Existential Democracy as a Model of Democracy for the Development of Human Personality. Part I. The Concept of Existential Democracy and Its Scientific, Philosophical Justification

Abstract

The article is devoted to the development of an original model of democracy – existential democracy. Study consists of two parts. In the first part presented here are provided political scientific, sociological, as well as psychological and religious-philosophical justifications of existential democracy. One of the main innovations of existential democracy is a departure from only the pragmatic, utilitarian-functional understanding of democ-racy, directed at satisfying material needs alone and electing for this purpose an elite that satisfies these needs – a functioning state administration. Existential democracy addresses the goal of spiritual devel-opment and the achievement of the spiritual good of man – a goal that was originally postulated for the political process by Aristotle in “Politics”. This turns democracy to the problem of the development of the personality, the revelation of its true human, free and creative “I”, and not the “ego” embedded into the system. This corre-sponds to the interpretation of human not as just a bio-systemic organism, but as a spiritual transcendental be-ing striving for the meaning of his life, according to the humanistic psychology of Frankl, Fromm and others. These provisions seem especially actual now, during the advent of the postmodern era, consumer society and cybernetic regulation of human life.