[1][2][3] With thinkers such as Claude Lefort, Pierre Clastres, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Marcel Gauchet, Abensour greatly contributed to the renewal of French political philosophy in the post-war period.

This complex idea, akin to other theories of radical democracy, insists on the dissolution of the State-form and political domination as the authentic democratic moment per excellence.

Acting as the guiding thread of his thought, the question posed by Étienne de La Boétie never left him: "why does the majority of the oppressed not revolt?"

Born in February 1939 to parents who came to France from Algeria only a few months before the beginning of World War II, Abensour had to live in hiding during the Occupation, as his father was Jewish.

Reflecting on this period of his life in a lengthy interview conducted by Michel Enaudeau, he stated: We lived in a small village, and my parents had pointed out to me the houses that we had to avoid and the people not to talk to.

It's undoubtedly extremely unsettling for a child to realize that the world in which they live every day is divided in two and includes dangerous places and people.After the war, his father worked as a German interpreter at the Nuremberg trials.

In the same interview with Enaudeau, the philosopher recounted another disquieting episode from his childhood: Around the age of twelve, I searched through his bookshelf and found, mixed in with the trial documents, a volume of related photographs about the death camps.

These images have never left me.Abensour was also deeply marked by the period of the Algerian War, "especially the idea that torture was commonly practiced, even by people who had been part of the [French] resistance.

In 1973, he obtained a PhD in political science after successfully defending in 1973 a thèse d'État on utopia in the 19th century, first supervised by Charles Eisenmann and later by Gilles Deleuze.

[2] As a professor, he supervised the doctoral theses of several influential figures in the renewal of political philosophy in France, including Luc Ferry, Philippe Raynaud, Jean-Michel Besnier, and Étienne Tassin.

[12][fr]" His first published article, appearing in two installments in the Annales historiques de la Révolution française, was dedicated to Saint-Just.

According to Franck Berthot, those two journals played a significant role in the resurgence of political philosophy in France during the turning point of the 1980s with critical discussion of the themes of democracy and totalitarianism, emancipation and domination.

[18] In 1977, along with Cornelius Castoriadis, Pierre Clastres, Marcel Gauchet, Claude Lefort, and Maurice Luciani, he co-founded the journal Libre under the Payot editions.

[21] Finally, in 2017, just before his passing, he co-founded the journal Prismes with Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Anne Kupiec, Géraldine Muhlmann, Katia Genel, and Gilles Moutot.

[23] According to Élisabeth de Fontenay, "[Abensour] displayed genuine inventiveness in democratically and effectively directing an institution that was still in the fragility and instability of its nascent state.

[24]" She points out that he was the one who "established the principle of voting, and it was under the guidance of the executive committee he chaired that the program directors were installed, and thus the new institution of the collegial assembly.

Questions ouvertes" colloquium held in March 1987, where Emmanuel Levinas agreed to express his profound ambivalence toward the German philosopher and his implication in the Nazi regime.

[10] In a conversation about the history of the Collège international de philosophie, Derrida revisits this colloquium organized by Éliane Escoubas and Abensour:[24][25] "The example of the Heidegger colloquium—we could cite many others if we had the time—was particularly remarkable in this respect because it took place during the height of the 'Heidegger affair.'

[31] Abensour also formed a deep friendship and a true intellectual companionship with Louis Janover,[32] who was, among other things, a collaborator with Rubel on the edition of Marx's complete works in the Pléiade.

[34][fr]" As such, Abensour ensured the transmission of a considerable number of texts: over a hundred titles in his "Critique de la politique" collection at Payot.

Some of the contributions from this colloquium were compiled in 2011 in an edited volume titled Pierre Clastres,[43] which includes letters from André Du Bouchet and Paul Auster.

[2][fr]" Antonia Birnbaum describes the creation of this collection as follows: "A young man, inspired by his readings, returns from the US and proposes to a publisher, Payot, to create an anti-textbook using critical texts from political philosophy.

[54][fr]" In addition to reissuing works by lesser-known authors (Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, or Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis) and publishing the theses of young researchers (Étienne Tassin, Géraldine Muhlmann, Blaise Bachofen, Martin Breaugh, or Nicolas Poirier), Abensour contributed to the dissemination of the writings of the Frankfurt School founders in France by offering translations of their works,[54] such as the first title in the collection with Max Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason.

[55] Later on, he had books translated from Theodor W. Adorno, Franz Neumann, Jürgen Habermas, and Oskar Negt, as well as authors closely associated with the Frankfurt School like Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, or Siegfried Kracauer.

Disseminated throughout numerous articles, intertwined with reflections on utopias, and driven by an "insurgent" conception of democracy, Abensour's thought constitutes a "critical-utopian political philosophy"[56] aimed at emancipation.

I claim the centrality of heroism, which can be seen as the essential element of the Revolution in the strong sense of the term, meaning it is an environment in which the actors are immersed"[63][fr].

[66][fr]" Against these reductions and interpretations of utopia, Abensour put forth a "plurality of perspectives" in his editorial collection "Critique de la politique."

'[71][fr]" This judgment aligns with that of Jean Birnbaum, who, in a 2006 article dedicated to Abensour's collection, wrote: "Rarely, indeed, have intellectual vocation and editorial adventure converged so remarkably in a single path of ideas.

Regarding the first pole, Louis Janover recalled the context of Abensour's research and work: "It is up to him, indeed, not only to have unearthed forgotten authors at a time when utopia had been banished to that undefined space known as pre-Marxism but also to have reintroduced them into the genealogy of the labor movement.

[78][fr]" Similarly Audric Vitiello remarked, "One can question the concrete outcome of such a conception hostile to all institutionalization: if every institution leads to the arkhè, [...], if democracy always emerges 'against the State,' it seems difficult, if not impossible, to establish a genuinely democratic regime.