06 068776 Labelle

CAN THE PROBLEM OF THETHEOLOGICO-POLITICAL BERESOLVED? LEO STRAUSSAND CLAUDE LEFORT

Gilles Labelle

ABSTRACT The starting point of this article is that there is a kind of ‘hiddendialogue’ that Claude Lefort is trying to conduct with Leo Strauss on the theo-logico-political problem. If Strauss claims this problem to be ‘irresolvable’,Lefort seeks to show that the ‘permanence of the theologico-political’ inmodernity is only an appearance, as democracy has, in the last instance,succeeded in ‘cutting’ the knot tied between the theological and the politicalin pre-modern societies. Moreover, while Strauss associates recognition of theirresolvable character of the theologico-political problem with moderation,Lefort takes the exact opposite view, insisting on the lack of moderation, evenexcess, that weighs particularly on modern politics consequent to any attemptto amalgamate the theological with the political.

KEYWORDS Claude Lefort • modernity • Leo Strauss • theologico-politicalproblem

INTRODUCTION

There is no shortage of reasons to compare the writings of Leo Straussand Claude Lefort. One might note that Leo Strauss was always concernedwith the fate of political philosophy, whose very existence, he believed, wasput in question by the development of modernity; for example, he wrote in1959 that ‘political philosophy is in a state of decay and perhaps of putre-faction, if it has not vanished altogether’ (Strauss, 1959: 17). Similarly, in 1983Claude Lefort declared that he sought the ‘restoration of political philosophy’,the latter being questioned by social scientists, and neglected by philosophers

Thesis Eleven, Number 87, November 2006: 63–81SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op LtdDOI: 10.1177/0725513606068776

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themselves (Lefort, 1986: 17). And while Leo Strauss was never interested inthe work of Lefort (his opus magnum on Machiavelli appearing one yearbefore Strauss’ death in 1973), Lefort, for his part, often wrote on Strauss(see in particular Lefort, 1960, 1972 and 1992). What is more, and this isprecisely what I wish to demonstrate in this article, it seems to me that certainof Lefort’s ideas can be better understood if related to Straussian claims – asif the former constituted a sort of response to the latter, even when Straussis not explicitly mentioned.

This is particularly the case, in my view, with respect to Lefort’sdiscussion of the theologico-political problem. If Strauss claims this problemto be ‘irresolvable’ (see Tanguay, 2003), Lefort seeks to show that the ‘perma-nence of the theologico-political’ in modernity is only an appearance, asdemocracy has, in the last instance, succeeded in ‘cutting’ the knot tiedbetween the theological and the political in pre-modern societies (Lefort,1986: 299). Moreover, while Strauss associates recognition of the irresolvablecharacter of the theologico-political problem with moderation, Lefort takesthe exact opposite view, insisting on the lack of moderation, even excess,that weighs particularly on modern politics consequent to any attempt toamalgamate the theological with the political.

I will first expose the basic elements of Leo Strauss’ position on thetheologico-political problem and its importance; I will then compare themwith Lefort’s position while insisting on the ‘hidden dialogue’ that he is, inmy view, conducting with Strauss.

1. LEO STRAUSS: FROM THE DEBATE BETWEEN THEANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS TO THAT BETWEEN REASONAND REVELATION

Strauss is often presented as a defender of the Ancients against theModerns, or of ‘classical political philosophy’ against ‘modern political phil-osophy’. This is not untrue, so long as one understands the ‘return to theAncients’ to be a means of returning to the no less fundamental debateopposing (philosophical) Reason to mythology and (religious) Revelation.According to Strauss, if classical teaching supposes Reason incapable ofdefinitively overcoming mythology and Revelation – a failing that constantlyrecalls philosophy to more moderate positions – modern teaching, bycontrast, claims to have settled the problem of the theologico-political onceand for all, and thus tends towards immoderate, even extreme positions.

In order to grasp the meaning of this thesis, one must consider what,according to Strauss, the Ancients teach.

1.1. The meaning of Classical teaching according to StraussThe most important point Strauss draws from classical teaching is the

idea of an independent good that exists beyond human experience, even as

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it is expressed in or through it, and gives rise to philosophy as an essen-tially endless quest led by the few.

According to Strauss, the pre-Socratic philosophers were the first todiscover ‘ancestral morality’, that is, the anchorage of law in customs andtraditions that differ between cities. This discovery gives birth to what hecalls ‘conventionalism’, the claim that cities are based on conventions thatcan be considered relative, i.e. contingent or arbitrary. This leads the firstphilosophers to oppose convention to nature: the many submit to conven-tion, but the few can model their lives on the search for power or pleasure,which would alone be natural. For the pre-Socratics, there exists no medi-ation between convention and nature, only a pure and simple opposition,at least according to Strauss’ interpretation (Strauss, 1954: 126–8).

Socratic philosophy draws on this foundational teaching while modify-ing a number of its basic elements. Like conventionalism, Socrates considersthere to be a close relation between the laws and ancestral morality. He alsoagrees that there is a difference between what exists by convention and whatby nature. However, he holds that convention and nature are not simplyopposed: the distinctive feature of his method, as based on maïutics ordialectics, consists in discovering what exists by nature from convention.

