SOURCE: "The Problem of Democracy," in Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy, Stanford University Press, 1967, pp. 41-84.

In this excerpt, Zetterbaum examines Tocqueville's attempts to reconcile the seemingly contradictory concepts of equality and individuality, justice and excellence, in modern democracy.

Even if democracy is the only just social condition, it need not coincide with a condition of human excellence; it is not necessarily conducive to what is highest in man. This observation, along with the tension implied by it between justice and excellence, forced Tocqueville to make a critical choice. Traditionally, justice had been considered equivalent to human excellence, or at least an expression of it. In a striking passage at the end of the Democracy, Tocqueville acquiesces to the modern separation of justice and excellence and accepts the priority of the claim of justice. "A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just...