Claude Lefort

About the author

Claude Lefort (1924–2010) was a French philosopher and political activist whose work traced a restless intellectual path from Trotskyism to an original theory of democracy and totalitarianism. Politically active from 1942 under the influence of his tutor Maurice Merleau-Ponty, he joined the Trotskyist Parti Communiste Internationaliste in 1944 before co-founding, with Cornelius Castoriadis, the libertarian socialist group Socialisme ou Barbarie in 1948. He later taught at the University of São Paulo, the Sorbonne, and the École des Hautes Études, and edited Merleau-Ponty's posthumous publications.