Marcel Gauchet and The Loss of Common Purpose: Imaginary Islam and the Crisis of European Democracy

Marcel Gauchet arid the Loss of Common Purpose explores the work of Marcel Gauchet, one of France's most prominent contemporary intellectuals, to examine the contemporary crisis of European democracy. It does so by examining the threats from ideological co-radicalization associated with the combined impact of economic crisis and Islamic fundamentalism. It locates Gauchet's theory of democracy in the context of French intellectual history and notes the significant influence upon it of the social and political theories of Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, as well as its reaction against those of Foucault. This book highlights the need for European societies to rediscover their political underpinnings: their capacity to invent a new collective future by starting from the nation-state and to adapt to a new mode of international relations on a global scale. To do so, and to counter the threat of radicalization, they must retrieve the lost common purpose encapsulated in the notion of democratic sovereignty.