Transcript of Noomahia Lecture no. 6 - European Civilization

Now the lecture number 6 that has as a topic, European Civilization. Now we put aside other Indo-European societies and we concentrate on European history, and European cultures, and European people. So now it is clear that European civilization is based on this superposition of two existential horizons and has a center, and the main problem is the problem of Dionysus and its interpretation. So European history is titanomachia or noomahia and the basic condition of this titanomachia was the fact of this coming of Turanian Indo-European cultures with Kurgan culture in the field of the Great Mother, civilization of Great Mother. Speaking about Dionysus in the previous lecture, we have identified that Dionysus is the main problem of this civilization and that is the battleground where there is titanomachia developing.
I have mentioned as well, the case of Thracian people. Thracian people were people of Turanian type first of all, Indo-European people that came to the Balkans before the Slavs (maybe 1200 years before Christ, maybe a little bit later, maybe earlier. It’s difficult to say). What is important is that was a kind of empire of the Thracian tribes. Many Thracian tribes lived in the Northern Balkans but they occupied almost the huge part of the Eastern Europe. What is important is that these territories where the Thracian civilization was based and was expanded were the poles and the centers of the civilization of Great Mother. Lepenski Vir, Vinča culture, Karanavo Gumelnița culture, Cucuteni–Trypillia, Criș, Tisza culture, and all other cultures were under existential horizon of Thracians. We don’t know and we could know whether the Thracians were the first Indo-Europeans coming over these territories but we don’t know the more ancient groups (Indo-European). Maybe and possibly (probably) there were the other waves of Turanian people coming there. Maybe not. We could not say. But Thracian culture was precisely the field or special European culture where this meeting between horizon of Apollo and Logos of Apollo and Logos of Cybele was accomplished. So that was the culture of meeting. And Slavic tribes that came much later in the Balkans have assimilated and included these Thracian elements inside of their structure. As well, there is a very important aspect that Dionysus was considered by the Greeks to be Thracian God. Whether that was really Thracian or pre-Thracian or by some Indo-European people that preceded Thracian in the Balkans, we don’t know. But that is very important that Dionysus came from the North to the Greece, from the Thracian, as well as Orpheus. As well as Bendis, Bendis was  Thracian goddess very popular in Greece. The festival mentionned by Plato in “Republic” dedicated to her was Bendideia. The other goddess of Thracian origins was Kotys. Orgiastic festival dedicated to her was called ”Cotyttia”. Phrygians as well were close to Thracians and Phrygian civilization was the people where the Cybele cult was developed. That as well has something to do with Thracian world.
It is possible that Thracian tribes were more ancient than we presume and maybe they were the first, or maybe not. We could not affirm. But what is certain is that they were Indo-European society with very developed nomadic aspect and more to the north, more nomadic they were, more to Transylvania, to Romania that was already the steppes of Eurasian, Turanian space. But what is certain is that Thracians were here around Danube River and basin and in Balkans long before Scyths and Sarmats. So that is very ancient Indo-European culture that has assimilated and included the paleo-Indo-European tradition directly or by intermediary by some other Indo-European society. We could not say anything affirmative here but what is important is that regarding the Slav horizon of Eastern Europe that dominated Eastern Europe as civilization after 5th and 6th century when the Eastern Europe was invaded by Slavs, before the coming of Slavs, the Thracian civilization was here. And that was Indo-European. And maybe the meeting between Logos of Apollo and Logos of Cybele was precisely in Thracia. And the other important is that if so, European peasantry expanded from the same region. The Balkan space was the motherland (Urheimat) not only for Eastern European peasantry but for all European peasantry, because the agricultural tradition was developed much earlier, precisely in the fertile territories of Balkans, where this matriarchal society existed, long before coming of Turanian culture.
