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Postmodernity is much discussed and much maligned in contemporary political discourse. In this piece I will provide my readers with a succinct orientation regarding this often nebulous concept. This is of importance generally given the ubiquity of the term in the discourse, but also particularly as understanding it is a key cornerstone of the project of Political Perennialism.

French School vs stage in history

First, a distinction has to be drawn. ‘The Postmodernists’ can refer to a specific school of philosophy that originated in France in the 1970s. This school is typified by Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). This is not what I denote by postmodernism, at least not primarily. There is a distinct tendency amongst those concerned by postmodernism to see it as a product of the influence of these philosophers. By contrast, I see Postmodernist philosophy as a manifestation of, rather than the source of, postmodernity as such. Instead, what I denote by postmodernity is principally an historical stage, a phase in the downward trajectory of humanity. It is characterized by a shift in ontological locus towards contingent being (what is perhaps better termed ‘becoming’ rather than being). This will naturally manifest in articulated perspectives such as that of the ‘Postmodernists’ but the condition of postmodernity is more expansive than just this product of France. Furthermore, most philosophies, ideologies and perspectives that can be classed as ‘postmodernist’ in this more general sense are less self-conscious about their postmodern character than the French school. I distinguish between the two by using a capitalized ‘P’ to refer to the French school, and a lower case ‘p’ to denote the general condition.

What, then, is to be understood by ‘postmodernity’? Succinctly, postmodernity is that condition and historical stage wherein only the reality of the social ontological realm is recognized. The preceding sentence is likely too condensed to be readily intelligible. So, it will be ‘unpacked’ in what follows.

Traditional ontology

Postmodernism is a restricted or blinkered view of ontology. To gain an appreciation of why this is, we must first equip ourselves with a complete, that is to say Traditional, ontology. Traditional ontology sees reality as relative in a vertical sense. In other words, all reality is relative to or dependent upon that one Reality which is not relative to or dependent upon anything else. Otherwise stated, there is an ultimate Reality to which all other realities are relative. It is to denote its ultimacy that we write this former with an upper case ‘R’. Thus, from a Traditional perspective, truth can be said to be both absolute and relative. There is a highest, absolute Truth, and then there are relative degrees of truth. These latter truths exist hierarchically, possessing greater or lesser degrees of truth relative to their proximity to the Truth. From the perspective of unconditioned, ultimate Reality, it can be said there is only one Reality, and all that are not it are unreal. All are equal(ly unreal) before God. But from the perspective of conditioned reality, these relative realities are real, if only relatively so.

All Traditions present, albeit in different terms, a picture of this hierarchically arranged scale of ontology. In Christianity we find the great chain of being. In Buddhism we find the five, six or ten realms of rebirth (depending on what school of the Buddha Dharma we are looking at). The plurality of these schema illustrates that there are a multitude of ways in which these relative layers of reality can be taxonomized. The most useful of these for understanding postmodernity is the East Asian Tiān-dì-rén or Heaven-earth-humanity triad. This triad is highly multivalent, but seen as an ontological taxonomy, it functions thus: Heaven denotes metaphysical reality, earth material reality and humanity what can provisionally be called social reality.

Metaphysical reality is that which is anterior to the material realm. That this ontological realm is itself divided into a plurality of layers is clear from the ontological hierarchies of other Traditions, or even from within different articulations of the East Asian Tradition. See, for example, the ascending order of heavens in Daoism. Ultimate Reality itself both does and doesn’t belong to the metaphysical dimensions of reality. In its comprehensible dimension (for example, the personal God or the Dao that can be named) it is the highest (i.e. the most real) stratum of metaphysical reality. In the fullness of its being, however, the Absolute transcends this, and any other, categorization. It is for this reason that Schuon termed this “beyond being” and Guénon “non-being”. Any positive statement is necessarily limiting and so cannot be applied to it.

One suspects the reader feels material reality to be self-explanatory. It is that ontological domain that is the proper concern of the natural sciences. Modernity is nothing more than a closure of humanity’s horizons to that which lies beyond the material. To the extent that it equates material reality with the highest dimension of reality, we can identify modernity with materialism.

Submaterial reality

What was provisionally termed social reality are all those ontological layers that exist at the submaterial level. These are realms of reality that depend on the material level of reality for their support, just as material reality depends on metaphysical reality. We termed this the ‘social’ realm of reality as part of what belongs to the submaterial realm is all of what is contemporarily referred to as ‘social constructs’. Social constructs, contrary to what is often suggested in discourse, do carry a degree of reality – but this degree is conferred on them by the material reality upon which they depend for their existence. Take race for instance. Race is often, quite rightly, said to be a social construct. Races, as such, do not exist as material facts. For example, whether Slavs and Germanics are components of a single ‘White’ race (as is currently the dominant view) or two distinct races (as was the view of Hitler) is not a scientifically determinable material fact but an intersubjectively determined social fact. These social constructs are not independent of material reality, but rather material reality serves as the support of their existence. For one thing, the human actors that intersubjectively construct social facts have a material existence that makes this construction possible. Beyond this, the scope of a social construction is also limited by the material ground of their being. For example, whether or not Ethiopians, Tamils or Australian Aborigines are part of the ‘Black’ race is a question of social construction. But Ethiopians certainly cannot be constructed as part of the ‘Yellow’ race, nor Swedes as part of the ‘Black’ race. Certain material facts, the color of the skin of the individuals in question, serves as the basis and thus the limit of the social fact.

It was said earlier that this level of reality should be ‘provisionally’ termed the social, as it is not only socially constructed facts which belong to it. Fiction belongs to this submaterial level of reality. I anticipate resistance from the reader on this point – is fiction not completely devoid of reality by definition? I readily concede that it is less real than social constructs, but not that it is totally without reality. In beholding fiction (there is something distasteful about saying we ‘consume’ it), we confer on it a degree of reality. If not, why do we laugh at pratfalls in comedy? Why is it funny that the character had an accident, when we know that he did not really have an accident but that the author decided events would play out as they did? Why do tragedies make us sad? Why does horror frighten us? Why does action excite us? Why do we become attached to the fate of characters? One could posit that, in the moment of watching we forget that what we watch is not real, but this rings hollow. Moved to tears by what we see on the screen, we redirect our eyes to, let’s say, our phone or our plate – but the tears do not cease to flow. Having read a fictional account of some demoniacal cruelty, the memory may continue to disturb us the next day. Suspension of disbelief entails imbuing the fiction with a degree of reality. It is less real than material reality, but it is not completely devoid of reality – this is what gives it its power to move and inspire us.

Furthermore, the submaterial ontological realms also include dimensions of reality not acknowledged by the modern outlook, namely the infernal realms. Hell – or the hells in the Sinic and Dharmic Traditions – are located beneath our world (at a maximal distance from God) for this reason. Hell, as with social constructs or fiction, are our creations or – perhaps more precisely – dependent ontologically on the earthly realm in the sense that we send ourselves there through our rejection of God.

Each of these ontological realms has an epistemic faculty proper to it. Gnosis, also known as intellection or prajna, is the suprarational faculty by which we know metaphysical facts. Rationality is the instrument for understanding the material world. The submaterial realm is the proper realm for sentimentality – feeling in the subrational sense.

As modernity entails the untethering of material reality from its metaphysical support, so does postmodernity involve detaching social reality from its material basis. It is in no way hyperbolic to say that this entails a collective descent into madness. What is insanity if not detachment from reality? How are we to characterize postmodernity then, if not as an epoch of collective madness? Is this not an appropriate label for an era when the dominant mode of thought is subrational?

The postmodern era

We are, at present, only in the early stages of post-modernity. Modernity could be said to have begun beginning with the realist/nominalist controversy and finished beginning with the Renaissance. In much the same way – having reached its nadir in the Second World War – modernity began ending in 1945, and finished ending in 1990. In a sense, Fukuyama was right. Post-modernity is, then, still beginning to begin. We still see much rationality operating in how the world functions today. Indeed, it seems difficult to imagine how a world completely stripped of rationality would not immediately implode. How would humanity provide itself with sustenance? Who would prevent nuclear reactors from melting down?

The answer will be, perhaps, artificial intelligence. The handing off of all tasks requiring exercise of reason to a self-sustaining AI may pave the way for humanity to fall into an extended irrationalism. Perhaps the apocalyptic future of AI dominance over humanity is less Skynet and more AUTO. If this is so, it would affirm Nick Land’s vision of AI providing a material vessel for the Antichrist. This kind of nanny AI, should it come into being, could provide the material reality on the basis of which humanity’s full submersion into submateriality is made possible. This may well be the shape of the Dajjal’s coming[1].

This is the nature of postmodernity. A final word should be said as to the political manifestations of postmodernity. In contemporary discourse postmodernity is associated with the so-called ‘left’ (I have already written on the disutility of the left/right spectrum). This association of the postmodern with the so-called left requires some correction. Postmodernism is a stage in humanity’s descent, not the property of a particular political camp. As liberalism, communism and fascism were all proper to modernity, so too will postmodernity likely have a set of mutually hostile political ideologies of its own. The reason this is not immediately apparent is we are currently still experiencing the transition from modernity to postmodernity. This is a painful process that a part (the losing part) of humanity resists[2].

Conflict of this type makes postmodernity appear to be a political position rather than an historical stage, hence the mistaken identification of it with a tightly defined set of thinkers. We can already see the beginnings of opposed but equally postmodernist ideologies emerging. If deconstructionist gender and race critical theory can be thought of as postmodern anti-Tradition, then the civilizationalist identitarianism championed by Alain de Benoist and Aleksandr Dugin should be considered as postmodernist counter-Tradition. Indeed, we find early intimations of “postmodernism” in thinkers not typically labeled ‘leftist’ – Heidegger, Spengler and Nietzche. We also find a precognition of it in that current within fascism which prized feeling over reasoning.

Once the transition to postmodernity is complete, none except the most marginal will think to oppose submaterially grounded positions with materially grounded ones – as today only a small minority oppose materialistically informed positions with metaphysically based ones. We can also see other movements towards postmodernity that transcend any supposed binary political divide – for example the push towards the legalization (and implicitly the normalization) of recreational use of strong narcotics, and various attitudes towards artificial intelligence.

