Основные проблемы теории прогресса 65

Was zu wünschen ist, ihr unten fühlt'es: Was zu geben sei, die wissen's droben. Gross beginnet, ihr Titanen! Aber leiten Zu dem ewig Guten, ewig Schönen Ist der Götter Werk: die lasst gewähren. O. Comte established the so-called. the law of three states (loi de trois états), according to which humanity moves in its development from theological understanding of the world to metaphysical, and from metaphysical to positive, or scientific. Comte's philosophy has now lost credit, but this supposed law still seems to be the basic philosophical belief of large sections of our society. Meanwhile, it represents a gross delusion, because neither the religious need of the spirit and the corresponding area of ​​ideas and feelings, nor the metaphysical requests of our mind and the speculation that responds to them are in any way destroyed, they even lose nothing from the positive science that is magnificently developing alongside them. Both religion, metaphysical thinking, and positive knowledge meet the basic spiritual needs of man, and their development can only lead to their mutual clarification, and not to their destruction. These needs are universal for all people and at all times of their existence and constitute the spiritual principle in man as opposed to the animal. Thus, only the ways of satisfying these needs, which develop in history, are changeable, but not the needs themselves. The most understandable and indisputable is the universality of the need for positive scientific knowledge of the laws of the external world. Having as its primary source the material needs of man, the struggle for existence, positive science in its further development sets itself purely theoretical goals of establishing patterns in the world of phenomena. We are currently witnessing an unprecedented development of precise knowledge, which, moreover, has no end in sight. However, no matter how positive knowledge develops, it will always remain limited in its object - it studies only fragments of reality, which is constantly expanding before the eyes of the scientist. The task of complete and complete knowledge in the world of experience is generally an insoluble and incorrectly formulated task. It is as deceptive and deceitful as the task of reaching the horizon, which is constantly receding into infinite space. The development of positive science is endless, but this infinity is both the strength and weakness of positive knowledge: strength in the sense that there are no and cannot be indicated limits to experimental science in its forward movement, but weakness in the sense that this infinity of movement is determined precisely by its inability to finally resolve its task - to provide holistic knowledge. We have here an example of what Hegel called bad, imperfect infinity (schlechte Unendlichkeit, actually Endlosigkeit), in contrast to infinity, which is a synonym for perfection. Geometrically, the first can be illustrated by a line indefinitely continuing in space, while the second can be illustrated by a circle. Since, speaking purely mathematically, in comparison with infinity, all finite quantities lose their meaning, no matter how different their absolute sizes may be, we can therefore say that at present positive science is no closer to the task of giving holistic knowledge, as it was several centuries ago or will be several centuries later. But a person needs to have a holistic understanding of the world; he cannot agree to wait to satisfy this need until future science provides sufficient material for this purpose; he also needs to receive answers to some questions that are completely beyond the scope of positive science and cannot even be recognized by it. At the same time, a person is not able to drown out these questions within himself, to pretend that they do not exist, to practically ignore them, as positivism and various shades of agnosticism, including neo-Kantianism, especially of the positive kind, essentially propose to do. For man as a rational being, it seems infinitely more important than any special scientific theory to solve the questions of what our world as a whole is, what its substance is, whether it has any meaning and reasonable purpose, whether our life and our actions have any value, what is the nature of good and evil, etc., etc. In a word, man asks and cannot help but ask not only how, but what, why and why. Positive science has no answer to these questions; more precisely, it neither poses them nor can resolve them. Their resolution lies in the area of ​​metaphysical thinking, which thus defends its rights along with positive science. The competence of metaphysics is greater than that of positive science, both because metaphysics solves questions that are more important than questions of experimental knowledge, and because, using speculation, it gives an answer to questions that are beyond the power of experimental science. Metaphysics and science, of course, are interconnected by an inextricable connection; the conclusions of positive knowledge provide material on which metaphysical thought works, therefore also subject to the law of development. But this is not the place to analyze these complex relationships. However, there are a number of philosophical schools that deny the right of metaphysics to exist, such as: positivism, materialism, neo-Kantianism, etc. etc. Doesn’t this contradict the stated statement about the universality and necessity of metaphysical thinking? It does not contradict at all, for all these schools essentially deny not metaphysics, but only the known conclusions and known methods of metaphysical thinking. But they cannot thereby abolish metaphysical questions, just as the question of goblins and goblins, or the question of the vital elixir, or the alchemical production of gold, etc., was abolished with the development of science. On the contrary, all these schools, even those denying metaphysics, have their own answers to its questions. Indeed, if I raise the question of the existence of God or the essence of things (Ding an sich), or about free will and then answer these questions negatively, then I do not destroy metaphysics at all; on the contrary, I thereby recognize it, recognizing the legitimacy and necessity of raising these questions that do not fit into the framework of positive knowledge. The difference in answers to metaphysical questions divides representatives of different philosophical schools, but this does not destroy the general fact that all philosophers are metaphysicians by the very nature of human thought. In our atheistic age, the greatest misunderstanding can be caused by the assertion that religion meets the same basic need of the human spirit as science and metaphysics. By destroying or temporarily abolishing one or another particular form of religious belief, people often think that they have destroyed or abolished religion itself. To the credit of humanity, this opinion is completely unfair. Religious feeling remains in a person, despite the change of religion. In fact, it would be naive myopia to think that a person, losing faith in God at the age of 20, and therefore changing his philosophical views, at the same time loses his religious feeling, and, returning to this faith, restores it again. There are no irreligious people, but only pious and wicked people, righteous and sinners. Atheists also have religion, although, of course, their religion is different from that of theists. An example is the teaching of O. Comte, who, following the abolition of Christianity and metaphysics, considers it necessary to establish a religion for humanity, and its object would be “la grande conception d'Humanité, qui vient éliminer irrévocablement celle de Dieu” (Syst. de polit, posit. I, 106). Don't people talk about the religion of humanity these days, the religion of socialism? Isn't Ed developing before our eyes? f. Hartmann has his own religion of the unconscious, which is in the sharpest contradiction to all deistic religions and especially to Christianity, and isn’t Nietzsche’s cult of the superman also religious of its own age? This usage of words is not at all an empty play on words, but a deep meaning, showing that a religious feeling, a religious attitude as a formal principle can be combined with various contents 66 and that in a certain sense the old wisdom of de Silva is true: “It is not what we believe, but how we believe that makes a person beautiful.” What in metaphysics we recognize as the highest meaning and highest principle of the world, as an object of religious adoration, becomes the shrine of the heart. Of course, we do not try to give a definition of religion that would cover all aspects of religious life in all its concrete complexity. What matters for us here is only to distinguish it from adjacent areas of the activity of the spirit. Religion is an active going beyond the limits of one’s self, a living feeling of the connection of this finite and limited self with the infinite and higher, the expansion of our feeling into infinity in the pursuit of unattainable perfection. Only religion therefore establishes a connection between the mind and heart of a person, between his opinions and his actions. A person who would live without any religion for personal fear and at the expense of his little self would be a disgusting monster. And on the contrary, for a truly religious person his entire life, from large to small, is determined by his religion, and thus there is nothing that is indifferent in religious terms. The fundamental principles of religion are at the same time the final conclusions of metaphysics, which, therefore, have received their justification before reason. But religion as such is not satisfied with these products of reflection, discursive thinking. She has her own way of directly, intuitively receiving the truths she needs. And this method of intuitive knowledge (if only the word “knowledge” is applicable here, inextricably linked with discursive thinking and, therefore, with evidence and provability) is called faith. Faith is a way of knowledge without evidence, the notification of hoped-for things, the revelation of invisible things, according to its excellent characterization in St. Pavel. The indisputability, the certainty of those positions that, as a subject of proof, have all the controversy and instability inherent in our knowledge, constitutes the distinctive features of all religious truths (regardless of whether we are dealing with a theistic or atheistic religion), and it is this immediate evidence that determines the living connection that exists here between the thought and will of man. 67 Thanks to these features, the circle of what is accessible to faith is wider than the circle of what is accessible to discursive thinking; You can even believe in something that is not only completely unprovable, but also cannot be made completely understandable to reason, and this area actually constitutes the special property of faith. Considering the matter exclusively from the formal side, we must, therefore, say that the knowledge (no matter how little, I repeat, this word is suitable here) that faith gives is richer and broader than that given by experimental science and metaphysics: if metaphysics reveals the boundaries of experimental knowledge, then faith destroys the boundaries of the intelligible. (The question of the mutual relationship between faith and speculation is one of the most important and interesting questions of metaphysics. Let us recall here the teachings of Jacobi, Fichte of the second period, etc., especially the profound theory of knowledge of V.S. Solovyov). 68 So, man cannot be satisfied with one exact science, which positivism thought to limit him to; the needs of metaphysics and religion are irreducible and have never been eliminated from human life. Exact knowledge, metaphysics and religion must be in some harmonious relationship with each other, the establishment of such harmony is the task of philosophy of each time. It is interesting now to see how this matter stands among the positivists (understanding this term in a broad sense, that is, grouping here all currents of thought that deny metaphysics and the independent rights of religious faith). The mechanical worldview is considered to be the most appropriate to the state of modern thought and knowledge. According to this view, the world is dominated by mechanical causality. Beginning unknown when and how, and perhaps existing from eternity, our world develops according to the law of causality, covering both dead and living matter, both physical and mental life. In this dead movement, devoid of any creative thought and rational meaning, there is no living principle, but only a certain state of matter; there is no truth and error - both are equally necessary consequences of equally necessary causes, there is no good and evil, but there are only states of matter corresponding to them. One of the most courageous and consistent representatives of this view, Baron Holbach, speaks of the fatal necessity (fatalité) that reigns in the world: “Fatal necessity is an eternal, unchanging, necessary order established in nature, or a necessary connection of causes producing such effects as are characteristic of them. According to this order, heavy bodies fall, light bodies rise, related matter is mutually attracted, and unrelated matter is repelled; people unite in society, influence each other, become good or evil, make each other happy or unhappy, necessarily love or hate each other, according to the effect they have on each other. It follows that the necessity that governs the movement of the physical world also governs the movements of the moral world, in other words, everything is subject to fatal necessity” (Système de la nature, I, 221). This view, which sees the entire solution to the mystery of being in mechanical causality and thus elevates it to the level of an absolute world principle (as opposed to the view of Kant, who sees in it a simple condition of experimental knowledge), is entirely metaphysical, although it is characteristic of those philosophical schools that deny metaphysics in principle (agnostics, positivists, materialists). In fact, the universal significance of the law of causality, which is attributed to it by this view, not only has not been, but cannot be proven from experience, which always deals with scraps of being and, by its very concept, incomplete and cannot be completed. At the same time, the mechanical worldview is one of the most contradictory and unsatisfactory metaphysical systems, because it leaves a whole series of facts of our consciousness unexplained and a whole series of nagging questions unanswered. At the same time, there is no more bleak and deadening view than the one according to which the world and our life seem to be the result of absolute chance, absolutely devoid of any internal meaning. Even the most pessimistic systems pale before the chilling horror of this view, because they still liberate the world from absolute randomness, although they give it into the hands of an evil, not a good, force. 