The return from a business trip abroad ends the first student period of Solovyov’s life. The philosophical period begins. Over the course of Five years, he built his broad philosophical system: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and historiosophy. This time includes: “Philosophical principles of integral knowledge” (1877), “Readings about God-manhood” (1878) and “Criticism of abstract principles” (1877-1880).
Soon after Solovyov’s arrival in Moscow, Prince. D. Tsertelev introduced him to his aunt Countess Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy, the widow of the poet Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. Her niece Sofya Petrovna Khitrovo and her children lived with her; she separated from her husband, although she was not officially divorced from him. Soloviev soon became close to this family; constantly visited the countess in St. Petersburg, stayed for a long time on her estates Pustynka (Petersburg province) and Krasny Rog (Bryansk district). His letters to Sofia Andreevna are full of special trust and tenderness. He loved Sofya 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 the woman he loved, but he had to abandon this belief, and the break with S.P. cost him great suffering: love for Khitrovo was his life’s tragedy. He never trusted anyone with the secrets of his relationship with her. This could not be accidental - such was his will. Therefore, Solovyov’s biographers must limit themselves to one external story of “the love of his 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 by the cult of his memory, his books, thoughts, poems; the count's library, his manuscripts and favorite things were kept reverently; in the evenings, long conversations were held about him and his intimate letters were re-read. Soloviev came in as close person into this special atmosphere of Tolstoy’s house. He was already prepared for it partly by his friendship with Count Tsertelev’s nephew. In the house of S.A. Tolstoy, he breathed the air of pure poetry, spiritual grace, and an aesthetic sense of life. He was surrounded by the romance of the supernatural: the otherworldly intertwined with the earthly; premonitions, omens, prophetic dreams, omens, spiritualistic experiments, mysterious phenomena made the line between the two worlds almost elusive. Biographer gr. A. Tolstoy A. Lirondelle collected interesting material related to the Count’s studies in occult and metapsychic phenomena. In the early sixties, A. Tolstoy studied Swedenborg, Van Helmont, “Magnetic Magic” by Cahagnet, which talks about magic mirrors, talismans, elevations, filters, spells, conspiracies, witchcraft; “Natural Magic” by Du Potet, dedicated to the phenomena of somnambulism, magnetism, clairvoyance, hallucinations, visions, materialization, etc.; “History of Magic” and “Dogma and Ritual of High Magic” by Eliphas Levi with drawings, texts of spells and invocations, triangles, pentagrams and tetragrams, “Pneumatology” by J. Eudes de Mirville, containing the doctrine of magnetic currents, possession, supernatural voices, exorcisms, mysterious monomanias, flying tables and self-igniting fires. A. Tolstoy's occult hobbies were reflected in his Don Juan. In a letter to Markevich, he explains that the statue of the commander is nothing more than the materialization of astral force, which is carried out invisibly in every act of our will and visible in all magnetic and magical experiences.
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 was 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 Tolstoy’s family, the general tone of the house was determined by the spirit of the late poet who was invisibly present in it, but into this tone his widow introduced her own, very personal shade of mystical spirituality.
In an atmosphere of romantic mystery and cosmic poetry, Solovyov’s teaching about Sophia grew.
In the fall of 1876, Soloviev resumed his lectures on the history of ancient philosophy at Moscow University, but his course did not last long. One of the professors, Lyubimov, submitted a “special 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 Soloviev was not at all on Lyubimov’s side, 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 Academic Committee under the Ministry of Public Education. He moved to St. Petersburg and lived there with short breaks for four years. Letters from Solovyov to gr. S.A. Tolstoy shows how quickly their relationship turned into spiritual closeness and affection.
“I have now arrived at Shpalernaya... (i.e., 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 happy here.” Everything is quiet. and melancholy, as in my soul now. If only you could always know what’s wrong with you, and not invent various impossible horrors at night...”
In another letter (April 27, 1877) we find an extremely important and unique message from Solovyov about his study of literature about Sofia:
“...I didn’t find anything special in the library. The mystics have a lot of confirmation of my own ideas, but no new light, and besides, almost all of them are extremely subjective and, so to speak, slobbering. I found three specialists in Sofia: Georg Gichtel, Gottfried Arnold and John Pordage. All three had personal experience almost the same as mine, and this is the most interesting thing, but actually in Theosophy all three are rather weak, following Boehme, but lower than him. I think Sofia messed with them more for their innocence than anything else. As a result, only Paracelsus, Bam and Swedenborg turn out to be real people, so for me the field remains very wide.”
In addition to studying in the library, there was also service in the Academic Committee, which turned out to be not a sinecure at all. “I have already begun my service in the Academic Committee,” writes Soloviev to D.N. Tsertelev. “Meetings are mortal boredom and inexhaustible stupidity; It’s good that it’s not often.”
He lives alone, goes almost nowhere, “has become a complete misanthrope.” He misses the family of S. A. Tolstoy, who left for the summer in Krasny Rog.
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 attached to him he became; the writer's attitude towards the young philosopher was similar to the attitude of the elder Zosima towards Alyosha. The elder fell in love with Alyosha because he reminded him of his deceased brother: Dostoevsky became attached to Solovyov, because in his spiritual appearance he seemed similar to I.N. Shidlovsky, who had such a beneficial influence on Fyodor Mikhailovich in his youth. This is where, perhaps, the legend originated that Dostoevsky portrayed Solovyov in the image of Alyosha. Anna Grigorievna believes that there is more reason to think that another Karamazov, Ivan, was copied from Solovyov. Indeed, it is not the simple-minded 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 reminiscent of Solovyov. It is not for nothing that in “The Brothers Karamazov” it is Ivan who expounds his “idea” about theocracy, which Vl was working on at that very time. Soloviev. S. Gessen suggests that Soloviev influenced the architectonics of The Brothers Karamazov. From him Dostoevsky borrowed “the formal features of his philosophical technique.”
Dostoevsky's influence on Solovyov is reflected in his 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 swept Russia at the beginning of the liberation war of 1877-1878. awakened in Solovyov a thirst for immediate action in life. He responded to the declaration of war with the "Three Forces" speech and an attempt to take an active part in the war effort. His speech begins with a calm historical and philosophical introduction and ends with an inspired sermon. World history has given rise to two forces: the first is 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 answer the question about the positive content and purpose of life. The synthesis of religion and philosophy cannot occur 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, first of all, 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 one must believe that a new historical force will emerge, which “will revive the elements dead in their enmity with a higher conciliatory principle.” . This third force must be a revelation of the divine world, and the people through which this force will manifest itself will only be an intermediary between humanity and that world. He does not need any special advantages or external gifts; All that is required of him is freedom from any limitation and one-sidedness; what is required is indifference to all this life with its petty interests and complete faith in positive reality upper 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 complete force, the only bearer of which can only be the Slavs and the Russian people. The external image of a slave in which our people find themselves, the pitiful position of Russia in economic and other respects, not only cannot serve as an objection to its calling, but rather confirms it... The great historical calling of Russia... is a religious calling in the highest sense of the word " Everything indicates 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.
Soloviev ends with an appeal to the Russian intelligentsia: “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 bear the image and likeness of a monkey, we must finally see our pitiful situation, we must try to restore in ourselves Russian national character... to freely and intelligently believe in another higher reality.”
