Louis Sala-Molins

Louis Sala-Molins (* 1935 in Santpedor / Catalonia in the department of Barcelona ) is a Catalan - French philosopher with a focus on politics and law .

Life

Sala-Molins studied in Rome, Paris and Freiburg im Breisgau. He conducted research at the “ Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)” and until his retirement in 2000 he taught at the University of Paris I ( Sorbonne ), where he held the chair of Vladimir Jankélévitch , and at the Université de Toulouse II-Le Mirail political philosophy. Sala-Molins gives the following self-characteristic of his path as a teacher, publisher and researcher: “After a childhood love for the philosophy and poetics of Ramon Llull , I turned to the study of the scandalous copulations between philosophy and the law in bed in political philosophy Theologies in particular and ideologies in general. Fatally, this had to lead me to an encounter with such enormous monstrosities as the Inquisition ' right ' and the ' right ' of slavery. At the end of my course it was the last inspiration for ' Le livre rouge de Yahvé '. On the comic level, it is a settlement with the relevant source of all legality for us . "

The Code Noir and the dark sides of the Age of Enlightenment

After his research on the Inquisition, Sala-Molins came across a body of law that had fallen into oblivion in France, which regulated slavery in the French colonies from 1685 to 1848 . He published the entire text with detailed commentary in 1987 in advance of the preparations for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution : " Le Code Noir ou le calvaire de Canaan ". The book was published in its tenth edition in 2005. Sala-Molins bases his commentary on a report by Quobna Ottobah Cugoano , published in 1788 , who described his experiences as a freed slave in England and quoted the white slave traders who justified themselves in their craft with reference to the fate of Canaan and the Canaanites . The blacks were seen as descendants of Ham , who was cast out as son by Noah, and of the dark-skinned Kush - Martin Luther called them " Moors ". According to the account of the Book of Genesis (Chapter 12 ff.) In the Torah , Canaan also refers to the land promised to Abraham and his descendants (see Promised Land ), which Joshua, son of Nun , conquered by conquering the Canaanites with infants, children, women and Exterminated men. Sala-Molins cites other milestones that led to the exclusion of blacks from humanity dominated by European Christianity: According to Herodotus , black sperm is as black as their skin, so that anthropology and theology have difficulty making transitions between all the qualities that the Could come to whites and find the evils that blamed blacks since birth. During the Enlightenment, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon became an authority on the natural sciences and on anthropological issues. He saw people in a hierarchical model that graded them from “ degeneration ” to “perfection” in the form of the white European, although it was difficult for him to separate the monkey from the negro . Indians did not do much better because they were incapable of sovereignty and the animals did not understand how to subordinate themselves. Even so, Buffon did not deny them the ability to think and speak.

The 19th century began with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's “ Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Vol. 1: Reason in History “continues this tradition. According to Hegel, Africans have no history of what is inherent in their nature; Victor Hugo explained in 1879 that Africa was made up of sand and ashes, an immobile, passive heap, a monstrous ham that halted Sem (Bible) with its enormous size, its abundance of sun and night. In this environment, the “Code Noir” remained undisturbed for 163 years. The Enlightenment - Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet , Denis Diderot , Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu , Guillaume Thomas François Raynal , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Voltaire - never insisted on its immediate repeal, but at most relied on Buffon's developed hierarchical model by allowing blacks to gradually develop from “degeneration” to “perfection” and finally to acquire their dignity as free people. The decision made in the Revolution of 1794 to immediately repeal the law was not carried out for two reasons: under the leadership of François-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture , slavery had already been abolished in 1793 on its own initiative ; Moreover, the presence of the English in the Antilles made it impossible to apply the Revolutionary Decree. In 1802 Napoleon explicitly confirmed the Code Noir , which continued to apply in its old form , so that a Victor Schoelcher was required, and through whose commitment it was abolished in 1848. For the long duration of the "Code Noir", the economic importance for France was decisive. In order to supply the sugar cane cultivation and the plantation economy with workers from Africa, the companies involved in Versailles were rewarded with rewards and relief. With the injustice done to black slaves, the non-existence of which was the only legal definition, the French monarchy stipulated the exclusion of slaves from the rule of law. The declaration of human and civil rights of 1789 could not do any harm to this because black slaves were still regarded as not belonging to the social body. They were seen as the movable property of free people - see Article 2, which guarantees property rights and is the only article that refers to the existence of slaves - and not as independent actors at the legal level.