69 It is not surprising that the main efforts of self-conscious philosophical thought, starting with Socrates, are directed towards finding the highest principle and meaning of existence besides the law of causality and its transitory dominance. All the great philosophical systems of the 19th century that emerged from Kant agree in recognizing teleology along with causality. Fichte views the world as a kingdom of moral goals, which together form a moral world order; Schelling considers it, moreover, a work of art (Kunstwerk), Hegel sees in it the development of absolute reason. Lotze's metaphysical views are characterized by recognition of the supreme principle of teleology. On this, Wundt and Ed finally agree. f. Hartmann. Not to mention Vl. Solovyov, who considered the absolute beginning of the world to be the love and goodness of God. But it is curious that mechanical philosophy is unable to fully sustain the consistent development of its principles, and ends up trying to fit teleology into its framework, to recognize the ultimate triumph of reason over irrational causality, just as this is done in philosophical systems based on a completely opposite principle. This flight from one’s own philosophical principles is expressed in a tacit or open recognition of the fact that at a certain stage of world development this same causality creates the human mind, which then begins to organize the world in accordance with its own rational goals. This victory of reason over the irrational principle does not occur immediately, but gradually, and the collective mind of people united in society conquers more and more dead nature, learning to use it for their own purposes; Thus, the dead mechanism gradually gives way to rational expediency, its complete opposite, if you would already know that I am talking about the theory of progress, which forms a necessary part of the modern mechanical worldview, at least in its popular form. If we agree, following Leibniz, to call the revelation of the highest reason, the highest purposiveness in the world a theodicy, then we can say that the theory of progress is a theodicy for the mechanical worldview, which, obviously, man cannot do without. Next to the concept of evolution, aimless and meaningless development, the concept of progress, teleological evolution is created, in which causality and the gradual revelation of the purpose of this evolution coincide until complete identification, just like in the mentioned metaphysical systems. So, both doctrines - about mechanical evolution and about progress - no matter how different they are in their conclusions, are connected with each other by a necessary internal, if not logical, then psychological connection. Thus, the theory of progress for modern humanity is something much more than any ordinary scientific theory, no matter how important the role this latter plays in science. The significance of the theory of progress is that it is intended to replace the lost metaphysics and religion for modern man, or rather, it is both for him. We have here, perhaps, the only example in history of a scientific (or imagining itself scientific) theory playing such a role. The future destinies of humanity are discussed and weighed by us with such fervor not out of platonic interest in the destinies of this future humanity, but because of ourselves, real people, because depending on these destinies the fatal, unique in its significance, question about the meaning of our own life, about the purpose of existence is decided. In Athens time ap. Paul, among the churches of many gods in which they had long ceased to believe, stood an altar dedicated to the “unknown god.” This expressed the incessant search for God on the part of humanity, which had lost the old faith. And our theory of progress, our religion of humanity is an altar to the “unknown God”... What gives the theory of progress a unique philosophical interest and what distinguishes it from other religious and philosophical teachings is that, according to the main idea of the metaphysical teaching that created the theory of progress, this philosophy, which at the same time is also a religion, is built exclusively by means of positive knowledge, not only without crossing into the realm of the super-experiential, transcendental, but fundamentally condemning and denying such a transition, not only without resorting to the usual method of religious knowledge, to faith, but again consciously denying all its rights and all its meaning. In the theory of progress, positive science wants to absorb both metaphysics and religious faith, or rather, it wants to be a trinity of science, metaphysics and religious teaching. A bold idea that deserves, in any case, careful philosophical consideration! At the same time, for the modern philosophizing mind there cannot be a subject more worthy of reflection due to the importance that this teaching has for present-day humanity. So, let us try to understand the extent to which positive science is capable of making metaphysics and faith unnecessary and giving a positively scientific, i.e., experimental metaphysics and religion (such a combination of concepts is a contradictio in adjecto, but it does not belong to us, but to the philosophical doctrine being analyzed). Every religion has its own Jenseits - the belief that one day its aspirations will be fulfilled, its religious thirst will be quenched, its religious ideal will be realized. The theory of progress also has such Jenseits in ideas about the future destinies of humanity, free, proud and happy. But, denying faith and super-experimental knowledge, it wants to instill confidence in the undoubted advent of this future kingdom by scientific means, it wants to scientifically foresee and predict it, just as an astronomer predicts a lunar eclipse or any other astronomical phenomena that he can accurately calculate several centuries in advance. Such insight into the future is also attributed to the science of social development, sociology, which therefore receives absolutely exceptional significance among other sciences, becoming, as it were, the theology of a new religion. This explains the extraordinary development of social science in the 19th century and the extraordinary, completely exceptional interest in this science, which in our time plays the same sovereign role in public opinion as theology in the Middle Ages and classical literature in the era of humanism. The greatest faith in its own abilities was demonstrated by one sociological doctrine, which aroused the greatest enthusiasm and to this day forms the religion of many millions of people - the doctrine of Marx and Engels, the theory of scientific socialism. This doctrine wanted to prove with the data of scientific experience (the inevitability of the onset of the socialist mode of production, which at the same time constitutes the ideal of modern humanity; as far as it concerns the future, this doctrine represents a very typical and most striking example of scientific theodicy (in the sense described above). Confidence in the reliability of social predictions has been so greatly undermined in recent times that to attack predictions with excessive vehemence would, to a certain extent, mean breaking through an open door; at the same time, proper proof of the position that social science, by its very cognitive nature, is incapable of making predictions, would require an entire epistemological study. Here we will have to limit ourselves to only a few main points. 70 First of all, what does it mean to predict the future? This means accurately determining the occurrence of future events at a certain point in space and time (as predicted by astronomy). Any other predictions are simply commonplaces, sometimes called, out of decency, in social science by the Latin word “tendency” of development. 71 Thus, if someone tells me that the tendency of my development is to die one day, I will hardly consider this a prediction in which I would expect to find a designation of the time and place of my death. Prediction in this sense completely coincides with prophecy, as it was understood in Old Testament history, or sorcery and fortune telling. Is social science capable of prophecy or, what is the same, prediction? There are two ways to study reality: in one case, attention is directed to the general, in the other, to the specific. According to Rickert (who here develops Windelband’s ideas), in one case we have natural science, a science that operates with general concepts, in the other, history, which has the task of as accurately as possible establishing reality with its individual characteristics. When applied to social science, we distinguish between history in the proper sense and sociology, the science of the laws of coexistence and development of social phenomena. There cannot be, and there has never been, any talk about the ability of history as such to make predictions. 72 All hopes in this regard were placed on sociology. In sociology we have a system of concepts abstracted from a certain historical reality and aimed at making it understandable, that is, expressible in a coherent network of logical concepts, the various relationships of which are sociological laws. Thus, all individual events, i.e. events in space and time are extinguished in abstract concepts; sociology in this sense does not deal at all with events about which predictions can be made. At the same time, it is also necessary to note the following feature of the formation of concepts in sociology, in contrast to some departments of natural science. General concepts of natural science are obtained by isolating a certain sum of properties of an object through abstraction; but these properties themselves represent an independent reality; Science can therefore use its conclusions for practical purposes, subjecting these conclusions, of course, to some practical consideration; within these limits, natural science becomes capable of prediction. Sociological concepts, on the contrary, do not represent such a selection of the general and repeated in all individual cases; they are formed by merging a number of different, “interconnected events into a concept, which, to a certain extent, receives the meaning of a symbol, a symbol for this series of phenomena (for example, the feudal system, capitalist production, freedom of trade, etc.). The first method of concept formation can be likened to mechanical isolation, the second to chemical combination, because in the latter case, element-events lose their independent existence and are combined in a new synthesis, different from each of them. From this nature of sociological concepts it follows, in my opinion, that they depend entirely on the concrete historical material from which they are abstracted. This material changes, and concepts change. There can be an innumerable number of them, due to the variety of material created by the inexhaustible creativity of history, as well as due to the difference in the special goals that are pursued by the researcher in each individual case. Sociological concepts are therefore distinguished by, so to speak, a passive, derivative character; they are only a more or less accurate logical mirror of reality. Their value as an instrument of knowledge can therefore in no way be equal to natural scientific concepts. Historical concepts do not increase our knowledge in any way, but only our understanding of the connection of events. From this it is clear that sociology is not at all capable of expanding our historical horizons and revealing the future for us, since history, on which it is directly dependent, is not capable of this. Be that as it may, the ability of social science to make predictions has never been sufficiently proven, either theoretically or practically, enjoying at one time all the rights of legal presumption, so in any case the onus probandi lies with the supporters of this view. 73 I think, in general, that knowledge of all future events would bring not happiness, but misfortune for a person, because it would make life uninteresting and tasteless for him, and especially the future, which can now be filled with unrestrained imagination. It is unlikely that each of us would feel happy if his future life up to and including the day of death was revealed to him in every detail; on the contrary, I think it is difficult to imagine a greater misfortune. Omniscience is beyond the power of man. However, in order to avoid misunderstandings, I will add here that humanity will never stop thinking about tomorrow and introducing into its ideas about it the understanding of the reality of today and yesterday that social science provides. In the same way, no one can do without making a certain judgment, on the basis of common sense and scientific experience, not only about the present, but also about the near future, for which each of us works. If we call this a prediction, then making predictions about the future in this sense is the right and duty of every conscious person. But at the same time, we must not forget that this prediction has nothing in common with an accurate scientific forecast, but comes down to a kind of impressionism, not so much scientific as artistic synthesis, which has subjective persuasiveness, but is objectively unprovable with complete clarity. 