Miguel Abensour (; 13 February 1939 – 22 April 2017) was a French philosopher specializing in political philosophy.
Beginning his academic career as a professor of political science at Dijon, then at the University of Reims, before teaching political philosophy at the Paris Diderot University (Jussieu), where he became emeritus professor. Founder and director of the editorial collection "Critique de la politique" at Payot and president of the Collège international de philosophie from 1985 to 1987, he is generally viewed as a left-libertarian thinker and as a theoretician of radical democracy.
With thinkers such as Claude Lefort, Pierre Clastres, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Marcel Gauchet, Abensour greatly contributed to the renewal of French political philosophy in the post-war period. Aware of the many controversies surrounding the legacy, history, and historiography of the French Revolution in France, he examined the contradictions of the French revolutionaries and commented their texts (especially Saint-Just). In the wake of the rediscovery of Karl Marx, notably his early writings, Abensour aimed to distinguish Marx's own thought from Marxism. After the advent of the Nazi regime and the Shoah, the Italian fascism and against Soviet totalitarianism, Abensour questioned the nature of those totalitarian experiences in which he sees the blossoming of domination and the vanishing of politics. Moreover, while several political leaders in France and worldwide have advocated for liberal democracy, Abensour emphasized the distinction between representative government and democracy.
In the same spirit of critique, Abensour has offered many studies on Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Emmanuel Levinas. He examined the history of utopia and identified in it a "new utopian spirit." Finally, Abensour has developed a conception of democracy that he refers to as "insurgent democracy." This complex idea, akin to other theories of radical democracy, insists on the dissolution of the State-form and political domination as the authentic democratic moment per excellence.
Whether in his work as an editor, as a thinker, or as a public intellectual, Miguel Abensour always reflected on the emancipation of the oppressed. Acting as the guiding thread of his thought, the question posed by Étienne de La Boétie never left him: "why does the majority of the oppressed not revolt?" Eventually, he reframed this fundamental question with the terms set by Baruch Spinoza: "why do men fight for their servitude as if it were for their own salvation?"
Biography
Early life Born in February 1939 to parents who came to France from French Algeria only a few months before the beginning of World War II, Abensour had to live in hiding during the Occupation, as his father was Jewish. The family left Paris and settled in a village in the Lower Pyrénées. Reflecting on this period of his life in a lengthy interview conducted by Michel Enaudeau, he stated:
After the war, his father worked as a German interpreter at the Nuremberg trials. In the same interview with Enaudeau, the philosopher recounted another disquieting episode from his childhood:
Abensour was also deeply marked by the period of the Algerian War, "especially the idea that torture was commonly practiced, even by people who had been part of the [French] resistance.[fr]" In 1957, he spent part of the summer in Oran: "An atmosphere of widespread hatred prevailed there. All communities despised each other. I could also observe the humiliations that Algerians endured daily from the French colonizers.[fr]"
Academic career Holding an agrégation in political science, Abensour began his teaching career as a professor of this discipline at Dijon during the 1960s. Later, he spent some time at the CNRS. In 1973, he obtained a PhD in political science after successfully defending in 1973 a thèse d'État on utopia in the 19th century, first supervised by Charles Eisenmann and later by Gilles Deleuze.
During the 1970s, when a doctorate program in political theory was established, he was appointed as a professor of political science at the University of Reims. He established there the Centre de philosophie politique, where Claude Lefort and Pierre Clastres came to present their works. In 1990, he joined the University of Paris VII-Denis Diderot, where he taught until the end of his career and eventually became professor emeritus of political philosophy. Within this university, he took part in the adventure of the Centre de sociologie des pratiques et des représentations politiques and its affiliated journal, Tumultes.
As a professor, he supervised the doctoral theses of several influential figures in the renewal of political philosophy in France, including Luc Ferry, Philippe Raynaud, Jean-Michel Besnier, and Étienne Tassin.
Intellectual journey
From journal to journal Miguel Abensour was "an active figure in the world of journals.[fr]" His first published article, appearing in two installments in the Annales historiques de la Révolution française, was dedicated to Saint-Just. Subsequently, alongside his academic and teaching pursuits, Abensour engaged with various journals such as Textures and Libre. According to Franck Berthot, those two journals played a significant role in the resurgence of political philosophy in France during the turning point of the 1980s with critical discussion of the themes of democracy and totalitarianism, emancipation and domination.
His involvement within these journals was intense, and the debates among collaborators in the various journals were quite lively. In a 2007 interview with Jean-Claude Poizat, reflecting on his journey, Abensour stated, "I am more of a journal-oriented person. I participated in Textures, Libre, Passé-Présent, Tumultes; the practice of writing has the merit of introducing distance between the members of the journal.[fr]"
In the early 1970s Abensour became involved with the journal Textures, created and led by the Belgian phenomenologist Marc Richir. In 1977, along with Cornelius Castoriadis, Pierre Clastres, Marcel Gauchet, Claude Lefort, and Maurice Luciani, he co-founded the journal Libre under the Payot editions.