In his afterword to that of Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe in her book " White barbarism " Passion illustrated with numerous examples (2001/2004) of the black since 1492 Sala-Molins writes under the heading " Gorée "

“To rationalize the systematic dehumanization of an entire continent - a masterpiece that knowledge and belief have achieved - animalizing all blacks because they are blacks leads to the legal enslavement of all blacks because they are blacks and the law To transform the relationship between slave traders and black, colonialists and black, colonial princes and slave traders and black, priests of the colonial masters and slave traders with their princes and priests and blacks into a pure relationship between an owner and his property. The law effortlessly put this will of the mighty, who as usual submitted to faith and science, into beautiful words. "

A settlement with YHWH

In 2004 “ Le livre rouge de Yahvé ” was published. As noted in an introductory note, it is aimed at the unbelieving reader. The subject is the Torah, which describes the work of YHWH from the creation of the world to the foundation of " Eretz Israel ", in whose succession many Israelis see themselves in the present . Back then it was bad for the Canaanites and Philistines , today it is for the Palestinians .

The title has a little story: From the introductory note to the reader it is clear that Sala-Molins is an " honorable abridged version of the Torah ". The book was originally to be called “ Petite Torah de poche ” (= “Small Pocket Torah”); but the publisher feared difficulties and so, following the words of Chairman Mao Tsetung, it became “ Le petit livre rouge de Yahvé ”. In contrast to the seriousness of the theologian Gerd Lüdemann and his book “ The Unholy in Sacred Scripture: The Other Side of the Bible ” from 1996, Sala-Molins resolves to play with what is “revealed” on the level of common sense. This game in the tradition of the combinatorics given by Ramon Llull includes the mixing of the levels of style so that the high-level language comes next to the colloquial language. Sala-Molins likes to portray the fall of man as the erotic awakening of Adam and Eve and love like an attack, which is paired with shame as the first result of knowledge . Or he transfers terms historically occupied with certain contents to other things: " Habitat ", " Genocide ", " Final Solution " or " Holocaust " are transplanted into the scenery of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua for illustration . The book ends with the death of Joshua:

"And it was in Shechem , the once by the forced circumcision of all their males in fever staggered city that allsobald of the sons of Jacob , the first peoples murderers Israelite line, all its inhabitants was drowned in the blood that Joshua at the behest of YHWH a Statute and a right issued for their descendants. After the statute and law were established, Joshua died at the age of 110. He was buried. Yahweh had established the peace of the circumcised on the mortar of foreskins, and the right of the saints on the blood of the innocent. He is Yahweh. He deserves fame for centuries of centuries. "

reception

He has factored in that Sala-Molins is being accused of anti-Semitism . The fact that he is accused of refusing to clarify, however, misses his attempt to think “from below”. It is about admitting that in solving human rights problems, not only “up” in Paris discussing the distinction between the urgent and the postponable, but “down” to help people, whose skin and flesh were blown away in tatters, to gain their rights immediately would have been. Bartolomé de Las Casas set an exemplary standard for this behavior . Bassidiki Coulibaly, philosopher of African descent, appreciates Sala-Molins for the fact that he refreshes the monotonous intellectual landscape with color. If Sala-Molins had something to say, no one could gag him, be it the grammatical, the cultural or the institutional coding. Since there is no silence for him, he cannot play wrong either.

