REVOLUTION, TRANSFORMATION AND THE ROLE OF THE SUBJECT. CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON FRANÇOIS JULLIEN’S BOOK THE SILENT TRANSFORMATIONS
Ľubomír Dunaj
Studia Politica Slovaca, 2022, vol. 15, no. 1, p. 28-46
Language: Slovak
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/SPS.2022-1.3
Abstract
In order to understand today’s social and political situation in East-Central Europe, one should examine in particular the consequences of post-socialist transformation. The negative and often very painful effects of the social changes that affected Central and Eastern Europe over the last three decades have not been overcome until today. This makes it all the more important to be better “prepared” philosophically for future social changes. François Jullien comes up with a theoretical solution. In the first part of my paper, taking Jullien’s book The Silent Transformations as a point of departure, I show that many of the problems that still exist in East-Central Europe largely result from placing too much emphasis on the event of the revolution and too little on the transformation experienced by the region’s populations. Such “intellectual blindness” may be seen as a consequence of the dominance of the transitological approach in political and social sciences of the time, which is analyzed towards the end of the first part through (an outline of) Boris Buden’s critique. In the second and third parts, I suggest, pace Jullien, a way towards a moderate, “sober”, but nevertheless creative and productive understanding of the active agent by appealing to the work of Hans-Herbert Kögler and Fabian Heubel.
Keywords
transformation, East-Central Europe, subject, agent, Chinese philosophy, revolution
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