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The article discusses the author's interest in seeing if a critical review of the teleologies associated with reference to "Europe" can help clarify what is at stake in the present crisis. Topics discussed include the distinct representations that are at stake including representation of the historical space called Europe, representation of the conflict that was terminated by the victory of the French-British alliance and representation of the destiny to which European nations are jointly tied.

In this article, the author discusses politics and regulations related to practices of human rights. He mentions several debates which was raised after internationalization of laws on human rights which includes power and practices of socialist practices, democracy and sovereignty of nations. He highlights the issue related to regulations of human rights and its claims by social order under state laws. He focuses on sensitiveness of the issues on control of protection of minorities and women rights both under domestic and social surroundings.

In the wake of previous reflections on the antinomies of citizenship-which derive both from the tension between an 'insurrectional' logic of equal liberty and a 'constitutional' project of building a community of citizens, and more recently from the conflict between (national) social citizenship and neoliberal forms of global governance-this paper focuses on problems of'representa-tion' and 'agency' linked to the idea of democratizing democracy itself. It will try in this sense to propose a more specific determination to the idea of an unfinished, although contingent, history of citizenship in the modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a lecture on civic universalism and anthropological differences of inclusion and exclusion, adapted from 2010 and 2011 seminars and classes at the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

Borders are never purely local institutions, never reducible to a simple history of conflicts and agreements between neighboring groups and powers. Borders are already global, ways of dividing the world into regions and thus make possible place and a 'mapping imaginary'. Borders are characterized by an intrinsic ambivalence that derives from their internal and external functions, as the basis of collective belonging and state control over mobility and territory. The construction of political space takes place through modes of translation between inside and outside that the border signifies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Jacques Derrida's formulations on community and the interconnection between ethics and politics. The author examines two recent commentaries that he finds useful for evaluating Derrida: Simon Critchley's essay called "The Other's Decision in Me," and Lawrence Burns' article "Derrida and the Promise of Community." The author believes that Derida's "problematic of hospitality" is a reformulation of the "problematic of the relationship to the other."

The article presents an obituary of Louis Althusser, a political philosopher.

The discussion in this paper moves through three stages. In the first the relation of political spaces and borders to citizenship is interrogated; in the second, notions of deterritorialization and reterritorialization are examined in relation to ideas of the material constitution of Europe; and, in the third section it returns to the issue of citizenship and its relation to cosmopolitanism. Rather than being a solution or a prospect, Europe currently exists as a `borderland', and this raises a number of issues that need to be confronted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses the dialectical relationship between the concepts of “democracy” and “citizenship,” by relating to current debates which combine a transformation of the philosophical tradition and an evaluation of situations where the legal distinction between the “citizen” and the “national” is challenged. Starting with considerations on the semantic tensions of the “Greek” and “Roman” categories (politeia, demokratia, isonomia, ius civitatis), it discusses the aporias of “democracy” as a model or an ideology, which philosophers like Jacques Ranciere and Hannah Arendt allow us to overcome by defining democracy as a process of permanent anti-oligarchic “insurrection” rather than a stable regime. It is not the spread of democracy, therefore, that constitutes the primordial object of political theory, but the “democratization of democracy” itself, especially in the form of the elimination of its internal exclusions. This theory is illustrated and further refined by referring to debates about class and race discrimination, violent struggles for recognition affecting republican institutions, “nomadic” or “diasporic” forms of citizenship, and the relationship between social and political rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reflection on the coherence of political theorist Hannah Arendt's practical philosophy. It aims to examine why there is a persisting difficulty at the core of Arendt's discourse on human rights, at least from a philosophical point of view. It also aims to answer the question of how is it possible to reconcile a critique of the idea of basic human rights while at the same time locating a typical politics of human rights at the core of politics in general, especially democratic politics.

The article presents the main directions of a new research project that focuses on the self-contradictory argument of the enunciation of the universal. It examines a few texts by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to explore the conflict of universalities. The problem of ideology, the relation between the enunciation of the universal and the idea of domination are tackled with reference to texts by German philosopher Karl Marx. It also revisits texts by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud on identification and ideality.

Examines the anthropological categories difference, otherness and exclusion, which have been playing an important role in the analysis of racism. Epistemological history of the categories; Intrinsic correlation between the categories and other phenomena such as sexism, nationalism and imperialism; Interpretation of metonymies of racism.

In this article, the author takes up a current controversy over toleration, that is, France's decision to ban Muslim head scarves and other conspicuous signs of religious affiliation in public schools. By retreating into a doctrinaire interpretation of laïcité, the author argues, the French authorities have missed an opportunity to address urgent questions concerning the place of religion in public life, the possible one-sidedness of official secularism, the relation between social, gender, and cultural inequality, and the authority of education in an increasingly decentered society.

This article gives considerations on the uncertainties of Europe's political identity at the beginning of the twenty-first century by reflecting on voices from abroad. It notes that by drawing on its devastating experiences in the twentieth century and its liminal position in the world, Europe may be capable of generating aspects of an anti-strategic politics that could present a real alternative to imperial power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the hypothesis that the notion of text occupies a point between those of work and statement. Possibilities implicated in the notion of text; Idea of movement; Nature of structuralism as a divergent encounter; Structuralist question on the status of philosophy.

This article investigates problems related to the status of citizenship and civility in the era of global violence. The term cruelty is chosen by convention to indicate those forms of extreme violence, either intentional or systemic, physical or moral that, so to speak, appear to be worse than death. It is hypothesized that the actual or virtual looming of cruelty represents for politics, and particularly for today's politics in the framework of so-called globalization, a crucial experiment in which the very possibility of politics is at stake. The term civility is an ambiguous term, but its connotations are preferable to those of civilization, socialization, police and policing and politeness. In particular, civility does not necessarily involve the idea of a suppression of conflicts and antagonisms in society, as if they were always the harbingers of violence and not the opposite. Issues of citizenship and segregation, asylum and migration, mass poverty and genocide in the globalized world order must be located and connected if people want to understand how and why democratic citizenship in today's world cannot be separated from an invention of concrete forms and strategies of civility.

Discusses the scattered meaning of universality. Use of Hegels' scheme in integration of juridical universality; Emphasis on latent transformation of minority in the socio-political realm; Philosophical view on speculative construction of universality.

The article explores some themes emerging from the economic and political crisis in Europe. It suggests that the Greece's inability to repay its debt, the European rescue loan, and the budget austerity measures in several member states of the European Union are just the latest episodes of the crisis. It also comments on the Greek protest, the politics of rescuing the European currency, the real trends of globalization, and the bankruptcy of the European Left.

The article presents the speeches of college faculty members Costas Lapavitsas, Kevin Featherstone, Peter Bratsis, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Etienne Balibar given during a debate at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London in England on May 5, 2010 in which the contributing factors to Greece's economic crises such as corruption and clientelism are mentioned as well as the solidarity of national economies in the Eurozone.