Abstract
The paper tackles recent tectonic changes often assessed as the crisis of liberal democracy and, broader, as the crisis of European modernity. The author depicts how the triumphalist mood of early 1990-s captured by the famous notion of "the end of history" transforms into the catastrophic mindset of today.
It is argued that the contemporary poly-crisis requires new theoretical approaches and a new social and political vocabulary. Three paths of theorizing are distinguished hereby.
The first one builds upon the "end of history" mindset keeping the present as the main point of reference and Western liberal democracy as the peak point of ideational and institutional evolution. The second approach revolves around the cyclical reading of history while tracing pre-modern features in the recent developments, its conceptual arsenal includes the notions of retraditionalization, demodernization, neotribalism, and the like.
The author argues that an alternative approach is feasible, the one focused on brand new traits of contemporaneity that keeps future free from historical determination. The latter approach is being developed in the paper based on the ideas of Ulrich Beck, Ken Jowitt, and Mary Kaldor.
It is proved that within the globalized spaces of action, any local conflict has a global dimension and global repercussions; that the novelty of contemporary warfare should be re-assessed in post-Clausewitzian terms, namely as a new social and human condition. It is suggested that the erosion of modern nation-state augments the need for strong transnational institutions against an active cosmopolitan community of citizens, to which scholars can contribute both with their civic position and with their expertise.
Active citizens not only maintain "islands of civility" amidst military conflicts but they might ignite "movements of hope" as an alternative to "movements of rage" and prop up "politics of sympathy" as opposite to "politics of anger."