The 16th volume of the complete works published by Gallimard contains, on three pages, notes that Tocqueville made about Plato around 1836/37. In letters to Louis de Kergorlay (OC XIII, 1, 388) and Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard (OC XI, 19), both written in Baden in August 1836, Tocqueville points out that he is, among other things, reading Plato. Although Tocqueville approves of the spiritualistic orientation of Platonic philosophy with its strict dualism, there are nevertheless some elements of this philosophy that contradict the liberal premises of Tocquevillian thought. Plato’s condemnation of the decadence of Athens may have been justified, but his solution to the problem, so to speak, went far beyond the target. Democracy must not sink into the swamp of materialism, but it cannot exist in the pure heaven of spiritualism either. Tocqueville, according to Lawler, shares with Platonism the idea that man must take care of his soul, as it represents what is valuable in him (Lawler 1992, 105).