Revolution and the Restoration of Romanity, Comments on Aleksandr Dugin's “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”

[Note: To those waiting for the second installment of my discussion of identity, I promise you, it is forthcoming. Today's essay is a product of recent reading and I wanted to get it out quickly, so it got priority. My apologies. -J]

I begin this essay with the admission that, because I do not read Russian, I am forced to confront the ideas presented by Professor Dugin in translation, which may result in some inaccuracies of detail; however, given the rise in popularity of his “Fourth Political Theory” among my philosophic and intellectual circle, I feel that addressing some of the problems with his larger ideas that come across in the essay is warranted. I also must confess a certain longing for the geopolitical situation that Professor Dugin envisions as the end result of his “new way.” However, as I will attempt to demonstrate in this essay, Dugin's end-game is, ultimately, the restoration of a kind of political order that pre-existed the Roman world (and in that world, or cosmos, we must include Hellenic philosophy and culture) and is, frankly, inferior to it.

Dugin refers back to the essential dichotomy of order and chaos, striving back and forth toward the omipresent Logos as the birth of western philosophy with the pre-socratic Heraclides of Ephesus. Heraclides' philosophy identifies a common Logos in which all things participate, even unknowingly, as quoted by Sextus Empiricus “So we must follow the common, yet the many live as if they had a logos of their own. Though logos is common, yet the many live as if they had a logos of their own.” [1] Dugin asserts:

    The European philosophy was based on the logocentric principle corresponding to the principle of exclusion, the differentiating, Greek diairesis. All this corresponds strictly to the masculine attitude, reflects the authoritative, vertical, hierarchical order of being and knowledge. This masculine approach to the reality imposes order and principle of exclusivity everywhere. That is perfectly manifested in Aristotle’s logic where the principles of identity and exclusion are put in the central position in the normative manner of thinking. A is equal to A, not equal to not-A. The identity exclude non-identity (alterity) and vice versa.” [2]

Within this quote, we begin to see what Dugin is suggesting through what he identifies as criticisms of 'Western' philosophy; namely masculine 'domination,' vertical/hierarchical order, and exclusivity are—if not negatives—at least grave weaknesses of the philosophic system. By quoting the principle of identity defined by Aristotle in this regard, Dugin is actually asserting that the principle of identity might not hold true. A might not be equal to A and sometimes might actually be equal to not-A.

Such an assertion, no doubt, finds a great many supporters in our contemporary context. Exclusivity, masculinity, and hierarchy are the typical bogey-men of western academics, and much of their prejudice has filtered into the popular culture. In upholding the non-exclusivity of truth, people are willing to violate principles of identity; Dr. Peter Fosl noted this anecdotally from his dealings with undergraduates in philosophy classes a few years ago:

    I remember once posing the following question to a class I was teaching: if we take the religions of the world, isn't it true that at most one can be right and that perhaps none are right? Every single student in the class answered in the negative, holding that all can be right. When I pointed out that such an option would violate the principle of non-contradiction in the sense that it would mean that both X is true and X is not true (where X is a religious doctrine, for example that Jesus is God). To my amazement, every student was comfortable with tossing out the principle of non-contradiction.
    At the time I figured that the event showed that people are more interested in moral and political practices of tolerance and even simple manners than with logic. But I later thought to myself that my students might be onto something about the curious way "truth" plays out in religious discourses. There may be a sense in which it's wrong to use ideas of truth and falsehood as they appear in the sciences, philosophy, law, etc. But if one takes that option, one does have to accept, I think, a set of consequences that most religious believers would be loathe to tolerate (for example, that believing in Jesus may have little to do with salvation). [3]

The principle of non-contradiction (a corollary of Aristotelian identity) is here identified as an essential in exclusivity. Fosl is generous in his evaluation of the motives of his students; I suspect that most undergraduates at the liberal arts college at which he teaches would rather melt into the floor than be seen as possibly believing that someone, somewhere might be in possession of a exclusive truth. But, when faced with Fosl's justification of this principle of non-exclusivity, we come upon an interesting couple of ideas. The first, and most important for this analysis, that the nature of “truth” may not be the same in religious discourse as it is in other disciplines. {As a side note, I wrote a bit about Fosl's claim that believing in Jesus might not have much to do with salvation a few years ago. Interested readers can check that out here.}

