1. Explain why Tocqueville regards the principle of individualism as such a crucial social value.

2. In what way do the people "direct" the American democracy, according to Tocqueville?

3. What impressed Tocqueville during his time in America? Cite examples to support your answer.

4. In what way could Tocqueville's book (Democracy in America) be relevant today?

The answers are below.

Explanation:

1. Tocqueville believes that individualism comprises two fundamental aspects: first, a denunciation of the despotic dangers that threaten democratic societies when their members, dominated by the individualist tendency, withdraw to the private sphere and disregard responsibilities that correspond to them, as citizens; and, secondly, a proposal to overcome, in a humanistic key, the perspective that conceives of individualism as an anthroponomic figure characteristic of liberal democracy.

2. The main problem that Tocqueville arises throughout Democracy in America is that of the conformation of the democraticus furnace and hence its interest in thoroughly analyzing the nature, consequences, inconveniences and possible remedies to such transformation.

3. The example of American society - Tocqueville maintains - teaches us to distinguish between this erroneous, grossly utilitarian and individualistic view of one's own interest, and an enlightened and "well understood" vision of it. The first one reduces the individual interest to the merely economic, conceives it naively as if it were something natural and previously constituted to the social relationship, tends to confuse it with selfishness and, finally, believes illusory that the general interest is nothing more than sum of private interests. The second, on the contrary, defines the particular interest as a social construction and insists, from there, on the need to make individuals understand that they are not self-sufficient and that their own interest is closely linked to the fair construction of a common interest.

4. In the way that Tocqueville considered equality as a great political and social idea of his time, the author argued that the United States was the most advanced example of equality in action.