Processual Pessimism
Subtitle: On the Nature of Cosmic Suffering and Human Nothingness
Series: The Tragic
Publisher: Ridero
Published: 10/01/2026
Place of publication: Moscow
Language: eng
Translated from: rus
Translation of: Процессуальный пессимизм. О природе вселенского страдания и человеческом ничто
ISBN-13: 9785006908185
First sentence: Preface: If you are holding this book in your hands, you clearly lack pessimism in your life. Or are you still hoping to find in it the tale of the kind elf promised by Professor N., which he never finished in the first part? You will be disappointed: the tale is over. This is the second part of the Dilogy of the Tragic, which brings the project to its completion. The Experience of the Tragic, the first book, explores the theme of the tragic for humanity. The task was to lay bare the problem and to show the full ambiguity of the contemporary human tragedy through an analysis of the limits of reason and the structure of experience. The description of human tragedy proceeded through two independent thinkers — Professors N. and P. Professor N. radicalized the Dionysian acceptance of the world, proposing a conscious dwelling in a state of ontological uncertainty without recourse to the defensive strategies of consciousness. Professor P. criticized this position, introducing the idea of the Differentiating experience — a fundamental level of being that precedes any meaning. His position was described as ontologically oriented pessimism, free from aestheticized melancholy. But both positions — N. with his asceticism of unbelief, and P. with his analytical pessimism —reflect a dead end; ultimately the tragedy remains unresolved. N. was forced to live within uncertainty outside any beliefs, whereas P. endlessly generated new experience without finding a point of support. All forms of philosophical response proved secondary with respect to the experience that conditions them, while that experience itself remains excessive and inexhaustible. This work completes the investigation begun earlier but takes a decisive step beyond the human perspective. If the first book concentrated on the tragic experience of human beings, this study discloses the cosmic nature of tragedy for the whole world and radically revises the ontological status of experience itself. After acknowledging the impasse of Professors N.’s and P.’s positions, only honesty about one’s own predicament remains. The central thesis of this book is as follows: the Cosmos is not indifferent to life, as is commonly assumed. All living beings — temporary organizations of matter — necessarily serve to accelerate entropy on the path to general decay and equilibration. Everything in the Cosmos exists only within a single large-scale process: to bring the Cosmos closer to its own death. This conclusion requires a radical revision of both ontological foundations and ethical consequences. The book develops a processual ontology free from biocentric and anthropocentric prejudices. Each part of the book is self-contained, and the reader may begin with any section. Nevertheless, the logic of the work is arranged to lead the reader from ontological foundations through processuality to ethical consequences and, finally, to the question of whether it is possible to exist under full awareness of the tragic nature of being. An appendix includes information about the author, since behind every philosophical position there is always a personal history that may help the reader better understand the origins of these ideas. Like the previous book, this work relies on numerous works from various disciplines — from cosmology and thermodynamics to ethics and theology. I proceed from the premise that any contemporary intellectual work is intertextual by nature. It engages in a dialogue with predecessors and contemporaries, and knowledge is born precisely in that dialogue. Those who insist on sterile originality are either mistaken or misleading their readers. The Cosmic pessimism developed here differs from classical philosophical pessimism in that it elevates the pessimistic intuition to a cosmological absolute. Processuality is given a strict definition through informational-thermodynamic processes, which makes it possible to look beyond the anthropocentric perspective. With this the The "Tragic" dilogy is concluded, though it does not claim finality. The processual nature of reality means that all knowledge remains provisional. However, unlike optimistic epistemologies that read this provisionality as a promise of progress, Cosmic pessimism sees in it only confirmation that the movement of cognition itself is part of the entropic process. We do not know in order to overcome ignorance; we know because the process of knowing serves the same purpose as all other processes — the acceleration of movement toward final equilibrium and the death of the Cosmos.
Description: Processual Pessimism. On the Nature of Cosmic Suffering and Human Nothingness — the second part of the dilogy of the “Tragic”. What is left for a person when the scale of the tragic goes beyond human life and rises to the size of the universe? When the usual explanations dissipate, and existence itself is revealed as a brief pattern of matter against a background of slow, inexorable decay?
Table of contents: label: Part I. Ontological Foundations; label: Part II. Process and Experience; label: Part III. Ethical Consequences; label: Part IV. Antireproductive Attitudes; label: Part V. The Human; label: Epilogue; label: Bibliography; label: Appendix