As mentioned previously, Tocqueville examined the various elements of French and American society and government to find how they informed the whole. But Tocqueville also saw each part of society--be it the family, religion, literature, games, sexual mores, etc--as reflecting a unifying, underlying principle. Our examination of Chinese civic culture will require us to explore these various elements while at the same time looking for what principle, if any, is pulling the pieces together into a civic whole.
Can a large society like China live without a coherent and larger idea of "right"? It may be that there is no immediate challenge to the Party today, but many have talked about a moral and ethical void in China today--one the government has not adequately filled. Is it accurate to say that there is no dominant view of "right" in China today? If not, is there an incipient one? If so, how might it inform or exist in tension with China’s current political and civil arrangements? If not, what does that tell us about the prospects for China's civic health or stability in the future? We will examine these and other questions in the following "Tocqueville on China" sessions.
- What can we learn from Tocqueville about how to study a society?
- Is China's experiment in village governance a School of Liberty?
- Windows into China's Civic Culture
- Tocqueville's Ancien Regime: A Revolution Gone Bad
- What's Next
