Angelo Scola - eng vers » asset

THE “NEW RIGHTS” IN THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN PUBLIC SPACE/ “Rethinking Rights in a Plural Society”

ufficiostampa — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:18:31 +0000

Studium Generale Marcianum Venezia

ASSET – Alta Scuola Società Economia Teologia

International Summer School/ Venice, September 6th-10th 2010

THE “NEW RIGHTS” IN THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN PUBLIC SPACE

Rethinking Rights in a Plural Society

+ Angelo Card. Scola

Patriarch of Venice

1. The Summer School as an occasion and the role of Asset

The Summer School is a particularly important and prestigious event in the programme of research and teaching carried out at Asset, l’Alta Scuola di Società Economia e Teologia. Asset developed out of the Studium Generale Marcianum and it was conceived as a means of fostering contemporary interpretative frameworks for the study of today’s socio-cultural reality, viewed in terms of the rise of the “plural society”. This is a project that Asset plans to develop by the utilisation of methods of transdisciplinary comparison, through research on significant issues, such as discussion of the current forms of reason and “public reason” in particular and the elucidation of crucial anthropological and social issues from the diagnostic and critical-propositional point of view.

The transdisciplinary ethos that Asset aims to foster, making connections between the domains of legal science, economics, philosophy, and religion, is a necessity if we are to capture and comprehend reality as it is, namely as rooted in history. Economic globalisation, the civilisation of the internet, migration on an epochal scale, the spread of an education and schooling that are international in character – all these phenomena penetrate everywhere in the structures of contemporary societies. Therefore in pursuit of the unity of knowledge – the raison d’être of the Studium generale Marcianum, along with its concern for the unity of the subject of knowledge – we cannot fail to take up the invitation to the unity of the object of knowledge which is implied in the frequent projects of the transdisciplinary era today under way in various fields of research.

Theology too is of course not exempt from this commitment. The new cultural and social phenomena challenge it to the core; and it has the choice either of interacting with the other disciplines, or submitting to the consequences of too much self-referentiality. Theological pratice is called on for help in the guidance of study and formation by reflecting on the experience of the faith of the Christian community, the place out of which authentic and critical encounter with cultures is born.

Asset is not a study centre, but it aspires to become a School capable of articulating the Christian cultural patrimony in the context of the plural society.

2. Why legal studies?

Now that the subject proposed has been identified, the decision to opt for a starting point in the terrain of legal studies can be seen to make sense. Law now constitutes the lingua franca of peoples and cultures[1], as can be seen on two levels. In the first place, legal issues represent a privileged level of exchange, comparison, and relationship between the various traditions and peoples.[2] This becomes evident if we turn our minds to human rights in particular, or in other words to those that are defined as “fundamental rights”. The drive for amendments to rights in a country often arises from the reception of the law or praxis prevalent in another state, or of solutions received and relaunched by international treaties.[3] What happens elsewhere, then, has importance for the legal experience of each country.

In the second place, rights have a specific role in each society: a role that is now no longer only regulative, in the normalization of relations. The idea of social change, of evolution within a given society seems almost inevitably to assume juridical connotations. When we speak of change, we almost always– and perhaps above all – draw on legal experience. It seems that when a society judges itself, or another community, it searches for parameters of judgement in juridical instruments. Law has become, as it were, one of the languages in which the universal speaks.

This imposing expansion of the horizon and the role of law points us to the rationale for, and the scope of, this Summer School. It does not intend to limit itself to being a mere survey of the phenomenon, but expects in addition to examine the critical aspects of it.

3. The new rights and the conception of man

Today’s session opens – and not by accident – with a reflection on the new rights and on the conception of man that they suggest by implication; we shall be returning to this subject on several occasions in the course of the coming week.

