Что даёт современному сознанию философия Владимира Соловьёва? 133

In this essay, the author does not set himself the task of a complete presentation and proper analysis of Solovyov’s philosophy. Such a statement would hardly be timely in view of the stubborn indifference and suspicious distrust with which the leading part of our intelligentsia still regards Solovyov’s philosophy. Therefore, I am pursuing here a journalistic rather than a directly philosophical goal. I want to show, at least in pale outlines, the figure of the real Solovyov in all its colossal stature and thereby contribute to his identification. I consider this identification the most important, next task in the spiritual development of our society. But is there any basis for such an identification? Or, in other words, what can the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov give to modern consciousness? We can answer this question only by finding out what it needs most, what is the spiritual thirst of modern humanity? It thirsts more than anything for what constitutes the basic principle of Solovyov’s entire philosophy, its alpha and omega - positive unity. Modern consciousness, torn, turned into a fragment of itself in the system of division of labor, does not cease to be ill with this fragmentation and is looking for a holistic worldview that would connect the depths of being with everyday work, would comprehend personal life, would place it sub speciem aeternitatis. Solovyov's ideal - the ideal of integral knowledge, integral life, integral creativity - is inherent in every developed consciousness. Meanwhile, with all the wealth of knowledge and the development of science, modern thought presents a picture of internal decay and impotence. Those elements that should normally be in harmony are now at enmity with each other or are in a state of mutual alienation: positive science suspects metaphysics of violating its rights, metaphysics together with science suspect religion of the same, and practical life goes on in its own order, regardless of both. Such a state cannot be considered either final or normal, and the way out of it can only be indicated by a synthetic philosophy, which will reconcile religion, metaphysics and science in the modern consciousness and illuminate with their combined light practical life with its area of ​​ought, its ethical and historical tasks. The experience of such a philosophical synthesis, unique in modern times, is given by Vl. Soloviev: this determines its significance for modern consciousness. A spirit that was capable of carrying out such a universal synthesis must itself possess a high degree of universality, and Soloviev was indeed distinguished by it. He possessed it primarily as a philosopher. In the history of philosophy, it is positively impossible to indicate a philosophical system that would be as multifaceted as Solovyov’s: not to mention the fact that all modern philosophy, starting with Descartes, is a necessary prerequisite for it; there is not a single great philosophical and religious teaching that would not be included as material in this multifaceted system: the philosophy of the Greeks, which finds its historical completion in Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, Buddhism and Christianity, Kabbalistic philosophy, everything has its place. In this sense, Solovyov's system is the most full-voiced chord that has ever been heard in the history of philosophy. That there can be no talk of eclecticism here, in the sense of a mechanical combination of different teachings, is best evidenced by the fact that in Solovyov’s philosophy there is a place for teachings that deny each other, such as, for example, Hegelian panlogism and empirical positivism. Hegel created the science of the history of philosophy, basing it on the principle that in various philosophical systems we recognize moments of the dialectical development of a concept, in other words, we see one-sided aspects of a single, universal truth, which is therefore not their negation, but an organic synthesis. Each later synthetic system therefore naturally absorbs the one-sided truths of the previous systems, and in the history of philosophy, thus, a gradual revelation of this universal truth takes place. From here follows, by the way, the entire significance of the history of philosophy as a science for modern philosophical consciousness. Solovyov's system is universal precisely from the point of view of the history of philosophy in the Hegelian sense. But for the completeness of philosophical synthesis, a modern philosopher must not be alien to natural science, at least in its latest conclusions. This requirement is also satisfied by Soloviev, in whose system all the most important doctrines of modern natural science have found a place. A philosopher must also be gifted with a living sense of beauty, without which a special path to understanding the universe remains closed to him. Soloviev was richly endowed by nature in this regard too: he united in himself not only a first-class literary critic, but also a poet; the enchanting charm and sincerity of his muse, despite her modesty, gives Solovyov a very special and independent place in the host of Russian poets. Along with this, in the interests of the philosophical justification of religion or