Characteristic of “servants of Magical Matter” is pure agnosticism, i.e., a third way between Gnosis and Faith. The agnosticism of mystical materialism is conditioned by the inadmissibility of the subject questioning knowledge, since the subject, as part and parcel of the cosmos, is merely one of the facts of this cosmos and nothing more, thus the subject’s reflective capacity (its mind) cannot add or subtract anything from the flow of the cosmos. In this view, knowledge is identical with cosmic fact, but insofar as the cosmos is in motion, knowledge is identified with practice, i.e., it is simply discarded. In other words, agnosticism is the result of the absence of the pair of “knower” and “known” which is necessary for knowledge itself. For the proponents of Magical Matter, the absolute surface of the world coincides with its absolute depth. Here it would be interesting to recall Nietzsche’s aphorism regarding how “a woman needs to find depth in her superficiality.” Such an analogy is no accident, since the ideology of Magical Matter bears an openly gyneocratic, matriarchal character, in some sense being a projection of the female subconscious closed to itself.

There exists no greater mystery in human existence than the mystery of life and death, dying and becoming. For man, the Year is the supreme Revelation of divine action in the Universe. The Year is the expression of God’s providential cosmic law, in accordance with which occurs the becoming of the world in the infinite and everlasting return. The most magical and profound phenomenon before us in nature is the Year of God. A number of days makes up the Year, and in each of these days is opened the image of the Year: the birth of the Light from which comes all life, its climb to the highest peak, and its descent, death, and sinking, only to rise again. The morning, noon, evening, and night in a day correspond to spring, summer, autumn, and winter in the Year.

There exist several points of view as to what runes are. Some believe that runes are an altered version of the Latin alphabet that appeared in the 5th-6th centuries among the Scandinavians and Northern European Germanic peoples. Others suggest that runes were the ancient characters used for divination and recording texts which emerged only at a later stage and under the influence of Latin writing. These two points of view on the nature and origin of runes are considered to be the “scholarly” and “orthodox” ones. 

But there is another theory of runes proposed by the German scholar, Professor Herman Wirth. We should mention from the outset that this theory is not recognized by broader scholarly circles. The reason for this neglect of Wirth is not so much his paleo-epigraphic and runological works as his assessment of the text famously known as the Oera Linda Chronicle, the story behind which resembles that of the Book of Veles. The Oera Linda Chronicle was discovered at the beginning of the 19th century and allegedly presented the most ancient history of the Germanic peoples (the Frisians) stretching back centuries to many millennia. The text was written in a special quasi-runic script and contained tales of pre-Christian mythology and the sacred history of the Germanic people. The Book of Veles (discovered only at the beginning of the 20th century) represented a precise analogue of the Oera Linda Chronicle, only applied to the Slavs.

The West believes that only its path of development, only its logic, and only its values are universal and common to all of mankind, and that all other peoples have simply not yet understood this. This means that the West, albeit temporarily (until they understand this), can and is even obliged to rule others. With such a blatant agenda, the West has in practice managed to colonize the East. This is no easy feat, but it managed to. But the West faltered in the face of Russia, Eurasia. We, Russians, opposed the West with something that stopped it in its tracks. It repeatedly tried to take us by force and ruse, but we held on. The East fell, but we didn’t. And we are holding out to this day. This is Eurasia as an idea.

Eurasia means not succumbing to the West’s claims to universality, rejecting its hegemony, and insisting that no one has a monopoly on truth, especially not the West. Eurasia is the possibility for peoples and civilizations to follow their own path and, if the logic of the path demands such, not only a non-Western one, but even an anti-Western path. This is Eurasia. This idea was understood by the first Eurasianists, Trubetzkoy, Savitsky, and Alekseev in the 1920’s. We too understand it. And Vladimir Putin understands it, since there is no other meaning of Eurasia.

