Since their declaration in 1789 human rights have been the subject of numerous critiques. Even nowadays, they are accused of being detrimental to democracy and of favouring individualism. But these accusations, J. Lacroix and J.-Y. Pranchère explain, are not founded.
There are currently two million prisoners in the USA, and the use of high security solitary confinement is on the increase. The violence of this procedure and its dramatic effects, in particular on the youngest inmates or those suffering from psychiatric conditions, has now sparked a public debate.
What do we actually mean when we say we want our identity to be recognized? How much do our identities depend on the choices we have made? How are collective identities constructed? These questions are addressed in the work of Vincent Descombes, who although acknowledging the multiplicity of our affiliations tends to give priority to the national one. Stéphane Haber’s review here is followed by Decombes’ reply.
In Made in America, sociologist Claude S. Fischer develops the idea that voluntarism, not individualism, is the key feature to describe social ties in America and that this notion of voluntarism best helps us understand what makes America exceptional among other Western societies.
Louis Dumont is very well known for his anthropological work on India, but rather less for his political thought. Vincent Descombes emphasizes the substantial originality of that thought, which defined the political on the basis of comparative studies and in that way dispelled some of the equivocations of modern and contemporary philosophy.
All students of economics are aware that Carl Menger was one of the founding fathers of neoclassical economics. To mark the publication of a French translation of one of his major works, Cyril Hédoin discusses Menger’s contribution and legacy.
Alain Ehrenberg believes that Robert Castel’s review of his book in La Vie des Idées is grounded in a misunderstanding about his approach. As opposed to presenting America as a model, Ehrenberg’s comparative approach attempts to describe the social meanings of autonomy in order to transcend the opposition between liberalist and antiliberalist orientations. His objective is to replace an individualistic sociology with a sociology of individualism.
It has been said since the 1970s that the “death of the subject” is an irrevocable given of any modern conception of the self. Jerrold Seigel shows how to go beyond this simplistic approach: with a multi-dimensional vision of the self, taking into account its bodily, social and reflexive nature, he demonstrates that the self has been at the core of Western philosophy and historical experience from Locke to Derrida.
In L’Avènement de la démocratie (The Advent of Democracy), Marcel Gauchet claims that our democracies are in crisis as a result of modernity’s difficulty in letting go of the religious order. But this thesis, while challenging, suffers from being over systematic, viewing any desire for unity as nostalgia for the divine. Moreover, it throws the issue of social struggles into the shade.