Eastern Europe that is considered to be periphery or border or something marginal to Greece or afterwards to Western Europe, maybe was central one. So we need to consider more this Eastern European space as existential space. We need to pay more attention to this Eastern European Dasein and existential horizon of Eastern Europe. It is complex with many tribes, many people, and many levels of the culture but what is very important is the Thracian origins of Dionysus and Orpheus. In the perspective that I have explained about the central role of the figure of Dionysus as a key to the historical sequence of European history, to ontology of European history, the Eastern Europe obtains new dimension and new importance. It was not in the reality, periphery of the other Greek, Roman, later Western European civilizations. That was something polar in Eastern Europe, in Balkans, that was kind of center and pole. But the quality and the noological nature of this pole, we need to study more. So not only to be proud to be Balkanian Slavs living here after Thracians, but what is important is to understand the structure and the levels to noology of this space. Because the problem of Dionysus is central and so important as I have tried to explain, the role of Eastern Europe is growing. We could deduce from that, one important thing. We could deduce that we know Eastern Europe (Thracian, Slavic, Balkanic space) as a kind of continuation or result or periphery of the Western Europe and Eurasia, Russia, or Turanian space. But there is absolutely new Dionysian kind of Eastern Europe where this meeting that is key event in the ontological and semantical history of the Western Europe was produced. So Eastern Europe is not the periphery but is in some way the center and the pole, in very special way. Regarded as such, we need to concentrate more on the motherland of Dionysus because it is precisely the motherland of Dionysus. And the factor of Thracian language and Thracian culture and the only pure Thracian God, Zalmoxis, that is known, we need to pay more attention to this figure. There are many parallels and common aspects between Zalmoxis and Dionysus. Mircea Eliade and Romanian tradition paid great attention to the figure of Zalmoxis and its role in the Thracian horizon. So Thracian culture as well as matriarchal culture before Thracians, the civilization of Eastern European Great Mother didn’t disappear. It entered into the peasant Eastern European tradition and expanded with the peasantry through all of Europe. Where we have the peasants in Europe, we have the continuator, the descendants from the Balkanian motherland.
So we could speak about peasant Dasein, a special kind of third function that conserved cultural lines of pre-Indo-European tradition. One of the first pre-Indo-European societies that integrated these elements were Thracians. And after them were all the other. Maybe we should pay special attention to Illyrians as well because they lived here in the Western Balkans with Thracians. And according to some historians, the space of Illyrians reached to the Baltic Sea. Maybe Illyrians lived as well far to the north before Slavs came there. But we know too little about these two people but we could deduce some things starting interpreting correctly Southern Slavic tradition because there is cultural continuity. Because all the peasants we know, maybe after the thousands of years of Indo-Europeanization, they were originally Balkanic. Peasantry is Balkanic and peasant Dasein and peasant tradition is in the roots, in the depth, Balkanic. So that is very important.
Now we could consider European space and to say some words about different lesser existential horizon of the great European space. As we have said already, there is the huge Indo-European Turanian space that includes almost all Eurasia, from the British Isles to India. That is the greatest Indo-European existential horizon. There is European existential horizon of the Western but European that includes as well Eastern Europe. But we could as well change the scale of noology and geosophy and try to consider the lesser scale. But now we know what we are seeking. We are seeking how each society solved or is solving the problem of Dionysus. Now our search is much more concrete. Trying to understand or decipher or interpret hermeneutically, one or other European culture, we are searching the noological balance and the moment of noomahia in any society.
For example, starting with Greek tradition, Greek tradition is based on the absolute victory of the Logos of Apollo. But this victory as I have mentioned yesterday was not immediate. Hellenistic tribes (Aeolian, Ionian) came to the Balkan and the Peloponnese in waves controlling or overcoming the existing matriarchal civilization. But at the same time there was exchange of the elements. Some Greek territories conserved this Indo-European vertical tri-functional purely patriarchal structure and some have lost it or some elements. So we had Minoan and Mycenaean cultures where there was the mixture between patriarchy and matriarchy elements. And only the last wave of the Hellenic tribes coming from the north, from Macedonia, Dorian wave, the fourth Hellenic tribe, brought with itself decisive Apollonism, decisive pastoralism and destroyed Mycenaean culture and introduced the purely Turanian style. That was very important. That is reflected in the Sparta. It is more Dorian than Ionian Athens. And the dualism of Greek culture between Sparta and Athens is that Athens was Ionian and Sparta was Dorian. And that was as well the dualism of the balance of noomahia because in Sparta, the Logos of Apollo was clearer and more powerful. And in Aeolia and Ionia, in Athens, in the Anatolian Greek colonies, the power of this vertical Logos of Apollo was lesser. That is important that in Greece as well there were the kind of differences of existential horizons. And the dualism between Sparta and Athens is the key dualism in the geopolitics, as well has noological and geosophical interpretation and explanation.
