Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 25 No. 3, 2005.
Original scientific paper
Antithetical Solidarity?
Lino Veljak
Abstract
In this work, the concept of antithetical solidarity is introductorily defined. Antithetical solidarity is an objective category that expresses the mutual support of opposite forces based on common interests. In the post-September llth world, that solidarity distinguishes itself in the mutual supporting of the destroyers and proponents of liberal democracy. The first strive to change the existing world order by restoring some type of organic community, which by its own character would be necessarily totalitarian. The second, strive to save the liberal-democratic order by the strengthening of repression and decreasing the level of protection on individual freedom, and so, civil and human rights. However, they only make way for the totalitarian potential which is present in developed countries worldwide. Among the defenders of liberal democracy are also present forces which themselves plead for the establishment of new types of totalitarianism. Among the first of these we find those for whom liberalism is absolutely equitable with neoliberalism. The necessity of fundamental research of the modalities and mechanisms through which antithetical solidarity acts is the assumption of avoiding false alternatives, to which tend trendy thinkers like Fukuyama and Huntington. Liberal democracy cannot sustain itself by exclusively depending on liberal theory, because this theory cannot respond to the most fundamental questions which exceed the boundaries of procedure (jus- tice, democratic control over the centers of power, solidarity, resistance in relation to manipulation). Therefore it is necessary to establish the unity of the practical philosophy, that is, ethics, economics and politics.
Keywords
antithetic; solidarity; totalitarianism; 9/11; Francis Fukuyama; Samuel Huntington; practical philosophy
Hrčak ID:
202162
URI
Publication date:
1.9.2005.
Visits: 1.415 *