New Enlightenment, New Alliances

Part two-

2 – The Lost Path of Modern Freedom

From the United States to Europe, the daughter of the Enlightenment, the luminous path traced by Descartes and Newton, Leibniz, and the Encyclopedists is lost in the shadows of doubt and confusion, first, by ignoring the conditions that give life to a political society. Aristotle said: “to make citizens, passions, and reasons must be shared.” Modernity has forgotten this. Reasons to stifle passions. Look at the European Union. Reasons are not lacking for celebrating the tangible benefits of the Union. They are called the single market, the Euro, and the Schengen Area. But where is the passion? Who has ever seen the passion that should unite the French and the Germans, the Belgians and the Greeks, the Swedes, and the Portuguese, as it united the half-billion Hindus celebrating the Kumbh Mela in January-February 2025? Reason alone is not enough, in politics or elsewhere. Recognising this passion deficit in liberal societies amounts to questioning the myths of law and the market as the twin guides allowing a society without politics, without debate and without choice. The assertion “TINA” (there is no alternative), dear to Margaret Thatcher, sounds the death knell of democracy. It is not insignificant that at least part of the Western world shares this simplistic view that denotes its impotence and triggers the spectacular return of repressed perversions (violence, satanism, pedophilia, etc.). In retrospect one must note how some African leaders despised by the West, such as Colonel Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe, were able to inspire passions for African unity and for their nations to reclaim their destiny!

There is spiritual blindness in Benjamin Constant’s foundational assertion; “political liberty was the liberty of the ancients, the liberty of the individual is modern liberty.” (1819) It is time to reverse the maxim; political liberty is the liberty of the future. Constant’s individual is the man of reason, the man who exists for his own interest, the man who has rights and no ties. The man who judges that everything can be bought and sold, and that every relationship is transactional, first at what price? and secondly contractual: underwhat conditions? This modern monster has no future. Based ofn his field studies in Cameroon, Maurice Godelier (in “The Foundations of Human Societies,” Plon, 1992) concludes without hesitation; in any sustainable human society, the things that matter are neither bought nor sold, they are given or passed down, outside the market and without a price. The contention that “What has no price has no value” can justify the trafficking of organs and humans, as well as the genocide of “inferior” peoples. In the reality we have lived in for the past half-century, the liberty of the individual in the pursuit of his unlimited interest destroys the political community, and thus the ability to collectively decide the future, the laws,  customs, etc. 

As was forcefully stated by Marcel Gauchet (“Human Rights Do Not Make a Polity,” 2008, Gallimard) the ‘societies of reason’ are no longer able to ensure the overall improvement of living conditions for their population, unlike what the Chinese power has done over the past fifty years, (see the study by the Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy, “Understanding CCP Resilience; Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time,” July 2020, introducing the term “authoritative resilience”).

Furthermore, owing to the hypertrophy of reason and will, expressed through technology, freeing man from the material conditions of his physical circumstances: geography, climate, language, history, traditions, gender, etc., leads to Wokism, reopens the trap of the ‘new man’ through the projects of old totalitarianism and current transhumanism. It leads to the unexpected merger of liberalism and totalitarianism. The former French Education Minister Vincent Peillon states in his book “A Religion for the Republic” that the child must be freed from all familial, ethnic, social, intellectual, and sexual determinisms. Stalin could not have said it better. At the end of an enterprise of deconstruction that rejects the natural condition of man, liberal capitalism becomes totalitarian (see Hervé Juvin, “Chez Nous!”, La Nouvelle Librairie, 2022, and Quinn Slobodian, “The Capitalism of the Apocalypse,” Odile Jacob, 2025). There is no need to mention the environmental crisis we are experiencing to size up the failure of a reasoning reason that reduces nature to a collection of objects put at our disposal. Reason against nature spells doom. This is the starting point of the localist revolution which posits that there is no sovereignty without territory, no political liberty without border control.

We witness the collapse of human diversity, such as languages, customs, laws, norms, and so on. Where can it be said better than in Dakar, this stronghold of French-speaking Africa? The generalisation of the practice of English is an essential element of the decline of civilization among those who abandon their own languages, traditions, and ways of life. The diversity of languages reflects the diversity of human societies, laws, customs, and political regimes, which proceeds from social, historical, and territorial singularities. Nothing is more hostile to the autonomy of peoples, nothing is more foreign to this human ecology that arises from the interaction of men with their land, nothing is more conducive to war than the standardisation of systems, models, and rules, eagerly implemented by those who dream of a flat world where capital flows without obstacles. Truths are multiple, diverse, dated, and situated; this is the very precept of Localism,

The debate between traditionalists and ‘globalists’ was raised and nourished by many thinkers critical of modernity such as Burke, Bonald,  de Maistre, Novalis, and  Fichte. It has taken a new turn since the Second World War. The shadow of Nazism and the fear of a totalitarian resurgence continue to poison modern politics, but we often ignore its return via information technologies, genetic and molecular manipulation, and the coupling of AI and biotech – eugenics is already here! 