The point is that both the Slavs and the Rus (like the Franks and Celts) ethnologically belonged to one Northern Aryan ethnos today known as the Veneti. In the days of old, one could stumble upon the name mentioned by Strabo – Vindelicum or Vendelicum (and the Baltic Sea was the Sinus Venedicus). Moreover, one of their names was Franks (the “free ones”) and the other was Slavs. As Eckhard wrote, “The Franks once dwelled near the Baltic Sea, where there is now the Vagria” (Franci olim ad mare Balthicum, ubu nune est Vagria). It should thus be clearly borne in mind that all of these ethnonyms are from later times. “The Franconian Slavs,” writes the 19th century Russian scholar Y.I. Venelin (Gutsa), “did not call themselves Vindelicum, just as they did not call themselves Slovene as the name existing only in ethnographic books. The very word Franks is a modern ethnonym derived from one of the names of the kings who ruled the ancient Vagria called Reges Francorum and who, according to Fredegar and the later chroniclers, were the descendants of the Trojan kings (the line of Priam). These are the Trojan Veneti settlers who formed the ruling, princely caste of whom Polybius wrote. According to him, they “differ little from the Celts, but speak their own language. The writers of tragedies often mention this people and speak of its many miracles.”

European modernity, which abolished religion, faith in the King and the Heavenly Father, the castes, the sacred understanding of the world, and essentially patriarchy, was the beginning of the fall of Indo-European civilization. Capitalism, materialism, egalitarianism, and economism are all the revenge of those societies against which the Indo-Europeans waged war, subjugated, and strove to remedy, which composed the essence of all Indo-European peoples’ history. Modernity was the end of Indo-European civilization. It naturally corresponds to the nadir. This is not an abstraction, for it affects us in the most direct ways. 

No compromises will help us. Either we will disappear and be dissolved, or we must restore our Indo-European civilization in its entirety, with all of its values, ways, and metaphysics. If we want to preserve ourselves as a people, as an Indo-European people, we must wake up and be reborn in contrast to all that has been taken for granted in the world of modernity. To hell with this world of modernity.

We are no less different from Europe than Iranians or Indians. Sure, we share common roots with Greco-Roman civilization, but this civilization underwent a schism that began in the 6th century when the Western Empire fell away from Byzantium and then disappeared under attack by Germanic tribes. Already back then, two identities formed: a Catholic identity in the West, and an Orthodox identity in the East. The two gradually drifted away from one another further and further until, in 1054, the Orthodox and Catholic worlds parted ways once and for all. We, Russians, adopted Christianity from Byzantium and have kept none other than this Eastern Christian tradition to this day.

After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, we took over the Byzantine mission. This is not merely the mission of a country, Trubetzkoy asserted, but the pole of self-conscious and independent Orthodox civilization, its center.

The symbolism of the Dormition icon (if we juxtapose it to the Mother of God icon) also has analogies outside of a Christian context. The clearest such similar spiritual concept of the structure of being is reflected in the Chinese symbol of Yin-Yang, in which the white dot against the black background signifies the diminishing of the spirit in matter, while the black dot against the white background is, conversely, matter in spirit. However, the Chinese tradition is characterized by contemplation and and the absence of an eschatological orientation. Thus, the Chinese are inclined to consider this symbol as a sign of eternal harmony while Christians see ontological plans in an historical and eschatological perspective, hence Christianity’s distinctly ‘dynamic’ character supposing the personal, volitional engagement of man in the outcome of the fate of the spirit. The Chinese believe that this volitional aspect is not so important insofar as the Tao ultimately arranges everything in the best way. Undoubtedly, similar symbolism can be found in many other traditions in reference to the correlations between the material and spiritual worlds, but the Chinese example represents something so clear and comprehensive that all similar parables can be reduced to it.

Within the Abrahamic line religions there is a kind of hierarchy that allows you to distribute them according to the criteria of immanentism and transcendentalism.

The religion, which can be called a religion par excellence, is, of course, Judaism. And especially, the form of Judaism, which developed after the arrival of Jesus Christ, after Judaism rejected not only the person and mission of Jesus, but the principle of the immanent God, Emmanuel (which in Hebrew means "God with us"). The abyss between the Creator and the creation in Judaism is maximal, and generally the concept of creation itself, "creationism", is of Jewish origin. Judaism embodies abrahamic apophaticism and carried up to its logical extreme.

