关键词: 自由, 托克维尔, 平等, 暴力, 法国大革命

Abstract: In his unfinished writings about the French Revolution and Napoleon, Tocqueville analyzed the tension between liberty and equality and the political dynamics of the Revolution. During the liberal revolution from 1787 to 1789 which was the first period of the French Revolution, the class struggle provoked by the radical idea of democratic liberty gradually defeated the ideas of the aristocratic and elitist liberty. The weakening of the royal power and its wrong decisions aggravated the class struggle and strengthened the revolutionary ideology. The popular violence which pushed the radicalization of the Revolution created divisions in the camp of revolution which with the struggle for power brought the reign of Terror. During the late period of the French Revolution, the French people grew disgusted by the instability caused by revolution while enjoying the equality and advantages brought about by the Revolution. As a result, Napoleon Bonaparte who had assumed the equality of the Revolution and abandoned its pursuit of liberty was supported by the French people. Besides the analysis of the revolutionary process and dynamics, Tocqueville’s writings on the French Revolution confirmed his thesis in The Old Regime and the Revolution about the continuity between the Old Regime, the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule. French revolutionaries unwittingly inherited the political culture of Statism and the administrative centralization which dominated the Old Regime,while at the same time they destroyed aristocratic and feudal elements that could resist the absolute power. The French people accomplished the Revolution with the aid of the Old Regime and constructed a state and a centralization that was much more powerful than those autocrats during pre-1789 French history. 

Key words: violence, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French Revolution, liberty, equality