Abstract

In this interview, Marcel Gauchet is asked to introduce his interpretation of the role of the nation-state in the current European and world landscape. This specific topic was chosen among many because it allows us to show how Gauchet’s critique of the dynamics of our democracies is bound up with a broader historical-philosophical reflection that is largely unknown in Italy. The target of Gauchet’s critique is the illusion that economic logic and legal arbitration can replace political government. According to the French thinker, the political, in its institutional and mediating dimension, is instead irreplaceable. Finally, in his last answer, Gauchet makes explicit the theory of the social on which his political philosophy is grounded: the idea of the political as the symbolic institution of the social.