The Challenge of post-Communism: philosophy and politics
ENAlthough from different perspectives, today we are all observers of, or participants in, a new challenge to contemporary history. The emergence of post-Communism has produced many problems. Here I shall concentrate on the most general features of the main hurdle which impedes the transition from a closed society to an open one, as seen from the perspective of the developments of Western metaphysics. I shall point out some methodological and historical aspects of the analysis, rise and significance of the distorted individual consciousness and disrupted rational discourse which have been nourished by the various forms of totalitarianism, and which zealously uphold and strengthen it. An analysis of post Communist society would be incomplete and even misleading without deliberately taking into account this important aspect of its inner structure. My paper is based on one general presupposition, which I will briefly discuss, namely that the political, social and cultural history of Western civilization is deeply influenced by the history of ideas articulated in Western philosophical discourse. So, in order adequately to grasp the meaning of cultural, social and even political problems as they are currently posed by the challenge of post-Communism, one must evaluate them, inter Alia, against the background of the history of Western metaphysics. This is so, because the present state of affairs in Europe is deeply affected by the intellectual history of thought in general, and the history of metaphysical thought in particular. Implicitly or explicitly, this affects not only the contemporary methodological stance of philosophy and the social sciences, but our morality, legislatures, and even the way we imagine our future, including the limits of our political choices.