By all principle parameters, the Russian Federation is the geopolitical heir of the preceding historical, political and social forms that took shape around the territorial of the Russian plain, from Kievan Rus through the Golden Hordes, the Muscovite Czardom, The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.  This continuity is not only territorial, but also historical, social, spiritual, political and ethnic.  From ancient times, Russian government began to form in the space of the Heartland, gradually expanding more and more, until it occupied the whole Heartland entirely, together with the zones adjoining it.  This spatial expansion of Russian control over Eurasian territories was accompanied by a parallel sociological process: the strengthening in Russian [Russkii] society of "land-based" social arrangements, characteristic of a civilization of the continental type.  

According to Guenon, Tradition (the entirety of sacred knowledge dating back to the primordial and inhuman divine source) has, in the final period of our cycle – the Kali Yuga, which has already been counting down for several millennia – been divided into two parts: exotericism and esotericism. Exotericism can manifest itself in the form of religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or in a non-religious form (Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.) and represents the socio-psychological, ordering aspect of Tradition, i.e., the face of Tradition oriented exclusively outwards toward people and made available to all members of traditional society without exception. Esotericism, for its part, is the purely spiritual sphere. On this level, Tradition appeals to the “elite” and the “chosen” who have been called to go deep into sacred doctrines and myths. Esotericism is the underside of Tradition, while exotericism remains the outer side. 

In Samuel Huntington’s famous article describing the impending “clash of civilizations”, Huntington mentions a very important formula: “modernization without westernization.” This formula describes the relationship to problems of socio-economic and technological development experienced by some countries (as a rule, those of the Third World) who, while understanding the objective necessity of the development and improvement of their social systems’ political and economic mechanisms, refuse to blindly follow the West, instead striving to put some of Western technology – in isolation from its ideological content – in service of their traditional value systems and national, religious, and political characters. Many representatives of the elites of the East, having received higher Western educations, return to their home countries with important technical knowledge and methodologies which they then use to strengthen their own national systems. Thus, instead of the rapprochement between civilizations expected by liberal optimists, what ensues is the arming of certain “archaic,” “traditionalist” regimes with new technologies which render civilizational confrontation all the sharper. 

The role of the USA, the last remaining superpower in the world, is central to global geopolitics today. Beginning with the end of the 19th century, this peripheral, marginal continent, previously but a European province secondary and complimentary to the Old World, increasingly became an independent political and cultural power. After the Second World War, the USA even came to act as the paradigmatic, universal model for the countries of Europe themselves and even Asia. The significance of the steady growth of America and the totality of the American ideological, cultural, psychological, and even philosophical complex goes beyond the framework of purely economic or military influence. “Mythological America,” “America as a concept,” and “America as the American Ideal” are today manifesting themselves all the more visibly. 

There must be compelling reasons why the “American idea” has taken root and implanted itself as something “neo-sacred” in global geopolitical consciousness connected to the collective unconsciousness of humanity and the mysterious continental geography that can be traced back millennia, the memory of which still lives in the archetypes of the psyche. Considering the “mythological” underpinnings of America as an “internal continent” is the main task of this chapter.

The Traditionalists’ (Guenon, Evola, Georgel, etc.) perception of the relationship between the paleo-continents, cardinal directions, and cyclical periods of ancient civilizations boils down to the following [30]: the North was the original orientation whose ancient paleo-continent located at the North pole was Arktogeya, or Hyperborea, with its sacred capital as Thule or Tula (for the Greeks and Aztecs) or Vara in the Zoroastrian Iranian tradition. It is important to note the similarity between the Iranian “Vara” – the northern city, capital of Aryan-Vedj, and the homeland of the Persians’ ancestors – and the Hindu term Varahi (literally “boar”, or “land of the boars”), as well as the Nordic designation of the continent. The Golden Age of mankind, lasting 25,920 years [31] is associated with this ancient, primordial continent. In the ancient tradition, the New Year came at the point of the winter solstice (or winter eclipse), i.e., the most obvious moment in the transition of the sun and light’s movement from descent to ascent. The priority of the northern orientation and celebrations of the New Year on the day of the winter solstice are signs of the Primordial Tradition itself. 

The second cardinal direction was that of the South and the southern paleo-continent conventionally called Gondwana. The period of the southern orientation’s predominance falls on the Silver Age lasting 19,440 years. The New Year that falls on the day of the summer solstice corresponds to this orientation. Thus, the initial periods of our cycle, the Manvantara, were moved by way of the main migrations of the sacred proto-peoples along the vertical axis from North to South, which corresponds to the priority of the vertical over the horizontal (the axis of East-West) as a qualitative space in sacred geometry. 

