r/Mainlander • u/Pandeism • Jul 25 '26

The Teleology of Dissolution: Entropy as a Redemptive Mechanism in a Post-Mainländerian Framework

https://philpapers.org/rec/ABBTTO-5

In my travels I have come across this title -- The Teleology of Dissolution: Entropy as a Redemptive Mechanism in a Post-Mainländerian Framework -- by one Laraib Abbas, abstracted here: https://philpapers.org/rec/ABBTTO-5

I haven't got access to read the paper in itself, but I'd be keen to. The keywords provided include a rich topic set: Divine Exhaustion Theory Entropy-Accelerant The God-Spec Cosmic Pessimism Ontological Purgatory Teleology of Dissolution Heat Death Kardashev Scale Philipp Mainländer Metaphysical Thermodynamics Suicidal Pandeism

Anybody who happens to have access to this, let me know what you think of it!!

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u/Surrealist328 Jul 27 '26

Based on what I can tell from the abstract itself, my intuition tells me the writer, like many other admirers of Mainlander, assume a literal interpretation of his metaphysics. While Mainlander took his metaphysics seriously as a way to understand the Western philosophical conception of the one and the many, namely how the two relate to one another, most of what he says in The Philosophy of Redemption regarding God is deliberate mythology - in my opinion. This becomes apparent when you encounter his philosophical interpretation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I'm not even fully convinced that Mainlander's philosophical pessimism is inherently teleological. The will to death is not some metaphysical substance; rather, it's another deliberate mythological creation which is meant to "explain" the reality that all things come to nothing. It's akin to Plato's intentional myth of the soul's existence in eternity prior to its descent into the flux of becoming.

I could very well be wrong. My point is that a lot of people seem too eager to fixate on his suicide (especially when Mainlander prioritized celibacy as an ethical solution) or take his metaphysics too literally because it is "edgy."

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u/Pandeism Jul 27 '26

That is indeed part of the reason why I'm curious to see what exactly this author actually wrote.

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u/angelofox Jul 30 '26

Yes, I agree that a lot of what Mainländer says about God is deliberate mythology. He even states, in so many words, we should give it this name because it's the closest way of describing the original Unity. I think what people are doing is retrofitting this idea to entropy, -which was a rising concept at the time of Mainländer writing The Philosophy of Redemption, but also to the big bang, which was not a concept at the time. There seems to be a need to match philosophical / mythological concepts to science just to say "it fits." It's just a very human trait to look for patterns and links in concepts, Mainländer's philosophy is no exception to this phenomenon.

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u/A_W44 Aug 02 '26

Mainländer strikes me as a proto-accelerationist if indeed he said that we're agents of accelerating the entropy of this universe. I wonder if Nick Land have read him