74 Reality, of course, provides here a series of transitions from more or less sober scientific conclusions to completely unbridled fantasy. A major role in this is usually played by judgments by analogy, the logical value of which should be completely clear in advance from logic (an example of judgment by analogy is one of the most popular provisions of Marxism, namely, that a more economically developed country shows another, more backward, picture of its future development). But we recognize in full force the validity of the scientific theory of Progress. We admit that scientific prediction is generally possible and those scientific predictions that have already been made so far, in particular the prediction about the naturally necessary advent of the future socialist system, are scientifically indisputable. Let us thus cede to the theory of progress all the scientificity that it claims to have. Still, is this theory capable of satisfying those who seek in it a firm refuge, a basis for faith, hope, and love? The most daring theories of progress do not go further in their predictions than the foreseeable historical future, but the historical eye sees not far. Let us know the fate of humanity, let’s say, in the 20th century, but we already know absolutely nothing about what awaits it in the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, etc. centuries. The scientific theory of progress is like a dim candle that someone lit at the very beginning of a dark, endless corridor. The candle scantily illuminates a corner of a few feet around itself, but the rest of the space is enveloped in deep darkness. Positive science is unable to reveal the future destinies of humanity; it leaves us in absolute uncertainty regarding them. The joyful confidence that everything good and rational will ultimately triumph and be invincible has no basis in a mechanical worldview: after all, here there is absolute chance, why doesn’t the same chance that today exalts reason drown it tomorrow, and which today makes knowledge and truth expedient, tomorrow will not make ignorance and error equally expedient? Or does history not know the collapse and death of entire civilizations, or does it testify to correct and continuous progress? Let's forget about a global cataclysm or the freezing of the earth and universal death as the final ending in the history of mankind, but in itself the prospect of absolute chance, full of impenetrable darkness and uncertainty, is not one of the invigorating ones. And one cannot object to this with the usual indication that future humanity will cope with its needs better than us, for after all, we are not talking about future humanity, but about ourselves, about our ideas about its destinies. It is unlikely that anyone will really be satisfied with such an answer. No, all that honest positive science has to say here is one thing: ignoramus and ignorabimus. She can unravel the hidden meaning of the story and its ultimate goal, while remaining herself. But, of course, the human spirit can never rest on this answer. To stop at such an answer means to turn your back on the most basic questions of conscious life, after which there is nothing left to ask. 75 And humanity, in its best representatives, has never turned its back on the question of the final purpose and destinies of the human race and has always responded to it in one way or another; Positivists also answer. And not only do they answer, but they founded on the idea of ​​the destinies of the future of humanity a religion that ignites the most sacred feelings in people, calling for heroism and struggle, inflaming modern hearts. Where did this conviction come from and this, as it were, firm knowledge of the future destinies of humanity, since positive science is not able to give it? It is from where all religious truths generally come, that is, what is religiously accepted as truth. Its source is religious faith, but a faith that crept in quietly, smuggled in, without its royal grandeur, but nevertheless asserted its dominance where it is considered that only science is called upon to reign. Thus, the attempt to build a scientific religion failed: faith powerfully asserted its rights where science wanted to dominate, and science deceived the expectations placed on it. But wasn’t the very dream of founding a religion that deals with the infinite and eternal, on that concrete and always limited foundation given by positive science, not erroneous, not utopian? One of two things is possible: either science will retain only its name, but will actually cease to be a science, or it will not be able to become a religion. The first thing happened. Let us now turn to a further consideration of the religion of progress. The subject of endless progress is humanity. Humanity fully plays the role of a deity in the religion of progress - it is such not only according to the idea of ​​the founders of this religion, Comte and, perhaps, Feuerbach (who is of particular importance for us due to his direct influence on Marx and Engels), but also according to the very essence of the matter. Why is it that humanity is deified, why is this impersonal subject endowed with the properties of a deity, first of all, eternity, or at least immortality, perfection, absoluteness (for only with the presence of these properties is a religious attitude possible)? A person is guided by a normal and unsuppressed religious need. Seeing the highest and final goal of existence in this transitory and accidental existence is unbearable for a person. But, according to the philosophy of positivism, the highest and absolute meaning of life, which denies its limitations and its conditionality, cannot be sought in the area of ​​the transcendent or in the area of ​​religious faith. It must be found in the world of experienced, sensory-tactile existence. Human thought is again presented with an insoluble task, the imaginary solution of which can only be obtained at the cost of internal contradictions and self-deception. Man is mortal, humanity is immortal; man is limited, humanity has the capacity for endless development. Living for others, a person overcomes the sting of death and merges with eternity. A vivid expression of this thought is given by Guyot in his wonderfully sublime discussion of immortality (in “Irréligion de l'avenir”): “Stoicism was right when, telling us about death, it convinced man to rise above it. We will find consolation in the thought that we have lived our lives honestly, fulfilled our duty, that life will continue unceasingly even after us, and, perhaps, a little thanks to us; that everything we love will live, that all our best thoughts, without a doubt, will be realized at least in part, that everything that was impersonal in our consciousness, that which we were only, as it were, a bearer (tout ce qui n'a fait que passer à traver vous), all this immortal heritage of humanity and nature, which we have received and constitutes the best part of us, all of it will live, continue, continually increase, be transmitted to others without disappearing; that the world is not at all like a broken mirror, that the eternal continuous connection of things retains its meaning, that you do not interrupt anything. To achieve full consciousness of this continuity of life means at the same time to determine the real meaning of this apparent break, the death of the personality, which is, perhaps, only the disappearance of a kind of living illusion. And yet,” the philosopher repeats for the second time, “in the name of reason, which understands death and must face it like everything that is understandable, one must not be a coward (pas être lâche).” It would be difficult for me to find a more successful and sublime expression for the view under discussion than that given by the French philosopher. And yet, with charming sincerity, he sounds a sad refrain: pas être lâche, do not be a coward in the face of this horror of disappearance. In order to characterize the teaching in question even more clearly by contrast, I will cite here Fichte’s view - the fruit of a lofty thought and an equally lofty mood, nourished, however, by other, much more gratifying thoughts (see “Bestimmung der Gelehrten”). Fichte speaks of the endless tasks of moral life: “Oh, this is the most sublime thought of all: if I take on this sublime task, I will never be able to completely fulfill it; and therefore, if the acceptance of this task is truly my purpose, I can never cease to act and, therefore, never cease to exist. What is called death cannot bring a break to my business; for my work must be completed, and therefore the time of my existence is not determined, and therefore I am eternal. By taking on this task, I at the same time joined eternity. I boldly raise my head to a formidable rocky ridge or a furious waterfall or to thundering, floating clouds in a sea of ​​fire, and say: I am eternal and I resist your power. Overthrow you all on me, you, the sky, and you, the earth, mingle in wild chaos, and you, all the elements, rage and rage, and erase in a wild struggle the last, only noticeable speck of dust in the ray of the sun of the body that I call mine - my will with its firm plan will bravely and calmly hover over the ruins of the universe, for I have taken upon myself the assignment determined for me, and it lasts longer than you: it is eternal, therefore I am eternal, just like it.” Here are two faiths, one of which can be called faith in the dead, the other in living immortality. But who is immortal and who is absolute in the first of these faiths, if man is mortal and relative? We already know the answer: humanity with its capacity for endless development. But what is this humanity and does it differ in its properties from man? No, it is no different from him, it simply represents a large, indefinite number of people, with all human properties, and receives as few new qualities in its nature as a heap of stones or grains compared to each individual stone and grain. What positivism calls humanity is a repetition in an indefinite space and time and an indefinite number of times of ourselves with all our weakness and limitations. Our life has an absolute meaning, price and purpose, and so does humanity; but if the life of each person, taken separately, is nonsense, an absolute accident, then the fate of humanity is also meaningless. Not believing in the absolute meaning of individual life and thinking to find it in the life of a whole collection of people like us, we, like frightened children, hide behind each other; we want to pass off a logical abstraction as a higher being, thus falling into logical fetishism, which is no better than simple idolatry, because it ascribes to a dead object created by us the features of a living God, The appearance of an absolute is given to the concept of humanity by the ability of endless development affirmed for it. But this infinity is only imaginary or apparent - bad infinity, according to Hegel’s terminology already known to us. It is based simply on the fact that the development of mankind in time, given at least the state of knowledge, cannot have an end indicated, and not at all on the fact that it cannot exist by the very concept. To understand this difference, it is enough to compare this bad infinity, or, better said, indeterminacy, indefinite duration with the idea of ​​infinity in Fichte, where it follows from the absolute nature of the goal served by infinite movement. But humanity, according to the view of positivism, does not have an absolute goal of development that could sanction this infinity and transform it, so to speak, from passive to active, from chance and uncertainty into reasonable necessity. Progress is not endless on the qualitative side. The conquests of the human mind and conscience, insofar as they are expressed in objective institutions, in general in all kinds of cultural benefits, of course, have no boundaries. But these objective achievements of all humanity as a whole for each given moment or for each generation constitute only a starting point from which one must move forward, for a given level of culture goes to him not as a conquest, the fruit of struggle and aspirations, but as a finished result. Progress itself does not consist in these objective results - one only has to assume that humanity has become quite achieved and has stopped in its development in order to understand that this can only mean death and complete decay - progress consists in a tireless movement forward. And the only real carriers of this movement are people (and not “humanity”), who are just as incapable of being satisfied and accepting their relative existence as absolute, as we are now. The idea of ​​humanity as an absolute also from this side turns out to be an illusion. So, the attempt to imagine humanity as an absolute leads to a vicious circle: we strive to give meaning to our existence through others, and others through us; the whole argument is up in the air. Religious faith in humanity is thus an unreasonable, blind faith; Compared to faith, which is based on metaphysical truths justified by reason, this faith, “which does not have such a rational foundation, is a kind of superstition. Thus, positivism, which strived only for positive knowledge and therefore fundamentally rejected both metaphysics and religious faith, ends up in superstition. Faith in humanity - this holy and cherished faith - is degraded by positive philosophy to the level of mere caprice and superstition. What exactly is the endless progress of humanity? Various answers have been and are being given to this question. The simplest and most common answer is that the goal of progress is to increase the happiness of as many people as possible. The point of view of both social and individual eudaimonism is ethically the crudest and is unable to respond to the demands of a more or less developed consciousness. It is based, among other things, on the assumption that a eudaimonic scale can be found and that the total amount of pleasure and pain in the world can be accurately determined, and one must strive to ensure that ultimately the plus exceeds the minus and continues to increase at the expense of the minus until the latter completely disappears. Social eudaimonism in this case comes close to the teachings of Hartmann, who also considers it possible to take into account the final balance of world joy and grief, but comes to completely opposite conclusions, and his eudaimonistic pessimism, peculiarly combined with evolutionary optimism, finds final approval in his metaphysics, in the doctrine of the unconscious as the absolute substance of the world and the absolutely random origin of the world as if due to the error of the absolute. (But we must give Hartmann justice that in his ethics he is a bitter enemy of all eudaimonistic tendencies.) The mere fact that in different cases this world balance is calculated differently, sometimes with a plus, sometimes with a minus, indicates the dubiousness of such arithmetic. The difficulty of drawing an exact balance is explained by the impossibility