Claude Lefort

Claude Lefort (born April 21, 1924 ; † October 3, 2010 ) was a French philosopher who made a name for himself especially through his reflections on the relationship between totalitarianism and democracy .

Based on his criticism of bureaucracy and totalitarianism, he developed a political philosophy of democracy in the 1960s and 1970s , which included the separation of an autonomous civil society from the state, the perpetual political conflict of competing convictions and an "empty place of power" as the foundations of a democratic one Society elevates.

Intellectual career

In his youth, Lefort was initially a Marxist under the influence of his teacher Maurice Merleau-Ponty , but rejected Stalinism because of its nationalism and belief in progress. Communism, as propagated by Stalin, seemed to Lefort to be inconsistent with the original Marxian teaching. At the age of 18 he came into contact with members of the Fourth International , which he also joined in 1943. In the International, committed to the spirit of Trotskyism , he found a forum for his anti-Stalinism. Together with Cornelius Castoriadis , however, in the course of the 1940s he completely opposed any kind of leadership of the proletariat by a “revolutionary party” - a goal that Trotskyism still pursued. The differences finally led to a break with the Fourth International in 1947/48.

Together with Castoriadis, he founded the group Socialisme ou barbarie at the same time and both began to publish the magazine of the same name. In the following period he deepened his criticism of the bureaucratic rule of the communist parties, although according to his own statements he was still fundamentally inspired "by the belief in the creativity of the proletariat". However, since the demand for intellectual leadership of the 'revolutionary masses' and for the development of a binding socialist program was voiced within this group as well, he resigned in 1958. This break also marks his final departure from Marxism. Inspired by his preoccupation with classical political theorists (especially Machiavelli ) and the analysis of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, he developed his political philosophy during these years, which made him better known - especially in the French-speaking area.

After studying philosophy, Lefort passed the agrégation for philosophy in 1949 and became docteur ès lettres et sciences humaines (Doctor of Humanities and Humanities) in 1971 . From 1976 to 1990 he was a professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and until 2008 he was a member of the center de recherches politiques Raymond Aron . His work includes studies on Machiavelli and Merleau-Ponty, analyzes of the socialist regimes in the Eastern Bloc countries and a book on Alexander Solzhenitsyn , whose description of the Soviet labor camps had a decisive influence on Lefort's assessment of communist totalitarianism. The main ideas of his concept of totalitarianism and democracy are presented in the book L'invention démocratique , published in 1981 .

Basic lines of Lefort's political philosophy

Lefort's declared goal is "the restoration of political philosophy " and he thus opposes a positivist political science that makes the attempt, in his eyes impossible, to analyze society as a system of causal relationships according to objective criteria. The social scientist can never be completely objective, since every reflection on society always includes its own interpretations. After all, the scientist is part of the society he is researching and cannot abstract from certain value judgments (with which he, for example, grew up). In addition, neutrality is not absolutely desirable, as it forbids the scientist to make his value judgments consciously and deliberately, with a view of the whole and in the knowledge of his social preconditions. Instead, the value judgment in the positivist social science, now hidden in the - according to arbitrary criteria - respective weighting of the supposedly 'objective' social determinants, returns as "hypocrisy".

Against this epistemological background, Lefort tries to work out the basis of modern democratic societies, which he sees primarily in an "original division of society". In the modern age, this is no longer obscured by the power of the political-religious monarch - as it was in the Middle Ages. The monarch had "embodied" the community in its entirety through his dual personality as a mortal person and political-religious representative of the state and was a guarantor of the identity of society (cf. also the "two-body theory" of the historian Ernst Kantorowicz ) . With the abolition of royalty in the “political revolution” at the end of the 18th century (meaning the French Revolution, in particular the declaration of human and civil rights ), society is now “decorated” and can no longer be represented as a unit.

The lack of representability as a whole manifests itself in the modern age in a twofold division of society: First, an autonomous civil society splits off from the state. Secondly, civil society itself is insurmountably divided, in which various convictions and interests clash incessantly, without there being any final principles that would allow a final decision on the conflict in favor of a particular opinion. A final decision-making body, such as the monarch was, is impossible in a democracy: all knowledge, all law and power itself are subject to civil society conflict and therefore remain uncertain.

On the other hand , society needs a universal representation: Since the perceptual horizon of the members of a society, however, has always been shaped by history and society (not determined!), Humans can only be imagined as part of society and no one can imagine society as a “place of overflight “As a whole, a representation of this whole is only possible as a reference to something outside of society. For Lefort, this 'outside' is the “virtual place of power”. In the modern age characterized by conflict and division, which has lost the integrative “divine-human” body of a monarch forever, this place cannot be occupied by any individual, since such a place can never be a part and the holistic representation of society at the same time . The place of power in a democracy therefore necessarily remains empty and is always only symbolically occupied by the respective ruler, who is himself part of civil society .

A paradox: “The self-institution of society under the aspect of its self-representation is [...] both: both necessary and impossible. That is why Lefort [...] speaks of quasi-representation ”. The place of power is the opposite pole to civil society, the gap between the two is constitutive for democracy and so the respective representative of power has to demonstrate this difference again and again and make sure of it - because this is what society expects of him as a representative of the universal. Nevertheless, he must never fall into the illusion that he actually embodies the universal, that he actually occupies the place of power. As soon as this is the case, the actual particular character of the ruler reveals itself and in the attempt to lead civil society, which is beginning to defend itself, as the ultimate authority, he has to resort to brutal means that only underline his illegitimacy more clearly.

