Dwie koncepcje jedności: interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne
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| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
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| Language: | Polish |
| Published: |
Bydgoszcz [u.a.]
Oficyna Wydawn. Branta
2006
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| Online Access: | Inhaltsverzeichnis Abstract |
| Item Description: | Zsfassung in engl. Sprache u.d.T.: Two concepts of unity. - Inhalt: "The problems dealt in this books are problems of political philosophy and practice". |
| Physical Description: | 283 S. |
| ISBN: | 8360186138 |
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Record in the Search Index
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| adam_text | SPIS TREŚCI
PRZEDMOWA
........................................................................................
,
...................7
WPROWADZENIE
.....................................................................................................9
CZĘŚĆ PIERWSZA
1.
Wolność i jedność
..................................................................................................17
2.
Globalizm
І
partykularyzm
....................................................................................39
3.
Jednostka ludzka w filozofii komufiitaryzmu
.......................................,................52
4.
Karl Popper
i jego wrogowie
.................................................................................67
5.
Antyracjonalizm w polityce
...................................................................................91
CZĘŚĆ DRUGA
6.
Trudny powrót do Europy
...................................................................................115
7.
Zjednoczona Europa
í
jej wrogowie
.......,..............................................,............. 129
8.
Europejska porażka Polski
...................................................................................145
9.
Wymiary i ciężary Europy
...................................................................................156
10.
Trzecia wojna światowa
.....................................................................................175
11.
Upadek polskiej lewicy
........................................................................................206
12.
Polityka pogardy
..................................................................................................229
13.
Kondensacja polskiego ducha. Jan Paweł
Π
i krzyż interpasywności
.................246
BIBLIOGRAFIA
......................................................................................................263
SUMMARY
..............................................................................................................271
INDEKS NAZWISK
................................................................................................279
Adam Chmielewski
TWO CONCEPTS OF UNITY
Philosophical and Political Interventions
Summary
The problems dealt with in his book are problems of political
philosophy and practice. In the book I develop some new theoretical
proposals as well as some interpretations of political doctrines of the
past, A more immediate reason to write it, however, was a need to
understand and interpret political events of contemporary Poland,
Europe, and the world, which took place within the first five turbu¬
lent years of the 21st century. Yet, despite addressing current prob¬
lems, the book is not an exercise in political science. Events of con¬
temporary politics are used here to test, and hopefully to demonstrate,
the efficacy of theoretical concepts and ideas put forward in the book
as tools of their interpretation.
This double aim of the book is reflected in its structure. Five
chapters of the Part I are analytical in character and are devoted to
definition and elaboration of theoretical ideas, most especially the
one of two conceptions of unity. Remaining eight chapters of the Part
Π
are an attempt to understand problems related to the difficult process
of the expansion of the European Union and its place on the interna¬
tional scene. The essays contain also a highly critical assessment of
the current policies of the Polish political elites, and in this sense they
are interventions urging for essential corrections within this area.
272
Adam Chmielewski,
Dwie koncepcje jedności
The present book is also a next stage in development of propos¬
als formulated in my former book Open Society or Community?
Philosophical and Moral Foundations of Liberalism and its Critique
in Contemporary Socials Philosophy
(Wrocław
2001,
in Polish)
which contains an outline of the consequently agonistic conception
of society and politics . It consists of the concept of two traditions in
political thinking, conversational turn, egalitarianism
(epistemologia
cal,
moral and political), and the idea of agonistic democracy. These
ideas are supplemented here by distinction between two concept of
unity, interpassivity, and the idea of the constitutive role of antago¬
nism for (our understanding of) human nature, society and politics.
The point of departure of the agonistic view of society is the
claim that the poles of the opposition constitutive for the traditional
political philosophy, i.e. the individual and community , are to be
superseded by an another pair of opposites, namely that of the open
society and community . This new opposition enables one to step
beyond the futile dilemma between the individuality and community,
and to focus on a more pertinent question, that of the method of orga¬
nization of the communal life of societies. From this point of view the
problem lies not so much in ontological priority of the individual
or of the community, for this issue may be considered to be definite¬
ly settled, but rather in the problem whether a political community is
to be organised in order to constitute a public space for an egalitarian
development of human individuals or, vice versa, a space in which
agency of the individuals will have to be subordinated to supraindi-
vidual aims of the community to which they belong.
