Once upon a time, François Ost

Yves Cartuyvels, legal researcher at the Facultés universitaires de Saint-Louis-Bruxelles, described his colleague and compatriot François Ost as a " thinker of the in-between ". A thinker of coherence, a thinker of balance, a thinker " of links ", this is how he defines himself, having just been awarded the prestigious title of honorary doctor by the University of Montpellier. Recognition of an exceptional academic career that this committed and inquisitive Belgian citizen has built like a bridge. Bridges between law and philosophy, between law and the environment, and between law and literature.

Law and philosophy

It was during the ferment of the 70s that François Ost, a young man from Brussels, enrolled in law school " out of family tradition ", he confides in an interview entitled : François Ost, all the horizons of law. However, the grandson of international law professor Charles de Visscher had a " secret wish ": philosophy. It was to these two disciplines that he ultimately devoted his life, " with a view to opening up the study of law and thinking about its relationship to society ", emphasizes Alexandre Viala, Professor of Public Law at the UM, Director of Cercop and sponsor of this honorary graduation. Books such asA quoi sert le droit? or Le droit ou l'empire du tiers published this year, bear witness to this ongoing desire to decontextualize the law in its uses and purposes.

At the beginning of the 80s, with a thesis in legal philosophy in his pocket - the subject of which was the mythological drifts of legal rationality - François Ost began his career as an educator by becoming a professor at the Saint-Louis-Brussels Law Faculty, of which he was Dean between 1982 and 1993. He also taught at the Académie européenne de théorie du droit, which he founded in 1989, as well as in Geneva, at the Collège de France and at the University of Montpellier, where, in close collaboration with Cercop, he set up a university diploma in legal philosophy in 2002.

Law and the environment

At the same time, the jurist pursued his research work, to which he gave a profoundly interdisciplinary dimension in the editorial line of the Revue Interdisciplinaires des études juridiques, which he founded in 1978. In it, he developed " a critical eye, an eye constructed, enriched and sharpened by interdisciplinarity, whether through philosophy, economics, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis or ecology ", recalled Carine Jallamion, vice-dean of Montpellier's Faculty of Law, at the solemn ceremony. Ecology has been a key theme in François Ost's career. The Centre d'étude du droit de l'écologie, which he founded in 1989, offered the very first training in environmental law in French-speaking Belgium.

" In the '80s, I was part of a generation that, rightly or wrongly, but probably wrongly, considered that the social problem had been solved and taken care of by the welfare state, but that it was time to take the measure of another threat, the ecological threat ," declares François Ost in the same interview. He then published La nature hors la loi or What future for environmental law?

The lawyer's ecological awareness is also reflected in his civic commitment. He joined the board of directors of the Greenpeace association, where he remained for ten years, before setting up the Foundation for Future Generations with friends, of which he is still Chairman today. " Very often, when you're in the thick of things, you lack perspective. On the other hand, when you're at university, you sometimes lack an anchor in reality. We can see how the go between academic expertise and civic commitment can be fruitful for both," he sums up when asked about the dual dimension he gives to his work.

Law and literature

A third pillar underpins the architecture of François Ost's thinking: the articulation between law and literature. An " unlikely marriage, even a dangerous liaison ", comments the academic, who for years illustrated legal cases with examples taken from literature. In the end, it was in the United States that he found his inspiration in the " Law and Literature " movement, which he brought to the university faculties of St. Louis, first in the form of a course, then through numerous publications. Raconter la loi, aux sources de l'imaginaire juridique, Shakespeare, the comedy of law, Faust or the frontiers of knowledge but also Sade et la loi, are just a few examples of his work on the subject.

Theater is also part of his palette, and the play Antigone voilée will give him the opportunity to revisit the question of the veil and the yardstick of this mythological figure of resistance to oppression. More recently, François Ost has continued his exploration of the links between law and literature in the form of stories, with the publication in 2019 of the collection Si le droit m'était conté and Nouveaux contes juridiques in 2021. " Telling the law to better think about it, considering it as a culture rather than a technique, apprehending it from the angle of the case and not just the rule, this is my answer to the question "Why tales? " concludes the man with whom the University of Montpellier can now count.