Vl.S.Soloviev
three forces
From the beginning of history, three root forces have controlled human development. The first strives to subordinate humanity in all spheres and at all stages of its life to one supreme principle, in its exclusive unity it strives to mix and merge all the diversity of particular forms, to suppress the independence of the individual, the freedom of personal life. One master and a dead mass of slaves - this is the last realization of this power. If it were to receive exclusive predominance, then humanity would be petrified in dead monotony and immobility. But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it strives to break the stronghold of a dead unity, to give freedom everywhere to particular forms of life, freedom to the person and his activity; under its influence, individual elements of humanity become the starting points of life, act exclusively from themselves and for themselves, the general loses the meaning of real essential being, turns into something abstract, empty, into a formal law, and finally completely loses all meaning. Universal egoism and anarchy, the multiplicity of individual units without any internal connection - this is the extreme expression of this force. If it were to gain exclusive predominance, then humanity would disintegrate into its constituent elements, the connection of life would be severed, and history would end in a war of all against all, in the self-destruction of humanity. Both of these forces have a negative, exclusive character: the first excludes the free multiplicity of particular forms and personal elements, free movement, progress, the second has an equally negative attitude towards unity, towards the general supreme principle of life, breaks the solidarity of the whole. If only these two forces controlled the history of mankind, then there would be nothing in it but enmity and struggle, there would be no positive content; as a result, history would be only a mechanical movement, determined by two opposite forces and going along their diagonal. Both of these forces do not have inner integrity and life, and therefore they cannot give it to humanity either. But humanity is not a dead body, and history is not a mechanical movement, and therefore the presence of a third force is necessary, which gives a positive content to the first two, frees them from their exclusivity, reconciles the unity of the highest principle with the free multiplicity of particular forms and elements, thus creating , the integrity of the universal human organism and gives it an inner quiet life. Indeed, we always find in history the joint action of these three forces, and the difference between these and other historical epochs and cultures lies only in the predominance of one or another force striving for its implementation, although the full implementation for the first two forces, precisely because of their exclusivity , is physically impossible. Leaving ancient times aside and confining ourselves to modern humanity, we see the coexistence of three historical worlds, three cultures that differ sharply from each other - I mean Muslim East, Western civilization and the Slavic world: everything that is outside of them has no general global significance, does not have a direct impact on the history of mankind. What is the relation of these three cultures to the three root forces? historical development? As far as the Muslim East is concerned, there is no doubt that it is under the predominant influence of the first force - the force of exclusive unity. Everything there is subordinated to the single principle of religion, and, moreover, this religion itself is of an extremely exclusive character, denying any plurality of forms, any individual freedom. The deity in Islam is an absolute despot who created the world and people at will, which are only blind tools in his hands; the only law of being for God is His arbitrariness, and for man it is blind irresistible rock. Absolute power in God corresponds to absolute impotence in man. The Muslim religion, first of all, suppresses the person, binds personal activity, as a result of this, of course, all manifestations and various forms of this activity are delayed, not isolated, killed in the bud. Therefore, in the Muslim world, all spheres and degrees of human life are in a state of fusion, confusion, are deprived of independence relative to each other, and all together are subject to one overwhelming power of religion. In the social sphere, Islam does not know the difference between the church / state and the society itself or the Zemstvo. The entire social body of Islam is a continuous indifferent mass, above which rises one despot, uniting both spiritual and secular supreme power. The only code of laws that governs all ecclesiastical, political, and social relations is the Alcoran; representatives of the clergy are at the same time judges; however, there is no clergy in the proper sense, just as there is no special civil power, but a mixture of both prevails. A similar confusion prevails in the realm of the theoretical or mental: in the Muslim world, in fact, there is no positive science, no philosophy, no real theology at all, but only some mixture of meager dogmas of the Koran, of fragments of some philosophical concepts taken from the Greeks, and some empirical information. In general, the entire mental sphere in Islam did not differ, did not separate from practical life, knowledge here has only a utilitarian character, while there is no independent theoretical interest. As for art, for artistic creativity, it is just as deprived of any independence and extremely poorly developed, despite the rich fantasy of the Eastern peoples: the oppression of a one-sided religious principle prevented this fantasy from being expressed in objective ideal images. Sculpture and painting, as you know, are expressly prohibited by the Koran and do not exist at all in the Muslim world. Poetry here did not go further than that immediate form that exists wherever there is a person, that is, lyrics. As for the music, the character of exceptional monism was especially clearly reflected in it; the richness of the sounds of European music is completely incomprehensible to oriental man: the very idea of musical harmony does not exist for him, he sees in it only disagreement and arbitrariness, his own music (if you can only call it music) consists solely in the monotonous repetition of the same notes. Thus, as in the field public relations, and in the sphere of the mental, as well as in the sphere of creativity, the overwhelming power of the exclusive religious principle does not allow any independent life and development. If personal consciousness is unconditionally subordinated to one religious principle, extremely meager and exclusive, if a person considers himself only an indifferent tool in the hands of a blind, acting deity according to the senseless arbitrariness, then it is clear that neither a great politician, nor a great scientist or philosopher can come out of such a person. , not a brilliant artist, but only a crazy fanatic will come out, which are the essence of the best representatives of Islam. That the Moslem East is dominated by the first of the three forces, which suppresses all vital elements and is hostile to all development, is proved, besides the characteristics given above, by the simple fact that for twelve centuries the Moslem world has not taken a single step on the path of internal development; no sign of consistent organic progress can be pointed out here. Islam remained unchanged in the state in which it was under the first caliphs, but could not retain its former strength, because according to the law of life, not going forward, it thereby went backward, and therefore it is not surprising that the modern Muslim world presents a picture of such a miserable decline. As is well known, Western civilization exhibits a directly opposite character; here we see rapid and uninterrupted development, the free play of forces, the independence and exclusive self-affirmation of all particular forms and individual elements - signs that undoubtedly show that this civilization is under the dominant influence of the second of the three historical principles. Even the religious principle itself, which formed the basis of Western civilization, although it represented only a one-sided and, therefore, distorted form of Christianity, was nevertheless incomparably richer and more capable of development than Islam. But this principle from the very beginning Western history is not an exclusive force that suppresses all others: willy-nilly, he must reckon with principles alien to him. For next to the representative of religious unity - Roman church - the world of the German barbarians appears, having adopted Catholicism, but far from being imbued with it, retaining a principle not only different from the Catholic, but also directly hostile to it - the principle of unconditional individual freedom, the supreme significance of the individual. This initial dualism of the Germano-Roman world served as the basis for new divisions. For each particular element in the West, having before it not one principle that would completely subordinate it to itself, but two opposite and hostile to each other, thereby received freedom for itself: the existence of another element freed it from the exclusive power of the first and vice versa. Each sphere of activity, each form of life in the West, separating itself from all others, strives in this separateness to acquire absolute significance, to exclude all others, to become one with everything, and instead, according to the immutable law of finite being, comes in its isolation to impotence. and insignificance, capturing an alien area, loses strength in its own. Thus, the Western Church, separating from the state, but appropriating in this separateness the state significance, having itself become an ecclesiastical state, ends up losing all power both over the state and over society. In the same way, the state, separated both from the church and from the people, and having assumed absolute significance for itself in its exclusive centralization, in the end loses all independence, turns into an indifferent form of society, into an executive instrument of the people's vote, and the people themselves or the zemstvo, having risen up and against the church and against the state, as soon as it defeats them, in its revolutionary movement it cannot maintain its unity, it disintegrates into hostile classes and then must necessarily disintegrate into hostile personalities. The social organism of the West, having first been divided into private organisms hostile to each other, must finally be broken up into its last elements, into the atoms of society, that is, individuals, and corporate egoism, caste egoism, must pass into personal egoism. The principle of this last disintegration was first clearly expressed in the great revolutionary movement of the last century, which, therefore, can be considered the beginning of the full revelation of the force that moved all Western development. The Revolution transferred the supreme power to the people in the sense of a simple sum of individuals, the whole unity of which comes down only to an accidental agreement of desires and interests, an agreement that may not exist. Having destroyed those traditional ties, those ideal principles which in old Europe made each individual person only an element of the highest social group and, dividing humanity, united people, breaking these ties, the revolutionary movement left each person to himself and at the same time destroyed his organic distinction from others. In old Europe, this difference and, consequently, the inequality of persons was determined by belonging to one or another social group and the place occupied in it. With the destruction of these groups in their former meaning, organic inequality also disappeared, only the lowest natural inequality of personal forces remained. From the free manifestation of these forces, new forms of life were to be created in place of the destroyed world. But no positive grounds for such new creativity were given by the revolutionary movement. It is easy to see, in fact, that the principle of freedom in itself has only negative meaning. I can live and act freely, that is, without encountering any arbitrary obstacles or constraints, but this, obviously, does not in the least determine the positive goal of my activity, the content of my life. In old Europe, human life received its ideal content from Catholicism, on the one hand, and from knightly feudalism, on the other. This ideal content gave the old Europe its relative unity and high heroic strength, although it already concealed in itself the beginning of that dualism, which was bound to lead to the subsequent disintegration. The revolution finally rejected the old ideals, which, of course, was necessary, but due to its negative character, it could not give new ones. It liberated the individual elements, gave them absolute significance, but deprived their activity of the necessary soil and food; therefore, we see that the excessive development of individualism in the modern West leads directly to its opposite - to general depersonalization and vulgarization. The extreme tension of personal consciousness, not finding an appropriate object for itself, passes into empty and petty egoism / which equalizes everyone. old europe in the rich development of her powers, she produced a great variety of forms, many original, bizarre phenomena; she had holy monks who, out of Christian love for their neighbor, burned thousands of people; there were noble knights who fought all their lives for ladies whom they never saw, there were philosophers who made gold and died of hunger, there were scholastic scholars who talked about theology like mathematicians, and about mathematics like theologians. Only these originalities, these wild grandeurs, make the Western world interesting for the thinker and attractive for the artist. All its positive content is in the past, but now, as you know, the only greatness that still retains its strength in the West is the greatness of capital; the only essential difference and inequality between people that still exists there is the inequality of the rich man and the proletarian, but even this is threatened by a great danger from revolutionary socialism. Socialism has the task of transforming the economic relations of society by introducing greater uniformity in the distribution of material wealth. There can hardly be any doubt that socialism in the West will be assured of an early success in the sense of the victory and domination of the working class. But the real goal will not be achieved. For just as the victory of the third estate (the bourgeoisie) was followed by a hostile fourth estate, so the forthcoming victory of this latter will probably call forth the fifth, that is, the new proletariat, etc. Against the socio-economic disease of the West, as against cancer, all sorts of operations will only be palliatives. In any case, it