Fragments on Recent Matters

“The state is the ethical whole in and for itself, the actualization of freedom; … it is the absolute end of reason that freedom should be actual. The state is the spirit on earth … the state is the march of God through the world.”

THE EMBODIMENT OF THE STATE; THE STATE AS THE MARCH OF GOD

The state, inasmuch as it is the manifestation of will and volition, is democratic; otherwise, and for this very reason, the non‑democratic state is a tyrannical state. By a democratic state, however, we do not mean a state brought forth by conventional electoral balloting, nor what circulates in ordinary usage. A democratic state is one that reflects the will of the population assembled beneath its banner. Here, of course, some may quickly object that this is not democracy at all, but merely the idle dream of this writer dressed up as democracy; yet these worthy critics fail to notice that, even if historically and in its exact locution this is not “democracy,” still in the present moment whoever rises in opposition to democracy will do so because, first, the well‑known theological mind confronting democracy will set up an autocratic regime, even if erroneously. Second, in order to avoid such an outcome and to be neither undemocratic nor tyrannical, within our modern nation‑state situation we must offer a sufficient theory with which to draw a new map and picture a new world. Third and finally, the modern nation‑state, in order to be ethical and divine, must fundamentally be democratic! Since the industries and instruments brought forth by technology for mass and extensive dissemination — whether the paper‑printing industries or digital and analogue technologies that distribute writings at great speed and on enormous scales — have gained predominance in our world, and through television, universal public schooling, newspapers, websites, news channels and periodicals, nation‑states have been formed and the mass of people has been nationalized beneath them.¹ Democracy is not a theological idea, much less an idea in moral science; that is, it does not mean that the majority opinion is the correct one, and any opposition to democracy that perceives it thus turns it into a sophistry. The state is the ethical will and for that reason it is the march of God on earth, though it may err; on the other hand, although it is the march of God, no state, not even the finest, is a divine state. The state is the body of human beings’ ethical wills. For this very reason, the idea of governmental secularization appears equally misplaced as an undemocratic and theologizing idea for a modern nation‑state.

Even so, the objection levelled against democracy is sublimated by the state’s finding a body; state‑formation becomes possible together with embodiment. In the literature of the first half of the previous century, “a‑historicity” was a common term employed to describe the mode of our condition. In the view of many intellectuals down to our contemporary theorists, we have suffered from anachronism or indeed become a‑historical; yet this is essentially a description that most other writers of the region, too, have used to explain the situation. Others, from the second half of that century, began their historiography with the assumption that we possess a history of “several thousand years”; and, once again, it was not only we with our pre‑Islamic royal dynasties who made such a claim — from the religious minorities of the region to Egyptians, Arabs and the seekers of Hindu‑caste rites, they, too, made a similar effort, and regional governments were more attached to the idea of an “asserted historicity” than to the claim of “a‑historicity.” One of the most conspicuous manifestations of the importance of such a (historical) category is the issue of territorial and political unity, which is threatened by (separatism). This writer would ask: is it necessary for the different ethnic groups in the Middle East to possess a single history or a single language in order to gather under one flag? At the very least, one may say that in a parallel world a shared history does not necessarily cause unity beneath a single banner; in many a mono‑ethnic country, regions may, rightly or wrongly, contemplate separation because they imagine that discrimination exists. The humble author’s intention is to point out the problem of history in its relation to nationhood; one cannot build a nation‑state by claiming that we have possessed a history from the beginning. It is clear that in the era of pre‑Islamic kings we had no mass publication industry whatsoever for the form of this discussion to be taken seriously. The expression “a‑historicity,” as some have noted, refers to our contemporary condition in the modern world, and thus the nature of being‑formed‑as‑a‑state in such a situation stands in direct relation to being‑nationalized. If, under other conditions, a nationality could threaten the state, it would have negated itself or would claim that no state existed in the first place, in which case we could not be dealing with a nation. Nevertheless, what there is, and what we see, is the nation of Iran, and if such a nation does not accept its state, how is it still a nation? The answer: they may be afflicted with a cognitive deformation and suppose that another state belongs to them, while simply ignoring the point that states may undergo even radical changes, but this kind of revolution cannot be a subversion, for we observe that these subversions do not overthrow the legal and judicial norms, but merely seek to replace the government personnel — especially if conducted by, or in complicity with, non‑indigenous forces. The resulting occurrence is that it is the states which, in the first place, in such a colonised world, are themselves the agents for founding a nation. In a sudden movement, quicker than the longer continuum of the Frankish lands, the states in this region bring forth schools and educational systems, publishing and newspapers, industries and technologies, and it is by means of a new state that we acquire nationhood. The embodiment of the state means the expansion of will and the intensification of nationalization. This, of course, requires system‑building: in the past century, many have opposed democracy, but rarely have the Muslims of the region attempted a jurisprudential system‑building that would truly bring about a juristic state. The so‑called “fundamentalist” spectra, from ISIS and the Taliban to smaller groups, are, apart from stray and dangerous bombs, essentially nothing but stumblings in the footsteps of others. The Taliban enforces Hindu‑caste contracts while claiming to be the executor of Islam.

