Abstract
Alexis de Tocqueville is known for his strange liberalism. One of the reasons therefore
has to be found in his lesser known strange religious belief. The three main elements
that determined his belief were his aristocratic and profoundly religious education, the
dramatic loss of his faith after reading eighteenth century French philosophers and his
conviction that the stability of the American democracy was mainly due to religious
mores. These elements explain why Tocqueville appeared in his publications as an
obvious believer, hardly bothered by any dubiety, while internally he was a restless
doubter, sometimes a panicky infidel and occasionally some sort of believer anyway.
The focus of this article is a meticulous dissection of Tocqueville’s personal belief by
contrasting it with approaches of religion that look familiar at first sight. Although
Tocqueville had the highest esteem for Pascal, his wager was not really tempting to
him. James’ will to believe seemed far more attractive, yet Tocqueville’s thinking was
too empirical to fit with it. Kant furnished strong arguments to overcome this obstacle,
and in that respect he offered a solid philosophical ground to consider Tocqueville’s
outlook on religion as an authentic religious belief. But what Tocqueville has never
found was a religious ground to Christianity. As a matter of fact, Christianity was
Tocqueville’s philosophical belief, rather than his religious belief.