would be ridiculous to see in socialism some kind of great revelation that should renew humanity. If we really assume even the full implementation of the socialist task, when all mankind will equally enjoy material goods and the conveniences of civilized life, the same question about the positive content of this life, about the real goal of human activity, will become all the more powerful, and to this question socialism, like all Western development, does not give an answer. True, they talk a lot about the fact that in place of the ideal content of the old life, based on faith, a new one is given, based on z_n_a_n_i_i, on science; and as long as these speeches do not go beyond generalities, one might think that it is about something great, but one has only to look closer at what kind of knowledge, what kind of science, and the great very soon turns into the ridiculous. In the field of knowledge, the Western world has suffered [the same fate as in the field of social life: the absolutism of theology was replaced by the absolutism of philosophy, which in turn must give way to the absolutism of empirical positive science, that is, one that has as its subject matter not beginnings and causes, but only phenomena and their general laws. But general laws are only general facts, and, according to one of the representatives of empiricism, the highest perfection for positive science can only consist in being able to reduce all phenomena to one general law or general fact, for example, to the fact of universal gravitation, which can no longer be reduced to anything else, but can only be ascertained by science. But for the human mind, theoretical interest lies not in the cognition of a fact as such, not in ascertaining its existence, but in its explanation, that is, in the cognition of its causes, and it is this cognition that is renounced. modern science. I ask: why such and such a phenomenon occurs, and I receive an answer from science that this is only special case another, more general phenomenon, of which science can only say that it exists. It is obvious that the answer has nothing to do with the question and that modern science offers our minds rocks instead of bread. It is no less obvious that such a science cannot be directly related to any living questions, to any higher goals of human activity, and the claim to provide an ideal content for life would only be amusing on the part of such a science. If, however, the true task of science is not to recognize this simple statement of general facts or laws, but their actual explanation, then we must say that at the present time science does not exist at all, yet what now bears this name is in fact only a formless and indifferent material of the future true science; and it is clear that the building principles necessary for this material to turn into a harmonious scientific building cannot be derived from this material itself, just as the building plan cannot be derived from the bricks that are used for it. These building principles must be obtained from a higher kind of knowledge, from that knowledge that has absolute principles and causes as its subject, therefore, the true construction of science is possible only in its close internal union with theology and philosophy as the highest members of one mental organism, which only in this wholeness of his can receive power over life. But such a synthesis is completely contrary to the general spirit of Western development: that excluding negative force, which divided and secluded the various spheres of life and knowledge, cannot by itself unite them again. Best of all the unsuccessful attempts at synthesis that we meet in the West can serve as proof. Thus, for example, the metaphysical systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann (for all their significance in other respects) are themselves so powerless in the field of the supreme principles of knowledge and life that they must turn to Buddhism for these principles. If, therefore, modern science is not able to provide an ideal content for life, then the same must be said about modern art. In order to create eternal true artistic images , it is necessary first of all to believe in the higher reality of the ideal world. And how can such art provide eternal ideals for life, which does not want to know anything but this very life in its everyday superficial reality, strives to be only its exact reproduction? Of course, such a reproduction is even impossible, and art, refusing to idealize, passes into caricature. And in the sphere of public life and in the sphere of knowledge and creativity, the second historical force that governs the development of Western civilization, being left to itself, irresistibly leads in the end to a general decomposition into lower constituent elements, to the loss of any universal content, all unconditional principles of being. And if the Muslim East, as we have seen, completely destroys man and affirms only an inhuman god, then Western civilization strives primarily for the exclusive affirmation of a godless man, that is, a man taken in his apparent superficial separateness and reality and in this false position recognized together and as the only deity and as an insignificant atom - as a deity for itself, subjectively, and as an insignificant atom - objectively, in relation to the external world, of which it is a separate particle in infinite space and a transient phenomenon in infinite time. It is clear that everything that such a person can produce will be fractional, partial, devoid of internal unity and unconditional content, limited to one surface, never reaching the real focus. A single personal interest, an accidental fact, a small detail - atomism in life, atomism in science, atomism in art - this is the last word of Western civilization. It worked out the particular forms and external material of life, but it did not give the inner content of life itself to mankind; by isolating individual elements, she brought them to the extreme degree of development, which is only possible in their individuality; but without internal organic unity they are devoid of a living spirit, and all this wealth is dead capital. And if the history of mankind must not end with this negative result, this insignificance, if a new historical force must emerge, then the task of this force will no longer be to develop individual elements of life and knowledge, to create new cultural forms, but to revive to spiritualize the hostile, dead in their hostility elements with the highest conciliatory principle, to give them a common unconditional content and thereby free them from the need for exclusive self-affirmation and mutual negation. But where can this unconditional content of life and knowledge come from? If man had it in himself, he could neither lose it nor seek it. It must be outside of him as a particular, relative being. But it cannot exist in the external world either, for this world represents only the lower stages of that development, at the top of which man himself is, and if he cannot find unconditional principles in himself, then even less so in the lower nature; and he who, apart from this visible reality of himself and the external world, does not recognize any other, must renounce all ideal content of life, from all true knowledge and creativity. In such a case, only the lower animal life remains for man; but happiness in this lower life depends on blind chance, and even if it is achieved, it always turns out to be an illusion, and since, on the other hand, the striving for the higher, and with the consciousness of its unsatisfactoriness, still remains, but serves only as a source of the greatest suffering, then natural the conclusion is that life is a game that is not worth the candle, and perfect insignificance is presented as a desirable end for both the individual and the whole of humanity. This conclusion can only be avoided by recognizing above man and external nature another, unconditional, divine world, infinitely more real, rich and living than this world of ghostly superficial phenomena, and such recognition is all the more natural because man himself, by his eternal principle, belongs to that world. the higher world, and a vague memory of it is preserved in one way or another by everyone who has not yet completely lost human dignity. So the third force, which is to give human development its absolute content can only be a revelation of the higher divine world, and those people, the people through which this force has to manifest itself, should only be an intermediary between humanity and that world, a free, conscious instrument of the latter. Such a people should not have any special limited task, it is not called upon to work on the forms and elements of human existence, but only to communicate living soul, to give life and integrity to the torn and dead humanity through its connection with the eternal divine principle. Such a people does not need any special advantages, any special forces and external talents, because it does not act on its own, does not realize its own. From the people - the bearer of the third divine power, only freedom from all limitation and one-sidedness, elevation above narrow special interests is required, it is required that it does not assert itself with exceptional energy in any private lower sphere of activity and knowledge, indifference to all this life is required. with its petty interests, a total faith in the positive reality of the higher world and a submissive attitude towards it. And these properties undoubtedly belong to the tribal character of the Slavs, and especially to the national character of the Russian people. But historical conditions also do not allow us to look for another bearer of a third force outside the Slavs and its main representative of the Russian people, for all other historical peoples are under the predominant power of one or another of the first two exceptional forces: Eastern peoples- under the authority of the first, Western - under the authority of the second force. Only the Slavs, and in particular Russia, remained free from these two lower potencies and, consequently, can become the historical conductor of the third. Meanwhile, the first two forces completed the circle of their manifestation and led the peoples subject to them to spiritual death and decay. So, I repeat, either this is the end of history, or the inevitable discovery of a third all-powerful force, the only carrier of which can only be the Slavs and the Russian people. The external image of the slave in which our people find themselves, the miserable position of Russia in economic and other respects, not only cannot serve as an objection to her vocation, but rather confirms it. For that high power which the Russian people must lead into humanity is a power not of this world, and external wealth and order have no meaning in relation to it. The great historical vocation of Russia, from which only its immediate tasks derive significance, is a religious vocation in the highest sense of the word. When the will and mind of people enter into actual communion with the eternally and truly existing, then they will only receive their positive value and the price of all particular forms and elements of life and knowledge - they will all be necessary organs or mediations of one living whole. Their contradiction and enmity, based on the exclusive self-affirmation of each, will necessarily disappear as soon as all together freely submit to one common beginning and focus. When the hour will come for Russia to discover its historical vocation, no one can say, but everything shows that this hour is close, even though there is almost no real consciousness of its highest task in Russian society. But great outward events usually precede great awakenings of the social consciousness. Thus, even the Crimean War, which was completely fruitless politically, however, strongly influenced the consciousness of our society. The negative result of this war corresponded to the negative character of the consciousness awakened by it. It must be hoped that the impending great struggle will serve as a powerful impetus for the awakening of the positive consciousness of the Russian people. Until then, we, who have the misfortune of belonging to the Russian intelligentsia, which, instead of the image and likeness of God, still continues to wear the image and likeness of a monkey, we must finally see our miserable position, we must try to restore in ourselves the Russian national character. , stop creating an idol for yourself. any narrow, insignificant idea, must become more indifferent to the limited interests of this life, freely and reasonably believe in another, higher reality. Of course, this belief does not depend on a single desire, but one cannot also think that it is a pure accident or falls directly from the sky. This faith is the necessary result of an inner spiritual process - a process of decisive liberation from that worldly rubbish that fills our heart, and from that supposedly scientific school rubbish that fills our head. For the denial of the lower content is thereby the affirmation of the higher, and by banishing false gods and idols from our soul, we thereby introduce the true Divinity into it. 1877. Printing this speech in the form in which it was read at a public meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, I consider it necessary to note that a more detailed development of the same topic will be given by me in the historical prolegomena to the essay "On the Principles of Integral Knowledge", of which the first part now in print, (Hereinafter footnotes by the author. The work mentioned was published under the title " Philosophical foundations whole knowledge. - Approx. ed.) In the medieval Arabic philosophy there was not a single original idea: she only chewed on Aristotle. In any case, this philosophy turned out to be an empty flower and left no trace in the East. The rich Persian poetry does not belong to the Muslim world: part of it is rooted in the most ancient Iranian epic, while the other part not only remained alien to the influence of Islam, but even imbued with protest against it. I mean Muslim dervishes or saints. In any religion, holiness consists in achieving the most complete union with the deity through likening oneself to the deity. But it is characteristic in what this connection is supposed and how it is achieved. For the Moslem dervish, it comes down to the complete stifling of personal consciousness and feeling, since his exclusive deity does not tolerate another self next to him. The goal is reached when a person is brought into a state of unconsciousness and anesthesia, for which purely mechanical means are used. Thus, the connection with the deity for a person is tantamount here to the destruction of his personal existence, Islam in its extreme consistent expression is only a caricature of Buddhism. This refers to the Russian-Turkish war. The hopes of the Slavophile camp (to which Solovyov gravitated in those years) for the liberation of the Balkan Slavs were associated with her.
