Claude Lefort

Judith Revel

Claude Lefort, one of the most prominent political philosophers of the twentieth century, reads Dante’s Monarchia and demonstrates the surprising relevance of this radical fourteenth-century treatise defending the necessity of a universal monarchy independent from the Church. Written to accompany a new French translation of Dante’s treatise in 1993 and appearing here for the first time in English, Lefort’s essay exemplifies his signature method of taking political philosophy in new directions by reframing key works from the history of political thought. Dante’s Monarchia was attacked early on by the Church, burned as heretical in 1329, and remained on the Vatican’s index of prohibited works until 1881. With trenchant insight and his characteristic attention to detail, Lefort pursues the often hidden influence of Dante’s long suppressed treatise on the politics and political thought of subsequent centuries. He also challenges us to explore its still unrealized potential by disentangling Dante’s notion of universal sovereignty from its historical links to imperialism and nationalism. Drawing out the provocation of Dante’s treatise for contemporary debates, Lefort’s essay presents readers of Dante with a remarkably fresh account of an oft-neglected yet crucial part of the author’s oeuvre. In her extensive interpretive essay, Judith Revel submits Lefort’s encounter with Dante to a transformative mis/reading and shows the importance of Dante’s text for Lefort’s conception of political philosophy. She carefully reconstructs its radical legacy, all too frequently reduced to a postmarxist turn or even mistaken for an affirmation of liberal democracy. The two essays are accompanied by a note from their translator, Jennifer Rushworth, and a preface by Christiane Frey.

An Introduction to the Monarchia. With an Essay by Judith Revel

Dante’s Modernity

Le travail de l'œuvre Machiavel

One of the preeminient political philosophers of the 20th century makes a compelling argument for the political cogency of literary writing in this book which among to his intellectual autobiography and an introduction to his work.

Writing, the Political Test

Michael B. Smith

In Machiavelli in the Making, the influential French scholar and public intellectual Claude Lefort introduces a wholly novel interpretation of Niccoló Machiavelli's oeuvre, revealing in the Florentine's thought a thoroughly modern concept of the political with implications for "our experience of politics here and now." Lefort extricates Machiavelli's thought from the dominant interpretations of Machiavelli as the founder of "objective" political science, which, having liberated itself from the religious and moralizing tendencies of medieval political reflection, attempts to arrive at a realistic discourse on the operations of raw power. Lefort ultimately finds that Machiavelli's discourse opens the "place of the political," which had previously been occupied by theology and morality. An essential contribution to the ongoing reassessment of Machiavelli's significance, Machiavelli in the Making also stands as a crucial text for the understanding of Lefort's later writings on democracy and totallitarianism.

Machiavelli in the Making

El advenimiento de la democracia evidencia la condición histórica y política del hombre que aún en su etapa moderna no consigue descifrar las claves de su identidad. Es en el correr de la experiencia democrática que este hombre moderno se vuelve más político y menos atávico, despertando a la conciencia de una identidad en expansión en la que unos velos caen sólo para descubrir otros. En este libro, Claude Lefort, desenmascara la vieja obsesión de la filosofía por el pensamiento puro y su ceguera ante un trabajo de expansión y producción de una obra en la que el pensamiento se busca a través de la escritura desvelándose e inventándose a la vez. La lectura que hace de maquiavelo, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Sade; o de Toqueville, Leo Strauss, Raymond Aron, Gordon Wood... es un ejemplo de esa búsqueda y de su impacto sobre la historia y las sociedades políticas.

Claude Lefort

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