Horizon of the Ideal Empire

Sometimes one hears the reproach from critics that the Fourth Political Theory offers no positive image of the future, instead operating with what seem to many to be “abstractions.” I would like to respond to this criticism and outline how I see the future.

What follows below is, of course, no more than a scientific metaphor. Nevertheless, here is how society and the world should be after the victory of, or even in the course of the struggle for the Fourth Political Theory.

Society should be structured in the form of a hierarchy based on an eidetic-existential principle, i.e., the degree of intensity to which one lives eidetic being should be at the heart of the hierarchical criterion. This concerns none other than the different floors or degrees of the existence of Angels. The dogma should be accepted that people do not live, but rather an Angel lives through us. The brighter and more intensely it lives through us, the higher the hierarchical level of he through whom the Angel lives and, as follows, the lesser the individual element of he through which it lives. The Angel and ego are present in a person in inverse proportion: the greater the Angel, the lesser the ego. The more modest and ascetic a person is and the less individual he is, the higher the rank he occupies in the true hierarchy. In the highest of people, there should be nothing individual, egoistic, and material. Their wealth should be reduced to a minimum, minimized. Here monasticism is an anthropological model. Authority, hierarchical level, and power increase proportionally with the abolition of the individual element and the the glow emanating from ascetic effort. A good ruler is he who does not want to have anything for himself. Instead, he has everything, but taken in aggregation and eidetically, maximally enriching the inner aspect of existence. Something similar was embodied in the Middle Ages in the theory of the “second body of the king.” [1]

People, intimately knowing Stalin, will testify to his extreme simplicity in being. For example, they will tell of how he, at the zenith of his power, preferred to sleep on a cot. Another communist ruler of imperial scale, Mao Zedong, tried to never touch money, which he hated physically. The very thought of money or touching it caused him physical pain. These are signs that an angelic presence is close. These are also the marks of a good leader. Any draw towards materiality would naturally cause pain for and draw disgust from the higher figures of the Platonopolis built along existential principles. For this reason, in many religions, priests and rulers were forbidden from engaging in physical labor and sometimes from even touching material objects in their natural form, i.e., before they were worked upon in the sacred ways. This prohibition of physical labor has persisted up to the present day in Orthodoxy in respect to priests.

And so, at the head stands the philosopher king, who accordingly represents a being in which there is no individuality. The philosopher king, a philosophical tsar, does not essentially differ from the embodiment of this personal Angel. He is a form as such. In fact, if we look at the monarchical, imperial idea, we see echoes of this theory, in which the king was the metonymic pole of the whole society, whole culture, and whole people. The king is an Angel, the whole people. He is a true person, who is superior to both the individual and the collective or society. Hence the sacralization of kings up to the point of deifying them in Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Ancient Iran, etc.

The fact that any person is a potential king is brought to mind in Orthodoxy by the wedding ceremony, when the bride and groom hold the imperial crown. In his nature, man is homo regius. He is just as much a king and an Angel as he is human.

The state should be ruled by the philosopher king, who is absolutely transparent, devoid of any individual properties. His individual element should be so miniscule that it would be desirable to hide everything reminiscent of it, including his body, his image, etc. It would be better if no one saw the philosopher king as something external. All should recognize him as an internal ruler, as the “guest within.”

The philosopher king must be hidden. Moreover, his existence must be so intense that it transcends the limits of existence. He will act in not-acting (the Taoist ideal of the perfect ruler is he who accomplishes non-acting, or Wu-Wei). Considering his deep and profound connection to the apophatic, he will not exist in existing or, on the contrary, he will exist in not existing. The philosopher king is as if he was not, and he is not as he is. He should be easy, transparent, always open to the abyss represented by him in the Platonopolis of the Fourth Political Theory. Perhaps he will communicate with his subjects from behind a curtain, from the depths of a cave, or even through an oracle. He should not not speak nor be silent, but instead only give signs, if that is how we should paraphrase what Heraclitus said in fragment 93 of the Delphic Pythia: – ὁ ἄναξ οὗ τὸ μαντεῖόν ἐστι τὸ ἐν Δελφοῖς, οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει ἂλλὰ σημαίνει. For Heraclitus it is important that οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει ἂλλὰ σημαίνει, or “neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.” Meaning is located between words and silence. The philosopher king operates with sign-meanings, in semi-silence, in the light regal whisper from which meaning is transmitted as directly as the spirit blows.

The philosopher king stands at the center of the Platonopolis. He is the Platonopolis. In him, as if in a sacred place, occurs the epiphany of man.

Furthermore, the philosopher king will be surrounded by other philosophers, by sacred priests that live an angelic being. These can be monks, ascetics, contemplators, dreamers, mathematicians, or people immersed in the contemplation of the absolute useless which no one needs. Aristotle said that there is useful knowledge (φρόνησις) which multiplies with years and is maximal in reasonable old age, and there is the useless (σοφία) which is accessible immediately, regardless of age, and is not incremental or declining – it does not serve something else, but is self-sufficient and self-worthy. For Aristotle, useless knowledge, wisdom, or σοφία was the highest and most aristocratic. The rulers of the Platonopolis should be Sophist personalities.

