Etienne Balibar: The ‘Equaliberty’ and the Challenges of Contemporaneity

Article

Abstract

[In Russian]

This paper aims at the analysis of some key ideas of Etienne Balibar. They enable considering emancipation as a realization of the idea of “equaliberty”. The author connects Karl Marx’s ideas with the theoretical frame of the Enlightenment and explicates them in the contemporary context, namely claiming the priority of social values in solving different problems related to the EU building process. The Greek economic crisis that put into question ideological foundations and political prospects of the united Europe may serve a practical domain of the approach mentioned. The aporia of liberty and equity seems to be unsolvable within the framework of the “classical” liberalism, which tends to solve urgent problems solely and exclusively by means of the “economic growth” and the “economic recovery”. The ethical universals of Balibar represent a productive alternative way to solve a paradoxical contradiction of the liberty and the equity (and therefore the contradiction of liberal and social values). The suggested solution might be regarded as a supplementary mechanism of the European integration.