The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

The early Protestants, and above all, the German mystics (Meister Eckhart, Heinrich Seuse, and at a lesser scale Albertus Magnus) affirmed that there should be inner relation between the heart of the man with the Christ. It should not pass through exterior relations. For us there is no problem because in Orthodox tradition we recognize both. We recognize completely the authority of the Church and completely this direct relationship because we have the other concept of the Church. For us, the problem could not exist because we could not understand that. In our situation, there is no split. There are both. We have both ways - inner and outer. But for Western Christian tradition, there was a problem. And the first pre-Protestant mystics said ‘good, let us accept the outer exterior form but let us proceed in an inner way.’ And they were Platonic because they said that we have the direct relations with God and God could speak inside of us and that is our inner dimension. So they were purely Christian. In our situation they were closer to Orthodox in some ways. There were excesses, as well, of Platonism. For example, Meister Eckhart said that there is something beyond the Trinity, unity beyond the Trinity. That is not too much Orthodox. But nevertheless the main idea was so. This radical subject concept, the concept of the inner self that is living in the heart, and the ‘inner Christ’ as they called it was at the origin of Protestantism (in Wycliffe, Hussites, Czechs, German mystics). So that was legitimate up to some point.

I have already mentioned Edmund Husserl and his concept of intentionality. According to Husserl, intentional act is the act directed towards something that exists outside of our mind but that has no quality in it. So any quality that we are dealing with is inside of mind. Husserl calls that noema. The process of intentional act is noesis and noema is something that is thought of. So we are dealing with the qualities of the objects that are inherent to our process of thought and not exterior to it. So that is phenomenology. Heidegger is a continuation to this phenomenological tradition as are many others. But Gilbert Durand proposes a different way to this phenomenological approach and he speaks about the regimes of imagination. That is very important. Gilbert Durand affirms that our imagination works in three regimes. And that is very very close to the concept of three logos. Now we are going to see how. Regime of imagination is a kind of inner state of the structure of human mind that creates different sequences of basic principle images, symbols and structure. According to Gilbert Durand, there are three regimes. First is diurne, which is the regime of day. That is the regime of light that is based on the concept of strict duality. So there are strict and absolute differences. So when we divide and separate (regime of diurne is to separate, not unite, only separate) everything is clear as in the daylight. And this regime as well is a regime of vertical organization of the space. It is linked, according to Durand, with the postural reflexes of the child. When the child begins to stay in vertical position, it is considered by imagination as a flight. He is a kind of arrow that is going to the heaven. That is the flight. 

We are continuing our lectures dedicated to Noology, philosophical discipline about consciousness, human mind, and the thought. Today we have two lectures. The third lecture has the name ‘Logos of Indo-European Civilization.’ So now we are going to apply the methodological principles explained in the previous two lectures to concrete objects and to concrete civilizations. We have spoken about the three Logos theory and the concept of existential horizon and the Historical. So now we are going to apply that to Indo-European culture. First of all when we are speaking about existential space, we can apply this concept to different scales, to small communities, to middle sized communities, or to big communities, for example united by the similar or same linguistic origins. And now we are going to speak about Indo-European existential space. What is Indo-European existential space? It is one of the largest forms of unity. Indo-European existential space coincides with the space where people speaking Indo-European languages live. What are Indo-European languages? That is Roman, Latin, Greek, German, Celt, Slavic, Persian, Indian Sanskrit and the other Prakrit languages, Hittite in Ancient Anatolia, Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrian (the ancestors of Albanians), and Balts more or less. What is interesting is that gypsies as well belong to this linguistic community because the language of the gypsy is also Indo-European. Their origins are uncertain but they speak in Indo-European languages. As well, Yiddish, a Jewish language, (a German language essentially) belongs to the European family. That is more or less the space populated by the people speaking these languages that enter in this Indo-European ecumene, Indo-European existential horizon. That is a huge amount of space, of peoples, of histories, very contradictory and conflictual, but at the same time that covers people speaking Indo-European languages. That is existential space.

Dear friends: it is the final part of our geopolitical Serbian School experimental course. That is based on the previous lecture courses that are already made. I presume that you have understood well the previous courses. They are necessary to understand this final metaphysical and philosophical summary of multipolar approach to understand the very essence of modern situation concerning cultures, civilizations, societies, globalizations, and the place of identity in this context. Noology is the new philosophical discipline or approach developed by Romanian and Russian school of thought. There are two branches in noology; one Romanian and one Russian. Romanian is represented by philosopher Lucian Blaga and his kind of continuator, modern Professor Badescu. Russian noology is completely different but having the same sources of inspiration as developed in my person and my friends. I have published already 18 volumes of Noomahia, more or less 800 pages each one. So that is a kind of already made work. It is not finished yet. I’m working on the 20th book now. But it will have 21, maybe 22 volumes in all. So that is the project that is based on the special philosophical, metaphysical approach I try to explain in this course, in the ten lectures. They are very important because they are a kind of summary of everything said and done before. Excuse me for speaking English but the problem is not only that we lack the qualified translator from Russian to Serbian but there are kind of new created terms as well in Russian. For Russian to understand noomahia in Russian is difficult. For Serbia, it’s almost impossible because nobody can make a correct translation. If I would know Serbian well enough, I would prefer to make this lecture in Serbian but I doubt that there is someone besides myself that could make such philosophical translation. So excuse me for English in this course but I could stop or return to the point if you miss something.

