Geydar Jemal — Book “Logic of Monotheism”

Fragment [topic: Radical Discourse, pages: 1-46]

This book cannot claim to be a comprehensive and accurate presentation of the topic that we have so risky included in the title. Dzhemal is not with us, and compiling a thematic collection of works without the author, knowing how he treated his own word presented to him in printed form, was rather presumptuous of us. After all, Geydar was very demanding and did not just mercilessly shorten the texts of his speeches that came across to him: everything would have ended with him simply setting out on just a few pages everything that seems to us here “the logic of monotheism,” and he would certainly have announced such a final text “key”. And still, we would have to lift hundreds more pages of his legacy, trying to find the “keys” to his “key”, and this is how this book turned out.
Each title in the Table of Contents is a separate lecture, unrelated to the others. All lectures were read at different times in different audiences. Several texts were dictated at home. Therefore, remember that in front of you not a one-piece book, but a collection of Jemal’s speeches, the selection of which rather reflects the understanding and approach of the compilers to the stated topic (our Kostya Taratorin’s, in the first place). At the same time, the obvious independence — in terms of time and place of creation — of each of the texts did not affect their logical connection, and we consider the occurrences of repetitions to be an undoubted merit of the book: Dzhemal returns to his theses in different contexts and from different angles, which makes it easier for the reader to understand the author’s thought.
And only under the title “Political Islam in Theses” we ventured to combine three unfinished texts on the same topic. With all the obviousness of their incompleteness and rough character, in these sketches for the book “Political Islam”, which he never finished, one can clearly see the intellectual power of Jemal, his ability to concise and at the same time exhaustive formulations, precise and comprehensive statement of the problem. Thus, in the personal correspondence of Heydar Jahidovich with the alleged publisher of this book, we found a remarkable passage worthy of publication: “There is a specificity in Islamic discourse that may seem exotic to an ordinary observer from the outside. Firstly, this discourse is extremely ideological and politicized — and it has always been so, all 14 centuries of Islamic history. In this space, the theology of politics and the politicization of theology are the norm. (Therefore, talk about the fact that “certain forces cover up political goals with religion” goes, so to speak, “goes out the window”: this logic simply does not exist in Islam.) Secondly, an even more difficult moment for third-party perception: there is no past in Islam. What happened in the first years of Islamic history is a permanently actual archetype, a sacred model, which is again and again comprehended as the essence of reality, and precisely of the current daily routine. There is no time gap, there is no transfer of layers of history into the category of legends, Christmastide stories, into irrelevant archaism. Since 622 A.D. (the first year of the Hijra), the global Islamic community has been living in the eternal present, in modernity, built once — until the end of history. Therefore, in my plan [of the book] there are, in fact, no excursions into history — only modernity, set in its content 1400 years ago … “ Here it is — Jemal’s brilliance of thought, capable of illuminating the most complex discourse with one thesis, like a flash, which at once becomes understandable and close! I think you understand why we couldn’t publish these unfinished drafts.
As in the previous collection, many of the presented texts are the author’s speeches in a “specific” environment of philosophers, sociologists, psychologists and other professionals in the humanities — “cathedral”, as Jemal himself called them. By the way, the very attitude towards Dzhemal in the academic (or all the same “cathedral”) environment is interesting — pretty much, by the way, tired of the abundance of “home-grown” amateur philosophers. Those who had the opportunity to observe the communication of Geidar Dzhakhidovich, for example, with employees of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences or teachers of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, had the impression that the higher and deeper the professional academic level of a specialist, the more reverence he had for Jemal. Heydar was fluent in the categorical language native to “secular” philosophers and was confidently oriented in all the niches of the conceptual field in which the humanities intellectual of his day expressed himself.
At the same time, Jemal was completely devoid of “academicism”: for example, he never designed his articles and lectures properly. To be more precise, most often Heydar simply did not see the texts of his speeches: he himself preferred improvisations based on a short plan (and even then not always), and enthusiasts later set out recordings of his speeches on paper. Therefore, Dzhemal’s articles do not correspond to academic “canons”, because they never contain, for example, bibliographies — despite the abundance of references in them, for example, to Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein or, excuse me, Marx and Lenin. Sometimes Heydar Jahidovich mentions the author of this or that thought or thesis directly, and sometimes he assumes that the audience knows who he is talking about. But in a professional environment, this style of his objections never aroused.
But if, studying the intellectual heritage of Dzhemal, we compare the text and the audience to which it was addressed, then it becomes obvious: Heydar, as a thinker in all his depth, “really”, revealed himself in the Muslim audience (or assumed Muslims as the final addressee of his intellectual message ).
Unfortunately, a kind of nihilism in the spirit of “philosophy is kufr, philosophy is superfluous” is widespread in the Russian-speaking Islamic environment. Such “confessional dogmatism”, upon closer examination, turns out to be nothing more than a stereotype about an intellectual borrowed from mass culture and disregard for “high matters”. But today, the formulation of Islamic ideology, the Islamic agenda in the Russian-speaking field is impossible without the full use of the categorical language, which for centuries has been polished and enriched outside the Islamic world, in isolation from the comprehension of Koranic truths. It is amusing to observe how, based on purely superficial associations connected, as it seems to them, with philosophical “absurdity”, some accuse Dzhemal of “importing” Gnosticism or Western philosophy into Islam. Apparently, they believe that since the time of the translation of “A Thousand and One Nights” the vocabulary of the Russian language has not changed, and it is precisely that part of the language that deals with Islamic thought.
Another problem is the complexity of a significant part of Dzhemal’s texts. In this case, the “critics” are led by poorly concealed irritation, the irritation of the Krylov’s fox, to whom ripe grapes were inaccessible. And already completely out of the realm of curiosities — attempts to convict Heydar, for example, of “Eurasianism” or “traditionalism”. But Heydar Dzhemal simply destroyed all these rather aggressive speculations on the way to the Russian-speaking Islamic intellectual field. By the way, it is always easy to find out that “critics” in their claims to the aforementioned directions operate with arguments borrowed from Dzhemal himself, though more often through “retellings” of third parties.
Dzhemal’s intellectual heritage made the Russian-speaking Ummah more mature — he himself grew up with it.
Yes, Heydar Jemal is very difficult to understand. Making his way through the thicket of Dzhemal’s reasoning, the reader runs the risk of falling into sophisticated intellectualism, trying to mentally recreate — “according to Dzhemal”, as he believes — some kind of “mountainous” reality. And falls into a trap. Because Jemal does not describe to us some kind of “high” reality that we need to “comprehend”. Dzhemal rather describes to us the very work of thought to break through into a new consciousness, comprehend the incomprehensibility of what is beyond ontology, and comprehend the causes of this incomprehensibility. He called it “the study of the other side of thought.” Dzhemal considered the central direction in his research to be a person’s knowledge of the possibilities and conditions of his own knowledge, the study of thinking itself, and not the comprehension of unknown “objects”.
We hope that the book will help the reader to overcome the content of his own consciousness again. After all, a human as an “intellectual viceroy of the Almighty” is obliged (!) to reflect the Providential Intention in his thought process — this is what Heydar Jemal is trying to convey to us.

