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The Ego and the Flesh: An Introduction to Egoanalysis
Is our ego but an illusion, a mere appearance produced by a reality that is foreign to us? Is it the main source of violence and injustice? Jacob Rogozinski calls into question these prejudices that dominate current philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the human sciences. Arguing that we must distinguish the true ego from the alienated and narcissistic construct, he calls for an end to egicide, or the destruction of the ego. Ego and the Flesh offers a critique of the two masters of egicide, Heidegger and Lacan, along with a rereading of Descartes, who was the first to discover the absolute truth of "I am." The book's main purpose, however, is to provide an entirely new theory of the self, egoanalysis , which reveals a divided ego-flesh. Constantly striving to attain unity, the ego-flesh is haunted by a remainder , whose role sheds light on various the encounter with the other, the passage from hate to love, the death and the resurrection of the I. For ego-analysis is no mere it opens the way to our deliverance.
- GenresPhilosophyPsychology
376 pages, Paperback
First published July 29, 2010
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February 15, 2025
The idea of this book excited me. Finally, a phenomenologist willing and daring enough to stand up for the ego, for the self! The book is divided in half, with the first part being a negative critique of Heidegger, Lacan, and Descartes for the great crime Rogozinski calls "egocide, this tendency... that denounces the ego as an illusion which should be conveniently dissolved" (5). After he murders the murderers of the self, he goes on, in the second half of the work, to provide a positive contribution that he calls "egoanalysis," which, while not clearly defined, can be thought of as a phenomenological psychoanalysis whose rigor supersedes that of Sartre's.
The first half of the book is brilliant. To my delight, I had anticipated in my own thinking and writing the same criticisms that he addresses to Heidegger's Dasein. This is not surprising, since both Rogozinski and I are fans of Michel Henry (although he has the privilege of having been a real student of the latter). He makes the provocative, but supportable, claim that Heidegger's anti-Cartesianism actually leads logically to the latter's support of Nazism. I won't trace out the exact lines of argumentation that Rogozinski pursues here, but generally his critique of Dasein's transcendence is compelling and incisive. The same can be said of his critique of Lacan, with whom I'm a little less familiar. Rogozinski shows that Lacan misinterpreted the mirror stage because he, like Heidegger, is too constricted by the visual and the ecstatic; neither Heidegger nor Lacan is willing to countenance immanence or life, which would lead to a serious (re)consideration of the ego. With this, he then turns to Descartes, whose legacy is ambiguous: On the one hand, he was the first "discoverer" of the ego, which he grounded absolutely, thus providing the basis for Husserl's phenomenology. On the other hand, when he snuck in God as the guarantor of truth and existence, Descartes then laid the grounds for egocide, since the life of the ego was outsourced to a transcendent Other, thus debasing the ego's absoluteness. For the most part, I could follow this last line of thinking, but it's also where the fault lines began emerging.
By the time egoanalysis comes onto the scene, I'm afraid Monsieur Rogozinski had lost me. It all begins with his insistence that the ego need not be an original unity, that the ego is in fact originally a multiplicity that synthesizes itself through its carnal chiasms. Under a complete reduction, the field of immanence is constituted by various, disparate experiences—sensations of sight, touch, scent, etc. He compares the continuous synthesizing of these ego poles to the "body without organs." Yet, at the heart of this very auto-affection, whereby touch touches itself, or speaking hears itself, there slips in a horrifying tragedy—what Rogozinski names "the remainder." What is this remainder, which is the crux of egoanalysis? It is "a residue of non-flesh that is indissociable from my flesh" (172), "the First Stranger" that is a "transcendence in immanence" (177). Very vague, very cryptic—but what does it mean? It means that, when I feel myself, I feel myself—but also, not myself purely, since there's a slight—how slight?—disidentification between the feeling flesh and the unfeeling body. Thus, at the very moment I am myself, there's also a tiny—how tiny?