The ever more insistent and widespread preoccupation with human dignity in our day does not shield us from doubts about what kind of idea of man is involved in the new rights. The debate on the subject has made it sufficiently clear that the catalogue of fundamental rights has been persistently modified in recent decades, both on the international level and within each country. Two modes of interpretation, which may perhaps be incompatible, have become established in this connection: on the one hand a gradualistic idea of human dignity, that values and protects life differently depending on the circumstances[4] in which the individual is placed; on the other hand, a vision of man as individual subject prescinding from the context in which he belongs[5]. These new conceptions of rights are grafted onto the old Lockean root of liberalism, promoting a new stage of legal individualism: they have features that are largely novel in respect of those with which traditional liberalism had made us acquainted.

To summarise with the greatest possible brevity, legal experience, especially on the American model[6], today seems to locate the individual at the centre of the order of things, breaking the social bonds by which his actual concrete life is held. This aspect of the situation is not lacking in ambiguity and indeed it has considerable importance, given the influence that for some decades Anglosaxon and American legal culture has been acquiring on the Continent and especially in Italy[7].

The ambiguity of the frame of reference within which the new rights are being developed, centred as it is on the individual, ultimately affects the relationship between society and state. If the task of law is to make possible the mere contiguity of individuals who move along parallel tracks, life in society disappears from the horizon of law. If the subject is detached conceptually from the social context of reference and deprived of bonds and relations, or if there is merely a failure to recognise the crucial role that society possesses in the affirmation of the personality of each individual, this has fundamental implications. It is in fact an approach that impoverishes the role of civil society and attributes the task of the protection and care of individuals to political authority alone. We are confronted with the paradoxical affirmation of a massive centrality of the state at the very moment when social arrangements are giving scope, formally at least, to the principle of subsidiarity.

4. The sustainability of rights

In addition to the new physiognomy of rights, we shall be considering their sustainability. There are highly complex issues involved in the circulation of rights, the transmission from one country to another of legal solutions or decisions taken by the European Union. If the range of rights and duties grows wider while the social horizon becomes ever more complex, this cannot fail to cause disturbances to the equilibrium of each state. The widening of the duty of protection or the addition of new duties has inevitable and almost immediate repercussions on the economic, productive and social levels. It is not realistic to separate the question of rights and duties from that of social and economic requirements, except at the price of creating rights that are not concretely exercisable or even that are destructive for the future of society.[8]

A perspective that does not take account of the social and economic implications of rights is not simply myopic but narrow from the start. The opposition between the requirements of protection of the person and economic exigencies, which may sometimes certainly exist in pratice, is not always necessarily present. To posit the relationship between rights and economy in oppositional terms means to replicate that individualistic anthropology, this time Hobbesian in character, which separates the subject from the social requirements of the context in which he lives. When the hypertrophy of rights suffocates economic life, it reveals by that very fact radical and intrinsic defects.

5. The challenge of legal modernity: the case of Islam

An individualistic anthropological model is not even a good common ground for facing up to processes of migration either, given that it is not easily assimilable by non-western cultures. This is in fact a non-secondary aspect of the phenomenon of the globalisation of rights, which applies precisely to the field of immigration and to countries in which the religious tradition plays a legally very important role.

The dramatic emergence everywhere of a plural society, in which is clearly discernible a process of “hybridisation” – a term that I use to indicate the process of constant interaction between identities[9], cannot fail to have repercussions on legal experience both in the countries of immigration, and in those of emigration. The so-called rights of new generations cannot but reckon with this prospect: the “new rights” must inevitably come to terms with a “new society”.

There is another aspect of the problem to be considered. Legal experience can reasonably be transmitted and become established if it fits with some existing pattern in the culture to which it is relating[10]. This represents a challenge that current legal reflection cannot avoid. The export of legal culture which is developing in our countries can be interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways. It may consist in what amounts to an unacknowleged replay of colonialism, so that an alien practice is imposed on another culture; or, on the contrary, it may be the sincere advocacy of a value so that another social order acknowledges it: an advocacy solicitous in its turn to receive the good pratices that the other order suggests.

This applies above all to Islamic societies and to the important Islamic presence in western societies. The capacity of the present order of things to control social phenomena, to give them an outlet and a prospect, to integrate them into the framework of a normality of relations, is put to the test by a religious presence, variegated and yet endowed with a strong internal cohesion, that asserts itself on a collective level.