In the absence of nationhood, freedom has little meaning; yet for nationhood to exist and for freedom to exist, ethics and law must be present. Freedom, in the singular mind of a Middle Easterner, finds a better expression in a mystical flight from the body: for us, freedom is a kind of release from the bonds of the flesh, from nationhood, from God and from law, in an almost narcotic state; freedom in this sense, in its more vulgar definition, would be a flight from responsibility! And at first, not from responsibility for the consequences of human acts, but from the responsibility of clarifying one’s own intention. The first and most crucial factor for democracy in a colonised country and a post‑colonial situation will be an affirmative, Middle Eastern freedom! This mode of freedom is bound up tightly with private ownership and, by relying on the powerful theology of sciences that conduct research in pathological domains, transfers phenomena to an inexplicable, meta‑sensory level — after the year 1401 [2022‑2023], it was something that claimed to be purely “sensory.” In events following the global pandemic, especially from the year 1401 onward, testosterone has become an inseparable element of many terrorist rhetorics, though some find this shameful, quite rightly. Yet testosterone, when repurposed as “generation,” may no longer be quite so shameful. In these years, the “generation gap” and similar expressions have once again returned to prominence. And, so it seems, by means of several broad signifiers — be it “youth” or “virtual space” — this gap and the fragileness of the historical situation are concealed. This claim certainly does not mean that one may ignore the educational condition and social issues; mass school‑dropout rates, poverty and class discrimination have in fact been significant in the formation of such a situation. Yet these components, it appears, operate in the negation of the subject’s freedom by exercising will; freedom does not bring responsibility in its train — rather, freedom is another name for responsibility. State‑formation, too, hangs upon this freedom. Freedom in this sense, if it is ethical freedom, is realisable and is essentially the determination of will. Depriving others of freedom is fundamentally impossible because the essence of every will is from the start a volitional and essentially determining essence; and what merely occurs — namely, oppression — is simply oppression, not a composite phenomenon.

Emerging from this condition demands that the state, through embodiment, also create nationhood. A disembodied state is not merely bodyless; it is a lie and a slander, a form of hypocrisy. In truth, no state can negate its own body. Although our states are condemned to begin from the body, what threatens ruling governments is a negative theology‑generation — a negation of the body and a mutilating drive. If statesmen imagine that they themselves and the state are nothing but body, that does not raise them to the realm beyond sense; it turns them into mere compromisers, at best.

What Is That Which They Call a Flag?

We cannot claim nationhood by asserting that we possess a “self‑consciousness” or, at the least, a “shared historical experience,” let alone come and say that we have been a “nation‑state” from the beginning, as the urban‑civilizationists and the chauvinistic claims or the defenders of the late Seyyed Javad Tabātabā’i would have it — as though being a nation were from the first a divine deposit or a remnant cast as a shadow over this geography (particularly if that deity is Ahuraic). Concerning the European nation‑states, they possess a shared historical experience; we do not, because we were either incapable of acquiring the industries and arts of printing, or indifferent to them, and we lacked mass media, and although a newspaper might be found in scattered, futile, archived pages, its dissemination and universality among us does not reach back more than a century, and even that was relative, for an unignorable rate of illiteracy in reading and writing existed in our history, which has only changed in the last century. For slightly more than a century, we have sought to erect a disciplined political system, which has usually proceeded through forced centralisation. Among villagers, marginals and the great mass of illiterates, it is less than a century that “Iran” has been known; that is to say, before that, referring to contemporary sources and memoirs, it becomes clear that no one even knew what exactly the lands of “Pārs” or “Iran” were — not even who they were, let alone what they were! This is not meant to draw an evaluative or ethical comparison between the former political systems and the present one; we only know that what exists is the fact that we lacked a shared experience or a common medium, and for this reason we lacked dialogue and dialectics among ourselves. Even if we note that it was after the Revolution of 57 that, through mass uprisings, the literacy campaigns of leftist and left‑leaning movements among workers, farmers and villagers, the eight‑year war and the relative conscription of people from all parts of Iran, new television programmes, the emergence of new simple and modern generations, the post‑war urbanisation and the “reconstruction crusade,” and many other events can be prepared from a theoretical dialectic. Whether we oppose or support the Islamic Republic, the point is that it emerged in a striving for nation‑building, and we, whether opposing or supporting, even if we have wrestled with a theology that may or may not be flawed, in any case possessed an idea. Although in this nation‑building we were heavily influenced by the left, and by denying nationhood we only succeeded in building nationhood — and, in principle, by denying ummah at the first stage — nevertheless, it was through these electoral, protest‑driven, and even subversion‑like struggles of the Islamic Republic that we were given a coherence and concreteness. Even the so‑called very radical and extremist spectra seem to wish to construct an all‑inclusive and legal‑ethical system. In this manner, the greatest traitor to the flag will be the nonsense‑monger and liar, and the problem of failing to understand the basis of nationhood consists in being in conversation and in accord. Right‑wingers and nationalists, [1] by taking the basis of flags as self‑evident, tear apart the thread of being a nation. For this reason, the relation of democracy to nationhood in the Middle East must be clarified; the opponents of democracy in our time are not those who provide an alternative system — they merely know well how to de‑populate and de‑nationify.