As the point of departure of our investigation we shall take the extremely interesting data concerning the sacred geography of the southernmost (or, more precisely, the south-western) territorial sector of Gardariki (the Galician principality) gathered in the book Hyperborean Dacia [13] by the Romanian Traditionalist author of a Guenonian orientation, Geticus (Basil Lovinescu). In this work, the author convincingly demonstrates on the basis of sacred toponymies and a deep analysis of Romanian folklore that ancient Dacia (modern Romania and Moldova) was once the sacred center of the Hyperborean tradition, albeit secondary in regards to Polar Hyperborea which was far more original than other indirect spiritual centers of traditional civilizations. In our opinion, the thesis of Hyperborean Dacia looks quite convincing and we would especially like to dwell on the mystery of the Danube delta which, according to Geticus, was the location of one of the main sanctuaries of Hyperborean Apollo. 

The author of Hyperborean Dacia notes the following peculiarity of the Danube delta and its cult center: river Danube flows into the Black Sea on the 45th parallel, i.e., on the belt dividing the entire northern hemisphere in half. Thus, the cult center of Apollo in Dacia was located in the far north for the entire southern half of the northern hemisphere whose establishment has only recently become known to modern historians of civilization. We note that the 45th parallel in general plays an extremely important role for Eurasia and in the far West. In France, two of the most important sacred centers, Lyon (the “city of meadows, i.e., the center of the geographical spiral of the druids as examined in Louis Charpentier’s book The Giants and the Mystery of the Origin [14]) and Grenoble (the “land of the Dauphins” [15] whose solar, Hyperborean symbolism was researched by the scholars Eugene Canseliet – Sevren Bafrue and Guy Beatrice in the book Land of the Dauphin [15]). At the same time in the Far East, in Mongolia, at approximately the same latitude is located the sacred center of Genghis Khan’s empire, the city of Urga. In addition, it is interesting note that the borders of the Russian Empire also more or less followed this parallel over a gigantic space resembling a sinusoid with a recess in the South in the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, and in the Pamir mountains, and a rise in the North in South-Eastern Siberia, Altai, and across the Amur River. In addition to such an important parallel at which the center of the Apollonian cult of “Hyperborean Dacia” was located, what is also extremely important for us is that the longitude of this place was 30 degrees east. It can be said that this meridian, in its northern part, was the axis of the Slavs’ settlement. To its west were the Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, and Belarussians, and to its east are the Great Russians. Thus, in addition to the “extremely northern” location of “Hyperborean Dacia” in relation to the mediterranean world, the extreme South of its situation can also be considered in regards to the Slavo-Baltic-Scandinavian world and Gardariki Rus. In fact, the mouth of the Danube was always the southern sacred-geographical pressure point of the “masses” of the Slavic, Russian world to the north. 

Sacred geography differs substantially from conventional, physical geography. We are accustomed to consider the earth as an orb, as a globe (in Latin, globus means “orb”). For us, the North is the top of the orb, and the South is the bottom. A globe can be rotated and, consequently, concepts of East and West slip away from our geographical attention. But when we present our earth as rotating in the solar system and in outer space, we generally digress from such concepts as cardinal directions. All of this seems to be so conventional! Understanding the world as standing on three pillars and the earth appearing to be a disk are relics of the “dark ages.” 

For a long time, scientific discoveries which have opened new horizons and succeeded each other at a furious pace have been accepted by people uncritically and with excessive enthusiasm. In turn, many have come to treat our ancestors’ map of the world with disdain and disgust and we have been inclined to consider our ancestors to be “dark,” “wild,” “primitive,” or having only recently ceased to be “apes.” 

Such a positivist attitude quickly finds itself confronted with a number of contradictions. The development of science has arrived at the problem of consciousness and the human factor in relation to natural phenomena. Here everything changes. It turns out that the mythological archetypes and systems of consciousness formed by culture, history, the environment, geography, and language have a strong influence on scientific methodology to the point that they “deform” these so-called “objective” material studies. 

