Daria Dugina's Eschatological Optimism

Excerpt from the Foreword to Daria Platonova Dugina, Eschatological Optimism (PRAV Publishing, 2023).

Excerpt from the Foreword to Daria Platonova Dugina, Eschatological Optimism (PRAV Publishing, 2023).

The Moment of Sophia

It is very difficult for me to write about Daria, because, especially in recent times, she had become everything to me: a friend, a thinker, a joy to be cherished, a partner in dialogue, a source of inspiration, and a pillar of support. The pain from losing her doesn’t dare subside; on the contrary, all of it persistently flares up with ever renewed force. Nevertheless, I understand that it is necessary to open her book, Eschatological Optimism, with words that she herself would have liked to hear and which might be useful to the reader.

Daria Dugina was a thinker, a philosopher. She was such organically and wholeheartedly. Yes, she was at the very beginning of her philosophical path, and some thoughts and ideas require a long time, sometimes many years (and others many centuries), to be thought through, but that is another matter. Something fundamental is decided before all else: whether you are a philosopher or not. Daria was a philosopher. This means that, whatever her path through the worlds of philosophy could have been, the beginning of her path is already valuable, important, and deserving of attention. The most difficult thing of all is to get into the territory of philosophy, to find an entrance into the closed palace of the king. One can besiege its walls for as long as one likes, yet still remain outside of it. To break through and find oneself in this most securely guarded palace depends on the vocation, the Call, that the genuine thinker hears in their depths. Daria heard this call.

Aristotle distinguished between two kinds of systematic thinking involved in philosophy. The first is the moment of sophia (σοφία), the sudden and instantaneous flash of the mind, the illuminating insight of the Logos. Such a flash might occur in one’s youth, adulthood, or old age. It might not happen at all. According to legend, Heraclitus claimed that up to a certain moment he knew nothing, and then he knew everything all at once. This is the moment of sophia. For Heraclitus, as for Aristotle, the Logos is one and indivisible. If someone has been granted the honor of experiencing its presence, they henceforth become a different kind of human: a philosopher. Henceforth, whatever this person thinks, wherever they turn their gaze, they now act and live in the rays of the Logos, in communion with its unity. This is what happens when one is initiated into philosophy. In Plato’s Republic, this is called noesis (νόησις), the capacity to raise individual intellectual conclusions up to the primordial and supreme world of eternal ideas. Daria Dugina bore this mark. She passed through the moment of sophia, and it was irreversible.

Her Phronesis

There is yet another, second kind of thinking. Aristotle called it phronesis (φρόνησῐς), and Heraclitus pejoratively called it “polymathy,” that is “having much knowledge” (which, in his opinion, “does not teach the mind”). In Plato, this corresponds to dianoia (διάνοια), or that rational thinking which does not collect everything together into one, but divides everything into parts, classes, and categories. If sophia comes instantly (or never), then phronesis necessarily requires time, experience, study, reading, observation, exercise, and diligence. Phronesis is also important. The crux lies in this: if the experience of sophia has taken place, then further exercise of the mind is always built around the immutable axis of the Logos. If it has not, then phronesis becomes something like common, mundane wisdom, which is, of course, valuable, useful, and deserving of all sorts of praise, but has nothing to do with philosophy. No matter how much phronetic people may exercise reading, analysis, and rational operations, if they have not previously entered the closed palace of philosophy, then their activity — no matter how stubborn and intensive — remains like wandering around the outskirts. This might be technically useful, but it nonetheless remains something completely exterior and, in some sense, profane.

It is in this sense that Daria’s phronesis stood only at the very beginning of a great philosophical path. She was just beginning to master philosophy on the fundamental level, to deepen her knowledge of theories and systems, to become fully acquainted with the history of thought, theology, and the infinite field of culture.

Here, perhaps, is the most important point of this book, Eschatological Optimism. This is a book of living thought. What is important here is not the scale, depth, or sheer volume of the theories, names, and authors cited in it. What is important is how a genuine philosopher reveals, lives, and embodies what they think in their very being. What is important is that they think philosophically, in the light of Sophia. Herein lies the novelty and freshness of this book. In the end, Daria writes and speaks not in order to move outwards to meet diverging lines of interpretations and observations of details, but to invite those to whom it speaks to make their journey inward, to live philosophy, to commit to a “turn” (ἐπιστροφή), as the Neoplatonists called it, and which Daria reiterates by no coincidence. This turn is key to her. Having experienced Sophia, she wanted to help others — readers, listeners, all of us — to experience the same illuminating insight by the Logos. Her book consists of multifaceted and widely differing approaches to the closed court of the king — in one place there is an imperceptible breach in the wall, in another there is an underground passage, in another there is a low-lying fence. Whoever has been inside knows how to enter, how to exit, and how to return.

Therefore, Daria Dugina’s book is initiatic and dedicatory. For someone who has the gift, the calling, the will to philosophy, this book might become a revelation. For phronetic people, it might be a useful and concise encyclopedia of Platonism. For aesthetes, it might be a model of graceful thinking. For those seeking the mystery of Russia, this book might be a humble milestone along such a difficult and noble path.

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Daria Dugina's Eschatological Optimism