Labelle

06 068776 Labelle (bc-t) 25/9/06 2:37 pm Page 63
CAN THE PROBLEM OF THE

THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL BE
RESOLVED? LEO STRAUSS
AND CLAUDE LEFORT
Gilles Labelle
ABSTRACT The starting point of this article is that there is a kind of ‘hidden
dialogue’ 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’ in
modernity is only an appearance, as democracy has, in the last instance,
succeeded in ‘cutting’ the knot tied between the theological and the political
in pre-modern societies. Moreover, while Strauss associates recognition of the
irresolvable character of the theologico-political problem with moderation,
Lefort takes the exact opposite view, insisting on the lack of moderation, even
excess, that weighs particularly on modern politics consequent to any attempt
to amalgamate the theological with the political.
KEYWORDS Claude Lefort • modernity • Leo Strauss • theologico-political
problem
INTRODUCTION
There is no shortage of reasons to compare the writings of Leo Strauss
and Claude Lefort. One might note that Leo Strauss was always concerned
with the fate of political philosophy, whose very existence, he believed, was
put in question by the development of modernity; for example, he wrote in
1959 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 1983
Claude 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: 63–81

SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd
DOI: 10.1177/0725513606068776
64 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)
themselves (Lefort, 1986: 17). And while Leo Strauss was never interested in
the work of Lefort (his opus magnum on Machiavelli appearing one year
before 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 is
precisely what I wish to demonstrate in this article, it seems to me that certain
of Lefort’s ideas can be better understood if related to Straussian claims – as
if the former constituted a sort of response to the latter, even when Strauss
is not explicitly mentioned.
This is particularly the case, in my view, with respect to Lefort’s
discussion of the theologico-political problem. If Strauss claims this problem
to be ‘irresolvable’ (see Tanguay, 2003), Lefort seeks to show that the ‘perma-
nence of the theologico-political’ in modernity is only an appearance, as
democracy has, in the last instance, succeeded in ‘cutting’ the knot tied
between the theological and the political in pre-modern societies (Lefort,
1986: 299). Moreover, while Strauss associates recognition of the irresolvable
character of the theologico-political problem with moderation, Lefort takes
the exact opposite view, insisting on the lack of moderation, even excess,
that weighs particularly on modern politics consequent to any attempt to
amalgamate the theological with the political.
I will first expose the basic elements of Leo Strauss’ position on the
theologico-political problem and its importance; I will then compare them
with Lefort’s position while insisting on the ‘hidden dialogue’ that he is, in
my view, conducting with Strauss.
1. LEO STRAUSS: FROM THE DEBATE BETWEEN THE

ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS TO THAT BETWEEN REASON
AND REVELATION
Strauss is often presented as a defender of the Ancients against the
Moderns, or of ‘classical political philosophy’ against ‘modern political phil-
osophy’. This is not untrue, so long as one understands the ‘return to the
Ancients’ to be a means of returning to the no less fundamental debate
opposing (philosophical) Reason to mythology and (religious) Revelation.
According to Strauss, if classical teaching supposes Reason incapable of
definitively overcoming mythology and Revelation – a failing that constantly
recalls philosophy to more moderate positions – modern teaching, by
contrast, claims to have settled the problem of the theologico-political once
and 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 Strauss

