{"title":"Claude Lefort","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"democracy-and-political-theory-book-claude-lefort-9780745604374","title":"Democracy and Political Theory","description":"This book examines the central questions of democracy and politics in modern societies. Through an analysis of some of the key texts of 19th and 20th century thought - from Marx, Michelet and de Tocqueville to Hannah Arendt - the author explores the ambiguities of democracy, the nature of human rights, the idea and the reality of revolution, the emergence of totalitarianism and the changing relations between politics, religion and the image of the body. While developing a highly original account of the nature of politics and power in modern societies, he links political reflection to the interpretation of history as an open, indeterminate process of which we are part. This work should interest specialists in social and political theory and philosophers.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730668101905,"sku":"NGR9780745604374","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0745604374.jpg?v=1763039499"},{"product_id":"writing-book-claude-lefort-9780822325208","title":"Writing","description":"Writing involves risks—the risk that one will be misunderstood, the risk of being persecuted, the risks of being made a champion for causes in which one does not believe, this risk of inadvertently supporting a reader’s prejudices, to name a few. In trying to give expression to what is true, the writer must “clear a passage within the agitated world of passions,” an undertaking that always to some extent fails: writers are never the master of their own speech.  In Writing: The Political Test, France’s leading political philosopher, Claude Lefort, illuminates the process by which writers negotiate difficult path to free themselves from the ideological and contextual traps that would doom their attempts to articulate a new vision. Lefort examines writers whose works provide special insights into this problem of risk, both literary artists and political philosophers. Among them are Salman Rushdie, Sade, Tocqueville,m Machiavelli, Leo Strauss, Orwell, Kant, Robespierre, Guizot, and Pierre Clastres. In Tocqueville, for example, Lefort finds that the author’s improvisatory and open-ended expression represents the character of the democratic experience. Orwell’s work on totalitarianism shows up the totalitarian subject’s complicity in this political regime. And Rushdie is remarkable for his solid attack on relativism. With the character and fate of the political forms of modernity, democracy, and totalitarianism a central theme, Lefort concludes with some reflections on the collapse of the Soviet Union. This intriguing and accessible exploration of literature’s political aspects and political philosophy’s literary ones will be welcomed by those who have been stymied by current efforts to bridge these two fields. Taken together, the essays in this volume also stand as an intellectual autobiography of Lefort, making it an excellent introduction to his work for less experience students of political theory or philosophy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50034076385553,"sku":"CIN0822325209G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822325209.jpg?v=1750883332"},{"product_id":"machiavelli-in-the-making-book-claude-lefort-9780810124387","title":"Machiavelli in the Making","description":"Machiavelli in the Making is both a novel interpretation of the Florentine’s work and a critical document for understanding influential French scholar and public intellectual Claude Lefort’s later writings on democracy and totalitarianism. Lefort extricates Machiavelli’s thought from the dominant interpretations of him as the founder of “objective” political science, which, having liberated itself from the religious and moralising 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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50081911308561,"sku":"CIN0810124386VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007920505105,"sku":"NIN9780810124387","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52351024988433,"sku":"NLS9780810124387","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0810124386.jpg?v=1763485008"},{"product_id":"formes-de-l-histoire-book-claude-lefort-9782070411849","title":"Formes de L Histoire","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50249588277521,"sku":"GOR013898664","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2070411842.jpg?v=1750836703"},{"product_id":"complications-book-claude-lefort-9780231133005","title":"Complications","description":"\"Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy\" ties together the central concerns of the work of Claude Lefort over the past half-century. A pivotal figure in French thought, Lefort studied under Maurice Merleau-Ponty, cofounded with Cornelius Castoriadis the influential journal \"Socialisme ou Barbarie\", and famously engaged in a heated debate with Jean-Paul Sartre over the Soviet Union and Communist parties in the West. He has influenced generations of political thinkers and throughout his career has offered invaluable leftist, non-communist critiques of both liberalism and Communism.It is the prevailing belief that the death of communism was a victory for liberal democracy. In \"Complications\", however, Lefort challenges this interpretation and provides new ways of understanding the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the Communist phenomenon. Lefort engages the work of prominent historians Martin Malia and Francois Furet and shows how their emphasis on 'illusion' and ideology led to their failure to understand the logic and workings of the Communist Party, and its impact on Soviet society, and the reasons why so many in the West had Communist sympathies.He also maintains that