The rupture of nationhood in Iran has many aspects: class, ethnic and geographical discrimination, even gender and sexual discrimination, and of course, perhaps most palpably, intellectual‑phobia! Intellectual‑phobia in Iran often arrives with the apologetic that it critiques the opinions of intellectuals, if it is to be taken seriously and professionally, in its own estimation — whereas this is not, first of all, critique; it may be opposition, but critique as dialectical passage‑analysis it is not. And second, even if one admits an error in the opinion of this or that intellectual, that does not mean that “intellectualism” is a mistaken thing! What occurs is an assault on authorship, and then a national and historical fragmentation. Hence it becomes clear that when one mocks the behaviour of one intellectual or another, one is in fact recognising intellectualism not as a situation but as a type; in fact, we are not opposing someone’s opinions, but we oppose any kind of writing, of making statements, of posing questions. The journalist, the writer, the poet and the theorist are held up to ridicule, and the market reigns; to sum up, the market and right‑wingism are the greatest danger to being a country! Issues are met with the shallowest of answers; when separatism and secessionism are treated as a taboo, we fail to notice that anyone who emigrates from Iran is perhaps not much different from a secessionist, for both have severed and dissolved the citizen‑relationship with their state. Parties and groups from marginalised ethnic groups are labelled secessionist, without our paying attention that a centre‑dweller, too, just like those ethnic groups, presumably regards his will as unrepresented in the administration of the state. When the discourse of the “ancient urban civilisation” seeks to link the roots of government to ethnic‑history, it is in fact not merely primitive — it is an exhausted, defunct civilisation!

Freedom of expression, in this manner, is for the Middle East a condition of nation‑statehood, not in its current more famous form, but in the sense that the people must be the authors of their country. Market‑worship and that famous terrorist rhetoric that became current in the past decade — so that every kind of authorship‑phobia could be accepted — as from religious, official and educational pulpits all forms of education, government employment and even insurance rights were blamed, and the only desirable job became the so‑called free job, that is, in fact, an Iranianised form of a kind of mercantilism which is truly lumpenism. Now, high drop‑out rates, government employment lower than in war‑torn countries, and narcotising rituals; in a more summary statement, the world has turned into India, and Iran even more so. Practical Hinduism with beautiful Buddhist tropes has become an inseparable mode of the domestic and foreign policies of Middle Eastern countries, and particularly of Iran. The relation of this problem to freedom of expression, authorship and nationhood is clearly to be found in this: that “expression” itself is reckoned an evil. The nature of being a state is indissolubly bound up with the regulation of power, and this will only be possible through a universal dialectic. With all this, it must be clarified that the flag has a certain relation to history, yet nationhood is an ethical self‑consciousness arising from the consciousness of freedom.

