Feed Zh. The religious question in the XXI century. Geopolitics and the postmodern crisis. Moscow: Institute of General Humanitarian Research, 2012, 288 p.

A relatively small book by Georges Korm is saturated and even oversaturated with stunning geopolitical generalizations, comparisons of historical epochs and civilizations; its texture is located on the verge of academic and journalistic genre, more precisely, it periodically spills out of the strict scientific channel onto the sharp rocks of current political discussions; the language (in a good Russian translation) feels the passion, energy and position of a biased intellectual despite the fact that his arguments do not give the impression of a simple series of baseless slogans - they rush to the very depths of modern discourses about global processes, claiming to deconstruct the current epistemological omissions and common ideologemes.

Well, fans of noble academic humility will find this book a political burlesque, a misplaced claim to omniscience, and even a blatant political agenda. And they'll close it on page three. But let's humble ourselves and look at the book in a different way, finding in it true merits that cannot be taken away. Let's take a closer look at the author. A Lebanese Maronite Catholic; a deeply Francophone person (all the numerous references, with a few exceptions, to French authors or, less often, to French translations of foreign-language authors); one can say that a well-educated intellectual-un intellectuel, deeply inscribed in the French rhetorical tradition, with selfless self-love and brilliant passages that can cause Russian delight and skeptical reaction. the grin of an English-speaking reader; a professional politician who, among other things, was Lebanon's finance minister in 1998-2000 and held a number of other posts more related to international relations.

Already all this biographical background makes the author's view special and worthy of attention. It explains his style and approaches. He thinks of himself in the center of the world - why not: this is naive, but fair! What kind of center is this? This is the Mediterranean Sea. But at the same time it has two points of reference: How is he

he himself somewhere marked out the two ends of the Mediterranean-Lebanon and France. To the former, it owes my acute sense of diversity and global involvement in societies, and here the experience of the Lebanon war and the Middle East (Palestinian) conflict, where all the geopolitical tensions of the modern world converge, pulsates passionately. The author owes France to others-an amazing awareness of philosophical and historiosophical debates for a current politician (post)postmodernism. The author, as the title suggests, is trying to connect geopolitics with the crisis of philosophy, to reveal (more often-hidden) the connection between the interests of powers and their ideological legitimation, reflected in academic debates. It is clear that as a Lebanese-Frenchman, as a man of the Mediterranean, as a proud inhabitant of this "universal cradle", he is cool and critical of the Anglo-American "civilization" (we will see this later with full evidence) and almost indifferent to the space that extends further east from the Arab east, not to mention the fact that the Arab world is still in the Middle East. not to mention South America, Africa, or Russia (the latter interests him only with the experience of Stalinism and the Cold War).

Now-to the content. The book begins with a description of what the author calls a "change of scenery" in the world over the past 20 to 30 years, namely, the return of religion to the forefront of international politics. Religion is returning along with an interest in" identity "and" roots " in all its manifestations. Homo religiosus becomes a new essentialist concept, replacing homo oeconomicus. This return is a dubious boon (sic!) of postmodernity, the author believes, and tries to understand what is behind this "change of scenery", this "shameless" (sic!) mixture of religious and political in the prevailing geopolitical discourse.

"Dubious" benevolence, "shameless" confusion - it is these harsh words that pop up at the beginning of the book, and then the author's position no-no and shines through, in Conclusion turning into a completely open political declaration that leaves no doubt. It becomes clear to us that the author actively dislikes the mixture of religious and political, that he considers it dangerous, that the "change of scenery" - the return of the religious-is a crisis of something important, for which the author is ready to stand up.

This is important - Modernity, and to protect it from all sorts of (including postmodern) revisions is the author's goal. The author's anti-heroes are the political philosopher Leo Strauss, who "overthrows all the achievements of Modernity"; the philosopher Rene Guenon, who rejects Descartes and praises "tradition"; the historian Francois Furet, who redefines the meaning of the French Revolution (reducing it to immoral terror); the German historian Ernst Nolte, who reinterprets Nazism (reducing it only to a reaction to Bolshevism, that is, to extreme modernism). The author's heroes are Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas and all the others who remain true to the "bright and positive" side of Modernity, so to speak.

Where does the good old Modernism face the main danger? About twenty pages later, a thick text full of very subtle observations and energetic polemics reveals the frightening outline of the main carrier of the new religious conservatism - the "American superpower", which since the early 1990s, after the end of the cold war, declared itself a "nation of believers" and began to build geopolitical logic in civilizational confrontations, trying to convince the world of the reality of the conflict of civilizations and manipulating this idea for their own domination. The book was clearly written in the fresh wake of the Iraq War and with a clear dislike for the Bush presidency; its pages contain the anti-Atlantic irritation of a European and the anti-Israeli discontent of a Lebanese.

Let's focus a little on Israel. In fact, America is the main actor in the drama of the overthrow of Modernity for us. America is essentially the bearer of Messianic nationalism, which is again and again clothed in religious garb. Israel is the most important ally of America (this is extremely important for a person living in the neighborhood), and Israel, according to the author, is "a true icon of the return of religiosity" (p. 151). As far as can be judged, the Food is absolutely not subject to anti-Semitism. (He argues sharply with Ernst Nolte, who tends to revisit the Holocaust; Korm, on the other hand, speaks to its deep roots.) But he believes that Israel is playing along with America in its attempt to plant a neoconservative-religious mythology of global geopolitics. Korm devotes an entire and very interesting paragraph to " the place of Nazism and the Holocaust in the Western worldview "(pp. 170-178).,

by claiming that Western neocons are manipulating the Holocaust in two ways: (a) they are making the event exceptional and seemingly without underlying causes, viewing Nazism as a "monster that fell from the sky" (p. 165), thereby removing the burden of responsibility from their own history, and (b) they are emphasizing their own exclusivity because of this that they were able to overcome their own cruelty and "deeply repent", and therefore they need the Holocaust to legitimize their own sense of moral superiority.

