_Democracy Past and Future_ is the first English-language collection of Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins, contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life. One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European unification and the crises (...) of the present. In so doing, he lays out an influential new theory of how to write the history of politics. Rosanvallon's historical and philosophical approach examines the "pathologies" that have curtailed democracy's potential and challenges the antitotalitarian liberalism that has dominated recent political thought. All in all, he adroitly combines historical and theoretical analysis with an insistence on the need for a new form of democracy. Above all, he asks what democracy means when the people rule but are nowhere to be found. Throughout his career, Rosanvallon has resisted simple categorization. Rosanvallon was originally known as a primary theorist of the "second left", which hoped to stake out a non-Marxist progressive alternative to the irresistible appeal of revolutionary politics. In fact, Rosanvallon revived the theory of "civil society" even before its usage by East European dissidents made it globally popular as a non-statist politics of freedom and pluralism. His ideas have been shaped by a variety of influences, ranging from his work with an influential French union to his teachers François Furet and Claude Lefort. Well known throughout Europe as a historian, political theorist, social critic, and public intellectual, Pierre Rosanvallon was recently elected to a professorship at the Collège de France, Paris, a position held at various times by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. _Democracy Past and Future_ begins with Rosanvallon's groundbreaking and synthetic lecture that he delivered upon joining this institution. Throughout the volume, Rosanvallon illuminates and invigorates contemporary political and democratic thought. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, society's wealthiest members have claimed an ever-expanding share of income and property. It has been a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon--the end of the age of growing equality launched by the American and French revolutions. And just as significant as the social and economic factors driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself. An ambitious transatlantic history of the struggles that, for two centuries, put political and economic (...) equality at their heart, The Society of Equals calls for a new philosophy of social relations to reenergize egalitarian politics. For eighteenth-century revolutionaries, equality meant understanding human beings as fundamentally alike and then creating universal political and economic rights. Rosanvallon sees the roots of today's crisis in the period 1830-1900, when industrialized capitalism threatened to quash these aspirations. By the early twentieth century, progressive forces had begun to rectify some imbalances of the Gilded Age, and the modern welfare state gradually emerged from Depression-era reforms. But new economic shocks in the 1970s began a slide toward inequality that has only gained momentum in the decades since. There is no returning to the days of the redistributive welfare state, Rosanvallon says. Rather than resort to outdated notions of social solidarity, we must instead revitalize the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that more accurately reflect today's realities. (shrink)

Interview with Pierre Rosanvallon, conducted by Javier Fernández Sebastián, in Madrid, September 28, 2006.

The welfare state has come under severe pressure internationally, partly for the well-known reasons of slowing economic growth and declining confidence in the public sector. According to the influential social theorist Pierre Rosanvallon, however, there is also a deeper and less familiar reason for the crisis of the welfare state. He shows here that a fundamental practical and philosophical justification for traditional welfare policies--that all citizens share equal risks--has been undermined by social and intellectual change. If we wish (...) to achieve the goals of social solidarity and civic equality for which the welfare state was founded, Rosanvallon argues, we must radically rethink social programs. Rosanvallon begins by tracing the history of the welfare state and its founding premise that risks, especially the risks of illness and unemployment, are equally distributed and unpredictable. He shows that this idea has become untenable because of economic diversification and advances in statistical and risk analysis. It is truer than ever before--and far more susceptible to analysis--that some individuals will face much greater risks than others because of their jobs and lifestyle choices. Rosanvallon argues that social policies must be more narrowly targeted. And he draws on evidence from around the world, in particular France and the United States, to show that such programs as unemployment insurance and workfare could better reflect individual needs by, for example, making more explicit use of contracts between the providers and receivers of benefits. His arguments have broad implications for welfare programs everywhere and for our understanding of citizenship in modern democracies and economies. "For more than two decades Pierre Rosanvallon has been analyzing the development and the crisis of the 'welfare state,' combining precise, specific knowledge with philosophical and historical depth in a way that is rare among social policy analysts.... [A] subtle and informed book."--From the foreword by Nathan Glazer. (shrink)

