BOOKS
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belongs to the economists in the manner of an heirloom clock. They
take pride in seeing it on the mantel but consult their Rolex watches
when they want to know the time. Thucidydes is a trust fund for histo–
rians who return to the
History of the Peloponnesian War
now and then
when the discipline's intellectual resources seem a little straitened.
Thomas Hobbes's
Leviathan
is the drafty ancestral mansion of political
science, clung to despite high taxes and a leaky roof. Sociologists for
their portion received title to a whole shelf of books by French and Scot–
tish thinkers, but lost everything at the racetrack. Who then owns Toc–
queville?
Democracy in America
continues to compel attention from histori–
ans, political scientists, and a substantial lay audience of Americans
who are dazzled by the pertinence of Tocqueville's insights into con–
temporary American society. To these audiences, I should add one other
of which I am part: anthropologists to whom Tocqueville was a pioneer
ethnographer and for whom
Democracy in America
is a kind of
Arg–
onauts of the Western Atlantic.
Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop have translated Tocqueville's
most famous work, as they put it, "with a certain reverence."
It
is, in
fact, an excellent translation, but to discover its excellence, the reader
must be ready to work through the obstacle that reverence has erected–
a straining for fidelity to the French, even if minor adjustments would
provide much more fluent English. For rapid reading, the ordinary
American reader is probably better served by the widely available Reeve
and Bowen translation (I835, I862) or the George Lawrence transla–
tion (I966). For instance:
Tocqueville. Chapter
6:
"Du Pouvoir Judiciaire aux Etats-Unis et
de Son Action sur la Societe Politique "
Reeve and Bowen: "Judicial Power in the United States and Its
Influence on Political Society"
Lawrence: "Judicial Power in the United States and Its Effect on
Political Society"
Mansfield and Winthrop: "Judicial Power in the United States and
Its Action on Political Society"
"Action" is arguably an accurate choice for the French
"action,"
but is
unidiomatic and slightly opaque. The title of the chapter in Mansfield
