Subjective universality of great novelists as an artistic measure of history's advance towards actualising Kant's vision of freedom

The main idea behind this article is that in order to understand the meaning that Kant's political philosophy is rendered to by the given socio-historical context of a community we need to turn for help to artistic genius whose subjective "I" holds a general feeling of the world and life. It is in this sense that authors of great novels can help us in two ways. First, their works summarise for our imagination artistic truth about man's capacity for humanity, the very thing that Kant considers to be the scientifically improvable "fact of reason'. Second, works of great writers offer for our insight destinies of individuals who decide to pursue moral dictate in a society, thus actualising the potential that lies hidden in all of us, making us worthy of respect. As we lack objective scientific standard of measurement, artist's universal feeling of the world is impressed upon us through a narrative about a man who, in a given society and in a given moment, decides to exercise his autonomy and seek the divine in himself. Contemporary social scientists' attempts to prove historical progress is characterised by the very lack of humbleness. Referring to the great novelists' works in this article is aimed to remind scientists of restraint and self-control demanded from them by the citizen of Konigsberg

Subjective Universality of Great Novelists as an Artistic Measure of History’s Advance towards Actualising Kant’s Vision of Freedom

The main idea behind this article is that in order to understand the meaning that Kant’s political philosophy is rendered to by the given socio-historical context of a community we need to turn for help to artistic genius whose subjective “I” holds a general feeling of the world and life. It is in this sense that authors of great novels can help us in two ways. First, their works summarise for our imagination artistic truth about man’s capacity for humanity, the very thing that Kant considers to be the scientifically improvable “fact of reason”. Second, works of great writers offer for our insight destinies of individuals who decide to pursue moral dictate in a society, thus actualising the potential that lies hidden in all of us, making us worthy of respect. As we lack objective scientific standard of measurement, artist’s universal feeling of the world is impressed upon us through a narrative about a man who, in a given society and in a given moment, decides to exercise his autonomy and seek the divine in himself. Contemporary social scientists’ attempts to prove historical progress is characterised by the very lack of humbleness. Referring to the great novelists’ works in this article is aimed to remind scientists of restraint and self-control demanded from them by the citizen of Konigsberg.Osnovna teza članka jeste da bi za razumevanje smisla koji Kantova politička filozofija zadobija u konkretnom društveno-istorijskom kontekstu određene zajednice trebalo iskoristiti pomoć genijalnih umetnika u čijem se subjektivnom „ja“ smestilo opšte osećanje sveta i života U tom smislu, pisci velikih romana mogu nam pomoći na dva načina. Prvo, njihova dela sažimaju za našu uobrazilju umetničku istinu o čovekovom kapacitetu za ljudskost, onome što za Kanta predstavlja naučno nedokazivu „činjenicu razuma“. Drugo, u delima velikih pisaca možemo posmatrati sudbinu pojedinaca koji u određenom društvu odluče da deluju u skladu sa moralnim zakonom, ostvarivši tako mogućnost koja leži u svakome od nas i čini nas vrednim poštovanja. U odsustvu objektivnih naučnih merila, umetničko opšte osećanje sveta prenosi nam se kroz priču o čoveku koji u konkretnoj zajednici u određenom vremenu odluči da ostvari svoju autonomiju, potraži božansko u sebi. Odsustvo skromnosti ono je što odlikuje pokušaje današnjih društvenih naučnika da dokažu istorijski progres. Pozivanje na dela pisaca velikih romana u ovom članku o Kantu ima za cilj da opomene naučnike na uzdržanost i samograničavanje koje je od njih zahtevao građanin Kenigsberga

Emergent Invisible Power in EU Federalism

In contrast to modern federations, the federalization of the EU has taken place without a constitutional answer to the question of the system's democratic legitimacy. The process of compound polity building under the shadow of the dilemma of the Union's finalite politique can be described as "hidden federalism". The major consequence of this process has been a gradual migration of decision-making from an intergovernmental toward a supra-governmental power-holder. On the one hand, due to an excessive Europeanization of governing tasks, national democratic institutions have lost the political autonomy necessary for shaping the relation between state and society, politics and the market, and individual and collective autonomy within member states. On the other hand, reforming the EU by creating democratically suspicious control mechanisms within its members' budget policies has not substituted the absence of the EU's governance autonomy to regulate politically sensitive fields such as fiscal, employment and social policies. With the escalation of the Eurozone crisis it has become evident that neither member states nor the EU have a sufficient level of autonomy to make policy choices related to the most sensitive issues of distributive justice. The implementation of the Fiscal Compact will decisively affect economic and social life in Europe; yet it is hardly possible to discern who should take credit or the blame for the nontransparent penalty mechanism embedded in this contract and aimed at regaining the Eurozone's stability. In this new historical context, institutions of constitutional democracy, being present on the national and to an extent on the European level, have been deprived of their original purpose. Instead of making power visible and accountable, they have actually enlarged the scope of an unaccountable power by maintaining the illusion that citizens can still determine their collective destiny through the political process

Jačanje separatizma u državama članicama EU kao nenameravana posledica evropske integracije

This paper analyzes the rise of secessionism in the EU member states in light of constitutional and political transformations of the EU and its member states in the course of the European integration process. The main argument is that the rise of secessionism should be seen as an unintended consequence of the EU federalization process under the mask of market integration and in the absence of a constitutional answer to the question of finalité politique. However, the author demonstrates that present-day secessionist demands by the Catalans, Scots, Flemish, or Venetians hardly have anything in common with the original historical and philosophical meaning of the 'self-determination' concept. As a direct consequence of the European integration process, necessary prerequisites for the actualization of the popular sovereignty have disappeared on both the national and the European level. Therefore, the idea that internal secession of the EU would enable citizens of newly established states to autonomously shape their collective destiny is no longer grounded in socio-political reality.U članku se jačanje secesionističkih pokreta u državama članicama Evropske unije analizira u svetlu ustavnih i političkih preobražaja kroz koje su Unija i njene članice prošli u dosadašnjem toku integracije. Osnovna teza je da nagli rast secesionizma predstavlja jednu od nenameravanih posledica procesa federalizacije EU pod maskom tržišne integracije i u odsustvu odgovora na pitanje političkog finaliteta. Autor, međutim, pokazuje da zahtevi današnjih Katalonaca, Škota, Flamanaca ili Venecijanaca za 'samoopredeljenje naroda' suštinski odudaraju od filozofskog i istorijskog smisla tog pojma. Evropska integracija proishodila je postepenim ukidanjem neophodnih pretpostavki ostvarenja načela vladavine naroda rođenog sa Francuskom revolucijom. Time je i stanovište da će unutrašnja secesija EU omogućiti građanima novonastalih država da sami oblikuju svoju kolektivnu sudbinu izgubilo uporište u društvenopolitičkoj stvarnosti

WHO IS THE GUARDIAN OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?

Mjere koje su glavni donosioci odluka donijeli kako bi se izborili s krizom javnih dugova svjedoče o promjeni ustavne prirode Evropske unije: Složena politička zajednica čiji je legitimitet počivao na finoj ravnoteži između zahtjeva za uspostavljanje europskog zajedništva i zahtjeva za očuvanje političke autonomije država članica, dobija obrise imperijalnog modela centar – periferija. Autor analizira ovakav razvoj u svjetlu učenja o čuvaru ustava, koje su u svojim radovima razvili Benjamin Constant i Carl Schmitt. Bez obzira na promjene društveno-historijskih okolnosti, zadatak čuvara ustava jest da utvrdi točku koja se ne smije napadati ukoliko se želi očuvati legitimitet političke zajednice. U kontekstu europskih integracija pitanje “Tko je čuvar ustava?” svjesno je zaobilaženo. Ta strategija, koja se pokazala funkcionalno uspješnom jer je proizvela zajedničko tržište i monetarnu uniju, gurala je EU k sistemskoj krizi u kojoj se danas nalazi. Predugo odsustvo čuvara europskih ugovora/ustava suočilo je države članice s izborom između odbijanja pokoravanja odlukama centra i potpunog prepuštanja odgovornosti za blagostanje vlastitih građana europskom proto-imperijalnom poretku. Koncept imperija u ovom članku je vrijednosno neutralan, upotrebljen samo kao jedan od mogućih teorijskih okvira za objašnjenje nove empirijske stvarnosti procesa europskih integracija.Measures taken by the EU’s major decision-makers in order to confront the public debt crisis provide evidence that the EU’s constitutional nature has been changed. This compound political community whose legitimacy was based on the fine balance between the need to establish more European unity and the need to preserve political autonomy of member states, is now gradually transforming into an imperial, centre – periphery model of governance. The author analyses this development in the light of the guardian of the constitution concept, developed in the works of Benjamin Constant and Carl Schmitt. Regardless of changes of socio-historical circumstances, the guardian of the constitution’s fundamental task is to determine the point that must not be surpassed if the legitimacy of a political community is to be maintained. In the context of the European integration process the question “Who is the guardian of the constitution?” has deliberately been sidestepped. That strategy, which has proven to be functionally rather successful, has been pushing the EU towards its current systemic crisis. Long absence of a guardian of the European treaties/constitution has eventually confronted the member states with the choice between refusing to obey the centre’s decisions and conceding of the responsibility for their citizens’ welfare to the European protoimperial order. The empire concept used in this article is normatively neutral, used only as a possible theoretical framework for explaining the new empirical reality of the European integration process

