Tocqueville e il carattere nazionale

This article deals with the idea of national character in the opinion of Tocqueville. It is an intellectual tool that he employs for analyzing the present and the past, and for foreseeing the future? What is his idea (if he has one) of the character of a people? To answer these questions we will examine almost exclusively the Démocratie en Amérique: here the character is subjected to an accurate critical examination, an apparent definitive condemnation and, in the development of the text, the definition, in contrast with the essentialist one, of a character such as to make it usable.