—lag between myself(?), a difference inserted into my very identity: There is an otherness in myself that is introduced by none other than myself. This ineradicable, inevitable remainder thus constitutes a mysterious "intimate alterity" that, according to Rogozinski, will haunt me for the rest of my life. It is responsible for all my relations whatsoever. It is the original trauma that characterizes the very fact that I'm alive—not the birth trauma of Rank, but the trauma of my own self-alienation, or incorporation. This haunting alienation manifests itself in phantasms, which are self-projections, which are false identifications. I am the sole cause for all my problems, for if I am the absolute ground of being—Rogozinski is a solipsist—then everything that oppresses me is really a result of self-oppression, which has its source in the ego's self-transcendence. This he finds prefigured in Descartes' Evil Demon: This deceiver is not external to me; the Evil Demon is me, has always been me—it's me projecting an image of myself, which I mistakenly identify to be external, even though it's my own self-mocking mirror. The goal of egoanalysis, then, is to liberate the ego from its self-delusions. We scapegoat others, who are really projections of ourselves; thus, we are ourselves to blame. From this dynamic, Rogozinski proposes that hatred is the primordial affect from which love springs and that salvation comes by way of resurrection, whereby I free myself from myself to be myself. He calls this "instasis," about which "there is nothing to say" (295): "In my instasis, I will be this I that I am to be." Very nice. What does this mean? It "implies the revelation of the identity between the ego and the remainder, but it does so in order to reintroduce a limit, a gap within this identity" (302). Ahhh, right. Rogozinski has some curious—and to me unintelligible—things to say about the possibility of immortality. This is then followed by world peace and an end to all persecutions of others. All egos live in peace, reconciled to themselves.
Now, I admit to feeling rather duped. I was promised a critique of egocide, but by the end, I can't help but feel I have left the crime scene of yet another egocide. First, the ego is revealed to be the synthesis of its various ego poles in constant flux. He gives some marvelously abstract proposals for how this multiplicity synthesizes itself, but slapping on the word "passive" doesn't seem to really help. Second, Rogozinski criticizes phenomenologists like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty for their lack of fidelity to experience, a fidelity that he finds respected by Husserl (131). I agree with this. We shouldn't forfeit too much of our concrete experience to abstract, formal speculations that take us away from ourselves. But 30 pages later, he introduces an extreme reduction to pure immanence and admits that the remainder, the lynchpin of his whole edifice, "is not immediately accessible, it must be the object of a construction" (173). Likewise, "There is nothing to say about instasy” (295). (Then why bother speaking about it?) He gives a justification based on "fruitfulness." Very well. But then, when he calls the remainder “the unconscious of my consciousness” (178), he thinks he's done something! He thinks that reversing the priority of consciousness is significant; I disagree. I think that he's guilty of the same error he accuses Derrida of: It has "only a purely rhetorical value" (167). If the unconscious belongs to consciousness rather than the other way around, then it still exists and is inaccessible to the latter! No duh the unconscious is "of" consciousness! Nothing new has been established here; it's just equivocation. Third, he radicalizes psychoanalysis in a way I find strange and unpalatable. The Œdipal Complex, castration anxiety, incest, etc.—all of this is rooted in our lived experience as egos, apparently; from the fact that, when I speak, I hear myself outside myself, it follows that this moment of slippage, the remainder, alienates me from myself, so that the not-me is then projected onto everything, forever coloring my interactions. This originary trauma, this "original sin," which is passively constituted, acts as the "screen,"Rogozinski claims, for my whole life trajectory; if we can trace all our projections back to the ego, and reconcile it to its non-identity identity, then all scapegoating, racism, sexism, etc. will evaporate, ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven. Beautiful. But I find this awfully speculative and strange and non-intuitive: Does this really accord with my 1st-person experience, my carnal immanence? Fourth, let's return to instasy: it "implies the revelation of the identity between the ego and the remainder, but it does so in order to reintroduce a limit, a gap within this identity." Right, okay, so we start with a gap between the ego and the remainder; then we reveal their secret identity; then, upon doing this, we "reintroduce a limit." So, in other words, we end where we began and undo what we did? I fail to see how this really changes anything. Perhaps, by seeing it for what it is, we adopt an altered relation to it, but still. Rogozinski proceeds to link this idea to Eckhart's Godhead, to Sankara's non-dualist advaita, and even to the ego's being God. All of this, to my mind, is a betrayal of the ego—as much as Dasein or the barred subject ($) is. Like the vast majority of critical theorists or otherwise continental philosophers, Rogozinki's revolutionary egoanalysis will not change the world: His hopes for a more narcissistic, egocentric world, in which we can all be ourselves, in which we can accept difference, where alienation and hatred have been neutralized, where our traumas are resolved—none of this will happen—first, because this book is dense as hell and only academics will read it; and second, because, in attempting to restore us to ourselves, this unconventional vision of the ego will only serve to further estrange us from lived reality.
