36 Facts About Marcel Gauchet

Marcel Gauchet is professor emeritus of the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and former head of the periodical Le Debat.

Marcel Gauchet has written widely on such issues as the political consequences of modern individualism, the relation between religion and democracy, and the dilemmas of globalisation.

Marcel Gauchet was awarded the Prix europeen de l'essai, fondation Charles Veillon in 2018.

Marcel Gauchet then came into contact with Socialisme ou Barbarie, a radical socialist journal of an anti-Stalinian ideological orientation.

Marcel Gauchet then joined the Lycee Henri-IV to prepare for the competitive entry exam into the Ecole normale superieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud.

From 1966 to 1971, under the guidance of Claude Lefort, his professor at the University of Caen Normandy, Marcel Gauchet wrote his DESA thesis on Freud and Lacan.

In Caen, Marcel Gauchet studied alongside Jean-Pierre Le Goff and Alain Caille.

Marcel Gauchet then began his journey through the world of intellectual journals.

Together with Lefort, Castoriadis and Clastres, and in association with Miguel Abensour and Maurice Lucciani, Marcel Gauchet then launched the journal Libre in March 1977.

In July 1980, Marcel Gauchet published "Les droits de l'homme ne sont pas une politique" in the third issue of Le Debat.

In 1989, in what constitutes a major milestone of his career, Marcel Gauchet, sponsored by Nora and Furet, was appointed to the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron, the political studies centre of the EHESS.

In 1985, Marcel Gauchet penned the work for which he first became known outside France, Le Desenchantement du monde: Une Histoire politique de la religion with its English translation coming out later as The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion.

Four years later, in La Revolution des droits de l'homme Marcel Gauchet turned to the historiography of the French Revolution in order to analyse the debates around the creation of modern democracy that arose from this historically significant event.

In 2002, Marcel Gauchet published La Democratie contre elle-meme, which brought together in one volume all the political articles published by Marcel Gauchet in Le Debat since its inception.

The year before, Marcel Gauchet had gone back to the French Revolution to discuss the philosophy and historical significance of one of its most influential figures, Maximilien Robespierre, in Robespierre: l'homme qui nous divise le plus.

Furthermore, Marcel Gauchet published La Droite et la Gauche: histoire et destin which revisits an iconic text first published in Les Lieux de memoire to ask if the ideological divide is still meaningful in the contemporary era.

Marcel Gauchet has been interested in the question of the crisis of schooling and education, which, in Conditions de l'education, he analyses in a similar vein to that of Hannah Arendt.

Marcel Gauchet argues however that the deepening of contemporary individualism encourages us to lose sight of the fact that this production supposes certain pre-conditions.

From this point on, Marcel Gauchet is interested in themes such as authority and the transmission of knowledge.

Marcel Gauchet specifically considers this change not as a progress per se, but as a movement towards human autonomy.

Marcel Gauchet proposes that this organic juxtaposition of conflicting ideals leads to the recognition that there is no perfect solution to human problems: conflict is present in potentially all societies.

In La Revolution des droits de l'homme, Marcel Gauchet used historiography to reflect on the place of political phenomena in socio-historical events.

Marcel Gauchet turned his attention to an emblematic historical event in the genesis of modern democracy, the formulation of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Six years later, in La Revolution des pouvoirs, Marcel Gauchet furthered his analysis by moving away from the question of the founding ideals towards the debates of the national assembly that continued to shape this political experience of representation.

Hence, Marcel Gauchet stresses that a nation's sovereignty acquires a symbolic effectiveness through the judgement of this third power.

Marcel Gauchet uses these teachings from the French Revolution to bring the focus back to the contemporary era in which the gap between the ideal sovereignty of the people, and the reality of representation by the elected members, is signalled not only by the role acquired by constitutional courts in the second half of the 20th century, but by the role of the media and through them, of public opinion.

Marcel Gauchet discusses several key events such as the rise of Nazism, Stalinism and fascism, as well as socialism's lack of imprint in the US at the time, as opposed to Europe.

Marcel Gauchet uncovers the nature of individualism in a new postmodern and neo-liberal form of democracy, wherein the individualistic identity is at odds with old understandings of collective identity.

When comparing this pessimistic viewpoint with those of a more positive nature, Marcel Gauchet brings to light the increasing discordance between the 'elites' and the rest of the population, a dissociation that widens social divisions in French society.

In Macron, les lecons d'un echec: Comprendre le malheur francais II, Marcel Gauchet discusses the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, and the phenomena that surround Macron's succession to the post as well as his handling of France's contemporary issues.

Marcel Gauchet, while acknowledging the challenges of Macron's presidency, analyses his election as the consequence of the collapse of the French political party system.

Marcel Gauchet suggests that the dynamism unleashed by Macron may yet have more repercussions for French politics as a result, and that the 2022 French presidential election could still hold many surprises.

Marcel Gauchet's views are relatively more centrist and reformist in comparison with those of other French theorists such as Foucault, whose ideas tend to be more binary and extreme.

In other words, Marcel Gauchet's work seems foreign to an English-speaking reader who awaits from his work another example of traditional French theory.

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, a philosopher, and Edouard Louis, a writer, made an appeal to boycott Marcel Gauchet's lectures at the 2014 Rendez-vous de l'histoire at Blois, an annual conference that brings together intellectuals to discuss socio-historic topics.

Marcel Gauchet has, in a number of different contexts, made clear his critique of 21st century radicalism, especially in its neo-Marxist form.