The truth about democracy in Jean-Luc Nancy

I – In “The Truth of Democracy,” and emphasizing that “truth” will have a very specific meaning in Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophy, he, in a brief introduction to the text, draws attention to the importance of the 68 movement. Just as in 2013 in Brazil, with due consideration for the differences in scale, we will encounter different reactions. Gumbrecht, for example, in his important book “Production of Presence,” explicitly states some reservations regarding the movement, even though he himself belongs to a generation strongly influenced by 68, as he himself acknowledges. But even among those who sympathize with 68, we will find different points of view. In this sense, it is worthwhile to compare Nancy and Badiou. For Nancy, the immorality and social indifference of which 68 is accused on his fortieth birthday are the fruits of a cynicism that attempts to safeguard the virtue of the good politician and the scruples of good capitalism, both in service of the working-saving citizens. For Nancy, in addition to politics and capitalism, the movement also addressed managerial democracy, as well as outlining an important question about the truth of democracy – this last aspect being worth highlighting in Nancy's work and which entitles him to his own space among those who have reflected on democracy.

II- What Nancy brings to light is the distrust of 68 regarding the return of democracy as a consequence of the Second World War – a return that would be confined to the progress of decolonization, the growing authority of the representations of the rule of law and human rights, as well as the ever clearer demand for social justice not dependent on communism. The consensus of the world of democratic nations, giving rise to the beginning of international law prior to the Second World War, could be resumed after it. It was against the illusion of this great reconstruction – the illusion of the return of democracy – that 68 was directed.

III- The inadequacy of democracy stemmed from a misperception, primarily played out in Europe – and, contrary to popular belief, the interruption was not the Second World War; there was a shift in expectations throughout history, expressed in the struggles that continued into the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not a mere interruption. Hence the difference between reality and what Europe believed itself to be. The fact is that a point was reached where Europe was no longer what it believed itself to be – a spiritual entity, a geopolitical unity. This is because the era of preconceived notions had come to an end. It is in the face of this lack of perception that the Cold War gave rise to another political subject with regulatory, post-colonial, post-Soviet ideas, aiming at overcoming bourgeois democracy (possibilities of organized action, an organic and planned vision with foresight, whose formal scheme would be introduced into the conception of the state). According to Nancy, these two political subjects stem from an original flaw in democracy, which has not sufficiently reflected on its own pattern (not only on the loss of representation of the standards of the republican idea, but on its constitutive lack, the lack of its principle: the "demos" as power of some with others, without subordination and with a sharing of meaning).

IV- Regarding the period of the Second World War, or from then on, the opposition to totalitarianism (fascism, Stalinism), the struggles for decolonization, and the search for diverse refoundations (of the extreme left and the social left) were part of a project to rectify the image of the good subject of history. This forgetting of the principles of democracy, for Nancy, was not deliberate – in this aspect, the author differs both from those who saw the catastrophes of the 20th century as a malevolence of democracy – as was the case with Bataille, Benjamin, Arendt, and Tocqueville – and from those who defended it, as it was, against the attacks it suffered. The issue for Nancy, and in this case he aligned himself with the 1968 movement, was the reinvention of democracy (not restoring it, nor opposing it). And this reinvention involved Nietzsche and the demand for a transvaluation. What we saw in the Cold War was the confrontation of conceptions of valuation, that is, the choice of more or less subjective options, within a general regime where vision as a theoretical paradigm also implied the outlining of the horizon, the determination of visions and the operative pre-vision – in short, conceptions of the world that is the age of History, whose end would have been diagnosed by some intellectuals such as Levi-Strauss, Foucauld, Derrida and Deleuze. A way out, in the face of the nihilism implied in valuation, would lie in the end of the philosophy of the subject.

V- The question of the subject of democracy leads Nancy to recognize three regimes of thought, establishing, among other things, a difference between her own conception and that of Alain Badiou. For the latter, the political hypothesis of communism is verified by a political action taken within the framework of a class struggle – which, in a certain way, contradicts the infinite in action, which, according to Nancy, leaves open any prediction or hypothesis. If we are in common, this being the common given, the demand to become what we are is infinite, it is the infinite in action. The importance of Pascal, when he conceptualizes modern times as the opening of the subject (man infinitely becomes man), is precisely the non-exposure of goals. While the exposition of goals would not, strictly speaking, make any difference between the presupposition of the subject – master of their representations, will, and decisions – and the presupposition of some machinery of forces and objects: whether the exposition of goals is based on meaning (realization), or on community (communism), or on humanity (humanism), the infinite act disappears. It is in this aspect that political representation (conceptions of the presupposition of the subject) and political presentation with its imposition of good and destiny are, in some way, equivalent. Nancy also draws attention to the fact that the self-criticism of democracy, which should be carried out, for example, by questioning the electoral process and opinion polls, should not backfire on its own principles, whether in the name of free expression, by keeping education and cultural life under the hypnosis of superstition, or in the name of politically correct multiculturalism by justifying the subordination of women, or in the name of anti-racism by refraining from criticizing religious attitudes. In all these cases, there would be a perversion of human rights that the self-criticism of democracy can entail, turning against its own principles.

