L’«esperienza del mondo»: Claude Lefort e la fenomenologia del politico

The conviction that guides this research is that the capital point of Claude Lefort's thought is within the political application of the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his design of the chiasmus, that of the imbrication of all levels that form reality. We can say that the phenomenology of the political, conceived by Lefort, it is an application of the Merleau-pontyan lesson to the political dimension of the social. The heart of this reading is represented by the book Le travail de l’œuvre Machiavel where the role of power and its relationship with the people, on the one hand, and the Greats, on the other, outlines a conception of the political in which there is no possible separation between grantor and composed, real and imaginary, immanent and symbolic. Therefore the first chapter analyses the genesis of the Lefortian philosophy, which dates to the years of Socialisme ou barbarie, the group the French philosopher participates to between 1948 and 1957. In this period his reflection, even if still internal to Marxism, already shows the signs of phenomenology. Such connection is clear in his critiques towards the philosophies of history and in his notion of "proletarian experience". While the most famous studies concerning the Parisian philosopher find in the detachment from Marxism the origin of his thought, we will try to show how all the main categories of the Lefortian philosophy appear in the critical reading of Marx. 3 As we show in the second chapter, it is within his phenomenological reading of Marx’s works that are taking shape the ideas of division of the social, of the symbolic dimension and of the chiasmus. In such frame it is important the role played by ethnology: the studies of Marcel Mauss on the donation, in primis, and those of Abram Kardiner, Gregory Bateson and Claude Levi-Strauss. The third chapter deals with the Lefortian design of modernity, the idea of the symbolic institution and the question of the division of the social. We can interpret this phase of his work as a sort of a preparation for the interpretation of Machiavelli. Indeed, the following chapter is dedicated to the work Lefort dedicates to the study of Machiavelli. We examine here the division between "the humors”, the role of power as a symbolic pole and the relationship between power, the Greats and the people. We show how the interpretative work of the Discours and of the Prince compose the phenomenology of politics in Lefort’s thought. The last chapter, in closing, analyses democracy and totalitarianism as a result and summit of the Lefortian phenomenology. We can see here how the confrontational dynamic of democracy translates in a political language the movement of the being proposed by Merleau-Ponty. In conclusion we consider the novelty of the Lefortian phenomenology of the political in its distinction with the "insurgent democracy" proposed by Miguel Abensour.