Dionysus was Greek God as well with Thracian origins, but it was purely Greek because around him there was Apollonian perspective and very ancient Cybelian space. And in Greek culture, in the worship, in the polytheistic religion, and in philosophy, we see this element very clearly. I would like to mention that I have already said that could be the Logos. All three of them could be reflected in the religion and in the myth but as well in the philosophy. The Logos of Apollo is reflected in the perfect, almost absolute best way in the Platonic philosophy. Platonic philosophy is the absolute version of Logos of Apollo, as well as logic of Aristotle that was the disciple of Plato. In part of Aristotle’s teaching we as well see the Logos of Apollo in the purest and formalized version. There was the Logos of Dionysus in Heraclitus that is dialectic. That is as we have called that dramatic nocturne. That is Heraclitus philosophy that is based on the cycle, on the war, on this dialectic between eternal and what is in time. But that is not materialist. Heraclitean belongs to the Dionysian aspect. As well the part of the teachings of Aristotle of physics and rhetoric belong as well to Dionysian Logos because they are dealing with a paradox of two-in-one, a form and matter in one thing. The thing is double and is one. That is not Apollonian. Apollonian is 'one is one. That is that and not the other.' If there is something that is ‘that is that and the other’ we are already shifting to Dionysus. So that is the great error to consider the physics of Aristotle as the logic of Aristotle. There are two visions in Aristotle. There is Apollonian side of Aristotle that is logic. And there is Dionysian side of Aristotle that is physics. And what is interesting is we are dealing with completely erroneous understanding of Aristotelianism because we are trying to apply logic to physics. We are working with physical mathematical object. There is not such object in the reality. There is mathematical object that is purely Apollonian and there is physical object that is purely Dionysian.
From that follows a very important remark. In order to study the physical world, we need to apply not the logic to this world but rhetoric. Rhetoric will be more strict science and more precise science of the physics. We need to use Heraclitean concept of dialectics and rhetorics. Rhetorics is a kind of violation of the law of the logic. In rhetoric, we are saying the things that don’t correspond exactly to what we pronounce. That is irony. Irony is the main figure of rhetoric. Irony is when we are saying one thing and are meaning the other thing. For Slavs it’s very clear. Our language is rhetoric and ironic. We are living in an ironical culture. We never say what we mean. We say one thing and mean another and make a third and the result is fourth. That is classical rhetorical ironical society. We are ironical people. All our speech is based on irony. But irony is the main figure of the rhetorics. So irony is violation of the laws of logic. For example, metonymy; metonymy is the figure that we say as how many ‘heads of cattle’ we have but we mean cows or bulls or sheep and not the ‘heads’ of them. But we are using the part as the whole as rhetoric. But it is violation of the logic. We are counting heads. And all rhetoric figures are such. We are saying one thing and meaning something other. Synecdoche and anti-phrase and all the other rhetoric figures cover the physical reality exactly. But logically we could not gain such precision just because the physical object could not belong to the intellectual object or mathematical. There is not physical mathematical. With logic we could study mathematical and geometrical objects but physical objects we should study with different rhetorical method. And only this rhetorical method could be strict and precise enough to cover the dialectical structure of the object. The thing is rhetorical and not logical. That’s very important.
I suggest reading of early texts of Heidegger about Aristotle as well as Aristotelian studies of early Husserl and Brentano because the phenomenological tradition in philosophy stressed this Aristotelian aspect ignored by the previous tradition. Phenomenologists have rediscovered this Aristotle. There was as well in Greek existential space, the third logos (logos of Cybele), represented philosophically and not only in the mystery of Great Mother. This philosophical tendency of Ancient Greece was represented by Democritus and by Epicurus and in Rome by Lucretius. These three authors were typically representatives of ancient materialist and immanentist tradition because for them there were no patriarchal principles and everything consists from atoms. They professed (above all Epicurus and Lucretius) the concept of progress that says everything is going in the positive way from the lesser to the better, from the evil to the good. That was the concept that everything was growing from the bottom to the top. The concept of the progress, of evolution is purely titanic. That was materialistic titanic version of the cosmos. Three Logos were present in Greek philosophy but what is important is normative Logos were considered to be Logos of Apollo (Platonism and partly Aristotle) and Heraclitus (Dark Logos but as well accepted). Democritus and Epicurus (in the lesser scale) were rejected. Plato suggested to burn the book of Democritus because that was considered a very dangerous heresy and philosophy could be as well heresy. Now we see clearly, that was the continuation of Indo-European titanomachy or noomahia and the moment of Greek culture of noomahia was based on the victory of the Logos of Apollo with the friendship and alliance of Logos of Apollonian Dionysus over this materialistic Cybelian Logos. That is more or less, in some words, an explanation of Greek tradition. And inner dualism was represented in the dualism of Sparta and Athens.
