The discourse of structural necessity as a factor in the totalitarianisation of politics and law: The greenhouse effect and the COVID-19 pandemic as political “hybrids”

Abstract

This article discusses the contemporary discourse of justifying the abandonment of the protection of rights by a higher necessity, which is presented as resulting both from the indications of science and from the structural features of modern society. Such ideas are proclaimed, among others, on the occasion of the phenomena referred to as the COVID-19 pandemic and the greenhouse effect and climate crisis, and are in turn addressed by institutional and political actions. The aim of the article is to analyze this discourse and its effects on the way of understanding politics and law, and in particular the totalitarian tendencies it generates. The author adopts a hermeneutical perspective as a methodological starting point and refers to a certain understanding of politics and law as based on practical reason, which is established in the Western philosophical tradition. This then serves to outline an ideal type of discourse of structural necessity as a rejection of this type of rationality. In doing so, the author refers to the interpretation of commonly known ideological tendencies and institutional facts. The presentation of the less obvious feature of this discourse, i.e. the identification of natural and political necessity, is supported by the author with references to contemporary philosophical and political concepts dealing with the relationship between the social and natural spheres. The conclusion is that this discourse eliminates the idea of the subject, politics understood as the sphere of manifestation of subjectivity, law as an art based on practical rationality, and finally the separation of science and power.