Marcel Gauchet

Marcel Gauchet (born 1946 in Poilley) is a French philosopher, historian and sociologist and one of the most visible intellectuals in France since the late twentieth century. His work belongs to political philosophy and the history of ideas, and it asks why modern democracy is so hard to think through and to sustain.

After training as a teacher and studying in Caen under Claude Lefort, he moved away from Marxism and for years edited the journal Le Débat, founded by Pierre Nora. In 1989 he joined the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron at the EHESS in Paris, where much of his research has taken place. His best-known book outside France is The Disenchantment of the World (1985), which examines how Christianity made modern political autonomy possible and what happens to the individual when that religious horizon recedes. Other works, such as The Revolution of Human Rights and Democracy Against Itself, address the internal tensions of liberal democracy, individualism and the place of religion.

For Gauchet, democracy is not only a political regime but a way of collective life resting on the autonomy of citizens. His influence reaches the historiography of the French Revolution, contemporary political philosophy and debates on secularism and education.