the religious justification of philosophy, the philosopher must also be of a religious nature, have not only the thought of God, but also the feeling of God. And regarding Solovyov, we can confidently say that the religious side of his spirit was, without a doubt, the most fundamental, coloring all his philosophical constructs. Finally, for the completeness of philosophical synthesis, it is necessary that the philosopher be not only an armchair thinker, but also a person whose heart is close and understandable to all the sorrows and needs of our time; he must be a son of his time, be a citizen. This requirement may sound strange to those who share a fairly widespread prejudice and think that philosophical quests and a religious mood only paralyze a person’s responsiveness to the phenomena of social life. Soloviev represents a living refutation of this view. He was a citizen in the broadest sense of the word. This does not mean, of course, that he himself was involved in politics - this is excluded by the need for division of labor and the extreme impracticality of a philosopher - but he was constantly occupied with issues of practical justice, and Solovyov’s journalism is one of the most brilliant, and most importantly, generally recognized aspects of his activity. Journalism undoubtedly interfered with the external completeness and elaboration of Solovyov’s system - instead of a German book of a thousand pages, we have only a light and not entirely finished sketch, but thanks to precisely this journalistic temperament of the philosopher, it contains a breath of life that is not found in book books, despite their external completeness and architecture. What else can be added to this philosopher's track record? Is it also the case that he is at the same time not only a philosopher, but also a theologian, like some of the Slavophiles. For various reasons, both internal and external, we will not touch here at all on Solovyov’s activities as a theologian. This is the appearance of our philosopher. Let's take a look at his ideas. At the entrance to the church of philosophy, the theory of knowledge now stands guard, from which every philosophical doctrine must receive a passport for the right of residence. The enduring significance of Kant in the history of philosophy lies in the fact that after him metaphysics, even theology, must be critical, that is, before constructing any teachings, it must pose and give a conscious answer to the question about the nature of knowledge itself and its competence. The content of the theory of knowledge is the eternal Pilate question: what is truth, a question understood not from the side of its material content: what is truth, but from the side of the formal conditions of knowledge: how and to what extent is it possible? To determine the position taken by Solovyov in relation to Pilate’s question, you need to know the results of the previous development of philosophical thought, that “crisis of Western philosophy”, with the clarification of which Solovyov began his philosophical activity. To understand this crisis, we must return to Kant. Kant's teaching is the central station through which all modern philosophy moves. From it the paths of modern thought diverge in all possible directions. Thanks, on the one hand, to the significance of his philosophical work and, on the other, to the incompleteness, as a result of which Kant’s teaching equally rightly serves as the basis for the most opposite philosophical trends, the understanding and assessment of Kant is characteristic of all philosophical teaching. In the passport of a philosophical system, the surest “special feature” is which Kant it believes in, and the study of Kant, Kantology, is the most favorite activity of modern school philosophy. Kant prepared two mutually contradictory directions: the logical idealism of Hegel and the empiricism or positivism of modern natural science. He posed the Humean question: how is experience possible, how is scientific knowledge possible? The analysis of knowledge in the “Critique of Pure Reason” showed that it is possible only due to the presence in our consciousness of subjective cognitive forms - time and space, as forms of sensory perception, and categories (among which the category of causality comes first) as forms of thinking. It has become obvious to human consciousness once and for all that our scientific knowledge rests on these properties of pure reason, in short, that reason itself is the legislator of nature, itself establishes its laws, because these laws are at the same time the laws of our thinking, for which sensibility provides the material. Kant absorbed all the cognitive energy into the subject, in relation to which the passive material is the testimony of sensibility, that which is “given” (gegeben) to us. Kant broke all real unity between the knower and the known; an abyss opened between the subject or form of knowledge and the matter of knowledge or sensibility. The question of how these subjective forms can be superimposed on cognitive material and even whether this superimposition, that is, cognition itself, is possible, remains unresolved. In an effort to establish the formal conditions of knowledge, Kant undermined knowledge itself and had to capitulate to the realm of faith, calling it “practical