Conventions are manifest, above all, in doxa, but every opinion ‘pointsbeyond itself’. Doxa, in other words, bears a ‘vision of the ideas’ or ‘of thearticulated whole’, and is thus concerned with what Strauss calls the ‘beingof things’ (Strauss, 1954: 125). Now every designation of being is immedi-ately a designation of its ‘quid ’, that is to say, of its ‘figure’, ‘form’ or ‘char-acter’, which Strauss says is synonymous with its ‘nature’, or with the ‘idea’to which this being refers. We can give a simple example. A statement like‘It is just that . . .’, which is a matter of opinion, inevitably refers to the ideaof justice. One can only distinguish between what is just and unjust if onepresupposes that something like justice exists (even if one cannot perhapsdefine it in a precise or coherent manner). The idea of justice in its turnrefers, according to Strauss, to what is considered the ‘good’, which accord-ing to Socrates in The Republic is at ‘the head of’ all other ideas (Plato, 1968;the Bloom translation speaks of ‘cause’). In this sense, there is a movementfrom opinion or ‘common sense’ (‘It is just that . . .’) to ‘something’ partiallyhidden or absent (the idea of justice and the good) – this ‘something’ beingsimultaneously revealed in part by opinion and by the effort that opinioncalls forth (since it is by questioning the distinction between the just andunjust that one can hope to uncover what is justice and the good). This isprecisely what Socrates understands by philosophy which, beginning withopinions, makes them deliver, by a method based on systematic question-ing, what they naturally bear, that is, what they both mask and reveal: theideas, nature and, ultimately, the good. To philosophize, in this sense,‘consists, therefore, in the ascent from opinions to knowledge or to the truth,in an ascent . . . guided by opinions’ (Strauss, 1954: 124).

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Socratic philosophy thus points to the ‘good life’, a life directed by thevirtues associated with the ideas and the good (Strauss, 1954: 127). In otherwords, Socratic philosophy points to ‘natural right’, that is, to what shouldexist by nature. Since natural right always supposes a certain distance relativeto conventions, it can only ‘act as dynamite for civil society’ (Strauss, 1954:152). This is why Strauss does not hesitate to ‘liken philosophy to madness,the very opposite of sobriety or moderation’ (Strauss, 1959: 32). As only thefew are inclined to pursue ‘natural philosophy’, and as the confrontationbetween the few and the many inevitably leads to the victory of the latter(as illustrated emblematically by the trial of Socrates), philosophy’s principaltask after Socrates will be to learn moderation.

Plato’s writings, according to Strauss, illustrate such an apprenticeship.In contrast to Socrates’ teaching, which was essentially oral, Plato’s is written,thereby lessening the risk of alarming opinion, all the more so as philosophyteaches an ‘esoteric art of writing’ that aims, if not to deceive, then at leastto avoid shocking the uninformed reader (Strauss, 1952). Moreover, Platon-ist philosophy, in Strauss’ view, implicitly admits that the good, and theperfect realization of the good life, establishes a horizon and representsobjectives which are largely unattainable, such that philosophy will probablynever become wisdom or an understanding of the whole. Thus Socrates,when questioned about the nature of the good in The Republic by his younginterlocutors, either ducks the question or responds rather vaguely. This iswhy Strauss insists on the fact that Plato, whether in The Republic or TheLaws, presents the realization of the ‘best regime’, which should be governedby learned and wise men, as ‘improbable’, being dependent on ‘chance’. Itshould thus be considered, in the last instance, a ‘utopia’, as moreover Aris-totle understood it (Strauss, 1954: 138–42).

The immediate consequence of the lesson learned (and then taught)by classical philosophers after the trial of Socrates was, according to Strauss,an awareness among the Ancients that the theologico-political problem isinsurmountable. Once the philosopher admits that the good, which is inprinciple the object of his quest, is not within his reach, he finds himselfunable to substitute natural right for convention; he can no longer turnnatural right into a positive law that can then be opposed to mythology orpoetry, which, if they do not found conventions, at least legitimize them.Among the Islamic or Jewish Platonists, such as Al Farabi or Maimonides,the conflict between philosophy and theology is explicitly posed as insuper-able. In order to completely vanquish monotheist Revelation, Reason wouldhave to be able to fully explain the whole or totality of things in a way thatleaves no room for the idea of a divine Creator who loves humanity. Thisappears impossible, not just because monotheist Revelation, by identifyingGod with the Creator of the universe, makes him into an omnipotent beingwho, by definition, is mysterious and invisible (an omnipotent being cannotbe represented, since to represent it would be to delimit its power; moreover,



how can one prove the non-existence of a mysterious or invisible being?);it also appears impossible because the good as conceived by philosophersconstantly appears to escape them. This is not to say that philosophy cannotexist, since its theological adversary has never been able to demonstrate theimpossibility of the philosophical life (despite claiming that philosophy maybe condemned to lose its soul for refusing to follow the only true, divinelaw). It is to suggest, however, that philosophy must accept that, in the end,it is only a wager on a way of life centered on the (unachievable) quest forthe good. Philosophy, in other words, must admit its limits; it can only bemoderate as it can never be absolutely certain of incarnating the good life(Strauss, 1983). In a sense, here lies the privilege of the few, since the many,being ‘philosophically challenged’, submit more or less blindly to laws andconventions they do not question, though the latter may be neither entirelyjust nor good.

It is precisely the moderation of classical political philosophy that,Strauss claims, modern philosophers reject. They would complete the questfor wisdom by making the good not the object of an endless quest but apositive reality within reach of not just a few philosophers but the manynon-philosophers. As such, the Moderns radically reject the problem of thetheologico-political; the good can no longer be a mystery about whichtheology and philosophy argue endlessly, when it is literally available toeveryone. Such a position, in Strauss’ view, can only encourage a movementtowards a lack of moderation, that is, to extremes, as illustrated by the ideolo-gies formative of the contours of modernity.

1.2. The meaning of the Moderns’ teaching according to StraussPhilosophical modernity is deployed, according to Strauss, in three

successive ‘waves’, all of which establish the idea of the good as conceivedby classical philosophers on a completely new basis. It is important topresent, if only briefly, these three waves in order to suggest where, in hisview, they are heading.

