40 Comments
User's avatar
Thomas Schinkel's avatar

In all its brevity and simplicity, a brilliant and welcome synthesis of what's going on inside the bowels of our western world.

Expand full comment
Melvin Clive Bird (Behnke)'s avatar

This text presents a sweeping historical and philosophical argument regarding the foundational role of Plato and Aristotle in Western, Russian, Islamic, and Jewish intellectual traditions. It further asserts that modernity, communism, and liberalism represent a betrayal of these classical thinkers, culminating in a crisis that necessitates a return to “Political Platonism.” However, the argument is laden with historical oversimplifications, logical inconsistencies, and ideological biases that merit critique from multiple angles.

Historical Critique

The text makes several broad historical claims that are either highly contested or outright misleading. While Plato and Aristotle have indeed influenced Christian theology, Islamic philosophy, and Jewish Kabbalah, their role is far more complex than the text suggests.

1. Plato and Christian Theology: While elements of Platonism were integrated into Christian thought—especially via Augustine and later Neoplatonists—Christian theology is not “based on Plato” but rather on Biblical revelation, early Church traditions, and later Scholasticism, which synthesized Aristotle with Christian doctrine (as seen in Aquinas). To claim that without Plato, “nothing is comprehensible in our heritage” is an overstatement that ignores alternative influences such as Jewish thought, Roman legal traditions, and indigenous European cultures.

2. Plato in Islamic Philosophy: The text states that Islamic thought, including Sufism and Shiism, is constructed on Plato. This is misleading. While Neoplatonism, particularly through thinkers like Al-Farabi and Avicenna, played a role in Islamic philosophy, Islamic thought also engaged deeply with Aristotelianism (as seen in the works of Averroes) and had its own unique theological developments, such as Ash’arism and Mu‘tazilism, that do not reduce neatly to Platonism. Furthermore, the influence of Persian, Indian, and Semitic elements in Islamic thought is downplayed.

3. Jewish Kabbalah and Neoplatonism: The claim that Jewish Kabbalah is “nothing else but Neoplatonic doctrine introduced in the Middle Ages” is an oversimplification. Gershom Scholem indeed argued that Neoplatonic influences shaped Kabbalah, but Jewish mystical traditions predate medieval Neoplatonism. Kabbalistic ideas also draw from Biblical, Talmudic, and earlier Jewish mystical traditions, such as Merkavah mysticism. The assertion that traditional Judaism lacked an emanationist framework is also misleading, as there were proto-Kabbalistic ideas in earlier Jewish thought.

4. Hellenization of Semitic Religions: The text suggests that all three monotheistic religions were fundamentally “Hellenized” and that “pure Semitic elements” are unknown. This claim neglects the deep roots of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Semitic traditions, independent of Hellenic influence. While Hellenization impacted these religions (especially in Alexandrian Judaism and early Christian theology), they retained significant indigenous theological and philosophical elements that do not derive from Plato or Aristotle.

5. Modernity and the “Decline of the West”: The assertion that modernity represents a rejection of Plato and Aristotle in favor of Democritus and atomism is historically inaccurate. The Renaissance saw a revival of both Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Even during the Enlightenment, thinkers like Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche continued to engage with Plato and Aristotle, rather than simply embracing Democritus. The reduction of modernity to “pro-Democritus” thinking ignores the vast philosophical diversity of the modern era.

6. Britain, MAGA, and Historical Revisionism: The final political statements regarding Britain as a “dying demon” and the call for a “New 1776” (implying a revolution in the United States) are historically detached from the rest of the argument. These remarks introduce an ideological agenda that is not logically connected to the philosophical discussion and reflect a political rhetoric rather than historical analysis.

Logical Critique

The argument relies heavily on categorical generalizations, false dichotomies, and historical determinism.

1. Oversimplification of Intellectual Traditions: The text portrays the history of philosophy as a linear struggle between “Plato and Aristotle” on one side and “Democritus and materialism” on the other. However, philosophical history is not reducible to such binary conflicts. Thinkers like Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger engaged with both Platonic and Aristotelian traditions in diverse ways.

2. False Causal Relationships: The claim that modernity declined due to the rejection of Plato and Aristotle is unsubstantiated. Many of the scientific, political, and technological advancements of modernity emerged precisely through critical engagement with classical philosophy, not through its abandonment. The reduction of liberalism and communism to “pro-Democritus” ideologies ignores their complex historical and intellectual origins.

