One of the most prominent political philosophers of the twentieth century reads Dante’s Monarchia, showing the surprising relevance of this radical fourteenth-century treatise that defends the necessity of universal monarchy and its independence from the Church for modern political theory. Judith Revel’s accompanying essay submits Lefort’s encounter with Dante to a transformative mis/reading and ties it to current debates on the question of the common.

Claude Lefort, Dante’s Modernity: An Introduction to the ‘Monarchia’. With an Essay by Judith Revel, ed. by Christiane Frey, Manuele Gragnolati, Christoph F. E. Holzhey, and Arnd Wedemeyer, trans. by Jennifer Rushworth, Cultural Inquiry, 16 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020) <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-16>.

Posted on 4 February 2020