Between 1979 and 1994 Cornelius Castoriadis repeatedly, but piecemeal, confronts the legacy of Alexis de Tocqueville. In a context in which the rediscovery of this author is marked by the influence of Raymond Aron in a liberal and Atlanticist key, Castoriadis's position - although sociologically close to Aronian circles - appears difficult to situate: to Tocqueville he concedes the lucidity of having identified a basic tendency of modernity, the equalization of economic conditions, without, however, having fully understood its counter-tendency, namely the inequality in regimes of individual autonomy. Through the comparison with the author of Democracy in America, Castoriadis can thus vindicate his conception of equality coinciding with freedom in the figure of autonomy, a third way from Marxists and liberals.
