From the beginning the French philosopher Claude Lefort has set himself the task of interpreting the political life of modern society-and over time he has succeeded in elaborating a distinctive conception of modern democracy that is linked to both historical analysis and a novel form of philosophical reflection. This book, the first full-scale study of Lefort to appear in English, offers a clear and compelling account of Lefort's accomplishment-its unique merits, its relation to political philosophy within the Continental tradition, and (...) its great relevance today. Much of what passes for political philosophy in our day is merely politicized philosophical concepts, a distinction author Bernard Flynn underscores as he describes the development of Lefort's truly political philosophy-its ideas formed in response to his own political experience and to the work of certain major figures within the tradition of political thought. Beginning with Lefort's most important single work, his book on Machiavelli, Flynn presents the philosopher's conceptions of politics, modernity, and interpretation in the context within which they took shape. He then draws on a wide variety of Lefort's works to explicate his notions of premodern and modern democracy in which totalitarianism, in Lefort's singular and highly influential theory, is identified as a permanent problem of modernity. A valuable exposition of one of the most important Continental philosophers of the post-World War II period, Flynn's book is itself a noteworthy work of interpretive philosophy, pursuing the ideas and issues addressed by Lefort to a point of unparalleled clarity and depth. (shrink)
This work considers the consequences for political philosophy of what contemporary philosophers have called the end, or closure, especially in the works of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
Penetrating and illuminating, these essays firmly install Merleau-Ponty among the most innovative and critically debated thinkers of the past half century.
This article follows the development of Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy from his 1947 text, Humanism and Terror, through a number of essays in the Adventures of the Dialectic, to the Preface to Signs published in 1959. It shows the process by which Merleau-Ponty escaped the “grip of marxism” as a philosophy of history. It notes the link between his philosophy of history and the concrete historical events of his times, particularly the Russian Revolution and its degeneration into Stalinism. It suggests a (...) certain analogy between Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on the October Revolution and Kant’s reflection on the French Revolution. The notion of the universal class of the proletariat is the guiding thread in the analyses of both Merleau-Ponty’s proximity to marxism and the process by which he frees himself from its grip. We observe the role that this concept plays in Humanism and Terror and in the essays on Weber and Lukacs in the Adventure of the Dialectic where we eventually see its dissolution. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty arrives at a new conception of historical meaning which is neither totalizing or empiricist. The paper concludes by presenting an outline of the direction that his philosophy of history took after he extricated himself from marxism. This new philosophy took the form of a critical reflection on the role of the “notion of the hero” in 20th century political philosophy in general, particularly in Heidegger and Sartre. (shrink)
Philippe Van Haute, a practicing psychoanalyst as well as a professor of philosophy who was schooled in the phenomenological tradition, is well-positioned to write the book that he has written. In Against Adaptation: Lacan’s “Subversion” of the Subject—A Close Reading, Van Haute presents a close reading of one of Lacan’s most philosophically important essays, “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious.” This essay appears in Ecrits but was first delivered in a seminar organized (...) by the philosopher Jean Wahl. Instead of attempting to produce an overview of Lacan’s work as a whole, something which has already been done, Van Haute prefers to give us a detailed exposition of this one text. Rather than merely “getting the general idea,” he makes the reader confront the complexity of Lacan’s text and the philosophical issues that it raises. These are issues that spread well beyond this particular essay and extend to Lacan’s work as a whole. They also are the concerns of European philosophy in the last half of the twentieth century. (shrink)
Philippe Van Haute, a practicing psychoanalyst as well as a professor of philosophy who was schooled in the phenomenological tradition, is well-positioned to write the book that he has written. In Against Adaptation: Lacan’s “Subversion” of the Subject—A Close Reading, Van Haute presents a close reading of one of Lacan’s most philosophically important essays, “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious.” This essay appears in Ecrits but was first delivered in a seminar organized (...) by the philosopher Jean Wahl. Instead of attempting to produce an overview of Lacan’s work as a whole, something which has already been done, Van Haute prefers to give us a detailed exposition of this one text. Rather than merely “getting the general idea,” he makes the reader confront the complexity of Lacan’s text and the philosophical issues that it raises. These are issues that spread well beyond this particular essay and extend to Lacan’s work as a whole. They also are the concerns of European philosophy in the last half of the twentieth century. (shrink)
