Martin Heidegger’s influence looms large over the field of political theory. Leo Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, and others are among Heidegger’s sometimes rebellious, sometimes reverential intellectual offspring. But on the whole they and other political theorists responding to Heidegger tend to depart from his account of philosophy or his ideas about the relationship between philosophy and politics. This paper will argue that the Russian thinker Alexander Dugin, who tracks Heidegger much more closely than other theorists do, should be included in the list of philosophically serious and important political-theoretic Heidegger receptions. Including Dugin among receptions of Heidegger brings to light forgotten or suppressed possibilities of Heideggerian political philosophy not reducible to Nazism. Dugin's use of Dasein in particular provides a fruitful starting point for comparisons with liberal, leftist, and other uses of Dasein among political theorists.
Why are we talking more about liberalism? Because, unlike the ideological conditions of the twentieth century, today socialism is not particularly influential and, moreover, does not have the ability to totalitarianly dictate its ideological principles. Also, socialists today have almost no influence on the definition of basic legal categories. And if they do, then in the case of China or North Korea, then only on a regional scale and moreover, an adequate assessment of this influence requires a thorough analysis of such legal systems as Chinese or North Korean. And there everything is far from what it seems to an outside observer. But it goes without saying that the ban on ideology should concern not only liberals, but also leftists.
Therefore this Mahdi does not become angry except for God's sake, so that his anger does not go beyond (what is required in) upholding God's limits[xlviii] that He has prescribed; this is just the opposite of the (ordinary) person who becomes angry because of his own desires or (something happening) contrary to his own personal aims. And likewise the person who becomes angry (only) for God's sake can only be just and equitable, not tyrannical and unjust. Now a sign of whoever (rightfully) lays claim to this spiritual station is that if he becomes angry for God's sake while acting in judgment and upholding the (divinely prescribed) penalty against the person with whom he is angry, then his anger disappears once he has finished fulfilling (that religious duty)—(to the extent that) sometimes he may even go up to the (condemned) person and embrace him and be friendly with him, saying to him "Praise be to God Who has purified you!" and openly showing his happiness and pleasure with him. And sometimes (the condemned man) also becomes friendly with (his judge) after that, for this (inner fulfillment and realization of the divine commands) is God's Scale (of Justice), and all of (God's) Mercy comes back to that condemned man
Pyotr Volkov: In Central America, the US political domination existed long before it reached South America. The US political and cultural domination of the South America began after 1947 with the demise of the British empire and the start of the Cold War. Britain’s domination of our economy brought us a lot of technological progress but U.S domination of our economy brought the very opposite. If it wasn’t for the anti-Yankee sentiment, the U.S would had brought our people down to the Middle Ages.
Iurie Roșca: You are writing a lot in your book about Russian Orthodox Faith and about spiritual issues in general. Is it because of your Russian roots or because of your interest in the spiritual decadence of Modernity? As we all know such decadence grew catastrophic during the current historical period of globalization and the Western ”culture of death”
Pyotr Volkov: I must admit that my preoccupation for the spiritual decadence of Modernity is something painful that sometimes it keeps me awake at night, it just makes me sick. Despite my distant Russianroots, I felt like some kind of superior force or reason guided me all along this path. Following this path is the entire reason of my earthly existence, anyone is in need of a true reason to live or die.
These three paradigms can be provisionally placed along a vertical axis between the “here” (ενταύθα) and the “there” (εκείνα), between Earth and Heaven, between cause and effect, between the yield and the source, and so on. Each Logos builds its own universe and presents itself as the master and “demiurge.” Therefore, from a noological point of view, we are dealing not with one world but three whose paradigms conflict with one another and each encompass an infinite number of cosmic layers, hierarchies, and life cycles. It might be said that the Noomachy unfolds between these three Logoi in their vying for domination, and the reverberations of this primordial struggle are projected within these three noological universes, thus giving rise to internal battles, conflicts, splits, and oppositions. By virtue of implosion, this paradigmatic “three-way war” collapses each of the Logoi, immersing their content, structures, and “populations” into a funnel of fundamental catastrophes. Studying Noomakhia therefore demands a more careful dissection of these three Logoi. Each of them can be presented as a philosophical country, organized in accordance with certain rules with their own extended geography and topology of central and peripheral zones, and with a number of internal levels and both common and local hierarchies. These three noological countries are the country of Apollo, the country of Dionysus, and the country of Cybele (the Great Mother).