The most important point Strauss draws from classical teaching is the
idea of an independent good that exists beyond human experience, even as
Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 65
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 to
discover ‘ancestral morality’, that is, the anchorage of law in customs and
traditions that differ between cities. This discovery gives birth to what he
calls ‘conventionalism’, the claim that cities are based on conventions that
can be considered relative, i.e. contingent or arbitrary. This leads the first
philosophers 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 considers
there to be a close relation between the laws and ancestral morality. He also
agrees that there is a difference between what exists by convention and what
by nature. However, he holds that convention and nature are not simply
opposed: the distinctive feature of his method, as based on maieutics or
dialectics, consists in discovering what exists by nature from convention.
Conventions are manifest, above all, in doxa, but every opinion ‘points
beyond itself’. Doxa, in other words, bears a ‘vision of the ideas’ or ‘of the
articulated whole’, and is thus concerned with what Strauss calls the ‘being
of 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 idea
of justice. One can only distinguish between what is just and unjust if one
presupposes that something like justice exists (even if one cannot perhaps
define it in a precise or coherent manner). The idea of justice in its turn
refers, according to Strauss, to what is considered the ‘good’, which accord-
ing to Socrates in The Republic is ‘the cause’ of all other ideas (Plato, 1968:
517b). In this sense, there is a movement from opinion or ‘common sense’
(‘It is just that . . .’) to ‘something’ partially hidden or absent (the idea of
justice and the good) – this ‘something’ being simultaneously revealed in
part by opinion and by the effort that opinion calls forth (since it is by ques-
tioning the distinction between the just and unjust that one can hope to
uncover what is justice and the good). This is precisely what Socrates under-
stands by philosophy which, beginning with opinions, makes them deliver,
by a method based on systematic questioning, what they naturally bear, that
is, what they both mask and reveal: the ideas, 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).
Socratic philosophy thus points to the ‘good life’, a life directed by the
virtues associated with the ideas and the good (Strauss, 1954: 127). In other
words, Socratic philosophy points to ‘natural right’, that is, to what should
exist by nature. Since natural right always supposes a certain distance relative
to conventions, it can only ‘act as dynamite for civil society’ (Strauss, 1954:
153). This is why Strauss does not hesitate to ‘liken philosophy to madness,
the very opposite of sobriety or moderation’ (Strauss, 1959: 32). As only the
few are inclined to pursue ‘natural philosophy’, and as the confrontation
between the few and the many inevitably leads to the victory of the latter
(as illustrated emblematically by the trial of Socrates), philosophy’s principal
task 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 philosophy
teaches an ‘esoteric art of writing’ that aims, if not to deceive, then at least
to avoid shocking the uninformed reader (Strauss, 1952). Moreover, Platon-
ist philosophy, in Strauss’ view, implicitly admits that the good, and the
perfect realization of the good life, establishes a horizon and represents
objectives which are largely unattainable, such that philosophy will probably
never become wisdom or an understanding of the whole. Thus Socrates,
when questioned about the nature of the good in The Republic by his young
interlocutors, either ducks the question or responds rather vaguely. This is
why Strauss insists on the fact that Plato, whether in The Republic or The
Laws, presents the realization of the ‘best regime’, which should be governed
by learned and wise men, as ‘improbable’, being dependent on ‘chance’. It
should thus be considered, in the last instance, a ‘utopia’, as moreover Aris-
totle understood it (Strauss, 1954: 138–43).
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 is
insurmountable. Once the philosopher admits that the good, which is in
principle the object of his quest, is not within his reach, he finds himself
unable to substitute natural right for convention; he can no longer turn
natural right into a positive law that can then be opposed to mythology or
poetry, 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 would
have to be able to fully explain the whole or totality of things in a way that
leaves no room for the idea of a divine Creator who loves humanity. This
appears impossible, not just because monotheist Revelation, by identifying
God with the Creator of the universe, makes him into an omnipotent being
who, by definition, is mysterious and invisible (an omnipotent being cannot
be 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 philosophers
constantly appears to escape them. This is not to say that philosophy cannot
exist, since its theological adversary has never been able to demonstrate the
impossibility of the philosophical life (despite claiming that philosophy may
be condemned to lose its soul for refusing to follow the only true, divine
law). 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 for
the good. Philosophy, in other words, must admit its limits; it can only be
moderate as it can never be absolutely certain of incarnating the good life
(Strauss, 2004: 67). In a sense, here lies the privilege of the few, since the
many, being ‘philosophically challenged’, submit more or less blindly to laws
and conventions they do not question, though the latter may be neither
entirely just nor good.
It is precisely the moderation of classical political philosophy that,
Strauss claims, modern philosophers reject. They would complete the quest
for wisdom by making the good not the object of an endless quest but a
positive reality within reach of not just a few philosophers but the many
non-philosophers. As such, the Moderns radically reject the problem of the
theologico-political; the good can no longer be a mystery about which
theology and philosophy argue endlessly, when it is literally available to
everyone. Such a position, in Strauss’ view, can only encourage a movement
towards 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 Strauss

Philosophical modernity is deployed, according to Strauss, in three
successive ‘waves’, all of which establish the idea of the good as conceived
by classical philosophers on a completely new basis. It is important to
present, if only briefly, these three waves in order to suggest where, in his
view, they are heading.
1.2.1. Modernity’s first wave: Machiavelli and Hobbes

Modern philosophy’s point of departure, according to Strauss, is the
work of Machiavelli. The latter’s ‘realism’ is based on the fact that the
Ancients aimed ‘too high’: human beings, for the classical philosophers, have
to strive for virtue; for the Church Fathers and theologians humans strive for
charity and the other Christian virtues. In these circumstances the best city
is either unrealizable (as Plato admits) or tyrannical (as in the case of the
Christian communities). For Machiavelli this impasse can be avoided by
lowering the criteria that define the best city; one must construct ‘low but
solid’, to use Strauss’ expression (Strauss, 1958: 296). In other words, one
must start with men as they are and not seek to elevate them; one must start
with their deceitfulness, cowardice, egoism, etc. in order to construct cities.
This demands what Machiavelli calls virtù – an understanding of men and