The opposition between liberal idea of the open society and
communitarian concept of community is used here as an instrument
of understanding various political conflicts of the present. The global
conflict between the Occidental forces of modernization and the tra¬
ditionalist (largely Oriental) forces of resistance against it, can be
interpreted as the most dramatic and important example of this oppo¬
sition. An another, local example is the present political conflict between,
on the one hand, (more or less self-proclaimed) inheritors of the tra¬
dition Solidarity and, on the other, followers of the liberal tradition,
seen as alien to the Polish nation by the other part of the conflict.
Summary
273
I also believe that the opposition between the above philosophical
and political projects may throw new light on the contentious issues
between contemporary left and right. For it enables one to take into
account not only the economic issues, on which the traditional left
and right concentrated. Without writing off the problems of social
justice, social egalitarianism and justice of the redistribution of the
socially produced wealth, the opposition between the open society
and the community makes it possible to embrace a much wider range
of social and political problems, most importantly those of political
recognition of social difference which traditional left and right usually
relegated to the background, or dismissed altogether.
The conception developed here is based on recognition that
at the point of departure, but also at the point of arrival, we have
to acknowledge the agonistic nature of human nature. This claim is
a methodological postulate that this feature of human nature is to be
kept in mind both at the outset of construction of our understanding
of politics, but also at the end of our inquiry. Theories which do
acknowledge the agonism of human nature are also open to the
dialectics of political life and to the unavoidable dialectics of their
philosophical understanding, i.e. they are able to come to terms with
intrinsic incommensurability of political discourses, with reasons
of this incommensurability, and with reasons for indecidabilily of
political differences and conflicts.
This book contains an argument that in contemporary world, in
which globalising and particularising tendencies have clashed with
formidable force, the philosophical attention should focus on the con¬
cept of unity rather than on that of freedom. In other words, the prob¬
lem of various ways of understanding unity, methods of its social
implementation and its preservation should now receive a theoretical
and practical priority which in the 20th century unquestionably
belonged to the idea of liberty.
The juxtaposition of two alternative ways of understanding
of political unity, to some extent parallel to two conceptions of liber¬
ty juxtaposed in
1958
by Isaiah Berlin, is the main motif of this book.
His famous distinction has been recently revived, though largely for
the critical purposes, in the context of the liberal/communitarian
274
Adam Chmielewski,
Dwie koncepcje jedności
debate, especially in
Charles
Taylor s and Alasdair Maclntyre s cri¬
tique of individualism, emotivism and atomism in political and social
philosophy life of modern societies.
Berlin s distinction between two concepts of liberty, negative
and positive ones, has been formulated in a very specific historical
context. His insistence upon the understanding of liberty as indivi¬
dual freedom from limitations, along with his critique of the historical
inevitability (indebted to Karl Popper s critique of historicism and
totalitarianism) has been put forward at the time when much of the
world has been under the sway of the communist regimes which, both
doctrinally and practically, aimed at controlling and limiting the free¬
doms of individuals. Berlin s critique of the positive concept of free¬
dom, just as Popper s defence of the liberal individualism and of the
open society, are properly to be understood in the historical context
of the dangers human liberty had to face at that time.
Ever since the time of the staunch defence of liberty by Berlin
and Popper, the world has undergone dramatic changes. Victorious
liberal freedom prevailed in those parts of the world which were pre¬
viously stifled by non-liberal regimes. At the same time, however,
its victory has enticed strong adverse reactions in different regions
where the negative freedom is not, and has never been, appreciated.
The strength of the resistance against globalisation of the Western
ideology and economy is nowadays leading to dramatic conflicts that
contribute to the instability of the post-cold-war world disorder.
It is becoming evident that at this particular moment of history,
in view of the strength of the resistance against the liberal world, and
gravity of the present global conflicts, we should now be addressing
not so much the questions of individual liberty, but those of the unity
of the world.