3. Unfounded Political Conclusions: The text leaps from a discussion of classical philosophy to a sweeping condemnation of Britain and advocacy for a political revolution in the U.S. This transition lacks logical coherence and suggests an attempt to weaponize philosophy for ideological purposes rather than engage in genuine philosophical inquiry.

Philosophical Critique

From a philosophical standpoint, the text presents an essentialist and traditionalist view of civilization, assuming that returning to classical philosophy is the only way to restore cultural and intellectual integrity.

1. Misinterpretation of Plato and Aristotle: The text presents Plato as a metaphysical foundation for civilization without critically engaging with the actual content of his philosophy. Plato’s dialogues contain a variety of perspectives, some of which are in tension with each other. Aristotle, meanwhile, was historically appropriated in ways that sometimes contradicted Plato (e.g., his empirical approach versus Plato’s idealism).

2. Neglect of Other Intellectual Traditions: The argument assumes that only Platonic and Aristotelian thought are necessary for understanding philosophy, religion, and life. However, major intellectual traditions in India, China, and the Islamic world developed independently of Greek philosophy and produced profound insights. Figures like Confucius, Laozi, Nagarjuna, and Ibn Arabi offer alternative metaphysical and ethical systems.

3. Instrumentalization of Philosophy for Political Ends: The text promotes “Political Platonism” as a solution without clarifying what this means. Plato’s political philosophy, particularly in The Republic, contains elements (such as the philosopher-king and the “noble lie”) that have been interpreted in various ways, including as authoritarian. The invocation of “Political Platonism” appears more ideological than philosophical.

Conclusion

This text is a blend of historical revisionism, logical fallacies, and political rhetoric disguised as philosophical analysis. While it raises interesting points about the influence of Plato and Aristotle, it misrepresents historical complexities and makes unwarranted leaps to ideological conclusions. A more nuanced approach would acknowledge the multifaceted nature of philosophical traditions and the diverse influences on modernity, rather than reducing history to a battle between Platonism and materialism.

Expand full comment
Hussein Hopper's avatar

Agree, greatly overstates the influence of the Greeks, especially on Islamic philosophy which was chiefly Sufic in origin and experiential in nature and used philosophical concepts from many traditions to illuminate their varied experiences of Reality. And of course India had a completely independent philosophical tradition entirely separate from the West. The same for China.

Still Mr Dugin has to push his western focused ideological barrow through many foreign fields , oblivious to the many indigenous philosophical systems flourishing there, and that in itself , is very European. Old habits die hard.

Expand full comment
Steve and Krys Crimi's avatar

What do I know? But if you want to comprehend our origins in the west, you have to comprehend Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles and the Pythagoreans, because Plato is really drawing from and a reaction to them. Plato transmuted the mystery tradition into rationalism—see his Symposium especially—and Aristotle sealed it with his stultifying logic. Liberalism and communism and Christian Theology are all products of rationalism. You cannot get to the real through thought. Why Aquinas said after his mystical experience serving mass, “All I have written is straw.”

But what do I know?

Expand full comment
Ryan McCann's avatar

Nice one. Today, though, liberalism is absolutely not a product of rationalism. If it came from the enlightenment, then how far it has come, indeed. It's the core theme of my latest piece: With liberals like these, who needs conservatives?

https://typerider.substack.com/p/with-liberals-like-these-who-needs?r=2ywal

Expand full comment
Modeste Schwartz's avatar

Is Sputnik V inside or outside consciousness?

Expand full comment
Dara's avatar

«Plato and Aristotle (this one correctly interpreted) assumed that reality is internal." I would see: Plato and Aristotle (this one correctly interpreted) assumed that the "true or higher levels of reality are internal but it is manifested and visible in certain way also in the external world. ....

Expand full comment
José S Mendez's avatar

Exactly.

Expand full comment
Barryonthefly's avatar

I was, in my own primitive way, just thinking about this today. This subject requires a much longer discussion and I hope Mr Dugin will consider it. The fluctuation between those who lean to one side or the other throughout history have eloquent arguments.

In reaction to Sir Issac Newton demonstrating a rainbow is but light split into its different frequencies.

“…Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.”

— Part II, lines 229–238 To Science Edgar Allan Poe

Expand full comment
Luis Sánchez's avatar

This frame is unconvincing. While it must be agreed that modernity started abandoning Aristotle, it also entails returning to Plato through Kant, Hegel, rationalism, and the Vienna School. I do not think that Plato is an internalist or Democritus an externalist. What Plato and modern rationalists do is split the spirit from the natural world and locate it as the metaphysical centre from where the world is derived.

