USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The French aristocratic political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) described individualism in terms of a kind of moderate selfishness that disposed humans to be concerned only with their own small circle of family and friends.

Detailed explanation-2: -In using the phrase “equality of conditions” Tocqueville did not refer to the literal material equality of all American citizens, but rather the universal assumption that no significance was to be accorded any apparent differences-material, social, or personal.

Detailed explanation-3: -Alexis de Tocqueville is best known for Democracy in America, which he wrote after spending 10 months of 1831 and 1832 in the United States on a mission from France to study American prisons (then considered progressive).

Detailed explanation-4: -The Tocqueville effect (also known as the Tocqueville paradox) is the phenomenon in which, as social conditions and opportunities improve, social frustration grows more quickly. The effect is based on Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on the French Revolution and later reforms in Europe and the United States.

Detailed explanation-5: -As “Democracy in America” revealed, Tocqueville believed that equality was the great political and social idea of his era, and he thought that the United States offered the most advanced example of equality in action.