VI- Perhaps the connection we can make between the street movements of 2013 in Brazil and 68 in France is precisely the sense of event and its relation to messianic thought – even though this is visualized, in its occurrence, before the Second World War and has little to do with the spirit of 68, duly qualified as without messianism or without Messiah, Nancy proposes for a moment to see it as messianic-inspired – instead of elaborating and advancing visions and predictions, models and forms, it is preferable to greet the present as an irruption that introduces no new figure, instance, or authority. Messianic thought would be a thought of time in disjunction instead of sequence, of separation instead of succession, which, in other words, is a rupture in History and of History, a way of leaving History (the transvaluation of all values, as Nietzsche proposes, would be another way), of leaving the regime of conception. In the case of 2013, there has always been a desire to give it direction, a vision, an objective – the serpent's egg, the origin of the great evil of today. Under the sign of History, to transform it into the advent, with a name, identity, and meaning.

      The substitution of the subject with its representations would lie in the power of being, that which, perhaps, we could identify as what most profoundly constitutes democracy: the true possibility of being all together, all and each one. Authority, in this case, is desire, an expression of this possibility and an expression of the power of being. From the perspective of common sense, we understand authority in another way: it will always be defined by some prior authorization, whether institutional, canonical, or normative. The election of an authority takes place under this sign: through institutional authorization. It is an authority marked by identification – outside this game or this straitjacket, its existence is forbidden. The power of being establishes and amplifies openness: all together, all and each one. Together but without losing their singularity.

VII- Nancy's proposed shift in relation to democracy is that, before being a form, institution, or political and social regime, it must be endowed with desires, demands, and requirements. As a desire, democracy will never be determined or defined (in its opposition to communism, for example, it would contradict its own meaning). Therefore, in the demand, in the democratic desire, there would be a demand for meaning, a demand for the Spirit, and a demand for Life – Marx, Rousseau, and Pascal respectively; the common, man, and the infinite. If Rousseau's contract primarily produces man or spirit, this production, according to Pascal, is infinitely more valuable than any measurable evaluation (a man is not measured by the height of a given man, in a kind of calculation). This production, therefore, would have an incalculable part, corresponding to the infinity of the demand.

    The other democratic demand is that of meaning, which will only be constituted by being together – all and each one. If this last demand has to do with the common good, the “demos” as the essence of democracy (the power of being: all together, all and each one), then we can consider the co-presence of possibilities alongside presence, in the apprehension of the present – ​​these possibilities not being subjected to unconditional realization. Resistance to this unconditional realization on the part of power is what gives the character of openness to the world and to our existence. In this aspect, the common good and the infinite are related.

VIII- One thing is the desire for democracy, its demand; another thing is democratic politics (democracy is spirit before it is form, institution, political and social regime). That said, Nancy establishes two orders in relation to existence: that of inalienable goods and that of exchangeable goods. Regarding the first, its characteristic is goods without value or outside of any measurable value. To this infinite character, some goods can be shared: art, love, friendship, thought, knowledge, and emotion. However, democratic politics should refrain from sharing the incalculable, not assume its content, at the risk of introducing into the order of inalienable goods a common identity (the working people) or the destiny of a nation. Monarchies enjoyed this sharing in a kind of religious order (although not constituted by divine right, the regime was structured by authority and its divine destiny). What characterizes politics is its eminently political nature, not sharing in the order of inalienable things: it makes the existence of the "worthless" possible, its task is to maintain the openness of this order, to ensure the conditions of access to it, but it does not assume its content. The same applies to meaning, which is the other requirement or desire of democracy: outside the political order, but open to the good in the midst of the world, open to the good in our midst and as our common share; meaning does not include our existence under a signification, which would be a kind of sharing of the political with meaning, but opens existences to themselves or to others. Meaning, therefore, has this function of openness that relates to the infinite and whose premise is being-with. The desire on the part of democracy relates directly to existence (its essence is linked to it), while democratic politics only manages it, taking care not to assume the content of incalculable goods, nor the content of meaning. For Nancy, there is a theological basis in the assertion that everything is political.

IX- Referring to infinity as one of the demands of democracy, Nancy underlines the inversion that Pascal establishes on Rousseau's thought. For Rousseau, democracy properly speaking (direct, immediate, spontaneous) would only be good for a people of God – in other words, full democracy would only happen in a given infinity, that is, in Man as God. Nancy therefore notes the fact that the birth of democracy (the social contract) would be linked to its own forgetting. This is because one of the demands of democracy is infinity as incalculable, not given, infinity in act, in presence. Instead of being democracy in the given infinity, understood as divine, it is democracy itself as infinity, which deconstructs a finite or given form of democracy: it is infinity in the finite, the absolute presence of the immeasurable, an actual, effective, consistent presence – according to Derrida, infinite difference is finite. Marx absorbs Pascal's overcoming of the past, admitting that the social production of man by man is an infinite process, therefore, more than a process and more than progress. In this sense, existentially, sovereign assumption does not belong to the State, nor to any political conformation, nor to man as God, but to man under the absolute, the common, the "demos" (the condition of democracy). The presence of democracy is not ensured by human rights nor by the dignity of the person – it is rather linked to the sovereign being, it has more to do with potential than with rights.

