In a departure from traditional Western political theory that is reminiscent of left?wing anarchism, contemporary libertarianism rejects the necessity of making political choices based on a value hierarchy, instead claiming that it is possible for all individuals to pursue their divergent values simultaneously?as long as each respects the equal rights of others to do the same. The caveat, however, hides a conflict of loyalties that would plague a libertarian society: on the one hand are the particular loyalties of one's preferred (...) Utopian community; on the other hand, loyalty to the larger ?framework for utopias?; within which one's utopia exists. The second loyalty implies a value relativism incompatible with the first one, meaning either that loyalty to the libertarian framework will undermine the utopias within it, or that the particular values of the utopias will destabilize the libertarian framework. The durability of a libertarian society, then, requires a mentality best characterized as nihilistic. In this, libertarianism differs from liberalism but is surprisingly similar to the cultural diversity movement. The thesis is illustrated by examining John Gray's attempt to eschew both a hierarchy of values and moral relativism. (shrink)

In Poland, the practical difficulties encountered in the struggle to create a capitalist society are leading many Hayekian liberals to the realization that social factors crucial to the creation and stability of such a society are invisible within the classical liberal intellectual horizon and are undermined by its ethic of egalitarian individualism. Therefore, paradoxically, a major step forward in the creation of a liberal society has been the abandonment of significant elements of liberal ideology in favor of civic republican and (...) neoconservative ideas. (shrink)

History -- Utopia -- Politics -- Ideology -- Religion.

The paper attempts to reconstruct Thales’ argument about water, which is rightly considered to be the core of his philosophy of nature. It consists of two separate arguments – one biological and the other physical – which ascribe to water two different functions: in the first case, it is a source of life on the earth or, in another version, a source of life of the earth in its entirety; in the second case, it is something that supports the earth (...) in its stationary position in the cosmos. These two arguments indicate that Thales’ notion of water was meant to answer more than just one question about nature. This, in turn, might justify the use of the concept of arche, which Aristotle attributed to the Ionian philosophers, even though Thales had obviously never used the term. The concept may somehow accurately render Thales’ more general view of water. It should be noted, however, that if the term arche can be applied to Thales’ views, then it is only in the sense related to the “coming-to-be”. Thales’ arguments did not apply – contrary to what some doxographers said and what certain scholars still maintain – to the question of the end, or perishing of physical things, the problem taken up only by later Ionians. To put it differently, Thales never claimed that the physical things which die or undergo destruction change into water. (shrink)

Like many libertarian thinkers, Simpson assumes that the minimal state is culturally neutral. This is false. Libertarianism is a theory opposed to hierarchy at the state level. As such, it also undermines the grounds for hierarchy at the community level. Since communities require some form of hierarchy not only to exist but to generate meaningful culture, libertarianism is inherently nonneutral towards culture. From this it follows that Simpson's idea of a minimal state overseeing various nonliberal communities cannot be realized within (...) the libertarian framework. In its place, I defend republicanism, which makes no pretensions toward cultural neutrality. (shrink)

W tomie zamieszczono teksty powstałe w ramach programu "Demokracja - idee, dylematy, praktyka", który obejmował cykl wykładów i dyskusji organizowanych przez Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej w roku 2001 na Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej w Krakowie.

In Society as a Department Store Ryszard Legutko wrestles with the emancipatory ideology promulgated by postmodernists, libertarians, and liberal thinkers. Legutko argues that modern Western liberals have embraced a revolutionary ethic; they have turned their backs on their own cultural heritage, and used its political and ideological apparatus to destroy classical metaphysics and epistemology. The book considers the paradoxical implications of this state of affairs for Eastern European intellectuals arguing that, with the triumph of liberalism over communism, these intellectuals feel (...) compelled to digest an ideology that shares many elements with the oppressive system from which they just liberated themselves. Based on hubris rather than genuine humane concerns, Legutko mourns not simply the loss of faith in classical Western culture, but the way in which that loss is becoming a central point of identity. (shrink)

By viewing toleration—which is usually interpreted as a personal attitude—through the lens of peaceful coexistence, Michael Walzer links toleration to political arrangements. The consequence of this approach is to blur basic political categories such as the state, political power, culture, and political creed. Moreover, while Walzer clearly prefers an immigrant society as embodying the practice of toleration more fully than any other regime, he fails to identify either its cultural or its political preconditions.

The book has two currents. The first is an analysis of the three concepts of freedom, which are called, respectively, negative, positive, and inner. Negative freedom is defined as an absence of coercion, positive freedom as an ability to rule oneself and rule others, inner freedom as being oneself, that is, being an author of one's decisions. Each concept is analyzed both in terms of its development in the history of ideas and in terms of its internal logic. The major (...) problem of negative freedom is to find widely accepted rules according to which this freedom can be distributed. The major problem of positive freedom is to define what constitutes a free person. The major problem of inner freedom is how to correlate it with the proper interpretation of the human self. The book advances the thesis - and this constitutes the other current of its narrative - that we have been witnessing the advent of a new form of despotism, much of it being the effect of the dominant position of liberalism. Precisely because it took a reductionist position, liberalism has impoverished our view of freedom, and consequently, our notion of human nature with its political, moral, and metaphysical dimensions. (shrink)

In Hayek's Social and Political Thought, Roland Kley argues that Hayek's defense of capitalism is instrumentalist: that is, that Hayek sees market societies as efficient mechanisms that have no independent ethical justification. But in fact, Hayek does have such a standard, one that is expressed in the notion of a discipline of freedom. This standard derives from the moral anthropology of the liberal‐conservative tradition.