Ahmed Magomedov

ON THE METHODOLOGY OF THOUGHT IN ISLAM

August 19, 2012
Today, the main problem of the Islamic political movement is the ability to clearly and preciously formulate the agenda, to formulate the Islamic ideology. It is necessary to understand clearly that Islamic ideology is not just a repetition of theological positions in a dogmatic form, but it is the ability to clearly state the principles of your faith in the language of modern philosophy.
Or if someone does not like the word “philosophy” and it seems “not Islamic”, then you can say this: categorical logical thought. Muslims are obliged to express their faith, their concept, their understanding of reality not in a special “confessional”, dogmatic language, but in the language of categorical logical thought. This is not a return to Aristotle, not a return to Plato, not a return to the first centuries of Islamic history, when the mass of new intellectuals of the Islamic world was fascinated by Aristotle, called him “Teacher”: there was a school of Eastern peripatetics, where they went very far from the Qur’anic teaching about reality — up to the coincidence in views with Aristotle regarding the “indestructibility” of matter, the “eternity” of the world, and so on. This is not a return to this.
We must present in categorical language the principles of the Qur’an in the form of a logical doctrine that is absolutely intelligible, clear and valid for minds not educated within Islam. It is necessary to overcome the negative attitude of Muslims towards categorical logical thought, because this negative attitude is based on a misunderstanding. Muslims think that “philosophizing” means “to reason falsely” and following “their own opinions” about those things that they do not know and cannot know, which are outside their experience, outside their perception.
Indeed, to follow such “opinions”, to talk about this topic is nothing more than speculation. Especially when we have clear instructions in Revelation. But after all, philosophy is not reduced to a reasoning about what objective reality is, especially that invisible, invisible aspect of it, called “gaybat”, which is beyond sensory experience. Philosophy is not limited to this.
In fact, the most operational and essential part of philosophy is the understanding of your own thought. But to the thinker his own thought is open. Muslims must understand how human thought works and manage this human thought so that it is a mirror reflecting Islamic theology — Qur’anic science, Qur’anic knowledge. And the study of thought is not “following opinions”, it is not reasoning about things that are beyond your experience and your reach, but an analysis of what is happening inside you — about how, in fact, your own head works. This is what is missing today. And it is precisely a step in this direction that turns us from passive, suffering objects of the influence of the historical process into active, independent, subjective players who make history. We must move today from the state of the object of history “to quality” — to the state of the subject of history.

PROLEGOMENA TO THE IDEOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL RADICALISM

August 28, 2016
Radicalism is a worldview that fundamentally does not accept the universe as a proper and “good” order. In a radical worldview, the human world is a reflection, as in a mirror, of the essence of Being. Being is a principle hostile to the Spirit, representing the antithesis of the Divine Plan. Being and the Great Being are synonymous, impersonal and personal aspects of Iblis — Satan.
Elements of a radical worldview are shared with political Islam and other religious ideologies emanating from the Abrahamic root. For example, it is worth noting the deep hatred of the Priestless Old Believers — orthodox christian sect for the authorities and the “official” society. The state for Priestless Old Believers is an instrument of the Antichrist (in Islam — Dajjal). The entire society, in their opinion, is at the mercy of the Antichrist, and the support of any government is a step towards strengthening the position of the Antichrist on earth.
It should be noted that in this, Priestless Old Believers went further than even modern radical Islam, which still dreams of a “Sharia statehood” coexisting peacefully with kufr, provided that the latter “refuses aggression against Muslims.”
Today, Muslims are unaware that the political goals and objectives of global Islam are rooted at the metaphysical level — in the triangle of conflict between the Almighty, Adam and Satan, who refused to bow before Adam, but reprimanded the Creator for himself the right to lead people astray throughout history.
Political Islam cannot follow the example of the Jews, who rely on the category of “galut” in their attitude to the outside world. For Jews, life in dispersion means life in an airless and lifeless space, in relation to which only predatory actions are appropriate.
Muslims cannot go this way and create a ghetto — whether it be a “caliphate” or “black” quarters of European megacities. The task of Muslims is stated in the Qur’an: to fight until all religion on the Earth will belong to Allah. This does not mean, as naive or unscrupulous non-Muslims think, “forcible conversion” of everyone to Islam. But this means the demolition of the world order in its deepest metaphysical foundations. In other words, we cannot speak only of the struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and local forms of national oppression. In short, Islam cannot confine itself to the revolutionary platform of the liberal left, be it Trotskyists, anarchists, or Chegevarians of whatever kind. “Companionship” with revolutionary-minded liberals is occasionally possible if it fits into the format of Islamic strategies at the moment in a given place.
However, Islam cannot be “socialist” (just as it cannot be “capitalist”). Socialism is the cult of society as a “magic machine” capable of generating an excess of material wealth and nurturing each of its members, like a shepherd cherishes a sheep.
All forms of oppression for Islam — colonialism, imperialism, comprador control in the interests of kufr through nationalist dictatorships and the like — all this is only a peripheral toolkit of the main enemy — the Great Being, whose shadow on earth is human society as such.
Society for political Islam is not something formed from below through some kind of “social contract”. This is always and initially an extrahuman factor, the evolution of which leads to the disappearance of man as a sovereign autonomous personality.
From below, by the initiative of real people, fraternal communities are formed, which, according to the Plan of the Almighty, are cells of resistance of the Spirit that opposes the global system.
Islam is a strategy of the Spirit. It has a pronounced, strictly confessional side, which is certainly significant for those who are inside the Islamic community. However, there is also a political ideology that is not expressed in strictly confessional terminology and which can be the foundation of the political philosophy of a non-Muslim who has challenged the system.
Such a political ideology of radicalism, which, despite the inevitable internal anti-secularity, is, for “operational” reasons, non-confessional in nature, is based on four cornerstone concepts that are closely related to each other. Each of these four concepts is something originally provocative, thrown as a challenge, so that the radical masters each of these concepts and at the same time gives it a different authentic content.
These are the four cornerstone concepts: death, violence, pain, justice.

Death. From the point of view of political radicalism, death is the antithesis of doom. Doom is the abolition of a phenomenon, be it an animal, a person, or, for example, a masterpiece of painting. Death is a spiritual phenomenon, which is associated with the presence of Ruhullah — the Spirit of the God — at the human level. Death is the end of the human, moreover, it is the end of the existent, which becomes the exit to the incomprehensible abyss of the Divine Plan (Providential Thought).
As long as a person is alive, death within him acts as a witnessing consciousness, forming his true here-presence. However, as soon as the outer phenomenological shell of a person ceases to function (he perishes), this here-presence inside him returns to the “abyss of the incomprehensible”, which in no way can be identified with nothingness, non-existence or absence.
This is what it means to return to Allah. From this “abyss of the incomprehensible” the possessors of death will be brought into personal existence a second time: resurrected for Judgment. Death for the political radical is the end of a homogeneous here-being, after which begins something that is not like nothing.

Violence is the form in which reality interacts with a mortal being. Our environment is violence. Society is, of course, all-pervading violence. The destructive, denying energy of the homogeneous tends to cover up any hint of a “puncture”, reaching the final. Ultimately, being commits violence against consciousness. And this is what is called “human vale”.
The political radical seeks to remove the monopoly of violence from existence in order to assign violence to consciousness. Violence has an incomparable energy potential, which, being withdrawn from the Great Being, turns into the all-burning energy of love. For pure love in its Divine foundation is a continuous sacrifice and at the same time a continuous stepping over yourself. Violence is that secret “gold of reality”, for the right to possess which there is a constant battle between Being and consciousness.

Pain is a manifestation of the direct impact of Being as such on a human being. This influence always manifests itself as a burning fire. Existence burns with fire both bodies and souls. Therefore, physical pain and mental pain have the same nature: the ultimate existential experience of the destructive flame. After the victory of the Adamic heritage — a particle from the Spirit of the Highest, invested in Adam — over the Great Being, the hell fire will, on the contrary, be the flame of the victorious consciousness, which will scorch and burn everything plunged into jahannam — that is, everything that was true to Being, and not the Spirit in the Hereafter.
For the political radical, pain is a guiding beacon, for he is looking for an encounter with pure Being in order to fight him. Pain is evidence of the great confrontation between the Spirit and the Anti-Spirit. That is why, for the radical, pain is a stigma of anti-comfort, a denial of sleep, a challenge to clay humanity, which is drugged by its own existence.

