Do interesse à paixão na política : uma trajetória filosófica de Alexis de Tocqueville

Abstract

This research sought to investigate, from the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, what propels the action of democratic modern men in the public sphere, causing them to withdraw from the private sphere. These are individuals who live exclusively for themselves, according to their reason and who are primarily concerned with the pursuit of their material well-being. They tend to live in isolation, but there is something that motivates them to act for the union of the political body. The point of this thesis is that, in the course of his philosophical reflections, Tocqueville presents the political categories of interest and passion as that something. They are described as fundamental categories for the preservation and functioning of modern democracy and are important keys to reading the works “Democracy in America - Book I and II” - and “Souvenir”. The philosophical reading of these titles allows us to understand that, in the first two, the American model of consolidated democracy is put as an epistemological model to think of interest as a principle of democracy. In Souvenirs, Tocqueville reflects on another political context: the French social state which was a democracy in consolidation. It is possible to perceive a change of perspective of the Tocquevillian thought due to the alteration of the analyzed context. The Tocquevillian philosophical thought starts from the analysis of a political and social state that is based on interest for another that is based, predominantly, on the passions. Tocqueville does not neglect the existence of passions in the American social state, nor the existence of the interest in the French social state, but it is observed in “Democracy in America - Book I and II” a consolidated democracy, which conservation as a political body is based on the political category of interest; and in “Souvenirs”, a society that, being in the process of democratic transition, moves under the beacons of the passions. The perception of this change of perspective was central to the construction of this thesis and it was based on the sequential reading of “Democracy in America - Book I and II” and “Souvenirs”.