Critique of Political Reason

by Régis Debray

R�gis Debray's major new work is an exploration of the foundations and limits of political discourse and action. Focusing, with his familiar verve and fluency, on the mechanism through which ideologies mobilize historical subjects, Debray argues that there is a common pattern in all great political or religious movements. Each possesses an apparatus that releases affective charges of belonging and closure; each is tended by bodies of functionaries who maintain its continuity and transmit its doctrines. The great mobilizing ideologies--Christianity, Islam, Marxism--deploy corps of priests, teachers, cadres. The real foundation of "political reason", for Debray, lies in the human need to participate in closed groups, denying or mitigating the harshness of the external world and the fact of death.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia.