Small meeting in the State University’s philosophy department, 28th October 2004

This was a more informal meeting where a friend invited me to speak with her colleagues – four men and two women – all teachers. As they were all very familiar with German philosophy, I spoke about Carl Améry (former chairman of PEN) who, going through the accounts of intellectual meetings in the East and West in the eighties, was surprised: “we all thought the crucial question was the confrontation between capitalism and communism – but already at that time, the problems were altogether different ones …the threat on our biosphere…”

There was a lot of interest expressed for Hans Jonas’ book. They kept saying: everything that we are being told about globalisation at the moment is a hundred percent positive. When I spoke a bit about the social forums and Porto Alegre, I had to promise to come back and say more.

Rights and duties

The co-director of the University of Languages and Culture, Levan Lebanidze, a very well-known ethnologist and philosopher:

You begin with rights: “We are all responsible for making sure that Human Rights are reaffirmed in our ways of thinking and in our actions”. I think stressing rights is exactly what’s going to lead to our ruin. I don’t like this beginning!

I found this comment unfair. But it came back to me when, on the plane back, I was flicking through the free magazine, encouraging me to benefit from attractive weekends just a few hours from Berlin and Paris: “you have the right!” The right to thoughtlessly pollute the atmosphere. Who wants to know that aeroplanes’ kerosene consumption does not come into any project restricting CO2s? Who wants to get informed about what bothers them? Who knows how to make a clear distinction between Human rights and abusive rights? It seems a lot harder to gain awareness of responsibilities than to gain awareness of rights.

Protection of the environment: the Charter alone is not enough…

A student:

“The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is supposed to cross the Borjomi valley, a natural park where a mineral water spring renowned throughout the ex-USSR is located. The risks are huge for this natural treasure. What can we do?”

The Georgians really rallied together. The big protests in July and August and the speeches to the president were not in vain; but British Petroleum, Total and Donald Rumsfeld are stronger. How does one answer back? I know that in France, there is a new organisation, Sherpa, set up by the former secretary general of the International Federation for Human Rights, which aims to bring legal advisors’ expertise together in order to take action against multinationals that don’t respect international agreements. Sherpa is interested in the issue of this pipeline. It’s David against Goliath. And the Georgians are finding themselves between two avid Goliaths.

I’m finishing with this difficult question. It reiterates that in addition to the Charter, we have to do something else; and the same goes when we have to say that we don’t know. There are different ways to express our solidarity.

As Edith emphasised, the Charter text is a pre-text. It asks us to engage with it and to adapt it by transforming it. It is also an opportunity to enter into discussions that will perhaps take us a lot further.