Why Look for a Dark Logos in a Dark Room (Especially When It Isn’t There)?

Abstract

The article provides a critical analysis of the Russian philosopher, sociologist and political scientist Alexander Dugin. According to Dugin, there are no universal (rational) principles on which philosophy may rely; however, every culture has its own rationality and its particular “Logos.” Therefore, the task of Russian philosophers is to create a special “Russian philosophy of chaos,” also termed a “dark Logos,” as an alternative to the Western Logos and its pretentions to universality. The uncritical acceptance of this Western Logos by Russian society has given it a distinctive attribute called “archaeomodern,” which is an incomplete and superficial modernization of Russian society even though it remains deeply archaic in its essence. The article finds several critical flaws in Dugin’s project to (re)create a “Russian philosophy of chaos.” First, Dugin’s ideas about the essence of Western European modernity (and consequently about the constituent elements of the Russian archaeomodern) are drawn mainly from the writings of Western such critics of modernity as René Guénon and Martin Heidegger that are themselves an integral part of the Western Logos and that paint a distorted picture of Western modernity by starting from a polemical opposition to it. The author notes also that Dugin’s ideas about the radically archaic nature of the Russian nation, which he believes has not reached even the stage of Europe’s Middle Ages, are based primarily on the speculations of Western thinkers about “underdeveloped non-Western nations.” Thus, instead of the nuanced study of the extent and depth of modernization in Russian society and analysis of its elements promised by Dugin, he offers a series of caricatured images borrowed from Western philosophy and makes recommendations that are too superficial to be of much interest to Russian society or its government