The European Union Project of Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon: between Utopian Imagination and Technocratic Reality Cover Image

Proiectul de Uniune Europeană al lui Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon. Între imaginaţie utopică şi realitate tehnocratică
The European Union Project of Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon: between Utopian Imagination and Technocratic Reality

Author(s): Anca Simitopol
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences
Published by: Fundaţia »Societatea Civilă« (FSC)
Keywords: scientific messianism; technocratic administration; the force of industry; pacifism; social hierarchy

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the relation between politics, religion, and science, as understood by the nineteenth-century French socialist Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon and described in his project of European Union. We find in his works, and in this project in particular, ideas that are surprisingly actual, the most important of which is the idea of replacing the “governing of people”, or people’s interest in res publica, with the „administration of things”, the best rule being then that of technocrats attempting, on the grounds of science, to administer a predictable world. Starting from the philosophical reflections of Étienne de La Boétie and of Simone Weil, this article raises the question of what explains the fact that a majority can be easily subordinated to the administrative control of a small technocratic group.

  • Issue Year: XXII/2014
  • Issue No: 179/3
  • Page Range: 66-75
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: Romanian