Gestos críticos

Critique is the fundamental activity of all emancipatory thought. From a philosophical standpoint, it is as delicate as it is radical; far from taking a single form, it manifests in widely varied gestures. There is the Socratic gesture—what Plato termed the "art of critique" or "discernment"; the philological technique that enabled figures like Lorenzo Valla and Spinoza to challenge the religious authority of certain dogmas; Diderot’s "sensual" critique; and, of course, the Enlightenment gesture embodied by Kant, who clearly distinguished critique from any closed system. We find a form of critique practiced by poets among the German Romantics, and, in Marx, a major critical effort aimed at transforming the world. Benjamin offers a critique that seeks to capture both the "poet’s courage" and, politically, a certain "organization of pessimism." Foucault presents the idea of ​​critique as a gesture of refusal to be governed. When Miguel Abensour revisited Marx’s phrase "critique of politics" fifty years ago, did he not create an exemplary collection of these diverse modes of critique—and, in a sense, a library of freedom? In the first part of this book, Georges Didi-Huberman traces a path through a constellation of figures, ideas, and gestures essential to the history of critical thought; he then turns his attention to Miguel Abensour, exploring the coherence and rigor that inseparably link his work as an editor with his philosophical writings.