Politics and theater as guardians of a common world

In this paper the author claims that the history of European drama and theater contains an original answer to the classical political question of relation between an order and change. The theater's fundamental goal is preservation of a common world in the absence of which the theater itself becomes meaningless. Confronting us at first with the abyss of searching for the meaning of life, the great dramatists than help us return to the normality by providing us with an answer whispered in their ear by the spiritual, historic and political circumstances of their age. Those among them aiming to preserve the existing order, such as Aeschylus, Moliere and Racine, artistically revealed to the audiences the order's grounding idea. For others, such as Goethe and Schiller, whose artistic genius recognized in the history signs of a development towards a republic of autonomous citizens, theater was a place for esthetic education of an elite expected to accelerate the process of coming into being of a new common world. Authors of revolutionary periods, such as Brecht and Pirandello, used theater to inspire radical change of all existing social and political institutions. Finally, to the authors such as Euripides, Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg, theater made it possible to cry out for an old common world that no longer has a grounding idea and therefore disappears

Federalizam i izgradnja poretka - proces ili odluka?

Most of contemporary constitutional lawyers investigating federalism focus only on the system's normal functioning. In contrast to this mainstream approach in this article we argue that in order to understand true challenges of compound communities in today's epoch of crisis a scholar has to look for the ways a federation caught in the trap of exceptional situation deals with the either/or decisionist dilemma. The article is divided in three parts. In the first part we ask the three major questions: Who is guardian of the federal constitution? What enables the parallel political coexistence of a federation and its composing parts? What is the relationship between federalism and democracy? In the second part, we present some of todays most distinguished federal scholars' arguments that negate the importance of whether-or decisionistic dilemma for understanding compound communities' constitutional nature. In the last part, we land from the sky of theoretical discussions to the realm of history in order to look for the answers to Schmitt's questions in concrete experience of compound political communities.Nasuprot preovlađujućem pristupu današnjih ustavnih pravnika koje zanima isključivo normalno funkcionisanje federalnih sistema, u članku tvrdimo da je proučavanje načina na koji se federacija, uhvaćena u zamku vanrednog stanja, suočava sa decizionističkim ili-ili, pitanjem od odlučujućeg značaja za razumevanje izazova složenih političkih zajednica u epohi krize. Članak je podeljen na tri dela. U prvom delu analiziramo tri osnovna pitanja koja klasični teoretičar decizionizma Karl Šmit (Carl Schmitt) upućuje federalistima: ko je čuvar federalnog ustava, šta obezbeđuje paralelnu političku egzistenciju federacije i njenih sastavnih jedinica i kakav je odnos između federalizma i demokratije? U drugom delu predstavljamo argumente nekih od najvažnijih savremenih teoretičara federalizma koji negiraju značaj decizionističkog ili-ili pitanja za razumevanje ustavne prirode složenih političkih zajednica. Na kraju se spuštamo sa visina teorijskih rasprava na čvrsto tlo istorije kako bismo odgovor na pitanje utemeljenosti decizionističkog i federalističkog pristupa potražili u konkretnom iskustvu složenih političkih zajednica.

Izbori za Evropski parlament u vremenu "Žutih prsluka" (Gilet jaune)

What links the French "Gilet Jaunes" movement with the latest elections for the European parliament? Article aims at answering this question. The major argument is that the European elections function as a mask used by the Monnet integration method in order to hide the disintegration of a common world's constitutional foundations within the EU member states. Survival of the European order depends on a decision that will resolve the threatening either-or conflict between member states and their societies. Elections for the EP will maintain their functional justification so long as they remain able to cover the real decision maker and his accountability.Kakva je veza između pokreta "Žutih prsluka" i izbora za Evropski parlament? U radu tražimo odgovor na ovo pitanje. Osnovna teza je da izbori za Evropski parlament predstavljaju samo deo maske koju stvara Moneov metod integracije kako bi prikrio urušavanje temelja zajedničkog sveta u državama članicama. Opstanak evropskog poretka zavisiće od odluke koja će razrešiti tinjajući ili-ili sukob država članica i njihovih društava. Izbori za Evropski parlament ostaće svrsishodni samo u meri u kojoj budu uspeli da zamagle stvarnog donosioca te odluke i njegovu odgovornos

Da li je ujedinjenoj Evropi potreban parlament?