Expand full comment
The FOJ 449331's avatar

Perfection! But how does one evolve one's thinking out from under materialism towards the Platonic or Aristotelian (let alone find a means to do this for culture at large)? Metaphysics for materialists means orgies, drugs, and free-money.

Expand full comment
Edward OGrady's avatar

Yes, Alexander, and the essence of internalism is the existence of the Father God in relationship with us, His own children, for all eternity in both the physical and spiritual realms.

Expand full comment
Barbarissa Brommel's avatar

The Torah was given as a moral and ethical guide to humanity 1000 years( more or less) before Plato. How can then Mr.Dugin claim that Plato shaped Judaism?? Only based on Kabbala? But the Talmud, the Tanach are vastly more than Kabbalah.

Expand full comment
Hussein Hopper's avatar

It had nothing to do with humanity , it was given only to jews, and as can be clearly seen, they have nothing to do with humanity either.

Expand full comment
Barbarissa Brommel's avatar

Children are subservient to the state per Plato , and therefore to be taken away from the parents to be reared by the state to become good citizens to serve for the greater good. How can Plato's philosophy be a model?

Expand full comment
Barbarissa Brommel's avatar

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1586152/jewish/Jewish-Impact-on-Greek-and-Western-Philosophy.htm

It seems that the Greeks hugely influenced the Jews and Judaism is not settled. It could be the other way around.

Expand full comment
Barbarissa Brommel's avatar

Judaism valued the Greek culture and vice versa except that the greeks violently oppressed Judaism (the story of Chanukah) For all the great achievements of the greeks they could not accept one universal God., with all their universality and open-mindedness. As far as I can understand Christianity is a hellenized product with its head god and the doctrine of trinity constructed after the hellenistic gods concept. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/64639/jewish/Couldnt-the-Jews-and-Greeks-Get-Along.htm

Expand full comment
SAMUEL LOPEZ CASTILLO's avatar

Me parece que Duguin no conoce la obra de Gustavo Bueno. No conoce la teoría del Cierre categorial. Bueno reivindica a Platón y a Aristoteles y es materialista

Expand full comment
Melvin Clive Bird (Behnke)'s avatar

This text presents a sweeping historical and philosophical argument regarding the foundational role of Plato and Aristotle in Western, Russian, Islamic, and Jewish intellectual traditions. It further asserts that modernity, communism, and liberalism represent a betrayal of these classical thinkers, culminating in a crisis that necessitates a return to “Political Platonism.” However, the argument is laden with historical oversimplifications, logical inconsistencies, and ideological biases that merit critique from multiple angles.

Historical Critique

The text makes several broad historical claims that are either highly contested or outright misleading. While Plato and Aristotle have indeed influenced Christian theology, Islamic philosophy, and Jewish Kabbalah, their role is far more complex than the text suggests.

1. Plato and Christian Theology: While elements of Platonism were integrated into Christian thought—especially via Augustine and later Neoplatonists—Christian theology is not “based on Plato” but rather on Biblical revelation, early Church traditions, and later Scholasticism, which synthesized Aristotle with Christian doctrine (as seen in Aquinas). To claim that without Plato, “nothing is comprehensible in our heritage” is an overstatement that ignores alternative influences such as Jewish thought, Roman legal traditions, and indigenous European cultures.

2. Plato in Islamic Philosophy: The text states that Islamic thought, including Sufism and Shiism, is constructed on Plato. This is misleading. While Neoplatonism, particularly through thinkers like Al-Farabi and Avicenna, played a role in Islamic philosophy, Islamic thought also engaged deeply with Aristotelianism (as seen in the works of Averroes) and had its own unique theological developments, such as Ash’arism and Mu‘tazilism, that do not reduce neatly to Platonism. Furthermore, the influence of Persian, Indian, and Semitic elements in Islamic thought is downplayed.

3. Jewish Kabbalah and Neoplatonism: The claim that Jewish Kabbalah is “nothing else but Neoplatonic doctrine introduced in the Middle Ages” is an oversimplification. Gershom Scholem indeed argued that Neoplatonic influences shaped Kabbalah, but Jewish mystical traditions predate medieval Neoplatonism. Kabbalistic ideas also draw from Biblical, Talmudic, and earlier Jewish mystical traditions, such as Merkavah mysticism. The assertion that traditional Judaism lacked an emanationist framework is also misleading, as there were proto-Kabbalistic ideas in earlier Jewish thought.

