The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

By the close of the 20th century, the violent battle between the three political theories of Modernity, i.e. Liberalism, Communism and Fascism, ended with the spectacular worldwide victory of the First Political Theory, Liberalism. This yielded the unipolar moment, Francis Fukuyama’s declaration of the “End of History” (as it at least seemed to be so in the 1990s), and globalization. “One World” began to be discernible based on one universal ideology – liberal globalism. In the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of analysts and experts, public figures and political scientists were inclined to believe that henceforth the economy and civil society would gradually replace politics and competition among nation-states. This created a new paradigm of truths and new obligatory epistemological criteria, such as those represented by such trends as cognitivism, techno-science, political correctness, and “LGBT+ culture.” This unipolar moment lasted until the year 2000, after which something went wrong (for the First Political Theory). The 9/11 attack, the gradual recovering of sovereignty of Putin’s Russia, the spectacular rise of China, the populist wave in Europe, and finally Trump’s election marked symptoms of the fact that Liberalism is in trouble, submerged in a crisis that has become more and more serious and irreversible.

A criminal was considered not only to be a person in full health and consciousness who had made a negative impact, but also as a person marked by a dark spirit. There was something abnormal about the criminal in the eyes of this society. This kind of  abnormality was also associated with disease; for instance, being infected with cholera or the plague was considered a crime. Physical pathology, moral pathology and the commission of a crime were brought closer together in the minds of people, leading to the isolation of both criminals and the sick.

In the beginning we will talk about the ontology of the theater. Ontology is the study of being. So, in the ontology of the theater, we will consider how the theater relates to such a major philosophical category as being. That is, if Martin Heidegger’s main work is “Sein und Zeit”: Sein – being and Zeit – time, “Being and time”. This is the main philosophical work of the XX century and perhaps one of the most important in the whole history of philosophy. Our course is dedicated to “Sein und Theater”, that is “Being and Theater”. So, theater will be for us the same problematical category as "being" for Heidegger.

The plague gods teach us humility. God sends plague in monotheistic cultures so that a person remembers how insignificant and weak he is. And if we fight the plague by means of a state of emergency, a new number of masks, ventilators, only relying on doctors – then we, as Ereshkigal, say that we are not convinced – we will defeat the plague ourselves, we will not change our way of life, we will make fun and live as before, we will restore the capitalist economy, our secular values, our entertainments, our path of autonomous humanity, our research in the field of high technologies and AI, we will continue to modernize and digitalize our society, we will implant everyone during the epidemic and the quarantine with microchips, and thus overcome the plague ourselves.

We ended the era of peremptory existence in an open global world, we were forced to find ourselves in a closed commercial state, and I propose to seriously think over this perspective. We can return, I do not exclude this possibility that we can return to globalization, it will be, however, a different globalization, we will not return there soon, but there are very great reasons that we will never return to this globalization, and will exist for a very long time in a closed commercial state. In order to prepare for this second scenario, which we are already doomed to, and we don’t know how much time it will last: the coming months, maybe years, maybe even longer. That is why I propose to make this mental experiment and, in fact, to make a choice. Without this choice, we cannot move on. The situation is very serious, and Russia will have to make this choice, but all other countries will also have to make this choice. So, either we temporarily take a step back from globalization, to which we will return after the end of the coronavirus, as Bill Gates, Gordon Brown (speaking about world government) and George Soros say (in fact, he keep silence now, because now to advocate for globalism is like to make a coming-out, that is, if you say “I'm a liberal,” you can be hospitalized for this, so only people with a bunker or some kind of reliable shelter such as Bill Gates or Gordon Brown can afford it. In principle, today, of course, everyone understands that only closeness is saving, but nonetheless, voices even from these dungeons, from secret shelters are heard that propose however to make a world government. But, of course, today no one is listening.

Having said this, we consider that the reading of the aforementioned work reveals, in between the lines, a specific methodology, so to speak, a way of universal action to be adopted apt to allow the construction of positions informed by the Fourth Political Theory on the most diverse topics and in the most diverse areas of knowledge. In this sense, regarding the methodology, we are talking about something which belongs to the “praxis”, but in the measure in which this methodology depends on the comprehension of the Fourth Political Theory in order to be unveiled and, simultaneously, points towards the work of permanent construction of the same, this also belongs to the “theory”.

The state of emergency, Ernstfall, it is very very serious and one who is in power in such a situation, is not likely to give it up voluntarily to anyone. This is, let's say, the positive side of the epidemic in which we now live. Of course, it’s important to deal with it, it’s important to survive, but you can’t reduce everything to solution of purely technical issues, it is essential to think about the future. And at the exit from this pandemic we will come across a completely new post-global reality.

