The Notion of Power and Liberalism Evolution

Abstract

The author of the article makes the attempt to explain the evolution of liberalism and even broader, of human history not through the evolution of the notion of freedom, that became the philosophic mainstream already at the time of Hegel and was convenient for liberalism itself, but on the basis of the notion of power analysis that is interpreted by the liberals as opposite to freedom. Proceeding from the linguistic and political history data, the author demonstrates the multi-components character of the notion of power that is interpreted as: 1) some intriguing and “charming” authority ensuring harmony and order; 2) the source of legal violence; 3) the promise of advantages that leads to voluntary assuming certain responsibilities; 4) dependence on the source of want satisfaction; 5) passion, irrational dependence. The present notion of power structure is coherent to the Varna system specific for Indo-European nations; each Varna has its own, specific only for it, understanding of power. In various epochs and in various societies we find a specific governing notion of power. So, in Russia since ancient times the worldview of Kshatriyas prevailed and it still determines to a large extent its civilizational specifics. The classic western liberalism was characterized by the Vaishyas ideology dominance, i.e. the bourgeois class; on the contrary modern liberalism, libertarianism share the world view of the “classless society” of the Dalits (“gone astray”), whose dominance deprives the world of controllability and destructs all vertical hierarchy. The way out of the universal crisis is possible only on the basis of new historical grounds that will become, according to Heidegger, “the new beginning of history”.