Selection of works in Latin, Catalan and French

• Lull. Arbre de philosophy d'amour. Livre de l'ami et de l'aimé et Choix de textes philosophiques et mystiques . Introduction et traduction, Paris (Aubier-Montaigne) 1967.
• Nicolau Eymerich and Francisco Peña. Le Manuel des Inquisitorum (Directorium inquisitorum). Introduction, traduction. Paris - La Haye (Mouton) 1973. Réédition: Paris (Albin Michel) 2001.
• La philosophie de l'amour chez Raymond Lulle . Préface de Vladimir Jankélévitch. Paris - La Haye 1974.
• Silvio Zavala. Amérique latine: philosophy de la Conquête . Introduction et traduction. Paris - La Haye 1977.
• La loi, de quel droit ? Paris (Flammarion) 1977.
• Le Dictionnaire des Inquisitorum (Repertorium Inquisitorum). Valence 1494. Introduction and traduction. Paris (Galilée) 1981.
• Raimundi Lulli Opera latina in Montepessulano composita anno MCCCIV . Editio critica. Turnhout (Brepols) 1982.
• Herder. Encara una filosofia de la història. Introduction et traduction . Barcelone (Laia) 1983.
• Sodoma A l'alba de la filosofia del dret . Barcelone (Edicions 62) 1984.
• Eimeric. Court traité. Introduction et traduction. Grenoble (million) 1986.
• Le Code noir or le calvaire de Canaan. 1st edition: Paris (PUF) 1987; édition courante (10ème) Paris (PUF, “Les grands textes”) 2005.
• De brisk. De libertate. Del rei. De la llibertat . Paris-Barcelone (Moufflon) 1988.
• Sodome. Exergue à la philosophie du droit . Paris (Albin Michel) 1991.
• L'Afrique aux Amériques. Le Code noir espagnol . Paris (PUF) 1992.
• Les misères des Lumières. Sous la raison l'outrage . Paris (Robert Laffont) 1992. Réédition: Paris (Homnisphères) 2008.
• Déraison, esclavage et droit. Les fondements idéologiques et juridiques de la traite négrière et de l'esclavage . Collectif dirigé par Louis Sala-Molins et Isabel Castro-Henriques. Paris, Unesco 2002.
• Le livre rouge de Yahvé . Paris (La Dispute) 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Message to Frank Helzel on October 8, 2009.
2. ↑ Louis Sala-Molins, Le Code Noir ou le calvaire de Canaan , Paris (PUF Quadrige) 2007, pp. 21, 206-212; ISBN 978-2-13-055802-6 .
3. ↑ Sala-Molins (2007), pp. 25, 29.
4. ↑ Louis Sala-Molins, Les misères des Lumières. Sous la raison l'outrage , Paris (Homnisphères) 2008, pp. 163-173; ISBN 2-915129-32-0 .
5. ↑ Sala-Molins (2008), p. 25.
6. ↑ Sala-Molins (2007), pp. 8, 24.
7. ↑ Sala-Molins (2008), p. 104 ff.
8. ↑ The only text that has appeared in German so far. - At Sala-Molins, the island of Gorée still has its now refuted myth-laden status.
9. ↑ Gorée , in: Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe, Weisse Barbarei. From colonial racism to the racial politics of the Nazis , Zurich (Rotpunktverlag) 2004, p. 329.
10. ↑ Cf. Moshe Dajan and his book “ Living with the Bible. Archeology in the Holy Land ”, Fritz Molden Verlag: Vienna-Munich-Zurich-New York 1981; ISBN 3-217-01218-6 : “ Like all Jewish children born in the land of the Bible, I learned about the Bible at an early age. Meschulam Halevi, our teacher in Nahalal in the Jezreel Valley, not only brought us closer to the beginnings of our people, he also always animated them with a certain topicality. It was as if events three to four thousand years ago were happening in the present. And the environment in which we lived also did its part to bridge the gap in time and to transport us back to the old days, to the times of the patriarchs, the patriarchs and heroes of our people ”(p. 13).
11. ↑ Louis Sala-Molins, Le livre rouge de Yahvé , Paris (La Dispute / Snédit) Paris 2004, p. 242; ISBN 2-84303-065-X .
12. ↑ Sala-Molins (2004), p. 236 (translation by FH)
13. ↑ Sala-Molins (2004), p. 242.
14. ^ Sala-Molins (2007), SX
15. ↑ Cf. Bassidiki Coulibaly on Sala-Molins ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.