I became acquainted with Cioran’s works while in France. Until recently, many of his works were not translated into Russian. Emil Cioran was a consistent Romanian nihilist, an extremely pained one. The majority of his works are in the form of aphorisms.
All of them are quite melancholic. I’ll read you now verbatim one quote used in the announcement of my lecture: “On a gangrened planet, we should abstain from making plans, but we make them still, optimism being, as we know, a dying man’s reflex.”
Cioran had quite an interesting life. He was brought up in a religious environment, and at first undertook religious studies. His life then took a turn and he ended up being influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Klages. He gradually became a kind of “nihilist.” His experience of the First World War was brutal. From his pen appeared such works as A Short History of Decay, Syllogisms of Bitterness [known in English as All Gall Is Divided], The Trouble with Being Born, Anathemas and Admirations, The Evil Demiurge [known in English as The New Gods], etc.19 All of these are written in aphoristic style, consisting of heavy and painful fragments that are somewhat like the dark fragments of Vasily Rozanov.
There are two components in Cioran’s eschatological optimism. On the one hand, he recognizes the illusoriness of this world, its finitude, and how it is absolutely, impenetrably closed, with no way out. Cioran writes that he finds himself in a world that is condemned, that we are all obviously doomed, cursed victims of this condemnation. We have no way out in any direction — no way, up or down, because “we are condemned and crucified on the cross of interpretation.” Elsewhere, Cioran wrote: “We are born already crucified.” And elsewhere: “The soul is already a crucifixion.”
At the same time, Cioran says that “optimism is the reflex of the dying.” But even this convulsive reflex is necessary in order to somehow maintain the status of the universe, for optimism constitutes the world (in the same way that a spasm characterizes a dying person). Oddly enough, this is a healthy reaction to the meaninglessness of this world into which we are thrown. Despite the fact that Cioran’s works bear no religious element and no salvational doctrine that might change a person’s fate by opening up the call to leave this universe and take a leap of will towards the Absolute, which is to say that there is no positive transcendence, he nevertheless accurately captures the most important condition of this world: its illusory nature, the absolute meaninglessness permeating its exhaustion. This starting point of human existence constitutes the basis of optimism as the spasmodic reflex of the dying.
Therefore, in my view, Cioran is extremely important for understanding eschatological optimism. In fact, the very notion of “eschatological optimism” came to my mind after I read Cioran for the first time, in 2013 or 2012. That is when I started finding this hopelessness of the immanent world, the tragic experience of its finitude, in other works by other authors and schools, as well as, in spite of everything, a consciousness of the need to have an optimistic, volitional attitude towards it.
Jünger: Turning the Ship into the Forest
One important author whom I recently discovered to be a bearer of eschatological optimism is Ernst Jünger. Jünger’s life and works had many stages, but I have in mind first and foremost his work The Forest Passage. It was recently released in Russia by Ad Marginem with brilliant commentary by Alexander Mikhailovsky. In this text from 1951, Jünger speaks of “passing into the forest.” At some point, the time will come when a person has to break with the given reality of the hopelessness of the surrounding world. Jünger calls for resistance, for joining the fight against this world and for rising above the illusory reality to whose very illusoriness we testify through the very act of our abruption. In Jünger’s work, we find an interesting formulation which I will now quote:
The forest rebel is that individual who, isolated and uprooted from his homeland by the great process, sees himself finally delivered up for destruction. This could be the fate of many, indeed of all — another factor must therefore be added to the definition: this is the forest rebel’s determination to resist, and his intention to fight the battle, however hopeless.20
Jünger speaks of modern man being thrown into a space in which technology and matter essentially destroy him, in which he loses his axis of rebellion and sovereignty in the face of materiality and illusoriness. He writes of the necessity of committing to revolt against the modern world, saddling its reality, subduing it, and passing into the forest. What Jünger means by “forest” is very important.