It is common knowledge that, in virtue of the
exclusivist
nature
of human beings, it is easier for people to unite against a common
enemy, or against a common threat, rather than around a common
cause. There are reasons to believe, however, that essential ineradi-
cability of human
exclusivism
does not leave us helpless in coping
with the question of unity. For there are at least three fundamental
attitudes one may adopt toward it. For one may aim at suppressing
Summaiy
275
the agonistic individual need to distinguish oneself from each other,
as did Thomas Hobbes in his authoritarian, para-political conception
of society. Alternatively, one may aim at exciting the agonistic rivalry
between individuals and their groups as did, for example, Carl
Schmitt in
his ultra-political view of mutual relationships between
societies, or more recently, Samuel
Huntington in
his account of the
future of the globe as an unavoidable clash of civilisations. What
is usually left from sight is a third possible attitude, truly political
one, that consists in a continuous attempt at managing the
exclusivist
rivalries between individuals and their various groupings; this can be
achieved not by extinguishing the rivalries altogether, nor by exciting
them into all-out conflicts, but by keeping them alive, yet within limits
of respect for life, dignity and well-being of the other.
It is in order to elaborate on this point that I introduce the dis¬
tinction between two concepts of unity: the unity of enforced dogma,
and the unity of negotiated compromise. These two concepts of unity
differ in the ways of arriving at them, as well as in the stability guar¬
anteed by them. The first kind of the unity is achieved through impo¬
sition or enforcement, the other is the unity negotiated and hard-won
through an argument and an effort toward mutual understanding. The
unity imposed may seem firm and durable, yet rarely is; the unity
negotiated may seem unstable and fragile, yet is, as a rule, far more
permanent. The first kind of unity is usually repugnant to those who
are forced to reconcile with it; the other, on the contrary, is by far
more respected and treasured by all involved in its achievement and
protection; although the first kind unity is likely to win in a short-run
perspective, its proponents must be wary of the fact that those who
were forced to yield to their will, sooner or later will most likely rebel
against it.
Alasdair Maclntyre has often been misrepresented as preaching
a return to the tightly-nit ideal community in which an individual has
little scope for his or her individual freedom. This view is far from
adequate. In fact, Maclntyre
s
concept of community enables better
to understand the second, agonistic concept of social unity.
Following Maclntyre one may say that any community exists in so
far as its members are engaged in a permanent debate about what
276
Adam Chmiclewski,
Dwie koncepcje jedności
their community is supposed to be. A continuous debate about the
identity of a community, conducted within it, is a sign of its life;
it should be read as an evidence that its members are really concerned
about their community, that they identity with it. The death of such
an argument would signify that the community has lost its attractive¬
ness to them, that its members gave up on it and do not wish to take
any active part in it; that they refuse to co-determine its future devel¬
opment and do not see anymore a place for themselves within it. Any
living community builds its unity through a process of a continuous¬
ly negotiated and renegotiated compromise. From this it follows that
a community is never constituted by unanimity; rather, unanimity
is a sign of its atrophy. Unanimity signals that the unity of a commu¬
nity is being built according to an imposed dogma. The concept of
a community cannot be understood in abstraction from the two con¬
cepts of unity.
In this book many critical things are said about liberalism; at the
same time, many words of appreciation are expressed here about the
communitarian, most especially about Alasdair Maclntyre s political
and moral philosophy. This is for two reasons. Before explaining
them, however, I would like to stress that the criticism of liberal doc¬
trines does not mean a wholesale rejection of liberalism as a political
project, just like the acceptance of a version of communitarianism
does not necessarily imply the acceptance of various republican
communitarian political designs, most especially in their form of
moral revolutions , as proposed recently e.g. by the Polish extreme
right.
One reason for the criticism of liberalism, as well as for the cau¬
tious attitude toward the political-practical communitarianism, is that
they, in their traditional forms, do not take seriously enough the ago¬
nistic nature of individuals and societies. For the liberal para-political
vision of politics, as well as the arehe-political communitarianism,
both seem to imply suppression of inner diversity and dynamics of
social communities.
