![]() ![]() Under the Restoration and the July Monarchy, art criticism and, more broadly, reflection on the arts were a central issue in political life. Great experts on Tocqueville’s thought, Françoise Mélonio and Lucien Jaume retrace for us the point of view of this writer, not an art enthusiast but someone concentrated on democracy and its effects on the arts. While we often see art as a force of opposition (above or alongside public opinion), Tocqueville thus envisages it, on the contrary, as an object that is representative of the general spirit of a society. That is why Tocqueville saw modern societies as unsuited to the production of significant works of art, citizens there being incapable of elaborating reasonable criteria of evaluation. For, if it is really aristocratic inequality that has encouraged the creation of works that are considered to be major, democratic society, with its egalitarian calling, would on the contrary be driven toward a culture of entertainment that goes off in search of what is new and easy. ![]() One of its effects would be the “softening of customs,” but it would also engender cultural upheaval and an upending of established cultural objects. The principal thesis of the second volume of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is that the dominant passion of modern societies is equality. ![]()
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