The Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society

The Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society is an intellectual community at Furman University devoted to seeking the truth about the moral and philosophic questions at the heart of political life. We host curricular and extracurricular activities designed to help students and faculty to engage seriously with the most powerful arguments behind diverse and competing religious, political and ethical points of view. Our work is undertaken in the hope that the practice of shared, disciplined inquiry into disputed questions can help us understand better how to maintain the delicate fabric of our civilization. Our center takes its name from Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th-century French author, statesman, and traveler who developed a “new science of politics” focused on the study of the modern democratic soul. On the contested, partisan questions of his time, Tocqueville “undertook to see, not differently, but further than the parties.” We seek to follow his example.