Not All Will Be Saved: The Boundaries of the Political Community as a Socio-ontological Premise

Abstract

The article offers an exposition of the range of topics discussed at the events of the Centre for Fundamental Sociology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2017–2018. These topics were generally connected with the basic theme of the return of the sacred to the world of late modernity which seemed to be completely secularized long ago. Special emphasis is given to the role the state plays in this process of the political rehabilitation of the transcendent. The statement of the problem starts with the analysis of significant structural changes within the global discursive landscape, including the demise of the leading role of triumphalist globalization narratives which, until recently, dominated the sphere of values and symbolic meanings. Then it raises the question of the return of the state as an operator of worldly, secular salvation, which, through its institutions, ensures the inclusion of the social world into the transcendent one, thereby defining the circle of those to be rescued. A short historical-philosophical excursus then demonstrates the rooted-ness of the problem of borders of communities in solidarity united by certain transcendent values in the tradition of social science since the times of antiquity. The next section, appealing to the Aristotelian understanding of the political, proposes a participatory model of the mutual recognition for the members of a certain “We”-group structurally separated from other historically-contingent communities of fate. By conceptual means, the article offers an analysis of the attempts to overcome the inevitably discrete character of social ontology undertaken by universalist discourse through the return to cosmopolitan utopias such as projects of global citizenship, post-national inclusive politics, etc. Finally, the text proposes a reconstruction of the alternative line of argumentation usually associated with the names of Aristotle and Rousseau, but explicitly developed by Carl Schmitt. In this line of reasoning, homogeneity is postulated as a condition of the possibility for any community of solidarity. The article offers preliminary conclusions on the relevance of this topic to the theory of social order.