The most profound Russian thinkers of the 20th century were undoubtedly the Eurasianists, the ideologists of the special Third Way wing of the first Russian emigration who expressed genuinely important and reliable considerations on the fate of Russia. In their conceptions, the geographical location of Russia between East and West plays a central role. For them, Eurasia amounts to Russia and the Russian ethnos (in the supranational sense of the word) is considered to be the modern carrier of Turanism, a special imperial psycho-ideology accordingly passed down to the people of Rus by the Turkic-Mongolian tribes of the Horde. Thus, the Eurasianists, in contrast to the representatives of the monarchist camp, were not so much “Panslavists” as Turkophiles. And this is not a paradox since a significant part of the Russian nobility and, in particular, many Slavophile ideologists of the 19th century who constituted a significant percentage of the top Russian elite,were representatives of the Turkic heritage. For many Eurasianists, Russia-Turan was a supra-political concept whose value was defined by its geopolitical mission.

The intuition of the Eurasianists proved to be quite true, but the origins of this concept stretch back to pre-history, to the epochs prior not only to the conquests of Genghis Khan and his successors, but also prior to even the appearance of Slavs on Russian lands. Where did Russia-Turan come from?

In principle, this is exactly the same case with the “enigma of Russian patriotism.” Mystical Russia, the “White India” of Klyuev, the “Holy Rus” which Yesenin set above Paradise and which Tyutchev equated to a religious principle in which one has to believe – imagine how absurd “Holy Australia” or “Faith in the Czech Republic” would sound! – undoubtedly, this is a deep reality of national psychology, an “Internal Continent” synthesizing in itself the worldview of a giant nation. The memory of “Continent Russia” may lurk and sleep at the bottom of consciousness for many long years, but sooner or later it will come to life and, when the time of Awakening arrives, it will become a storm, a vortex, a scream. 

However, the psychological reality of “Inner Russia,” in order to be effective and specific, should have an archetypal structure entirely corresponding with objective historical processes and geographical areas. In this way, it is not a mere passive reflection of the external, but a paradigm which forms and structures the surrounding temporal and spatial space. In this regard, the famous historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, keenly observed: “Nature is something determined by culture (culturalmente condizionata); some of the ‘laws of nature’ vary depending on what the peoples of this or that culture understand by ‘nature.’”

The words that became the title of this lecture appeared in my consciousness as something in themselves. Not so much the idea as the formula: Satan and the problem of antecedent. It seems to me that this should be anything but a simple statement of something long known, is understandable. Many things in the process of preparing this lecture, I myself have been not completely clear. I hope that in the process of narration (from my side, with your – in the process of listening, that is, complicity) but there is a lot I can find out. Some things, so to speak, hanging in the air, and perhaps they will be formulated in the here and now. New The University (unlike the old) suggests spontaneous cognition, spontaneous epistemological grasp certain things, not specified initially. The main thing may (and should!) born at the time of presentation, in the process of focusing on certain aspects of a given topic.

While the EEU fulfills the economic, political, and symbolic goals of Eurasianism, Putin’s agenda can change without seriously affecting Dugin’s mission. He has the diversionary task of filling ideological vacuums created around the world by suspicion and skepticism regarding the United States, the European Union, and other liberal powers. Dugin’s ideology already resonates with both high intellectuals and the conspiratorial fringe. His ideas seem tailor-made to exploit continuing economic stagnation, distrust of EU bureaucracy, anxiety at the continuing influx of immigrants, and, crucially, the anxiety of those immigrants themselves, who fear the assault on their traditions that comes as a part of their resettlement in the West. Dugin is also obviously intent on maximizing the potential of his ideology through various political, intellectual, and social media networks. 

Along with the more geopolitical aspects, the Fourth Political Theory lies at the heart of Eurasianism, and constitutes its philosophical core. Drawing its roots from France's New Right, the Third Way, the German Conservative Revolution, and thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Boaz, Evola, and de Benoist, the Fourth Political Theory could be summed up by what Alain Soral calls "la gauche du travail et la droite des valeurs" ("the worker’s left and the moral right"). It is important to note that, just like Alain Soral, Dugin rejects ethnocentrism. The Fourth Political Theory rejects not only liberalism (capitalism), but also communism (socialism) and fascism, preferring a blend of the two non-capitalistic systems in order to prevent each one’s particular shortcomings.

