Przedmiotem artykułu są teoriopolityczne rozważania na temat posthumanizmu. Jest to podejście, które zrywa z humanistycznym dogmatem, że człowiek jest bytem najważniejszym w rzeczywistości. Zamiast tego posthumanizm dowartościowuje byty pozaludzkie (naturalne, sztuczne, rzeczy), z którymi ludzie wchodzą w rozmaite interakcje. Autor uznał, że problematyka posthumanistyczna może być rozpatrywana w perspektywie biopolityki, która zajmuje się relacjami między polityką a życiem. Jednakże w odróżnieniu od wcześniejszych ujęć wiążących biopolitykę z kontrolą populacji posthumanizm stawia na szali żywotność gatunkową. W artykule przedstawiono konsekwencje takiego myślenia dla problemu polityczności. Autor odniósł to pojęcie przede wszystkim do fundamentalnych uwarunkowań konstytuowania się społeczeństwa jako pewnej całości, a szczególnie granic rozmaitych struktur i tożsamości. W przypadku posthumanizmu chodzi o przemyślenie granic człowieczeństwa oraz napięć między tym, co biologiczne, społeczne i technologiczne. To możliwość przepracowania na nowo problemu opresji i kontroli (np. kwestia szowinizmu gatunkowego) oraz emancypacji (np. cyberfeminizm). Ostatecznie sam posthumanizm stał się ruchem ideowym o politycznym znaczeniu, czego wyrazem jest aktywność transhumanistów domagających się przezwyciężania ograniczeń biologicznych człowieka poprzez innowacje technologiczne.

The aim of the article is to define the methodological status of the proposed new sub-discipline of political sciences – the political science of religion (politology of religion). The diagram of naturalism adopted in the text indicates the choice of the perspective of cognition for an alliance of religions and politics as a single social and political phenomenon. The position expressed in the text aims to find a common knowledge base for the two most important social phenomena. The presented postulate takes into account the combination of knowledge in the field of political sciences and theology, sociology of religion, religiousness or history with the classical methodology of sciences, characteristic for mathematical natural science.

We argue that the current understanding of politics is caught in a tug of war between “economistic” and “postmodern” views, neither of which captures the distinctiveness of political rule and consequently instills confusion among citizens and misplaced expectations from leaders. Drawing largely on Aristotle, who warned precisely against this error, we consider the logic of mastery and contrast it to paternal rule. Then we discuss the voluntary nature of economic activity to distinguish it from the involuntary nature of mastery, before turning to discuss the political proper, which is a combination or mixture of these two that nevertheless makes it qualitatively distinct. These distinctions help us to better appreciate what is a likeness between political and economic, on the one hand, and between political and paternal, on the other while realising that political rule is not exhausted by either economic or paternal alone. The paper seeks to show that political rule finds itself as an in-between condition that balances itself against despotic, mastery, and the kind of care that paternal rule points to.

Dualisms and the concept of the political: theoretical reflections on the political significance of binary thinking

The article discusses the relationship between different kinds of thinking based on binary oppositions in the context of the political. The main assumption of the article is based on the claim that the notion of the political requires a reworking of different kinds of dualisms. The verification of the initial assumption has been carried out in two – opposing – directions. On the one hand, there are sphere dualisms of the public–private type, which in practice support the political/ non-political opposition. Such divisions turn out to be a source of erasure of important political problems of collective life. On the other hand, no conceptualisation of the political, understood as a fundamental political relationship, can do without dualistic assumptions. Different conceptions approach this issue differently. For example, the biopolitical theory of M. Hardt and A. Negri promotes the abolition of dualisms, but ultimately the dichotomous logic in it returns, although as a manifestation of inconsistency. The concept of the political that seems most realistic appears in the agonistic theory of Ch. Mouffe and E. Laclau, in which the political is immanently associated with fundamental antagonisms based on the us–them relationship.