Saving a Child’s Mind

Given the current attack on the life of the mind of a child by a trans activist educational system and its abettors (teachers), seeking to to destroy the innocense of children that they may readily be transformed into mutilated eunuchs—we thought it would be best to return to the ideas of Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), the man who created education for the very young, which he labeled Kindergarten (a garden for children).

What follows is in two parts: first a brief life of Froebel by Nora Archibald Smith (1859–1934), the American writer and education, and then the words of wisdom from the man himself, taken from his letters and published works.

Part I: The Life of Friedrich Froebel

It was Froebel who said, “The clearer the thread that runs through our lives backward to our childhood, the clearer will be our onward glance to the goal;” and in the fragment of autobiography he has left us, he illustrates forcibly the truth of his own saying. The motherless baby who plays alone in the village pastor’s quiet house, the dreamy child who wanders solitary in the high-walled garden; the thoughtful lad, neglected, misunderstood, who forgets the harsh realities of life in pondering the mysteries of the flowers, the contradictions of existence, and the dogmas of orthodox theology; who decides in early boyhood that the pleasures of the senses are without enduring influence and therefore on no account to be eagerly pursued;—these presentments of himself, which he summons up for us from the past, show the vividness of his early recollections and indicate the course which the stream of his life is to run.

The coldness and injustice of the new mother who assumed control of the household when he was four years old, his isolation from other children, the merely casual notice he received from the busy father absorbed in his parish work, all tended to turn inward the tide of his mental and spiritual life. He studied himself, not only because it was the bent of his nature, but because he lacked outside objects of interest; and to this early habit of introspection we owe many of the valuable features of his educational philosophy. Whoever has learned thoroughly to understand one child, has conquered a spot of firm ground on which to rest while he studies the world of children; and because the great teacher realized this truth, because he longed to give to others the means of development denied to himself, he turns for us the heart-leaves of his boyhood.

It would appear that Froebel’s characteristics were strongly marked and unusual from the beginning. Called by every one “a moon-struck child” in Oberweissbach, the village of his birth, he was just as unanimously considered “an old fool” when, crowned with the experience of seventy years, he played with the village children on the green hills of Thuringia. The intensity of his inward life, the white heat of his convictions, his absolute blindness to any selfish idea or aim, his enthusiasm, the exaltation of his spiritual nature, all furnish so many cogent reasons why the people of any day or of any community should have failed to understand him, and scorned what they could not comprehend. It is the old story of the seers and the prophets repeated as many times as they appear; for “these colossal souls,” as Emerson said, “require a long focal distance to be seen.”

At ten years old the sensitive boy was fortunately removed from the uncongenial atmosphere of the parental household; and in his uncle’s home he spent five free and happy years, being apprenticed at the end of this time to a forester in his native Thuringian woods. Then followed a year’s course in the University of Jena, and four years spent in the study of farming, in clerical work of various kinds, and in land-surveying. All these employments, however, Froebel himself felt to be merely provisional; for like the hazel wand in the diviner’s hand, his instinct was blindly seeking through these restless years the well-spring of his life.

In Frankfort, where he had gone intending to study architecture, Destiny touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and knew her. Through a curious combination of circumstances he gained employment in Herr Gruner’s Model School, and it was found at once that he was what the Germans love to call “a teacher by the grace of God.” The first time he met his class of boys he tells us that he felt inexpressibly happy; the hazel wand had found the waters and was fixed at last. From this time on, all the events of his life were connected with his experience as a teacher. Impelled as soon as he had begun his work by a desire for more effective methods, he visited Yverdon, then the centre of educational thought, and studied with Pestalozzi. He went again in 1808, accompanied by three pupils, and spent two years there, alternately studying and teaching.

There was a year of lectures at Göttingen after this, and one at the University of Berlin, accompanied by unceasing study and research both in literary and scientific lines; but in the fateful year 1813 this quiet student life was broken in upon, for impelled by strong moral conviction, Froebel joined Baron von Lützow’s famous volunteer corps, formed to harass the French by constant skirmishes and to encourage the smaller German States to rise against Napoleon.

No thirst for glory prompted this action, but a lofty conception of the office of the educator. How could any young man capable of bearing arms, Froebel says, become a teacher of children whose Fatherland he had refused to defend? how could he in after years incite his pupils to do something noble, something calling for sacrifice and unselfishness, without exposing himself to their derision and contempt? The reasoning was perfect, and he made practice follow upon the heels of theory as closely as he had always done since he became master of his fate.

After the Peace of Paris he settled down for a time to a quiet life in the mineralogical museum at the University of Berlin, his duties being the care, arrangement, and investigation of crystals. Surrounded thus by the exquisite formations whose development according to law is so perfect, whose obedience to the promptings of an inward ideal so complete, he could not but learn from their unconscious ethics to look into the depths of his own nature, and there recognize more clearly the purpose it was intended to work out.

In 1816 he quietly gave up his position, and taking as pupils five of his nephews, three of whom were fatherless, he entered upon his life work, the first step in which was the carrying out of his plan for a “Universal German Educational Institute.” He was without money, of course, as he had always been and always would be—his hands were made for giving, not for getting; he slept in a barn on a wisp of straw while arranging for his first school at Griesheim; but outward things were so little real to him in comparison with the life of the spirit, that bodily privations seemed scarcely worth considering. The school at Keilhau, to which he soon removed, the institutions later established in Wartensee and Willisau, the orphanage in Burgdorf, all were most successful educationally, but, it is hardly necessary to say, were never a source of profit to their head and founder.

Through the twenty succeeding years, busy as he was in teaching, in lecturing, in writing, he was constantly shadowed by dissatisfaction with the foundation upon which he was building. A nebulous idea for the betterment of things was floating before him; but it was not until 1836 that it appeared to his eyes as a “definite truth.” This definite truth, the discovery of his old age, was of course the kindergarten; and from this time until the end, all other work was laid aside, and his entire strength given to the consummate flower of his educational thought.

The first kindergarten was opened in 1837 at Blankenburg (where a memorial school is now conducted), and in 1850 the institution at Marienthal for the training of kindergartners was founded, Froebel remaining at its head until his death two years after.

With the exception of that remarkable book, The Education of Man (1826), his most important literary work was done after 1836; Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, the first great European contribution to the subject of child-study, appearing from 1837 to 1840 in the form of separate essays, and the Mutter-und-Kose Lieder (Mother-Play) in 1843. Many of his educational aphorisms and occasional speeches were preserved by his great disciple the Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow in her Reminiscences of Froebel; and though two most interesting volumes of his correspondence have been published, there remain a number of letters, as well as essays and educational sketches, not yet rendered into English.

Froebel’s literary style is often stiff and involved, its phrases somewhat labored, and its substance exceedingly difficult to translate with spirit and fidelity; yet after all, his mannerisms are of a kind to which one easily becomes accustomed, and the kernel of his thought when reached is found well worth the trouble of removing a layer of husk. He had always an infinitude of things to say, and they were all things of purpose and of meaning; but in writing, as well as in formal speaking, the language to clothe the thought came to him slowly and with difficulty. Yet it appears that in friendly private intercourse he spoke fluently, and one of his students reports that in his classes he was often “overpowering and sublime, the stream of his words pouring forth like fiery rain.”