I will explore these latter two points more fully in future pieces, so for the time being I will only touch on them in a cursory manner. The recreational usage of drugs (as opposed to their usage in a sacerdotal context) signifies, consonant with the general trends of postmodernity, a flight from reality. Where the sacred usage of drugs (for example, the Native American use of peyote) allows for access to supramaterial realms of reality, its recreational usage more often than not entails a temporary forgetting of material reality. Indeed, they may open the doors to infernal realms and are sometimes used with this express purpose. The disconnection from material reality that artificial intelligence risks (for example, through the circulation of computer-generated images purporting to be photographs) is well known. What is less considered is the possibility of political domination by an artificial intelligence. Such a scenario may seem far-fetched, but has been contemplated by some with utter seriousness (and varying degrees of enthusiasm), for example Mary Harrington’s “egregoric Caesarism” and Nick Land’s singularity. We have already considered above how such a Satanic cyber Caesar may facilitate humanity’s abandonment of the ratiocinating faculty.

Conclusion

In conclusion, postmodernism should be considered not as a tightly bound set of ideas espoused by a particular set of idealogues but as a new stage in historical decline. This stage is characterized by its contempt for material reality. Postmodernism recognizes only the submaterial realm of ontology and nothing higher, as modernity privileged the material domain and denied metaphysical verities. As we proceed further into the Kali Yuga, we can expect the increased dominance of postmodernism and the gradual forgetting of the materialist outlook[3], as humanity comes to be dominated by that which, in the normal order of things, should be its creature.

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[1] The Dajjal being the Islamic analogue to the Antichrist.

[2] They are losing partly because it is their destiny to lose, but partly because the position they defend (the ancient regime of modernity) is already fundamentally compromised. As Guénon observed, the compromises that characterized the later stages of Tradition paved the way for modernity – so that the defenders of Tradition found themselves defending not the top of the hill, but a higher portion of a slippery slope, so to speak. When the gnostic faculty is dimmed, it is hard for it to resist a perspective that regards reasoning as the highest form of thought. When rationality overturns the gnostic insights which are its foundation and support, it is inevitable that it will give way to emotivism.

[3] Indeed, as it appears to already have been by those postmodern political currents that are regularly misidentified as ‘cultural Marxism’. These currents, though not truly Marxist, are postmodern analogues in terms of the position they occupy in the eschatological dialectic. It is telling in this regard how the defining materialism of Marxism (i.e. dialectical materialism) is completely absent from these movements.

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Lindbom expresses his theory lucidly and succinctly in the following passage in the context of a discussion of the ‘peace movement’:

It [the peace movement] speaks of peace as if it were a technical problem to be solved by political arrangements, by disarmament treaties, by the establishment of international institutions. But peace, true peace, is not a political problem. It is a spiritual condition. It arises not from the absence of conflict but from the presence of order—order that is rooted in a recognition of the divine hierarchy of being. – Bortom Teologin (1986)

Conflict is a product of multiplicity, that is to say of the quantification of reality. If war is an evil, it must have the character – as St Augustine teaches us – of a deprivation. Peace cannot therefore be defined by lacking something, but by a presence. Peace must be rooted in the Absolute.

Lindbom distinguishes between frid and fred, inner and outer peace respectively. Inner peace is not so much attained as granted from above through an act of grace. I’ve discussed this from a specifically Shin Buddhist perspective in an earlier paper, where spiritual salvation is denoted anjin (a Chinese compound word consisting of the characters for ‘peace’ and ‘heart/mind’). But this inner-peace-by-Heavenly-grace is, mutatis mutandis, a universal phenomenon. Unassailable inner peace is received from above when we submit to the transcendent order.

Outer peace – or order – can then be established externally as a reflection of this inner order. This externalization of order, in a Traditional society, is particularly the task of the warrior caste. A well-known illustration of this principle is the refusal of Ali ibn Abi Talib to kill in anger during war. Anger is a disruption of his inner peace, which transforms warfighting from the creation of order to the externalization of disorder. This is speaking microcosmically. Considered macrocosmically at the social level: the priestly caste holds the keys to Heavenly paradise while the warrior caste hold the keys to earthly paradise, but the latter are empowered by their subordination to and hence anointed by the former.

Among peace activists in modernity it is perhaps only Gandhi and those inspired by him who understand that true peace is to be established first and foremost in our hearts. One hopes that more of the activists today concerned with opposing the war in the Middle East will learn that attaining peace internally has priority over achieving peace externally, for the exoteric always relies on the esoteric. No true worldly peace is possible without inner peace, for all wars begin in our minds, and even if one fails to establish peace in the world, if one has secured peace in one’s heart – a peace impervious to ballistic missiles and armour piercing rounds – this is, to invoke the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a), already equivalent to having established peace in the whole world.

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As the world’s sole superpower stares down the barrel of yet another interminable conflict in West Asia, I would like to see what relevant insights we can glean from Tage Lindbom’s thought on modern war.

Lindbom’s Theory of Democractic War

Specifically, I’d like to apply this great son of Sweden’s theory of “democratic war” to the problem of America’s forever wars. In what follows, I will summarize Lindbom’s ideas as they are expressed in the chapter “Frid på jorden och fred i världen” in his book Bortom Teologin.

Although humanity is the product of a single protoplast, Heaven saw fit to divide it into a plurality (5:48 Holy Koran). An inevitable consequence of this human diversity, writes Lindbom, is armed conflict as different human collectives clash and compete. This is a necessary if lamentable consequence of man’s fallen nature and the imperfection of the manifested order. But Lindbom goes further. For Traditional people, writes Lindbom, the bloodshed of war was not only because of humanity’s sinful nature but was also an act of expiation for that nature. Traditional people did not glamourize war, nor did they anathematize it. If the perceptive reader detects shades of de Maistre in this, they should pat themselves on the back. Lindbom directly cites the Savoyard, whose views on war he held in high esteem. As an aside, one wonders if the influence of the famous reactionary is also to be found in René Girard, whose ideas are enjoying something of a renaissance among certain American conservatives.

With this view of war, Lindbom contrasts that of modern humanity. The modern is incapable of recognizing what is salutary in pain and death, for their ontological horizon rises no further than the material world. Therefore, for the modern Lindbom tells us, there is no greater good than earthly ease and comfort. ‘Progress’ consists in giving in to humanity’s vegetative instinct. As such, in an inversion, humanity no longer understands that it is falling away from a primordial state of unity and peace, but rather believes itself to be marching towards such a condition of concord.

This is the origin, teaches Lindbom, of the modern ideology of pacifism (which is to be distinguished from pacifism as such). For these pacifists, war is to be abolished because it is a hinderance to the tranquility mankind ‘should’ (in their view) enjoy on earth. And it is in this pacifism that we find the justification for democratic wars.

In Traditional societies, the use of military power required no ideological justification. In modernity, however, war must be justified as an end to war. All wars must be wars to end all wars. Democratic wars thus become unrestrained wars, Manichean struggles in which the enemy must be annihilated. Where in Traditional warfare the norm was for a losing prince to retain his crown but become subordinate to the victor, the modern perspective sees these ‘princes’ and their entire regime as an impediment to peace. So, no such restraint as was formerly exercised is any longer possible.

Lindbom goes on to compare and contrast modern and Traditional notions of peace. We will return to this in a sequel to this essay, so as to end on an uplifting note. First, I will apply Lindbom’s theory of democratic war to America’s ‘forever wars’. But before turning to that task, I think it would be judicious to anticipate an objection to the preceding.

Anticipating Objections

I imagine some readers may be inclined to protest that totalizing ‘democratic wars’ are not quite so modern. It is not for naught, say these hypothetical interlocutors, that the total wars of modernity have often been styled as ‘crusades’.

A good point. Lindbom has a rather elliptical style that invites misunderstandings such as these. What Lindbom is describing in this chapter, although he does not spell this out explicitly, are belligerent relations as they existed within a civilization, not between civilizations. In Tradition, each civilization was a world unto itself, most often but not always ruled over by a single imperial power. The empires, though in principle universal, were providentially bounded. Beyond these boundaries was the Dar al-Harb, where warfare often approached the unrestricted nature of democratic war. It did not, however, reach this extreme precisely because of the knowledge of the continuing reality of war within the bounds of the civilization. Furthermore, in modernity all states inhabit a single world system where in Tradition the world was divided into a plurality of more-or-less separate systems. For a fuller discussion of this theme, see Hedley Bull’s masterful work of International Relations theory, The Anarchical Society (1977). In the context of this single world society of polities, despite the entire globe having at least nominally been drawn into a unitary order (as symbolized by the United Nations), there is no longer any space for limited wars of the kind described by Lindbom.

To repeat, because war as such has been demonized by anti-Tradition, only ‘final wars’ to bring about everlasting peace are permissible in the anti-Traditional frame. And these are consequently wars that are ironically far more unrestrained than they would otherwise be. The most obvious expression of this, and the ones that Lindbom directly cites, are the pseudo-crusades of the first and second world wars, to which we could well add the Spanish and Russian civil wars. What is more, anti-Tradition’s nominal abhorrence of war paves the way for the counterfeit ‘return to Tradition’ in the form of the fascistic glorification of war for war’s sake.

Forever Wars

Let us now turn to the problem of forever wars. These are, it could be argued, restrained wars, are they not? Afterall, a consistent theme in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran today is that (for all Trump’s braggadocio about unleashing hell) the US ultimately employs a fraction of its military might in these endeavors. Often, these military adventures more closely resemble policing actions than they do the city leveling warfare of either world wars, or indeed the present wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

This is true. However, the unrestrained nature of combat in Lindbom’s theory of democratic war is not its only feature, merely its most spectacular. It is the other features which are of most interest in applying these theories to America’s seemingly interminable entanglements. As Lindbom observes, the norm in Traditional wars – part of what kept them contained – is that there was no fixation with sovereignty. Only God is sovereign. Trading parcels of land was no unthinkable outrage as it is today, and a ruling house usually remained in place – even if they now had to recognize those who bested them in battle as superiors.

