by Greg Johnson
10. THE LEGACY OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS: THE CONSTRUCTION OF WESTERN POLITICAL MODERNITY
We have already had occasion several times to discuss how the Indo-European aristocratic warrior spirit is, in fact, the true origin of democratic institutions and doctrines of “rights.” Our thumotic, barbarian ancestors would never accept the rule of tyrants, and demanded to “have a say,” to be recognized. Democracy is simply the application of this principle beyond the aristocratic class. Exactly how that process took place is a very complicated story. But we need to take a closer look at it. Amongst other things, it will allow us to discern the process by which the contributions of aristocratic warriors to civilization came to be forgotten—as well as the process by which Western uniqueness came to be denied.
I have already mentioned that the basis for Athenian democracy was a pre-existing aristocratic system of a “council of nobles,” and that many of the most prominent figures in Athenian democratic politics were of noble birth. In Rome we see a similar pattern. The Roman Republic was preceded by a period of tyranny, which was eventually replaced by a group of aristocrats. These men constituted the leading figures in the Republic, and they ruled in the name of liberty—which meant freedom from absolute monarchs. As Duchesne correctly points out, without this group of aristocrats, there would have been no Republic, and all that followed it, both good and ill.
Eventually, the Romans dropped their emphasis upon heredity as a source of aristocratic virtue, and instead created a system in which individuals could prove their virtue and move up in the world through competition. One could argue that this is in fact more in keeping with the ancient, barbaric Indo-European ethos: nobility is really all about deeds and spirit, not who one’s father happened to be. In fact, so broadminded were the Romans that they offered limited citizenship to freed slaves, and full citizenship to their descendants. By the time of the early Empire, in fact, the majority of Roman citizens were descended from slaves (!).
In the Medieval period, the aristocratic principle of sovereignty was central to the feudal system of government—just as it had been in the days of the barbarians. The nobles had autonomy within their sphere, and the king was expected to respect the rights of his nobles and to consult them. And the nobles demanded quite a lot of their kings, the Magna Carta of 1215 being only the most famous example (other, similar documents were imposed on kings throughout Europe). Duchesne also refers to the Medieval “warren of jurisdictions”—duchies, baronies, bishoprics, counties, guilds, monasteries, universities—which effectively meant that no one man or group of men had authority over all. (Consider by contrast the centralized “Oriental despotism” of China.)
All of this laid the groundwork for the development of parliamentary government out of the feudal system. As Duchesne notes, drawing on the work of Marc Bloch, it was only in those lands that had been governed by a system of aristocratic councils that representative, parliamentary government arose. (It didn’t happen, for example, in Japan, where the submission of the noble vassals to their lord was total.) And we see rising to prominence all over Europe three “estates” that demanded a voice: the nobles, clergy, and “townsmen” (or middle class). As Duchesne puts it, “the privileges of the aristocracy were not antithetical to the idea of bourgeois ‘rights’ and ‘liberties’ but were instead their original inspiration and precedent” (p. 483).
The increasing commercialization of early modern Europe meant that the power of merchants and bankers—of the middle class—steadily grew. In Dumézilian terms, what occurred was a gradual shift to the rule of the “third function”—even if, on the surface, it was still those of noble birth who officially ruled. And with this change in power relationships came a change in the Zeitgeist. Increasingly it was no longer the values of the nobility (“honor”) or the church (“piety”) that mattered, but rather the values of the middle class: industriousness, utility, sociability, affability, cleanliness, “likeableness,” “niceness,” etc.
As societies turned more toward commerce and the values and interests of merchants and bankers, the more the purpose of society was seen as the promotion of peace, order, and security. Enter Thomas Hobbes, who argued precisely that this was the only legitimate purpose of political order—deriving the humdrum values of bourgeois shopkeepers deductively from an Epicurean metaphysics (the part of Leviathan that nobody reads). Hobbes’s stated intention was to reign in the aristocratic desire for “vainglory” that threatened peace and security, and therefore the free flow of commerce. For “vainglory” simply read thumos. Hobbes’s theory of the “social contract”—which expresses what is in fact the distilled essence of the modern social and political outlook—was constructed in conscious opposition to the thumotic virtue that was the foundation of Western greatness itself.
Of course, one can’t really eliminate thumos—and there will always be certain men who are particularly gifted with it. So, what the modern world does is to channel that thumos into activities that do not threaten it. Men are encouraged to become “economic warriors” doing battle with others to see who can build and sell the biggest and best mousetrap. No real man is ever truly satisfied by this—but modern society offers him money and pharmaceutical drugs to kill his pain. The most thumotic are encouraged to go into the military to “fight for democracy.” Not for glory—only to keep the peace.
With this rechanneling of thumos also came a reconceiving of it. When thumos was put to work for economic ends, it became confused with the pursuit of self-interest. In other words, if one looks at the economic warriors busily competing with one another and hooting and hollering at their latest sale or acquisition, it certainly looks like all that is going on here is a bunch of greedy ex-frat boys seeking their selfish benefit. In fact, of course, this is exactly how the slave types (in Nietzsche’s sense) saw the masters of old. They did not see that what was really at work, under the surface, was the pursuit of an ideal—the desire for honor and prestige.