of finding a unit for measuring joy and grief, because in each of these states we have something individual, determined not quantitatively, but qualitatively, so the scale of measurement by time or number is not applicable here. Will we even be able to say about ourselves what sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, we have received more during not only our lives, but a day or a year? In addition, according to Solovyov’s apt remark (in “The Justification of Good”), this balance is not an object of direct perception, each pleasure or displeasure is perceived separately, and their algebraic sum is only a theoretical result. So, it is impossible to decide with certainty whether there is or does not exist any eudaimonic progress in history, especially since, along with new sources of pleasure, humanity also receives new sources of suffering, new illnesses and worries. The pursuit of universal happiness as the goal of history is an impossible undertaking, because this goal is completely elusive and indefinable. Social eudaimonism, essentially the same Epicureanism, is condemned by developed moral consciousness and due to the baseness of its basic principle. Happiness is a natural desire of a person (although it does not depend on his will), but only that happiness that is an incidental and unintentional result of moral activity and service to good is moral. If we put an equal sign between good and pleasure, then there is no fall and monstrous vice that would not be sanctified by this principle. The ideal from this point of view would be the conversion of humanity into an animal state, as accompanied by a minimum amount of suffering. This teaching is completely unable to appreciate the uplifting significance of suffering, its ethical significance. The predicate of all-blessedness is conceivable only in relation to God as the most perfect being; For a person, a moral life without struggle and suffering is impossible. Therefore, if moral life constitutes the true calling of man on earth, certain forms of suffering will always remain ineradicable. The “cross” is a symbol of suffering and sanctification. The desire to alleviate or eliminate the suffering of other people is one of the main forms of moral life and active love, and compassion is one of the main virtues (Schopenhauer wanted to see it as even the only one). It may therefore seem that the elimination of suffering as such is the guiding goal of all moral activity. But the incorrectness of this judgment will become clear to us as soon as we pay attention to the fact that not every suffering deserves our sympathy, not that which is rooted in the immoral aspirations of a given person, and not that which does not cripple, but morally elevates a person. We will not want to alleviate the suffering of the usurer, who lost the opportunity to take a usurious interest, and we will consider it madness to want to alleviate the suffering of Faust as Mephistopheles, who took him away from them on Walpurgis Night. On the contrary, we are obliged to strive to alleviate the people’s misfortunes, to fight poverty, disease, enslavement, everything that stands in the way of the spiritual development of the people. From here it turns out that compassion itself is under the control of a higher moral principle, and what is good in the moral sense should be valued by us above the suffering of both ours and others. The fight against human suffering loses the character of the main moral goal, and takes on the meaning of a subordinate one. 76 The basic view of modern political economy is permeated with a kind of eudaimonism, according to which the growth of needs and, consequently, the pleasures from their satisfaction is the basic principle of economic development. Culture and culture in the eyes of economic science is precisely the growth of needs and opportunities to satisfy them. One of the most decisive economists in this sense, Sombart, once directly called this growth of needs “Menschenwerden”. Such a straightforward point of view, which, without distinguishing between the needs of the spirit and the body, deifies the growth of needs as such, is not only erroneous, but also antimoral. Both economic life and economic science, which reflects this life, are subject to moral evaluation, and only this latter can protect against falling into crude materialism. The growth of material needs and their satisfaction is truly progressive only insofar as it liberates the spirit and spiritualizes man, and not insofar as it, by strengthening the area of ​​sensuality, contributes to a decline in spiritual life. To a certain extent, this growth of needs and economic progress constitutes a necessary precursor to spiritual development, sometimes the awakening of the individual (this, in my understanding, characterizes the current moment of economic development in Russia). But the growth of moral and sensory needs can lag behind each other and be separated from each other. In this case, the refining of sensuality, which does not excite, but suppresses the activity of the spirit, is a kind of moral disease, moral squalor, stemming from wealth, and not from poverty. Economists sometimes forget this two-sidedness of economic progress when, carried away by their special point of view, they identify it with the universal human and cultural one. 77 The eudaimonic ideal of progress as a scale when assessing historical development leads to directly antimoral conclusions in another respect. The suffering of some generations appears as a bridge to happiness for others; For some reason, some generations must suffer in order for others to be happy; with their suffering they must “manure the future harmony,” as Ivan Karamazov put it. But why should Ivan sacrifice himself to the future happiness of Peter, and does not Ivan, as a human individual, from this point of view, have the same rights to happiness as the future Peter? Isn’t it therefore quite logical and consistent with the eudaimonistic theory that Ivan’s desire to switch roles with the future Peter and make happiness his destiny, and his suffering? Doesn’t the theory of après nous le déluge, that is, complete egoism, seem provable from the principles of eudaimonism, along with the theory of progress?! On the other hand, what ethical value does this future happiness, bought by someone else’s sweat and blood, represent? Can such a price for progress and this happiness be justified in any way? Our descendants are seen as vampires feeding on our blood. To build one's happiness on the misfortune of others is in any case immoral, and the view that justifies such a course of action, even if only for the future generation, is also immoral. The presence of suffering from a eudaimonistic point of view is an absolute evil, and future happiness cannot and should not be purchased with this absolute evil. A world that was structured in a similar way and on similar principles would not be worth living in for a self-respecting person. He can only “respectfully return the ticket.” It is against such a world that Ivan Karamazov “revolts.” 78 Justice requires recognizing that although all versions of the theory of progress have some flavor of eudaimonism, none of them consistently pursues it as an exhaustive principle. Thus, next to happiness, the improvement of humanity is also set as the goal of progress. “Positivism considers,” says Comte, “the constant goal of our existence, personal and social, to be the general improvement (perfectionnement) first of our external situation, and then of our internal nature” (Syst. de pol. pos., I, 106). Limitless improvement is the content of progress for Condorcet, too, in his youthfully enthusiastic “Progrés de l'esprit humain.” There is no doubt that this ideal is much loftier than the previous one, but an attempt to substantiate it from the point of view of positivism leads to even greater difficulties. In order to talk about improvement as an approach or striving towards some ideal of perfection, you need to have this ideal in advance. And this is doubly true because this improvement is conceived as endless, therefore, none of the given stages of development possesses this perfection, therefore the concept of perfection cannot be obtained inductively, from experience. This ideal, therefore, on the one hand, does not fit within the framework of relative experience, in other words, it is absolute; on the other hand, this absolute ideal, the development and implementation of which “is contained in experience, obviously can only be of non-experiential or super-experimental origin. Here, too, the well-trodden path of experience necessarily leads us to the difficult and rocky path of speculation. Positivism once again borrows excessively from metaphysics, which again proves the impossibility of resolving the most basic questions of life and spirit within the boundaries of experimental knowledge. What has been said will have to be further strengthened when we turn to the last and most sublime formula of progress, according to which it consists in creating conditions for the free development of the individual. This formula, along with a more or less eudaimonic understanding of progress, is the esoteric wisdom of Marx, to which he owes his acquaintance with the philosophy of Hegel. It thus represents a direct borrowing from metaphysics, but it is done in the same external, mechanical way as the “upside-down rearrangement” of Hegel’s philosophy by Marx was generally accomplished. From a living formula, which stood in connection with the whole worldview and flowed organically from it, a dead scheme was obtained in which its philosophical meaning was killed, namely the doctrine of the development of the spirit towards freedom, i.e., self-consciousness. It is difficult to have a high opinion of this entire philosophical operation, but only as a result of such an operation a doctrine was obtained about the leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom, about the “Vorgeschichte”, after which the Geschichte will only begin. 79 The free development of the individual as an ideal of social development is the main and general theme of all classical German philosophy; it is expressed with the greatest strength and brightness in Fichte. We think that this ideal should currently have the meaning of a moral axiom. It is only an expression in other words of the main thought of Kant’s ethics about the autonomy of moral life, about the self-legitimacy of the will in the choice of good or evil. The will is no longer self-legal in the sense that any oppression, political, economic, social, influencing the individual, tends to mix in its transitory and deadening influence, to place someone else’s and imperious will where one self-legitimate will should reign and freely choose between good and evil. The liberation of the individual is therefore the creation of conditions for an autonomous moral life. This ethical axiom imparts axiomatic immutability, places above all doubt the legality and obligation of modern aspirations for political and economic democracy, gives them ethical sanction, and therefore raises them from a simple struggle for existence to the level of fulfillment of the moral law. 80 The reader understands that this is an idea of a super-experiential, metaphysical nature (that is why metaphysics gives the highest sanction to the modern social movement). One must have an unshakable conviction regarding what Fichte called “the vocation of man,” a certain idea of ​​his moral nature, in order to put forward such a purely negative demand as the free development of personality. The positive nature of this negative requirement is thus given by its metaphysical content. Deprived of this content, it, like all negatively defined concepts, is empty and meaningless. Marxism takes the formula in question, of course, without any metaphysical content. The personality here is not a bearer of absolute tasks, endowed with a certain moral nature and abilities, but entirely a product of historical development, changing with the latter. The concept of personality, strictly speaking, is completely absent here and is reduced only to the purely formal unity of the self. But in this case, what can the formula mean: free development of personality? And again positive science is knocking on the door of metaphysics... Finally, there remains an area where the impotence or insufficiency of positive theory, its inability to solve the most basic problems of worldview, is most pronounced. According to the basic idea of ​​the theory of progress, whatever the content of this latter may be, the future, which comes with natural necessity and is subject to the law of causality, is at the same time the ideal of activity, that is, an obligation, a moral order addressed to the will. Here we come across the fundamental antithesis of consciousness, the opposition between being and ought, and it does not take many words to show that experimental science is not able to cope with this antithesis. First of all, it is obvious that it is in no way possible to justify oughts from being. How can it follow from the fact that a given event will actually occur that I should strive for it as a matter of course? Why do I classify some of my past actions, which have absolutely equal significance from the point of view of their general dominance of the law of causality, as moral, in agreement with the law of obligation, and others as immoral, in disagreement with it, and my conscience torments me for them, although I cannot change and destroy them? All the sophistications of positivists to present morality as a fact of natural development (and thereby undermine its holiness by equating it with all other natural needs, such as hunger, sexual reproduction, etc.) concern only individual forms, special expressions of morality, but they presuppose the very fact of the existence of morality, without which these very studies would be impossible. (Thus, atheists, the more ardently they prove the non-existence of God, the more clearly they discover what role this problem plays in their consciousness and how much God is present in it, at least as an object of negation.) Must is of super-experiential origin, and since our life is permeated with ought, we can say that the life of people consists of a constant combination of the experimental and super-experiential principles. The problem of ought is only a general designation for a whole series of problems, and in the face of all of them the positive theory of