In terms of the rigor of the dialectical method and the conciseness of the formulations, and the internal tension, Solovyov’s speech brilliantly reveals the period of his creative heyday. Only three years have passed since the writing of The Crisis of Western Philosophy, but in this short time his thought has come a long way. In his master's thesis he was only partly a Slavophile; in “The Three Powers” he not only shares the basic faith of the Slavophiles, their messianic pathos, but goes further than them.
Preaching “the third force as the highest religious synthesis of the principles of the West and the East,” Solovyov in his speech provides 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 about the Kushite religious principle; Khomyakov goes back to the idea that “the religious principle that formed the basis of Western civilization represents only a one-sided and, therefore, a distorted form of Christianity”; The characterization of European culture as a process of fragmentation and isolation of individual principles is built on the main conclusions of Iv. Kireevsky. Solovyov claims that “The Western Church, having separated from the state, ... itself became a church state”: the reaction to this separation of the church from the people was a revolution; it completed the self-affirmation of the individual: “the revolutionary movement left each person to his own devices.” This entire passage in the speech accurately reproduces the theses of F. I. Tyutchev’s article “Russia and the Revolution.” Tyutchev also connects the revolutionary movement in the West with the secularization of the Roman Church. “The Western Church,” he writes, “has become a political institution... The reaction to this state of affairs was inevitable... The revolution is nothing more than the apotheosis of the human self, as the last word in the separation of the individual from the Church, from God... Humanity “I, left to myself, is essentially contrary to Christianity.”
There are also echoes of the teachings of K. N. Leontyev in Solovyov’s speech: Western civilization, which was once in “blooming complexity,” is now moving towards “simplifying confusion,” impersonality and vulgarization. “The excessive development of individualism in the modern West,” writes Solovyov, “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 neighbors, burned people by the thousands; there were noble knights who fought all their lives for ladies whom they had never seen, 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 greatnesses make the Western world interesting for a thinker and attractive for an artist...” This tirade is reminiscent of Leontiev not only in thought, but also in style; Soloviev introduces into his philosophical presentation a certain “artistic intermezzo”; His elegant images are designed in the spirit of Leontief decorativeness.
Finally, the idea that Russia’s vocation is religious, that it will show the world the divine principle that lies hidden in the depths of its faith and humility, was undoubtedly instilled in Solovyov by Dostoevsky. In “The Diary of a Writer,” Dostoevsky, deepening the Slavophil 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 the entire 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 man-divinity (“Demons”).
Such is the complex and varied composition of “Three Forces,” this “philosophical symphony” by Solovyov. But he creatively processed the motley material - and what we see 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 directly opposite concept of pan-humanity. He shows that in true 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 and was the most consistent and most fearless successor of their work.
The response to Solovyov’s speech was a formidable article by A. Stankevich in the “Bulletin of Europe” “Three impotences: three forces. Public lecture by Vl. Solovyov.” Regarding it, Soloviev wrote to S. A. Tolstoy: “Was it really unpleasant, and not funny, for you to read about the “Three Forces” in the “Bulletin of Europe?” I partly have a presentiment of 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. Here, no calculation will help - “not a guess, not intelligence, but madness at that time.” edge, but luck can lead you!”
Having called 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 excluded 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, moved 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 roar grows like in a sleeping sea
Before the fatal storm -
Soon, soon in an abusive argument
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 Krasny Rog with S.A. Tolstoy. During a spiritualistic session, a strange event occurs, which he reports to D.N. Tsertelev. “Are you healthy, and did anything special happen to you on the night of June 13th and 14th? 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 files of the Ministry of Public Education there is a telegram from the Chisinau governor addressed to the minister with the following content: “I request permission to issue a passport to travel abroad to court councilor V.S. Solovyov.” Having received a passport, Soloviev gets to Bucharest, where he waits a week for money from Katkov. Without waiting, he takes his place and gets ready to move on. He tells his father his future address: Svishtovo in Bulgaria, headquarters of the active army. This is where our information ends. Soloviev never made it to Bulgaria; a month and a half later he was back in Moscow. Why he changed his mind, what made him return after all external obstacles (passport, money) had been 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 deception, answered him: “I am a rogue - cannot help it.” Goodbye for a long time. I hope we’ll meet better, that is, when I’m better.”
The letter is cold, ironic, bitter - and very pathetic. Soloviev 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 about this in a forced-joking tone, with slight self-disgust. Is this depression connected with the sudden return from the war?
Whatever his motives for abandoning his plan, one thing remained certain: his heroic impulse, his desire to take a real part in the “big story” failed. When confronted with reality, the young philosopher felt his inner failure and could not help but experience this very painfully. To recover from the blow life dealt him, he goes into theory, into the “wilds of metaphysics.”
In 1877, Solovyov’s unfinished study “Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge” appeared in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education. This is the first sketch of a philosophical system; a diagram was outlined, the main milestones were outlined, the main departments were drafted: 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-Humanity”, “Critique of Abstract Principles”, “Justification of the Good” and “Theoretical Philosophy”.
“Philosophical principles of integral knowledge” begins with a “general historical introduction.” Philosophy must answer the question about the purpose of our existence. But, speaking of a 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: mixture or external unity, isolation of the forming elements and internal free unity.
The basic forms of universal 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 as its subject objective good, the second - objective truth, the third - objective beauty.
The first principle of social life is will. First of all, man directs his will to external nature in order to obtain sustenance from it. Therefore, the first aspect of the will is economic society, or the family. The will that determines the relationship of people to each other gives rise to a political society, or state. Its natural principle is legality or right. 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, the feeling receives its objective expression 1) in material creativity - technical art, 2) in aesthetic creativity - fine art and 3) in a creative attitude towards the transcendental world - mysticism.
Since creativity dominates knowledge and practical activity, and mysticism occupies the first place in it, then, consequently, “this latter has the significance of the real supreme principle of the entire 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, disintegrates into atoms - separate individuals.
In the field of thought, the same process of disintegration leads to positivism, in the field 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.
“Since even exceptional monism is higher than atomism, since even a bad beginning is higher than perfect beginninglessness... to that extent the Muslim East is higher than Western* civilization.”
The third point - free synthesis - is recognized to be realized by Russia. Here Solovyov repeats his speech about the “Three Forces” almost verbatim.
What will happen when this internal connection takes place? Then the three highest degrees of being - mysticism, theology and the Church - will form one organic whole - religion. Mysticism with art and technology form 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 zemstvo form a free theocracy, or an integral society; finally, the activity of all organs of life in humanity forms a new general 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 three-term scheme of Hegel, the same “law of development” of Herbert Spencer, the same Slavophile messianism. The author makes, however, one important change: the first phase of development is no longer applied to the Muslim East (which turns out to be even higher than Western civilization), but to ancient paganism; the second phase coincides 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 subject of the historical process, is felt by him not abstractly and metaphysically, but in the fullness of reality. For the first time in this work we encounter the well-known Solovyov triad - theosophy, theurgy and theocracy, under the sign of which the entire “Catholic period” of his life passes.
The first chapter of Philosophical Principles is devoted to “three types of philosophy.” Having shown the inconsistency 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; the truth can only be that at the same time there is goodness and beauty. “Real truth, whole and living, contains within itself both its reality and its rationality and communicates them to everything else.” Mystical philosophy knows that every being is only an image of the representation of a being, but also knows that man himself is more than a representation and that, even without leaving himself, he can know about a being. But mystical knowledge can only be the basis of true philosophy: it still needs to be subject to reflection of reason and receive confirmation from empirical facts.
“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 broader connection with theology and positive science.”
