No Polis Without Ethnos: A Civilizational Call to Arms

Alexander Raynor reviews Identity: The Foundation of the City  as Henri Levavasseur’s powerful argument that the survival of Western civilization depends on rekindling the ancestral unity of ethnos and polis.

In Identity: The Foundation of the City, Henri Levavasseur delivers a compelling and erudite critique of modern political and cultural paradigms, articulating a call for the reintegration of ethnos and polis as the basis for a healthy civic life. Translated into English by Roger Adwan and published by Arktos in 2025, the work is both philosophical and polemical, combining anthropological insights, historical reflection, and civilizational analysis to advocate for the restoration of rooted identity in a fractured European context.

Levavasseur’s central thesis is clear and unwavering: “Identity remains the very foundation of the city” (Foreword, p. viii). Against the backdrop of liberal universalism, mass immigration, and cultural amnesia, he argues that only a return to deep historical and cultural memory can restore meaningful political order in the West.

A Sobering Reappraisal of Renan

The book opens with a rigorous reassessment of Ernest Renan’s 1882 lecture “What Is a Nation?,” which is often invoked by liberal republicans to support a civic model of nationhood based on “the will to live together.” Levavasseur pushes back against this instrumentalist reading, stressing instead the importance Renan placed on shared history, heritage, and sacrifice. Quoting Renan directly, Levavasseur highlights the true spirit of national identity:

Having common glories in the past, a common will in the present; having done great things together, and wanting to do more: these are the essential conditions for being a people. (p. 6)

This passage underscores Levavasseur’s point: identity, far from being a voluntary association or a social construct, is the cumulative product of ancestry, sacrifice, and cultural continuity. Renan himself, Levavasseur argues, was aware that nations “are not eternal” and depend upon shared memory and future orientation to survive (p. 7).

The Crisis of the Liberal Nation

In the second chapter, titled “Liberal Aporia,” Levavasseur lays bare what he sees as the inherent contradictions of the modern liberal order. He critiques the republican framework that attempts to deny the cultural and ethnic foundations of European peoples, reducing national identity to a set of abstract values. He writes scathingly of the failure to integrate non-European populations while simultaneously deconstructing native traditions:

The political entity appears quite distinct from the old, physical fatherland: its population is now divided into adverse parts, simply because it no longer constitutes a people. (p. 10)

Levavasseur contrasts the bloodless “values of the Republic” with the visceral loyalty of rooted identity. Drawing on examples from recent French history, he sees contemporary political elites as having betrayed France’s historical legacy in favor of globalist ideologies. The result, in his view, is a fragmented polity where “the will to live together” has become a rhetorical farce. His diagnosis of societal atomization, civic disengagement, and ethno-cultural dissolution is grim, but his tone is resolute rather than despairing.

Jean de Viguerie is cited approvingly as a historian who identifies the deep rupture between the revolutionary “homeland” and the ancestral “fatherland.” In Viguerie’s words:

There is, in fact, no France anymore, and it is those in power who have killed it. (p. 9)

Such stark judgments reflect Levavasseur’s willingness to confront what many see but few dare to articulate: the erasure of European historical consciousness and the loss of civilizational confidence.

Toward an Ethnos-Based Reawakening

Chapter III, “Thinking in Ethnos-Based Terms,” is the intellectual heart of the book. Here, Levavasseur develops a philosophical anthropology rooted in ethology, classical philosophy, and modern genetics to argue that humans are “naturally cultural beings” (p. 30) and that identity arises from a dual inheritance: genetic and cultural. Drawing on Plato’s myth of Prometheus, Konrad Lorenz’s insights, and the anthropology of Arnold Gehlen, Levavasseur asserts that man’s incompleteness at birth makes him dependent on tradition, social order, and transmitted memory.

Just as a tree cannot do without its roots, the universal exists only as a polyphonic extension of specific identities. (p. 8)

He rejects both liberal individualism and Marxist collectivism as dehumanizing abstractions that deny the rootedness of real human beings. A major strength of this chapter is its interdisciplinary fluency. Levavasseur invokes paleogenetics to argue that modern European populations derive from a common Indo-European heritage. He stresses that despite modern admixture, the foundational identities of European peoples remain intact and traceable — linguistically, culturally, and genetically.

The awareness of a common origin represents the foundation on which the City is erected. (p. 33)

This section serves as a rebuke to multiculturalist ideology. For Levavasseur, to deny the ethnos is to destroy the polis. Identity cannot be a mere administrative label or legal status. It must be lived, inherited, and renewed through family, tradition, and collective memory.

The Polis and Ethnos Reunited

In the concluding chapter, “Re-Becoming What We Are,” Levavasseur calls for a spiritual and political renaissance rooted in identity. While he is critical of the European Union and modern republics, he does not merely advocate for reaction or nostalgia. Instead, he calls for a renewal of civic life anchored in ancestral memory and shared destiny. He writes:

It is not about resorting to any kind of ‘essentialism’... but rather about rediscovering the very momentum and tension that allowed our destiny as a people to blossom. (p. 27)

This is a constructive nationalism — not one based in exclusion or hatred, but in a positive self-reclamation. Levavasseur exhorts his readers not to abandon Europe’s civilizational project to bureaucrats, nihilists, or technocrats. He seeks instead a politics of continuity and belonging — a renewed City where ethnos and polis once again harmonize.

The City can only thrive if it is animated by a spirit that flows from a shared heritage and a will to carry it forward. (p. 43)

Final Thoughts

Levavasseur’s Identity: The Foundation of the City is a challenging, thoughtful, and deeply learned book. While it may unsettle those wedded to liberal orthodoxies, it offers a coherent and passionate defense of Europe’s right to memory, continuity, and self-determination. The book’s prose — formal yet clear, philosophical yet impassioned — demonstrates the author’s seriousness and literary discipline.

It is also a book of hope, however dark its assessments may appear. Levavasseur’s appeal is not to resentment or defeat, but to responsibility, self-awareness, and renewal. He urges Europeans to reclaim their agency, their roots, and their right to shape their future.

For historians, political theorists, and all those concerned with the fate of European identity, this is a vital and provocative work. It reminds us that the City, if it is to endure, must be built upon the firm ground of shared memory and living heritage.

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