Riesman Given French Prize; Giscard to Make Presentation

French President Valery Giscardd'Estaing will award the second annual Tocqueville Prize Friday to David Riesman '31, Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus.

The prize of about $5500, sponsored by the French Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, is given for work in the spirit of the nineteenth-century French philosopher and historian Alexis de Tocqueville.

The American ambassador to France, Arthur A. Hartman '47, will accept the award for Riesman, who does not travel abroad for health reasons, in a ceremony at the Tocqueville family chateau in Valogne, the Brittany village in which Tocqueville served as town deputy 140 years ago.

Taken Aback

"I am overwhelmed and tremendously honored," Riesman said yesterday.

"The fact that it is an international award in an age of nationalism in both France and the United States makes the prize all the more significant," he added.

In a message Riesman has sent to be read at the ceremony at Valogne, he wrote, "No award or honor I have received nor any I can conceive of in the future is as great as this one."

Riesman was chosen by a jury of five Frenchmen and three Americans, including Laurence Wylie '50, Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France Emeritus, and Stanley Hoffman '52, who currently holds Wylie's former chair. Wylie will be on hand in Valogne to read a tribute to Riesman.

"We wanted to give the award to someone who does the sort of work Tocqueville did, which restricts the field a great deal," Hoffmann said yesterday, adding, "I suppose some of the members of the jury like Riesman's work."

The jury awarded Riesman the prize for his life's work, although it singled out two of his best known books, "The Lonely Crowd" and "Abundance for What? and Other Essays," in its announcement.

In a statement from Alain Peyrefitte, the French Minister of Justice, Riesman was hailed as "a great thinker." The statement concludes: "He has had a profound influence on the academic world. More than anyone else, he has contributed to the dissemination of Tocqueville's philosophy."

"Tocqueville was always our first reading in Social Sciences 136," Riesman said. "Robert Merton said, 'We stand on the shoulders of giants' and Tocqueville was a giant. And there is something of a political connection between us. He was a liberal, he believed in equality, and he liked America and saw it as the future."

The Tocqueville Prize was founded a year ago "to fill the need for a major prize of international scope in the field of political science," Peyrefitte wrote in December 1979. The first prize went to the French journalist Raymond Aron