The persistent replay of the logic of the Enlightenment, which aims at cohabitation by playing on the separation between the public arena and the private space and between the religious and secular spheres, does not seem to work in favour of this normalisation of relations[11]. It cannot be a fear of the Islamic presence that leads to advocacy of a model already in crisis within the traditional European context, a model which legal doctrine has repeatedly stigmatised[12] because it excludes from social life precisely those things that religious persons hold most dear[13]. A clear separation between the secular and religious spheres does not seem to help cohabitation, rather it deprives it of justifications.

6. The background

The question that involves philosophy and theology most directly has up to now remained in the background of our reflection. Soon after the felicitous conclusion to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man (1948), Maritain claimed that agreement could be reached on it only by prescinding from the question of the foundation of the rights themselves. Basically, the various subjects had agreed on the content of the Declaration, each on the basis of their own religious, philosophical, ideological and cultural presuppositions, without finding a theoretical common ground for a shared understanding.

The most discerning political philosophy of today, reflecting on the plural nature of democracy, has seen the positive aspect of this choice, developing organically what was then a simple factual given. It is necessary, through agreed procedures, to confer political value on the primary social good of a practical nature: the fact of living together. It is a social datum that needs to be elevated to the level of a political good by all and promoted by institutions, and it will not require any preliminary agreement as to its foundation. Within such a space that is guaranteed to all, the dynamism of dialogical acknowledgement of individual contents of value between the subjects can operate, in a close but always open comparison between the different world views. From this point of view, the practical political good of being in society could constitute the political universal that the secularisation process has lost sight of throughout modernity[14].

In this way the difference, which is at times acute, between shared political action and the various cultural identities ceases, at least in principle, to be conflictual. The various subjects in question ought obviously to live together under the guidance of the public institution, while this latter, if it is to accomplish its sensitive regulatory role, ought to be non-confessional and impartial towards all, without however taking up neutralist positions. It will be able to act in this way by guaranteeing the two constitutive levels of the political: an acknowledgement of the value of the practical-social common good of being together and an acknowledgement of those specific values that ongoing negotiation will recognise gradually as such, according to the criterion formulated by Rawls of the overlapping consensus[15], in the continuing quest, from time to time, for a noble compromise on specific goods of an ethical, social, cultural, economic, and political nature with all the others “inhabiting” the plural society.

On the basis of these points we can see that the theme of the foundation, which will of necessity become axiomatic in plural societies, will inevitably be an ongoing part of the debate between subjects.

The fact that often the broadening of rights makes more likely the progressive elimination of the philosophical, ideological, and theological presuppositions that would limit their expansion, does not prevent the problem of axioms being reflected in the actual content of the rights: liberty, life, and human dignity acquire new meanings and unprecedented forms precisely because the relevant philosophical context has been lost to view. The context is not discussed, it is simply forgotten. As the correlative of this, the specific content of each right fades away. Concepts wander beyond their natural or at least initial borders. Such for example is the case with human dignity. Developed as a useful tool for the protection of minorities and vulnerable individuals, it is now utilised to configure a person’s right to terminate his own life.

This is an example of the profound variations in the orientation of contemporary rights, whereby the redefinition of fundamental concepts as imposed by the plural society[16], mainly taking as its basis a concept of liberty understood in a purely subjective way, often ends up overturning their traditional meaning.

We are thus faced with a paradox: a hitherto unprecedented circulation and expansion of rights in tandem with a degree of vagueness about their content.

7. The task

Here is the point of entry for the contribution of the Marcianum – the specific role of the theological dimension and of the social doctrine of the Church. The point at issue is not about putting “new wine into other wineskins”, but about making clearer the true face of these rights. This operation brings into question the whole horizon of the human and theological sciences. Looked at from one side, any catalogue of rights has formidable economic and social implications, but in truth it is itself the product of a certain view of man which is always I-in-relation. To recover the true face of rights it is indispensable to engage with their anthropological and social dimensions: an objective on which the various sciences and disciplines converge, each with its own specificity but in a perspective which increasingly requires a transdisciplinary dimension.