Justice. For the vast majority of critics of society, justice has a meaning exactly the opposite of what it means for a genuine radical. The human masses lived and live in poverty. They are deprived of the level of material wealth that is available to their jailers — not to mention their overlords. The levels of elite consumption change from Ancient Rome to the modern West, but the deprivation of the lower classes practically remains the same, and in many places it is increasing (as, for example, in India after the arrival of the British).
This deprivation in itself is not pain in that pure existential substratum that we spoke about above. This is not a meeting with Being, which burns with fire. Rather, it is a mirror negative of pain, a kind of cool shadow of that sizzling possibility that can fall on people at any moment. People respond to poverty by creating criminal structures that challenge the established practice of sharing wealth. Thus, they “invite” pain into the core of their subhuman everyday life. It is pain that distinguishes the space of armed crime from the vegetation of ordinary clochards.
For the political radical, however, justice has nothing to do with the distribution of wealth. The political radical does not aim to ask or even force the rulers of life to share their comfort with the poor and downtrodden. Both comfort and material benefits for a political radical are attributes of an extra-conscious existence.
Justice for a political radical is always only Meaning. What is Meaning? This is the end of the “bad” infinity. This is the end of the absurd. It is a rupture of the endless web of lies from which reality is woven, which is nothing more than a system of “descriptions”.
Meaning is rooted in the transcendent redemptive power of finalism, which unconditionally puts an end to everything immanent, everything self-identical, and opens the door to where everything known has disappeared.
Everything that exists is created only in order to testify with itself: “I, the existence is not the God!” God is different in relation to everything that is given in the boundless possibility. This means that the Revelation itself about the God, Who cannot be perceived, understood and experienced by being, this Revelation itself is already an absolute finale. It is death as consciousness that perceives this message of the finale and discovers it for itself as a redeeming meaning. This is absolute justice, because thanks to this covenant with the Spirit of the God, the believer is connected with the Providential Plan, in which he is an instrument. It is through this that the triumph of consciousness (the true oppressed) over Being (the true oppressor) is accomplished.

BACKGROUND OF RADICALISM

December 09, 2013

opening speech

For several centuries, the radicals were without their own ideology. I want to be the one who will give the radicals their own ideology from now on. So that they do not go like beggars, with an outstretched hand, towards some kind of Marxism, Nazism, anarchism, towards some kind of totalitarian perversions. So that they have an ideology in which they would be aware of the metaphysical foundation of their total, innate disagreement with the existing. The kind of disagreement that makes them pleasing to the God. God wants us to be dissenting. Because the whole reality is full of zulm — injustice. As we know from the hadiths of the Prophet (peace and blessings of the God be upon him): “And when the Mahdi (may God hasten his coming) comes, when victory comes, then all reality will be filled with justice, as today it is filled with injustice.” And today it is filled with injustice.
But the origins of this injustice are not that some ruler, some mayor of the city, is a criminal, but that reality itself is organized as an injustice and a challenge. To blow it up on the metaphysical level before it gets blown up on the political level. If you blow it up immediately on the political level, but do not blow it up on the metaphysical level, reality will return and break your face.

