فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

After the onslaught of some Enlightenment thinkers on religion, Tocqueville was one of the most impressive philosophers who tried to reconcile modern democracy with religion. His stance is that liberty cannot be established without morality, and morality cannot be established without faith. He thinks that despotism can do without faith, but freedom cannot. So, religion is more necessary in a republic or a democratic country than any other. Tocqueville’s vision aligns him with those associated with “post-secular society” theories today. Contrary to Marx, Tocqueville did not think religion was destined to disappear with economic and educational progress. However, he feared that religion might disappear in democratic societies. His stance is that stronger passions for material gratifications can extinguish the spiritual faculty of humans, and if spirituality extinguishes, liberty will disappear. He thinks that if democratic people do not have faith, they must serve, and if they are free, they must have at least a few simple beliefs. They must maintain a more elevated view of human life’s potential and set more distant goals. This is the place in which Tocqueville foreshadows Nietzsche most closely. Unlike Nietzsche, however, Tocqueville looked for sources of elevation compatible with democracy. This article analyzes Tocqueville’s personal beliefs, the causes of his attention to religion, the relationship between religion and the doctrine of “self-interest properly understood,” the relationship between religion and materialism, the relationship between religion and freedom, and the relationship between religion and state in Tocqueville’s philosophy.