Recent debates on and around the economic crisis frequently highlighted
the issue of rights: social rights, fundamental rights and human rights
..., and not least the question of ethics and politics. Politics and
ethics are surely a major issue, both part of a complex hegemonic
system. And equally important is to think about rights on the said level
in more complex ways, seeing them not as static or simply developing in
a linear way towards any kind of an 'absolute idea'. Equally misleading
is thinking about rights in terms of relativism, leaving their
definition to discourses and making them negotiable. The present author,
bringing different perspectives from social policy, social work and
economics together and drawing on extensive experiences from different
regions of the world, aims on overcoming both, relativist and moralist
stances. Not least, this continues the elaboration from the first
chapter of the previous volume of the 'Writings on Philosophy and
Economy of Power' (the Prolegomena in the 'New Princedoms', published
2011 at Rozenberg, Amsterdam). One important aim of this second volume
of the 'Writings on Philosophy and Economy of Power' is to localise the
changes of the current mode of regulation in a more fundamental way,
emphasising the need to elaborate the changes of the political economy.
The guiding question can be spelled out in a nutshell: 'Do we face a new
renaissance?'