Soloviev retains the old names for the three components of free theosophy: logic, metaphysics, ethics, but unlike other philosophical systems he adds to them the definition “organic”. He managed to write only three chapters of his Organic Logic.
The subject of free theosophy is the truly existing in its objective expression, or idea. Together with mysticism, it is based on the unconditional, immediate reality of existence, but contrary to it, it recognizes the development of this reality in the ideas of reason and in the experiences 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 goal of religion. The material of integral knowledge is given by experience, and one should distinguish between external, internal and mystical experience; the latter is, however, not characteristic of everyone, but “in the question of the reality of known phenomena, the number of their subjects is obviously indifferent.” The three types of experience are arranged hierarchically; higher and most important are 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 proven by fact artistic creativity.
The artist’s ideal images are neither copies of empirical reality nor abstract general concepts; they appear before his mental gaze at once in all their internal integrity. The peculiarity of the intelligible idea lies in the combination of perfect individuality with perfect universality - this distinguishes it from a concept and from a particular phenomenon. We can contemplate real ideas because the ideal beings themselves act on us and evoke cognition and creativity in us. 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 community. Philosophy studies existence itself. But the absolute origin cannot be called being: it is the beginning of every being, every being is its subject. Existence is not being; it is also not non-existence, for non-existence is the deprivation of being, and all being belongs to the absolute first principle. It should be defined as power or force of being. Being presupposes a relationship to another, it is always relative, but existence is unconditional. Existence is the substance of everything, including ourselves; everything that exists is one, it is deeper and higher than all being. Being is only the surface under which the truly existing as absolute unity is hidden.
The East cognized existence 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 come to know it as plurality. A true universal religion must unite these two knowledges and bring about the real “En kai pan” on earth.
The Absolutely Existing is required not only by our mind, but also by our will as absolute good, and by our feeling as absolute beauty.
So, the absolute is nothing and everything - nothing, since it is not something, and everything, since it cannot be deprived of something. 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-negation of a being, its affirmation of another, and meanwhile this self-negation realizes its highest self-affirmation. “So, when we say that the absolute first principle, 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 singularity 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 the principle that produces and possesses it, and in being itself distinguishing two centers or poles, 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 call essence and then we get: existence, essence, being, or: power, necessity, reality, or: God, idea, nature.
An idea is actually what a being wants, what he imagines, what he feels. As the content of the will of a being, the idea is good; as the content of its representation, it is truth; as the content of its feeling, it is beauty.
Finally, an 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, an idea is a being.
The theses of “Philosophical Principles” that we have briefly outlined may seem schematic. Solovyov is often reproached for rationalizing the mystical. With the same right one could accuse him of mystifying the rational. Indeed, the boundaries between rational and mystical knowledge seem to have been erased for him. He considers all knowledge - even knowledge of the natural sciences, the empirical study of the external world - to be 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 non-distinction between the types of knowledge and their confusion in one category of theosophy is explained personal experience Solovyova. For him, the beyond was an everyday fact of consciousness; behind his constructions is real experience“meetings” with the “soul of the world.”
For Solovyov, the integrity of knowledge is not a philosophical concept borrowed from Schelling and Yves. Kireyevsky, but his own mystical experience. The “All-One” appeared to him in childhood as “whole and living truth”, as “a single image female beauty" He began to philosophize in order to talk about his visions in an understandable, that is, logical, language. When reasoning, he proceeds from the “unconditional, immediate reality of existence” as a basic axiom. He does not prove it - for him it is obvious. But at the same time, he understands that the knowledge of unity is not given by either external or internal experience. Therefore, he has to recognize mystical experience as the source of knowledge - “intellectual contemplation.” It lies at the basis of both philosophy and science; therefore, not only philosophers, but also scientists (for example, physicists or mineralogists) must be mystically gifted. This conclusion does not confuse Solovyov: he does not distinguish between natural knowledge, which has as its subject the conditional relative world, 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. What results is a kind of vicious circle: mystical experience is substantiated by the direct action of divine essences on us, and the reality of these essences is proven by the presence of mystical experience.
But if “contemplation” lies at the basis of all knowledge in general, then it should not contain anything specific. Soloviev equates it to inspiration and explains it by analogy with artistic creativity. All knowledge is religious, which means there is no special religious knowledge. Mysticism expands infinitely and ceases to be mysticism. The author takes the logical concepts of being and existence and from them derives the metaphysical concept of the absolute, which in turn is revealed as the principle of apophatic theology (“Nothing and Everything”). From the Absolute “positive unity” is logically deduced as “the unity of oneself and its opposite.” There is a transformation of logic into ontology, ontology into theology: existence, 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, with the help of 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 forced him to face enormous difficulties: while trying to solve one problem, he brought into being 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, “positive unity” turned into pantheism, the abstract absolute absorbed the personal God and mysticism unexpectedly turned into rationalism. And yet Solovyov’s plan was unusually original and his problems were ingenious. He posed questions and outlined ways to resolve them, but he was not destined to fully implement the plan of a “holistic worldview,” and he bequeathed it to his successors. All Russian philosophy followed the road he indicated.
The influence of Hegel is clearly felt here.
Vladimir Solovyov. Life and teachings
From the beginning of history, three root forces have ruled human development. The first seeks to subordinate humanity in all spheres and at all degrees of its life to one supreme principle, in its exclusive unity it seeks 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 exercise of this power. If it were to gain exclusive predominance, humanity would petrify into dead monotony and immobility. But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it strives to break the stronghold of dead unity, to give freedom everywhere to particular forms of life, freedom to the individual 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. General egoism and anarchy, a multiplicity of individual units without any internal connection - this is the extreme expression of this force. If it had gained exclusive predominance, then humanity would have disintegrated into its constituent elements, the life connection would have been interrupted and history would have ended 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 common supreme principle of life, and breaks the solidarity of the whole. If only these two forces controlled the history of mankind, then there would be nothing in it except enmity and struggle, there would be no positive content; as a result the story would only be mechanical movement, determined by two opposing forces and running along their diagonal. Both of these forces do not have internal integrity and life, and therefore, they cannot give it to 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 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, and thus creates , the integrity of the universal human organism and gives it an inner quiet life. And indeed, we always find in history the joint action of these three forces, and the difference between one and another historical eras and cultures lies only in the predominance of one or another force striving for its realization, although complete realization for the first two forces is precisely due to their exclusivity , - physically impossible.
