Some Comments on the Productivity of Dichotomies in the Current Arena of Ideological Confrontations

Abstract

The history of the development of human communities opens up a large number of chapters of the alliance of rationality and power. The determining power of the implementation of elements of purposeful rationality at the political level is almost always represented by the legitimation of a certain type of interest associated with the greatest power to enforcing them. The primary goal of this paper is in an endeavour to place the normative nature of current (democratic) political regimes where we encounter the need for a more fundamental theoretical argument that would enable us to respond to their dynamic, often contradictory development. We focus on the productivity of dichotomies in the theory and practice of rationalism, irrationalism and liberal democracy. Their interaction in fact defines and creates the conditions for experimenting with different forms of political structures in the search for a better human and the world. At the same time, its performance not only defines the conditions for the theoretical justification of the idea of power, but also becomes a tool for its implementation. The theoretical background of this approach develops monitoring the content turbulences in the political systems of liberal democracies, with an emphasis on political life in Slovakia. Hence, in the present study, in the context of possible effects of the infectious disease COVID-19 on the activities of individual political actors, we point to a unique experience that contributes to addressing the issue of the way of establishing "softer" forms of political communication instead of political struggle, especially at the level of relations between the conservative, socialist, and liberal party-political communities not just in Slovakia, but also in other countries around the world.