Fourth Political Theory: shortest presentation

The easiest way to understand what is Fourth Political Theory is to attentively concentrate on following suite of pictures.

1. Fourth Political Theory. Its symbol means number 4 and the sign of Jupiter the planet of Order and Monarchy. It is patriarchal Indo-European symbol of the God of the Heaven -- Dyaus, Zeus, Deus.

2. Any Political Theory is defined by the paradigms of History - being fully dependent of them. So in order to understand 4PT correctly we need to consider what three basic paradigms are:

Pre-Modernity (traditional society)  

Modernity (modern society)

Post-Modernity (a kind of post-society or dis-society where all social ties and all forms of collective identity – including gender - are destroyed, made “optional”)

3. Three main Political Theories (liberalism, communism and nationalism aka "fashism") belong to the second paradigm – i.e. to the Modernity. All three of them are essentially modern and they are dealing with the ontological and gnoseological (epistemological) map of philosophy of Enlightenment with the Cartesian concept of subject as the center. 

4. The three Political Theories can be situated in the space with special characteristics of directions. So 1st Political Theory (liberalism) has its topological place in the center and in the highest point of open (it is essential!) circle. 2nd Political Theory (communism / socialism) is to the left. 3rd Political Theory (nationalism, fashism) is to the right. Being in the middle the position of liberalism is central in the philosophical sense. It is the point that defines where is left and where is right. Left and right obtain the meaning only in relation to the 1st Political Theory. So it is why the liberalism is so important. And it is why it is winning as long as Modernity rests unquestioned and unchallenged.

5. Three Political Theories propose three versions of Cartesian subject identifying it:

with the individual (1st Political Theory  -- liberalism),

with class (2nd Political Theory -- communism / socialism),

with nation/race (3rd Political Theory -- nationalism, fashism, nazism).

6. The relations and alliances between three Political Theories can be different. The are (were) such options as 1PT+2PT vs 3PT (WWII) or 2PT+3PT vs 1PT (Ribbentrop-Molotov pact). History shows that both types of alliances were tested in XX century where the competition between three Political Theories was a main ideological stake.

7. After the common victory of 1PT+2PT over 3PT in WWII, 3PT has disappeared from the political reality. From 1945 it either belongs to the past, or has completely lost its meaning and the real influence on world politics and the societies. From that moment the struggle between 1PT and 2PT has began. That was the meaning of the second half of XX century from the standpoint of ideology.

8. The end of XX century has turned out to be the end of the battle between 1PT and 2PT. The 1PT has definitively won and from that moment it rests the only Political Theory that represents the Modernity as such on the ideological level. The liberalism has triumphed and became the universal system of thought (Pensée Unique) on the world scale. Hence the globalization and so on. From 1991 with the fall of Berlin's wall we have entered in the context of planetarian Liberal Empire. There can not be any more neither 3PT, nor 2PT. All that vaguely remind them are the liberal simulacra.

9. The historical moment we are living in is essentially unipolar - not only geopolitically (with USA and NATO as global center) but as well ideologically - with the clear and absolute domination of liberalism (of all kinds -- left, right, far left or far right). We can accept such status quo (as political global elites and the masses convinced and mind-controlled by them do) or challenge it. But the problem is we cannot oppose to 1PT any more 2PT or 3PT - both are instrumentalized by liberals. So we are in a sort of trap. The absolute domination of liberalism (1PT) doesn't let us have any serious alternative pretending that there is nothing of that kind and can not be. So we are obliged to rest inside the unipolar moment or to spin along curves of the labyrinths of artificial simulacra - between far left anarcho-communist liberalism and far right big capital liberalism. 

10. Here the horizon of 4PT appears. If we still insist on the Alternative (because being human we are essentially free and thus we can accept or reject anything) and understand the ideological meaning of the history of the Modernity (refusing to join the pseudo-leftist and pseudo-rightist camps), we need an Alternative beyond 2PT and 3PT. From that logically follows the necessity of Fourth Political Theory (4PT).

