Elucidation of the sense of openness through deconstruction of the concept of totalitarianism

Abstract

Aim of the article is to elucidate the very problem of openness through deconstruction of the concept of totalitarianism defined as a contrary to liberalism. In the first part author elaborates new concept of totalitarianism as defined with three main components of the phenomena: 1) Transcendental agreement (convenient) in relation to the eschatological truth given in four topos within the scope of modern ideas: god, nation social class, man; 2) Tautology of legitimization - in relation to the Other; 3) Scientization of charisma - in relation to the world; 4) Political Messianism and Manicheism - in relation to the self. Historical explanation provides the genesis of the concept of heavenly contract through the transformation of transcendence into the immanence of the world through three cases: 1) Puritanism of the 16th Century (Jean Calvin and John Knox) 2) Jacobinism of the 18th Century (Rousseau and Robespierre); 3) Marxism of the 19-20th Century (from Marx to Lenin). The second part of the paper presents the characterization of the totalitarian mind as specified with elimination of differences between the following levels: Identity-difference (in the dimension of discourse); Position-opposition (in the dimension of thinking); Friend- enemy (in the dimension of existence). Deconstruction of totalitarianism as its precondition of its possibility presupposes: a) experience of futility of political extremism; b) the fall of all available eschatological axes (whether the paramount topos topoon is god, Man, people or class). By means of deconstruction of the given concept author provides the basic prerequisites of liberalism: 1) Transcendental prerequisites of rational communication (co-understanding and argumentation); 2) Prospects of valid (non-thatulogical) procedures of legitimization; 3) Conditions for acquiring and preserving rational authority (in the realms of politics science, etc) Author thus shows full contrast between totalitarianism and liberalism. Given component of liberalism could only be safeguarded by institutional means. That amounts to the conclusion that deconstruction of totalitarianism as an actual occurrence includes the problem of the huge institutional reconstruction. Through juxtaposition of totalitarianism and liberalism, author elucidates the very problem of openness on the following way: only upon the downfall of all mentioned interchanings varieties of suprime good (summum bonum), the openness as primary distinction of political order became possible. This amount to: a) substitution of the idea of suprime good by the opposite idea of supreme evil (summum malum); b) transfer of all positive political programs and choices of values into the sphere of private matters of the citizen. Hereby the room is provided for synchrony of all ideas of good. But none of them could be made official without 'closing' society again. This means two things: firstly, that the state must be ideologically neutral; secondly, that every political program changes cardinally its rank: from constitutive into regulative on the basis of which is possible to maintain in the sphere of ethics without selfcontradictions. Thirdly, very possibility of openness is giving the clue of nowadays postmodern story on the 'end of all grand stories and metanarratives', for this is profound condition od the real 'open society'. Prospects of the openness are elucited by juxtaposing the two concept of liberalism: 1. In its initial meaning liberalism is one of modern universalistic doctrines, which, like any other, can be the way of 'closing society'; 2. In the second sense liberalism is not a doctrine, but exclusively pragmatic attitude or performance. Both concepts are based on the insight that mutual inferriability of proposition and performance, i.e. pragmatic and semantic, is not possible whatsoever. Liberalism could be the basis of openness and its maintenance only in the second sense, if and when it has institutional safeguards. In the perspective of this proposition all grand modern political programs (freedom, equality, fraternity) are: a) equal in their right to validity; b) they are in the relations of complementarity, with consequence that polemical conflicts among them are irrational and futile; c) hence, on the basis of openness their relation of communication and cooperation is only rational prospect. That is the function of the idea of openness. To be realistic, that means that one in its practice have to use the idea in regulative, not in constitutive sense.