What is important is that is Hellenistic time. Many things were changed during Hellenistic times after Alexander the Great. During Alexander the Great, Greece had expanded its control over completely new existential horizon. That was Iranian existential horizon. That was included in the Mediterranean and Greek culture. And that created the phenomenon of Hellenism. Hellenic is one thing and Hellenistic is other thing. Where lays the difference between two cultures and existential horizons? Hellenic is Greek as we have explained. Hellenistic is Greek plus not Orient, not Eastern, not Asian, not Semitic as we usually say, but precisely Iranian existential space. So it is not vague or something Orientalistic. Hellenism is regarded as Greek plus something Oriental. If we study correctly this phenomenon of Hellenistic civilization, we discover very important thing - that Hellenism is strictly Greece plus Iran, and not Greece plus Egyptian, Semitic, Eastern, Indian, in the general sense. It is Iranian because Iranian civilization was not only the culture of Iran. That was culture of Achaemenid Empire that included in itself as well Egypt Semitic tradition and transformed in its Iranian Logos, all these ancient cultures. There was the common denominator in this Achaemenid cultural tradition and existential horizon. All that I have explained in my book The Logos of Iran, Iranian Logos. Iran has included all the previous cultures and transformed in the context of its own dominating Zoroastrian Mazdean concept. So we are dealing with Egypt, with Semitic world, with Babylonia, after Achaemenid Empire, not directly but through Iranian concept. They were Iranized. What we are calling Egyptian, Semitic, Babylonia in the reality were Iranized version of this tradition.
So I suggest to distinguish Iranian and Iranistic as we are distinguishing Hellenic and Hellenistic. So Achaemenid Empire was not purely Iranian but that was not exclusively Iranian but was inclusively Iranian. That included the other traditions but transformed them semantically in the context of Iranian Logos. In Hellenism, that was a kind of heir, and Alexander of Macedonia has received the heritage of this Iranism in full scale because the Empire of Alexander (Hellenistic Empire) was the same as Achaemenid Empire plus Greece. But that heritage is almost always ignored. They say ‘Alexander of Macedonia has received Oriental heritage and not Iranian’ because we consider this acquisition of the new territories and conquests of Alexander the Great with Greek eyes. In that sense, we Europeans (Russians, Serbians, French, Germans) are all Greeks because for us, Greek history is our history and Iranian history is the history of other. Never do we consider Iranian history as our history. So that was conquest of us against them. And they were not so clearly distinguished. So we should overcome them, include their cultures, but we don’t go into the details of what we have acquired. They were conquered culture. But if we consider that in the perspective of Iranians, everything changes. There was a kind of Iranian Logos. And what was the essence of Iranian Logos that we should include in our understanding of European civilization because of Hellenism. And I will explain why Hellenism is so important.
Iranian Logos is based on the main principles; first of all that is the war of light. That is, as we have said yesterday, radical dualistic Platonism. It is the Logos of Apollo against the Logos of Cybele but recognizing the power and the substance and the autonomous nature of this second Logos. So that is not only as in Advaita Platonism, as non-dualist Platonism, which the darkness is the absence of light. No. The darkness in Iranian concept is a living thing, is powerful thing, and is winning thing. For Plato, to suggest that the evil can win against the good is absurd. It’s absolutely impossible. Because in the world of Apollo and Logos of Apollo, there is the eternal victory of the light over darkness and darkness doesn’t exist. In dualist Iranian version, darkness exists and darkness is God but the other God. The night is powerful and the night can win. The fight between them is for the first time comparing to the Platonism and the Logos of Apollo is serious and something dramatic, something that you can lose. That is completely different attitude toward life. That is Apollonian. To be Iranian is to be the bearer of light for Iranians. There is no other definition of Iranian. Iranian is the son of light put into the field of the darkness in order to fight. So that’s extremely dramatic version of Logos of Apollo with recognition of the substance, the reality, and the power of the Logos of Cybele. It is Iran purely.
  In Iranian self-consciousness, Iranian identity is based on the concept that only Iranians are pure, the people of light and all the rest, including Turanians, are people of darkness. So that is a kind of metaphysical racism in Iranian tradition; purity. And that was the situation of the permission of the incest. Incest is strictly prohibited in any kind of culture primitive or developed but not in the Iranian. Because the concern to conserve the purity of the Iranian soul, Iranian body, and Iranian blood was so great that it outweighed the prohibition of the incest and the marriage between the sister and brother or son and mother. That’s almost incredible in archaic society and developed society but in Iranian society, that was permitted. That was almost obligation in order to save this purity of the son of light. So that is extreme version of Logos of Apollo. But that is Iranian tradition. But Iranism included Egyptian, Semitic, Babylonian, and other people. So that was not so much exclusive as Iranian. Iranism is a kind of symbolical transfer of this quality of son of light, not from the direct Iranian bodily concrete material (in some way) understanding of what is the light and what is the son of the light as a kind of metaphoric son of light. So Iranism is not Iranian. It is not so exclusive. It embedded in itself the other traditions. The concept of war of light is accepted in the broader sense.