The State as the March of God; The Ethical State

No idea can ignore the link between ethics and the state; in fact, as it is well known and as has been said, the state is nothing but ethics. For this reason, secularism in the Middle East, in Asian and colonised countries, and in a non‑Western expression, is a destructive and rupturing factor, experimentally and historically, and ultimately a factor in the deformation of human knowledge of its environment. The state, with all its abstract and even, if one may say, concrete mediations, is ultimately the executor of the will of the political subjects beneath its flag, and will is nothing but ethics. Secularism, in this manner, is merely a concept arising from right‑wing and class hegemony in its historical dialectic; but when secularism comes to “Iran,” it sows Hinduistic suppositions. The indication of such an event may initially be known in this: that colonised countries, however much they may take an interest in secularism, never abandon their mystical ideals, and secular freedom in these countries is often restricted to something heavenly and transcendent. The reason that secularism at its foundations assumes that a will other than the will determined by the ethical matter can be posited, thus continuing the same famous discourse of lust‑conscience, and for the same reason its overthrow lies beyond the capacity of the current commonplace theology of those who, ironically, consider themselves opponents of secularism. Therefore, matters can only be justified in the view of these gentlemen by considering the “West” as a purely un‑ethical entity, whereas Israel, that impurity‑devouring filth, is also an ethical will, although, because it has constructed only the negative aspect in its phantasmatic nationality, it is not a nation. To confront it, we must be aware not only that we are not faced with a pathology, but must also treat it by way of a counter‑rule; that is to say, the state cannot be built upon conscience/concupiscence, but the confrontation of states is a confrontation of wills that are ethically determined. By claiming that global imperialism is “conscienceless,” we have not advanced but rather regressed. Global imperialism is a conviction, and Zionism is a will that is determined according to rules; hence, confronting it is initially only possible theoretically. This theoretical confrontation in no way means that physical and military confrontation must not take place — of course it must — but it means that this very practical and military confrontation, too, arises from the same will that, theologically, has determined certain norms for itself. For it is equally false to imagine that the state is the executor of pure and immaculate ideas; rather, the state actualises ethical rules as the will of every individual subject, with varying qualities and quantities, through the path of norms that have been inscribed by experience. In this regard, secularism, especially as it exists in the region, not only allows will‑lessness to become an agency, but becomes the cause of an undeniable intensity of lying; as though no deed save an ethical deed can determine the will, and as though apart from ethical rationality — whether right or wrong — no other determination can be specified for the will.

Secularity is in precisely this way the factor of intellectual‑phobia, that is, authorship‑phobia. There is no solution but embodiment for rationality to find a way. It may be asked, and indeed an objection may arise, against such a scheme: does a secular state seek to free itself from the ethical will and consequently from ethical embodiment, that this humblest writer finds fault with it? The answer will be that the very source of such a question is what condemns secularity; that is, we, in our turn, ask: if the foundation of the state rests upon ethics, is not the deep study of this very ethics necessary? And would such a thing not be indebted to a political theology? Perhaps leftist atheists objected to the foundations of political positivism precisely from this standpoint — can the legislator claim to have derived the laws from the universal reason of ethics? And what, fundamentally, will define the “good” of a nation? And setting aside all these debates, is the state the legislator at all? Here secularity becomes an infinite self‑reference, forbidding us from questioning and thus from authorship. Whatever we call this event, the determination of the will is attached to a proposition that ethics commands; but if we contemplate the in‑itself being of these propositions, we shall have empty contents and nihilistic equivalences, and hence we realise that propositions are neither approved nor created by reason; rather, whatever we may call it, they issue from an authoritative theological source — now, whether you call this source God and His Law, or the orders of a bunch of space‑aliens, will not make much difference to the problem.

The nationalisation of the state likewise depends on the will of its own political subjects. The modern state is the will of its subjects; this does not mean that in the modern state democracy possesses necessity, or even that the modern state is the only ethical state; but every state is, from its very foundation, ethical, and as was said, it is the march of God upon the world — even the despotic state is also the manifestation of the will‑system of its subjects, because despotism, too, is an ethical will. And when we say this, it does not necessarily mean that anyone considers this despotism a rule in itself, but in the ground of its being a norm, they also regard it as an ethical norm. Strife against such a construction can only become effective when we view the norm as rational and ultimately ethical, and then criticise it from that standpoint. The Muslim nation‑state, too, must preserve its statehood and its nationality simultaneously with deep study, and a ruler in such lands, even if not bound to any religion personally, must engage in deep study. In short, one may say that the state is a monastery and the statesman is a monk. The monk, however, is not a preacher; he must have “experienced,” and what else is his experience? Political experience is also the organic working‑out of ethics in things and possibilities.

