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Ramana Maharshi and Egoism
I've had the pleasure of engaging in long-running conversations with a few egoists, and I'm always trying to delve deeper than the often disruptive or obscurantist polemics that so characterize egoism. To my mind there is a foundational question at the heart of the egoist enterprise that never seems to get due attention: what is this ego, this self you go on about? How can us egoists go on and on about our elevation of self over every other concern, and yet not deal with the character, the nature of that self? This is especially frustrating when we acknowledge the social construction of the ego, recognizing that the dualism we stress is contrived in at least some important ways.
As you may recall, my approach to egoism is infused with an interest in the metaphysical. Much of political egoism is tied to a spiritual teleos for me because that's my experience of self, my reality tunnel, my model of the phenomenal world. Indeed, egoism appeals to me because it acknowledges the primacy of the subject in subjectivism. Now on the one hand, I go to great lengths not to impose this approach on others. It's not rational, and therefore I simply cannot argue it, and that's not a helpful mode to discuss such matters anyway.
However, I have no qualms about asserting the utility of a more contemplative, introspective, inward-oriented approach to the nature of the ego and the self (as well as the politics involved). I frequently and vigorously push back on the notion that the end goal of egoism is some sort of exaltation of the individual self. Indeed, I'm inclined to think that the ego is much more of a social phenomenon than we often realize, and our experience of ourselves individually can be as memetic and artifical as any institution.