BACKGROUND OF RADICALISM

Radicalism is a phenomenon that everyone is hearing about, everyone is talking about it, articles of the code are devoted to it, but no one, in fact, knows that this is a fundamental phenomenon that runs like a red line through the entire history of mankind and, moreover, is a backbone the backbone of a historical plot, a macroplot. But the radicals at all times are not equal to themselves and they turn to history and to those who want to study them, different faces: we know the Hussites, Taborites, we know the uprising of Spartacus, we know the Trojan War, the heroes of Hellas (they were also radicals) we know, of course, the companions of the prophets, including our last Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). All of these are radicals. But there were radicals in the 19th century. Auguste Blanqui was a radical, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the “populists” were radicals. And they are all different.
Some of them are deeply religious people, others are atheists, and militant ones at the same time. What unites them and what makes them radicals?
We must understand that radicalism is a metaphysical phenomenon rooted in the problems of ontology and epistemology. And not always a radical born in the wrong era can realize himself as such, that is, he can call himself a radical, but he will speak, in case of unfavorable circumstances, with the world, with his followers, with his audience, not in the language of a radical, but in in a borrowed language, in a borrowed discourse, simply because in his time, for a given epoch, for a given generation, there is no radical discourse.
Such an unfavorable situation developed in the 18th, 19th and much of the 20th century. For 250 or even 300 years, the radicals were forced to speak the “borrowed” language. They borrowed the language from the liberals — from the extreme left liberals — but still liberals, because the radical language did not exist: it ceased to exist after the religious wars ended and the religious content of the protest ended. Marx noted that earlier people masked real social and economic relations with religious clothes. That is, under religious banners, they advocated certain solutions to issues that actually meant class socio-economic relations. In fact, what Marx is talking about (not that he meant it — he didn’t mean it, but we mean it) is the real time of radicalism, when the radicals came up with their discourse, and this discourse was religious, and they, under the banner of radical, as it is now customary to say, sects tried to challenge the status quo of the universe. Then, over time, the ground fell from under their feet and they were forced, due to external conditions, to switch to a foreign language — the language of the liberals.
There are all sorts of liberals. There are leftists, there are rightists, there are centrists, there are neoliberals, but the essence of liberals is that for a liberal there is one life that passes here, and it is absolutely rooted in material values, in comfort, in hedonism. A liberal may have different approaches, that is, a liberal may believe that working people deserve complete comfort, all blessings, full disclosure of all their human abilities — and such liberals are called “leftists.” A liberal may believe that only those who deserve it, especially capable, gifted people deserve a wonderful life — then these are classical liberals who make an orientation towards meritocracy. A liberal can think that only the elite race, the master race deserves a good life — then he will be a right-wing liberal, he will be a Nazi, he will be a fascist. But they will all be liberals nonetheless, from the far right to the far left.
And the radical is distinguished by a completely different concept of the universe, a completely different worldview, that is, his worldview is not connected with the fact that he wants to improve his life circumstances, not with the fact that he wants to improve the life circumstances of someone else, but he wants to change some fundamental the laws that govern the universe. Because these fundamental laws in his inner experience, in his instinct, do not correspond to the instinct of truth he experiences, they do not correspond to the ideal affirmation that he carries in his heart. It is very difficult to express this, it is difficult to express it because a person is born in certain conditions, he is a passive subject, perceiving the civilizational matrix of his era, his place and time: the chronotope that is imprinted in him. And if he was born in the 19th century, and if, for example, the Darwinian theory of evolution dominates around, and if we talk about things that are not tactile, not material, this means placing himself in the margins, then the radical is forced to tactically orient himself and start speaking in the language of an educated crowd. At the same time, he remains a radical — and then very strange combinations are obtained.
Here V. I. Lenin was a radical, but he was forced to speak the language of Marxism, and Marx was a liberal. Therefore, Marxism-Leninism appeared. Such a very strange Russian transformation of Marxism, in which something is possible that is impossible according to Marx, that is, according to Marx, something is impossible, but according to Lenin, it is possible. But this, of course, is a palliative, and sooner or later such failures in discourse, when a person has one thing in mind, but is forced to speak about it in other words, make themselves felt, and an initiative that is built on such a substitution will end in failure, as we testify today.
In fact, despite the fact that the radicals of the 19th and 20th centuries were mostly atheistic or agnostic people, radicalism is always a religious idea, it is always a religious principle, it is always a deeply religious instinct. And here I would like to note the following: when I say “religious”, I mean something fundamentally opposed to traditionalist metaphysics — what is called in the school of big metaphysics “cross-cutting”, mainstream Tradition. Because the metaphysics of Tradition proceeds from the fact that reality is unconditional, concrete and fatal, it is determined in its entirety. Since it is a manifestation of infinite possibility (and everything that is possible is realized), then there is nothing that would be unsaid, underexpressed, undermanifested. That is, the fullness of the possible is given in the metaphysical scope of the statement. This statement is unconditional, and beyond it there is only error, “outer darkness and gnashing of teeth.” Everything is possible and everything is implemented, except for the error. And the error is in non-existence, in that non-existence, which, according to Parmenides, does not exist.
A more reduced version of the same feeling about an unconditionally fulfilled reality, which is irrevocable and which is necessary (it carries its own necessity, it has no options), is the idea that we live in the “best possible world”. And here you need to understand that this assessment — “the best of all possible worlds” — indicates an optimum, as it were, of an ethical nature. For example, in Islam there is an attitude that the Almighty created the world in an optimal way, that He means that it is this world that is necessary, He created the necessary world. But nowhere in Revelation is it said that this world is good or the best, the most beautiful. It is necessary.
Let me remind you that in the Quran, when the Almighty puts Adam as a viceroy on earth, the angels object — they say: “Why put this one, since he is weak, mischief, blood, all kinds of horrors will come from him? Better put us.” And indeed, Allah does not say to the angels: “No, I have created the best possible creature.” He says: “I know — but you don’t know.” That is, He says, in other words: “I created the one that I need, I put the one I want to put, although you are right — he is weak and blood, confusion, horrors, crimes will come from him, but this one I need.”
Therefore, when in the religion of Revelation, in the religion of Monotheism it is said that this world is unconditionally such as the Creator has in mind, this does not mean what, for example, Leibniz and Kant had in mind — that it is “optimal” , the “best” world in the sense of such a blissful positive, that is, that we live in a “six-star hotel” and this is our reality, and there is no “seven-star” hotel — that is, this is not meant in Revelation.
The radical feels that this world is pre-programmed with an internal failure, that this world is built on a mistake, and this is the will of the Almighty from the very beginning: to put an error in some fundamental laws that determine the life of the universe. If this were not so, then there would not be a question about the New Earth and a New Heaven, there would not be a question about the Hereafter, there would not be a question about the reality that comes to replace this reality. Because if this world is the “best”, then nothing can be added to it and, therefore, it is impossible to create any new prolongation of the “heavenly” or any “optimized” version. This, by the way, also applies to Western Christian discourse, that is, to those Christian philosophers who speak of “the best of all possible worlds” — from the point of view of such a conformist contentment with beings, it is impossible to explain the eschatological idea and life of the next century. If this is the “best”, then, therefore, either this “best” can be repeated in a different version — but it is not clear why — or they are wrong or not eschatologically oriented. In any case, they are not radicals.
The radical knows at the level of cells, at the level of instinct, that this reality is the reality of an aporia. Fundamentally, inside this reality there is injustice, there is a challenge, a challenge to his instinct, the instinct of some truth, which is deeply rooted in his very heart, in the very depths of his being. And since the metaphysics of Tradition says that reality is the realization of the fullness of infinite possibility, a polar alternative to this statement opens up for the radical. Because in the instinct of denying that this reality is an unconditional, perfect statement, it is implied that at the basis of the existent, beyond the existent, in the roots of the existent lies the impossible, the impossibility lies as the main motivator, as the main super-idea, as a kind of “superprogram” of existence. And what already has taken place in a visible way (manifestation, satisfaction, and so on) is in a certain way the concealment of this impossibility, there is a shadow of this impossibility, which is always, as it were, a negative antithesis to what it is a shadow of. There is light, there is darkness. If the basis is darkness, then we are in the light. But this light is the negative from the primordial darkness. That is, it is the impossibility as the initial principle that lies within the existent. And this immediately places the radical in polar opposition to traditionalist metaphysics.
We imagine that the radical is an absolute reflective subject. At the moment, in this lecture, we are not saying that radicalism and Revelation are closely connected, that radicalism is impossible without Revelation, that Revelation is necessary, because in it something is revealed that cannot be given either in experience, neither in contemplation, nor in conjectures, nor in immersion into some depths — that is, Revelation is necessary because it reveals something that is not in existence. We don’t talk about this yet, we take it out of the brackets: we assume that the radical either has already received Revelation from the very beginning, or somehow manages without Revelation (let’s single it out in a pure scholastic model), he himself is a “revelation”, — this suggests that radicalism is absolute reflection.
