0008 Okay, I am looking at chapter two of Inside Putin’s Brain, titled “The Enthosociological and Existential Dimensions of Dugin’s Populism”.

Does this title explain my blog’s title?

Obviously, there are two dimensions to Dugin’s view of people.

People?

Yeah, like “We, the People…”

The ethnosociological dimension addresses the question, “What is a people?”

The existential dimension addresses the question, “Why is there a people?”

Now, I move to a purely relational structure, the Greimas square.

Here is a picture.

A is the focal term, “people”.

B contrasts with the focal word, “people”.  Here, I will put “person”.

C speaks against (the transliteration of “contradict”) B and complements A.

Right away, I see a technical term that Dugin uses. “Narod” is a Russian word that means “people”, in an us-versus-them sort of way.  Narod is distinct from individual, class, state and race.

I ask, “What if narod goes into C?”

Once I put the word, “narod”, into C, the term, “person” in B, appears convoluted.

According, to Dugin, the narod contradicts individual, class, state and race.  Plus, when I recall about how modern academics classify each person, they tend to do so according to easily observable and measurable features.

Plus, these classifications fit into a Greimas square.

Obviously, the most phenomenal feature of a person is that the person is an individual.   Liberalism models the phenomena of the individual.  The individual is the subject.  The phenomena of individuals give rise observations and measurements, that end up in models that liberal experts use.

Class contrasts with the focal word, “individual”.  Class terms include “bourgeois” and “proletariat”.  Working personsself-identify as the latter.  Owners of various means of production are accused of being the former.  The pattern extends into culture, by associating “class” with a person’s chosen identity.  Technically, class is a style of righteousness that calls persons into organizations.  Communists model observations and measurements of social phenomena on the basis of distinctions among classes.

The state contradicts (or “speaks against”) class.  To appreciate the contradiction, replace “class” with “state” in the above technical definition.  The state is also a style of righteousness that calls persons into organization.  The state is an institution that is in charge of keeping peace among institutions.  Class is tied to a feedback loop between institutions and persons.  When, the state replaces class, the state confounds righteousness and social order.

State-based fascists model observations and measurements of social phenomena according to the state as arbiter of order and righteousness.  Fascists consider individuals to be citizens.  The state (as subject) takes priority over the individual (as subject). Hence, fascisms are called “il-liberal”.

Finally, what happens when “race” substitutes for “class” as a style of righteousness that calls persons into organization?

Well, once the subject is regarded in terms of “race”, then the state decides who is free and who is a slave.  That implies that there are two classes, “free” and “slave”.  Certain races are free and the other races are slaves.

Oddly, the assignment of “free” or “slave” is not necessarily based on phenotypic variation among populations.  But, it is often enough the case.  Members of the free “race” are regarded as citizens.  Members of the slave “race” are not.  Thus, race-based fascism fixates on who is a citizen and who is not.

Race-based fascists model observations and measurements of social phenomena according to the state serving as arbiter of who is free and who is slave.

0009 What does this apparent digression have to do with “the person” in slot B?

If the narod, the Russian word for “people”, goes into slot C, then the person in slot B is the person as the subject of inquiry, according to a modern science-inspired ideology (B).  The result may be depicted by a Greimas square for the three political theories preceding Dugin’s proposed fourth political theory.

Here is a picture.

0010 The previous discussion yields the following Greimas square.

0011 A is the subject of Dugin’s populism, the people.

B contains objectifications of the subject, according to modern political theories.  These theories claim to be rooted in science.  Yes, trust the science, even as each theory goes on to first order the people, then destroy the people on the altar of its own construction.  Isn’t that what science does?  It discovers the order of nature, a facet of God’s creation, then ambitious technologists use that discovery in order to create a weapon?

The pattern is ancient.  But, premodern theories are not based on modern science.  They are based on idolatries.

0012 This permits me to introduce a tangent not in Millerman’s text.

To me, the following strange association from the gospel of Matthew 16:13-20 mirrors Dugin’s approach, as rendered above.

0013 Here, the people (A) are those capable of ideating who Jesus is.

In Dugin’s approach, the people (A) are those capable of theorizing who they are.  To me, this theorization requires speech-alone talk.

Speech-alone talk?

Consider Razie Mah’s short e-work, The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace, or the lengthy (and much more dramatic) An Archaeology of the Fall, available at smashwords and other e-work venues.  Speech-alone talk defines our current Lebenswelt.

