HOMOJURIDICUS OntheAnthropologicalFunctionoftheLaw ALAINSUPIOT TranslatedbySaskiaBrown VERSO London New York ._ Lmrw t|te tatitBIl FIS ThisbookissupportedbytheFrenchMinistryofForeignMfairs,aspartofthe BurgessProgrammerunbytheCulturalDepartmentoftheFrenchEmbassyin London,( www.frenchbooknews.com). ThisbookispublishedwiththesupportoftheFrenchMinistryof Culture-Centrenationaldulivre. Ouvragepubl ieavecleconcouranceduMinisterefrancaischargedeIaculture-Centrenationaldulivre. ThiseditionpublishedbyVerso207 AlainSupiot2007 Translation SaskiaBrown207 Firstpubl ishedasHomo Juridicus: essai sur Iafnctionanthropologiquedudroit EditionsduSeui l205 Al lrightsreserved Themoralrightsoftheauthorandtranslatorhavebeenasserted 1357910864 2 Verso UK:6MeardStreet,LondonW1FOEG USA:180VarickStreet,NewYork,NY100144606 www.versobooks.com VersoistheimprintofNewLeftBooks ISBN-13:978-1-8467-105-2 BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary Libraryof Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData AcatalogrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryof Congress TypesetinSabonbyHewerTextUKLtd,Edinburgh PrintedandboundintheUSAbyCourierStoughtonInc. CONTENTS Prologuevn PartOne: Legal Dogma:OurFounding Beliefs1 1TheHumanBingasimagoDei3 TheNormativeInstitutionof the Human Being4 TheLegalFoundationsof thePerson10 TheIndividual,UniqueandIdentical13 TheSubject,SovereignandSubjected17 ThePerson,SpiritandIncarnate21 TheThirdPartyasGuarantorof Identity27 Towards TotalEmancipation:HumanityDecomposed29 2Law' s Dominion: dura lex,sed lex41 Variations onaModeof Thought42 The HumanMasteryoverLaws51The HumanBeing Explained by Laws59 3The Binding Forceof theWord:pactasuntservanda78 The ' Civilizing Mission' of theContract79 TheOriginsoftheContract86 TheStateasGuarantorof Agreements94 Feudalism' sRevivalintheContractualBond100 PartTwo:LegalTechnique:the Resourcesof Interpretation1 1 14MasteringTechnology: theTechniqueof Interdiction1 13 Law isPart of TechnologicalProgress1 17 FromtheInstitutiontotheNetwork1 19 FromRulestoRegulation125 LawHumanizesTechnology1 31UbiquityanditsLimits132 Transparencyand i ts Limits137 Procreation and theReproductiveTechnologies142 vi HOMOJ URI DI CUS 5Calling Power to Reason: fromGovernment to Governance146 The Decline of Sovereignty 150 TheMetamorphosesof the State152 TheSeparationof Power fromAuthority156 TheDismantlingof LegislativePower159 The Enfeoffmentof Freedoms167 TheStandardizationof Behaviour168 The lnstrumentalizationof the Sourcesof the Law1 80 6BindingHumanity: ontheProperUseofHumanRights1 85 TheCreedofHumanRights1 87 TheThreeFiguresof WesternFundamentalism 192 Messianism 193 Particularism 195 Scientism 197 Opening the Doorsof Interpretation 203 HumanRights:Humanity'sCommonResource204 ThePrincipleof SolidarityRevisited207 TowardsNewModesof Interpretation212 Bibliography 217 Index 239 PROLOGUE Glissez,mortels,n'appuyezpas, laglaceestsousvaspasfagile Pierre-YveN arvor1 Humansaremetaphysicalani mals. Asbiologicalbeings, they apprehendtheworldthroughtheirsenseorgans. Buttheyinhabit not only auniverse of things but also auniverse of signs,extending beyondlanguageandembracinganythingthatgivesmaterialform toanideaandsomayevokewhatisphysicallyabsent.The universeofsignsencompassesallthingsinwhichmeaningis invested, particularly manufactured obj ects,insofar as they embody theideathatpresidedovertheirproductionandhencemaybe distinguished from natural things. Itisauniverse that includes the mostcommonplaceobj ects ,suchasahewn stoneorahandkerchief,aswellasthemostsacred, like the MonaLisaor the Pantheon. Thisuniversealsoencompassesdistinctivesigns( clothingcodes , makeup,tattoos) andbodilyroutines(gestures ,ritual ,dance)that transformthebodyitselfintoasign. Thelifeofthesensesis inseparable,forhumans ,fromthesenseweconferonlife,for which we are even ready to die,giving death itself a sense.It is vital forustoas signmeaningtoourselvesandt.otheworld,inorder to avoidsinkingintomeaninglessnes s,that i s,in order tobecomeand remainrationalbeings.Every human being i s born into a world of sense, the sense of a world already there, which gives meaning to his or her existence. In order to haveaccesstothisworld,everychildmustlearntospeak,andso subject him- or herself to the 'legislator of language' .If, as Platosays, this legislator 'is of all the artisans among men the rarest',2 it is because 1.[Glide,mortals,tread not heavilyItheicebeneathyourfeetisthin].2.SeePlato,Cratylus,388e,trans.H.N.Fowler,Cambridge,MA,Harvard UniversityPress,1927,p.25. viiiHOMOJURIDICUS she has the appearance of our mother's face: our mother tongue, which is our first source of sense, is also the primary resource of the dogmatic beliefs necessary for the constitution of the subject.If we are toenjoy thinking andexpressing ourselvesfreely in a language, we must first submittothelimitsthatgivewordsmeaning;withoutthisradical heteronomy,we would haveno autonomy.But even before the newborn child arrivesat anawarenessof his or her being through speech, heorsheisnamed,situatedinalineage:aplacewillhavebeen attributed to him or her within thesuccession of generati ons.That is, before we can dispose of ourselves freely and say'I',we are already a subject of law,bund - sub-jectum:thrown under - by words which tie ustoothers.Thebondsoflawandthebondsofspeechconverge, enablingeverynewbornchildtobecomeamemberof humanity,in otherwords,tohavetheirlifeendowedwithrecognizedmeaning.3 Whereverpeoplearecutofffromtheirfellowcreatures,theyare condemnedto idiocy,in theetymologicalsenseof the term(from the Greekidios:' confined to oneself' ) ,as are people whocannot envisage thatuniversesotherthantheirownexistandwhoaretherefore incapable of arriving at a consensual representation of a world where we would each have a place.The aspiration to j ustice is thus, for better and for worse, a fundamental anthropological fact and not a hangover frompre-scientificmodesof thought.Peoplewillkillanddiefora causetheyconsiderj ust(Freedom,Country,God, Honour,andso forth)- which impliesthat we each bear withinus abomb. Humanbeingsarenot bornrational,they"becomesobygaining accesstomeaningsharedwithothers.Everyhumansocietyinits ownwayundertakestheinstitutionofreason.Whatwecall ' s ociety'isaweaveofspeechbindingpeopletogether( whichby thesametokenmakesan' animalsociety'i mpossible) .4 ' Law'and ' contract'aretwosortsoflegaltiesbywhichweareboundand whichbindpeopletogether:under'law'wecanclasstextsand wordsimposedonusindependentlyofourwill,andunder' con-3.Signum,in Classical Latin, correspondsto the Greek sema; its general sense is 'distinguishingmark'or'stamp',anditappliesto ensignsorstandards,paintedor carvedimages,aswel lastothedistinctiveforenameofaperson,asignal,slogan, portentorsymptom.InFrench,signification('meaning')fromthevery first denoted whatal lowsonetoaffirmthatsomethingthatisnotpresentexists.Itscognates signifier andsignificationhad,fromveryearlyon,thelegalsenseof'tonotify','to bring alegaldeedofficiallytotheattentionofthosetowhomit applies'.SeeA.Rey (ed.),DictionnairehistoriquedIa languefrantaise,Paris,Robert,1992,s.v.'signe'; alsoR.Maltby,ALexiconof AncientLatinEtymologies,Leeds, Cairns,1991. 4.SeeP. Legendre,DeIasociete commetext e.Lineamentsd'une anthropologie dogmatique,Paris,Fayard,201. PROLOGUEix tract' those stemming from an agreement freely entered into with an other.Weare eachboundbyour civil statusas determined bylaw beforebeing boundbyanycommitmentwemaymake. Moreover, not everything we s ayis binding on us,or bringsobligations,in the literalandetymologicalsenseof theterm( ob-ligare:totieto) ;for example,IaminnowayboundbywhatIamwritingatthis momentandIreservetherighttogobackonwhatIsay,or contradictmyself.Withinthewordsandtextsthatbindmeto others,that createobligations,wemustidentifythosewhichcome frommeandthosewhichcomefromothers,sincethelatteronly haveauthorityovermeandlogicallycamefirstinmylife,even though Idid notpronounce them myself or give myassent to them. Ourconceptsof lawandcontractarethereforeintimatelyrelated. Bothstem from the belief in a divine Legislator who vouches for the pledgesmadebythosewhobelieveinHim,whoaretruetoHim and therefore truetotheirword.Thatiswhysuchnotionsdonot exist in the s ame abstract and general form in other civilizations, for exampleinChinaandJ apan. TheideasofIa wandcontract commontothecivilizationsoftheBookconstituteonlyoneway ofinstitutingj usticeamongpeople,andbringingthemunderthe ruleofreason.It i s by transforming each of us into ahomojuridicusthat, in the West,the biological and symbolic dimensions that make up our being havebeenlinkedtogether.Thelawconnectsourinfinitemental universe withour finitephysicalexistence and in so doing fulfils the anthropological function of instituting us as rational beings.To reject thebiologicalorthesymbolicdimensionleadstotheinsanityof treating humans as mere animals or as pure mind, subject to no limits that are not self-imposed. Pascal expressed this connection in its most succinct form:Man i s neither angel nor beast. Yet we find it hard to graspthissimple idea becauseour categories of thoughtset thebody against the mind, ' materialism'against ' spiritualis m' .The progress of scienceand technologyhasmoreoverexacerbatedthisdivision.We areconvinced that humanbeings may be explained j ust like any other natural obj ect.The natural sciences, it is argued, will one day be able to reveal and process all there i s to knowabout us,sothat, when all mysteries havebeenelucidated,wewillbeabletoescapeallnatural constraints: wewillchooseoursex,remainuntouchedbyage, triumphoverillnessand- whileweareatit- overdeathitself. To view the human being as pure object or pure mind are two sides of thesamelunacy. One of the lessons that Hannah Arendt draws from the experience of XHOMOJURIDICUS totalitarianismisthat'Thefirstessentialstepontheroadtototal domination is to kill the j uridical person. '5 To deny the anthropological functionof thelawinthenameof asupposedrealismgroundedin biology, politics or economics is something that all totalitarian projects haveincommon.Thislessonseemstohavebeenforgottenbythe j urists who today argue that the legal person is a pure construct bearing no relation to the concrete human being.And, indeed, the legal person isj ustthat,aconstruct,butinthesymbolicuniversethatisours, everything isaconstruct.Legal personality is certainly notafact of nature,butratheracertainrepresentationof thehumanbeingthat posits the unity of body and mind at the s ame time as it formulatesa prohibition:thatthehumanbeingshouldnever b reduced onesidedly toeither.InthewakeofthehorrorsofNazism,itwasdeemed necessarytoextendlegalpersonalityandtheprohibitionitcontains to every personwherever they might be.6 It isthis prohibition that is really being challenged when people today seek to disqualify the subject of law and treat the human being as a mere accounting unit, like cattle, or - and it amountstothesame - asapureabstraction? Thisreductiveapproachto thehumanbeinggoeshandinhand with thedevelopmentof arithmetical calculation,onwhich capitalismandmodernsciencewerebuilt.Agoodexampleof thisdevelopmentisthewaythelegalprincipleof equalityhasbeenmapped onto arithmetical equality, so as to abolish all difference:if I s ay ,then a may be indifferently replaced by b, wherever it occurs, such that .If we apply this to sexual equality, it means that a man is a woman and vice versa.But equality between men and womendoesnotmeanthatmenarewomen,eveniftheymay sometimesdreamofbeingso. Theprincipleofequalitybetween the sexes i s one of the mostvaluable and vulnerable achievements of theWest,butitisdoomedinthelongtermifitisconceived mathematically,thatis,ifthehumanbeingistreatedasapurely quantitativeunit.Thinkingandlivingequalitywithoutnegating differencesi spreciselythedificult taskthatmodernsocietiesconfront today.Thisisrelevantnotonlyto relationsbetweenmenand women but equally to relations between men or women of different nationality,customs, culture,religionorgeneration.Whatdistin-5.H.Arendt,TheOriginsof Totalitarianism, London,Allen&Unwin,1967, p.447. 