What does “absolute reflection” reflect? The phenomenon that consciousness exists as a witness. The radical is conscious of his own consciousness. This is the condition of his radicalism. At the same time, he may be an atheist, and the “consciousness of his own consciousness” causes quite big problems for him, perhaps even painful ones. I suspect that the Jacobin radicals (they, however, were religious), the Socialist-Revolutionaries, for example, the Bolshevik-Leninists, were terribly tormented by this topic, they could not explain the phenomenon of their own consciousness in any way, and therefore they went to the end in political action: they committed terrorist attacks killed the satraps. Because they needed to remove the constantly itchy, painful question about their own consciousness.
The phenomenon of consciousness, when it is truly reflected, reveals its absolute opposition to Being. There is no problem for traditional metaphysicians. For Plato, being, consciousness, goodness are synonyms. Similarly for Hegel: “Being is the absolute idea in which pure Being and pure Nothing are identical.” But if this is an “absolute idea”, then, in fact, in this “idea” the question of evidence and thought is resolved, the question of the subject is resolved. But it is solved “as if”, it is solved in quotation marks, because if Being was really consciousness, it would never take a single step beyond itself to contradict itself. That is, the thesis would never step into the antithesis. If initially Being were consciousness, if it were an “idea”, then Being would never be distinguished from itself. This distinction would be impossible, because the true identity is the identity from which it is impossible to get out. And if you can get out of this identity, if you can leave it and look back at yourself, at “what you came out of,” this is not identity, it is an illusion of identity.
For the radical, there is an absolute opposition between Being and consciousness. There is Being and there is consciousness. But how consciousness is presented? If you analyze consciousness, then consciousness turns out to be not even a point of emptiness in some such Buddhist or metaphysical-traditionalist sense, but a point of pure non-identity, a point of non-coincidence with nothing. It’s like a punctuation mark. There is a certain stream of reality, a large-scale river is moving, and somewhere there a stone rises from the bottom, which creates a whirlpool. This stone is not identical to the element of moving water — it is the opposite, the fixation. But this is a very weak example, because the stone is material — it is, of course, opposite to the river in its properties, but it is material.
Consciousness is absolute and real — it is pure apophaticism. It is not identical with anything, and precisely because of this there is a fact of witnessing. Like an amalgam of a mirror that does not allow the rays to pass through and creates the phenomenon of the image. And consciousness, therefore, is counter-substantial, anti-substantial, polar to everything that is — here the main thing, here we come to the key issue — to everything that is. Thus, consciousness is an indication of what is not there. But not in the same way as Parmenides («there is no Non-Being»), namely the indication of what is not there, and which due to this «not there» is the central, affirmative alternative around which all this Being which is there is built. It (Being) it is built around the center of the “point of absence”, the “point of negativity”, the “point of apophaticism”, which is not there somewhere ‑ as the apophatic properties of the Absolute, a certain Urgrund, primordial, primordial, — no. This apophatic point is in the center, in the center of ourselves. This point inside our heart is an incomprehensible absence that opposes everything.
The radical begins with the fact that he “understands” — we put “understands” in quotation marks. We are already talking about the fact that the radicals are subject to the vicissitudes of historical time. But we consider the conditional radical as an absolute reflective subject. And such an ideal, “virtual” radical, absolutely reflecting, understands that he begins with a categorical total distinction between Being and consciousness. Being is there, consciousness is not. Rather, consciousness arises from the comparison of what is there with what is not. Consciousness is a phenomenon of meeting, colliding Being as a presumed existence and total absence. But this total absence is not independent. It can’t just appear out of nowhere in a human being who is mortal, dependent, determined by circumstances and so on. Where does this point of apophatic non-identity come from in us? It doesn’t exist in a dog, it doesn’t exist in a fox, moreover, it doesn’t exist in angels, jinns, it doesn’t exist in any creatures. It exists only in human. This is a witness that is unique to human. When our absolutely reflective “ideal” radical focuses on this, he finds that this point of apophaticism is directly related to his instinct or suspicion of the impossible as the basis of reality.
I deliberately say “reality” (not “being” — nothing like that), because “reality” goes beyond being, goes beyond any hypostatic projections — it is not even reducible to any concepts of the infinite, the base, the basis, the Urgrund, the primordial. That is, reality is what opposes the point of apophaticism. Because this point of apophaticism, the point of negativity, the point of absence inside me, opposes not just the world around me (walls, lawns, flowers, stars), but it opposes absolutely everything — it opposes even the denial of myself. It opposes that minus, that endless negativity, which, like a wet rag, erases everything from the board. It opposes the concept of the infinite. Why does it oppose the concept of the infinite, the concept of the incomprehensible, any experiences, the most mystical experiences, everything? Yes, because if all these experiences, if all these concepts are opened, then they are opened due to non-coincidence with this point. If I know about something, if I know about the Absolute, it means that this point is outside the Absolute, it means that it opposes it, it means that the Absolute is “not absolute”, because nothing can, by definition, resist it.
But there is a trick here. He is opposed by a point in which there is nothing. That is, the Absolute does not seem to «know» about this call. Because we do not have to know about the absence of something. Here, the Absolute does not know that there is Something outside the Absolute, which is not something in reality, but which is a point of non-coincidence with it. And there is a very interesting thing here. If we talk about the fundamentally religious experience of radicalism, then the radical comes to the conclusion that this apophatic point of absence within him is a direct projection of the impossible into his center. And the Absolute, that is, the infinite that we are talking about, he, the radical, perceives as infinite. And, therefore, he is outside it, outside the infinite (the infinite cannot speak of itself): he is a witness outside the infinite, outside the Absolute. Therefore, the impossible is unknown to the Absolute. The Absolute appears as something that does not know about the impossible, as something that negates the impossible.
Thus we come to the first definition of what is apophatic, what is the point of absence in the heart, which is the root of consciousness: it is the negated. The spirit within us as a witnessing consciousness is a negated beginning. That is, there is an external environment around us — the contours of the external environment, reality, the world — which negates us, but in a “soft” way. That is, from the very beginning, having been born into this world, we feel that the universe, the world, the conditions in which we were born negate us, they crush us, but gently. It’s just that the very existence of something outside of us is a kind of burden, a kind of challenge, a kind of collision with this point of non-coincidence, but this is not Scythe yet. Yes, in this “inside” there are such challenges of an incoming conventional plan, such as, for example, a matrix that is imprinted in us from the cradle (mother, school, police, army, prison, scrip, war), but these are all circumstantial things.
But there is a more serious negation. There is a pure negative that passes through all things, as air passes through the earth, through water — a scythe of negativity passes through everything. There is this chair — it will not exist, there is this book — it will not exist, there is this house — it will not exist, we are here — all of us will not exist, our children, grandchildren will not exist, everything that exists — everything will not exist. A “scythe of negativity” goes through everything, it destroys absolutely everything. But after all, it does not exist in order to destroy us — we are too small mosquitoes for this endless “scythe of negativity” to exist for our sake. This «scythe of negativity» pursues something that it defines as inadmissible as impossible. Here the mathematical “minus” negates what? Does it negate numbers? No. It negates not numbers. It is simply attached to any number, and it “destroys” it. But the minus does not exist for the negation of numbers, but for the very possibility of being something that this minus could not negate. This is a clear idea. “Minus” does not allow that there is something that it cannot negate. It negates everything. And so it chases after the shadow of that which could oppose it. Thus, it points out that there is an impossible that cannot be realized, which is not identical with anything, is not a number, and even more so a zero that opposes a minus. It cannot be resisted, therefore it is impossible.
And now this impossible turns out to be a reality. It is embodied within us as an apophatic point of non-coincidence with nothing. This impossible is not a hypothesis, not something we talk about in the abstract. And all of a sudden we find that our very gnoseological ability to understand, our very subjectivity, is rooted in the impossible, it is rooted in what is not there. The subject is that which is not there. And the object is what is there. Next to the object is the subject — this is the impossible, but at the same time introduced, like a kind of egg, through the ovipositor of a long, terrible mosquito, which pricked and introduced into existence this “egg” of the impossible. And here arises the phenomenon of a human being, a subject who, if he comes to absolute reflection, finds himself as a radical.
Here it turns out that we are dealing with three options.
A human being can realize the presence of a subject in himself as a burden: “I realize that I am here and now, John Smith, right here, in this room, among you, and I will no longer be, and I understand that, probably, it’s an illusion, it’s probably a mistake to understand myself as separate from everything, I’m probably just a midge in a circle of midges, I should probably merge with the whole, I should probably say to myself “tat tvam asi”, “you are that” and identify with infinity, in which I — a small speck of dust — become equal and identical to the Absolute and disappear into it.” This is the path of the traditionalist. This is the path of a metaphysician who strives for a great identification with the fundamental infinity, for a “midge”, for liberation, for the removal of the illusion of his own separate Self.
There is the path of the liberal, which we have already talked about. This is a person who simply understands that “we sit and we sit well, we drink coffee, we eat deliciously, who will interfere, we will destroy him, and well, if we die then we die — it’s better not to think about it.” This is the path of the liberal.
There is a path of absolute reflection — the path of a radical who understands that “this my non-identity — this is the only value, this is the only clue to the Truth, which coincides with what does not exist, but inside it there is a load of this explosive will to the obligation.”
Well, there are just people who are not liberals, not radicals, not traditionalists, but simply the “silent majority” — they are simply “thrown” into life that they do not understand.
