Philosophy

Today we have gathered to honor the late Daria Dugina and to reflect on her untimely passing. I would like to begin my talk with a short historiosophical discussion on the subject of very relevant events, the deaths, not only of Daria, but also of many others. The death last night of the first and last president of the Soviet Union was the subject of a lot of postings. Our mutual friend, the writer Vladimir Kovalenko, said that when Gorbachev died, the 20th century ended and the 21st century began. And I have had this feeling over the last six months that people who had no place in the future are really dying, people from the past are dying. The last convulsions of the modern age will be at an end. This can be seen in the example of public figures.

First of all, I would like to express my condolences to Daria Dugina’s parents: Alexander Dugin and Natalia Melentyeva. I'm currently in lockdown. Unfortunately, I couldn't send my condolences earlier. Of course, my soul and thoughts were with you and Daria's loved ones all along, but physically I am far away.

Preparing this report... In fact, it was Dasha (Daria Dugina) who had invited me to come and get involved in the Council. She suggested that I talk about Luciano Blaga, because Alexander Dugin had talked about him in the context of the Fourth Way and existential politics. But I decided to make a report on Eliade, although for some reason it seemed unexpected and fortunately is in the context of the topic brought up by Nikita Syundyukov. And it seems to me now that the report and the subject it deals with have become, to put it immodestly, somewhat practical, but for some reason it has also dealt with these subjects: sacrifice, Easter, somehow, history... So let's get down to the report itself. I assume Daria is supposed to be mentioned at the end of the report without any special dedications to her at the beginning, since it turned out that the entire report was actually dedicated to her.

The topic of eschatological optimism is a rather dangerous and complex topic. It is dangerous because it has never been developed up to this point, it is fraught with many traps, many inaccuracies. When I was trying to prepare for today's lecture, I realized that although such a hypothesis of eschatological optimism can explain many historical and philosophical processes, give them content and additional dimensions, additional context and depth, there are still a lot of questions.