In France there is a way of thinking about freedom that often impedes its realization. To understand this question first a fundamental contradiction of the tension between political rationalism and popular sovereignty is examined. The terms of this contradiction are presented along with the ways in which this tension manifested itself in France during the Revolution of the 19th Century. This is also shown by contrasting the French approach to producing the law-state with English liberalism which relies on a balance (...) of powers. The French case shows that there is a way, other than representative government, to think about protective rule: the establishment of a good, rational authority based on science. Key Words: democracy • France • law-state • liberalism • politics • political rationalism • popular sovereignty. (shrink)

Gaz de schiste, OGM, énergie nucléaire, cellules souches, changement climatique, efficacité des médicaments... La science, plus que jamais, suscite la méfiance, voire la défiance, des citoyens. Pour une large part, cela vient d'une incompréhension de ce qu'est la démarche scientifique. «A l'occasion du colloque de rentrée du Collège de France organisé à l'automne 2013, des scientifiques, des historiens, des juristes et des politiques se sont attachés à analyser et à clarifier les enjeux technologiques et scientifiques, en s'appuyant sur des exemples (...) concrets au coeur des débats les plus actuels : comment aborder dans une société démocratique le problème du renouvellement des énergies et du remplacement des énergies fossiles par des formes d'énergie moins polluantes, ou celui qui lui est lié du réchauffement climatique, ou encore celui des thérapies géniques, en utilisant de la façon la plus rationnelle possible ce que la science nous apprend, pour optimiser la réponse de la société aux défis qui lui sont posés?» S. H. (shrink)

Gaz de schiste, OGM, énergie nucléaire, cellules souches, changement climatique, efficacité des médicaments... La science, plus que jamais, suscite la méfiance, voire la défiance, des citoyens. Pour une large part, cela vient d'une incompréhension de ce qu'est la démarche scientifique. «A l'occasion du colloque de rentrée du Collège de France organisé à l'automne 2013, des scientifiques, des historiens, des juristes et des politiques se sont attachés à analyser et à clarifier les enjeux technologiques et scientifiques, en s'appuyant sur des exemples (...) concrets au coeur des débats les plus actuels : comment aborder dans une société démocratique le problème du renouvellement des énergies et du remplacement des énergies fossiles par des formes d'énergie moins polluantes, ou celui qui lui est lié du réchauffement climatique, ou encore celui des thérapies géniques, en utilisant de la façon la plus rationnelle possible ce que la science nous apprend, pour optimiser la réponse de la société aux défis qui lui sont posés?» S. H. (shrink)

« Entre Deleuze et Guattari, Clastres et Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, il sera question dans cet article de l’échange fécond entre philosophie et anthropologie. En 1972, Pierre Clastres trouve chez Deleuze et Guattari la théorie du marquage qui sera déterminante dans l’élaboration de sa thèse de la société-contre-l’État. Huit ans plus tard, ces derniers développent une théorisation du nomadisme dans Mille plateaux où tient une place importante la thèse de l’anthropologue. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, fin lecteur de Mille plateaux, (...) y puise pour sa part des outils conceptuels, notamment le concept de devenir, lui permettant de dépasser le clivage entre nature et culture en anthropologie et développer une interprétation du perspectivisme et du cannibalisme amazonien. Il relit en retour Clastres pour décentrer la thèse de la société-contre-l’État de son “sociocentrisme” et l’ouvrir à une cosmopolitique “par-delà nature et culture” qui se dessine clairement à l’horizon de Mille Plateaux. ». (shrink)