the skill to choose the means that suit the circumstances, with their moral
or 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 this
sense remains utopian. Although Hobbes conceives nature in a mechanical
fashion, such that it can only be known by posing hypotheses that must
then be verified experimentally, there is, nonetheless, one aspect of nature
which can be known with certainty and which must be relied upon when
constructing cities: ‘Whereas the philosophy or science of nature remains
fundamentally hypothetical, political philosophy rests on a nonhypothetical
knowledge of the nature of man’ (Strauss, 1954: 201). And not only is knowl-
edge of human nature possible according to Hobbes, it is immediately
accessible to each and every person. In effect, to know oneself, one has
only to examine oneself to discover that one’s strongest passion is the fear
of death (Strauss, 1954: 180–1). For Hobbes, each and every person thereby
has immediate access to the universal, natural right expressing ‘something
that everyone actually desires anyways’ (Strauss, 1954: 183). In this sense
Hobbes is the ‘first plebian philosopher’ (Strauss, 1954: 166), as the few
philosophers and the many non-philosophers all have, in a sense, equal and
immediate access to wisdom. Each person has access to the good; better,
each person egoistically and subjectively defines his good as the desire to
continue living. Hobbes thereby takes up the Platonist project of founding
a sage city, but rather than seeing it as a utopia, as did Plato, he proposes
to realize it, this city being based on the fact that there is no longer any
difference between philosophers and non-philosophers, as everyone is in
possession of the good. According to Strauss, this plebian philosophy lacks
moderation, since it leads to the unconditional embrace of a natural right
that, beyond all doubt or questioning, is deemed to incarnate the good. This
is why the Hobbesian edifice defines such a large part of political modernity,
that is, the ideology of liberal societies, based on a shameless dedication to
the most brutal egoism – thus, the unlimited accumulation of goods and
capital, 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 Hegel

The Hobbesian solution was, as is well-known, severely criticized by
Rousseau. His main objection was that Hobbes reduces humanity to the
odious figure of the proprietary individual or bourgeois. All of Rousseau’s
efforts are devoted to restoring to the idea of humanity a nobility irreducible
to this figure. To be sure, like Hobbes, Rousseau claims that in the state of
nature humans’ primary concern is their self-preservation; humans, in other
words, follow their own particular will. Nonetheless, a clear-sighted legisla-
tor can resist by pursuing a general will, thereby reviving the figure of the
citizen in opposition to that of the bourgeois.
This being said, despite his critique of Hobbes, Rousseau ends up,
according to Strauss, deepening Hobbesian premises. In effect, the idea of
the general will recovers, at least tendentially, the claim that everyone is
capable of exercising virtue and seeking out wisdom and the good.
Rousseau too considers valid the dissolution of the difference between
philosophers and non-philosophers, just as he considers possible, as a
consequence, the realization of the best regime based on the possession of
wisdom. In this sense, Strauss believes that Rousseau must be considered a
crucial figure in the gestation of modern historicism. If the general will
embodies the search for virtue and the good, then the latter are henceforth
to 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 the
citizens may be asked to submit to positive laws that are said to embody
the good, though they violate all that was once considered to constitute
natural law. There is, it is true, an important, moderating element in
Rousseau, namely his doubt concerning the Moderns’ ability to fully know
the good. In effect, Rousseau admits that the majority will remain guided
by, above all, their egoistic desire for self-preservation, the general will
seemingly condemned to remain more or less utopian. The inhabitants of
the modern city appear destined to remain torn between two conceptions
of the good, one that speaks of particular wills and the other of the general
will. Even so, beyond all desire for self-preservation, and at a distance from
the 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 to
Strauss. Hegelianism proceeds, first and foremost, from a reflection on
history, onto which the essentials of the teachings of Machiavelli, Hobbes
and Rousseau are projected. If, as Hegel claims, men are egoistic, deceitful,
mendacious, etc. and if the general will – here the ‘spirits’ of different
peoples – is relative or contingent, this does not in the least prevent one
from seeing the accession of the good in terms of a complex, dialectical and
global 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 best
regime, with the search for wisdom and final accession of the good depend-
ing on the merger of philosophy with non-philosophy, the latter identified
with the totality of human acts, both reasonable and unreasonable, as given
historically. For Strauss, Hegelianism completely buries the good in history,
thereby preventing it from becoming the object of a quest, as it is now
located in each and every person’s deeds. The good in Hegel does not even
correspond 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 consequences
can only be disastrous, as much for philosophy (reduced to being the
handmaid of a history that embodies and realizes the good) as for humanity
itself (with entire generations sacrificed in the name of the good’s realization).
1.2.3. Modernity’s third wave: Nietzsche

Just as Rousseau protested against Hobbes, Nietzsche protests against
Hegel’s historicism. There is something classical about Nietzsche’s point of
departure: 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 result
is that modernity’s logic is deepened rather than contested. If Nietzsche’s
claims retain a certain ambiguity, it is still the case that he often appears to
reject the existence of the good as given by nature in order to identify it
with the subjective will of the few (Strauss, 1983: 175 and f.). In this regard
Nietzsche is very much a part of modern subjectivism, and if a politics can
be deduced from his work, it would in all likelihood pay little attention to
the limitations one might wish to impose on the domination of the masters
or supermen. He thus opens the way, in Strauss’ view, to the welcoming of
radical subjectivism, historicism and relativism. If Hobbes and Hegel were
the fathers of, respectively, liberalism and progressivism, Nietzsche must be
considered, if only indirectly, the inspiration for regimes and ideologies that
combat the latter, lauding a brutal decisionism, even brute force, to the point
that their lack of moderation ‘made discredited democracy look again like
the golden age’ (Strauss, 1959: 55).
1.2.4. Modern teaching and the end of the theologico-political problem

