This essay was written for a special issue of the French journal Esprit, where it appeared in May 2008. The editors wanted to avoid the typical default of French exceptionalism, which is certain that the true origin and significance of …
In 1998, Claude Lefort received the Hannah Arendt Prize given by the City-State of Bremen and co-sponsored with the Heinrich Boell Stiftung of the German Green Party. I was asked to deliver the Laudatio before a mixed public consisting of …
Two decades after the fall of the Wall seemed to announce – by default, as an unexpected gift – the triumph of democracy, optimism appears at best naïve, at worst an ideological manipulation of the most cynical type. The hope …
Editor’s Note: We present here a revised version of a talk given by Dick Howard on 22 April 2005 to a symposium organised in New York by the journal French Culture, Politics and Society. The subject of the symposium was …
The chapter on class that concludes the third volume of Capital did not remain incomplete because Marx died at his desk. Capital presents the economic “anatomy of civil society” on the basis of a two-class model articulated by the relation …
Open the Sunday New Y ork Times, and you’ll see three or four pages combine the tactics of advertising with the wisdom of the universities. What will draw you in? Advance at work? Occupying your leisure time? Meeting glamorous people (or professors, politicians, or bureaucrats)? Self-knowledge? …
There are three simultaneous arms races—the Soviet-American competition in nuclear arms, the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, and the worldwide traffic in conventional arms. All three have been flourishing, at a worldwide cost of over $300 billion a …
