LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AS A CONCENTRATION CAMP? SOME REMARKS ON PROLIFERATING SCANDALOUS? OPINIONS Aristotelian distinction dzoē and bios is very often present in reflections on a condition of contemporary liberal-democratic Western societies. Some authors suggest that processes in modern or even postmodern societies lead to new conceptions of power and combine new conceptions of law. Thanks to this in biopolitical reflections, above all in Foucault’s and Agamben’s writings, we could see liberal democracy as a concentration camp, without individual freedom, but with strictly controlled human bodies. Article presents some aspects of this dramatic visions.

When one reads the declaration of UNESCO from the early twenty-first century and wonders not so much on the phenomenon of coexistence of different cultures, but rather on the multicultural projects formulated in relation to the above, one relates the key questions to its origin and possible new solutions, first political and then legal. In political philosophy today developed in the so-called Western societies, these projects are linked to the reflection on their liberal and democratic foundations, especially on the issue of individual and group rights. Outlining these problems may be the introduction to the discussion of the key issues emerging in the reflection on the modern citizenship, as well as the expected legal order of multicultural societies.

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The concept of human rights, supposedly of universal importance, is usually derived from the tradition referred to as “Western”. Although the “classic approaches” – Greek, Roman and Christian, refer to the norms of natural law, making them the basis or limits of the rights of individuals, in modern approaches the relation is reserved, in the manner that rights become primary to norms. Although liberals of the 17th and 18th centuries consider the law of nature as a tool for their protection, starting from the 19th century, the rights (already called human rights) have been increasingly perceived as positive abilities to articulate own, subjective preferences of individuals. This evolution needs to be accounted for in the studies carried out by representatives of various cultures, since the comprehension of an individual (and even a “human person”) as an essentially culturally unconditioned one, is its ineradicable element.

Poszukiwania prowadzone przez filozofów politycznych dotykają zwykle wymiaru normatywnego: wsparte na rozstrzygnięciach dotyczących pojmowania świata, niekiedy z udziałem osobowego Boga, oraz pojmowania człowieka w świecie tym osadzonego, ustalają podstawy ładu stanowiącego analogon kosmosu lub wyraz Bożej woli, następstwo ewolucji lub rozstrzygnięć świadomie dokonywanych przez panujących albo legitymizujących ich. Drugi wymiar budzi mniejsze zainteresowanie filozofów, większe prawników i politologów wkraczających niekiedy również na pole filozofii politycznej. Wymiar ten ma walor instytucjonalny, wiążąc się z próbą wskazania „mechanizmów” pozwalających realizować ład normatywny. Przedmiotem rozważań będą różne rozwiązania proponowane w obu wymiarach refleksji przez dwóch polskich autorów XVII w.