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International audience; The challenge of developing humane migration and refugee politics in Western states is far from resolved. This ongoing failure is typically attributed to the increased influence of right-wing populism and neo-fascism in Western migration politics. In this article I discuss a more radical explanation: Christoph Menke argues that political liberalism and its framing of migration as an issue of subjective human rights is the deeper root of the problem. While the merit of Menke's approach is its criticism of subjectification through individual rights that blocks politics, I show that his Critique of Rights may lead to an antipluralist and paternalistic 'radical republicanism'. To react to this problem, I propose a 'reflective liberalism' that allows to criticise subjectification without abandoning the form of individual rights. This position, which I develop through a discussion of Foucault's concept of 'freedom as critique', shows that in addition to protecting minorities such as migrants, individual rights turn out to be part of a regime of critical subjectification that constitutes critical subjects. Such critical subjectification by law can help to break through the blockade of politics that prevent the development of humane migration and refugee politics.

International audience

This entry is dedicated to Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt developed a radical, innovative liberal ideal compared to the thought which had dominated up until that point and to the German context within which it flourished. Hannah Arendt defined him as “one of the rare genuine German democrats”. He worked concretely as a man of politics, trying to implement his own programme of non-violent renewal, without abrupt pauses (as he explained in Ideen über Staatsverfassung, durch die neue französische Konstitution veranlaßt, 1791) in the various fields that gradually became his areas of expertise, thus in the context of censorship, religion and education (in 1810, he founded the University of Berlin, asking Friedrich Carl von Savigny to teach, among others), and, last but not least, in the general constitutional-governmental framework (acting as the Interior Minister of Prussia in 1819).

International audience

The work of Sarah Moore Grimké (1792-1873) was shaped by a combination of abolitionist and feminist militancy, since she was an agent of the most radical anti-slavery movement as well as author of one of the very first American texts in favor of extending women’s rights, also influencing the Seneca Falls Convention (1848). This entry shows the relevance of her contribution in the history of the philosophy of law.

Voce sulla Scuola di Genova di Teoria del diritto.