The classic expression of this order was the ancient epoch of Mediterranean societies beginning with the Achaean conquests and Homeric Greece. Such a system was characteristic of Ancient Greece and Rome with the exception of periods of decline distinguished by a strengthening of the political positions of “urban dwellers”, who represented a mixture of higher castes with uprooted peasants that gave birth to a new type of merchant hitherto alien to classical Indo-European societies. This type of merchant could have taken shape through the degradation and materialization of the warrior caste (which Plato describes in his Republic as the phenomenon of timocracy), or from below through a specific deviation from social type on the part of former peasants or urban artisans. It cannot be ruled out that this was the result of influences that were altogether foreign to the Indo-European cultural circle, such as Phoenician or, more broadly, Semitic cultures, for whom trade was a widespread social occupation. In the city-states of Greece, “urban dwellers” and “citizens”, i.e., “townspeople”, formed a specific social milieu in which the three classical functions of Indo-European society found parodical manifestation. In the very least, this is what Aristotle presented in his Politics. The authority of king-priests (the sacred monarchy) transformed into tyranny. The domination of the warrior aristocracy gave way to domination by a financial oligarchy. The organic self-government of ethnically homogeneous and solidary communities (polity) became “democracy”, or the power of the sporadic and disparate crowd unified only by territory of urban residence.
It is significant that the Eurasianists rejected all three of these projects (and political theories), and even exposed their disastrous nature. The Eurasianists also predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union from the very onset of its establishment. The Eurasianists discussed the importance of religion to the life of the people and the state, and the Eurasianists insisted on the peaceful coexistence of cultures and ethnoi. Although the Eurasianist movement proper existed only during the interwar period, it found successors in the Soviet Union and now in contemporary Russia. Of extreme interest in this regard are the ideas of the philosopher Alexander Dugin, who has proposed the model of a Fourth Political Theory. This variation of “society D” continues the line of classical Eurasianity and rejects the three historical political theories of Liberalism, Fascism, and Communism. If Muhammad Iqbal spoke of the need to obtain the collective self (Ijtimayi Khudi) for a new society, then Professor Dugin is employing the terminology of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in speaking about the Selbst and Dasein.
The whole discourse of post-colonial criticism lies within the unequal and uneven depiction of culture, in contrast to political and social authority within the liberal world order. Hence, the emergence of post-colonial discourse as a domain knowledge explored the marginalization of subaltern identities and became a historical testimony of the marginalized “Third world” with a broader focus on minorities within the geopolitical division of East and West. Moreover, the whole context of post-colonial revolves around the ideological state apparatus by digging out the differences between culture, social gap and political discrimination within the rationalization of Liberal modernity.
Today, there is a heated continental debate between the Liberal Atlanticists and Eurasianists, the latter of whom reject the liberal led modernity of Europe. Moreover, the Eurasianist traces their racial and cultural identity from the Indo-European Chronology and calls themselves as indo-Europeans instead of Liberal modern Europeans – which despite the civic, legalistic criteria of the latter, is in fact a cultural, historical, economic supremacism over the broader Eurasian identity rooted in its people.
In Moscow, Eurasianist scholar Alexander Dugin influenced the policy of President Vladimir Putin and diverted Russian policy towards Eurasianism. The ultimate purpose of this diversion was aimed at Russian revisionism in order to bolster Russia’s role for the creation of a multi-polar, and multi-stakeholder, world.
According to Dugin, European civilization has degenerated and it must be destroyed. However, to fight the European civilization, Dugin suggests the Eurasianist Federation based on the strategic unity and ethnic plurality with a principle judicial element of the rights of people.
