Etienne Balibar

L'ouvrage se propose d'introduire à la philosophie de Spinoza - conçue comme une ontologie et une éthique de la communication - à partir du rapport intrinsèque qu'elle entretient avec la politique. Après une mise en situation de Spinoza dans les conflits de son temps et de son pays, qui claire les multiples dimensions de son projet intellectuel, les trois grandes oeuvres (Traité théologico-politique, Traité politique, Ethique) sont successivement discutées. Une attention particulière est apportée aux thèmes de la démocratie, de la religion, de l'institution et du rapport entre la raison et l'imagination, qui font l'actualité du spinozisme. L'ouvrage s'adresse à la fois à un public d'étudiants, d'enseignants et d'intellectuels pluridisciplinaires.

The paper argues that a specific "concept of the political" can be reconstructed in Arendt by bringing together elements coming from Origins of Totalitarianism, Part II, from The Human Condition and On Revolution, and from On Disobedience. These propositions produce a singular variety of "institutionalism", which involves a "groundless" politics of Human Rights, and also helps clarifying the thesis on the "banality of evil" in Eichmann in Jerusalem: the sovereign tautology "law is law" is the root of voluntary servitude. To say that we have a choice between becoming Eichmanns or taking the risk of civil disobedience is too quick; and to suppose that a state where civil disobedience becomes recognized would be immune of the danger of totalitarian transformation is an illusion, but as an ideal type, these formulations may encapsulate what Arendt's "concept of the political" hints at.

This paper combines reflections on the current “state of war” in the Middle East with an epistemological discussion of the meaning and implications of the category “war” itself, in order to dissipate the confusions arising from the idea of a “War on Terror.” The first part illustrates the insufficiency of the ideal type involved in dichotomies which are implicit in the naming and classifications of wars. They point nevertheless to a deeper problem which concerns the antinomic character of a collective institution of violence. The second part discusses the extent to which, in spite of the historical transformations in the means and political objectives of wars, the contemporary confrontation still obeys the rules of warfare described by Clausewitz, particularly with respect to temporality (“friction”). The third part discusses “non‐clausewitzian” aspects of the “new wars” defined by Martin Van Creveld and Mary Kaldor, while suggesting that they have left aside the most salient contradiction illustrated by the US interventions, which results from the combination of a claim to universal sovereignty and a reduction of war to generalized police operations.

As a contribution to the debate on the future of philosophy as an autonomous discipline beyond its current function within Western-type universities, a comparison is offered between three diverging strategies of “speaking the universal” which keep their relevance today; the “Double Truth” strategy for secular tolerance, illustrated by Spinoza and Wittgenstein; the construction of the universal as “hegemony,” analyzed by Hegel and Marx in terms of collective consciousnesses or ideologies; and the program of generalized translation as it emerges from the critique of traditional “paradoxes of the untranslatable” in the works of contemporary socio-linguists and pragmatic philosophers. The conclusion remains an open questioning on the equivocity of the universal.

The fourth and final volume of The New Press Postwar French Thought series provides a fresh map and analysis for understanding the history of ideas since 1945. This anthology collects the writings of celebrated philosophers along with work by thinkers highly regarded in France for the first time. It contextualises the material within a larger intellectual and political history and chronology, identifying antecedents and distinguishing four main phases or moments. Indispensable for understanding the development of postwar French philosophy as a whole.

"As one of Louis Althusser's most brilliant students in the 1960s, Etienne Balibar contributed to the theoretical collective masterpiece of Reading Capital. Since then he has established himself amongst the most subtle philosophical and political thinkers in France. In Politics and the Other Scene Balibar deepens and extends the work he first developed with Immanuel Wallerstein in Race, Nation, Class. Exploring the theme of universalism and difference, he addresses questions such as "European racism, " the notion of the border, whether a European citizenship is possible or desirable, violence and politics, identity and emancipation"--provided by publisher.

This paper presents the main directions of a new research project that centres on the paradox of the enunciation of the universal. Historical experience and the history of philosophy have made us highly sceptical towards the very possibility of enunciating the universal, yet the universal can be said to have become a fact of contemporary life, and the attempt at enunciating the universal remains an inescapable demand, in politics and notably in practice. Not to enunciate the universal is impossible, but to enunciate it is untenable. Three directions of questioning emerge from this paradox. First, a rereading of Hegel helps us to study the conflict of universalities. Second, with Marx, we can revisit the problem of ideology, the relation between the enunciation of the universal and the idea of domination. And thirdly, by rereading texts by Freud on identification and ideality, we can revisit the relation of the universal to the idea of community, and the aporia of its deconstruction.

The paper, which retains a hypothetical character, argues that Spinoza's propositions referring to God (or involving the use of the name ‘God’, essentially in the Ethics), can be read in a fruitful manner apart from any pre-established hypothesis concerning his own ‘theological preferences’, as definite descriptions of three ‘ideas of God’ which have the same logical status: one (akin to Jewish Monotheism) which identifies the idea of God with the idea of the Law, one (akin to a heretic ‘Socinian’ version of Christianity) which identifies it with the idea of Human Love, and one (akin to a form of Cosmotheism, rather than ‘Pantheism’) which identifies it with Nature. Evidence of this analytic tripartition can be found in the letter of the texts themselves. If accepted (at least as a thought experiment), it would carry three interesting consequences: 1) to renew our understanding of the theory of the ‘three kinds of knowledge’, which have obvious affinities with the three possible ways of understanding the idea of God; 2) to emphasize the critical move associated by Spinoza with each of the three ideas of God (passing from an anthropomorphic legislator to an impersonal command, passing from an imaginary community of similarities to a practical community of singularities, and passing from a teleological and harmonious idea of nature to a causal, even conflictual, idea of its infinite power); 3) to locate the essential ethical and political questions associated with religion on the ‘vectors’ which lead from one idea to another, and represent themselves practical conatus: obedience, utility, order. It is also assumed that such a reading enhances the relevance of Spinoza's philosophy with respect to contemporary debates about religion and secularism.