The Politics of Providence: Democracy in America I as Port-Royalist Epic.

While the content of Alexis de Tocqueville's political categories has been voluminously studied, his use of religious categories in moral argument are only occasionally noted and almost never explained. In this paper I argue that Tocqueville's use of the category of Providence in Democracy in America I is best understood in relation to the history and practices of Jansenism. Secondly, I argue that Tocqueville's use of the idea of Providence points to his use of other Jansenist categories as well, especially the idea of an 'order of justification.' Tocqueville's use of this concept allows him to defend the democratic social state as a set of political and social relations independent from the world of religion while maintaining that the ultimate ethical justification of the democratic social state is that it is, in fact, an expression of divine will. The approach I follow in this paper is closest to that of Jean-Louis Benoit in Tocqueville Moraliste because I view Democracy in America I as moralist work, intended to move the reader emotionally and provoke action. Tocqueville's use of Jansenist categories owes the most to his reading of Pascal but Pascal is by no means the only Jansenist in Tocqueville's intellectual genealogy. Without an understanding the connections between Pascal's religious and political ideas, our understanding of the influence of Pascal on Tocqueville remains incomplete. The advantage of using the history and ideas of Jansenism is that it gives a mechanism of transmission and a hierarchy of ideas that more robustly explains the influence of Pascal on Tocqueville. Moreover, it is certain that Tocqueville knew Pascal was a Jansenist. In the next section of this paper I explain the basic philosophical substance of Jansenism with a special focus on Pascal's use of Jansenist categories of the hidden God, an 'order of justification.', and Providence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]