In the modern period, the slave perspective on thumos has become the dominant perspective—and even the self-under-standing of most genuinely thumotic men. Thumos has simply been conflated with appetite, and seen as on a par with the desires for food, sex, and comfort. The connection of thumos to the pursuit of an ideal—in fact, to the negation or mastery of appetite—has been completely lost. And so Duchesne writes, on the very last page of his book: “Accordingly, to the degree that the spirited part of the Western soul was suppressed by the ethical demands of modern democratic liberalism, rechanneled into economic inventiveness, or confounded with bodily appetites, it became increasingly difficult for scholars to attribute the restlessness of the West to this part of the soul” (p. 488).
In other words, the reason why our revisionists must understand everything in economic terms, seeing, for example, even the Indo-European migrations as responses to “scarcity,” is that they are modern men who have effectively been neutered. (Duchesne puts it more politely.) They simply do not know the thumotic part of the soul. There is no place for it in their understanding of human motivations. One sees this even in modern science, where the evolutionary biologists insist that the thumotic pursuit of recognition simply must reduce to a desire to attract mates or accumulate material resources. It simply does not occur to them that there might be some fundamental difference between human beings and earthworms, and that there might be a part of the human being that rises above—indeed, that negates—the purely natural. And how could this to occur to them? The only world they have ever personally known is dominated by an ethos nicely summed up by the rapper Ice Cube: “Life ain’t nothing but bitches and money.”
11. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
And yet, even within the most modern of Western men—yes, even within our politically correct revisionists—we still see some glimmer of the old, Indo-European thumotic nature. One sees this, of course, in the polemical nature of their scholarship. And, as Duchesne points out, their critique of the West embodies the perennial Western negativity ab
out itself, and Western “self-doubt.” This may be the hardest point for Right-wing critics of the Left to understand. The suicidal self-hatred of Western Left- wingers is something that seems utterly mad, and defies explanation. I’ve spoken to many a conservative who has expressed utter consternation over this. The important thing to understand is that the anti-Western animus of the Left may be foolish, dishonest, and disastrous—but it is not un-Western.
From the beginning—if Duchesne is correct—we have been animated by a spirit of individualism that has involved the willingness to negate even the desire for life in order to achieve the ideal. We have been willing to risk everything, in other words, for individual autonomy, and for our vision of what is right. This is the source of everything great about us, but it is simultaneously our tragic flaw. It seems to lead, in many Westerners, to a form of madness in which one comes to believe that freedom means emancipation from all limits whatsoever. And so we modern Westerners now believe that we are not just capable of taming or channeling our animal desires, but of giving birth to ourselves.
We believe that we can free ourselves from history, from culture, from biology, even from the limits of time and space. We deny heredity, natural inequality, upper limits on physical and mental development, ethnic and national characters, and even the difference between the sexes. We want to “have it all” and be all, or anything. But, of course, this really amounts to being nothing at all. And that really is our goal: the apotheosis of the Western spirit. To be absolutely free of all limits and all otherness; to be free of anything not chosen by the autonomous self. To be free, in fact, of identity. Pico understood us correctly: we Westerners are the animal with no nature—or at least we think that we are. And this realization, in fact, is what Hegel saw standing at the end of history. All of history for Hegel was the coming into existence, through (Western) humanity of Aristotle’s God: the being who is utterly and completely independent, self-sufficient, and undetermined; spinning in an eternal bliss of pure and perfect self-relatedness.
But, of course, this is complete insanity. It is true enough that we are able to negate our animal nature in the name of an ideal, or to channel our animal drives. But we are not free to be anything we like. The very ability to react against our animal drives has its basis in factors—biological and cultural—that we have not chosen. And the obvious truth is that we haven’t freed ourselves from history, culture, and biology. We have only fooled ourselves into thinking that we have, or that it is possible. Intrinsic, immutable human characteristics continue to exist—as well as intrinsic, immutable human inequalities. The madness of the West is not that it has removed these things, but that it thinks it has. And this madness may well lead to its destruction.
As a perfect illustration of how one cannot escape one’s nature and history, consider the Left-wingers Duchesne crosses swords with. Whether we tarry with the PC historians or sociologists at Ivy League schools, or with the garden-variety liberals of Seattle, or with the Democratic power brokers of Washington, D.C., or with the Labour organizers of London, we will find a people as deeply invested in Eurocentrism as Rudyard Kipling.