1.2.1. Modernity’s first wave: Machiavelli and HobbesModern philosophy’s point of departure, according to Strauss, is the

work of Machiavelli. The latter’s ‘realism’ is based on the fact that theAncients aimed ‘too high’: human beings, for the classical philosophers, haveto strive for virtue; for the Church Fathers and theologians humans strive forcharity and the other Christian virtues. In these circumstances the best cityis either unrealizable (as Plato admits) or tyrannical (as in the case of theChristian communities). For Machiavelli this impasse can be avoided bylowering the criteria that define the best city; one must construct ‘low butsolid’, to use Strauss’ expression (Strauss, 1958: 196). In other words, onemust start with men as they are and not seek to elevate them; one must startwith their deceitfulness, cowardice, egoism, etc. in order to construct cities.



This demands what Machiavelli calls virtù – an understanding of men andthe skill to choose the means that suit the circumstances, with their moralor immoral character counting for little.

Hobbes’ work, Strauss claims, follows in Machiavelli’s wake. But Machi-avelli, in Hobbes’ view, accords too much to the prince’s virtù, and in thissense remains utopian. Although Hobbes conceives nature in a mechanicalfashion, such that it can only be known by posing hypotheses that mustthen be verified experimentally, there is, nonetheless, one aspect of naturewhich can be known with certainty and which must be relied upon whenconstructing cities: ‘Whereas the philosophy or science of nature remainsfundamentally hypothetical, political philosophy rests on a nonhypotheticalknowledge of the nature of man’ (Strauss, 1954: 201). And not only is knowl-edge of human nature possible according to Hobbes, it is immediatelyaccessible to each and every person. In effect, to know oneself, one hasonly to examine oneself to discover that one’s strongest passion is the fearof death (Strauss, 1954: 180–1). For Hobbes, each and every person therebyhas immediate access to the universal, natural right expressing ‘somethingthat everyone actually desires anyways’ (Strauss, 1954: 183). In this senseHobbes is the ‘first plebian philosopher’ (Strauss, 1954: 166), as the fewphilosophers and the many non-philosophers all have, in a sense, equal andimmediate access to wisdom. Each person has access to the good; better,each person egoistically and subjectively defines his good as the desire tocontinue living. Hobbes thereby takes up the Platonist project of foundinga sage city, but rather than seeing it as a utopia, as did Plato, he proposesto realize it, this city being based on the fact that there is no longer anydifference between philosophers and non-philosophers, as everyone is inpossession of the good. According to Strauss, this plebian philosophy lacksmoderation, since it leads to the unconditional embrace of a natural rightthat, beyond all doubt or questioning, is deemed to incarnate the good. Thisis why the Hobbesian edifice defines such a large part of political modernity,that is, the ideology of liberal societies, based on a shameless dedication tothe most brutal egoism – thus, the unlimited accumulation of goods andcapital, and the endless development of markets and techniques, irregard-less of the consequences (Strauss, 1983: 229–31).

1.2.2. Modernity’s second wave: Rousseau and HegelThe Hobbesian solution was, as is well-known, severely criticized by

Rousseau. His main objection was that Hobbes reduces humanity to theodious figure of the proprietary individual or bourgeois. All of Rousseau’sefforts are devoted to restoring to the idea of humanity a nobility irreducibleto this figure. To be sure, like Hobbes, Rousseau claims that in the state ofnature humans’ primary concern is their self-preservation; humans, in otherwords, follow their own particular will. Nonetheless, a clear-sighted legisla-tor can resist by pursuing a general will, thereby reviving the figure of thecitizen in opposition to that of the bourgeois.


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This being said, despite his critique of Hobbes, Rousseau ends up,according to Strauss, deepening Hobbesian premises. In effect, the idea ofthe general will recovers, at least tendentially, the claim that everyone iscapable of exercising virtue and seeking out wisdom and the good.Rousseau too considers valid the dissolution of the difference betweenphilosophers and non-philosophers, just as he considers possible, as aconsequence, the realization of the best regime based on the possession ofwisdom. In this sense, Strauss believes that Rousseau must be considered acrucial figure in the gestation of modern historicism. If the general willembodies the search for virtue and the good, then the latter are henceforthto be defined in such a manner that they differ according to time and place.The good now appears a historical and relative good, such that one day thecitizens may be asked to submit to positive laws that are said to embodythe good, though they violate all that was once considered to constitutenatural law. There is, it is true, an important, moderating element inRousseau, namely his doubt concerning the Moderns’ ability to fully knowthe good. In effect, Rousseau admits that the majority will remain guidedby, above all, their egoistic desire for self-preservation, the general willseemingly condemned to remain more or less utopian. The inhabitants ofthe modern city appear destined to remain torn between two conceptionsof the good, one that speaks of particular wills and the other of the generalwill. Even so, beyond all desire for self-preservation, and at a distance fromthe crowd, a small number of ‘solitary dreamers’ will seek to recover the‘sweetness of all existence’ (Strauss, 1959: 53).

These are the dualisms that Hegel seeks to overcome, according toStrauss. Hegelianism proceeds, first and foremost, from a reflection onhistory, onto which the essentials of the teachings of Machiavelli, Hobbesand Rousseau are projected. If, as Hegel claims, men are egoistic, deceitful,mendacious, etc. and if the general will – here the ‘spirits’ of differentpeoples – is relative or contingent, this does not in the least prevent onefrom seeing the accession of the good in terms of a complex, dialectical andglobal process that ties men, cultures and societies together, as though a‘ruse of reason’ had transfigured the meaning of human action. Once again,philosophy claims the practical realization of the Platonic project of the bestregime, with the search for wisdom and final accession of the good depend-ing on the merger of philosophy with non-philosophy, the latter identifiedwith the totality of human acts, both reasonable and unreasonable, as givenhistorically. For Strauss, Hegelianism completely buries the good in history,thereby preventing it from becoming the object of a quest, as it is nowlocated in each and every person’s deeds. The good in Hegel does not evencorrespond to what everyone wants or desires, but to what everyone does,such that one can no longer think the distinction between fact and right.