progress is silent. Oughtness refers to the will; it necessarily presupposes the possibility of moral volition, the possibility of choice; therefore, it is unthinkable without free will. At the same time, all actions are motivated, that is, they are subject to the law of causality. Philosophy has to combine this possibility of combining free will and determinism. Determinism must respectfully step aside to make room for moral action, but it must keep the series of causal connections constantly closed, for any interruption destroys experience. Turned to the future, free will sees only an obligation, but experience sees in this future only causes and consequences. Is there any connection between causation and ought and the corresponding principles of necessity and freedom, and which of them is primary? These are the questions that must be posed by the antithesis being analyzed and which can only be resolved through metaphysical synthesis. And indeed, all these questions were the central questions of metaphysics of all times; in particular, the question of freedom and necessity is the main problem of the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. This problem was posed with complete clarity only by those who once and for all showed the relativity of experimental knowledge and the conditional rights of science and, along with the necessity reigning in the world of experience, showed the possibility of transcendental, intelligible freedom. Schopenhauer rightly considers this distinction one of the greatest achievements of the human mind and Kant’s immortal merit in philosophy. But Kant dualistically opposed experiential necessity and intelligible freedom, and therefore all the efforts of post-Kantian philosophy were aimed at overcoming this dualism and showing the ultimate triumph of freedom. This is the theme and main content of the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Thus, we have reviewed all the main problems of the theory of progress and came to the general conclusion that all these problems exceed the strength of positive science and are either not resolved by it at all, or lead to internal irremovable contradictions, or are resolved with the help of smuggling, that is, by introducing elements alien to it under the flag of positive science. Thanks to this confusion, positive science is placed in an ambiguous position and at the same time the rights of metaphysics and religious faith are grossly violated. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to carefully distinguish between the various elements and problems that are mixed up in the theory of progress. It is necessary to return to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. A correct formulation of the theory of progress must show by what means the problems it poses are solvable, to what more general problems these solutions necessarily lead; it must, therefore, distinguish between and in this area restore science, metaphysics and religion to their rights. The further presentation will be devoted to an attempt to make this distinction and give a proper formulation to the problems of the theory of progress. The first and main task that the theory of progress sets itself is to show that history has meaning, and the historical process is not only evolution, but also progress. It proves, therefore, the ultimate identity of causal regularity and rational purposiveness; in this sense, as we have already said, it is a theodicy. It thus sets itself the goal of revealing the higher mind, which is both transcendental and immanent in history, revealing the plan of history, its goal, the movement towards this goal and the forms of movement. 81 We have already seen that this entire task turns out to be beyond the capabilities of positive science and is generally insoluble by means of experiment alone. But the task itself is posed absolutely correctly, and it inevitably presents itself to the philosophizing mind, which seeks constant, unchanging existence in the stream of transitory events and does not agree to see in history only a dead causal connection. This task is super-experimental, metaphysical, and the answer to it can be given by a speculative discipline, which until now has been called the philosophy of history, but which, perhaps, it would be more correct and accurate to call the metaphysics of history. The metaphysics of history, of course, does not have an independent, independent character; it is only a part or department of the general metaphysical system, a particular application of general metaphysical principles to the historical life of mankind. Therefore, in terms of its content, the metaphysics of history is determined by the general metaphysical views of this or that philosopher, and it will be one for Hegel, another for Schopenhauer, another for Bl. Augustine, another, finally, by V.S. Solovyov. A classic and at the same time dazzling example of the metaphysics of history is the historical philosophy of Hegel (of course, this does not mean that it can satisfy the needs of modern scientific consciousness). The metaphysics of history is the revelation of the absolute in the relative; it seeks to see how the eternal radiance of the absolute is reflected in the limited frame of space and time. For its content, therefore, it is essential not only how the absolute is understood, but also how wide this framework is, that is, how extensive the historical study is in space and time, and also how deep it is. This affirms the inextricable connection between the metaphysics of history and the positive content of the latter; metaphysics should not only ignore the positive progress of historical science, but must constantly take it into account, thus expanding its tasks of interpreting the meaning of this historical material. It is natural that the metaphysics of history is bad if it ignores or is in conflict with the data of the historical science of the moment being studied. Anyone who wants to create a metaphysics of the history of science must be as much a philosopher as a historian. We have already said that the problems of the metaphysics of history are irreducible from our consciousness, and we should not think that they will ever be completely eliminated; only the content of the answers given to the basic questions of the metaphysics of history changed, and some schools (like positivism and materialism) denied the transcendental meaning of history, considering mechanical causality to be the absolute beginning, while others sought absolute reason in history. What does it mean to find the meaning of a story? This means, first of all, to recognize that history is the revelation and fulfillment of one creative and reasonable plan, that the historical process expresses global, providential thought. Therefore, everything that has been and will be in history is necessary for the disclosure of this plan, for the purposes of reason. As Hegel says, “every development has content and is of interest... Everything that, taken in itself, is limited, receives its value because it belongs to the whole and is a moment of development of the idea” (Moment der Idee). In this sense, Hegel’s prophetic word receives its full meaning: “everything that is real is reasonable, and what is reasonable is real.” But this position, which for Hegel is the last conclusion of his brilliant system and the final product of the gigantic work contained in it, is at the same time the main theme of the metaphysics of history, the main problem that it must solve. This is the problem of theodicy in the proper sense of the word, and the metaphysics of history necessarily includes this problem, the same one that Yves poses with such decisiveness. Karamazov (see previous article). This Karamazovian question is the greatest and most important problem not only of the metaphysics of history, but of all moral philosophy. Here a “justification of good” must be given (as the late Soloviev formulated this same problem), which is at the same time an explanation of the existence of evil, evil in nature, in man, in history. Philosophy here is tasked with finding a point of view in which the existence of evil in the world seems not only acceptable, but in a certain sense expedient and relatively reasonable; With this understanding, evil loses the significance of an original principle, and its internal, final powerlessness is revealed. If we admit that history is the revelation of the absolute, then we already accept that in history only the dead regularity of causality does not reign, for it expresses the regularity of the development of the absolute. The causal pattern of history in this sense takes on the meaning of a auxiliary means for the purposes of the absolute. On the other hand, we thereby accept that there is a living and intelligent force in history that goes further than our intentions and directs them. And our free aspirations and actions, in a certain sense, turn out to be a means to the ends of the absolute. Hegel, in his peculiar language, called this the cunning of reason (List der Vernunft). “The mind is as cunning as it is powerful. Cunning generally consists in mediating activity, which, forcing objects to act according to their own nature on each other and without directly interfering with this process, brings into fulfillment only the own goals of the mind. In this sense, we can say that God's providence relates to the world process and the world as absolute deceit (als die absolute List). God permits men to act upon their own interests and passions, but what results therefrom represents the fulfillment of His purposes, which are distinct from the immediate purposes of those whom He employs.” Positive science also knows the deceit of history. One cannot judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, says Marx (in the famous preface to “Zur Kritik der pol. Oekon.”); you need to ask the economic basis about this. This idea of ​​the deceitfulness of the economic basis or of a generally dead historical pattern is capable of killing all energy and all moral enthusiasm, because it leaves the final outcome of our personal intentions in complete uncertainty, leaving the final outcome of our personal intentions to the will of absolute chance. True, they propose to fight this by comprehending this pattern and controlling it, but until now this pattern has not been (and will not be) comprehended in such a way as to give a completely reliable indication of individual activity. In this case, activity turns into a moral lottery: I, being inspired by good intentions, risk ultimately serving evil, and the servants of evil will turn out to be the benefactors of humanity. However, no matter how convinced we are that history represents the revelation of absolute reason, and no matter how conscientiously we strive to understand this reason, our search will always remain imperfect, and this reason more or less hidden from our weak eyes. To know the mind of all things, to understand equally “every blade of grass in the field and every star in the sky” is available only to the omniscience of God. For us, individual events of both our own life and history will forever remain irrational, and we have to reckon with this irrationality of reality, representing the struggle between good and evil, in our activities. Evil is irrational by its very concept, and if, for one reason or another, it exists in history, is immanent to it, then at the same time a certain irrationality is immanent to it, hiding from us the transcendental rationality of all things, although it can be postulated by metaphysics and constitute the subject of rational faith. But doesn’t this mean that we must abandon the metaphysics of history if its main postulate is impossible for us to fulfill, and surrender to the calm or despair of agnosticism? 82 Or is there a middle path on which the metaphysics of history still becomes possible? The metaphysics of history actually includes two problems: first, the problem of theodicy in the narrow sense, that is, about the possibility and significance of evil in history and human life; secondly, the problem of the main content of history, or the problem that is being solved by historical humanity. In relation to this task, given the existence of the struggle between good and evil in history, all historical events are presented with a positive or negative indicator, moving to the right or left; History, from this point of view, is a gradual, albeit zigzag, progress accomplished through the struggle of good and evil, the movement of contradictions. The metaphysics of history in this part, in terms of the nature of the problems, completely coincides with the theory of progress in the generally accepted sense, with the significant difference that the main criteria of progress are not chosen arbitrarily, using the “subjective method,” but are subjected to critical testing and receive preliminary justification in metaphysics. However, with this understanding of the metaphysics of history, a new question arises. If we cannot make the goals of the absolute directly our own goals, then what should we be guided by in our immediate activities? But the absolute constantly guides us in life, constantly gives us instructions, punishes us for disobedience and mistakes. Every day and hourly we hear his authoritative voice, categorical, stern and unforgiving. This is conscience, a moral law, a categorical imperative, the absolute nature of which in philosophy is shown absolutely indisputably by Kant. The moral law tells us to want good, always and everywhere, for the sake of good itself. The absolute law of good must also be the law of our life. This law, when applied to historical development, tells us to want good in history and with our own efforts to contribute to the implementation of good, tells us, in other words, to want progress. Progress is, from this point of view, a moral task (as Professor Siebeck rightly points out in his excellent speech “Über die Lehre vom genetischen Fortschritte der Menschheit”, 83 not an ought, but an absolute obligation; the finite and relative cannot contain the absolute, in this sense progress is infinite. 