By Ricardo Duchesne
Arktos, 239 Pages
Reviewed by Rémi Tremblay
I had the chance to meet Professor Ricardo Duchesne a few years ago, before he launched the Council of Euro-Canadians blog. Thanks to his professorial approach, he made me grasp the depth of Antonio Gramsci's thoughts and how we should use his approach if we were to have success in reversing the current dominant culture. I am not ashamed to say that this meeting was one of the most influential ones in my own intellectual development. It is why I was particularly thrilled to learn that he had decided to pen a new book, his first one since he started being involved in the Canadian Alternative Right, if we can use that term. His book Faustian Man in a Multicultural Age met my expectations.
In his previous book The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, Duchesne argued that Western man was mostly a product of the uniqueness of Western civilization. However, with his latest work, he goes further and explains that if Western man is unique, it is not as a mere result of his unique civilization, but because of his inner being. This means that rather than being the creation of the civilization, the civilizations are instead the creation of his unique nature. They are exceptional because of what differentiates him from other peoples.
It could be seen as yet another meditation on the nature-versus-nurture debate, but it goes further than that. What this ultimately implies is that no one can just assimilate our civilization: being a Western man is not a matter of adopting certain values, languages, or traditions; it comes from deep inside. It is inherently exclusive.
Our civilization cannot be defined by a set of ideas or a thought system, but instead by its very race. And race, far from being a social construct, must not be confused with culture. People like Samuel Huntington would like to present Western man as a universal concept, something everyone and anyone can eventually "buy into," but experience has proved this thesis wrong. Cities like Detroit and Vancouver cannot be considered Western anymore, simply because they are no longer ethnically European.
For Duchesne, who draws inspiration from both Spengler and Nietzsche, the Western man is defined by his Faustian mind; his will to rise above and conquer. He has never satisfied himself with mere survival, but has always sought to push the limits of his realm, whatever the field.
His soul has been forged by the Northern climate and the wolf-like society he has evolved within for centuries and was later nourished by the hero narratives of the Beowulf, Cuchulain, and Arthur. For Duchesne, who exposes the genesis of the Faustian man, "the ultimate roots of the superior creativity of Europeans should be traced back to the aristocratic warlike culture of the Indo-Europeans." Its creativity was not born in the Greek polis, but long before in the heroic culture of the proto-Europeans and has later been perceived in the astonishing number of achievements and discoveries in various fields.
It is that Faustian soul we can see through the explorations which did not start in the Renaissance, but with the Greeks who wanted to push back the limits of the known world. And they did so with little respect for their own lives, ready to sacrifice it for the sake of knowledge and adventure. The fact that 97% of inventors were White is also not coincidental; it is a logical result of our unique will.
Instead of taming those instincts, as cultural Marxism is trying to achieve nowadays, the Greeks channeled them positively in many fields, the Olympics being a prime example: the athlete was to achieve fantastic feats in a legal frame for the benefits of his polis. It is clear that today we need to find such a balance instead of trying to repress the Western will. We could make the Western world great again, reaching summits only dreamt of by the Greeks, Romans and Germanic tribes if we embraced our very nature.
Unfortunately in today's academic world, the uniqueness of Western man is not celebrated and presented as an ideal: the only thing unique about him is his supposed evilness and his will to dominate the "poor oppressed peoples" of the Earth. The case of slavery is particularly telling: it is presented as a Western monopoly, totally neglecting the fact that it was not the West that invented it, but it was the West that first abolished it.
The dominant way of thinking in the academic world is that the great successes of Europe, even the Enlightenment that ironically inspired such thinking, are not inherently European, but were instead the result of exchanges with the rest of the world.
For current historians—if that word can be applied to the propagandists and charlatans claiming the title—European history does not stand apart. It is merely part of a global history of interconnected societies. Thus the scientific and philosophical revolutions are not specific to Europe because they would have been made possible anyway thanks to intercivilizational exchanges. The new norm states that Europe was positively influenced by the rest of the world, and thus did achieve a few things, but, paradoxically, the rest of the world was negatively impacted by Europe and therefore kept down willfully.
Concepts like "Euro-Islam" or "Islamo-Christian civilizations" that have absolutely no foundation are becoming trendy in universities. By claiming so, not only are they historically inaccurate, but also they "dissolve Europe’s identity and sense of accomplishment." Those who refuse to accept the new dogma are considered too parochial and obsessed with details, and are of course suspected of being Eurocentric.
Duchesne adopts a Spenglerian point of view claiming that the "rises" of the West—rises because, if there were many declines, there were also many rises with different centers—were due to the "creative and expansive psyche" of the Faustian man.
It is not the Industrial Revolution that proves the uniqueness of the West, but its perpetual evolution and renewal in every single field. Today, our civilization and race is threatened by mass immigration, pushed by an elite that is not necessarily blinded by liberalism as many claim, but rather is actively promoting cultural Marxism and multiculturalism.
Healthy and natural instincts like ethnocentrism, or the desire to perpetuate one's own genes, have been vilified, and fields like psychology, under the influence of the Frankfurt School, have tried to present them as pathologies. Actually, to be clear, ethnocentrism itself is not considered wrong by the current thought consensus. Only White ethnocentrism is! Incidentally, with multiculturalism, only Whites are required to learn about other peoples' heritage and celebrate it.
