Perry Anderson has been invited by the Collège de France assembly, at the suggestion of Prs Samantha Besson, Edith Heard, Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge and Thomas Römer.
This series of four lectures by Perry Anderson in English is part of the Collège de France's Europe cycle. In 2022-2023, this cycle will be devoted to the theme "Peace and Power in Europe". It is common to consider the political idea of Europe as inseparable from that of peace. This age-old project of pursuing a peaceful European (and then world) order, notably through law, should be of interest to us at a time when the Europe-power discourse is asserting itself in a context of rebalancing of powers in the world, and questions of security and defense are regularly invited into European debates, particularly in France. The cycle will host a second series of lectures on the same theme by Stella Ghervas in spring 2023.
Few attributes are more important to the European Union than that of Rechtsstaat. The connotations of the term are both internal and external: it can refer either to the supremacy of law within its own borders, or to its respect for international law beyond them. Historically, the "law of nations", as it was originally called, predates the jurisprudence of the Union, a relatively recent creation, by many centuries. At its center lay a concern with the regulation of armed conflicts between peoples and States: relationships of power traditionally settled by war. What is the bearing of these on a contemporary political system priding itself on its commitment to peace? This series of lectures will look, in turn, at the origins and evolution of the law of nations in Europe; at the origins and nature of law within a Union that defines itself as neither national nor international; at the kinds and results of the ensuing statecraft and democratic will-formation; and in conclusion, at the historical juncture of the Union at the time of war in Ukraine.
