FILOZOFSKI ASPEKTI POJMA LJUDSKOG IDENTITETA
THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE CONCEPT OF THE HUMAN IDENTITY

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the relation between the individual and collective identity and its conceptions which crystallized in the debate between communitarianism and liberalism. The essential characteristic of modernity is de-substantialization of form, separation of norm and reality which enable the realization of specifically modern principle of the so called negative freedom of the individual which is the crucial characteristic of the liberal-democratic societies. The basic category of organization of the modern liberal-democratic societies is the universalized form (procedure) which enables the pluralism of the life styles and the realization of the liberal-democratic political principle. In the purely normative and not in the ontological, historical and genetic way, Locke’s insight that community is not the condition of law but on the contrary, the law is the condition of community is valid. The political principle is separated from the cultural level which gives rise to the de-politization of culture. Hence the modern civil identity is necessarily abstract. According to liberal political theory and practice, the most democratic and the most plausible form and theory of nation and the relation between individual and collective identity is not ethnic and cultural but civic theory of nation which claims the equality of all citizens regardless of their concrete, collective, traditional affiliations. This paper claims that the essence of modernity is constant pluralism of rival theories and constant competition of traditionalistic and non-traditionalistic conceptions. The author finds very disputable and unacceptable the classical liberal founding of human and civil rights not in society, public, history, community, communication but in God, human nature, intelligible sphere. However, the classic liberal foundation and conception of the relation of individual and collective identity, morality and ethics, individual and community cannot solve the problem of the origin, realization and application of these abstract principles. The very concept of individual identity, morality and citizenship presupposes the process of socialization and community. The concrete social and historical insights clearly show that morality has to protect both the individual and community. Both of these principles have to be integrated and internally connected. The concrete, practical and historical action and reality demand the synthesis and integration of communitarianism and liberalism, individual and community and Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophy and not their exclusive opposition and radical either-or choice.

• Details
• Contents