The major argument of this article is that the European elections 2014, that for the first time provided voters opportunity to actually choose European Commission's future political leadership, came too late. The elections took place in the moment when the decision on the best way of dealing with the crisis had already been made. Therefore, new democratic legitimacy of the European Commission should be seen first and foremost as an excuse for uninhibited implementation of a concrete political vision, which the EU's most powerful member states previously determined and secured by adopting Fiscal compact. The EU's governing elites' major assumption is that the novelties in the way the Commission is elected will at least to a certain degree bring back the lost illusion of the EU's democratic nature and thus undermine the growing dissatisfaction and resistance of citizens to the so far established anti-crisis policy. If this strategy proves to be successful the EU would regain stability at the expense of further destruction of member states' constitutional democracy. It is, however, not probable that this attempt to simulate transfer of the party government model to the European level will bring back stability to the Union. Instead it may turn out that this latest democratic disguise of the European project will have as an unintended consequence further deviation from the road toward the 'ever closer Union among European peoples'.Osnovna teza članka je da su evropski izbori 2014. godine, na kojima su birači po prvi put dobili priliku da biraju između konkretnih kandidata za predsednika Komisije i njihovih političkih vizija, stigli prekasno. Izbori su održani u trenutku kada je odluka o najboljem načinu rešavanja krize već uveliko bila doneta. Utoliko i novi demokratski legitimitet Komisije treba posmatrati prevashodno kao izgovor za neometano sprovođenje sasvim određene političke vizije, koju su prethodno utvrdile i donošenjem Ugovora o stabilnosti trajno zaštitile najmoćnije države članice EU. Pretpostavka evropskih upravljačkih elita bila je da će nov način izbora Komisije makar donekle povratiti izgubljenu iluziju o demokratskoj prirodi EU i na taj način oslabiti rastući otpor građana dosadašnjoj antikriznoj politici. Uspeh ove strategije značio bi učvršćivanje stabilnosti Unije u njenom današnjem nedemokratskom obliku i dodatno urušavanje ustavne demokratije u državama članicama. Malo je, međutim, izvesno da će simuliranje prenošenja koncepta partijske vladavine na evropski nivo doneti Uniji stabilnost. Umesto toga, nanošenje ovog najnovijeg sloja demokratske fasade preko evropskog projekta mogao bi za nenameravanu posledicu imati još veće skretanje sa puta ka 'sve bližoj uniji naroda Evrope'

Skriveni evropski federalizam u službi izgradnje poretka bez političke slobode

After the Second World War a new idea of a European order was born in the minds of today's EU founding fathers. The way it has provided statesman a rare opportunity for political action, the European integration has given to scholars a chance to learn something new about the old problem of building of an order. Still, maybe there is not anything new that the experience of the integration process among European states teaches us. Maybe, it is needed only to unveil the old truth that what it takes to establish an order is always a decision of a sovereign ruler unrestrained by society's conflicting demands. Who to believe, Kant or Carl Schmitt? Is there anything historically new that the European integration tells us about political community building or are Bodin and his insights into the nature of state and law still all it takes for understanding the old problem? In this article we search an answer to these questions.Nakon Drugog svetskog rata, nova ideja o evropskom poretku začela se u glavama idejnih tvoraca današnje EU. Kao što je državnicima ukazala priliku za delovanje, koju istorija inače retko ukazuje, evropska integracija je i teoretičarima pružila šansu da nauče nešto novo o starom problemu izgradnje poretka. Možda, ipak, i nema ničeg novog što se iz iskustva posleratne integracije evropskih država može naučiti. Možda je samo potrebno razgrnuti naslage novog vremena sa stare istine o uspostavljanju poretka odlukom suverena oslobođenog zahteva posađanog društva. Ko je u pravu, Kant ili Šmit? Ima li nečeg istorijski novog što nas evropska integracija uči o izgradnji političke zajednice ili su nam za razumevanje tog starog problema i dalje dovoljni uvidi do kojih je u XVI veku došao Boden? U članku se traga za odgovorom na ovo pitanj