Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (BOLLI)

H&G17-10-Wed1

Yiyang Zhuge

This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation in this course requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email

September 11 - November 13

The upcoming 2024 election will occur amidst intense political polarization and growing concern about the future viability of our democracy. What better time to turn to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, widely regarded as the best book ever written on American politics. Although this book was written over 200 years ago, we will see that Tocqueville’s analysis of the viability of institutions of self-government is still pertinent today. We will discuss the novelty of the American experiment, the status of this “democratic revolution,” and the needs for “a new science of politics” for the American republic. We will use Tocqueville as our guide in studying perennial issues in American politics: democracy and aristocracy, liberty and equality, individualism and “self-interest well understood,” law and mores, tyranny of the majority and “soft despotism,” local government and the art of association, religion, race and family.

Roughly the same amount of lecture and discussion.

Democracy in America by Alex de Tocqueville translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop ISBN #0226805360

2 hours per week. 

Yiyang Zhuge is a Political Philosophy PhD Candidate at Boston College working on 19th century liberalism. She has taught classes on classical political philosophy at Boston College and Jane Austen and Alexis de Tocqueville at BOLLI. She also hosts a popular mandarin-language political philosophy podcast that comments on contemporary Chinese social and political issues.