This pattern of conquest even persisted in early modernity. It is precisely on this pattern of dominion that Britain and Holland built their respective empires in India and Indonesia (these empires are to be condemned for their modernism and not for being empires as such, as I [have argued previously]). But, as a rule, this is unthinkable in modern warfare. Corrupt regimes must be entirely cleansed from the Earth to make way for ‘democracy’. It is something of a cliché to describe America’s invasions as acts of ‘colonialism’ or ‘imperialism’. The irony is that much blood and treasure (primarily local!) would have been spared if the US actually did engage in colonialism. But would it have been acceptable to America to keep the Saddams and Baathists in power under American management? No, instead protracted wars with varying degrees of failure had to be engaged in in the name of installing democracy. Of course, this is not to say that America should have colonized – let us say – Iraq. Our object here is only to explain the phenomenon.

Now, to be fair, not all of the blame for this can be laid at Washington’s door (however much our frustrations with the world’s leading power may incline us to do so). It takes two to tango, as the saying goes. The national-democratic mentality does not allow the leaders of Iraq, Iran, Vietnam or Afghanistan to accept the kind of colonial arrangement that was once quite normal. What was in the past regarded as the prince’s business is now cast as an act of betrayal. It is precisely for this reason that Yogjakarta is the only part of Java that retains a Sultan. All the others were done away with in Indonesia’s National Revolution for their ancestors’ sin of what at the time seemed to them responsible acts of capitulating to the Dutch King. Meanwhile the Sultan of Yogjakarta was rewarded for his predecessors’ intransigence (which is not to cast aspersions on the bravery of those warriors who faced cannons with swords).

A practical example to vindicate the preceding: Venezuela. Unfortunately for Trump, Iran is much more modern in this regard.

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The beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine has a series of implications. Among them is the growing rift between Russia and Europe, with the latter sinking further into the hands of the United States for a longer period. But Putin’s move also signifies the ideological and intellectual triumph of Aleksandr Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism in the Kremlin.

Russia has chosen to wage a senseless war to halt NATO expansion. This new phase of the Ukrainian conflict is, above all, a failure of Russian attempts to negotiate a new security architecture with the United States. The Russians may have overestimated American weakness and their willingness to compromise in order to accelerate their pivot to Asia. Supporters of the U.S. can certainly claim they were right and that Russia is indeed engaged in a policy of imperial revival. In any case, the Russian offensive undermines any prospect of an agreement with Russia while at the same time consolidating U.S. dominance over European countries. Any opposition to Atlanticist orthodoxy will quickly be subjected to reductio ad Putinum.

The Indefinite Expansion of NATO to the East

From an ideological standpoint, this war, by severing all bridges between Russia and the West, marks the victory of neo-Eurasianist currents and, above all, their leader, Aleksandr Dugin. He who might have been seen as a vague and eccentric intellectual with no real influence on Russian foreign policy, or as an emissary in Russia’s soft power strategy toward Europe’s “illiberal” right, now perhaps emerges as the key to this invasion—one that frustrates all rational calculations and shows that a state is not always the “coldest of all cold monsters” as Nietzsche described.

Some doctrinal clarifications are useful here. Neo-Eurasianism stems from a question that runs throughout Russian history: is Russia a “European state” or a separate “civilization”? Putin initially sought to make Russia a member of the European family. NATO’s indefinite eastward expansion seems to have led him to decide definitively in favor of the latter option. Putin’s critique of postmodern decadence takes on a new dimension in light of Dugin’s thought, who for years has been working to construct a “Fourth Political Theory” as an alternative to liberalism, fascism, and communism for Russia. Ideologically, Dugin achieves an unlikely synthesis of traditionalist thinkers (Guénon and Evola in particular) and Heidegger’s philosophy, making Heidegger’s Dasein—the human being open to the mystery of Being—the central theme of his political doctrine.

The originality of his thought lies above all in the fact that this anti-liberal vision, which in its own way belongs to the counter-revolutionary tradition, is translated into a geopolitical framework. Adopting Carl Schmitt’s theory of “Great Spaces,” but from a specifically Russian perspective, Dugin advocates the emergence of a multipolar world in which Russia would be one of the poles, alongside an alliance of land powers such as China, Iran, Turkey, and even India, against the maritime powers of the United States and its allies. Behind this seemingly simplistic opposition lies a deeper one: a world of rootedness versus a world of dissolution, Tradition versus postmodernity. This entire construction may seem like an intellectual house of cards—a careful reader of Guénon might wonder what he is doing in such a strange enterprise—but that was before the war in Ukraine, which now appears to transform Putin, the patient chess player, into an almost messianic figure of neo-Eurasianism before our eyes.

The Alliance Between Russia and China

Of course, while ideas sometimes drive the world, they do not always have the final word. There is something in Dugin of the “gnostic” figure described by Voegelin, who, in revolt against both internal and external disorder (the collapse of Russian power after the Cold War, but also the triumph of a form of postmodernity that, in the name of emancipation, uproots everything and even threatens the very idea of human nature), seeks to precipitate a cathartic crisis that would bring about the “kingdom of God” on Earth. Historically, such enterprises have always resulted in large-scale catastrophes that only deepen the spiritual disorder they sought to oppose.

From a more pragmatic standpoint, NATO’s eastward push and the Russian counteroffensive may bring about the worst nightmare of American geostrategists like Brzezinski: an alliance between Russia and China to drive the U.S. out of Eurasia. It is not certain, however, that a Russia drained by the occupation of Ukraine will avoid gradual vassalization by the Middle Kingdom. This would be an even more paradoxical outcome from a neo-Eurasianist perspective, since Xi Jinping’s neo-Maoist China seems far less interested in restoring its own Tradition than in establishing a form of postmodern totalitarianism—achieving the worst possible synthesis of communism, economic liberalism, and transhumanism.

A More Fragmented Europe Than Ever

By invading Ukraine, Russia is also damaging the entire soft power strategy it has pursued in Europe for decades. The war thus risks erecting insurmountable barriers, for at least several generations, to any rapprochement between European states and Russia—even if it would be in Russia’s interest to form a kind of central bloc, maintaining equal distance from the Chinese and American empires that are set to clash in the 21st century. Europe will therefore emerge from this war more fragmented than ever. The liberal cycle is undoubtedly drawing to a close worldwide, as evidenced by the rise of political Islam and Hindu nationalism, not to mention China, in a context of Western decline, including in the technological sphere. But one of the poisoned fruits of the war in Ukraine could be the paradoxical revival of a twilight, exhausted liberal progressivism on the old continent. At the scale of a country like France, there is every chance of seeing men and women of the conservative right—once tempted by rapprochement with Russia—quietly rally behind the banner of Atlanticism. A catastrophe never comes alone.

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We are living through decidedly unpeaceful times. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, 2023 had the dubious distinction of witnessing the largest number of state-based hostilities since the end of the Second World War. It also saw the highest number of conflict-related casualties from the time UCDP started collecting data in 1989. Tragically, 2024 matched 2023’s dispiriting figures. What is more, the outlook continues to appear rather grim. According to former British Defence Minister Grant Shapps, we have moved from “a post-war to a pre-war world”. In other words, it is not alarmist to foresee a major power conflict, or even a Third World War, in the medium-term. The long-standing dispute over Taiwan, and the series of interlocking flashpoints running from the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea and Kashmir, through to the Persian Gulf, the Balkans and the Baltics, create a scenario of heightened escalation similar to what preceded the First World War.

This is not, however, a presentation about aggressive political disputes but on Shin Buddhism. How, as followers of this Tradition who presumably desire peace in the world, are we to confront such frightful developments? The answer I propose to give is neither an institutional nor a doctrinal one. I am in no position to speculate on how the Honganji or other Shin authorities might view these foreboding events. All I am is a layman who has entrusted his future Buddhahood to Amida. It is from this personal perspective that I speak.

It is natural that we should be disturbed by the prospect of war. Yes, it is true that we are akunin or ‘evil people’ with only a limited capacity for compassion; indeed, one that is thoroughly tainted by our tenacious self-interest. But the apprehension we feel is not merely a selfish response to the impact that such destruction might have on us. From a Buddhist aspect, such concern for ourselves is not illegitimate, (a point I shall return to later). However, I would venture to claim that, for most among us, this distress is prompted by genuine compassion, however adulterated, for those directly affected by conflict. Confronted with the enormity of human suffering wreaked by this menace—often described as infernal for good reason—the heart must break. So, how can the Dharma help those who find themselves traumatised by the ravages of warfare?

I daresay that there’s a common expectation that Shin should promote something like a substantial program of activism; that is, offering a material response to the brute physical reality of war. Yet, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that our opinions actually matter. Regarding the complex global conditions that give rise to major conflicts, the opinions of ordinary folk simply do not count for anything. It is an uncomfortable fact that—in parallel with our spiritual helplessness—there is next to nothing the vast majority of us can do to help end or avert the scourge of war. This holds true whether “us” here means those in this room, Shin Buddhists generally, or humanity at large. If there is anyone listening to this who thinks they have any measurable influence—not just on the vexing matter of conflict—but even on the major geo-political forces that impinge on our lives, I would certainly like to hear from you.

As Shinran Shonin observed, we cannot help others in this life as we would wish. I live near the grounds of a university, and walk past it regularly. As some of you are aware, protesters have maintained a continuous presence at a number of universities since the current war began in Gaza, and the one near my home is one such. I cannot help but wonder if the great effort involved in this encampment has prevented even a single Palestinian death. I don’t say this to denigrate the protestors. On the contrary, and at the risk of alienating those more sympathetic to Israel, I rather admire them. But I do mean to illustrate the point that our capacity to determine better outcomes in the world is always going to be severely constrained.