Just as Hobbesian philosophy gave birth to liberalism, Rousseau’s phil-osophy supplemented by Hegel’s gives rise to what Strauss calls progres-sivism, that is, the idea that history bears a principle of order within itself



that tends to justify everything that happens. For Strauss, the consequencescan only be disastrous, as much for philosophy (reduced to being thehandmaid of a history that embodies and realizes the good) as for humanityitself (with entire generations sacrificed in the name of the good’s realization).

1.2.3. Modernity’s third wave: NietzscheJust as Rousseau protested against Hobbes, Nietzsche protests against

Hegel’s historicism. There is something classical about Nietzsche’s point ofdeparture: he opposes the possession of the good by all with the distinc-tion between the few and the many, between the ‘masters’ or ‘supermen’and the large number of ‘slaves’ or the ‘weak’. However, once again, the resultis that modernity’s logic is deepened rather than contested. If Nietzsche’sclaims retain a certain ambiguity, it is still the case that he often appears toreject the existence of the good as given by nature in order to identify itwith the subjective will of the few (Strauss, 1983: 175 and s.). In this regardNietzsche is very much a part of modern subjectivism, and if a politics canbe deduced from his work, it would in all likelihood pay little attention tothe limitations one might wish to impose on the domination of the mastersor supermen. He thus opens the way, in Strauss’ view, to the welcoming ofradical subjectivism, historicism and relativism. If Hobbes and Hegel werethe fathers of, respectively, liberalism and progressivism, Nietzsche must beconsidered, if only indirectly, the inspiration for regimes and ideologies thatcombat the latter, lauding a brutal decisionism, even brute force, to the pointthat their lack of moderation ‘made discredited democracy look again likethe golden age’ (Strauss, 1959: 55).

1.2.4. Modern teaching and the end of the theologico-political problemGiven this analysis, the Moderns’ approach to the theologico-political

problem has to be situated at the antipodes of that proposed by the Ancients.While the latter learned moderation from the confrontation with mythologyand monotheist Revelation, the Moderns stopped taking the theologico-political problem seriously as a matter of principle, and abandoned allmoderation. Since the Moderns allege that they can positively know thegood, they conclude not only that the good bears no mystery, but also, andas a consequence, that Revelation’s claim to define it as having its originssomewhere other than in human Reason is completely invalid. In principle,mythology, theology and Revelation are simply tissues of foolishness andsuperstition. What belong to their terms of reference can serve, at best, asinstruments for those societies in a position to know the good and constructtheir constitution on its basis.

Machiavelli, for example, considers Roman religion or Revelation asessentially political tools of greater or lesser use to the Prince (Roman religionbeing indisputably superior to Revelation, which tends to deny all signifi-cance to worldly glory and, by extension, political activity). But Machiavelli



does not seek an explanation of the whole to oppose to Revelation; that is,he never directly confronts the latter. Hobbes for his part is perfectly aware,Strauss claims, that the identification of man’s most fundamental passion withthe fear of death implies atheism, in that it supposes the disappearance ofthe Christian idea of a retribution or punishment post mortem. This is whyhe must be considered the real father of the Enlightenment. Rousseau andHegel approach the theologico-political problem a little differently, as theytend to reduce Revelation to a manifestation of a more fundamental orderthat ultimately gives it its sense, whether in terms of the people’s spirit orHistory. In the end, however, the result remains the same: the theologico-political problem is eliminated or circumvented rather than confronted, sinceit can make no legitimate claim capable of leading to a debate on the good.In a certain sense, Nietzsche, in one dazzling phrase, reveals the truth of theModerns regarding the theologico-political problem by proclaiming the‘death of God’, that is, the Christian religion’s incapacity to structure societiesby appraising them in the light of an idea of the good.

In sum, the Moderns, in contrast to the Ancients, do not take seriouslyRevelation and the problems it poses for Reason, notably, by suggesting thelatter’s limits. What Strauss considers the Moderns’ lack of ‘intellectualintegrity’ is a logical consequence of this position, with its claim to possessknowledge of the good. Its outcome are the ideologies that would submitmen to the good supposedly embodied by the different regimes – liberal,progressive or reactionary-aristocratic – which, as the 20th century hasrevealed, represent potentially major calamities for humanity. Leo Strauss’efforts to revive classical political philosophy must be understood in the lightof the critiques he addressed to these regimes (as well as, to be sure, of hisown lived experience). In other words, his efforts must be understood inthe light of his desire to restore a sense of measure or moderation by return-ing to the classic debate about the meaning of the good, the quest for whichcannot and must never be considered ended. If it is so imperative to considerthe theologico-political problem ‘unsolvable’, it is because this problempoints precisely to the debate’s present significance.1

2. CLAUDE LEFORT: ‘PERMANENCE OF THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL?’

Claude Lefort’s reflections on the problem of the theologico-politicalstand at the opposite pole to those of Strauss but are formulated in such afashion that they gain, to my mind, from being read as a response to him.Essentially, Lefort maintains that the theologico-political problem is not asource of moderation in modernity but, on the contrary, of excess; that thedissolution of the boundaries between philosophers and non-philosophers,which is, as Strauss stresses, intrinsic to modernity, rather than dissolving theidea of the good in subjectivism, contributes on the contrary to preserving it



as the object of a quest; finally, that the modern democratic regime thereforerepresents a ‘solution’ to the theologico-political problem, which prevents usconcluding that it is ‘permanent’ or insoluble.