those who regard the end of Communism as the triumph of markets and 'freedom' restrict the scope of democratic thought and the possibility of greater social equality. Lefort contends that Communism must be seen as part of a larger history of modernity and believes that the diagnosis of its death is dangerous to the future of democracy. In the tradition of Hannah Arendt and Raymond Aron, Lefort complicates the pieties of historical understanding and offers a new approach to thinking about totalitarianism and a more vital democracy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347062886673,"sku":"CIN0231133006G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231133006.jpg?v=1762337399"},{"product_id":"democracy-and-political-theory-book-claude-lefort-9780816617555","title":"Democracy and Political Theory","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50574907670801,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50574908358929,"sku":"CIN0816617554G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0816617554.jpg?v=1751329934"},{"product_id":"l-invention-democratique-book-claude-lefort-9782213593722","title":"L'Invention démocratique","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50996272890129,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50996279968017,"sku":"NIN9782213593722","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/2213593728.jpg?v=1751348915"},{"product_id":"dante-s-modernity-book-claude-lefort-9783965580039","title":"Dante's Modernity","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51063763796241,"sku":"NIN9783965580039","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52592260645137,"sku":"NLS9783965580039","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3965580035.jpg?v=1751351208"},{"product_id":"political-forms-of-modern-society-book-claude-lefort-9780262620543","title":"The Political Forms of Modern Society","description":"Claude Lefort is one of the leading social and political theorists in France today. This anthology of his most important work published over the last four decades makes his writing widely accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time. With exceptional skill Lefort combines the analysis of contemporary political events with a sensitivity to the history of political thought. His critical account of the development of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a timely contribution to current debates about the nature and shortcomings of these societies. His incisive analyses of Marx's theory of history and concept of ideology provide the backdrop for a highly original account of the role of symbolism in modern societies. While critical of many traditional assumptions and doctrines, Lefort develops a political position based on a reappraisal of the idea of human rights and a reconsideration of what democracy means today. \u003ci\u003eThe Political Forms of Modern Society\u003c\/i\u003e is a major contribution to contemporary social and political theory. The volume includes a substantial introduction that describes the context of Lefort's writings and highlights the central themes of his work.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52099363406097,"sku":"CIN0262620545G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52138062479633,"sku":"NLS9780262620543","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53260127306001,"sku":"GOR014840357","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780262620543.jpg?v=1757085655"},{"product_id":"writing-book-claude-lefort-9780822324843","title":"Writing","description":"Writing involves risks-the risk that one will be misunderstood, the risk of being persecuted, the risks of being made a champion for causes in which one does not believe, this risk of inadvertently supporting a reader’s prejudices, to name a few. In trying to give expression to what is true, the writer must “clear a passage within the agitated world of passions,” an undertaking that always to some extent fails: writers are never the master of their own speech.  In Writing: The Political Test, France’s leading political philosopher, Claude Lefort, illuminates the process by which writers negotiate difficult path to free themselves from the ideological and contextual traps that would doom their attempts to articulate a new vision. Lefort examines writers whose works provide special insights into this problem of risk, both literary artists and political philosophers. Among them are Salman Rushdie, Sade, Tocqueville,m Machiavelli, Leo Strauss, Orwell, Kant, Robespierre, Guizot, and Pierre Clastres. In Tocqueville, for example, Lefort finds that the author’s improvisatory and open-ended expression represents the character of the democratic experience. Orwell’s work on totalitarianism shows up the totalitarian subject’s complicity in this political regime. And Rushdie is remarkable for his solid attack on relativism. With the character and fate of the political forms of modernity, democracy, and totalitarianism a central theme, Lefort concludes with some reflections on the collapse of the Soviet Union. This intriguing and accessible exploration of literature’s political aspects and political philosophy’s literary ones will be welcomed by those who have been stymied by current efforts to bridge these two fields. Taken together, the essays in this volume also stand as an intellectual autobiography of Lefort, making it an excellent introduction to his work for less experience students of political theory or philosophy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53490212045073,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53490212405521,"sku":"NIN9780822324843","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780822324843.jpg?v=1777732150"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-claude-lefort.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}