It is probable that in daily life Froebel was not always an agreeable house-mate; for he was a genius, a reformer, and an unworldly enthusiast, believing in himself and in his mission with all the ardor of a heart centred in one fixed purpose. He was quite intolerant of those who doubted or disbelieved in his theories, as well as of those who, believing, did not carry their faith into works. The people who stood nearest him and devoted themselves to the furthering of his ideas slept on no bed of roses, certainly; but although he sometimes sacrificed their private interests to his cause, it must not be forgotten that he first laid himself and all that he had upon the same altar. His nature was one that naturally inspired reverence and loyalty, and drew from his associates the most extraordinary devotion and self-sacrifice. Then, as now, women were peculiarly attracted by his burning enthusiasm, his prophetic utterances, and his lofty views of their sex and its mission; and then, as now, the almost fanatical zeal of his followers is perhaps to be explained by the fact that he gives a new world-view to his students,—one that produces much the same effect upon the character as the spiritual exaltation called “experiencing religion.”

He was twice married, in each case to a superior woman of great gifts of mind and character, and both helpmates joyfully took up a life of privation and care that they might be associated with him and with his work. Those memorable words spoken of our Washington—”Heaven left him childless that a nation might call him father,” are even more applicable to Froebel, for his wise and tender fatherhood extends to all the children of the world. When he passed through the village streets of his own country, little ones came running from every doorstep; the babies clinging to his knees and the older ones hanging about his neck and refusing to leave the dear play-master, as they called him. So the kindergartners love to think of him to-day—the tall spare figure, the long hair, the wise, plain, strong-featured face, the shining eyes, and the little ones clustering about him as they clustered about another Teacher in Galilee, centuries ago.

Froebel’s educational creed cannot here be cited at length, but some of its fundamental articles are:

  • The education of the child should begin with its birth, and should be threefold, addressing the mental, spiritual, and physical natures.
  • It should be continued as it has begun, by appealing to the heart and the emotions as the starting-point of the human soul.
  • There should be sequence, orderly progression, and one continuous purpose throughout the entire scheme of education, from kindergarten to university.
  • Education should be conducted according to nature, and should be a free, spontaneous growth—a development from within, never a prescription from without.
  • The training of the child should be conducted by means of the activities, needs, desires, and delights, which are the common heritage of childhood.
  • The child should be led from the beginning to feel that one life thrills through every manifestation of the universe, and that he is a part of all that is.
  • The object of education is the development of the human being in the totality of his powers as a child of nature, a child of man, and a child of God.

These principles of Froebel’s, many of them the products of his own mind, others the pure gold of educational currency upon which he has but stamped his own image, are so true and so far-reaching that they have already begun to modify all education and are destined to work greater magic in the future. The great teacher’s place in history may be determined, by-and-by, more by the wonderful uplift and impetus he gave to the whole educational world, than by the particular system of child-culture in connection with which he is best known to-day.

Judged by ordinary worldly standards, his life was an unsuccessful one, full of trials and privations, and empty of reward. His death-blow was doubtless struck by the prohibition of kindergartens in Prussia in 1851, an edict which remained nine years in force. His strength had been too sorely tried to resist this final crushing misfortune, and he passed away the following year. His body was borne to the grave through a heavy storm of wind and rain that seemed to symbolize the vicissitudes of his earthly days, while as a forecast of the future the sun shone out at the last moment, and the train of mourners looked back to see the low mound irradiated with glory.

In Thuringia, where the great child-lover was born, the kindergartens, his best memorials, cluster thickly now; and on the face of the cliffs that overhang the bridle-path across the Glockner mountain may be seen in great letters the single word Froebel, hewn deep into the solid rock.

(Nora Archibald Smith)

Part II: Excerpts from Froebel’s Work

The Right of the Child

All that does not grow out of one’s inner being, all that is not one’s own original feeling and thought, or that at least does not awaken that, oppresses and defaces the individuality of man instead of calling it forth, and nature becomes thereby a caricature. Shall we never cease to stamp human nature, even in childhood, like coins? to overlay it with foreign images and foreign superscriptions, instead of letting it develop itself and grow into form according to the law of life planted in it by God the Father, so that it may be able to bear the stamp of the Divine, and become an image of God?…

This theory of love is to serve as the highest goal and polestar of human education, and must be attended to in the germ of humanity, the child, and truly in his very first impulses. The conquest of self-seeking egoism is the most important task of education; for selfishness isolates the individual from all communion, and kills the life-giving principle of love. Therefore the first object of education is to teach to love, to break up the egoism of the individual, and to lead him from the first stage of communion in the family through all the following stages of social life to the love of humanity, or to the highest self-conquest by which man rises to Divine unity….

Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness (the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably connected; that they form a unit; and that God and nature have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands. Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive part in human history, because great battles and the political organization of nations were not suited to their powers. But at the present stage of culture, nothing is more pressingly required than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals, and therefore of the whole nation, depends in great part upon the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of the problems of the time, problems that men are not able to solve. If but one half of the work be accomplished, then our epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As educators of mankind, the women of the present time have the highest duty to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely more than the beloved mothers of human beings….

But I will protect childhood, that it may not as in earlier generations be pinioned, as in a strait-jacket, in garments of custom and ancient prescription that have become too narrow for the new time. I shall show the way and shape the means, that every human soul may grow of itself, out of its own individuality. But where shall I find allies and helpers if not in women, who as mothers and teachers may put my idea in execution? Only intellectually active women can and will do it. But if these are to be loaded with the ballast of dead knowledge that can take no root in the unprepared ground, if the fountains of their own original life are to be choked up with it, they will not follow my direction nor understand the call of the time for the new task of their sex, but will seek satisfaction in empty superficiality.

To learn to comprehend nature in the child—is not that to comprehend one’s own nature and the nature of mankind? And in this comprehension is there not involved a certain degree of comprehension of all things else? Women cannot learn and take into themselves anything higher and more comprehensive. It should therefore at least be the beginning, and the love of childhood should be awakened in the mind (and in a wider sense, this is the love of humanity), so that a new, free generation of men can grow up by right care.

(From Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel, by Baroness B. von Marenholtz-Bülow), (1877).

Evolution

What shall we learn from our yearning look into the heart of the flower and the eye of the child? This truth: Whatever develops, be it into flower or tree or man, is from the beginning implicitly that which it has the power to become. The possibility of perfect manhood is what you read in your child’s eye, just as the perfect flower is prophesied in the bud, or the giant oak in the tiny acorn. A presentiment that the ideal or generic human being slumbers, dreams, stirs in your unconscious infant—this it is, O mother, which transfigures you as you gaze upon him. Strive to define to yourself what is that generic ideal which is wrapped up in your child. Surely, as your child—or in other words, as child of man—he is destined to live in the past and future as well as in the present. His earthly being implies a past heaven; his birth makes a present heaven; in his soul he holds a future heaven. This threefold heaven, which you also bear within you, shines out on you through your child’s eyes.