Such an assertion begs the question, though, “What would a non-exclusive truth be?” Pressing the limits of language, we might be able to articulate such a concept as the 'furious green idea'--a grammatical possibility, but still functional nonsense. Non-exclusive truth has to be within this category as well. If exclusivity is ever not an essential component of truth, then we are faced with the possibility of many co-existing truths; which is another way of saying no truth at all. Fascinatingly, this is precisely what Dugin is asserting about post-modernity in his essay, saying:

    [...]postmodernity as a sum of non-co-possible fragments which can coexist. It wasn’t possible in the Leibnitz’s vision of reality based on the principle of co-possibility. But within the postmodernity we can see excluding elements coexisting. The non-ordered non-co-possible monades («nomades») swarming around could seem to be the chaotic, and in this sense we usually use the word chaos in the everyday talk. [4]

To be fair, Dugin asserts that this “chaos” is not the chaos which he advocates. His vision of chaos is actually “a kind of post-order and the Greek Сhaos as pre-order, as something that exists before the ordered reality has come into being.” [5] Here, however, we see Dugin betray that what he really seeks is a restoration of a earlier philosophic-cosmological system that was defined by the pre-socratic philosopher Anaximander. It was Anaximander who first articulated the limitless, boundless prexisitng unity out of which all things that have being arose. In his commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, the neoplatonic philosopher Simplicius of Cilea writes of Anaximander:

    Anaximander from Miletus, son of Praxiades student and descendant of Thales, said that the origin and the element of things (beings) is apeiron and he is the first who used this name for the origin (arche). He says that the origin is neither water, nor any other of the so-called elements, but something of different nature, unlimited. From it are generated the skies and the worlds which exist between them. Whence things (beings) have their origin, there their destruction happens as it is ordained. For they give justice and compensation to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time, as he said in poetic terms. Obviously noticing the mutual changes between the four elements, he didn't demand to make one of them a subject, but something else except these. He considers that genesis takes place without any decay of this element, but with the generation of the opposites by his own movement. [6]

Dugin speaks of chaos as “something that precedes being and order, something pre-ontological.” [7]

Maybe the case that Dugin wants to make—indeed, it is the case that he does seem to make in parts of the essay—is the identification with Chaos with the apeiron, and that a restoration of the ontology of pre-existing Chaos out of which Logos can arise is the only way to save the Logos from the perversion of post modernity. However, in another part of the essay, he gives us the intellectual history of Chaos “as something that preceded the Logos abolished by it and its exclusivity was manifested and dismissed by the same move. The masculine Logos ousted the feminine Chaos, the exclusivity and exclusion subdued the inclusivity and the inclusion.” Here, we see Chaos not as a the boundless, limitless first principle, but rather as the opposition to the Logos (made clear by the description of the Logos as essentially masculine and Chaos as essentially feminine). This begins to set red flags off for me, because I see cloaked in philosophic language a return to the Babylonian creation myth, where the pre-existing feminine Chaos dragon Tiamat is slain by the male warrior hero Marduk, who then builds and orders the world from her carcass. [8]

A return to this creation myth would not bother me, perhaps, if I were not an Orthodox Christian—and if I did not believe that Orthodox Christianity is an essential component in Romanitas or Romanity. Vladimir Moss provides us with a starting point to understand Romanity as “the principle that legitimate political power is either Roman power, or that power which shares in the faith of the Romans, [that is] Orthodoxy.” [9] This idea is, we shall see, entirely inconsistent and, ultimately, incompatible with Dugin's thesis.

