Ούτε ατομικιστικός φιλελευθερισμός, ούτε κοινοτιστικός συντηρητισμός: φιλελεύθερος ρεπουμπλικανισμός στη δεύτερη νεωτερικότητα

Abstract

In the first half of the twentieth Century, the concept of «community» offered the basis for an ideological, and for that reason, imaginary rejection of modernity. The contrast between community and society can only be understood with reference to the shaping of individual and collective identities. This follows from the aporetic nature of the foundation of the society. Further, the impossible self-foundation of the Political reguires the distinction between the Political and the Civil Society, which guaranices the preservation of citizen’s Liberty and their equal paticipation in public affairs. The formalism of the liberal theories of Justice guarantees the liberty of the individuals, but it opens up a void concerning the question of the Good. Contemporary Communitarians share in common with Liberals the concern about the Rights, but they hold that the Rights realization requires a definition of the Good Liberals object on this insofar the communitarians’s aims fullfil- ment leads often to the emergence of closed and particularist communities. However, the simultaneous fullfilment of the Justice and the Good is impossible and therefore it constitutes the tragic nature of modernity. More than so that Contingency, as an element of collective and individual desires, can never be supressed. The contemporary risk society is dominated by the narcissism of the little, particularist differences, so that the Non-Identical, which is constitutive of each individual desire, is repressed. In front of this situation, the redescovery of a subjects radical selfbind to the Other, can only provide a new meaning to the concepts of Liberty and Justice.