The beast lives only in the present. Of past and future he knows naught. But to man belong not only the present, but also the future and the past. His thought pierces the heaven of the future, and hope is born. He learns that all human life is one life; that all human joys and sorrows are his joys and sorrows, and through participation enters the present heaven—the heaven of love. He turns his mind towards the past, and out of retrospection wrests a vigorous faith. What soul could fail to conquer an invincible trust in the pure, the good, the holy, the ideally human, the truly Divine, if it would look with single eye into its own past, into the past of history? Could there be a man in whose soul such a contemplation of the past would fail to blossom into devout insight, into self-conscious and self-comprehending faith? Must not such a retrospect unveil the truth? Must not the beauty of the unveiled truth allure him to Divine doing, Divine living? All that is high and holy in human life meets in that faith which is born of the unveiling of a heaven that has always been; in that hope born of a vision of the heaven that shall be; in that love which creates a heaven in the eternal Now. These three heavens shine out upon you through your child’s eye. The presentiment that he carries these three heavens within him transfigures your countenance as you gaze upon him. Cherish this premonition, for thereby you will help him to make his life a musical chord wherein are blended the three notes of faith, hope, and love. These celestial virtues will link his life with the Divine life through which all life is one—with the God who is the supernal fountain of life, light, and love….

Higher and more important than the cultivation of man’s outer ear, is the culture of that inner sense of harmony whereby the soul learns to perceive sweet accord in soundless things, and to discern within itself harmonies and discords. The importance of wakening the inner ear to this music of the soul can scarcely be exaggerated. Learning to hear it within, the child will strive to give it outer form and expression; and even if in such effort he is only partially successful, he will gain thereby the power to appreciate the more successful effort of others. Thus enriching his own life by the life of others, he solves the problem of development. How else were it possible within the quickly fleeting hours of mortal life to develop our being in all directions, to fathom its depths, scale its heights, measure its boundaries? What we are, what we would be, we must learn to recognize in the mirror of all other lives. By the effort of each, and the recognition of all, the Divine man is revealed in humanity….

Against the bright light which shines on the smooth white wall is thrust a dark object, and straightway appears the form which so delights the child. This is the outward fact; what is the truth which through this fact is dimly hinted to the prophetic mind? Is it not the creative and transforming power of light, that power which brings form and color out of chaos, and makes the beauty which gladdens our hearts? Is it not more than this—a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the spiritual fact that our darkest experiences may project themselves in forms that will delight and bless, if in our hearts shines the light of God? The sternest crags, the most forbidding chasms, are beautiful in the mellow sunshine; while the fairest landscape loses all charm, and indeed ceases to be, when the light which created it is withdrawn. Is it not thus also with our lives? Yesterday, touched by the light of enthusiastic emotion, all our relationships seemed beautiful and blessed; to-day, when the glow of enthusiasm has faded, they oppress and repulse us. Only the conviction that it is the darkness within us which makes the darkness without, can restore the lost peace of our souls. Be it therefore, O mother, your sacred duty to make your darling early feel the working both of the outer and inner light. Let him see in one the symbol of the other, and tracing light and color to their source in the sun, may he learn to trace the beauty and meaning of his life to their source in God.

(From The Mottoes and Commentaries of Mother-Play), (1895). Translation of Susan E. Blow.

Aphorisms

I see in every child the possibility of a perfect man.

The child-soul is an ever-bubbling fountain in the world of humanity.

The plays of childhood are the heart-leaves of the whole future life.

Childish unconsciousness is rest in God.

From each object of nature and of life, there goes a path toward God.

Perfect human joy is also worship, for it is ordered by God.

The first groundwork of religious life is love—love to God and man—in the bosom of the family.

Childhood is the most important stage of the total development of man and of humanity.

Women must make of their educational calling a priestly office.

Isolation and exclusion destroy life; union and participation create life.

Without religious preparation in childhood, no true religion and no union with God is possible for men.

The tree germ bears within itself the nature of the whole tree; the human being bears in himself the nature of all humanity; and is not therefore humanity born anew in each child?

In the children lies the seed-corn of the future.

The lovingly cared for, and thereby steadily and strongly developed human life, also the cloudless child life, is of itself a Christ-like one.

In all things works one creative life, because the life of all things proceeds from one God.

Let us live with our children: so shall their lives bring peace and joy to us; so shall we begin to be and to become wise.

What boys and girls play in earliest childhood will become by-and-by a beautiful reality of serious life; for they expand into stronger and lovelier youthfulness by seeking on every side appropriate objects to verify the thoughts of their inmost souls.

This earliest age is the most important one for education, because the beginning decides the manner of progress and the end. If national order is to be recognized in later years as a benefit, childhood must first be accustomed to law and order, and therein find the means of freedom. Lawlessness and caprice must rule in no period of life, not even in that of the nursling.

The kindergarten is the free republic of childhood.

A deep feeling of the universal brotherhood of man—what is it but a true sense of our close filial union with God?

Man must be able to fail, in order to be good and virtuous; and he must be able to become a slave in order to be truly free.

My teachers are the children themselves, with all their purity, their innocence, their unconsciousness, and their irresistible claims; and I follow them like a faithful, trustful scholar.

A story told at the right time is like a looking-glass for the mind.

I wish to cultivate men who stand rooted in nature, with their feet in God’s earth, whose heads reach toward and look into the heavens; whose hearts unite the richly formed life of earth and nature, with the purity and peace of heaven—God’s earth and God’s heaven.

Featured: Poster for the American Library Association, by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1919.

About Dasha on “Tradition”: The Tears of our Resurrection

Dear friends! Dear participants of the Tradition Festival! Dear founders of the Daria Dugina Prize!

Unfortunately, due to circumstances, I was unable to attend the Tradition Festival this time, although I tried not to miss it before. Tradition is the main word in my life. It became the main and the last word in the life of my daughter, Dasha Dugina.

Only that for which people are ready to sacrifice their lives becomes valuable. Tradition is the highest value. It is what makes the Motherland the Motherland, the people the people, the Church the Church, and culture the culture.

I would like to say a few words about the Creative Award. This is a wonderful initiative. There is hardly a better way to honor her memory. After all, Dasha was the embodiment of creativity. She was a leap into the future. She lived in faith and hope. She was always looking forward and upward. Perhaps, she took it too steeply, as far as “up” is concerned… But her message lives on among us and is only becoming more and more distinct, focused and clear. Her message is an invitation to the Russian future. A future that has yet to come true.

Dasha always thought of herself as a project, as a burst of creative will. She was enflamed by philosophy, religion, politics, culture, and art. She lived so richly, so fully, precisely because she cared about everything. Hence such a range of her interests, her texts, her speeches, her creativity, her endeavors. She wanted very much during her lifetime that Russians would move, that our country and our culture would move from a standstill and take off.