6.TheUniversalDeclarationofHumanRights,adoptedbytheUNGeneral Assemblyon10December,1948art.6. 7.Forthedifferentaspectsofthislegalreificationofthehumanbeing,seeB. Edelman,LaPersonneendanger,Paris,PUF,1999. . PROLOGUExi guishescapitalismisnotthepursuitofmaterialrichesbutthe subordinationofthediversityofpeopleandthingstotheruleof quantity.Itisarulethatengendersludicrousinterpretationsof equalitywhenweareencouragedtobelieveinabstractnumbers independentlyof the qualitative character of what we are counting.8 Calculating is not thinking, and thearithmetical rationalizationon whichcapitalismisbuiltdegeneratesintomadnesswhenitleads people to believe that what cannot be calculated for that very reason hasnosignificance. Theabilitytocalculateiswithoutdoubtan essential attribute of reason,9 but it is not reason in its entirety. The logical formalization of such an ability has led to the invention of the computer;andthe processwherebythehumanmindproj ectsitself onto an obj ect has,from the very first carved flint, been the agent of technological progressandmasteryover the material world.But the kindofcognitivismwhichcurrentlyreplacesyesterday'sScienceof Mindmovesintheoppositedirection: itproj ectsontothehuman mind the model of the calculating machine, hoping, with the help of a fewnanotechnologies,toendupmasteringthoughtitself.Likethe prevalenteconomicideology, itisbasedonthebeliefthatrational beingsareexclusivelycalculatingbeings,suchthattheirbehaviour can, inturn,becalculatedandprogrammed.But, inorderto calculate,wemustfirstbeabletoforgetthediversityofthings andbeings,retainingonlytheirmostbasiccharacteristic: their number.Whatenablesustoforgetthisdiversity- withoutwhich there would be no calculation of interest nor scientific calculation - is thatotherfacetofhumanreason, whichcoverseverythingthat numericalabstractionleavesout. Forevenmathematicscannot do without undemonstrable postulates, itsaxiomaticbasis .We cannot add up caterpillars and clouds because we can only count identifiable obj ectsin which we posit somecommontrait;and thecategoriesof thought through which we identify and classify natural obj ects are not themselvesmathematical(whichdoesnotmeanthattheyarenot rational) . The labour of thought is to give meaning to calculation by systematically relating the quantities measured to a measure of sense.There inevitably remains a dogmatic element in our definition of this 8.See R. Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times,trans. Lord Northbourne,London,Luzac&Co.,1953. 9.TheFrenchtermraison comes from theLatinratio ( which itself comes from the verbrear, tocount, to calculate) andwhichfirstmeant'amount' beforeit came to mean'judgement,doctrine',and,lastly,'reason'(see R.Maltby,Lexiconof Ancient Latin Etymologies, op.cit. , ) ; ratio in contemporary French has retained the first sense (numericalratio). X11HOMOJURIDICUS sense,insofarasourcategoriesofthoughtarenotagift of nature; theyarethemeansbywhichwe seektounderstand it.Sapereaude!'Havecouragetouseyourownreason! '1Kant' s famous precept reminds usof the act of faith on which the Enlightenment rests : faith in the human being as rational being. We believe in the Enlightenmentif webelieve that thehumanbeing iscapableof thinkingfreely.Suchanactoffaithshouldnotpreventusfrom examining the conditions under which the humanbeing may become arationalbeing,butitshouldpreventusassimilatingthehuman being to an animal ora machine, or professing to explain himor her away throughexternal determinants.Whenever thedisciplineof the humansciencesattemptstoimitatethenaturalsciences,reducing peopletoobj ectsthatcanbeprogrammedandexplainedaway,it becomesamererelicof Westerndogma,apitifulreminderofthe decomposition of scientific thought as it busies itself with eliminating theveryquestionsitshouldbeaddressing.Besides, thepersistent effortsto force societyinto themouldof mechanicsorbiologyare doomedtofailurebecausewhereasbiologicalnormsmaybediscovered by examining biological organi sms,this i s not the case with human societies.The founding norm, which secures our place within agivensociety,canonlycomefromoutsideit.ForGeorgesCanguilhem, thisfeature remains' one of themaj or problemsof human existence and one of the fundamental problems thatreasonattempts toaddress'.11 Itimpliesthatthemeaningoflifecannotbefound withinourorgansbutonlyinrelationtoapointof referencelying outsideofus.If werefusetoadmitthi s, andidentifyreasonwith scientificexplanation,or law withbiological regulation,we will give freereintomadnessandmurder;andifweremainblindto the necessityof instituting reason,societywillappeartoussimplyasa massof elementary particlesdrivenbythecalculationof individual utilities or by a physico-chemical makeup.In such a framework, every humanbeing istaken to be a self-sufficiententity,whereasin reality not a single one of us can do without the others.Without a common reference point to guarantee a meaning and a place for each of us,we become caught inatrapof self-referentiality,withnochoice other 10.I.Kant,Beantwortungder Frage: was istAufkliung?[1783],translatedby LewisWhiteBecker as'WhatisEnlightenment?'inCritique of Practical Reasonand OtherWritingsin MoralPhilosophy, Chicago,Universityof ChicagoPress,1949,p. 286. 11.G. Canguilhem,'Leproblemedesregulationsdansl'organismeetdansIa societe', in hisCahiers de !'Alliance israeliteuniverselle,92,September-October1955, pp.64ff.,reprintedinhisEcritssurIamedecine,Paris,Seuil,2002,p.108. PROLOGUEXH1thansolitudeorviolence.Thatishowwearriveatthewarofall against all,suffering what Vico called the 'civil malady' of peoples in decay.1 2 Ifscienceandtechnology,aswellas themarketeconomy,are historically theproductsof Westerncivilizationand arestillclosely linked to it, this i s because of the beliefs on which this civilization is founded. Scientificandtechnologicalprogressstemmedfromthe beliefthattheEarthwasGod' slegacytohumankind,thatNature was organized according to His unchanging laws and that knowledge of these laws would give humans mastery over Nature. The material prowess of the West, and the consolidation of its identity, thus owes much to Christianity.13 We tend to think that all thisbelongs to the past and that Westernsocietieshave freed themselvesfrom religion. The ' disenchantment of the world' and the ' desertion of religion' have become commonplaces in thesocial sciences,to the extent that many Westerners consider the continued attachment of other peoples to the religious foundations of their societies as an archaictrait destined to disappear. Butweshouldnotforgetthatthemeaningof theword 'religion'haschangedintoitsoppositewiththesecularizationof society.There is religion and Religion.Whereas previously Religion constitutedthedogmaticfoundationofsociety,nowadaysitisa question of individual freedom;a public affair hasbecome aprivate one, which i s why discussing religion today i s unfailingly a source of misunderstanding.InmedievalEurope,Religionwasnotaprivate matter andsohadno existence in the sense theword has today.1 4 At the time,Religion determined thelegal status of both the Prince and hissubj ects .Evencommerciallaw,thelexmercatoriawhichdeveloped during that period,was the work of good Christians united in a common faith,andthe' trust account' , whichwaslater to become a powerful instrument of capitalism, wasinvented toserve the needsof 12.G. Vi co, Prindpi di Scienza nuova d'intorno alta comune natura delle nationi [1744],translatedbyDavidMarshasPrinciplesof theNewScienceConcerningthe CommonNatureofNations,London,PenguinBooks,2001,p.488. 13.Thereferencetothe'West' originatesinthegreatdivisionoftheRoman EmpireintoEasternandWesternrealms.Itdesignatesthedifferentculturesthat inheritedtheirpoliticalstructuresfrommedievalChristianity.Thisimperiallegacy explains,amongotherthings,whythoseWesternerswhomoststronglybelievethat their vision of theworld is absolutely universal are also thosewho refuse to recognize themselvesinthisreferencetotheWest,whichwouldputthemon anequalfooting withothercivilizations. 14.SeeJ.-C.Schmitt,'LacroyanceauMoyenAge',Raisonpresente,115,1995, p.15,reprintedinhisLeCorps,lesrites,lesrives,letemps.Essaisd' anthropologie medievale,Paris,Gallimard,2001,pp.77ff. xiv HOMOJURIDICUS Franciscanmonkswhodidnotwanttoownthegoodstheyhad received by donation.15 The idea of an undying State derives from that ofthemysticbody,inthetheoryoftheking'stwobodies.16 Modernity broughtaboutthe secularizationof these notionsinthe West, with the State becoming the ultimate guardian of the identity of persons and the guarantor of the pledged word. But a distinction has remained between what one could broadly call the realm of faith and therealmofcalculation. Therealmoffaithistherealmofthe qualitative andtheundemonstrable;it is basicallythesphereof law and of public debate.The realm of calculation, of the quantitative, is the sphere of the contract and negotiati on.ThefactthatChristianitynolongerhasanyconstitutional positionincertainWesterncountriesinnowayimpliesthatthe latterarenotfoundedondogma. States,nolessthanpeople, continueto besustainedbyundemonstrablecertainties,beliefs that are notthe result of free choicebecausetheyarepartand parcel of one' s identity.Ask an Englishman if he ' believes in the Queen'(head ofstateandoftheAnglicanChurch: ' GodsavetheQueen! ' ) ora Frenchmanifhe' believesintheRepublic'( ' indivisible,secular, democratic andsocial ' ) ,and it will sound today as absurd asasking the question'Doyoubelievei n the Pope ? 'wouldhave inmedieval Europe.OfcoursethelatestcredoofWesternmani sthatheno longerbelievesinanything,apositionthatisparticularlywidespreadi n formerCatholiccountries,wherethe . separationbetween StateandChurchisgreatest.Buteventhosewhotodaylabel themselvesasunbelieverswillreadilyadmittobelievinginthe valueof thedollarsintheirwallets,althoughthesearenothingbut scraps of paper.It is truethattheybear thewords'InGod we trust' and that the President of the United States,who is sworn inonthe Bible, missesnoopportunitytoremindusofthespecialbond betweenhiscountryandGod/7 abondechoedinthe motto' God blessAmeri ca' . Butweplaceourconfidence equally intheyenor 15.SeeL.Parisoli,'L'involontairecontributionfranciscaineauxoutilsdu capitalisme',inA.Supiot(ed.),Tisserlelien social,Paris,MSH, 2004,pp.199ff. 16.E.Kantorowicz,TheKing'sTwoBodies:aStudyinMedievalPolitical Theory,Princeton,PrincetonUniversityPress,1957. 