What Is Metapolitics?

by Alain de Benoist

In an interview given to the magazine of the Friends of Jean Mabire, Alain de Benoist discusses the often misunderstood concept of ‘metapolitics’, central to the New Right’s activities and his intellectual journey.

THE FRIENDS OF JEAN MABIRE: When did you first encounter metapolitics? Was the concept already familiar to you? What is your understanding of it today?

ALAIN DE BENOIST: I probably first came across the term in the latter half of the 1960s, but I’ve forgotten the circumstances. At that time, I was unaware of the rather questionable book published in New York in 1941 by Peter Viereck titled Metapolitics, which critiqued post-romantic German culture. I also hadn’t read Anthony James Gregor’s An Introduction to Metapolitics, released in 1971. And, of course, I was completely ignorant of the fact that the word was first used in the 17th century, specifically in a manuscript titled Metapolitica, hoc est tractatus de republica philosophice considerata, now preserved in the Historical Archives of the Diocese of Vigevano, near Pavia, written by the Spanish Catholic mathematician and philosopher Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, born in Madrid in 1606.