Power Disincarnate: The Foreclosure of Democracy in Hegel, Marx and Heideggerian Thought

Abstract

The question of democracy-of the specificity of democracy as a political formation-has been foreclosed in European thought for almost two centuries, namely, in Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and in post-Heideggerian deconstruction. The theoretical catalyst for this claim, and the investigations that proceed from it, is the work of Claude Lefort. The thesis turns first to Hegel to elaborate the (forgotten) connections he draws between modernity, the subject and the French Revolution. While modern philosophy is related to the democratic revolutions which mark the transition out of the old world for Hegel, his ontology of the State-and especially the role of the monarch— shrinks from the full implications of modern democracy. Next, a series of responses to Hegel are developed: 1) the relation between religion and politics analysed by Lefort (modern democracy as a fundamental shift in the domain of theologico-political thought); 2) the philosophy of the State investigated by the young Marx (the sovereignty of the people as opposed to that of the monarch); 3) the subject analysed in Heidegger's interpretation of modernity (precluding the possibility of differentiating democracy from other political forms).

The thesis then examines the fate of Heideggerian readings of modernity-in the work of Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, and Derrida-in which democracy is merely "soft" totalitarianism. Specifically, it takes issue with Nancy's formulation of community (which presupposes a post-metaphysical politics beyond democracy); Lacoue-Labarthe's understanding of National Socialism as a "national aestheticism" (which reduces democracy to the organicist metaphysics underpinning Nazi ideology); and finally it examines Derrida's ontology of contamination (democracy becomes a blindspot in the ethico-political dimension of deconstruction)-in elaborating democracy's potential future.