I was looking what other books Askr Svarte‘s publisher Prav Publising has available and I ran into Eschatological Optimism. The name of the author did not yet ring a bell.
From the introduction of translator and owner of Prav, Jafe Arnold, it soon became clear to me: here we have a book of Darya Aleksandrovna Dugina (1992-2022), the daugher of Alexander Dugin (1962-) who died in a car crash before she turned 30. The book is introduced by Arnold and Alexander Dugin himself.
Daria had studied philosophy and was so ‘Plato minded’ that she used the pseudonym “Platonova”. Obviously she was massively influenced by her father and the circle around him. I see several similarities with the writings of Askr Svarte (or would that be because they have the same translator?).
Dugina appears to have been an avid writer and lecturer and the book is a collection of lectures and essays. The book is divided in four parts. Two first two are -even though very philosophical- quite interesting. The last two interest me less. These last to parts are -very shortly- about the political side of Platonism and later philosophy.
The first part gave the book its title:
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.
“Eschatology” is the acknowledgement that the material world is finite. The “optimism” part of the concept is not so much the being happy about that, but more the ‘riding the tiger’ attitude of Julius Evola: we are going down, let us make the best of the time that is left (but also: “live a life of unhappiness”).
Julius Evola represents an authentic revolt within Postmodernity. Guénon is even more fundamental. They show us the paths we can take. For myself, this path is, without a doubt, Orthodoxy and Edinoverie.
Explaining the latter term later in the book.
I belong to Edinoverie. This Edinoverie Church is somwhere between the Old Believers’ Rite and the ruling Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.
So quite like her father, Dugina is interested in philosophy, Traditionalism, politics and Russian Orthodoxy. Different from her father, Dugina was also a feminist, but I must say: of a very specific type that is completely different from our Western view of feminism and so we see that Dugina was also a thinker of her own.
Just like Svarte, Dugina’s writing frequently goes over my head, but it makes an interesting and often non-Western way of thinking inspite of being too philosophical for my liking. She sure was a thinker with great potential, so her early passing is certainly a shame. With an afterword of Daria’s mother Natalya Melentyeva the book has a tragic opening and closing, but it is good that also the Western audience now has a chance to read this young philosopher.
2023 Prav Publishing, isbn 1952671787