After that, the other concept of Iranian tradition that wasn’t known by the Greek society is the idea of time and the idea of history. In the Platonic version, there is no history and there is no time as something important. There is always just the same, the cycle of the birth and the death, of the same. That is eternal return of the things. That is purely Platonic with no reason, with no development, with no progress, and with no regress. There is completely different time. You come from the source and you return to the source. That’s all. And what is going on in these sublunar cycles has no matter, no knowledge, no sense, no direction, no time, and no history. So there is the history of eternity. The Platonic history is the history of eternity and the time is reflection of eternity so it doesn’t exist in the sense that is common to us. But only in Iranian tradition, the time obtains meaning because Iranian tradition affirms that in the beginning there was the light over darkness. And the second stage of Iranian historical sequence, the darkness has interrupted and has invaded the realm and field of light and began to destroy and deviate and pervert the world of light. In the next moment, the darkness will overcome the light and will win the light. At the end of the rule of the darkness, there will be the great restoration, resurrection, and appearance of the chosen one that will be the king and the savior of humanity (Saoshyant). So there appears the time because now the time matters. In Plato, the time doesn’t matter. It’s nothing. There is no logic. And here appears the history. Here appears the time and the eschatology. Here appears messianism, the messiah. Here appears the last king of the world that should appear and restore the realm and the kingdom of light as the last result of the fight of the war of light. And there is resurrection of the lost perfection of the creation of light. That is Iranism. But we are dealing with that as something completely close to us. But all that was completely unknown to the Greeks. It is purely Iranian influence; history, time, resurrection, eschatology, and the meaning of the time. In Greek Platonic world, the time has no meaning at all. Only return to the origin has meaning. The time and the history is nothing. There is only the example of the past heroes in order to repeat that. The heroes of the past are functioning as paradigms, as ideas. And here appears the history. Here manifests itself the completely new Iranian perspective and after conquests of Alexander the Great, that spiritual philosophical and metaphysical heritage entered into the Mediterranean Greek culture. That which was outside became inside.
There is a kind of idea that the time, the messianism, and the history were all brought by Semitic Jews by the Bible. But we know the Bible only after Babylonian captivity. In Babylonian captivity and the end of Babylonian captivity, there was the Achaemenid Empire that distributed this Iranian Logos including among the Jews. The late Judaism that we know and that is linked with the concept of Messiah, of the end of time, and resurrection is some Iranian redaction of the purely Semitic original Judaism. The time and the history was Iranian and was Hellenistic. Hellenism is so important for European culture and for any European existential horizon because it is precisely based on two conceptual pillars and not on one. It is not the Greek Hellenic culture and something Oriental or Semitic. It is Greek and Iranian. Hellenism is Iranism at the same time. And Hellenistic culture and Hellenistic world was precisely the existential space that created Hellenistic Dasein. Hellenistic Dasein was the basis of European culture of the next stage. What is important is first of all; this Hellenistic space and Dasein had changed the ruling point. That was the shift from the Greek domination to the Roman domination. But the Ancient Rome was as well something like the Logos of Apollo in Italy. But the conquests of Rome of the Mediterranean space was the conquest of the Hellenistic world. And that was as well the shift from the Roman to the Roman Empire and the late Republic as well because that started long before the Empire. After the victory over Greeks, there was the beginning of the change of the Roman culture. Roman culture we know is Hellenistic Rome. But Hellenism is Greek plus Iranian. So Roman Mithraism and many other aspects were taken from these Hellenistic sources. And this Greco-Roman Iranian Hellenism, in Roman version, expanded to the northern Western Europe, to the Balkans. Roman conquests in the cultural dimension were Hellenistic. The Roman soldiers brought Hellenism everywhere they came to.
What was Hellenism? Hellenism, once more, was Logos of Apollo in Greek Platonic tradition, Logos of Dionysus in Greek mysteriosophic and as well Heraclitean tradition, Logos of Apollo in Iranian version, in dualistic version with time, with concept of war of light, with Messiah eschatology, and no Logos of Cybele. The Logos of Cybele was present in the depth of this existential space but was not represented clearly. Only maybe in some Pergamon, in some history of the sibyl’s prophecy and to put the black stone of Cybele from Phrygia to Rome but that was more or less marginal. There was a kind of matriarchal cult in Roman Hellenistic Empire but they were not dominating. The dominating culture was Apollonian, Greek Apollonian, Iranian Apollonian, and Greek Dionysian. But precisely this Hellenism was Roman Empire culture. And that was Christianity, because Christianity was constructed over this space. And that has logical continuation of the same culture, Christianization of the Hellenism in Greco-Roman version. Iranian aspect in Christianity was crucial. But now we see this Roman Hellenism with domination of Logos of Apollo. That was conserved with some aspect of Dionysian culture up to Modernity. The Latin Logos, the Roman Empire Logos, is Hellenistic, is Roman in its deepest aspect, but Hellenistic and Greco-Iranian in the next level. And that was with some aspect of dualism that in Roman culture was more accentuated than in Byzantine Christianity. St. Augustine was Manichean in his youth. Manichaeism is a form of Iranism and Iranism is dualism, and so on. So there is something Manichean and Iranistic in Rome a little more than in Byzantine where there is much more Dionysian balance, or not dualistic Platonism in Byzantine Orthodoxy and dualistic Platonism in Roman Latin Catholicism. Nevertheless the Roman Catholic Empire was based on the Logos of Apollo with more dualism and maybe less Dionysian but at the same time purely Indo-European. And that was the destiny of Italy up to the last time. Conservation of this Logos of Apollo was a kind of moment of noomahia for Italy, to be the place where Rome was, to be the center of the Roman Empire, to be invaded by the German Indo-European tribes, to create a new state, but stay true to this Christian (in Catholic version) source to this kind of Christianized Hellenism up to the end.
