What is the connection between politics and philosophy? With this seemingly innocent question begins the latest book by Russian state philosopher Alexander Dugin, Politica Aeterna: Political Platonism & the Dark Enlightenment. Politics and philosophy are inseparable — anyone who believes politics can be divorced from philosophy will never fully grasp the dimension of the political.
“Democracy” and “human rights” are, in the modern West, taken for granted just as much as “Workers of the world, unite!” was in communist states. Yet, if we do not understand these concepts and their consequences (a materialistic worldview, the erosion of state sovereignty, etc.) philosophically, we are also unable to take control of our people’s destiny. On around 600 pages, Dugin presents a history of philosophy that, unlike in Germany, does not start with the Greek atomists like Democritus or the European Declaration of Human Rights but with Plato and Aristotle. Dugin interprets the philosophical systems of these two Greek thinkers as manifestations of a masculine philosophy of eternity, in which Plato (the philosophy of the Father, the realm of eternal ideas) and Aristotle (the philosophy of the Son, the realm of phenomena) serve as the foundation for a 3,000-year-old European intellectual history.
The Russian philosopher and sociologist emphasizes that both thinkers form the basis of the Indo-European tradition and the starting point for right-wing thought: the pursuit of service to God and truth, a hierarchically structured, patriarchal society composed of philosopher-kings/priests, warriors, and peasants that prioritizes the common good over individual self-interest, and the primacy of the spiritual over the material. Plato and Aristotle’s vision of the kallipolis, the ideal state that exists as an eternal model, starkly contrasts with the idea of democracy, which they polemically dubbed the “city of pigs,” inevitably sliding into tyranny. This ideal state shaped Europe’s political reality from antiquity through the realm of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, and up to the Renaissance.
Dugin highlights the roots of Western democracy in the thought of the Greek atomists 3,000 years ago, with their materialism, atheism, disdain for hierarchy, and matriarchal worldview, which eventually evolved into a fully developed “philosophy of the mother” with the advent of modernity. The bourgeoisie, individualism, modern science, and capitalism eventually led to today’s liberalism, which aims to “liberate” the individual further and, in Democritus’ view, seeks truth in the void of nothingness. Dugin meticulously demonstrates how the latest philosophical developments in postmodernity — from transhumanism to self-loathing, gender ideology, climate cultism, and the liberal world state as a consequence of the Great Reset — are all outcomes of a liberal end-of-history narrative, driven by a philosophy of non-being, which, in the truest sense of the word, he deems Satanic.
Against this “dark enlightenment” with its object-oriented ontology and accelerationism (inspired by Nick Land and Reza Negarestani), Alexander Dugin opposes the political Platonism of his Fourth Political Theory, as encapsulated in Politica Aeterna. Rejecting communism and fascism/National Socialism as equally materialistic and individualistic as liberalism, he advocates a re-rooting in eternity, countering Fukuyama’s liberal eschatology of the end of history along with Popper and Soros’ “open society.” Like a bird that learns to fly when pushed from the nest and must prove that it is not a stone, humanity should use the postmodern descent to recognize that it has wings and is not a stone. Dugin views hierarchy, (national) community, heroism, and tradition as antidotes to a society of the many, of merchants, and of egotism, which suffocates the spirit in wealth. In light of the open Satanism of postmodern philosophy, which not only promotes a secular, God-detached world but even appeals to humanity’s dark, demonic aspects, Dugin advocates reorientation towards heaven and transcendence. In the war of ideas between gods and titans, we should align ourselves with the heavenly host. We must become a radical subject in a world threatening to merge with the radical object (the devil).
Politica Aeterna provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of 3,000 years of philosophy from a right-wing perspective. Not only does it critique liberalism and trace its development, but it also thoroughly explains the thought of Plato and Aristotle as a spiritual antidote. A must-read for those on the right who seek to understand and save our world.