Sejak 2001 Collége de France, lembaga pendidikan tinggi Prancis paling bergengsi yang berisi para filsuf dan pemikir terkenal dari berbagai bidang, menginisiasi munculnya sebuah fakultas baru. Modern and Contemporary History of the Political adalah nama fakultas baru tersebut. Pierre Rossanvallon, seorang ahli filsafat politik dan penulis buku yang produktif, didaulat sebagai Guru Besar untuk yang pertama kali dan masih menjabat hingga saat ini. Nama fakultas tersebut rupanya sejalan dengan perkembangan termutakhir dalam kajian filsafat politik, yaitu penelaahan kembali asas-asas politik (...) demokratis dalam masyarakat yang heterogen dan plural, bangsa-bangsa yang semakin melintas batas, negara yang tidak lagi digerakkan oleh ideologi-ideologi besar, dunia yang semakin terhubung, serta kecenderungan konflik yang semakin acak menyebar. Perkembangan dalam kajian filsafat politik ini sebenarnya bukan sesuatu yang baru sebab telah dimulai sejak periode 1980-an oleh beberapa tokoh kunci dalam filsafat politik, seperti Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Claude Lefort, dan Leo Strauss. Pada umumnya, para ahli filsafat politik tersebut menghidupkan kembali pemikiran Carl Schmitt, seorang pakar hukum dan ahli politik di Republik Weimar, Jerman mengenai Das Politische (Yang Politis/The Political) sebagai dasar penggerak politik yang selalu konfrontatif, konfliktual, agonistik, dan senantiasa mengelak dari prosedur-prosedur rasional demokratis. Pierre Rosanvallon berada di dalam satu barisan para pemikir kontemporer tersebut, barisan yang kini dikenal dengan nama para pemikir post-foundational. Sebelum menerbitkan buku Democratic Legitimacy, Rosanvallon telah menerbitkan beberapa karya monumental dan telah diterjemahkan ke dalam berbagai bahasa, seperti L’âge de l’autogestion (1976), Le capitalisme utopique (1979), Le nouvel âge des inégalités (1996), dan La contre-democratie (2006). Buku Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity, merupakan kelanjutan dari karya-karya awalnya sekaligus pendalaman dari buku terakhirnya Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust (2008)...... Sebagai sebuah karya filsafat politik, Democratic Legitimacy memiliki tujuan praktis yang dirumuskan secara jelas. Maka buku ini juga memuat beberapa kemungkinan solusi dan resolusi atas kontradiksi-kontradiksi internal demokrasi seperti misalnya re-institusionalisasi lembaga-lembaga demokrasi. Untuk Indonesia yang sedang bergumul dengan demokrasi, sistem kepartaian, otonomi daerah, serta munculnya persoalan-persoalan seperti fundamentalisme agama, korupsi, inefisiensi birokrasi, dan sebagainya, buku Democratic Legitimacy merupakan buku yang wajib dibaca oleh para ahli filsafat, para politisi, para penasihat penguasa, dan penyelenggara negara serta pengambil kebijakan. Democratic Legitimacy mampu menjelaskan dengan kalem berbagai persoalan yang acapkali dipeributkan dalam politik nasional/lokal kita, sekaligus memberikan kerangka pemahaman yang solid dan jelas mengenai arah demokrasi untuk 50 tahun ke depan. (Ito Prajna-Nugroho, Alumnus Program Sarjana dan Pascasarjana STF Driyarkara, Jakarta). (shrink)

In this essay I introduce Pierre Rosanvallon’s recent turn toward relational egalitarianism. Rosanvallon has come to find in relational equality the best remedy for liberal democracy’s crisis and thereby joins a number of egalitarian thinkers who prioritize social and political relations over material distribution in their accounts of equality. Rosanvallon stands out for his historic-genealogical engagement with equality. Unlike other egalitarians, Rosanvallon is also a theorist of democratic legitimacy and governance, which invites a broader contextualization (...) of his egalitarianism. My aim in this essay is to provide such contextualization and to further discuss how elements of earlier works prepared a turn to relational equality bound up with increasingly global political theorizing. Inspired by Tocqueville and Marx, Rosanvallon regards democratic socialism as the normatively preferable regime type for relational equality. As I try to show, his political ambitions for democratic socialism run into a number of problems, mainly due to a schizophrenic relationship to the notion of class and his remarks on the relationship between democracy and capitalism. (shrink)

Brief introduction to an interview with Pierre Rosanvallon, conducted by Javier Fernández Sebastián, in Madrid, September 28, 2006.

Volume 25, Issue 4, June 2020, Page 488-490.

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 34-47, March 2022.

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 34-47, March 2022.

