Citoyenneté, laïcité et révolution. Les nouveaux processus d’universalisation

Vers des nouvelles “Lumières” méditerranéennes?

Abstract

The ancient opposition, dating back to the era of the French Revolution, between the Bourgeois, the Citizen and the Man, on whose foundations the Rights of Man and Citizen were built in 1789, at the beginning of the 21st century, is undermined by the new processes of constitution of nationalities and citizenship, in the context of neocapitalist globalization. These new processes of universalization put aside the idea of «revolution of human rights», placing the problem of human «dignity» at the center of the question, as a basic condition for the concrete exercise of the same human rights. Two preliminary conditions guarantee the success of this new kind of universalization and integration. 1/ The secularism and 2/ the cultural operation of the trans-historical Enlightenment (the political legacy of Revolution). Our essay analyzes these two possible ways of realizing a new universal, beyond the «revolution» but always in (conflictual) continuity with it.