Claude Lefort's Political Philosophy

ISBN-13: 9783031363771 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Mattia Di Pierro

Opis

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 highlights an internal tension in Lefort’s own thinking: between autonomy and experience, institution and insurgence.

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Socialisme ou Barbarie

1.1 The bureaucratic society and the Chaulieu-Montal tendency

1.2 Socialisme ou Barbarie: autonomy and conscience of the proletariat

1.3 Rereading Marx against pseudo-Marxism 1.4 The proletarian experience

1.5 Lefort and Castoriadis: the issue of organization

Chapter 2: Society, Reality, Alienation and Ideology

2.1 The lesson of ethnology

2.2 The alienation: Marx without Hegel

2.3 Inside alienation: towards social division

2.4 The social is the real!

2.5 Production and representation

2.6 Ideology

2.7 From proletariat to people

Chapter 3: The modern symbolic revolution

3.1 History and sociality

3.2 The image of the body and the heteronomy

3.3 The body of the community and the theological-political

3.4 Disincorporation and the form of modern society

3.5 Humanism, republicanism and democracy

Chapter 4: The interpretation of Machiavelli

4.1 The oeuvre and the interpretation

4.2 Machiavelli’s conspiracy: the critique of tradition

4.3 The conflict, the prince and the people

4.4 Implication and the original division of the social

4.5 The symbolic pole of Power and the institution of social

Chapter 5: The theory of the political

5.1 The institution of the social

5.2 They do not recognize the social: the critique of Foucault and Deleuze

5.3 Beyond transcendence and immanence

5.4 A political ontology

Chapter 6: Democracy and Totalitarianism

6.1 Democracy

6.2 Totalitarianism

6.3 Sauvage or conflictual democracy

Chapter 7: Conclusions

O autorze

Mattia Di Pierro is a Post-Doc researcher at the Philosophy Department of the University of Milan, Italy. His research mainly concerns contemporary political thought, theories of democracy and of modernity. He is the author of L’esperienza del mondo: Claude Lefort e la fenomenologia del politico (ETS 2020) and numerous articles on history of political thought and political philosophy.

Blurb

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 highlights an internal tension in Lefort’s own thinking: between autonomy and experience, institution and insurgence.

Mattia Di Pierro is a Post-Doc researcher at the Philosophy Department of the University of Milan, Italy. His research mainly concerns contemporary political thought, theories of democracy and of modernity. He is the author of L’esperienza del mondo: Claude Lefort e la fenomenologia del politico (ETS 2020) and numerous articles on history of political thought and political philosophy.