Duchesne advises that today's youth should turn away from the brainwashing going on in the universities, and, instead of buying the lies and rhetoric about the baseness of their ancestors, should look towards the White explorers, who can teach "the meaning of endurance and hardship and the inimitable European thirst for adventure and risk." Maybe if they did this, they would stop turning towards extreme sports to satisfy their thirst, and would make the White race resume its glorious march.
Connected Content:
The Anti-Civilization of the West
In his previous book The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, Duchesne argued that Western man was mostly a product of the uniqueness of Western civilization. However, with his latest work, he goes further and explains that if Western man is unique, it is not as a mere result of his unique civilization, but because of his inner being. This means that rather than being the creation of the civilization, the civilizations are instead the creation of his unique nature. They are exceptional because of what differentiates him from other peoples.
It could be seen as yet another meditation on the nature-versus-nurture debate, but it goes further than that. What this ultimately implies is that no one can just assimilate our civilization: being a Western man is not a matter of adopting certain values, languages, or traditions; it comes from deep inside. It is inherently exclusive.
Our civilization cannot be defined by a set of ideas or a thought system, but instead by its very race. And race, far from being a social construct, must not be confused with culture. People like Samuel Huntington would like to present Western man as a universal concept, something everyone and anyone can eventually "buy into," but experience has proved this thesis wrong. Cities like Detroit and Vancouver cannot be considered Western anymore, simply because they are no longer ethnically European.
For Duchesne, who draws inspiration from both Spengler and Nietzsche, the Western man is defined by his Faustian mind; his will to rise above and conquer. He has never satisfied himself with mere survival, but has always sought to push the limits of his realm, whatever the field.
His soul has been forged by the Northern climate and the wolf-like society he has evolved within for centuries and was later nourished by the hero narratives of the Beowulf, Cuchulain, and Arthur. For Duchesne, who exposes the genesis of the Faustian man, "the ultimate roots of the superior creativity of Europeans should be traced back to the aristocratic warlike culture of the Indo-Europeans." Its creativity was not born in the Greek polis, but long before in the heroic culture of the proto-Europeans and has later been perceived in the astonishing number of achievements and discoveries in various fields.
 |
| The Faustian soul sleeps only to dream. |
Instead of taming those instincts, as cultural Marxism is trying to achieve nowadays, the Greeks channeled them positively in many fields, the Olympics being a prime example: the athlete was to achieve fantastic feats in a legal frame for the benefits of his polis. It is clear that today we need to find such a balance instead of trying to repress the Western will. We could make the Western world great again, reaching summits only dreamt of by the Greeks, Romans and Germanic tribes if we embraced our very nature.
Unfortunately in today's academic world, the uniqueness of Western man is not celebrated and presented as an ideal: the only thing unique about him is his supposed evilness and his will to dominate the "poor oppressed peoples" of the Earth. The case of slavery is particularly telling: it is presented as a Western monopoly, totally neglecting the fact that it was not the West that invented it, but it was the West that first abolished it.
The dominant way of thinking in the academic world is that the great successes of Europe, even the Enlightenment that ironically inspired such thinking, are not inherently European, but were instead the result of exchanges with the rest of the world.
For current historians—if that word can be applied to the propagandists and charlatans claiming the title—European history does not stand apart. It is merely part of a global history of interconnected societies. Thus the scientific and philosophical revolutions are not specific to Europe because they would have been made possible anyway thanks to intercivilizational exchanges. The new norm states that Europe was positively influenced by the rest of the world, and thus did achieve a few things, but, paradoxically, the rest of the world was negatively impacted by Europe and therefore kept down willfully.
 |
| Eurocentrism is centrifugal. |
Duchesne adopts a Spenglerian point of view claiming that the "rises" of the West—rises because, if there were many declines, there were also many rises with different centers—were due to the "creative and expansive psyche" of the Faustian man.
It is not the Industrial Revolution that proves the uniqueness of the West, but its perpetual evolution and renewal in every single field. Today, our civilization and race is threatened by mass immigration, pushed by an elite that is not necessarily blinded by liberalism as many claim, but rather is actively promoting cultural Marxism and multiculturalism.
Healthy and natural instincts like ethnocentrism, or the desire to perpetuate one's own genes, have been vilified, and fields like psychology, under the influence of the Frankfurt School, have tried to present them as pathologies. Actually, to be clear, ethnocentrism itself is not considered wrong by the current thought consensus. Only White ethnocentrism is! Incidentally, with multiculturalism, only Whites are required to learn about other peoples' heritage and celebrate it.
Duchesne advises that today's youth should turn away from the brainwashing going on in the universities, and, instead of buying the lies and rhetoric about the baseness of their ancestors, should look towards the White explorers, who can teach "the meaning of endurance and hardship and the inimitable European thirst for adventure and risk." Maybe if they did this, they would stop turning towards extreme sports to satisfy their thirst, and would make the White race resume its glorious march.
Connected Content:
The Anti-Civilization of the West
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