In light of this, we should see ourselves as we really are—incapable of redressing the calamities threatening our common welfare. This is a painful reality, and a difficult one to accept because it cuts against the core assumptions of our democratic age. However, it is a realization that should not sound unfamiliar to my audience today. It hints at the Shin teaching that our self-power (with respect to spiritual matters) is altogether deficient. I hasten to add that the two are not the same. Our school teaches that jiriki is impotent to bring about our enlightenment. This is clearly different to claiming that we are essentially powerless to affect major political outcomes. However, they are nonetheless comparable in that both scenarios reveal that we have scant abilities to help ourselves and others to an extent that we would consider truly efficacious. There is also a parallel in that coming to this realization carries with it a certain emancipatory potential. Realizing our powerlessness in one domain can, in both cases, open our eyes to an attainment that is readily within reach.

We are accustomed to talking about serious issues, such as war, as if we were world leaders, and that our opinions carried the same weight as theirs. This is not only naïve, but harmful—not least because it causes us unresolvable stress and frustration, in addition to distracting us from what we are actually able to achieve.

So, while we can do little to bring about even a fleeting harmony in this world, we can at least aim for a truly lasting peace in our hearts, regardless of what lies beyond our immediate control. Shinjin gives us an abiding inner repose that is within our reach if we simply take refuge in Amida Buddha. A peaceful heart is such a cardinal dimension of entrusting that the word anjin is often used as a synonym for faith. Indeed, I believe that the Honganji’s restorer, Rennyo Shonin, adopted this term more frequently than he did shinjin.

“Inner peace” has become something of a cliché in English these days, particularly with respect to Buddhism, so it would be worth dwelling on this for a moment. To possess a reservoir of contentment within our hearts, that is not subject to our ever-changing circumstances or state of mind, would be something truly precious. Yet this is precisely what is promised to us by our Traditional teachings.

Death is widely regarded as the worst of all possible fates, despite it being the only certainty that awaits us. It is for this reason that homicide is regarded as such a heinous crime. War also elicits a deep-seated horror because it is, effectively, legally mandated murder. For most, life can only be enjoyed in a carefree manner by maintaining a wilful ignorance of our impending mortality. But for the person who has accepted Amida’s salvific gift, death becomes the occasion for our liberation from samsara and, thus, the attainment of Buddhahood. Life is then transformed from a bitter and inescapable march to the grave, to a joyous procession towards the Pure Land. When we come to see the insubstantiality of death in this way, we are endowed with an impregnable haven of peace in which we can always find shelter from life’s turbidities and absurdities.

When this tranquillity takes root in our hearts, through no self-willed effort on our part, we no longer feel compelled to pursue the impossible task of establishing peace in the world. In fact, the key to attaining this elusive goal is, precisely, for all people to encounter the very same peace that is promised by the 33^rd vow of Amida Buddha (“If, when I attain buddhahood, sentient beings … who have been touched by my light should not feel peace and happiness in their bodies and minds, surpassing those of humans and devas, may I not attain perfect enlightenment.”)

I would like to anticipate two lines of likely criticism to the case I have advanced. The first is that making shinjin a priority is selfish, and the second is that telling people to trust in Amida is an inadequate response in the face of so much suffering in the world.

At the risk of mounting a straw man argument, the first objection comes from having an insufficient grounding in our Tradition’s doctrines. It is precisely by receiving faith that we are enabled to most effectively assist others, including those suffering in wars. Consistent with the principle of ‘self-benefit’ and ‘benefiting others’, we are born as buddhas at the very moment this life comes to an end. We will then (to use the appropriately martial language of the Larger Sutra) “don the armour of great vows” and return to samsara as bodhisattvas to aid living beings, unshackled by the limitations that constrain us so thoroughly as bombu. And what form will such relief take? The unfettered emancipation of sentient beings from the realm of birth-and-death, in accordance with their circumstances and regardless of the condition in which they find themselves.

The second objection stems from a position that fundamentally denigrates what Shin Buddhism, and religion in general for that matter, uniquely affords. This betrays an outlook that is prominent in the modern world, but also found among certain advocates of ‘Engaged Buddhism’ who prize material welfare over spiritual salvation. In the face of mutilation, acute trauma and imminent death, there is no greater comfort than knowing that death does not mean oblivion or a fearful destiny but, rather, entry into a realm of “utmost bliss” (sukhavati) that is filled with the light of boundless wisdom and compassion. Unlike the precarious peace found in this world of tribulation, we are given a calm—even in the midst of unmitigated horror—that is accessible to ordinary people; one that is altogether impervious to the effects of high-explosive rounds and precision-guided missiles.

So, the attitude which suggests that entrusting in Amida is something akin to Maslowean “self-actualization”—to be put off until material needs have been fundamentally met—misunderstands the existential urgency of securing spiritual liberation. Let us not forget (as indeed it is easy to do given Japan’s present pacific conditions) that the times of Honen, Shinran and Rennyo were riven by seemingly incessant wars. None of them responded to these calamities by urging any kind of activism that sought deferral of our spiritual health until worldly peace had been secured. On the contrary, the very chaos that surrounded these masters only spurred them to become assured of their own birth in the Pure Land, and to share this way of entrusting with others.

I may have given the impression, thus far, that I am opposed to any kind of activism. This is not the case. On the contrary, my intention has been only to insist that Shin’s answer to the pervasiveness of violence in the world—and indeed its proper response to any disturbance or commotion in our lives—would be to put the Dharma front and centre. Whatever means we engage in pursuit of peace (be this either activism or even combat) we should first be ensured of peace in this life and the next by Amida Sama. If we do this then we will, to paraphrase Gandhi, be the change that we want to bring about.

With faith as our life’s foundation, we can helpfully augment the well-being of others in a way that could be of greater significance than we might otherwise suppose. Activism in the quest for grand objectives like world peace all too often become a means for stoking our egos, rather than making less dramatic—but more meaningful—contributions to improve the perilous conditions of our earthly existence.

Although, as ”foolish beings”, we cannot be divested of our deluded egoic existence until Nirvana is realised in the Pure Land, there is a certain humility to be gained from the experience of faith in everyday life. The conviction that we are incapable of saving ourselves, and the recognition of our essentially defiled nature, should serve to go a long way towards restraining our stubborn hubris. This makes it easier to accept our inherent powerlessness as political actors that I mentioned at the beginning of this talk. We can then act in ways that, though modest and unassuming, may contribute markedly to improving the lives of others.

With respect to providing relief in times of war, this can take the form of material and financial donations to ameliorate the plight of suffering victims. We also have the example of those who have opened their homes to refugees. But often, the most meaningful contribution we can make to peace in the world is to treat those—with whom we have personal relations—as kindly and compassionately as we can. All too often in our day-to-day lives, we act as though having the right political opinions is more important than proper and humane conduct. As an aside, Shin Buddhists are often reluctant to talk about social morality because it has dispensed with precepts, but Rennyo does recommend an ethical program that is based on the ‘Confucian’ (or Ruist) virtues. These do not entail holding the ‘right’ positions but, instead, stress the need to live with other people in a spirit of good-will, concern and integrity.

There is a final dimension to address before concluding my talk. Wars are not only protested against, but they are fought as well. Often, they are done so involuntarily—let us not forget that Ukraine and Israel rely on conscripted armies. Granted that, even in the hypothetical event of another great power or global war, the vast majority of the population is highly unlikely to be made combatants. That said, I think it’s important to reflect on the great comfort that entrusting one’s posthumous state to the Tathagata can bring to those on the brink of death. Perhaps this is a sensitive subject given the misuse of our school’s teachings during the last war in which Japan was involved. Nonetheless, it is worth remembering that Shin Buddhists fought and died on both sides of that conflict. I have had occasion to hear readings of letters from Japanese-American Shin Buddhists who died fighting in Europe. These made an enormous impression on me. I do not have immediate access to this correspondence, so I’m unable to share it with you now. However, it was clear to me that these young men brought an abiding peace with them into the very maelstrom of war’s terrors.

I appreciate that to suggest our teaching might be of value to soldiers may elicit discomfort among my listeners. Perhaps some of you are fearful that this could be seen as promoting an institutional sanction for conflicts that should be rejected on principle. Again, it is not as though this concern doesn’t have a basis in relatively recent events. Or maybe there’s a view that war is something that should always be opposed, consistent with the Buddha’s teaching. Without taking a position on this question one way or another, I am inclined to recall that Amida’s Vow is, as we are clearly taught, specifically intended for the ‘evil person’. Let us also remember Shinran’s advice to Yuien-bo in Chapter 13 of Tannisho. Some of us may be possessed of deeply noxious karma that could lead us to commit appalling acts of violence, and not necessarily for a just cause or in self-defence. Even such people are not excluded from Amida’s compassionate embrace.

Those saddled with a karmic burden that necessitates having to fight in wars—a condition from which they cannot be readily extricated despite their faith—should at least be granted a peace within themselves that comes from knowing that, were they to fall in action, however shocking their acts may be in the heat of battle, they are nonetheless destined for birth in anraku – the land of peace and supreme happiness.

We live, unquestionably, in trying times. Peace is in short supply around the world, and the likelihood of further outbreaks of war in the near future remains high. Entertaining the prospect of an imminent Third World War does not make one a catastrophist. Yet, there is a pronounced tendency for Buddhists to respond, to the enormous suffering engendered by war, with calls for greater “social engagement” and political activism.

While the desire for global harmony is naturally commendable, it overlooks the fact that we are ineffectual in our endeavours to bring about widespread peace. It also loses sight of what Shinshu really has to offer in the face of intractable and disturbing circumstances. Our Tradition does not propose a strategy for addressing the ills that plague the world (not that this is an unworthy objective), but it does furnish the spiritual means for overcoming the world altogether. Only through a transcendent resolution to the problem of human suffering can any enduring peace be found. The noble motivation behind so many activist ventures will always fall short of this goal insofar as samsaric remedies can never yield a nirvanic outcome. The indestructible serenity of anjin alone serves as our ultimate sanctuary, regardless of what this world of sorrow and uncertainty may unleash on us.

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The best definition I could find was quoted here, which seems as reputable a source as any: “mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality”.

