Volume 1, Number 6 · November 14, 1963
Right Thinking
By Marshall Cohen
The Pure Theory of Politics
by Bertrand de Jouvenel
Yale, 220 pp., $6.00
M. de Jouvenel is a writer of great historical learning, political imagination, and literary force. He is, I think, the ablest recent representative of a tradition of French libertarian thought stretching from Montesquieu and Rousseau through Royer-Collard and Benjamin Constant to Alexis de Tocqueville. It is not surprising therefore that in a period notable for its inability to produce political philosophies in the classical manner, works such as On Power and its sequel, Sovereignty, should find an eager audience. Nevertheless, M. de Jouvenel's reading of history is so myopic, his dialectical confusions so serious, and his political nostrums so inapropos that the large claims often made for him cannot be sustained. Indeed, I suspect that his admirers are attracted by his ideological tendencies as much as they are by his philosophical gifts: for M. de Jouvenel is an unrelenting critic of democracy, socialism, and every form of modern 'radicalism,' and his typical admirers are notable more for their political allegiances than they are for their devotion to philosophy. If the democratic Prince requires an anguished aristocrat as his court philosopher he would do better to call Tocqueville to the post. For Tocqueville offers a juster analysis of the problems involved in plucking the flower of liberty from the nettle of equality.
Review, 2470 words
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