reason” and proclaiming the “primacy of practical reason.” Evidence of this impotence of Kant’s philosophy remains his doctrine of the thing in itself, which, with its obvious inconsistency and obscurity, does not allow us to dwell on Kant (as neo-Kantians are currently trying to replace philosophy with epistemology). The classical philosophy of German idealism with amazing consistency develops all possible contents of the teachings of Kant, whose last word was said by Hegel. The basic dualism between the subject and the object of knowledge, created by Kant's philosophy, was resolved by Fichte in favor of the absorption of the object by the subject (not the I is only the position of the I). This solipsism 134 obviously cannot be considered a solution to the problem, because it does not resolve it, but only removes it, destroying one of the members of the dilemma. (The insufficiency of this solution to the problem was always felt by Fichte, who constantly rebuilt his system and in its latest edition came significantly closer to Kant, i.e., returned to his starting point). The problem of reconciliation or internal union of subject and object was taken as a starting point by the philosophy of identity of Schelling, who was looking for such an absolute principle that would be the unity or identity of subject and object. After Schelling, who in his subsequent activities deviated from this problem and in many of his philosophical insights anticipated his time and preceded Solovyov, Hegel posed the same problem. Hegel solves it like Fichte, namely destroys a special object or material of knowledge, with the only difference that for Fichte all being belongs to the pure self, and for Hegel to pure thinking. “Starting from Kant’s position that objective knowledge is possible only thanks to the subjective forms of knowledge, which in their totality form a priori logic, Hegel comes to the conclusion that this a priori logical thinking is truly existing; it is everything, and outside of it and besides it there is nothing. Thought, thinking itself, is simultaneously its subject and object; this is the beginning of Hegel’s philosophy. Thus, there is nothing but thinking, therefore, the science that studies this thinking is not only a teaching about the forms of knowledge, but also about the forms of being, since being and thinking are identical. This explains the meaning that “Wissenschaft der Logik”, i.e., the science of being, acquires in Hegel’s teaching. But if everything has true reality only in its concept, then the knowing subject is nothing more than a concept and in this respect has no advantage over the rest of being, thus, the concepts or ideas that form everything that exists are not the ideas of the thinking subject (he himself is only an idea) - they are themselves, and everything that exists is, as said, the result of their self-development or, more precisely, the self-development of one concept, pure being or nothing. In other words, everything comes from nothing or everything is essentially nothing. Everything is pure thought, that is, thought without a thinker and without a thinkable, as without an agent and without an object of action.” 135 Entangled in logical contradictions arising from the basic principle, Hegel's philosophy turned out to be even more powerless in its claims to universality. If the basic position of Hegel's panlogism is true, that everything is thought and everything is known from pure thinking, then this pure thinking should, in the process of the dialectical development of concepts, develop from itself all natural science, all history, all experimental science; Panlogism leaves no room for empiricism. It was here, in this attempt to really measure one’s strengths and justify one’s claims, that Hegel’s philosophy faced its greatest bankruptcy. In fact, it turned out that reality cannot be fully cognized by the dialectic of concepts, therefore, logical thinking is not universal knowledge, it is not everything, and this is a denial of the main position of panlogism. Despite the fact that in Hegel the philosophical thought of modern times reaches its peak, it was Hegel who most contributed to the spread of that harmful prejudice that philosophy and science contradict each other. Historical Nemesis, in place of arrogant speculation, brought forth the weakest direction in philosophical terms, which, however, occupied and still continues to occupy the philosophical throne of Hegel. Hegel's philosophy dealt the greatest injustice to empiricism and the demands of empirical research, and panlogism was victoriously supplanted by empiricism, which found its philosophical formulation in positivism. The dominance of the philosophy of positivism coincides with the flourishing of the natural sciences, and it is often thought that both of these phenomena are in a causal relationship and condition each other. However, it is not difficult to show that this is incorrect, that positivism cannot provide a philosophical foundation for natural science and in its consistent development leads to contradiction and absurdity. While completely ignoring or being unfamiliar with the previous history of philosophical thought and in particular with the development of post-Kantian philosophy, representatives of positivism console themselves with the naive