An another reason for critical assessment of some versions
of liberalism, and communitarianism, has to do with ideological fun¬
damentalism ( principialism ) that often accompanies them. Each
Summary
_______________________________________________277
view can be professed in a more or less fundamentalist way. Usually,
the fundamentalist attitude is a result of the temperamental disposi¬
tion of a person professing particular view. There is, however,
an important structural asymmetry in acceptable level of fundamen¬
talism in the case of liberalism and communitarianism, respectively.
For a degree of fundamentalism seems not only in agreement with the
very nature of communitarianism, but also an essential element of it.
Thus, an integral fundamentalism of communitarian doctrmes seems
to be wholly understandable, and even necessary for it.
At the same time, however, such fundamentalism is structurally
incompatible with liberalism and, in its case, is particularly out of
place. Yet some of its followers and defenders, in the face of the
communitarian critique of their doctrine, are prone to construe argu¬
ments which resemble Manichean oppositions. In fact a metatheore-
tical opposition between (good) liberalism and (evil) communitarian¬
ism is one of such liberal arguments against communitarianism. This
Manichaean liberal argument, however, implies two contradictory
claims; one asserting that (contrary to the moralistic communitaria¬
nism) liberalism does not aim at defining any axis between good
and evil, and the second asserting that when faced with the opposi¬
tion between liberalism and communitarianism, we are in fact faced
with a choice between politically beneficial tolerant liberalism
and the politically dangerous communitarian intolerance . Such
a Manichaean defence of liberalism, however, seems to imply a per¬
formative contradiction and may be interpreted as an attempt to
impose the yoke of liberalism on the doubtful or on the dissenting.
If that is the case, liberalism thus defended implies an intellectual clo¬
sure of the liberal discourse space, the protection of which was the
overall aim of liberalism in the first place.
Thus the reason for criticism of the non-agonistic versions
of liberalism and communitarianism stems from the fact that they aim
as suppressing the differences both at the level of political practice
and in their understanding of human individuals. From this point
of view, quite obvious become also the reasons for simultaneous
approval for Alasdair Maclntyre s communitarianism and Isaiah
Berlin s agonistic liberalism. Although in both cases my approval
278
Adam Chmielewski,
Dwie koncepcje
jeàno&ci
of their doctrines is somewhat limited, it is based on the fact that both
thinkers, representing opposed political and philosophical stand¬
points, have in their doctrines unanimously acknowledged the ago¬
nistic character of society, social rivalry and incommensurability
of moral and political values. To sum up, the attitude of particular
philosophical doctrines toward the agonistic view defended in this
book is the basic.criterion for their assessment.
One of the merits of the agonistic of view human nature is the
fact that it enables fully to acknowledge the importance of psycholo¬
gy for the philosophical understanding of political processes.
The philosophical and political entry into the inner sphere of human
individuals, called for here, has been done so far in a variety of ways.
One of the recent examples is Maclntyre s investigation of the self
which assumed the form of his narrative conception of human iden¬
tity and the ethics of virtues; an another one is Charles Taylor s
search for sources of the self. Still another way of politically and
philosophically relevant psychological investigation is provided by
the use of the concept of interpassivity (formulated by Robert Pfaller
and developed by
Slavoj Žižek).
An important part of the project
developed in this book is a conception which may be called a psy¬
cho-sociological political philosophy . Taking seriously arguments
of the above-mentioned philosophers, it makes prolific use especial¬
ly of the concept of interpassivity which proves quite useful in analy¬
sis of a number of particular phenomena and events of the contem¬
porary politics, ideology and religion.
Adam Chmielewski
|
| adam_txt |
SPIS TREŚCI
PRZEDMOWA
.
,
.7
WPROWADZENIE
.9
CZĘŚĆ PIERWSZA
1.
Wolność i jedność
.17
2.
Globalizm
І
partykularyzm
.39
3.
Jednostka ludzka w filozofii komufiitaryzmu
.,.52
4.
Karl Popper
i jego wrogowie
.67
5.
Antyracjonalizm w polityce
.91
CZĘŚĆ DRUGA
6.
Trudny powrót do Europy
.115
7.
Zjednoczona Europa
í
jej wrogowie
.,.,. 129
8.
Europejska porażka Polski
.145
9.
Wymiary i ciężary Europy
.156
10.