She considered it her mission to live for Russia, and if she had to, to die for Russia. This is what she wrote in her Diaries, Topi i vysi moyego serdtsa (Drown and Rise, my Heart), which we have recently published. Dasha’s second philosophical book, Eskhatologicheskiy Optimizm (Eschatological Optimism) will be published soon—in several languages at once, because Dasha is remembered and loved in the world.

Living for Russia is her message, which should be passed on and on. Dasha’s award is more than a formal encouragement; it is a living vibrating impulse.

We have many wonderful true heroes, warriors, defenders, people of deep soul and pure heart. Some of them gave their lives for the Motherland. Some live with us now. The memory of every hero is sacred. And the memory of Dasha.

The fact is that Dasha is not just a model patriot and citizen, she is also the bearer of an incredible, though not yet fully revealed, only intended (but how intended!) spiritual potential. She sought to embody the grace of imperial Russia, the style of the Silver Age, and the deep interest in Neoplatonist philosophy with which she burned. Sincere and heartfelt Russian Orthodoxy and geopolitics. Modern avant-garde art—in music, theater, painting, film—and a tragic comprehension of the ontology of war. Sober and aristocratically restrained understanding of the fatal crisis of modernity and the fiery will to overcome it. This is eschatological optimism. To look into the eyes of misfortune and horror of modernity and to keep a luminous faith in God, His Mercy, His justice.

I wish that the memory of Dasha would not so much focus attention on the images of her lively, charming, filled-with-pure-energy girl’s life, but becomes a continuation of her ardor, the fulfillment of her plans, her far-reaching, pure imperial dreams.

Today it is clear to many that Dasha has objectively become our national hero. Poems and paintings, cantatas and songs, plays and theater productions are dedicated to her. Streets in towns and cities of Russia are named after her. A monument is being prepared for installation in Moscow, and possibly in other cities.

A young girl who had never taken part in hostilities, who had never called for violence or aggression, who was deep and smiling, naive and well-educated, was brutally murdered in front of her father’s eyes by a heartless, ruthless enemy—a Ukrainian terrorist who did it here, at the festival “Tradition,” not hesitating to involve her young daughter in the murder. She was sent to do this by the authorities in Kiev and the secret services of the Anglo-Saxon world—the staunch enemies of Tradition. A year ago, I gave a lecture here on “the Role of the Devil in History.” Dasha listened. So did the murderer. The Devil was listening to what I was saying about the Devil, preparing to do his diabolical work.

And sure enough, Dasha became immortal. Our people could not remain indifferent to this. And my tragedy, the tragedy of our family, Dasha’s friends, all those who communicated and cooperated with her, became the tragedy of all our people. And tears began to choke people—both those who knew this girl and those who heard about her for the first time.

And these are not simple tears. These are tears of our resurrection, of our purification, of our coming victory.

Dasha is becoming a symbol. She already is. But now it is important that the content of this symbol does not disappear, does not dissolve, does not fade away. It is important not only to preserve the memory of Dasha, but to continue her work. Because she had this Cause. Her Cause.

That is why this prize is so important, why it is important to work on the Daria Dugina Foundation, as suggested by my close and good friends Konstantin Malofeev, Eduard Boyakov and many others. Young philosophers, theologians, priests, musicians, politicians, scientists, poets, artists, journalists, military officers—all those who today are building the spiritual basis of the Russian World, reviving the depths and heights of our Empire. Dasha supports them, inspires them, helps them, protects them above all.

There are saints who help in certain circumstances—those in poverty, those in illness, those in wanderings, those in captivity. Even individual icons are distributed in God’s mercy in such a way that they care for people in different difficult, sometimes desperate situations. “Assuage my Sorrows” is the name of one of the images of the Mother of God. And there is one canon that is recited when it becomes impossible to live at all and everything collapses…..

Mother of God Assuage My Sorrows (a wonderworking icon, Church of St. Nikolaev Odrin Monastery, Karachev, Orlov province, ca. 1640).

And so are the protagonists. They are different, too. Some embody military valor. Others, sacrificial tenderness. Others, strength of mind. Others still, the pinnacle of political will. They are all beautiful.

Dasha embodies the Soul. The Russian Soul.

Both the prize named after her and the Foundation we are going to establish should be dedicated to the Russian Soul. This is the most important thing. If there is no Soul, there will be no Russia; there will be nothing.

Many good people have volunteered to carry the memory of Dasha. There is the People’s Institute of Daria Dugina. There are Daria Dugina’s Lessons of Courage. There is a new series in the wonderful publishing house, Vladimir Dal: “Dasha’s Books.” There are various awards and other initiatives. And let people do what their heart tells them to do. The main thing is to do it all with a soul.

Thanks be to Christ!

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.

Ad multos annos Pat Buchanan

It must have been in the Summer of 2005. On a warm southern Ontario evening my brother and I made the trip to the cinema complex at Mississauga’s Square One Plaza [Canada]. However, as we had done several times before seeing a movie, we made the traditional intellectual pit stop at the nearby Chapters [bookstore].

While my brother, ever the aviation fanatic, looked over the latest publications pertaining to his field of interest, I made my way over to the history and political science sections. At one point I came across a title that sounded very catchy, i.e., Where the Right Went Wrong. It happened to be last one on the shelf. I also noticed that the author’s name rang a bell: Patrick J. Buchanan. Having read the summary and the recommendations I had no doubt this was the book I wanted to spend the rest of Summer 2005 with. By that time my political views were solidly grounded, nurtured by the excellent ethics and philosophy lectures at my alma mater, the Catholic University of Lublin.

I set out to find why the United States since 9/11 acted the way it did. The conventional Amerika-type explanations were simply unsatisfactory. Here finally was a tour de force of the malaise. I must admit that before reading Where the Right Went Wrong I could have asked the same question that apparently George W. Bush once posed to his late father: “What’s a neocon?”

Buchanan laid it all out: the ideological creed of that unsavory band of warmongers called neoconservatives, the emphasis on the unparalleled hubris of the Bush II administration attempting to “rid the world of evil,” all combined into a historical, political, and sociological analysis of a country that was on the road to perdition. A conservative takedown of a conservative-in-name-only administration. And all this from a former adviser to American presidents, three-time presidential candidate, public intellectual, tv personality and, what struck me most, a Latin Mass attending Catholic. Finally, a book I could truly call “foundational.”

As the years went by, I would become a certified Pat Buchanan fan of sorts. Back in my native Poland, I quickly devoured the local translation of The Death of the West. Names like “Gramsci” and terms like “Frankfurt School” would become essential parts of my vocabulary in heated political discussions. Buchanan was an influencer of sorts, who with precision and whit would hammer away in intellectual shock and awe fashion at all our common enemies: globalism, the European Union, the heresy of Modernism in the Catholic Church, the neocons, the multicultural Left. Reading Pat’s books and columns simply became an intellectual necessity—and remains so to this day.