From this point, Lefort's theory on the relationship between democracy and totalitarianism can also be understood. A characteristic of social ideologies is that they believe they are in possession of a universal principle through which an overcoming of the original conflict and a social life worth striving for in the interests of all are possible. For this purpose, an ideology will always try to actually occupy the place of power and to abolish both the external and the internal division of society (see above), a total penetration of society takes place. However, due to the fundamental, insurmountable character of the original division, this overcoming is necessarily doomed to failure; the resistance of civil society must be suppressed by force. The ruler imagines himself to be the embodiment of the law and acts arbitrarily. This path to totalitarianism is in principle always mapped out by the paradoxical nature of democratic society:

“One must, so Lefort's thesis could be reformulated, understand the distinction between democracy and totalitarianism as a distinction within democracy: Democracy is not completely different from totalitarianism, but always contains totalitarianism as a tendency. [...] Democracy will always be pervaded by totalitarian moments. ""

The danger of totalitarianism hangs over the democratic society like the sword of Damocles, since it subliminally still longs for a security of law and knowledge that has not existed since the “decorporation” of society in the course of the abolition of the monarchy. A society,

"" Which no longer has a representation of its origins, goals and limits and, as a purely worldly one, is haunted by the question of its establishment, its potential for change, its self-generation, even the "invention of man" [...] necessarily tends to Phantasm of total domination of the social space, ie of the individuals who populate it [...]. She tends to the phantasms of an omniscient power and an omnipotent knowledge. ""

However, totalitarianism is also doomed to failure in the long term. Because the creation of a social unity (totality) and the associated elimination of everything whatever kind of 'other' - such as B. dissident movements, 'enemies of the people' in National Socialism, 'counterrevolutionaries' in Stalinism etc. - require an actor who can oversee society as a whole and who stands outside it. However, that is not possible. Civil society will never be able to be controlled down to the smallest detail. Thus, even totalitarianism could not achieve its goal of representing a conflict-free, homogeneous, closed society.

Awards

• 1997: Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought

Works

• The question of democracy , in: Ulrich Rödel (Hrsg.): Autonomous Society and Libertarian Democracy, Frankfurt a. M., 1990, pp. 281-297.
• Persistence of the theological and political? , Vienna, 1999.
• The breach. Essays for May 68 . Translated from the French and provided with an introduction by Hans Scheulen, Vienna 2008, Turia + Kant, ISBN 978-3-85132-520-1

literature

• Oliver wing, Reinhard Heil, Andreas Hetzel (ed.): The return of the political - democratic theories today. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2004.
• Andrea Gabler: The despotism of the factory and the semblance of freedom. Evidence from everyday Fordist work, collected by “Socialisme ou Barbarie”. In: Archive for the history of resistance and work 16, 2001, ISSN  0936-1014 , pp. 349–378, online at workerscontrol.net .
• Oliver Marchart : The Political Theory of Civil Society Republicanism: Claude Lefort and Marcel Gauchet. In: André Brodocz and Gary Schaal: Political Theories of the Present II. 2nd edition. Budrich / UTB, Opladen 2006, pp. 221-251
• Ulrich Rödel [Hrsg.]: Autonomous society and libertarian democracy. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990
• Andreas Wagner: Law - Power - Public. Elements of democratic statehood in Claude Lefort and Jürgen Habermas. Steiner, Stuttgart 2010.
• Andreas Wagner (ed.): At the empty place of power. Claude Lefort's understanding of the state and politics. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2013.

Web links

• Obracaj: "The void that remains - on the death of Claude Lefort" by Jan Obracaj, www.theorieblog.de, October 12, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ^ Nicolas Truong and Nicolas Weill: Claude Lefort, Philosophe . In: Le Monde, October 7, 2010, p. 25; David A. Curtis: Translator's Forewords . In: Claude Lefort: Writing, The Political Test . Duke University Press 2000, online .
2. ^ Claude Lefort: Foreword to Eléments d'une critique de la bureaucratie. In: Ulrich Rödel (Ed.): Autonomous Society and Libertarian Democracy . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 30-53
3. ↑ Claude Lefort: Foreword to Eléments ... p. 37
4. ↑ Claude Lefort: The question of democracy. In: Ulrich Rödel (Ed.): Autonomous Society ... p. 281
5. ↑ Claude Lefort: The question of democracy… p. 285 f.
6. ^ Claude Lefort: Human Rights and Politics. In: Ulrich Rödel (Ed.): Autonomous Society ... p. 259
7. ↑ cf. Daniel Gaus: Democracy between conflict and consensus. In: Oliver Flügel et al. (Ed.): The return of the political - theories of democracy today. Knowledge Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2004, pp. 65–86
8. ^ Claude Lefort: Foreword to Eléments d'une critique ... p. 50
9. ↑ cf. Oliver Marchart: The Political Theory of Civil Society Republicanism: Claude Lefort and Marcel Gauchet. In: André Brodocz and Gary Schaal: Political Theories of the Present II. 2nd edition. Budrich / UTB, Opladen 2006, p. 225
10. ↑ Claude Lefort; Marcel Gauchet: About Democracy: The Political and the Institution of the Social. In: Ulrich Rödel: Autonomous Society ... p. 95
11. ↑ Oliver Marchart: The political theory of civil society republicanism ... p. 227
12. ↑ Oliver Marchart: The political theory of civil society republicanism ... p. 230 f.
13. ^ Claude Lefort: Foreword to Eléments d'une critique ... p. 50
14. ↑ cf. D. Gaus: Democracy between conflict and consensus ... p. 80 ff.