Therefore, there are four corners: traditionalists (“royals”, clerics), who know that there is a sacred way of identifying the relative and finite with the infinite and absolute; there are liberals who have crawled out in the last 300 years and occupied all the seats, formed a facade — impudent hedonistic guys; there are radicals who are against it; and there is the “silent majority” — the masses for which all the other three clubs are fighting.
Now it turns out that until now the radicals do not have their own ideology. There are radicals, but they have no discourse. Recently it was Marxism. Imperfect. But Che Guevara, the Red Brigades, and the Baader-Meinhof group were forced to speak the language of the left. That is, to pester judges, police chiefs, bankers, not because they represent a system, embody a metaphysical evil, but because they are the bourgeoisie, mistreat workers, social subsidies and pensions are not paid well enough — in general, to talk nonsense. But at the same time they feel they are radical and shoot really all sorts of policemen, judges, magistrates. And they say all sorts of nonsense to justify all this. And if you go further: you read “populists”, Socialist-Revolutionaries — complete nonsense. But at the same time people are radical.
It turns out that there is no ideology. And recently, a demand for political Islam has arisen and is being formed. And we have been hearing about political Islam for a long time: we hear about the Ikhwans, we hear about the Salafis. But when we come closer and begin to study the question of political Islam, we find that it is “political” in quotation marks. Because the Ikhwans understand politics as simply participation in the Western electoral process (parties of all kinds, voting — all sorts of nonsense). Even they do not have the idea of a new type of party, like Comrade Lenin. If we take the Salafis, then they are not in this line at all, their task is “to be pleasing to the Almighty on the path of self–sacrifice.” This is very worthy, the greatest, the most beautiful thing that can be. But the Almighty ordered us to fight for power in spite of the real structure of the Being that He created. He created and offered us Genesis as an obstacle course and invited us to go through it and be victorious in the end. And people say: “No, I’d rather become a martyr and an inhabitant of the Gardens of Eden now, and you guys stay here, because I don’t have time with you.” This is wrong, this is desertion, this is not political Islam.
Political Islam must know: first, what is reality; second, what is thought; third, how human society is organized; fourthly, what is power; fifthly, what does he himself want; sixthly, what awaits him after the victory, that is, the Hereafter. Of course, he cannot know everything in detail, because “Allahu Alim”, only the Almighty knows the true, but he must reflect in his soul, as in a mirror, the conceptual predestination that was really created for him to carry it, to perceive it, to express it, because that without this, the Almighty would not have appointed him viceroy.
And after all, the fact is that Muslims read the Koran, and it is written there that Allah taught Adam the names, and then He set him up and began to ask and ask the angels, and the angels whom He did not teach the names said: “We do not know, Lord “. And Adam, who was previously taught, answered all questions. And so, these people read the Koran and after that they say: “Why do we need philosophy, why do we need this, that, the third, the tenth, this interferes with iman.” That is, they do not want to understand what is written to them, they simply do not want to accept a specific indication that a person is an intellectual viceroy who is obliged to reflect in his reflective process, at least to some extent, the Providential Thought of the Lord, the Providential Intention. He is obliged to reflect this, this is his main duty! Know and Serve.
By the way, Muslims always translate “ibadat” as worship. There is no such word as “worship”. Worship is sajda. The Arabic word “sajda” has a clear semantic meaning “bow”, “worship” — this is worship. “Ibadah” associated with the root “abd” is “service”, not “worship”. “Ibadullah” are slaves, servants of God, not worshipers. So there is a change here. Allah says that “We created humans and jinn only to serve us (abad).” That is, He says that they should serve — not “worship Us,” as it is translated, but “serve Us.”
What is service? Service is the realization of Providential Thought. Because Allah in another place says: “We have not created anything in vain.” Since “have not created anything in vain,” then this has a purpose: a person has a purpose to serve, to serve in accordance with a certain Plan.
A radical is one who must serve in accordance with a certain plan, which is revealed precisely in him. That is, what I was talking about in the preamble — a collision with yourself as a point of apophaticism, which is a direct manifestation of the impossible, which, in turn, is negated, revealed by the endless action of pure minus, pure negative. Pure negative, negating everything, indicates that there is (actually there is not, but “not” as it is) the impossible, which opposes the negative, which opposes the “minus”. Since it cannot be resisted, it is impossible, but it is, and it manifests itself not in the plane of Being, which removes everything, but in the plane of witnessing, which opposes this Being. But as witnessing — it is a covenant, it is a pledge. This is a guarantee that another abyss opens behind this apophaticism.
And here the question is: what type of abyss? Since we are talking about the fact that the center of the Idea is the impossible, which is determined not by itself, but through the fact that it is negated, the negativity visible in its action indicates to us what is impossible due to this negativity, but at the same time is inside everything. , which is removed by this negative. And this creates a situation of fundamental uncertainty, that is, reality is absolutely uncertain. It is indeterminate in what way? It is indefinite in the sense that this impossible, unlike the ideas of traditional metaphysicians, is not a self-identity. That is, reality is not identical to itself. It can be said that in the apophaticism of the traditionalists who speak about the Absolute, such non-identity is already outlined when they say that the Absolute, or Brahman, or Urgrund, or something like that, is “not this and not that, and this and that” . They are very fond of discovering apophaticism in various variants of coincidence and non-coincidence.
In fact, it goes much deeper than that. The impossible, denied by the infinite, which must be outside the infinite, but impossible, because it is impossible to be outside the infinite, is the reality that is given by this infinity — an impossible reality. It is essentially the absence of a statement. What is the impossible? This is not a statement. A statement — is something that assumes the exclusion of everything that can be outside of it. That is, a true statement, an absolute statement presupposes the exclusion of everything that is outside of it. And here we mean external infinity, external negativity, which has no content but to annihilate, and what is generated by this negativity as something that cannot be, because the negative does not allow it. And thus it does not belong to the realm of possibilities, but to the realm of the impossible, and as such it is placed at the center of being.
This is not a statement — this is some kind of uncertainty. This is an “explosive” uncertainty, which in itself is an aporia. That is, this counterreality, embedded in reality, can exist, can dynamically be some kind of such a structure. In fact, we must understand that our very existence as witnessing subjects in the midst of this reality is explosive, is similar to explosion.
Imagine that in some dense, homogeneous, absolutely all filling substance suddenly such «hole» is made, which is central, and in this «hole» — the antithesis of the rest of the substance; conventionally speaking, matter and antimatter, — by matter alone we mean all reality, and antimatter here in our hearts (that’s why we understand everything). Thus it turns out that all matter, that is, substance, all that exists, all reality, this all in itself is meaningless. Being is an absurdity. Opposition to this absurdity at the junction of a dramatic confrontation gives rise to meaning. And the meaning is not something that can be told, it is not a conceptuality, it is not a structure. Meaning is the statement that everything that exists is as a given, as a kind of hopelessness, as a kind of totality that absorbs everything. Meaning is the assertion that all fullness, absolute totality, absolute Everything, is finite, negated, that in its center there is a “hole” that passes through the heart.
What kind of well it is, we can understand only by remembering the verse of the Qur’an, when Allah says: “I (in this single case) put a particle of My Spirit (min Ruhi) into Adam.” This particle is from the Spirit of Allah, from Ruhullah, from Ruh al-Qudus (the Holy Spirit) — it is the very point of non-identity with nothing, the point at which the impossibility, the impossible, explodes the entire infinite reality that creates this whole situation.
Thus, the radical represents — we take a step from this metaphysics to the historical-social space — the vanguard of the warrior caste, represents the political representation of the warrior caste. The warrior caste, when left to its own devices, is deeply unhappy because it is embedded in hierarchy and subordination to priests. And the priests teach that “reality is total, has no gaps, is identical to itself, includes the fullness of possibilities, is realized, and all vectors nullify each other in all directions, and as a result we have a metaphysical zero, “absolute balance”, summed up of all vectors. And a kshatriya (warrior) should serve this statement by being an errand guard. Above, you understand, are the sages, philosophers, and here are the warriors who protect these “carriers of zero and nonsense.” But the message comes to these soldiers from the impossible, addressed to that “well” in the heart, open to the soldiers, and the message says that “there is a way out — these (priests) cover the truth with a lie.” By “priests” I mean clerics of all stripes, from lamas to “mullahs” and “alims.” And behind them are the “sheikhs”, behind them are the “Great Unknowns”, and behind the backs of the “Great Unknowns” stands the radiant Satan himself. He is Being in its purest form, he is the Great Being.
And out of the impossible, from the One whom we call only “He”, comes a message in the form of a Book. This book, which opens as “I”, where God says about Himself: “I” (then it is “I” and this “He”, uniting, becomes “We” — “Nahnu”). And in this message, the Almighty says: “Do not listen to them, but listen to Me.” That is, the soldiers receive the news, the Good News that, it turns out, the great closed identity, locked with the colossal key of the metaphysical Everything, is a prison that can be demolished, this “Bastille” can be demolished, you can break out of it. It is possible to break out of it, because there is a fundamental initial uncertainty, which is fraught with future statement — the statement of the Future Age. And it is precisely the radicals, namely the political representation of the warrior caste, that will have to take the step from uncertainty to certainty. The basis of the warrior caste is passionarity — what is called “kama” in Sanskrit, is called “hub” in Arabic.
What is a “hub”? It is Love. Why love? Passionate love is the love of death. What is death? Death is the meeting of the “hole” in my heart with the One who made it.
This is just an introduction, a kind of preamble, the beginning of a conversation about what radicalism is. I think that today this preamble is completed and we can talk in a free form.