We need to remark that Modernity ends precisely with the global victory of 1PT (liberalism). So the End of History by F.Fukuyama is in the reality the End of Modernity. And thus it is beginning of Post-Modernity. But the Post-Modernity is essentially liberal because it is manifesting itself inside the liberalism (not outside of it). So it is the liberalism that define the conditions of Post-Modernity. Post-Modernity is not (as it is given now) the alternative of Modernity. It is its highest phase, its culmination. So Post-Modernity is based on the complete and absolute victory of 1PT. That is why Post-Modernity has to be global (uniting the implosion of man to the subhuman fragments in the micro-level and in the same time insisting on the progressive integration on the global and transnational mcaro-level). Post-Modernity can not be local or regional.

But in this moment of passage from the Modernity toward (liberal/post-liberal) Post-Modernity where the very principles of social, political and geopolitical order are shaking, it is the time to propose Alternative. Not only alternative to liberalism (1PT), but the Alternative to the Modernity - because 1PT is the essential political expression of the political Modernity. 1PT struggled during last centuries against 3PT and 2PT for the right to embody the very nature of Modernity and it has won. So those in search of Alternative (4PT) shouldn't be hypnotized any more by the Modernity or seduced by its post-modern perverted development. The rediscovery of Pre-Modernity is the only logical step. Here we are meeting with traditionalist philosophy and the essential critics of Modern World as a concept.

Constructing the 4PT we arrive to the rediscovery of the Pre-Modernity understood not as the past, but as the a-temporal structure of principles and values belonging to the different philosophical Universe (where exist Eternity, God or gods, angels, souls, devil, end of time and resurrection of dead). The concept of past (as as something that is not any more) with pejorative connotation is essentially Modern concept based in its turn on the negation of the dimension of Eternity and absolutization of the time (becoming). The Pre-Modernity is not the past. The Pre-Modernity is society, culture, Weltanschauung and political system constructed on the fundamental belief in the Eternity. The Modernity denies that - hence its chrono-centric epistemology.

In the context of Modernity we are dealing with Cartesian subject. Its actual normative interpretation is liberal one -- individual. So we need to deconstruct this concept of individual making appeal to the pre-modern understanding of human being and its essence.

11. But the problem is where can we find the fulcrum? The Modernity and Post-Modernity - precisely by means of Third Totalitarianism (this time liberal one) - have destroyed already the humanity and replaced it by the assembly of individuals (human rights doctrine). Refusing normative subject of all-pervading liberalism (individual and - in the near future - post-human species) we are in the void because liberalism doesn’t accept institutionally (!) any form of non-individual onthology and anthropology. And the pre-modern version of subject, of human nature are considered to be obsolete and miserable – in the extreme case criminal. If we insist nevertheless they will qualify as the residui and treat us in the same manner as in the first stage of Enlightenment - simply killing us as Jacobins and bolsheviks killed the Christians priests and princes. May be it is an option for certain men and women. The way of martyrdom is great path.

But there is other solution. Not being able to certify our own existence in the conceptual field of totalitarian liberalism we can make appeal to Heideger's concept of Dasein. When the concept of human being is obligatory fake and the liberal totalitarian culture splits the human figure more and more depriving it of any order or unity as well as of any collective identity (more than that --depriving it of any identity at all) Dasein nevertheless is here - it is always here or rather t/here. It is here - existing in authentic or inauthentic way, but it is here! So 4PT invites to take Dasein as the axial fulcrum when everything else is missing. The return to the Tradition and to the Eternity can be accomplished neither by individual nor by class or nation. Dasein is the ontological root of the human being, the nucleus of Being. Dasein can be put in the wrong way of functioning but still it is present. So it is our final argument and the main feature of 4PT. Fourth Political theory is existential. And starting from Dasein we can make the eschatological leap to the Tradition. Else we would lack the foothold. Traditionalism is to be existential otherwise it will be but one simulacrum more.

12. So we have arrived to the main structure of 4PT. Now everything is perfectly clear (I hope).

13. All these philosophical considerations (conceptual steps rendering the structure of Fourth Political Theory explicit) can be translated in the political praxis. It is only one possible way to project the main idea of 4PT to the reality of many other, but it is the more evident application. In the last scheme we observe where we are politically, with whom we have to fight and what kind of alliances we should conclude. This map of the ideological reality becomes each day more and more transparent and obvious. So now we are fully prepared and armed to interpret correctly the (political) world around us and to treat it as it deserves.