0014 Returning to the strange association, I ask, “How does B contrast with A?”

Here, B is how the people, who have no idea of what is really going on, regard Jesus in terms of contemporary political theologies.  Who formulates these theories?  Well, the Sadducees and Pharisees are self-anointed experts and they intend to remain that way.  Indeed, they remain so until the second temple, and later, most everything else, is destroyed by the Romans, who are sorely pissed off by the rebelliousness of the province.

In Dugin’s approach, the people, who may or may not have any idea of what is really going on, embrace one or other political theory.  These political theories exclude one another in the same way that sociology excludes biology and biology excludes chemistry and chemistry excludes physics.  Even though the noumenon of the narod remains the same, the phenomena observed and measured by each political theory differs according to the way that the subject is objectified by each political discipline.  Liberalism observes and models the individual.  Communism observes and models the class.  Fascism observes and models the state and race.  Race is a special application of the state.  “Race” is state imposition of the condition of “free” or “slave” on the basis of established criteria.  How special is that?

0015 What about C in the strange association?

C contradicts B and complements A.

0016 Obviously, Jesus as an objectified subject of political theologies (B) is not who he is (A).  Admission of that realitydefines (C).

So, Jesus asks a second question, where “you” (C) complements “people” (A), because “you” encompasses those living with Jesus.  Indeed, it encompasses the Church as the Bride of Christ, the helper to the New Adam.

Also, the second question asks “you”, the disciples, to put the answer into spoken words.

0017 In Dugin’s approach, the narod is not the people as constituted in response to political theory, but the people as constituted by lived experience.  The narod is personal.  The narod is like a bride to her groom.  Marriage is more than what spoken words can describe.  The groom belongs to his bride.

0018 The narod (C) is the subject of the fourth political theory.

The narod cannot be understood by political science.  Yet, political sciences have had their day.  The people need a new political not-science.  The people need a fourth political theory that is theoretical in the same way that the hermeneutical interpretation of the gospel according to to Matthew 16:13-20 is theoretical.

To this end, Dugin turns to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

0019 Dugin offers an entirely new discipline of political philosophy, based on the term, “narod”.  He calls this discipline, “ethnosociology”.  Ethnosociology is not a science.  Indeed, ethnosociology stands as a noumenon in contrast with its phenomena.  Phenomena are observable and measurable facets of a noumenon.  The distinction between the noumenon and its phenomena is developed in Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

Ethnosociology (C) contradicts the first three political philosophies of the modern West (B).  Ethnosociology (C) complements the people (A), the topic under consideration.

0020 The first three political philosophies of the West (B) objectify phenomena of the narod, that is, the person in community.  Liberalism, communism and fascism operate as empirio-schematic judgments, where disciplinary languages bring mechanical and mathematical models into relation with observations and measurements of phenomena.

Dugin’s use of the term, “subject”, applies to the suite of phenomena that contribute to observations and measurements of one particular -ism.  Substitute the word, “person” for “subject” and one gets the person as individual, class, citizen and role-bearer.

Role-bearer?

Yes, free or slave.

Or maybe, accepted or rejected.

Or maybe, pure or defiled.

Whatever the state decides.

0021 This brings me to the existential dimension, as related by Millerman.

First, the fact that the subjects and the -isms constitute a Greimas square serves as a nexus for existential concern.

Each -ism excludes the other.  Liberalism excludes communism and fascism.  Communism excludes fascism and liberalism.  Fascism excludes liberalism and communism.  Surely, the implications are existential.

Second, the fact that -isms constitute political scientific disciplines that engage sovereign power in order to exclude one another reinforces slot B as a nexus of existential concern.

Does that suggest that the fourth political theory will grasp for sovereign power in order to exclude the prior three political theories?  No and yes.  No, all three prior political scientific disciplines have already ruined themselves through incredible and mind-boggling failures. Yes, the fourth political theory must interpret the historic catastrophes of the prior scientific political theories in order to guide sovereigns in avoiding future cataclysms.

0022 Here is a diagram of how the two dimensions of Dugin’s populism radiate out of two slots of the Dugin’s Greimas square.

0023 Here are my associations, so far.

0024 The Greimas square for the term, “people”, slowly manifests.

A is the focal word, “people”.

B is the objectification of the subject (the person) by various -isms.  Each -isms strives to exclude the other.  In this regard, they are like normal contexts.  -Isms are empirio-schematic.  Social behaviors serve as phenomena.  Observations and measurements of phenomena permit explicit abstractions.  Explicit abstractions initiate sensible constructions of existential significance.  The fourth political theory aims to interpret that existential significance.