"Three Forces" is a work of the Russian religious thinker, mystic, poet, publicist and literary critic V. S. Solovyov (1853 - 1900).*** The article was written in 1877. In fact, this is a speech that Solovyov delivered before the start of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877 at a public meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. Here, under the undoubted impression of impending events, the philosopher expresses his assessment of the West, the East and the mediating mission of Russia between them. The author finds the answer to the question posed by Western philosophy not in any teaching, but in a living common cause, which, in his opinion, is the vocation of Russia. It is not enough to find and proclaim the meaning of life: it is necessary to bring meaning into life. With this meaning, it is necessary to revive and gather together the dead body of humanity, which has disintegrated into parts. This may not be the work of a single thinker, but of an organized community, a great people who have given themselves to the service of the cause of God, the philosopher believes. Solovyov’s Peru also includes such works: “Byzantism and Russia”, “Historical Affairs of Philosophy”, “On the Way to True Philosophy”, “At the Dawn of Misty Youth ...”, “Pushkin’s Fate”, “The Concept of God (in Defense of Spinoza’s Philosophy) "," The idea of humanity in August Comte.The return from a business trip abroad ends the first student period of Solovyov's life. The period of philosophy is coming. During the Five Years he builds his broad philosophical system: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and historiosophy. By this time belong: "The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge" (1877), "Readings on God-Mankind" (1878) and "Critique of Abstract Principles" (1877-1880).
Shortly after Solovyov's arrival in Moscow, Prince. D. Tsertelev introduced him to his aunt Countess Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya, the widow of the poet Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. Her niece Sofya Petrovna Khitrovo lived with her with her children; she separated from her husband, although she was not officially divorced from him. Solovyov soon became close to this family; he constantly visited the countess in St. Petersburg, stayed for a long time in her estates Pustynka (Petersburg province) and Krasny Horn (Bryansk district). His letters to Sophia Andreevna are full of special gullibility and tenderness. He loved Sofia Petrova Khitrovo, and this love filled his whole life. We can only guess about the history of this feeling, since not a single letter from Solovyov's correspondence with Khitrovo has hitherto been published. For many years, Solovyov believed in the possibility of marriage with his beloved woman, but he had to give up this belief, and the break with S.P. cost him great suffering: love for Khitrovo was his life tragedy. He never confided the secrets of his relationship with her to anyone. It could not be accidental - such was his will. Therefore, Solovyov's biographers must confine themselves to one external story of "the love of his whole life." Count Alexander Tolstoy died a year before Solovyov's rapprochement with his family; everything in the house was full of memories of him. Sofya Andreevna and her niece lived in a cult of his memory, his books, thoughts, poems; the count's library, his manuscripts and favorite things were kept reverently; in the evenings there were long conversations about him and his intimate letters were reread. Solovyov entered as close person into this special atmosphere of Tolstoy's house. He was already prepared for it in part by his friendship with Count Tsertelev's nephew. In the house of S. A. Tolstoy, he breathed the air of pure poetry, spiritual elegance, an aesthetic sense of life. He was surrounded by the romance of the supernatural: the otherworldly intertwined with the earthly; premonitions, omens, prophetic dreams, signs, spiritualistic experiments, mysterious phenomena made the line between the two worlds almost imperceptible. Biographer gr. A. Tolstoy A. Lirondelle collected interesting material relating to the count's occupations with occult and metapsychic phenomena. In the early sixties, A. Tolstoy studied Swedenborg, Van Helmont, Cahagnet's "Magnetic Magic", which tells about magic mirrors, talismans, elevations, filters, spells, conspiracies, witchcraft; "Natural Magic" by Du Potet (Du Potet), dedicated to the phenomena of somnambulism, magnetism, clairvoyance, hallucinations, visions, materialization, etc.; "History of Magic" and "Dogma and Ritual of Higher Magic" by Eliphas Levi with drawings, texts of spells and calls, triangles, pentagrams and tetragrams, "Pneumatology" by Ed de Mirville (J. Eudes de Mirville), containing the doctrine of magnetic currents, possessions, supernatural voices, exorcisms, mysterious monomanias, flying tables and self-igniting fires. A. Tolstoy's occult passions were reflected in his Don Juan. In a letter to Markevich, he explains that the statue of the commander is nothing but the materialization of astral power, which is realized invisibly in every act of our will and is visible in all magnetic and magical experiments.
Such was the circle of "mystical interests" of the author of Don Juan. The romantic poet was attracted by everything mysterious, but he did not go beyond the natural magic of Paracelsus. His sense of nature is colored by a rather vague pantheism, and he did not believe in personal immortality. Sofya Andreevna shared her husband's passion for spiritualism and magnetism, but did not sympathize with his "naturalistic religion." She was deeply religious and mystically gifted.
At the moment of Solovyov's rapprochement with the Tolstoy family, the general tone of the house was determined by the spirit of the late poet who was invisibly present in it, but his widow brought her own, very personal shade of mystical spirituality into this tone.
In an atmosphere of romantic mystery and cosmic poetry, Solovyov's teaching about Sophia grew.
In the autumn of 1876 Solovyov resumed his lectures on the history of ancient philosophy at Moscow University, but his course did not last long. One of the professors, Lyubimov, filed a "dissenting opinion" on the need to change the university charter. It was supported by M. N. Katkov and caused great confusion among the Moscow professors. Although Solovyov was not at all on the side of Lyubimov, he was outraged by the persecution to which he was subjected, and he submitted his resignation (February 14, 1877). A month later, he was appointed a member of the Scientific Committee under the Ministry of Public Education. He moved to St. Petersburg and lived there with short breaks for four years. Solovyov's letters to gr. S. A. Tolstoy show how quickly their relationship turned into spiritual intimacy and affection.
“Now I’ve arrived at Shpalernaya ... (that is, at the Countess’s St. Petersburg apartment), writes Solovyov. “I shed a few tears in front of the cold fireplace in the living room, but still I think that I will be very good here. Everything is quiet and melancholy, as in my soul now. If only I always knew what was the matter with you, and did not invent various impossible horrors at night ... "
In another letter (April 27, 1877) we find an extremely important and unique message of this kind from Solovyov about his study of literature on Sophia:
“... I did not find anything special in the library. Mystics have many confirmations of my own ideas, but no new light, and besides, almost all of them are extremely subjective and, so to speak, slobbery. I found three Sofia specialists: Georg Gichtel, Gottfried Arnold and John Pordage. All three had personal experiences, almost the same as mine, and this is the most interesting thing, but actually in Theosophy all three are rather weak, following Boehme, but below him. I think Sophia tinkered with them more for their innocence than anything else. As a result, only Paracelsus, Bam and Swedenborg will turn out to be real people, so the field remains very wide for me.
In addition to classes in the library, there was also a service in the Academic Committee, which turned out to be not at all a sinecure. “I have already begun my service in the Scientific Committee,” Soloviev writes to D.N. Tsertelev. “Meetings are mortal boredom and inexhaustible stupidity; It's good that it's not often."
He lives in solitude, almost never goes anywhere, "has become a complete misanthrope." He yearns for the family of S. A. Tolstoy, who has gone to Krasny Rog for the summer.
