MIĘDZY PRAKTYKĄ ŻYCIA A ĆWICZENIEM DUCHOWYM NOWOCZESNE HORYZONTY WOLNOŚCI OBYWATELSKIEJ
BETWEEN A PRACTICE OF LIFE AND A SPIRITUAL EXERCISE: MODERN HORIZONS OF CIVIC FREEDOM

Summary/Abstract: In the third decade of the twentieth century, Max Scheler claimed that his time was the fi rst in which man became thoroughly and completely problematic to himself. A hundred years later, the same can be said of human freedom and citizenship, which have not only become problematic, but have never been understood and problematized in as many ways as they are today. The article is an analysis of the divergence in the culture of the Western world of two concepts of freedom: internal freedom associated with individual feeling and awareness of it, and political freedom, exercised through presence and action in a common public space. The paper is also an attempt to trace the consequences of the separation in question in the sphere of citizenship. Does the gap between lived freedom, lulled by its past economic and social success, and political freedom, which can be exercised in action and which now, as a result of the hasty acceptance of modernity, is susceptible to resistance to the unknown, shape attitudes towards citizenship today? These are the questions the article seeks to address. Moreover, the considerations prompt the thesis that the dominant factor depreciating the awareness of the importance of freedom in today’s world is the political culture promoting the model of citizen and citizenship based primarily on internal freedom, which Sartre called “Cartesian freedom.”

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