Frank Herbert's Dune - a philosophical analysis

The pyramid of power within the fictional Dune’s Herbertian Universe before the coup d’etat of the House Atreides:

    The Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino The Fourth  as a representative of Landsdraad

  CHOAM  = The Spacing Guild = Landsdraad

 Bene Gesserit
The feudal system of Faufreluches: siridars, 

                                                        nobles and
                                                          pyons

The pyramid of power of the Known World after the Battle from Arrakis:

The Emperor Paul Atreides as the sole ruler of the Universe/ The Regent Alia of the Knife/ The God-Emperor Leto II Atreides (ruled cca. 3500 standard years)

     The Spacing Guild

  CHOAM  = Landsdraad = Bene Gesserit

The feudal system of Faufreluches: siridars,
                                                        nobles and 
                                                          pyons

The pyramid of power during Middle Ages in the cradle of civilization, Europe:

     Popedom

  The Catholic church = The biggest Christian king(dom)s -
 The free international trade

The local nobles and bishops; and
                                 the peasants

The pyramid of power during Renaissance in the cradle of civilization, Europe:

The Catholic Church with its leader, the Pope, the Protestant Church = The biggest Christian king(dom)s = The free international trade

The local nobles and bishops; and
                                 the peasants

Conceptions, doctrines and conclusions (metaphysical, anthropological, and so forth):

Christianity (and Renaissance):

‘The man is the centre and the purpose of the entire creation’

F. Herbert’s Dune:

‘The Universe doesn’t have centre’ [physically or metaphysically]

Iudeo-Christianity uses the already born and dead Avatar of God to control the inhabitants of Europe. The Christian world, starting with the Emperor Constantine, used its religion as a State or political tool. They even disseminated Christianity in Americas and in parts of Asia, just that they did it for an immediate socio-political advantage, and, secondary, due to a strictly unselfish spiritual reason.

In Dune’s Universe, the religion is used by a relatively small minority - the nuns of Bene Gesserit - as a control tool for enslaving the masses of planetary denizens (the peasants, in general, and the inhabitants of the primitive worlds): this is the function of the so-called Missionaria Protectiva, which spreads religious myths about the genetical desideratum of BG, Kwisatz Haderach (← Kefitzat Haderech = ‘contraction of the way’ קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְ (in Hebrew)), with the goal of easing the future planned domination of the known Universe, once Kwisatz Haderach was produced and even without this scope being reached. But, when ‘the man that can be in different places in the same time’ finally arrives, he begins to rule tyrannically the World, sending all the former tripods of power, including BG, in the background of the cosmic history.

The spice (or melange) is a metaphor of the nowadays’ oil. Water itself, which is so priceless on Dune, works, according also with the words of the writer himself,  as a metaphor for oil, for the clean air, for the water itself or for the economical situation generated by the shortages of oil during the oil-fuelled Energy Crisis. Compared to the Renaissance, the spice may play the role of the gold. Dating back from the medium Middle Ages, one of the two main goals of the alchemists was the production of the gold, having as prima materia other metals, usually iron. Would be like the Inca Empire would had the monopoly of gold, while the viceroy of Spain - which was appointed by the king to manage the precious metal - would take the entire political power in his hands, backed by his huge earnings.

After the prophecies scattered by BG all around the world met their fulfillment, Arrakis (aka Dune) becomes a SiFi Jerusalem (or Mecca), while the political power was already moved to the same place since the new Emperor established his capital in the regained planetary fiefdom of his family. Also, thanks to the springs of spice, Arrakis takes its deserved rank within the economical hierarchy of the Universe. Arrakis (with its capital, Arrakeen) becomes the new axus mundi, being thus very similar with the Ancient Rome of the old Earth. Ironically, the temporary capital of Dune, which had this role during the Harkonnen regime, is named Chartag.

The Imperial religion is Buddislam, but this doesn’t seem to contradict the quasi-divine nature of Kwisatz Haderach, his super-natural mental qualities having the same phenomenology with the effects of sadhana or of the meditative practices from Buddhism, in general. The Golden Path, Leto’s strategy to avoid the destruction of the human species, it is a clear reference to the Buddhism as well. Still, although both Emperors, Paul and his son Leto II, were trained by Bene Gesserit sisters (Jessica, mother of Paul, was a BG nun), their mental capacities were owed exclusively to their overdoses of geriatric spice.

You can also understand the spice as a metaphor of soma (from the Hindu Buddhist & Hindu culture) or of the coffee (initially belonging to the Muslim culture).