Los intentos más recientes de repensar las normas democráticas están ejemplificados por dos pensadores franceses contemporáneos. Pierre Rosavallon critica los movimientos de protesta y trata de institucionalizar sus fuerzas. Jacques Rancière, por otra parte, ha definido notoriamente la política democrática de forma que se da sólo en momentos en los que se re-imagina caóticamente el orden existente. Su enfoque se revela de forma que reclama más atención hacia las normas razonables de ese orden de lo que el propio Rancière (...) admite. Tales normas constituyen un modelo de la democracia disidente, y puede inspirarse en los radicales populares de la era de la fundación americana. (shrink)

This paper compares the democratic theories of Pierre Rosanvallon and Axel Honneth. The aim is to show how their work could form the basis of a ‘reconstructivist’ approach in political philosophy that rehabilitates the insights of 19th-century thinkers such as Guizot and Hegel concerning the benefits of combining political philosophy with history and sociology. Whereas the dominant procedural approaches in political philosophy tend to disconnect normative theory from the actual study of society and its history, Rosanvallon and (...) Honneth argue that in order to understand the problems that face our democratic societies today we need a closer connection between theory and practice. Both have therefore developed a method that consists of historically reconstructing developments in modern society in order to identify certain pathologies. The paper compares the different diagnosis that Rosanvallon and Honneth give of the central pathology that faces democracy today, which in Rosanvallon’s reconstruction is related to the problem of representation and in Honneth’s account to the problem of recognition. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que la 'déconstruction'? Quelles sont les origines philosophiques de ce mot magique, brandi par tous ceux dont le but, déclaré ou non, est de criminaliser l'Occident en le réduisant à une expression du racisme, de l'esclavagisme, de l' 'hétéro-patriarcat' et de l'impérialisme colonial? Cette civilisation redoutable dont les proies seraient les peuples dominés, racisés, opprimés, et les minorités essentialisées en tant que victimes systémiques? Ainsi la civilisation occidentale se trouve-t-elle convoquée devant un nouveau grand Tribunal de l'Histoire pour répondre (...) de ses crimes, imaginaires ou réels, et, surtout, elle est la seule civilisation à être mise au banc des accusés. Au croisement de la recherche universitaire et du militantisme politique, le décolonialisme, l'intersectionnalité, la 'théorie critique de la race', la 'théorie queer', la 'théorie du genre', mais aussi le 'wokisme', né d'une corruption idéologique de l'antiracisme et du féminisme importée des campus étatsuniens, se sont peu à peu diffusés dans les médias et dans la société tout entière grâce à une propagande violente et culpabilisante puisant dans un imaginaire victimaire. Dans ce livre incisif et documenté, qui part d'une réflexion sur la pensée de Nietzsche et sur ses mésusages par les disciples français de Heidegger, Pierre-André Taguieff analyse ces théories aussi foisonnantes qu'inconsistantes et dénonce l'émergence de ce nouvel esprit totalitaire qu'il faut se garder de réduire à ses effets les plus médiatisés, comme ces 'déboulonnages' spectaculaires illustrant la violence purificatrice de la 'cancel culture'. De fait, ce néo-puritanisme obscurantiste, inquisitorial et punitif représente, dans les démocraties occidentales, un défi majeur pour les défenseurs de la liberté d'expression, de pensée et de création."--Back cover. (shrink)

Comment devient-on philosophe? Par quel sursaut un Aristoclès se fait-il Platon, jusqu'à s'imposer dans la liste des " auteurs philo " Il faut enquêter, non pas sur la vie privée, mais sur la vie intime : rumination intellectuelle, ton sur lequel on parle, motivations amoureuses... Ce qui fait un philosophe, c'est un immense travail sur soi, et la rencontre d'autres philosophes, vivants, de leurs problématiques. Mémoire sémantique + obsession métaphysique, voilà le code génétique du philosophe. Il débute par un attentat (...) religieux, puisqu'il commence sa carrière en niant tel ou tel sacré. Bien sûr, il vaut mieux être mâle, communiquer par les livres adopter la langue dominante, écrire quand on est célibataire. Comment gagner sa vie? Pas forcément en étant enseignant, comme c'est le cas aujourd'hui. Le profil du philosophe nous le révèle orphelin, vivant à l'étranger, souvent laid, jamais fou, et serial thinker, prêt à changer de philosophie pourvu qu'il reste, lui, à menacer le monde donnera ou donnera pas du sens à notre vie? Le philosophe est l'être inquiet qui pense inquiéter l'Être par deux trois mots bien aiguisés. (shrink)

Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died two years ago, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan--a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. Science of Science and Reflexivity will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (...) . In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research--that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in Science of Science and Reflexivity are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, Science of Science and Reflexivity is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology. (shrink)