We are continuing our lectures dedicated to Noology, philosophical discipline about consciousness, human mind, and the thought. Today we have two lectures. The third lecture has the name ‘Logos of Indo-European Civilization.’ So now we are going to apply the methodological principles explained in the previous two lectures to concrete objects and to concrete civilizations. We have spoken about the three Logos theory and the concept of existential horizon and the Historical. So now we are going to apply that to Indo-European culture. First of all when we are speaking about existential space, we can apply this concept to different scales, to small communities, to middle sized communities, or to big communities, for example united by the similar or same linguistic origins. And now we are going to speak about Indo-European existential space. What is Indo-European existential space? It is one of the largest forms of unity. Indo-European existential space coincides with the space where people speaking Indo-European languages live. What are Indo-European languages? That is Roman, Latin, Greek, German, Celt, Slavic, Persian, Indian Sanskrit and the other Prakrit languages, Hittite in Ancient Anatolia, Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrian (the ancestors of Albanians), and Balts more or less. What is interesting is that gypsies as well belong to this linguistic community because the language of the gypsy is also Indo-European. Their origins are uncertain but they speak in Indo-European languages. As well, Yiddish, a Jewish language, (a German language essentially) belongs to the European family. That is more or less the space populated by the people speaking these languages that enter in this Indo-European ecumene, Indo-European existential horizon. That is a huge amount of space, of peoples, of histories, very contradictory and conflictual, but at the same time that covers people speaking Indo-European languages. That is existential space.
We have spoken yesterday that we are defining the cultures and people by existential horizon, the space, and the historical. So we could speak about the Indo-European history or Indo-European historical sequence of the events. We will see later what could be or what versions of this main general Indo-European historical sequence can be but now we are going to discuss what is the kind of main features of Indo-European existential horizon. What is Indo-European Dasein? (t/here being) First of all, we need to concentrate on a very important concept. That is the concept of Turan. Normally, we use the term Turan as a space where Turkish people lived. But that is not so, because the term Turan is purely Iranian and it is much more ancient than the appearance of the first Turkish tribes in Central Asia or in Eurasian steppes. The term belongs to Avesta, to the ancient Zoroastrian Mazdaen religion and was used in the Iranian tradition long before the manifestation or creation of the first Turkish tribes. So that is an Indo-European term (Turan). And what is the meaning of the Indo-European term? We know very well Ferdowsi, a Persian poet of the Middle Ages that has created a kind of poetry about the Iranian historical sequence called Shahnameh poem. This Shahnameh is based on the duality taken from Avesta, from ancient pre-Islamic sources, about duality and dualism and the fight between Iran and Turan. Iran was sedentary people of Iranian descent. Iranians as we know them living in Persia and in the Media to the north of the actual Persia, in the Caucasus. The essential feature of Iran was sedentary. And Turan was the space where nomadic people lived. But what is the meaning of the word ‘Turan’? The original meaning, root of this Indo-European word was ‘tribe’ or ‘people.’ It is the same as in the case of ‘tautos' in Lithuanian (nation or people). That was the name for the people of the steppes. And the meaning of Turan was the space populated by the nomadic tribes. And these tribes, in the ancient Avestan time when this term was used, these peoples were absolutely Indo-European as well. So we are dealing with very interesting duality (dualism), cultural and civilizational. Iran and Turan signified in the original time, two versions of Indo-European societies. Iran was the same as sedentary Indo-European society and Turan was the name for nomadic Indo-European society. That is very important because that has to do with the origins of the Indo-European peoples.
When we try and when we start to explore, from Iran and Turan, what kind of civilization or society was more ancient, we come to the absolute conclusion that is the main position of any historians that Turanian Indo-European tribes were first. So the Iranians that were at the source of sedentary Iranian culture were the ex-nomadic tribes that turned into sedentary tribes. They came from the same Turanian space. That is the main position. There are many many debates and quarrels of where exactly in Turan was the center of this proto-Indo-European culture. But almost everybody agrees that that was somewhere in Turan. There is position that was far to the east or to the south of the Ural Mountains, or in the Caspian area, or to the north of the Black Sea, but somewhere from Danube up to the southern Siberia. That was a large area but somewhere there was the so-called motherland, or urheimat to use the German word, initial, original motherland of the European people. So that is urheimat (in Russian прародина), something not motherland but pre-motherland. That is more or less the common position, somewhere there. That is the main principle of the origins of the European civilization.
Second moment - if we have location somewhere in Turan, the second principle of the Indo-European origins is that the first Indo-European cultures were nomadic, so strictly linked to the pastoralism. They were pastoralist, nomadic, Turanian tribes. I would suggest the readings of Marija Gimbutas (Lithuanian author), that have explained excellently and brilliantly the kind of logic of this Indo-European expansion. The idea is that, according to Marija Gimbutas, and according to the many Russian scientists and archaeologists as well, the origin of these Turanian Indo-European tribes was somewhere to the south of the Ural, around Chelyabinsk city where a very ancient city was recently discovered called Arkaim, because that was the typical Turanian city of the nomadic Indo-European tribes.
You know that it is common wisdom and common scientific position that the first bearers of Indian Vedas came as well from the north, from this same Turanian space. The ancestors of the Iranians came from the same Turanian space. The ancestors of the Hellenic, Roman, Latin, German, Celts, Slavs, Balts, and Hittites (one of the first of the more ancient tribes) came to their places from the same urheimat, from the same Turanian space. And all of them were bearers of the nomadic pastoralist culture. According to Marija Gimbutas, there were many waves of these Indo-European tribes. Any wave brought with it new languages, new forms, new mixtures of different dialects of Indo-European languages that were at the origin of the modern Indo-European languages. They were bearers of the Kurgan culture. Kurgan culture is very important for us. Now we could reconstruct a kind of archaeological historical sequence of the phases of the creation of the Indo-European societies in that way. There was urheimat. There was an Indo-European motherland somewhere. Let’s say to the south of the Ural. I don’t insist on this concrete location but that is more or less as the majority or serious part of the historians that agree about that. It was maybe to the east or maybe to the west but somewhere there.
The second point that is as well Kurganian hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas is that every Indo-European people in the origin was nomadic and pastoralist. They were not farmers, not sedentary. They created a kind of special city and they were warriors. They domesticated the horse for the first time. The domestication of the horse came from precisely this Turanian space. It’s normal they have domesticated horse. They moved through the steppes in order to conquer the other spaces, going from this urheimat through India up to Britannic Islands. They colonized Eurasia starting from that point. That is normal Kurganian hypothesis and that is the origin of all Indo-European languages. Ancestors of any Indo-European tribe and people spoke this Indo-European language living in the Turanian space, being nomads and pastoralists, and elaborating a kind of culture, culture that is at the origin of any Indo-European society and Indo-European civilization. We could speak about this proto-Indo-European culture and civilization and we could localize it, situation it in the Turan, identify it with the nomadic way of life, with the warrior type of being and ethic of the warrior and heroism, with domestication of the horse, and very important moment with the solar circle as the main moment of this.
There is very interesting author, Leo Frobenius (German author) that explained the stages of the culture in the following way. The first stage is fascination. If you are fascinated by something you are possessed by spirit, by beauty, by God, by inner feeling, by something. The second stage of the culture is the expression of this possession. You liberate yourself from this possession, trying to express in the images, in the exterior forms what possesses you, what fascinates you. That is second. And after that, you apply the result of this expression technically. We could see in the ancient Indo-European Turanian stage, all these three stages linked with the concept of the circle. First of all, that is the sun; sun as deity, sun as the day, sun as Apollo. So, you are fascinated by the sun. You are possessed by the sun. You worship the fire, the light, the sun, the heaven. It is at the center of your fascination. After that you create the symbol of it. You create the sign of the circle and you worship that as something that possesses you. That is kind of your inner concentration. After that, you apply this technically in the third stage. And what is this? That is the wheel and chariot created by the wheel. That is common wisdom as well. The first charioteers and the first creators of chariots with the wheel and with the horses were Indo-European. With the help of the chariots, they have conquered every space in Eurasia, from the Britannic Islands up to India or Persia or Greek and Balkans. So Europe and all European spaces were conquered by chariots with the horses and with this application of the sun (circle) to the technical aspect. They were possessed by the sun. They worshipped the sun. And they technically used the symbol of the sun in order to create the chariot. And with the chariot and with their inner dynamic being like the sun, they have expanded the rays of the sun through the Eurasian continent from the Turanian urheimat motherland.
That is more or less pre-historic Indo-European, the Historical sequence. So that is a kind of destiny. That is to be like the sun, to shine, and to expand the fire and the light of the culture from the starting point. So that is very important in order to grasp what is Indo-European Dasein. And that is reflected in all Indo-European languages and Indo-European cultures. All Indo-European peoples are heirs of this Indo-European Dasein because we are speaking, we are thinking, we are defined, we are prefigured, we are pre-defined by this Indo-European solar Dasein of this Turanian (not yet Iranian - Iranian culture is the second phase. First phase to be Indo-European is to be Turanian, nomadic warrior tribe of the steppes.) That was common origin of all Kurgan culture type of the society according to Marija Gimbutas and almost everybody else. Kurgan is area. And the sign of that was the hill over the tomb. Kurgan is a kind of artificial hill over a tomb. That is very important because it is a kind of verticality, a creation of this vertical society. And as well the second sign is to put the weapon in the tomb. Because in other cultures, there was not. And the horse. Horse, weapon, and the hill are the three signs of this Kurganian type of culture. That is Indo-European Dasein.
We could trace, from the point of Turan, somewhere in Turan, maybe. Because the first wheels were discovered precisely to the south of the Ural mountains and the first traces of the domestication of the horse in more or less the same space. So that would be logical to presume that the center of Turan was situated somewhere there in the Kazakh Russian steppes. (Actually Russian, before that was Indo-European.) That was the heart of Turan. And from this point, that was a kind of expansion, an expansion, not only physically in the search of the new field to feed the horse and the cows, but as well that was a kind of imitation of the sun. So the earthly sun was situated somewhere there in Turan and from this point there was a kind of expansion of the race. So we could presume that that was not only inertia or something casual but that was idea that there is the center somewhere in Turan, (for example to the south of the Ural mountains in the steppes) where there was a kind of sacred motherland of Indo-European tradition, the center, the pole of Indo-European tradition, and from this pole there was expansion in all possible directions. The main bearers of this Kurgan culture were nomadic Indo-European tribes. And they have colonized almost all of the Eurasian continent, from the West to India and through India to the Indian Ocean, expanding Buddhism as a kind of product of Indian culture which was as well a continuation of the same cultural influence projected to Chinese culture, that was completely different. So we have a kind of race everywhere. But the most interesting conclusion from that, the pure type of this Indo-European culture, we need to seek in the nomad Indo-European tribes as Afghanian or Ossetian (actual Afghanian Pashtuns) or some Pakistani tribes (nomadic as Baluch in Iran and Pakistan) or actual Ossetians (Ossetes, the direct descendants from Sarmatian Tribes). They turned into sedentary very recently and they were continuators of this Turanian type of culture. Iranians were secondary and Turanians were first. Their conflict (Turan against Iran) was very very secondary aspect of this history of the first stage of the Indo-European history.
That was as well the idea of the late Oswald Spengler theories. There is posthumous writings of Oswald Spengler, a recently published unfinished book that was called The Epic of Man. That was unfinished. Only parts were written by Oswald Spengler (the author of The Decline of the West). In this The Epic of Man, he developed this concept that, according to Spengler, there existed three pre-civilizations; Atlantic with megalithic culture, Cushitic with Afro-Asiatic covering Northern Africa and Near East (Ancient civilization), and the third was precisely named Turanian civilization by Spengler. That fits well with Marija Gimbutas’ concept and with archaeologists’ Kurgan hypothesis and with studies in Indo-European past because unity of all Indo-European languages points out more or less to the same area where the Indo-European peoples lived before being separated in the actual known Indo-European languages and peoples. So Spengler, Gimbutas, linguistics, archaeology, everything points in that area.
How we could evaluate the structure or noology of this proto-Indo-European Turanian society, there is an author that helps us very much that is called Georges Dumézil. I highly recommend his works. (I don’t know whether they are published in Serbia. In Russia, we have one book published about Latin religion and another about Indo-European Gods.) Georges Dumézil is a French historian that has dedicated all his life to the brilliant exploration of the Indo-European culture, comparing all kinds of mythologies, religions, tales, folk songs, and so on, symbolism in the written or oral traditions in Indo-European culture. He has written many books. He has written a very important text that is called Indo-European Ideology. That is a kind of summary of his extensive books with many thousands of pages, comparing carefully with details, different mythologies of Indo-European peoples. What is the result or summary of the studies of Indo-European structure by Dumézil? That is the three functional theory. He has arrived at the conclusion that all types of Indo-European cultures, ancient or modern, were based on the concept of the three functional society.
Any Indo-European society consisted of three castes. First caste was the priests. They were sacred kings and priests. They were considered to belong to the heaven. They were divine. They were considered to be deities, not man but divine beings, or the sacred kings and sacred priests. Their traits were Brahman and Brahmin in Indian caste system. They had their own ethic and metaphysic, the idea that they possessed a special kind of soul consisted from the light. The rule of the priests and sacred kings was based on the same idea of the sun. Because they were earthly sun, they were fire, they were light. And they represented light as the sun of God, of heaven God. The second caste was warrior or 'Kshatriya' in Indian system, ‘raθaēštar’ in Iranian system and ‘raθaēštar’ is staying on the chariot (warrior on the chariot). Because the chariot with the wheels was the main symbol of expansion through Turanian space of these Indo-European tribes. And the third caste were the simple pastoralists or masters of the animals, of the cows, of the horses. And all society represented a kind of army, an army going through the space in order to fight and to die, because there was no death in our understanding. There was a kind of elevation. Every soul was considered to be heavenly sparks coming down to the earth in order to return. So the quicker the better. If you die young, that is good because it is normal to die young, to die in the fight, to die killing the enemies. Not to survive, but to die was the goal of the warrior. And to be wise and not to live long was the task and the goal of the priests; to be pure, to purify himself and everybody else. To be loyal and to be brave, to have many horses and cows was the task of the third function.
And there was absolutely vertical hierarchy with the priests on the top, the warriors in the middle, and the pastoralists at the bottom. Because pastoralists dealt with the material aspects of the cows, horses, and sheep so they were considered less pure and less perfect. But they strived to be the same to be wise as priests and kings and to be brave as warriors. So the value system was based not on the simple pastoralists and their goals but in the center was the concept of the priests and warriors and they defined as well the ethics of the third caste. But everything was absolutely vertical and we could see that here in that situation, pure version of Logos of Apollo in our noological understanding. That is the most brilliant, most expressive, most clear Logos of Apollo, vertical, because all the living was considered a kind of coming down of the light, of the sun into the sacred kings and priests, expanding going through the warriors, and finishing with the pastoralists, in order to return to the heaven.
And what is interesting is the quality of the earth in the steppe in the Turan. The earth was hard. It was not the type to put the seeds, to plant something there. That was a kind of space in order to get to and to return back. There was no under-earth dimension in that vision in the steppe. The most daemonic, most devilish, most negative creature symbolically was the mouse, living under the surface of the space. The little hole of the mouse was considered to be something as a Hell and that was the symbol of Satan in their tradition, or the snake living under the surface of the Turanian steppes, but not deeper. That is tradition and society with no roots because the roots are in heaven. That was completely different version. That is not something growing from the earth but something growing from the sky, expanding its branches on the earth precisely as Indo-European tribes and returning to the roots but to return to the roots is to return to the Gods and to the fire. That is cremation rite to put the body of the dead man into the fire in order to return through the fire to the sun, to the fire, and to heaven. So everything was quite opposite that we habituated. That was purely nomadic Indo-European tradition. That was as well pure type of Apollonian Logos.
According to Dumezil, what is Indo-European? It is Apollonian we could say. It is exactly the same as Logos of Apollo and any kind of normal, known by us, Indo-European society (Celtic, German, Latin, Illyrian, Thracian, Hellenic, Greek, Hittite, Iranian, Indian, Scythians, Sarmatians, Slavs, Balts), every kind of Indo-European culture was based originally on this Logos of Apollo. The name was given by the Greeks but the same we could identify easily in Veda, in Avesta, in German the Odin myths, in Celt legends and myths. And Georges Dumezil has put together all these types of mythologies in order to compare them. That was clear when we are reading one book after the other that that is absolutely founded. That is almost common sense. There is nothing absolutely new. That is a kind of clear manner to explain that in the very transparent way. That is his result of his writings. That was the school as well founded by him and continued by Émile Benveniste, one of the best linguistic authorities of the 20th century. Émile Benveniste has created a kind of dictionary of Indo-European terms that shows the correctness of the Dumezilian concept theory that is now accepted.
And the second important thing in Dumezil is what he calls Indo-European ideology. Indo-European ideology is a structure that is unchangeable and everlasting. That is represented in the language, culture, symbols, and way of thinking of Indo-European people that is strictly the same in the time of urheimat and modern Indo-European mind. So there are constant principles. They affect us in our understanding of the cosmos, of the political society, and of the history. This ideology is reading, grilles de lecture, interpretation, scale. Through this reading we decipher and interpret what is going on. We consider the society. There is philosophers or intelligentsia, there is military, and there is all the rest of the population. That is vertical and hierarchical vision with the president or leader as a kind of ancient sacred king, military or administrative groups, and population. It is unconscious in us but any Indo-European society is based around this three functional axis (modern or ancient, Christian or Pagan, eastern in Indian and Iranian or western in Celtic, German, Slav, French, Latin). So that is very interesting. According to Dumezil, nothing changes in that. More than that, through this ideology, we interpret the history; the history of the founding of Rome, the history of the founding of any country, of any Indo-European state. There is always some messenger of God or some sacred king coming from outside because the foundation of the kingdom was from outside, from Turan coming these nomads somewhere, and founding there the city. But the city was a kind of fortress. That was not a continuation of the village. That was something created from outside with the kind of military man coming somewhere and creating the fortress (citadel) in order to defend this military position. So it was a military conquest with some sacred heroes and leaders coming from outside. That was the main scenario. And after that, there was a kind of these three functions and relations, sometimes conflictual relations between priests and warriors, their basic interests, and the mass of the population. All three functions were described in many many ways through the chronicles, histories, myths, religious tales, folklores, songs, and so on. That is the main content of Indo-European tradition, to establish this verticality.
That is interesting idea of the gender relations in this Turanian society (very important). When we study the relations between the sexes in the nomadic Indo-European society, we see a very interesting idea. Gimbutas, in other occasion, has proposed the terms of a kind of equivalence between men and women but in the matriarchal society. She proposed the concept of gylania. It’s not domination of the woman over man but a kind of friendship but under the main concept of the domination of matriarchy. Gylania was friendship and equality between man and woman but seen from the female position. I proposed the opposite neologism, anelygynia. That is the same, the kind of friendship between man and woman but from the male point of view, from the Turanian Indo-European point of view. There are two neologisms - gylania and anelygynia. (gylania : γυνή [Greek for woman], ἀνήρ [man]) That’s the same but Gimbutas puts woman first but in the Turanian male patriarchal society, the male is first (anelygynia, ἀνήρ). But there was not submission of the woman to the man but the friendship based on the concept that this solar warrior and celestial sky concept is the domination. So men and women were friends basing on the domination of this solar concept of the man nature. That was very interesting because men always were in the war and the women with children cannot go to the war normally. And they were left in the camps in the fortress. But that was not peaceful living because everywhere were as well the same type of societies, very aggressive and very expansive. And women were obliged to defend the cities. So they should be heroic and they should be warriors as well. Otherwise they will be conquered by the other and they didn’t want that. So they were as well the other type of warrior, with the same values as the man.
That was reflected in many Turanian traditions in the nomadic society. Before the marriage there was a battle between the girl and boy. If the boy could not overcome the girl, the marriage could not be concluded. He should testify his force, his power over her power. There was a kind of competition in the fight but in order to fight, girls should be as well warriors. That is reflected in Brunhild complex in psychoanalysis. When on the bed of marriage, there was a continuation of the fight between man and woman. And woman can overcome and kill the man before the marriage is made. That is the kind of trace of this anelygynia, of this military friendship based on the recognition of the normative values of patriarchy. Amazonian type of society was not feminist or not female. Amazonians were absolutely patriarchal because that was a kind of projection of masculine, male type of culture and values over female society. That was a kind of purity and braveness and force and power of the type of the society exactly as male type of society but in the case of women. So Amazonian is not matriarchy. That was completely the last victory of patriarchy because the women accepted all kind of male type of behavior. That is anelygynia. We could say that is the extreme case in Amazonian society. But that is Turanian type of society with powerful and very strong and independent women that could represent not only a kind of possession of man. They were absolutely the citizens of these Turanian tribes that could defend themselves against possible aggression. That is very important and that is the pure patriarchy.
There were not so much Goddesses in this mythology or when they were present, they were as men, as Greek Athens that was virgin. She was wise as a priest, and she was brave as warrior, and she was virgin. That was not the mother type of woman. That was the warrior, and priests, and virgin type of woman that is purely Turanian. So Greek Athens is the reflection of the male values. Wisdom is the most important male feature of the first caste, first function in the Dumezilian version. And the bravery and heroic spirit and the fight, all the attributes of Athens were as well wisdom and warrior heroism and no mothership, no purely earthly destiny of woman, no children. That is very important anelygynia concept of the Turanian society. That is the sources of the Logos of Apollo.
Here we can as well remind ourselves of Plato. Plato, as I have already said, is a purely Indo-European thinker. He is the best known possible representative of the Logos of Apollo. He was considered to be incarnation of the God Apollo by the followers. In three dialogues of Plato, we see the clear images of this three functional cosmos, universe of purely Turanian and Indo-European type. In Timaeus, there was the Platonic cosmology based on three species. First example or paradigm, the father. The second was the image, icon, the son or child. And the third that was very not clearly defined concept of the matter or khora or the space, not the matter in our understanding nor the substance but space. It is khora, the third principle of Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. Khora is the space. So there is the origin, the paradigm, father. There is the son as the reflection of the father. And there is a kind of space where it is no more. That was called not so much mother but the woman that nurtures, that nourishes, that is the figure that gives the place in order for this reflection act to happen. So there are three levels of the reality in Plato. In the last one, khora, that is country or space and nothing more. That is not mother that gives birth to something. It is something that accepts the influence from the top of the hierarchy, from paradigm, accepts and gives back. That is purely Indo-European version of cosmology. And that is very very clearly defined so we could regard that as pure type of Apollonian cosmology that was accepted as such in Christianity, in Middle Ages, in Roman culture. Platonic Timaeus version of cosmology is normative for any Indo-European tradition.
We could compare that with Vedas. In Vedas, more or less the same, in Iranian version more or less the same. There is a kind of three worlds; the highest, the middle, and the next very poorly defined. The last third world is a kind of surface of the earth where begins return. In the neoplatonic tradition that was the idea of the providence and return. So everything comes from the sky, heavenly father, comes down, and that is epistrophê, return to the same. There is a vertical cycle. The life is moment of the return and the death is not the end. It is the stage of return. So when we are un-manifested in the earth, we exist in better conditions than in the earth. The lowest point of the descent from our inner and paradigmatic position, from our own spirit (Atman in Hinduism) from our immortal soul. So our soul descends in order to ascend, in order to come back, and in order to go to the source. But the source is on the top, above. That is in Timaeus.
In other dialogue, Plato’s Republic, there are three types of ideal state; philosophers (that is equivalent of the priests traditionally), warriors, and all the other. And philosophers should rule because they are dedicated to the highest contemplation of the sources, of the principles. Because they go from the cave out to see the unity, to see the sun, to see the stars, the heavenly lights. And he returns and has the right to rule because he is linked to the sky. So that is idea in Plato’s Republic. The state should be as such. The philosophers, Brahmans, or sacred kings contemplating the source of heavenly light and fire should govern over the other. The warriors should follow them and the others involved in material matters should obey to the philosophers and to the warriors. We have three functional concept in Plato.
And the same Plato in the Phaedrus, Plato gives description of the soul. The soul has three parts according to Plato. There is black horse that is epithymia that is a kind of desire, desire in a more bodily sense, desire of something material, of sexual relations, of the nourishment, of eating and so on. That is kind of tendency to the bottom, to the most material aspect. That is black horse. There is white horse that is called thymos in Greek. That is desire for the glory. That is purely warrior value. It is not the material things but to be known, to have the fame, to be famous, to have glory. That was very important for Greek culture. That is purely Kshatriya value. And there was a kind of charioteer of these two horses, black and white, that is represented by the nous or by Logos in man. That is thought. That is priests in man and human soul. That is thinking principle, the center of the soul. And we see in this metaphor, in Phaedrus, once more chariot and horses, purely Indo-European signs and the soul is the same. It consists from three parts, hierarchically, vertically organized where charioteer is the main, is the Brahman, the priest. The white horse is the glorious warrior. And there is the material inclination of the black horse that is the worst by all the definitions of Plato. So the soul, the political system and the universe, and the cosmos, the world around us, all of them, cosmology, politology, and psychology are based on the same Indo-European pattern.
And that is not the case as is said that all the European philosophy is only marks on the margin of Plato. So Plato is the philosopher’s ‘par excellence.’ It is the absolute philosopher. So everything is around Plato, or criticism of Plato, or development of Plato, or kind of debate with Plato as in case of Aristotle. But Plato is the center and if we now consider the structure, what is Indo-European structure, we could call it Platonism. Platonism is based on the concept of the eternity. It could not be too old. It could not become too old because eternity is not the past. Eternity is the past, present, and the future. There is the Platonism of the past, there could be and should be Platonism of the present, and there could be Platonism of the future because it is based on the strong belief in the eternity. It is based on our Indo-European Dasein. Being Indo-European, we are Platonists. That was not only the past. It is as well our present Dasein. We are Indo-European, using Indo-European languages, living in our history, being Platonists. It is very important. Because in that Indo-European version of the Logos, there is no modern understanding of time. There is vertical time in Platonism. The time is the reflection; the mirror of eternity says Plato. So that is more or less Indo-European attitude. That is vertical time. We are going here in order to go back. We are not developing in the earth. We are the witnesses of the glory of God that will come. And in our Christian tradition, everything is present. It is pure Platonism in any sense. That is very important.
What we could add here are some considerations. First of all, in Indo-European cultures, there is not only one form of this vertical Logos of Apollo. Logos of Apollo can manifest itself in different ways. And there are many types of this Logos of Apollo. We could, for example, compare two main forms of it. In one form, there is a kind of absolute domination of the light. And that is Platonic version. So there is no problematic. There is the light that goes from the source, reaches the darkest point, the more distant point, the earth, the bottom line, and peacefully, joyfully returns to the source. There is nothing that could oppose the light. There is nothing that could fight seriously against the sky, against God, against the sun. There are some potential powers of the earth that would try not to let sun go back, return, or try to keep us on the earth, not to let us go back, not let us die, not let us return. But in the Platonic understanding that is something that is not so much important. We could easily overcome that following discipline, ascetic tradition, following the orders, to integrate in the heroic society, to have a kind of paideia in Greek (education) that teaches us how to return. All the educational system in Platonic society is not only to obey formally but to accept the order, integrate the order inside and following this help of the state, of the church, of the tradition, to become the real Indo-European man and woman in order to follow this straight line of return.
In that optic, there is no evil. The evil as Platonists say, it is diminution of the good. That is only form of diminishing good. There is not evil as nature. There could not exist something like evil in this version because the good is the sun, is the origin, the good is the heaven and the God, and distance from the God is necessary test, for example, for soul. It is not evil in such. So any kind of evil, it’s only a test, an experience that tries to put obstacles in our way to return to ourselves. There is Platonist version but there is as well a much more developed Indian Vedic advaita metaphysic where there is this concept Advaita Vedanta (Indian metaphysics) that stresses this point that we go from the reality and truth into the world of the illusion in order to overcome the illusion and to return to ourselves because the essence of ourselves is God. So we are Gods but we have forgotten about that, Indian says. So there is no problematic. There is Advaita Vedanta non-dualistic version of Apollonian Logos. So everything that is not God is as well God but not knowing it. So there is no darkness. The darkness is simply the absence of the light and absolute darkness could not exist. There is only relative darkness that is kind of a darkening of the light. And darkening of the light, as we know in our observations of nature, is the first stage of the dawn, of the sunrise. If there is no darkening, there is no lightening. So that is unproblematic. I’m calling that advaita Platonism sometimes. So there is no dvaita, no duality. So it could be in Platonic or Indian.
But there is the other formulation of Logos of Apollo that is problematic. And we see that in Iranian tradition. Iranian tradition is as well as Greek and Indian and Vedic, has the same sources, has the same origin that came from the Turan, from Indo-European structure, from Indo-European Dasein and is a kind of form, type of this Indo-European Dasein. But it considers the opposite force as something much more important. And we could call that dvaita Platonism. So there is a light and there is the darkness. The darkness in that version of Iranian dualistic tradition is not only kind of smallness of the light. Darkness is something much more serious. And that creates a kind of intense titanomachy and idea of the ethos of the fight of the light against the darkness. But this time the fight is something much more serious. In Platonic advaita perspective, it is a kind of illusion and we need to overcome the illusion. And in Iranian version, we need to overcome the enemy because this time the evil is. It is not only illusion. In the end of the day, it is illusion but not when we are in the reality. And that is a kind of much more serious and intense opposition of Logos of Apollo against something other.
So in Platonic advaita Indo-European tradition, we have no opposition to that or the opposition is a kind of game. Plotinus has said once ‘the game is taken seriously only by puppets. The real players understand that all that is game and it is not serious.’ But in the case of dvaita Platonism or Iranian dualism, that is not the game. That is a fight. That is a war. And a war is serious because the power of the darkness, of something that is opposite to Apollonian Logos, this time is huge and is comparable with the power of the light. That is completely new attitude (dualism). And we could see that here is something approaching to the Logos of Cybele. The pure Logos of Apollo in the case of advaita non-dualist Platonism or Hinduism, they don’t know the Logos of Cybele. They don’t consider it to be something important. It’s only the surface of the earth that is very hard. You come down in order to come back. You could not fit into the hole of the mouse. You are too big for that. You are too glorious for that. It is the fate to be like the snake. Nobody can imagine that as a fate to come down to the earth, to come into the earth, to be in the hole, to have something in common with the snake or mouse. So the Apollo is represented in very archaic version staying over the figure of mouse or mole. The mole is Satan in this version because he is blind and could not see the light.
And here appears something other. But in order to go further, go to this dualist version of Indo-European structure and Indo-European society, we need to consider more what happens when these Turanian nomadic tribes become sedentary because there is a kind of shift. Some tribes that rest in the same state including up to now (Kalash population, Nuristani population, Pashtun population in Afghanistan and Pakistan) are continuing to be nomadic Indo-European tribes. So there were Scythes, Sarmatians, Alans, Iazyges, and Ossetes who were continuators of this nomadic tradition. But what happens when the Indo-European tribes come to the sedentary society, conquer them, and become as well sedentary? We will explore that in the next lecture. And now I suggest a little break in order to follow this kind of detective story about Indo-European Dasein and Indo-European existential horizon.