Political friendship in the era of ‘the social’: Theorizing personal relations with Alexis de Tocqueville

Abstract

This article examines the contribution Tocqueville’s work can make to recent scholarly debates on political friendship in modernity. Tocqueville, unlike most modern classical social theorists, does not treat friendship as a private bond devoid of political significance. For him, political friendship contributes to the success of democracy and is so crucial that its absence leads to despotism. The reason Tocqueville is attuned to the political significance of personal bonds when most modern theorists are not is his interpretation of ‘the social.’ This article investigates Tocqueville’s account of political friendship relative to his analysis of the new social basis of modern democracies. I argue that, in linking friendship to the social, Tocqueville provides an account of political friendship apposite to a modern society of strangers.