Postmodenism and Speculative Realism reflects this on philosophical level
Real as nothing (Lacan) Active nihilism non-philosophy (F.Laruelle, Ray Brassier) Rizoma and schizo-masses (Deleuze, Guattari) Object Orientated Ontology ( Harman, Meillassoux, Toscana) Accelerationism (left -- Nick Schrnichek, Alex Williams --and right – Nick Land - Possession of radical Other (Reza Negarestani) Singularity (Kurzweil) Cannibal metaphysics (Viveiros de Castro) Anti-essentialism (subjectivity without subject)
In order to effectively oppose Sea Power Heartland has to restructure the Rimland zone.
USSR being strong and powerful wasn’t capable to do that alone. Reduced Russia obviously couldn’t afford it at all. So the idea of conquest by forced was immediately abandoned. The only way to achieve the goal was the politics of alliances directly or indirectly against Sea Power. Rimland can not be Russian. Well, it shouldn’t be American (or West European). That’s the fundamental. At that moment Russian geopolitical school has discovered the concept of Big Spaces (Grossraum), accepted plurality of civilizations that have reappeared after the end of bipolar era and started to develop Theory of Multipolar World.
Democracy today cannot be discussed objectively. It is not a neutral concept: behind “democracy,” as a political regime and corresponding value system, stands the West, Europe and the USA. For them “democracy” is a form of secular cult or a tool of political dogmatics, thus, to be fully accepted into society in the West, it is necessary by default to be “for” democracy. One who calls it into question falls out of the field of political correctness. Marginal opposition is tolerated; but if it is more than marginal, democracy sets its machines of oppression against its alternatives like any regime, any ideology, and any dominant religion. It is not possible to talk about “democracy” impartially. That is why in discussions about democracy we must say at once whether we are completely for or completely against it. I’ll respond with extreme candor: I’m against it, but I’m against it only because the West is for it. I’m not prepared to accept anything thoughtlessly and uncritically on faith, even if everyone believes it, and all the more so if this is accompanied by a concealed (or clear) threat. You suggest that I rely on my own reason, no? I’ll begin with the fact that reason advises me to reject all suggestions [predlozheniy, offers, proposals]. No one can give us freedom. It either is or it is not [we either have it or we don’t]. A slave will convert even freedom into slavery, or at least into swinishness, and a free person will never be a slave even in fetters. From his time enslaved Plato did not become either less Plato or less free, while we still pronounce the name of the tyrant Dionysus with contempt, so which of them is a slave? At any rate, as a popular textbook on technical analysis says, “the majority is always wrong.”
Where is thought? On a different plane. Thought is born and comes into being in a completely different dimension. Compared to what we are doing when (it seems to us that) we are “thinking”, it is something radically other. The experience of thought means the collapse of everything we usually take such to mean. Thought can begin only when what we make thought out to be is finished. Both everyday delirium and intellectual “scholarly citations” are barriers to the birth of thought. They should be abolished. Thought is born out of the moment of madness or nonsense, when the rotation of the gears of both everyday and scientific consciousness is suddenly stopped. In the face of death, this feels good. But not for everyone. Pseudo-thinking reliably protects us from death by barricading against the very possibility of experiencing it with countless instances, fears, calculations, plans, and hopes (for doctors, miracles, police, common sense, science, and the “light at the end of the tunnel”). Everything is subject to death, but death is the lot of the chosen. Death is intimately connected to thought. Thought is born only in the face of death. That which is born freely and horribly in the face of death, when everything else that we have held “thought” to be has been destroyed – that is real thought. Only at this moment does subjectivity make itself known, having been in all other cases dissolved amidst the alienated fields of unfocused consciousness.
Alexander Dugin’s Political Platonism offers a seminal analysis of the contemporary philosophical crisis from one of the best-known writers and political commentators in post-Soviet Russia. Through a series of essays, course transcripts, and a single long interview—each remarkable for the depth of its learning and the boldness of its vision—Dugin exposes the profoundest roots of the Western philosophical tradition, offering his view of why it has reached its final terminus, and his indication of where a new beginning must be sought.
