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Theoretisch + Aus tschechischer Sicht + Essayistisch + Aus europäischer Sicht + Soziologisch + Philosophisch

Doom and Democracy: An Essay in Political Soteriology
The essay explores the philosophical (metatheoretical) presuppositions of democratic social strategy in the current "apocalyptic age". Here democracy means a way of life based on the assumption that individual freedom, mutual respect and fundamental good will toward the other can be taken for granted; as a feasible and a desirable way of ordering human affairs. In this broadly cultural sense, democracy is an outgrowth of a deeply rooted consensus on the posture of respect and good will toward all. Yet democracy, with its Enlightenment heritage of sober rationality, seems ill-equipped for dealing with apocalyptic threats. That what makes our age apocalyptic is truth denied. The arrogant posture of omnipotence leads to paralysis. A democratic strategy needs to be one that has the courage to face the truth and the commitment to deal heart and will with the finite tasks we recognise once we give up the arrogance of infinite ones.

Running as a social democrat for the Senate in the Czech Republic is not for the timid. In my district, four voters out of five stoutly affirm social democratic values and virulently reject social democratic candidates. After forty years of waking up to radios blaring Kupredu levá!—roughly, "Lead with the left!"—only the right is respectable, and they want to be right.