Procès, affaire, cause. Voltaire et l'innovation critique

Abstract

The Trial, the Case, the Cause. Voltaire and the critical innovation. Elisabeth Claverie [76-851 In the 1760's, Voltaire took on the impassioned defense of a number of people accused of crime by judges of Parlement (Calas, Sirven, Chevalier de la Barre). Undertaking this defense meant accusing and, as a consequence, transforming the judiciary arena, in which procedures were secret, into a public arena. The innovation introduced by Voltaire during the Calas case was that, in order to defend him, the philosopher did not look for social or religious support, but brought forward a new definition of honour, making Calas a representative of the "human kind". In so doing Voltaire created a paradigma centered on the notion of Cause, used regularly, and until recently still, in political criticism.

Comment se mobilise-t-on ?

“…Mais la temporalité peut encore être décon-nectée du support biographique des personnes et de la moyenne durée des affaires publiques. Dans le court terme, l'enquête peut suivre la temporalité de moments d'épreuve qui provoquent des mobilisations soudaines -qu'il s'agisse d'événements comme celui de la profanation du cimetière de Carpentras (Barthélémy, 1991) ou de disputes, comme les affaires Calas et du Chevalier de la Barre (Claverie, 1994(Claverie, et 1998. Elle peut encore prendre la forme des controverses que les étudiants de l'École des Mines et de Sciences Po étudient aujourd'hui, emboîtant le pas à l'entreprise de Latour depuis son étude sur la « pasteurisation de la France » (Latour, 1984) -avec, dans l'étude des dispositifs d'action publique, un recroisement entre les conceptions de sociologie des organisations, des cités de justification, et des sciences et des techniques (Lolive, 1999).…”

Sexual Morality at the Egyptian Bar: Female Circumcision, Sex Change Operations, and Motives For Suing

“…It is tempting to draw a parallel with the Calas affair, a case of apostasy that arose in eighteenth-century France (Claverie 1994). Voltaire, the mastermind behind the affair, showed that he had no personal interest whatsoever in the case and that his only concern was to promote a ÒcauseÓ, or a Ògood cause.Ó 14 He used this ÒcauseÓ to mobilize the general interest over and above particular interests for the benefit of Òthe public goodÓ.…”

Environmental Conflicts and Public Deliberation Arenas Around the Environmental Issue in Argentina

“…Their dissemination in the media and the fact that they implicated actors at different levels such as governments from different jurisdictions, multilateral bodies, international courts and the Supreme Court of Justice, among others, have contributed to making these conflicts destabilizing cases for state action. They constitute scandals that exemplify a state of things and that, from the perspective of the social analyst, allow for the understanding of certain aspects of the problem under analysis (CLAVÉRIE, 1994;DE BLIC and LEMIEUX, 2005;BOLTANSKI ET. AL., 2007).…”