Translated by Michael Millerman. Founder of http://MillermanSchool.com - online philosophy and politics courses on Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dugin, Strauss, and more.

The hermeneutic ellipse

Russian culture embarked on the path of the archeomodern from the end of the 17th century, but its first signs appeared even earlier - from the first half of this century. It was then that fundamental changes in church practice became noticeable: the proliferation of polyphony and the partial introduction of the partes in church singing, the influence of “fryazh” style - perspectives - in iconography (for example, in Ushakov’s school and parsuna painting), and the active imposition of European modes and customs (theaters, smoking, new styles of clothing, etc.). In the church schism, and then in the Petrine reforms, this tendency reached its climax and predetermined the structure of Russian society right up to our time. Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has been living in archeomodernity, and an appeal to this social model serves as a fundamental hermeneutic base for the correct interpretation of major cultural, social, political, spiritual and economic events.

Archeomodernity can be likened to an ellipse with two foci — the Modern focus and the archaic focus. The processes of modernization (= Europeanization) were developed at the elite level, while the masses remained within the framework of the archaic paradigm in Muscovite Rus’. At their cores, both social groups lived autonomously from each other, almost without intersecting, like on two different planets, two different social territories. Costumes, manners, even language differed: after the seventeenth century the elite of Romanov Russia spoke fluent Dutch, English, German, and later French, while they might not know Russian at all: it was superfluous in the everyday life of a nobleman. These two territories represented two types of what Husserl called the “life world” (Lebenswelt), two distinct horizons of being and life, structured in a completely different way. The core of the elite was made up of foreigners who served as a benchmark for the Russian aristocracy itself: they were the carriers of a truly European Lebenswelt. The core of the common people was the Old Believers and, in part, representatives of Russian sectarianism, who consciously strove to have as few interactions as possible with the Russian state and “personnel” society (that is, with the Modern).¹⁴  But although these worlds were completely divorced, yet we are dealing with one and the same society, even if it consists of the superposition of two cultural territories. Moreover, this unity was formalized by the unity of political, social and economic mechanisms, affecting everyone in one way or another. Between these two poles, a gradually generalizing figure crystallized, embodying archeomodernity not as a composite, decomposable concept, but as a formless [bez-obraznyy] internalized pseudosynthesis. This is our Smerdyakov, “the lackey-dragon.” He was that common denominator that turned two circles with different centers into a single Russian ellipse.

And precisely Smerdyakovism, easily discerned in the Russian aristocracy (both among the heroes of Pushkin and Lermontov and especially vividly in the real historical character of Peter Chaadaev), is the whole that is the structure of the hermeneutic ellipse of archeomodernity.

The Westernizer focus

In the structure of the hermeneutic ellipse, one can mark the pole that embodied modernization (Modernity) and was part of the destiny of the West. A Western person, even one living in Russia, or an individual Russian (aristocrat), fully integrated into Western society (which is theoretically quite possible), is part of Western culture, Western sociality, and, accordingly, a moment of the logic of the development of Western history. From the point of view of philosophy (as Martin Heidegger clearly shows), this history was an expression of various stages of philosophical thinking. Western society and the stages of its historical formation down to Modernity was a reflection of the development of Western philosophy. Therefore, Modernity (the New Time [another term for Modernity in Russian]) was part of Western destiny, in some sense its goal, its “telos.” Modernity matured in Western culture, was embodied in it and spread beyond its borders in Europe’s colonial rush to integrate the world under its principle [nachalo] (the era of the great geographical discoveries).

In its pure form the pole of Modernity in Russia can well be regarded as the extreme periphery of the Western European hermeneutic circle, like the brutish Spanish conquistador lost in the Amazonian swamps in search of El Dorado.¹⁵ Nikolai Gumilev wrote pathetically about such a figure:

Delving into unknown mountains,
The old conquistador got lost.
Condors were swimming in the smoky sky,
Snow masses were hanging.
Eight days he wandered without food,
His horse died, but under a large ledge,
He found a comfortable home,
So as not to be separated from the dear corpse.
There he lived in the shade of dry fig trees.
Sang songs about sunny Castilla,
Recalled battles and mistresses,
Saw firearms and mantillas.
As always, he was bold and calm,
And he knew neither horror nor anger.
Death came, and the warrior offered her
To play among broken bones.

It is clear that such a “conquistador” is not up for philosophy, but even in inhuman conditions he remains the bearer of Western European destiny, which sets Western man in his fundamental and unremovable solitude before the face of the main interlocutor, death, in the structure of an aleatory code, associated with the haphazardness of European Dasein, lost in the labyrinth of the growing nothing.

But this existential charge of the real (and not imitational-Smerdyakovite, and in fact, deeply Russian as a result) Western culture at the level of the masses was not at all perceived and deciphered. Therefore, modernization as inclusion in the West European process, the West European destiny, spread to a very limited layer of the Russian political elite. As the representative of an orthodox power seeking (albeit for pragmatic reasons) to preserve sovereignty in the face of other European powers that were ready at any moment to encroach on it, this elite was geopolitically oriented mainly against the West both on the periphery of Russian rule in the West (Baltic, Ukraine) and in the South (Crimea, the Caucasus) and the East (Central Asia, and starting from a certain point, the Far East).

These geopolitical circumstances did not contribute to the organic assimilation of the principles [nachal] of Western philosophy, even by the Russian aristocracy. The Russian elite developed the archetype of the brave landsknecht who found himself in a strange, incomprehensible and not interesting country, but who was trying to serve it as much as possible for a specific interest.