Perhaps the greatest definition of Romanitas is the Eastern doctrine of synergia between Church and State, which was articulated most succinctly by the sainted emperor Justinian in the sixth century:

    The two greatest gifts which God in His infinite goodness has granted men are the Priesthood and the Empire. The priesthood takes care of divine interests and the empire of human interests of which is has supervision. Both powers emanate from the same principle and bring human life to its perfection. It is for this reason that emperors have nothing closer to their hearts than the honor of priests because they pray continually to God for the emperors. When the clergy shows a proper spirit and devotes itself entirely to God, and the emperor governs the state which is entrusted to him, then a harmony results which is most profitable to the human race. [10]

This is the Roman ideal: the Orthodox emperor presiding over the ecumene as the pater familias of the kings of the nations which make up the Roman world, supporting and supported by the divine priesthood of the Church. This creates a unity, a singularity, of Christian/Roman understanding. There can be only one emperor because there is only one God; there can be only one Church because there is only one God. Here we see that the principle of identity and the principle of the non-contradiction of truth are absolutely impossible to divorce from any kind of Christian understanding.

But, Christianity ups the ante. Again, with Romanity, we must confess the Orthodox Christian faith. To do that, we must confess the Symbol of Faith espoused by the Holy Fathers of the First Council of Nicea. In that Creed, which is held up by the Orthodox Church as the definition par excellence of our Faith, we are required to believe in the singular divine-human person of Jesus Christ, the same divine-human person defined in the prologue to the Gospel of St. John as “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made […] and the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”[11] Here we see that the Orthodox Christian understanding of the pre-ontological nature of reality is that the Logos transcends Being, it is the Logos out of which all things arise. And that Logos was made flesh, in the divine-human person of Jesus Christ—a male human being. The Roman Orthodox Christian can no more abandon the Logos than be can believe that the Logos can be perverted. And yet, this is precisely what Dugin asserts: The Logos that was the guarantee of strictness of the order serves here to grant the curvature and crookedness, being used to preserve the impassibility of the ontologically border with nothing from the eventual trespassers. [12]

Again, we see a dramatic example of the Heracleitan position; the Logos is common to all, and yet men act as if each of them possessed a private logos. Professor Dugin, for all his laudable goals, has underpinned them with theory which is very much possessed of a private logos. While he heaps praise upon the “eternal nascency” of Chaos, saying:

    To sum up, the chaotic philosophy is possible because chaos itself includes Logos as some inner possibility. It can freely identify it, cherish it and recognise its exclusivity included in its everlasting life. So we come to the figure of the very special chaotic Logos, that is completely and absolutely fresh Logos being eternally revived by the waters of Chaos. This chaotic Logos is at the same time exclusive (and it is why is properly Logos) and inclusive (being chaotic). It deals with the sameness and otherness differently. [13]

Dugin attempts here to create a logical space within Chaos for the continued existence of Logos, like a Venn diagram where Logos represents a subset of the all-embracing Chaos; this sounds very attractive, because it attempts to allow for a continuation of the Logos-centric tradition while acknowledging the existence of other traditions that exist de facto outside it, and by dealing differently with differences. But what he claims is as impossible as the furious green idea; because the Logos-centric tradition is crowned by the claims of Orthodox Christianity, the Logos itself is outside Being and the source of Being. For the Logos-centric tradition to exist within the eternal nascence of Chaos, as Dugin puts it, the Logos would have to in some way be defined as Chaos, which is antithetical to the truth-claim proposed by adherence to Nicene Orthodoxy. As a result, Dugin's idea of a multipolar world, with multiple truth-claims mutually co-existing within their own thought-space inside the eternally nascent Chaos is antithetical not only to Orthodox theology but also to Orthodox politics, while presenting the possibility of an existence for it within another context. This is why the idea is so dangerous. Like the post-modernity it reviles, it attempts to infinitely reproduce within itself a truth with is essentially outside itself—namely, the Logos that became flesh and dwelt among us.

If there is to be a revolution away from post-modernity (which is really modernism fulfilled), it has to be through learning to embrace the Logos the way that transformed the ancient multipolar chaotic world into the Roman Orthodox ecumene; the way that does not denigrate the upholding of Romanitas through the principles of the Orthodox emperor and the Orthodox priesthood, synergistically cooperating to bring all of the cosmos into the ecumene. From my perspective, Dugin is not offering us a way to return to the glory of Christian Rome (which is the essential political norm for Orthodox Christians) but a chance at living in the world inhabited by Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné.

