Living with division: An analysis of the modern self and of contemporary democracy according to Marcel Gauchet.

Abstract

The following is an attempt to shed light on the continued role played by Otherness in a post-transcendental world as understood by French philosopher, Marcel Gauchet. Despite the end of religion as the organizational principle of society, he argues, are maintained two important forms of division. On the one hand, we will analyze how civil society is divided from political power and on the other how the modern individual is thought to be composed of a conscious and an unconscious element all the while attempting to draw parallels between the two levels of analysis.