La civile violenza dei desideri : la scienza politica di Tocqueville come scienza storica

The aim of the essay is to read Tocqueville's First Memoir on Pauperism as the fulcrum of his proposal on democratic civilization, and to establish the place of History in the new political science he develops. Once it has been demonstrated that the link between property and desire orients the path of civilization, it is shown that the assumption that democracy is an unstoppable process dictates the criteria for the solution of the social question.

Finally, the essay investigates these connections in the chapters of Democracy in America dedicated to the social and anthropological effects of industrialization and to the models of writing and understanding History in the democratic era: the correct understanding of modern History goes hand in hand with the proposal of solutions to the social question, united by the identification of the regulation of desire as the condition for a political intervention aimed at containing social crises. [Publisher's text]