Ummah‑Oriented, Fundamentalist and Nationalist over against the State

Although an attempt was made above to indicate, metaphorically and summarily, why the state is a determinative working‑out of ethics and religion in its foundation and structure, and that its link with the nation is only possible through theology, yet for this last reason it becomes clear why a so‑called “ummah‑oriented” person does not differ much from a nationalist. The ummah‑oriented person, to the same extent as the nationalist, takes the hidden institution of the state to be an already positive and affirmative matter, and consequently not only considers it static, but with this otherness that he ascribes to it, it is not unlikely that he imagines the state to have existed from the very beginning — a cognitive deformation visible in the graphics of our age: forgetting the crucial point that everything is an idea, and the state is, like aesthetics, the working‑out of will and idea. A fundamentalist forgets that in relation to what he calls “ummah” and “religion,” he is responsible for defending his own reading, just as it is these very people who are the agents of the negation and decay of ethical‑governmental deep study — they who tear down the political sections of determination. As much as a colonised secularist imagines his government to be already given and in need of no deep study or inquiry, so too is a fundamentalist, for the reason that both consider the state as a sheer institution of power without being able to provide a powerful theology for it. For this reason, it is foolish if anyone imagines that overthrowing the “Islamic Republic” will lead to a free government, because the unfree crises of the Islamic Republic stem from its “Islamic” fragment — one who fabricates a simplistically pluralistic account merely deceives himself, for it must have become clear to all that the anti‑Islamic spectrum is, to the same extent and perhaps even more, crisis‑ridden and hostile to freedom, because the absence of the theological authority of the state and the fragmentation of nationhood spring from our dialectical situation. Opponents of the Islamic Republic, however much they may dislike this statement, must accept that it was the guardianship (velāyat) of the second leader that bestowed a relative nationhood upon “Iran” — which had not existed before — and now the overthrow of the government is deeply intertwined with spectra that in fact overthrow nationhood. In this respect, secession on the morrow of overthrow is not a “danger” or “threat,” but the very reality, and perhaps a “must.” A Baluch who is still struggling in severe deprivation, who lives in deprivation from gas and water pipelines to educational and healthcare centres — why, and for what reason, should he feel solidarity with a centre‑dweller who possesses far greater facilities? Where is this “homeland” in which neither ideas hold sway, nor “justice,” nor “contract”? And if it be said that this discrimination is itself the fault of the present ruling power, the most elementary question that arises is: firstly, let us suppose the future government resolves this discrimination — we still ask: with such cultural and ideological distances, why should a marginalised ethnic group feel empathy with the centre‑dwellers? And secondly, if something is to be founded that is to become the basis of this nationhood, we wish to ask what that something will be? The sovereignty of the state is not the manifestation of the nation’s spirit; sovereignty is the very spirit of the nation, and if dialectical foundations are not carried out within us, there will ultimately be no nationhood to possess a state, and what remains — whether its name be Islamic, atheistic, secular or whatever else — will be a power that will stay in place by force. For this reason, political parties and factions that dream of overthrowing the ruling power will, inevitably or consequently, turn to foreign powers in order to preserve such a survival. If, too, the governance of the Islamic Republic wishes to maintain its survival, it will not make much difference — that is, the government must provide the dialectical foundations among the people. Whether they call it communism or state economy or some other thing, when in a land “nationhood” is an imported, instantaneous matter, the absence of universal, purely educational, health and economic policies has itself set fire to the relative nationhood that has taken shape. In this sense, a fully state‑run economy means the founding of the nation‑state, and in this way the state must fundamentally be “state” for there to be a state at all. Entrusting the country to the market and to the Other‑state brings about the very condition that these gentlemen then go to complain about! With all this, everyone must lay aside institution‑worship and return once more to deep study — and how is the deep study of politics possible except through politics?

What are we at war with? What are these “America” and “Israel” with which we are at war? What are the defining coordinates of these two countries in the eyes of the rulers of this land, that they contend with them? And if we ask them to define their enemy, will they present a definition that would be theoretically sufficient for them and to which they would remain committed as the basis of their opposition, and not merely prepare a few “Western” slogans for propaganda? Apparently, this America and this Israel, or in their larger name “the West,” do not need defining for these gentlemen; and in this way, the defenders and opponents of this aforesaid “West” are not speaking about one and the same thing at all. From the accumulated makeshift theories that have been uttered out of false expediency, a cognitive deformation has brought about an undeniable tragedy; as it appears, for the “Eastern” people, this “West” is a kind of moral corruption, which, if we set formalities aside, is, in all seriousness, for a large multitude merely a kind of sexual corruption, and the rest of the matter does not seem very clear and vivid; that is, the crimes of this “Western” front apparently do not pose much of a problem beyond theoretical aspects. And above all, what is “resistance”? Is resistance a human confrontation against everyday oppressions? In that case, first: are we prepared to unite with anyone on this path — with these questions that seem to be denials? And second, in this state, we will not be liars in this respect, for we will have put aside our theological definition of friend and enemy — and indeed, is such a thing even possible? — I confess this last question is more like a denial. Do we define “the West” as it has been customary in the literature of the Eastern Bloc and still is? How do we know that we ourselves do not think in exactly the same manner as the “Westerners,” or that this is merely a set of conflicts of interest? To fight against something, we must surely know from the beginning what that thing is, so it is meaningless for anyone to pause over this question; as though one could live for a moment without reflection, because if we alter Descartes’ intention, we might say “I am, since I think”; thus, what are we now at war with? What is this “Western hegemony” that we are in strife with? With this question we return to the redefinitions of “the West” that have been carried out more or less since the sixties, because this very act of redefinition constitutes our nationhood — up to a point, that is, to the extent that in opposition to it we at least posit ourselves, thereby giving ourselves nationhood in some form. Clearly, the objection may be raised that we must already possess an “identity” by means of which we have seen ourselves in opposition; but the answer is: no, not in a case where this “identity” is also an Orientalist illusion, and when the other, too, is a phantasmatic illusion — that is, logically we must ask: when we speak in concrete details, what exactly separates us from one another in those details? If we are to be “Islam,” then we must first work out into authorship the definition we have of “self” and “Islam.”

