Ego or God? Zizek, Absolute Egoism, and The One of Dugina's Eschatalogical Optimism

The Question of the Reality and the Virtual

To return to the One or the Good which is to say God which is both knowable and unknowable may be a false task if we take into the consideration this basic and ugly little truth which varies in popularity at various points in history: God is a false concept insofar as religion posits itself as real and in fact it is a manifestation of the Deep Ego, or the Dialectical Ego, the Absolute One of all Egos.

This truth is important insofar as it indicates a split or a falsehood, as Dugina puts it in Eschatalogical Optimism, “Eschatological optimism is a formula that describes the sad and even unfortunate descent of the awakened philosopher into the world of dark illusions and heavy nightmares.” (Dugina, Eschatological Optimism) What exactly is the illusion?

Zizek marks a break from Plato insofar as he declares it is not important that the reality we think exists is in fact virtual, but rather that the virtual functions. In this sense, Zizek marks a new crack in the history of philosophy where Dugina expands thoroughly her Neoplatonist viewpoints in a manner that it can be brought into the 21st century.

The One of Dugina of course functions to expand Putin’s regime and blah blah blah, what sort of philosopher would bother themselves which such a trite and obvious truth that those into mere neoliberal politics themselves echo. Similarly, who among us still cares that God is dead? Even the Godly take this for granted.

Nonetheless, there is still a philosophical disagreement here. The One of Absolute Egoism, the Absolute quality that all things are perceived and are subject to the Kantian synthesis of categories and senses but do not produce Kant’s morality, but rather Absolute Egoism, is a truth which leads to the question of what is justice.

Can Absolute Egoism or Dugina’s neoplatonism tell us about justice? Well, of course Dugina’s neoplatonism is egoistic, it is a truth and a philosophical system which works within Putin’s world whether or not it actually expands it at all. It is philosophy which asserts the virtual as virtual and the character of the philsopher as someone who is actually important.

In this sense, Dugina advocates for not Putin, but philosophy itself. Insofar as her philsophy operates successfully within the framework of Putin’s Russia, does this really say much? I am not sure. I think I could advocate Absolute Egoism and it make sense within the framework of Putin’s Russia, despite not being an advocate for right wing ideals or authoritarian regimes (in the most basic liberal sense possible, I do not consider myself a political genius of any kind but rather someone who is a Progressive Californian learning slightly more about politics).

The west doesn’t know what a Russian philosopher is I don’t think, thus when Dugina dies it is some appendage of Putin that died for the west. In reality, beyond the virtual, there is an advocate for some sort of philosophy. That philosophy is not just her philsophy, but a major question of the reality and the virtual, of appearances and the Beyond.

”When we consider the philosopher’s return to the cave along with his inner orientation towards the pure One, we obtain a theology that is simultaneously cataphatic and apophatic. This synthesis is tied to the situation of being submerged in an inferior world while preserving the inner experience of the transcendent. This is the essence of eschatological optimism. Optimism in this case will manifest itself in the recognition of the possibility of communicating about the One, i.e., through cataphaticism.”

-Dugina, Eschatalogical Optimism

We have to ask, the world is inferior to what? It seems to me it is inferior to the reflection of The Philosopher upon it. For the philosopher insofar as they choose to be a philsopher and not a business man, maybe this is simply a logical categorical truth. It does of course return to the One. But if the One is Absolute Egoism— this is a large break between the religious formula leading to God and the Actual-Pragmatic approach of both politics and Absolute Egoism.

Dugina is saying here that we must nonetheless speak of God, “cataphaticism,” that despite God being unknowable there is a philosophical task to expound it in reality despite never matching its nature of being transcendent and beyond human grasp. This is exactly the psychoanalytic case of the Ego and the psyche. We can not grasp the past appears as a crack in the present.

What is the significance of Dugina’s One being both her definition of the Good AND Ego? It means if it is Ego we must take the declarations of her Absolute positionality of what is and what is not at the highest, darkest philsophical ground. It is exactly as Dugina poetically puts it, “Eschatological optimism is a formula that describes the sad and even unfortunate descent of the awakened philosopher into the world of dark illusions and heavy nightmares.”

Let us use this formula of unveiling illusion, it is useful. Insofar as ideas function sociopolitcally-economically, as they have material effects and are used to bolster one’s own side in petty and global conflicts, do we double down on our egoism? Do we acknowledge our limit and state we can not escape ourselves? Or do we say we are in fact the hand of the Absolute Rational state?

By doubling down on something else besides our egoism, we add to our egoism, but it can’t be said to be a doubling since we do not grasp the darkest illusion of all, which is the self-propagation of the self which bends all ideas and ideals towards itself. To think Dugina’s Egoism and Zizek’s Egoism is almost nonsensical. It is a philosophical topic that I instinctually reject writing it. What can be gained by measuring one against the other?

Zizek functions in a apophatic way, he advocates for a Communist regime that can never equate to an Actual communist regime. No regime will get Zizek’s unequivocal blessing. In this way, he is the true Platonist despite advocating for the reality of the virtual over the virtualness of reality.

The reality of war appears when one is a politically cataphatic philosopher, or associated with one that is on a materially weaker side of a global conflict. How is Dugina the philsopher reduced to an appendege of Putin in the western mind? Through the sheer force of ego as represented through historical and institutional force. Zizek on the other hand breaks through to the western mind and doesn’t advocate for a regime, which fits nicely for a western pleb like myself that is impident politically and can relate to this limit.

Egoism is the ugly Absolute and it is located within the Actuality of the history of Mankind and its productions. There is no God Absolute unfortunately (and quite boringly of course!) but the consequences of the lack of an entity to guarantee of Goodness means we have to work out the measure of our Ideals alongside and always with our Egoism if we want to understand from the Highest Ground of Philosophy.

“Zizek has better politics,” “Dugina has better politics,” “I, Eliot, have better politics,” all of these statements are subject to the Absolute Egoism of the totality of human workings and have logics which intuitively stem from each due to the totality of human workings, or Absolute Egoism. We can in fact expand on this force, it does have Being unlike God.

Who died exactly when Dugina died? A Putin appendage? For the intellectual, a daughter of an intellectual? For me just to be different, I am assuming a philosopher died. I need to read the rest of the book. I like that it is implied that philosophers are real and it is important to do philosophy, maybe there will be other interesting things in the book.