The last form of this, in the very Modernized and perverted way, was the Italian Fascism. That was continuation of this Apollonian attitude. It was vertical hierarchy in the modern version. But that was the kind of straight line. Italian Fascism was the last sound of the See. Before that was the Trident Council where the Catholicism refused to go in the Protestant way. Defense of this Catholic identity or Apollonian Roman identity was the kind of destiny of the Italian existential horizon. That was not only caricature in the Fascism. There was absolutely a caricatural aspect of Roman tradition in Fascists as everything in Modernity is a caricature but at the same time there was something logical and continuation of this Roman tradition in very special way, but continuation and defense.
The next existential of Europe is France. That is Celt tradition. What is particularity of Celt existential horizon? It is the power of the feminine principle, the power of Mother. Celt tradition has fresh roots of matriarchy. So the Celt Christianity was much more feminist friendly. There are many legends and myths about the island of mothers. The death was considered to be feminine. Maybe partly the tradition of the knights of Middle Ages with the cult of love was based on these Celt traditions. There is Denis de Rougemont, the very interesting author that tries to study the sources. Denis de Rougemont has written the book that is called Love in the Western World where he studied the sources and the roots of the tradition of glorifying love in the knight’s culture in the Middle Ages. That was as well Celt influence with very strong presence of Great Mother. I gave the name for the book on French culture, The French Logos: Orpheus and Melusina. Melusina was the name for the fairy that was female dragon in Celt mythology. Orpheus as well was the figure (Thracian by origins), very important for French culture and Celt culture because the idea to go down to the center of the Hell in order to meet with the feminine principle that resides in the center of the Hell is the kind of destiny of the French culture in best aspect and the worst aspect. That was a kind of journey to the center of the earth in order to discover the femininity, the mother.
German Logos was quite different from Celt. It was heroic, it was warrior, and it was Apollonic. And that was the fight, a little bit as in Iranian case, against the Chtonic power. That is everlasting fight. To be German is the same as to fight. The German fights against the serpents, against dragons, against everybody else around. That is paranoid type (if we remember Gilbert Durand) of culture, but strongly patriarchal and with anelygynia relations with valkyries. So German women are more like German men. They are the same. They are fighting. They are Brunhildas. That is a kind of heroic society and destiny is the fight against titans. But when the Germans follow their destiny, they fight so sincerely that they could not remark the moment when their fight becomes titanic itself. They fight so much and are so devoted to the fight that it overcomes some natural limits and overcoming the natural limits is something titanic. So they begin to destroy themselves and to destroy everybody else around them. In Hitler, the titanic aspect of truly Germanic spirit is clear. That was good idea to create Great Germany but that was not so good idea to destroy everything and afterwards Germany itself with this over-measure. There is the Greek term ‘hubris' that means absence of measure. So if for example you kill the enemy in the fight, that is good for heroic ethos. But if you violate, for example, his child in order to continue this, that is hubris. That happens but that is not considered to be too much heroic, or rape of the women, which is as well always a part of the war. But that is hubris. Maybe in the certain situation hubris and in the other not, but there is overcoming natural borders. In the German case, we see this warrior spirit, purely Apollonian, that sometimes overcomes its borders and the enemies of the titans become titans themselves. So they’re trying to overcome the other and they change their roles in the history. So being fighters of the sky against the earth, they begin to fight the earth in chtonic way.