Philosophers will fly and skate on dolphins, who will also be philosophers.

Above all will soar the Great Raven.

Below are the berserkers, the warrior barons. They are the Guardians, the “guardians of being” (Heidegger). Warriors will be extremely frightening, terrifying to the point that no one will want to fight them. In the army will serve battle Dragons and aggressive fighting cocks.

Who is lower? Artisans? We propose not to discern such a caste at all. The third caste is that of Poets and Farmers.

Production is poetry. Artocracy (Wagner’s principle). People should eat artistic products.

Art is the most rough shell of an idea, its materialization, its plasmation. In our policy, any object should be first and foremost beautiful. Non-beautiful objects will be subject to destruction.

The economy will be abolished and economists dismissed.

Private property will also be abolished. The sun will work. Earth and time will belong to the eidos. there will be no banks, no large estates. Rilke and Heidegger spoke of such as “transferring the weights from the Merchant’s hands to the hands of the Angel.”

There will be cars, but only very, very beautiful ones.

The art of dance will be one of the most important arts. Dance will become a political duty. All will dance in circles, and tango, twist, and bossa nova will be promoted and made mandatory. Everyone should be able to dance. Officials, like in China, will need to compose poetry in addition to painting.

The attitude towards farmers will be sacred. All life will be adapted to suit the farmers. Everything for the farmers. The population will be pastoralists and cultivators. Farm labor, grain, grapes, baking, loaves, and bulls, cows, sheep, and goats will be raised to the status of state ideology. Seeing an ear of grain or a donkey, not to mention a farmer or shepherd, all citizens of Platonopolis will welcome them with singing. At the head of humanity will be Bread and Wine. Talking bulls with the Moon between their horns will serve Bread and Wine to weary travelers.

All around will be gardens and forests and wild animals along with domestic ones. The wolves will master crafts and help men repair carts and sing songs.

Farmers will have huge beards which will be twined with ripe ears. As the most intelligent of forest brothers, bears will also work the fields. Pigs will feed themselves or elect a pig-in-command.

Women will be provided with earthenware pots with fresh milk and huge, extremely beautiful hats.

This is the vertical of society.

Now for the horizontal.

It will be a huge Empire. The richness of the landscape and the diversity of the polities will be intrinsic to the state. The Empire principle must be rehabilitated. Besides the trifunctional system (philosophers, warriors, and farmers), the Empire can include enclaves of a variety of creatures from Amazons to two-headed, bird-legged, and headless beings, gypsies, Evenki, etc. There could even be a mermaid republic or Veche forest gatherings governed by an assembly of Domoviye and Leshie. We can also imagine a congress of Angels or Tatar Kurultai.

A plurality of types of political and anthropological creativity should be encouraged.

TV and the press will be cancelled, as they are always spouting some kind of meaningless nonsense.

Clothing will have its own meaning. The body is the wrapper of the eidos, and the clothes are the wrapping of the body. Everyone will have different clothes, but all colorful and astonishingly beautiful, so that people pay attention to them. People will notice clothes and judge by clothes. There will be an absolute cult of clothing. People will spend most of their time getting dressed and changing.

Food will be the most ecologically pure, and distributed freely, as a gift. There will be an exceptional lot of sausage, cheese, and hazelnuts in the Empire.

As for gender, women will be esteemed in the Empire, since they are more interesting than men (and more beautiful). Men will not be upset by this given that envy will be abolished by decree (The first decree will be abolishing envy, jealousy, and property; envy will be published with three shots of ivy for an envious look and six for a jealous word).

Women will love the Empire and cherish it every morning in greeting the sun.

Morality will change. The word “evil” will be excluded from the lexicon along with all bad expressions. Instead of them will be introduced the gradual concept of “less good.” A less good person stole a bun at the market. He deserves less love and less respect than the one who asked for a bun and was given one. With a gentle smile.

Everyone will smile and laugh at funerals, for since this world is so beautiful, what about the next…And then death will be comprehended as a return to the eidos (επιστροφή).

There will be no law. He who is smart, bold, and beautiful, is right.

Education will combine high metaphysics, theology, Angelology, and Heidegerrianism for the smallest and Kyoto School.  Everyone will be taught such.

Warriors will additionally be taught gymnastics and figure skating.

Poets will be taught different languages, from 10 to 15 each.

Farmers will have nothing to be taught besides bossa nova and tango. They are already so wise in their sacred labor.

It is approximately such a society that we propose to build as the goal of the Fourth Political Theory.

[1] Kantorovich, E. Dva tela korolia. Issledovanie po srednevokovoy politicheskoi teologii. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Instituta Gaidara, 2013.

Translator: Jafe Arnold

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