C is the narod, encompassing both the person and the community.  The narod is a noumenon.  Only philosophy can address noumena, because a noumenon cannot be objectified as its phenomena.  As such, the term, “narod”, reminds us that people in community cannot be understood as phenomena.  The narod cannot be distilled into individuals, classes, citizens and so on.  The narod is an actuality that philosophy struggles to articulate, but cannot, because spoken words fail.  Nevertheless, the articulation must be made, because the question is posed. Who do we say that we are?

Every people faces an ethnosociological question.

D is what remains.

0025 What goes into D?

0026 What goes into D?

Once again, consider the strange association to Matthew 16:13-20.

Here is the complete Greimas square.

0027 D contrasts with C, contradicts A and complements B.

The contrast between D and C is clear.  C is a question. D is an answer.

The contradiction between D and A is less obvious.  What Peter says is not the same as who people say that Jesus is.  Yet, it is the same.  People intuitively feel Simon Peter’s answer, yet cannot say, because they fear the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They fear those who frame the political theologies of the day.  Their angst is existential.

The complement between D and B is difficult to fathom.  Perhaps, the experts of Jerusalem may be able to formulate the theology of Christ as the Son of the living God (B).  But, they cannot recognize Jesus as the person who fulfills theological expectations (D).  The inability to recognize Jesus is existential.

0028 So, how does the complement between D and B work?

How does fulfillment (D) implicate contemporary models of the anticipated phenomena of the Christ, Son of the living God (B).

Jesus cannot be the Messiah because Jesus is not the one who fits our models.

0029 Christian theologians take note.

Dugin’s fourth political theory may be what you should be exploring.

Who defines who Jesus is?

The experts or the uncertified fisherman?

0030 To me, the complement between D and B parallels the way that a noumenon and its phenomena complement one another.  The noumenon is the thing itself.  Its phenomena are its observable and measurable facets.  A noumenon cannot be objectified as its phenomena.

This is one of the weird (and often not discussed) features of modern science.  Every scientist works to observe and model and talk about phenomena.  But, no scientist can address the noumenon, the thing itself.

But, the narod (C) is the noumenon.  So, (D) must be some transit between the noumenon (C) and its phenomena (B).

Yes, Dugin’s Greimas square goes one step further.

Dugin introduces the term, “ethnos”, as that which is prior to the narod.  Ethnos is where the narod comes from and where the narod cannot return to.

Here is a picture of the ethnos in its placement in Dugin’s Greimas square.

0031 Now I replace the term, “ethnos” with “cannot be objectified as” in order to elucidate a resonance.

“Cannot be objectified as” (D) is where the noumenon (C) comes from and where the noumenon (C) cannot return to.  Plus, it (D) is a transit between a noumenon (C) and its phenomena (B).  It (D) consists of a contradiction that exists in the realm of potential.   What something is cannot be objectified as what scientists observe and measure.  

“Cannot be objectified as” expresses an impossibility.  Yet, here is the foundation of science.

0032 At this juncture, I am looking for ways to appreciate how D implicates B when D appears to be something like the transit between C and B.

Somehow, D contrasts with C and D implicates B serves like a conduit that flows back around the rule that C contradicts B.

0033 Here is another example of a Greimas square, drawn from a January 2023 blog at www.raziemah.com.  The Greimas square concerns the temptation and fall of Eve in Genesis.

0034 A is a singular tree at the center of the garden of Eden.

B is the name that God gives the tree, along with that commandment about not eating its fruit, lest Adam and Eve die.

C clearly speaks against B, because the discussion between the serpent and Eve negates obedience to the commandment.

D contrasts with C, because D denotes the consequences of the temptation.  If C is a question, then D is an answer.

D complements B, because Eve and Adam’s eyes are opened.  And what do they first see?  They see that they are naked.

0035 Okay, what happens when I substitute D into A, do I get another Greimas square?

I sure do.  D, the fall of Eve, occurs when she eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Here are my associations.

0036 A is the act of eating the fruit from the singular tree.

B is the rebellion of Adam and Eve.  They broke God’s commandment not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  B contrasts with A.  B goes with guilt.  A goes with crime.

C is the punishment.  The punishment (C) fulfills the legal implications (B) of God’s commandment.

D is a remainder.  When God commands Adam not to eat from the singular tree, He adds, “…lest you die.”  But, in the story, Adam and Eve go on to live outside of Eden (which still harbors the tree of life).  So, the question arises.  If Adam and Eve do not die, then what exactly does die?