Trzecia wojna światowa
.175
11.
Upadek polskiej lewicy
.206
12.
Polityka pogardy
.229
13.
Kondensacja polskiego ducha. Jan Paweł
Π
i krzyż interpasywności
.246
BIBLIOGRAFIA
.263
SUMMARY
.271
INDEKS NAZWISK
.279
Adam Chmielewski
TWO CONCEPTS OF UNITY
Philosophical and Political Interventions
Summary
The problems dealt with in his book are problems of political
philosophy and practice. In the book I develop some new theoretical
proposals as well as some interpretations of political doctrines of the
past, A more immediate reason to write it, however, was a need to
understand and interpret political events of contemporary Poland,
Europe, and the world, which took place within the first five turbu¬
lent years of the 21st century. Yet, despite addressing current prob¬
lems, the book is not an exercise in political science. Events of con¬
temporary politics are used here to test, and hopefully to demonstrate,
the efficacy of theoretical concepts and ideas put forward in the book
as tools of their interpretation.
This double aim of the book is reflected in its structure. Five
chapters of the Part I are analytical in character and are devoted to
definition and elaboration of theoretical ideas, most especially the
one of two conceptions of unity. Remaining eight chapters of the Part
Π
are an attempt to understand problems related to the difficult process
of the expansion of the European Union and its place on the interna¬
tional scene. The essays contain also a highly critical assessment of
the current policies of the Polish political elites, and in this sense they
are interventions urging for essential corrections within this area.
272
Adam Chmielewski,
Dwie koncepcje jedności
The present book is also a next stage in development of propos¬
als formulated in my former book Open Society or Community?
Philosophical and Moral Foundations of Liberalism and its Critique
in Contemporary Socials Philosophy
(Wrocław
2001,
in Polish)
which contains an outline of the "consequently agonistic conception
of society and politics". It consists of the concept of two traditions in
political thinking, conversational turn, egalitarianism
(epistemologia
cal,
moral and political), and the idea of agonistic democracy. These
ideas are supplemented here by distinction between two concept of
unity, interpassivity, and the idea of the constitutive role of antago¬
nism for (our understanding of) human nature, society and politics.
The point of departure of the agonistic view of society is the
claim that the poles of the opposition constitutive for the traditional
political philosophy, i.e. "the individual" and "community", are to be
superseded by an another pair of opposites, namely that of "the open
society" and "community". This new opposition enables one to step
beyond the futile dilemma between the individuality and community,
and to focus on a more pertinent question, that of the method of orga¬
nization of the communal life of societies. From this point of view the
problem lies not so much in ontological priority of the individual
or of the community, for this issue may be considered to be definite¬
ly settled, but rather in the problem whether a political community is
to be organised in order to constitute a public space for an egalitarian
development of human individuals or, vice versa, a space in which
agency of the individuals will have to be subordinated to supraindi-
vidual aims of the community to which they belong.
The opposition between liberal idea of the open society and
communitarian concept of community is used here as an instrument
of understanding various political conflicts of the present. The global
conflict between the Occidental forces of modernization and the tra¬
ditionalist (largely Oriental) forces of resistance against it, can be
interpreted as the most dramatic and important example of this oppo¬
sition. An another, local example is the present political conflict between,
on the one hand, (more or less self-proclaimed) inheritors of the tra¬
dition "Solidarity" and, on the other, followers of the liberal tradition,
seen as alien to the Polish nation by the other part of the conflict.
Summary
273
I also believe that the opposition between the above philosophical
and political projects may throw new light on the contentious issues
between contemporary left and right. For it enables one to take into
account not only the economic issues, on which the traditional left
and right concentrated. Without writing off the problems of social
justice, social egalitarianism and justice of the redistribution of the
socially produced wealth, the opposition between the open society
and the community makes it possible to embrace a much wider range
of social and political problems, most importantly those of political
recognition of social difference which traditional left and right usually
relegated to the background, or dismissed altogether.