Bene Gesserit may correspond to the (Catholic) Church, and since its influence was always confined by various political factors - the last one and the most repressive being the ascension of the House of Atreides on the Throne of the Golden Lion - I think that we may say that this sisterhood resembles with the Church from the timespan between Renaissance and the present days, having a gradually decreasing strength. Due to its specific psychosomatic techniques (as prana bindu - the control of the muscles and of the nerves, or the using of the Voice to subdue other people’s will), BG can be perceived as well as a metaphor of the sangha, the monastery of the Eastern dharmic metaphysics.

I think that the reclusive and sober life-style (modus vivendi) of BG imposes its subsequent labeling as 'Stoic'. They always think on long term, and the importance of an individual is reduced to her participation to the great project of the order. Their supreme scope is beyond them - the creation of Kwisatz Haderach - still, they would like to control the world through him. Their sexuality is used only in political purposes, for manipulation and for selective breeding, sometimes for both, in the same way in which the Church ratified or rejected weddings between the ruling dynasties of the medieval Europe.

The role of the Latin is played by Galach, that serves as lingua franca in Dune’s fictional Universe.

The Guild owes its mathematical knowledge applied to the spacetravel to the stable abuse of melange. This is the practical domain where the prescience of the Emperors (their ESP of foreseeing events before they happen) converges with the limited prescience requested by the craft of sailing within the dynamic frames of spacetime continuum of the Guild Navigators.

Here is a similarity between the theological/ sacerdotal and nobles' monopoly of writing during the Middle Ages and the specialization of the art of spacetravel to the Navigators.

I infer that the relative independence of Guild can be paralleled historically by the homologous condition of the official emissaries of the European crowns in Americas and Asia, which conquered large territories and brought a lot of treasures back home. This was the reason why the kings preferred to give them extended rights over the new lands and to name them viceroys, precisely for securing their further cooperation.

Thus, Guild has become a sui generis pillar of power, being the only element which partially escaped from the control of the Emperors. 

The Houses of the Empire, especially the richest and the biggest one - the Houses Major -  have a pleasurable and hedonistic life, consequently, I assume that labeling them as 'Epicurean'; wouldn’t be too far from objectivity, especially ‘cause the complete semantic extension of Epicurus’ philosophy, as it was underlined by the studies of Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus from Rotterdam, showed that Epicureanism would be, more likely, an approach of life very similar with the (our) modern modus vivendi.

This conclusion is emphasized by the thesis, implicit in Herbert’s writing, of the perpetuated memories of the ancestors in the bodily cells of every living human: the men inherited all the male memories of their corresponding genetical line, the women inherited all the female experience of their lines. In consequence, since didn’t exist an absolute oblivion, but just an end of the time when a centre of consciousness may express itself in an autonomous and stable way, living a balanced life, characterized by tranquility, would be a very realistic choice to be taken during the ‘epi-phenomenal’ or conscious existence.

The conflicts between the Houses are regulated by specific norms, the only way to legally defeat another House being The War of Assassins, Kanly. Like in Middle Ages, the poisoning was a very common practice. Therefore, the assault of Harkonnens on Dune or the landing of the Imperial troops - Sardaukars  - and their subsequent fight with the local Freemen were notable exceptions, both historically and methodologically. These resemble with the noble’s duels from Middle Ages’ and Renaissance’s Europe.

The most skilled warriors: Sardaukars, qua Imperial soldiers of Shaddam, Freemen, qua Crown troops of Atreideses, resemble with the most valuable Orders of Knights, like Teutonic Knights or Templars.

Both the Freemen tribes from Dune - the native planet of the sandworms, whose dejections, exposed to the air, generate the spice, - and the BG’s nuns use overdoses of pre-spice masses named Water of life to induce themselves the so-called spice agony after that a Freemen is accepted as a full warrior and a BG sister becomes a Reverend Mother.

These rituals look more alike with the mysteries of the Pagan antiquity from the religion of mysteries of Graecia Magna - like those from the cults of Apollo or Dyonisos - or with the ecstatic practices from the Indian subcontinent or with those specific to Zoroastrianism.

Paul Atreides, the son of Duke Leto I Atreides, becomes the first Atreides and Dune-based Emperor, being propelled in the head of the Freemen armies by his successful spice agony, which made him a demigod, with extensive prescient abilities. Practically, the man which has returned from the heart of the desert, riding a giant sandworm and leading a huge army of natives, it is a transformed or reborn version of the initial one, which barely escaped from the hands of Harkonnens, as a teenager. His super-natural mental qualities, derived from the consumption of melange and his carefully selected genetic line, allowed him to see the future even after he loses his sight due to an attack with a stoneburner - an atomic weapon.

