Julien Freund, “Theorist of Essences”: a Philosophical Clarification Attempt
Abstract
The political theory of Julien Freund, especially known for his magnum opus of 1965, L’essence du politique, rests on the philosophical and epistemological bases that he himself defined as “theory of essences”. This theoretical model, even if he applied at first to the political, was conceived nevertheless as an instrument of global analysis of social phenomena in an ontophenomenological and, consequently, anthropological sense. There is not yet, however, a complete exposition of this theory, on which we intend to offer here a first systematic study, in relation especially to two issues: the historical circumstance in which the theory was forged and its general epistemological intention, that can only be properly understood in its original metaphysical sense.
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