I think that this is perhaps the most important: we must think not just how to save ourselves from the coronavirus, but why and most importantly for what it came to us, whoever stood behind its appearance and whatever the nature of this pandemic - man-made / not man-made, natural or artificial is, it’s not important, it is the sense of it that really matters. And here when it comes to telos, the purpose of something, the meaning of something, then we must turn to the figure of Apollo, who is the interpreter and the true originator, that is, the metaphysical source of the pandemic that happens to people, and it is a healing, albeit rigid, shaping, it is a hand outstretched to us and aid from light metaphysics so that we return to ourselves, that we close our borders, that we close our homes, that we close our eyes and draw them inside ourselves .

The outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic has been a decisive moment in the destruction of the unipolar world and the collapse of globalization. The crisis of unipolarity and the slippage of globalization has been noticeable since the very beginning of the 2000s - the 9/11 catastrophe, the sharp growth of China's economy, the return to global politics of Putin's Russia as an increasingly sovereign entity, the sharp activation of the Islamic factor, the growing crisis of migrants and the rise of populism in Europe and even the United States that resulted in the election of Trump and many other parallel phenomena have made it clear that the world formed in the 90s around the dominance of the West, the US and global capitalism has entered a crisis phase. The multipolar world order is beginning to form with new central actors, civilizations, as anticipated by Samuel Huntington. While there were signs of emerging multipolarity, a trend is one thing, and objective reality another. It is like cracked ice in spring - it is clear that it will not last long, but at the same time, it is undeniably here - you can even move across it, albeit with risk. No one can be certain when the cracked ice will actually give way. 

We should stand together with the awakened Iranians, awakened Shiites, awakened muslims and all awakened from other confessions and religions in order to participate on the same side in common struggle against Daddjal, the Lier which we call Antichrist and which is identified in the actual world in globalism, Western hegemony, global capitalism and murderous politics of United States of America with all theirs pawns, puppets and proxies.
The Iranian Revolution ids the revolt against modern World in favor of eternal truth and the coming age of the Restoration, Resurrection and establishing of global Justice. It is our common struggle – we have common enemy and we should feel ourselves as brothers in spirit and arms.

When Bush was in Moscow, at the moment of the invasion of the United States in Iraq, he said: ‘Please be patient, you will have democracy as well, like in Iraq.’ Putin said: ‘Thank you very much, we will find another way to build our society.’
I think the picture you gave is correct, but it has nothing to do with modern Western society, where there is a purely totalitarian way of describing the facts, not in favour of a small group of owners of one mass medium or another, but in favour of a political elite. And they are in that sense a kind of Platonists, taking their truths from their liberal ideology; that is something Platonic as well. And the people are in revolt against that, in different countries but also in the West. I think the wave of populism is precisely the refusal of the European people, not right wing or left wing, but a refusal by normal European citizens of this absolutely abstract agenda of liberal elites. So I think that it is not about the State now, we are speaking about political elites.

So, Russia is in trouble; its Logos, its people, its Dasein, its existential horizon. But 'nothing is lost when there is something that is not lost,’ as Curzio Malaparte has said. So I think that we are in a situation that is structurally close to the situation of Serbian people. We have different scale, different power, different space, different number of population, but the problem is the same. And Russia could not be regarded as the answer or alternative to what is going on. It is only the other place where the Noomahia still continues, with domination of the Cybelian Logos. So we are inside of Cybele. We are not outside of Cybele. That maybe was remarked by Milos Crnjanski in his final result of his book, that Russia is good but that is not the answer for Serbian quest for identity. Milos Crnjanski’s result or summary is a tragic one because Serbs become kind of in exile, in permanent exile, with no motherland left for them. But all the hopes on Russia should be measured with this pessimistic but very open solution of Milos Crnjanski because he loved Russia, and Serbians love Russia. And that is good, but when we have too much incorrect expectations, we could miss the question and unity in fight with something that already accomplished and perfect. So that is very important to Serbs and to all the fighters of identity to know that Russia fights. Russia is not yet defeated formally, because our people is, because it exists. But we have so great problem with Russian Logos, we could not yet start to continue the situation when our effort to create Russian philosophy was cut drastically by Communists. So we are outside of the place where really philosophy begins. We are outside. And this place is not attained, not reached yet. We are fighting to go to this moment. And because of great damage we had during last hundred years, we could not restart the process. In Russia today, there is pure social madness. We could not speak with nobody. As people, we are very good and open and very Christian, but as a kind of bearer of some intellectual ero. With so big people, so few people capable concretely to think, it is unimaginable. That is a kind of deep, dogmatical sleep (not dogmatical in the positive sense, it’s adogmatical), modern, post-modern sleep, conservative sleep of the people. So we are sleeping but that is good thing that we could be awake, lets hope.

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.

