Un nouvel intérêt se manifeste en France pour l'œuvre de Max Weber. Des traductions récentes rendent enfin accessibles au public français des textes majeurs jusqu'alors ignorés, tandis que les questions qui traversent cette œuvre, celle des formes de domination, des logiques d'individualisation et de socialisation, des conflits de valeur, imposent leur actualité à une époque où l'expansion planétaire de certains types de rationalité d'origine occidentale va de pair avec la remise en question irréversible des représentations eurocentriques du sens. Le moment (...) est venu d'une lecture philosophique, puisant aux textes et à leur commentaire érudit les moyens d'une reconstitution du programme scientifique wébérien, en le dégageant des mythes d'hier (la " sociologie compréhensive ") comme des distorsions d'aujourd'hui (la " crise de la modernité "), également incapables de renoncer aux postulats téléologiques que Weber n'a cessé de critiquer. Au fil de ses études, Catherine Colliot-Thélène s'y emploie en passant de la question des rationalités à celle des conditions historiques et à la genèse des systèmes juridiques. Instituant les confrontations nécessaires (Marx, Gierke, Schmitt, Elias, Wittgenstein, Habermas, Foucault), elle centre son alternative aux récupérations idéalistes de Weber sur trois concepts : contingence, conduites de vie, puissances de socialisation, dont l'ensemble fait de Weber le pionnier d'un nouvel universalisme sans fondation ni mission. (shrink)

Penser la démocratie sans demos implique de dénouer le lien solidement établi au XIXe siècle entre les concepts de démocratie et de souveraineté du peuple. A cela, la mondialisation contemporaine ne cesse de nous inciter. Le procès continu de démocratisation de l'Etat moderne a été rendu possible par l'individualisation du sujet de droit, elle-même résultat de la destruction des droits particuliers des sociétés d'Ancien Régime par l'action centralisatrice d'un pouvoir de type territorial. Mais, en s'imposant comme la seule instance garante (...) des droits, l'Etat moderne a aussi nationalisé la citoyenneté. Or, il est certain qu'aujourd'hui l'érosion du monopole juridique et judiciaire de l'Etat s'accompagne d'une multiplication et d'une hétérogénéité croissantes des pouvoirs auxquels les individus peuvent et doivent s'adresser pour obtenir la reconnaissance et la garantie des droits qu'ils revendiquent. Cette situation nous fait obligation de dénationaliser la citoyenneté sans sacrifier pour autant cette forme spécifique de subjectivité politique qu'est l'individu sujet de droits, sans renoncer par conséquent aux ressources émancipatrices dont cette figure du sujet politique a fait la preuve au cours des deux derniers siècles. (shrink)

This book critically investigates the notion of democracy without demos by unravelling the link that modern history has established between the concepts of democracy and the sovereignty of the people. This task is imposed on us by globalization. The individualization of the subject of rights is the result of the destruction of regimes of special rights of ancient societies by the centralizing action of a territorial power. This individualization, because it implies equality, has created a new form of political subjectivity (...) that has been the driving force of the democratization of democracies during the 19th and 20th centuries. Democracy and subjective rights discusses how asserting itself as the only guarantor of rights, the modern state has also nationalized citizenship. However, the author argues, the legal and judicial monopoly of the nation-state is weakened today by the multiplication and heterogeneity of the powers on which the rights of individuals depend. This situation forces us to denationalize citizenship without sacrificing, however, the specific form of political subjectivity that the individualization of rights has made possible. (shrink)

A number of authors now invoke the opposition between political philosophy and social philosophy, whether to account for the specific nature of Marx’s relation to philosophy or to reactualize the project of a critical theory of society. What, the article asks, is the meaning of this distinction? Can it fulfill the requisite conditions that will enable philosophers to address in a pertinent manner the social and political challenges of our time? These are the questions addressed here by Catherine (...) class='Hi'>Colliot-Thélène, whose fear is that the distinction in question may lose sight of the crucial question of power, and by Franck Fischbach, who emphasizes the materialist orientation of an approach that seeks to address the political from the perspective of the social. (shrink)