The modern tchnocratic revolution has been redicalised by authors such as Popper, Adorno, and Habermas, as well as the “usual suspects,” Hayek and Friedman. The radicalisation of liberal individualism after the Second World War is the direct cause of the civilisational crisis facing Europe and the United States. It is impossible to attribute the recent deviations of the globalised West to the initial Enlightenment, but it is also impossible to continue speaking of “modernity” or “modernisation” as if the most promising experiences did not seem to come nowadays from China, India, Southeast Asia, and perhaps tomorrow from Africa – as if the ‘new’ modernity did not now originate far from the West, and even against what the West still signifies.

To proclaim the open society, as Karl Popper did, was to respond to the ethno-nationalist manifesto of Nazism by destroying political autonomy. For more than half a century, and still today, a part of public opinion, sometimes the majority, considers that any talk about border, Nation, and territorial sovereignty forebodes the return of Nazism. This prejudice has lent almost irresistible shine to the planetary utopia, to global democracy, to the liberty of movement of goods and services, people and capital. This is what denies people’s attachment to the land that makes them and that they shape. It explains the second wave of colonisation, under the pretext of shared values,  rule of law,  human rights , right to development , etc. What about those people who don’t want to be developed against their will ? This is also what, in the long run, amounts to destroying the political autonomy of societies once they are prevented from deciding for themselves and their own, incapable of saying “Our home!” with trust and hope.

To disarm the evil passions that fed Nazism, leaders from the financial sphere, such as Jean Monnet, saw it fit to entrust the automatic piloting of human societies to the market. Yet, the subordination of the legitimacy of a government to the liberty of the markets,  regardless of territory and time, as recommended by Ludwig Erhard,(cited by Michel Foucault in his lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979), and Habermas, with his “constitutional patriotism,” which the European Union is based on, reminds us of the rise of Nazism due to German industrialists (read Johann Chapoutot, “The Irresponsibles,” Gallimard, 2025).

The result is there. Donald Trump understood it; naive globalization was a machine to ruin States by allowing private companies to produce where labor is cheapest and to declare profits where taxes are lowest. The example is given by these so-called “luxury” brands that sell products from China, or Vietnam under the “Made in France” label and complain about paying too much tax in France. Benefiting from nationality, from common goods such as the educational system, history, and prestige, without paying taxes, is the stark reality of present-day globalisation, which localist globalisation would replace. The new modernity is territorial, deep-rooted, and particularistic. The new  universalism is the universality of differences, singularities; it emerges out of the universal circulation of specific . Any empire that claims or tries to rule the world and to be the world must  retreat into national borders to survive; that is the challenge for  any superpower. 

3 – The Moment When the Gods Return?

The American essayist and influencer NS Lyons published an important paper after Donald Trump took power titled “The Return of Strong Gods.” He announces the return of heroes, warriors, and victors. Current events prove him right. Should we see this as a response to Heidegger’s call, inviting Europe to leave open the possibility that a God might arrive?

The victory of Donald Trump, the second decolonisation movement that is spreading, and the end of Western globalization signal this return of the Gods. These ‘Gods’ are called territory, and geography is taking revenge on history. They are called political liberty, and it is the end of these “good governance,” “rule of law,” and “ESR” (environmental and social responsibility), and other inventions of US Aid, Foundations, and NGOs relayed by international institutions to end people’s local autonomy. They are called the will to live and celebrate the reunion of man and nature as shaped by traditions, beliefs, and customs (read Byung Chul Han, “The Disappearance of Rituals,” Actes Sud, 2025). The Localistes ! welcome this movement of political, economic, and mental decolonisation. It is called ‘diversitarian globalisation’, in the Chinese, Indian, African, and also European way. It heralds the age of civilisation-states (read “The Hindutva Paradigm,” Ram Madhav, 2021). It opens new paths for African nations, unique to each of them, as Senegal is showing. It suggests that the time is ripe for a new Bandung, which will build the foundations of a world without poles, enriched by the diversity of peoples free to determine their destinies.

I will limit myself to calling for the small gods of peace, joy, and all the wonders of the world. I hear them telling us great things.