The conception developed here is based on recognition that
at the point of departure, but also at the point of arrival, we have
to acknowledge the agonistic nature of human nature. This claim is
a methodological postulate that this feature of human nature is to be
kept in mind both at the outset of construction of our understanding
of politics, but also at the end of our inquiry. Theories which do
acknowledge the agonism of human nature are also open to the
dialectics of political life and to the unavoidable dialectics of their
philosophical understanding, i.e. they are able to come to terms with
intrinsic incommensurability of political discourses, with reasons
of this incommensurability, and with reasons for indecidabilily of
political differences and conflicts.
This book contains an argument that in contemporary world, in
which globalising and particularising tendencies have clashed with
formidable force, the philosophical attention should focus on the con¬
cept of unity rather than on that of freedom. In other words, the prob¬
lem of various ways of understanding unity, methods of its social
implementation and its preservation should now receive a theoretical
and practical priority which in the 20th century unquestionably
belonged to the idea of liberty.
The juxtaposition of two alternative ways of understanding
of political unity, to some extent parallel to two conceptions of liber¬
ty juxtaposed in
1958
by Isaiah Berlin, is the main motif of this book.
His famous distinction has been recently revived, though largely for
the critical purposes, in the context of the liberal/communitarian
274
Adam Chmielewski,
Dwie koncepcje jedności
debate, especially in
Charles
Taylor's and Alasdair Maclntyre's cri¬
tique of individualism, emotivism and atomism in political and social
philosophy life of modern societies.
Berlin's distinction between two concepts of liberty, negative
and positive ones, has been formulated in a very specific historical
context. His insistence upon the understanding of liberty as indivi¬
dual freedom from limitations, along with his critique of the historical
inevitability (indebted to Karl Popper's critique of historicism and
totalitarianism) has been put forward at the time when much of the
world has been under the sway of the communist regimes which, both
doctrinally and practically, aimed at controlling and limiting the free¬
doms of individuals. Berlin's critique of the positive concept of free¬
dom, just as Popper's defence of the liberal individualism and of the
open society, are properly to be understood in the historical context
of the dangers human liberty had to face at that time.
Ever since the time of the staunch defence of liberty by Berlin
and Popper, the world has undergone dramatic changes. Victorious
liberal freedom prevailed in those parts of the world which were pre¬
viously stifled by non-liberal regimes. At the same time, however,
its victory has enticed strong adverse reactions in different regions
where the negative freedom is not, and has never been, appreciated.
The strength of the resistance against globalisation of the Western
ideology and economy is nowadays leading to dramatic conflicts that
contribute to the instability of the post-cold-war world disorder.
It is becoming evident that at this particular moment of history,
in view of the strength of the resistance against the liberal world, and
gravity of the present global conflicts, we should now be addressing
not so much the questions of individual liberty, but those of the unity
of the world.
It is common knowledge that, in virtue of the
exclusivist
nature
of human beings, it is easier for people to unite against a common
enemy, or against a common threat, rather than around a common
cause. There are reasons to believe, however, that essential ineradi-
cability of human
exclusivism
does not leave us helpless in coping
with the question of unity. For there are at least three fundamental
attitudes one may adopt toward it. For one may aim at suppressing
Summaiy
275
the agonistic individual need to distinguish oneself from each other,
as did Thomas Hobbes in his authoritarian, para-political conception
of society. Alternatively, one may aim at exciting the agonistic rivalry
between individuals and their groups as did, for example, Carl
Schmitt in
his ultra-political view of mutual relationships between
societies, or more recently, Samuel
Huntington in
his account of the
future of the globe as an unavoidable clash of civilisations. What
is usually left from sight is a third possible attitude, truly political
one, that consists in a continuous attempt at managing the
exclusivist
rivalries between individuals and their various groupings; this can be
achieved not by extinguishing the rivalries altogether, nor by exciting
them into all-out conflicts, but by keeping them alive, yet within limits
of respect for life, dignity and well-being of the other.