The works collected in this volume present Dugin’s theory of Political Platonism as a fundamental philosophical and political orientation, capable at once of reviving higher political and social forms and furnishing solid ground for resistance to the collapse of the contemporary world. His multi-perspective thesis offers a thorough and thought-provoking critique of modernity and a masterful survey of Western philosophy, reaching from before Heraclitus to beyond Heidegger. In its provocative, clear-sighted analyses and its visionary flights, this book provides an invaluable reference for those already familiar with Dugin, and an intriguing introduction for those coming to him for the first time.
A number of various, altogether interesting conclusions can be extracted from Sedgwick’s analysis.[4] Here we will fixate on merely one point, that of the conceptual unity of 20th century Traditionalism (Guénon, Evola, etc.) and Renaissance Platonism (Plethon, Ficino, Steuco, etc.). Both of these philosophical currents can be generalized with the notion of “Perennialism.” If we can historically trace Guénon’s philosophical inspirations back to the Renaissance, which Guénon himself harshly criticized for misunderstanding the sacred civilization of the Middle Ages, and if we can find there the first formulations of Sophia Perennis or the Prisca theologia which compose the foundation of Traditionalist philosophy, then in it becomes completely obvious that these currents came to Western Europe in the Renaissance from the much deeper past and, to a certain extent, from a different cultural context (more specifically, the Byzantine-Greek). Of course, Platonism was well known in Medieval European Scholasticism, but it had long since yielded to Averroism and Aristotelianism enshrined virtually dogmatically in the realism of Thomas Aquinas. Hermeticism had existed in the form of alchemical currents and esoteric fraternities, but in the Renaissance these tendencies surfaced in rather vivid and magistral form, such as in the forms of open Neoplatonism and philosophically-formulated Hermeticism (with numerous direct or indirect polytheistic elements), which claimed to be not merely a secret tradition parallel to the dominant Scholasticism, but a foundational, universal worldview. Renaissance Platonism and Hermeticism directly opposed Catholic Tomism and formulated the agenda of Renaissance Humanism. This humanism was magical and sacred: man was understood to be the “perfect man”, the Platonic philosopher, the Angel-Initiator.
Kemi Seba is a man of his time. Speaking loudly, echoing the indignation of the proletarian layers of Africa and its diaspora. His speeches are the soundtrack of a people who can no longer be anesthetized, their resistance is like that of a young woman who has been so struck so many times that she no longer feels the blows landed on her. In the space of the former French colonies, since the death of Lumumba and Sankara, we have not seen in Africa young Africans arousing the enthusiasm of the masses and expressing the desire for total sovereignty of the people as Seba does in part in their struggle for self-determination populations of Francophone Africa.
Paganism envisions for the end times not a return to a unity lost in manifestation, but a return to primordial duality. It is no accident that Zoroastrian cyclology calls the final stage of sacred history vicharishn, literally “separation.” Only at the moment of contact between being and non-being is the pagan revealed the whole depth of his doctrine, with all the paradoxical implications. This border realized at the final point of manifestation is the point of departure for the questioning of the subject, who here can only view both metaphysical realities (both exhaustive being and incumbent non-being) as something that does not principally satisfy him, hence his turn to the source which might be beyond both being and non-being. On the pragmatic level, eschatologism is an essential feature of metaphysically fully-fledged paganism, since the true immanentism of authentic tradition cannot and should not be a doctrine of absoluteness and the non-transcendence of “this world”, which would render it an anti-tradition and anti-nomist materialism. For the subject of pagan immanentism, being is not the final sought-after shore or “paradise.” Rather, it is a symbol of the fact that non-being itself is not this “paradise.”
“Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists”. In other words, Bannon's call for European patriots is not to be intimidated by the pernicious accusations of corporate media. Well, denigration and demonization of the opponents of international mafia like Soros network continues. And this is a sure sign that European populists are on the right track. This shows that Dugin and his followers everywhere are not just right, but also successful.