0037 Does a path from C through D to B circle around the path from B to C?

Yes and no.  Yes, the termini are the same.  No, former path adds the awareness that a transit between Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden (C) and the rebellion of Adam and Eve  (C) is what?… Adam and Eve losing their opportunity for immortality (D)?  Is that the same as death?

Here is a picture.

This pattern is identical to the prior example where the contiguity, “cannot be objectified as” (D), adds awareness to the way that a noumenon (C) contradicts its phenomena (B).

If I match this bible-inspired Greimas square with Dugin’s, I arrive at the following correspondences.

A is the people, who have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whether they like it or not.  The deed is done.  The only recourse is baptism, which washes away the stain of original sin.

B is the person, objectified as the subject of various political disciplines. Liberalism, communism and fascism objectify the person according to particular phenomena, such as individual, class member, citizen and role-bearer.  Well, if anyone is going to feast at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and celebrate their rejection of the logos, then it is going to be the purveyors of the three political theories that Dugin rejects.  

C is the narod, corresponding to Adam and Eve cast out of the garden of Eden.  The narod parodies the act of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (A), because the only knowledge that the narod gains is on a need to knowbasis.  They realize that they are naked and better get some cover.  Pronto!  

0038 The narod shares the same fate as Adam and Eve (C).  However, the narod (C) contradicts the rebellion (B) in that they did not directly receive the commandment that Adam and Eve received. They did not commit the crime, yet share its consequences.

D is the ethnos.  The ethnos is where the narod comes from and where the narod cannot return to.  This ethnos is us.  The ethnos is the “you” who died.

Sweet Eden (D) speaks against the people (A), forever entangled in their constructions of good and evil.  Us losing our chance for immortality (D) contrasts with where we are right now (C) and complements our apparent inability to stop formulating models of our observations and measurements of current human behavior (B).

0039 In the following blog, I take the analogy to the next level.

0040 Here is Dugin’s Greimas square.

0041 Here is the second strange Biblical association.

0042 A comparison takes the inquirer straight into an unanticipated opportunity to reconfigure the doctrine of Original Sin.  Modern academic Christians have been trying that for years, to no avail.  That is because Augustine of Hippo is not irrelevant.  It just turns out that the scientific aspect of his doctrine has been disproven.  All humanity does not directly descend from the loins of Adam.  But, the theological aspect is alive and well, as the Greimas squares demonstrate.

What is required is a new scientific hypothesis.

0043 One component of a new hypothesis appears in the e-works The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace (a plain formulation) and An Archaeology of the Fall (a dramatic portrayal), by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

In the year 2022, neither Alexander Dugin nor Michael Millerman are aware of the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0044 The hypothesis starts with an observation.  Our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

How so?

0045 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in spans around two million years.  Once hominins are bipedal, their arms are free to gesture to one another.  This allows the evolution of talk.  At first, hominins pantomime their meanings, presences and messages.  Then, the manual-brachial gestures become familiar, then routine, and hand talk evolves.  Hand talk consists of routinized manual-brachial gestures that are used in particular social normal contexts, especially teamwork.  Manual-brachial gestures work because they picture and point to their referents. They are icons and indexes.  They are natural signs.  Routinization turns these gestures into systems of differences.

Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.  Ferdinand de Saussure defines language as two related systems of differences, parole (talk) and langue (mental processing of signs).  The story is told in the masterwork The Human Niche.  Once hominins domesticate fire, starting around eight-hundred thousand years ago, symbolic operations become general and grammar evolves.

Fire and linguistic hand talk allow hominins to prosper.  When humans evolve, speech gets added to hand talk.  Anatomically modern humans practice a dual-mode way to talking, hand-speech talk, for two-hundred thousand years, until the first singularity.  The semiotics of hand-speech talk are yet to be explored.  Hand-speech talk is grounded in the iconicity and indexality of hand talk.  Since speech cannot picture or point to anything, speech adorns hand talk and allows novel styles of social grooming.

0046 If all civilized humans practice speech-alone talk, then how do we get from hand-speech talk to where we are now?

The rupture starts with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.  The Sumerian language is unrelated to any family of languages.  Why would this be so?  It is a creole, a language that emerges from the fusion of other languages.  When two groups coalesce, they practice pidgin.  Pidgin is composed of words, from two or more languages, without much grammar.  Then, over time, children weave the pidgin into a language with grammar.

As it turns out, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia forms out of the fusion of two hand-speech talking cultures.  In the pidgin, the hand component of hand-speech talk is lost, leaving speech-alone.  From a pidgin of spoken words, the children of the Ubaid weave the first speech-alone language.

