The Infinite Democracy: Lefort between Habermas and Mouffe

Abstract

Chantal Mouffe and Jürgen Habermas’ democratic perspectives are frequently portrayed as incompatible and mutually opposed. However, this paper proposes a conciliatory approach by emphasizing two fundamental ideas that both authors share: the critique of the liberal tradition and the radicalization of the democratic ideal. Here we explore the deliberative and agonistic convergence in the symbolic understanding of the democratic society that Claude Lefort proposes. This type of society has emptied power’s place and dissolved the markers of certainty. Without transcendent grounds, democracy is conceived as an always perfectible, open ended and uncompleted project, and therefore, radical.