2.1. The foundations of the ‘theologico-political matrix’In order to understand what Lefort means by what he calls the ‘theo-

logico-political matrix’, we must briefly examine his definition of the conceptof the ‘symbolic institution’, which is fundamental for him. First, we may tryto understand what the symbolic is not for Lefort. His approach involves acritique of the social sciences, which treat the social space as existing ‘initself’, that is, a space for the scientific observer which is delimited by whatgives it coherence, whether it be force or power, a set of functions (for thefunctionalists), social relations of production (for the Marxists), etc. In theseconceptions, the symbolic is necessarily derivative, ‘grafted onto somethingwhich is supposed to carry its determination in itself’ (Lefort, 1986: 259).Lefort insists that the symbolic is not to be considered as derivative. Thereare many formulations indicating that for him the symbolic is primary, thatit ‘commands/controls . . . access to the world’ (Lefort, 1986: 261). The ‘gener-ative principles’, the ‘guiding schema’, terms equivalent to the ‘symbolic insti-tution’, ‘command a configuration of society, which is both spatial andtemporal’ (1986: 256).

These statements on the primacy of the symbolic will gain from beingrelated to other statements, which seem at first sight somewhat enigmatic.Lefort repeatedly insists that the symbolic institution is based on a need,which is beyond the control of humanity and thus in this sense imposed onit: ‘the opening of human society to itself is caught up in an opening whichis not its own such that humanity “experiences a difference”, which doesnot come in and through history’ (Lefort, 1986: 262). This is also the meaningof statements affirming that society defines itself in relation to an outside(1986: 265). The symbolic institution of the social ‘is not itself a social fact’(Lefort, 1978a: 506). In other words, the social does not institute itselfsymbolically – which would suppose that the social space exists ‘in itself’ orthat it preexists symbolic institution, making its advent secondary; on thecontrary, the symbolic imperative, which is given with the very existence ofsocialized humanity and represents in this sense an ‘enigma’ (Lefort, 1986:265), is what institutes the social space or brings it into existence.

Posing the question in this fashion raises the question of religion. Itsvery structure not only affirms that society’s opening to itself is ‘caught upin an opening which is not its own’; religion also provides society with a‘figurative mode’, which is originary because all-encompassing, that is to say,a mode of ‘dramatizing the relations that humans establish with what tran-scends empirical time, the space in which they form their own relations’(Lefort, 1986: 263). This is also the reason, as political anthropology shows,why the political, to the degree that it expresses the symbolic dimension,



tends to be originarily intermeshed with religion. In this sense Lefort regis-ters the importance, at least up to the 19th century for Western societies, ofa ‘theologico-political matrix’ in which are inextricably intermeshed what hecalls ‘the already politicized theological and the already theologized politi-cal’ (Lefort, 1986: 293). In order to grasp its meaning, we need to examinethe particular meaning Christianity has given it.

2.2. The theologico-political matrix in Christianity and itsapparent ‘persistence’If Lefort’s views on the particular meaning of the Christian theologico-

political matrix are brief (far less elaborated than Marcel Gauchet, 1997), theyare nevertheless crucial for grasping the apparent permanence of the theo-logico-political in Western modernity. Let me reconstruct them as follows.The starting point is Christianity’s politically original attitude to theocracy, itsrefusal in principle of a single power acting as the guardian of the sourcesgiving meaning to the visible and invisible worlds (Lefort, 1986: 296). Thisimpossibility draws on the christological motif that no one, neither Pope norEmperor, may claim formal identification with Christ, that is to say, installhimself in his place in order to assure the union of heaven and earth. Chris-tianity assumes from the beginning the existence of two powers, the onemainly but not exclusively concerned with the things of this world, the othermainly but not exclusively concerned with the invisible world – powerswhich are both imperfect (because inferior to the power incarnated in Christand to be re-incarnated at the end of time) but nevertheless inspired (andhence legitimated), that is, illuminated or guided by the Holy Spirit, a mani-festation of God among humans. The outcome is a dynamically complexschema (Lefort, 1986: 293): two powers which are indissociable but must notbe confused, simultaneously complements and rivals, since each in its ownway refers to the Holy Spirit and hence is incapable of asserting completepreeminence over the other (Lefort, 2000: 32).

Concretely, this schema, which is constantly reworked symbolically bythe test of events (Lefort, 1986: 293), forms the axis in Christian societies,along which the dualisms intermesh and ceaselessly revolve around imagesrelating to the mystical body of Christ in the Church and in the variousearthly cities, and to the double body, natural and supernatural, of Christand of the King (Lefort, 1986: 295). But rather than seeking to follow all thecomplex moves which give meaning to the theologico-political matrix inthe course of the Christian Middle Ages, we need to consider the birth ofthe modern nation and state, integral on the one hand to political modernityand witness on the other to the extraordinary importance of the theologico-political matrix in modernity.

Thus, according to Lefort, the articulations of the modern worldemerge from the foundations of the Christian world. From the 14th centuryon, in France in particular, a new idea of the Kingdom takes shape, as the



realization of a mystical body, informed by the Holy Spirit, such that theterritory circumscribed by royalty becomes a veritable ‘holy land’ and itspeople, chosen by God, the incarnation ‘of a privileged fashion of realizinghumanity’ (Lefort, 1986: 298). The body of the King’s subjects, like the King’sbody, is conceived as dual: visible and invisible, natural and supernatural,mortal and immortal, corruptible and incorruptible. The King is mortal butthe Royalty in him is immortal; the Kingdom is an ensemble of living beings,which also has an immortal dimension, because it is inscribed in a lineageof the dead, the living, and the coming generations, a lineage through whichFrance appears as a living, even eternal ‘person’.2 The sovereign state andnation, which define political modernity, are thus undeniably and paradox-ically born of the theologico-political matrix (Lefort, 2000: 37).