0047 The semiotics of speech-alone talk is vastly different from hand-speech talk.  The Ubaid constitutes the first narod. 

Remember, speech-alone talk cannot picture or point to its referents.  So, what does a spoken word really mean?  The narod of the Ubaid starts to create artifacts that valid certain novel speech-alone words.  In doing so, they generate novel labor specialties, such as shepherd, goat-herder, reed-harvester, farmer, beer-brewer, potter and transporter.  They construct novel social specialties such as king and priest and warrior and missionary and on and on.  The Ubaid becomes wealthy and powerful.

The surrounding Neolithic hand-speech talking cultures cannot help but notice.  Speech-alone talk spreads on the wings of mimicry.

Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

0048 Around 7800 years later after the start of the Ubaid, the hypothesis of the first singularity is formulated.  Speech-alone talk characterizes our current Lebenswelt, filled with unconstrained social complexity.

Hand-speech (and hand-) talk characterizes the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, filled with constrained social complexity. Constrained?  All our ancestral social circles work in harmony.  Intimates, family, teams, bands, community, mega-band and tribe draw nourishment from the soil and branch out into our tree of life.  Eden is paradise because, in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, we are who we evolved to be.

0049 The hypothesis of the first singularity allows me to add a correlation, that further develops the contrast between the narod (C) and the ethnos (D).

Here is a picture.

0054 Allow me to cut to the chase.  The reason why Millerman writes this chapter is simple.  He wants to defend the serious study of Dugin before admirers of the political philosopher Leo Strauss.

Why would Millerman want to do that?

When Millerman declares the topic of his doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto, four members of his dissertation committee resign.  Two are Straussians.  The actions of these two are particularly poignant, since Millerman self-identifies as a maven of Strauss.

0055 Maven?

Yes, the term fits.  This chapter, number six in the collection of essays under one title, Inside Putin’s Brain: The Political Philosophy of Alexander Dugin, (available at Amazon and other hardcover book venues) plays Straussian themes.  The essay is exoteric.  The essay is esoteric.  There is a message in the middle.  Plus, that message comes from Dugin himself.

Of course, I do not say this lightly.  I have my own philosophical axe to grind, so to speak.  Yet, the clever Millerman has already prepared his text, so to speak.  The essay cleaves into three parts.  The introduction discusses two philosophical dances, one between Heidegger and Strauss and the other between Heidegger and Dugin.  The middle translates an excerpt from Alexander Dugin’s Book (2011) Martin Heidegger and the Possibility of Russian Philosophy.  The end recapitulates the introduction.

I cannot axe for more.

0056 Millerman’s text is an example of the semitic (as opposed to the greek) textual style (as discussed in An Instructor’s Guide to An Archaeology of the Fall).  The pattern is A:B:A’.

The semitic textual style asks the reader to recognize a possibility.

0057 What is the possibility that Millerman wants us to recognize?

Dugin and Strauss have a lot in common.  Both dance with the one Heidegger.  Both address a key question, articulated by ancient Greek philosophers, that defines classical political philosophy.

What is the best political order?

0058 What is best political order?

Leo Strauss ends up asking the question that moderns evade.  According to the political philosophers in our current Age of Ideas, the political order institutes organizational objectives in the names of the righteousness of the individual, the class member, the citizen and the unrighteousness of the one who cannot be a citizen.  The ancient questions are ignored.  The political order is a means to an end.  Plus, modern experts define that end in the name of an objectified subject.  We are who the experts say that we are.

And that is not good.

0059 To oversimplify Millerman’s account, Strauss’s story starts with Spengler’s cultural relativism and ends with the eternal, natural philosophy of Plato.  Spengler conceives of a comprehensive theoretical project, where (as Strauss frames it) the task of philosophy is to understand various cultures as the expression of souls.

To me, that sounds like a huge complicated project.

So, of course Martin Heidegger, who sits in the same academic chair once occupied by Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, says, “Let me give this a try.”

0060 Now, projection is a huge temptation in trying Spengler’s project.  As soon as one projects one’s own terminology into the past, then the past will conform to present academic expectations.  Here is a clue that Heidegger avoids this temptation.  Heidegger claims that modern philosophers do not understand Aristotle or Plato, at least, not in the ancient Greeks’ own terms.

The admission pleases Leo Strauss, who happens to agree.

Out, out, damned projection!

0061 Historical studies are welcome.  Historicism, the ideology that philosophy is a symptom of the culture and the age, be damned.