The most significant spiritual event of this period of Solovyov's life was his rapprochement with F. M. Dostoevsky. They met back in 1873, but real friendship between them began only in 1877. Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya writes in her memoirs that Fyodor Mikhailovich, the more he met Solovyov, the more he became attached to him; the attitude of the writer to the young philosopher was similar to the attitude of the elder Zosima to Alyosha. The elder fell in love with Alyosha because he reminded him of his dead brother: Dostoevsky became attached to Solovyov, because he, in his spiritual appearance, seemed to him like I. N. Shidlovsky, who had such a beneficial influence on Fyodor Mikhailovich in his youth. From here, perhaps, the legend began that Dostoevsky portrayed Solovyov in the image of Alyosha. Anna Grigorievna believes that there are more reasons to think that another Karamazov, Ivan, was written off from Solovyov. Indeed, not the simple-hearted and enthusiastic Alyosha, but the brilliant dialectician Ivan, with his strength of formal logic and rational ethics, with his scope of social utopia and religious philosophy, outwardly resembles Solovyov. Not without reason, in The Brothers Karamazov, it is Ivan who expounds his “idea” about theocracy, on which Vl. Solovyov. S. Gessen suggests that Solovyov influenced the architectonics of The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky borrowed "the formal features of his philosophical technique" from him.
Dostoevsky's influence on Solovyov is reflected in his very first public speech in St. Petersburg in 1877 - the speech "Three Forces", read in April at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.
The social and national upsurge that engulfed Russia at the beginning of the liberation war of 1877-1878. awakened in Solovyov a thirst for immediate vital action. He responded to the declaration of war with the "Three Forces" speech and an attempt to take an active part in the hostilities. His speech begins with a calm historical and philosophical introduction and ends with an inspired sermon. World history gave rise to two forces: the first - the Muslim East, the exclusive power of the religious principle: "One master and a dead mass of slaves"; the second force is Western civilization: "universal selfishness and anarchy." This force reached full disclosure in the French Revolution, which destroyed the former organic unity of Europe. The only greatness that still retains its strength in the West is the greatness of capital. Socialism will not renew humanity: it will not give an answer to the question of the positive content and purpose of life. The synthesis of religion and philosophy cannot take place on European soil, because it completely contradicts the general spirit of Western development. So, if the Muslim East destroys man and affirms only an inhuman god, then Western civilization strives primarily for the exclusive affirmation of a godless man. Atomism in life, atomism in science, atomism in art - this is the last word of European culture, and if the history of mankind should not end with this insignificance, then we must believe that a new historical force will emerge that "will revive the elements that are dead in their enmity with a higher reconciliatory principle" . This third force must be a revelation of the divine world, and the people through which this force will be manifested will only be an intermediary between humanity and that world. He needs neither special advantages nor external gifts; what is required of him is only freedom from all limitation and one-sidedness, indifference to all this life with its petty interests and complete faith in the positive reality of the higher world. And these properties undoubtedly belong to the tribal character of the Slavs and its main representative - the Russian people. “So,” Solovyov declares, “either this is the end of history, or the inevitable discovery of a third all-powerful force, the only carrier of which can only be the Slavs and the Russian people. The external image of the slave in which our people find themselves, the miserable position of Russia in economic and other respects, not only cannot serve as an objection to her vocation, but rather confirms it ... The great historical vocation of Russia ... is a religious vocation in the highest sense of the word ". Everything points to the fact that this hour is near; the beginning of the war will serve as a powerful impetus for the awakening of the positive consciousness of the Russian people.
Solovyov ends with an appeal to the Russian intelligentsia: “Until then, we, having the misfortune of belonging to the Russian intelligentsia, which, instead of the image and likeness of God, still continues to wear the image and likeness of a monkey, we must finally see our miserable position, we must try to restore in ourselves Russian folk character ... freely and reasonably believe in another higher reality.
In terms of the severity of the dialectical method and the conciseness of the wording, in terms of internal tension, Solovyov's speech brilliantly reveals the period of his creative flowering. Only three years have passed since the writing of The Crisis Western philosophy”, but in this short time his thought has come a long way. In his master's thesis, he was only partly Slavophile; in "Three Powers" he not only shares the basic faith of the Slavophiles, their messianic pathos, but goes beyond them.
Preaching "the third force as the highest religious synthesis of the principles of the West and the East," Solovyov in his speech gives a wonderful example of the synthesis of all currents of Russian thought. In the "inhuman God" of the East, one can see a peculiar refraction of Khomyakov's idea of the Kushite religious principle; Khomyakov, on the other hand, goes back to the idea that “the religious principle, which formed the basis of Western civilization, is only a one-sided and, therefore, distorted form of Christianity”; the characteristic of European culture as a process of fragmentation and isolation of individual principles is built on the main conclusions of Iv. Kireevsky. Solovyov asserts that “the Western Church, separating from the state, has itself become an ecclesiastical state”: the reaction to this separation of the church from the people was a revolution; in it, the self-affirmation of the individual personality was completed: "the revolutionary movement left each person to himself." All this place in the speech accurately reproduces the theses of F.I. Tyutchev's article "Russia and the Revolution". Tyutchev also links the revolutionary movement in the West with the secularization of the Roman Church. “The Western Church,” he writes, “became a political institution... The reaction to this state of affairs was inevitable... The revolution is nothing but the apotheosis of the human self, as the last word of the separation of the individual from the Church, from God... The human I, left to itself, is contrary to Christianity in essence.
In Solovyov's speech there are also echoes of the teachings of K. N. Leontiev: Western civilization, once in "blooming complexity", is now moving towards "simplistic confusion", impersonality and vulgarization. “The excessive development of individualism in the modern West,” Soloviev writes, “leads directly to its opposite—to general depersonalization and vulgarization. Old Europe, in the rich development of its forces, produced a great variety of forms, many original, bizarre phenomena; she had holy monks who, out of Christian love for their neighbor, burned thousands of people; there were noble knights who fought all their lives for ladies whom they never saw, there were philosophers who made gold and died of hunger, there were learned scholastics who talked about theology like mathematicians, and about mathematics like theologians. Only these originalities, these wild grandeurs make the Western world interesting for the thinker and attractive for the artist...” This tirade, not only in thought, but also in style, is reminiscent of Leontiev; Solovyov introduces a kind of "artistic intermezzo" into his philosophical exposition; his elegant images are designed in the spirit of Leontief decorativeness.
Finally, the idea that Russia's vocation is religious, that she will reveal to the world the divine principle, which is hidden in the depths of her faith and humility, was undoubtedly inspired by Solovyov by Dostoevsky. In The Writer's Diary, Dostoevsky, deepening the Slavophile teaching, spoke with inspiration about the Russian people, the most Christian in the world, about their humility, about their "image of a slave", about their mystical love for Christ. "Godless man", the result of all European development, appears in Solovyov as an original synthesis of Khomyakov's idea of the self-affirmation of the human principle in the West and Dostoevsky's idea of a human-deity ("Demons").
Such is the complex and varied composition of the "Three Forces", this "philosophical symphony" of Solovyov. But the motley material was creatively reworked by him - and before us is not a mosaic, but a living organic whole. Solovyov brings Slavophile ideas to the end, and as a result, instead of the concept of national identity, we get the concept of all-humanity that is directly opposite to it. He shows that in genuine messianism there can be nothing specifically national: messianism inevitably turns into universalism. The idea of the universality of the Russian spirit, which formed the basis of Dostoevsky's Pushkin Speech, was formulated by Solovyov in an even broader form in 1873. Did he betray the Slavophiles by interpreting their theory in this way? On the contrary, he completed their teaching, was the most consistent and most fearless continuer of their work.
The response to Solovyov's speech was A. Stankevich's formidable article in Vestnik Evropy, "Three Impotences: Three Forces. Vl. Solovyov's Public Lecture". Regarding it, Solovyov wrote to S. A. Tolstoy: “Was it really unpleasant for you, and not funny, to read about the Three Forces in Vestnik Evropy?” I partly foresee what you will tell me, but I declare in advance that there can be nothing in common between me and prudence, since my very goals are not prudent. edge, but luck can bring you!
Calling the Russian intelligentsia to action, Solovyov should have been the first to set an example. He decided to go to war. Weak build and sickness ruled out the possibility of entering the active army; he came up with the idea of going to the front as a war correspondent
Moskovskie Vedomosti. He negotiated with Katkov for a long time, went from hope to disappointment, called his plan “a chimera of frivolous youth,” a “dream of the imagination,” and finally left. Before leaving, he wrote to Countess Tolstoy: “The big story makes me very happy.
The hum grows like in a sleeping sea
Before the fatal storm -
Soon, soon in a quarrel
The whole earthly world will boil."
He left full of joyful forebodings and believed in the providential meaning of the war for the liberation of the Slavs.
On the way to the active army, he spends two days in the Red Horn with S. A. Tolstaya. During a seance, a strange event occurs, about which he reports to D.N. Tsertelev. “Are you healthy, and was there anything special with you on June 13 and 14 at night? There, in my presence, some kind of devilry happened: your spirit appeared and I don’t know what else. As a result, we were all very worried about you. They wanted me to send a telegram ... "
In Chisinau, he has to wait for his passport. In the affairs of the Ministry of Public Education, there is a telegram from the Governor of Chisinau addressed to the Minister with the following content: “I ask permission to issue a passport for traveling abroad to court adviser V.S. Solovyov.” Having received a passport, Soloviev gets to Bucharest, where he waits for a week for money from Katkov. Without waiting, he takes the place and is going to go further. He tells his father his future address: Svishtovo in Bulgaria, the headquarters of the army. This is where our information ends. Solovyov never made it to Bulgaria; in a month and a half he is back in Moscow. Why he changed his mind, what made him go back after all external obstacles (passport, money) were removed, remains a mystery. From Moscow, he writes a rather strange letter to S. A. Tolstoy: "... However, I am not at all surprised that you are interested in me: I know that you are interested in all objects - both living and inanimate (sometimes I belong to these latter ). Avec des apparences de bonte j "ai un coeur tres mediant. C "est mauvais, mais je n" y puis rien. One Chinese merchant, when an Englishman reproached him for some kind of deceit, answered him: "I am a rogue - cannot help it." Goodbye for a long time. I hope we meet better, that is, when I'm better."