Leaving aside ancient times and limiting ourselves to modern humanity, we see the coexistence of three historical worlds, three cultures, sharply different from each other - I mean the Muslim East, Western civilization and the Slavic world: everything that is outside of them has no common global significance , has no direct impact on human history. In what relation do these three cultures stand 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 has an extremely exclusive character, denying any plurality of forms, any individual freedom. The deity in Islam is an absolute despot who, according to his will, created the world and people, who are only blind instruments in his hands; the only law of existence for God is His arbitrariness, and for man it is blind, irresistible fate. Absolute power in God corresponds to absolute powerlessness in man. The Muslim religion, first of all, suppresses the person, binds personal activity, and as a result of this, of course, all manifestations and various forms of this activity are delayed, not isolated, and killed in the bud. Therefore, in the Muslim world, all spheres and degrees of human life are in a state of unity, confusion, deprived of independence relative to each other and are all subordinated to one overwhelming power of religion. In the social sphere, Islam does not know the difference between the church, the state and society itself or the zemstvo. The entire social body of Islam represents both spiritual and secular supreme power. The only code of laws defining 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 displacement of both prevails. A similar confusion prevails in the theoretical or mental sphere: in the Muslim world, strictly speaking, there is no positive science, no philosophy, no real theology at all, but there is only some kind of mixture from the meager dogmas of the Koran, from passages of some philosophical concepts. Taken from the Greeks, and some empirical information 2. In general, the entire mental sphere in Islam is not differentiated, is not isolated from practical life, knowledge here has only a utilitarian character, and independent theoretical interest does not exist. As for art, artistic creativity, it is also devoid of any independence and is extremely poorly developed, despite the rich imagination of the eastern peoples: the oppression of a one-sided religious principle prevented this fantasy from being expressed in objective ideal images. Sculpting and painting, as you know, are directly prohibited by the Koran and do not exist at all in the Muslim world. Poetry here did not go beyond that immediate form that exists wherever a person exists, that is, lyrics 3. As for music, the character of exclusive monism was especially clearly reflected in it; the wealth of sounds of European music is completely incomprehensible to an Eastern person: the very idea of musical harmony does not exist for him, he sees in it only discord and arbitrariness, his own music (if you can call it music) consists solely in the monotonous repetition of the same notes . Thus, both in the sphere of social relations and in the mental sphere, 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 instrument in the hands of a blind, mindless arbitrariness of an active deity, then it is clear that such a person cannot make either a great politician, or a great scientist or philosopher , not a brilliant artist, but only a crazy fanatic, which is what the best representatives of Islam are.
That the Muslim East is under the dominance of the first of three forces, suppressing all vital elements and hostile to any development, this is proven, in addition to the given characteristic features, by the fact that simple fact that for twelve centuries the Muslim world has not taken a single step towards internal development; It is impossible to point out here any sign of consistent organic progress. 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, without moving forward, it thereby went backward, and therefore it is not surprising that the modern Muslim world presents a picture of such a pitiful decline.
Western civilization, as we know, shows exactly the opposite character; here we see rapid and continuous development, the free play of forces, 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 very religious principle that formed the basis of Western civilization, although it represented only a one-sided and, therefore, distorted form of Christianity, was still incomparably richer and more capable of development than Islam. But even this principle, from the very first times of Western history, is not an exclusive force that suppresses all others: willy-nilly, it must reckon with principles alien to it. For next to the representative of religious unity - the Roman Church - stands the world of German barbarians, which accepted Catholicism, but was far from being imbued with it, retaining a principle not only different from the Catholic one, but also directly hostile to it - the beginning of unconditional individual freedom, the supreme importance of the individual. This initial dualism of the German-Roman world served as the basis for new divisions. For each particular element in the West, having before itself not one principle that would completely subjugate it, but two opposite and hostile to each other, thereby received freedom for itself: the existence of another principle freed it from the exclusive power of the first and vice versa.
Each sphere of activity, each form of life in the West, having become isolated and separated from all others, strives in this individuality to obtain absolute meaning, to exclude all others, to become one with everything, and instead, according to the immutable law of finite existence, comes in its isolation to powerlessness and the insignificance, seizing someone else's area, loses strength in its own. Thus, the Western Church, having separated from the state, but in this separateness appropriating state significance for itself, having itself become a church state, ends up losing all power over both the state and society. In exactly the same way, the state, separated from the church and from the people, and in its exclusive centralization having arrogated to itself absolute significance, is ultimately deprived of all independence, turns into an impersonal form of society, into an executive instrument of popular voting, and the people themselves or the zemstvo, rebelling against church and against the state, as soon as it defeats them, in its revolutionary movement it cannot maintain its unity, disintegrates into hostile classes and then must necessarily disintegrate into hostile individuals. The social organism of the West, which at first was divided into private organisms, hostile to each other, must eventually fragment into the last elements, into the atoms of society, that is, individuals, and corporate, caste egoism must turn into personal egoism. The principle of this final disintegration was first clearly expressed in the great revolutionary movement of the last century, which, therefore, can be considered the beginning of the complete revelation of the force that moved all Western development. The revolution transferred supreme power to the people in the sense of a simple sum of individuals, the whole unity of which is reduced only to an accidental agreement of desires and interests - an agreement that may not exist. Having destroyed those traditional connections, those ideal principles that in old Europe made each individual person only an element of a higher social group and, dividing humanity, united people - by breaking these connections, the revolutionary movement left each person to himself and at the same time destroyed his organic difference from others. In old Europe, this difference and, consequently, the inequality of individuals was determined by belonging to one or another social group and the place they occupied in it. With the destruction of these groups in their former meaning, organic inequality also disappeared, leaving only the lowest natural inequality of personal forces. 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 a negative meaning. I can live and act freely, that is, without encountering any arbitrary obstacles or restrictions, but this, obviously, does not in any way 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 old Europe its relative unity and its highest heroic strength, although it already concealed within itself the beginning of that dualism which was bound to lead to subsequent disintegration. The revolution finally rejected the old ideals, which was, of course, necessary, but due to its negative nature it could not give new ones. It liberated the individual elements, gave them absolute significance, but deprived them of activity, 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, turns into empty and petty egoism, which equalizes everyone. 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 neighbors, burned people by the thousands; there were noble knights who fought all their lives for ladies whom they had never seen, there were philosophers who made gold and died of hunger, there were scholastic scientists who talked about theology like mathematicians, and about mathematics like theologians. Only these originalities, these wild greatnesses make the Western world interesting for the thinker and attractive for the artist. All its positive content is in the past, but now, as we know, the only greatness that still retains its strength in the West is the greatness of capital; the only significant difference and inequality between people that still exists there is that of the rich man and the proletarian, but this too is in great danger from revolutionary socialism. Socialism has the task of transforming the economic relations of society by introducing greater equality in the distribution of material wealth. There can hardly be any doubt that socialism is guaranteed rapid success in the West in the sense of victory and dominance of the working class. But the real goal will not be achieved. For just as after the victory of the third estate (the bourgeoisie) the fourth estate, hostile to it, came forward, so the upcoming victory of this latter will probably call forth the fifth, that is, the new proletariat, etc. Against the socio-economic disease of the West, like against cancer, any 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, in fact, we assume even the complete implementation of the socialist task, when all of humanity will equally enjoy the material benefits and conveniences of civilized life, with all the more force will the same question arise before him 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 provide an answer.
True, there is a lot of talk about the fact that in place of the ideal content of the old life, based on faith, a new one is given, based on knowledge, on science; and as long as these speeches do not go beyond the boundaries of generality, one might think that something great is going on, but one has only to take a closer look 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 suffered the same fate as in the field of social life: the absolutism of theology merged with 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 not principles and causes, but only phenomena and their general laws. But general laws are only general facts and, as one of the representatives of empiricism admits, 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 is already cannot be reduced to anything else, but can only be ascertained by science. But for the human mind, theoretical interest lies not in the knowledge of a fact as such, not in ascertaining its existence, but in its explanation, that is, in the knowledge of its causes, and it is this knowledge that modern science refuses. I ask why such and such a phenomenon occurs, and I receive an answer from science that this is only a special case of another, more general phenomenon, about 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 mind stones instead of bread. It is no less obvious that such a science cannot have a direct relationship to any living questions, to any higher goals of human activity, and the claim to provide ideal content for life would only be ridiculous on the part of such a science. If the true task of science is recognized not as this simple statement of general facts or laws, but as their actual explanation, then we must say that at the present time science does not exist at all; nevertheless, everything that now bears this name is in fact only formless and indifferent. material for future true science; and it is clear that the constructive principles necessary for this material to turn into a harmonious scientific building cannot be deduced from this material itself, just as the plan of a building cannot be deduced from the bricks that are used for it. These creative principles must be obtained from the highest kind of knowledge, from that knowledge that has as its subject absolute principles and causes; 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 integrity can gain power over life. But such a synthesis is completely contrary to the general spirit of Western development: that exclusive negative force that has divided and secluded the various spheres of life and knowledge cannot of itself unite them again. The best proof of this is the unsuccessful attempts at synthesis that we encounter in the West. So, for example, the metaphysical systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann (for all their significance in other respects) are 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 should be said about modern art. In order to create eternal, truly artistic images, you must first of all believe in the highest reality of the ideal world. And how can such art give eternal ideals for life, which does not want to know anything other than this very life in its everyday superficial reality, strives only to be its exact reproduction? Of course, such reproduction is even impossible, and art, refusing idealization, turns into caricature.
