How today French thinkers are apprehensive about European construction ? Justine Lacroix shows how the various representations of Europe problematize the tensions that are formed between human rights, democracy and nation.
The history of Europe is inseparably that of an idea and that of an institution. Each political evolution of the continent corresponds to a set of normative representations: Christian Europe of the Middle Ages, Europe of sovereignties at the beginning of modern times, cosmopolitical Europe in the second half of XVIIIe century. Obviously, the parallel is far from perfect between the idealizations of Europe and its real historical evolution. From the abbot of Saint-Pierre to Victor Hugo, it is the model of cooperation that is highlighted, even though nationalisms are essential on the European scene. Inevitable, this hiatus could also be fruitful since it inscribes Europe in a regulatory horizon: its idea is still excessively on its achievements.
Justine Lacroix’s book wonders about this gap in the context of contemporary French thought. Because European construction “ destabilizes national identity, while questioning the representative procedures as well as the methods of social solidarity (P. 18), she cannot leave indifferent thoughts concerned with questioning the political since the real of institutions. However, the dominant affect in the matter seems to be the discomfort, the French philosophers of today displaying more skepticism than militant adhesion or argued criticism. At the origin of this distrust, we may find the figure of Raymond Aron, whose proeuropian enthusiasm quickly left room for perplexity. The author quotes this Aron judgment in the early 1970s: “ There are no European citizens. There are only German, French or Italian citizens ».
The sentence is inspired by the criticisms addressed by Burke and Marx to human rights. Justine Lacroix perfectly shows that the French reception of European construction is inseparable from the trial in abstraction brought to rights that are deemed inherent in human nature. This is why, as the author very well suggests, the origin of this theoretical story is found in the work of Claude Lefort, and in his post-Marxist rehabilitation of human rights in the name of democratic indeterminacy. Community construction is essentially legal in the sense that it uncovers a new type of legitimacy which is no longer limited to the framework of the nation state. Everything happens as if the depoliticizing and/or radical potential of human rights was verified experimentally on the European example.
Three representations of Europe
The book distinguishes three French modalities from reception: Europe “ disembodied “, Europe” dreamed “, Europe” missed ». The first is the most faithful to the judgment of Aron quoted above. Representatives of what is agreed to call the current “ neotocquevillian “(Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent) deplore the absence of a bodies of the European institution, thereby invalidating the Lefortian thesis on democracy as” empty place of power ». A wide range of opinions is part of this register: from the criticism of the rise of legal individualism by Gauchet to the singular rapprochement between the European project and the extermination of the Jews suggested by Jean-Claude Milner. Europe without border always appears as the dissolution of the policy (which is always dealing with limited totalities) in a whole whose principle is unlimited. It would result from a series of oversights: foreclosure of the idea of limit, denial of the territories, discharge of nations. In such an interpretative framework, which we understand that it is not that adopted by the author, institutional Europe is nothing more than a field of experimentation for a human rights policy which is emphasized the contradictory nature. Among these authors, European construction “ appears less as an original phenomenon than as a revealer and an accelerator of heavy trends already at work in the hearts of nation states for thirty years. “(P. 34) Distrust, for the typical French blow, with regard to the law also implies a form of casualness in the study of legal texts which are very rarely evaluated for themselves. The result of the 2005 constitutional referendum seems to legitimize this kind of precaution: popular sovereignty is envisaged here as the best response to the judicialization of the world.
To those who think Europe is “ For peoples, without the peoples », Justine Lacroix opposes a tradition of thought which envisages law as a founding instrument of democratic dynamics. Representatives of “ Dream Europe »Offer cosmopolitical readings of European construction which find their inspiration in Kant and in the Habermassian reappropriation of cosmopolitanism. For Jean-Marc Ferry, for example, the problem is not the alternative between nation and federalism, precisely because European construction has never truly signed up in this opposition. Europe, precisely because it is made of diversity, makes it possible to substitute the ideal of a “ Confrontation consensus “On the theme, dear to John Rawls and to the Liberals, of a” Recovery consensus ». As Lacroix shows, the community level allows “ bring the democratic ideal to life beyond its original context (P. 62). While being in line with globalization, he calls into question the identity that is most often applied between nation-state and politics. Europe “ dreamed It is not that of a Federation of States, by simple displacement of the place of sovereignty, but that of a legal pluralism which multiplies the sources of legitimacy.
These considerations overlap the position of the author who, in his conclusion, pleads in favor of a “ Decentrate and reflexive national identity (P. 111). Europe would be at the principle of a joyful irony which carries individuals to put their own spheres of belonging. This hope was also that of French thinkers who deplore Europe today “ missed ». By mainly referring to Étienne Balibar (we could also quote Toni Negri), the author shows how European construction first seduced part of the radical left, for the same reasons that made it worried “ neo-tocquevilliens ». The interpretation of human rights is always central: for these theorists, these rights are the principle of a permanent destabilization of the established order. Without fear of the paradox, Justine Lacroix talks about a point of view “ revolutionary liberal (P. 87) to designate the attempt to join the Marxist requirement of social emancipation and the democratic potential of law. The fact remains that disenchantment is commensurate with utopian expectations placed in the construction of a transnational space. Far from implementing a transformation of citizenship in the sense of equality, the policy of Europe in matters of immigration has confirmed the closure of the borders, reinforcing, by widening it, the structure of “ the social national state Criticized by Balibar. “” Political Europe only lifts the boundaries that separate the Member States by renewing the institutional border which excludes from European citizenship those who cannot avail themselves of a Community nationality (P. 96). Less optimistic than supporters of Kantian cosmopolitanism, Spinozist defenders of the unconditionality of rights can only regret that institutional Europe has not invented the means of an alternative to national and sovereignist logic.
We will be able to blame this book certain oversights that the concern to stay at “ Circle of democratic reason (P. 19) does not justify. In particular, the reflection on Europe carried out in the line of phenomenology (Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricœur) is absent from the work of Justine Lacroix. It is true that the author chooses to favor legal perspectives, and this choice is justified. Then remains the social question, little present in the book even though Europe is often seen in France as the “ Trojan horse of economic liberalism ». We were able to judge the effectiveness of such rhetoric at the time of the constitutional referendum. These political uses should not however obscure the driving role that the theory of ordoliberalism played in the foundation of the European Community, a role already analyzed by Michel Foucault in its courses at the Collège de France from the late 1970s. This reference would make it possible to specify the status of human rights of which Justine Lacroix is perfectly reason to highlight the importance in Europe. Depending on whether they borrow from the tradition of classical liberalism or that of neoliberalism, these rights do not exercise the same critical function with regard to the State.
The fact remains that this book has the great merit of replacing debates on Europe at the heart of a theme that haunts contemporary French thought: democratic indeterminacy and the resistance which it continues to be the object. European construction is indeed a “ test For French thought insofar as it radicalizes this indeterminacy, sometimes giving in to the temptation to absorb it in a discourse of the unequivocal (“ Christian roots “From Europe, unilateral promotion of” unusual competition »). Like all institutions, the European Community is a set of ideas do things: as such, it deserves better than peremptory judgments in Pour or against. Justine Lacroix reminds us that Europe is neither a artifice nor a destiny, but a possible horizon for our political expectations.