HEGEMONY AND EMPIRE. Prolegomena to a Study of Hegemony: Recurring Dilemmas, Grand Politics, and the Philosophy of Life

Table of Contents

Hegemony and Its "Ideal Type"
Wilhelm Dilthey and German Historicism
The Philosophy of Life as Anti-Metaphysical Philosophy
Recurring Paradoxes and Dilemmas
Hegemony, Planetary Politics, and Empire

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Hegemony and Its "Ideal Type"

In the eyes of a traveler through the centuries, the dimensions of a hegemony strike the observer through the powerful force of change, the shock of its original creations, the allure of an immemorial past, and the enthusiasm for a future of conquest. The multiplicity of knowledge attested by its cities, monuments, and ancient glories adds to the admiration for its princely palaces, the fervor of its orderly workshops, the rigor of its research offices, and the collective labor of its arsenals. For a hegemonic country is an imposing construction site of techniques, a hive overflowing with resources, projects, and hopes.

This is an "ideal type" of hegemony, albeit close to reality.

The essence of a hegemony lies in its philosophy - the soul of hegemony - whose geopolitics makes it the cosmopolis of an independent and sovereign strategic space. The immaterial form of a hegemony, however, remains its ideology, which constitutes its double: disseminated, multiplied, and insidious, where people rally around its ideas as neo-converts or long-time militants.

We find these different elements in the testimonies of the grandiose and the spiritual, in Egypt, ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and, later, in Spain, France, Great Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

From the pyramids to space satellites and the conquest of the cosmos: so many compelling testimonies. Because every hegemony has a history, a conscience, a sense of excess, and a limit.

In general, where a philosophy of life, understood as self-awareness, is lacking, there can be neither greatness nor great politics, and with them, a worldview.

Let us begin with philosophy, not only as the foundation of a rising power, or, even better, of the Machtpolitik of an expanding Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also as a source of inspiration for nationalism, sovereignty, and, at the same time, as a factor in "another" international regulation.

Wilhelm Dilthey and German Historicism

The great thinker who made the "lived experience" (Erlebnis) of individuals and peoples, along with experience and life itself, the fundamental substratum of every form of historical affirmation, was Dilthey.

With Wilhelm Dilthey, the philosophy of history distances itself from both the abstract categorization of Hegelian idealism and the rationalist abstraction of Kant, returning instead to the concrete and immediate facts of the historical world and the awareness of the historicity that events inspire in the actors of change.

This "lived experience" is not composed of isolated cognitive acts - and therefore random, transitory, and fragmentary - but of elements of an intense and complex social life, both individual and collective, which refer to the whole and to action upon the whole, or upon the system of forces, in the language of systems theory.

The dynamic nature of this whole is expressed through the global flourishing of all the potentialities of a specific and singular social whole. These elements, in their symbolic, legal, institutional, or cultural forms, generate identity, belonging, and cohesion; and in their public manifestations, solemnities, rites, and beliefs.

The ritualism of the hegemonic gesture - understood as a set of epic or poetic narratives that evoke the legendary or historical deeds of heroes, leaders, or sovereigns, or the fairs and popular festivals of bygone days - is the basis of other figures of grandeur, a preeminent civil and cultural presence in the history of the future. However, hegemony is based on another theoretical assumption: an asymmetry of political status constituted by the superiority of a community or people, which such domination seeks to perpetuate, spread, and amplify.

Yet any perpetuation of superiority that turns into privilege inevitably generates jealousy, greed, and hostility. A politics of force and alliances thus emerges to counter these hostile sentiments, and war offers its bloody exploits as a means of coercion to silence these rivalries.

In the Middle Ages, war, in its essence, was masked by the theory of "just war," that is, by an ethical-religious justification for the use of violence. For example, in the Russian tradition, unlike the Western tradition and Machiavelli's rational realism (which relies on force and cunning), this justification was not based on legal formalism, but rather on the priority given to truth over force. This idea is expressed with perfect clarity in the Discourse on Law and Grace by Metropolitan Hilarion of Kiev (11th century), according to which the "Law" of the Old Testament, understood as an external norm, is distinguished from the "Grace" of the New Testament, as an internal law of truth and the natural exercise of power. Its legitimacy lay in its conformity to the metaphysics of a superior divine justice.

War and religion have always gone hand in hand, both in the West and in the East. In Russian tradition, the idea attributed to Prince Alexander Nevsky - "God is not in might, but in truth" - has defined Russian philosophy of conflict for centuries. The legitimacy of combat and ultimate victory could only depend on the metaphysical correctness of the chosen political "line," that of the defended cause. This led to the "Third Rome" thesis, which later evolved into the Soviet Union, then into revolution, and finally into Third World thought.

The Philosophy of Life as Anti-Metaphysical Philosophy

However, a philosophy would not be what it is in its essence - a perpetual questioning of "meaning"- if its task were to construct metaphysics rather than to understand the various moments through which man has come to fulfilment in his century and, at the same time, to grasp the bonds that unite the individual to the society of his time. In this sense, Dilthey's philosophy can also be defined as a kind of historical relativism grounded in experience, as it seeks to historicize every product of thought and every lived experience, demonstrating the necessary connection between man and his time, between the part and the whole, beyond any metaphysics.