Both in the sphere of social life and in the sphere of knowledge and creativity, the second historical force that controls the development of Western civilization, being left to itself, irresistibly leads in the end to universal decomposition into lower constituent elements, to the loss of all 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 first of all for the exclusive affirmation of godless man, that is, man taken in his apparent superficial isolation and reality and in this false position recognized together and as the only deity and as an insignificant atom - as a deity for himself subjectively, and as an insignificant atom - objectively, in relation to the external world, of which he is a separate particle in infinite space and a transitory phenomenon in infinite time. It is clear that everything that such a person can produce will be fractional, private, devoid of internal unity and unconditional content, limited to one surface, never reaching the real focus. An individual personal interest, a random fact, a small detail - atomism in life, atomism in science, atomism in art - this is the last word of Western civilization. It developed particular forms and external material of life, but did not give the internal content of life itself to humanity; having isolated individual elements, she brought them to the extreme degree of development that is only possible in their individuality; but without internal organic unity they are deprived of a living spirit, and all wealth is a dead result, this insignificance. If a new historical force is to 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 and spiritualize hostile elements, dead in their enmity, with a higher 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 a person had it within himself, he could neither lose it nor seek it. It must be outside of him as a private, relative being. But it cannot be 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 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, all true knowledge and creativity. In this case, only the lower animal life remains for man; but happiness in this lower life depends on blind chance and even if achieved, it always turns out to be an illusion, and since, on the other hand, the desire for the highest, even with the consciousness of its unsatisfactoriness, still remains, but serves only as a source of the greatest suffering, then it is natural the conclusion is that life is a game that is not worth the candle, and complete insignificance appears as the desired end both for the individual and for all 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 illusory surface phenomena, and such recognition is all the more natural since man himself, by his eternal origin, belongs to that to the higher world and a vague memory of it is somehow retained by everyone who has not yet completely lost human dignity.
So, the third force, which must give human development its unconditional content, can only be a revelation of the higher divine world, and those people, that people through which this force has to manifest itself, must only be an intermediary between man and that world, a free, conscious instrument of the latter . Such a people should not have any special limited task; they are not called upon to work on the forms and elements of human existence, but only to impart a living soul, to give life and wholeness to torn and dead humanity through its union with the eternal divine principle. Such a people does not need any special advantages, any social forces or external gifts, because they do not act on their own, they do not realize their own. What is required of the people, the bearer of the third divine force, is only freedom from any limitation and one-sidedness, an elevation above narrow special interests, it is required that it does not assert itself with exceptional energy in some particular lower sphere of activity and knowledge, indifference to all this life with her petty interests, complete 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 do not allow us to look for another bearer of the third force outside the Slavs and its main representative - the Russian people, for all other historical peoples are under the predominant power of one or another of the first two exceptional forces: the eastern peoples are under the power of the first, the western peoples are under the power of the second force. Only the Slavs, and especially Russia, remained free from these two lower potentialities and, therefore, can become the historical vehicle 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 complete force, the only bearer of which can only be the Slavs and the Russian people.
The external image of a slave in which our people find themselves, the pitiful position of Russia in economic and other respects, not only cannot serve as an objection to its recognition, but rather confirms it. For that highest power that the Russian people must bring into humanity is a power not of this world, and external wealth and order have no meaning in relation to it. The great historical calling of Russia, from which only its immediate tasks derive significance, is a religious calling 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 value - they will all be necessary organs or through the media of one living whole. Their contradiction and enmity, based on the exclusive self-affirmation of each, will necessarily disappear as soon as everyone freely submits to one common principle and focus.
When the hour will come for Russia to discover its historical calling, no one can say, but everything shows that this hour is close, even despite the fact that in Russian society there is almost no real consciousness of its highest task. But great external events usually precede great awakenings of social consciousness. Thus, even the Crimean War, completely fruitless politically, however, greatly influenced the consciousness of our society. The negative result of this war corresponded to the negative nature of the consciousness it awakened. It must be hoped that the great struggle that is preparing 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, who, instead of the image and likeness of God, still continue to bear the image and likeness of a monkey - we must finally see our pitiful situation, we must try to restore the Russian national character in ourselves, stop to create an idol for themselves out of every narrow, insignificant idea, they must become more indifferent to the limited interests of this life, and freely and intelligently believe in another, higher reality. Of course, this faith does not depend on one’s desire, but one also cannot think that it is pure chance or falls straight from the sky. This faith is a necessary result of an internal mental process - a process of decisive liberation from the everyday rubbish that fills our hearts, 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 expelling false gods and idols from our soul, we thereby introduce the true Divinity into it.
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1 Printing this speech in the form as 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 Beginnings of Integral Knowledge,” the first part of which is now is printed.
2 In medieval Arab philosophy there was not a single original idea: it only chewed on Aristotle. In any case, this philosophy turned out to be an empty flower and did not leave any trace in the East.
3 Rich Persian poetry does not belong to the Muslim world: part of it is rooted in the ancient Iranian epic, while the other part not only remained alien to the influence of Islam, but was even imbued with protest against it.
4 I mean the Muslim dervishes or saints. In any religion, holiness consists in achieving complete union with him through assimilation of oneself to the deity. But what is characteristic is what this connection is based on and how it is achieved. For the Muslim dervish it comes down to the complete suppression of personal consciousness and feelings, since his exclusive deity does not tolerate another self next to him. The goal is achieved when a person is brought into a state of unconsciousness and anesthesia, for which purely mechanical means are used. Thus, union with the deity for a person is equivalent here to the destruction of his personal existence; Islam in its most consistent expression is only a caricature of Buddhism.
