*** GENEVIEVE SOUILLAC: A Study in Transborder Ethics. Justice, Citizenship, Civility. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Philosophy & Politics", No. 24. 2012, 214 pp, €32-70. ISBN 978-90-5201-824-9.
One of the objectives of a preface is to give a taster of a book to get people interested enough to read the following pages. Mission fully accomplished by Daniel Innerarity whose preface is like the setting of an exceptional precious stone. Daniel Innerarity, the Spanish philosopher, does not dish out undeserved compliments because Geneviève Souillac's book is genuinely exceptional. The author, a researcher at Tampere University, invites her readers on a journey to breathe new life into democracy and thus into the world at large. With this in mind, she enters into the failings and paradoxes of the current world, into major issues that are the business of us all because they affect everyone and call for a coordinated response, but issues that nobody is capable of taking responsibility for or that nobody wants to take responsibility for. Taking readers to the dividing line between common responsibility and generalised irresponsibility, she urges them to explore areas where national sovereignty is ambiguous, domains where risks and threats are these days the common property of humanity as a whole and can no longer be properly dealt with in isolation. How should we think and govern in a world of shared risks and submerged sovereignty? How should we protect ourselves in unlimited areas, in the online world of flux and inter-connections? Daniel Innerarity explains that it is by seeking answers to questions like these that Geneviève Souillac sketches ways of 'civilising globalisation,' thus re-inventing politics at a planetary scale, making it ethical in order for the world to become an 'area of citizenship' rather than the property of a few.
In fact, this book turns into an ode to democracy and the sanctity of human rights as the author never for one minute doubts their growing universality and hence the need for all them to express themselves without being hemmed in by archaic straitjackets of national democratic legitimacy. Her aim is to discern and conceptualise alternative paradigms for contemporary politics and ethics while taking account of the inter-subjective complexity abroad in the world. In the first chapter, the philosopher-author describes the historical function of democracy in terms of popular sovereignty in the light of European experiences and disillusion, which leads her to the clear conclusion that democratic legitimacy and democratic justice cannot no longer be separated from the global issues of human security and biosustainability. Going on to explore the implications and tensions arising from demands for global justice and cosmopolitan ethics, she notes that the dispossessed, the voiceless, the invisible, must first be seen and heard so that a convincing democratic ethics can emerge that tells the truth to power on behalf of humanity rather than simply on behalf of security of the State. After explaining why, in her view, a meta-language is needed if one is to gain any clarity in the complex heritage of sovereignty in the constitution of political communities, Geneviève Souillac deepens her investigation into the de-territorialisation of democratic experience, which leads her to consider how the proposal of European citizenship is reflected in a state of normative solidarity born of the historic awareness of the obligation to arbitrate conflicts and violence in order to expand the sphere of political stability.
Running through this rich reasoning is a picture of civil society and the public sphere uniting their efforts to deal in a democratic manner, beyond national and generally obsolete frontiers, with the challenges facing mankind. All citizen players now recognise the common objective of survival in a world that is ever more complex and inter-dependent, she explains. The author points out in conclusion that more than ever, the role of creative imagination has to be highlighted. Geneviève Souillac has clearly set an example with this book, which is a beautiful invitation to fight for a globalised democracy!
Michel Theys
*** MONICA CLAES, MAARTJE DE VISSER, PATRICIA POPELIER, CATHERINE VAN DE HEYNING (Eds.): Constitutional Conversations in Europe. Actors, Topics and Procedures. Intersentia Publishers (31 Groenstraat, B-2640 Mortsel. Tel: (32-3) 6801550 - Fax: 6587121 - email mail@intersentia.be - Internet: http://www.intersentia.com ). Ius Commune Europeum, No. 107. 2012, 397 pp, €95, £90, $133. ISBN 978-1-78068-069-9.
Particularly within the European Union, we are no longer living in the time of the 'war of the judges,' but instead in an epoch of constitutional pluralism which, without deciding on the substance between the defenders of absolute primacy of unconditional supremacy of national contributions, leads the European Court of Justice and member states' highest courts to have extremely rich and instructive conversations (the book's editors explain in the introduction why the word 'conversation' is better than the usual term of 'judicial dialogue'). In this book, which is the fruit of deep scientific research, specialists from the world of academia examine various aspects of this phenomenon that saw the light in the European Union. Two authors start by describing the background in detail and examining the pertinence of considering interaction between judges at the European Court of Justice and national constitutional court judges as conversations, with Prof. Anneli Albi of Kent University preferring the notion of 'cooperative substantial constitutionalism.' This is followed by other authors taking a detailed look at the technicalities of exchanges between the Court of Justice and the constitutional courts of Belgium, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic, which are all very different from one another. In the third part of the book, the content of the conversations is discussed, from the traditional domain of protection of fundamental rights to the growing topic of constitutional identity, particularly in the light of Germany, France and Poland. The final section expands the scope of the study to the influence of the European mandate of ordinary courts on the positions taken by constitutional courts.
(PBo)
*** ALTIERO SPINELLI: Manifeste des Fédéralistes européens. Editions Fédérop (le Pont du Rôle, F-24680 Gardonne. Internet: http://www.federop.com ). "Textes fédéralistes," series, No. 12. 2012, 190 pp, €19. ISBN 978-2-85792-209-4.