NOTES:

[1] M. Perry, A Right to Religious Freedom? The Universality of Human Rights, The Relativity of Culture, in Roger Williams Law Review, 2005, 10, p. 350.

[2] See at length, S. Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006, and also the contribution by J. Waldron, ibid. pp. 83-101.

[3] See the reiterated reflections of S. Ceccanti in Una libertà comparata. Libertà religiosa, fondamentalismi e civiltà multietniche, il Mulino, Bologna, 2001.

[4] See the contribution by J.R. Neuhaus to the report on human dignity produced by the Presidential Bioethics Council of the United States, at http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/index.html.

[5] A full discussion in M.A. Glendon, Rights Talk. The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991.

[6] See E.J. Eberle, Dignity and Liberty: Constitutional Visions in Germany and United States, Prager, Westport, 2002, 125 and 131, which elucidates the connection between individualism, autonomy, and self-realisation contained in the American perspective on fundamental rights, at least in the reading of them currently being offered.

[7] U. Mattei, Why the Wind Changed: Intellectual Leadership in Western Law, in American Journal of Comparative Law, 1994, esp. pp. 199 e 205.

[8] M.A. Graber , Constitutional Democracy, Human Dignity, and Entrenched Evil, in www.princeton.edu.

[9] P. Gomarasca, Meticciato: convivenza o confusione?, Marcianum Press, Venezia, 2009.

[10] See the reflections on the category of “concrete universal” offered by F. Botturi, as to the capacity of a culture to hold a value universal in scope, The Decline of the Minimum Common Denominator, in Oasis [on-line] 5, 2007, www.oasiscenter.eu/node/2813. From a different perspective, but equally relevant to the relationship between the individual dimension and the universal scope of an experience, see the contribution by C. Di Martino in All’origine della diversità (ed. J. Prades), Guerini, Milano, 2008.

[11] G. Zagrebelsky, Scambiarsi la veste. Stato e Chiesa al governo dell’uomo, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2010.

[12] See, among many others, R.P. Kraynak, Commentary on Dennett, in Report on Human Dignity, President’s Council of Bioethics, 2008, in http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/index.html., p. 92; C. Cardia, Le sfide della laicità. Etica, multiculturalismo, islam, San Paolo, Milano, 2007, p. 115. On the public role that must be played by the subject of truth, see above all J. Habermas, Tra scienza e fede, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2006, p. 47 and P. Häberle, Diritto e verità, Einaudi, Torino, 2000, p. 93 .

[13] Cf. A. Scola, La dottrina sociale della Chiesa: risorsa per una società plurale, Vita & Pensiero, Milano, 2007.

[14] Cf. A. Scola, La società plurale. Prospettiva teologica, in G. Richi Alberti (ed.), Pensare la società plurale, Marcianum Press, Venezia, 2010, 7-22 e F. Botturi Secolarizzazione e laicità, in P. Donati (ed.), Laicità: la ricerca dell’universale nelle differenze, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2008, 295-337.

[15] J. Rawls, Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, New York 1993, 133-168. This is what Rawls writes about public reason: «[a] feature of public reason is that its limits do not apply to our personal deliberations and reflections about political questions, or to the reasoning about them by members of associations such as churches and universities, all of which is a vital part of the background culture. Plainly, religious, philosophical, and moral considerations of many kinds may here properly play a role» (215).

[16] The multiplication of identities leads us quite naturally to ponder and even to rethink the categories and value hierarchies of a society. As J. Stout has rightly emphasised in Democracy and Tradition, Princeton University Press, Princeton-Oxford, 2004, p. 6, «the democratic practice of giving and asking for ethical reasons, I argue, is where the life of democracy principally resides. Democracy isn’t all talk». The debate in a plural society ought to be enriched and to converge freely in the processes of juridical production, rather than this leading to an impoverishment of the contents of rights. If the response to the complexity of the debate and to the increased numbers of social actors goes through the emptying from rights of the values and goods about which society is arguing, political and social life is indeed impoverished and, in the last analysis, the debate itself is deprived of meaning.