confidence that by studying phenomena or, as they like to put it, “facts” (not suspecting that each fact already contains a whole philosophy, according to Goethe’s fair remark), they also learn the laws of phenomena, therefore, neither more nor less, the true meaning of all things. “But the question is, by what right can empiricism talk about any laws while remaining on the basis of phenomena? It is assumed that science learns these laws from experience. But in experience we can only observe empirical relationships between phenomena, i.e. their relations in given cases are subject to our experience. The known relation of consistency and similarity between given phenomena, the same in all our past experiences, is a fact; but what guarantees the immutability of this relation at all times, unconditionally, both subsequent and preceding our experiences, in which, therefore, we cannot affirm this relation as a fact? What gives the empirical, factual connection of phenomena the character of universality and necessity, what makes it a law? Our scientific experience has existed, one might say, since yesterday, and the number of cases subject to it is infinitely small in comparison with the rest. But if this experience existed for millions of centuries, then these millions of centuries would mean nothing in relation to the infinite time ahead of us and, therefore, could in no way contribute to the unconditional reliability of the laws found in this experience.” 136 “Thus, the doctrine of regularity and uniformity of the laws of nature is a completely arbitrarily accepted axiom that has no basis in positivism. Being unable to substantiate science, empiricism among its most profound representatives leads to skepticism, which questions the universal dominance of even mathematical axioms, and returns us to Hume (this is the philosophical position of D. St. Mill). On the other hand, recognizing that only phenomena exist, positivism is necessarily sensationalism: we know only our sensations and nothing but sensations, which we classify into different categories, such as the external and internal world, etc. I know not only about external objects, but also about other people only through my sensations, they exist for me only in these states of my consciousness, therefore, they are nothing more than states of my consciousness. But I also know about myself, as a subject, only in the states of my consciousness, therefore, I myself, as a subject, must be reduced to the state of my consciousness; but this is absurd, since my consciousness already presupposes me. It remains, therefore, to admit that there are phenomena of consciousness, but not mine, since I do not exist, but consciousness in general, without the conscious as well as without the conscious.” 137 The philosophy of positivism leads to such absurdity. So, whether we take as our starting point the form of knowledge or its matter, the philosophy of rationalism, like the philosophy of empiricism, leads us to a contradiction. Is there a way out of the impasse into which the latest development of philosophical thought leads? Is knowledge possible, is there truth as the object of this knowledge, is there anything at all, the external world, other people, ourselves? This is the question that Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, posed to himself, and this same question is repeated by this philosophy, having completed its full cycle of development. Obviously, this question can only be resolved with the help of a third source of knowledge, in addition to empiricism and rationalism, and this source is mental intuition (intellektuelle Anschaung) or faith. “We feel a certain effect of an object, think about its general characteristics and are confident in its own or unconditional existence. This confidence is in no way determined by the sensations we receive from the object and our concept of it, but on the contrary, the objective meaning of our sensations and concepts is directly determined by the confidence in the independent existence of the object. In fact, if I were not sure that a known object exists independently of me, then I could not attribute my concepts and sensations to it; then these very concepts and sensations would be only subjective states of my consciousness, my inner feelings and thoughts, in which I would not recognize anything other than them, as mental facts. Thus, the objective, cognitive meaning of my sensations and concepts depends on the confidence in the independent, unconditional existence of their object, in its existence beyond the boundaries of my sensations and thoughts. This unconditional existence, which cannot really be given to me either in my sensations or in my thoughts, which cannot be the subject of either empirical or rational knowledge and by which, however, this knowledge is conditioned, obviously constitutes the subject of some, special, third kind of knowledge, which can more correctly be called faith.” 