DISCOURSE:
"Love Doesn't Exist Anymore"
by philosopher Alexandr Dugin
I think that love in different cultures
is understood differently.
It seems to us that it's something universal
but, actually, it's not.
There's nothing universal in the human society,
and similar notions, similar phenomena, similar
approaches are formed differently in different
collectives, different civilizations, different cultures.
Like, in this regard there was and is
a brilliant book by Denis De Rougemont
"L'Amour et l'Occident" or "Love in the Western World".
And the author, a remarkable intellectual
describes in his book "L'Amour et l'Occident"
that love as we know it meaning courtly love,
like, love not within the marriage, something
unlike Christian love agape but romantic love
is solely the heritage of the Western culture.
And what seems self-evident to us,
like, songs about love, movies about
love, books about love, stories about
love, legends, etc., is actually a certain
movement, a specific ideological worldview
which highlights love and absolutizes it.
In this regard Denis De Rougemont shows
that love for the Western society, like,
passionate love, love as a passion
is the pivot, unlike in many other cultures.
That's the reason his book's called
"Love in the Western World".
In this light if we consider Western European
understanding of love which is quite different
from Platonic Eros... by the way, Plato thought
that passion, which is "pathos" in Greek,
is precisely that aspect of love that sidetracks
attention from its essence - the aspiration
of man for the highest principle.
Like, cosmic Eros is something that makes us
put attention not to "the other" or the world
but to what precedes them, to the depth
of ourselves, so this Eros is introvert, it makes
us go inside our souls and its heavenly origin.
That's why Eros has wings, that's why
it's angelic, that's why it makes contemplate
in the world and in ourselves that source, that
homeland, that nostos of nostalgia, like,
the longing for the abandoned home, which lies
at the core of philosophical-religious feeling.
Like, Eros of Plato is a philosophical notion,
metaphysical notion whereas pathos
meaning passionate love that lies at the
foundation of the Western European tradition
was considered by Plato as illness or defect.
From the other side, Christian agape,
which is another name for love, is respect,
veneration, courtesy, like, doing justice
to elders, that's all agape, like, mutual
harmony of people devoid of any passion.
Unlike in Platonic Eros, like, cold, intellectual,
luminous Eros agape stays at the level
of society, like, social harmonization which
implies humility, self-control through each other,
so Christian agape is quite different thing.
So this European love, l'amour, that minne
of medieval minnesingers - the singers of love -
is precisely the courtly love, it's the German
term for the courtly love like l'amour is
the French, so it's a very specific thing.
Denis De Rougemont writes that happy
love doesn't have a story, they don't write
stories about it, like, love has to be wretched,
love has to be tragic, love has to transform
into death and sufferings, it cannot be
institutionalized meaning that love
which Western culture stands upon.
Like, love is always adultère, it's always
a transgression, it always tries to transcend
the norm, it's a love that always aspires
to some asocial goal, that's the reason it's tragic.
That's why the myth of Tristan and Isolde
which Denis De Rougemont draws on in his book
has a tragic end, meaning Tristan and Isolde
unite only as trees which grew on their graves.
That's why they're doomed to separation,
they're doomed to the exaltation of their love
in the isolation from others.
This love undoubtedly frames Western
culture, we can talk about its fate today,
and I think it's simply gone, like, this love
once pivotal to Western culture is gone.
After all these practices of self-love, like,
love yourself, which Foucault wrote about,
after losing the dramatic tension when
the imagine of the beloved could be a vessel
for the higher force, not always a luminous
one, perhaps, but something certainly higher,
like, there are many things higher than man.
So the superhuman in love would manifest
in all its obviousness, in all its brutality, in all
its impregnability, like, it intrudes, and man just
grows numb, he becomes a victim of this great
force that overwhelms him, that becomes
 the disposer of his destiny and personality,
that's what love is, and it's lost now in West.
Now love is transformed into and measured with
digital models, combined with the quantity of
pleasures with a price tag for each of those
micro-pleasures that a cell receives.
Like, the desiring-production of Deleuze and
Guattari or, for example, the sexuality of Foucault
represent, in my view, the complete antithesis
of this love since everything here is disunited,
dismembered, compartmentalized, like, any
covetable part of the body got a price tag, like,
you can touch this finger for $5, this ear goes
for $15 followed with other, obscene details.
This is far from love, of course, love got
disunited in the same was as Logos got
disunited, as Western society got disunited,
as Western values collapsed so its fragments
are swarming in some subhuman filth,
that's how the building of love collapsed.
What is left is some fragments, pieces,
chips trying to reflect the entire world
but the mirror is too small so it can
 reflect only a tiny portion of it.
We can talk now about Fukuyama's
end of history or we can talk about
the end of love, and it's not just the end
of the love affair, a petty intrigue, but it's
the end of love as a phenomenon,
that love which created a unique and
antimonic model of Western culture.
I'm not saying this model is something good, we'd just
been brought up on it, we were born in the world
where love still existed, and we would die in the world
with no love left, it's thinning out in front of our eyes,
it's being subjected to entropy, and all other things
would replace it like sexuality, contract, pleasures,
transplantation of organs, botox, latex, etc.,
which are everything but love.
It's because love is a very subtle, fragile, delicate
feeling, Denis De Rougemont himself says that it's a form
of religion, it's an unrecognized form of religiosity that
can't be recognized, a very specific one, he tracks
it down to Cathars and certain Christian sects.
Actually, there's an occult side to love,
love has occult roots, and they got to the
Western European culture not just out of the blue
but from certain cultural-religious environments,
eventually they got into the spotlight and swept
the Western European culture with their flow.
First of all, art comes to mind.
If you take love from the Western
European art nothing would be left.
So what's now happening is the end
of love, that love which would organize,
secretly inspire, guide and structure
the Western European culture.
Yes, this is no more Western culture, we can't say
any longer that West preserves its image, it's losing
its image right in front of our eyes, it's being watered
down, dissipated, dissolved, fragmented, contaminated
with other, non-Western chaotic movements, West is
losing its image, and by losing itself it's losing love.
