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Publication Details

The Contradiction of the Institutional and the Human

(Original title: Inštitucionálne a humánne)
Filozofia, 23 (1968), 6, 572-585.
Type of work: Papers and Discussions
Publication language: Slovak
Abstract
The power of the forms of alienation is the power of society over individuals. It is an inverted community in which the general determinations of man change, in the form of an institution, into its own self-determination. Institution is a social adoption of the individual who did not adopt the society. As long as society developed by means of slavery, the pole of inevitableness included freedom, social organization the organized, the social life human life and the „political life“ the social life. In the world of superior global forms man is turned away from himself. Sovereign political power as well as political revolution which dominates up to now, is man’s way from himself away; therefore, it is necessary now to find broad and free forms of activity and organizations which would represent man’s way to himself. If socialism is to avoid uncontrolled development and historical disastres, it must proceed further from the institutional forms to the humane ones, from political revolution to a democratic and humane socialism, and to do it, above all, in such a way, that politics will be brought to people’s power and that the latter will be based on the power of people over their own relations, without which no self-government and no objective control are possible. Thus, having adopted all forms of his social being, man will abolish the secular institutional point of departure and become, for himself, a starting and final point. Such people and such a man are real who produces their lives to the full extent, and in such a way that — by means of their being — they also determine their social antithesis and maintain the unity of both sides and, through it, themselves. Such a man includes his self-development into his existence, and since he overcomes himself in his self-development, he remains at the same time what he is as well as what he wants to be.
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