Vl.S.Soloviev
Three forces
From the beginning of history, three fundamental forces have governed human development. The first seeks to subordinate humanity in all spheres and at all degrees of its life to one supreme principle, in its exclusive unity it seeks 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 exercise of this power. If it were to gain exclusive predominance, humanity would petrify into dead monotony and immobility. But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it strives to break the stronghold of dead unity, to give freedom everywhere to particular forms of life, freedom to the individual 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. General egoism and anarchy, a multiplicity of individual units without any internal connection - this is the extreme expression of this force. If it had gained exclusive predominance, then humanity would have disintegrated into its constituent elements, the vital connection would have been broken, and history would have ended 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 common supreme principle of life, and breaks the solidarity of the whole. If only these two forces controlled the history of mankind, then there would be nothing in it except 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 moving along their diagonal. Both of these forces do not have inner integrity and life, and therefore, they cannot give it to 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 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, and thus creates , the integrity of the universal human organism and gives it an inner quiet life. And indeed, we always find in history the joint action of these three forces, and the difference between one and another historical eras and cultures lies only in the predominance of one or another force striving for its realization, although complete realization for the first two forces is precisely due to 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, sharply different from each other - I mean the Muslim East, Western civilization and the Slavic world: everything that is outside them has no common world meaning, does not have a direct impact on the history of mankind. In what relation do these three cultures stand 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 has an extremely exclusive character, denying any plurality of forms, any individual freedom. The deity in Islam is an absolute despot who, according to his will, created the world and people, who are only blind instruments in his hands; the only law of existence for God is His arbitrariness, and for man it is a blind, irresistible fate. Absolute power in God corresponds to absolute powerlessness in man. The Muslim religion, first of all, suppresses the person, binds personal activity, and as a result of this, of course, all manifestations and various forms of this activity are delayed, not isolated, and killed in the bud. Therefore, in the Muslim world, all spheres and degrees of human life are in a state of unity, confusion, deprived of independence relative to each other and are all subordinated to one overwhelming power of religion. In the social sphere, Islam does not know the difference between the church/state and society itself or zemstvo. The entire social body of Islam represents a continuous indifferent mass, above which rises one despot, combining in himself both spiritual and secular supreme power. The only code of laws defining 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 theoretical or mental sphere: in the Muslim world, strictly speaking, there is no positive science, no philosophy, no real theology at all, but there is only some kind of mixture from the meager dogmas of the Koran, from passages of some philosophical concepts taken from the Greeks, and some empirical information. In general, the entire mental sphere in Islam is not differentiated, is not isolated from practical life, knowledge here has only a utilitarian character, and independent theoretical interest does not exist. As for art, artistic creativity, it is also devoid of any independence and is extremely poorly developed, despite the rich imagination of the eastern peoples: the oppression of a one-sided religious principle prevented this fantasy from being expressed in objective ideal images. Sculpting and painting, as you know, are directly prohibited by the Koran and do not exist at all in the Muslim world. Poetry here has not gone beyond that immediate form that exists wherever there is a person, that is, lyrics. As for music, the character of exclusive monism was especially clearly reflected on it; the wealth of sounds of European music is completely incomprehensible to an Eastern person: the very idea of musical harmony does not exist for him, he sees in it only discord and arbitrariness, his own music (if you can call it music) consists solely in the monotonous repetition of the same notes . Thus, both in the sphere of social relations and in the mental sphere, 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 instrument in the hands of a blind, mindless arbitrariness of an active deity, then it is clear that such a person cannot make either a great politician, or a great scientist or philosopher , not a brilliant artist, but only a crazy fanatic, which is what the best representatives of Islam are. That the Muslim East is under the domination of the first of three forces, suppressing all vital elements and hostile to all development, this is proven, in addition to the given characteristic features, by the simple fact that for twelve centuries the Muslim world has not taken a single step on the path of internal development; It is impossible to point out here any sign of consistent organic progress. 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, without moving forward, it thereby went backward, and therefore it is not surprising that the modern Muslim world presents a picture of such a pitiful decline. Western civilization, as we know, shows exactly the opposite character; here we see rapid and continuous development, the free play of forces, 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 very religious principle that formed the basis of Western civilization, although it represented only a one-sided and, therefore, distorted form of Christianity, was still incomparably richer and more capable of development than Islam. But even this principle, from the very first times of Western history, is not an exclusive force that suppresses all others: willy-nilly, it must reckon with principles alien to it. For next to the representative of religious unity - the Roman Church - stands the world of German barbarians, which accepted Catholicism, but was far from being imbued with it, retaining a principle not only different from the Catholic one, but also directly hostile to it - the beginning of unconditional individual freedom, the supreme importance of the individual. This initial dualism of the Germanic world served as the basis for new divisions. For each particular element in the West, having before itself not one principle that would completely subjugate it, but two opposite and hostile to each other, thereby received freedom for itself: the existence of another principle freed it from the exclusive power of the first and vice versa. Each sphere of activity, each form of life in the West, having become isolated and separated from all others, strives in this individuality to obtain absolute meaning, to exclude all others, to become one with everything, and instead, according to the immutable law of finite existence, comes in its isolation to powerlessness and the insignificance, seizing an alien region, loses strength in its own. Thus, the Western Church, having separated from the state, but in this separateness appropriating state significance for itself, having itself become a church state, ends up losing all power over both the state and society. In exactly the same way, the state, separated from both the church and the people, and in its exclusive centralization having arrogated to itself absolute significance, is ultimately deprived of 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, rebelled and against the church and against the state, as soon as it defeats them, in its revolutionary movement it cannot maintain its unity, disintegrates into hostile classes and then must necessarily disintegrate into hostile individuals. The social organism of the West, which was first divided into private organisms, hostile to each other, must ultimately fragment into the last elements, into the atoms of society, that is, individuals, and corporate, caste egoism must turn into personal egoism. The principle of this final disintegration was first clearly expressed in the great revolutionary movement of the last century, which, therefore, may be considered the beginning of the complete revelation of that force which moved the whole of Western development. The Revolution transferred the supreme power to the people in the sense of the simple sum of individuals, the whole unity of which comes down only to a random agreement of desires and interests - an agreement that may not exist. Having destroyed those traditional connections, those ideal principles that in old Europe made each individual person only an element of a higher social group and, dividing humanity, united people - by breaking these connections, the revolutionary movement left each person to himself and at the same time destroyed his organic difference from others. In old Europe, this difference and, consequently, the inequality of individuals was determined by belonging to one or another social group and the place they occupied in it. With the destruction of these groups in their former meaning, organic inequality also disappeared, leaving only the lowest natural inequality of personal forces. 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 a negative meaning. I can live and act freely, that is, without encountering any arbitrary obstacles or restrictions, but this, obviously, does not in any way 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 old Europe its relative unity and high heroic strength, although it already concealed within itself the beginning of that dualism that was bound to lead to subsequent disintegration. The revolution finally rejected the old ideals, which was, of course, necessary, but due to its negative nature it could not give new ones. She 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, turns into empty and petty egoism / which equalizes everyone. 