I had high hopes for this book. Perhaps, in the end, my disappointment in this book is really a projection of my self-hatred; perhaps my distaste for egoanalysis is a phantasm resulting from my remainder, from the split in my ego poles, the clash between my flesh and non-flesh, my non-identity; if I were to reflect on the other within me, perhaps I would discover Rogozinski and I are actually one flesh, and I would agree with him wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, I'm too wedded to my own ego. To his credit, Rogozinski has some bars in this book; he can be quite poetic. His introduction is also amazing; the facility with which he responds to the most common criticisms against the ego is enviable and epic. I admire his audacity, though I don't agree with it.
The first half of the book is brilliant. To my delight, I had anticipated in my own thinking and writing the same criticisms that he addresses to Heidegger's Dasein. This is not surprising, since both Rogozinski and I are fans of Michel Henry (although he has the privilege of having been a real student of the latter). He makes the provocative, but supportable, claim that Heidegger's anti-Cartesianism actually leads logically to the latter's support of Nazism. I won't trace out the exact lines of argumentation that Rogozinski pursues here, but generally his critique of Dasein's transcendence is compelling and incisive. The same can be said of his critique of Lacan, with whom I'm a little less familiar. Rogozinski shows that Lacan misinterpreted the mirror stage because he, like Heidegger, is too constricted by the visual and the ecstatic; neither Heidegger nor Lacan is willing to countenance immanence or life, which would lead to a serious (re)consideration of the ego. With this, he then turns to Descartes, whose legacy is ambiguous: On the one hand, he was the first "discoverer" of the ego, which he grounded absolutely, thus providing the basis for Husserl's phenomenology. On the other hand, when he snuck in God as the guarantor of truth and existence, Descartes then laid the grounds for egocide, since the life of the ego was outsourced to a transcendent Other, thus debasing the ego's absoluteness. For the most part, I could follow this last line of thinking, but it's also where the fault lines began emerging.
By the time egoanalysis comes onto the scene, I'm afraid Monsieur Rogozinski had lost me. It all begins with his insistence that the ego need not be an original unity, that the ego is in fact originally a multiplicity that synthesizes itself through its carnal chiasms. Under a complete reduction, the field of immanence is constituted by various, disparate experiences—sensations of sight, touch, scent, etc. He compares the continuous synthesizing of these ego poles to the "body without organs." Yet, at the heart of this very auto-affection, whereby touch touches itself, or speaking hears itself, there slips in a horrifying tragedy—what Rogozinski names "the remainder." What is this remainder, which is the crux of egoanalysis? It is "a residue of non-flesh that is indissociable from my flesh" (172), "the First Stranger" that is a "transcendence in immanence" (177). Very vague, very cryptic—but what does it mean? It means that, when I feel myself, I feel myself—but also, not myself purely, since there's a slight—how slight?—disidentification between the feeling flesh and the unfeeling body. Thus, at the very moment I am myself, there's also a tiny—how tiny?—lag between myself(?), a difference inserted into my very identity: There is an otherness in myself that is introduced by none other than myself. This ineradicable, inevitable remainder thus constitutes a mysterious "intimate alterity" that, according to Rogozinski, will haunt me for the rest of my life. It is responsible for all my relations whatsoever. It is the original trauma that characterizes the very fact that I'm alive—not the birth trauma of Rank, but the trauma of my own self-alienation, or incorporation. This haunting alienation manifests itself in phantasms, which are self-projections, which are false identifications. I am the sole cause for all my problems, for if I am the absolute ground of being—Rogozinski is a solipsist—then everything that oppresses me is really a result of self-oppression, which has its source in the ego's self-transcendence. This he finds prefigured in Descartes' Evil Demon: This deceiver is not external to me; the Evil Demon is me, has always been me—it's me projecting an image of myself, which I mistakenly identify to be external, even though it's my own self-mocking mirror. The goal of egoanalysis, then, is to liberate the ego from its self-delusions. We scapegoat others, who are really projections of ourselves; thus, we are ourselves to blame. From this dynamic, Rogozinski proposes that hatred is the primordial affect from which love springs and that salvation comes by way of resurrection, whereby I free myself from myself to be myself. He calls this "instasis," about which "there is nothing to say" (295): "In my instasis, I will be this I that I am to be." Very nice. What does this mean? It "implies the revelation of the identity between the ego and the remainder, but it does so in order to reintroduce a limit, a gap within this identity" (302). Ahhh, right. Rogozinski has some curious—and to me unintelligible—things to say about the possibility of immortality. This is then followed by world peace and an end to all persecutions of others. All egos live in peace, reconciled to themselves.
