This chapter highlights the affinities between moderation, modesty, and humility. It uses the example of the Swedish term lagom, which connotes a certain form of humility and respect for limits.

Democracy in America begins from the central insight that religion precedes politics. This is best seen in the prominent role that Tocqueville accords to America’s Puritan Founders. The Puritans, in his view, contribute much to the spirit of American political culture. On the one hand, they contribute a covenantal theology that focuses on the importance of intermediation among otherwise separate democratic individuals. Yet the Puritans are also responsible for notions of sinfulness and religious “stain” that have the potential to assume illiberal forms. As Joshua Mitchell argues in this chapter, one potentially illiberal danger of Puritanism is the scapegoating of particular groups through the dynamics of identity politics. In Mitchell’s view, we need to reckon with America’s Puritan legacy not only through the lens of John Calvin and the covenantal theory of mediation but also through the prism of Blaise Pascal whose insights into the problems of loneliness, separation, and redemption illuminate contemporary political dilemmas.

In the editor’s introduction, Richard Boyd surveys the main intellectual sources for Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work Democracy in America. After sketching out how Democracy in America has been read in light of the influences of Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Blaise Pascal, and François Guizot, Boyd surveys the book’s contemporaneous receptions in France, England, and America. Consulting reviews from leading journals of the 1830s and 1840s, Boyd demonstrates that, while Democracy in America was universally acclaimed as a work of genius, its teachings about democracy were interpreted differently as a function of the ideological predilections of its readers. Tocqueville’s appeal to divergent political sensibilities – conservative and liberal democratic alike – anticipates a consistent pattern of subsequent thinkers adapting the book’s complex teachings to their own political circumstances. This rich tradition of appropriation is hardly confined to the United States or Europe but extends globally into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In this chapter, Ryan Patrick Hanley surveys some of the best-known Enlightenment sources of Alexis de Tocqueville’s political philosophy. He considers in particular the respective influences of René Descartes, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Blaise Pascal on the arguments and methodology of Democracy in America. Rather than conceiving of Tocqueville as either pro- or anti-Enlightenment, Hanley argues that we should instead understand Tocqueville as an example of a “Moderate Enlightenment” that eschews the rationalism and materialism of the “Radical Enlightenment.” By way of illustration, Hanley identifies specific affinities between Tocqueville and the moderate Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith.

Chapter 1 gives two answers to the question, why should we care about meaning? The first answer comes from Blaise Pascal. He was appalled at people who appear to be indifferent to the meaning of their lives because, he believes, everyone naturally cares about meaning. Given this fact, we expect that everyone will care about meaning. This expectation is muted somewhat, however, by the fact that there are a number of causes of indifference. A second answer to the question of the chapter connects caring about meaning with believing in God: we should care about meaning because God has given us desires for intrinsic goods and right pleasures and because God desires for us to satisfy these desires. This answer is compatible with duty ethics (deontological ethics), happiness ethics (hedonism), and virtue ethics. The chapter suggests that caring about meaning can be regarded as a virtue alongside traditional virtues, and it describes the features of such a virtue.