Geneviève Souillac’s book, in its careful analysis of the work of four French philosophers concerned with human rights issues, is thus timely and important. They are Marcel Gauchet, Blandine Kriegel, Luc Ferry, and Etienne Balibar. All of these figures are well established in the French intellectual scene, but are much less well known in the English-speaking world (though they have had at least some part of their work translated). All of them teach in France’s higher education system, and three have had significant public roles as well: Gauchet co-founded and still runs the immensely influential monthly review Le Débat; Kriegel has been an adviser to the French government on issues of integration; Ferry was minister of education from 2002 to 2004. In choosing these figures, Souillac’s goals are twofold. On one level, she is making a case for their voices to be accorded greater attention in the more global present-day debates about human rights and democracy, which tend to be dominated by Anglo-American approaches. On another level, she focuses on how each of them relates to the specifically French model of republican democracy, a model she sees as flawed.

All four philosophers belong to a tradition deriving from the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, a tradition which makes a quasi-organic connection between individual rights and responsibility to the spheres of society and government. All posit this model and its particular universalist ambitions as an alternative to the Anglo-American liberal one, with its greater emphasis on conceiving human rights in terms of the protection of individual freedoms. They all aspire to offering ways in which, throughout the world, human rights and democracy can be revitalised. The numerous and significant differences between the four philosophical approaches are analysed in detail. Kriegel and Ferry, for example, are shown to be more reformist, Gauchet and Balibar more contestatory; Ferry and Gauchet both study the ways in which humanity has become ‘disenchanted’ through the decline of religion, but each proposes quite different solutions; Kriegel defends the universality of human rights through an appeal to the laws of nature, a position explicitly rejected by the others. However, all are inspired by a form of faith in the capacity of human rights to generate a more liveable secular society. In the end, Souillac’s compelling case for the value of these four sets of reflections to global discussions about human rights and democracy should be of crucial interest to thinkers across a wide range of fields.

The second strand of Souillac’s study is especially pertinent to those interested in France. Over the last several decades, there has been a widespread and well-founded perception of deep unease in France, as a society and a nation, as it has struggled to cope with internal frictions and uncertainties about its identity within Europe and in a globalising world. This sense of crisis is a key stimulant for the work of all four of the philosophers presented by Souillac. All are troubled by what they see as a loss of social cohesion and by the increasing vulnerability of individuals within a democracy that itself appears fragile. The marginalisation and exclusion of particular groups such as migrants and asylum seekers constitute a recurring theme of disquiet and alarm. Interestingly, while Souillac presents her subjects’ various proposals with extreme thoroughness and respect, she is highly critical of Gauchet, Kriegel and Ferry for their failure to account sufficiently for the pluralist realities of contemporary French society. As she puts it in her chapter on Gauchet, ‘while the search for a self-reflective democracy is a commendable one, it is as though the French perspective seeks unity where there is none, and claims disintegration when it is hard to ascertain whether there was any homogeneity in the first place’. She sees more promise in Balibar – whether despite his reconstructed Marxist framework or because of it is not quite clear. Balibar’s ‘politics of civility’, based on a concept of citizenship that emphasises the right to resistance to state power, is presented as both a political virtue for individuals and a process through which societies can emancipate and transform themselves.

Human Rights in Crisis, because of the necessarily complex and technical nature of its discussion, will undoubtedly appeal more to specialised readers than to a general audience. Nonetheless, its content and conclusions give greater definition to the way that crucial issues of human rights and democracy are articulated, both locally and inter-nationally. This book shows Geneviève Souillac (who teaches in the Department of French Studies and in the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney) to be an original and highly intelligent thinker likely to continue to make major contributions to worldwide debates about human rights and democracy.