Présentation de l’éditeur

This book adopts an Eastern or Chinese perspective on Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought, highlighting the ‘aristocratic’ nature of his theory of freedom; and, as it does to, it takes the great traveller of nineteenth-century Europe to the East. What would that traveller see in China? What kind of freedom would be identified in Chinese social contexts? And how would Confucianism figure in today’s politics? This book departs from the usual present-day distinction between democracy and authoritarianism, to analyse how ‘equality of conditions’ has affected both China and the West, albeit in different forms. It rejects the ‘End of History’ perspective as both false and dangerous, arguing in the Tocquevillian spirit that ‘democracy’, although inevitable for human societies, it is not an ‘end’ but rather a condition according to which we must adjust ourself in order to stay free, whether in the West or in the East.  

Denim Duan is Professor of Politics at Peking University, China.

Sommaire

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Empire and Freedom
Chapter 3 Aristocrat in Democracy
Chapter 4 Déjà vu: Tocqueville in China
Chapter 5 People and Hierarchy: Confucianism in Today’s China
Chapter 6 Another Form of Representation
Chapter 7 A Tale of Two Revolutions
Chapter 8 Conclusion: Tocqueville between East and West