84 To recognize the obligatory moral task of progress, is it necessary to be certain that this progress is carried out with mechanical necessity? Is it necessary, in other words, to lift the veil of the future and resort to scientific prophecies? No, no crutches are needed for the moral law. The absolute nature of his commands, to want good for the sake of good, does not stand in connection with any random conditions for the implementation of good in history. From the eudaimonistic point of view, of course, it makes a big difference whether this struggle is difficult or easy, whether it leads to victory or defeat, whether it requires heroic effort and courage or whether it is content with modest everyday work, but this does not change anything in the absolute nature of the moral command, once it is recognized as such in the face of one’s own conscience - it can be violated, but not changed. Suppose for a moment that we have the best possible forecast for the next 10 years, and based on this forecast, all our best aspirations are doomed to failure. Does it follow that they are no longer mandatory? No way. You can, because you must, this is the moral law. This formula is terrible, and there are few heroes who will not retreat to anything and go to death for what they consider their duty. But for those who are unable to follow the moral command, the pain of conscience testifies to the fact that this command has been violated, a sin has been committed. The positive theory of progress is a kind of eschatology designed to inspire fighters and support religious faith in the ultimate triumph of good. 85 But for this we need a different conviction, namely that our moral actions and thoughts have lasting significance, that they are taken into account by the absolute and are necessary for its deceit, in other words, the conviction in the existence of an objective moral world order, a kingdom of moral goals, in which our humble life will find its place. This sublime idea (ethical pantheism, as Windelband aptly put it) found its most complete development in the teachings of J. G. Fichte. For Fichte, it is “the most certain, even the basis of all loyalty, that there is a moral world order, that every rational being has a certain place assigned and his work is meant, that everything in his destiny is the result of this plan, that apart from it not a single hair will fall from his head... that every good deed succeeds, every bad one fails,” etc. In a certain sense, in Fichte’s system, the existence of other people, and then the external world, even the existence of God, everything is proven from the necessity of this idea of ​​​​a moral world order; the world exists only insofar as it is an arena for moral activity. (It is not difficult to recognize in this teaching of Fichte the further developed teachings of Kant about the primacy of practical reason and the moral proof of the existence of God.) So, the main premises of the theory of progress are as follows: moral freedom of the human person (freedom of will) as a condition for autonomous moral life; the absolute value of the individual and the ideal nature of the human soul, capable of endless development and improvement; absolute reason ruling the world and history; the moral world order, or the kingdom of moral goals, goodness not only as a subjective representation, but also an objective and powerful principle. All these provisions in their totality are included as an irreducible part of the philosophy of theism, namely Christian theism (although, of course, they far from exhaust its entire content). Consequently, the main problems of the theory of progress are at the same time problems of the philosophy of Christian theism and are solvable only on the basis of this philosophy, and the doctrine of progress is in fact a specifically Christian doctrine. We have already seen that the positive atheistic theory of progress is fatally based only on faith, albeit covered with a scientific garb. In its objective content, this faith is unconscious and inconsistent, or rather, indecisive and partial theism, 86 but, not understanding its actual genesis and support and thanks to the failure of attempts to rely on science, based on faith alone, the positive theory of progress is unprovable, irrational and therefore unscientific. The question now is whether the theory of progress must always remain at this level, or whether it, being brought into connection with its actual philosophical foundations, can become a rational theory, provable by the arguments of reason? And if the theory of progress is included as part of the philosophy of Christian theism, then the question comes down to whether the doctrine of Christian theism (and in it the theory of progress) represents an exclusive object of faith, or can it, in addition, be made the subject of philosophical research and rational proof (with the degree of persuasiveness, of course, that philosophical positions that are inaccessible to empirical verification and based only on logical argumentation can generally have)? I adhere to the latter opinion and find the most successful philosophical justification for Christian theism (and in it the theory of progress) in the philosophy of V. Solovyov. In any case, the solution to all these problems (and not only positive, but also negative) takes us beyond the boundaries of experimental science, that is, into metaphysics. The moral law, despite the absolute nature of its commands, is implemented only for specific purposes. This poses a new task for moral life - to fill the empty form of absolute obligation with specific relative content, to find a bridge from the absolute to the relative, to establish the difference between good and evil in concrete life. This is where positive science comes to the rescue. It is the arsenal in which the moral will chooses its weapons. In particular, as for the social sciences that study various forms of social existence in the past and present, in our time they are, as it were, specially called upon to orient in reality and illuminate good and evil in social life. As in everything relative, reason follows a shaky path here: the concepts of good and evil in concrete life are controversial, mistakes are possible, only the very concept of good and evil, which unites all people, is not controversial. A person, to the extent of the understanding of reality that he has managed to achieve (and in which science plays an important role), from the boundless sea of ​​evil chooses exactly what can and should be eliminated now and by his own forces, on what he should focus his struggle at the moment. At the same time, a person cannot, of course, do without determining the probabilities of this or that course of things, without looking into the future, without making predictions. From the totality of all these data and opinions comes the consciousness of what is called the historical task. Every century, every era has its own historical task, determined by the objective course of things. Thus, although the moral law is absolute, its commands have meaning sub specie aeterni, but its content is always given by history. To be a son of your time, to respond to all its calls, to understand all its tasks and to fight for their solution in the forefront - these are the duties that the moral law imposes. Without such content, this law is a clanking cymbal; it will not lead to achievement, but only to pharisaism and hypocrisy. Therefore, it is a pity for anyone who in our time is not able to see the radiance of the absolute moral ideal in the hearts of people who give themselves to help the proletariat in its struggle for their human dignity, who know how to live and die for the cause of freedom, who does not see it in the boring and prosaic paragraphs of the factory law or in the statutes of the workers' union, etc. Fichte's rigoristic ethics wants to subordinate his whole life, down to the smallest detail, to the control of the moral. law. Perhaps such a sublime understanding of ethics is beyond the power of the average person to implement, but it is indisputable that there is nothing morally indifferent where the human will acts, and this applies not only to actions, but also to human institutions (primarily law), which, after all, represent only the repetition of a certain series of actions that has become a rule. Therefore, the liberation of the peasants, the institution of zemstvo chiefs, the fixation of zemstvo taxation, city reform, and censorship and university statutes are subject to moral assessment. Everything is good or evil. Positive historical science, as well as sociology (understanding the first as concrete history, the second as a system of abstract concepts) are, of course, concerned with the establishment and causal explanation of reality, which represents the arena of moral activity. The group of social sciences is of great ethical importance, since these sciences most of all help to recognize good and evil in complex reality and indicate the most fruitful ways to combat evil; they develop along with the growing complexity of social life. Thus, social science has a completely definite and, moreover, enormous practical significance; it is currently, one might say, the sine qua of moral action. 87 Of course, I in no way want to say that the value and significance of social science is exhausted by this utilitarian application. The interests of pure knowledge represent too high an independent value for modern humanity to make it possible to completely subordinate any science to utilitarian considerations alone. 88 We already know that faith has an irreducible and completely independent significance in human life. Only it makes certain that which is doubtful, like any subject of human knowledge, only it warms cold theoretical knowledge with the warmth of the heart and makes it the basis of behavior, not only external, but also internal, not only actions, but also feelings. Faith establishes a religious attitude towards those truths that are the product of knowledge and thought, and at the same time it extends the realm of the undoubted to places where science is lacking. In this sense, you can believe, for example, in your calling, in your idea, in your task; one can believe in the imminent realization of known goals, even if science is silent regarding this. Without faith, a religious attitude towards teaching is impossible, no matter how sublime it may be. Religion - whatever it may be - by its very idea permeates the entire active life of a conscious person. All the moral goals that he sets for himself must at the same time be the requirements of his religion. This idea is expressed by Kant when he gives the following definition of religion: “Religion (in the subjective sense) is the recognition of all our duties by the commands of God” (“Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft”). Each person, therefore, must solve a difficult task in his life: to combine the absolute with the relative, to determine his activities in such a way that it meets the requirements of his religion, to become imbued with the consciousness that these very deeds and these very duties are what our God wants from us. The solution of this question of practical religion, the famous question of “what to do,” is extremely difficult and opens full scope to boundless and endless doubts. To put an end to them, to morally put a person on his feet and establish a person, only faith can do this. Without it, therefore, a person cannot take a step in the most basic issues of life. Faith is a completely independent ability of the spirit, which is far from equally distributed among people. There is talent and genius of faith, just as there is philosophical or scientific genius. If Hegel’s words are true that nothing in history was accomplished without great passion, then they are true in the precise sense that nothing great is accomplished without passionate faith in oneself and in one’s achievement; It was she who led the martyrs of the idea to the stake, and to torture, and to prison, and to exile, and to death. But just as knowledge constantly presupposes ignorance and is, in essence, a transition from ignorance to knowledge, so faith presupposes doubt and the struggle with unbelief, and this is the life of faith. The classic formula for the psychology of faith in this sense is the words of the Gospel story: I believe, Lord, help my unbelief! You cannot believe in something obvious, for example, that two and two make four - there is no place for faith, which always deals with what allows doubt. Therefore, we are denied firm support from the outside; the power of faith must be found within ourselves; faith itself is a moral task. Faith in goodness has never diminished in humanity, no matter what form it takes, but there are eras of history marked by the decline of faith or its rise. No development of knowledge and brilliance of material culture can compensate for the decline of faith; it can be assumed that humanity will lose its science, its civilization, just as it lived without them for centuries. But a complete loss of faith in goodness would mean moral death, from which no powers of science, no tricks of civilization could save. Let me conclude by making a few comments regarding the tasks of modern philosophy. Hegel rightly pointed out that “just as each individual is the son of his time, so philosophy expresses in thought a given era” (ist ihre Zeit in Gedanken erfasst), and that “the task of philosophy is to understand what exists.” What are the features of our time that his philosophy must take into account? The main features of the history of philosophical thought in the 19th century are known. At the beginning of the century, philosophy experienced an almost unprecedented flowering, when in less than half a century Germany produced four philosophical geniuses: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel (not counting Schopenhauer). In Hegel the pinnacle of philosophical speculation was reached, and his philosophy reigned, albeit briefly, in all the most important branches of thought. Then came the collapse of metaphysics. The prophetic words of Hegel, who wrote in the preface to Logic, were justified: “If science unites with common sense (which Hegel always treated with contemptuous irony) in order to cause the destruction of metaphysics, apparently a strange spectacle may result: it will become possible to see an educated people without metaphysics, similar to a once variously decorated church without the most expensive shrine (ohne Allerheiligstes)". What Hegel considered an unlikely possibility became a reality soon after his death, and for more than half a century this “strange spectacle” could be seen. The power of scientific thought at this time went into positive science, humanity was intoxicated by the successes of natural science and technology