Alexis de Tocqueville is one of the most important political thinkers of the modern era. His*Democracy in America*and*The Old Regime and the Revolution*are not merely political studies, but also an attempt to understand how social, cultural and mental transformations shape modernity, and what tensions are constitutive of modern societies.
A biography of his thought shows how personal experiences – his aristocratic background, his observation of revolutionary tensions, his journey to America, his political career – became the source of his intellectual reflections. Tocqueville did not develop his theories in isolation from life; on the contrary, his reflections stemmed from a constant grappling with the question of how to preserve freedom in an age of growing equality. It was from this tension that his 'new political science' emerged, based on a fundamental shift in the questions we consider most important for understanding the political sphere.
Tocqueville combined the sensibilities of a philosopher, historian and sociologist, creating tools that allowed him to study the phenomenon of democracy from a long-term perspective. Thanks to this, we too, today, can view what is happening around us through 'Tocqueville's glasses'.
Biography:
Jan Tokarski (b. 1981) – historian of ideas, philosopher. Editor of *Przegląd Polityczny* and the quarterly *Kronos*. Regular contributor to *Kultura Liberalna*. His publications include *The Presence of Evil: On the Philosophy of Leszek Kołakowski* (Kraków 2016), "The Thucydides Moment" (Warsaw 2021), "Has Liberalism Died?" (Kraków 2021). He received the Marcin Król Award for his book "After the Catastrophe: Encounter, the Congress of Cultural Freedom and the Memory of the 20th Century". His latest book is "Tocqueville: A Biography of Thought" (Gdańsk 2025). He lives in Warsaw.
Venue: Plac NZS 1
Date: 24 March Time: 18:00, Room 108A