The letter is cold, ironic, bitter - and very pathetic. Solovyov experienced something difficult, perhaps even humiliating for his pride. He saw something "dark" in himself (un coeur tres mediant", "I am a rogue"). And he speaks of this in a forced-joking tone, with a slight disgust for himself. Is this depression connected with a sudden return from the war?
For whatever motives he abandoned his plan, one thing remained certain: his heroic impulse, his desire to take a real part in the "big story" failed. When faced with reality, the young philosopher felt his inner failure and could not help but experience this very painfully. In order to recover from the blow inflicted on him by life, he goes into theory, into the "wilds of metaphysics."
In 1877, Solovyov's unfinished study "The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge" appeared in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education. This is the first draft of a philosophical system; a scheme was drawn, the main milestones were outlined, the main departments were drafted: the philosophy of history, logic and metaphysics. The problems raised in this essay are central to Solovyov's work. He repeatedly returns to them in his subsequent works: "Readings on God-Manhood", "Critique of Abstract Principles", "Justification of the Good" and "Theoretical Philosophy".
"The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge" begins with a "general historical introduction." Philosophy must answer the question of the purpose of our existence. But speaking of the universal and final goal, we thereby presuppose the concept of development. Only a living organism can develop. Consequently, we recognize humanity as a true organic subject of historical development. Any development contains three moments: mixing or external unity, isolation of the forming elements and internal free unity.
The basic forms of human life must have their source in the principles that determine the very nature of man. There are three of them: will, thinking and feeling; the first has objective good as its object, the second objective truth, the third objective beauty.
The first principle of social life is the will. First of all, man directs his will to external nature in order to obtain from it the means of subsistence. Therefore the first aspect of the will is economic society, or family. The will, which determines the relationship of people to each other, gives rise to a political society, or a state. Its natural principle is legality or law. The will turned to God, striving for the highest goal - eternal and blessed life, creates a spiritual, or sacred society (church).
Thinking can also be considered in three aspects: knowledge of the factual, formal and absolute. They correspond to: positive science, philosophy and theology.
Finally, feeling receives its objective expression 1) in material creativity - technical art, 2) in aesthetic creativity - fine art, and 3) in a creative attitude to the transcendent world - mysticism.
Since creativity dominates knowledge and practical activity, and mysticism occupies the first place in it, then, consequently, "this latter has the meaning of the real supreme principle of the whole life of the universal human organism."
The second stage - the separation of elements - began with Christianity, which separated the sacrum from the profanum. First, the state is separated from the church, then economic society (zemstvo) is separated from the state (French Revolution), finally, the zemstvo, or people, breaks up into atoms - separate individuals.
In the realm of thought, the same process of disintegration leads to positivism; in the realm of creativity, to utilitarian realism. Socialism, positivism, utilitarianism - this is the last word of Western civilization. But in the history of human development, this is only the second moment, which must be followed by a third. Western civilization has not become universal.
“Insofar as even exclusive monism is higher than atomism, inasmuch as even a bad beginning is higher than complete annihilation ... insofar as the Muslim East is higher than Western* civilization.”
The third moment - free synthesis - is recognized to be carried out by Russia. Here Solovyov repeats almost verbatim his speech about the Three Forces.
What happens when this inner join is completed? Then the three highest degrees of being - mysticism, theology and the Church - will form one organic whole - religion. Mysticism with art and technology form a free theurgy, or integral creativity; theology with philosophy and science will merge into free theosophy, or integral knowledge; the church with the state and the zemstvos form a free theocracy, or an integral society; finally, the activity of all the organs of life in humanity forms a new common sphere of integral life.
This concludes the "general historical introduction". It is easy to see that it is a development and substantiation of the theses of the Three Forces. The same tripartite schema of Hegel, the same "law of development" of Herbert Spencer, the same Slavophile messianism. The author introduces, however, one important change: he no longer applies the first phase of development to the Muslim East (which turns out to be even higher than Western civilization), but to ancient paganism; the second phase is timed to coincide with the emergence of Christianity. Solovyov is credited with the first and bold attempt to apply Hegel's logical formula and Spencer's biological law to the history of mankind. He transfers the concept of a collective organism from the field of natural sciences to the field of sociology. Humanity as a single entity historical process, is felt by him not abstractly and metaphysically, but in the fullness of reality. For the first time in this work, we meet the well-known Soloviev triad - theosophy, theurgy and theocracy, under the sign of which the entire "Catholic period" of his life passes.
The first chapter of the "Philosophical Principles" is devoted to "three types of philosophy." Having shown the failure of all types of empiricism and rationalism, the author proves the need for a "third type of contemplation" - mysticism.
Truth does not belong to theoretical knowledge in its isolation; Truth can only be that which is at the same time good and beautiful. “Real truth, whole and living, contains both its reality and its rationality in itself and communicates them to everything else.” Mystical philosophy knows that all being is only an image of the representation of beings, but it also knows that man himself is more than a representation and that, even without leaving himself, he can know about beings. But mystical knowledge can only be the basis of true philosophy: it must also be subjected to the reflection of reason and be confirmed by empirical facts.
“A free theosophy must represent the highest state of all philosophy, both in the internal synthesis of its three main directions, mysticism, rationalism and empiricism, as well as in a more general and wider connection with theology and positive science.”
Solovyov holds for three constituent parts free theosophy old names: logic, metaphysics, ethics, but unlike others philosophical systems adds to them the definition of "organic". He managed to write only three chapters of his Organic Logic.
The subject matter of free theosophy is the true-existent in its objective expression or idea. Together with mysticism, it is based on the unconditional, immediate reality of beings, but in spite of it, it recognizes the development of this reality in the ideas of reason and in the experiments of nature. This is how a synthesis of mysticism, rationalism and empiricism is achieved. The goal of true philosophy is the liberation of man from everything external and his union with God; this is also the purpose of religion. The material of integral knowledge is given by experience, and it is necessary to distinguish between external, internal and mystical experience; the latter is characteristic, however, not for everyone, but "in the question of the reality of known phenomena, the number of their subjects, obviously, is indifferent." The three kinds of experience are arranged hierarchically; higher and more important than all mystical phenomena; but Theosophical mysticism does not declare "Natur ist Sunde, Geist ist Teufel"; he strives to bring the divine principle into all human and natural things, not destroying, but integrating both spirit and matter.
The primary form of integral knowledge is mental contemplation or intuition (intellektuelle Anschauung); its existence is proved by the fact of artistic creation.
The artist's ideal images are neither copies of empirical reality nor abstract general concepts; they appear before his mental gaze at once in their entire inner integrity. The peculiarity of the intelligible idea lies in the combination of perfect individuality with perfect universality - this distinguishes it from the concept and from the particular phenomenon. We can contemplate real ideas because the ideal beings themselves act on us, evoke in us cognition and creativity. This action of ideas is inspiration. “So, the active or directly determining principle of the true philosophical knowledge there is inspiration.
The subject of true philosophy is the whole world in its totality. Philosophy is the study of being itself. But the absolute beginning cannot be called being: it is the beginning of every being, every being is its object. Being is not being; neither is it non-existence, for non-existence is the deprivation of being, and all being belongs to the absolute beginning. It should be defined as the power or force of being. Being presupposes a relation to another, it is always relative, but what is is unconditional. Being is the substance of everything, including ourselves; everything that is is one, it is deeper and higher than any being. Being is only a surface, under which the true-existent is hidden, as an absolute unity.
The East cognized the existent only in the attribute of its absolute singularity; but being is also the beginning of multiplicity; not only "en", but also "pan". The West has known it as a plurality. The true universal religion must unite these two knowledges and realize the real "En kai pan" on earth.
The absolutely existing is required not only by our mind, but also by our will as an absolute good, and by our feeling as an absolute beauty.
So the absolute is nothing and everything—nothing insofar as it is nothing, and everything insofar as it cannot be deprived of anything. If it is nothing, then being for it is something else; but at the same time it is the beginning of being, that is, the beginning of its other, therefore, it is the unity of itself and its opposite. This logical law is only an abstract expression of the moral fact of love. Love is the self-denial of a being, its affirmation of the other, and meanwhile this self-negation brings about its highest self-affirmation. “So, when we say that the absolute beginning, by its very definition, is the unity of itself and its negation, we repeat only in a more abstract form the words of the great apostle: God is love.”
In the absolute, two centers or poles are distinguished - the beginning of individuality and freedom and the beginning of multiplicity and necessity. The second pole is the essence, or prima materia, of the absolute; the first pole, positive nothingness (en-sof), producing multiplicity, constantly triumphs over it, realizing itself as positive unity.
The first matter is the attraction or desire for being, the thirst for being, the eternal image or idea of being.
Distinguishing being from being as its producing and possessing principle, and distinguishing two centers or poles in being itself, we thus have three definitions: 1) freely existing (first center), 2) necessity, or first matter (second center ), and 3) being, or reality, as their common product. The second definition, in contrast to the third, we will call the essence and then we get: the existent, essence, being, or: power, necessity, reality, or: God, idea, nature.
The Idea is, properly speaking, what being wants, what it imagines, what it feels. As the content of the will of beings, the idea is good; as the content of its representation, it is truth; as the content of its feeling, it is beauty.