17.AttheG8meetinginCanadain June 2002,PresidentBushdeclaredtothe summit(the summit of the eight richest countries in the world) that'the declaration of GodinthePledgeofAllegiancedoesn'tviolaterights.Asamatteroffact,it'sa confirmationofthefactthatwereceivedourrightsfromGod,asproclaimedinour DeclarationofIndependence'(UnitedPressInternational,28 June2002,andUSA Today,27June2002). PROLOGUEXVtheeuro, even though we have taken pains to eradicate anyreligious reference fromthem.'Irrational' beliefs instituted and guaranteed by the law can thus be foundatthe very heartof thearithmeticalrationality which isthe hallmarkofourtimes .Eventheeconomy,insofarasitinvolves exchange, is above all concerned with credit(etymologically credere: ' tobelieve' ) ; and,initsfreetradeform,isbasedentirelyonlegal fictions such as legal personality or the circulation of debt claims, that is,thecirculationofbeliefs.Thesedogmaticfoundationsofthe market1 8resurfacewhenevertheconfidenceofeconomicoperators beginstowaver.Onehasonly to cast doubtupon theveracity of a company'saccounts - those mysteriousiconscreatedbyaccounting rules - for the good old techniques of the oath and severe punishment of perjury,which American law i s extending to the wholeworld, to come galloping back,in order to restore confidence in the authenticity of thesereveredfigures .1 9 Whenallissaidanddone,noState,not eventhosethatdeclarethemselvestotallysecular,can dowithouta certainnumberoffoundingbeliefswhichcannotbeempirically demonstratedandyetwhichdetermineitsnatureandactions.Just astheabilitytocommunicate,andfreedomofspeech, wouldbe impossible withoutthedogmatic rules of language, so people cannot livefreelyandpeaceablywithoutthedogmaticnatureof the law.The West ' s proj ect of dominating the rest of the world i s based on itsconviction that it possesses the truthand issuperior toallother societies .This conviction has remained intact throughoutthedifferentformsithastakenhistorically. Itwasfirstconveyedbythe dogmas of Christian Rome, in which the ideaof the West originated, in opposition to the Christianity of the Eastern empire. It was in the nameof thesedogmasthatthenon-Christianworldwas first conquered and converted.Thereafter, science took over from religion to justifyrulingoverother populations. Until theSecondWorld War, theideaof abiological inequalitybetweenpeoplewaswidespread, particularlyinProtestantcountries ,andwasoneofthe' scientific truths 'inheritedfromDarwinianscience. 20Incountrieswitha 18.SeeA.Supiot'TheDogmaticFoundationsoftheMarket',IndustrialLaw journal,val.29,4,December2000,pp.321-45. 19.FollowingtheEnronandWorldComscandals,theSarbanes-Oxleylawof late July2002obligesdirectorsofcompaniestradingontheUSstockexchangeto swearunderoaththattheiraccountsarecorrect.Perjuryispunishablebytwenty years'imprisonment,anddirectorscannotevadetheirresponsibilitybyclaiming bankruptcy. 20.SeeA. Pichot,La Societe pure.De Darwin d Hitler, Paris, Flammarion, 2000. XV1 HOMOJURIDICUS Catholic tradition, like France, the colonial enterprise was j ustified by the idea of the West' s historical mission, a'civilizing mission' which aimed to dispel the night of superstition in which certain peoples were stillshrouded. Whiletheideaofracialinequalitymaywellhave disappearedafterNazismandthenotionof'civilizingmission'did notsurvivethecollapseofthecolonialempires,thehistoryofthe West nevertheless continues to unfold according to the same - slightly revised- logic. Humanityishenceforthdividedintodevelopedand under-developed countries( more recently termed'developing'); wellmeaningeconomistshave even invented'humandevelopmentindicators 'tomeasurehow farbehind certainpeoplesarecomparedto theirWesterncounterparts .21 Asfortheprophetsoftheendof history,theyconsiderthat the domination of the West over the rest of the world hasan obj ective cause,namely obedience to the laws of theeconomy.ThiscredohasbeentakenupbyEuropeanUnion institutions and international organizations, with a view to extending thesupposedbenefitsof afreemarketeconomyto thewholewide world.Whatever happens,Western countrieswill alwaysbe onthe righthistoricaltrack- especiallysincetheyaretheonlyonesto believeinsuchathing. 22 Western legal systems , in which the conceptionof the human being as arationalbeing i s most fully developed,arethemselvesbasedon dogma.For example, the Preamble to the French Constitution of 1946 opens thus: ' The French people once again proclaim that every human being, irrespective of race, religion or creed, possesses inalienable and sacred rights . 'The Subj ect - the French people - that proclaims these ' sacred rights' i s evidently not exposed to the condition of mortality, otherwiseitwouldbeunabletoremindtheworldofwhatithad already declared in 1789: the sacredness of Man himself. Likewise,the United States Declaration of Independence i s based on what are called ' self-evident truths'( ' Wehold these truths to be self-evident, that all menare created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . .. ' ), that is, on dogma in the etymological senseof the term: that which i s trueanddisplayedandhonouredas such.Itisclearlyareligiousstatement,i nwhatishistoricallythe 21.See theWorldReport on HumanDevelopment, published in the framework oftheUnitedNationsDevelopmentProgramme(UNDP),Brussels,deBoeckand Larcier,202.Theinventionofhumandevelopmentindicatorsisexplainedina technicalnoteintheAnnextotheReport,pp.22ff.Itturnsoutthatin202the Norwegianswerethemostdevelopedpeopleontheplanet. 22.SeeK.Lowith,MeaninginHistory:TheologicalImplicationsofthePhilosophyofHistory,Chicago,Universityof ChicagoPress,1949. PROLOGUEX11primarysenseoftheterm,thatis,astatement that cannot be freely evaluated but rather is absolutely and timelessly imposed onall.The cliche that is served up time andagain, that law arrives after the fact, overlooksthistemporalityoflegalsystems.Asisthecaseforany systembasedondogma,thelegalsystemcannotbesituatedina continuum of chronological timebuttakesplace in a sequential time frameinwhichanynewlawbothrepeatsafoundingdiscourseand generatesnewcognitivecategories.23 It is thanks to Pierre Legendre that thisconceptof dogmahas been placedattheheartofouranalysisofmodernity.24 ' Dogma' isa pivotalconceptinthehistory of science(particularly in medecine25) , butisgenerallytaken,ineverydaylanguage,toimplythevery oppositeofreason. Andyethumanreason- todayasinthepast, in the West as elsewhere - is founded on dogma, which i s 'the site of legal truth, posited and displayed sociallyas such' .26 Our entryinto language, which defines us as human beings, also opns the gates wide toeveryformofl unacy.Dogmai stheretoclosethosegates. The dogmatic dimension of human reasondid not escape the notice of the foundingfathersofthehumansciences. Tocquevillestatesthat dogmaticbeliefs' canchangeinformandobj ect,butonecannot makeit so that thereare no dogmaticbeliefs, that isto sayopinions whichmenacceptontrustandwithoutdebate' .27 AugusteComte, father of both sci entific positivism and the Religion of Humanity, is evenmore explicit:Dogmatismi s the normalstateof the humanmind,the stateto whichby natureit tends, continuously and in all sorts, even when the mind > to b distancing itself from it most. For scepticism 23.Thistemporalitycharacteristicoflegaldiscoursecanbeobservedinthe culturesoriginatinginthereligionsoftheBook.ForthecaseofIslam,seeAzizAIAzmeh,'Chronophagousdiscourse:astudyofclerico-legalappropriationofthe worldinanIslamictradition',inF.E.ReynoldsandD.Tracy(eds),Religionand PracticalReason,Albany,StateUniversityofNewYorkPress,1994,pp.163ff. 24.See particularlyP.Legendre,L'Empire deLaverite.Introduction aux espaces dogmatiques industriels, Paris,Fayard,1983;P.Legendre,Sur La questiondogmatique enOccident,Paris,Fayard,1999;alsohisDeLasocietecommetexte,op.cit. 25.SeeM. Herberger,Dogmatik.ZurGeschichtederBegriffundMethodein MedizinundJurisprudenz,Frankfurt,Klostermann,1981. 26.P.Legendre,SurLaquestiondogmatiqueenOccident,op.cit.,p.78. 27.A. de Tocqueville,De La democratie en Amerique,II,I, chap. I I;'DeIa source principaledescroyanceschezlespeuplesdemocratiques',translatedbyStephenD. GrantasDemocracyin America,II,I,ch. 2,'ThePrincipalSourceofBeliefsamong DemocraticPeople',Indianapolis,IN,Hackett,2000,p.175. xviii HOMOJURI DICUS isonlyastateofcrisis,theinevitableresultoftheintellectual interregnum which necessarily ocurs whenever the human mind is called to change doctrines, and at the same time a essential means employedwhetherbytheindividualorthespeciestpermitthe transitionfromonedogmatismtotheother;thatconstitutesthe onlyfundamentalutiityofdoubt[ . . . ].Modempeoplehave obeyedthisimperiouslawoftheirnature,evenintheirrevolutionary priod,since whenever it was necessary really to act - even if only tdestroy - they were led inevitably to give a dogmatic form tideaswhichwereinessence purelycritical.28 Oneshouldnotforgetthecentralroleofthereligiousparadigmin Durkheim'sandWeber' ssociology,andintheanthropologyof MarcelMaussandLouisDumont,noneofwhomlostsightof the beliefswhichbindhumansociety together.Yetdogmaisconsidered nowadaystobetheobsceneunderbellyofreason,destinedtobe eradicated.Since the legal system is clearly the last refuge of dogma, attempts have been made to subsume it under the lawsof science, whether the lawsofhistoryorrace,asinthepast,orthoseofeconomicsor genetics,asisthecasetoday.Such proj ectsaresupportedbythose legal theorists who see law as nothing but the product of political or economicforces .Materialistcritiquewasthefirsttotreatlawas nothing but a technique of power serving the interests of the powerful,suchthatonlylawsratifiedbyscienceshouldbebindingon people. This idea was brilliantly formulated by Pashukanis at the time of the Russian Revolution, 29 and was further developed by those for whom the idea of j ustice had no place in a' scientific'analysis of law (even if they themselveswere oftenaware of the very real injustices producedbyexisting legalsystems30) .Butreducing lawtoamere instrumentofforcehasalsobeenthehallmarkofalltotalitarian 28.A. Comte, 'Considerationson the Spiritual Power',Early PoliticalWritings, ed.andtrans.H.S. Jones,Cambridge/NewYork,CambridgeUniversityPress,1998, pp.214-15. 29.E.B.Pashukanis,'TheGeneralTheoryofLawandMarxism',inP.Beirne andR.Sharlet(eds),SelectedWritingsonMarxismandLaw,London/NewYork, AcademicPress,1980,pp.32-131. 30.DuncanKennedy,abrilliantrepresentativeofCriticalLegalStudies,describes his first days studying law as follows:'I started law school in 1967 with a sense that"the system" had a lotof injusticeinit,meaning thatthedistributionofwealth andincome andpowerand accesstoknowledgeseemedunfairly skewedalongclass andracelines,'in'TheStakesofLaw,orHaleandFoucault!',Legal Studies Forum, vol.15,1991,p.327. PROLOGUE xix regimes .Whentheyhavenotsimpl ydoneawaywithlegalforms altogether, they have exempted those inpositionsof power from any legal constraints.The fact that these enterprises have always ended in failureshows how futile the contemporary theoriesarethat seek to explainthelawwithoutreferencetotheideaofj ustice. Theyare mostlyelaboratedbyindividualsgenuinelyseekinggreaterinsight (evenif theydotendtooverlookthattheircomfortableacademic positionitself owesmuchtothelegalform) . 