ANSWERS ON QUESTIONS

A radical is “one who stands at the root”? Or are we setting aside this etymology here?

Interestingly, in modern newspeak, pseudo-journalistic, pseudo-political, “radical” and “extremist” are synonymous. Whereas “extreme” is “on the edge”, and “radical” is “in the center”. In fact, the radical is in the center, and this corresponds to the verse of the Holy Quran, when Allah Almighty says: “I put you in the center of the Ummah, in the middle.” This verse is always translated as: “I made you a community far removed from extremes, “average” people.” That is, they always gloss over a very specific meaning in translations. And it will be correct: “I put you in the center of the Ummah, so that you testify about humanity, and the Prophet would testify against you.” I mean on the Judgement Day.

Any radical, ascending this vertical of the impossible and unreal Absolute — that which exceeds all possibilities — cancels it, but ascends in this movement to the last degrees, to the last instance that cancels everything? Or are there certain metaphysical gradations here, and how is this expressed in the psychological space of the radical?

The fact is that one cannot confuse the path of the radical with the path of the “searching” esoteric undergoing initiation in traditionalist metaphysics, because in traditionalist metaphysics there is an idea of ascent to a great identity and identity with the “original principle” — the unconditional “original principle”, identification with the unconditional. And radicalism is not an identification with the unconditional, because identification presupposes a substantial aspect.
And here there is a sphere of manifestation and non-manifestation. By the way, I combine under the term “Being” both manifestation and non-manifestation — that is, let’s say conditionally, what Guénon defines as “dao”, manifested and unmanifested together, that is, the possibility of non-manifestation and the possibility of manifestation. He says that the possibility of manifestation is the unmanifested possibility of Being, that is, it is the possibility of manifestation which is itself not yet manifested; within it there is immeasurably more possibility of non-manifestation. So, I combine the possibility of non-manifestation and the possibility of manifestation together in the conditional term “Being”.
This Being is the realization of the possible. And the possible is a shadow that is cast by the impossible, because the impossible as such is not real, but is an aspect of the Devine Thought. The impossible is the core, it is an aspect of the Devine Thought. The impossible is the being of the Devine Thought, which is hidden. And since it is impossible, it can only be given by pointing to it by what negates it. That what negates it, as it were, a frontier, a horizon, a pure infinite negative, which is taken by all Traditions as the fundamental “origin,” that is, Brahma, which is the unconditional apophatic Absolute. And from the point of view of all Traditions, this is the beginning of beginnings.
In reality, it is pure negativity with no content. Total negativity cannot be self-sufficient, therefore it is inherently flawed: the infinite cannot be positive, the infinite is devoid of internal structuring, definitions, limits, goals (it simply denies), but at the same time it cannot have content. How does the finite emerge from the infinite? If the infinite were self-sufficient and identical to itself, then it would be impossible to get out of it: the finite would be excluded. And then the final would be impossible. But in fact, the infinite is not self-sufficient — it exists only as an indication of the impossible beyond itself. And so the finite becomes possible. And, as a matter of fact, “possible” and “finite” as categories are absolutely synonymous. The possible is the finite. Therefore, when Guenon says “possibilite infini”, it is an oxymoron.
There can be no “infinite possibility”, but there can be an interference of finite possibilities in such a way that as a result of the “interreflection” of receding mirrors, in the endless “interreflection” of mirrors that reflect each other, the illusion of “positive infinity”, that is, positive presence, is created. But this is nothing more than mutual interference of finite principles. That is, what we accept as Being, which is incomprehensible, is in fact the mutual interference of finite principles, of which there are a finite number. There are five of them: the possibility of the concrete, the possibility of the alternative, the possibility of not being concrete, the possibility of not being the alternative, and the possibility of not being anything. The first two are the possibilities of manifestation. And the next three are possibilities of non-manifestation. And they interfere with each other and give rise to an infinite variety, which in fact is a manifestation of the Great Being.
This Great Being is Dennitsa, Lucifer, Iblis, Apollo — this is the Great Being, which is at the same time objective Being. This is the “interference” of finite principles. And human is, in it’s model, just one of the distant reflections of the Great Being, but in human this «well» is uniquely introduced, this point of divergence with all the other mirror Being. It’s like in an infinite set of mirrors: a certain point was chosen in one mirror, an amalgam was scratched, and at this point the mirror became special: optical reflection disappeared in it. Or there is a special point in one of the mirrors that does not coincide with the light flow, with this optics system, but at the same time it is a mirror far enough from the center.
And the main task of the radical is not to ascend, but to reflect the Devine Intention in his own thinking. But it is impossible to fully reflect this in individual thinking, and individual thinking has the specificity of non-historicity. Only collective thinking, that is, thinking at the level of brotherhood, jamaat, community, when people participate, only their thinking is historical. Only the thinking of people connected with each other through “brotherhood by death” — not through the emergence from the female womb, but through going to the grave as an antithesis to the female womb, a mass grave — acquires the dimension of “historicity”, — in contrast to individual thinking by Marx, Hegel. That is, there can be any kind of genius, but his thinking is not historical. But the thinking, for example, of People’s Will political movement is a thousand times weaker, more invalid than the thinking of Hegel, but unlike Hegel, it is historical. Because in the thinking of the radical brotherhood, some part, some kind of shadow (the more, the better, of course) reflects the Plan of the Almighty.
The task is that the Divine Providence, which is initially an uncertainty, is initially a non-statement, is initially an aporia, so that it is reflected in thinking here, and this community, this group of interconnected brothers becomes an instrument for its implementation. But, of course, the implementation for all participants is an absolute sacrifice. And this does not mean that each of them should go and die, leaving everything behind — and do not care what will happen tomorrow. No. This absolute sacrifice must be the initial and permanent state. At the same time, these people can come to serious positions, to power, live even to old age — it does not matter. The circumstances of whether this person dies at twenty or dies at eighty (winning or not winning, in the dungeons) — it’s all unimportant. The main thing is that his entire being is imbued with a passionate will to die. And he understands death as a discovery of the nature of his consciousness, as a projection of the impossible into himself. Death is a departure into the impossible. And the impossible inside me, before it has not yet taken place as my end, is my consciousness as a witness. And when you realize that your witnessing, your death and your mission of “the key that turns the locked door of Reality” are one and the same, then this is the fate of the radical.
But “ascent” and “identification” is a completely different path, it is a pantheistic path, it is a path of initiatory identification. These are mutually exclusive paths.

Are we treat too easily such a figure as Hegel, based on school ideas about the original identity of “being — thinking”, “otherness of spirit” (what you call “reality”)? After all, his philosophy is dominated by what is translated as the monstrous power of the negative, moreover, this negative of a spiritual nature, and without this negative, Hegel’s monism would be too simple, tasteless and uninteresting.

Hegel speaks precisely of this negativity as a function of infinity left to itself. We are talking about one thing. It’s just that this negative has a functional content: this negative is not independent.
The ancient Greeks perceived “infinity” as an extremely negative term. They were afraid of it, they negated it, they did not love it, because they perfectly understood that infinity cannot have content. Later, already in the Platonic, post-Platonic world, infinity was filled with the idea of “being, goodness, light”, the idea of unlimited positive. For ancient Greeks infinity was the «scythe of negation». Because infinity is the removal of all limits. And the limit is life itself. The limit is concreteness, it is life, it is a definition, it is fixation. And this is dissolution (as there is the Absolute — the great “solvent”). They didn’t want it.
But infinity has a functional purpose, because (looking ahead) The Devine Providence of the Almighty has one fundamental feature: its primordial nature (as if it were in itself) is so terrifying that it cannot exist in the form in which it is related to itself. Therefore, it, this Providence, immediately, at the moment of its self-discovery, immediately disguises itself. This idea is initially scary and impossible. And its first manifestation, as it were, is the transfer of itself into another being, which is more “tolerant”, relatively speaking. That is, the original Providence is a fundamental non-statement. But the next (“shell” of it, as it were) is impossible. That is, this fundamental non-statement appears as an impossible one. And the impossible is also terrifying and unthinkable, and therefore acts as a negated one, that is, the impossible is what is negated. And if there is a negation, then there is a negator. And this negative is the same negative with which everyone starts. Everyone starts with a negative: Hindus start with a negative, Hegel. Endless negativity. But it is only an outer garment that justifies the mystery that this negativity negates.
The mystery exists in the form of self-negation. To put it simply, if we translate it into theological language, we can say this: “God exists in the form of ignorance of Himself.” True God. Because when people talk about God, they mean the Great Being, that is, they mean “grande être”, “being of light”. But for us it is an absolute enemy. And the true God, or better to say the Subject (since “god” is a substantial word that connects us with the soil tradition), the true Subject, is that which can be given only in the form of absolute ignorance of Itself. And the true Subject is the absolute ignorance that exists in the form of pure negativity, replacing the ignorance of the second circuit as created existence. But in this created being He introduces a reflection of Himself in the form of what exists in our heart as a mismatch. And that’s where all this disclosure of a phased explosion comes from.
For Hegel, after all, there is no problem of the alienation of the Spirit, because Hegel once said that “the theology that speaks of God as other than human is a theology that has nothing to do with the mind”, that is, such a “non-intelligent”, “primitive” theology. That is, according to Hegel, only that theology is “smart”, only that theology is integrated into civilization that does not distinguish between God and the “arrived” human, who is the final stage …

I want to note such a thing that without Hegel there would be no Marx. He “grounded” and recoded his philosophy. Without Marx there would be no Lenin. And the same Herzen was not such an idiot. After all, this is the algebra of revolution. Some of these things were taken from there: in particular, this “negation”. Maybe he was not fully understood in all the nuances …

The problem is that Hegel was — despite the fact that he completed the Platonic line of Western thought — a liberal. Because he stood on the platform, of course, a very complex discourse, but he was an absolute immanentist. He was a pantheist with an emphasis on immanentism. Ultimately, it is thanks to this that one can draw “right” and “left” conclusions from it. Left Hegelianism, which followed the path of Feuerbach and Marx, became possible precisely because Hegel is a liberal (immanentist). It does not have a breakthrough into “exploding flaming Darkness”. The darkness that turns all reality into an aporia that needs a paradoxical resolution, a resolution not laid down in the conditions of the problem.
The essence of Providential Thought lies precisely in the fact that it is an aporia, because its resolution, as the unstable dynamics of the indeterminate, presupposes a solution that is not included in the condition of the problem. Take the classic aporia “Can Achilles catch up with the tortoise?” The answer to this question involves the calculus of infinitesimals, which are not included in the conditions formulated by Zeno. That’s an example. Because in the very primordial Devine Providence it is just as accurately assumed that its solution involves tools that are not included in the context of the primordial Intention. It is formed outside of the original Providence. And this requires the dynamics of the macro-plot of creation and opposition to creation. In other words, can the the Almighty make a stone that he cannot lift?
God cannot Himself answer both ends of the aporia. He cannot do it Himself, because if He creates such a stone, then it will be a restriction — on the one hand, He will not create it — on the other. And He must create Adam, who will fulfill this task in such a way that the Creator’s hands are untied in relation to this aporia. This is the essence of radicalism. Understanding this and understanding yourself as “the key to the decision to raise this stone” is the essence of radicalism.