Schematization of the hermeneutic ellipse

Adopting archeomodernity as the basic model for interpreting the features of the mentality of Russian society in recent centuries brings us before the problem of correctly deciphering what the 19 th century attempts to build a “Russian philosophy” actually were. A graphic depiction of the hermeneutic ellipse of Russian archeomodernity brings us closer to the main problematic of our research. Consider the following figure.

Figure 1. The Russian Hermeneutic Ellipse (Archeomodern)

We see several figures on it. The ellipse itself signifies Russian archeomodernity, which, when superficially analyzed, appears to be something integral and one, but is in fact organized around two rather distant (and, most importantly, qualitatively different) foci.

The structure of the poles

Focus B (Figure 1) is the focus of modernity. The whole secret is that it belongs to another really existing, actual hermeneutic circle, the circle of Western European philosophy. That is, the discourse of modernization in Russian society is a provincial and blind reproduction of Western European culture, history, and, accordingly, philosophy. At the same time, the focus B itself (Figure 1) has its own core and periphery. At the core are the Europeans who settled (permanently or temporarily) in Russia and retain an organic connection with the hermeneutic circle of Western culture.

First of all, they are either Russian tsars and tsarinas, who married European houses, or ethnic foreigners them-selves. Naturally, they did not appear on the Russian throne alone, but carried with them from Europe a whole army of relatives, lovers and mistresses, maids of honor, jesters, doctors and a giant personnel serving the imperial personalities who automatically reached the highest levels of power. They were all carriers of the Western European beginning [nachalo], which affected them even if they were Orthodox or converted to Orthodoxy in Russia. In the 18th-19th centuries, only form remained of Russian Orthodoxy; the content was fundamentally distorted by various Western Christian influences (Catholic, Protestant, mystical, Masonic, etc.) both from within the new-rite nobles and on the part of the secular elite.¹⁶

The foreigners laid the foundations of Russian academic science, first of all, within the framework of the Petrine Academy of Sciences, whose project was fully implemented under Catherine I. Among them was a whole pleiad of foreign scientists: physicians Blumentrost and Schumacher, historians Miller and Schlözer, physicists D. and N. Bernoulli and Aepinus, mathematician Euler, naturalist Gmelin, academic functionary Tauberg, philologist Bayer, draftsman and art historian Staehlin, etc. To this should be added the foreigners who enlisted in the Russian service in search of ranks and awards. Together, they created the content of pole B (Figure 1), being the true bearers of modernity, albeit of a peripheral, colonial “conquistador” type.

Grouped around this nucleus in the form of small concentric ellipses are Russians captured by the process of Europeanization and modernization. These are the representatives of the Russian boyars and especially the nobility, who, for purely practical reasons, strive to win the favor of their Imperial Majesties and are ready to sacrifice the old traditions and foundations to do so. They are also a new pleiad of Russian scientists (sometimes by origin raznochintsy, such as Lomonosov, but quickly rising to the elite), who adopt certain aspects of their thinking from foreigners and form the basis of the Russian intellectual class. In other words, around pole B concentric figures of Russian society – aristocracy, first of all – gradually form.

Moreover, the further away they move from their foreign core, the more the severity of the structure of Western European thinking is erased in them, eroded by the pulling influence of the second focus (A) (Figure 1), the archaic pole. The erosion of the Western European core is especially noticeable in the Russian raznochintsy of the second half of the 19th century, who were close to the common people, though not only in them, as indicated by the case of Russian conservatives at the beginning of the same century – Shishkova, Glinka, Magnitsky, Rostopchina, Sturdza, Uvarova – and by the Slavophiles - Khomyakov, Kireevsky, the Aksakov brothers – or by Pushkin, who became interested in folk culture “from above,” from the position of the aristocracy.

The circles forming around Focus B (Figure 1), gradually expanding, change shape, turning into ellipses as the Russian Beginning [nachalo], Focus A, has an increasing influence on them. We now consider Focus A in more detail.

The archaic focus

Focus A (diagram 1) marks the archaic principle [nachalo] in the hermeneutic ellipse. It is this that can be considered as a potential center of that hypothetical hermeneutic circle (not an ellipse!) that could be called “Russian philosophy,” the possibility of which is the subject of this work. We marked this circle with a dotted line (Figure 1) to emphasize its hypothetical nature. As such it is not. But whether it can be we will try to find out in the course of our research based on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In the meantime, it is important to us that in the real structure of Russian society this focus is in a subordinate position and corresponds to the broad masses, the people, to what may be called the archaic principle [nachalo] of Russian society. Given this hierarchical subordination, the hermeneutic ellipse of Russian archeomodernity should be positioned vertically.

Figure 2. The Russian Hermeneutic Ellipse; Vertical Arrangement Emphasizing the Hierarchical Relationship of the Foci

The final hermeneutic ellipse consists of the extension of the process of modernization and Europeanization, gradually including more and more Russian people. Pole A (Figure 2), the archaic focus, represents a kind of “strange attractor,” the influence of which modifies the general struc-ture of society and its logos and distorts its proportions, which imitate (as the modernizers think) the hermeneutical circle of Western European culture, science and philosophy.

This can be seen especially clearly in the 19th century as the project of the “people’s Enlightenment” spread, when large segments of the simple Russian people fell under Western influence in the basic parameters of their education.

Notes:

14. Dugin A.G. 2000. Russkaya Veshch’. Moscow: Arktogeya

15. The Werner Hertog film “Aguirre, The Wrath of God” conveys the existential condition of the European romantic type with nuance.

16. The figures of such prominent leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, like Theophan Prokopovich (1681-1736) and Stefan Yavorsky (1658-1722), both Little Russians. Fiercely arguing among themselves, these two church hierarchs essentially transferred to Russian soil European disputes between Protestants and Catholics: Prokopovich defended Protestant positions, and Yavorsky, Catholic-Jesuit ones.