But the main transmutation takes place one generation later, in the case of his son, Leto II, which will become the God Emperor of the Known Universe for 3500 standard years. Leto II, in the epilogue of the Children of Dune, merges his body with a sandtrout, the haploid phase of a sandworm - and becomes literally an ovule for the ingoing male sexual cell - and transforms himself in a hybrid, half sandworm, half human, but endowed with special physical attributes. He switches his species, but he also changes the species of the organism inserted in his body. The renewed Leto II may be compared with the other desideratum of alchemy, the (re-)creation of the man, anthropos. He preserved his spirit - spiritus -, he retained his soul - animus -, while he modified his body - corpus -.

The transformation worked because his blood was supersaturated with spice, and the sandtrouts were confused. But mentally - animus - and spiritually - spiritus - his changing begun earlier, since he increased gradually his daily dose of spice, extending the spectrum of his self-awareness as an individual and of the self-awareness as a species to the new levels.

Maybe, in the terms of Nietzsche, his grandfather, Leto I, the Red Duke, was the camel, his father, Paul Muad’Dib, was the lion, while himself was the child, the offspring of a new age.

‘Paul Muad’Dib created a religion to unify, then he became The Preacher to destroy what he had created. Nietzsche brings back Zarathustra because the Persian prophet created a religion and has now come back to destroy the belief in a set of values [...]. Zarathustra preaches of the coming of a new kind of man, what he calls the Superman. Nietzsche talks of the future of humanity, a different kind of humanity. The human being is the rope tied between the animal and the Superman. He must overcome himself: the opposite of which is the desire for self-preservation which characterizes the attitude of the last man’. (Dune and the philosophy of the weirding mentat, ed. by J. Nicholas, Paul Atreides the Nietschean hero, Roy Jackson, p. 186.).

Concretely, this accumulated mass of human anaphoras which constituted the diachronic genetic program of BG exploded in the substantial form of Leto II. He succeeded to impress to the humankind the only evolution path which allowed its survival - this being the meaning of the Golden Path. His leadership was necessary:

‘Leto II is an example of the ultimate consequentialist in the moral thinking [...] Herbert presents the ultimate challenge: is the very existence of the human beings enough to justify any means? Leto II commits atrocities on a galactic scale, all in the name of creating a human populace that will forever despise despotic rule, ensuring the continued survival of the species.' (Ibidem, The Golden Path of Eugenics, Stephanie Semler, p. 23.). 

‘Clausewitz remarkable trinity highlights the relation between the population, the government, and the military capability that will that will be wielded in a war and provides a framework for understanding the force of this activity. Without a proper balance within this relationship [...] the utility of war for political purposes is highly questionable [...]. Just ask Muad’Dib about his intent to regain a dukal seat that results in becoming emperor at the expense of the thousands of planets and billions of lives.’ (Ibidem, Shifting sand, shifting balance, Louis Melancon, p. 35.).

I think that we can understand the tyrrany of Leto II as being a metaphor of the needed socio-political change that marked Renaissance, as well as the following age until the old feudal system begun to be replaced by the capitalistic societies, with a limited or no room for kings, emperors and their earls. Leto II was the embodiment of the absolute power, and all the other pillars of power (BG, Landsdraad, CHOAM) were removed from the equation, although the feudal system continued to operate on the scattered worlds, that hardly communicated to each other, hence, even the function of the Guild was substantially diminished. 

Leto II is a metaphor of the necessity of late medieval or early modern change, exhibiting the irrationality of Popedom and of the customary system of well-defined social classes. In God Emperor of Dune, humanity is frozen in a trans-galactic stage, while during Renaissance the man (fore)sees for the first time the desirability of a political change. Leto II decimates all the sandworms from Arrakis, becoming the only remaining source of spice. Thus, he basically incarnates all the issues and the solutions of his time, as the late medieval real world was frozen in a obsolete shape. His death is the death of the essence of the feudal system - the system of Faufreluches - is the death of the essence of monarchy because all the contemporary monarchies are purely formal, they functioning effectively as free-trade capitalistic republics. Therefore, his assassination was paradigmatic, Leto II himself accepts this stream of events and his death reveals all the hidden answers for the future. More precisely, after his death a new life-cycle of the sandworms begins afresh, while this three millenia and a half stasis helped the human race to avoid an extremely possible self-destructive temporal course and gave birth to the Scattering, a large diaspora of Imperial citizens which didn’t accept his rule or the policy of Bene Gesserit that made him possible, and represented the seeds of a future guaranteed non-monopolarity of the Universe. Similarly, in the real world the foundations of the new capitalist system were deepened through the colonization of Americas.

I can risk even a comparison between the gravitational force of Christianity - which still echoes even in the most civilized countries - and the endless reign of Leto II. Maybe that the both reigns were necessary in their dimension, both having the same logical consequences:1) the stability and the continuity of the elements glued together due to the coercive factors, and 2) the chance for a new and stronger life to be disclosed afterwards, in the scattering of the peels. 

In Dune, the tyranny played the role of the peel, the peel that covered the cosmic egg of the humankind.

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