31 Butthosewhowere forcedtoreflectonthesesameissuesfromwithinthehellof totalitarianism drew quite different conclusions .SimoneWeilwrote in1943: Where forceisabsolutelysovereign,j usticeisabsolutelyunreal. Yet j ustice cannot bethat.We kncwit experimentally.Itis real enough i the hearts of men. The structure of a human heart is just much of a reality as any other in this universe, neither more nor less of a reality than the trajectory of a planet.It doesn't lie within the power of any M absolutely to exclude all justice whatsoever from theendswhichheassignstohisactions.TheNazisthemselveshave not been ableto dothis.If it were possible for men to do so, the Nazis would no doubt have ged it [ . . . ]If j ustice is ineradicable fromtheheartof Man,it must havea reality in this world.It isscience,then,whichismistaken. 32 Juristswhobelieveitisrealistictoeliminateallconsiderationsof j ustice fromtheiranalysis of thelawareprofoundlymisguidedand fundamentallyunrealistic: theyforgetthathumanbeingshavetwo 31.TheFrench'legal critique'movementwas explicitlyMarxistininspiration, which maybe explainswhy the'critical positivists' of today hardly refer to it. They are morelikelytoadhereto'theAmericanCriticalLegalStudiesmovement(called 'Crits').ThelatterrefersabundantlytoFoucaultandDerrida,whichcertainly breathesnewlifeintothatoldundertakingofseekingtomakelaw'witheraway' - aprojectrebaptized'deconstruction'- andwhichconvenientlyerasestheburdensomememoryofCommunismasitreallywas.FortheFrenchlegalcritiquemovement,seeM.Bourjoleta!.,Pourunecritiquedudroit.Du juridiqueaupolitique, Paris/Grenoble,Maspero andPU deGrenoble, 1978; andfor the Crits movement, see R.M.Unger,TheCriticalLegalStudiesMovement,Cambridge,MA,Harvard UniversityPress,1986;alsoA.C.HutchinsonandP.J.Monahan,'Law,Politics, andthe CriticalLegalScholars:TheUnfoldingDramaofAmericanLegalThought', StanfordLawReview,vol.36,1984,p.199. 32.S. Wei!,L'Enracinement. Preludedunedeclarationdes devoirsenversl'etre humain[1943],translatedbyA.F.WillsasTheNeedForRoots.Preludetoa Declarationof DutiesTowardsMankind,London,RoutledgeandKeganPaul, 1952, pp.232-3. XX HOMOJURI DICUS dimensions,and thatlifeinsocietypartakesbothof' being'andof ' ought-to-be' . Lawisneitheradivinerevelationnorascientific discovery. Itisawhollyhumancreationthatincludes thecontribution of those who claim to study it and who cannot remain blind to the values implied by their interpretations . Every society must develop a vision of j ustice thatissharedby all its members, inorder to avoid civilwar,andthisiswhatthelegalframeworkprovides.Whereas conceptions of j ustice differ from epoch to epoch and from country to country, the need for a shared representation of j ustice in a particular country and at a particular time does not.The legal system i s where thisrepresentation takesshape and, although itmay well be contradicted by the facts, it gives shared meaning and a common orientation to people' s actions. These are the very simple truths which the horrors of the Second World War fixed firmly in everyone's mind, and which j urists are today forgetting when they claim, i n the name of science33-andreturningtothepositivistidealsofthe pre-Waryears34 - that every 'value choice' falls within the sphere of individual morality and must therefore be excluded from the strictly legal sphere. The study of lawrequiresknowledgeableandscholarlymindscapableofunderstandingthemoral,economicandsociali ssuesinvolvedinlegal technique, and not latterday Scholastics professing to possess the 'true science' .33.Theclaimt o thestatusof'scientist'defended by certainjurists(someeven comparethemselvestonuclearphysicists!)wouldbesimplycomicalifitdidnot remind us chillingly of whatGeorgesRipertwrote in his preface to a collective volume onNazilaw:'Menofsciencehavetherighttobeunconcernedwiththepractical consequencesoftheirresearch'(inEtudesde droitallemand,Paris,LGDJ,1943,pp. VI- VII,citedby C.SingerinVichy,l'Universite etles juif s,Paris,LesBelles-Lettres, 1992,p.179).RipertwasDeanoftheLawFacultyofParisandbecameSecretaryof StateforEducationundertheVichy government. It is in thisrole that he presided over thefirstpoliticalandracialpurgesoftheteachingprofession.Inprivatehedeclared thathefoundthefirstanti-Semiticlaws'brutalandunjust',whileatthesametime overseeingtheirimplementationasa'technicaladvisor'(C.Singer,Vichy,l'Universite,op.cit., p. 95; on this subject, see also the courageous summary byD. Lochak, 'La doctrine sousVichy ou lesmesaventures du positivisme', inD.Lochak et al.(eds),Les Usagessociauxdudroit,Paris,PUF,1989,pp.252ff.). 34.See the biting criticism that H.Dupeyroux levelled at legal positivists as early as1938:'Ourlegalpositivistsmaytryastheymaytobanishthatuncomfortable notioncalled justice-be donewith it, lock it upsomewhere, keep it from gettingoutitwillnecessarilyreturntoitsproperplaceduetotheteleologicalnatureoflaw.It permeates every rule; it reappears inenforcement, or inthe refusal of enforcement; all attemptstostifleitaredestinedinadvancetofailure.IfImayputitinsuchterms, justice seeps in everywhere'('Les grands problemes du Droit', Archives de philosophie dudroit,1938, vols1-2,pp. 2D-21). PROLOGUE xxi Other j uristsdonotdenythatthelawhassomething todowith j ustice, buttheyimmediatelyidentifyj usticewithmaximizingindividualutility.35Thisiswhatthe'LawandEconomics' doctrine does, relatingeveryruletoacalculationof utility whichwouldbe both its source and the measureof its legitimacy. 36 This doctrine has becomeverypopularonFrenchcampusesand has foundadditional support in the Court of Cassation ( Cour de cassation)which recently became itsmost zealousadvocate.37 So even j urists have been bitten by this mania for calculation, and seek to reduce humansociety to the sumofindividualutilities .3 8 Fromsuchaperspective,allrightsare individualrights.Everyruleistransformedintoasubj ectiveright: righttosecurity,toinformation,toprivacy,todignity,tohavea child, toafairtri al, toknowledgeofone' sorigins,andsoforth. Rightsare doled out like arms - and now it'sover to you!Law asa sharedheritagedisappearsinthisflodofindividualrights,which 35.Inthis theyreflecttoday'sprevailingeconomism.Thefamousworkof J. Rawls(ATheory of justice, Oxford, ClarendonPress, 1972) owes much of its success to the fact that it posited a contractual basis for the generalization ofthe calculation of utility.Foramorebrutal,butalsoclearer,presentationofthiswayofconceiving society,seeG.S.Becker,TheEconomicApproachtoHumanBehavior,Chicago, UniversityofChicagoPress,1976. 36.R.A.Posner,EconomicAnalysisof Law[1972], 5thedn, NewYork,Aspen Law&Business,1998;R.CooterandT.Ulen,LawandEconomics,GlenviewIllinois,Scott, Foresman& Co.[1988], 2nd edn, 1996;E.Mackaay,'La regie juridique observeeparleprismedel'economiste,unehistoirestyliseedumouvementde !'analyseeconomiquedudroit',Revueinternationalededroiteconomique,vol.1, 1986,p.43,andid.,L'Analyseeconomiquedudroit,vol.1:Fondements,Montreal andBrussels,Themis&Bruylant,2000. 37.This highest jurisdiction,whichonemighthavethoughtwasthere to judg and not to support and disseminate theories, organized a series of conferences in 2004 inpartnershipwith the Chair of 'Regulation' at SciencesPo Paris(l'Institut des etudes politiquesdeParis).The title ofthis cycle could not be more explicit:'TheRelevance andJnterestofanEconomicAnalysisforLaw,EconomicsandJustice'-towhich shouldbe addedthe explanationgiven by theFirstPresidentofthe Cour de cassation to the press: 'Judgesat the Cour decassationshould beable to integratean economic analysis into their legalarguments'(G. Canivet,'La Cour de cassationdoit parvenira uneanalyseeconomique"pertinente" ', LesEchos,1March204).Incallingupon economicanalysis to lay down the law through its integration into legal reasoning, the normativedimensionofsuchananalysisisbeingenshrinedbythehighestjudgein France. 38.One is eventually led to reduce the law to the calculation of interestswhich is operativeinthecontract.Butinso doing,itistheverynotionofcontractthatis destroyed.An example of this is providedby the contemporary theory of the'efficient breachofcontract',accordingtowhichthereisnodifferencebetweenhonouring one'swordandprovidingreparationfortheconsequencesofnotdoingso.See Chapter3. xxii HOMOJURIDICUS obscures the fact thatlawhastwoaspects,s ubj ective and obj ective, and that they are two sides of the same coin. In order for each of us to be able to enj oy hisor her subj ective rights(lesdroits ) ,these must be relatedtolawasalegalsystem(leDroit) whichistheshared frameworkrecognizedbyall,andthenormativeskeletonwithin whichindividualrightstakeonmeaning.Lawasthebodyoflegal rulesstemsfromtheState,thesovereignlegislator,whetherinthe formofthePrinceortheNation.Itisthisideaofl awasheteronomousrulesthati s withering away,39 asthough personscouldbe bearersofindividualrightswithoutanyneedforthelaw, which makes these not only enforceable but, firstly, possible.It is as though, onthecontrary,thewholesphereof thel awweresimplythesum totalarri ved atbyadding andsubtracting different,and sometimes conflicting,individual rights.Thecommonlawtradition,whichi stoday' s dominantlegal cultureandalsothecradleoftheeconomicanalysisoflaw, can go all the more blithely downthis path becauseit preciselylacksa termequivalent to the French Droit objectif (or Droit witha capital D). The French concept has equivalents throughout the Continental tradition.I ti stranslatedby' l aw' inEngl i sh, butthetranslation l osesboth the ideaof direction,of common orientation,whichthe termDroittakesfromitsrootdirectum,andthedistinction between singlelaworpieceoflegislation( loi , Legge, Gesetz, ley)andthesphereofthelawasalegalsystem( Droit, Diritto, Recht, Derecho) , adistinctionthatholdsthroughoutContinental Europe.ThisdistinctionoriginatesinRomanlaw,41wherelex designates the place where a legal system i s founded(well conveyed by the German term Gesetz:'that which i s pl aced,posited' ) ,and ius the rules governing how this system functi ons .The modern meaning of thisdistinctioncomestous from Romano-Canonical law which conceivestheStateonthemodelofthepapacy,asStateand Legislatorinone, bothsourceof thel aw(thesystemofrules,le Droit)and of rights ( the prerogatives secured for each individual,les droits ) .Engl ish retains from the tradition of ius only the figure of the 39.SeeJ. Carbonnier,Flexible Droit. Pour une sociologie du droit sans rigueur, Paris,LGDJ,6thedn,1988,p.85. 40.Derived from dirigo:'to trace apath','to guide'(see R. Maltby,ALexicon of AncientLatinEtymologies,op.cit.). 