Tocqueville on the true love of liberty (1856)

In these passages on “the true love of liberty” Tocqueville asks two very profound questions. The first has to do with the conflicting desires of the French people before, during, and after the Revolution of 1789. On the one hand there was the desire for political liberty which was in conflict with another equally strong desire to have a powerful state which would act as the “tutor of individuals.” These conflicting ideals could have no resolution, which Tocqueville believed explained the cycles of revolution, liberty, and despotism in France over the previous 60 years (this book was published in 1856). The second question he poses is more general in nature and has to do with why individuals are attracted to liberty in the first place. He begins by discussing two common justifications people give for wanting to be free: “love for independence” from tyrants and a desire for “the material advantages it procures” but dismisses them as merely the “incidental benefits” of liberty. He believes the “the true love of liberty” comes from a much deeper source, namely the realization by the individual that there are “intrinsic attractions of freedom” which have their “own peculiar charm.” The true lover of liberty, Tocqueville concludes, loves “the pleasure of being able to speak, to act, to breathe unrestrained, under the sole government of God and the laws.”