This paper is not an attempt to present the process of political changes that occurred in Poland after the end of the Second World War. Its aim is to indicate and explain the characteristics of the process of political change which after 1945 turned Poland into a totalitarian socialist state, and from 1989 led to the construction of the democratic state. The fate of Poland and other Eastern European countries was decided by the strategic interests of the great powers. The memory of the victims of war and democratic axiology gave way to the calculations and domination of force. Many nations were deprived of subjectivity and the possibility of sovereign choice in their future development. In Poland the place of the sovereign nation had been taken by a small group of politicians who became the plenipotentiaries of the Soviet leadership. The creation of the totalitarian system was an essential precondition for the implementation of the Stalinist model of society entirely dominated by the Communist Party, the state described as socialist, and its apparatus of repression. The rule over the nation, although it was called the dictatorship of the proletariat, was a dictatorship over the enslaved society. Only the gradual erosion and finally the collapse of the centre of communist world, created in this part of Europe the possibility to choose freely the model of collective life. The victory of the Polish Solidarity and the fall of Berlin Wall alike symbolize the overcoming the post-Yalta order and the return of these nations to the European, democratic idea of social order. After 1989 the political solutions in which power is protecting the needs, interests and aspirations of each individual as well as the common good, considered the summum bonnum, were chosen. This power is by its very nature decentralised.

Self-actualization is often touted but rarely achieved. The Liberal frame that champions autonomy requires strict conformity: conformity to laws assured by state force, conformity to market transaction assured by privileging private property, conformity to limited collective action assured by the social atomization which comes from the construction of negative rights. This paper explores the many impediments to autonomous self-actualization within the rubric of liberalism, including the superegoistic internalizations of mores and taboos elucidated by Western-oriented psychoanalysis. It further explores the possibility that self-actualization may be more readily achieved through what Gramsci referred to as “heteronomy:” selfconsciously engaged collective social action. By examining the mechanisms of self-limitation through the dynamics of superego development, the paper posits that self-actualization may best be realized through collective articulation of ethics and morality which are constantly situational. In this, the paper takes up the Deleuzian and Guattarian propositions of simultaneous, multiplicitious identities, deterritorialized and evaluated only within the multitude of a given moment in time and space. The dynamic and contextual quality of this discursive engagement is not one of relativity, but characterized by the intersubjectivity of the participants. ! is specifi city – specifi city of interlocutors, specifi city of locality, and specifi city of time – provides for unique self-actualization, which neither reifi es nor objectifi es selves, but suggests that individuals are not essences, but subjective beings which are as dynamic as the social situations they create. Thus self-actualization cannot be achieved alone, but only within a collective discursive context. This context must be characterized as a social forum of praxis, for instrumentality or technical motivations disrupt the contributions not only of the actor guided by techne, but the contributions of the whole for disingenuousness makes intersubjectivity impossible. Collectively articulated ethics and morals cannot be adjudicated by a discursive forum which is tainted by motives of self-gain. Instrumentality of one impedes the ability of all others to self-actualize. Thus, self-actualization only comes within the context of heteronymous action. ! is paper will thus interrogate the consequences of inverting the age-old problem of public action – autonomous self-actualization is threatened by free-loading – and suggests that collective self-actualization is impeded by self-oriented, atomistic, instrumentality.

The sixtieth anniversary of entering into diplomatic relations between Republic of Poland and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea inclines to draw up a balance sheet. Korea is located far away from Poland, in a very different civilization circle, the neo-Confucian one. It has 5 thousand years of history; the legendary Tangun in a year 2333 B.C. has founded the first Korean state Kodzoson. The history is generally difficult, numerous invasions of grand neighbors (China, Japan). The Korean chronicle compared Korea to a prawn swimming in between of two whales. Such difficult history is also the attribute of Poland. Poland was also a subject of partitions, numerous invasions of the neighbors. Polish and Koreans have common national features: pride, inexorability and independence.