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If one accepts this definition, the thought occurs that the descent into modernity and post-modernity can with great accuracy be characterized as the development of progressively more severe collective insanity. If it is appreciated that fantasy or fiction possess a degree of reality, but one lesser than the material plane, and that the material plane of reality in turn is possessed of less reality than the supra-material plane, then we can arrive at the following conclusion. Modernity is a condition of insanity as it amounts to the denial of realities that are plainly perceptible by the gnostic faculty. This is no less insane than perceiving a material reality by both logical deduction and the sensory faculties and continuing to deny it. Indeed, the sensory faculties can be impaired or deceived (we can mishear a sound), but the gnostic faculty is not so disadvantaged. This is because the sensory faculties operate dualistically, while the gnostic faculty functions non-dualistically. Therefore, to deny what is known by the gnostic faculty, or to deny its functioning in others, is more insane than to deny what one can see, or if one is blind, to deny that others can see.

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Out of step with the spirit of the times: My Introduction to Tage Lindbom

At a time when people flocked to the North, Tage Lindbom chose the lonely path south. He inhabited the most desolate niche in Western civilization, the way of Traditionalism.

I am sure most of you have not heard the name of Tage Lindbom, a conservative thinker from Sweden. Until now his name has never been mentioned in any article or book whatsoever in the Indonesian language.

In the West, Lindbom is also not particularly popular, even in his native state of Sweden his works are not widely read. Only a handful of people who really dive deeply into philosophy will encounter Lindbom’s thought.

I myself only recently became acquainted with Lindbom, although I’d long been in possession of his monumental work “Demokratin är en myt” or “The Myth of Democracy”. This book was saved on a flash drives that I had not used in years.

I am certainly given to downloading books from various cloud storage platforms like MEGA, Mediafire and the famous 4Shared, and then occasionally saving these to flash drives.

Lindbom’s book was one among many that I’d saved to a flash drive and had been on there for some time. In a moment of boredom I was looking through some flash drives and found “The Myth of Democracy”.

Right away, I recognized the brilliance of Lindbom who traces the red thread of democracy in Western thought and constructs the argument that this idea constitutes the resistance of humanity to the authority of God.

Outline of the content of the book “The Myth of Democracy” by Tage Lindbom

Throughout his book, Lindbom witheringly critiques the modern world, secularization, and democracy. According to him, over the course of centuries Western civilization has been devolving from an order based on God to “the Kingdom of Man” – which is centered in itself.

This long story began at the end of the Middle Ages, when Aristotle made a comeback and natural science began to creep into European thought. The world which had long been viewed as a reflection of something higher, specifically a vertical order which ascends towards God, began to be seen as a world which could be understood and mastered by human reason. [Translator’s note: the word here translated as “world” is “dunia”. Although perhaps unintended by the author, this lends the preceding sentence a certain pathos which will be immediately apparent to Muslim readers. Dunia is a loan word from Arabic, which in its original language carries the implication of referring specifically to this world of suffering, this “vale of tears” (Psalm 84:6). In this sense, it could be assimilated to the Hindu “maya”. “Dunia maya” is, incidentally, the Indonesian term for virtual reality or the online space.] Knowledge is no longer a property of faith; it has become the field of experimentation.

Then appeared William Ockham, who severed the universal link between creation and The Creator. Nominalism opened a gap: if universals are no longer tied to reality, then transcendent authority becomes unstable. The relationship between humanity and the divine transforms from a straight line to something more tenuous: knowledge of the divine is now more a matter of faith than empirical knowledge.

The Renaissance and humanism add wood to this fire. Art, science, and new ways of life taught humanity to see itself not as a creature determined by sacred traditions, but instead as a creative agent. The reading of the world became increasingly profane, with all beauty, meaning and value increasingly weighed according to worldly experience.

In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, Descartes separated reason from faith, affirming the method of doubt as the path towards certainty. Locke put forth sensory experience and practical rationality as the basis of government and society. From here, notions about humanity as an autonomous subject thrived: a humanity that can think, choose and manage its own fate.

When the French Revolution erupted, it was not only the king who fell. Symbols of the old order, authority which was based on a vertical continuity between humanity and the divine collapsed. The debris from this collapse gave birth to a new certainty: humanity has a right to determine its own fate. This certainty, according to Lindbom, is not only a political practice, it constitutes a myth: the myth of the Kingdom of Man, where humanity places itself at the center of all legitimacy.

Rousseau plays an important role in this myth. The social contract, which at first appears as a rational tool to regulate communal life, develops into something almost sacred according to Lindbom. The concept of the General Will becomes a moral basis for moving legitimacy from heaven to earth, or more precisely from God to the collective will of humanity. Politics obtained a new aura of saintliness, and the collective will can become the measure of truth.

The two major currents of liberalism and socialism are two different paths to the same end. Both defy the vertical tradition and place humanity in the central position. Liberalism glorifies the freedom of the individual, market and discourse; while socialism demands collective justice and freedom from the alienation of production. Both, by different means, give energy to the Kingdom of Man.

In the 20^th Century, the birth of the great administrative state, which Lindbom nicknames the modern Leviathan, regulates the lives of citizens with technocracy: statistics, bureaucracy and technology. Science becomes an instrument of management.

Humanity begins to be seen as a part of a mechanistic system; the difference between humanity and machines blurs. In this framework, traditional notions regarding sin, forgiveness and divine authority have difficulty finding space.

Heidegger gave philosophical shape to this atmosphere: being as a flow of time, experience which reveals, [as something self-sufficient] not as something additional to transcendent reality. If reality is just a matter of phenomenal disclosure, then dogmatic authority collapses, and secularization has found a tidy formula.

After the Second World War, Lindbom saw the formation of a cultural trinity: the Kingdom of Man, modernism, and democracy. All three are mutually reinforcing.

Modern democracy, which connotes respect for freedom and equality, transforms into a system dependent on quantity, majority opinion, statistics and uniformity which determine legitimacy. Modernism declares that the world [dunia] is self-explanatory; the Kingdom of Man declares humanity the final moral authority. The combination of the three forms a single order where vertical meaning is removed and all legitimacy is reduced to collective human interest.

However, the upshot of this freedom and equality is that it triggers a paradox. The unlimited worship of freedom can undermine norms and adds to fragmentation: individuals who are separated, pursuing their private desires without any common bond.

Equality that is demanded quantitively can become mechanistic conformism, erasing differences for the sake of measurable uniformity. The tension between freedom which disintegrates and equality which uniformizes calls forth a response of centralized management: a state which is ever larger, ever more technocratic.

In this state of uncertainty, humanity seeks an escape. A portion submerge themselves in private affairs, routinizing life so that it feels meaningful. Another portion hang their hopes on a charismatic leader, a figure who gives the impression of being a family man, a father, or an incarnation of an order that has disappeared. Both, according to Lindbom, are false exits: [they constitute a] closing the door on existential anxieties without addressing the root problems of meaning and legitimacy.

His conclusion is simple but dour, namely that the post-1945 victory was not only a military victory. It was also a confirmation of a cultural structure that shed the remnants of the traditional order. Modern democracy, modernism and the Kingdom of Man form a new narrative, a narrative which allots humanity a position of rulership but also closes it off to redemption, moral verticality and the plurality of meaning.

The consequence is not only a crisis of identity, but also the risk of a new authoritarianism born from the need to efficiently regulate collective life.

Lindbom’s Life

My interest in Lindbom’s ideas led to an investigation into his private life. There is quite a bit of literature that touches on the life of this figure. Only a biography conceived by his son, Tomas Lindbom, provides a complete picture of the life of this philosopher who died at the beginning of this century.

This is “I otakt med tidsandan” (2021), a book which covers in detail Lindbom’s private life through the eyes of his son, Tomas. However, this book is still difficult to obtain and is currently only available in Swedish.

But fortunately I found a podcast in Swedish featuring an interview with Tomas about the life of his father. The podcast Koranpodden entitled “Min pappa Tage blev muslim” (My Father Tage [Lindbom] Became a Muslim) uncovered a side of Lindbom’s personality which is rarely revealed.

But before that, we have to start with general matters that many already know about Lindbom. He was born in 1909 in Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden. He was raised as the adopted child of Carl Theodor Lindbom and Ann Sprinchorn. After studying at the University of Uppsala, he obtained the title fyllkand (full degree) and in 1938, he became the head Archivist at the Library of the Worker’s Movement.

Tage Lindbom was an indominable socialist and in his youth was also for a while a communist. As a skilled pianist, he was also active in cultural politics, among other things as the head of the state committee to investigate music 1947 and as a member of the directing council of the Royal Theater for years.

With the passage of time, Lindbom began to doubt the socialist vision and lost faith in the Social Democratic Party. He interested himself in an intensive study of the history of Western ideas, and experienced a personal awakening. He became very religious, converted to Islam, and took the Muslim name Sidi Zaid. He became religiously conservative and antimodernist.

Towards the end of his life, Lindbom lived a cloistered lifestyle and devoted himself to spiritual studies, primarily through his books. Lindbom departed this world on 30 September 2001 in Stockholm.

This is a brief picture of Lindbom, which was detailed in greater depth by Tomas in the podcast hosted by Salih Tufekcioglu. Tomas explained that his father’s childhood was difficult because he was a child born out of wedlock who, at the age of one and a half, was moved from a loving foster family in Gothenburg to a childless couple in Hudiksvall. These experiences caused feelings of coldness and anger within himself.

This anger pushed him into rebellion against authority and small town conservatism, which led to his adoption of socialism. “Tage Lindbom became a socialist because of his anger towards authority which fell short of his standards and towards a deficiency of compassion” said Tomas in the aforementioned podcast.

Lindbom’s Career

Do not doubt that Lindbom was a talented individual. He studied at the University of Uppsala and attained the degree Fil. Kand. (Filosofian Kandidaatti, a postgraduate degree in Finish equivalent to a Masters) in a short period. In 1938, he became the head Archivist at the Library of the Worker’s Movement.

Initially a convinced socialist, Lindbom also became a communist for a few years in the early 1930s. Tomas tells how his father, after undergoing psychotherapy, began to “thaw” his inner “ice box”, which caused him to abandon the Communists and return to the Social Democrats as a “regular reformist social democrat”.

