Twentieth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Aristotle opens his Metaphysics by stating that all human beings have the appetite for knowledge. This is the promise that philosophy makes to men: our destiny consists of ascending through the cave from ignorance up to knowledge. To the philosophical myth of the cave the Bible opposes the myth of the human condition in the garden of Eden: what is forbidden is to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once Adam and Eve are tempted to disobey God, they have one foot out of Paradise. These two human orientations lead to two different ways of life: while one is oriented towards the use of reason by free men, the other is founded on obedience to an inscrutable God. When these two forms of life face the problem of human society, political philosophy, and political theology are born. The history of human civilization can be described as a clash for hegemony between these two forms of life. In the West, political philosophy took the lead from the Renaissance onwards, while in other civilizations this has not necessarily been the case. In the twentieth-first century what we are witnessing is what the French called Le Retour de Dieu, which politically is an Imperial impulse to challenge liberalism, a creation of political philosophy. I probe this assertion by explaining its development in the foreign policy of twentieth-first-century Russia. I claim that the writings of Alexander Dugin, particularly his writings on Heidegger, offered a theoretical basis for Russian imperialism.