POSTRAKONTO
The Dilogy of the Tragic:
The Experience of the Tragic
Vladislav Pedder, 2025

The Experience of the Tragic — the first part of the dilogy The Tragic.

It is an investigation into the nature of human fears and limitations. The book offers a perspective grounded in nihilism and pessimism on the tragic in human existence, examining it through the lens of philosophy and science. The author continues the lineage of Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer Peter Wessel Zapffe, developing and reconceptualizing his ideas through process philosophy.


ISBN: 9785006745506 

ISBN10: 5006745509

ASIN: B0FGD289G5

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QUOTES FROM THE BOOK

«...before your birth, and indeed after it, everything that shaped you had no "I"—it was merely matter without purpose or meaning. In a sense, you do not exist and never have. Every "I" is merely a temporary assembly of matter, a particle of the infinite cosmos where there is no absolute beginning or end, just as there is no meaning.»
«Life is not a celebration; it is an endless funeral procession, where every second relentlessly draws its bearer closer to oblivion and decay. Every organism enters into a dialogue with death, creating the conditions for the next turn of experience, but this dialogue is always conducted in the language of pain and suffering.»
«The fault lies not with the human, but with life itself, in its inability to cease anticipating experience. In this lies the true tragedy of life... Experience is a mechanism of destruction operating within the structure of living systems. It knows no equilibrium. From the very moment of its emergence, life has never been in harmony; there has always been a succession of changes, where each new moment arises from the ashes of the previous one. The true face of experience is destruction and suffering, because only in the rupture of the old is the new created. There is no place for creation here.»
A review of the book The Experience of the Tragic and an interview for DARKER magazine. No. 8 August 2025
Editions

Опыт трагического
1nd edition, 2024; 2nd edition, 2026

ISBN: 978-5-9216-2481-8
Language: Russian
Release date: September 2, 2025
Publisher: Totenburg
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The Experience of the Tragic

ISBN:  978-5006745506
Language: English
Release date: January 20, 2025
Publisher: Ridero
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Dilogy of the Tragic


The Dilogy of the Tragic is a unified study of the tragic as a philosophical problem within the tradition of philosophical pessimism, enriched by a process-ontological approach. This synthesis renders the project the first systematic work in the field of processual pessimism. The inquiry is divided into two interconnected yet methodologically distinct parts: while the first volume examines the human dimension, the second transcends the human to unveil a cosmic pessimism.

The first book, The Experience of the Tragic, focuses on human suffering and the limits of rational understanding. Through a dialogue between two philosophers—Professors N. and P.—it analyzes the defense mechanisms of consciousness, as well as how social practices and intellectual traditions mask or structure the experience of the tragic. The author deliberately introduces two opposing viewpoints and leaves the problematic questions open.

The second book, Processual Pessimism. On the Nature of Cosmic Suffering and Human Nothingness, reorients the analysis from an anthropocentric to a process-ontological level. Reality is interpreted as an aggregate of processes conducive to entropy, and the tragic is revealed as an integral part of the Universe. The thesis of cosmic nihilism is debunked by cosmic pessimism, which lays bare the tragic fate of all things in the cosmos. "Everything in the Universe exists for but one purpose—to accelerate entropy toward the end of the Universe's life," states the author. From this conclusion stems the author's ethical position—sentiocentric antinatalism—which is also examined in detail from unexpected angles. The dilogy's culmination presents the author's definitive stance; the inquiry concludes by systematically answering the questions posed in the first part, shifting the discourse from describing human reactions to drawing conclusions about permissible interventions and responsibility. The conclusion of the book addresses questions of promortalism and EFILism. The finale of the dilogy assumes the character of ultimate speculative reflection, calling into question the very foundation of all suffering and awareness: "If consciousness does not exist, then what does, and is there anything at all?"

The dilogy traverses a path from the phenomenology of human pain—through the ontology of cosmic suffering—to ethical conclusions and a metaphysical impasse, offering a rigorously consistent and unsettlingly holistic view on the place of life and reason within the destructive processuality of being.

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