What, in Korm's opinion, are the underlying reasons for the new geopolitical mythology being imposed on the world? They are in monotheism. Modern conservatives are only reviving the old "monotheistic matrix". Further, the author offers the experience of his "archeology of violence", and monotheism-in the face of Christianity - is severely charged. Monotheism, with its principled exclusivism, with its denial of the Other, was, in the author's opinion, the main root of the violence of the last centuries; it was the religious wars of the XVI-XVII centuries and the inquisition (if we do not look further into history) that were the main impulse of all later violence; it was their echo that was the French and Russian revolutionary terror; It is precisely these characteristics of monotheism that have the deep roots of colonial atrocities; it is religious violence that was the prototype of the world wars of the twentieth century; and it is this violence that eventually turned into the Holocaust. So, all the troubles and cruelties of the Modern period are not the fault of Modernity itself, the author believes; on the contrary, enthusiastically voicing the "religious genealogy" of Western violence, he tries to remove all charges from Modernity.

What about now? According to the author, now the basis of geopolitical constructions is the newly established, now united Judeo-Christian exclusivism (again an obvious allusion to the American-Israeli alliance). The concept of Judeo-Christianity, introduced by Hegel and then developed by Max Weber, is now raised to the shield as the main civilizational mythologeme. This new concept, Korm believes, "unceremoniously replaced the belief in the Greco-Roman roots of the West that had prevailed since the Renaissance" (p. 225).

What is the militant potential of Judeo-Christianity, promoted and imposed by the American authorities and the mass media? Now it is directed against the" third monotheism " - Islam. Islam is everything-

gda was considered a "third extra", a kind of inferior tradition (as can be seen from the author's contemptuous words of E. Renan on p. 152). Korm devotes an entire chapter to Islam, trying to expose the simplistically hostile and alarmist stereotypes of the "war on terror" era. He talks about the complexity of Islam's legacy, discusses - in great detail-attempts at reform and the search for a tolerant model within Islam, and emphasizes that in the case of Islam, the militant impulse was a reaction to "cavalier" Western pressure.

However, Korm's justification of Islam as a victim does not go too far: in the end, he speaks of the "stagnation" of tradition and finds in Islam the same reasons for fundamentalism as in the other two monotheisms. In general, the dominant idea is that all three monotheisms are in "convulsions and convulsions"; they are too often and consistently mixed up with politics; the geopolitical confrontation between Judeo-Christianity and Islam is a" shameless " (still the same harsh word!) geopolitical instrumentalization of religion, a source of great danger. The author emotionally urges "to resist the use of religion and the fabrication of civilizational nationalisms" (p. 246); to stop abusing the concept of "the West"; to stop essentializing conflicts of civilizations. And now we come, in fact, to Georges Korm's credo, which sounds like a frank political program at the end of the work. It is necessary to preserve Republicanism, citizenship and political morality, "freed from the convulsions of identity, religion and ethnicity"; to return to the great Kantian concept of openness and cosmopolitanism (sic! not multiculturalism, which is part of the rejected mythologeme!), put before Europe (sic! versus America), to become a guarantor of secular humanism - a global "secular pact" as a shield against threats lurking in religious confrontation; to make "the international geopolitical scene a republican space in the strict sense of the word, from which any dramatization of identity and any appeal to religiosity would be removed" (pp. 261-262). And finally: "Put an end to the vacillation of global geopolitics and the scandalous instrumentalization of the three monotheisms, which everywhere threatens the freedoms that have come at such a high price "(263).

Two words at the end. We can agree or disagree with the liberal program of Georges Korm, who defends with chivalrous courage the high principles of secular modern universalism. But we can't help but see an obvious simplification and schematism here. We already know that Modernity as a historical reality has always been in a more complex relationship with religious values than it seems to strict advocates of absolute secularism. We even know that the earthly utopia of Modernity and the Christian Heavenly City have certain intersections. We have long known that Modernity is not reducible to the noble Voltaire-Kantian universe and has itself generated ugly extremes (including totalitarianism), for which it is absurd to "pin" the blame on religious reactions or even hidden relapses of monotheistic instincts. We also know that modern America is irreducible to the neoconservative wave, that Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush, that the idea of a" war of civilizations", thank God, has many opponents; that Europe, apparently, has developed a strong immunity to this kind of manipulation. In general, the world is complicated. And that's why Georges Corm's chivalry - as it happens with chivalry in general-seems a little outdated.

Nevertheless, some important warnings voiced by the Lebanese intellectual should be heeded. Geopolitical myths - yes, there are; politicians manipulate the mass consciousness; conservative elites - from the West and East-tend to hyperbolize conflicts of "identity" and thereby directly threaten decent, tolerant communication within the global village. Therefore, let us pay tribute to the restless and sincere voice coming from the Middle East-the "solar plexus" of global contradictions.

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