Contingency and necessity in Alexis de Tocqueville

Abstract

Tocqueville’s analysis took a scientific approach to the social context. He saw the need for “a new science for an entirely new world”, but one which did not erase the history of free action of men; that “sacred thing” that is human freedom. This defence of freedom enabled him to step aside from the mechanism and the prevailing notion of progress in emerging positivist social science to affirm freedom as the core and the normative content of a sociological theory of social change. In Tocqueville, there is a convergence between science and values. At the same time, his research is never idly curious but rather a committed science intimately linked to the values that guide his life. His beliefs are implicit in his research questions and in the objectives of his investigative work.