Alexis de Tocqueville and his actual validity

Abstract

Only few authors have been so well considered and taken into account among the classics of political thought as Alexis de Tocqueville. His contributions to understand some of the pathologies affecting our societies, as well as the identification of a set of resources to correct and health them, makes of him an author of outstanding significance. This paper focusses on his critical arguments about the doctrinarian liberalism of his time, sketching an ideological diachronic continuity that locates almost in the same coordinates the present globalization process led by neoliberalism. In this context of social urgency arguments about freedom, inequality, religion or violence are shown with a surprising topicality and with a clear derivate of practical order.