This schema is so important that it continues up to the end of the 19thcentury and is to be found where least expected, in the thinkers who under-take its critique, as is best illustrated for Lefort by the work of Michelet.Michelet undertakes an acerbic critique of the theologico-political schema.He explicates the construction of royalty through its assumption of theChristian conception of grace. One tradition of interpretation, going back atleast to Augustine, supposes that God accords his grace to whom he will,without mortals being permitted, short of blasphemy, to question the reasonsfor divine decisions. In the absolute monarchy justice is to the King whatgrace is to God: the king determines justice and injustice sovereignly just asGod decides salvation or damnation. However, once he has established this,rather than ridding himself of the theologico-political schema, Michelet re-entangles himself in it in his refounding of justice. Arguing that the people’slove of the sovereign does not rest solely on fear, in other words, does notspring solely from the royal will, Michelet maintains that it also springs fromthe desire to see justice and the good incarnated in this world (Lefort, 1986:286). This desire for the just and good Law, incarnated in a guardian, thusappears simultaneously as the desire for the ‘One’, since the body of theKing, acting as the guardian of the Law or intermediary between eternaljustice and human reason, is the object of all gazes, which can only commu-nicate in him (Lefort, 1968: 288). In this sense, the desire for emancipationand for servitude converge rather than diverge (Lefort, 1978b). These desiresfind satisfaction, moreover, in that their object, the King, is not only immortalbut also mortal, even ‘human, all too human’. If Christ can be held up asthe model of imitation, it must not be forgotten that he is not only perfectlyhuman but also perfectly divine, according to the famous formula of theCouncils, such that he remains in fact inimitable. Against this, the weaknessof the King, which does not prevent his privileged communication with theinvisible, is human in a completely different sense; if he calls for sacrifice(to die for him), he is also the source of rejoicing, since he resembles hissubjects (he may even be touched) at the same time as he offers them justiceand the good in this world. Now, rather than breaking with this schema,



after having carefully uncovered its functioning, Michelet redeploys it,according to Lefort, by substituting the People for the King: the guardian ofthe Law, the intermediary between justice and this world, is no longer theKing, an impostor, but the People (with a capital to distinguish it from theregular populace). Michelet’s republicanism appropriates rather than opposesthe monarchy’s constant staging of its anointed role, ‘the anointed for himhas become the people’ (Lefort, 1986: 281). It leads Michelet as far as envis-aging that France, as the bearer of a spiritual mission, and as the setting forthe possible liberation of the human race (Lefort, 1993: 59ff), is called uponto export the ‘social Word’ to the whole world. In other words, the politi-cal-theoretical matrix nourished French expansionism, even colonialism (thegreat difficulty that the French Left has had breaking with colonialism isdeeply rooted in its history).

The French example is far from being unique in modernity, as we canobserve in the case of the civic humanism of Italian cities since Dante’s workon universal monarchy (Lefort, 1993); it offers a curious mixing of the workof humanism with that of Christianity in order to ‘fabricate transcendence inthis world. Ancient maxims, exalting Reason, Justice, Wisdom or the immortalFatherland, join with religious references to magnify and immortalize theCity of man’ (Lefort, 1992: 319). The good citizen is similarly defined forMilton or for Harrington as ‘God’s Englishman’ (Lefort, 1993: 57) and theCommonwealth is held to incarnate ‘a new chosen nation, a new Israel . . .dedicated like an empire to unlimited expansion’. And how can we forgetthat the Americans are the faithful inheritors who ‘embrace with fervourrepublicanism, mobilizing all these themes . . . that of the chosen people,that of the double heritage of the ancient city and of Israel, that of a uniquemoment in which mankind’s history reveals itself, even that of a societydestined for the first time to immortality’ (Lefort, 1993: 58)?

In sum, contra Strauss, far from leading philosophers and societies tomoderation, the permanence of the theologico-political in modernity hasnourished the imperial temptation in the nation-state, which found there itsprimary sources of legitimation. Rather than leading to thinking the limits ofhuman action, as Strauss believed, the intermeshing of the theological or thereligious with politics led to a justification of unlimited expansion in the nameof the spirit which peoples or nations were thought to incarnate. In order toreach this conclusion Lefort contests Strauss’ way of posing the problem byplacing at the centre of his analysis the concrete effects that Christian theologyhas had in societies: instead of simply positing a divine law to which humansshould submit (and which only philosophers would be capable of question-ing), Christian theology assumed an extremely complex relation between thevisible and the invisible worlds, that is to say, a presence of the Holy Spiritin the world that gave powerful support to the existence and deployment ofauthority and power. The fact that the Holy Spirit is deemed to ‘blow’ every-where and nowhere meant that the theologico-political problem, far from



bringing about a debate on the good, led to authority and power claimingit as their privileged possession – and as a consequence, it was deemed toconfer legitimacy on expansion in order to spread the good tidings.

This does not mean that societies were incapable of conducting adebate about the good. On the contrary, Lefort proposes a thesis which isexactly the opposite to that of Strauss: as the boundaries between the fewphilosophers and the many non-philosophers dissolved, the good ceased tobe the prerogative of the few and became the stake in an interminable debatewhich acts as a moderating factor in modern societies.

2.3. Philosophy, non-philosophers and the LawFirst we must clarify the meaning that Lefort gives to the Law (with a

capital) by recalling our starting point: the symbolic institution of the social‘is not a social fact’ since it is not the social which produces the symbolicinstitution but the reverse. Concretely, this institution manifests itself as acertain number of ‘markers of certitude’ which give social life its consistencyby enabling the ‘discrimination of the real and the imaginary, the true andthe false, good and evil, the just and the unjust, the natural and the super-natural, the normal and the abnormal’, etc. (Lefort, 1986: 258). Lefort callsthe set of these distinctions the Law.