There was very important idea in Iranian tradition that the army of light is weaker than the army of darkness. And the defeat of the army of light is necessary element of resurrection and the final victory. That is very metaphysical aspect. So in order to win, you should undergo defeat with the light. If the light should die, it’s better to die with the light than to win with the darkness. So the force is not the last word. The last word is the truth or the light. So the idea is that when we pass over some measure, some borders, some limits, and if we fight too much we could destroy everything. That is German destiny and that is German Logos. In the case of Protestantism, in the beginning, that was very important idea that Christ is something inner, not only outer, not only belonging to the cult, and not only going from outside. Christ comes from within. That was the original idea of Protestantism. And Platonism and German mystics (Meister Eckhart) were inside at the center of the early Protestantism. But without measure, being brought to the hubris in titanic way, that becomes something completely different; the individualism, rationalism, absence of mystery, absence of humility in front of God. That was heretic Arianism. It was a kind of return to the Arianism. That was the Protestantism that was as well German, in the best and the worst aspects. Protestantism is titanic version of Christianity because Catholicism and Orthodoxy are Apollonian version of Christianity. But modern Protestantism (Calvinism above all) and the radical versions of Protestantism are not Christian. They are titanic versions.
So England and the British horizon - when I studied British history, I have arrived at the conclusion that I could not call the book dedicated to the English ‘The English Logos’ because I didn’t find the English Logos. But I have discovered a profound duality of English culture. There was the Celt pole represented by Welsh, by Ireland, and by Scotland that is part of the Celt world and Celt existential horizon. This is part of the France in some way with the same fascination with the feminine principle, with the same descent to the Hell, with the same black romanticism and so on. And Celt part is not only Irish or Scottish. That was as well in Wales and inside of English society. The Stuart Dynasty was Celt. The Celtic elements are inside of English identity. They are not outside. Outside are the radical aspects in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. But the majority of the population of the British Isles were Germanized Celts. The other pole is German.
So the mixture of Celt and German elements didn’t create a new Logos or new existential horizon. It created English schizophrenia and bipolarity. There is a kind of unbalanced mixture between German and Celt that was not a kind of synthesis. That was a very ill mixture or confusion of contradictory elements. They didn’t create a united Logos. They didn’t create a united identity. They created a bipolar society which was very very troubled inside. And there is the other example of the relations between Celt and German identity in Switzerland, Belgium, and all the heritage of Lothair, the third heritage of Charles the Great. And in Switzerland there is very very thin balance between both identities. There is not so much synthesis but there is harmonization. And what we see in England is absolutely disharmony, absence of any harmony. There is very aggressive German part and very depressive Celt part. They don’t form the whole, something holistic, something internal. They formed bipolar entity with deep conflict inside that could not be resolved internally so it expanded as British Empire. It was expanded as a kind of explosion of these two contradictory identities that didn’t create a Logos. It created British Empire of capitalism, imperialism, and liberalism. If French Celt Logos, for example, is much more Dionysian with many aspects of the black Dionysus and German Logos is Apollonian with possibility to change the situation to the titanic aspect, English culture and identity took the black Dionysus and titanic aspect of German Logos, united them in very conflictual way and expanded over the planet. That was a kind of not colonialism but colonization of illness that wasn’t cured inside and couldn’t be cured. That is manifested in the main myth of England - the fight of two dragons; the red dragon and white dragon. That was the beginning of the history of England. The red dragon represents Celt identity and white dragon represents German identity. And these two dragons are still fighting. And the explosion of British Empire didn’t change anything and didn’t cure English mind. English mind rests ill and bipolar but now it is obliged to return to this fight that never ends. That is very interesting idea. There is no Logos. In France we could identify the Logos. In Germany we could identify the Logos. We could identify the Logos in Italy, Greece, and other countries but not in England.
There is a kind of North American Logos. South American is the continuation of the Latin Logos with Apollonian structure. That was embedded in the pre-European population not without the problems but that was a synthesis. And Anglo-Saxons brought to North America their illness. They began to destroy the Indians and not integrate them into their society. And they created an absolutely ill North-American society as continuation of the same problem. But there is a kind of American Logos in pragmatical philosophy. There is a kind of solution for them. Pragmatism is the main trend in North-American philosophy. What is Pragmatism? It is the idea that there is no normative knowledge about subject and there is no normative knowledge about object but there is only interaction in practice. If something works, it is. If something doesn’t work, then maybe next time. There is no concept of what subject or object should be, of what should be matter, nature, cosmos, or human soul. We could pretend to be everybody; Elvis Presley, martians, Anglo-Saxon, everybody. If it works, so nice. If it doesn’t work, it’s bad for you. So we could treat the world in any way we want. So that is a kind of pragmatical freedom. That is why American philosophers tried to adapt Heidegger in their Pragmatist way. It’s not Heidegger but it’s American reading of Heidegger, precisely because they believe only in what is between, what is interaction, practical. For example, if you are constructing the time machine in order to return to the other time, you are free to do that because doing that, something could happen. Maybe not return to the time but you could discover some elements or some knowledge to sell something or new bottle for Coca-Cola. So you are completely free to do whatever you want because there are no limits of object or subject. There is no inner and no outer. It’s only interaction. And interaction is practical and pragmatical, if it’s good to you. That is American Logos. It’s very special. It’s not Anglo-Saxon. It is the other kind.
