The three chapters of this part of the book are devoted to elucidating the key concepts that constitute Ranciére's work on politics. And doubtless, Ranciére has made a crucial contribution to debates over how to understand or theorize politics. Indeed, his work gained much wider circulation outside France when his writings specifically on politics from the 1990s were quickly translated into English and powerfully affected a series of debates within contemporary critical and political theory. For these reasons, Ranciére's readers may be tempted to take up his writings as works in the tradition of political philosophy. Matters prove less than simple, however, since Ranciére states directly, and with critical force: “I am not a political philosopher” (CR 10).

Ranciére refuses this label not merely for the sake of avoiding disciplinary confines, but for two interrelated reasons. First, political philosophy has a very particular meaning within Ranciére's arguments: he entirely rejects the idea of taking “political philosophy” as a branch or “natural division” of the broader field of philosophy (D ix). More than this, Ranciére argues that the ultimate aim of the project of political philosophy has been precisely the elimination of politics. This claim holds, according to Ranciére, across the canon. From Plato to Aristotle, from Marx to Arendt, political philosophers have sought to supplant the anarchic disorder of politics with a hierarchical order of the philosopher. Secondly, the so-called “return of political philosophy” has a particular resonance in the context of French politics.