This course offers to focus on the historical, philosophical and cultural contexts which paved the way for the political and administrative entity that the European Union has become over the last few decades. Of course the European cultural cohesion finds its deepest roots in Europe’s rich antique background, made up of Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian legacies, each having contributed in the linguistic, political, philosophical and moral structures of this continent. Without necessarily endorsing Denis de Rougemont’s view according to which Europe has in fact existed for the past twenty-eight centuries[1], one can positively assert that the European Union with its ideal of inalienable individual liberties undeniably corresponds to a specific representation of the human kind, which appeared in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Enlightenment Europe. This module will often refer to Jonathan Israel’s theory, developed in his essay Radical Enlightenment and will try to show that the influence of this pioneering thought was so far-reaching that it was probably in the French revolutionaries’ minds, notably when they wrote the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen in August 1789. This course will deal with the primary importance of individual rights in the European Union, it will explore the origins of such ideals, mainly in 17th-century Northern Europe, before addressing the transmission and development of those ideals to the rest of Europe in the 18th century.
[1] Rougemont, Denis de, Vingt-huit siècles d’Europe. La conscience européenne à travers les textes, d’Hésiode à nos jours, Paris : Payot, 1961.
Bibliographie indicative :
Primary sources
Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (1789), http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/Droit-francais/Constitution/Declaration-des-Droits-de-l-Homme-et-du-Citoyen-de-1789
The European Convention on Human Rights (1953), http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/treaties/html/005.htm
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000), http://www.eucharter.org/
Churchill ,Winston, Speech at Zurich University (19th September 1946), https://www.churchillcentral.com/timeline/stories/churchills-speech-at-the-university-of-zurich
De Gouges, Olympe, Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne (1791), http://www.siefar.org/docsiefar/file/Gouges-D%C3%A9claration.pdf
Locke, John, The Works of John Locke in Three Volumes, volume II, London : Browne, 1751, Macaulay, Catharine, Letters on Education (1790), New York : Garland, 1974, Montesquieu, Charles de, Œuvres Complètes, Paris : Hachette, 1859, Rougemont, Denis de, Vingt-huit siècles d’Europe. La conscience européenne à travers les textes, d’Hésiode à nos jours, Paris : Payot, 1961, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Du Contrat social ou principes du droit politique, Amsterdam : Rey, 1762, Spinoza, Baruch, A Theologico-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise (1677), Mineola : Dover Publishings, 2004,
- -------------------, Letters, Indianapolis, IN : Hackett, 1995,
- -------------------, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), Leiden : Brill, 1989, Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques ou lettres anglaises, Amsterdam : Lucas, 1734, Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfs/wollstonecraft1792.pdf
Secondary sources
Alpaugh, Micah, ‘The British Origins of the French Jacobins : Radical Sociability and the Development of Political Club Networks, 1787-1793’, in European History Quarterly, vol 44 n° 4, 593-619, London : Sage Publications, 2014, Erdman, David, Commerce des Lumières : John Oswald and the British in Paris,
1790-1799, Columbia : Missouri University Press, 1986, Israel, Jonathan, Radical Enlightenment, Oxford : OUP, 2001, Jacob, Alexander, Henry More’s Refutation of Spinoza, Hildesheim : Georg Olms, 1991, Klever, Wim, ‘Locke’s Disguised Spinozism’ in Revista Conatus, filosofia de Spinoza, Vol. 6, n° 11 (61-82) and 12 (53-74), Fortaleza : Ed. da la Universidade Estadual do Cearà, Jul. And Dec. 2012 (ISSN 1981-7509).