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)

This article approaches Charles Batteux’s (1713-1780) concept of taste (one as central to 18th-century nascent aesthetics as it is complex) through the lens of virtue aesthetics, mostly borrowing from Roger Pouivet’s work (2006, 2017). Firstly, it argues that Batteux’s account of taste matches Pouivet’s description of aesthetic virtues, and that taste, as a function of the soul, is the golden mean between corresponding intellectual vices. Secondly, it examines the ways the aesthetic virtue of taste interacts with two other intellectual virtues (...) discussed by Batteux, namely intelligence and genius. In sum, it argues that re-reading Batteux’s philosophy of literature through the lens of contemporary, analytical virtue aesthetics makes it relevant to contemporary aesthetic theory, and not only for students of the history of literary theory. (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 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)

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.

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)