Un nouvel intérêt se manifeste en France pour l'œuvre de Max Weber. Des traductions récentes rendent enfin accessibles au public français des textes majeurs jusqu'alors ignorés, tandis que les questions qui traversent cette œuvre, celle des formes de domination, des logiques d'individualisation et de socialisation, des conflits de valeur, imposent leur actualité à une époque où l'expansion planétaire de certains types de rationalité d'origine occidentale va de pair avec la remise en question irréversible des représentations eurocentriques du sens. Le moment (...) est venu d'une lecture philosophique, puisant aux textes et à leur commentaire érudit les moyens d'une reconstitution du programme scientifique wébérien, en le dégageant des mythes d'hier (la " sociologie compréhensive ") comme des distorsions d'aujourd'hui (la " crise de la modernité "), également incapables de renoncer aux postulats téléologiques que Weber n'a cessé de critiquer. Au fil de ses études, Catherine Colliot-Thélène s'y emploie en passant de la question des rationalités à celle des conditions historiques et à la genèse des systèmes juridiques. Instituant les confrontations nécessaires (Marx, Gierke, Schmitt, Elias, Wittgenstein, Habermas, Foucault), elle centre son alternative aux récupérations idéalistes de Weber sur trois concepts : contingence, conduites de vie, puissances de socialisation, dont l'ensemble fait de Weber le pionnier d'un nouvel universalisme sans fondation ni mission. (shrink)

“Reality” is not a category listed in Hegel’s Logic. Hegel is distrustful of the ordinary uses of this term, linked to the empiricist presupposition of a dependence of thought on the given of sensi...

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début Introduction Aux sources de la méthodologie wébérienne : la polémique contre l'Ecole historique allemande Max Weber et le marxisme Rationalisation et désenchantement du monde La logique du comprendre Conclusion Textes extraits des œuvres de (...) Max Weber Quelques donnéesbiographiques et bibliographiques Glossaire Pages de fin. (shrink)

Dans les « Concepts fondamentaux de sociologie » (1920), Max Weber distingue entre Vergemeinschaftung (« communautisation ») et Vergesellschaftung (« sociétisation »). Cette terminologie, bien qu’elle évoque l’opposition célèbre de Ferdinand Tönnies entre communauté et société, signale le caractère original de l’approche wébérienne des phénomènes collectifs. Plutôt que de figer des types de collectifs structurellement distincts les uns des autres, Weber analyse des logiques de formation qui se retrouvent et se combinent, à des degrés divers, dans tous les collectifs humains. (...) Un ensemble de manuscrits plus anciens (1910-1914), première mouture d’Économie et société, est consacré pourtant à l’étude de différentes variétés de communautés (domestiques, ethniques, nationales, de marché, etc.). S’appuyant sur ces manuscrits (dont la traduction française est parue en 2019), on confronte ici la compréhension wébérienne des phénomènes communautaires avec divers usages, anciens ou récents, de la notion de « communauté » ou du « commun ». (shrink)

This article discusses some of the theses put forward by Catherine Colliot-Thélène in her latest book, Le commun de la liberté (2022). After a brief reminder of the links of continuity between the latter and La démocratie sans “demos” (2011), concerning in particular the central question, in both books, of subjective rights, I turn to the author’s treatment of the themes of property and exclusion. With regard to property, whose meaning I seek to determine in the book, it (...) is the joint, paradoxical and ultimately fruitful use of Kant’s and Marx’s theories that is examined here. According to Colliot-Thélène, the major problem of contemporary democracies is exclusion due to the dispossession or absence of property, which defies their universalist principles: I underline the originality of her approach in terms of rights, and suggest some extensions that sociological and ethnological literature can provide to it. (shrink)

In her latest work, Le commun de la liberté (2022), Catherine Colliot-Thélène returns to Kant, which seems to her to offer a more robust defence of subjective rights and, above all, to provide these rights with all the guarantees necessary for them to be effective, notably through a reflection on the universalisation of private property understood as a fundamental right. This approach – which reinforces the definition of the subject of rights as a political subject advocated in La (...) démocratie sans “demos” (2011) – is similar to that of the reciprocity of powers described – and put aside – in Philip Pettit’s neo-republicanism. Our article seeks to understand whether a return to Hegel, interpreted in the light of the analyses proposed by Colliot-Thélène in her first work, Le désenchantement de l’État (1992), might not offer a better strategy in order to protect subjective rights: that of compatibility between the antecedence of a just social order and the defence of subjective rights. (shrink)

Based more specifically on Le commun de la liberté (2022), this article examines the notion of the common as it appears in Catherine Colliot-Thélène’s thought, and aims to test the conception of politics that it outlines. The first part of the article examines the reasons, issues and contours of Colliot-Thélène’s “politics of rights”, before highlighting its merits, focusing in particular on the conception of social rights and migrants’ rights that it implies. After this first part, which seeks (...) to reconstruct the argument of Le commun de la liberté by following its argumentation, the second part seeks to identify what is both problematic and fruitful about this “politics of rights”: while thinking about the political common without self-legislation seems perilous, the risks of heteronomy that Colliot-Thélène’s approach seeks to avert call for us to question what democratic domination – government – can be. (shrink)

