Meta-Politics: City of God, cities of men

“If God is one, the worlds are many.” Meta-Politics: City of God, cities of men explores the philosophical and spiritual basis for political representation and pluralism. Drawing on ancient as well as modern sources, it traces how universal functions have been understood to be “indexed” to particular persons and institutions, and why universals must manifest in a plurality of forms. It argues that, ultimately, the idea of absolute transcendent oneness is the necessary basis on which any communal life and peaceful relations must rest.“This is a richly challenging work that reflects philosophically and theologically on what I would call the intimate universality of divine-human ‘betweening’ in the metaxu of the ecumenical. Carlos Perona Calvete puts it felicitously: ‘the beyond is between.’ The work plurivocally explores the ecumenical space and is itself an ecumenical wording of an extensive range of relatings. It is attentive to the more determinate markers of particular traditions, be they Christian, Pagan, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jewish. It is also attentive to surprising and revealing porosities between these traditions in their religious, cultural, and political dimensions. At the same time, it never closes off what might yet exceed traditions. A work of intelligent interreligious exploration, it is as well a reflective synthesis in which one is impressed by its ambition and its singular power to illuminate a diversity of orientations. There is a worthy series of fascinating addenda. Very warmly recommended.”—WILLIAM DESMOND, David Cook Chair in Philosophy, Villanova University; Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium“Carlos Perona Calvete’s book is stunning. He might be described as the Norman O. Brown of Perennialism—the Norman O. Brown of Love’s Body. It exhibits a sense of verbal symbolism informed by ‘deep etymology’ that allows for a multi-dimensional resonance of meanings, finished off by incisive metaphysical wit. Wherever we enter the text, we meet a metaphysical principle perfectly understood and incisively expressed, united into a towering synthesis that incarnates a sophisticated and articulate vision of what a global society based on traditional metaphysics might look like. Such a society is, of course, highly unlikely in historical and cyclical terms; nonetheless, Perona Calvete’s image of it might still inform an embattled and occulted Remnant, thereby providing seed-material for the cycle to come. Though ours is an age of retrospection and summing-up, the archive of the past, when eternalized, may yet function as a fertile paradigm for the future.”—CHARLES UPTON, author of Vectors of the Counter-Initiation and Dugin Against Dugin Read more