138 “We believe that an object is something in itself, that it is not only our sensation or our thought, is not only the limit of our subjective existence, we believe that it exists independently - “we believe that it is.” This is the proper element of faith or faith in the narrow sense, as an affirmation of unconditional existence. This unconditionality equally belongs to everything that exists, since everything that exists is.” 139 From the previous it is clear that if we do not doubt the existence of the external world, we feel ourselves surrounded by living people, and do not consider them only our ideas, we do not doubt, finally, the existence of our own self, constant and abiding, despite the change of thoughts, feelings and sensations, then all this knowledge is given only by faith and cannot be proven in any way by reason and sensations, because they exceed the content of the evidence we receive from one or another source. And since these assumptions about the existence of the world, people and ourselves serve as necessary conditions not only for life and activity, but also for science itself, we can say that faith holds together and grounds our entire life and our entire science; scientific knowledge rests on faith. How is the first principle of being determined, which constitutes the object of faith and substantiates our knowledge? Here, general and preliminary definitions are possible for now. It cannot be thought of as a type of being, as was done in philosophy; the concept of being is not an independent concept, it is only a predicate or predicate, necessarily requiring its subject; it therefore implies a certain relation and therefore, being itself relative, cannot serve as the basis of any being or relations. Therefore, when Hegel tried to raise the concept of pure being to the absolute origin and make it the starting point of his objective logic, it was discovered that pure being, not related to anything and representing a predicate without a subject, is a completely meaningless concept and turns into its opposite, nothing. The absolute beginning therefore cannot be being, or, more precisely, a type of being; it must have the ability to be, but at the same time be above being; it can be defined as a being. Just as a living subject does not merge with any of its states or images of its being, being at the same time their basis, so the absolute principle has the positive power of being, while remaining at the same time above being. Since a being takes on images of being and becomes in a certain relation to another, it becomes knowable. This definition of the absolute principle as existence, and not being (as Hegel and previous philosophy defined it), is of decisive importance for Solovyov’s philosophy and, as it seems to us, for all modern philosophy. It is here, in this concept, that Hegel masters himself philosophically and takes a positive step forward in philosophical knowledge. The similarity of Solovyov’s concept of being with the basic concept of Plotin’s philosophy does not diminish the significance of Solovyov’s philosophical discovery because Plotin’s brilliant intuition finds critical justification here and is recognized as the result of the centuries-long development of philosophy. The concept of existence finally overcomes the philosophy of pantheism and philosophically affirms the concept of a living personal God, necessary for religion. It is obvious that the absolute principle can only be one; several principles, entering into certain mutual relations, would already be relative and would require a new unifying principle; therefore, the efforts of philosophy of all times were directed precisely towards finding this single fundamental principle of being. But, being one, it cannot be poorer in content than any being, but must, on the contrary, be richer, must include everything, but in the form of unity. Therefore, the absolute origin is defined as positive unity. Further definitions will be revealed to us in ontology, but here we note several conclusions arising from what has been said. The truth or untruth of a fact or position is obviously determined by its relation to this positive unity. “The rationality of any fact consists only in its relationship with everything, in its unity with everything; to understand the meaning or reason of some reality, some fact, after all, means only to understand it in its relationship with everything, its unity.” 140 By assuming the possibility of any kind of knowledge, we already imply, although not always quite consciously, some real, essential unity of the cognizable object with us; Only this unity makes knowledge possible, which is some kind of internal union of the knower with the knowable. Knowledge would be impossible if the subject and object of knowledge were completely alien to each other; their objective connection or unity is a necessary prius of knowledge. (And from ordinary practice we know that the depth and, so to speak, intimacy of cognition are directly proportional to the proximity of the object of cognition to the knowing spirit). The unity of the knower and the known is expressed in their logical unity, the tacit recognition that the norms or laws of thinking that we apply in knowledge are at the same time the laws of objective existence and are in accordance with each other. In fact, if the law of causality or sufficient reason had only subjective meaning, and objective reality were free from it, knowledge would obviously be impossible. Recognition of the unity of all things necessarily includes the unity of the objective logos or reason of all things. The laws of thinking are also the laws of being. This basic