It is in order to elaborate on this point that I introduce the dis¬
tinction between two concepts of unity: the unity of enforced dogma,
and the unity of negotiated compromise. These two concepts of unity
differ in the ways of arriving at them, as well as in the stability guar¬
anteed by them. The first kind of the unity is achieved through impo¬
sition or enforcement, the other is the unity negotiated and hard-won
through an argument and an effort toward mutual understanding. The
unity imposed may seem firm and durable, yet rarely is; the unity
negotiated may seem unstable and fragile, yet is, as a rule, far more
permanent. The first kind of unity is usually repugnant to those who
are forced to reconcile with it; the other, on the contrary, is by far
more respected and treasured by all involved in its achievement and
protection; although the first kind unity is likely to win in a short-run
perspective, its proponents must be wary of the fact that those who
were forced to yield to their will, sooner or later will most likely rebel
against it.
Alasdair Maclntyre has often been misrepresented as preaching
a return to the tightly-nit ideal community in which an individual has
little scope for his or her individual freedom. This view is far from
adequate. In fact, Maclntyre'
s
concept of community enables better
to understand the second, agonistic concept of social unity.
Following Maclntyre one may say that any community exists in so
far as its members are engaged in a permanent debate about what
276
Adam Chmiclewski,
Dwie koncepcje jedności
their community is supposed to be. A continuous debate about the
identity of a community, conducted within it, is a sign of its life;
it should be read as an evidence that its members are really concerned
about their community, that they identity with it. The death of such
an argument would signify that the community has lost its attractive¬
ness to them, that its members gave up on it and do not wish to take
any active part in it; that they refuse to co-determine its future devel¬
opment and do not see anymore a place for themselves within it. Any
living community builds its unity through a process of a continuous¬
ly negotiated and renegotiated compromise. From this it follows that
a community is never constituted by unanimity; rather, unanimity
is a sign of its atrophy. Unanimity signals that the unity of a commu¬
nity is being built according to an imposed dogma. The concept of
a community cannot be understood in abstraction from the two con¬
cepts of unity.
In this book many critical things are said about liberalism; at the
same time, many words of appreciation are expressed here about the
communitarian, most especially about Alasdair Maclntyre's political
and moral philosophy. This is for two reasons. Before explaining
them, however, I would like to stress that the criticism of liberal doc¬
trines does not mean a wholesale rejection of liberalism as a political
project, just like the acceptance of a version of communitarianism
does not necessarily imply the acceptance of various "republican"
communitarian political designs, most especially in their form of
"moral revolutions", as proposed recently e.g. by the Polish extreme
right.
One reason for the criticism of liberalism, as well as for the cau¬
tious attitude toward the political-practical communitarianism, is that
they, in their traditional forms, do not take seriously enough the ago¬
nistic nature of individuals and societies. For the liberal para-political
vision of politics, as well as the arehe-political communitarianism,
both seem to imply suppression of inner diversity and dynamics of
social communities.
An another reason for critical assessment of some versions
of liberalism, and communitarianism, has to do with ideological fun¬
damentalism ("principialism") that often accompanies them. Each
Summary
_277
view can be professed in a more or less fundamentalist way. Usually,
the fundamentalist attitude is a result of the temperamental disposi¬
tion of a person professing particular view. There is, however,
an important structural asymmetry in acceptable level of fundamen¬
talism in the case of liberalism and communitarianism, respectively.
For a degree of fundamentalism seems not only in agreement with the
very nature of communitarianism, but also an essential element of it.
Thus, an integral fundamentalism of communitarian doctrmes seems
to be wholly understandable, and even necessary for it.
At the same time, however, such fundamentalism is structurally
incompatible with liberalism and, in its case, is particularly out of
place. Yet some of its followers and defenders, in the face of the
communitarian critique of their doctrine, are prone to construe argu¬
ments which resemble Manichean oppositions. In fact a metatheore-
tical opposition between (good) liberalism and (evil) communitarian¬
ism is one of such liberal arguments against communitarianism. This
Manichaean liberal argument, however, implies two contradictory
claims; one asserting that (contrary to the moralistic communitaria¬
nism) liberalism does not aim at defining any axis between good
and evil, and the second asserting that when faced with the opposi¬
tion between liberalism and communitarianism, we are in fact faced
with a choice between "politically beneficial tolerant liberalism"
and the "politically dangerous communitarian intolerance". Such
a Manichaean defence of liberalism, however, seems to imply a per¬
formative contradiction and may be interpreted as an attempt to
impose the yoke of liberalism on the doubtful or on the dissenting.
If that is the case, liberalism thus defended implies an intellectual clo¬
sure of the liberal discourse space, the protection of which was the
overall aim of liberalism in the first place.
Thus the reason for criticism of the non-agonistic versions
of liberalism and communitarianism stems from the fact that they aim
as suppressing the differences both at the level of political practice
and in their understanding of human individuals. From this point
of view, quite obvious become also the reasons for simultaneous
approval for Alasdair Maclntyre's communitarianism and Isaiah
Berlin's agonistic liberalism. Although in both cases my approval
278
Adam Chmielewski,
Dwie koncepcje
jeàno&ci
of their doctrines is somewhat limited, it is based on the fact that both
thinkers, representing opposed political and philosophical stand¬
points, have in their doctrines unanimously acknowledged the ago¬
nistic character of society, social rivalry and incommensurability
of moral and political values. To sum up, the attitude of particular
philosophical doctrines toward the agonistic view defended in this
book is the basic.criterion for their assessment.
One of the merits of the agonistic of view human nature is the
fact that it enables fully to acknowledge the importance of psycholo¬
gy for the philosophical understanding of political processes.
The philosophical and political entry into the inner sphere of human
individuals, called for here, has been done so far in a variety of ways.
One of the recent examples is Maclntyre's investigation of the self
which assumed the form of his narrative conception of human iden¬
tity and the ethics of virtues; an another one is Charles Taylor's
search for sources of the self. Still another way of politically and
philosophically relevant psychological investigation is provided by
the use of the concept of interpassivity (formulated by Robert Pfaller
and developed by
Slavoj Žižek).
An important part of the project
developed in this book is a conception which may be called "a psy¬
cho-sociological political philosophy". Taking seriously arguments
of the above-mentioned philosophers, it makes prolific use especial¬
ly of the concept of interpassivity which proves quite useful in analy¬
sis of a number of particular phenomena and events of the contem¬
porary politics, ideology and religion.
Adam Chmielewski |
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| id | DE-604.BV022535320 |
| illustrated | Not Illustrated |
| index_date | 2024-07-02T18:08:02Z |
| indexdate | 2024-07-09T20:59:42Z |
| institution | BVB |
| isbn | 8360186138 |
| language | Polish |
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| spelling | Chmielewski, Adam 1959- Verfasser (DE-588)132642247 aut Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne Adam Chmielewski Bydgoszcz [u.a.] Oficyna Wydawn. Branta 2006 283 S. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Zsfassung in engl. Sprache u.d.T.: Two concepts of unity. - Inhalt: "The problems dealt in this books are problems of political philosophy and practice". Europäische Union European Union Membership European Union Poland Philosophie Politische Wissenschaft Political science Philosophy Politische Philosophie (DE-588)4076226-9 gnd rswk-swf Polen Politische Philosophie (DE-588)4076226-9 s DE-604 Digitalisierung BSBMuenchen application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=015741838&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Inhaltsverzeichnis Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=015741838&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Abstract |
| spellingShingle | Chmielewski, Adam 1959- Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne Europäische Union European Union Membership European Union Poland Philosophie Politische Wissenschaft Political science Philosophy Politische Philosophie (DE-588)4076226-9 gnd |
| subject_GND | (DE-588)4076226-9 |
| title | Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne |
| title_auth | Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne |
| title_exact_search | Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne |
| title_exact_search_txtP | Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne |
| title_full | Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne Adam Chmielewski |
| title_fullStr | Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne Adam Chmielewski |
| title_full_unstemmed | Dwie koncepcje jedności interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne Adam Chmielewski |
| title_short | Dwie koncepcje jedności |
| title_sort | dwie koncepcje jednosci interwencje filozoficzno polityczne |
| title_sub | interwencje filozoficzno-polityczne |
| topic | Europäische Union European Union Membership European Union Poland Philosophie Politische Wissenschaft Political science Philosophy Politische Philosophie (DE-588)4076226-9 gnd |
| topic_facet | Europäische Union European Union Membership European Union Poland Philosophie Politische Wissenschaft Political science Philosophy Politische Philosophie Polen |
| url | http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=015741838&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=015741838&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA |
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