^{Here are some initial thoughts from Dr. Mijuskovic following the Presidential Debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on June 27, 2024.}

Essentially, my theoretical work stems from a single principle and paradigm of human self-consciousness. “All human beings are intrinsically, cognitively, reflexively, and emotionally lonely.” The solution to loneliness is twofold. It is “constituted” by empathy, the mutual sharing of feelings, meanings, and affection between two human beings; and intimacy, the mutual sharing of trust, respect, and values (Ben Mijuskovic, “The Role of Empathy as a Path to Intimacy,” Paedagogia Christiana: Being Alone Together, Torun, Poland: Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, 2/46, 2020).

But what we are often unaware of is that loneliness produces anger; we feel rejected, and narcissistically wish to hurt others, sadistically, indiscriminately, and cruelly, as for example in the case of Elliot Rogers in Isla Vista and the Columbine teenagers; and at other times racially and nationally as in the case of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin in the Second World War (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism) and today Putin and Trump.

Trump’s powerful MAGA appeal to his supporters is predicated on his narcissism and sadism; that is what is motivating his fans. It is also what is currently fueling the passions of national narcissistic and sadistic movements in Europe as well.

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^{Logical and Philosophical References}

Leibniz versus Schopenhauer: The best of all possible worlds (Monadology) against the worst of all possible Worlds (The World as Will and Representation): good versus evil.

Leibniz>free will, spontaneity + the unconscious and reason; World Optimism versus Schopenhauer>qualitas occulta + the subconsciousness, and egoism: World Pessimism

Leibniz on freedom and goodness

Schopenhauer on egoism and evil

Schopenhauer’s influence on Freud

In Schopenhauer’s view, the will to life and the will to death are continually in conflict within the ego.

According to Freud, his views on the aggressive and destructive instinct can be summarily indicated in his earlier writings within the context of his reflections on sadism…The second class of instincts are not so easy to point to; in the end he came to recognize sadism as its representative…Once we have admitted the idea of fusion of the two classes of instincts with each other, the possibility of a ‘defusion’ of them forces itself upon us. The sadistic component of the sexual instinct would be a classic example of an instinctual fusion; and the sadism which had made itself independent as a perversion would be typical of a defusion…We may pause for a moment over this pre-eminently dualistic view of instinctual life. Two processes are constantly at work [and in conflict with each other] in a living substance operating in contrary directions, one constructive or assimilatory and the other destructive or dissimilatory. May we venture to recognize the two [conflicting] directions taken by the vital processes, the activity of our two instinctual impulses, the life instincts and the death instincts. We have unwittingly steered our course into the harbor of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. For him death is the ‘true result and to that extent the purpose of life,’ while the sexual instinct is the embodiment of the will to live.

Freud on narcissism and sadism (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Civilization and Its Discontents, The Ego and the Id, The Interpretation of Dreams, The Future of an Illusion, etc.

Cf. Ben Lazare Mijuskovic, The Philosophical Roots of Loneliness and Intimacy: Political Narcissism and the Problem of Evil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and Theories of Consciousness and the Problem of Evil in the History of Ideas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).