Tocqueville, Jansenism, and the Necessity of the Political in a Democratic Age

Before being declared heretical in 1713, Jansenism was a Catholic movement focused on such central issues as original sin and predestination. In this engaging book, David Selby explores how the Jansenist tradition shaped Alexis de Tocqueville’s life and works and argues that once that connection is understood, we can apply Tocqueville’s political thought in new and surprising ways. Moving from the historical sociology of Jansenism in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France to contemporary deb