Mengue, Philippe:
The Absent People and the Void of Democracy

In: Contemporary Political Theory 4 (2005), 386-399

Mention of Spinoza: s. Kommentar/commentary

Literature type: Articles
Language: English
Thematic areas: Philosophy of politics and law
Subject (individuals): Deleuze, Gilles ; Habermas, Jürgen ; Hardt, Michael ; Machiavelli, Niccolò ; Negri, Antonio

English commentary: The principal argument advanced here is that the principle of immanence, common to Deleuze and Spinoza, will — if we follow its political radicalism — lead to a revalorization of existing Western democracy, to the degree that it allows for an internal and permanent self-reflexivity (the role of a doxological plane of immanence). The principle of the discontinuity of spheres of rationality, the emotive basis of all political power, and the principle of multiple and incomplete association distinguishes this idea from the Habermasian public sphere. Confrontation with the void of the political, as much as the absence of a substantive People and knowledge of justice, is the key aspect of a democratic politics of multiplicity and heterogeneity." (abstract)

Link to this page: http://spinoza.hab.de/detail.php?id=18281&LANG=EN