Human Rights as a Way of Life: On Bergson's Political Philosophy (Cultural Memory in the Present) - Softcover

Lefebvre, Alexandre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804785791 ISBN 13: 9780804785792

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

The work of Henri Bergson, the foremost French philosopher of the early twentieth century, is not usually explored for its political dimensions. Indeed, Bergson is best known for his writings on time, evolution, and creativity. This book concentrates instead on his political philosophy—and especially on his late masterpiece, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion—from which Alexandre Lefebvre develops an original approach to human rights.

We tend to think of human rights as the urgent international project of protecting all people everywhere from harm. Bergson shows us that human rights can also serve as a medium of personal transformation and self-care. For Bergson, the main purpose of human rights is to initiate all human beings into love. Forging connections between human rights scholarship and philosophy as self-care, Lefebvre uses human rights to channel the whole of Bergson's philosophy.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alexandre Lefebvre is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He is author of The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza (Stanford, 2008).

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

HUMAN RIGHTS AS A WAY OF LIFE

On Bergson's Political Philosophy

By Alexandre Lefebvre

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-8579-2

Contents

Preface....................................................................
xiii
Acknowledgments............................................................
xix
Abbreviations..............................................................
xxi
PART I HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE PICTURE OF MORALITY............................
Introduction: The Picture of Morality......................................
3
1. A Dialogue on War.......................................................
6
2. Bergson's Critical Philosophy...........................................
15
3. The Closed Society: Bergson on Durkheim.................................
32
4. Human Rights and the Critique of Practical Reason.......................
49
PART II AN INTRODUCTION TO THE OPEN LIFE...................................
5. Human Rights as Conversion..............................................
73
6. The Open Society........................................................
83
7. The Two Faces of Human Rights...........................................
110
Notes......................................................................
145
Bibliography...............................................................
167
Index......................................................................
177

CHAPTER 1

A Dialogue on War

Just like the witches of Macbeth, the belligerents will say: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair."Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

In a letter written as the preface to Jean-Clet Martin's Variations,Gilles Deleuze has the following words of advice for a young philosopher:

In the analysis of concepts, it is always better to begin with extremely simple,concrete situations, not with philosophical antecedents, not even with problems assuch (the one and the multiple, etc.). Take multiplicities for example. You want tobegin with a question such as what is a pack? (it is different from a lone animal)... I have only one thing to tell you: do not lose sight of the concrete, alwaysreturn to it.

I have no idea whether or not Bergson inspired these lines. They do, however,capture his way of proceeding in Two Sources. In particular, they areapt for describing how he arrives at the concept of the "closed society."

The closed society is the major critical concept of Two Sources. It is ofspecial importance for us because it is Bergson's point of attack against thepicture of morality, along with the predominant dispensation of humanrights it underpins. Part 1 will analyze the concept of the closed society, primarilythrough Bergson's critique of Émile Durkheim. And my purpose isto show the significance of Two Sources for theoretical and practical problemsof human rights. But it is best to begin as Deleuze recommends, withthe concrete situation. What is it that leads Bergson to create the conceptof the closed society? The answer is simple and brutal: war.

The Picture of Morality and the Problem of War

Let us restate the picture of morality that Bergson challenges. In essence,it is the view that moral obligation expands from smaller to biggergroups, all the way to the whole of humanity. As previously quotedin the Introduction: "We observe that the three groups [i.e., family, nation,and humanity] to which we can attach ourselves comprise an increasingnumber of people, and we conclude that the increasing size ofthe loved object is simply matched by a progressive expansion of feeling.(DS 1001–2/32)

The point of calling this scheme a "picture" or an "image" is tounderscore the sense in which it is less a worked-up theoretical positionand more the ordinary grain or bent of our moral thinking. Indeed,once on the lookout for this view—that is, that a morality universal inscope is secured through step-by-step expansion—we can begin to detectit everywhere, in both friends and foes of human rights. We find it, forinstance, in W. E. H. Lecky's History of European Morals: "At one timethe benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expandingincludes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations,then all humanity and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of manwith the animal world." And in Edmund Burke: "To be attached to thesubdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the firstprinciple (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link inthe series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind."Closer to our own time, it is revealed in a casual turn of phrase:"The goal of [human rights education] is to expand the reference of theterms 'our kind of people' and 'people like us.'" We could easily multiplyexamples. But it is Durkheim, the founder of French sociology, whogives it a definitive articulation. We will see that it is this version of thepicture of morality that Bergson attacks in Two Sources.

Family, nation, and human represent different phases of our social and moralevolution, stages that have mutually prepared one another. Consequently, thesegroups can be superimposed on one another without mutual exclusion. Just aseach has its part to play in historical development, they mutually complementeach other in the present: each has its function. The family envelops the person inan altogether different way, and answers to different moral needs, than does thenation. It is not a matter then of making an exclusive choice among them. Man isnot morally complete unless he undergoes this triple action.

Here we have a perfect match with the picture of morality. With just aglance we see that Durkheim explicitly deploys two of the four postulatesidentified in the Introduction. First, our group attachments are compatible(postulate 2). Properly arranged, our attachments to the three groups—family,nation, and humanity—are complementary. Durkheim thus closesoff the inevitability of a tragic situation where the rights of one groupwould square off against the rights of another. Instead, each group fulfillsa different function, all of which are necessary to form a complete moralperson. But it is important to note that although the three groups are complementary,they are not equal. This is the second point: for Durkheim,there is a clear ranking to these levels and progress (postulate 4) is madeby advancing to higher stages—from family, to nation, to humanity. Accordingly,"they constitute a hierarchy," with attachment to humanity atthe summit.

Yet in addition to these explicit postulates, it is clear that Durkheimalso presupposes the other two. On the one hand, our attachments are directedtoward determinate objects or groups (postulate 1), and on the otherhand, our attachments can be extended to quantitatively larger groups ofpeople (postulate 3). This passage is, therefore, a model of the picture ofmorality and moral progress that Two Sources will extensively...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804785791
• ISBN 13: 9780804785792
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 212
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland