Radical Subject, traditionalism, metaphysics - audio chapters from Dugin's books
Introduction to Noomakhia: Noological analysis of Modernity [Lecture 8] - Alexander Dugin
Lecture 8 is dedicated to noological analysis of the modernity. I presume that now it is more or less easy to anticipate what will be the result of this analysis. First of all, I would suggest the reading of the traditionalist school’s very important others such as Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, Titus Burckhardt, Frithjof Schuon, Michel Valsan, or Hossein Nasr who have explained that the modernity is a special concept. So modernity is not something that has to deal with contemporarity. Because now in the contemporary actual moment we could have modern society, pre-modern society, post-modern society, archaic society, society with religion, middle ages type of society but living in today’s world. So contemporary does not mean modern. That is a very important aspect and conceptual element. So when we speak about modernity, we don’t speak about what exists now. It is a description of a type of society, of structure, of existential horizon, of civilization that is a little bit a-temporal. So we could imagine modernity now. We could imagine modernity belonging to the past or belonging to the future. That is already very important.
So we consider the modernity not as the fate 'cause we have it now and we will have it tomorrow, and we are obliged to be modern’ and so on. Traditionalists affirm that to be modern is a decision. You can be modern or you can be not modern. And they have created two concepts - the tradition and the modernity. So modernity is not something actual. That is a kind of society or civilization or world vision or picture of the reality. That is one thing. And there is tradition. That is the picture of reality, the civilization, the culture, and the society that is different. And between them, affirmed the traditionalists, there is antagonism. That is very important because that gives us the possibility to study modernity not as something inevitable but as something that is the product of concrete historical development based on concrete sequence of decisions and choices.
And the modernity is artificial, I would say. It was artificially created. It is not something that went by itself. Modernity is not natural. Modernity was created, is supported, is defended, is adjusted, and is developed. But there is a kind of free will behind the modernity that is not fatality. There is not mechanical law of modernity, because we know many societies that are not modern. For example, there is Islamic society, Indian society in some aspects, archaic society, which are not modern. They exist today. And if we consider the majority of mankind and humanity today in 21st century, they live not in the modern society. The society they belong to is traditional society. Modernity has something to do with contemporary world but we should understand that separately from contemporary.
We could speak about structure of modernity. Modernity is something structural, constructed, and could and should be deconstructed. Postmodernist philosophy is based precisely on this deconstruction of modernity with their special aspects. But that is possible. And deconstruction of modernity (and that is crucial point in noology) could be made from 2 positions. Deconstruction of modernity could be made by postmodernists with their hyper-modern ethics. The majority of postmodernists are disappointed with the modernity because modernity didn’t fulfill its promises, doesn’t satisfy them, their hopes and anticipations. So that is a kind of despair. They’re in despair that modernity couldn’t accomplish the goal that it declared. So that is post-modernity in the sense that modernity is too small, is not enough. And they try to deconstruct modernity in order to show that it should be overcome in order to create what modernity wanted to do but couldn’t accomplish by inner limitations. In the eyes of post-modernists, the modernity was too traditional, excessively traditional. Modernity could not overcome tradition, but it should and it shall with the post-modernity. So that is a kind of deconstruction of modernity that shows that modernity was not so much modern as it needed to be in the eyes of post-modernist ethic. But what is interesting in this method, in doing that they show the artificial nature of modernity, that modernity is a creation, that modernity is based on the decision. So we could deconstruct something that something has constructed. So we can use some methods of post-modernity precisely dealing with modernity.
But what is much more important is the other possibility to deconstruct the modernity in much more radical way than post-modernist critics. That is traditionalism that regards the modernity as a kind of the type of the structure that was created against the tradition. So that is consideration of modernity as anti-tradition. It could be represented as a kind of reversal of all traditional values. And what was in the traditional society with the sign plus in the modernity is minus. So that is a kind of reversal of the traditional state of things. And that was based on decision, subversion, and the will to destroy and to exchange the thesis with anti-thesis in some way. So modernity is anti-thesis for tradition. That is traditionalist position. And what is interesting is that post-modernists agree with the goal of modernity. So they criticize modernity as something not enough, something not sufficient. But traditionalist criticize the modernity as something awful, as something completely negative, as nihilism, as destruction, as perversion, as subversion, as daemonic design of reality or as a kind of anti-Christ civilization created by the conscious partisans of Satan. So the modernity in the eyes of traditionalists is conscious satanic creation. So there is traditional divine society, divine world, and divine soul and there is satanic tradition, satanic order, satanic cosmos and so on.
That is very interesting because this kind of deconstruction of modernity exists as well, including in our world. And we could use both in order to deal with modernity. We could have deconstruction from the left (postmodern deconstruction) with elaborated methodology with traditionalist deconstruction. I don’t insist now on who is right. I try to show that there are two possibilities to deal with modernity outside of the pretensions of modernity, because modernity says ‘oh, that is necessary, that’s mechanical law of development, the progress, the man is good, the man is developing, the progress is inevitable’ and so on. All that is questioned by post-modernity and all this is questioned by traditionalism. If we unite both criticisms, methodologically we obtain something completely new. So we see, joining both methodologies, at least one thing for certain - that we are dealing with something absolutely artificial, because both criticisms show that with all the power of persuasion of scientific expression from different positions and that is very important. So we could regard the modernity as something conceptual, structural, and in some way eternal. So modernity exists, not only in contemporary world, but it is structure. If we could describe the modernity with mathematical, for example structures, values and anti-values, plus and minus, if we could have a kind of formula of modernity, it could not be contemporary. So this formula could exist in a different context. So that opens to us the way to analyze the modernity as something that could be turned from the contemporary moment. That is very important. So we could study modernity as we are studying for example Chinese culture or Roman culture in the same way. That is something that is accomplished but that belongs to some eternal text. We could choose different scales; we could go closer or go further from modernity. So modernity is the object of the study.
When we try to concretize in noomahia perspective what is modernity, we have already spoken about that it is anti-Christianism. Because we had in our European history tradition, about which traditionalists speak, in the form of Christian tradition. And we have shown in the previous lecture, how this Christian tradition included in itself pre-Christian structures and Indo-European Logos. So tradition now, in this noological version, is the same as Christianity but at the same time is the same as the alliance between Logos of Apollo with Logos of Dionysus in concrete historical Christian form. So that was and is tradition that we could identify and as well describe as type. So if we have this concrete and positive description of what is tradition, it is not something vague. It is concrete. It is Logos of Apollo with its structure, its symmetry, verticality with Logos of purified Apollonian Dionysus in the case of dialectic embedded in this version. So everything is quite concrete.
And we try for example to deny all that, to make a kind of reversal of that. We receive the other type - no Apollo, no Dionysus. And now it is not only nihilism or destruction or parody (as traditionalists say) but in our noological analysis, we see clearly what is so called positive content of modernity. So the modernity is not only destruction, the chaos, the anti, anti, anti, against, against, against. It is not nihilism. In the eyes of Logos of Apollo, there is no Logos of Cybele. There is nothing. There is destruction, matter. But in three Logos concept of noomahia, there is Logos of Cybele. There is a kind of structure that we could imagine, that we could describe with positive inner relations. That is why noomahia noology is so important now, because thanks to noomahia we have the key to deeper and the better understanding on what is modernity. Because when traditionalists criticize the modernity, they use negative terms. That is ‘overthrow of the traditional values, negative, nihilism.’ That is conservative discourse. They belong to tradition, to the Logos of Apollo and Dionysus and they consider the end of this situation as the end of time. So there’s nihilism, negative terms. Maybe that is the reason why they could not get the essence of modernity, because the modernity is purely negative for them, as it is purely positive for modernists. They could as well not understand the modernity, because for them, that’s all. That’s beauty, that’s progress, that’s something inevitable, that’s nature, that’s casual sequence of events that we could not change, something predefined. Modernists don’t understand the modernity. And traditionalists understand better than modernists but in negative way, so as well they understand not enough. But with noomahia we could say, that is not only destruction. That is not only nihilism. That is not only chaotic transformation. That is other Logos - third one.
And if we apply to the modernity this concept, we obtain completely new vision and perspective to understand the modernity. And modernity is in the reality ancient. That is not paradox. It is absolutely ancient because it is precedent to the Indo-European Turanian invasion. So we are dealing not with something new. We are dealing in the modernity with something very very old that existed before Indo-European invasion, before Turanian Logos of Apollo. So in that case the modernity is old and Indo-European tradition and Christianity is something new because it came after. And the modernity is return to the pre-Indo-European aspect of civilizations. That is extremely important remark. Because now we are dealing not with something as the end of some natural construction. There is nothing natural in human history. Everything is based on the Logos. So modernity is a moment of noomahia that came the new attack of Titans against the Gods. And this one is a successful attack. So modernity is the victory of the titans, of Cybele, of the serpent over God. Successful attack. So that is the moment of noomahia that existed as potential possibility always. And when the power of light became too weak and too small, the Titans were liberated from the hell and from the chains and they made interruption again in the realm of the order and they have submitted the humanity to their rule. So that is not purely negative description. There is event and we could speak about the Logos of modernity. The modernity has a Logos.
In order to trace the modernity, we could come to the event or the time when modernity started. That was the end of middle ages and Renaissance time was the border time. That was precisely the moment where this noomahia and titanomachy reached the critical stage, in the Renaissance. That is the name for the special battle between Logos of Apollo against the Logos of Cybele where the battle was lost by the Gods. The battle was lost by Indo-European tradition. The battle was lost by this patriarchal existential horizon in favor of this alternative Logos. And we see multiple aspects of that. That is beginning of capitalism, of bourgeois, of national state. That was beginning of secularization of the state and the society, the end of Christianism. And that was reflected in the science, because the modern science is a kind of necessary aspect of modernity. So we are living in the world where our understanding of reality is based on the science. And this science, this modern science (it is called modern science to make a difference from middle ages science) is very special. We could consider its structure. When we begin to read the first texts of authors of modern science, we see very special feature - they criticized Aristotle. Aristotle was a kind of dogmatic scientific concept of middle ages. And that was scholastic and that was Christian. In Orthodox context, Aristotelian teaching was adapted by John of Damascus to Orthodox Christian doctrine. In western Christianity that was scholastic tradition based on the combination between Platonic and Aristotelian concepts. Aristotle and to a lesser scale Platonism were overthrown in the beginning of the scientific world vision. And we could trace what concretely was attacked, how this titanomachia was developed in the field of the scientific theories. I have dedicated my first thesis to the concept of creation and appearance of modern science.
First of all there was the criticism against the natural places theory of Aristotle or anisotropic version of the space. Anisotropic understanding of the space of the natural places Aristotelian theory was based on the concept of what is movement. According to Aristotle, everything has its own goal, its own entelecheia. The goal is the final reason. That is equivalent with natural space. So everything has its natural space. And the movement of the thing, it is moving toward this natural place. When the thing reaches its natural space, the movement ends. So the movement is because all the things are not in their natural space. They are moving toward them but they prevent each other to get there. And that defines the nature of movement. So everything strives to reach its natural space and because it is a little chaotic under the sphere of moon, (according to Aristotle, there is chaotic movement), so everybody hurt the other. Nobody is in its own space, only God. Only God has reached from the beginning, eternally He is in His natural space. Everything other is out. And that is why everything is living, everything is moving. That is the explanation of the nature of kinetic movement. But that creates the special space with the absolute center for each thing. The absolute center for each thing is its natural place. So everything is striving somewhere, somewhere that is more important, and more natural for things than other place. So you could be at home. The concept of home is very important. Home is the natural place. We are going home. And everything is going home. It is return. It is return to the God but only God is in His own place. That is immovable mover. It is something that moves everything but is not moved by anything. That is the concept. So the space or the cosmos is theocentric. And there is a kind of sacred geography with the special sacred centers, with special points of cult, and all cosmos have the meaning, structure, and reason. So there is a center.
The main attack of Galileo Galilei, Copernicus, and the other was against this concept of the natural place. They affirmed there is no natural place and there is no final reason. There is only casual reason. There is the reason of movement if something makes impact on other thing. So there is casual reason but final reason doesn’t exist. Because there is no goal, there is no teleology of the movement. And there is no absolute center. Everything is relative. Everything is moving chaotically as in Aristotelian version, but with no plan, with no goal, and everything is defined by the previous cause. So the cause belongs to the past. And there is no cause of the future. There is no eschatology and no goal. Everything is casual. And there is no center. There is no center in space. Everything is relative. There is no anisotropic space. There is isotropic space. Isotropic space means you will go any way with the same possibility because there is no natural space for things. So everything is absolutely relative. And that was destruction of Apollonian structure of space and time and destiny and history. Everything is destroyed with that. And that was so called scientific discovery.
Post-modernists show that that was publicity. That was the war of the school, of laboratory. Everything in Galileo Galilei was a kind of trick organized in order to convince the audience that he’s great but his personal motivations we could put aside. But what was the meaning of Galileo Galilei and the other founding father of modernity? They destroyed Logos of Apollo represented in Plato and Aristotle by the Logos of Cybele. And the Logos of Cybele was not their discovery. That was return to the third form of Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy represented by Democritus, and later by Epicurus and Lucretius. They were put aside in the Christian version. Christian world vision was based on Plato and Aristotle, and Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius were put aside and forgotten. They were purged by Logos of Apollo because they belonged to the other vision, the atomistic vision, to the materialistic vision. Already in the ancient time, before Plato, they were anti-Indo-European and they belonged to the context of Logos of Cybele. And they reappeared in the Renaissance. So that is not new. That was something that was denied, that was put off, that was prohibited. That is some prohibited knowledge that reappeared as a dominating one. So postmodernists show that there was nothing convincing in the new ideas and they won not because they were more true. They won because they won. Because something changed in the mind of the Renaissance man that has opened the way to the Logos of Cybele to return with scientific premise. There was atomism.
Atomism belonged to the past. Atomism was rejected by Christian cosmology but it returned with Boyle, with Newton, with Gassendi, with Hobbes, and with Descartes. That is not the chance that Marx had dedicated his doctorate to relations between Epicurus and Democritus. So the most modern philosopher of the 19th century dealt with in his doctorate with very old problem of the matter, of the atomism, and of the evolution. Because evolution, almost Darwinian type, we see Lucretius, in his point that was the idea of the evolution of the species. So the species were confused and little by little they developed into the creatures we know. That was by the Venus, by the Holy Mother that was produced. In Lucretius, there are purely Cybelian topics, purely scientific. So in this Lucretius concept, there are as well black Gods in Democritus. Democritus says that Gods as well have bodies and daemons as well. That was atomic. They live more than the body of human but they will as well die. So dying Gods of Democritus, black Gods or daemons. There was the mixture between scientific and mythological topics but what kind of mythology was that? That was purely materialistic, chthonian, and Cybelian mythology.
At the same time, destruction of verticality, of old order, of old middle ages doctrine and Christian teaching was replaced by new world vision based on Cybelian ideology. Cybelian ideology is strictly materialist and immanentist. There is no heaven. There is no transcendental God. There is substance and everything grows from this substance. And the growth has reason as cause but has no final reason because this growth is something that confuses. It is a kind of growth as such with no reason. That is a kind of immanent process. And there is no attractor. There is no point to which this growth leads because that is the huge immanent substance that has the goal in itself. So the reason is. The cause is. The final reason is not.
That was reflected in the cosmology of Copernicus. That is not the shift from geocentric to heliocentric doctrine but the reason of Copernican revolution was that there is no center at all. Everything is relative. The earth was not the center, was not natural place of incarnation of God. It is something casual. The earth is something casual. It is some ball that is revolving around some other fireball and so on, in the context of the other balls in the infinite disordered chaotic atomic tradition. What is important is that according to Democritus, atom could be small and invisible or great. That is something like very modern concept of the body, the heavenly body of the particle and so on. So that was reflected in the scientific vision. And what is considered today to be scientific is the same as Cybelian. Cybelian is scientific. What is not Cybelian, what for example insists on the existence of natural place, is not scientific, and is mythological. So there was the change of the Logos but that was not immediately. The Logos of Cybele in scientific world vision appropriated some aspects of Apollonian rationalism, of logic, of Dionysian dialectic. But everything was put under this sign of Cybele. So that was a kind of post-Apollonian culture and that was difference with pre-Apollonian kingdom or civilization of Lepenski Vir, Vinča, or Çatalhöyük. So the civilization of great mother was pre-Apollonian and modernity is the same civilization with the same structure and the same Logos but post-Apollonian. So that was appropriation of methods of logic, of philosophy and put under control of this materialistic, atomistic, immanentistic, substantialist domination.
That was reflected in the politics. That was destruction of empire. That was the essence of modern politics. Because empire, as we have seen, was the normative organization of Christian political space, in Byzantine sense, but as well in the Western Catholic sense. So the concept of modern state and the concept of nation were two concepts directed against empire. That was atomic vision of the state - the state as social and political, with no reason. And the difference between modern state and the empire is there is no final reason, there is no natural space, there is no function or mission of Katehon. The national statehood is directed against Katehonian mission. It is directed against the sacredness of empire and mission of empire. Modern state by definition of Jean Bodin or Thomas Hobbes is created from below as a kind of social contract. And that is Leviathan in Hobbes. Modern state is not reflection of the heavenly paradigm. It is created and has no final reason. It has reason as cause. The reason of this modern state is social contract so it is created by the people, by the individuals, in order to prevent them from the other individuals. So that is completely different concept of politics. It is a revelation that Hobbes has called the Leviathan, the serpent, the modern state. Modern state is a serpent, a dragon that is mechanically organized from below in order to destroy everything that is sacred. The modern state is directed against the empire in its origin.
That appeared precisely in the Renaissance with scientific vision, with this completely new understanding of religion. And the modern state should be secular, with no religious sense. It could have church; Protestant, or Catholic, or Orthodox. But church should be separated and exist outside of politics. So the modern state is titanic. And modern national state is anti-Christian, anti-traditional, anti-European, anti-Apollonian, and anti-Dionysian. It is purely titanic. It is serpent and dragon. And as such it was introduced as Leviathan in the beginning of the modernity.
So what is nation? Nation is as well a concept that appeared precisely in modern meaning in the Renaissance time. Nation is the population living inside of the national state. Nation is absolutely artificial. That is the community of citizens who are those who have created the social contract. So the citizens are participating in social contracts. And citizen can redefine, concluding the other social context, the state. For example, the citizen could conclude that they don’t want to live anymore in Belgium and they want to have Flemish state and Bolognian state. They have all the right because Belgium has no reason. It is not reflection of something that is transcendental. It is result of social contract. So the people could create Yugoslavia, could destroy Yugoslavia if they want, because there is no Yugoslavia, there is no France, there is no Belgium, and there is no Germany. So they could easily create one Leviathan or destroy if they think that is better for them. So that is absolutely immanent concept of the politics. And it could be reflected in the vertical structure of state as a tradition of pre-Cybelian Indo-European tradition but it is from the beginning titanic. That is a new kind of hierarchy, a titanic bureaucracy with new type of dominating figure. This type we should regard and describe carefully. Because in modern state, there are not priests. It is clear that secularism has put the priests outside of the government. So they could exist as a cultural institution on the margins for example, as cult or funerals or weddings, something not so important, less and less important. Because marginalization of the church is the process of political modernity and church should be put more and more outside of the political decisions.
In the case of the warrior, warriors were a noble class, aristocracy of the traditional state. They should be marginalized as well. They should be a kind of mercenary by the state. They could not have their arms with them because the arm is a symbol of warrior. They take the arm from the state. And when the state thinks that is enough for them to fight, the state takes the arm back. It is difficult with sword but it is easy with cannon or tank. So it is development of the state weapon (nuclear weapon you could not possess being an aristocrat warrior with private ownership). But if you have no weapon, you’re not autonomous warrior. You’re just a hired mercenary that serves as a servant with something that is given to you by the state and that is decided bureaucratically. So warrior is not the type that decides. Priests are not the type who decide.
Who decides? There appears a new figure - bourgeois. We are calling that capitalist system. We are calling this bourgeois system. And bourgeois is a normative figure in modernity in political way. And now we should regard and make a kind of structural analysis of what it is. It is conventional wisdom that bourgeois belongs to the third state (tiers état). That is third function. There are first priests, second warriors, and bourgeois third. It is called tiers état in French (третье сословие in Russian). But here lays a very interesting misunderstanding, because it is represented by the man that lives in the city (bourgeois) and is occupying with the commerce (commercial). That is bourgeois. But this figure was absent from the Turanian society that was nomadic and was very marginal in the traditional sedentary European and Indo-European society, where existed third function, pastoralists and cattlers in one case, and peasants in the other case. But they were not bourgeois. So third function in the classical Indo-European society was peasant or cattler and not the merchant living in the city. So bourgeois is something new. We could not say that that is traditional third function that overcomes first and second. It is not tiers état in the Indo-European sense. There is something else. And bourgeois and merchant living in the city is not a cattler. He has nothing to do with cows, with sheep, with goats. He has nothing to do with laboring earth. He is not peasant. He is turned from that.
But who is that? Who is bourgeois? It is something that is between warrior and peasant. That is very lazy peasant that doesn’t want to work on the earth. And it is coward as warrior because he could not affront death. He is in middle - lazy peasant and coward warrior. So it is a slave. In Russian language there is the name ‘холоп.’ Холоп is slave of the master. So he helps master to live good. It is not servant we could say. It is not free or not free peasant working in its field, maybe paying taxes or giving something else. He doesn’t participate in the battle. He is between people and aristocracy, between second and first functions and third. Because the Indo-European cities were founded by warriors in order to be a kind of fortress, in their military strategic relations with the space and with the people, so they were a kind of secondary worker serving these warriors. That was artificial class that has grown with the growth of the commerce in this city. Their appearance as an important class begins precisely in the same moment when begins the Cybelian revenge. They are special form of new sociological type living in the city, busy with the commerce. And it is important that the traditional symbol of Cybele is the town as the crown. Cybele has the crown in the form of town. There is something bourgeois in that crown of town. And there is something perverted in the commerce. So to be busy with commerce, in our traditional Christian and Indo-European logic, we have no pattern, no example, and no place for that. Because it is not war, it is not work, and it is not religious rite. It’s something that has no place in the traditional society. But it could exist in the margin of society in order to facilitate some technical aspect but that never was a kind of class or function. It never had its own mythology, its own ethic, its own tradition. And we see in bourgeois something completely unnatural for our tradition, dealing with the commerce and the exchange. They say mild commerce is not war because they’re coward. They could not take away as the warrior make, or they could peacefully work for their fields embedded in the traditional society with many cultural traditions concerning any stepped life that is the peasant life. That is the peasant turned from the tradition. That is warrior that could not fight. That is perversion. The bourgeois is the ill type. It is completely sick, sociological sickness, representation of perversion in our traditional way. So majority of bourgeois were peasants but peasants turned from their natural state.
When the peasant that by some reason has lost its possibility, its field, its normal and natural place in the village, it comes to town. But who is the peasant in town? Nobody. He is idiot (Ιδιώτης), idiot in Greek sense, the person with no collective identity. That is something individual. That is atomic. And the atom was the basis of the new materialistic science of the Renaissance. That is new and old figure but one that had no place in the traditional society. That is something that was regarded with pity maybe in traditional society. It is ill peasant (because lazy or too arrogant) and it is coward warrior that didn’t want to fight. So that is perversion. It could always be under-class being. Bourgeois is under-class, the group of sick, mad, perverted, anti-normal human being that are idiotical by semantic definition. They have no organic relations with collective identity. Their identity is artificially constructed. They didn’t belong to the traditional warrior or agricultural societies. They were devoided of any organic collective qualities. They came to the city and they tried to find their way. It is not the case that bourgeois were from other places or other ethnical group, because they were individuals put in the city, and not belonging to the traditional cooperation and form. And they began to grow in number and they began to define the normative vision of the social normative type. They have dethroned warriors. They have dethroned priests. And they have as well misrepresented third state, because the bourgeois hates peasants, because it exploits him. He doesn’t let him sell his things openly because he buys it by itself and they make a speculation. They are speculator. They don’t produce anything and they make kind of balls of money in order to manipulate with production. Bourgeois is unproductive. Peasants were productive.
At the same time, bourgeois were partly peasant. Because they came to town from where? Some part from other ethnic groups or some marginal groups, they became bourgeois. But the majority, the growth of the bourgeois state was from peasant. But now we see the real noological mystery. But who were the European peasants? They were the members of the civilization of Cybele under control of Indo-European horizon. And when they were turned from this controlled structure, the Cybelian origins of the peasantry could be revealed. So that is a kind of liberation of the deepest level of peasant European identity taken from the special Christian and traditional aristocracy, feudal vertical society was liberated. So they were bearers of some very ancient archetypes of ancient collective unconsciousness that was reanimated precisely in the moment of the end of the middle ages.
So we see that modernity and all political theories that were developed in the later phases of modernity dealt with this bourgeois organization. The pure and the most important glorification of bourgeois is liberalism. It is dealing with idiots (idiots in the semantical sense) because the man devoided of any kind of collective identity is idiot (Ιδιώτης) in Greek sense. Liberalism is from the beginning, idiotism. So that is glorification of idiots. The individual is devoided of any collective identity, it’s clear. But the Communism is dealing with the same concept. Communists hated as well peasants. They think that everything is developing in the city. And the poor bourgeois are proletariat. The rich bourgeois are bourgeois. But both of them are purely modern (in the conceptual structural sense) industrial figures living in the city, not outside of the city. So Communism was the idea that poor bourgeois should overcome rich bourgeois and create the society where proletariat should dominate over bourgeois. But who are proletariat? They were ex-peasants coming to the city. And these ex-peasants were devoided, precisely in the Communism conception, from relations with the traditional society. And that was positive in the eyes of Communism. So they were no more peasant and being no more peasant in Communist eyes was the same as having no relations with religion, with the cult, with the culture, with the language, with the traditions, and so on. They were as well, the other form of idiots. There were rich idiots, or more or less easy idiots, bourgeois as basic figure of liberalism. And there were poor idiots as proletariats. But they should be cut from tradition, from traditional state (priests, warriors, or peasant). And they should be put in the artificial commercial structure, commercial spaces of the modern bourgeois city. That was one of the ideas of Communism. And that was good. If we read Marx’s manifesto, the majority of it is dedicated to what Marxist Communism is not. Marx and Engels stressed that it is not enough to be anti-bourgeois to be Communist. It is necessary to be post-bourgeois and not pre-bourgeois. And the criticism of the first part of the manifesto of the Communist party was directed against so-called aristocracy, anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist tradition that were as well anti-bourgeois but pretending to restore some pre-bourgois, in comparison to feudal or traditional society, Communists should be on the side of bourgeois, of capitalism, but they should not only destroy traditional society. They should help to destroy traditional society but afterwards, the poor citizens of the city (bourgeois is the bourger, someone who lives in the bourg, in the city, in town) poor citizen should overcome rich citizens. So proletarians as bourgeois are absolutely un-traditional. They are two semantically idiotic concepts because there is rich idiot and poor idiots. And poor idiots in the Communist vision should take richness from rich idiots and distribute among the idiots. And where are peasants in this situation? They should be transformed into proletariat. They should be brought to the cities. That is the concept of how to merge the villages with the city. The village was the enemy of Marxism, of Communism. So villages should be destroyed and transformed into city and the peasants should be transformed into workers and workers should be normally industrial workers living in the city, working in the fabric. So that is as well mechanical vision. That was materialistic as well as Liberalism. That is the second political theory.
Third political theory was as well absolutely Cybelian. That is maybe difficult for Serbians with patriotic feeling. But the idea of modern state is artificial creation. Modern state is based on the destruction of empire. Modern state is based on the social contract. And nation is artificial creation of bourgeois. Nation is purely bourgeois concept. It is not organic community, with the state, with warriors, with priests, with peasants. The nation is the concept in center of which is the chauvinistic and egoistic citizen of the city. And the state is created as the city, not as empire. And the peasants as well were considered to be secondary form. They live between one city and the other. They have no proper space. They were considered as citizen. But the term citizen; city is town. Peasant is not citizen. He is villager. In the normative concept of political nationalism, peasants were included. We should speak of citizens and villagers for example. But we are speaking only about citizens. Because we consider peasants to be the citizens of the second sort, so they were politically sub-human in some way in nationalist, communist, and as well liberal concepts. So that was the split in the third function in the beginning of modernity. The split between traditional Indo-European peasantry and this ex-peasantry of ex-peasants coming to town and becoming bourgeois or proletarian or nationalist. That is why all three political theories, Communism, Liberalism, and Nationalism are absolutely Cybelian. Because modern nationalism is modern, is based on the bourgeois concept. That is artificial unity of the citizens that accentuates not only the freedom of commerce, but most the defense of their own commercial interests by a nation, bureaucracy, or state.
Now we could apply that to geosophy of Europe. Where did modernity start? Modernity stated partly in Italy, partly in the northern part of Europe, but the most clear and most bright examples of modernity was Great Britain that began creation of this bourgeois version. That was not revolutionary bourgeois but evolutionary bourgeois history. They tried to introduce more and more bourgeois elements in the government. So Hobbes was one of the English political theorists. But with Cromwell and with Protestant revolution, that was bourgeois revolution. And the killing of the tsar, of the monarch was a kind of symbolic action of dethronement of the traditional Indo-European Logos. Protestantism was as well as we have seen, a kind of titanism inside of Christianity. And all these elements, the development of bourgeois, the killing of monarch, and Protestantism, that was England that was in the center. And the fight of Englishman against Celt-Catholic was inner drama. Because the modernity was on the side of Anglo-Protestants and tradition in their case, in this bi-polar case of English culture, tradition and continuity was on the side of the Celt. That is why the Celts were in that sense, the last defenders of more or less traditional society, in front of purely modernist Cybelian English society.
It is very interesting that there was traditional concept of four Empires in Christian culture. The first empire was Assyrian. The second empire was Achaemenid. The third empire was Greek. And the fourth empire was Roman. That was put into context with prophet Daniel’s vision of the giant with the gold head, silver breast, bronze thighs, and iron feet. Iron feet represented Roman Empire, most radical but traditional empire. This tradition had some ties with Katehon. That was transition of Katehon. The Roman Empire was considered to be the last one, where Christ was born. So we have normal concept of four empires. And fourth empire was Roman. Roman and Byzantine were the same, including all the continuation with third Rome and so on with Russia and Bulgarian kingdoms and so on. And the idea was that in the English British revolution, there was the concept of the fifth empire. Fifth empire was called fifth monarchism. That was the tendency that that should be the other empire, beyond Roman one (that was considered beyond the Rome as Catholic). That was a kind of modern, secular, Protestant empire and that was called fifth monarchism. There were two versions of it. In Dutch, in Holland there was Jewish version of it that the fifth empire should be Jewish one. That was among the Jews of the circle of the philosopher Spinoza. And that was Anglo-Saxon concept of fifth monarchism. And they were linked with the same circles of English Protestants living in Holland and coming back to England to give the status of fifth monarch to Cromwell.
But in the story of this giant that is a symbol of this fourth Empire, there is concept that in the iron feet of the giant, there is sand, we could say. And this sand is the fifth element in giant. And thanks to this sand, the giant will fall. So there is a kind of symbol of anti-Christian, post-Christian, post-traditional element, fifth element of sand that makes all this empire unstable. So the fifth empire is precisely the end of empire, the destruction of empire, the destruction of traditional order. It has to do with sand, the fifth element in the vision of Daniel. That is the concept of fifth element or fifth monarchy that was British Empire. British empire was anti-empire that was based on bourgeois concept of nationalism and liberalism (socialism was absent). That was the first and the third political theories represented in this British Empire. So the British Empire was the first modern empire that was anti-traditional empire and that was one of the main sources, philosophical as well with the philosophy of common sense. Common sense philosophy is absolutization of the little individual with idiotic scale of thought, with no great revelations, absolutized mediocrity represented by Reid and by Ferguson. And that was the basis of North American society because these Scottish philosophers of common sense were considered to be philosophical fathers of North American society. That was glorification of idiotic mind with very narrow interests, with pragmatism, with little concern as development of Protestant titanism and positivism. I’m calling that positive subject. That is second man in the three man theory of Tauler (German mystic). That was evolutionary bourgeois concept.
But at the same time in France, there was preparation of revolutionary bourgeois concept with its culmination in the French Revolution, with the concept of purely anti-Christian motivation, with scarlet woman as the symbol of the freedom, with the killing of monarch. That was as well the other revolutionary form, with socialism already, with the concept of preparing socialism and social democracy, the idea of absolute immanence, openly anti-Christian not in the Protestant way but purely atheistic and materialistic. Enlightenment theory was a kind of culmination of all of this modernity. Modernity started with that, with the revenge of Cybele. And all the history of modernity was a kind of purification of this noological pattern. The civilization of Cybele became more and more and more Cybelian. All traces of the previous Indo-European society were purged, were cleansed. That was a kind of creation from more and more perfect Logos of Cybele. For example, what was revolutionary 300 years ago, after that was considered conservative. So new and new stages. But that was construction of very ancient type of civilization.
And when we are dealing with modern feminism, that is the finalization of the process. It is not the beginning of something. So now Cybele appears as it is. This march of Madonna in New York against Trump, with hundreds of thousands of women with rose cat disguise in order to kill the Trump is a kind of call for castration of the male figure. They try to sacrifice Trump as a symbol of the patriarchate. He is macho, male, a symbol of the previous stage of civilization. So it is modern feminism and politics and minds in education and social norms, and juridical acceptance of homosexuality that was the part of the Cybelian procession. Homosexuality was a kind of part of typically Cybelian cult. They participate in the procession as special type of priests. The homosexuals are priests of Cybele. So now everything has come back to the pure image of that. But feminism didn’t start yesterday and doesn’t start today. Feminism started with titanism. The modernity was metaphysically feminist, because materialist, because orientated against this heroic type of patriarchy, of Indo-European culture. Bourgeois is feminist class already because it is not warrior and it is not worker. It is parasitic class. That is the worst form of feminine nature. It is not Indo-European or Christian concept of femininity. It is something completely different. It is Cybelian femininity. And Werner Sombart has said that capitalism began with the mistresses because when the people had wives, they were not so obliged to have more and more money, but having mistresses, they were obliged to participate in the speculations more and more because they needed excessive amounts of money, and mistresses were parasites that demanded more and more with no work and so on. According to Werner Sombart, that was a kind of motivation of capitalist development of capitalist society. It is anecdotal but it is sociological anecdote.
All our science is feminist because it is materialist and Cybelian. We are living in the world of Cybele in the modernity. We will speak about that later tomorrow in the last session of lectures, but we are living inside of this kind of civilization. The moment of noomahia we are living in is the moment of revenge of pre-Indo-European existential horizon, artificially with bourgeois, organic but very ancient with our scientific world vision, based on this lowest level of the peasant identity of European peasantry. So we have a kind of special image now of modernity that is explained as well with Christian vision. That is the end of Katehon. The Katehon has fallen. The Katehon was the king, the tsar, the emperor that defended traditional society and that was defeated by modern political system with democracy, national state, globalization today. And that was the same fate for Christian faith. That was the fate for all three traditional functions, because there are less and less peasants. We have no peasants in Europe. We are losing them. Everybody is citizen. Everybody is bourgeois (poor bourgeois proletarian or rich bourgeois). We are living precisely in the post-Katehonian cycle. That is when Satan is liberated and when there is a kind of intrusion of underground tendency that we see around us. So everything fits well in this noological analysis. Now we see that this noology could appear a little bit abstract, a little bit too metaphysical, has to do with the reality we’re living in. We are inside of this noomahia. We are a part of this fight and the battle of the Logos. We could not be free from that. We are defined absolutely. Everything in us is defined by this moment of noomahia. We consider the reality as we are taught, as it is imposed. We could not deal with reality as such. We are dealing with reality through a type of reading, through a paradigm. And this paradigm is defined now by the Logos of Cybele.
But the knowledge that there are two other Logos helps us to see relativity of modernity and to put the modernity into the context of noology and to define as well the geosophical place we are in. So if France and England were the first in order to promote this in the geosophy of Europe, Latin worlds and Austrian empire resisted against them. Russia resisted more than other. Ottoman Empire resisted because that was as well traditional society. But when traditional empires had fallen, new modern states appeared. And being modern, they were doomed if we think they could transmit traditional spirit. Modernity and tradition are incompatible. Creating a national state instead of a traditional kingdom, we are already doomed. The creation of modern state, Russian or Serbian, is the end of Russia and Serbia. That will be the state, modern but not Russian and not Serbian. What is modern could not be really Serbian or Russian or German. It is already simulacrum. It is already something Cybelian. That is why, anticipating the next lecture, maybe that could explain as well some aspects of modern Serbian history, of Yugoslavia, Serbia, because after liberating from Ottoman Empire that was traditional, that was the chance for revival and the chance was lost (for many reasons). In the next lecture, we will maybe openly discuss that (I have some concept). But in order to finish, I think that noology and geosophy now gives us the key to interpret the world we live in.
Cources & cycles
Radical Subject, traditionalism, metaphysics - audio chapters from Dugin's books
Лекции курса: - Hegel and the Platonic Leap Down - Alexander Dugin
- Traditionalism as a Language - Alexander Dugin
- Postmodernity and Black Miracles - Alexander Dugin
- Radical Object: the necro-ontology of Dark Enlightenment (Negarestani's philosophy)
- The Noology of the Ancient Chinese Tradition - Alexander Dugin
- From Sacred Geography to Geopolitics - Alexander Dugin
- The Solar Hounds of Russia - Alexander Dugin
- Hyperborea and Eurasia - Alexander Dugin
- The Three Logoi: An Introduction to the Triadic Methodology of NOOMAKHIA - Alexander Dugin
- Baron Ungern: God of War - Alexander Dugin
- The Logos of Europe: Catastrophe and the Horizons of the Another Beginning - Alexander Dugin
- The Battle for the Cosmos in Eurasianist Philosophy - Alexander Dugin
- The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos -
- Traditionalism as a Theory: Sophia, Plato and the Event - Alexander Dugin
- NOOMAKHIA: The Logos of Turan – “Turan as an Idea”
- The Metaphysics of the Warrior: philosophy by way of the sword
- Star of an Invisible Empire (on Jean Parvulesco) -
- The Advent of Robot (History and Decision) - Alexander Dugin
- Modernization without Westernization - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: What is Noomakhia? [Lecture 1] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Geosophy [Lecture 2] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Logos of Indo-European Civilization [Lecture 3] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Logos of Cybele [Lecture 4] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Logos of Dionysos [Lecture 5] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: European civilization [Lecture 6] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Christian Logos [Lecture 7] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Noological analysis of Modernity [Lecture 8] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Serbian Logos [Lecture 9] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Noomahia in XXI Century [Lecture 10] - Alexander Dugin
- Eurasia: A Special Worldview - Alexander Dugin
- The Dormition of the Mother of God - Alexander Dugin
- Christian Metaphysics: The Essence of the Problem - Alexander Dugin
- On the Third Rome - Alexander Dugin
- Russian Orthodoxy and Initiation - Alexander Dugin
- Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy and his Theory of Eurasianism - Alexander Dugin
- Herman Wirth’s Theory of Civilization - Alexander Dugin
- NOOMAKHIA: Principles for Comprehending Chinese Civilization - Alexander Dugin
- Carl Schmitt’s 5 Lessons for Russia - Alexander Dugin
- Counter Hegemony in the Theory of the Multipolar World - Alexander Dugin
- Post-Anthropology - Alexander Dugin
- Deconstructing the “Contemporal Moment”: New Horizons in the History of Philosophy - Alexander Dugin
- The Figure of the Radical Subject (Traditionalism and Sociology) - Alexander Dugin
- How the world of things will replace the world of people (on Speculative Realism) - Alexander Dugin
- Encounter with Heidegger: An Invitation to Journey - Alexander Dugin
- Deconstruction of Democracy - Alexander Dugin
- On Speculative Realism - Alexander Dugin
- Russia as a Civilization (Cultural-Historical Type) - Alexander Dugin
- The Forefront of the Great Awakening - Alexander Dugin
- Russia Awakening: An Imperial Renaissance - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Dasein - Alexander Dugin
- The fate of the “Russian Spengler” - Alexander Dugin
- There is No Time - Alexander Dugin
- We are Going Beyond the Horizon - Alexander Dugin
- Civilization as Paideuma (the Educational Concept of Civilization) - Alexander Dugin
- Being is More Primary Than Time - Alexander Dugin
- The Idea of “Progress” as the Basis for Political Colonization and Cultural Racism - Alexander Dugin
- The Fourth Political Theory and Heidegger’s Dasein - Alexander Dugin
- Nationalism criminal fiction and ideological impasse - Alexander Dugin
- Hegel and the Platonic Leap Down - Alexander Dugin
- Traditionalism as a Language - Alexander Dugin
- Postmodernity and Black Miracles - Alexander Dugin
- Radical Object: the necro-ontology of Dark Enlightenment (Negarestani's philosophy)
- The Noology of the Ancient Chinese Tradition - Alexander Dugin
- From Sacred Geography to Geopolitics - Alexander Dugin
- The Solar Hounds of Russia - Alexander Dugin
- Hyperborea and Eurasia - Alexander Dugin
- The Three Logoi: An Introduction to the Triadic Methodology of NOOMAKHIA - Alexander Dugin
- Baron Ungern: God of War - Alexander Dugin
- The Logos of Europe: Catastrophe and the Horizons of the Another Beginning - Alexander Dugin
- The Battle for the Cosmos in Eurasianist Philosophy - Alexander Dugin
- The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos -
- Traditionalism as a Theory: Sophia, Plato and the Event - Alexander Dugin
- NOOMAKHIA: The Logos of Turan – “Turan as an Idea”
- The Metaphysics of the Warrior: philosophy by way of the sword
- Star of an Invisible Empire (on Jean Parvulesco) -
- The Advent of Robot (History and Decision) - Alexander Dugin
- Modernization without Westernization - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: What is Noomakhia? [Lecture 1] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Geosophy [Lecture 2] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Logos of Indo-European Civilization [Lecture 3] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Logos of Cybele [Lecture 4] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Logos of Dionysos [Lecture 5] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: European civilization [Lecture 6] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Christian Logos [Lecture 7] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Noological analysis of Modernity [Lecture 8] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Serbian Logos [Lecture 9] - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Noomakhia: Noomahia in XXI Century [Lecture 10] - Alexander Dugin
- Eurasia: A Special Worldview - Alexander Dugin
- The Dormition of the Mother of God - Alexander Dugin
- Christian Metaphysics: The Essence of the Problem - Alexander Dugin
- On the Third Rome - Alexander Dugin
- Russian Orthodoxy and Initiation - Alexander Dugin
- Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy and his Theory of Eurasianism - Alexander Dugin
- Herman Wirth’s Theory of Civilization - Alexander Dugin
- NOOMAKHIA: Principles for Comprehending Chinese Civilization - Alexander Dugin
- Carl Schmitt’s 5 Lessons for Russia - Alexander Dugin
- Counter Hegemony in the Theory of the Multipolar World - Alexander Dugin
- Post-Anthropology - Alexander Dugin
- Deconstructing the “Contemporal Moment”: New Horizons in the History of Philosophy - Alexander Dugin
- The Figure of the Radical Subject (Traditionalism and Sociology) - Alexander Dugin
- How the world of things will replace the world of people (on Speculative Realism) - Alexander Dugin
- Encounter with Heidegger: An Invitation to Journey - Alexander Dugin
- Deconstruction of Democracy - Alexander Dugin
- On Speculative Realism - Alexander Dugin
- Russia as a Civilization (Cultural-Historical Type) - Alexander Dugin
- The Forefront of the Great Awakening - Alexander Dugin
- Russia Awakening: An Imperial Renaissance - Alexander Dugin
- Introduction to Dasein - Alexander Dugin
- The fate of the “Russian Spengler” - Alexander Dugin
- There is No Time - Alexander Dugin
- We are Going Beyond the Horizon - Alexander Dugin
- Civilization as Paideuma (the Educational Concept of Civilization) - Alexander Dugin
- Being is More Primary Than Time - Alexander Dugin
- The Idea of “Progress” as the Basis for Political Colonization and Cultural Racism - Alexander Dugin
- The Fourth Political Theory and Heidegger’s Dasein - Alexander Dugin
- Nationalism criminal fiction and ideological impasse - Alexander Dugin