The Republic, for Thierry Ménissier, does not belong to the past. On the contrary: today it remains the political regime best able to guarantee our freedom, provided however that it is renovated and makes room for political participation. On condition also of reconnecting with the classic republican tradition.
Renovate the Republic
The Republic enjoys the status of an essential reference in the French political vocabulary. Beyond the diversity of opinions and political choices, it establishes the civic identity of the French in the sense that it embodies a certain idea of democracy, one which has been able to impose the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity at the end of a particularly eventful national history. Although central, the republican reference is nonetheless increasingly discussed and contested. The Republicans who vigorously defend the virtues of a certain French model and its universalist demands are opposed by the Democrats, who are critical of the excesses of the Republican State, which they accuse of not taking the principles seriously enough. individual rights and pluralism. This democratic questioning can follow two paths, the first which consists of rejecting a model considered obsolete, because it is unsuitable for the characteristics of modern societies, the second which chooses to preserve it by “ renovating “, that is to say by adapting to the contemporary era the original responses put forward by the tradition of republican thought to resolve a certain number of social and political problems. It is on this second path that Thierry Ménissier embarks in his book, The freedom of contemporaries. Why we need to renovate the republic. Noting that with the multiple effects of globalization, “ the republican reference appears singularly confused “, the author nevertheless proposes to “ save the principle » by tracing the contours of an authentically republican normative theory – normative theory which he defines as a “ concept game quite credible » to allow both thinking about reality and motivating political action (p. 97).
THE “ standard republicanism »
The book thus starts from the conviction that there exists a “ principle » republican, irreducible to those of political liberalism, which can be distinguished from the diversity of uses of the notion of republic and linked to a sort of ideal type designated by the author as the “ standard republicanism » (p. 23). The latter is based on the fundamental intuition of collective action oriented by “ the common thing » which implies a “ specific anthropology » and a “ political morality irreducible to any other “. Listing from Aristotle to Rousseau, via Cicero, the different legacies which constituted the republican heritage, Thierry Ménissier highlights, in the first part of the book, the essential character that the civic community plays in allowing men to access to freedom and to act on their destiny. The real and positive unity expressed by political fraternity still seems credible to him, despite the blurring of borders caused by globalization and the obsolescence of the nation-state, discredited both within its borders by multicultural mobilizations. than externally through the construction of post-national political entities such as the European Union. To defend this position and revive the unifying potential of the republican principle, the rest of the book proceeds in two stages. In the second part, the author analyzes the historical, political and theoretical changes which make the renovation of standard republicanism necessary and the third part puts forward the solutions proposed to integrate such changes into the republican model.
“ The freedom of contemporaries »
The originality of the book thus lies in the manifest desire to defend the specificity of the tradition of republican thought without denying the relevance of liberal critiques. Returning to the inevitable opposition between the freedom of the Ancients and the freedom of the Moderns, Thierry Ménissier sees in it a “ true dialectic » in the Kantian sense (p. 114), in which each theoretical position constantly refers to the other and from which it is essential to free ourselves. There “ freedom of contemporaries » thus demands that we reformulate standard republicanism in the light of the anthropological developments of modernity, of which liberalism has been both the revealer and the catalyst. It is through a “ genealogy of interested conduct » (chap. 5) that the author establishes this point, by showing how the category of individual interest (and through them the central notions of “ dignity of the inner self », of private property, p. 129-130) has gradually become constitutive of modern subjectivity.
However, this historical development does not invalidate “ the major anthropological intuition » of republicanism (p. 175), neither with regard to the scope of the concept of general will, nor with regard to the capacity of citizens to project themselves into such an abstraction. On the first point, Thierry Ménissier puts forward an interesting proposition which consists of “ recompose the general interest » (chap. 7). Drawing on the recent development of theories of participatory democracy and deliberative democracy (whose relationship with standard republicanism is not devoid of tensions), he plans to systematize the exchange between non-institutional forms and forms institutional frameworks of public debates, so that a dialogue is established between the “ social interests » expressed by non-elected bodies (popular juries, deliberative assemblies) and “ public interest » stated by the classic instances of political representation, without the first being simply subordinated to the second, nor the dynamic of increasing generality of the second being forgotten, to arrive at a dynamic balance of the agonistic type that the third term of ‘ « general interest » is supposed to express. The liberal anthropology of interested behavior therefore does not definitively discredit Rousseau’s intuition regarding the capacity of citizens to escape from the narrow logic of private interest to project themselves into the general will. The freedom of contemporaries requires, on the contrary, that all the procedures and initiatives which encourage the formation of collective judgment be reactivated, such as that which the author observes in the aesthetic field with the multiplication of literary prizes, where the opinions of non-professional readers , despite everything being established as experts, are increasingly in demand (chap. 8). The freedom of contemporaries finally requires that taking into account interested behavior does not serve as a guarantee for a conception “ landlord » of private property: on the contrary, it invites us to reinvest theoretical models (republican solidarity or Rawlsian institutional merit) which, following Rousseau, attempt to reconcile the right to possess one’s own sphere of action and the demand for solidarity social (chap. 9).
A freedom of contemporaries that is too classic ?
If the desire to revive the tradition of republican thought in the light of the characteristics of contemporary subjectivity is entirely laudable, the method taken by Thierry Ménissier to achieve this may nevertheless come as a surprise. Claiming the heritage of Machiavelli and adopting the posture of “ advise ” Who “ consider the possible by exploiting cultural resources » (p. 18), the author reconstructs the standard form of republicanism by exploiting with great erudition the texts of the classic republicans and, in general, by extracting from both the republican and liberal canon the philosophical problems to be treated and the concepts to be addressed. mobilize. The resulting position is rather paradoxical, in that it defends the contemporary character of republican freedom, without truly engaging in contemporary debates on this subject. The work of those who, like Thierry Ménissier, have recently sought to provide a liberal corrective to republicanism are certainly mentioned, such as those of Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit or John Maynor in the Anglo-Saxon field and those of Cécile Laborde and Jean- Fabien Spitz in the French field, without a precise discussion of their respective theses being initiated, which leaves certain difficulties unresolved.
Thierry Ménissier does not engage in the debate with neo-republicanism which he describes as “ a civic liberalism “, on the pretext that “ he does not seem to conceive the issues of civic engagement in terms of the skills of a collective subject of politics. A fundamental difference between standard republicanism and neo-republicanism arises from the fact that the terms ‘people’ and ‘nation’ are never referred to as possible springs of civic community. » (p. 47) In other words, Thierry Ménissier does not discuss in depth the position of the neo-republicans because he judges them too liberal to be integrated into standard republicanism, but he thus misses the opportunity to specify what distinguishes the “ freedom of contemporaries » of the « freedom as non-domination » as Pettit defines it. However, these are two convergent theoretical positions, which seek to grasp the political dimension of freedom while leaving room for private freedoms. In Pettit, freedom as non-domination remains a negative form of freedom which does not impose any substantial conception of the good life, without however being confused with the liberal form of freedom reduced to simple non-interference, and which highlights the usefulness of political protest to maximize the fact of not being dominated. Thierry Ménissier for his part vigorously resists any strictly instrumental justification of political participation, as suggested by his numerous references to Aristotle and the intrinsic good that civic life constitutes for individuals. ; but simultaneously, the fact that he insists so much on the now inescapable character of the freedom of the Moderns creates a heavy ambiguity: to what extent does political participation remain a real good from the moment we take seriously the pluralism of values which arises from respect for private freedoms ? Does the freedom of contemporaries remain perfectionist, close to the positions of civic humanism, or does it stick to quasi-perfectionism as defended by John Maynor? ?
The author’s tendency to grant a rather instrumental value to civic participation, in the manner of the neo-republicans, is manifested in particular in the close proximity that exists between the model he constructs of a general interest “ recomposed » and that of protest democracy that we find in Pettit: do not the two models in fact seek to correct the defects of representative democracy by authorizing the expression of individual points of view, of “ social interests », supposed to adjust the point of view of the general interest to the diversity of social reality ? Furthermore, it is surprising to see the author explicitly claim the figure of Machiavelli to establish his model, then taking up the heritage of neo-Roman republicanism, sensitive to the virtues of social pluralism and political confrontation, this which hardly fits with the neo-Athenian themes of the philia civic and patriotic fraternity which he values in other passages. The border that separates civic liberalism » of the neorepublicans and the liberal republicanism of Ménissier is therefore far from being as obvious as the author claims and would have deserved more justification.