Claude Lefort's Political Philosophy: Democracy, Indeterminacy, Institution (Political Philosophy and Public Purpose)

This book proposes a new interpretation of Claude Lefort’s thought focusing on his phenomenological method. Although all scholars recognize the influence of Merleau-Ponty, so far no one has demonstrated the fundamental coherence between Merleau-Ponty’s theory and the main concepts proposed by Lefort; in particular between the concept of institution and the definitions of social and democracy. If Merleau-Ponty uses the idea of institution to think beyond the division between subject and object, to think together continuity and difference, permanence and change, this same concept allows Lefort to understand society as both conflict and unity. From this starting point, this study will attempt to clarify Lefort’s concept of the political and his interpretations of modernity, humanism, and the work of Niccolò Machiavelli. These very concepts will show the difference from structuralism, Michel Foucault’s contemporary theory and theories of immanence. At the same time this study highlightsan internal tension in Lefort’s own thinking: between autonomy and experience, institution and insurgence. Foreword Acknowledgments Claude Lefort’s Essential Bibliography Contents 1 Introduction Event and Form What About Lefort? References 2 Socialisme ou Barbarie The Chaulieu–Montal Tendency Socialisme ou Barbarie A Phenomenology of the Proletarian Experience The Role of Theory Lefort or Castoriadis: The Proletariat, the Party, and the Organization References 3 The Symbolic Dimension of the Social Phenomenological Marxism The Social as Culture A Political Issue at the Bottom of the Social The Social Is the Real, or Marx’s Mistake The Symbolic and the Political The Symbolic Institution of the Social References 4 A Sociology of a Divided Society: Alienation, Ideology and a Project for a Study of Democracy Alienation, or a Sociology of the Division of the Social Ideology From the Proletariat to the People References 5 The Modern Symbolic Change The Image of the Body and Heteronomy Ancien Régime Societies and the Theological-Political The State, Disincorporation, and the Modern Form of Society Dante, Civic Humanism and the Birth of Modernity References 6 Niccolò Machiavelli The Critique of Tradition, or the Loss of Foundation The Conspiracy: A New Politics The Conflict The Role of the People Power, Imaginary and the Foundation The Original Division of the Social References 7 The Political and the Institution of the Social Structure or Institution Interpretation or Archaeology: Lefort and Foucault Against Theories of Immanence References 8 Democracy The Democratic Form of Society Modernity and Democracy Totalitarianism On Revolution: Change and Foundation in Democratic Society References Index