Examples Of Individualism In Richard David Tocqueville

“I have no name, no title” (Shakespeare 4.1.266). With these words, former King Richard II laments his deposition at the hands of Bolingbroke, but his reasoning extends beyond simply his loss of power. In Richard’s world a name means everything, in that it connects an individual to both his ancestors and his descendents. Consequently, when Richard loses his title, he also loses his identity. Likewise, when the aristocracy melts away in the democratic centuries, individuals lose their ties to the past and to the future and become isolated. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville explores the sources and ramifications of this phenomenon, which he calls individualism. However, Tocqueville is not the only thinker to comment on the operations of individualism

in society. In Leviathan, Hobbes illustrates the causes and consequences of individualism through his “state of nature,” while the writers of The Federalist Papers used individualism to frame the structure of the U.S. government. Furthermore, residents of the current century may witness the long-term consequences of individualism beginning to manifest themselves in the opioid epidemic afflicting the U.S.’s isolated populations.
First and foremost, Tocqueville distinguishes individualism from the frequently confused selfishness. In distinguishing individualism from selfishness, Tocqueville also distinguishes democracies from aristocracies. Tocqueville defines individualism as a “reflective and peaceable sentiment” of “democratic origin,” while he describes selfishness as an “exaggerated love of self” and a “vice as old as the world” (Tocqueville 482-483).
Because individualism is a new feature of democracies, Tocqueville describes the implications of the trend among democratic families. In aristocracies, individuals had a stronger connection to the past and to the future because families remained in the same location for centuries, rendering all generations “contemporaries” in a way (Tocqueville 483). According to Tocqueville, the aristocratic man “almost always knows his ancestors and respects them” and “believes he already perceives his great-grandsons” and “loves them” (Tocqueville 483). As a result of this multi-generational bond, the aristocratic man feels a duty to a group of people larger than himself; he must protect the reputation of his family name. As Tocqueville explains, the aristocratic citizen “willingly does his duty by both” his ancestors and his descendents and “frequently comes to sacrifice his personal enjoyments for beings who no longer exist or who do not yet exist” (Tocqueville 483). Therefore, in an aristocratic society, individuals feel less isolated because they exist within the context of their name. Their duties exist for them before their births, and they are part of a much larger picture that expands beyond their lifetimes.
Shakespeare’s Richard II displays the difference between aristocratic societies and democratic societies as it relates to family identity.

For instance, in Richard’s world, a life builds around the connection to one’s ancestors and descendants. In the play, characters repeatedly appeal to their bloodlines for authority and power. Moreover, society expects people to be like their ancestors, even the ones who lived long before they did. For example, Gaunt scolds Richard by comparing him, unfavorably, to his grandfather with the lines, “had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye / Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons, / From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame” (Shakespeare 2.1.110-112). With these words, Gaunt blames Richard not only for destroying his own reputation, but also for destroying the reputation of all his descendants. When Bolingbroke strips Richard of his kingship, Richard feels isolated because he lost his connection to his ancestors and descendants, who will no longer hold the same power or title he did. Richard expresses his feeling that he lost his identity when he says “I have no name, no title, / No, not that name was given me at the font, / But ‘tis usurped. Alack the heavy day, / That I have worn so many winters out / And know not now what name to call myself” (Shakespeare 4.1.265-270). Tocqueville argues that, like Richard, many democratic citizens feel the same distance from others and from an identity as a consequence of

individualism.
Furthermore, Tocqueville explores the origins of individualism in democracies.

According to Tocqueville, the source of individualism in democratic societies is the equality of conditions (Tocqueville 483). As class associations previously found in aristocracies disappear, each citizen isolates himself “from the mass of those like him” and withdraws “to one side with his family and his friends” (Tocqueville 482). After the individual removes himself from those similar to him, he creates “a little society for his own use” and then “willingly abandons society at large” (Tocqueville 482). The individual finds himself stranded, removed from the family lineage that bonded members of different generations in aristocratic times. Likewise, Hobbes also characterizes individualism through his imagined “state of nature,” a world in which men are “so equal in the faculties of body and mind” that they all hope to achieve the same ends (Hobbes 74-75). Therefore, Hobbes and Tocqueville agree that equality is the source of

individualism.
However, Tocqueville’s and Hobbes’ perspectives on the effects of individualism diverge. According to Hobbes, when men of equal abilities directly compete with one another, they become enemies (Hobbes 75). The equality of conditions allows for every man to be a potential threat to every other man’s life, thus sustaining a perpetual state of war (Hobbes 76). In this continual state of war, each man lives in “continual fear and danger of a violent death,” a state that renders his life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes 76). Therefore, Hobbes’ “state of nature,” which arises out of an equality of conditions like the one Tocqueville describes, also leads to isolation. However, while the individuals in Hobbes’ state of nature constantly anticipate war, the state of nature is not a bloodbath. Instead, Hobbes says that men’s fear of death inclines them to seek peace and live under the Leviathan, or “a common power to keep them all in awe” (Hobbes 78). Therefore, for Hobbes, equality first leads to the possibly of total war and ruthless violence, followed by a stagnating fear that produces peace and passive conformity. Yet, while Hobbes builds off of an “equality of conditions” like Tocqueville does, he believes that natural human isolation diminishes in the context of a society. The problems caused by equality diminish under the Leviathan while they intensify under a democracy. In fact, the equality of conditions and feelings of isolation that emerge from it spawn the great dangers of democracy that Tocqueville describes.