Marcel Gauchet

Marcel Gauchet (born 1946) is a French historian, philosopher, and sociologist.

He is professor emeritus of the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and head of the periodical Le Débat.

Gauchet is one of France's most prominent contemporary intellectuals.

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

Two of Gauchet's books have been translated into English, including The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion.

In 1961, he attended the teacher training college of Saint-Lô, after which he pursued additional teaching qualifications for secondary schooling.

In 1962, he met Didier Anger, who was an active member of a union movement created by educators.

Through him, Gauchet met anti-Stalinist left militants, quite different from the communists who dominated the colleges that were training primary school teachers.

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

In his first protest, he demonstrated against violent police repression during the Algerian war, in reaction to the so-called Charonne metro station scandal.

He then joined the Lycée Henri-IV to prepare for the competitive entry exam into the École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud.

However, he decided to end his education before sitting the exam, and returned to the Manche department to take up teaching once again.

Gauchet later resumed his higher education studies.

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

Lefort steered Gauchet towards political philosophy, which led him to study simultaneously for three majors in philosophy, history and sociology.

During these years of study, Gauchet attempted to distance himself from the Marxist strain of theory which nonetheless continued to exercise influence over Lefort.

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

With Le Goff, he took part in situationist anarchist rallies; and during the events of May 68, he remained faithful to the revolutionary spontaneity of the student revolts.

After May 68, he broke with Marxism altogether.

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

From 1970 to 1975, with its original instigator Marc Richir, he revived Textures, the journal created by students at the Université libre de Bruxelles, which was supported by a newly-created editorial committee, composed of Gauchet himself, Richir, Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Pierre Clastres.

In 1971, Gauchet published his first articles in a special issue of the journal L’Arc (‘Lieu de la pensée’, L’Arc, no 46, p. 19-30) dedicated to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in Textures (‘Sur la démocratie : le politique et l’institution du social’, named after a course delivered by Lefort).

During his collaboration with Swain, he completed critical reviews of La Société contre l’État, recherches d’anthropologie politique by Clastres (with Gauchet’s review appearing in October 1974 in Les Éditions de Minuit) and of L’Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique by Michel Foucault.

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

This journal, which picked up from where Textures left off, was subtitled - ‘Politics, Anthropology, Philosophy’.

Eight issues were published through Payot et Rivage until 1980.

Gauchet’s other collaborative works included those written with his partner Gladys Swain, who introduced him to the field of psychiatry and anti-psychiatry.

In April 1980, Gauchet published his first book, co-written with Gladys Swain, La Pratique de l'esprit humain (see synopsis below).

Lefort introduced Gauchet to François Furet, a historian who conducted a seminar in the Paris School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (also known as EHESS).

This seminar later gave birth to the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron (also known as CERPRA), a centre for political studies.

Furet welcomed Gauchet to the EHESS and introduced him to his brother-in-law, Pierre Nora.

Throughn the EHESS, Gauchet met Pierre Manent, Pierre Rosanvallon, Vincent Descombes, and encountered once again, Cornelius Castoriadis.

In May 1980, Nora appointed Gauchet as the chief editor of his recently launched journal Le Débat.

This decision taken by Nora was, at the time, perceived as an indication of his desire to distance himself from Foucault, especially given Gauchet’s intense criticisms of Foucauldian theories in La pratique de l’esprit humain.

In July 1980, Gauchet published "Les droits de l’homme ne sont pas une politique" in the third issue of Le Débat (July - August).

In hindsight, this article appears as a major intellectual turning point marking Gauchet’s break from the political philosophy of his former intellectual mentor Lefort, and its emphasis on the symbolic emancipatory power of human rights.

It heralded the development of his own analysis of the inner tensions of liberal democracy and their contemporary manifestation.

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

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

As the son of a Gaullist railway worker and a Catholic seamstress, Gauchet received both a Catholic education and a republican one in the French public schooling system.