Given 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 mythology
and monotheist Revelation, the Moderns stopped taking the theologico-
political problem seriously as a matter of principle, and abandoned all
moderation. Since the Moderns allege that they can positively know the
good, they conclude not only that the good bears no mystery, but also, and
as a consequence, that Revelation’s claim to define it as having its origins
somewhere other than in human Reason is completely invalid. In principle,
mythology, theology and Revelation are simply tissues of foolishness and
superstition. What belong to their terms of reference can serve, at best, as
instruments for those societies in a position to know the good and construct
their constitution on its basis.
Machiavelli, for example, considers Roman religion or Revelation as
essentially political tools of greater or lesser use to the Prince (Roman religion
being 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 with
the fear of death implies atheism, in that it supposes the disappearance of
the Christian idea of a retribution or punishment post mortem. This is why
he must be considered the real father of the Enlightenment. Rousseau and
Hegel approach the theologico-political problem a little differently, as they
tend to reduce Revelation to a manifestation of a more fundamental order
that ultimately gives it its sense, whether in terms of the people’s spirit or
History. In the end, however, the result remains the same: the theologico-
political problem is eliminated or circumvented rather than confronted, since
it 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 the
Moderns regarding the theologico-political problem by proclaiming the
‘death of God’, that is, the Christian religion’s incapacity to structure societies
by appraising them in the light of an idea of the good.
In sum, the Moderns, in contrast to the Ancients, do not take seriously
Revelation and the problems it poses for Reason, notably, by suggesting the
latter’s limits. What Strauss considers the Moderns’ lack of ‘intellectual
integrity’ is a logical consequence of this position, with its claim to possess
knowledge of the good. Its outcome is the ideologies that would submit
men to the good supposedly embodied by the different regimes – liberal,
progressive or reactionary-aristocratic – which, as the 20th century has
revealed, represent potentially major calamities for humanity. Leo Strauss’
efforts to revive classical political philosophy must be understood in the light
of the critiques he addressed to these regimes (as well as, to be sure, of his
own lived experience). In other words, his efforts must be understood in
the 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 which
cannot and must never be considered ended. If it is so imperative to consider
the theologico-political problem ‘unsolvable’, it is because this problem
points 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-political
stand at the opposite pole to those of Strauss but are formulated in such a
fashion that they gain, to my mind, from being read as a response to him.
Essentially, Lefort maintains that the theologico-political problem is not a
source of moderation in modernity but, on the contrary, of excess; that the
dissolution of the boundaries between philosophers and non-philosophers,
which is, as Strauss stresses, intrinsic to modernity, rather than dissolving the
idea of the good in subjectivism, contributes on the contrary to preserving it
as the object of a quest; finally, that the modern democratic regime therefore
represents a ‘solution’ to the theologico-political problem, which prevents us
concluding 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 concept
of the ‘symbolic institution’, which is fundamental for him. First, we may try
to understand what the symbolic is not for Lefort. His approach involves a
critique of the social sciences, which treat the social space as existing ‘in
itself’, that is, a space for the scientific observer which is delimited by what
gives it coherence, whether it be force or power, a set of functions (for the
functionalists), social relations of production (for the Marxists), etc. In these
conceptions, the symbolic is necessarily derivative, ‘grafted onto something
which is supposed to carry its determination in itself’ (Lefort, 1986: 259).
Lefort insists that the symbolic is not to be considered as derivative. There
are many formulations indicating that for him the symbolic is primary, that
it ‘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 and
temporal’ (1986: 256).
These statements on the primacy of the symbolic will gain from being
related 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 on
it: ‘the opening of human society to itself is caught up in an opening which
is not its own such that humanity “experiences a difference”, which does
not come in and through history’ (Lefort, 1986: 262). This is also the meaning
of 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 itself
symbolically – which would suppose that the social space exists ‘in itself’ or
that it preexists symbolic institution, making its advent secondary; on the
contrary, the symbolic imperative, which is given with the very existence of
socialized 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. Its
very structure not only affirms that society’s opening to itself is ‘caught up
in 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, of
a ‘theologico-political matrix’ in which are inextricably intermeshed what he
calls ‘the already politicized theological and the already theologized politi-
cal’ (Lefort, 1986: 293). In order to grasp its meaning, we need to examine
the particular meaning Christianity has given it.
2.2. The theologico-political matrix in Christianity and its