From 1982 to 1984, he collaborated with the journal Passé-Présent, created and led by Claude Lefort. In the mid-1990s, he contributed to the journal Tumultes, published by the Centre de sociologie des pratiques et des représentations politiques at Paris VII, under the direction of Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun. He also participated, as part of the editorial board, in the journal Épokhé, created and led by Marc Richir.
Finally, in 2017, just before his passing, he co-founded the journal Prismes with Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Anne Kupiec, Géraldine Muhlmann, Katia Genel, and Gilles Moutot. The inaugural volume of Prismes was published in 2018.
The Collège international de philosophie In the 1980s, Abensour was involved with the Collège international de philosophie. He chaired its collegial assembly from November 1985 to December 1987, succeeding Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard. According to Élisabeth de Fontenay, "[Abensour] displayed genuine inventiveness in democratically and effectively directing an institution that was still in the fragility and instability of its nascent state." She points out that he was the one who "established the principle of voting, and it was under the guidance of the executive committee he chaired that the program directors were installed, and thus the new institution of the collegial assembly.[fr]" She also notes that he initiated the "Bibliothèque du Collège international de philosophie" collection with Aubier editions and was the driving force behind the creation of the Cahiers of the Collège international de philosophie, a journal that collected contributions both from within and outside the university, following a model similar to that of the Frankfurt School.
Furthermore, his presidency is remembered for the "Heidegger. Questions ouvertes" colloquium held in March 1987, where Emmanuel Levinas agreed to express his profound ambivalence toward the German philosopher and his implication in the Nazi regime. In a conversation about the history of the Collège international de philosophie, Derrida revisits this colloquium organized by Éliane Escoubas and Abensour: "The example of the Heidegger colloquium—we could cite many others if we had the time—was particularly remarkable in this respect because it took place during the height of the 'Heidegger affair.' I remember interventions where, on one hand, there was evidence of competence in interpreting Heidegger's texts, and on the other hand, various ways of disagreeing with Heidegger were demonstrated, posing questions, especially political ones, to his texts and thoughts without succumbing to media trials and hasty methods that dominated the public scene.[fr]"
Conflicts and intellectual friendships Abensour experienced rifts with two founders of the journal Libre: Claude Lefort and Marcel Gauchet. With Lefort, the disagreement arose in the 1990s when Lefort proposed a critique of the French Revolution through the lens of totalitarianism and thus aligned with historian François Furet's interpretation, tendentious in Abensour's eyes.
In the case of Gauchet, the break officially occurred when Gauchet, former friend and colleague, accused Abensour of being a leader of "revoltism". Gauchet used this term to describe the paradoxical stance of a certain anti-totalitarian far-left that struggled to reconcile its love for democracy with an ultracritical posture. According to Gauchet, the aesthetics of intransigence and the cult of rupture don't coexist easily with the idea of collective self-governance. In his response, Abensour dismissed Gauchet's criticisms and embraced the label of "revoltist". While Gauchet, following the decline of the revolutionary horizon and the establishment of a certain liberal reality, saw democracy and revolution as opposed, Abensour argued that this opposition is null since, following the insight of the young Karl Marx in his critique of Hegelian political right, the essence of democracy can only be understood as a continuous effort of resistance and even destruction of the State-form, making democracy the revolutionary regime per excellence.
Abensour shared a path with Maximilien Rubel, publishing Rubel's Marx, critique du marxisme in his "Critique de la politique" collection. Upon the publication of Marx's complete works in the Pléiade, Abensour wrote an article titled "Pour lire Marx," defending Rubel's editorial work. He also shared with Rubel "the thesis of a Marx engaged in a unitary critique of bourgeois society, oriented toward a project of radical emancipation.[fr]" When launching a new "Critique de la politique" collection at Klincksieck editions, Abensour republished one of Rubel's books: Karl Marx, essai de biographie intellectuelle.
Abensour also formed a deep friendship and a true intellectual companionship with Louis Janover, who was, among other things, a collaborator with Rubel on the edition of Marx's complete works in the Pléiade. In memory of Rubel, Abensour and Janover published Maximilien Rubel. Pour redécouvrir Marx.
Death Abensour died on 22 April 2017, at the age of 78, in Paris. His body rests at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
Life as an editor
Transmitting works Abensour has been a tireless conveyor of texts. According to Lucia Sagradini, "Miguel Abensour's entire intellectual life has been intertwined with embodying a philosophical thought that has intersected with reading, writing books, as well as the work of transmission, involving authors of Critical theory, whose reception he facilitated in French, and also through his work as a professor throughout the years.[fr]"