Lindbom was also active in cultural politics, taking office as the head of the State Music Committee in 1947 and as a member of the council of the Royal Theatre for several years. He was seen as “an important person who would probably have become Minister of Culture” in a Social Democrat government if he did not commit ‘heresy’ by criticizing his own group.

One such supposed heresy originated from Lindbom’s doubts about the socialist vision. The matter arose in the early 1950s. He was disappointed in the workers’ movement which fell ever further from its early idealism as a People’s movement to raise material and spiritual conditions, and became more oriented around consumption and material pragmatism.

He observed that the working class didn’t care about culture, and also didn’t care about the ideas and values of socialism. This was a turning point for him, where he saw that modern society and modernism generally leads to “technocracy” and “top-down” instead of “bottom-up”.

After this he resigned from all his public offices and began “reading professor’s courses in philosophy”, which brought him to conservative thought and, finally, to conversion to Islam (mualaf).

Tage Lindbom’s conversion to Islam, and his adoption of the Muslim name Sidi Zeid, was a secret he tightly guarded for years. Tomas accidentally discovered this at age 13, when he found his father performing Salah in his room.

“I encountered something which I had never imagined and had never seen before. Firstly, the lighting in the room was very dim, and there was a lamp I was unfamiliar with that emitted this dim light. And then in this dim light, I saw the figure of a body stretched out on a prayer mat.”

This conversion was kept secret because Sweden in the 1960s was a very homogenous society, and being a Muslim was “very difficult” for the career and reputation of an intellectual. Lindbom explains “Sweden is a country that is very homogeneous in all matters. Religious, cultural… if you study in school… pictures of people performing Salah are displayed… all the students laugh and think it’s funny, and I sit there and know that my father does that at home.”

This secrecy continued until the 1990s, when Lindbom felt that that immigration had made Islam more common in Sweden, and he permitted his son to tell of his conversion.

Muslim Adherence

Lindbom followed the teachings of Islam in his day-to-day life, praying five times a day and fasting for Ramadan. Tomas tells how his father refused to drink alcohol and eat pork during a Christmas dinner with extended family.

Even in the last moments of his life, Lindbom spoke of Islam to the nurses in the hospital where he was being cared for. A male nurse said to Tomas, “Your father is a good man. He speaks so beautifully about Islam.”

For myself as a Muslim, it is very beautiful and unique, that such a person as Lindbom with his life history, during the final hours of his life, gave such a good impression to his nurse that night.

Conservative

Lindbom is also known as a conservative figure, but his conservatism is different from the modern conservative movement. He was an antimodernist rooted in classical thought, like Plato, and Medieval Scholasticism, which he saw as the peak of Western culture. For him, the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Romanticism all represented “decline”.

His conservatism stressed traditional values like family, authority and wisdom that is passed down generationally. He was very critical of the policy of the radical school which prioritized the “pleasure principle” rather than the teacher’s responsibility to impart knowledge.

Lindbom was also “surprisingly prophetic” in his opinions of modern society. Tomas implies that his father would see developments like sex change operations, abortion, and euthanasia as natural consequences of the “Kingdom of Man” which believes in the “supremacy of the self” and the right to experiment with one’s own body. “There are no limits whatsoever, and pleasure is at the center of everything”.

The Figure of Lindbom in the Eyes of his Son

Tomas describes growing up under his father’s influence as “inhibiting”. Lindbom supplied complete arguments and thoughts regarding life and society, causing Tomas to feel that he “had no reason to develop anything”.

Tomas initially rebelled against his father’s views, embracing modernism and postmodernism. Tage scolded him saying, “Tomas, you are a modernist” which was “the worst thing a person can say to their son.”

After the death of his father, Tomas slowly returned to his father’s thought, “now without anger” and valued Lindbom as “a great thinker”. Tomas has now found the Christian faith, although Islam remains “closed” to him.

Original article: https://kumparan.com/yopi-makdori/mengenal-tage-lindbom-filsuf-swedia-yang-menyebut-demokrasi-mitos-modern-25h3YZEYo3t/full

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My understanding is that the talk will be included in a future publication featuring all the papers given. I am also currently working on a chapter with the same title, to be included in a book to be published next year (at the earliest). That chapter will greatly expand on this paper, being two (maybe three or four) times the length.

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We hear constantly in modern discourse that female empowerment is a good. The most vulgar music, for example, is regularly lauded on the basis that it is empowering for women. You know what else is empowering? Inflicting pain on other humans, and presumably animals, is extremely empowering. Few things make one feel as powerful as punching someone in the face. By extension, taking life ought to be the height of empowerment. Letby must have felt very empowered.

Clearly, female empowerment, if this is indeed a good thing, must be subordinated to other values. It can’t be a good thing in itself but must in some way be qualified. This seems obvious in the case of Letby – but becomes occluded in less extreme cases like those of our delightful lady rappers. But the point remains – without a measure of values, a fixed point relative to which all worth is ordered – there is no possibility of giving goods an order of priority.

That fixed point is the Absolute. Or in personal terms, God. The Absolute is the Good – hence we refer to it as the Good with an upper case ‘G’. It is relative to their proximity to the Good/the Absolute/God that discrete a thing is good. Goods are ordered according to the extent to which they are close to, point to, lead to the Absolute. This is what Plato meant when, pace Protagoras, he said that “God is the measure of all things”.

The nature of talking about ‘good’ things means that the above is necessarily true. If I say something is good, I’m saying it exists in a hierarchy. It is ‘good’ as opposed to something else which is ‘bad’. If everything were good, then it would make no sense to speak of things being good. Good as opposed to what? To repeat a well-known truism, without the bad we cannot know the good.

To speak of goods necessitates a hierarchy. If this hierarchy is not to be meaningless, it has to have a fixed point. It has to be anchored in a reference point that is not subject to change or contingency. Otherwise, it will be arbitrary. This means that the reference point must be absolute, and the only thing that is absolute in the last analysis is the Absolute. Again, God is the measure of all things.

If we do not acknowledge such an absolute anchor, then there is no way to determine an order of priority between empowering women and other goods – like not killing babies. Indeed, it would be impossible to determine if empowering women is in fact a good and killing babies is in actuality not.

Why, then, are liberals so fixated on the supposed value of unqualified empowerment? It is due to the Promethean nature of liberalism. The rebellion against God can be characterized as having two or three phases. Most simply, we can divide it into the Demiurgic phase (which denies God) and the Satanic phase (which opposes God). The Demiurgic phase can further be distinguished into the Promethean phase and the Luciferian phase. The Luciferian is that which claims for itself coequal status with God, while the Promethean is that which merely claims certain traits or aspects of the Divine. It is named after the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole knowledge of fire from the gods and gave it to humanity.

As was observed long ago by Martin Lings in Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions, the modern idées fixes of liberty and equality are expressions of both the Promethean phase of the revolt against Heaven, and the salubrious instinct to return to the Absolute. Freedom, absolute freedom, is a quality of the Absolute. Equality is enjoyed by humanity through their union with the Absolute. Profane liberty and equality are the products of the interaction between humanities denial of God and their persistent desire for Him. These Promethean instincts are by no means restricted to liberalism. For example, Aleksandr Dugin demonstrates this same Promethean instinct when he claims that humanity has the same freedom as God, despite not sharing in God’s omnipotence. As if it were possible to possess one without the other, and as if any but the Absolute could possess absolute freedom (or any other quality absolutely).

This leads us back to ‘empowerment’. Omnipotence is, as was just stated, one of God’s qualities. The power of a limited being as limited being must also itself be limited. This is true both descriptively and normatively, as the above given reductio ad absurdum example of Lucy Letby illustrates. The desire for power (and freedom which are, again pace Dugin, intrinsically interwoven) is reflective of our fitra, our innate desire for the Absolute, itself a manifestation the transcendent God immanent in the human heart. It is from this desire that all of our most fundamental drives originate – for goodness, love, justice, power, freedom, honor etc etc. Divorced from their proper object, these drives give rise to multifarious perversions – such as the unqualified glorification of the empowerment of those seen as disempowered. In fact, ‘empowerment’ Traditionally meant to be made able to do the good. It is only when the West’s (and subsequently humanity’s) worldview became unmoored from Heaven by the Promethean impulse that this term lost its directionality.

I have previously produced a reading of Lings’ excellent chapter on freedom and equality here. I should also note that I am aware that some serious doubt has been cast on Letby’s guilt since her conviction. I don’t know if there is any substance to these doubts, but should she transpire to be innocent, this would not detract from the rhetorical thrust of what I have stated here.

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Schuon’s Perspective

We will answer this question by drawing on the writings of Frithjof Schuon. Other than in Castes and Races (1982), Schuon did not write systematically about socio-political matters. Particularly with regard to politics, his views can only be gleaned from brief comments scattered throughout his corpus. Following Acharya and Buzan (2009), we may call this “pre-theory” – ideas that have yet to be systematized, in writing at least, into a methodical single statement that could be considered a theory. I shall offer a reconstruction of what Schuon had to say about one of the foundational questions of modern political theory – that of individualism versus collectivism – before concluding with some broader thoughts on the issue from a Perennialist perspective.