Political subjects are ethically willing agents, and it is therefore a sign of cognitive deformation — and of a deformation arising from the authoritarian fantasies of the Harvard‑Japan laboratories (!) — if anyone thinks that the political views of subjects can be altered by means of propaganda. Political subjects, from the moment they exercise will, also have a viewpoint, and consequently the task of propaganda is to change the positions in the opinions of political subjects. In contrast, however, this question remains in its place: during the time of our war with the Zionist‑American front, were the state‑run and domestic media in this manner passive, wearisome and imbecilic? Has the delusion truly arisen within the governing system that “the street” and nightly ceremonies will work miracles? Or do they suppose that when the internet is cut off, subjects will not turn their hands to something else?! We are certainly not returning to an era when there was no internet at all — this is clearly a nostalgic fantasy of previous decades. Rather, in the absence of authorship and a unified dialectic, political subjects will be dismembered, and the reason we already lack will be destroyed even more than before. The shadow of the baroque tone is, on the other hand, not nearly as alien to the people as the optimists within the system imagine, and if our politicians think that the people “lack the patience for thinking,” they have undoubtedly given their lives over to a caste‑centric, Hinduistic mindset mingled with a little European Enlightenment, for this very conception of the situation is manifestly phantasmatic. This “thoughtlessness” is itself the outcome of the previous policies of the government, which supposed that no political subject possesses the capacity for thought. Every will determines its object only through awareness; for this reason, every willing agent is endowed with awareness, and the human being, since he is endowed with will, is endowed with awareness.

“Democracy” is a norm; democracy cannot in itself be desirable for ethical rules or otherwise, but it is a norm through which two things may be borne in mind: first, because the political subject in our time, more than in any other period, possesses an extensiveness due to the prevalence of mass publication media, he therefore cannot be set aside from the dominion of the political‑ethical will. Second, by setting aside this democracy, we presumably set aside an ethical law — that is, regard for the will of others. Democracy is not in itself the concept of observing freedom, but in our contemporary age negating it leads to the negation of the freedom of political subjects. With all this, democracy can also, of course, be a simulacrum; before it is even a simulacrum, one must ask: in a society whose political economy is so thoroughly class‑centred, is the wealthy political subject from the outset the same as the poor one? Just as Greek democracy did not permit women, slaves or other races to vote, we shall then say that democracy is, in its essence, a method of constructing volitional validities and it is the name of the relative dialectical movement of that society, rather than a universally valid norm. Even so, the opponent of democracy in our time must, in order to clear up several misunderstandings, say what must then be done with the ethical, and thus political, will of the political subjects who fall within the realm of this will? Of course, it is foolish for anyone to imagine that democracy will return and will also determine the determinant of its own will — that is, democracy possesses ethical value. Yet, when we regard it as a mere norm that intends to reach its own equivalence, how can it be replaced? Just as the opponent of velāyat‑e faqīh must also accept that the rightness or wrongness of the affair is separate from the fact that velāyat‑e faqīh, at least in Iran, was a thought‑oriented movement that moved away from monarchy — though its defenders must answer on what basis and principles the jurisprudential element of velāyat‑e faqīh is determined! For, clearly, as much as ethical scepticism is foolish, the idea that there is a dogmatism in political work and ethical will will be equally foolish, just as saying that jurisprudential science is dogmatic resembles what they believe about the sciences. Conflicting jurists are nevertheless regarded as jurists, and the modern subject is, in that other sense, no longer prescriptive. The modern subject looks upon law as an ethical working‑out, not as an ethical law; for this reason, law is to this extent similar to pornography, meaning that both arise from a previously worked‑out position, and any positivism at this moment is mendacious and dull-witted.

The embodiment of the state can speedily negate every civil and negative freedom as well; but this is not a problem, rather the symptom and sign of a crisis. Every political subject accords a certain dignity to his own political theology. The famous image arising from the post‑revolutionary, war‑era right‑wing line makes a judged hero out of “wine‑drinkers” and “nightly riffraff”; but does this same claim, that they were unjustly judged, stand ready to extend itself and consider others, too, as included in this lauded image? The fellows who rose from the alleys and streets and were transformed from wine‑drinking into martyrs of Islam are more a contradictory denial of the leftists of the early revolution, who were prevented from fighting, removed from war and returned to the city and executed — that is, as if the pre‑revolutionary cabaret fellows, relying on their traditional Iranian identity‑plot, stood over against the leftists who also wished to take part in the war, but these were heroes and inheritors, and those others not. In other dimensions, too, we see that such political operations are not willing to extend themselves. As was exemplified, the civil and negative freedoms of political subjects in their private spheres are, from the outset, fundamentally the subject of the collective and affirmative policies of the state. When the conventional reading of Islamic government says that we cannot, from a legal standpoint, have anything to do with prayer and the permission of a parent over even a sixty‑year‑old child, but fasting and the hijab are matters that are the subject of Islamic law, this is in advance a theological‑political affirmation; and not only here and there, but fundamentally, freedom in law is an affirmative matter, because this freedom is itself determined affirmatively by ethics, and in order to analyse or defend the rights of citizens, one must carry out an analysis of this very subject — that is to say, one cannot, through negativity, construct negative freedoms for the citizens of a state, and the fact that theological propositions in the political operations of a nation‑state are customary and implicit does not mean that they fall outside the domain of affirmative law.