I agree with Brandon W. Hawk in the essence. I love the Middle Ages and I hate Modernity. For me, the Enlightenment is totally wrong, and Modern science and the broader Modern “scientific” world vision is based on a lie. I believe in God, Angels and the Holy Spirit, not in Descartes, F. Bacon, or Einstein. I think Plato and Aristotle were absolutely right and their atomist detractors absolutely wrong. I am sure that the Church Fathers are bearers of absolute truth and that Modern philosophy is the radiation of the mind of the fallen Angel – Satan. I am sure that the Apocalypse is near, and I regard liberalism and globalization as clear signs of the approaching Antichrist and End Times. I am a Traditionalist and follower of the Russian Slavophiles, of Dostoevsky, of Soloviev, of various Russian religious philosophers and monarchists. I appreciate very much the ideas of René Guénon and Julius Evola. I am absolutely in favor of Antiquity and the Middle Ages and absolutely against Modernity in all its forms. So I have an anti-Modern and anti-Western (when the Modernity and the West mean the same) worldview, and I see Modernity as the catastrophe and decline of the West. Philosophically, I agree with Heidegger that Modernity is based on the Oblivion of Being, and I call on thinking people to awaken to the new discovery of Being. I regard Artificial Intelligence as the final personification of das Man (or Gestell) and I consider it to be the Antichrist, or one of his heads.
Ideological unipolarity entails the universalism of Western values and Human Rights ideology with the concept of human vs. citizen. The concept of human in Human Rights theory is against the nation-state and against the concept of citizen. If you say that the human being has the same rights as the citizen, you destroy citizenship. Migration and the defense of migrants are not purely humanitarian, but ideological. It is the idea to destroy the concept of citizenship, nationality, and the state. That is one of the main goals of the so-called human rights movement. It is purely ideological - as much ideological as Marxism or National Socialism. It is pure propaganda, nothing humanitarian. If you share human rights values, you are globalists on one side, sharing an ideology just like racism in National Socialism or communism and the proletarian position in classical Marxism. Human rights is a liberal ideology. It is not neutral. It is not self-evident. It is purely ideology, just as belongingness to the Aryan race or the capitalist or proletarian classes is. If you are in favor of human rights, you are already totally controlled by ideology.
Many aspects of Herman Wirth’s unjustly forgotten works deserve attention in the study of plural anthropology. First of all, his extremely fertile hypothesis of the cultural circle of Thule, which is usually discarded from the outset without any careful analysis of his argumentation, is so rich that it deserves serious attention in itself. If such an hypothesis allows for the resolution of such numerous historical and archaeological problems associated with the history of symbols, signs, myths, rituals, hieroglyphs, the calendar, writing, and the most ancient views of the structure of space and time, then this alone is enough to warrant thorough inquiry. Even though Wirth’s works contain many claims which seem either unequivocally wrong or highly controversial, we can set them aside and try to understand the essence of his theory which, in our opinion, is an extraordinarily constructive version that expands our understanding of the archaic epochs of the ancient history of mankind. The theory of the cultural circle of Thule need not be unconditionally accepted, but an assessment of its interpretive potential is necessary.
This is also where some of his most useful observations are found—his discussion of potlatch, for example, the ethnic destruction of property to demonstrate power, can be very useful in understanding the tendency of certain demographics to riot as a means of demonstrating or celebrating power. Civilized societies, of course, consider such riots as counter-productive because when a fully realised narod riots, it is usually an expression of frustrated powerlessness, not a demonstration of social power. Dugin enables us to draw qualitative distinctions having nothing to do with environment or circumstance between the bread riots preceding the French Revolution and the Ferguson and Baltimore riots following the death of Black criminals in the United States or the more recent riots in places like Johannesburg. Another interesting observation is his understanding of slavery as a function that only higher civilization, the narod, is truly capable, since slavery creates irreconcilable contradictions within the structure of the ethnos. The primitive ethnos has no category for a slave, since the balance of the ethnos requires the “other” to be an absolute evil to be destroyed, while a slave is allowed to exist and remain “other” to the ethnos (he observes that the Egyptians referred to slaves as “living dead” for this reason – those who by all right should have been deprived of life but instead were kept alive to become tools for ethnic labour). The necessary connexion of slavery with complex societies and higher thought is rich fodder for Reactionary thought in particular.