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 neighbors, burned people by the thousands; there were noble knights who fought all their lives for ladies whom they had never seen, there were philosophers who made gold and died of hunger, there were scholastic scientists who talked about theology like mathematicians, and about mathematics like theologians. Only these originalities, these wild greatnesses make the Western world interesting for the thinker and attractive for the artist. All its positive content is in the past, but now, as we know, the only greatness that still retains its strength in the West is the greatness of capital; the only significant difference and inequality between people that still exists there is the inequality of the rich man and the proletarian, but this too is in 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 is guaranteed rapid success in the West in the sense of victory and dominance of the working class. But the real goal will not be achieved. For just as after the victory of the third estate (the bourgeoisie) the fourth estate, hostile to it, came forward, so the upcoming victory of this latter will probably cause 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, in fact, we assume even the complete implementation of the socialist task, when all of humanity will equally enjoy the material benefits and conveniences of civilized life, with all the more force will the same question arise before him 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 provide an answer. True, there is a lot of talk about the fact that in place of the ideal content of the old life, based on faith, a new one is given, based on knowledge, on science; and as long as these speeches do not go beyond the boundaries of generality, one might think that something great is going on, but one has only to take a closer look 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 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 not principles and causes, but only phenomena and their general laws. But general laws are only general facts, and, as one of the representatives of empiricism admits, 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 gravity, which can no longer be reduced to anything else, but can only be stated by science. But for the human mind, theoretical interest lies not in the knowledge of a fact as such, not in ascertaining its existence, but in its explanation, that is, in the knowledge of its causes, and it is this knowledge that modern science refuses. I ask why such and such a phenomenon occurs, and I receive an answer from science that this is only a special case of another, more general phenomenon, about 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 stones instead of bread. It is no less obvious that such a science cannot have a direct relationship to any living questions, to any higher goals of human activity, and the claim to provide ideal content for life would only be ridiculous on the part of such a science. If we recognize that the true task of science is not 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 everything that now bears this name is in fact only a formless and indifferent material of future true science; and it is clear that the constructive principles necessary for this material to turn into a harmonious scientific building cannot be deduced from this material itself, just as the plan of a building cannot be deduced from the bricks that are used for it. These creative principles must be obtained from the highest kind of knowledge, from that knowledge that has as its subject absolute principles and causes; 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 integrity can gain power over life. But such a synthesis is completely contrary to the general spirit of Western development: that exclusive negative force that has divided and secluded the various spheres of life and knowledge cannot of itself unite them again. The best proof of this is the unsuccessful attempts at synthesis that we encounter in the West. So, 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 should be said about modern art. In order to create eternal, truly artistic images, you must first of all believe in the highest reality of the ideal world. And how can such art give eternal ideals for life, which does not want to know anything other than this very life in its everyday superficial reality, strives to be only its exact reproduction? Of course, such reproduction is even impossible, and art, refusing idealization, turns into caricature. Both in the sphere of social life and in the sphere of knowledge and creativity, the second historical force that controls the development of Western civilization, being left to itself, irresistibly leads in the end to universal decomposition into lower constituent elements, to the loss of all 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 first of all for the exclusive affirmation of godless man, that is, man taken in his apparent superficial isolation and reality and in this false position recognized together and as the only deity and as an insignificant atom - as a deity for himself, subjectively, and as an insignificant atom - objectively, in relation to the external world, of which he is a separate particle in infinite space and a transitory phenomenon in infinite time. It is clear that everything that such a person can produce will be fractional, private, devoid of internal unity and unconditional content, limited to one surface, never reaching the real focus. An individual personal interest, a random fact, a small detail - atomism in life, atomism in science, atomism in art - this is the last word of Western civilization. It developed particular forms and external material of life, but did not give the internal content of life itself to humanity; having isolated individual elements, she brought them to the extreme degree of development that is only possible in their individuality; but without internal organic unity they are deprived of a living spirit, and all this wealth is dead capital. And if the history of mankind should not end with this negative result, this insignificance, if a new historical force should 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 hostile elements, dead in their enmity, with a higher 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 a person had it within himself, he could neither lose it nor seek it. It must be outside of him as a private, relative being. But it cannot be 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 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, all true knowledge and creativity. In this case, only the lower animal life remains for man; but happiness in this lower life depends on blind chance and even if achieved, it always turns out to be an illusion, and since, on the other hand, the desire for the highest, even with the consciousness of its unsatisfactoriness, still remains, but serves only as a source of the greatest suffering, then it is natural the conclusion is that life is a game that is not worth the candle, and complete insignificance appears as the desired end both for the individual and for all 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 illusory surface phenomena, and such recognition is all the more natural since man himself, by his eternal origin, belongs to that to the higher world and a vague memory of it is somehow retained by everyone who has not yet completely lost human dignity. So, the third force, which must give human development its unconditional content, can only be a revelation of the higher divine world, and those people, that people through which this force has to manifest itself, must only be a mediator between humanity and that world, a free, conscious instrument of the latter . Such a people should not have any special limited task; they are not called upon to work on the forms and elements of human existence, but only to impart a living soul, to give life and wholeness to torn and dead humanity through its union with the eternal divine principle. Such a people does not need any special advantages, any special powers or external talents, because they do not act on their own, they do not realize their own. What is required of the people, the bearer of the third divine force, is only freedom from any limitation and one-sidedness, an elevation above narrow special interests, it is required that they do not assert themselves with exceptional energy in some particular lower sphere of activity and knowledge, indifference to all this life is required with her petty interests, complete 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 also historical conditions do not allow us to look for another bearer of the 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: the eastern peoples are under the rule of the first, the western peoples are under the rule of the second force . Only the Slavs, and especially Russia, remained free from these two lower potentialities and, therefore, can become the historical vehicle 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 complete force, the only bearer of which can only be the Slavs and the Russian people. The external image of a slave in which our people find themselves, the pitiful position of Russia in economic and other respects, not only cannot serve as an objection to its calling, but rather confirms it. For that highest power that the Russian people must bring into humanity is a power not of this world, and external wealth and order have no meaning in relation to it. The great historical calling of Russia, from which only its immediate tasks derive significance, is a religious calling 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 value - they will all be necessary organs or through the media of one living whole. Their contradiction and enmity, based on the exclusive self-affirmation of each, will necessarily disappear as soon as everyone freely submits to one common principle and focus. When the hour will come for Russia to discover its historical calling, no one can say, but everything shows that this hour is close, even despite the fact that in Russian society there is almost no real consciousness of its highest task. But great external events usually precede great awakenings of social consciousness. Thus, even the Crimean War, completely fruitless politically, however, greatly influenced the consciousness of our society. The negative result of this war corresponded to the negative nature of the consciousness it awakened. It must be hoped that the great struggle that is preparing 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 bear the image and likeness of a monkey - we must finally see our pitiful situation, 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 intelligently believe in another, higher reality. Of course, this faith does not depend on one’s desire, but one also cannot think that it is pure chance or falls straight from the sky. This faith is a necessary result of an internal mental process - a process of decisive liberation from the everyday rubbish that fills our hearts, 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 expelling false gods and idols from our souls, we thereby introduce the true Divinity into it. 1877. Printing this speech as 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 is now being published, (Hereinafter, interlinear notes by the author. The work mentioned was published under the title “Philosophical foundations of integral knowledge.” - Ed.) In medieval Arab philosophy there was not a single original idea: it only chewed on Aristotle. In any case, this philosophy turned out to be an empty flower and did not leave any trace in the East. Rich Persian poetry does not belong to the Muslim world: part of it is rooted in the ancient Iranian epic, while the other part not only remained alien to the influence of Islam, but was even imbued with protest against it. I mean Muslim dervishes or saints. In any religion, holiness consists in achieving complete union with him through assimilation of oneself to the deity. But what is characteristic is what this connection is based on and how it is achieved. For the Muslim dervish it comes down to the complete suppression of personal consciousness and feelings, since his exclusive deity does not tolerate another self next to him. The goal is achieved when a person is brought into a state of unconsciousness and anesthesia, for which purely mechanical means are used. Thus, union with the deity for a person is equivalent here to the destruction of his personal existence; Islam in its most 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 pinned on her.
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 one and the other.
Vladimir Solovyov finds the answer to the question posed by Western philosophy not in any teaching, but in living in general, which, in his opinion, is Russia’s calling. It is not enough to find and proclaim the meaning of life: we must contribute meaning to life. With this meaning it is necessary to revive and bring together the dead body of humanity that has fallen into pieces. This may not be the work of a single thinker, but of an organized body, of a great people who have given themselves to the service of the cause of God.