apparent ‘persistence’
If Lefort’s views on the particular meaning of the Christian theologico-
political matrix are brief (far less elaborated than Marcel Gauchet, 1997), they
are 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, its
refusal in principle of a single power acting as the guardian of the sources
giving meaning to the visible and invisible worlds (Lefort, 1986: 296). This
impossibility draws on the christological motif that no one, neither Pope nor
Emperor, may claim formal identification with Christ, that is to say, install
himself 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 one
mainly but not exclusively concerned with the things of this world, the other
mainly but not exclusively concerned with the invisible world – powers
which are both imperfect (because inferior to the power incarnated in Christ
and to be re-incarnated at the end of time) but nevertheless inspired (and
hence legitimated), that is, illuminated or guided by the Holy Spirit, a mani-
festation of God among humans. The outcome is a dynamically complex
schema (Lefort, 1986: 293): two powers which are indissociable but must not
be confused, simultaneously complements and rivals, since each in its own
way refers to the Holy Spirit and hence is incapable of asserting complete
preeminence over the other (Lefort, 2000: 32).
Concretely, this schema, which is constantly reworked symbolically by
the test of events (Lefort, 1986: 293), forms the axis in Christian societies,
along which the dualisms intermesh and ceaselessly revolve around images
relating to the mystical body of Christ in the Church and in the various
earthly cities, and to the double body, natural and supernatural, of Christ
and of the King (Lefort, 1986: 295). But rather than seeking to follow all the
complex moves which give meaning to the theologico-political matrix in
the course of the Christian Middle Ages, we need to consider the birth of
the modern nation and state, integral on the one hand to political modernity
and witness on the other to the extraordinary importance of the theologico-
political matrix in modernity.
Thus, according to Lefort, the articulations of the modern world
emerge from the foundations of the Christian world. From the 14th century
on, 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 the
territory circumscribed by royalty becomes a veritable ‘holy land’ and its
people, chosen by God, the incarnation ‘of a privileged fashion of realizing
humanity’ (Lefort, 1986: 298). The body of the King’s subjects, like the King’s
body, is conceived as dual: visible and invisible, natural and supernatural,
mortal and immortal, corruptible and incorruptible. The King is mortal but
the 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 lineage
of the dead, the living, and the coming generations, a lineage through which
France appears as a living, even eternal ‘person’.2 The sovereign state and
nation, 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 19th
century 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 the
Christian conception of grace. One tradition of interpretation, going back at
least to Augustine, supposes that God accords his grace to whom he will,
without mortals being permitted, short of blasphemy, to question the reasons
for divine decisions. In the absolute monarchy justice is to the King what
grace is to God: the king determines justice and injustice sovereignly just as
God 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’s
love of the sovereign does not rest solely on fear, in other words, does not
spring solely from the royal will, Michelet maintains that it also springs from
the 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, thus
appears simultaneously as the desire for the ‘One’, since the body of the
King, acting as the guardian of the Law or intermediary between eternal
justice and human reason, is the object of all gazes, which can only com-
municate in him (Lefort, 1986: 288). In this sense, the desire for emancipa-
tion and for servitude converge rather than diverge (Lefort, 1978b). These
desires find satisfaction, moreover, in that their object, the King, is not only
immortal but also mortal, even ‘human, all too human’. If Christ can be held
up as the model of imitation, it must not be forgotten that he is not only
perfectly human but also perfectly divine, according to the famous formula
of the Councils, such that he remains in fact inimitable. Against this, the
weakness of the King, which does not prevent his privileged communication
with the invisible, 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 resem-
bles his subjects (he may even be touched) at the same time as he offers
them justice and 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
of the Law, the intermediary between justice and this world, is no longer
the King, an impostor, but the People (with a capital to distinguish it from
the regular populace). Michelet’s republicanism appropriates rather than
opposes the monarchy’s constant staging of its anointed role, ‘the anointed
for him has become the people’ (Lefort, 1986: 281). It leads Michelet as far
as envisaging that France, as the bearer of a spiritual mission, and as the
setting for the possible liberation of the human race (Lefort, 1993: 59ff), is
called upon to export the ‘social Word’ to the whole world. In other words,
the political-theoretical matrix nourished French expansionism, even
colonialism (the great difficulty that the French Left has had breaking with
colonialism is deeply rooted in its history).
The French example is far from being unique in modernity, as we can
observe in the case of the civic humanism of Italian cities since Dante’s work
on universal monarchy (Lefort, 1993); it offers a curious mixing of the work
of humanism with that of Christianity in order to ‘fabricate transcendence in
this world. Ancient maxims, exalting Reason, Justice, Wisdom or the immortal
Fatherland, join with religious references to magnify and immortalize the
City of man’ (Lefort, 1992: 319). The good citizen is similarly defined for
Milton or for Harrington as ‘God’s Englishman’ (Lefort, 1993: 57) and the
Commonwealth is held to incarnate ‘a new chosen nation, a new Israel . . .
dedicated like an empire to unlimited expansion’. And how can we forget
that the Americans are the faithful inheritors who
embrace with fervour republicanism, mobilizing all these themes . . . that of
the chosen people, that of the double heritage of the ancient city and of Israel,
that of a unique moment in which mankind’s history reveals itself, even that
of a society destined for the first time to immortality. (Lefort, 1993: 58)?
In sum, contra Strauss, far from leading philosophers and societies to