41.See for examplethe Institutes of Gaius, 1-3, translated by W.M.Gordon and O.F.Robinson,London,Duckworth, 1988. On the origins of the concept of ius, seeA Magdelain,'LeIus archalque'[1986], reprinted inIusimperiumauctoritas.Etudes de droitromain,Rome,EcolefranaisedeRome,1990,pp. 3-93. PROLOGUE xxiii ' j udge' andof ' j ustice' , inotherwordsthesceneof recognitionof individual rights in litigation.In thecommon law tradition, it is the j udgeandnottheCrown(theState)thatincarnatestheultimate source of legitimacy - the totemic figure of legislative power - and nowordexistsfor thenormativewholethroughwhichindividual rightsgain theirmeaningandsignificance.42 However,thedifferencebetweencommonlawandContinental cultures should not be overemphasized, since the idea of a normative unity is certainly present in the common law tradition, while holding aless prominent positionthan in itsContinentalcounterparts,since in common law the normative unity (equivalent to FrenchleDroit) develops out of individual rights (equivalent to French les droits) , and notviceversa.Ifwetake,forexample,thelegalmechanismsfor controlling globalization, a j urist from the Continental tradition will thinkfirstlyof thecreationof internationalinstitutionscapableof formulating common rules,while a common law j uristwill think of endowing every inhabitantoftheplanetwiththesameindividual rights. Commonlaw has typically flourished in Protestant countries, where the idea of the believer's unmediated individual relation to the Text is most fully developed. Without going into the relative influence of thereligious and legal traditions here,we can simply note the idea thatnothingintervenesbetweentheindividualandthel aw. Our contemporary world sees great potential in this, because it allows one toimaginelawswithoutStates .Forexample,economicanalysesof law treat the whole of humanity as an aggregate of individuals armed with the same rights - the right to vote, the right to property, human rights - and competing with each other under the rule of the one and only law,the law of themarket,which prescribes the struggle of all against all .This vision of the world allows one to dismiss States and legal systems as expressions of localsovereignty which have no place in theimperialmodelwhich is today making acomeback under the nameof globalization. Butbymakingtheindividualthealphaandomegaoflegal thought, thesolecertaintythatstudying lawcan yield is forgotten, namelythat there is no identitywithoutlimits,and if peopledo not findlimitsinternallytheywillseekthembeyondthemselves. Europeanizationandglobalizationopenontoasinisterfuture if they are 42.The English-language translation of Hegel'sGrundlinien der Philosophie des RechtsasPhilosophyof Rightisasignof thisdifficultyandparticularlyabstrusefor anAnglophonereader(seeHegel,PhilosophyofRight,trans.T.M.Knox,Oxford, OxfordUniversityPress,1965,ortrans.S.W.Dyde,NewYork,PrometheusBooks, 1996). xxivHOMOJURIDICUS conceivedasprocessesofobliterationofdifferencesandhomogenizationofbeliefs.Tobelievethatone' scategoriesofthoughtare universalandto impose them on therestof theworld isthesurest way todisaster. Old Europe knowsathing or two aboutit ,having troddenthatpathtimeandagain.Franceinparticularhasalways finallycomeupagainstthelimitsofitsuniversalistpretensions,fromtheNapoleoniccampaignstotheIndochineseWar.Similar disappointmentsawaittheutopiaof aglobalized worldexchanging marketvaluesandhumanrightsinpidginEnglish.Theradical individualismthat hastaken holdof legal thought has transformed the beliefsunderlying Western legalsystemsintosometranscendent Lawwhichisthen i mposedonthe wholewideworld.That i s how wearriveataWesternfundamentalismwhichcannotbutfuelthe fundamentalismsof othersystems of belief.If we claim to make the worlduniform,we wreckall chancesofunifying it,anddissolving our legal heritage intoacollection of individual rights securedby a supposedlyuniversalLawisthesurestpathtoa' clashofcivilizations' wherebeliefconfrontsbelief,armedtotheteeth.A better solution would be to return to what has always been the distinctive feature o. f legalsystems: notthebeliefsthey contain,on whichtheWesthasflourished,buttheresourcesofinterpretation they harbour. Alegalframework,likeanyothernormativesystem, fulfils the function of an interdiction.It i s a word imposed on all,and interposedbetweeneach person andhisor her representationof the world.Everywhere else, this anthropological role has been assigned to religion, which endows human lives with a common meaning and can thus fend off the danger threatening each of us of succumbing to our own private madness,as from our entry into language. The specificity ofthelawinthissense, sinceitsemergenceinGraeco-Roman Antiquity, is that it has progressively moved away from its religious originstoarriveatwhatLouisGernetcallsa' secularizationof speech' . 43Ithasbecomeatechniqueofinterdiction:atechnique, becauseitsmeaningisnotsealedwithinthe letterof asacredand immutable Textbut,like any other technical obj ect,dependson the obj ectives that people have set for it, and these are human, not divine, ends; andatechniqueof inter-diction, whichinterposesarealmof shared meaning transcending the individual and carrying obligations with it,between people,andbetween peopleandthe world,andso 43.See L.Gerner,'Droit etpredroiten Greceancienne',L'Anneesociologique, 1951,pp.Zlff.reprintedinhisDroitetinstitutionsenGriceantique,Paris, Flammarion,1982,p. 110. PROLOGUE XXVtransforms each of us into a link in the human chain. 44 Law has served manyvariedpurposesinthehistoryofpoliticalsystemsasinthe historyofscienceandtechnology,butithasservedthesebysubordinating power and technology to human reason.It is therefore as misguided to reduce lawtoa' mere technicality'emptyof meaning, whichpeopletendtodotoday,asitistosubsumeitunderthe supposedly immutable rules of a hypotheticalNatural Law, as people didinthepast.Ineithercase, law' sessentialqualityi sneglected, namely that it can temper the most varied forms of political power or technological prowesswith ameasure ofreason.It is this quality that should be borne in mind and defended today. While it would be madness to seek to make the law into an instrument forspreadingourbeliefsabroad, wecanreasonablyhopethatthe resources of interpretation provided by our legal technique may save us from aninward-looking attitude by forcing usto see j usticealso through the eyes of others. Since the dogmatic resources of the law are grounded neither in adeclaration of faith, sealed once and for all in the letter of a Text, nor i n the certainties of a fetishized science, they canat best found a fragile equilibrium whichwillalwaysbe exposed to the temptation of fundamentalism.This temptation hastwo sides toit,legalnihilismandreligiousfanaticism,whichtoday reinforce eachotherand,indeprivingpresentandfuturegenerationsofa universeofmeaningwhichprecedesthem,cannotbutunleashviolence. LawisnottheexpressionofatruthrevealedbyGodor discoveredbyscience;anditisnotsimplyatoolwhichcouldbe j udgedonthebasisof itsefficiency(efficient for whom? ) .Likethe measuring instruments in Durer' s Melencholia,its role is to come as close as possible to anaccurateand j ust representation of the world, in the knowledge that thiscan never be achievedabsolutely.4. TheFrench term interdit (English 'prohibition' or 'interdiction') captures the sensebothofsomethingthatissaid(interdit@ fromtheverbdire,'tosay'),andof somethingsaidbetween(interdit); ass uch,thetermimpliesbothaseparationanda linkthatmakesspeechandsharedmeaningpossible. PartOne LEGALDOGMA: OURFOUNDINGBELIEFS 1 THEHUMANBEINGASIMAGODEI Itispreciselythecharacteristicfeatureof theawakeninghuman spiritthataphenomenonhasmeaningforit. Wittgenstein Letuslearnourlimitsthen:wearesomething,butwearenot everything.Suchexistence as we havehides from us the knowledge of frstprinciples,which ariseoutof nothing;athe littlenessof ourbeingconcealstheinfinite fromoursight. Pascaf Theoldestwrittennarrativeto comedowntousi stheepicof Gilgamesh.3It recountsthewanderingsofayoung king,halfman, halfgo,who,afterlosinghiscompanionanddouble,Endiku,4 scourstheuniverseseekingareplytothequestion:'Whyisthere death?Howcanwe avoid death? 'Thisquestion,which i sasoldas humanity itself, still torments us today. If research proj ects in genetics and biotechnology attract so much funding and stir such passions,it is because they hold out the promise of answering it one day. What ageolddreamsbiology is currently vested with: the dream of discovering thehiddenbuildingblocksofthehumanbeing,ofhavingperfect children, of knowing and mastering the ultimatecauses of i llness and oldageoroflivingonthroughareplicaofoneself!Scienceand 1.' Das ist eben das Charakteristische am erwachendenGeist des Mens chen,da ihmeineErscheinungbedeutendwird' ;inL.Wittgenstein,RemarksonFrazer's 'GoldenBough',trans.A.C.Miles,Retford,Brynmill,1917,p.7. 2. ' Connaissonsdonenotreportee:noussommesquelquechose,et ne sommes pas tout; ce que nous avons d'etre nous derobe La connaissance des premiers principes, quiviennent du neant; et le peu que nous avons d'etre nous cache Lavuede l'infini', in Pascal,ThePensees,trans.J.M. Cohen, Harmondsworth,PenguinBooks,pp.53-. 3.TheEpicofGilgamesh,trans.AndrewGeorge,London,PenguinClassics, 2003. 4.Ibid.,p.7.4 HOMOJURIDICUS technologytodayelicitthe same mixture of hopeand fear as did the building of cathedrals a few centuries ago.Every large town wants its scienceparkorcyclotron,andopensitspurseliberallytoattract scientific infrastructures toitsarea. Whilewe may not beconvinced that synchrotrons or biotechnology centres will leave behind them for futuregenerationswonderscomparabletoGothicart,wecannot really be surprised that now, as in the past,vastsumsare lavished on revealing themysteriesof theuniverse. Butwhereas,forareligion, transcendingthehumanconditionisreservedforanotherworld, science and technology let us glimpse this possibility in the here and now. Today, as in all other epochs, human beings do not escape their secretdesire for immortality, but the singular character of this desire in the West, where the human being is conceived in the image of God, is revealed in a combined fear of and faith in scientific progress .Since ouridentificationwithGodhasoutlivedthedisappearanceofits religious roots,we are tempted to throw off anyand every limit;but thisdreamoflimitlessnesscontainswithinitadestinyofdecomposition, since in decayalone are the limits of the human being truly abolished.ThNormativeInstitutionof theHumanBeing Nothing is more difficult to grasp than what founds us . We allbelieve inthefirstarticleoftheUniversalDeclarationof HumanRights, whichstatesthathumanbeingsarebornfreeandendowedwith reason, and so we have difficulty admitting that reason and freedom areprecariousconstructionswhichhaveaninstitutionalbasi s. The limits of the sovereignty of the human mind are only perceptible when we reflect onourselvesandon the fragility of our rational faculty. Evensomeonewhoisaconverttothereassuringcertaintiesof cognitivismand who conceives his mind asa computer with a human face,capableof processinghuge quantitiesof data,may well,if he reflectsonwhathereallyknows, respondinthetermsofSaint Augustine: Thisfacultyof memoryisagreat one,0myGod,exceedingly great,avast,infinite recess .Who canplumbitsdepth?Thisis a facultyof mymind,belongingtomy nature,yetIcannotmyself comprehend all that Iam.Is the mind,then, too narrow tograsp itself, forcing us to ask where that part of it is which it is incapable of grasping?Is it outside the mind, not inside? How can the mind THEHUMANBEINGASIMAGODEI notcompassit ?EnormouswonderwellsupwithinmewhenI think of thi s,andIamdumbfounded. 