Contents -- Expanded Contents List -- Introduction: On the Absent Ground of the Social -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- Chapter 1 - The Contours of 'Left Heideggerianism': Post-Foundationalism and Necessary Contingency -- 1.1 Anti-Foundationalism and Post-Foundationalism -- 1.2 The 'Quasi-Transcendental Turn' -- 1.3 Heidegger: Event, Moment, Freedom, Dif-ference -- 1.4 The 'Grounding Question' regarding the Ontological Difference -- 1.5 Contingency -- 1.6 Moment and Constellation -- Notes -- Chapter 2 - Politics and the Political: Genealogy of a Conceptual Difference -- 2.1 The Political Paradox -- 2.2 The Associative Political: the Arendtian Trait -- 2.3 The Dissociative Political: the Schmittian Trait -- 2.4 Neutralization, Colonization and Sublimation of the Political -- 2.5 The Conceptual Difference: a Diachronic View -- 2.6 The Politicization of Concepts and the Concept of the Political -- 2.7 The Crisis of the Social - or Why Conceptual Nominalism is Not Enough -- Notes -- Chapter 3 - Retracing the Political Difference: Jean-Luc Nancy -- 3.1 Philosophy and the Political: the Deconstruction of the Political -- 3.2 The 'Retreat' of the Political -- 3.3 La Politique and le Politique -- 3.4 Community and the Political Difference -- 3.5 The Moment of the Political: Event -- 3.6 The Danger of Philosophism and the Necessity of a 'First Philosophy' -- Notes -- Chapter 4 - The Machiavellian Moment Re-Theorized: Claude Lefort -- 4.1 Thinking, Philosophy, Science -- 4.2 Politics and the Political -- 4.3 Conflict as Foundation: Society's Double Division -- 4.4 The Machiavellian Moment according to Lefort -- 4.5 The Real as Disturbance and the Imaginary as Concealment -- 4.6 Democracy as 'Ontic Institutionalization' of the Originary Division -- Notes -- Chapter 5 - The State and the Politics of Truth: Alain Badiou.

5.1 Against Political Philosophy as a Philosophy of the Political -- 5.2 Politics of the Real -- 5.3 A 'Politics' of Truth: Equality and Justice -- 5.4 The Grace of Contingency and the Evil of Foundationalism -- 5.5 The Danger of Ethicism -- Notes -- Chapter 6 - The Political and the Impossibility of Society: Ernesto Laclau -- 6.1 The Impossibility of Society -- 6.2 Social Sedimentation and the Event of Reactivation -- 6.3 Politics and the Political - a 'Laclauian' Difference -- 6.4 Discourse Theory as Political Ontology -- 6.5 The Seventh Day of Rest -- Notes -- Chapter 7 - Founding Post-Foundationalism: A Political Ontology -- 7.1 Towards a Philosophy of the Political -- 7.2 Post-Foundationalism and Democracy -- 7.3 The Political Displacement of Politics -- 7.4 Political Thought as First Philosophy -- 7.5 The Political Difference as Political Difference -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.