ABSTRACT
The creation of new states in Central and Eastern Europe and in the area of the former Soviet Union has been justified as the exercise of the right to self-determination by the acts of ‘national sovereignty’. The result, however, has been the imposition of the ‘sovereignty’ of the majority ethnic group, which immediately triggered analogous claims by the minority ethnic and/or religious groups now deprived of an adequate constitutional status, and actually exposed to various practices of ethnic cleansing. Since the 18th century, ‘nature’ has been colonised by humanity, humanity is only facing itself as a decision-making instance. The ‘reflexivity’ hypothesis seems to be spelled out in classical terms not so much to appeal to sociological rationalism or to profit from some popular Heideggerianism, than to covertly impose an implicit hypothesis of a different kind one regarding a certain ‘interior’ absence and not the absence of ‘exterior’.