The crucial (to some paradoxical) lesson of Pat Buchanan’s long career in politics and journalism is this: loyalty and taking a principled stand go hand in hand. To see why, I recommend reading his last two-volume memoir of his days with Richard Nixon, before and during the presidency. Only Buchanan can combine stories of how he bummed cigarettes from Pat Nixon with timeless political insight and historical reference. The esteemed Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley wrote in 2015, “like Moses, Buchanan wasn’t allowed to go to the Promised Land, but over the years he has been vindicated on many, many issues.”

There is no need here to elaborate on the obvious and well-documented, by both friendly and hostile authors, ideological affinity between the man who coined the term “Silent Majority” and Donald J. Trump. Suffice to say that Buchanan is the only public persona that I know of to whom Trump offered apologies after having engaged in some very nasty name calling in the heated race for Reform Party presidential nominee in 2000.

It can be argued that if it were not for “pitchfork Pat,” who planted the seeds of populist nationalism during his insurgent presidential campaigns, Jerry Goldsmith’s epic theme from Air Force One might have preceded someone else’s remarks during election night 2016.

As one of the founders of The American Conservative, Buchanan would give American patriots and “conservatives of the heart”, disgusted with the trajectory of their beloved country, a platform from which to intellectually strike at the enemies of “the Old Republic” and whose influence cannot be underestimated. We have come a long way since those heady days of neoconservative supremacy when anathemas against “unpatriotic conservatives” really made a difference.

I can also testify that Pat Buchanan has become a global symbol of what true American conservatism stands for. It would be hard to find anyone in my circle of political and journalistic colleagues who is not familiar with Buchanan’s works. Pat is an icon of an older, better America. American readers know exactly what I mean when I refer to America’s better days; still, I would submit that Timothy Stanley captured it well when he wrote in his biography of the man: “Buchanan’s America—a world of religious mystery, Joe McCarthy, obedient wives, patriotic teamsters, Latin Masses, Saturday Night at the Movies, Buck Rogers, apple pie, stink bombs and Sputniks—was long gone. Even Georgetown was now a plush shopping district, more Ralph Lauren than Roman Catholic. When country-and-western singer Johnny Cash died in 2003, Pat said in an interview ‘Johnny Cash is gone and it is fitting, because the America we grew up in is gone, too. We grew up in another country. Johnny Cash wrote and sang our songs’.”

“Another country” indeed.

On the other hand, if it were not for the “fire in the hearts of men” that this American legend lit in so many of his fellow countrymen, setting the stage for any eventual populist counterrevolution part deux—an imperfect one having already occurred in 2016—in the United States would be a lot harder. After all it was none other than David Brooks who just a few days after Trump’s election described Buchanan as “the most influential public intellectual in America today.”

In honor of this great American on his 83rd birthday, I encourage all to settle down with a Pat Buchanan book, listen to one of his many interviews given over the years (the ones about adventures with Nixon are a historic treasure) or even re-live the humor accompanying the 1996 presidential campaign. It’s always a good time to seek inspiration and insight from this intellectual and political titan. To paraphrase the campaign slogan of his former boss, Richard Nixon, “Pat Buchanan now more than ever!”

Mr. Buchanan, from all of us here in Poland, sto lat!

Michał Krupa is a Polish historian and commentator. He has published in various Polish and American media outlets, including The American Conservative, Consortium News, Chronicles Magazine and the Imaginative Conservative. His Twitter handle is: @MGKrupa.

Seeing the Marvelous: The Rediscovery of the Imaginal

The world of tradition is saturated with marvelous images that modern thought has often depreciated to the rank of “imaginary” productions of Man. This desacralization of the sign, which deprives the religious reference marks of any possible comprehension, is based however on a fundamental ignorance—that of the “imaginal,” of which the hermeneuticist Patrick Geay, in Hermès trahi (Hermes Betrayed) [1996], presents the rediscovery as the key for resolution of the disenchantment of the world.

Hermès trahi (Hermes Betrayed) is the name given by Patrick Geay to his philosophy thesis, published in 1996 and republished in 2010, to illustrate a quite decisive project—that of remedying the divorce of myth and reason, of mythos and logos, upon which philosophical modernism made the mistake of founding itself. Hermes is first of all a god—the god of secrets and stratagems in Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Iris. He is also and above all Hermes Trismegistus, author of a doctrinal corpus which Iamblichus said delivers the hidden science of all things, and which gave its name to “hermeticism,” on the refusal of which modern hermeneutics has built its project. Against it, the director of the journal of traditional hermeneutics, La Règle d’Abraham (The Rule of Abraham), sought to “judge a form of anti-metaphysical philosophy, [namely] critical philosophy,” by the yardstick of the “traditional doctrines” of which the work of René Guénon provides the method of comparison and understanding.

Deepening the philosophical rediscovery of religious symbolism by Jean Borella, Patrick Geay works on a metaphysical rediscovery of the “imaginal.” Largely forgotten, ignored, denied, and sometimes misinterpreted, the imaginal, solidly theorized by the Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi, nevertheless proves to be essential to the understanding of all that traditional religions conceal of the marvelous. By listening to the great visionary tradition of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Patrick Geay abolishes the reduction of the imagination to the human imaginary, showing that it extends well beyond the limits that modern psychologism assigns to images and their genesis. In doing so, to use the words of the philosopher Bruno Pinchard in his Preface, the author restores the conditions necessary for understanding the “true laws of the constitution of the religious,” against the demystifying undertakings of materialism and neo-spiritualism found at work in the human sciences.

Demythologization

Modern religious thought is based on a serious hermeneutical contradiction—that of interpreting images and sacred texts without recognizing their sacred character. This contradiction has a name—”demythologization.” Initiated by the Protestant philosopher Schleiermacher, who reduced the interpretation of sacred texts to the simple “psychological and grammatical study of the works,” it consists in saving the relevance of sacred texts only by emptying them of all that is mythical; that is to say, extraordinary, miraculous, supernatural—in a word: sacred. Thus undertaken, hermeneutics contradicts itself—it wants to study the sacred without recognizing its sacred character, as Ricoeur admits when he justifies the “oblivion of the signs of the sacred” by the “loss of man himself as belonging to the sacred.” As soon as it is posed, the object of hermeneutics is removed from its study.

Marcel Gauchet tried to save this logical contradiction by conceiving of Christianity as “the religion of the exit from religion;” that is to say, a religion without the supernatural, a religion which, by its monotheistic affirmation, “contributes to placing the unique God outside and beyond the world of men.” For Marcel Gauchet, Judeo-Christianity would thus be the religion of the absence of God in this world. However, in so doing, the philosopher only completes a contradiction with an ignorance; for, as Patrick Geay points out, “this forced and distorting approach to Hebrew prophetism [ignores] the function of the Shekinah as the Presence of the Divine in the Tabernacle of the Ark of the Covenant, which is recounted in Exodus. Marcel Gauchet’s interpretation of Judeo-Christianity also ignores “the very rich Jewish visionary literature, as found in the famous writings of the Merkabah,” as well as the symbolic profusion of “medieval Christian visionary narratives.” In sum, Marcel Gauchet reduces his conception of monotheism to its modern, heterodox version, which came out of the Protestant Reformation. From Paul Ricoeur to Marcel Gauchet, modern hermeneutics, by proposing to the human sciences the method of demythologization in order to satisfy “their claim to have knowledge of the religious,” has thus taken the risk of making them “systematically miss their target for lack of sufficient metaphysical and initiatory preparation” (Bruno Pinchard). This unpreparedness has for cause a progressive dismantling of the symbolic sign by modern philosophy, from nominalism.