It is clear that when we say deep study begins from within the state, this does not mean defending the deep study of this or that jurist, or justifying this rational proposition or that ethical one; rather, it means that in Iran the state has become intertwined with the nation‑state. The approach of the “ancient‑civilisationists” was the rupture of the nation from within this very nation‑state — an idea that acquired particular palpability from the presidency of Ahmadinejad and was fundamentally one of the intellectual projects of that government and era. Their alternative, too, was the creation of a historical state, and all at once they essentially rendered both of these (the ancient state — where it is unclear what “state” here means — and, subsequently, the ancient nation — where again it is not clear by what measure such a thing is a nation, unless we stretch and dilate every word to such an extent, in the manner of post‑colonial literature, that it becomes a fallacy in the first premise, and then the claim that the state, both present and ancient, is one and the same), fragmented and sterile. To put it more clearly and systematically: whatever the nation‑state may be, it is standing and it leaps and moves within itself, and revolution is merely a formal term for replacing statesmen; whereas revolution in the Middle East is not simply a political change, nor even endless bloodshed, but the annihilation of the nation‑state itself is the finest description of a national revolution in the Middle East. The revolutions of the Middle East expel political subjects, exclude a number from being the willing, political subjects of the nation‑state, and define for themselves something wholly novel. If a general revolution were now to occur in France and were to gather together all the judicial, military and political apparatus of France and cast them into the slaughterhouse, we would still be faced with “France” and “the French”; and it is for this same reason that “opposition” is something fundamentally non‑national as a rule: every revolutionary will and desire for change will be considered a radical term in the “state‑nation,” and it is from within that every occurrence takes place. This taking‑place from within, and reforming and revolutionising, is not merely an ethical counsel or a political stance, but the reporting of a political situation; whereas for us, “the state” is an autonomously self‑subsistent, external entity that, so to speak, exists before our being and our nationality, as a political equivalence and an “other” within us. Thus, deep study can only be opposed to the opinion of a jurist; and by jurist, of course, we do not mean a clergyman learned in jurisprudence in its conventional sense, but anyone who engages in ethical political action from the standpoint of his own internal discipline of inquiry.

The March of God Is the March of Morality; Preliminaries on Democracy and War

The state is nothing but ethical will, because no will exists that is not an ethical will. That which determines the human will, defines for us a volitional equivalence and distinguishes this act from that other, is nothing but ethics. It must also be accepted that every human will rests upon a logic and an understanding of the thing and the act that has performed such volition. Every human being has an ethical determination for his action: a hungry person, say, steals in order to escape a greater evil — hunger and death — and this comparison is itself grounded in ethical definitions. A murderer finds an aspect for his murder, and at bottom every event in the world has, in his own conventional terms, an ethical meaning. Nihilism is the greatest joke of humanity and the most mendacious claim possible: human beings flounder in “meaning,” they struggle, and fundamentally have no choice, and were it not so, the simplest wills would have no meaning or dimension. The modern world is the world of meaning and the world of morality! But what, in this sense, is ethics? Ethics is that determination of will which, in the form of a command, is assumed in its purest state. The presupposition of this claim is that no human being can affirmatively imagine a moment in which, prior to willing, he has an idea of the content of his will; rather, human cognition without ethics and command is, from this perspective, a completely formal and second‑order, negative cognition. The French Marxists of the twentieth century also considered this problem from a political point of view. In themselves, all possible forms of volition have no difference from one another in terms of ethical content, and thus, without ethics, there would be no preference at all. Ethical dualism says that opposite ethics stands lust, or the drive for survival, the carnal soul, or the innate evil of the human being: all these claims conceive a non‑ethical will, that is, a will outside the domain of morality. But we ask: when someone thinks of survival or of the equivalence of his lust, does he know anything except a form that has come to cognition negatively? Murder, theft, eating, appropriating property, engaging in sexual relations or reproduction are, for example, typically taken to be obvious, instinctive and natural matters; yet we ask: why should anyone want to be alive at all? When a person thinks of “staying alive” and “survival,” will he see anything but a neutral form if he fundamentally has no ethical basis for his speech? The drive for survival cannot, in essence, be derived from human cognition: why should a human being want to stay alive? By what indication? That a human being wants to stay alive is an ethical, contentful proposition that lies outside human cognition, which negatively is limited only to form. Therefore, from the very same fact that human will cannot be non‑ethical — that is, it springs from an external, learnable ethical proposition — every human act, too, is ethical. This claim is not particularly new; orthodox Marxists also levelled this critique at left‑wing positivists, and it was also one of the biting critiques of religious Marxists directed at the so‑called secularist spectrum. [iii] For this same reason, the democratic state is an ethical state, just as the monarchical state is; the point, too, is that the executive state and the legislative state — whether they are unitary from a legal point of view or distinct, whether parallel or hierarchical, and in whatever political form — are an ethical state, and their subject, too, is an ethical subject. The state must not be placed in the hands of a jurist; the state is itself jurisprudence; the state is already in the hands of a jurist, and the state will always remain in the hands of a jurist.