Press reaction to the birth of Asset (school of Advanced Studies Society Economy Theology)

ufficiostampa — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:45:19 +0000

The School of Advanced Studies Society Economy Theology (ASSET), created within the Studium Generale Marcianum of the Patriachate of Venice, is the object of an article by the italian Vaticanist Sandro Magister.

On September 5, Cardinal Scola opened in Venice an international conference entitled “The pluralist society,” with lectures by Italian and foreign scholars from different disciplines, Catholics and non-Catholics, from Massimo Cacciari to David Novak, from Ottfried Höffe to Cesare Mirabelli, from Ignazio Musu to Steve Schneck.

The conference marked the opening in Venice of a new study center called the “Alta Scuola Società Economia Teologia,” ASSET, which has the purpose of promoting interaction among the various disciplines, including theology, in confronting the crucial questions of a culturally “pluralist” world.

In introducing the conference, Scola invited Christians to identify and propose “common ground” on which to enact “noble compromises” among different positions. But this does not change the duty of these same Christians, whenever compromise is not possible, as in the case of abortion or of the family, to make use of conscientious objection and otherwise continue their “proclamation” in society at full voice, in the hope of a positive change.

The new Alta Scuola is the latest of a constellation of initiatives organized over the past five years by Cardinal Scola and collected under the banner of the Studium Marcianum, named after the holy patron of Venice, the evangelist Mark, including the international magazine “Oasis.” It will operate with seminars, cultural laboratories, summer courses, publications, annual lectures. The inaugural lecture, next December 17, will be delivered by the philosopher Robert Spaemann, of the University of Munich.

Asset: the new School of Advanced Studies Society Economy Theology within Studium Generale Marcianum aims to be an asset for the comprehension of the plural society

ufficiostampa — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:44:42 +0000

The School of Advanced Studies Society Economy Theology (ASSET), created within the Studium Generale Marcianum of the Patriachate of Venice, aims to be an asset for the comprehension of the plural society. ASSET is an academic and cultural proposal responding to a twofold urgency: on one side the necessity for the social sciences to take account, in a complex post-modern society, of all the dimensions of human experience and human need, avoiding any a priori exclusion of interpretative hypotheses, even those deriving from the religious traditions; on the other side the need for both theology and the social doctrine of the Church to become part of the public debate and to contribute to the common good, confronting topics, paradigms and methodologies typical of diverse disciplines.

Areas of study

Philosophy and theology

Social sciences and philosophy

Canon law, constitutional law, philosophy of law

Economy and social doctrine of the Church

Lecturers and members of the International Scientific Committee

Prof. Robert Spaemann (Universität zu München, Germany); Prof. Margaret Archer, (University of Warwick, UK); Prof. Angelika Nussberger, (Universität zu Köln, Germany); Prof. Guy Bédouelle OP, (Université Catholique de l’Ouest, Angers, France); Prof. Rubio de Urquia (Universidad CEU San Pablo Madrid, Spain); Prof. Juan Manuel Blanch Nougués (Universidad CEU San Pablo Madrid, Spain); (Prof. Roberto Gatti (Università di Urbino); Prof. Giuliano Segre (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice); Prof. Simona Beretta (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan)

Activities

The research project offers seminars, interdisciplinary workshops, and a summer school.

To whom is the initiative addressed?

PhDs (incl. doctoral candidates) and researchers working in university or research institutions, interested in this cultural training opportunity

Professors and researchers of the Studium Generale Marcianum

Members of associations working on the topic of pluralism in society

Staff of NGOs

Public officers at regional, national and European level

Further information

See the pages dedicated to ASSET at www.marcianum.it

Studium Generale Marcianum Foundation, Dorsoduro, 1, 30123 Venezia

tel: 39 (0)41 27.43.911 f :39 (0)41 27.43.998. Email: altascuola@marcianum.it

UK contact : Stratford Caldecott (Centre for Faith & Culture, Oxford) : s_caldecott@yahoo.co.uk