Among Aporias and Prescriptions. Pierre Rosanvallon's Reflections on a "Conceptual History of the Political Sphere"

This article explores the conceptual history of political ideas developed by Pierre Rosanvallon throughout his epistemological and historiographical works. After placing his contributions within the debate on intellectual history and the temporality of political concepts, we show how Rosanvallon applied his methodological digressions to examining the constitutive principles of the French democracy. In this way, we find that his works range from the recognition of the undecidability of the paradoxes of modernity, to the establishment of a set of requirements that define the best governmental regime.