Original scientific paper
Blaženka Despot
; Institute for Social Research, University of Zagreb
Abstract
In this article the liberation from freedom by overpowering the architectonics of the civil society — political state is achieved by reconsidering the dominant paradigm of the will for power through the example of new social movements, first of all the Greens, but also the feminist and peace movements.
The true position of advanced contemporary societies regarding the necessary restriction of the will for power in ecological catastrophes has caused the appearance of the empirical human universality to fight for life.
Societies in which the relation between particularity (civil society) and universality (political state) exist at the same time represent stage on which the fight between the old and the new paradigm is taking place. Ecological problems as a contradiction between capital and environment, capital and nature, are reflected both in ecological movements and in the old paradigm of the Greens, in parliamentary democracy.
The new paradigm is in its understanding of emancipation inevitably directed against the understanding of freedom whose presupposition is unlimited power over nature and its exploitation. In search of a new philosophy of nature, a possible new relationship between man and nature, it comes upon the old scientific paradigm.
New social movements, the new political paradigm, are bringing the concept of emancipation into relation with the liberation from the old paradigm. Their understanding of freedom as liberation from the notion of freedom, in whose groundwork lies the will for power, already in the notion indicates that they are not political in view of the traditional understanding of politics. These movements have not the homogeneous class base either, since their membership consists of people belonging to different groups and strata. The incoherent class base of the new social movements is an expression of the changed fundamentals and meaning of emancipation which is no longer apprehended in the field of conflicts between labour and capital interests.
The universalism of demands for new paradigms as anthropological needs for freedom and needs to live, is based upon the demands which can partly be found in the contradictions of the civil society and political state, but mostly out of the domain of this relation. The demands against freedom whose civilisational foundation is the will for power surpass civilization itself. Since the whole basis of civilization is solid and therefore appears as the only possible, the irreplaceable, these movements are often utopian in character. The new social movements of liberation from the old paradigm contain a panorama of factors disputing that paradigm.
Diversity in the articulation of the need for freedom, especially the need to live, brought about the need for orientation in an apparent wasteland marked by the topography »left«—»right«, »forward«—»backward«. An accurate compass can be found only through insight into the depth out of which the critique of the old paradigm emerged: into the relationship between emancipation and rights, the relationship between emancipation and the will for power, the relationship between emancipation and the submission of nature. This depth, on the other hand, can be measured by fathoming how much of the old the demands contain, how much of the old has been surpassed, meaning also revoked and brought to a new synthesis, and also how much of the utopian the demands contain.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155425
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1989.
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