Alexis de Tocqueville cannot be clearly classified as a liberal thinker of the nineteenth century in the tradition of John Stuart Mills nor as a republican thinker à la Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which is why he has sometimes been labelled a “strange liberalism” (Boesche 1981) in the history of ideas. However, in light of the current debate about new, republican conceptions of freedom, which seek to overcome the distinction between positive and negative freedom prominently launched by Isaiah Berlin, Tocqueville’s ambivalent position appears highly relevant.