China is recognized to be an independent and unique civilization by virtually everyone, and therefore there is no need to prove this. Rather, we are faced with attempting to reveal the structure of this civilization’s Logos and to determine as much as is possible its geosophical map both within the borders of China and beyond, as well as in its dialogue with neighboring civilizations.

Chinese culture has exercised an enormous and at times decisive influence on neighboring peoples, first and foremost on Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, all of which during certain eras held themselves to be part of Great China – not in the sense of political unity, but as indelible and organic parts of Chinese civilization and the Chinese horizon. This horizon also substantially impacted the peoples of Tibet as well as the nomads of Turan bordering China from the North. Moreover, we can encounter definite influences of the Chinese element among the peoples of Indochina and South-East Asia, such as in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, as well as, although to a lesser extent, Indonesia and the Philippines.

It is clear that the neoliberal elites have concentrated huge wealth and power by surpassing the aspects of body politics that has given birth to a state of anarchy. The neoliberal cult unashamedly claims, “We owe nothing to those whom we promised nothing.” That is besides the reality that they have plundered the wealth of ordinary masses. In this way, the neoliberal elites have affected the liberal ideals, such as liberty, justice and equality, without giving logical justification and propositions for the existing ills.

The New Metaphysics, which describes the ontological situation of extreme despair and the completely God-forsaken world, took shape in my consciousness in the early 1980s under the impression of my grasp of Traditionalist thought (Guénon, Evola, Schuon, etc.) and under the conditions of late Sovietism. Being attracted to the Hermetic tradition, I went to a chemical shop and asked for sulfur, mercury, and salt, to which the clerk replied with scant courtesy that they did not have any of the above, and that everything could only be distributed on approved ration coupons anyway. I didn’t have any coupons, nor any permission. Thus, for the first time, I laid out the approaches to the “New Metaphysics” in an unpublished article written in 1985, Sverkhchelovek (“Übermensch”). The essential point of this article boiled down to reflecting on the Nietzschean definition of the Übermensch, as described in detail by Evola in his Ride the Tiger. “The Victor over God and Nothingness” – I interpreted this formula as the essence of a special metaphysical program. “God is dead,” exclaimed the madman in Nietzsche’s work, “and we have killed him, you and I!” Man defeated God, and God retreated. This is desacralization. The sacred left. What is left? Nothing. After all, the sacred was the essence of everything, the center of being. After the death of God (victory over God), nothingness or “modern nihilism” (Nietzsche) was discovered. 

The past is a Foreign country, these are the famous words of V.I Hartley but future is a quest; a quest for destiny, a quest for identity and a quest for order. History has always been ambiguous because facts are hard to establish, and reality is built on prejudices, misconception and ignorance of our perception and knowledge. When we talk about the twentieth century, it ended with the end of ideological conflict and marked the beginning of a new era in which ordinary masses began to define themselves in terms of culture and religion.

The Globalists might appear to be looking for some kind of increased living standards and opportunities for people in a world without borders, new destinies for migrants happily moving without documents to foreign territories, but this story, this narrative of the earlier, rosy Open Society and early liberalism is only for the news. The most foundational, responsible, and realistic thinkers of speculative realism have already arrived at a different agenda. Their commentaries, criteria, terms, and projects are much closer to this active demonic nihilism. Here we can recall Friedrich Georg Junger’s words that where there are no gods, there are titans. There is no void. Where there are no angels, there are beasts. If we close the world egg on the top, we open it from the bottom. If we refuse God, the Devil comes. Man doesn’t come, as man can only stand so much in place without God. It turns out that the one who nudged man to kill God was not man himself, not of his own will, but rather the one standing behind him who, according to skepticism and rationalism, isn’t supposed to exist. The Devil pushed man to assert that there is no God, that there is only the material world, and now he is saying: “Greetings, my dear, you have done what I requested. It is I, I am Reza Negarestani, I am object-oriented ontology, I am progress, I am the 3D printer, now I will print you and your offspring, and everything will be well.” Gradually, humanity will be “packaged” in the supermarket of dark enlightenment.