Schuon provides a more nuanced and complex take than the simple binary opposition that we find in modern political thought. He writes:

Love of God is higher than love for man; in a distantly analogous way, love for the collectivity takes precedence over love for the individual. The collective interest comes before individual interest if both interests are of the same order, or if the parties concerned are qualitatively equivalent; this means that the collectivity must be of the same quality as the individual either by the fact of its totality or by reason of a specific quality – a caste for example; in no case does the purely quantitative collectivity come before the qualitative individual. . . . Society comes before the individual, if need be, as the norm comes before the exception, not as quantity crushes quality—which implies, precisely, that society should be organized with a view to man’s spiritual welfare. (2005, pp. 105-8)

Schuon sees this opposition through the lens of another, more foundational, polarity that is key to the Perennialist perspective – that of quality and quantity. He gives priority to the collective over the individual but, more than this, he elevates the qualitative over the quantitative. This means that the collective takes precedence over the individual only when they are “of the same order” – which is to say that the quantitative collective takes precedence over the quantitative individual, while the qualitative individual takes precedence over the quantitative collective. This, in turn, implies that the qualitative collective takes precedence over the qualitative individual. This can be visualized through the diagrams below:

Quantitative Individuals and Collectives vs Qualitative Individuals and Collectives

All of this doubtlessly requires some unpacking. What does Schuon mean by “quantitative” and “qualitative” individuals and collectives (or, in Schuon’s terms, “collectivities”)? A full exposition of these distinctions can be found in René Guénon’s Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (2004). For our present purposes, it is sufficient to state that what is qualitative refers to that which exists on a measure of value leading up to the Absolute. In other words, what partakes – to a greater degree – in the plenitude of Ultimate Reality is, to that extent, qualitatively superior. The quantitative, on the other hand, is a measure of mere number. Quantitative superiority consists in numerical superiority. Modernity, with its materialism, recognizes only quantitative measure as a value. Though modernity may talk of qualitative differences, this is altogether incoherent in the absence of an Absolute that is the sole touchstone for determining qualitative value.

Quantity is subordinate to quality because the former is ontologically dependent on the latter. Quality can exist free from any quantitative dimensions, but quantity is unintelligible in the absence of quality. For this reason, we find that Ultimate Reality is sometimes expressed, in Tradition, as 0 – that which transcends any quantitative aspects. Examples include the Buddhist notion of śūnyatā (‘emptiness’) and the Dao which “produces the one, the one produces the two, the two produces the three, and the three produces the ten thousand things” (Dàodéjīng, Chapter 42) – the Dao is anterior even to “the one”. We also find this insight corroborated in the Hindu conception of Nirguna Brahman, or what Guénon calls “Non-Being”. The following diagram, taken from Guénon’s The Symbolism of the Cross (2004b), may illustrate this point more clearly.

Indeed, it is only with reference to the vertical axis of quality that allows us to make legitimate statements of preference at the horizontal level of quantity. This is because quantity can never be completely divorced from quality (as expressed in the saying “quantity has a quality all of its own”). Accordingly, it is only by virtue of objective qualities that we can have preference over different numerical sums. In other words, preferring the numerically greater over the numerically lesser, or vice versa, is only possible by way of a qualitative referent.

In light of the above, how are we to understand the difference between quantitative and qualitative individuals and collectives?

The quantitative individual is a human subject considered, simply, as a single instance of the class ‘human’. By contrast, the qualitative individual is determined by intangible or non-quantifiable attributes. Properly understood, this refers to the level of development in an individual’s soul; what one might call “the spark of the Infinite” that is inherent to every human subject. It is the degree to which this divine element has been realized in each person that determines the qualitative distinctions between them (and which is also the basis of all legitimate hierarchy). Indeed, the etymology of the word hierarchy reveals that only that which conforms to the divine can truly be said to constitute a “sacred order”. By the same token, the qualitative dimension of even the most degraded individual – in whose hearts Heaven’s light shines but dimly – remains the cornerstone of all human dignity. It is on this basis that kindness, or “charity” as Schuon would say, can be extended to even the vilest person.

This contrast between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of a human being finds a parallel in Jacques Maritain’s distinction between the individual and the person (1946). Schuon’s nomenclature, though, arguably possesses greater conceptual clarity. Differentiating quality from quantity allows for an illuminating symmetry that is lost in Maritain’s terminology, and thus better highlights that what is under discussion here are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Schuon’s terms are also more accurate. Maritain’s use of terms opposes the person to the individual, suggesting that ‘the person’ is not ‘an individual’. When speaking of Maritain’s person (Schuon’s qualitative individual), we have in mind an indivisible instance of the class human, as opposed to the collective with its constituent components. It would be etymologically unsupportable to say that the person is not an individual human. For these reasons, Schuon’s terms are preferable to those of Maritain.

The quantitative collective is simply an aggregate of quantitative individuals. The qualitative collective, however, is the collective as a vehicle for the Divine will, that is to say a collective that is living according to a “sacred law” (2008, p.17). It may be permissible to borrow the word umat from Malay to denote a qualitative collective. Umat derives from the familiar Arabic word ummah, but rather than referring solely to Muslim believers, umat in Malay designates believers of any faith as a whole.

The quantitative individual is subordinated to the quantitative collective because, as indicated previously, the collective outweighs the individual in quantitative terms. For example, the wealth of the whole is of greater importance than that of the individual. An argument could be made, on this basis, for the redistribution of wealth in cases where it is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals at the cost of the majority’s immiseration.

A qualitative individual is superordinate to the quantitative collective because the spiritual dimension transcends quantifiable matter. To give a contemporary example – consider religious minorities in a modern state. Setting aside the case of identitarian and/or fundamentalist heretics, an argument could be made that even a Traditional Muslim or Jew (or indeed Christian!) who adheres to their faith is disruptive to the equilibrium of a modern Western society.

The self-segregation of Orthodox Jews or Muslims, or the non-conformity of such people on issues like homosexuality, may well be destabilizing for the majority. In such cases, the interests of the collective are quantitative[1], while those of the individuals are qualitative, and so the latter take precedence. It may be disruptive that the only Jew in a given collective insists on observing the Sabbath, or that the sole Muslim prays five times a day and fasts during Ramadan. Nonetheless, it is imperative that such a believer cleaves to what God demands of them.

Just so, the qualitative individual must be, as a rule, subordinated to the qualitative collective. To use the previously given example, let us suppose that a Christian is living in an Islamic society rather than a modern one. As sometimes happens, should the Feast of the Assumption occur during Ramadan, a Christian ought to conform to the collectivity in which they are living and avoid conspicuous celebration of the Feast. Similarly, it may be said that the execution of al-Hallaj and the persecution of Meister Eckhart were legitimate from the perspective of preventing spiritual confusion within the qualitative community, without having to question the authenticity of these sages’ spiritual attainments.

A further nuance may be added by noting that the welfare of the same individual or collective considered quantitatively or qualitatively need not necessarily coincide. As has been observed by Mark Perry (2000), this is why people condemned to death may receive pastoral care without religious authorities interceding for their pardon. In recognition of their dignity as creatures “made in the image of God”, even the worst offender is worthy of receiving the gift of grace. This consideration of the criminal operates on a qualitatively different level from the need to deter would-be offenders, which is aimed at preserving the welfare of a quantitative collective. Here, the priest is concerned with aiding the individual as qualitative entity (i.e. as regards his soul) but not with aiding him a quantitative entity (i.e. his material body). In the latter case, the interests of the quantitative collective take precedent.

Ineradicable Tension Between the Individual and Collective

Schuon’s understanding of the relationship between individuals and the collective is still more refined than suggested by the foregoing hierarchy of priorities. Schuon recognizes an abiding tension between the legitimate interests of the individual and of the collective:

Religions can reform the individual man with his consent—and it is never the function of religion to make up for the absence of this consent—but no one can bring about a fundamental change in that “thousand-headed hydra” which is collective man, and this is why nothing of the kind has ever been the aim of any religion; all that a revealed Law can do is curb the egoism and ferocity of society by channelling its tendencies more or less effectively. The goal of religion is to transmit to man a symbolic, yet adequate, image of the reality that concerns him, according to his real needs and ultimate interests, and to provide him with the means of surpassing himself and realizing his highest destiny; this destiny can never be of this world, given the nature of our spirit. The secondary goal of religion—with a view to the principal goal—is to make possible a sufficient equilibrium in the life of the collectivity or to safeguard, within the framework of the natural malice of men, a maximum of spiritual opportunities; if society must be protected against the individual, the individual for his part must be protected against society. (2006, p. 10)

In other words, the raison d’etre of a society is to facilitate the flourishing of religion which, in turn, seeks to foster spiritual realisation; and the latter can only be attained individually. A collective may take precedence only because it represents a plurality of individuals. However, there is no room here for the modern idea of “the People” standing over and above individuals who comprise a collective to which they may be sacrificed if needs must.

To take a collectivity as such as an intellectual norm means the progressive strangulation of intelligence. (2008, p. 17)

Furthermore, Schuon affirms that this persistent tension between the interests of the collective and the individual are of a piece with the duḥkha or ‘unsatisfactoriness’ (to use the Buddhist term) that characterizes this imperfect world.

A collectivity, as such, is tantamount to a principle of thickening and hardening, whence the impossibility for any collectivity to avoid abusing legitimate rights. Abuses are in human nature, especially when this nature is expressed in a collectivity; in this case, certain abuses become habitual and seemingly normal. There exists no collectivity, even a sacred one, that does not commit some abuses; to renounce a traditional collectivity for the sake of suppressing abuses is to renounce the social order; it is to renounce the better for the worse, as is quite obvious. Rights that are defensive for an isolated individual become aggressive for a collectivity. It is impossible for the sacred Law to alter the constants of human nature; it can only neutralize them to the degree sufficient for safeguarding the spiritual life. (2008, p. 17)

Thus, one should not expect perfect justice for every individual, even in collectives that conform themselves entirely to a revealed law. It is perhaps for this reason that, even in the most Traditional ambience, there have been holy men and women who have felt the need to withdraw from others altogether (e.g., the desert ascetics of the early church). Such civilizations – where virgin nature still abounded and the reach of political power was not yet ubiquitous – were able to afford sequestered havens for such revered recluses. To live a contemplative life apart from society has become much more difficult, and perhaps impossible outside pre-existing institutions like those of the Church – as the biography of Theodore Kaczyinski attests. All of this gainsays Maritain’s assertion that there is no conflict between the individual and collective[2].

Nominalism

At this point, it may be helpful to contrast Schuon’s perspective with that of Aleksander Dugin. Dugin is in agreement with the Perennialists regarding the onset of modernity, which began with the triumph of the nominalists in their battle with the realists during the late medieval period. To fully appreciate the nuances of this debate, a brief summary is needed.