The opponent of democracy and its proponent must first of all define democracy — a matter whose non‑occurrence leads, in the end, to the opponents of democracy merely, and in practice, accepting the “higher” force that is supposedly/civil and not pre‑existent, and ultimately justifying ethical oppression. That aside, the other point is that, in view of the new construction called “Namsion,” one must ask: if democracy is to exclude the assembled political will, on what basis will the nation‑state be founded? Nevertheless, the political will of the masses is exercised through authorship, for through authorship it is worked out and undergoes change. For the state to become embodied, it must at every moment bring logical and rational authorship into inquiry in the form of things and will; it is from this very point that any kind of hypostasis must be viewed as a plague upon the members of this state. War for a nation‑state is a moral campaign; the state cannot imagine that it simply fights against a threat to its survival, for, in the modern world, the state is an ethical construction, and this war only possesses meaning when ethical wills clash. “The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage in business with him. Nevertheless, he is the other, the stranger; and it is enough for his nature that he is, in a particularly intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in extreme cases conflicts with him are possible.” [Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 17] Schmitt, however, is mistaken; the enemy can only be an ethical enemy, yet he is not outside the circle of ethics — that is, the enemy need not be a wanton; indeed, he cannot be a wanton. Rather, he is the ethical other: a different ethical system. From this perspective, this conflict is a volitional and ethical conflict between the ethical state and the ethical state of Israel — the clash of two ethical wills. The ethical other is, in any case, ugly; if not, then a lie has been at work. My economic or aesthetic rival is the same as my ethical enemy, and vice versa. It suffices to note that in the recent war, the episode concerning “Austin” gave an accelerating dimension to the presence of the populace in support of their nation‑state; as though this ethical other — that is, the relationship of Trump and the Mossad to Austin — assisted a nation‑state‑formation, and the mass received a coherent ethical will. Beauty is not a part of ethics, and this statement and claim is not an “ought,” but a report on the reality and objectivity of the relation. The political theology of an Islamic state must understand that the subjectivity of its aesthetic and economic relations is not merely a set of instruments for propaganda, for it is not a relation of subjectivity, since ethics is fundamentally subjective, and ethical truth lies within the subject itself, not in the external objective form; rather, it must understand that the populace, forcibly assembled, considers the other and its economic benefit to be fundamentally ugly. Yet this state of embodied relation also breaks down when the economically disembodying political theology of the government arises and entrusts everything to that other other, i.e., the market: the government thereby turns itself — that which could be part of the populace — into the other, and this event is not the popularisation of the economy, but its othering. The state is the ethical will of political subjects and cannot be other than the embodiment of their will; the constitution is the embodying of this will — indeed, the apparatus of modern government is the member‑carving for the will of the populace. It is the ethical will that constructs war.

Footnotes

1. A similar note regarding the translation of ummah must be made: as will be explained within the note to the extent possible and with due patience, it has been clarified why one must say “nation” and not “ummah.” The brief explanation is that, for reasons that must be illuminated, states cannot fundamentally be built upon the basis of an “ethnic group” (qawm), because in our era, in which publications and communications are so vast and extensive, any “ethnic group” will, willingly or not, take steps on the path to becoming a “nation,” for the simple reason that they are raised under a single flag, with a common public educational system and, in parallel or over against similar channels and media. Of course, one may bring up the globalisation of media and dissemination as a counter‑example; this will be addressed in the main note.

2 . In the first footnote, I wrote that these “nationalists” are in fact ummah‑oriented; but are those spectra well‑known as ummah‑oriented really nation‑oriented?

3. Secularism may at one moment be the negative cognition derived from the systems known as secular systems, and at another moment it may be the claim of a secularist.