This paper elaborates a conception of the relationship between Philosophy and the Political which would not be one of exteriority but one of an intertwining between them. An analogy with Rémi Brague, who presents the conditions whereby the concept of 'the world' became a thematic object of reflection (The Wisdom of the World), is proposed to show the emergence of the concept of 'the political.' Following Lefort's philosophy, we trace the emergence of modern democracy with that of the political by (...) claiming that there is an ontological dimension of the political. As the concept of the world could not emerge within a conception of the universe that united man and world in an organic whole, so too the concept of the political cannot emerge when the discourse on power is determined theologically (premodern societies). It is argued that there is an ontological dimension to the revolutions that introduced our political modernity. Modern revolutions are not simply a change in a form of governance; they effect a mutation in the symbolic order of a society by which the political, as such, can become visible. The indetermination of modern democracy corresponds to "the disappearance of the markers of certainty" that characterize the modern experience of the world, an experience that reveals a transformed ontological dimension. This dimension of uncertainty, the experience of the place of power as an "empty place," is contrasted with the totalitarian impulse to fill this empty place with a determinate image, e.g., the Party, the Fürher. (shrink)
“Every angel is terrifying.” Dominique Janicaud evokes this sentence of Rilke in order to illustrate the essentially contextual character of meaning. I shall begin my brief reflections on his book, Powers of the Rational: Science, Technology and the Future of Thought, by situating Janicaud’s thought within the space between two angels, each in its own way terrifying. The first angel is that of angelic rationalism. Angelic rationalism is a strategy for the defense of classical rationalism which vacillates between reason as (...) an actual operation and the essence of reason as an idealization. Reason defends itself, and rightfully so, against the onslaught of the irrational; it evokes the success of the sciences, the accomplishment of modern technology, the fact of modern enlightened politics. When confronted with what one might call the “downside of rational modernity”—the ecological crisis; the possibility of nuclear annihilation; the “iron cage” of modern bureaucracy; the “deficit of meaning” in modern life, and so forth—it switches its focus from reason as an effective force realized in history and intertwined with power, to reason as an ideal, an idealization functioning as an infinite telos of humanity. And for the problems engendered by modern rationality, it prescribes more rationality. (shrink)
This essay begins with the contention that phenomenology has taken a “hermeneutic turn,” “the things themselves” are always already interpreted. Philosophers often elaborate their own positions through a “reading” of the works of other philosophers. This is the case for Claude Lefort. Through his interpretive reading of the works of Machiavelli one sees the origin of Lefort’s idea of the autonomy and the anonymity of the political and thus his notion of political modernity. In tracing the evolution of Lefort’s relationship (...) to Marx, we witness the process by which he disengages himself from his early “enchantment” with the works of Marx and the idea of the proletariat as a class bearing universal interest. Ultimately he criticizes Marx for his attempt to derive the political from the dimension of the social. This issues in his theory of totalitarianism as the attempt of a regime to close in on itself, thus denying any gesture to the dimension of the other. (shrink)
This important book on Heidegger is the most rigorous and systematic reading of his thought that has been produced to date. In addition, it draws out the consequences for practical philosophy of Heidegger's deconstruction of the history of metaphysics. The anarchy referred to in the title is specifically ontological; thus the reader should not expect to find here some improbable synthesis of Heidegger and Proudhon or Bakunin. Schürmann's interpretation of Heidegger is a reading in formed by contemporary theories of textuality. (...) It does not attempt to construct a quasi-intellectual biography by trying to construe what was in Heidegger's mind at a given moment, thereby using his texts as a cipher to discover his "inner thoughts." The book is organized in terms of the late works, the early works are read through them. (shrink)
The title of this paper makes an obvious reference to Pippin’s book Modernism as a Philosophical Problem. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part presents Pippin’s conception of Modernity, why it is a philosophical problem, and how two philosophers have responded to it, namely, Kant and Hegel whose position in an attenuated manner Pippin supports. The second part evokes dimensions of Merleau-Ponty’s thought which contest Pippin’s Hegelianism. The third part of the paper offers a different conception of (...) Modernity drawn from the work of Claude Lefort. Lefort’s understanding of Modernity avails itself of aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, in particular: Hyper-reflection and Institution. (shrink)
If there were any doubt concerning the fecundity, richness, indeed, ambiguity of Hannah Arendt’s oeuvre, it will be laid to rest by The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. This collection of generally excellent articles on her work instantiates the plurality of perspectives that was so much a part of her philosophical position. It opens with Dana Villa’s “Introduction: The Development of Arendt’s Political Thought,” which begins with her work on totalitarianism and ends with her appropriation of Kant’s theory of judgment. (...) Although necessarily sketchy, his presentation is eminently plausible. He notes the sometimes rigidity of Arendt’s distinctions, for example, the political and the social, but defends her opposition of the life of the mind and the life of the citizen. Villa remarks that she turns toward Athens for “the simple reason that [it was] the first flowering of democracy”. However, as the diversity of opinions concerning her relationship to the Greek polis testify, there is nothing simple in her relationship to Athens. In fact, it is this topic that could be read as a kind of leitmotif running through the work of most of her commentators. In this limited space I cannot comment on each of the articles contained in the collection. I will only mention those that I was particularly taken by. (shrink)
