Interestingly enough, Dr. Dugin echoes our own Dr. Scarmoge on the dangers of nominalism:
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I purchased his book The Fourth Political Theory about a year ago. It had to be shipped from London.
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Dugin makes an interesting and valid observation about woke-ism being a (train) āstationā headed toward a trans-human (or non human) condition as the future. Perhaps there is a super-human conscious entity (archon, etc) directing this from behind a veil. But another aspect of the woke movement is likely just the human tendency to over-achieve. Once one milestone or barrier has been overcome, we look for the next one and the next one until weāre chasing ridiculous accomplishments (ex: Ripleyās believe it or not registry). Once a milestone is breached, those whose careers and incomes rely on being funded to cause this mayhem need something more to doā¦they have become important people. Their lifeās work canāt be over so they find another fringe idea to try and push on the mainstream. They see this as their purpose in lifeā¦
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Is this what one means when saying āprogress for the sake of progressā and āactivity alone is not an accomplishmentā ?
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A search online provided the eBook download in English.
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Wow!, āā¦ because majority could choose Hitler or Putinā¦ā in one sentence. Either he is a quiet opposition to Putin, or tries to show that Hitler bad, Putin good.
A philosophers aim is to coalesce knowledge of human nature and point out the cognitive dissonance, not take sides. Dugan has been around long enough to ascertain the contrasts of the meaning of the liberal of old and the current use and implementation.
We are told Republicanism protects the minority from the majority yet how is rarely discussed in the public dialogue. Why?
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The very last thing that a competent āintellectualā in the modern western academy should do, is walk into a serious of inquiries with a answer already in mind. The special pleading, here, of Darren J. Beattie, who is apparently an abject moron, but an entitled Jew who believes he has the right to comment on a civilization about whom he knows absolutely nothing, make his sound like an idiot. His attempt to portray Dugin and Russian scholars as philosophically naive is ironically reflective of his own philosophical shortcomings, an unexpected revelation given his mathematical background from an institution as prestigious as Duke University ā or not.
"Some have asked me about this, so I figured Iāll go against my better judgement and say a few words.
First, I commend Tucker for his courage and open mindedness in having such discussions with controversial figures. Nothing I say should be interpreted as a criticism of Tuckerās laudable efforts.
This conversation reinforces in my mind two priors: one is that while Russians are a great literary and musical people, they are not a philosophical people (well, no people is really is a philosophical people post WWII)
The second prior I had, reinforced by this talk is that it is very difficult, next to impossible and rarely optimal to connect ādeep levelā philosophical diagnoses with diagnoses of more surface level political and cultural phenomena.
Letās take Duginās example of what went wrongāthe rise of āindividualism.ā Dugin perfunctorily gestures toward various ādeep levelā accounts of individualism in his reference to the āsubject,ā and to theological nominalism respectively.
This already gets into problems because the diagnosis of modernity as flowing continuously from nominalism and the diagnosis of modernity as discretely emerging from the self-grounding Cartesian subject are different and competing diagnoses.
The āpurposeā of nominalism was not to liberate the individual, but rather to liberate God. The structure of the self-grounding Cartesian subject moreover analogizes much more easily to other identifiable features of modernity (Rousseauās and then Nietzscheās self grounding will)
Things get even more confused when we bring in the third, implicit and most important aspect of individualismāits implicit contrast with collectivism. This seems to be the dominant version Dugin focuses on as in his telling the key feature of āliberalismā is the liberation of the individual from collective entanglements (tradition, culture, gender, humanity).
The relation of this version to nominalism is incomplete as nominalism has to do with the liberation of God from manās cognitive categories.
As to the Cartesian subject, the emergence of subjectivity exists at a deeper layer than and is presupposed by the more superficial distinction between individual and collective (at least according to Heideggerās telling)
Enough for a moment about the ādeep levelā diagnostic problems. Now letās turn to the political/cultural diagnostic problem.
In short, the āliberation of the individualā seems to be a very poor description of the present political moment. Duginās focus on the liberation of the individual might account for a ādystopianā society that were social darwinistic, pathologically dedicated to scientific progress and advancement and the elevation of the individual over all else (including his gendered and all biological constraints).
There are confused hints of this of course that we see in our philosophically impoverished tech elite (and what do you expect when from a society that confers such powers on glorified software engineers). But this is hardly the dominant thrust of the present moment, and if it were, notwithstanding the philosophical childishness of the tech class, would actually be a vry welcome and profound improvement from what we have today.