This is a French translation of a document published by Altiero Spinelli in January 1956, fifteen years after the Ventotene Manifesto that he wrote in captivity with fellow activist Ernesto Rossi. Spinelli says it was only a working document, but as Jean-Pierre Gouzy points out in the preface, that which could have been given the name 'Draft Paris Manifesto' was in reality a 'fundamental document' because it had set out changes in an original and powerful train of thought. Having opted for a strategy of breaking with the past, Spinelli slammed people who profiteer from national sovereignty and the claim of nation states to each have the sovereignty power to decide for themselves how to behave in matters which, in reality, can no longer be managed by individual countries and should be seen as a genuine usurping at the expense of the European people. These sentences have a strange resonance in this time of the eurozone crisis and, more widely, the crisis of the European Union as a whole… Over and above this Manifesto that was used as a platform for the people who went on to decide to found a Congress of the European People, the book includes Spinelli's opening speech at the first meeting of the Congress in Turin on 6 December 1957 and there are three essays on the federalist battle during those years, in Europe, France and Lyons by Jean-Pierre Gouzy, Catherine Previti Allaire and Jean-Francis Billion.
(MT)
*** Fedechoses… pour le fédéralisme. Presse fédéraliste (Maison de l'Europe et des Européens, 13 rue de l'Arbre sec, F-69001 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). March 2013, No.159, 36 pp. Annual subscription: €30.
Much of the current issue of this French federalist review is devoted to a European Citizens' Initiative that calls on the Commission to launch a special European plan for sustainable development and jobs. The details of this draft Citizens' Initiative presented by the Movimento Federalista Europeo and the Italian Council of the European Movement and social partners in Europe, is not only published in full, but also commented upon by Alberto Majocchi. This professor of finance at Pavio University convincingly demonstrates why a new economic model is now urgently needed and it is time to opt for a federal Europe, failing which the European Union will not be able to keep its promise to promote the well-being of its peoples, as stated in Article 3 of the Lisbon Treaty. There is also an article by a former high-ranking European Commission official, Paolo Ponzano, now a senior fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, on the first European Citizens' Initiatives.
(MT)
*** Diasporiques. Cultures en mouvement. Association Diasporiques et Ligue de l'enseignement (3 rue Récamier, F-75007 Paris. email: postmaster@diasporiques.org - Internet: http://www.diasporiques.org ). 2012, No. 20, 88 pp, €6-50. Annual subscription: €10 (France), €12-50 (elsewhere in the EU and Switzerland), €15 (rest of the world).
Diasporiques started in 1996 as a secular Jewish review, which changed direction five years ago when it entered partnership with the 'Ligue de l'Enseignement' and moved closer to interculturalism. Determined to contribute to a dialogue of cultures and examine diasphoric phenomena that are becoming the norm in the modern world, the humanists who run the review have the aim, along with the absolute priority of fighting against social inequality, of ensuring that political projects give a major place to cultural questions. The main dossier in this issue is the fraternity part of the French revolutionary motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, in which the various stages in France's rise to power are outlined from the Age of Enlightenment onwards. Historian Pierre Nora describes fraternity as a 'place of memory' of intense francité, a concept which is clearly still found in France in 'social institutions under the term 'solidarity.' He points out, however, that 'the French idea (…) is far from incompatible, quite the contrary in fact, with that of a supranational construction as long as it always respects the history and special nature of its components.' President of the 'Ligue de l'Enseignement' Jean-Michel Ducomte views fraternity as a privileged tool for the reconstruction of the social pact that has, in recent years, been rather maltreated. On behalf of the European Humanist Federation, Jean De Brueker confirms this, stating that 'fraternity finds it very difficult to move from well-meaning condescension to tangible solidarity' and launches an 'appeal for fraternity with the people of Greece.' In the same spirit, two other publicists warn in an article entitled 'Let's save the people of Greece from their saviours,' that Greece is simply a laboratory for social change inspired by fundamentalist neoliberalism which will later be spread to the rest of Europe. There is also an enlightening contribution from Dominican philosopher Bernard Quelquejeu showing how Vatican II caused a 'wave of fraternity' to flow over the Catholic Church, a wave that some people have not yet recovered from. This fine issue also has articles on more cultural subject matter.
(MT)
*** Le Revue générale. Revue générale asbl (41 ch. de Louvain, B-1320 Hamme-Mille. Tel: (32-10) 866629 - Fax: 866691 - email: la.revue.generale@live.be - Internet: http://www.revuegenerale.be ). 2013, No. 01, 94 pp, €16. Annual subscription: €99 (Belgium), €109 (elsewhere in European Union), €119 (rest of world).
France Bastia, editor-in-chief of this very established Belgian review, points out in the editorial that her team's aim is humanism for new times. The essay by Paul Löwenthal on what he says is the advent of 'European secularism' demonstrates this aim (which cannot really be said for the 'gloomy prospects' of Mutien-Omer Houziaux for 'euthanasia in Belgium and elsewhere' in a very controversial article from start to finish). In his essay, this emeritus professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgian says he wants to be 'the advocate of an inclusive secularism' in order to 'give a voice to people whose vocation it is to defend a meaning and its values.' After showing how diverse the situation is in the countries of the European Union when it comes to this, ranging from mono-religious to pluralism, he says that the principle of subsidiarity shall be unavoidable in this domain, but 'in order to debate with those who have the vocation to propose a meaning and values,' he says that the bilateral talks between President Barroso and religious leaders in 2009 ahead of the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty (and its Article 17) were mistaken, as were separate talks in 2010 organised by the European Commission with religious organisations on the one hand, and secular organisations on the other, which gave rise to a feeling that these movements were automatically antagonistic. In the same spirit, he says it would be a mistake to reduce the 'open, transparent and regulated dialogue' mentioned in Article 17 to simply the convening of an annual conference. Concretely, Paul Löwenthal recommends the creation of a permanent council for dialogue of faiths and beliefs, based on the model of the European Economic and Social Committee.
(MT)