The Great Split

The dismantling of metaphysical knowledge consisted in an increasing reduction and confinement of the faculties of the human mind, the stages of which Patrick Geay rigorously traces. As time went by, the image was less and less understood, because it was more and more separated from the idea. Starting with the nominalist William of Ockham, a Franciscan doctor of the 14th century, who held that “words are created by imposition,” “language is no longer the privileged reflection of being; ideas, concepts, the universal have no reality except in the soul” of individuals. In other words, “the names of things… no longer derive from their nature.” Ideas no longer have the value of objectivity and universality that the Neoplatonists of the early Middle Ages recognized—they are entirely mentalized, to be no more than psychological concepts. The word is no longer the real name of an intelligent thing (formally received by the intellect), but the conventional sign of a purely mental conception.

The nominalistic mutilation of the concept is pursued, in modern times, against the imagination. Initially, Descartes separated, in his sixth Meditation, imagination and conception (itself confused with intellection). His argument is the following: if there are things that one can both imagine and conceive, like the triangle, there are however things that one can conceive without imagining them, like the chiliogone (polygon with a thousand sides). Descartes, who differentiates the soul and the body as two distinct substances, takes advantage of it to found on his first dualism that of the concept and the imagination: “the imagination being naturally rather on the side of the body cannot succeed in conceiving any idea of what it simply puts in image, if it even succeeds in doing so.” With Descartes, the image no longer implies the concept in its existence; the imagination without the concept is indigent. Just as the body is, in itself, reduced to its mechanism, so the image is unintelligible by itself.

This split between the concept and the image is completed a century and a half later by Kant who, in his Critique of Pure Reason (A15/B29), bases his theoretical enterprise on the postulate according to which there are “two strains of human knowledge which perhaps start from a common root, but unknown to us; namely, sensibility and understanding; by the first one, objects are given to us; but by the second one, they are thought.” The consequence is obvious: as Geay notes: “this separation makes the corporeal world a neutral, empty form, since, according to Ilya Prigogine’s expression, nature is by it rendered ‘dumb.’” Indeed, for Kant, there is no real giving of meaning. There is only thought produced by the internal activity of understanding—the images that we perceive sensibly do not cause any thought in us; they do not deliver any meaning; but it is we who confer it on them: “in a priori knowledge,” Kant summarizes in his second Preface, “nothing can be attributed to the objects but what the thinking subject draws from himself.” The image is decidedly no longer intelligible, any more than beauty is for Kant a property of the object: “the universe is consequently reduced to the state of confused ‘matter’ to be organized; it is a priori dispossessed by Kant of its semantic content; that is to say, of an intrinsic symbolic structure that man would only have to unveil.” Philosophical modernity is founded thus, from Occam to Kant while passing via Descartes, on the big split between thought and the real, and within thought, between the concept and the image.

Several contemporary attempts, in the 20th century, were made to give back to the images their nobility, and to the images of the supernatural an interest against the materialist impoverishment of the world—Gaston Bachelard, in his “new scientific spirit,” as well as Gilbert Durand, within the framework of his “new anthropologic spirit.” However, impressed by the psychoanalytical theory of the imagination, their common mistake was to reduce the imagination to the fantasy of the human conscience or unconscious. For Bachelard, who saw in alchemical symbolism only an “immense sexual reverie…. a reverie of wealth and rejuvenation… a reverie of power,” while the religious imagination was only human poetry. For Durand, who confused traditional data with that of psychoanalysis, its “transcendental fantasy… remained locked in psychological categories… of ‘fabulation,’ whose ‘supreme meaning’ lay in euphemism; that is, in the human power of ‘improvement of the world.'” Patrick Geay’s conclusion is without clear: the revaluation of the image and the marvelous is not possible within the framework of the modern theory of the imagination, since it deprives of intelligibility any possible mythical content.

Remythologization

What modernity, timidly or resolutely, has dislocated, tradition, on the contrary, has reunited. On the one hand, the concept and the image are the two inseparable modalities of the same thing—the symbol. On the other hand, the symbol is, in its turn, inseparable from the reality of which it is the sensible sign—the idea. This second point can be understood by the fact that “if, in the rational mode, we can say that we know an object through its notion, it is because this notion is still something of the object; that it participates in its nature by expressing it in relation to us,” as René Guénon explained in his Générale à l’étude des doctrines hindoues (General Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines) [III, 9], underlining here the realism of traditional logic. As for the first point, contrary to Kantian separation of the sensible given and the thought, Patrick Geay remarks that “there is no pure sensation which is not already an act of the consciousness.” Sensation is not unintelligent, because man perceives accidents (figures, colors, etc.) which never exist separately from a given essence, but which belong to it and thus inform us about it. This is why Saint Bonaventure noted that “all pleasure derives from a ratio of proportion,” just as beauty is objectively “an equation of numbers” (Journey of the Soul into God—Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, I, 5). No more than the world according to the tradition is this homogeneous space of Galileo and Descartes reduced to extent; the images are not dumb matter, but on the contrary, “imprints” (vestigia), whose contemplation can lead us “to see God in any creature which enters in us and by the bodily senses” (II, 1).

The “despisers of the body,” to paraphrase Nietzsche, are therefore not the traditional and orthodox representatives of Christianity, but rather its modern innovators. For Tradition, the physical body is neither unreal nor autonomous, but it derives its reality from its iconic character: it is the image of an essence. Now the image is neither an obstacle to knowledge (iconoclastic error), nor knowledge itself (idolatrous error)—but its iconic means to reach the Idea of which it is the representation. If, therefore, the image puts man in contact with the world, and if this world has an organizing and creating principle (God), then the imagination cannot be reduced to a purely human faculty. Thus Ibn ‘Arabi recognizes three states of imagination—contrary to modern anthropological postulates that reduce imagination to the mere “combining imagination” (psychological) of Man, “it was necessary to conceive, beyond the human imagination qualified as imagination in conjunction with the subject (khayâl al-muttasil), a divine encompassing imagination, dissociable from the subject (khayâl al-munfasil), “having a subsistence in itself.” As the prototype of the human capacity to imagine, the absolute divine Imagination (khayâl al-mutlaq) is thus, so to speak, the container of the joint imagination.” If, therefore, the human imagination is contained in the divine imagination, the latter can allow itself to be contemplated by the former and reveal itself there, in accordance with its own coordinates of representation. The place of this contemplation is not imaginary, since it is not produced by human fantasy; but on the contrary by the divine intelligence—the imaginal belongs to the “creative imagination” of God. It is the intermediate world of the soul, where spiritual principles become sensible, where sensible bodies become spiritualized by being perceived in their principle. The “mixed constitution” of the imaginal thus corresponds to “the mathematical structure of the body of the world” that Plato looked at in the Timaeus as the mediation between the intelligible and the sensible.