It is true that Plato and the Ancients believed that one could probablynever arrive at a final definition of justice, the good, etc. This did not stopthem believing, however, that these entities existed naturally, that is, beyondall conventions. While insisting on the imperfection of the powers govern-ing the earthly city after the death of Jesus Christ, Christianity also repre-sented the Law as anchored in divine order and in nature (thus Aquinasdistinguished between eternal, divine and natural Law, etc.). According toLefort, modernity is distinguished by its refusal of a location for the Lawoutside the social space in some ‘other’ identifiable place (Lefort, 1978a: 512),such that the Law could be considered either natural or divine. Machiavelliwas the first to have thought this explicitly.

Machiavelli is thus the first philosopher to have stated that ‘there isnever a foundation in itself’ (Lefort, 1972: 435) and thereby to have made itclear that the human game has neither an extra-mundane origin nor goal,guaranteed by Nature or God. In other words, the game is played for ‘worldlyglory under the threat of death’; everything depends on the ‘heroism’ ofhumans in this, the only world we have (Lefort, 1972: 555–6). Now, it isprecisely the fact that the Law is ‘absent’ in the sense that it lacks all refer-ence to a set of unquestioned foundations, which ensures all the more its‘presence’ at the heart of the social space (Lefort and Gauchet, 1971: 10ff).It is the object of a quest which has become interminable, because one canno longer hope to state once and for all the criteria of good and evil, justiceand injustice. Modern society is always ‘in quest of its foundation’ (Lefort,1986: 270). Another way of putting it is to say that Machiavelli is the first



thinker of the ‘originary division’ which traverses all societies. There is anintrinsic link between the absence of secure foundations and this ‘socialdivision’, which allows us to say that socialized humanity lives in originaryseparation from the Law (in the sense that it does not possess it), whichgenerates a kind of ‘institutional space’ (Lefort, 1972: 485) in which conflictsand debates about what is just or unjust, permitted or forbidden, take place.The Law in this sense appears as the stake of social division; conversely,the Law affirms its presence in the fact that there is social division andconflict. The non-philosophers, the dispossessed and the oppressed, appearas the true guardians of the Law, according to Lefort, because it is they whosuffer wrong, who are driven to constantly pose the question of the good,the just, the legitimate, etc. and, going with this, the question of the legiti-macy of those who command in the name of the Law. For Lefort, againcontra Strauss, it is not the philosophers who are the guardians of the Law,of the idea of justice or the good, but – exactly the inverse of Plato – essen-tially the non-philosophers, who thereby reappropriate and realize the tasktraditionally reserved for philosophers, at least to the extent that theyconstantly protest or revolt against the reigning order. This, for Lefort, is themeaning of the famous thesis at the beginning of Chapter IX of The Prince,according to which ‘these two classes are found in every city; . . . the peopledo not want to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobleswant to dominate and oppress the people’ (Machiavelli, 1961: 34). Lefortunderstands it to mean, on the one hand, the desire to question commandsmade in the name of the Law signifies the refusal to be dominated oroppressed by the Law and its guardians; and, on the other, the desire tobelieve in a well-founded Law, which prescribes everyone his allotted placeand thus may dominate or oppress.

Modern democratic government is founded, according to Lefort,precisely on the recognition of the originary division between the City andthe Law; recognition of social division is the ground on which non-philosophers question the Law, no longer anchored in nature or divinity,and make themselves its true guardians.

2.4. Modern democracyThe ‘logic’ intrinsic to democratic government is founded in two essen-

tial features: to the extent that it rests on a ‘new determination-figuration ofthe place of power’, which makes it an ‘empty place’ (Lefort, 1986: 265),democracy makes the Law the stake and hence tends to conceive the socialspace as a space founded in a permanent questioning.

These formulations, especially that which turns power into an ‘emptyplace’, can easily give rise to misunderstandings. What does Lefort want to sayhere? Not as one might at first think, that nobody exercises power in democ-racy; in fact, we could say that Lefort means precisely the contrary. Basinghimself on the fact that the place of power is represented in democracy as



the stake of a competition between individuals, none of whom possesses itas a right, it indicates that such competition, even if it is formally regulatedby the institution of universal suffrage, makes it apparent that the exerciseof power in fact derives in the last instance from cunning, persuasivecapacity, even utilization of intimidation or force (what Machiavelli callsvirtù). In other words, the democratic exercise of power appears as theprerogative of ordinary human beings, ‘simple mortals’ (Lefort, 1986: 27),who enjoy no privileged relation to a transcendence (God, Nature, cosmicorder), capable of legitimating this exercise. In this sense, democracypartakes fully in what Weber termed the ‘disenchantment of the world’. Theplace of power appears empty to the extent that it refers only to itself, toits pure immanence – and it is precisely this permanent suspicion whichweighs on power. Machiavelli was the first to acknowledge this, constantlyinsisting that power can become at any time the object of the hatred andcontempt of the people, with the result that power just as constantly stagesthe right of its possessors to act as the guardian of the Law or as bearers ofa form of transcendence (Lefort and Gauchet, 1971: 15; Lefort, 1972: 369–98).