moderation, the permanence of the theologico-political in modernity has
nourished the imperial temptation in the nation-state, which found there its
primary sources of legitimation. Rather than leading to thinking the limits of
human action, as Strauss believed, the intermeshing of the theological or the
religious with politics led to a justification of unlimited expansion in the
name of the spirit which peoples or nations were thought to incarnate. In
order to reach this conclusion Lefort contests Strauss’ way of posing the
problem by placing at the centre of his analysis the concrete effects that
Christian theology has had in societies: instead of simply positing a divine
law to which humans should submit (and which only philosophers would
be capable of questioning), Christian theology assumed an extremely
complex relation between the visible and the invisible worlds, that is to say,
a presence of the Holy Spirit in the world that gave powerful support to the
existence and deployment of authority and power. The fact that the Holy
Spirit is deemed to ‘blow’ everywhere and nowhere meant that the theo-
logico-political problem, far from bringing about a debate on the good, led
to authority and power claiming it as their privileged possession – and as a
consequence, it was deemed to confer legitimacy on expansion in order to
spread the good tidings.
This does not mean that societies were incapable of conducting a
debate about the good. On the contrary, Lefort proposes a thesis which is
exactly the opposite to that of Strauss: as the boundaries between the few
philosophers and the many non-philosophers dissolved, the good ceased to
be the prerogative of the few and became the stake in an interminable debate
which acts as a moderating factor in modern societies.
2.3. Philosophy, non-philosophers and the Law

First 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 symbolic
institution but the reverse. Concretely, this institution manifests itself as a
certain number of ‘markers of certitude’ which give social life its consistency
by enabling the ‘discrimination of the real and the imaginary, the true and
the 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 calls
the set of these distinctions the Law.
It is true that Plato and the Ancients believed that one could probably
never arrive at a final definition of justice, the good, etc. This did not stop
them believing, however, that these entities existed naturally, that is, beyond
all 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 Aquinas
distinguished between eternal, divine and natural Law, etc.). According to
Lefort, modernity is distinguished by its refusal of a location for the Law
outside the social space in some ‘other’ identifiable place (Lefort, 1978a: 512),
such that the Law could be considered either natural or divine. Machiavelli
was the first to have thought this explicitly.
Machiavelli is thus the first philosopher to have stated that ‘there is
never a foundation in itself’ (Lefort, 1972: 435) and thereby to have made it
clear 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 ‘worldly
glory under the threat of death’; everything depends on the ‘heroism’ of
humans in this, the only world we have (Lefort, 1972: 555–6). Now, it is
precisely 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 can
no longer hope to state once and for all the criteria of good and evil, justice
and 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 an
intrinsic link between the absence of secure foundations and the ‘social
division’, which allows us to say that socialized humanity lives in originary
separation from the Law (in the sense that it does not possess it), which
generates a kind of ‘institutional space’ (Lefort, 1972: 485) in which conflicts
and 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 and
conflict. The non-philosophers, the dispossessed and the oppressed, appear
as the true guardians of the Law, according to Lefort, because it is they who
suffer 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, again
contra 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 task
traditionally reserved for philosophers, at least to the extent that they
constantly protest or revolt against the reigning order. This, for Lefort, is the
meaning 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 people
do not want to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles
want to dominate and oppress the people’ (Machiavelli, 1961: 34). Lefort
understands it to mean, on the one hand, the desire to question commands
made in the name of the Law signifies the refusal to be dominated or
oppressed by the Law and its guardians; and, on the other, the desire to
believe in a well-founded Law, which prescribes everyone his allotted place
and thus may dominate or oppress.
Modern democratic government is founded, according to Lefort,
precisely on the recognition of the originary division between the City and
the 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 democracy