First, they say that reason is not life and that life is not reasonable. The question is not that no one has a monopoly on reason, and that history belies Western pretensions; the question is that life is elsewhere. The first human faculty, that of wonder, escapes reason, calculation, and the mind. The great Gods of AI will soon be here; they are already here to teach us what Cartesian hubris has made us forget; mortals, we are first and foremost this body that is ours, the life that is in this body, its ability to feel, to enjoy, to suffer too, and the advent of AI could well be a new stage in “The Advent of the Body” (Gallimard) that I analysed in 2002. Will it go so far as to take the place of philosophy, as Heidegger announced in 1966 (in an interview with Der Spiegel, “today’s philosophers do cybernetics”)? Today’s philosophers are building the future AI. It will free man from vain operations of the mind and a jumble of useless conventions, rules, and forms, while waiting for brain-to-brain communication to make “language games” questioned by Wittgenstein superfluous or accessory. AI may challenge the monopoly of reason over sciences and knowledge, the culmination of the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle leading to the empire of technique. It is unheard of, but not impossible, that the empire of the senses could be liberated by AI and redraw the world. It is possible that thought could play against reason. It is possible that AI will impose the axiom spelled out by the contemporary Chinese philosopher Zao Ting Yang, “no longer cogito, ergo sum, but facio, ergo sum,” ( see All under Heaven , Berkeley, CUP, 2021). 

AI reveals that what makes man a man is its feelings, its emotions, its pleasure and pain, far more than its thinking ; it is so much easier to duplicate the operations of the mind than to  replace the human body with a machine The monotheism that holds the body as a prison for the mind leads into a civilisational impasse in which Europe is falling, despite texts like the encyclical “Laudato si” and the Eastern Orthodox notion of the sacred that is still alive in Europe.

As Leo Strauss reminded us, there is a human nature, that prevails in spite of everything, including and perhaps especially over reason, and attempts to overcome it, whether they are called wokism, transgender, or positive discrimination, only make it more resilient. What has positive discrimination done if not exacerbate the racial and sexual obsessions of the American Puritan substrate? The Small Gods call us to reconnect with our inner nature, more influenced by myths, tales, and legends more than by law and the market. Human nature is political, and the diversity of human societies results from it; it is the delicious fruit of collective liberty. Ethnologists have proven it on many occasions; placed in the same natural conditions, two human societies will adopt different customs, laws, and myths. The effect of political liberty is the diversity of cultures, but it is above all the diversity of regimes, legal systems, economic models, beliefs, customs, and even markets, This diversity is collective, otherwise it is only a mercantile trap for modern narcissism ( see Christopher Lasch, » The age of Narcissism », 1966) ! This calls for an ecology of civilisations and the intersubjectivity outlined by Transcultura! This suggests the immense wealth that Africa possesses, that of diversity. Is it by chance that the greatest biodiversity goes together the greatest human diversity?

Finally, new Lights will emerge from an alliance between human culture and nature. This is the moment we are living, the Localist moment. This is the moment that African, Asian, and South American nations are experiencing, discovering that the civilisation-state asserts itself above technique, reason, and against import models. Diverse truths and contrasting laws are the indelible effect of human liberty. It remains for us to achieve the difficult exercise of this liberty of life in the face of science, calculation, and the market, which are conventions, processes, and institutions. For this diversity is not a condition of life, it is life itself. The plurality resulting from nature and passions is the way of peace; the standardisation of interest, calculation, and reason is the way of violence. Behind the proclaimed ideal of the unity of the human race, the will of a few aggressive minorities to dominate the world can be read too easily. Those who are tempted, in the name of their manifest destiny or divine election, to affirm their vocation to unite the world must understand that they expose themselves to ridicule first, then to hatred, and finally to extermination. Is this why Donald Trump is trying to de-imperialise the United States of North America, in great danger of succumbing to the moral vertigo that destroyed the Soviet Union?

In conclusion

Things are never good when taken to extremes; they self-destruct. We have crossed the point where reason becomes madness, where law turns against rights. May the second decolonisation underway, from Delhi to Dakar, and from Maputo to Jakarta, protect the peoples of Africa from the Western shipwreck, under the triple colonial shock of the “Rule of Law,” “good governance,” and “ESR” (environmental and social responsibility), which ae weapons of mass destruction of national will and popular sovereignty! These words have an origin, they have a history, and they serve a power. If we study how words like “good governance,” “rule of law,” and “individual of right” appeared thirty or forty years ago,  we will see that they were imposed in the international vocabulary by many institutions, NGOs, and Foundations, for enforcing a new mental, financial, and mercantile colonialism, and that they placed “development” under the control of the West.

The Localists call for the urgent resumption of the universal conversation that brought forth and enlightened the Renaissance, from Bologna to Salamanca and from Montpellier to the Sorbonne, the one that unites us, from Dakar to Beijing and from Delhi to Moscow, the one that allowed Montesquieu or Voltaire to praise China as a model of administration. Peace will come from those who resume the conversation of free spirits across the world.

The Dakar Forum of April 2025, the first West Africa-China Forum, inaugurated the China-Africa Institute for Research in Social Sciences (see article by Elisée Héribert in “Le Label Diplomatique,” April 24, 2025), which co-hosted the fifth “Forum for a Good Strategic Neighborhood” with the Transcultura Foundation.