Tocqueville's defense of the necessity of a democratic republic found in the ‘Author's Introduction’ to Democracy in America left open the question of what theoretical resources could be used to make sense of its institutional arrangements. In this chapter I suggest that Tocqueville's observations in America not only gave him evidence for how to make democracy work, but also tapped into these Jansenist tendencies from his upbringing and professional training, and helped him see how they could be applied in modern world. From this fusion of French republican theory and American republican practices, Tocqueville developed a kind of neo-Jansenist interpretive framework to think about how democratic political life could be established in France.

I begin this chapter by looking at the reception of Pascal in the nineteenth century. By reading Pascal's ‘Conversation with Sacy on Epictetus and Montaigne’ in the political culture the Restoration and July Monarchy, I demonstrate how interpretations of the content of Pascal's philosophy are connected to visions of political rule. To do so, I look at two iterations of Restoration debates over the status of the Charter of 1814, the heritage of Pascal, and the role of the Catholic Church in political life. The first iteration of this debate combines the rise of the conservative Villèle Ministry with the publication of Joseph Maistre's Du Pape and De l’Église gallicane.

The second iteration of this debate is around the period of the July Revolution in 1830, which prompted Tocqueville's trip to America. It is not only useful for locating Tocqueville's own personal feelings about the fall of Charles X, but also helps to make sense of his defense of the sovereignty of the people in Democracy in America. In America, his French heritage confronted his democratic future. He saw not only the ‘image of democracy itself’ with all of its faults, but a republican system of democratic self-rule that gave him hope a similar set of institutions could be made to work in ‘other countries besides America.’

Pascal's ‘Conversation’ in the Nineteenth Century

Of the essays that were commonly included in editions of the Pensées, the ‘Conversation with Sacy on Epictetus and Montaigne’ stands out as an important example of Pascal's method, and is helpful for making sense of what is at stake in debates over Pascal in the nineteenth century.