Where right-wing liberals and conservatives preach “you can’t do anything against the progression of modernity, it’s only possible to gradually influence the process”, Alexander Dugins Ethnos and Society tells you the exact opposite: When one realizes the fact, that there are still ethnic societies around this planet in the Amazon, that the Muslim communities of the Middle East still live in the community of their narod, that in Russia and India the modern nation state is just a thin layer, then it’s obvious that the decay of modernity is just a possibility and not our destiny. If we want to continue the suicide of Europe and follow modernity to its conclusion and change nothing. But if we want to restore our tradition and ensure the existence of our people, we have to radically change our habits, morals and our way of life.
Whereas The Fourth Political Theory tells us to return to pre-modernity in order to protect our Dasein (narod), Ethnos and Society shows us how the preconditions for a return to pre-modernity work. Therefore, Ethnos and Society, is not only important to better understand the work of professor Dugin, but also in order to fight post-modernity to the last blood. If one doesn’t let oneself be scared off by the theoretical depth of this book, it’ll greatly improve one’s understanding of the current processes of globalization, decadence and the Great Replacement. This book is exactly what all the right-wing populist parties in Europe would need in order to change their policies of fake populism and realize what is really necessary to revive European identity.
Man, as the cosmic mediator, is situated on the border between both worlds, between Tradition (above) and modernity (below). He is always straddling this border, eternally, in both the era of Tradition’s predominance, and in the periods in which modernity temporarily wins. In his eidetic, eternal dimension, man himself is this border, and the movement of his spirit, his thought, his ways and methods of philosophizing, outline the content of that which lies on either side. Through his choice of orientation, spiritual or corporeal, man constitutes the time, the epoch, the age in which he lives.
Thus, residing in the “dark age”, the Kali-Yuga, is neither a fatality, a punishment, nor something arbitrary, but the Night’s testing of the grain of eternity, of the divine center that comprises the essence of man. In other words, no matter how far away the Golden Age might be, a kernel of it remains within man as hope, as opportunity, as a fulcrum, which can always be found in refusing to unconditionally and fatalistically (or unconsciously) accept the conditions of the Iron Age. Time is an illusion. The historial is no more than a sign, a metaphor that can be deciphered in different ways and appealed to freely. We ourselves choose the time in which we live. And if man is born in the modern world and in the West’s zone of influence, this means that he is included in the profound plans of eternity, and this reflects his mission and fate. Modernity is in Tradition, and Tradition is in modernity. But in different sections of the vertical world, their proportions adjust to being polar: in Heaven (Tradition) there is only a drop of hell (the Biblical serpent that first appeared in paradise), and in hell there is a drop of Heaven. But this is enough to stretch a semantic thread of sacred history, or hiérohistoire (in Henry Corbin’s formulation) between these drops.
Heidegger himself later called Sein und Zeit the most old-fashioned book ever written. We believe that in the way our economically driven political speech develops, we experience that in Dutch ‘ de wal het schip keert’ , meaning literally that the shore is the only thing that can stop the ship. We are caught up in a form of management. The thought of an Eurasian continent as a mediator between the Atlantic and the Asian might for a Dutch metaphysician be felt as the relieve of a burden. Heidegger saw his own mission in preparing European thinking for a confrontation with the East.
Bringing the geopolitical question back in the philosophical and political agendas means also the necessity of posing the question of the relation between the two. After all the question of politics is again the Schmittian question of friend or foe. When we would be so bold to identify the foe with the antichrist, Heideggers remark in the black notebooks spring to mind: ‘In relation to liberalism the antichrist is a small boy’ .
To work on a new political theory is a matter of great importance, but also a thing that requires great care. Perhaps this care, Sorge, for Heidegger in Sein und Zeit the unity of Dasein, is the driving force itself.