5 If each of us feels threatened with being dumbfounded, it is because eachmind, like Saint Augustine' s,is too narrow to encompassitself andhasto look beyond itself to find the grounds ofits being.Like every living creature,thehumanbeing experiencesthe world firstly through the senses;but, unlike all others, the human being has access, through language, to auniverse beyond the here and now of sensory experience. The finite natureofourorganic,biological life i ssupplemented by mental representations, which know nolimits .A child whoappearstobe makingsandcastlesisin fact building fortresses populatedbycreatureshe hasinventedandover which he rules;he may be there on the beach but the story he is telling himself spirits him awaytothedistanttimesofknights,deepinaforest,orelseto anotherplanetinaspacecraft. Throughthe wordshewhispersto himselforexchangeswithhisplaymates,heexperiencesanintoxicating freedom which no animal has ever known, as he invents other possibleworldswherehecanfly,haveadouble,becomeinvisible, become an ogre or agiant . . . a world in which he conferssense on the obj ects he creates or the drawingshe makes,and which hasthus becomethevisibleimprintof hismind.Oncewe have entered thissymbolicuniverse,onlyclinicaldeath can remove us from it.We thusevolve in the physicaluniverse of our biological being and its natural environment, and also in the symbolic universe of words and objects that the human mind has endowed with meaning.This piece of carved wood is certainly made of wood and as suchbelongsto the natural worldaroundme, but it i s alsoastick,a technicalobject,andwhichhassignificance,asany potentialopponentwillbequicktonotice.6 Theword' No' i sindeedaphysical obj ect - it can be analysed phonetically or as ink on paper - but it is alsoawordthat,unlikeacry,derivesitssensefromtheplaceit occupies in the structured totality of signs that constitute the English language. 7Humanbeingsattaina freedom thatistrulyvertiginous throughtheactofcraftingobj ectsandthroughthewordsthat designatethem. Itisthe freedomtoreconstructtheworldintheir 5.SaintAugustine,Confessions,X, 8,15,trans.MariaBoulding,NewYork, New CityPress,1997,pp.246-7. 6.SeeA.-G. Haudricourt, LaTechnologie,sciencehumaine.Recherchesd'histoireetd'ethnologie destechniques,Paris,MSH,1988,p.37. 7.Onthespecificity ofhumanlanguage, seeT.Deacon,The Symbolic Species. TheCo-evolutionofLanguageandtheHumanBrain,London,Penguin,1997. 6 HOMOJURI DICUS image,towrestthemselvesfromtheweightofthingsbyendowing them withmeaning.Butonedoesnotj ustwanderintothe universeofsense without knocking. If we are to take up a place within it, we must first abandon thewishtofashiontheworldinourimagealoneandlearnto recognize the limits of our subjectivity. We are metaphysical animals, andalwaysriskbeingcarriedawaybythegiddying powersofour imagination. In using our mental faculties we must therefore learn to discern what isimaginary and what isreal in this world of symbols whichbothlinksustoandseparatesusfromthephysicalworld. Whoever is imprisoned within the confines of their own vision of the world, oblivious to the sense that others give it - and who is therefore incapableofcommunicatingthat vision - isliterallyself-estranged. We may enter the universe of sense only on renouncing the pretension to dictate the sense of the universe and on recognizing that thissense cannotbe embracedbyonepersonalone.Modern science abandons this pretension to givemeaningtothe world more radically than any other discipline,since its goal is the worldofthesensesandnotthatofsense. Aprocedureistruly scientific when it no longerasksthequestionwhy?but the question how?:no finality is presupposed,and no ' spirit' is posited within the obj ect of scientific investigation. The latter may be explained only by theinterplayof thelawsgoverningmatter.Thisisthepositionof scienceevenwhenitexaminestheultimateoriginofthings.The hypothesisof theBigBangaimsto explainhow,andnotwhy,the universe came about,and hence it is fundamentally different from the narrativesoforiginsthat onefindsin everyreligionandwhich give meaning to thehumancondition.But whenever ascientistclaimsto explain the meaning of human life in the nameof science, he or she is in fact doing anything but following scientific procedure and is giving way to scientism.A truly scientific methodaims to efface the subject in favour of the obj ect and cannot therefore explain what founds the subj ect. 8 It is obliged to postulate that people are capable of agreeing on a representation of the world that is compatible with the evidence of the senses.This capacity is human reason, which is not an effect of scientificprocedurebutitsverycondition. Humanreasonisthereforealwaysanaccomplishment,theprecariousestablishment of shared meaning which we can all believe in becauseitaccountsforoursensoryexperience.Itisbasedon 8. See E.Husser!, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,trans.DavidCarr,Evanston,IL,NorthwesternUniversityPress,190.THEHUMANBEINGASIMAGODEI 7 certaintiesthatcannotbe demonstrated,ondogmatic resources that bridgetheworldofsenseandtheworldofthesenses. These certainties may differ from one society to another or from one period to another but our need for them i s unchanging.9 There is no obj ective sensetobediscoveredintheworldofnature;senseisnecessarily posited.In order to become rational subj ects,human beings must first enter asymbolicuniversewhich attributes sense to themand to the things that surround them.They are credited with a meaning to their lives before being indebted for the life they have received.Teaching a childto speak isthefirstwayof honouring thisdebt,butlearning a language involvesaccepting therulesthatgovernit,and it ison this condition alone that the child will later be able to give free expression to his or her thoughts andbring forthnew ones.Saussure noted that:Whenaphilosopherorpsychologist[ . .. ] announcesanew system,doingawaywithallprevious notions,thethinker' s new ideas,however groundbreaking, can only b classified i the terms of the languageinuse.None maycome tob classified under an existing word by chance[ . . . ] Furthermore, there willalways be a particular term whichALREADYcorrespondsbtter than others to thenewdistinctions . 10 We areallsubject totheheteronomyof language. It constitutes the condition of any discussion and thus cannot itself be debated.A world where each of us had to,or sought to, reinvent language would be a worldofmadmen;sharedmeaningimpliescallingaspadeaspade without wondering why one says ' spade' .Similarly, there i s no reason whyoneshould driveonthe left rather thanonthe right but if we each had to make a decision about this at every moment, deaths on the roadwouldrisetomillions .Language,customs,religion,lawand ritesareall founding normsof human life. They ensure an existing order within which people can act, even if their actions call this order intoquestion.The institution of reason is what allows every human to reconcile the finitudeoftheirphysicalexistencewiththeinfinityoftheirmental universe.In order to achieve this, we must learn to inscribe within the universe of sense the threefold limits placed on our biological existence: 9.Onthe dogmatic basis of the human intellect,seeA.Comte,'Considerations on the Spiri tualPower',op.cit., pp. 21415;Tocqueville, Democracy in America, II,I ,ch.2,op.cit.,pp.47ff. 10.F.deSaussure,WritingsinGeneralLinguistics,trans.CarolSandersand MatthewPires,Oxford,OxfordUniversityPress,2006(Saussure'semphases}. 8 HOMOJURIDICUS birth,sex anddeath.Accepting these limitsisalready the exercise of reason.When we give meaning to the fact of birth - our birth and that of ourchildren - we haveunderstoodthat we are inscribed within a chainofgenerations,thatweliveindebtedforthelifewehave received, 1 1 andfromthiswecancometounderstandtheideaof causality. When we assume our sexual identity, we understand that we embodyonlyhalf of . humanityandthatwe needtheother half,and from this we come tounderstandthe idea of differentiation, and learn to relate the part to the whole . When we learn to accept our death, we conceivethattheworldwilloutliveus,thatourlife issubjecttoa constraintonwhichwehavenopurchase,andthuswecometo understandtheideaofthenorm. 12 Ineverysociety,theprocessof humanizing theanthropoids we are involves giving sense and form to these three limits, thusenablingus to become rationalbeings.That is thepurposeofwhatcanbecalledthereligioussentiment,inits broadestsense, which is adistinctive feature of humanity,and which situateseachperson'slifewithinaframeworkwhichtranscends them. 13 TheWesternworldtodayi snoexceptiontothisruleand its' di senchantment'doesnotgosofarastorejectfuneralrites altogether and treat corpses as mere refuse. 14 Or rather, when it treats them in this way - as the world of the Nazi concentration camps has shownus - it has sunk into scientisticmadness,reducing man to the status of a thing. Collective irrationality and negation of the meaning of humanexistence are twosidesof thesamecoin. Thefactofendowingsexualdifference,birthanddeathwith meaningdoesnotimplythatthehumanbeingisincapableof i maginingaworldwheretheselimitscouldbedispensedwith.For the Vedicgods,the notion of filiation goes inboth directi ons,withfathersbeingsonsoftheirsonsoreventheirownsons . 1 5 Angel s ,int he monotheisticreligions, havenosexuality and know 1 1 . On thi s idea of the debt contracted by every person by virtue of being born, see C. Mal amoud( ed. ) ,Debts and Debtors,New Delhi,Vikas,1983,and his Liens de vie,noeudsmortels.LesrepresentationsdeLa dette enChine,au japanetdansle monde indien, Paris, EHESS, 1988; also his contribution in M.Aglietta and A. Orlean (eds ) ,LaMonnaiesouveraine,Paris,0.Jacob, 1998,pp. 65ff. 12.Deathisthearchetypallimitwhichfoundsasystemsof norms. TheVedic Godof death,Yama,is also the Dharma,god of l aws.See C. Malamoud, Le ]umeau solaire,Paris,Seuil,2002,pp.8f. 13. SeeVercors,Borderline,trans.RitaBarisse,London,Macmillan,1954. 14. Oncontemporarydevelopmentsinthel egalstatusofthecorpse,seeJ. - R.Binet,Droitet progresscientifique.Sciencedu droit,valeursetbiomedecine,Paris, PUF, 2002. 15. SeeC.Malamoud, Le]umeausolaire,op.cit.,p.36.THEHUMANBEINGASI MAGODEI9 nodeath. ThethemeofthepregnantmanispresentintheBible ( the account of thebirth of Eve from Adam' srib16)and in Greek mythology( Dionysus, bornof Jupiter' sthigh17) ,nottomention oneofthemanyforgottenepisodesintherecenthistoryof biology,thatof reproductionthroughparthenogenesi s. 18 Ifthe ideaofcloninghumanbeingsgivesrisetosuchheateddebate today,iti sbecauseitdrawsonthiscollectivefantasyofa superhumanuniverse. Beingabl etoproducereplicasofourselves holdsoutthepromiseofeliminatinginonegoallthreeofthe limitsplacedonthehumancondition: itwouldfreeusfromthe successionofgenerations,fromdependenceontheoppositesex andfromdeath,byenablingustocontinueindefinitely .Dreams ofdupli cationare nothing new.Storiesof doublesabound,inall civili zations,mostlyconcerningtwinsandtheparticulardangers attachedtothem. 