And, as the old cliché goes, it might be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

[1] Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, VII 133
[2] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos” 
[3] Peter Fosl, response of a questionon AskPhilosophers.org
[4] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”
[5] ibid.
[6] Simplicius, Phys. p. 24, 13sq.
[7] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”
[8] Thorkild Jacobsen, "The Battle Between Tiamat and Marduk" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1968), pp. 104-108
[9] Vladimir Moss, The Restoration of Romanity, p. 15
[10] Justinian, Novella Six
[11] John 1:1-3, 14
[12] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”
[13] ibid.

Beginning at the Beginning

As mentioned in the previous post Democracy, Anyone?, I've been working on exploring some interesting connections between religion and government and, because I'm an Orthodox Christian (and happen to believe that in Orthodoxy all of the human experience is capable of being restored by the operative power of God's grace) I, quite naturally, wanted to try to understand it from that point of view. I am aware that there are other points of view; this on-going study is not really an attempt to convince anyone not starting at the same baseline. And, while I would like to convince people in my own tradition, I am aware that so many of us are unwilling to give up some fundamentally held beliefs that have been inculcated in us Westerners (and those cradle Orthodox who have grown up and been educated in the West)--specially Americans—that this whole project may be about as useful as fairy wings on a cement truck. Nevertheless, I think this is a worthwhile thing to look at, and, frankly, I am pretty shocked that the subject is so taboo among modern Orthodox.

Since I need a way to break all this down and organize it in some fashion, and because I'm terribly out of date and old-fashioned, I decided an Aristotelean approach would be best. So as I make these posts, I'll be breaking down the Orthodox political worldview accordingly by attempting to answer the following four questions: What does the Orthodox political vision contain, or, of what is it made? Second, how does it manifest itself in the world? Third, what principle(s) guide or move Orthodox politics? And, finally, what is its aim or purpose? I will, of course, be drawing parallels from the reality of the political world, particularly America, by way of contrast and explanation.

There are, of course, simple answers to each of these questions—and those simple answers, which I have encountered many times in my relatively short time in Orthodoxy, are true up to a point, but they often are subject to misinterpretation through omission and ambiguity (whether these are honest or intentional I am not sure, but, nevertheless, they lead to distortions and confusion about what the Orthodox Church has taught about the political life of human beings for centuries). There is also a shocking amount of political agnosticism among contemporary Orthodox in America (of course, there is also a shocking amount of American politicization, too; both are, I think, bad). Then there is the tendency among the descendants of those cradle Orthodox (and, it must be said, the ex-Uniates) who came to the U.S. in particular seeking escape from political oppression and the economic disasters of 19th and early 20th century Europe not to criticize the form of government which allows them the protection of “freedom of religion.” This is entirely understandable and even, on some level, a noble impulse—I'm sure that some view it as a corollary of Japeth and Shem walking backward and throwing a cloak over their father, so as not to see him in his nakedness and shame (Gen. 9:23). But the simple fact remains that many of the dearest-held beliefs about the origin and intent of the liberal government of the U.S. is nothing more than deception and delusion.

Consider what has been said by the much-beloved Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, on this very subject:

As long as the "American experiment" remained rooted in its Christian soil, it worked. It was truly the worst possible form of human society, except for all others. It deteriorated to its present condition not only by evil and sin, or as some say, by ceasing to be overtly Christian, and even Protestant. It decomposed when democracy became an idolized end-it-itself and every participant and group demanded its right not only to be respected and tolerated, but to be affirmed and approved without condition or question. It collapsed, and continues to collapse, not only through the loss of basic Christian doctrine and ethics, but through the loss of the conviction that there is truth and righteousness for all people in any form at all. Because of this, the transformation of modern American liberal democracy into a post-modern pluralistic plethora of hostile and warring interest groups, including some which bear the name "Christian", was inevitable. [1]