Finally, the idea can be defined as the unity or synthesis of matter and form. It is something real and definitely existing, a certain reality - in a word, the idea is a being.
The theses of the "Philosophical Principles" that we have briefly outlined may seem schematic. Solovyov is often reproached for rationalizing the mystical. With the same right, he could be accused of mystifying the rational. Indeed, the boundaries between rational and mystical knowledge seem to be erased for him. He considers any knowledge - even the knowledge of the natural sciences, the empirical study of the external world - a revelation of divine essences, that is, religious speculation, and on the other hand, it seems to him possible to logically deduce the trinity of hypostases from the concept of the existence of God. This indistinguishability of types of knowledge and their confusion in one category of theosophy is explained by Solovyov's personal experience. For him the beyond was an everyday fact of consciousness; behind his constructions is the real experience of "meetings" with the "soul of the world".
For Solovyov, the integrity of knowledge is not a philosophical concept borrowed from Schelling and Yves. Kireevsky, but his own mystical experience. "The All-One" appeared to him as a child as a "solid and living truth", as a "single image female beauty". He began to philosophize in order to tell in an understandable, that is, logical, language about his visions. Arguing, he proceeds from the "unconditional, immediate reality of being" as from the main axiom. He does not prove it - for him it is obvious. But at the same time, it is clear to him that the knowledge of unity is not given by either external or internal experience. Therefore, he has to recognize the mystical experience as the source of knowledge - “intellectual contemplation”. It underlies both philosophy and science; therefore, not only philosophers, but also scientists (for example, physicists or mineralogists) must be mystically gifted. Such a conclusion does not bother Solovyov: he does not distinguish between natural knowledge, which has a conventional relative world as its object, and metaphysical and religious knowledge. For him there are no two worlds - there is a single divine essence; therefore, all knowledge is knowledge about God, religious knowledge. It turns out a kind of vicious circle: mystical experience is justified by the direct action of divine essences on us, and the reality of these essences is proved by the presence of mystical experience.
But if "contemplation" underlies all cognition in general, then nothing specific should be contained in it. Solovyov equates it with inspiration, explains it with an analogy with artistic creativity. All knowledge is religious, which means that there is no special religious knowledge. Mysticism expands indefinitely and ceases to be mysticism. The author takes the logical concepts of being and being and from them derives the metaphysical concept of the absolute, which in turn is revealed as the principle of apophatic theology (“Nothing and everything”). “Positive unity” is logically deduced from the Absolute, as “the unity of itself and its opposite”. There is a transformation of logic into ontology, ontology into theology: being, essence, being are equal to God, idea and nature. The dialectic of concepts turns out to be "an abstract expression of the moral fact of love."
The origin of plurality from positive nothingness, the emergence of will, feelings and ideas within the absolute, the distinction of three subjects in it is mysterious. Reason itself, by its dialectical method, deduces the Trinity. But if Christian dogmas are "necessary truths of reason", then the meaning of mystical experience is destroyed.
Solovyov's first attempt at a synthesis of religion, philosophy and science made him face enormous difficulties: trying to solve one problem, he brought to life a number of other problems. The boundary between the transcendent and the immanent almost disappeared; the concept of mystical experience became all-encompassing and vague, logic, metaphysics and theology were mixed up, "positive all-unity" turned into pantheism, the abstract absolute absorbed the personal God, and mysticism suddenly turned into rationalism. Nevertheless, Solovyov's idea was unusually original and his problematics were brilliant. He raised questions and outlined ways to resolve them, but he was not destined to fully implement the plan of "holistic worldview", and he bequeathed it to his successors. All Russian philosophy went along the path indicated by him.
The influence of Hegel is clearly felt here.
Vladimir Solovyov. Life and teaching
Three strength From the beginning of history three indigenous strength guided human development.<...>The first seeks to subjugate humanity in all spheres and on all degrees his life one supreme principle, in his exceptional unity tends to mix and merge all the diversity private forms, suppress the independence of the person, freedom of personal life. <...>One master and a dead mass of slaves - that's last thing implementation this strength. <...>If she got exceptional dominance, then humanity would be petrified in a dead monotony and immobility.<...>But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it seeks to break the stronghold of dead unity, to give freedom everywhere private forms life, freedom of the person and his activities; under its influence, individual elements humanity become starting points life, act exclusively out of and for themselves, the general loses the meaning of real essential being, turns into something abstract, empty, into a formal law, and finally, completely loses all meaning.<...>If she got exceptional dominance, That humanity would disintegrate into its constituent elements, the vital connection would be broken and history would end in a war of all against all, self-destruction humanity. <...>Both of these forces are negative, exceptional character: the first excludes free plurality private forms and personal elements, free movement, progress - the second is equally negative about unity, to the common supreme beginning of life, breaks solidarity the whole. <...>If only these two forces ruled history humanity, then there would be nothing in it but enmity and struggle, there would be no positive content; as a result, history would be only a mechanical movement, determined by two opposite forces and going along their diagonal.<...>But humanity is not a dead body, and history is not a mechanical movement, and therefore the presence of a third<...>
Three_forces.pdf
Vl.S. Soloviev Three Forces From the beginning of history, three fundamental forces have controlled human development. The first strives to subordinate humanity in all spheres and at all stages of its life to one supreme principle, in its exclusive unity it strives to mix and merge all the diversity of particular forms, to suppress the independence of the individual, the freedom of personal life. One master and a dead mass of slaves - this is the last realization of this power. If it were to receive exclusive predominance, then humanity would be petrified in dead monotony and immobility. But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it strives to break the stronghold of a dead unity, to give freedom everywhere to particular forms of life, freedom to the person and his activity; under its influence, individual elements of humanity become the starting points of life, act exclusively from themselves and for themselves, the general loses the meaning of real essential being, turns into something abstract, empty, into a formal law, and finally completely loses all meaning. Universal egoism and anarchy, the multiplicity of individual units without any internal connection - this is the extreme expression of this force. If it were to gain exclusive predominance, then humanity would disintegrate into its constituent elements, the connection of life would be severed, and history would end in a war of all against all, in the self-destruction of humanity. Both of these forces have a negative, exclusive character: the first excludes the free multiplicity of particular forms and personal elements, free movement, progress, the second has an equally negative attitude towards unity, towards the general supreme principle of life, breaks the solidarity of the whole. If only these two forces controlled the history of mankind, then there would be nothing in it but enmity and struggle, there would be no positive content; as a result, history would be only a mechanical movement, determined by two opposite forces and going along their diagonal. Both of these forces do not have inner integrity and life, and therefore they cannot give it to humanity either. But humanity is not a dead body, and history is not a mechanical movement, and therefore the presence of a third force is necessary, which gives a positive content to the first two, frees them from their exclusivity, reconciles the unity of the highest principle with the free multiplicity of particular forms and elements, thus creating , the integrity of the universal human organism and gives it an inner quiet life. Indeed, we always find in history the joint action of these three forces, and the difference between these and other historical epochs and cultures lies only in the predominance of one or another force striving for its implementation, although the full implementation for the first two forces, precisely because of their exclusivity , is physically impossible. Leaving aside ancient times and limiting ourselves to modern humanity, we see the coexistence of three historical worlds, three cultures that differ sharply from each other - I mean the Muslim East, Western civilization and the Slavic world: everything that is outside of them has no common world significance , has no direct impact on the history of mankind. What is the relation of these three cultures to the three fundamental forces of historical development? As far as the Muslim East is concerned, there is no doubt that it is under the predominant influence of the first force - the force of exclusive unity. Everything there is subordinated to the single principle of religion, and, moreover, this religion itself is of an extremely exclusive character, denying any plurality of forms, any individual freedom. The deity in Islam is an absolute despot who created the world and people at will, which are only blind tools in his hands; the only law of being for God is His arbitrariness, and for man it is blind irresistible rock. Absolute power in God corresponds to absolute impotence in man. The Muslim religion, first of all, suppresses the person, binds personal activity, as a result of this, of course, all manifestations and various forms of this activity are delayed, not isolated, killed in the bud. Therefore, in the Muslim world, all spheres and degrees of human life are in a state of fusion, confusion, are deprived of independence relative to each other, and all together are subject to one overwhelming power of religion. In the social sphere, Islam does not know the difference between the church / state and the society itself or the Zemstvo. The entire social body of Islam is a continuous indifferent mass, above which rises one despot, uniting both spiritual and secular supreme power. The only code of laws governing all ecclesiastical, political and social relations,
From the beginning of history, three root forces have controlled human development, the First strives to subdue humanity in all spheres and at all stages of its life one supreme principle, in its exclusive unity, seeks to mix and merge all the variety of private forms, to suppress the independence of the person, the freedom of personal life neither. One master and a dead mass of slaves - this is the last realization of this power. If it were to receive exclusive predominance, then humanity would be petrified in dead monotony and immobility. But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it seeks to break the stronghold of a dead unity, to give everywhere freedom for private forms of life, freedom for the individual and his activities; under her influence individual elements of humanity become the starting points of life, exist exclusively from and for themselves, the general loses the meaning of real existence.venous being, turns into something abstract, empty, into a formal law, and end, and completely loses all meaning. Universal selfishness and anarchy, multiple the existence of separate units without any internal connection - this is the extreme expression of this force. If it received exclusive predominance, then humanity would disintegrateto its constituent elements, the life connection would be broken and the story would end the war of all against all, the self-destruction of mankind. Both of these forces have a negative, exclusive character: the first excludes the free multiplicity of particular forms and personal elements, free movement, progress, the second has an equally negative attitude towards unity, towards the general supreme principle of life, breaks the solidarity of the whole. If only these two forces controlled the history of mankind, then there would be nothing in it but enmity and struggle, there would be no positive content; as a result, history would be only a mechanical movement, determined by two opposing forces and going along their diagonal. Internal-both of these forces do not have integrity and life, and therefore they cannot give itand humanity. But humanity is not a dead body, and history is not a mechanical movement, and therefore the presence of a third force is necessary, which gives a positive content to the first two, frees them from their exclusivity, reconciles the unity of the higher principle with the free multiplicity of particular forms and elements, thus creating the integrity of the universal human organism and giving it inner quiet life. And indeed, we always find in history the joint action of these three forces, and the difference between these and other historical epochs and cultures lies only in the predominance of one or another force striving for its realization, although full implementation for the first two forces , precisely because of their exclusivity, is physically impossible.
