Michael Millerman's Mistaken Promotion of Right-Wing Anti-Liberalism: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Strauss, Dugin, and Putin

                                                                       Michael Millerman

The latest issue (February 2023) of First Things has an article by Michael Millerman--"Alexander Dugin Explained."  I have written previously about Dugin as the right-wing anti-liberal who has been called "Putin's philosopher," because Dugin has developed the philosophic defense of Putin's anti-liberal Eurasian imperialism.  As the English translator of Dugin who has also written two books on Dugin and Dugin's Heideggerian philosophic tradition, Millerman has established himself as Dugin's primary interpreter for the English-speaking world, and thus as the leading conduit for passing Dugin's ideas to far-right neo-fascist thinkers in Western Europe and North America.  The publication of Millerman's article in First Things is significant because First Things is the leading journal of political theology for right-wing illiberal Christians and Jews, which now includes illiberal Russian Orthodox believers like Dugin and Putin.

As you can see if you go to Millerman's website, he presents himself as a passionate philosophic thinker with a fundamental intellectual commitment to the thought of Leo Strauss and Martin Heidegger understood as part of a Counter-Enlightenment tradition of right-wing illiberalism going back to Friedrich Nietzsche.  Millerman wrote about this in his doctoral thesis for his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Toronto.  This got him into trouble.  As noted in an article in Canada's National Post, two of his doctoral advisers (Clifford Orwin and Ronald Beiner) resigned from his dissertation committee because they didn't want to be associated with someone who apparently embraced right-wing extremist ideas.  Since then, he has failed to find an academic teaching position.  Now, he makes his living by selling his online courses on philosophy, which he advertises as "Premium Political Philosophy"!  A revised version of his doctoral thesis has been published as a book--Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida, Dugin and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political (London: Arktos, 2020).

To illustrate what people find troublesome about Millerman's writing, consider the last paragraph of his First Things article:

"Dugin has said of Putin, 'I believe both he and I are reading the same writings, written in golden letters on the skies of Russian history.'  Words such as these remind us of other philosophers who wedded themselves to tyrants.  Heidegger's support for Hitler offers an unsettling example.  As was the case with Heidegger, Dugin's ill-starred political alliance causes many to dismiss him, writing him off as the source of intellectual legitimation for a fascist, keptocratic thug who wishes to recreate the Russian empire.  Duginism is indeed compatible with Putinism, but we need to see that it is not reducible to it.  It is more accurate to say that Dugin is the chief philosophical mastermind of an ideologically coherent alternative to Western political modernity.  And like it or not, that is a remarkable accomplishment, from which even those who wish to defend political modernity in the West can learn a great deal."

The problem here is that any philosophical position that is "compatible" with evil must be morally and intellectually mistaken.  As I have said in some previous posts, the Nietzschean and Straussian philosophizing in favor of right-wing illiberalism suffers from at least three mistakes in the reading of some political philosophers:  a mistaken reading of John Locke, a mistaken reading of Adam Smith, and a mistaken reading of Friedrich Nietzsche.  I have also written about this in my chapters on Locke, Smith, Nietzsche, and Strauss in Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Pinker (4th edition, 2016).

It is a mistake to assume (as many Straussians have) that Locke promotes a hedonistic relativism that denies the moral and intellectual virtues.  In fact, Locke's liberalism secures the conditions for social virtue and the intellectual excellence of the philosophic life.

It is also a mistake to assume (as Joseph Cropsey and other Straussians have) that in Smith's commercial society, commerce takes the place of virtue.  In fact, Smith's commercial society promotes both the bourgeois virtues and the intellectual virtues of the philosophic life.

And, finally, it is also a mistake to assume (as most Straussians do) that Nietzsche's best philosophic work is in his early and late writings.  In fact, Nietzsche's Darwinian aristocratic liberalism in his middle writings (particularly, Human, All Too Human) is superior to his Dionysian aristocratic radicalism in his early and late writings.

Millerman has written: "we have to face the abyss Strauss warned us about:  there just is no sure philosophical foundation for liberal-democracy these days."  

Notice that Millerman simply assumes that Strauss and the Straussians must be right about this.  As far as I can see, Millerman never proves that this is true.  He never considers the possibility that a secure philosophical foundation for liberal democracy can be found in the texts of Locke, Smith, and Nietzsche.

Moreover, like other recent advocates of right-wing anti-liberalism (like Patrick Deneen), Millerman does not consider the empirical evidence that modern liberalism really does promote human flourishing.  Nor does Millerman present any empirical evidence that people who live under illiberal tyrants like Putin live lives with more liberty and virtue than those who live in liberal regimes.

By refusing to examine and assess the theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence supporting liberalism, Millerman shows that he is not an inquisitive philosopher but a committed ideologist of illiberalism. 

If I am wrong about this, Millerman can correct me.

By the way, if I had been a professor at Toronto while Millerman was writing his dissertation, I would have happily served on his committee (unlike Orwin and Beiner).  But I would have insisted that he answer my criticisms with some rigorous arguments showing how there can be no theoretical or empirical defense of liberalism, and showing how right-wing illiberalism is clearly superior theoretically and empirically.