Catherine Colliot-Thélène, philosophe politique disparue en 2022, a livré, dans son dernier ouvrage Le commun de la liberté. Du droit de propriété au devoir d’hospitalité paru aux Presses universitaires de France cette même année, une nouvelle étape importante de sa philosophie de la démocratie élaborée une dizaine d’années plus tôt dans la continuité de sa lecture de Max Weber et de ses réflexions de longue date sur la notion de droits subjectifs. Le dossier de ce nº 61 des (...) Cahiers de philos... (shrink)

This paper analyses Catherine Colliot-Thélène’s two books, La démocratie sans “demos” (2011) and Le commun de la liberté (2022), focusing on the “politics of subjective rights” they propose. It highlights their originality, particularly with regard to the reading of Marx, and the contribution they make to the critical theory of society.

La présente étude part d’une discussion de la thèse exposée par Catherine Colliot-Thélène dans son ouvrage La démocratie sans « demos » selon laquelle la démocratie moderne est « sans demos », composée uniquement de sujets de droits individuels. Appliquée à la construction européenne, cette thèse s’avère féconde, mais aussi problématique. Si elle conduit à sortir des mythes du contrat social et du pouvoir constituant et de poursuivre la démocratisation par la seule garantie du droit subjectif, elle le (...) fait néanmoins en maintenant l’un des axiomes principaux du contractualisme qu’elle réfute, à savoir l’idée que face à l’État seul l’individu est source de droit, non les corps intermédiaires, les communautés et les collectifs. Une autre tradition constitutionnelle fait pourtant plus efficacement l’économie du concept de pouvoir constituant, l’anglaise et l’allemande. Celle-ci développe l’idée d’une « constitution matérielle » ou « réelle », issue des rapports de la pluralité des puissances sociales et non de la volonté du législateur. On postule que cette tradition permet de mieux décrire l’intégration européenne et qu’elle livre des pistes précieuses pour démocratiser l’Europe. (shrink)

This article analyses the policies and the use of social rights in France and Germany in relation to the philosophical conception of subjective rights theorised by Catherine Colliot-Thélène. The first part is devoted to the relationship between the innate right and the solidarist conception of social citizenship, which is institutionalised and evolves within the framework of the “labour society” in both countries. The second part deals with the differences and developments in the French and German regimes of social (...) citizenship and policies of access to rights. In recent times, social rights have been redefined as fundamental rights and form part of a renewed conception of citizenship. In the third part, we study the implementation of schemes of access to social rights and their agents in Berlin, Paris and the Paris region, focusing on the case of “poor migrants”. (shrink)

This article discusses the way in which Catherine Colliot-Thélène addresses the issue of social law in her latest writings, in particular in Le commun de la liberté (2022). It is based on the hypothesis that social law is a point of discomfort for the Kantian and for the Marxian she is. Indeed, Colliot-Thélène recasts democracy, citizenship and, finally – since Le commun de la liberté – social law itself around the concept of subjective right, and not around (...) the concept of social law. But what is left of social law in this quest of a new foundation, which leads her to get rid of the concept of status? (shrink)

Cet article propose de lire Le commun de la liberté (2022) de Catherine Colliot-Thélène comme une contribution majeure à la manière nouvelle de faire de la philosophie politique propre à ce que l’on peut appeler les « Lumières radicales ». Il part de l’idée que le livre s’inscrit dans le même projet politico-philosophique que La démocratie sans « demos » (2011), celui de reconstruire la démocratie sur une base nouvelle et radicale. Colliot-Thélène propose une défense audacieuse de (...) l’individualisme méthodologique des droits dont elle fait l’élément clé de la grammaire de la politique démocratique, en même temps qu’elle examine les lacunes des systèmes démocratiques existants du point de vue de deux figures symptomatiques, le pauvre et le réfugié. La deuxième partie de la contribution aborde trois aspects qui sont au cœur du Commun de la liberté, à savoir la conception de la propriété, la conception de la citoyenneté et des statuts personnels, et la théorie des droits. (shrink)

The book contains a unique epistemological position that deserves serious consideration by specialists in the subject."--Bruce Aune, University of Massachusetts.