I know that this will seem an incredible claim. But consider: while those on the Left spend a great deal of time today speaking about “diversity,” in reality they are only willing to affirm those aspects of other cultures that do not conflict with the ideals of Western liberalism. Other cultures may enter into the great, multicultural project—but they may not exhibit (as many do) sexism, misogyny, or homophobia—or engage in such practices as arranged marriages, duels, honor killings, or clitoridectomy. Western liberals are in fact perfectly prepared to welcome individuals from cultures that practice these things—but most see it as their mission to enlighten them and get them to stop. At least, that is the mission of those who are actually willing to see these differences: many liberals, even when faced with abundant evidence of the illiberality of non-Westerners, will steadfastly deny that any such generalizations can be made and will denounce anyone who makes them as “racist.”382
The Left-wing “celebration of diversity” amounts, in the end, to a celebration of culture in its external and superficial forms. In other words, to Western liberals “multiculturalism” winds up amounting simply to such things as different costumes, music, styles of dance, languages, and food. The real guts of the different cultures—how they view the world, how they view the divine, how they view men and women—have to be nipped and tucked (or even excised entirely) to bring them into conformity with Western liberalism. (Or, in the case of the most dishonest liberals, they must simply be evaded.)
Thus, the hidden agenda of so-called “multiculturalism” is really the “Enlightenment,” or rather Europeanization, of all peoples. Now, I would venture to say that virtually no Western liberals are consciously aware of this. The obvious reason is that for the most part they are unable to see the culture of liberalism as uniquely Western—and thus they do not perceive that they have any Western identity at all. They see themselves as cosmopolitans; citizens of the world. They have no qualms about “helping” others to become like themselves, because they think that what they are really doing is merely helping those others to become truly human (to “realize their human potential”).
As Duchesne discusses at length, they have unconsciously taken European traits and values as simply “human” and projected them onto the rest of the world. It is thus possible for liberals to both “celebrate diversity” and, for example, give condescending lectures to Muslims about women’s rights. They do not perceive this as imposing their culture onto others, because they do not even perceive their culture as their culture; they see it as a “universal humanity” that others may need a little help to fully actualize. And it is their mission to help them to do so! (And one of our Western characteristics is that we must always have a mission in order to justify our existence.) The unification of all peoples, an end to war and strife, universal respect for rights, universal political enlightenment. It’s the end of history, and it’s all decked out in a coat of many colors. But there is but one lily-white Western mono-culture underneath. And the ultimate irony is that that mono-culture is spread by self-hating Westerners who condemn their culture because they think it has failed to live up to ideals that are, in fact, the invention of Westerners.
Of course, it is not just the Leftists who exhibit these tendencies—who want to civilize the planet by spreading a Western culture they do not even recognize as Western. Conservatives are playing the same game (especially the recent variety of “neo-conservatives”). It seems not to matter who is in charge. We are always in the business of exporting our “timeless ideals.” Always forcing others to be free. Always celebrating otherness by imposing a “humanitarian” sameness. It seems that we Westerners simply cannot escape our Westerness, regardless of our political affiliation.
So, what is the cure for this peculiar brand of madness? Here we have to be careful, because some of the cures proposed by Right-wingers are, in fact, worse than the disease. A cure is worse than the disease when it kills the patient. And some have proposed alterations to our self-conception and way of life that are profoundly anti-Western. For example, it is true that one of our problems is that we lack unity. Therefore, some of us look to non-Western countries like North Korea, take note of their impressive unity, and yearn for something similar. But we must keep squarely in mind that though our individualism, our passion for freedom, our self-criticism, and our bellicose nature have indeed, it seems, produced some pretty problematic results—nevertheless this is us. This is who we are.
Whoever would seek to save the West must not seek to change what is fundamentally Western about us. Indeed, such an aim is doomed to failure. So what is the answer? It is just possible, of course, that there may not be one. It is just possible that Western man is indeed a tragic figure, and his story a tale with no happy ending possible. This was Spengler’s position, in fact. And we must confront it. In the final analysis, we might just be a pe
ople whose incomparable greatness was made possible by traits that eventually doomed it.
Of course, if we adopt this pessimistic outlook we are bound to make Spengler’s prophecy a self-fulfilling one. I would therefore like to suggest an alternative. It deserves to be discussed at greater length, but I will merely sketch it here. Fittingly, I will take my inspiration from Hegel. The thinker who revealed to us the beginning of Western history, its course, and its alleged end may also be able to provide us with a way to a new beginning.
In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel deals with different conceptions of freedom. Most philosophers and ordinary people take freedom to mean “lack of constraint,” and to be the opposite of “determination.” But, good dialectician that he was, Hegel argues that this conception rests upon a false dichotomy. If freedom means lack of determination, then freedom is completely impossible. All of us are born into a determinate set of cultural, social, geographical, and historical circumstances. We don’t choose these things, but they shape who we are—often in ways to which we are oblivious (as my earlier discussion of Eurocentric Leftists illustrates).
But Hegel argues that this fact is not something we should mourn—because this “determination” is merely the set of conditions that makes possible our freedom. As I remarked earlier, freedom is always freedom within a context; “freedom of choice” means freedom, within a certain context, to select from a number of options. The context always defines what the options are—even the option you may dream up, that no one else has realized or thought to choose. And all sorts of factors define and make possible a context, factors over which we have no control. So, for example, that I was born in this country as opposed to that one, to this sort of family, in this time period, etc., undeniably limits me—but it defines a context in which I may make choices and, indeed, realize myself as the sort of being I am.
