The starting point of the present work is the Lefortian definition of democracy as opposed to totalitarism. Totalitarism is the institution of an organic society, one and homogeneous, where no social division, no disagreement with the party’s ideology are possible. On the contrary democracy’s specificity consists in enriching itself with the disentanglement of power, law and knowledge. Citizens, endowed with fundamental rights can judge of the legitimacy of the power in place. Their disagreements as well as the antagonism between social classes fuel the dispute about common good.Hence a fundamental question: is such a definition of democracy historically dated or is it still relevant today? To make it authentic should democracy be seen through civil conflict made into a political principle or should it be viewed in a consensualist way just after its opposition to totalitarism? Claude Lefort drew from Machiavelli to go beyond the limits of Marxism and rethink democracy by giving more importance to civil conflict as an integral part of the theme of social imaginary. The present dissertation adopts in a different way a neo-Machiavellian perspective. It amounts to proposing a dissensual public space on the Machiavellian model of understanding within conflict by confronting it with the Habermassian public space and with other conceptions of wrong and conflict in contemporary democracies.Today how can the themes of civil conflict and social imaginary be viewed – paradoxically drawing from Machiavelli- to question democracy?