He does not mean departing into a physical forest, nor guerrilla struggle against the system– he also does not mean slipping away into a space where there are no more illusions, because illusion is everywhere. The illusion is in the illusion itself. The forest is none other than something differentiated, something distinguished, something greater. The point is that, in the very center of this illusoriness, in the center of the deceptive, finite reality that devours man through technology, through Machenschaft as Martin Heidegger called it, man ought to cultivate a vertical axis within himself, a verticality which will be absolutely different from the surrounding illusion and the world as a whole. This axis of rebellion is what is meant by the “forest passage.”
Jünger chose the image of a ship to articulate the situation of the one who passes into the forest, an obvious reference to Dionysus. When Dionysus faced his enemies on the ship, the matter at hand was essentially a clash between two elements: the forest, the wooden, the ship-like, and the aquatic. The indomitable god causes the ship to become entangled in lush vegetation. The deck, masts, sides, and rigging are overwhelmed with wild ivy. The ship is turned into a forest. Dionysus thus vanquishes his enemies by way of a miracle. This metaphor serves Jünger as an illustration of the need to remain within the reality in which he found himself, in which he was manifest, into which he was born, while at the same time constituting some kind of transcendent volitional principle from the inside, within the immanent, something that will cut and break through the illusion until it collapses.
Evola: Differentiated Man’s Rupture of Levels
We encounter similar concepts among the Traditionalists. First and foremost, there is Julius Evola and his concepts of “riding the tiger” and the “differentiated man.”21 This is one and the same idea.
According to Evola, modern man finds himself under the destructive influence of matter, under the clichés of the consumer society, under the proliferating pressure of technology, which represses him and dictates to him the need to follow its intrusive, alienating algorithms. The majority surrender, shrug their shoulders, and merge with Modernity and its laws.
But, in spite of everything, there are certain individuals — “differentiated men” — who accomplish superhuman efforts to break this illusoriness, to subordinate it to their will, to overcome it, and to subject it to an act of radical transcendence.
The differentiated man continues to remain within the world, but, at the same time, his most important standpoint in his perception of this world is his piercing awareness of its finitude, its illusory nature, and the steadfast conviction that this illusion lacks an ontological status. Such a volitional tension results in the gesture of a sharp break, an experience of rupture. Evola calls this “la rottura del livello,” “rupture of level,” a puncture made in this illusion.
Summary
In the works of the philosophers I’ve spoken of today, we encounter indications of the experience of eschatological optimism. I would now like to summarize what I mean by eschatological optimism. We have considered various concepts and figures ranging from Plato to Julius Evola. Of course, each of these elements demands a separate lecture, but let us try to identify the basic criteria that can be traced throughout all these doctrines.
Firstly, eschatological optimism is the consciousness and recognition that the material world, the given world which we presently take to be pure reality, is illusory: it is an illusion that is about to dissipate and end. We are extremely, sharply conscious of its finitude. But, at the same time, we maintain a certain optimism; we do not put up with it, we talk about the need to overcome it.
Across different teachings, this finitude can be overcome in different ways. In theological Platonism, it can be overcome on the path of turning to the One that is to be found ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας, “beyond being,” and through the path of apophatic mystery. This optimism is also manifest in political Platonism, when the philosopher returns to the finite world not to serve the finite, but the infinite.
In Neoplatonism, the experience of eschatological optimism means gradually ascending up the hierarchy of virtues and along the ladder of the elements of the soul, through the soul’s selfimprovement from the lower to the higher virtues.
Once the higher levels are reached, the Neoplatonist’s path leads even higher, as he tries to escape the finitude of this world through the theurgical, mystical act.
In the political philosophy of Neoplatonism, which is, by the way, implicit in the late Platonists and more explicit in the early Neoplatonists (in Plotinus, for instance), this ascent is also associated with political virtues. In general, it is difficult to separate metaphysics from politics in Platonism. Take, for example, Plotinus’ project for a Platonopolis. This is something incredibly interesting: despite the fact that Plotinus seems to be repelled by the earthly world, he does not give up trying to build the ideal kingdom of philosophers. Proclus, despite all of his abstraction from the material world, participated in the political life of his native Athens, from which he was expelled for a while. Thus, in Neoplatonism, eschatological optimism can also manifest itself through political efforts, through the experience of political service. (...)
ESCHATOLOGICAL OPTIMISM
Daria Platonova Dugina
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