Abstract. Society is considered by the synergetic philosophy of history as a “dissipative structure”. The author analyses the mechanism of self-organisation of society – social selection – in terms of its factors such as thesaurus, detector and selector (V. Bransky). Freedom is an element of social selection. It manifests itself as a way of human existence. Freedom is directly correlated with the category of accident, but unlike it, it is only a “particular” form of necessity. In contrast to the definition of freedom as a recognised necessity, the definition of freedom as a recognised accident within the framework of regularity carries the unity of motive and action. Mastering the accident factor, a person more deeply comprehends the scope of possibilities presented by a complex system of relationships and patterns, changes his/her future and the future of society.
Keywords: self-organisation, accident, necessity, social selection, subject-object relations,
freedom, choice