1 9Thethemeofthedoublehasalsoinspired manyworksof fiction. Whatallthesestorieshaveincommonis that theyalwaysendbadlyforthe clonedcharacter( for example inthefilmsConfessionsofaRogui0 orTheKingandthe Mockingbird2 1)andalsofortheclone(forexample, thecloneof ProfessorMortimer2) .Doublesalwaysmeetasorryendbecause,whiletheyareabsolutelysense-l ess, theyal sotriggerafantasy thati ssopowerfulthatthetalecanendonlywiththedeathof theoriginalorthecopy.Yet peopleargue that whenhumankind harboured the dreamof flying off intospace like anangel ,or like Icarus,suchaventurewaslikewiseconsidereddoomed,until aviationmadeitpossibl e. Whyshoulditnotbethesamefor cloning?Isitnotthedistinctivefeatureofhumanbeingstouse theiri maginationtotransformtheworld, andpushbackever furtherthelimitsoftheircondition? Sincesciencegivesusa gli mpse of the technicalpossibilityofself-repl ication,why should 16. See R. Zapperi,The PregnantMan,trans.Brian Williams,Chur and New York,HarwoodAcademic,1991.17. SeeC. Isl erKerenyi, DionysosnellaGreciaarcaica.IIcontributodelle immagini,Pisa-Rome,Istitutieditorialiepoligraficiinternazionali,2001.18. See A. Pichot,' Cionage: FrankensteinouPieds-Nickeles? ' , LeMonde,30 November 2001,and A. Pichot,' Quise souvientde M. J. ?' ,Le Monde,27 December 2002. 19.For AncientGreece,seeC.Isler Kerenyi,DionysosnelleGrecia arcaica, op. cit.,pp.120ff.;forIndia,seeC. Malamoud, Le]umeau solaire,op.cit. 20.Copieconforme,filmby]. Dreville,Paris,1947. 21 . LeRoietl'oiseau,filmby P. Grimault,Paris,1979. 22. E.P.Jacobs,Les3formulesduprof.Sato,PartI, MortimerdTokyo, Brussels, Ed. duLombard,1977. 10HOMOJURIDICUS itbeforbidden?Shouldnoteverythingthatispossibleand conceivableberealized?23 Human cloning is not, however, j ust another technological proj ect . Its goal is not to extend human mastery over nature but to dissolve the verylimitsthatconstitutethehumanbeing;itisinthefieldof eugenics rather thanof aviation that a hi storical precedent should be sought. An aeroplane, j ust like the first hewn stone,imprints the mark of humanwillonanexternalobject,whereaseugenicsandhuman cloning aimto imprint the willof somehumansonthecreationof others .Humanitywillthen bedividedbetween producers of people andpeopleproduced,undertheaegisofthe' lawsof science' .24In producing humansin hisownimage,Manwouldrealize hiswildest dreamsofoccupyingthepositionofGodtheFather,theabsolute Father who i s neither the son nor the husband of anyone and who is thereforefreedfromallthelimitsdefiningthehumancondition. HumanbeingswouldbereplayingGenesisontheirown terms, no longersimplyprocreatingaslinksinachainof generationswhose meaninggoesbeyondthem,butbecomingCreators,theultimate Origin of beings programmed by them. The proj ect of human cloning effects a passage to the limit of the Western conception of the human being,treatingthisbeingbothasomnipotentcreatorandaspure obj ect of technological manipulation.This project could only emerge inthe anthropological context of the West,which conceives Man in the image of God.It ispartof amucholderand moredeeply rooted movementby whichscientificrationalityi s transformedintoscientistic madness . In order to understand this movement, we must revisit theproperlyWesternconceptionof thehumanbeingandexamine howitdiffersfromallothers.TheLegaFoundtionsof thePerson Like all other societi es,our own is founded on a certain conception of the human being that gives meaning to our lives .From a legalpoint of view, we consider humans to be endowed with reason, and subj ects of W 23.SeetheargumentputforwardbyFranoiseHeritier,ananthropologistand professorat theCollege de France,in favour of l egalizingsame-sexparenting:'When thingsare possible and begin to bethinkable,theywillend upbeing realizedone day oranother'[ ' Quandleschasessontpossiblesetcommencentaetrepensables,elles finissentunj ourou)'autreparetrerealisables'] ,LeMonde,3May2001,p. 10.24. J. -L. BaudouinandC. Labrusse-Riou,Produirel 'homme:deque!droit? Etudeethiqueetjuridiquedesprocreationsartificielles,Paris,PUF,1987.THE HUMAN BEI NGASIMAGODEI inalienableandsacredrights .Butfromascientificpointof view, humansareobj ectsof knowledge whose behaviourcanberevealed and explained by biology, economics, the social sciences, and so forth.These two aspects of the human being - subj ective and obj ective - are twosidesofthesamecoin,sinceitisonlyin thelightof acertain conceptionofthemindthatthebodycomestobeconsideredasa thing. 2 Theconceptsof subj ectandobj ect,personandthing,mind andmatteraredefinedbymutualopposition,eachconceivedin relationtotheother.Positivescienceisentirelyreliantonthese concepts,anditsownactivitywouldbeimpossiblewithoutthe postulateofahumanbeingcapableofrationalthought .Thispostulate i spreciselynot the resultofscientificdemonstration,iti sa dogmaticaffirmation,developedinthehistoryoflawandnotthe historyofscience.Contemporaryscholasticquarrelsthatseta ' materialist'neurologistagainsta'spiritualist'philosopher26 would be quite simply incomprehensible in a system of thought not based on these dichotomies . The culture of imperial China, for example, which hadnonotionof thesubject,27 couldevidentlynotqualifycertain persons as ' objects ' ,as was the case in imperial Rome,and therefore had no notion of s lavery in its precise sense.Before medicine could be conceivedasascience,andworkasanegotiablecommodity,the humanbeing had first to be conceivedas amaterialobj ect .Modern scienceandeconomicswouldnothave seen the light of daywithout thespecificallyWesternlegalconfigurationcalledthe humanbeing.OurWesternconceptionofthehumanbeingasanabstract universal, born free, endowed with reason, and equal among equals, 28 wonoutonly at the endof along historicalprocesswhich stretched fromthedevelopmentofRomanlawtomoderndeclarationsof rights .Anditi sonlyinmoderntimesthattherelationofsubject toobj ectandof spirit tomatter hasbecomeageneral principle of intelligibilityanddominationoftheworld.29Thisnewwayof 25. See GeorgesBataille,Theory of Religion, trans.Robert Hurley, NewYork, ZoneBooks,1 989,pp. 36ff. 26. See Jean-Pierre Changeux andPaulRicoeur,What MakesUsThink?, trans. M.B.DeBevoise,Princeton,NJ,PrincetonUniversityPress,2000. 27.SeeJeanEscarra,ChineseLaw:ConceptionandEvolution,Legislativeand judicialInstitutions,ScienceandTeaching,trans.GertrudeR. Browne,Cambridge, M, HarvardLawSchool,1961;alsoL.Vandermeersch,LaFormationdulgisme. RecherchesurLaconstitutiond'unephilosophiepolitiquecaraceristiquedeLaChine ancienne, Paris, Ecole franaise d'Extreme-Orient, vol.LVI, 1%5, reprinted 1987, pp. 192ff. 28. TheUniversalDeclarationofHumanRights( 1948) , art. 1 .29.Se eE.Cassirer, Th eIndividualand theCosmosi n RenaissancePhilosophy [1927] ,trans.MarioDomandi,Oxford,Blackwell,1963.12 HOMOJURIDICUS understandingtheworldstartedinthesixteenthandseventeenth centuries,inthewakeof theHumanistcritiqueoftheknowledge systemof the Scholasticsand Gl ossators .It introducedthe ideaof a sciencefoundedontheCartesiancogitoandofaiuscommune,governed no longer by reason of State but by the state of reason ( ' non ratione imperio,sed imperio rationis' ) .30 The ensuing period, which leads to our own, opens with the Enlightenment . It is characterized by the disappearance of God from the socio- political scene, which is why it i s interpreted as a desertion of religion and a ' disenchantment of the worl d' .31 However,itcouldequallybeinterpretedasatriplereenchantment: of science ( which replaces religion as authorized truth onthe s cale of theuniverse) ;of the State(promotedto the statusof omnipotent subj ect, living and supreme source of laws) ; andlastlyof thehumanbeing,whosefinality ishenceforth foundwithinhimself, divorced from any reference to the divine. This processwas accompanied by the rewriting of the human being's origins - from Hobbes and Rousseau to Rawls - and the founding of a Religion of Humanity,linkedtoscientificpositivism32 andendowedwithitsTen Commandments: theUniversalDeclarationof HumanRights.Contemporary debates on bioethics have much to gain from taking into account the history of our conception of the human being, which i s part of the history of the Christian West .The conception we have inherited is that of the imagoDei,the human being conceived in the image of God and destined to achieve mastery over nature.Like God,the humanbeingisoneandindivisible,l i keGodheorsheisa sovereign subject endowed with thepwer of the Wordand,likeGod 30. SeeA. Wijffels,'EuropeanPrivateLaw: ANewSoft-Packageforan OutdatedOperating System? ' ,in M. van Hoecke and F. Ost(eds ) ,The Harmonisationof EuropeanPrivateLaw,Oxford,HartPublishing,2000,pp. 103-16;andA.Wijffel s' ,' Qu'est-ce que l e ius commune?' ,in A.Supiot( ed. ) ,Tisser le lien social, op.cit . , pp. 131ff. 31 . See M. Gauchet,TheDisenchantmentof theWorld:APolitical Historof Religion,trans.OscarBurge,Princeton,NJ,PrincetonUniversity Press,1997. This concept of Entzauberung was elaborated by Max Weber who uses it in 8 very different sense( rejection of magicalmeans of attaining salvation) .SeeThe Protestant Ethic and theSpiritof Capitalism, trans. TalcottParsons,London,Unwin,1 985, pp.105-6;see also'TheSocialPsychologyofWorldReligions'inFromMaxWeber:Essaysin Sociology, ed.and trans.H. H.Werth andC.WrightMills,London, Routledge, 1 991,pp.281-2. For Weber,thisconceptdatesback tothepropheticmoment in Judaism,associatedwithGreekscientific thought(seeonthispointthecommentsofJ. -P.Grossein in hi s presentation of hi s French translation of Weber's texts, Sociologie des religions,Paris,Gallimard, 1996,pp.108ff. ) .32.SeeA. Comte, TheCatechismof PositiveReligion[ 1 927] ,trans.Richard Congreve,3rdedn, Clifton,NJ,A. M. Kelley,1973.THEHUMANBEINGASIMAGODEI 13 again,the humanbeingisaperson, anincarnatespirit .But,while conceived in the image of God, humans are not God. Their particular dignity i s notself-createdbutstems from theirCreator,anditisa dignitythatissharedwithallotherhumans .Thisiswhythethree attributesofthehumanbeing - individuality,subjectivityandpersonality - each have a double value:as an individual, each one of us is unique, butalsosimilar to allothers; asasubj ect,each one of us i s sovereign,but al so subj ected to the law;as a person, each one of us i s spirit, but al so matter . The secularization of Western institutions did noteradicatethisanthropological configuration,and thethreeattributesemergeagain, eachwithitsdoublevalue,indeclarationsof human rights .The reference to Godhas disappeared from the lawof persons, butwhathasnotdisappearedisthat,logically,allhuman beings must be referred to an authority that vouches for their identity andsymbolizesthattheyare nottobetreatedlike athing. TheIndividual,UniqueandIdentical Inorder tograspwhat isdistinctiveaboutourindividualism,what bettermethod.thantotakeanoutsider'sview,forexamplethe illuminatingremarksoftheAfricansageAmadouHampateBa. When asked what he understands by human identity, hereplied with thefollowing anecdote:'Every time my mother wanted to speak with me,she first called for my wife or sister and said: "Idesire tospeak with my son Amadou, but I would like to know beforehand which of the Amadous which inhabit him i s there at present . " '33 Thisreply, which we feel intuitively to be extremely profound, i s at the same time disconcerting,because it undermines what we take to be the hallmark of human identity: its indivisibility.In our l egal tradition, a person is oneandindivisible, from birth to death, asingle whole,andnota space of multiple coexisting characters .Weare equally disconcerted when we learn that, in Melanesiancountrie. s, people may be defined as empty spaces characterized by all the bondslinking them to others (father,uncle,spouse,clan) ,34ratherthan,asinthe West,assubstantial egos that freely forge social links rather than being fashioned by them. While in most other civilizations people consider themselves tobe partof a whole which both surroundsandgoesbeyondthem, 33. See A.Ham pate Ba,' La notion de personne en Afrique noire' in G.Dieterln ( ed. ) ,La Notion de personne en Afrique noire, Preface by M.Cartry, CNRS, reprinted Paris,L'Harmattan,1993,p. 1 82. 