“Solidary with a true metaphysics of the image, by which the Invisible is made visible,” the knowledge of the Imaginal and its “cosmological function, which is to unite the corporal plane to the spiritual plane,” is thus doubly required to understand the possibility of the perception of the divine as well as the religious function of the icon and of all sacred symbolism (illuminations, liturgical songs, architecture of the temples…)—for what is an icon or a sacred symbol, if not a spiritual body, or a corporeal spirit? Also, man is a fortiori called to become himself an icon; that is to say a saint who is the carnal image of the spirit, an incarnation of the universal truth. The problem of the imagination thus shows how much “the progressive oblivion of the esoteric tradition,” however “alone capable of allowing an in-depth illumination of religion,” is “the deepest cause of the metaphysical decline in the conscience of men.” The anti-metaphysical separation of mythos and logos is as false and arbitrary as is the anti-symbolic dualism of concept and image.

Paul Ducay, Professor of philosophy with a medievalist background. Heir to the metaphysics of Nicolas de Cues and the faith of Xavier Grall. Gascon by race and French by reason. “The devout infuriate the world; the pious edify it.” Marivaux. [This article comes through the kind courtesy of PHILITT].

Featured: “Sir Isumbras at the Ford,” by John Everett Millais; painted in 1857.

A Hundred Books to understand the World

Charles-Henri d’Andigné is a journalist for Famille chrétienne and also contributes to Figaro Magazine. Here he talks about his latest book, Cent livres pour comprendre le monde: petite bibliothèque pour un catholique d’aujourd’hui (A Hundred Books to understand the World: A little Library for Today’s Catholic)—a remarkable synthesis of one hundred important works to know.

He is in conversation with Christophe Geffroy, the publisher of La Nef magazine, to whom we are grateful for this opportunity to publish the English version of this interview.

Christophe Geffroy (CG): In this book you present an impressive array of authors. What was your goal and how did you choose?

Charles-Henri d’Andigné (C-HA): My goal is to offer Catholics, and men of good will in general, a set of books that provide reference points in an era when everything is fluid and changing, and when we are losing sight of the most obvious facts.

Charles-Henri d’Andigné. Credit: DR.

Modern man believes he can do whatever he wants, say whatever he wants, think whatever he wants! We Catholics are more affected than we think by this generalized hubris.

The one hundred books I have written about are so many beacons in this uncertain and changing world: philosophical, theological, historical and sociological beacons.

I wrote my book like a bouquet: there are lilies and roses, and then there are violets—I borrow this metaphor from Saint Therese of Lisieux. In other words, there are the great authors, Maritain, Bernanos, Camus, Brague, and then more modest authors, Alix de Saint-André or Gerald Durrell, to form a whole that I hope is harmonious. And accessible—I am addressing the general public.

CG: Why is it important for a Catholic to have a certain culture when Christ rejoices that his Father did not reveal the things of Heaven to the “wise” and the “clever” but to the “little ones” (cf. Mt 11:25)?

C-HA: The Gospel tells us that Christ did not come for an elite group of people who know, but for everyone, young and old, without leaving anyone by the wayside.

Christianity is not a gnosis for the initiated. However, we must cultivate ourselves, as the farmer cultivates the land, so that it may bear beautiful fruit. As François-Xavier Bellamy reminds us in Les Déshérités (The Disinherited), to which I dedicate a chapter, culture humanizes us, helps us to be more ourselves. This is all the more vital in an era rich in mortifying ideologies. Without true culture, there is no intellectual immunity—ideologies penetrate you easily like a hot knife cutting through butter.

CG: Man, God, history, society are the four main parts of your book. In what way do these themes intersect with the essential problems facing our us?

C-HA: Simply because the great ideologies to which I referred are all more or less materialistic. They turn us away from God; they turn us away from man, who thereby becomes only be an individual driven by his economic or sexual interests; they turn us away from the historical and social facts that then used to impose their propaganda.

I don’t need to tell you to what extent this propaganda is present in schools, in the media and now in big companies which impose re-education courses to their employees.

CG: Although all the authors selected are not Catholics or “conservatives” in the broadest sense, this dual belonging is nevertheless dominant. Do you also take on this marked commitment? And what do you say to those who would reproach you for it?

C-HA: I take on this commitment perfectly. We suffer a lot from “deconstruction,” based on the belief that nothing exists in a natural way, that everything is a social construct and that therefore everything is “deconstructable;” better that everything must be deconstructed, so that we can finally be free. The result is an isolated individual, an offspring of his own works, who does not inherit, does not transmit anything and has no other links with his peers than those related to his interests.

It is therefore urgent to reconnect with our religious, philosophical and historical traditions, in order to preserve what deserves to be preserved. Gustave Thibon, one of “my” hundred authors, defines himself as a conservative anarchist. Of course, conservative does not mean narrow-minded. One can have a conservative sensibility and read authors considered as left-wing, Orwell or Simone Weil to name but a few. Hence my chapters on Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Need for Roots.

CG: For Christians, how do you see the struggle of ideas in society (its importance, its influence)? And do Christians seem to you to be up to this struggle? In other words, is there today a credible Christian intellectual succession?

C-HA: Some Christians seem to have understood the importance of the struggle of ideas after the adoption of “marriage” for all. Having never heard of gender theory, they could not even conceive of the notion of same-sex marriage. Are they now up to the task of fighting this battle of ideas? I fear that this is not yet the case.

But the Christian intellectual succession is there. Let us mention just one name, that of the philosopher Olivier Rey—I dedicate a chapter to Une question de taille (A Question of Size)—one of the finest and most profound minds of his generation.

Featured image: “The Library of Thorvald Boeck,” by Harriet Backer; painted in 1902.

The Clash of Realism and Liberalism

We need to understand what is happening to us and around us. To do this, common sense is not enough; there must be methodologies. So, let us consider the SMO (the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine), in the context of a discipline like International Relations (IR).

There are two main schools of thought in international relations: realism and liberalism. These we will discuss, although there are others; but these two are the main ones. If you are not familiar with these theories, don’t try to guess what is meant here by “realism” and “liberalism.” The meaning of the terms is taken from the context.

Thus, realism in IR is based on the recognition of the absolute sovereignty of the nation state. This corresponds to the Westphalian system of international relations that emerged in Europe as a result of the 30 Years War that ended in 1648. Since then, the principle of sovereignty has remained fundamental to the system of International Law.

IR realists are those who draw the most radical conclusions from the principle of sovereignty and believe that sovereign nation states will always exist. This is justified by the realists’ understanding of human nature: they are convinced that man in his natural state is prone to chaos and violence against the weakest, and that a state is therefore necessary to prevent this. Furthermore, there should be no authority above the state to limit sovereignty. The landscape of international politics thus consists of a constantly shifting balance of power between sovereign states. The strong attacks the weak; but the weak can always turn to the stronger for help. Coalitions, pacts and alliances are formed. Each sovereign state defends its national interests on the basis of cold, rational calculation.