based on it. The highest needs of the spirit were satisfied, as we already know, by the positive theory of progress and the religion of humanity. But, of course, this state of affairs could not last forever. The limitations of the competence of natural science and positive science in general, which had already lost the courage to deny metaphysics, began to become clearer more and more. Then philosophical thought began to raise its head. It is interesting that she was so stunned by the flourishing of the positive sciences and to such an extent that she lost the living philosophical tradition that she took a roundabout path in her development, taking as her starting point not Hegel, but Kant, and, moreover, not the genuine, historical Kant, but Kant only “Critique of Pure Reason”, which does not play a primary role in the general system of Kant’s philosophical views, but has only, so to speak, propaedeutic significance. Therefore, the central problem of modern philosophy has become epistemological; The development of the theory of knowledge constitutes a special merit of the latest philosophical thought. But thought, of course, could not stop at the theory of knowledge, but sooner or later had to turn to knowledge itself; in other words, having recognized the true Kant, go to his successors. In this way the philosophical tradition will be restored; modern philosophy, contrary to the opinion of the neo-Kantians, should not only be a development of “critical” philosophy, it should provide a creative synthesis of all the latest philosophical systems, or at least reckon with them. But a modern philosophical system must not only know its entire spiritual inheritance, but it must also take into account the acquisitions of the time when this inheritance was in the position of hereditas jacens, without an heir. It must introduce and rework all the final conclusions of modern positive science. Philosophy has never been given such a difficult task as it is now, but our time is full of philosophical forebodings and, I believe, our young age will reveal an unprecedented flowering of metaphysics. Formally, the specified requirements of the latest philosophical systems are most satisfied by Ed systems. f. Hartmann and V.S. Solovyov; Solovyov’s philosophy is, in my eyes, so far the last word of world philosophical thought, its highest synthesis. But philosophy must stand at the height of its time in another sense, it must embrace not only science, but also the life of its time, understand its demands and, one way or another, respond to them. Not a single great philosopher has turned his back to reality and its tasks; classical German philosophy gave the ideal of the philosopher-citizen in the person of Fichte. The pulse of Hegel's mighty Miguel still beats in Marxism. And modern philosophy must face the great social struggle of our days, be its expresser and interpreter; it should not isolate itself from life in the office, which is the sin of modern German philosophy, the bourgeois sympathies of whose representatives, unfortunately, do not remain without influence on their social views. Thanks to this, a strange misunderstanding arose between philosophy and life, in which consciousness was lost as to how life is necessary for philosophy and philosophy is necessary for life. And philosophy is necessary for life now more than ever, thanks to some features of the historical moment we are experiencing. Everyone knows what a crisis the labor movement, which considers the teachings of Marx as its religion, is now experiencing. This crisis is not of an economic or political nature; on the contrary, its very possibility is conditioned by the growing power of the movement, but of a moral, and I will even say, religious nature. We already know that Marxism is the most extreme version of the theory or religion of progress; he inspired his supporters with faith in the imminent and natural arrival of a different, perfect social system, the end of Vorgeschichte and the beginning of Geschichte. He was therefore strong not in his scientific, but in his utopian elements, not in his science, but in his faith. Now discarded as utopian, the doctrine of social catastrophe (Zusammenbruchstheorie) and the “leap” into the kingdom of freedom was the central nerve of former Marxism, its eschatology. But this faith, misdirected, was bound to dissipate, or at least weaken, as the movement grew. More and more practical tasks came to the fore, overshadowing the final goals. The former socio-political utopianism was replaced by socio-political realism, which was quite coincidentally associated with the name of Bernstein. Modern development is thus distinguished by its two-sided character: on the one hand, the practical gains of the working class are strengthening, on the other, former religiously enthusiastic beliefs are being lost and killed; the prosaic light of day is brought into the twilight of the sanctuary. The decline of idealism (in this case expressed in social utopianism) threatens to lower the movement, deprive it of its soul, despite all the practical victories. I therefore fully understand the indignation of those who are outraged by this philistine-sacrilegious work. But at the same time, I consider it inevitable and historically necessary, and it is in vain that supporters of the old view want to fight it. It is impossible to revive faith once undermined. But it is possible and must create a new faith, find a new and more reliable source of moral enthusiasm. And this source should be seen in the elevating philosophy of idealism, to which, due to a strange misunderstanding, the labor movement is now turning its back. The point, obviously, is not about giving in or lowering even one of the practical demands of the modern social movement, but about returning to it moral strength and religious enthusiasm. In its practical program, the labor movement implements the emancipatory postulates of philosophical idealism, although on its theoretical banner it will put forward not economic materialism and class interest - this it can very well leave to its opponents - but the principles of idealism on which its demands can be firmly and indisputably based. Let, finally, the well-known words of Engels, who brought modern socialism into connection not only with Saint-Simon, Fourier, Lassalle, Marx, but also with Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, really come true. This connection exists and should be made known to the public consciousness. From this point of view, modern social struggle will appear to us not as one clash of hostile interests, but as the implementation and development of a moral idea. And our participation in it will not be motivated by class egoistic interest, but will be a religious obligation, an absolute order of the moral law, the command of God. Humanity will then return the lost harmony of the various spheres of activity of the spirit, and religion will take its rightful central place and become the basis of people’s thought and activity. When the Teacher of Love was asked what the main content of the law was, He expressed it in two commandments, the first commandment being about love for God, and the second, derivative, about love for one’s neighbor. He indicated by this the correct normal relationship between religious and social interest and, without detracting from the significance of the latter, he, however, gave it second place. In modern humanity this correct relationship has been lost, and modern doctrine recognizes only the second commandment, subordinating or replacing the first with it. We have seen what logical contradictions this doctrine suffers from and how little it can satisfy the thoughtful adept. It thus fell to the lot of this doctrine to negatively confirm the truth, showing the complete impossibility of its denial. PI this is the positive meaning of the theory of progress, because for the full disclosure of the truth it is necessary not only its affirmation and positive development, but also its consistent negation. Post-scriptum. – That part of the previous article, where the problem of the metaphysics of history was formulated, caused significant misunderstandings. I found it most convenient to express the idea of ​​planned historical development with the well-known formula of the great representative of objective idealism and the dialectical, or evolutionary, method - Hegel: “everything that is real is rational,” that is, it is subordinated to a reasonable plan, has a reasonable goal. (At the same time, of course, a reservation was made that, without sharing Hegel’s doctrine itself, I was posing only his problem.) The formula “everything that is real is rational” has a whole history, and both right and left Hegelians, conservatives and revolutionaries relied on it; I believed that the old and gross misunderstandings regarding it were now impossible, and therefore I used it calmly, without fear of misinterpretations, without unnecessary, as it seemed to me then, reservations and explanations, but, unfortunately, I was mistaken in my calculations. Therefore, I will try to explain what I wanted to say. The idea of ​​the rationality of the world-historical plan and the “cunning of reason” (List der Vernunft) outrages many, first of all, because it supposedly denies human freedom, and the individual turns into a plaything of the absolute with its cunning or into zero. 89 But who, however, makes such a reproach and takes upon himself the role of defender of freedom and individual identity? Free will theorists? Representatives of spiritualistic metaphysics and the doctrine of the substantiality of the soul? Nothing happened. This reproach comes from the lips of positivists who came to the defense of freedom and the independent role of the individual in history with one law of causality in their hands. Recognition of the absolute dominance of the law of causality and the denial of the existence or, at least, the knowability of any being other than the sensory-phenomenal, pure phenomenism - this is their philosophical catechism. Where is the place for freedom and, in general, for any independent significance of personality, if it is entirely and without any remainder a product of this mechanical causality? If all the past and present are determined, and the future is predetermined, then freedom is a subjective psychological state, completely illusory, only of everything. 90 And in this respect, the various forms of positive philosophy of history, economic materialism, and subjective sociology do not differ at all from each other. 91 Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt - this formula (once used by me to characterize the “inexorable objectivism” of the materialist understanding of history) flawlessly expresses the essence of positive determinism, and I very much ask those who will deny this and again reproach me with fatalism, to show me the possibility of another solution, another way out of the antinomy of freedom and necessity on the basis of a positive worldview. In the meantime, I will console myself with the thought that if I were truly guilty of fatalism, I would share this guilt with my accusers. But can metaphysical or providential determinism really only be fatalism, which, in my opinion, inevitably is positive determinism? Of course, opinions differ on this issue, and, as is known, there are metaphysical and theological doctrines in which free will is completely denied. 92 Nevertheless, if one way or another it can be proven at all, then only outside the boundaries of experimental science, that is, metaphysically. In any case, in my article I did not give reason to classify myself as a supporter of metaphysical fatalism, for I speak in it about duty, and about the categorical imperative, and about historical obligations, in a word, about such things that a fatalist, perhaps, should remain silent. On the contrary, I strive to reconcile necessity and freedom in my worldview, without sacrificing either freedom in favor of all-consuming determinism, or objective law in favor of absolute occasionalism and personal arbitrariness. The world and historical process can be thought of as such a planned process, the initial plan of which includes human freedom as its basic and necessary condition. In this case, it appears to be the interaction of human freedom, the free efforts of historical humanity and the creative or divine principle, a divine-human process, and since the human heart is open to the omniscience of absolute reason (and, consequently, all future actions of people), the existence of a common providential plan is possible without any constraint on human freedom. Of course, such a solution to the question of freedom and necessity can only be proposed in connection with an integral metaphysical doctrine. 93 Only such a solution to the question, in which both freedom and necessity are combined, can satisfy the demands of immediate consciousness or practical reason. There is no need to prove the importance of recognizing freedom: it is not without reason that there are endless debates about the role of the individual in history and about free will, which is too dear a good for humanity to even theoretically abandon it with a light heart. 94 That is why the accusation of fatalism sounds like a heavy reproach in the mouths of even those who philosophically stand on the basis of fatalism, although they do not realize it. It is just as difficult for our consciousness to reconcile with naked fatalism with freedom, devoid of any connection with necessity or regularity and representing the purest occasionalism, in which the results of human activity depend on elusive chance. 