Leaving aside ancient times and limiting ourselves to modern humanity, we see the coexistence of three historical worlds, three cultures that differ sharply from each other - I mean the Muslim East, Western civilization and the Slavic world: everything that is outside of them has no common world significance, does not have a direct impact on the history of mankind. What is the relation of these three cultures to the three fundamental forces of historical development?
As for the Muslim East, there is no doubt that it is under the predominant influence of the first force - the force of exclusive unity. Everything there is subordinated to the single principle of religion, and, moreover, this religion itself is of an extremely exclusive character, denying any plurality of forms, any individual freedom. The deity in Islam is an absolute despot who created the world and people at will, which are only blind tools in his hands; the only law of being for God is His arbitrariness, and for man it is blind irresistible fate. Absolute power in God corresponds to absolute impotence in man. The Muslim religion, first of all, suppresses the face, binds personal activity, but as a result, of course, all manifestations and various forms of this activity are delayed, not isolated, killed in the bud. Therefore, in the Muslim world, all spheres and degrees of human life are in a state of fusion, confusion, are deprived of independence relative to each other, and all together are subject to one overwhelming power of religion. In the sphere of social Islam does not know the difference between the church / state and the actual society or zemstvo. The entire social body of Islam is a continuous indifferent mass, above which rises one despot, uniting both spiritual and secular supreme power. The only code of laws that defines all ecclesiastical, political and social relations is Alkoran; representatives of the clergy are at the same time judges; however, there is no clergy in the proper sense, just as there is no special civil power, but a mixture of both prevails. A similar confusion prevails in the theoretical or intellectual realm: in the Muslim world / in fact, neither positive science, nor philosophy, nor real theology exists at all, but there is only some mixture of meager dogmas of the Koran, from passages some philosophical concepts taken from the Greeks, and some empirical information. In general, the entire mental sphere in Islam has not been distinguished, has not been isolated from practical life, knowledge here has only a utilitarian character, and there is no independent theoretical interest. As for art, for artistic creativity, it is just as deprived of any independence and extremely poorly developed, despite the rich fantasy of the Eastern peoples: the oppression of a one-sided religious principle prevented this fantasy from being expressed in objective ideal images. Sculpture and painting, as you know, are expressly prohibited by the Koran and do not exist at all in the Muslim world. Poetry here did not go further than that immediate form that exists wherever there is a person, that is, lyrics. As for the music, the character of exclusive monism was especially clearly reflected in it; the richness of the sounds of European music is completely incomprehensible to an Oriental person: the very idea of musical harmony does not exist for him, he sees in it only disagreement and arbitrariness, his own music (if you can only call it music) consists solely in the monotonous repetition of some and the same notes. Thus, both in the sphere of social relations and in the sphere of the mental, as well as in the sphere of creativity, the overwhelming power of the exclusive religion hyosic beginning does not allow any independent life and development. If a person new consciousness is unconditionally subordinated to one religious principle, an extremely meager and exceptional, if a person considers himself only an indifferent tool in the hands ofblind, according to the senseless arbitrariness of the acting deity, it is clear that fromsuch a person cannot become either a great politician, or a great scientist orphilosopher, not a brilliant artist, but only a crazy fanatic will come out, what areand the essence of the best representatives of Islam.
That the Muslim East is dominated by the first of the three forcescrushing all vital elements and hostile to any development, this is proofbesides the given characteristic features, the simple fact thatfor twelve centuries the Muslim world has not taken a single step on the path internal development; it is impossible to indicate here a single sign of a consistent organic progress. Islam has remained unchanged in the state in which what was it like the first caliphs, but could not retain the former strength, because according to the law well, life, not going forward, it thereby went backward, and therefore it is not surprising that the contemporary Muslim world presents a picture of such a miserable decline.
As is well known, Western civilization exhibits a directly opposite character; here we see a rapid and continuous development, a free play of forces, an independent validity and exclusive self-affirmation of all particular forms and individual elements - signs that undoubtedly show that this civilization is under the dominant influence of the second of the three historical principles. Already the most religious ozny principle that formed the basis of Western civilization, although it represented only one-sided and, therefore, a distorted form of Christianity, was still the same incomparably richer and more capable of development than Islam. But this principle also the early days of Western history is not an exclusive force that suppresses all others: willy-nilly, he must reckon with principles alien to him. For next to the representative of religious unity - the Roman church - stands the world of the German barbarians, who accepted Catholicism, but was far from imbued with it,retaining the beginning not only different from the Catholic, but also directly hostile to it - the new is the beginning of unconditional individual freedom, the supreme significance of the individual. This initial dualism of the Germano-Roman world served as the basis for the new out isolations. For every particular element in the West, having more than one principle, which would completely subordinate him to himself, and two opposite and hostile among themselves, thereby obtaining freedom for himself: the existence of another beginning freed him from the exclusive power of the first, and vice versa.
Every field of activity, every form of life in the West, isolated inhaving separated from all others, it strives in this separateness to obtain an absolute value, to exclude all the others, to become one with everything, and instead of incessantlyfalse law of finite being, comes in its isolation to impotence and insignificance, capturing an alien area, loses strength in its own. So,the Western church, separating from the state, but appropriating in this separatesti the state significance, which itself has become an ecclesiastical state, ends upthat loses all power over the state and over society. In the same way, the state a society separated both from the church and from the people, and in its exclusive centralization having appropriated to itself an absolute value, in the end loses all independence, turns into an indifferent form of society, into an executive instrument of popular voting, and the people themselves or the zemstvo, which has risen against both the church and the state, as soon as he defeats them, in his revolutionary movement he cannot keepunity, breaks up into hostile classes, and then must necessarily disintegrategraze on hostile personalities. The social organism of the West, dividedfirst on private organisms, hostile to each other, must in the endbe divided into the last elements, into the atoms of society, that is, individuals, andcorporate egoism, caste egoism must turn into personal egoism. The principle of this the last disintegration was first clearly expressed in the great revolutionary movement the last century, which, therefore, can be considered the beginning of a complete revelation of the force that drove all Western development, the Revolution transferred the supreme power to the people in the sense of a simple sum of individuals, whose entire unity is reduced only to an accidental agreement of desires and interests, an agreement that can and not to be. Having destroyed those traditional ties, those ideal beginnings that in the old Europe made each individual only an element of the highest social group dividing humanity, united people - breaking these ties, the revolutionary the movement left each person to himself and at the same time destroyed his organic difference from others. In old Europe this distinction, and therefore not The primacy of individuals was determined by belonging to one or another social group. ne and the place occupied in it. With the destruction of these groups in their formermeaning, organic inequality also disappeared, only the lowest natural inequality remained.inequality of personal power. Out of the free manifestation of these forces, new forms of life in place of the destroyed world. But no positive The grounds for such new creativity were not given by the revolutionary movement. It is easy to see, in fact, that the principle of freedom in itself has only negativemeaning. I can live and act freely, that is, without encountering any free obstacles or restrictions, but this, obviously, does not in the least determine the the positive goal of my activity, the content of my life. Life in old Europehuman received its ideal content from Catholicism, on the one hand,and from knightly feudalism - on the other. This ideal content gave the old Ev-rope its relative unity and high heroic power, although it already concealed in itself the beginning of that dualism, which had to lead necessarily to the subsequent general decay. The revolution finally rejected the old ideals, which was,Perhaps it is necessary, but due to its negative nature, it could not give new ones.It liberated the individual elements, gave them absolute meaning, but deprivedtheir activities needed soil and food; so we see that the excessivedevelopment of individualism in the modern West leads directly to its opposite mu - to general depersonalization and vulgarization. Extreme tension of personal knowledge, not finding an appropriate object for itself, passes into an empty and pettyselfishness / which equalizes everyone. Old Europe in the rich development of its forcesbrought forth a great variety of forms, many original, bizarre phenomena; she had holy monks that, out of Christian love for one's neighbor, you burned people by the thousands; there were noble knights who fought all their lives for ladies whom they neverdid not see, there were philosophers who made gold and died of hunger, there were scholastic scientists who talked about theology like mathematicians, and about mathematics like gods. words. Only these originalities, these wild grandeurs, make the Western world interesting. nym for the thinker and attractive for the artist. All its positive contentlonging in the past, but now, as you know, the only greatness that still preserves its strength in the West, there is the greatness of capital; the only significant difference and the equality between people that still exists there is the inequality of the rich man and the proletarian, but even this is threatened by a great danger from revolutionary socialism. Socialism has the task of transforming the economic relations of society by introducingEat greater uniformity in the distribution of material wealth. It's hardly possibleto doubt that socialism in the West is assured of an early success in the sense of the victory and domination of the working class. But the real goal will not be achieved. For howfollowing the victory of the third estate (bourgeoisie), a hostile quarter came forwardthis, and the forthcoming victory of this latter will probably cause the fifth, that is, but-proletariat, etc. Against the socio-economic disease of the West, as againstcancer, any operations will only be palliatives. Anyway it was funny would see in socialism some great revelation, which should renew humanity. If we really assume even the full implementation of the socialist task, when all mankind will equally use the material the blessings and conveniences of civilized life, with the greater force will be beforehim the same question about the positive content of this life, about the real goal of human activity, and to this question socialism, like all Western development, does not give an answer.