Traditionally, Western metaphysics was realist. Realism held that categories exist as universals outside the mind. What this means is that when, for example, we speak of men and women, we are referring to real metaphysical forms that represent man and woman as such. These are called “universals” in that every individual man and woman in the world is a particular instance of these transcendent realities. Each person participates in a universal which lends its qualities to beings that partake of its essence. Universals or “forms” (as Plato described them) exist at a higher ontological level than the material plane of phenomenal reality in which we find ourselves. To give an example: red, triangle, stone and wood are all universals that exist in a metaphysical order of reality. In our world of corporeal embodiment, we will encounter particular triangles, some made of red stone and others of red wood. The former are simultaneously instances of the universal forms ‘red’, ‘stone’ and ‘triangle’, while the latter manifest the forms ‘red’, ‘wood’ and ‘triangle’. They acquire their red-ness, stone-ness or wood-ness and triangle-ness from their participation in these universals.

Nominalists rejected universals, believing that they have no reality outside of the mind; that is, they simply serve as convenient labels to designate groups of particulars sharing similar traits. Despite what the modern reader may be inclined to think, nominalists did not deny universals out of a sense of incredulity at the existence of metaphysical entities. Indeed, such thinkers were actually Christian. Rather, their resistance to these realities was borne out of a theological conviction.

The nominalists believed that any claim to a thing’s immutability contradicted the omnipotence of God. Universals, in their view, undermined omnipotence because their existence implied a changeless dimension to the manifested order of reality that God could not violate; whereas each existing particular was altogether subject to God’s will, which could change at any time. God cannot be constrained in any way, and therefore nothing fixed can be said regarding his nature. If God so willed it, sinners could be sent to Heaven and the sinless to Hell. The consequence of this is that God becomes completely unknowable, such that the epistemological focus of the intellectual elite shifts from being to becoming. In this transition were sown the seeds of modernity which, unlike medieval nominalism, has become completely profane.

Dugin and Dasein

Dugin is in agreement that modernity begins with the triumph of nominalism. His understanding of its significance is, however, quite distinctive. For Dugin, nominalism is the root of individualism, which he equates with liberalism. Accordingly, the denial of universals amounts to a denial of the validity of collective identities. Tradition then is equated with collectivism. This sets the stage for Dugin’s defence of communism and fascism as the last bastions of collectivism in modernity, as well as his own Heideggerian civilizationism.

Dugin’s understanding, compared to that of the Perennialists, is far too simplistic. Unlike Schuon, he does not recognise the distinction between qualitative and quantitative phenomena in evaluating individualism and collectivism. Behind Dugin’s failure to do so is, I suspect, a wilful misunderstanding of the significance of nominalist individualism.

Dugin reduces individualism and collectivism to their purely secular dimensions. That is to say, he implicitly acknowledges only quantitative individualism and collectivism. He regards nominalism as objectionable principally for its socio-political significance, not for its metaphysical implications. In the context of nominalism, Dugin misunderstands ‘individualism’ as merely a rejection of the reality of collective essences, and not the “negation of any principle higher than individuality, and the consequent restriction of civilization, in all its provinces, to purely human elements”. (Guénon 2004c, p 71).

The individualism that is properly to be objected to in nominalism is its denial of the transcendent essence within each individual. It is this unitive principle – the ‘Self’ in Vedantic language – that forms the basis for Schuon’s qualitative individualism. I mentioned my suspicion that this is an intentional ‘misunderstanding’ on Dugin’s part because this error is clearly detailed in Chapter 5 of René Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World (2004c), a work with which Dugin is familiar.

Dugin’s over-simplification loses sight of both the deeper significance of the nominalist heterodoxy, and the possibility of a legitimate and qualitative individuality. What is more, through a sleight of hand, Dugin conflates the differences between universals and modern collective constructs, grouping both under the category of “collective identities”.

Ontologically speaking, and at the risk of repeating ourselves, universals exist on the metaphysical level. That is, their being surpasses the conditioned material reality. Sex, caste, umat, and human beings themselves are collectives that have an origin which is anterior to human agency. This does not mean, though, that all collectives can claim such a genesis, as Dugin implies. There are, of course, collectives of a purely human nature, which may be properly characterised as ‘social constructs’. My readers are likely to react adversely to hearing that something is a mere social construct or an abstraction. This is entirely understandable, given that modernist ideologies have thoroughly abused this notion. As Schuon observes:

But whereas with the medieval Nominalists only the general qualities as such were regarded as abstract, there is in modern thinking a significant abuse of the ideas of both the abstract and the concrete, the one error obviously being connected to the other: all reality not physically or psychologically tangible—although perfectly accessible to pure intellection—is described as being “abstract” with a more or less disparaging intention, as though it were a matter of distinguishing between dream, or even deception, and reality or healthiness of mind. Substance—that which exists of itself—is regarded as “abstract”, and the accidental as “concrete”; it is imagined that an idea of the supra- sensible is obtainable exclusively through abstraction, by prescinding from contingencies; while having a certain meaning on the logical plane, this is false at the level of direct intellection. (2009, p. 16)

To reiterate, this does not mean, pace Dugin, that there are no “abstractions”. To give a trivial example – consider youth sub-cultures like the hippies, goths or emos. Would Dugin have us believe there is a Platonic form of the hippy? Or are they more likely to be purely human creations, quintessentially modern in their lack of a transcendent basis. Such an entirely quantitative collective is called “artificial” by Schuon:

The problem of castes leads us to open a parenthesis here: how is the position or quality of the modern industrial worker to be defined? In the first place, the answer is that “the worker’s world” is a wholly artificial creation due to machines and the popular diffusion of scientific information connected with their use; in other words, machines infallibly create the artificial human type called “proletarian” or, rather, they create a proletariat for here it is essentially a question of a quantitative collectivity and not of a natural caste, namely one that is based on a particular individual nature. (1999, p. 90)

So, we can see how Dugin’s failure to properly evaluate the errors of nominalism lead him to reify artificial, quantitative categories like class and nation. Indeed, his error is more egregious still. As I have detailed extensively elsewhere, communism, fascism and Dugin’s own preferred “fourth political theory” all offer some conception of “the People” as something which is not reducible to its component individuals but, rather, as something that stands over and above them. This flies in the face of Guénon’s insight that “the community is nothing more than the sum of the individuals” (2004c, p 97).

The People are treated as a universal by Dugin. In doing so, a foundational principle of metaphysics is violated; namely, that the greater cannot come from the lesser. He erroneously assumes that humanity can create an entity that exists independently and above concrete individuals. This is not so much an opposition to nominalist individualism, as a perverse inversion of the doctrine of forms. As Tage Lindbom has demonstrated (1996, p 58-65), Heidegger’s dasein is entirely anthropocentric without a transcendent dimension, for it belongs to the quantitative order. Dugin’s invitation to imagine the People on the basis of dasein does not, therefore, address – but only repeats – the errors of communist and fascist collectivism.

Harmony vs Unity

Modernity deifies the collective while failing to do justice to the spiritual dignity of the individual. It seeks the earthly perfection of humanity in the here below, rather than individually in the hereafter. Thus, modern collectivism’s total negation of the individual, in any form, gives rise to its social conception of unity. This is to be contrasted with the Traditional ideal of harmony, which is distinguished from unity in that the former takes into account qualitative differences between individuals.

This can be illustrated with reference to an orchestra. Unity would entail each instrument playing off the same sheet of music. Harmony, on the other hand, allows each instrument to be played in a different but mutually complementary way. Recalling what Schuon wrote above, no performance can do perfect justice to every instrument, but harmony allows optimal conditions for each to find fulfilment in doing what is proper to its nature.

Modern thought dispenses entirely with the qualitative, in order to first dissolve and then solidify society. Given its anti-Traditional character, modern individualism erodes formerly legitimate collectives. Modern collectivism, on the other hand, has a counter-Traditional character; which is to say that, having been subverted by modern individualism, societies have subsequently been disfigured by modern collectivism into a parody of what they once were. This is much like melting an ice-sculpture and then re-freezing the puddle that remains. It replaces real universals with counterfeits, supplants harmony in favour of unity, and erases the individual into oblivion. Ironically, perhaps, anthropocentric collectivism becomes more inhumane the more thoroughgoingly it is applied.

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Reference List

Acharya, A. and Buzan, B. (2009). ‘Why Is There No Non-Western International Relations Theory? An Introduction’ in Acharya, A. and Buzan, B. (Eds.) in Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia, Routledge: London, UK.

Guénon, R. (2004). The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, NY.

Guénon, R. (2004b). The Symbolism of the Cross. Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, NY.

Guénon, R. (2004c). The Crisis of the Modern World. Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, NY

Lindbom, T. (1996). The Myth of Democracy. Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Maritain, J. (1946). “The person and the common good”, The Review of Politics, Vol. 8 (4): pp. 419-455.

Perry, M. (2000). On Awakening & Remembering: To Know Is To Be. Fons Vitae: Louisville, KY.

Schuon, F. (1982). Castes and Races, Perennial Books: Bedfont, Middlesex.

Schuon, F. (1999). Language of the Self: Essays on Perennial Psychology, World Wisdom: Bloomington, ID.

Schuon, F. (2005). Stations of Wisdom. World Wisdom: Bloomington, ID.

Schuon, F. (2006). Light on the Ancient Worlds: A New Translation with Selected Letters, World Wisdom: Bloomington, ID.

Schuon, F. (2008). Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts: A New Translation with Selected Letters. World Wisdom: Bloomington, ID.

Schuon, F. (2009). Logic and Transcendence, World Wisdom: Bloomington, ID.

[1] It could be argued in this case that the interests of the collective are qualitative because they pertain to commonly held, albeit secular, values. This, however, would be a misunderstanding. What makes the concerns of the collective in this case quantitative is the quantitative nature of the collective – not the nature of its interests as such.

[2] We see, then, that the true conception of political life is neither exclusively personalist nor exclusively communal. As we wrote many years ago, it is both personalist and communal in such a way that these two terms call for and imply one another. Hence, there is nothing more illusory than to pose the problem of the person and the common good in terms of opposition. In reality, it is posed in terms of reciprocal subordination and mutual implication. (1946, p. 444)