Christianity and Platonism in the Philosophy of Daria Dugina | Alexander Dugin
Darya Dugina was a Platonist philosopher. And here it should be added – an Orthodox Platonist philosopher. Raised since childhood on the ideas of traditionalists (R. Guénon, J. Evola, M. Eliade and their followers) and at the same time in the Orthodox culture (Daria, like us, her parents, belonged to the Edinoverie, the Old Believer tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church), from the very beginning of her studies at the Philosophy Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Darya discovered Plato and the Platonists. And it all began with Dionysius the Areopagite, the pinnacle of Christian Platonism.
The Areopagites became her guiding star, which allowed her to connect orthodox Christian theology with the Platonic universe. And the further she delved into the study of Platonism, the more she discovered an organic connection with both Orthodoxy and traditionalism.
The traditionalist philosophers mentioned Plato only in passing themselves, without focusing their attention on him. In Christianity, after the hasty and intellectually controversial decisions on Origen in the era of Justinian, a persistent distrust of Plato's teaching developed. And the fact that the basis of Christian theology itself - the most orthodox one - including terminology, conceptualization, structure, meaning, orientation, etc., was developed by the Alexandrian school and its direct followers, the Cappadocian fathers (the most prominent representatives of Christian Platonism) was overshadowed by sharp anti-Platonic attacks.
The situation was, of course, aggravated by the Monophysites and Monothelites, and later by the obviously unsuccessful theological searches of Michael Psellus's disciple John Italus. And finally, in the Palamite polemics, the opponents of St. Gregory Palamas - Barlaam and Akindynos - also tried to justify criticism of hesychasm by references to Plato. But if we look deeper and abstract ourselves from these historical twists and turns, where a large role was played by the cultural and even political context, which is not directly connected with the world of ideas, then the unity of mood, verticality and unconditional devotion to heaven, eternity and the highest horizons of being, without a doubt, brings Platonism closer to Christianity. The first Christian apologists were well aware of this, and the Cappadocian Saint Basil the Great, the highest authority of Christian orthodoxy (incidentally, a follower of Origen, whose texts he, together with like-minded people – Saint Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa, combined into the first collections of the Philocalia) strongly recommended that Christians familiarize themselves with the works of the Hellenic teachers. And finally, the texts of the Areopagitica, especially if you turn to the Greek original, are sometimes simply indistinguishable from the works of Proclus and representatives of his school. When Daria discovered this, she was completely captivated by Platonism, and in many ways inspired by her family and friends – philosophers, naturally – to study Platonism in depth.
In addition, Daria noticed the amazing closeness of Plato and especially the Neoplatonists with the European traditionalists, having discovered a complete unity of ontologies: the traditionalists have an approximately described and polemically opposed to fragmentary and distorted ontologies of Modernity, and the Platonists have an extremely developed, detailed (no less than in the Hindu Advaita Vedanta) and presented in detail and fully. In this way, she opened up the possibility of significantly expanding the language of traditionalism, since, having accepted Platonism as a completely correct version of traditional metaphysics, we get the opportunity to fully include it in the context of traditionalist philosophy. And for those who understand the meaning of language, this is simply an incredible discovery in its significance.
In a condensed form, all these considerations are contained in the book “Eschatological Optimism,” where an entire section is devoted to Platonism, references to which appear in Daria's most varied texts and speeches.
At the same time, Daria harmoniously and subtly combined her native Orthodoxy, traditionalism and Platonism, without entering into contradictions and collisions with each other, but strengthening and supporting what is paradigmatically common to them. Daria even interprets Julian the Apostate in the context of not so much a polytheistic restoration, but in the spirit of political Platonism and the metaphysics of the Empire, which was the basis of the Emperor's catechonic mission in a purely Christian understanding. This is a bold move, but it is justified by the entire structure of her philosophical worldview. This is not an attempt to revise the Orthodox tradition, which for Daria was, and remained until the end, the highest and only truth, but about focusing attention on the paradigmatic similarity of structures. And this is a completely different matter.
At the same time, Daria harmoniously and subtly combined her native Orthodoxy, traditionalism and Platonism, without entering into contradictions and collisions with each other, but strengthening and supporting what is paradigmatically common to them. Daria even interprets Julian the Apostate in the context of not so much a polytheistic restoration, but in the spirit of political Platonism and the metaphysics of the Empire, which was the basis of the Emperor's catechonic mission in a purely Christian understanding. This is a bold move, but it is justified by the entire structure of her philosophical worldview. This is not an attempt to revise the Orthodox tradition, which for Daria was, and remained until the end, the highest and only truth, but about focusing attention on the paradigmatic similarity of structures. And this is a completely different matter.