Global 1

I do not think we can say that the "non-novelty" of what he writes is an argument against him.
Gauchet, like Hegel before him which he claims to openly re-analysis of events "well known" and gives them an overall sense.
What is new in him, both in this series on democracy, as in "the disenchantment of the world", it is this overall analysis of the sense of history of the contemporary world, the attempt to identify a direction and a prospect.

In the current dispersal of social sciences related to their hyper-specialization, such an attempt (humanist) is to be welcomed, even if a more detailed analysis of the phenomena he describes some angles will yield different results (but losing in wide perspective what it gains in accuracy).

The scope of the phenomena realizes analysis Gauchet does not diminish in my opinion the depth of view.

Of course we must be critical of such an intellectual in-view and influential, but the arguments for most "ad hominem" or on points of detail, the other reviews do not do justice to such a book.