Other
The Question of Democracy
Claude Lefort
; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
Abstract
The author pleads for a renewal of political philosophy by asking what
it means again to think politically in our time. He also tries to re-examine
some characteristic of the concept of democracy which renews its weight
in relationship to totalitarianism and cannot be reduced to an institutional
system. After looking critically upon the works of Tocqueville who - contrary
to most of his contemporaries • saw democracy as a form of government,
the author comes to the conclusion that democracy appears to be a historical
social category par exellence, of a society that in its form accepts and
maintains indefinability. This is in significant contrast to totalitarianism
which, establishing itself with the slogan of building the new man, in fact
acts against this indefinability and tries to conserve the rules of its own
organization. Thus, in the contemporary world, totalitarianism manifests
itself secretely as a society without history.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
111495
URI
Publication date:
1.9.1993.
Visits: 2.707 *