“From the beginning of history,” we read in Solovyov’s speech, “three fundamental forces have controlled human development. The first seeks to subordinate humanity in all spheres and at all degrees of its life to one supreme principle, in its exclusive unity, seeks 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 exercise of this power. If it were to gain exclusive predominance, humanity would petrify into dead monotony and immobility. But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it strives to break the stronghold of dead unity, to give freedom everywhere to particular forms of life, freedom to the individual 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. General egoism and anarchy, a 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 vital connection would be severed, and history would end in a war of all against all.”
Vladimir Solovyov considers the East to be the embodiment of the first force, and Western Europe to be the embodiment of the second. The characteristic feature of Eastern culture is an impersonal unity that has absorbed all diversity; on the contrary, the peculiarity of Western culture is individualism, which threatens to abolish all social ties. The East completely destroys man in God and asserts inhuman God; on the contrary, Western civilization strives for the exclusive affirmation of godless man.
Philosopher Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov. Portrait by N. Yaroshenko, 1890s
If history were controlled only by these two forces, then there would be nothing in it except endless discord and the struggle of opposites, there would be no positive content and meaning. An inhuman God cannot fill human life with meaning; on the other hand, a godless person finds no meaning either in himself or in external nature.
The content of the story gives third force: it stands above 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 giving it an inner quiet life.” The implementation of this third force is Russia's task: it must be a mediator between two worlds, personified by the synthesis of West and East. That this is precisely our national calling, according to Solovyov, can be seen from the following:
“The third force, which must give human development its unconditional content, can only be a revelation of the highest divine world, and those people, the people through whom this force has to manifest itself must only be intermediary between humanity and that world, the free, conscious instrument of the latter. Such a people should not have any special limited task; they are not called upon to work on the forms and elements of human existence, but only to impart a living soul, to give life and wholeness to torn and dead humanity through its union with the eternal divine principle. What is required of the people who are the bearer of the third divine power is only freedom from any limitation and one-sidedness, an elevation above narrow special interests, it is required that it does not assert itself with exceptional energy in some particular lower sphere of activity and knowledge, indifference to all this life with her petty interests, complete 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 do not allow us to look for another bearer of the third force outside the Slavs and its main representative - the Russian people, for all other historical peoples are under the predominant power of one or another of the first two exceptional forces: the eastern peoples are under the power of the first, the western peoples are under the power of the second force. Only the Slavs and especially Russia remained free from these two lower potencies and, therefore, can be the historical vehicle 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 complete force, the only bearer of which can only be the Slavs and the Russian people.
The external image of a slave in which our people find themselves, the pitiful position of Russia in economic and other respects, not only cannot serve as an objection to its calling, but rather confirms it. For that highest power that the Russian people must bring into humanity is a power not of this world, and external wealth and order have no meaning in relation to it.”
It is not difficult to see that in this description by Solovyov of the “three forces” we have a reworking of old literary legends. First of all, its kinship with old Slavophilism is striking. On the one hand, it resumes Kireevsky’s favorite idea about fragmentation and atomism as properties Western culture, and about Russia’s calling – to restore the integrity of human life and humanity. On the other hand, it contains echoes of those Khomyakov articles on Western religions, where the essence of European culture is depicted as the self-exaltation of the human principle, the anti-religious affirmation of human reason and freedom, the consequence of which is the loss of universal unity, the transformation of organic, internal unity into an external mechanical connection . Solovyov’s saying that the development of Western Europe leads to the kingdom of godless man only brings Khomyakov’s old thought to the end. Finally, in the characterization of the “third force”, which affirms the reconciliation of the unity of the highest principle with free plurality, there is also a development of the old Slavophil thought. It was in this reconciliation of organic unity with free plurality that Khomyakov saw the difference between Orthodoxy and Western religions. The very task of the “great synthesis” was undoubtedly anticipated by the Slavophiles, although they posed it with less clarity than in Solovyov’s “Three Forces”. In the organic synthesis of the Divine and the human, in the completeness of its various elements, lies, without a doubt, the essence of Khomyakov’s church ideal.
Based on materials from the book of an outstanding Russian philosopher E. Trubetskoy“Worldview of Vl. S. Solovyov"
Three strength From the beginning of history three indigenous strength governed human development.<...>The first seeks to subjugate humanity in all spheres and at all degrees his life to one supreme principle, in his exceptional unity strives to mix and merge all diversity private forms, suppress a person’s independence, personal freedom life. <...>One master and a dead mass of slaves - here last thing implementation this strength. <...>If she received exceptional predominance, then humanity would petrify into dead monotony and immobility.<...>But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; she strives 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 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.<...>If she received exceptional predominance, That humanity would have disintegrated into its constituent elements, the vital connection would have been severed and history would have ended in a war of all against all, self-destruction humanity. <...>Both of these forces have a negative exceptional character: the first excludes free plurality private forms and personal elements, free movement, progress - the second has an equally negative attitude towards unity, to the general supreme principle of life, breaks solidarity the whole. <...>If only these two forces controlled history humanity, then there would be nothing in it except hostility and struggle, there would be no positive content; as a result, history would be only a mechanical movement, determined by two opposing forces and moving along their diagonal.<...>But humanity is not a dead body, and history is not mechanical movement, and therefore the presence of a third is necessary<...>
Three_forces.pdf
Vl.S. Solovyov Three forces From the beginning of history, three fundamental forces have controlled human development. The first seeks to subordinate humanity in all spheres and at all degrees of its life to one supreme principle, in its exclusive unity it seeks 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 exercise of this power. If it were to gain exclusive predominance, humanity would petrify into dead monotony and immobility. But along with this force, another, directly opposite, acts; it strives to break the stronghold of dead unity, to give freedom everywhere to particular forms of life, freedom to the individual 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. General egoism and anarchy, a multiplicity of individual units without any internal connection - this is the extreme expression of this force. If it had gained exclusive predominance, then humanity would have disintegrated into its constituent elements, the vital connection would have been broken, and history would have ended 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 common supreme principle of life, and breaks the solidarity of the whole. If only these two forces controlled the history of mankind, then there would be nothing in it except 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 moving along their diagonal. Both of these forces do not have inner integrity and life, and therefore, they cannot give it to 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 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, and thus creates , the integrity of the universal human organism and gives it an inner quiet life. And indeed, we always find in history the joint action of these three forces, and the difference between one and another historical eras and cultures lies only in the predominance of one or another force striving for its realization, although complete realization for the first two forces is precisely due to 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, sharply different from each other - I mean the Muslim East, Western civilization and the Slavic world: everything that is outside of them has no common global significance , has no direct impact on human history. In what relation do these three cultures stand 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 has an extremely exclusive character, denying any plurality of forms, any individual freedom. The deity in Islam is an absolute despot who, according to his will, created the world and people, who are only blind instruments in his hands; the only law of existence for God is His arbitrariness, and for man it is a blind, irresistible fate. Absolute power in God corresponds to absolute powerlessness in man. The Muslim religion, first of all, suppresses the person, binds personal activity, and as a result of this, of course, all manifestations and various forms of this activity are delayed, not isolated, and killed in the bud. Therefore, in the Muslim world, all spheres and degrees of human life are in a state of unity, confusion, deprived of independence relative to each other and are all subordinated to one overwhelming power of religion. In the social sphere, Islam does not know the difference between the church/state and society itself or zemstvo. The entire social body of Islam represents a continuous indifferent mass, above which rises one despot, combining in himself both spiritual and secular supreme power. The only code of laws defining all ecclesiastical, political and social relations,