95 If man were omnipotent, then freedom would completely merge for him with necessity, and the opposition between them would not exist. But since a person, being free to desire anything, does not feel omnipotent in fulfilling his desires and is subject to the necessity of the external world, he strives to rely on its objective laws, to align his free aspirations with the natural course of things. This is the root of the psychological reason for the constant and persistent search for the laws of social development, as well as for the charm that Marxism had and still has on many, promising - and in such a definite and scientific form - support for the objective course of things for free ideal aspirations. The idea of ​​a moral world order has a similar meaning in the metaphysical worldview, which consists in the fact that our free moral aspirations and actions are provided for in the world plan and are necessary for it, and therefore sooner or later they will bear good fruits. So, for life, ideas and freedom and necessity are equally dear and necessary, and our practical consciousness cannot refuse either one or the other without significant damage. And it was their philosophical combination that I put forward as one of the “main problems” of the theory of progress. The Hegel formula I used gave rise to another misunderstanding that was completely unexpected for me: it was interpreted in the sense that everything that is real is moral, that is, in the sense of completely denying any difference between good and evil or preaching the most criminal moral indifferentism (no matter how this wild interpretation contradicts the entire content of my article). The formula “everything that is real is rational” can in no way mean that in reality neither evil nor suffering exists; it expresses only the idea that the world and historical process is the fulfillment of a good and reasonable plan and is directed towards a reasonable goal. This idea is not at all alien to the positive theory of progress, which, while depicting a future paradise on earth as the goal of the efforts of present humanity, also assumes a certain expediency in history, although it considers it not the work of a higher mind, but the result of a game of causes and effects. The specific difficulty that arises here for the theistic worldview is the problem of theodicy: is it possible to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the recognition of a rational, good and powerful principle, is it possible to recognize the moral necessity and permissibility of evil in the world? It cannot be denied that this is perhaps the most difficult question of the entire theistic worldview. But no matter how we resolve it, its very formulation presupposes a completely clear distinction between good and evil - the highest truth in no way cancels our earthly truth, and with the recognition of the reasonableness of the general plan of history, we are in no way freed from the obligation to love good and hate evil and fight against it, since it has been given a place in life and history. This recognition can only strengthen confidence in the victory of good and thereby raise the spirit to fight evil. 96 Published in the collection “Problems of Idealism.” Moscow, 1902 Wed. for an example of Haeckel's discussion of atheistic religion: Die Welträthsel. Volksausgabe. 1903. Th. 4. A unique and practically extremely important intermediate step between faith and knowledge is the so-called conviction. Conviction is subjectively the most valuable part of our opinions for us, but at the same time, one can only be convinced of something that does not have the character of logical indisputability, but is more or less supported by faith. You cannot be convinced, for example, that today is such and such a date. As the reader can see, here only the fact of the psychological inevitability of faith from our consciousness is stated, which is further confirmed by the analysis of the theory of progress. 'But stating this fact, of course, does not yet resolve the question of the epistemological rights of faith (see the article on Solovyov's philosophy on this). The essence of the mechanical worldview is artistically expressed by Turgenev in a “prose poem” entitled “Nature”. “Conversation” is dictated by a similar mood. The present work had already been written when the major study appeared: Heinrich Rickert. Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften. Zweite Hälfte. Tübingen und Leipzig, 1902. (A Russian translation by A. M. Woden is being prepared.) The thesis about the impossibility of establishing historical laws and predictions has been proven here completely irrefutably, so that any further evidence on the merits of the matter is completely unnecessary. Referring the reader to Rickert’s book (whose general epistemological views I, however, do not share at all), I leave this paragraph unchanged, although I am fully aware of its insufficiency and incompleteness. The word "trend", although one of the frequently used (and abused) expressions, does not represent any specific term at all. Most often it is used not in relation to the future, but to the present, and it simply denotes a generalizing result of the study of individual facts. For example, if, based on an analysis of statistical data, we come to the conclusion that the trend of modern development is the concentration of production, then this is simply the most general formula that expresses the meaning of the development that has taken place so far and summarizes it. But devoid of such factual content, and only mentally continued from the present to the future, this tendency immediately turns into a common place, into a game of the mind, devoid of any serious meaning. Wed. article “Problems of Political Economy”. The reason for the fundamental impossibility of historical predictions, in addition to the fact that history deals with individual events that are not repeated in all their individual complexity, is also the fact that the course of history is determined not only by sociological reasons already known to us, the general conditions of historical development, but also by the activities of individuals. Meanwhile, every human personality (regardless of what we think about its spiritual nature in general) is something completely new in history, beyond any prediction. Of course, the influence that can be exerted on the course of development by each individual person may be imperceptibly small, although among great people it reaches very tangible proportions. But the very possibility of the appearance of certain individuals at different moments in history turns it into an equation with an indefinite number of unknowns. Unlike natural science, which has to deal with a certain number of elements and with certain forces of nature, history deals with an indefinite number of elements constantly appearing and being destroyed, so the law of constancy of energy does not apply here. In this sense, we can say that the creation of the world, that is, its forces and elements, not only cannot be considered finished, but continues continuously, and the spiritual forces of the world change and fluctuate not only in connection with historical progress and regression, but also simply with the birth and death of each human personality. On the epistemological inconsistency of consistent determinism and the resulting impossibility of social predictions, see the article “On the Social Ideal.” In the final chapter of my book “Capitalism and Agriculture” I spoke out about the fiction of social agnosticism, but in various places in it I did not refuse to judge the immediate future of development (mainly about the tasks of social policy), as far as I was able to formulate a judgment about this. At the same time, I did not consider it necessary to explain and stipulate the difference between these judgments, which have the nature of personal conviction, and an accurate forecast regarding the entire social development, the possibility of which I fundamentally deny. To my surprise, the imaginary contradiction became, as it were, a locus minons resistenliae for objections to my book. Concluding the book “Capitalism and Land Division” with an expression of the conviction of ignorabimus in the field of positive science, I, of course, in no way assumed that the whole matter ends with positive science and this ignorabimus. The impossibility and even intolerability of this point of view as an exhaustive teaching was clear to me even then, and its philosophical completion was only a matter of time. Of course, I am not preaching here either self-flagellation or all sorts of medieval fanaticism, and certainly not sanctioning poverty, lack of rights, hunger strikes, etc., as some readers interpreted this passage. It is obvious that not all suffering has an elevating effect; on the contrary, many sufferings, especially physical ones, can only humiliate and demoralize a person (for negative hedonism, see the article “On the Economic Ideal”). But if we deny hedonistic morality, which resolves the issue simply and definitely, considering pleasure as such to be good and suffering to be evil, then we must raise a particularly fundamental question about the ethical value of suffering. This question was posed by the father of autonomous morality, Kant (in “Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft”), where it is resolved in connection with Kant’s teaching about “radical evil in human nature.” Thanks to the latter, “the transition from a state of depravity to virtue is in itself a self-sacrifice and the beginning of a long series of life disasters... which a person undergoes voluntarily for the sake of good.” This issue is discussed in more detail in the article “On the Economic Ideal.” Wed. previous article “Ivan Karamazov as a philosophical type.” Our positivists reproach Marx for retaining some traces of Hegelian metaphysics; Engels and orthodox Marxists see this, on the contrary, as a virtue; in their opinion, Marx retained all the advantages of Hegelian philosophy, for example, the dialectical method. We cannot help but express regret that the connection between Hegelian philosophy and the teachings of Marx is distinguished by an external, mechanical character (even to the point of unnecessary imitation of Hegelian terminology), and is not the fruit of organic processing and further development of this philosophy. This issue is discussed in more detail in the article “On the Social Ideal.” “God cannot only be the God of geometry and physics; He must also be the God of history” (V. Solovyov. The Concept of God. In Philosophy and Ps., book 38, p. 409). I know that for many Kantians the combination of transcendence and immanence will seem like an epistemological contradiction. Together with Hegel, Schelling, Solovyov and others, I do not see a contradiction here. Rickert's arguments (op. cit.) against the metaphysics of history are entirely related to his epistemological constructions and outside of them they lose their convincing force. This is recommended, by the way, by Paulsen (in “Einleitung in die Philosophie”), which does not prevent him, however, from introducing a kind of theodicy from the back porch in the department of “faith.” This speech was published in Russian translation (under my editorship) under the title: Prof. Siebeck. Progress as a moral task. Kiev, 1903. On the absoluteness and therefore unattainability of the social ideal within the boundaries of history, cf. in the articles “Herzen’s Mental Drama,” Chapter I, and “On the Social Ideal.” About the insufficiency of this eschatology and about the eschatological problem in general, see the article “What does the philosophy of Vl. give to modern consciousness. Solovyov? Consistent atheism therefore leads to a complete denial of the theory of progress; We find such a sequence, by the way, in Herzen (see “The Mental Drama of Herzen,” Chapter II). For a special discussion of political economy, see the article “Problems of Political Economy.” Some critics have understood this article in such a way that I seek in it to undermine or belittle the rights of science, replacing it with the fantasies of metaphysics or subordinating it to blind faith and authority, and on this basis they have launched a ridiculous crusade in defense of science, apparently believing that science needs their protection. I will answer them as I once answered the Greek who began to zealously praise Plato: but does anyone scold him? The rights of science and scientific positivism remain beyond any dispute and above all doubt. Here the question was raised not about the rights of science within the boundaries of scientific research, but about these very boundaries: are all the questions that inevitably arise in a thinking person resolved in the field of science and scientific positivism, or are there questions that must be taken beyond these boundaries? II on the contrary: aren’t such tasks and problems imposed on science that obviously exceed its competence, and by this exaggeration aren’t the actual rights of science violated, as was the case in the theory of progress? This reproach can be found, by the way, in Herzen, who speaks with irony about the “providential charade” and does not want to be a “doll” intended to embody “some homeless idea.” (See “The Mental Drama of Herzen,” Chapter III.) This was quite rightly stated by me in the first article about Stammler. In general, in both articles written about his book (articles 1 and 2 of this collection), the question of freedom and necessity is resolved completely consistently in the spirit of positivism, that is, freedom is reduced to a psychological illusion, which exposes the fatalistic essence of determinism. I conscientiously tried to ward off this damning conclusion with verbal detours, feeling that here was the weakest point of my entire worldview at that time. True, the postulates of such consistent determinism actually cannot be fulfilled in social science, because they come into conflict with our direct consciousness of freedom (see the article “On the Social Ideal”). But this factual impossibility, which is of decisive importance for social science, does not solve the philosophical question of the mutual relationship between freedom and necessity and does not yet set a theoretical limit to the dominance of the law of causality. The reader will find a short outline of the history of the issue of free will (before Kant) in the article by Vl. Solovyov “Freedom of Will” in Eicycle. dictionary Unfortunately, among the articles in this collection, which arose mostly for some external reason, there is no article specifically devoted to this issue, and although I feel this gap, I am not able to fill it now. I personally find it in the philosophy of Vl. Solovyov, to whom I refer the reader. (Cf. article “What does the philosophy of Vl. Solovyov give to modern consciousness?”) I will remind you, as an artistic illustration, of Bourget’s excellent novel “The Apprentice.” The question of poly freedom is a central theme throughout this novel. This is the definition that Herzen usually takes of free will: cf. quotes on pp. 174–175, 176–177 of this book. I, following Solovyov, resolve this issue in connection with the doctrine of freedom (and the free choice of good and evil) as the main condition of the world process.