In summary, Dilthey's philosophy is based on the following fundamental aspects:

The valorisation of the individual as opposed to any idealistic generalization (recalling the anti-Hegelian "revolts" of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, as well as the main representatives of German historicism such as E. Troeltsch and F. Meinecke, and anticipating M. Heidegger and K. Jaspers).

The transposition of the "subjective" world of history into objectivity.

The rehabilitation of the emotional and irrational dimension of man in his multiple organic connections.

These assumptions lead us to the debate on classical studies, often presented as a contrast between tradition and progress, conservatism and radical reformism, when in reality the essential distinction lies in the strategic order: between actors and societies that consider civilization's knowledge as a visionary and decision-making resource, and those actors and countries that view it as a distant, outdated, and obsolete deviation.

Therefore, policymakers in today's multipolar world - Washington, Moscow, or Beijing - look to past hegemonies for models of action with which to think about the future, sometimes turning to the Hellenic and Homeric worldview, sometimes to the theology and morality of early Christianity.

The question, therefore, is not whether the questions of the past are relevant, but whether recurring and paradigmatic questions exist in history.

Recurring Paradoxes and Dilemmas

We note with amazement that the classical world continues to raise questions even in the Celestial Empire, through the very voice of the divine Xi Jinping, who evokes the "Thucydides Trap." Indeed, there are questions that stubbornly resist oblivion and obsolescence and can only be expressed in terms of paradoxes and major dilemmas for action, whether domestic or international.

In our Western political systems, the internal order seems to arouse greater interest among public opinion, and some of the key questions of their mental universe occupy the citizen’s mind. Here we group together the most incisive and least easily solvable ones for established regimes:

What are, in our day, the healthy and corrupt political forms once described by Aristotle, and how does a democracy decline?

 Is there a weakening of the spirit of liberty, and how can liberty and security be ensured?

 Can responsibility and authority be dissociated, and can authoritarian drifts of power be prevented?

What is a legitimate political order?

What corrupts elites, distancing them from the people, and what welds a society or a nation together?

Can power be exercised without excess (démesure)?

Does the internal order require violence, or can it suffice with a shock of authority?

Can the international scene do without war and content itself with diplomacy, finance, or “gentle commerce”?

Hegemony, Planetary Politics, and Empire

The confusion between hegemony and empire has been maintained by mainstream media regarding the supposed “troubles” of the Trump Administration — concerning the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage, Pete Hegseth’s statements in Munich, U.S.-Europe relations regarding the Atlantic Alliance and global security, the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, or the Trump-Xi Jinping meeting and the redefinition of global power relations. Moreover, a new concept of war and a new relationship between conventional and nuclear forces is emerging to measure strength or power. This set of factors influences European conduct and vision, and further affects the unity of the West.

On all these subjects, diplomatic and historical knowledge will have to debate and demonstrate incisive subtlety. However, it is undeniable that the isolation of the EU cannot be denied, and it is necessary to clarify for all the repercussions of discord in their camp by demystifying the role of power structures, individuals, and controversial situations that remain unclear today.

A simplified recall of theory will thus allow us to better grasp the essentials and to identify, within the maintained encrustation, the respective responsibilities and failings of the different actors on the world stage.

If, at the level of the international system, the essential paradigm is stability and, in terms of becoming, change, then an error of evaluation or understanding of a decision in the medium or long term falsifies the apprehension of a conjuncture. Thus, returning to the concept of stability, the latter significantly interferes in the distinction between Hegemony and Empire, because this distinction rests on the strategic management of the system of forces.

To be more precise: the notion of Hegemony differs from the notion of Empire because the former implies a dialectical relationship between coercion and consensus, while the latter implements a logic of domination, verticality, hierarchy, and bureaucratization among a multiplicity of military sovereignties.

The distinction between the two terms seems today to rest more on the exercise of liberal and informal control (Hegemony) rather than formal and direct control (Empire). In this context, “peace through empire” appears liberticidal, even if it comes from an imperial democracy like the United States and aims to shape international relations to its own benefit on the basis of a Lockean management (Hobson) or a “non-territorial management” (S. Strange).

In reality, the extension of this management to a financialized and interconnected economy secretes an immense bureaucracy that cares little about resolving the dilemmas of security policies within neo-imperial and post-Western relations (USA/EU, USA/FR, USA/ISRAEL…).

These can be read as replicas of the conduct of the colonial powers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Acting more dangerously than the old Nations, the EU - in the era of planetary hegemonies and multipolar conceptions of the world - has conceived and conceives multipolarity in terms of counterweights and regional war (Russia/Ukraine), distinct and disconnected from the global conflict and confined to the European chessboard.

Regarding maritime strategy in the Indo-Pacific (Hormuz) and the Far East (China/Japan, Koreas), or in the South Pacific (Australia, New Zealand), Europe as a whole ignores, or feigns ignorance, of the maritime objectives of its friend (the United States) and the historical ambitions (Taiwan) of its systemic enemy (China).

Therefore, the notion of hegemony that best describes the current international system—anarchic, multipolar, and partially decentralized, yet extraordinarily interconnected - is that of a "global hegemonic power," an inclusive and "borderless" power against which Europe has conceived neither a grand strategy nor a cooperative Grand Politics. Now, it is pitted against it, assuming the position of a subordinate power, against its own interests and its own historical survival, due to a lack of power, vision, and leadership.

Latest publication: "Peace and War in Grand Politics: Planetary Society, the Destiny of the West, and the End of European Civilization" Godefroy De Bouillon Edition, published February 26, 2026.