X - It's interesting how Nancy articulates nihilism and the equivalence of valuation gestures – values ​​may diverge but under a background of equivalence. In this sense, the reactivation of values, which would lead, for example, to a change in a supposed economic domination, would still be an effect of the fundamental decision by equivalence. When Machado de Assis, in "Esau and Jacob," describes the case of the signs, faced with Custódio's doubt about whether he should keep the name "Império" (Empire), as his confectionery was known at the time the Republic had been proclaimed, Ayres suggests changing the name of the confectionery to the owner's own name. To which Custódio replies: "Yes, I'll think about it, Your Excellency. Perhaps it would be wise to wait a day or two, to see what fashions are like," Custódio said, thanking him. Political regimes, in this famous passage by Machado, compared to passing fashions, reflect a certain equivalence, characteristic of exchangeable goods. Ayres's brilliant suggestion, indicating substitution by a proper name without equivalence, can be symbolically understood as an escape from the nihilistic perspective: value becomes the distinction of the gesture that values, a gesture without equivalence. Each evaluative gesture, within the system of differential values—a gesture that is the decision of existence, of work—has the possibility of not being measured in advance by a given system, but of being, on the contrary, the affirmation of a unique, incomparable, irreplaceable value or meaning. The absolute value from which one starts is put into gesture, act, work, and is only valid among all and in some way referring back to all, as the opening of the singular meaning of each one and of each relationship. The sharing of these incommensurables is not a substitution of functions or an exchange of places and occurs in a regime of strict equality.

XI - It is in the space of infinity (place or world) that cities, nations, peoples, and states become entangled. As a possibility, it is not determined by any figure, not even by the figure of democracy. But it is from this space that gestures, absolute values, meaning, or even unprecedented forms will be constituted. It is the democratic city or even Art that is engendered in this space, considered the field of possibilities, while the gesture is the act, the work, the realization of these possibilities. Between the space of infinity and unprecedented forms lies the polis, where one struggles, denounces, and demands the just, the beautiful, and the living infinity of a man "beyond." For politics should be remobilized in the polis, but from elsewhere – that elsewhere that contemplates the infinity of a man. The choice of equivalence, as a kind of politics, prevailing from the Renaissance to the 19th century, would reach its exhaustion with the end of the left. The new politics is then remobilized from the infinite or from surplus, which is undoubtedly a form of inversion. The death of God establishes a kind of will that goes beyond necessity – the Aristotelian good life – as opposed to the choice by equivalence. If death is the common dust where we are promised, the death drive is this choice, precisely when the common thing (res publica communis) is transformed into a reified thing, pure commodity. The death of God changes this picture and establishes another will, no longer identified with the death drive. It is when death, as our God, loses its meaning.

XII- The fact that sovereignty, of power, is an exercise, this will be admitted by both Bataille and Carl Schmitt: it is an act. What differentiates them, however, is that the act of power in Schmitt accompanies the destiny of peoples, a destiny that is expressed by the succession of imposing and perishable figures – it is the idea of ​​advent. In Bataille, however, the exercise of power has a free destiny that implies an anarchy engaged in actions, operations, combats, and formations, which rigorously preserve the absence of an imposed archia. In this case, Nancy comments that nothingness is taken seriously, unlike nihilism, which we should always distrust when it is affirmed. In democratic government, understood as the power of the people, each and every one takes on the task of actualizing the infinite openness, an openness that would be linked to the failure of archia. There is, therefore, a praxis, an exercise in democracy that is linked to the present: to act now. In this sense, it is neither a conformist subject nor the subject of contestation, of revolt (perhaps we could relate it to Deleuzian nomadism). The transformed and infinite subject emerges in praxis – it does not await any future: it immediately sets out for confrontation.

XIII- In the final definition of democracy, Nancy opens three windows: democracy is initially a metaphysics; democracy can be appropriated by capitalism; democracy, in the modern age, is a complete refounding of the political thing. But, strictly speaking, it presents itself in its dual aspect: regarding its ethos, democracy is an apprehension of existence, which is driven by profound choices – a regime of meaning whose truth fully engages man as a risk (the different values ​​and meanings of man will never be determined by opposition or conformity to other values); regarding politics, it is up to democracy to invent the politics of means (this would be its refounding in the modern age, no longer being responsible for giving the measure or the place of destiny), opening or leaving open the spaces for the game of existence, that is, inventing these spaces and ceasing to assume the ends of men – politics does not found Dasein, it only provides the conditions for its exercise. In Nancy, in this dual aspect of democracy, metaphysics and politics are not confused.