One may well object that democratic leaders are regarded as acting inthe last instance in the name of the people. The people, however, is far fromdesignating a positive entity; the people in democracy actually points to the‘enigmatic arbitration of Number’ (Lefort, 1986: 266–8). Universal suffragerests on a ‘fiction’ which posits that the place of power is ‘filled’ in the lastinstance by the people. We must bear in mind that in the very processwhereby the true sovereign expresses itself through the suffrage, we observethe ‘decomposition of society into political atoms’ through the conversionof citizens into ‘accounting units’, which take the place of classes, groups,and social movements. This ‘simulacrum of dissolution’, this ‘degree zero ofsociality’, effected by universal suffrage, withdraws all substance from the‘supposed social body’ at the very moment it is considered to express itself(Lefort, 1981: 148). With the result that modern democracy, contrary to itsetymology, does not consecrate the demos as sovereign but inscribes on thesocial tissue an unprecedented dispossession. It is therefore necessary toseparate the explicit discourse of modern democracy from what it tacitlydoes (Lefort, 1986: 299). It proclaims the sovereignty of the people and theadvent of autonomy, that is, the advent of a Law which is good because itis made by those to whom it applies. What it institutes, however, is a worldin which the people is ‘unfindable’ (to borrow Pierre Rosanvallon’s (1998)expression), and in which the quest for the Law opens onto an indefinitefuture. In this sense, we may say that this is the first regime, whose insti-tutions and effective functioning allow us ‘to pierce the enigma of the insti-tution of the social’ (Lefort, 1981: 150): in other words, modern democracyreveals for the first time in history that the social space is incompatible withany notion whatever of a definitive ‘solution’ to its constituent ‘contradic-tions’. It brings to the surface ‘the questioning which inhabits the institution



of the social’ (Lefort, 1981: 82), or better, it reveals the fundamentally ques-tioning nature of the social tissue (Lefort and Gauchet, 1971: 18). Whereasthe persistence of the theologico-political matrix feeds the claim to possessthe good or incarnate the spirit, and hence, imperial ambitions, democraticlogic by contrast reveals the always fragile character of societies, authoritiesand powers, their incapacity to achieve complete legitimation.

This is why modern democracy has a very special relation to the theo-logico-political matrix. In respect of the latter, there is a double democraticoperation. On the one hand, while keeping the question of the Law open,that is, the question of the good, just, etc., modern democracy is not based,as Strauss thought, on a positive (or subjectivist) conception of the goodwhich would amount to a straightforward rejection of Revelation. Moderndemocracy doesn’t assert that the good is no longer a mystery, it even main-tains the contrary according to Lefort, in the sense that it has to take seri-ously the kernel of Revelation, that is, it claims to convey its sense. In otherwords, one could say with Lefort that modern democracy preserves (in aquasi-Hegelian sense) – at the very moment it abandons the form in whichit was presented – the most difficult and precious question bequeathed tous by the religious past of humanity, the question of the good. But, as wehave just emphasized, democracy has clearly moved beyond the religiousform in which the question of the Law or the symbolic institution was posed,since its logic aims to guarantee everyone unlimited (in principle) access toits interrogation. It is the dispossessed, the oppressed, the damned of thisworld, those who have nothing and suffer wrong, who in fact keep thequestion of the Law open (they are not in the cave, they don’t cease tobreak their chains in order to escape). Democracy thus denies one the rightto speak in the name of the Law; it holds the place of power ‘empty’, theplace reserved for those identified as its legitimate guardians. By definition,this must seriously undermine not only the religious institution but whatgives it its consistency on the symbolic level, that is, the representations thatgive meaning to the idea that there exist privileged ways (and even privi-leged beings) for enunciating the good or the Law. This is why moderndemocracy works to deprive the theologico-political matrix of meaning – itspersistence in modernity is nothing but appearance (Lefort, 1986: 299).

The aim of this article has been essentially to read and elucidate Lefort’sposition in relation to the theologico-political problem, while undertakingan investigation of the foundations of Strauss’ position. The two positionsare so opposed – point by point, the one seeing moderation where the otheruncovers excess and vice-versa – that one could speak of a hidden dialogue,at least of Lefort’s effort to elaborate a certain number of theses relating tosome of the structuring intuitions of Strauss’ thought. It would be thereforequite legitimate to reverse the process, not by asking how Strauss’ thesesconstitute an answer to Lefort, but by asking what basis they offer for acritique of Lefort. Namely, it needs to be asked whether Lefort’s conception



of democracy, which makes the non-philosophers, to the degree that theydesire not to be dominated or oppressed, the guardians if not of the Law atleast of an institutional space in which the debate is kept open, whether thisconception does not entail – as with Strauss’ charge against modern histori-cism – embedding the good in history, thereby depriving us of a measurethat could be opposed to existing reality.

Translated from the French by David Roberts and Brian C. J. Singer.

Gilles Labelle is Professor at the School of Political Studies, University ofOttawa, Canada. He is the author of numerous papers and articles on contemporaryFrench political philosophy (Merleau-Ponty, Rancière, Lefort, Abensour, Gauchet,etc.). Most recently he has published ‘“Institution symbolique,” “Loi” et “Décision sanssujet.” Y a-t-il deux philosophies de l’histoire chez Marcel Gauchet?’ (Studies inReligion/Sciences religieuses, 34 (3–4) 2004: 469–93). He is currently working on a bookon Miguel Abensour and French political philosophy. [email: [email protected]]

Notes1. This is not the place to develop the idea, though it is nonetheless necessary

to emphasize that this interpretation of Strauss as a philosopher obsessed withmoderation goes completely against the recent doxa that makes him into thefather of American neo-conservative war-mongers. In order to understand themore visible ‘Straussian’ positions as regards American foreign policy, onewould have to consider, in order to avoid all distortions, the role of certain ofStrauss’ disciples (notably Allan Bloom) in the establishment of a current thatunited the different tendencies of American conservatism towards the end ofthe 1980s.

2. As General de Gaulle will still maintain (see Bouthillon, 1995). And perhapsthis is also François Mitterand’s conception, beyond socialism, of the indivisi-ble history of the nation with which he seems to have been obsessed (seeFaux et al., 1994.

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