No, what we have today in āwokenessā the political weaponization/empowerment of women and minority special interest groups, is far from the liberation of the individual. If we must use the āindividualismā vs ācollectiveā at all to account for what is going on, it can hardly be described as liberation of the individual. Wokeness, intersectionality is all about group identity. The purpose of censoring individuals is to assuage the collective inferiority complexes of politically weaponized groups (mostly women and minorities)
The whole thing is about pandering to the emotivism, unfounded indignation and undeserved pride of resentful underachieving and independent groups. Politically the transsexual phenomenon is so much less a trans-human liberation from biology and much more an empowerment of a politically favored GROUP identity (sexual degenerates).
Thus one can much more easily buy a trajectory from liberalism to transhumanism (elevation of the individual decision maker, individual choice) than one can see between liberalism and āwokeness.ā
One can imagine a line from epistemological grounding of things in the self-knowing subject (Descartes), to the political grounding of things in individual choice and consent (Locke) to a kind of hyper liberated individual apotheosis in transhumanism.
Finally-- In the discussion Tucker raises the point a point about so-called āclassical liberalism,ā mentioning that this is about individual choice, freedom from slavery, etc. This is more or less Locke.
I was somewhat surprised that Dugin didnāt respond that Locke (via Descartes to Hobbes) and by extension classical liberalism represent a profound step toward liberation of the individual that he decries (a politics based on choice and consent rather than heredity, tradition, etc).
Instead Dugin simply embraces the classical liberal vs bad liberal distinction, without noting that, as explained above, the bad ādegradedā liberalism is not really liberalism in any sense of the wordāthe political dystopia we see today is in every sense post-liberal.
Perhaps I should polish this up at some point but those are some immediate thoughts. And as mentioned in the beginning, my prior sense is that it is very difficult to have a discussion that gets into deep level philosophical diagnoses and more surface level political diagnoses without impoverishing both."
https://twitter.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/1785344641333653529
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Yes philosophy went kaput years ago. Now itās an esoteric discussion for only those in the knowā¦
On the flip side, Dugan and Carlson are simply having a discussion, no need to get all rankled up over it.
That plays right into the divide and conquer mystique.
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Your typical American self-centered dweeb, like Beattie, if the screed he produced is read carefully, is literally an inversion of reality, at virtually every level.
This, comment is particularily annoying:
āThe āpurposeā of nominalism was not to liberate the individual, but rather to liberate God.ā
No one ā¦ NO ONE who is familiar with medieval philosophy and theology thinks nominalism liberated God ā it erased universal. It cut the very bridges of Form off between Mankind and God. It ushered in huge problems and scholastic theology, Cartesian dualism, and Kantian rifts. This was absolutely deadly for the West.
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Yep, but the average reader of the post probably has no idea about nominalism and theology so would likely either pretend they do or simply agree with him causeā¦After all heās a popular and known pundit with many āfollowersā.
I genuinely think, he means to suggest that liberating the individual and the rational faculties of man, from the divine, which is precisely the target of worship of the Rabbinate, is to liberate God, because the collective people are God.
āThe āpurposeā of nominalism was not to liberate the individual, but rather to liberate God.ā
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Does this mean to liberate God from being a universal, abstract object and through liberalisim, liberating humans from their nature and turn them into universal, abstract objects?
Nominalism posits that only individual entities truly exist, laying a clear path toward Liberalism across various contexts. It contends that groups and categories are merely pragmatic shortcuts, lacking any tangible link to the ensemble, the term, the universal, and the collective objects. Consequently, it places the essence of an entity within its own existence, rather than in an abstract realm. Western thought largely derives from nominalist principles and the empirical approach accompanying them. Given that nominalism aligns with materialism, it views reality as a deterministic machinery. Therefore, even when we manage to find an ostensibly solid standpoint, we cannot be certain of its validity or ethicality. The notions of truth and goodness, both universal concepts imbued with significance, are thus deemed incompatible with contemporary life. God, then, is reduced to a contingent being merely among a collection of other contingent beings, without any necessary connection. From Descartes onward, this provided a basis for the modern terminology of Liberalism āfreedomā āthe individualā in the abstract, having no grounding in anything transcendent. God is just āa thingā among other āthingsā and is depersonalized into the Will to Power, or the function of the rational human faculties, or ākilling Godā as in F. Nietzsche.
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Itās important to distinguish between an interest in realityā¦ and an interest in the specific perception of reality.
Dugin has a very specific goal, and a flawed perception of reality. Not a philosopher
Doesnāt everyone have their own perception of reality to stabilize their existence? One can be philosophical about what they think and believe, cause others to doubt theirs and convince them to think otherwiseā¦quite a dangerous person.
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thank you, thank you,
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I couldnāt sum it up better Bill.
Dugin is pushing Eurasianism, no doubt.
Hope it clarifies the issue.