On Change and Human Nature in Alexis De Tocqueville’s “The Old Regime and the Revolution” – A Commentary

Abstract

The current study addresses two issues. Firstly, it tries to identify the causalities and conditionalities illustrated by Tocqueville’s analysis of the French Revolution, by comparing the French and English societies. Secondly, it purports to describe the specific forms of subjectivity under the Old Regime, during the French Revolution and in post-revolutionary France, laying the foundations for what sociology would later conceptualize as methodological individualism. Tocqueville tries to capture the logic of social systems during periods of societal production and reproduction by closely looking at the inner world of the social actors, be they individuals or groups, in which this act of production manifests itself. Discovering concepts of social psychology and the sociology of emotions within his discourse makes a lecture on Tocqueville’s work even more relevant.