The ‘logic’ intrinsic to democratic government is founded in two essen-
tial features: to the extent that it rests on a ‘new determination-figuration of
the place of power’, which makes it an ‘empty place’ (Lefort, 1986: 265),
democracy makes the Law the stake and hence tends to conceive the social
space as a space founded in a permanent questioning.
These formulations, especially that which turns power into an ‘empty
place’, can easily give rise to misunderstandings. What does Lefort want to
say here? Not as one might at first think, that nobody exercises power in
democracy; in fact, we could say that Lefort means precisely the contrary.
Basing himself on the fact that the place of power is represented in democ-
racy as the stake of a competition between individuals, none of whom
possesses it as a right, it indicates that such competition, even if it is formally
regulated by the institution of universal suffrage, makes it apparent that the
exercise of power in fact derives in the last instance from cunning, persua-
sive capacity, even utilization of intimidation or force (what Machiavelli calls
virtù). In other words, the democratic exercise of power appears as the
prerogative of ordinary human beings, ‘simple mortals’ (Lefort, 1986: 27),
who enjoy no privileged relation to a transcendence (God, Nature, cosmic
order), capable of legitimating this exercise. In this sense, democracy
partakes fully in what Weber termed the ‘disenchantment of the world’. The
place of power appears empty to the extent that it refers only to itself, to
its pure immanence – and it is precisely this permanent suspicion which
weighs on power. Machiavelli was the first to acknowledge this, constantly
insisting that power can become at any time the object of the hatred and
contempt of the people, with the result that power just as constantly stages
the right of its possessors to act as the guardian of the Law or as bearers of
a form of transcendence (Lefort and Gauchet, 1971: 15; Lefort, 1972: 369–98).
One may well object that democratic leaders are regarded as acting in
the last instance in the name of the people. The people, however, is far from
designating a positive entity; the people in democracy actually points to the
‘enigmatic arbitration of Number’ (Lefort, 1986: 266–8). Universal suffrage
rests on a ‘fiction’ which posits that the place of power is ‘filled’ in the last
instance by the people. We must bear in mind that in the very process
whereby the true sovereign expresses itself through the suffrage, we observe
the ‘decomposition of society into political atoms’ through the conversion
of citizens into ‘accounting units’, which take the place of classes, groups,
and social movements. This ‘simulacrum of dissolution’, this ‘degree zero of
sociality’, 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 its
etymology, does not consecrate the demos as sovereign but inscribes on the
social tissue an unprecedented dispossession. It is therefore necessary to
separate the explicit discourse of modern democracy from what it tacitly
does (Lefort, 1986: 299). It proclaims the sovereignty of the people and the
advent of autonomy, that is, the advent of a Law which is good because it
is made by those to whom it applies. What it institutes, however, is a world
in which the people is ‘unfindable’ (to borrow Pierre Rosanvallon’s (1998)
expression), and in which the quest for the Law opens onto an indefinite
future. 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 democracy
reveals for the first time in history that the social space is incompatible with
any 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). Whereas
the persistence of the theologico-political matrix feeds the claim to possess
the good or incarnate the spirit, and hence, imperial ambitions, democratic
logic by contrast reveals the always fragile character of societies, authorities
and 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 democratic
operation. 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 good
which would amount to a straightforward rejection of Revelation. Modern
democracy 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 other
words, one could say with Lefort that modern democracy preserves (in a
quasi-Hegelian sense) – at the very moment it abandons the form in which
it was presented – the most difficult and precious question bequeathed to
us by the religious past of humanity, the question of the good. But, as we
have just emphasized, democracy has clearly moved beyond the religious
form in which the question of the Law or the symbolic institution was posed,
since its logic aims to guarantee everyone unlimited (in principle) access to
its interrogation. It is the dispossessed, the oppressed, the damned of this
world, those who have nothing and suffer wrong, who in fact keep the
question of the Law open (they are not in the cave, they don’t cease to
break their chains in order to escape). Democracy thus denies one the right
to speak in the name of the Law; it holds the place of power ‘empty’, the
place reserved for those identified as its legitimate guardians. By definition,
this must seriously undermine not only the religious institution but what
gives it its consistency on the symbolic level, that is, the representations that
give meaning to the idea that there exist privileged ways (and even privi-
leged beings) for enunciating the good or the Law. This is why modern
democracy works to deprive the theologico-political matrix of meaning – its
persistence in modernity is nothing but appearance (Lefort, 1986: 299).
The aim of this article has been essentially to read and elucidate Lefort’s
position in relation to the theologico-political problem, while undertaking
an investigation of the foundations of Strauss’ position. The two positions
are so opposed – point by point, the one seeing moderation where the other
uncovers 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 to
some of the structuring intuitions of Strauss’ thought. It would be therefore
quite legitimate to reverse the process, not by asking how Strauss’ theses
constitute an answer to Lefort, but by asking what basis they offer for a
critique of Lefort. Namely, it needs to be asked whether Lefort’s conception
of democracy, which makes the non-philosophers, to the degree that they
desire not to be dominated or oppressed, the guardians if not of the Law at
least of an institutional space in which the debate is kept open, whether this
conception does not entail – as with Strauss’ charge against modern histori-
cism – embedding the good in history, thereby depriving us of a measure
that 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 of

Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of numerous papers and articles on contemporary
French political philosophy (Merleau-Ponty, Rancière, Lefort, Abensour, Gauchet,
etc.). Most recently he has published ‘“Institution symbolique,” “Loi” et “Décision sans
sujet.” Y a-t-il deux philosophies de l’histoire chez Marcel Gauchet?’ (Studies in
Religion/Sciences religieuses, 34(3–4) 2004: 469–93). He is currently working on a book
on Miguel Abensour and French political philosophy. [email: gplabell@uottawa.ca]
Notes
1. 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 with
moderation goes completely against the recent doxa that makes him into the
father of American neo-conservative war-mongers. In order to understand the
more visible ‘Straussian’ positions as regards American foreign policy, one
would have to consider, in order to avoid all distortions, the role of certain of
Strauss’ disciples (notably Allan Bloom) in the establishment of a current that
united the different tendencies of American conservatism towards the end of
the 1980s.
2. As General de Gaulle will still maintain (see Bouthillon, 1995). And perhaps
this is also François Mitterand’s conception, beyond socialism, of the indivis-
ible history of the nation with which he seems to have been obsessed (see
Faux et al., 1994).
References
Bouthillon, Fabrice (1995) Les schèmes qu’on abat. À propos du gaullisme. Paris: De
Fallois.
Faux, Emmanuel, Legrand Thomas and Perez, Gilles (1994) La main droite de Dieu.
Enquête sur François Mitterand et l’extrême-droite. Paris: Seuil.
Gauchet, Marcel (1997) The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of
Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lefort, Claude (1960) ‘Machiavel jugé par la tradition classique’, Archives européennes
de sociologie 1: 159–69.
Lefort, Claude (1972) Le travail de l’oeuvre Machiavel. Paris: Gallimard.
Lefort, Claude (1978a) Les formes de l’histoire. Essais d’anthropologie politique. Paris:
Gallimard.
Lefort, Claude (1978b) ‘Le nom d’Un’, in Étienne de la Boétie, Le discours de la
servitude volontaire, pp. 247–397. Paris: Payot.
Lefort, Claude (1981) L’invention démocratique. Paris: Fayard.
Lefort, Claude (1986) Essais sur le politique. XIX et XX siècles. Paris: Seuil.
Lefort, Claude (1992) Écrits. À l’épreuve du politique. Paris: Calmann-Lévy.
Lefort, Claude (1993) ‘La modernité de Dante’, in Dante, La monarchie, pp. 6–75.
Paris: Belin.
Lefort, Claude (2000) ‘Nation et souveraineté’, Les temps modernes 610: 25–46.
Lefort, Claude and Gauchet, Marcel (1971) ‘Sur la démocratie: le politique et l’insti-
tution du social’, Textures 2–3: 7–71.
Machiavelli (1961) The Prince (trans. and ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plato (1968) The Republic (trans. with notes and interpretive essay by Allan Bloom).
New York: Basic Books.
Rosanvallon, Pierre (1998) Le peuple introuvable. Paris: Gallimard.
Strauss, Leo (1952) Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
Strauss, Leo (1954) Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Strauss, Leo (1958) Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Strauss, Leo (1959) What is Political Philosophy? and Other Essays. Glencoe, IL: The
Free Press.
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Political Philosophy. The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin,
1934–1964 (trans. and ed. by Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper), pp. 217–33.
Columbus, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Tanguay, Daniel (2003) Leo Strauss. Une biographie intellectuelle. Paris: Grasset.

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06 068776 Labelle (bc-t) 25/9/06 2:37 pm Page 63

CAN THE PROBLEM OF THE

Thesis Eleven, Number 87, November 2006: 63–81

64 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

1. LEO STRAUSS: FROM THE DEBATE BETWEEN THE

1.1. The meaning of Classical teaching according to Strauss

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 65

it is expressed in or through it, and gives rise to philosophy as an essen-

66 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 67

how can one prove the non-existence of a mysterious or invisible being?);

1.2. The meaning of the Moderns’ teaching according to Strauss

1.2.1. Modernity’s first wave: Machiavelli and Hobbes

68 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

This demands what Machiavelli calls virtù – an understanding of men and

1.2.2. Modernity’s second wave: Rousseau and Hegel

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 69

70 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

1.2.3. Modernity’s third wave: Nietzsche

1.2.4. Modern teaching and the end of the theologico-political problem

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 71

2. CLAUDE LEFORT: ‘PERMANENCE OF THE

72 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

2.1. The foundations of the ‘theologico-political matrix’

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 73

tends to be originarily intermeshed with religion. In this sense Lefort regis-

2.2. The theologico-political matrix in Christianity and its

74 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 75

schema, after having carefully uncovered its functioning, Michelet redeploys

In sum, contra Strauss, far from leading philosophers and societies to

76 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

2.3. Philosophy, non-philosophers and the Law

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 77

2.4. Modern democracy

78 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 79

any notion whatever of a definitive ‘solution’ to its constituent ‘contradic-

80 Thesis Eleven (Number 87 2006)

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

Gilles Labelle is Professor at the School of Political Studies, University of

Labelle: Can the Problem of the Theologico-Political be Resolved? 81

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