Terorizam, pragmatizam, apsolutizam
Terrorism, Pragmatism and Absolutism

Summary/Abstract: Starting with a contextualized consideration of the phenomenon of global terrorism within different discourses of modern political philosophy, the author focuses on the changes of concepts of the political, war and democracy. It is emphasized that the most successful political analyses of the relationship between terrorism and democracy are actually not to be found in the framework of the so-called postmodernist and critical disputes, but rather in the opinions that point to the state of total war as the leading principle of society. Looking back on Richard Bernstein’s work, the author questions the idea about the difference of absolutism and pragmatic fallabilism, which questions Huntington’s thesis on the clash of civilizations and involves the conflict between mentalities. Bernstein’s critical hypothesis about absolutist mentality as the predominant form of US policy in the last decades instructively associates the importance of the interdependence of freedom and responsibility which is present in the opposing perspective, i.e. fallabilism. The author concludes that the thesis about self-certainty as a prerequisite for war and openness as a prerequisite for radical democratic practice is well-argumented and significant, but that it is also necessary for the democracy discourse to reflect its own assumptions in the light of selfcriticism.

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