An Ungraspable Society The Unstable Constitution of the Social in the Thought of Claude Lefort
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/oxi.2022.i19.34729Keywords:
Political philosophy, Claude Lefort, democracy, human rights, politicsAbstract
In this work I develop a series of concepts and ideas from Claude Lefort's political philosophy to think about the relationships of "men" with their forms and conditions of political existence. I will begin by referring to the general features of his philosophy, especially the inquiry and postulation of social logic, principles and articulations as keys to reading political events and phenomena. Then, I will advance on a set of concepts interrelated as a way of exposing three central ideas around the "instability" of the social: firstly, the understanding of politics as a decisive process of institution, ordering or unification of the ontological divisions of the society; secondly, I will analyze the image that Lefort offers of a society that is operating on itself through its own voice, taking advantage of the “fruits” of political freedoms and the legitimacy of the debate on the legitimate and the illegitimate that modernity brought with it. ; and, thirdly, I will address the "adventure" that according to the author begins with the proclamation and dissemination of human rights understood as a vector of social instability change. Finally, I will critically review the assumption of a society in which an ontological antagonism operates and whose "politics" seems to become almost exclusively an ethic of electoral competition.
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