Now, I admit to feeling rather duped. I was promised a critique of egocide, but by the end, I can't help but feel I have left the crime scene of yet another egocide. First, the ego is revealed to be the synthesis of its various ego poles in constant flux. He gives some marvelously abstract proposals for how this multiplicity synthesizes itself, but slapping on the word "passive" doesn't seem to really help. Second, Rogozinski criticizes phenomenologists like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty for their lack of fidelity to experience, a fidelity that he finds respected by Husserl (131). I agree with this. We shouldn't forfeit too much of our concrete experience to abstract, formal speculations that take us away from ourselves. But 30 pages later, he introduces an extreme reduction to pure immanence and admits that the remainder, the lynchpin of his whole edifice, "is not immediately accessible, it must be the object of a construction" (173). Likewise, "There is nothing to say about instasy” (295). (Then why bother speaking about it?) He gives a justification based on "fruitfulness." Very well. But then, when he calls the remainder “the unconscious of my consciousness” (178), he thinks he's done something! He thinks that reversing the priority of consciousness is significant; I disagree. I think that he's guilty of the same error he accuses Derrida of: It has "only a purely rhetorical value" (167). If the unconscious belongs to consciousness rather than the other way around, then it still exists and is inaccessible to the latter! No duh the unconscious is "of" consciousness! Nothing new has been established here; it's just equivocation. Third, he radicalizes psychoanalysis in a way I find strange and unpalatable. The Œdipal Complex, castration anxiety, incest, etc.—all of this is rooted in our lived experience as egos, apparently; from the fact that, when I speak, I hear myself outside myself, it follows that this moment of slippage, the remainder, alienates me from myself, so that the not-me is then projected onto everything, forever coloring my interactions. This originary trauma, this "original sin," which is passively constituted, acts as the "screen,"Rogozinski claims, for my whole life trajectory; if we can trace all our projections back to the ego, and reconcile it to its non-identity identity, then all scapegoating, racism, sexism, etc. will evaporate, ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven. Beautiful. But I find this awfully speculative and strange and non-intuitive: Does this really accord with my 1st-person experience, my carnal immanence? Fourth, let's return to instasy: it "implies the revelation of the identity between the ego and the remainder, but it does so in order to reintroduce a limit, a gap within this identity." Right, okay, so we start with a gap between the ego and the remainder; then we reveal their secret identity; then, upon doing this, we "reintroduce a limit." So, in other words, we end where we began and undo what we did? I fail to see how this really changes anything. Perhaps, by seeing it for what it is, we adopt an altered relation to it, but still. Rogozinski proceeds to link this idea to Eckhart's Godhead, to Sankara's non-dualist advaita, and even to the ego's being God. All of this, to my mind, is a betrayal of the ego—as much as Dasein or the barred subject ($) is. Like the vast majority of critical theorists or otherwise continental philosophers, Rogozinki's revolutionary egoanalysis will not change the world: His hopes for a more narcissistic, egocentric world, in which we can all be ourselves, in which we can accept difference, where alienation and hatred have been neutralized, where our traumas are resolved—none of this will happen—first, because this book is dense as hell and only academics will read it; and second, because, in attempting to restore us to ourselves, this unconventional vision of the ego will only serve to further estrange us from lived reality.