The principle of sovereignty makes wars between states possible (no one can forbid someone from above to wage a war, because there is nothing higher than a state); but at the same time peace is also possible, if it is advantageous for the states; or in a war there is no unambiguous outcome.

This is how realists see the world. In the West, this school has always been quite strong and even prevalent. In the US, it remains quite influential today: about half of American politicians and IR experts follow this approach, which during the Trump presidency dominated. Most Republicans (except neocons) and some Democrats lean towards it.

Now consider liberalism in IR. Here the concept is very different. History is seen as a continuous social progress. The state is only a stage, on the road to progress; and sooner or later it is bound to fade away. Since sovereignty is fraught with the possibility of war, one must try to overcome it and create supranational structures that first limit it and then abolish it altogether.

Liberals in IR are convinced that a world government must be established and humanity united under the most ‘progressive’ forces—i.e., the liberals themselves. For liberals in IR, human nature is not a constant (as it is for realists) but can and must be changed. Education, indoctrination, media, propaganda of liberal values and other forms of mind control are used for this purpose. Humanity must be turned liberal and everything illiberal must be exterminated and banished. These are the “enemies of the open society,” the “illiberals.”

After the destruction of the “illiberals,” there will be global peace—and no one will be at war with anyone. For now, war is necessary, but only against the “illiberals” who “impede progress,” challenge the power of the liberal global elites and are therefore not “human” at all, and can therefore be dealt with in any way—up to and including total extermination (including the use of artificial pandemics and biological weapons).

In the near future, according to this concept, states will be abolished and all humans will intermingle, creating a planetary civil society, one world. This is what is called “globalism.” Globalism is the theory and practice of liberalism in IR.

The new version of liberalism has an addition: artificial intelligence will dominate humanity; people will become first genderless and then “immortal;” they will live in cyberspace and their consciousness and memory will be stored on cloud servers. New generations will be created in a test tube or printed by a 3D printer.

All this is reflected in the Great Reset project of the founder of the Davos Forum, Klaus Schwab.

Liberals make up the other half of politicians and international relations experts in the West. Their influence is gradually growing and sometimes exceeds that of IR realists. The current Biden administration and the majority of the US Democratic Party are liberals in this sense. Liberals are also dominant in the EU, which is the implementation of such a project, as it aims to build a supranational structure. It was IR liberals who conceived and created the League of Nations and then the UN, the Hague Tribunal, the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the IMF, the World Bank, the WHO, the Bologna education system, digitalisation. All globalist projects and networks are all the work of liberals. Russian liberals are an integral part of this global sect, which has all the characteristics of a totalitarian sect.

Now let us apply this explanation to the NWO (New World Order). After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine became a tool of both liberals and realists in IR—precisely a tool of the West. The liberals in the MoD encouraged Ukraine’s integration into the global world and supported its aspirations to join the European Union and NATO (the military wing of globalism). The realists in the MoD used Ukraine in their interests against Russia. To do so, it was necessary to make Ukraine a nation-state, which contradicted the purely liberal agenda. This is how the synthesis of Ukrainian liberalism and Nazism, against which the SMO fights, was formed. Nazism (Extreme Right, Azov and other structures banned in Russia) was necessary to build a nation and a sovereign state as quickly as possible. Integration into the European Union required a playful and comically pacifist image (Zelensky). The common denominator was NATO. This is how liberals and IR realists achieved Russophobic consensus in Ukraine. When necessary, they turned a blind eye to Nazism, liberal values and gay pride parades.

Now to Russia. In Russia since the early 1990s under Yeltsin, Chubais and Gaidar liberalism has firmly dominated IR. Russia then, like Ukraine today, dreamed of joining Europe and joining NATO. If this had required further disintegration, the Kremlin liberals would have been willing to do that too. But at some point Yeltsin himself and his foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov adjusted the agenda slightly: Yeltsin resented separatism in Chechnya; Primakov deployed a plane over the Atlantic during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. These were weak signs of realism. Sovereignty and national interests were invoked, but only hesitantly, tentatively.

Real realism began when Putin came to power. He saw that his predecessors had weakened sovereignty to the extreme, caught up in globalisation; and that the country was consequently under foreign control. Putin began to restore sovereignty. First of all, in the Russian Federation itself—the second Chechen campaign, the deletion of sovereignty clauses from the Constitution, etc. Then he began to deal with the post-Soviet space—the August 2008 events in the South Caucasus; Crimea and Donbass in 2014. At the same time, it is indicative that the international expert community (SWOP, RIAC, etc.) and MGIMO continued to be completely dominated by the line of liberalism. Realism was never mentioned. The elites remained liberal—those who openly opposed Putin and those who reluctantly agreed to submit to him.

The SMO has, like a flashback, illuminated the situation in the Russian Ministry of Defence. Behind Ukraine there is an alliance of liberals and partly realists in the Ministry of Defence, i.e., the forces of globalism that have turned against Russia. For liberals (and Biden and his administration [Blinken and Co.], like Clinton and Obama before him, belong precisely to this school), Russia is the absolute enemy, because it is a serious obstacle to globalisation, to the establishment of a world government and a unipolar world. For American realists (and in Europe realists are very weak and barely represented), Russia is a competitor in controlling the space of the planet. They are generally hostile; but for them supporting Ukraine against Russia is not a matter of life and death. The fundamental interests of the United States are not affected by this conflict. It is possible to find common ground with them; not with liberals.

For IR liberals, however, it is a matter of principle. The outcome of the SMO will determine whether or not there will be a world government. Russia’s victory would mean the creation of a fully multipolar world in which Russia (and China and, in the near future, India) would enjoy real and strong sovereignty, while the positions of the allied entities of the liberal West, which accept globalisation and are willing to compromise their sovereignty, would be dramatically weakened.

In conclusion, liberalism in IR is changing to include gender politics, information and hybrid warfare, artificial intelligence and post-humanism. But realism is also changing: confirming the logic of S. Huntington (incidentally, a proponent of realism in IR), who spoke of the “clash of civilisations;” the main actors are not states but civilisations, what he calls Big Spaces. Thus, realism is gradually shifting towards the theory of the multipolar world, where the poles are no longer nation-states, but states-continents, empires. This is also clearly visible in the course of the SMO.

In terms of various theories of international relations, the SMO is simultaneously a conflict between:

  • unipolarity and multipolarity
  • realism and liberalism in IR
  • small identity (artificial Ukrainian Nazism) and large identity (Eurasian brotherhood of Russia)
  • the civilisation of the land (Land Power) versus the civilisation of the sea (Sea Power), in the battle for the coastal zone (Rimland), which geopolitics claims
  • the failed state and the resurgent empire

Before our eyes, and with our hands and blood now—right now—the great history of ideas is being made.

Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.

Featured image: “Monopoly” by Bernhard Gillam; published in 1883.