Even though it believes in multipolarity, Russia is central to Eurasianism, as is the goal of creating a "European Space," encompassing both Europe and Russia. The objective is clearly to shift the balance of global power from Washington to Moscow, although Dugin denies this in an interview with Arktos published at the end of the book. 

According to Alexander Dugin, the twenty-first century will be defined by the conflict between Eurasianists and Atlanticists. The Eurasianists defend the need for every people and culture on Earth to be allowed to develop in its own way, free of interference, and in accordance with their own particular values. Eurasianists thus stand for tradition and for the blossoming variety of cultures, and a world in which no single power holds sway over all the others. Opposing them are the Atlanticists. They stand for ultra-liberalism in both economics and values, stopping at nothing to expand their influence to every corner of the globe, unleashing war, terror, and injustice on all who oppose them, both at home and abroad. This camp is represented by the United States and its allies around the world, who seek to maintain America’s unipolar hegemony over the Earth. The Eurasianists believe that only a strong Russia, working together with all those who oppose Atlanticism worldwide, can stop them and bring about the multipolar world they desire. This book introduces their basic ideas. Eurasianism is on the rise in Russia today, and the Kremlin’s geopolitical policies are largely based on its tenets, as has been acknowledged by Vladimir Putin himself. It is reshaping Russia’s geopolitics, and its influence is already changing the course of world history.

From the moment of its inception in the 1920s, Eurasianism has always opposed the global domination of the West, European universalism, and supported the uniqueness of the Russian civilization. Therefore, Eurasianism is, indeed, an anti-Western ideology in the sense that it rejects the Western society’s right to impose its criteria of good and evil as the universal norm. Russia is an independent Orthodox-Eurasian civilization, rather than the periphery of Europe, insisted Eurasianists, following their ideological predecessors, the Slavophiles, along with other Russian conservatives.

Gradually, Eurasianism was enriched with the methods of classic geopolitics that were based upon the dualism of the Land and Sea civilizations. Englishman Halford Mackinder introduced this concept in the first half of the twentieth century; it was further developed by American strategists such as Nicholas Spykman and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Here, Russia serves as the core of the Land civilization, Eurasia’s Heartland, and is thus doomed to carry out a centuries-old battle against the Anglo-Saxon world. In the past, its core was the British Empire, and, from the second half of the twentieth century onward, this was the United States. Therefore, Eurasianists oppose Western hegemony, American expansionism, and Liberal values and support the distinct Russian civilization, religion, and tradition. Furthermore, Eurasianists not only oppose the West, but also Russia’s own Westernizers and moderates: Liberals, first and foremost.

The forest in sacred geography is close to the mountains in a definite sense. The symbolism of the tree is related to the symbolism of the mountain (both the former and the latter designate the world axis). Therefore in tellurocracies the forest also plays a peripheral function — it, too, is the “place of the priests” (druids, magi, hermits), but also at the same time the “place of demons”, i.e. archaic residuals from a vanished past. Neither the forest zone can be the centre of the overland empire.

The tundra represents the northern analogue to the steppe and the desert, although the cold climate makes it much less significant from a geopolitical point of view. This “periphericity” reaches its apogee with ices, which, similarly to the mountains, are deeply archaic zones. It is indicative that the eskimo shamanic tradition implies departing alone among ices, where to the future shaman the world beyond is opened out. Thus, ices are a hieratic zone, the threshold of a different world.

  Philosophy is not only a science, like the other scientific disciplines, but it is primarily a state of mind. The very meaning of the word philosophy (derived from the Greek compound philo + sophia  love of wisdom) indicates a special attitude and a special purpose. In particular, philosophy is a free and unprejudiced quest for truth, for the sake of having a vision of the truth (i.e. theorizing) and for the sake of the human being whose consciousness is motivated, attracted, and enriched by the quest for the truth. Thus, even though philosophy can be considered as a science, its object consists of all the objects that are studied by the other sciences. Moreover, philosophy is the creation of a world of meanings that expresses the spiritual freedom of the human being. 

    The main areas of philosophy are the following: (i) ontology (or metaphysics): it is concerned with questions about the nature and the mode of being of the world and of God; (ii) epistemology: it is concerned with questions about the validity of knowledge, and it investigates how we know what we think we know; and (iii) ethics: it investigates how we discern right from wrong, and, also, it is concerned with the meaning of ‘good life’.