I had high hopes for this book. Perhaps, in the end, my disappointment in this book is really a projection of my self-hatred; perhaps my distaste for egoanalysis is a phantasm resulting from my remainder, from the split in my ego poles, the clash between my flesh and non-flesh, my non-identity; if I were to reflect on the other within me, perhaps I would discover Rogozinski and I are actually one flesh, and I would agree with him wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, I'm too wedded to my own ego. To his credit, Rogozinski has some bars in this book; he can be quite poetic. His introduction is also amazing; the facility with which he responds to the most common criticisms against the ego is enviable and epic. I admire his audacity, though I don't agree with it.
January 19, 2023
With its simplest definition, the concept of I am defined as an interconnected reflection of the feelings, thoughts and behaviors that make a person that person and distinguish a person from other people. The self, on the other hand, is defined as a person's way of perceiving, understanding and expressing his own existence. However, this is really like that?
Many philosophers, many psychoanalysts and many writers have expressed the I in different ways by putting forward investigations and thoughts about the I and the self. Rogozinski concentrated on Heidegger and Lacan, who had tried to destroy the concept of self by attacking it with this book, and he was motivated by criticisms of these two thinkers in order to remove the obstacles in front of the ego. Rogozinski starts with the idea that the self has a singular existence, which is the main common points of Heidegger's ontology and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. In the sequel, Heidegger's criticism of Descartes over Descartes; Through Lacan's views explaining the I am based on the non-I, he also connected it to Husserl's I-life theory.
The book is full of ego analysis. Since he also reveals this based on fairly solid foundations and criticism, in fact, it would be much more correct to think of book b as a theory book. Because the author's criticisms of Lacan and Heidegger also have the meaning of a stance developed against fascism and religious exploitation in a political sense. In this sense, I would say a very valuable book for this. Apart from these, the topics of me and self are very valuable because they offer answers to the issues that are the main ones of today's social-scientific problems such as being other, being otherized, being other.
Returning again to the philosophical problematicity of the ego, what created the ego? How much impact do conflicts have on the self? Is I a form of existence, or is it an illusion? Do social injustice and deviant ideologies arise because of the self? it is more correct to approach the book by thinking about me and self issues outside of the book by asking questions such as. Because the author did not build his philosophy centered on the self, but he did not do without it either. Pleasant reading for the interested person already.
Many philosophers, many psychoanalysts and many writers have expressed the I in different ways by putting forward investigations and thoughts about the I and the self. Rogozinski concentrated on Heidegger and Lacan, who had tried to destroy the concept of self by attacking it with this book, and he was motivated by criticisms of these two thinkers in order to remove the obstacles in front of the ego. Rogozinski starts with the idea that the self has a singular existence, which is the main common points of Heidegger's ontology and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. In the sequel, Heidegger's criticism of Descartes over Descartes; Through Lacan's views explaining the I am based on the non-I, he also connected it to Husserl's I-life theory.
The book is full of ego analysis. Since he also reveals this based on fairly solid foundations and criticism, in fact, it would be much more correct to think of book b as a theory book. Because the author's criticisms of Lacan and Heidegger also have the meaning of a stance developed against fascism and religious exploitation in a political sense. In this sense, I would say a very valuable book for this. Apart from these, the topics of me and self are very valuable because they offer answers to the issues that are the main ones of today's social-scientific problems such as being other, being otherized, being other.
Returning again to the philosophical problematicity of the ego, what created the ego? How much impact do conflicts have on the self? Is I a form of existence, or is it an illusion? Do social injustice and deviant ideologies arise because of the self? it is more correct to approach the book by thinking about me and self issues outside of the book by asking questions such as. Because the author did not build his philosophy centered on the self, but he did not do without it either. Pleasant reading for the interested person already.
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