It was no accident that Hegel, especially Left Hegelianism and its offspring Marx, created revolutionary theories. There is in Hegel, no matter how we interpret it, a certain kind of radicalism. Now we will simply not go into details, but it is there.

I agree. We will not “merge” Hegel, but we need Hegel as a point of repulsion. We need Hegel in order to make a “photo” of him based on the negative: here is Hegel in black and white (not that in the version “left” or “right”), but we need him in those places where he black — white, and in those places where he is white — black. We need a negative from Hegel.
In general, in the 19th century, people said such nonsense, and it was all taken very seriously.
I read The Dialectic of Nature and Anti-Dühring when I was in the 10th grade, and I have never read anything more terrible in my life. If this is left Hegelianism, — then sorry…

…

And how can you gather these grains, these passionaries, radicals who have already crystallized, but they do not know what to do at the moment?

Previously, there was an institutionalized caste of warriors, it was within the framework of a hierarchical class society (the nobility of the sword, the nobility; the nobility is not exactly a caste of warriors, it is a class, but coinciding “technically” with the caste of warriors). Every person is born belonging to a certain caste — a person is born with a certain eye color: he cannot be born without eye color or hair color. He also cannot be born outside of caste. That is, either he is a priest, or he is a warrior, or a merchant, or a proletarian. But, of course, he can be born with a violation of this — born in a mixture of caste — and then he will be a pariah, a chandala, that is, his role will be to decompose, introduce some kind of confusion, simulacra, be an actor, for example, pose in a function that he does not correspond to. The more we go through time, the more chandalas who simulate. Accordingly, liberals are mostly Chandals. Because liberals are not bourgeois, they are not Vaishyas. Liberals are people of liberal professions: lawyers, dental technicians, artists, actors, singers, that is, such characters who live with society, who are so numerous that they make up a political club at some point.

There were kshatriyas, who in the West were a caste of warriors, nobility. But not for long, because the West, according to some agreements with the “Great Unknowns” who oversee the sacred political geography, was appointed as a “top manager”, and the “top manager” at some point had the need for an absolutist monarchical state. In an absolutist monarchical state, the warrior caste is absolutely useless, so it began to be cut down at the root and replaced with regular armies with officers who took patents [The system of recruiting the officer corps, in which officer ranks (patents) were sold for money.], licenses and became “intermediate”. By instinct they were still warriors, but by their status they were people with shoulder straps and boots, that is, “bureaucrats in uniform”. And a conflict arose: people who still walked with a sword, and people who already walked with a patent tucked into the cuff of their uniform — there was a discrepancy between them. And Fronda appeared, Prince Conde tried to object something very clumsily. All of them were expelled, destroyed, and then armies appeared, which were clearly manipulated, built, and fired from muskets. It was the end of the warrior caste. They were cornered, destroyed. The nobility was lumpenized. And lonely heroes appeared. That is, the death of the warrior caste in the West led to the emergence of lonely heroes.

Lonely heroes are a fundamental phenomenon of Modern times. What is our task? Our task is to gather lonely heroes back into the caste through the political club of radicals. The lonely heroes must gather into a caste again. We know who the lonely heroes are. This is Baader, this is Che Guevara, this is Fidel Castro, this is Chavez, but also people more radical, standing apart. A lot of lonely heroes. But it is possible to gather lonely heroes only through a political club. It is impossible to do this through the confessional field, through Islam, because one lone hero will be a “Salafist”, another lone hero will be an “ikhwan”, the third will go to Lebanese Hezbollah. Why? Because the discourse of the Qur’an is too general, it needs to be specified through the stages of immersing it in terminological thought. After all, on the one hand, Christians have the Gospel, and on the other hand there is Hegel. Hegel lectures on Christianity. But what a multi-stage gradation between the Gospel and Hegel! To go from the Gospel to Hegel, it took enormous intellectual efforts. I am not talking now about how Hegel corresponds to the Gospel — I am only interested in the fact that there is one pole and there is another, and there are a lot of transitions between them. And we have the Koran, which is not deciphered.

The Koran, which has not been deciphered, provides an opportunity for various crooks to act as “decoders”. But they do not come forward with explanations that “it says so and so here,” but they say: “It should be like this: you just have to go and fight, say, Assad or vice versa, go and fight the Salafists,” it doesn’t matter, just go and do something like that. The problem is that there are no clear explanations why it is necessary to go and fight these and there. I do not argue — perhaps it is necessary. But why? They don’t answer.

There are answers. The answers are contained in the political consciousness, which represents the subject of the will, — the Comintern, or “Islamintern”, or “Protestintern” (in our case, even better), — where the collective mind of the Jamaat or Jamaat of Jamaats understands that “now it is necessary to do this political move and that, with help of those and those, but in the next decade those must be removed because they are not good for us.” Who will figure it all out, who will say it?

This will be said by people who are charged with the spirit and will of the caste as a political entity. There were people who spoke on behalf of the proletariat: proletarian culture, proletarian diplomacy, proletarian mathematics. That is, they had a reference to some class — even fictitious, let it be sucked out of the finger, let it be good for nothing — but it was a reference to some player, to some subject. We don’t have such a link. And in the Quran there is. The Qur’an says that “Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame, etc.), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives.” Warriors are not equal to non-warriors. The Quran is addressed to warriors, it is a gift to all mankind, but it is addressed to those who can accept it and bear it — these are warriors who are capable of self-sacrifice. By the way, this is also reflected in the Gospel, because “There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.” — these are the words of Christ. It absolutely resonates with that.

And how do we gather lonely heroes into a warrior caste? Through the political club of radicals. And the political club of radicals is based on discourse, on method, on worldview — I deliberately do not want to use the word “metaphysics” because it belongs to the traditionalist space, and I do not want to use the word “philosophy” because it is profane and too marked by individual creativity: I believe that the discourse of radicals is sacred, it is super-philosophical, but anti-metaphysical. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate it, it is necessary to bring it to a honed grinding, and it is necessary that people, who will sooner or later become a beacon, enter it. Because we see how it happens: the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) in the beginning there were 30 followers, only 30 people, and this is the Jamaat. Beyond 30 people, the jamaat is ineffective, it is no longer a jamaat — it is already Ummah. And 30 people are a jamaat, because in this jamaat 30 people know each other. The specifics of the jamaat is that everyone in it knows each other and they are all connected by brotherly love among themselves.

You can generally love all Muslims, as if “abstractly”, but 30 people are more real, easier to love. Less is even better, but 30 is the limit. And so, there were 30 of them at first, and these 30 transformed the whole world, they blew it up. How many came out of the Hijaz to make the whole world Muslim? 700 Arabs landed in Spain, via Gibraltar, which Jabrayil At-Tariq. 700 Arabs conquered the Iberian Peninsula.

But when the crusaders came, the local “ Husseins Huslias”[alims], shaking their heads in turbans, discussed the question “on what day after the end of menstruation a woman can perform a prayer.” These damned “alims” have ruined Islam; but it cannot be ruined, because Allah specifically keeps it under His absolute control until it turns out that this humanity is another failure. But we are also warned about this: “If you get out of My way, I will take you away and bring better people than you in your place.” We have this warning. There is still a little time left. But I believe that the “Alims” are the most dangerous enemy of Islam within Islam itself, more dangerous than the Sufis. Because the “anti-Sufi Alims” look like they are Muslims, but they are not Muslims. Of course, I do not want to engage in takfirism — I am not a takfiri (Astagfirullah) — it’s just that in Islam a “cleansing procedure” is needed. It is difficult to move forward without a “cleansing procedure”. And we all understand the “cleansing procedure” in the same way. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been invented better than it is.