We were very close to it in the Dusan the Strong in your history, with the first and the second Bulgarian Kingdoms in the history of Bulgarians, we were close some time in the Polish Kingdom with Lithuanian and Great Moravia as well with some philosophical tendency. But we have never achieved the final version of this Logos in Eastern Europe, as well in Russia. We didn’t achieve the final version of Logos. Our existential horizon is not finished. It hasn’t received the last form. And that maybe is our historical challenge. And Slavophile thinkers saw that we came to the history later than the other when there was already a huge building of German philosophy, German political history, French philosophy, Roman philosophy, Greek philosophy, and as well political history. We Slavs have arrived to this a little later, not in the history, but to the understanding of history, to Logos of history, and to our philosophy. Our philosophy is a little bit childish and infantile. There is great example, great explosion of intellectual richness of precious thinkers such as Petar II Petrović-Njegoš metaphysical as well, Russian Dostoyevsky but all that is a kind of feeling of coming of our Logos and not the Logos itself. We are living in the anticipation of the Slav Logos. And when we study the past, we see many heroic deeds but we could not say that is our Logos. No. That is something like that. There is Saint Sava in Serbia. That’s anticipation of the Serbian mission, of the history. The creation of Nemanja Dynasty, Russian Ivan the Terrible and the other moments in our Slavic history are anticipation of Logos and not the Logos itself. That’s my personal opinion and it’s more difficult to describe our own Logos than to study the Logos of the other because it demands very deep introspection inside in our culture.

n our European civilization, we have two existential horizons and two daseins. One is the Logos of Apollo represented by the official ideology, three functional ideology, and the other is the Logos of Cybele. That is very important in the shadow part, in our subconscious, in the mother tradition. It is a part of the second parallel, hidden, or secret ideology. It is not the void. It is an ideology that is present in our societies but is not obvious, is not explicit. It is an implicit Logos of Cybele but is still alive because we are living in the civilization with the huge part of agriculture system and economy because we continue to produce and to consume the agriculture and food and we are sedentary. This level which we could individuate put the concept of the Logos of Cybele, not to the ancient types, but the Logos of Cybele exists now inside of ourselves, because our society is partly based precisely on this moment of noomahia. But noomahia is a continuing process. We could not once and forever grant the victory of one logos. If the Logos of Apollo weakens, that means that some other pole will become stronger. If the patriarchy dissolves (which is the case now in modernity), the other counter-current begins to appear, becomes more and more explicit, not implicit. That is the most important result of this noological analysis.

    And we could regard this existential horizon as space where the people live, Lebensraum. But at the same time, it could not exist without human being, without people, without language, without tradition. If you put the mixed population in some space you don’t get this existential space. It is not Dasein. And that is very difficult example in our history - Kalingrad people by Russian that was Prussia people by Baltic tribes, invaded by Germans, assimilated, and after that taken by us and we have put the Germans aside. So that is space Russian, not so German, no, Baltic, no. There is the place, the people there living, the culture, and the history but there is no Dasein. So a part of territory of the space is evacuated from existential aspect. It’s very special conditions. I have studied Serbian history and that is kind of this idea of migration of Serbs that created the similar idea where are the borders of Serbia. Where is Serbians, the bearers of Serbia? Or could the Serbs exist without Serbian motherland or not? It is open question. So that is a kind of exilic tradition. So it deals with the problem of existential Dasein. Existential Dasein is not the territory. And that is not only the people. It is the relation, the Sein (being) to the place, existential relations of the being to the place that passes through the people, through the cultures, through the humans, through the thought. It’s very particular concept but it’s very important to geosophy because geosophy studies precisely existential horizons. It is the relations of the being to the space that goes through the culture, through the language, through the tradition, through the identity. So that is very important category of geosophy.

Today the West is imposing not its system, but its systemlessness, not its obviousness, but its doubt, not its assertion, but its deep internal crisis. When we join the global network, we do not receive a new identity and we do not come into contact with a new world. We simply irrevocably surrender to the storage room with a forgotten entry code those remnants of what made us who we were before and that reality in which we lived before. The act of dropping old certitudes and definitions is quite specific: it is a passport to the “new times”, a credit card for complicity in globalism, a mandatory requirement, and all those who reject this “initiation into globalism” automatically end up on blacklists, henceforth deemed agents of the “axis of evil” – after all, they did not catch the “latest news” that the world and the human are dead (following the death of God). 

Over the course of this struggle, the flame of the “resurrection of the spiritual North”, the flame of Hyperborea, will transform geopolitical reality. The new global ideology will be that of Final Restoration, putting a final end to the geopolitical history of civilizations – but this will not be the end which the globalist spokesmen of the End of History have theorized. The materialistic, atheistic, anti-sacred, technocratic, Atlanticist version of the End will give way to a different epilogue – the final Victory of the sacred Avatar, the coming of the Great Judgement, which will grant those who chose voluntary poverty the kingdom of spiritual abundance, while those who preferred wealth founded on the assassination of the Spirit will be condemned to eternal damnation and torment in hell.