True, they talk a lot about the fact that in place of the ideal content of the old lifeneither based on faith, a new one is given, based on knowledge, on science; and whilethese speeches do not go beyond generalities, one might think that it is about something inlike, but one has only to look closer, what kind of knowledge, what kind of science, andthe great very soon turns into the ridiculous. In the field of knowledge, the Western world has comprehended[the same fate as in the field of public life: the absolutism of theology was replacedabsolutism of philosophy, which in turn must give way to absolutismempirical positive science, that is, one that has as its subject e principles and causes, but only phenomena and their general laws. But general laws areonly general facts, and, according to one of the representatives of empiricism, the highestperfection for positive science can only consist in havingthe ability to reduce all phenomena to one general law or general fact, for example, to the fact of universal gravitation, which is no longer reducible to anything else, but can only be ascertained by science. But for the human mind, theoretical in- The interest lies not in knowing the fact as such, not in stating its existence.existence, but in its explanation, that is, in the knowledge of its causes, and from this knowledgeand refuses modern science. I ask: why such and such a phenomenon occurs,and I receive in response from science that this is only a special case of another, more generala common phenomenon, of which science can only say that it exists. Obviously,that the answer has nothing to do with the question, and that modern science offers our minds rocks instead of bread. It is no less obvious that such a science cannot havedirect relation to any living questions, to any higher goals of humanhuman activity, and the claim to provide ideal content for life would befrom the side of such science only amusing. If the true task of science is I to know not this simple statement of general facts or laws, but their actual If another explanation is given, then we must say that at the present time, science does not exist at all, yet what now bears this name is in fact only the formless and indifferent material of the future true science; and it is clear that buildsolid beginnings necessary for this material to turn into a slender scientific building, cannot be deduced from this material itself, as a plan for building ki cannot be derived from the bricks that are used for it. These builders positive principles must be obtained from a higher kind of knowledge, from that knowledge that has absolute principles and causes as its subject, therefore, true the construction of science is possible only in its close internal union with theology and physiology.losophy as the highest members of one mental organism, which only in this wholeness can receive power over life. But such a synthesis is completelycontradicts the general spirit of Western development: that exclusive negative force,which divided and secluded various spheres of life and knowledge, cannot by itselfput them together again. The best proof of this is those unsuccessful attempts at synthesis that we meet in the West. Thus, for example, the metaphysical systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann (for all their significance in other respects) are they themselves are so powerless in the field of the supreme principles of knowledge and life that they must to follow these principles - to Buddhism.
If, therefore, the ideal content for life is not able to provide thebelt science, the same must be said about contemporary art. Forin order to create eternal truly artistic images, it is necessary, first of all, believe in a higher reality of an ideal world. And how can give eternal ideals for life is such an art that does not want to know anything but this very life in its everyday superficial reality, strives to be only its exact reproduction? Of course, such a reproduction is even impossible, and artificialstvo, refusing idealization, turns into a caricature.
Both in the sphere of public life and in the sphere of knowledge and creativity, the second historicalthe scientific power that governs the development of Western civilization, being granteditself, irresistibly leads in the end to a general decomposition into lower constituent elements, to the loss of any universal content, all unconditionalthe root of life. And if the Muslim East, as we have seen, completely destroys man and affirms only an inhuman god, then Western civilizationstrives first of all for the exclusive affirmation of the godless mancentury, that is, man, taken in his apparent superficial separateness and action reality and in this false position recognized together and as the only a deity and as an insignificant atom - as a deity for itself, subjectively, and as an insignificant ny atom - objectively, in relation to the external world, of which it is a separate a particle in infinite space and a transient phenomenon in infinite time. It is clear that everything that such a person can produce will be fractional, private, ordetermined by internal unity and unconditional content, limited by onesuperficiality, never reaching the real center. Separate personal in-Teres, random fact, small detail - atomism in life, atomism in science, atomism in art is the last word of Western civilization. She worked out private forms and external material of life, but the internal content of life itselfdid not give to mankind; by isolating individual elements, she brought them to the extremefines of development, which is only possible in their separateness; but without internal organization they are deprived of a living spirit, and all this wealth is dead capital. And if the history of mankind should not end in this negativeresult, this insignificance, if a new historical force must emerge, then the task of this force will no longer be to work out individual elements life and knowledge, to create new cultural forms, and in order to revive, spiritualize to destroy the hostile elements, dead in their hostility, by the highest conciliatory leadersscrap, to give them a general unconditional content and thereby free them from the needexclusive self-affirmation and mutual denial.
But where can this unconditional content of life and knowledge come from?If man had it in himself, he could neither lose it nor seek it.It must be outside of him as a particular, relative being. But it cannotto be in the external world, for this world represents only the lower stages of that development, at the top of which man himself is, and if he cannot findunconditional principles in oneself, then even less in the lower nature; and the one who exceptthis visible reality of itself and the external world does not recognize any other, must renounce all ideal content of life, all trueknowledge and creativity. In this case, only the lower animal remains for man.life; but happiness in this lower life depends on blind chance, and even if it is achieved, it always turns out to be an illusion, and since, on the other hand, the striving to the highest and, with the consciousness of its unsatisfactoriness, nevertheless remains, but serves only source of the greatest suffering, the natural conclusion is thatlife is a game that is not worth the candle, and perfect insignificance appears as a desirable end both for the individual and for all mankind. This conclusion can only be avoided by recognizing above man and external nature another, a clever, divine world, infinitely more real, rich and alive, not if this world of ghostly superficial phenomena, and such a recognition of those natural not that man himself, by his eternal origin, belongs to that higher worldand a vague recollection of him is preserved in one way or another by everyone who has not yet all lost their human dignity.
And so, the third force, which is supposed to give human development its unconditional content, can only be a revelation of the higher divine world, and those people, the people through which this force has to manifest itself, should only be a mediator between humanity and that world, a free, conscious tool the last one. Such a people should not have any special limited task, it is not called to work on the forms and elements of human existence, but only communicate a living soul, give life and integrity to a torn and dead manhumanity through its connection with the eternal divine principle. Such people are notneeds no special advantages, no special powers and external talents, for he does not act from himself, does not carry out his own. From the people the bearer of the third divine power requires only freedom from any limitation and one-sidedness, elevation above narrow special interests, requiresso that he does not assert himself with exceptional energy in some particular lowerour field of activity and knowledge requires indifference to all this life with itspetty interests, total faith in the positive reality of the higher world ra and a submissive attitude towards him. And these properties undoubtedly belong to the tribes character of the Slavs, in particular the national character of the Russiankind. But historical conditions do not allow us to look for another bearer of the third forces outside the Slavs and its main representative - the Russian people, for all other historical peoples are under the predominant power of one or the other of the first two exceptional forces: the Eastern peoples - under the rule of the first, the Western - under the rule of the second force. Only the Slavs, and in particular Russia, remained free from these two lower potencies and, consequently, can become the historical conductor of the third. Meanwhile, the first two forces completed the circle of their manifestation and led the peoples subject to them to spiritual death and decay. So, I repeat, either this is the end of history, or the inevitable discovery of a third all-power force, the only carrier of which can only be the Slavs and the Russian people.
The external image of the slave in which our people find themselves, the miserable position of Russia in economic and other respects, not only cannot serve as an objection to her vocation, but rather confirms it. For that higher power that the Russian people must lead into humanity is a power not of this world, and external wealth and order have no meaning in relation to it. The great historical vocation of Russia, from which only its immediate tasks derive significance, is a religious vocation in the highest sense of the word. When the will and mind of people enter into real communication with the eternally and truly existing, then only all the particular forms and elements of life and knowledge will receive their positive meaning and price - all of them will be necessary organs or mediations of one living whole. Their contradiction and enmity, based on the exclusive self-affirmation of each, will necessarily disappear as soon as all together freely submit to one common principle and focus.
When the hour will come for Russia to discover its historical vocation, no one can say, but everything shows that this hour is close, even though there is almost no real consciousness of its highest task in Russian society. But great outward events usually precede great awakenings of the social consciousness. So, even the Crimean War, which was completely fruitless politically, however, strongly influenced the consciousness of our society. The negative result of this war corresponded to the negative character of the consciousness awakened by it. It must be hoped that the impending great struggle will serve as a powerful impetus for the awakening of the positive consciousness of the Russian people. Until then, we, who have the misfortune of belonging to the Russian intelligentsia, which, instead of the image and likeness of God, still continues to wear the image and likeness of a monkey, we must finally see our miserable position, we must try to restore in ourselves the Russian folk character, stop creating an idol for yourself. any narrow, insignificant idea, must become more indifferent to the limited interests of this life, freely and reasonably believe in another, higher reality. Of course, this belief does not depend on a single desire, but one cannot also think that it is a pure accident or falls directly from the sky. This faith is the necessary result of an inner spiritual process - a process of decisive liberation from that worldly rubbish that fills our heart, and from that supposedly scientific school rubbish that fills our head. For the denial of the lower content is thereby the affirmation of the higher, and by banishing false gods and idols from our soul, we thereby introduce the true Divinity into it.
1877.
[Vl.S.Soloviev]|[Library "Milestones"]
© 2004, Vekhi Library
First publication on the Internet