4. Hellenization of Semitic Religions: The text suggests that all three monotheistic religions were fundamentally “Hellenized” and that “pure Semitic elements” are unknown. This claim neglects the deep roots of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Semitic traditions, independent of Hellenic influence. While Hellenization impacted these religions (especially in Alexandrian Judaism and early Christian theology), they retained significant indigenous theological and philosophical elements that do not derive from Plato or Aristotle.

5. Modernity and the “Decline of the West”: The assertion that modernity represents a rejection of Plato and Aristotle in favor of Democritus and atomism is historically inaccurate. The Renaissance saw a revival of both Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Even during the Enlightenment, thinkers like Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche continued to engage with Plato and Aristotle, rather than simply embracing Democritus. The reduction of modernity to “pro-Democritus” thinking ignores the vast philosophical diversity of the modern era.

6. Britain, MAGA, and Historical Revisionism: The final political statements regarding Britain as a “dying demon” and the call for a “New 1776” (implying a revolution in the United States) are historically detached from the rest of the argument. These remarks introduce an ideological agenda that is not logically connected to the philosophical discussion and reflect a political rhetoric rather than historical analysis.

Logical Critique

The argument relies heavily on categorical generalizations, false dichotomies, and historical determinism.

1. Oversimplification of Intellectual Traditions: The text portrays the history of philosophy as a linear struggle between “Plato and Aristotle” on one side and “Democritus and materialism” on the other. However, philosophical history is not reducible to such binary conflicts. Thinkers like Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger engaged with both Platonic and Aristotelian traditions in diverse ways.

2. False Causal Relationships: The claim that modernity declined due to the rejection of Plato and Aristotle is unsubstantiated. Many of the scientific, political, and technological advancements of modernity emerged precisely through critical engagement with classical philosophy, not through its abandonment. The reduction of liberalism and communism to “pro-Democritus” ideologies ignores their complex historical and intellectual origins.

3. Unfounded Political Conclusions: The text leaps from a discussion of classical philosophy to a sweeping condemnation of Britain and advocacy for a political revolution in the U.S. This transition lacks logical coherence and suggests an attempt to weaponize philosophy for ideological purposes rather than engage in genuine philosophical inquiry.

Philosophical Critique

From a philosophical standpoint, the text presents an essentialist and traditionalist view of civilization, assuming that returning to classical philosophy is the only way to restore cultural and intellectual integrity.

1. Misinterpretation of Plato and Aristotle: The text presents Plato as a metaphysical foundation for civilization without critically engaging with the actual content of his philosophy. Plato’s dialogues contain a variety of perspectives, some of which are in tension with each other. Aristotle, meanwhile, was historically appropriated in ways that sometimes contradicted Plato (e.g., his empirical approach versus Plato’s idealism).

2. Neglect of Other Intellectual Traditions: The argument assumes that only Platonic and Aristotelian thought are necessary for understanding philosophy, religion, and life. However, major intellectual traditions in India, China, and the Islamic world developed independently of Greek philosophy and produced profound insights. Figures like Confucius, Laozi, Nagarjuna, and Ibn Arabi offer alternative metaphysical and ethical systems.

3. Instrumentalization of Philosophy for Political Ends: The text promotes “Political Platonism” as a solution without clarifying what this means. Plato’s political philosophy, particularly in The Republic, contains elements (such as the philosopher-king and the “noble lie”) that have been interpreted in various ways, including as authoritarian. The invocation of “Political Platonism” appears more ideological than philosophical.

Conclusion

This text is a blend of historical revisionism, logical fallacies, and political rhetoric disguised as philosophical analysis. While it raises interesting points about the influence of Plato and Aristotle, it misrepresents historical complexities and makes unwarranted leaps to ideological conclusions. A more nuanced approach would acknowledge the multifaceted nature of philosophical traditions and the diverse influences on modernity, rather than reducing history to a battle between Platonism and materialism.

Expand full comment
Ryan McCann's avatar

Beautifully concise: Externalism is the approach when we agree that reality is placed outside of the consciousness not inside it.'

This notion, especially relating to the upside-down nature of modern liberalism, is something I touch on in my latest piece: With liberals like these, who needs conservatives?

https://typerider.substack.com/p/with-liberals-like-these-who-needs?r=2ywal

Expand full comment