 Dugin enters into scene in a modernity which is crumbling but threatens to take to the grave the human essence itself with it. His rebellion is projected revolution over the earthly and the political action, without pretending in any way to transcend Dasein, which is an imperative task for each people. His proposal demands a new historical principle which culminates completely the end of modernity founding a new epochal life over the return of the sacred and eternal archetypes. For Gómez Dávila, this would be the return of the sign of Christ; its historical praxis: the devotion to the miracle. For Dugin, the aegis of his Russian Orthodox Church, which reaffirms however, a plural comprehension of the gods: the logos of each people.

The circle of sacred animals is apportioned according to the logic of the five elements: the Black Turtle or Snake is associated with Water and the Underworld (the land of the Yellow Springs); the Yellow Dragon with Wood, the East, and the Spring Equinox; the Red Phoenix with the South and the Summer Solstice; the White Tiger with Metal, the West, and the Autumnal Equinox; and the Yellow Unicorn (qilin) with Earth and the Center. All of these sacred beings, however, are described as having a whole complex set of properties, such as horns, the tails of snakes or fish, wings, paws, scales, etc. In other words, all of them are pantheria, or “all-beasts” featuring elements of other animals. They are proto-animals, spirits, and sacred symbols containing the powers of the fivefold rhythm of the dispensation of Yin-Yang. In some sense, they might be called “gods” or “onto-logoi” insofar as they exhibit the most general synthetic powers conjugated with each of the elements; but as living and personified beings, they embody these powers in a concentrated form drawn towards a single pole. Appealing to the pantheria is a kind of spell of the elements which, in order for it to be possible to be evoked, must have personal traits. 

Today we assist not only huge geopolitical transformations in the balance of leading world power (the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity), but as well the deep ideological changes. Concretely in the Middle East we see how important is still the role of USA, Israel and European Union on one hand, how Russian and China presence changes the situation in region, and how different Islamic countries and different tendencies in Islam confront or ally with each other. So there is ideological – sometimes theological dimension behind the geopolitics and we cannot any more reduce the problems to simply national States competition or East-West ideological opposition. We need new tools of analysis that would explore the ideological ground and project it on the geopolitical map. We are in need of new kind of mapping the space. And that concerns Middle Eastern space much more than any other. Because it is here where main trends are redefined now.

This is the phenomenological, Heideggerian foundation of object-oriented ontology: the object continues to be a constituted subject. Not the strong, hard subject which wields it - and this is where Deleuze’s proposal comes in - the paranoid subject which reinforces itself and dissects others, but one which begins to dissolve itself and becomes schizophrenic. This “subject”, according to Deleuze and Guattari, dissipates itself into schizo-masses. With this gradual self-denial, self-splitting, this kind of metaphysical suicide, Dasein begins to endow objects with its own decomposition which enlivens these objects. For instance, in David Lynch’s films, such as in the Twin Peaks series, the character speaks with his own leg. When the character gets lost in the woods, he suddenly starts to speak to his own leg, which responds with its own voice. In other words, the leg, a subordinate, mute, obedient thing, a slave to the human brain, suddenly demonstrates the qualities of autonomy, has its own preferences as to where to go, can be angry, and so on. This is, as object-oriented ontologists say, a kind of “parliament organs”, a “parliament of things” or…as Bruno Latour says the new ontologies of the creation of hybrids between subjects and objects. The talking leg is one example of the constitution of independent objects. Thus, the object of object-oriented ontology becomes a reality, the object acquires independence significance from the subject insofar as the subject is abolished. And this object itself will be extinguished.

The subject is not so much “done away with” as it is abandoned. In this case, the subject is understood not as a pre-phenomenological subject, but post-phenomenological, Dasein.

Martin Heidegger’s influence looms large over the field of political theory. Leo Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, and others are among Heidegger’s sometimes rebellious, sometimes reverential intellectual offspring. But on the whole they and other political theorists responding to Heidegger tend to depart from his account of philosophy or his ideas about the relationship between philosophy and politics. This paper will argue that the Russian thinker Alexander Dugin, who tracks Heidegger much more closely than other theorists do, should be included in the list of philosophically serious and important political-theoretic Heidegger receptions. Including Dugin among receptions of Heidegger brings to light forgotten or suppressed possibilities of Heideggerian political philosophy not reducible to Nazism. Dugin's use of Dasein in particular provides a fruitful starting point for comparisons with liberal, leftist, and other uses of Dasein among political theorists.