Then and Now

If we take 1968 as a vantage point, certain ideological displacements become evident. When comparing the decade before with the one after the great tumult—which, although not a revolution, still briefly shook French society—one notices a change in the intellectual climate. It is not simply that actors have aged and sometimes changed their costumes, nor that others have come on the scene: the play itself is no longer the same. Since in the following pages I will argue that there has been a renaissance in political thought, it might be useful to begin by listing the most significant ideas that have emerged during the last 50 years and to explain why they have to be interpreted differently