And now in globalist time, there is a kind of loss of this Logos, because America could not pretend to be colonialistic, because colonialism is the clearly defined goal. So now America is not anymore American. They are in the hands of some other groups. American Logos is not so. It is pragmatism that couldn’t tolerate any goal. They could act and something happens or something doesn’t happen and you could feel happy or not but you could try everything and you shouldn’t prescribe to anybody nothing. Political correctness is anti-American and anti-Pragmatic. You can say everything and act how you like and make the monuments you prefer or not have any monuments at all because there is nothing inside or outside but only in the interaction. So that is pure American in best or worst. That is American Pragmatist Logos. Now North America is not such. It is different.
That is analysis more or less of the different existential horizons or cultural spaces of European civilization. I have already said some words about Slavs. We are Indo-European society. The last centuries, we are under great influence of the West. So partly we share with German, with French, with British, with Greeks, with Latins, their problems, having some special features. We will dedicate to Serbian identity a special lecture so I don’t want to anticipate too much. But what about our Slavic Logos? It is clearly a part of Hellenistic cultural space because all the other identities I have described are a kind of result of this Christian Hellenism in different combinations. But what is as well clear is that we do not have such Slavic Logos as something already made or something completed. It is the most interesting thing. That is challenge for us. That is open Logos. I have studied the possibility of the Russian philosophy basing on Heidegger in special book. I didn’t yet write the last book of noomahia that will be dedicated to Russian Logos, possible or not. But dealing with Eastern European Slavic tradition, I see clear that the Slavic Logos is possible and some time in the history we approached it.
We were very close to it in the Dusan the Strong in your history, with the first and the second Bulgarian Kingdoms in the history of Bulgarians, we were close some time in the Polish Kingdom with Lithuanian and Great Moravia as well with some philosophical tendency. But we have never achieved the final version of this Logos in Eastern Europe, as well in Russia. We didn’t achieve the final version of Logos. Our existential horizon is not finished. It hasn’t received the last form. And that maybe is our historical challenge. And Slavophile thinkers saw that we came to the history later than the other when there was already a huge building of German philosophy, German political history, French philosophy, Roman philosophy, Greek philosophy, and as well political history. We Slavs have arrived to this a little later, not in the history, but to the understanding of history, to Logos of history, and to our philosophy. Our philosophy is a little bit childish and infantile. There is great example, great explosion of intellectual richness of precious thinkers such as Petar II Petrović-Njegoš metaphysical as well, Russian Dostoyevsky but all that is a kind of feeling of coming of our Logos and not the Logos itself. We are living in the anticipation of the Slav Logos. And when we study the past, we see many heroic deeds but we could not say that is our Logos. No. That is something like that. There is Saint Sava in Serbia. That’s anticipation of the Serbian mission, of the history. The creation of Nemanja Dynasty, Russian Ivan the Terrible and the other moments in our Slavic history are anticipation of Logos and not the Logos itself. That’s my personal opinion and it’s more difficult to describe our own Logos than to study the Logos of the other because it demands very deep introspection inside in our culture.
But nevertheless we should recognize some centuries we were under the influence of the other existential horizons and they defined many things in our actual consciousness. But that is always scientific truth. We have conserved our identity and the core of our existential Slav horizon in the same condition. Maybe it is buried in the depth but it exists surely in the Serbian example of the resistance to globalization. It is one of the examples. Yes, that was the defeat but Kosovo struggle was as well defeat. But on this defeat is based the victory. On this defeat, on this capacity to resist is based the future resurrection. That is not only the death as defeat. That is heroic death. It’s always promise of the resurrection. To say the truth, I constate very pessimistic state in modern Slav society but at the same time, I’m very optimistic concerning the possibility of this Logos. It is not yet done or completed. But that is the challenge for new generations of Slav intellectual elite that should bring to the final point all the historical experience, all this historical (not historic) sequence of our ontological presence in the world. I think that we should study the cultures of other European people. We should study in depth these existential horizons to understand where we are and who lives around us, with whom we have to deal, who are oppressors, who are saviors, friends, and enemies but most importantly to understand who we are. But without knowing who are the other, we could not define ourselves. In knowing the other, we know ourselves. In knowing ourselves, we know the other. So in order to establish or re-establish or discover this Slavic Logos, we need to study as well, the Logos of and geosophy of European world, Indo-European world and the other people. That is the importance of noomahia.