Calls for justice and reconciliation in response to political catastrophes are widespread in contemporary world politics. What implications do these normative strivings have in relation to colonial injustice? Examining cases of colonial war, genocide, forced sexual labor, forcible incorporation, and dispossession, Lu demonstrates that international practices of justice and reconciliation have historically suffered from, and continue to reflect, colonial, statist and other structural biases. The continued reproduction of structural injustice and alienation in modern domestic, international and transnational orders generates contemporary (...) duties of redress. How should we think about the responsibility of contemporary agents to address colonial structural injustices and what implications follow for the transformation of international and transnational orders? Redressing the structural injustices implicated in or produced by colonial politics requires strategies of decolonization, decentering, and disalienation that go beyond interactional practices of justice and reconciliation, beyond victims and perpetrators, and beyond a statist world order. (shrink)

Catherine Zuckert examines the work of five key philosophical figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the lens of their own decidedly postmodern readings of Plato. She argues that Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, and Derrida, convinced that modern rationalism had exhausted its possibilities, all turned to Plato in order to rediscover the original character of philosophy and to reconceive the Western tradition as a whole. Zuckert's artful juxtaposition of these seemingly disparate bodies of thought furnishes a synoptic view, (...) not merely of these individual thinkers, but of the broad postmodern landscape as well. The result is a brilliantly conceived work that offers an innovative perspective on the relation between the Western philosophical tradition and the evolving postmodern enterprise. (shrink)

The principle that epistemic justification is necessarily transmitted to all the known logical consequences of a justified belief continues to attract critical attention. That attention is not misplaced. If the Transmission Principle is valid, anyone who thinks that a given belief is justified must defend the view that every known consequence of the belief is also justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection principle is modified, the (...) possibility of deductive justification is threatened. If some known consequence fails to be justified, the failure may extend to every known consequence. To reject Transmission is to insert a logical gap between the justification of a premise and the justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection on the Transmission Principle therefore usefully brings us face to face with the following dilemma: accept the principle and hand Cartesian scepticism a powerful weapon, or modify the principle and risk undermining deductive justification. (shrink)

I argue that trustworthiness is an epistemic desideratum. It does not reduce to justified or reliable true belief, but figures in the reason why justified or reliable true beliefs are often valuable. Such beliefs can be precarious. If a belief's being justified requires that the evidence be just as we take it to be, then if we are off even by a little, the belief is unwarranted. Similarly for reliability. Although it satisfies the definition of knowledge, such a belief is (...) not trustworthy. We ought not use it as a basis for inference or action and ought not give others to believe it. The trustworthiness of a belief, I urge, depends on its being backed by reasons—considerations that other members of the appropriate epistemic community cannot reasonably reject. Trustworthiness is intersubjective. It both depends on and contributes to the evolving cognitive values of an epistemic community. (shrink)

Exemplification is the relation of an example to whatever it is an example of. Goodman maintains that exemplification is a symptom of the aesthetic: although not a necessary condition, it is an indicator that symbol is functioning aesthetically. I argue that exemplification is as important in science as it is in art. It is the vehicle by which experiments make aspects of nature manifest. I suggest that the difference between exemplars in the arts and the sciences lies in the way (...) they exemplify. Density and repleteness are characteristic of aesthetic exemplars but not of scientific ones. (shrink)

I argue that constructive nominalism is preferable to scientific realism. Rather than reflecting without distortion the way the mind-independent world is, theories refract. They provide an understanding of the world as modulated by a particular theory. Truth is defined within a theoretical framework rather than outside of it. This does not undermine objectivity, for an assertion contains a reference to the framework in terms of which its truth is claimed.

Reversing centuries of methodological caution and skepticism, philosophers have begun to explore the possibility that experience in some form is widely distributed in the universe. It has been proposed that consciousness may pertain to machines, rocks, elementary particles, and perhaps the universe itself. This paper shows why philosophers have good reason to suppose that experiences are widely distributed in living nature, including worms and insects, but why panpsychism extending to non-living nature is an implausible doctrine.

Leibniz entertained the idea that, as a set of “striving possibles” competes for existence, the largest and most perfect world comes into being. The paper proposes 8 criteria for a Leibniz-world. It argues that a) there is no algorithm e.g., one involving pairwise compossibility-testing that can produce even possible Leibniz-worlds; b) individual substances presuppose completed worlds; c) the uniqueness of the actual world is a matter of theological preference, not an outcome of the assembly-process; and d) Goedel’s theorem implies that (...) there can be no algorithm for producing optimal worlds, assuming an optimal world contains truth-discerning creatures, though this is not to say that such worlds cannot arise naturally. (shrink)