34. See M. Leenhardt,DoKamo: Personand Mythinthe MelanesianWorld, trans. BasiaMillerGul ati,Chicago,UniversityofChicagoPress,1979,pp.153ff. 14HOMOJURIDICUS which hasprecededand willoutlivethem/5our legal tradition leads us, on thecontrary,toseethepersonasanelementaryparticleof human society,an individual in both the qualitative and the quantitative sense.Qualitatively,theindividual ismade in theimage of the monotheisticGod, andsoisauniquebeing,incomparabletoany other,andhisfinalityisfoundwithinhimself. Quantitatively,the individualisanindivisibleandstableentity.Bothself-identicaland identicalto all others, the individualis thebasicaccountingunit par excellence.Thusconceived,allhuman beingsarenecessarilyequal since each i s made i n the image of God,even if they are a woman,a slave ora heretic;andeachisbthuniqueandsimilar toallothers.Theprincipleof equalityi sstilltraversed,i n itsmost modernand secularizedversion,bythistensionbetweenthetwofacetsofindividual identity:we areall alike and hence all identical; and we are alsoalldifferent, for weareeachunique. Since all individuals are identical, they are like mirrors set at the same distance fromthe godhead or,toput it i n the ' secular'termsof the Preamble to the French Constitution of 1946, they each hold ' sacred and inalienable rights' equally .Our identity i s fundamentally the sameas that of any other person, and any difference based on sex, race, religion, nationality,age,etcetera,maybedisqualifiedasaprohibiteddis crimination. In the arresting words of Saint Paul :'There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. '36Hence the seminal role of the principle of equality in our legal and political traditions.37 We all have the same rights and duties, and we are all identical, which implies that any one person can always be replaced by another. Consequently, a personmayoccupyallpositionswithinsociety,whilenotbeing absolutelyidentifiedwithanyof them.38 Suchaconception i s very 35.See for example L. Dumont,' Absencedel ' individudanslesinstitutionsde l ' Inde', inI.Meyerson( ed. ) ,Problemes de La personne, Paris, La Haye,Mouton,1973, pp.99ff.;0.Nishitani,'Laformationdusuj et au J apon',Intersignes,8/9,1994,pp. 65-77,especiallyp. 70;M. Chebel,LeSujetenislam,Paris,Seuil,2002. 36.SaintPaul,EpistletotheGalatians,3: 28.37. See of course Tocqueville on this point ( Democracy i n America, op.cit. II,I I ,ch. 1,pp.479ff.)and LouisDumont, who was t he firsttoturnananthropologist's questioning back onto the Western world (see From Mandeville to Marx. The Genesis andTriumphof EconomicIdeology,ChicagoandLondon,UniversityofChicago Press,1977;alsoDumont'sEssaysonIndividualism:ModernIdeologyinAnthropological Perspective,ChicagoandLondon,Universityof ChicagoPress,1986) . 38. TheDecl arationoftheRightsofManandoftheCitizen,26August1789,art. 6: 'Allcitizens, bei ngequalintheeyesofthel aw, areequallyeligibletoall dignities and toall public posi tionsand occupations; according to thei r abilities, and wi thout distinctionexceptthatof thei r virtuesand talents. 'THEHUMANBEINGASIMAGODEI 15 'different from, for example, the caste system, which assigns a particular function to each person in their present life, with social mobility coming intoplayin thecycleof reincarnations.39Insofaraseachpersonis replaceable,eachisalsoquantifiableand canbe apprehended as an accounting unit . This quantifying tendency i s evident in the history of our politicalinstitutions,in whichthe lawof numbershascome to override any qualitative considerations, resulting in a purely arithmetical conceptionof the maj ority principle. 40 It isalsoat work in the increase in economic and social statistics , which has led to the emergence of anew type of norm:legal norms,deemed arbitrary because they are based on a qualitative appreciation of people and things, are increasinglychallengedbytechnicalnorms, deemedvalidbecause founded on the quantification of these .41 Asan accounting unit,the individual is also a stable entity which remains essentially unchanged frombirth todeath.In the terms of Hauriou:individual legal personalityappearstousascontinuous and selfidentical;itemergesatthesametimeastheindividualandis immediatelyconstituted;itremainsunchangedthroughoutits existenceandunfailinglysubtendsunchanginglegalsituations; it is watchful when Man sleeps, and remains sane when Man loses hisreason. 42 Thisfiction,which i s the cornerstone on whicheconomic theoryin itsentiretyrests, i sobviouslycompletelyforeigntocertaingreat 39.See L. Dumont,Homohierarchicus:The Caste System and Its Implications, trans. MarkSai nsbury,LouisDumontandBasiaGulati, ChicagoandLondon, UniversityofChicagoPress,1980.40.Onthe medi evaloriginsofthi sconception,seeL. Moulin, ' Lesorigines religieusesdes techniqueselectoralesetdeliberativesmodernes ' ,Revueinterationale d'histoire politique etconstitutionnelle, April-June 1953, pp. 143-8;andhis'Sanior et maior pars. Etudesur!' evolutiondestechniques electoralesetdeliberatives dansIes ordres religieux du VIe au VIlle siecle', Revue historique de droit franrais et etranger, 3 and4,1958, pp.368-97andpp.491-529.Onthetriumphof thisconceptionafterthe FrenchRevolution,seeP. Rosanvallon,LeSacreducitoyen.Histoiredusufrage universe[enFrance,Paris,Gallimard, 1992. 41. SeeG. Canguil hem,TheNormalandthePathological,trans.CarolynR.Fawcett incollaboration withRobert S. Cohen,NewYork,Zone Books,1989. The newmodesofgovernanceandregulationareinspiredbythequestforjustsuchan ' obj ective'norm,i n opposition tothe ' old-style'rule-bound modes of government (see A. Supiot, ' Unfaux dilemme: I aloiaulecontrat? ' , Droit social,2003,pp. 59ff. ) .42.M. Hauriou,Leronssurlemouvementsocial,LibrairiedeI asocietedu recueilgeneral des loisetarrets,1 899,pp.148-9,citedby A.Davidin Structure dela personnehumaine,Paris,PUF,1955,p. 1 .1 6 HOMOJURIDICUS traditionsschasBuddhism,whichemphasizesonthecontrary the impermanenceand instability of the physical and psychicalstatesof the human being. 43 Lastly,since we are all made in the image of God the Father, we are all related to some degree, we are all brothers, and thereforeobligedtoextendhelpandassistancetoeachother.This spiritof universalbrotherhood i sassertedinthe first articleof the UniversalDeclarationofHumanRights. Fromiti sderivedthe principleof solidarity,which inspired theestablishment of the Welfare State.But each individual,made in the image of the oneGod,i salsoa uniquebeing,differentfromallothers. Theindividual'sradical singularityisnottheresultofobj ective factorspresent frombirth, but i s expressed in the individual' s exercise of his or her freedom.I is throughcompetitionwith others that human beings, born free and equal, are revealedto themselvesandtoothers.Thisconception of election, which i s a driving force behind the market economy, came to dominate with Protestantism. 44 According to the Protestant ethic,our works do not give us any particular access to the afterlife,but reveal what we are in this world, with materialsuccessbeing consequently an external sign of salvation.45 Louis Dumont described this feature in saying that, in the Protestant worldview, there is inside each of usa monk. 46 Onecouldaddthatitisa'fightermonk' , sincefree competitionbetweenformallyequalindividualsbecomesthesole criterionofj ustice. Whencompetitioni sthuselevatedintothe organizingprincipleofprivatelife(freedominmarriageandin personallife) ,of politics(free electionof leaders) ,of civiladministration (free access to public service positions)andof economic life (freecompetition) ,itbecomestheverymotorofsocialexistence rather than being confined to its margins as something dangerous and deathly. 47 43.SeeR.de Berval( ed. ) ,Presence du bouddhisme,Paris, Gallimard, 1987,pp. 113ff. ;A.Bareau, 'Lanotiondepersonnedanslebouddhismeindien'in I.Meyerson (ed. ) ,ProbtemesdeIapersonne,op.cit. , pp. 83ff. 4. SeeM. Weber,The ProtestantEthic,op.cit. ;E. Troeltsch,Die Bedeutung desProtestantismusfurdieEntstehungdermodernenWelt[ 1911] ,translatedbyW. Montgomery as Protestantismand Progress:TheSignifcance of Protestantism for the Riseof theModernWorld,Philadelphia, FortressPress,1986.45. See F. G.Dreyfus, ' Les pietismes protestants et leur influence sur I a notion de personne aux X VIlle et XIXe siecles' in I. Meyerson( ed. ) ,Probtemes de Ia personne, op.cit. , pp.171ff.46.AcommentmadebyL. DumontandreproducedinI.Meyerson( ed. ) ,Probtemesde I a personne,op.citp. 1 85.47.SeeP. Thureau-Dangin,LaConcurrenceetIa mort,Paris,Syros,1995. THEHUMANBEINGASIMAGODEI17 Theinventionoflegalpersonalityenabledthisindividualistic notiontoinvadeeveryhumancommunityorsociety.Legalpersonalityallowsevery formof associationofindividuals,whether based onhavingthingsorhaving ideasincommon,toconstitute itself in turn as an individual . 48 That ishowhomojuridicus comes to treat a plural likea singular, an ' us'likean ' I'capable of interacting withall otherindividuals on an equalfooting.The cornerstone of thishuman ordercomposedexclusivelyofindividualsisasupremeindividual posited, again on the model of the imagoDei,as one and indivisible. SuchistheFrench Republic,one of the firstformsof theState to be divorcedfrom any sort of religiousreference, and to incarnate, one and indivisible,an immortal Bei ng whichtranscendsthe individual interests of its members ( unlike the guilds which were instruments in theserviceoftheirmembers) . TheSubject,SovereignandSubjected A subj ect is one who is the cause of something, first of all through his or her words : 49 he or she speaks and the spoken word i s law.In the Christiantradition,thiscapacitytoorganizetheworldthrough speechisthe firstattributeof God: 'Inthe beginningwasthe Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word wasGod.The same was in the beginning with God.All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 'This famous opening to theGospelofSaintJohn, inwhichmetaphysicsisidentifiedwith language, andlanguageismade intotheultimate keyto thesenseof the universe, is the most remarkable expressionof aconception that exists in other forms in many other civilizations. 'To be naked' ,says the Africanl uminaryOgotemmeli,' i s to bespeechless ' ,andspeech was the first garment to be thrown down on the world by the god of 48.Essential references here are: 0.von Gierke, Das deutscheGenossenschaftsrecht,Berlin,1868-1913,4vols . , aselectiontranslatedasCommunityinHistorical Perspective:ATranslationofSelectionsfromDasdeutscheGenossenschaftrecht (TheGermanLawof Fellowship),selectedandeditedbyAntonyBlack,trans.Mary Fischer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1 990; R.Saleilles, De La personnalite juridique.Histoireettheories,Paris,Rousseau,1910; L.Michoud,LaTheoriedeLa personnalitemorale.So