What Fr. Thomas says here is true to a point, but it misses the fact that the “American experiment” was never imagined to be a democracy, nor does he seem to understand the roots and origins of democratic government (perhaps even believing the liberal lie from the Enlightenment that selfish human interests are a good thing and will, when unfettered, lead to unlimited progress and social good—aka “enlightened self interest”) or its historically predictable outcomes, nor still yet that the grand experiment was never rooted in explicitly Christian soil. (Certainly not Orthodox or even “orthodox” Christianity.) It is probably better understood now than ever that the deistic/theistic impulses of many of the Founders of the U.S., while dressed, perhaps, in the trappings of Christian heritage, had at its root not Christianity, but a rival religion inspired by (and in many causes purporting to be the continuation of) the pagan mystery cults and “rational religion” of pre-Christian antiquity. Among these many groups (Freemasons, Rosicrucians, the 'Illuminati,' among others) was conceived and articulated a “new” conception of humanity: a brotherhood of all men, transcending nationality and creed, dedicated to the ideal of perfecting humanity through knowledge, learning, and freedom from the traditional confines of European culture and society (which must, no matter what one thinks of Western Christianity since 1054, be understood as deriving from the Church and upheld by the institution of monarchy).

The pervasive nature of these ideals, and their inculcation as tenets to be held against tide and time at all costs, shows just how influential these groups promulgating their doctrine of man's perfectibility through his own means have been; and yet, it does not take a saint or even a particularly good biblical scholar to detect as an enthymeme in that declaration the words of the serpent from Genesis: “For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). The liberal promise has always been the exact same...to make people better through “freedom.” We contrast this to the words of the holy Orthodox elder of modern times, Elder Paisios the New of the Holy Mountain, who said “Freedom is good when the person can use it appropriately. Otherwise it is a disaster.”[2] And it is precisely through the promise of greater and greater “freedom” (or, in more modern terminology “justice”) that the “new” liberalism—that is, socialism—devoid of its sacred cow of private property as a basic human right, has ensnared generations of Westerners with the promise of freedom from want and necessity. [3] It makes for n interesting juxtaposition for anyone familiar with the wording of the Great Ektenia from Eastern Rite liturgies where the priest asks God “For our deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, danger, and necessity...” [4] Apparently, we don't need God; human progress can do that all on it's own.

That the roots of this political and spiritual plague are in the Schism between the Churches I hope to demonstrate more fully at a later time; and while it is in the East that the purity of Orthodoxy was preserved, there were many from the East that were responsible in large part for the rise of humanism which elevated the worth of pre-Christian antiquity (primarily Greek, but Latin as well) over and above the esse of Western civilization which is Orthodox Christianity (and which, like it or not, the Russo-Byzantine east is actually the major and only surviving part)...leading directly to the religious and political factiousness of the 15th century (not only the Protestant reformation, but the ultimate fall of the Eastern Roman empire in 1453). That this disease manifests itself first as a hostility to tradition, and to the traditional of the principle of monarchical power, and then moves on to the Church, then to the principle of “religion” in general, is not coincidental, and I hope to demonstrate those connections more thoroughly in subsequent posts. I also hope to point to a more specific cause (or causes) than has generally been the wont of historians or theologians or philosophers, or anyone else who has bothered to look into these things.

This, then, is the beginning of the beginning. I make the commitment to this to finish it as best I am able, by God's grace, and to be dedicated only to the truth—as best as it can be judged by a sinful and unworthy man. May the prayers of our fathers among the saints Justinian the right-believing emperor of the Romans, King Alfred the Great of England, King and Martyr Edmund of East Anglia, Prophet and King David, ancestor of the Lord, and all the holy Orthodox monarchs of all ages enlighten and bless this work which is dedicated to them and the memory of their wise and just rule and their dedication to the Holy Orthodox faith. In name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.


[1] Fr. Thomas Hopko, "Orthodoxy in Post-Modern Pluralistic Societies." (http://www.svots.edu/fr-thomas-hopko-orthodoxy-in-post-modern-pluralistic-societies/).

[2] Elder Paisios, Elder Paisios the New of Mount Athos. (http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english elder_paisios_mount_athos.htm#_Toc61750930)

[3] F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. pg. 77.

[4] from The Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints John Chrysostom. (http://www.orthodoxyork.org/liturgy.html)