Glinchikova, E. V. On the Other Side of the ‘Self’: In Search of Non-Virtual Reality

Abstract: This article presents the author’s attempt to view virtual space as the space formed on the basis of the Descartes’ division of the mental and extended substances. Mental substance shown in the form of diagrams in the virtual space is nothing else but the mirror of the social world. This ‘virtual’ side of human is shown in his ‘self’. There is a famous Freud’s formula that ‘Self’ is the Other. This raises a question: what else is there in a human besides his ‘self’? Based on the author of the article, this is where the sense of reality is hidden. At the same time, if this sense of reality is only some kind of enclosure to subjective feelings and experience, Kant’s ‘thing in itself’, then human is completely ruled by the non-human and accidental occurrences. On the other hand, these accidental occurrences create the basis for one to feel real. Reality is like a black spot of the other world, sometime it lies at the bottom of the unconscious, sometimes, according to Badiou’s theory, it is concentrated in the event. In both cases it is inaccessible for human and human is unable to go beyond the borders of his ‘self’ and get the feeling of his true existence. A wish is represented as an initially split structure of the ‘self’ or cogito. Human is unable to experience the true event of his existence as it is and often distorts it. Yet, if we try to view this event as subjective and take a subject (human) as someone who can actually avoid such distortions, we can make an assumption that there is subjectivity without ‘self’, subjectivity presented through a wish expressed not by the means of the Other’s schematic image, but by the means of seeing himself as the Other and unstructured Self. This creates many opportunities for understanding the experience and mystical concepts of such philosophers as Soloviev, Bulgakov and Trubnikov and psychoanalytical insights of Jung and Laing. On the other side of the Self there is an endless godly subjectivity that, at the same time, remains solely human.

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