The goals of this chapter are to introduce Tocqueville's use of certain Jansenist ideas and to give an account of the Jansenist themes in his life and letters. I cannot prove beyond any doubt that Tocqueville was a Jansenist, but a look at his personal and professional relations will help to locate this Jansenist influence in tension and dialogue with other political traditions. Rather than provide a master narrative, I use a series of snapshots into Tocqueville's life, from his early childhood education to his personal letters as a man of politics, in order to demonstrate how Jansenist influences were present in both his personal relations and the political culture of nineteenth-century France.

I begin with an analysis of how the Jansenist ideas of the two states of man's nature and the theory of orders can be found in the drafts and notes to Democracy in America. After introducing Tocqueville's modification of these ideas in this major text, I turn to look at the Jansenist influence in several important social spaces of Tocqueville's life. Although this method breaks the usually diachronic structure of most histories, my goal is to introduce the reader to what is at stake ideologically first, in order to give a sense of the importance of looking biographically at Tocqueville's life.

The first snapshot is the brief history of the Tocqueville family from the old regime to the July Monarchy, including a look at what we know of the family library. The range of influence in the political culture of the Tocqueville family is best summarized in a letter to Tocqueville from his tutor Christian Lesueur. Lesueur advises Tocqueville to study ‘Bossuet, Massillon, d’Aguesseau.’ Bossuet is remembered as a nationalist Gallican but was also influential in the intellectual development of Catholic Ultras. On the other hand, d’Aguesseau is one of the great representatives of legal Jansenism and Massillon was banished from the court of Louis XIV for suspected Jansenist sympathies.

The second look at Jansenism in Tocqueville's life and works is a study of the political culture of the law in Restoration France. From 1823 until 1830, Tocqueville studied and practiced law. It was his first profession, one that in the Restoration still retained a strong link with the ideas and practices of Jansenism.