thought of Hegel’s logic is completely fair if we free it from the exclusivity that Hegel gave to the logical principle. (In “Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge,” Soloviev makes a masterful sketch, which unfortunately remained unfinished, of objective logic in the sense of Hegel). The absolute principle, on one side substantiating the logos of all things, or logical thinking and philosophical speculation, in another way of its existence determines empiricism, which provides material for experimental science. The latter is not diminished in its rights here, as it was diminished by Hegel, but, on the contrary, is restored in them, because it is given a specific goal - knowledge of the truth, i.e. unity in phenomena, and at the same time the indefinitely broad empirical basis necessary for it is recognized. So, in philosophy and science, the bottom of the image of being of existence is revealed to us, which we cognize by inner intuition or faith. “The branches of the same tree cross and intertwine with each other in various ways, and these branches and leaves come into contact with each other with their surfaces in various ways - such is external or relative knowledge; but the same leaves and branches, in addition to this external relationship, are also internally connected to each other through their common trunk and root, from which they equally receive their vital juices - such is mystical knowledge or faith.” 141 It follows that the various ways of cognition of existence, for the completeness of this cognition, mutually presuppose each other, and the normal relationship between them is not mutual alienation or even hostility, but a harmonious synthesis that constitutes the ideal of knowledge. Solovyov defines this synthesis of mystical, scientific and philosophical knowledge as the ideal of “free theosophy.” We have indicated the main ideas of Solovyov’s theory of knowledge, but we will have to limit ourselves to this, because of all philosophical teachings, the theory of knowledge is the least amenable to public presentation. In conclusion, let us pose the main question that interests us: what does Solovyov’s theory of knowledge give to modern consciousness? The competence of the theory of knowledge does not go further than resolving the formal question of the right to the existence of this or that source of knowledge, this or that teaching. And in this sense, we can say that Solovyov’s epistemology expands and strengthens the most primordial and dear rights of human consciousness. We already know that it critically substantiates the possibility of abstract thinking, empirical knowledge and faith; it shows that in different ways the same absolute principle is cognized here and their normal relationship is not enmity, but unity; this is not a temporary compromise between them, but brings inner peace and harmony. But even more important is the result of Solovyov’s theory of knowledge that it recognizes the rights of empirical, living or “concrete” consciousness: in this consciousness all three sources of knowledge are inextricably linked: faith, reason, experience. In the history of philosophy, one of them has been put forward in turn, and both of the others have been declared madness, although living consciousness has never abandoned and cannot refuse them. In the era of the dominance of theology, abstract clericalism, as Solovyov put it, the rights of one blind, unenlightened “harlot” by reason and scientific knowledge of the faith were recognized: the fires of the Inquisition, kindled against free research, burned for the glory of faith. Centuries passed, and faith suffered the same persecution from reason and science to which it itself had subjected them in its time: the most legitimate and sacred needs of faith were ridiculed or simply ignored. But at the same time, having temporarily united against their common imaginary enemy - faith, science and philosophizing reason entered into a quarrel with each other and in the end mutually rejected each other (Hegelianism and positivism). All this led philosophy to a crisis, from which Solovyov points out the way out. Based on the results of its development, he showed all the incorrectness of contrasting the sources of knowledge taken in their abstraction, all the necessity and legitimacy of harmony between them. He proclaimed the inalienable rights of living human consciousness, which was subject to philosophical vivisection, and this proclamation was not the work of a primitive, naive, non-philosophical consciousness, but an indirect conclusion, a critical result of the entire century-long development of philosophy. The living human soul could not be dried up in a monastery, dissected under a microscope, turned into a dry sheet of abstraction; it rose like a phoenix from the ashes of history. 142 The rights of faith are subject to the greatest derogation these days, and it is faith that has a central place in Solovyov’s theory of knowledge. The restoration of the morality of faith is the most important practical result of Solovyov’s epistemology, for modern consciousness needs nothing more than this. Now let us turn to Solovyov’s ontology, to further definitions of existence. The existent or positive unity appears as truth for the knowing spirit; but “it would be possible to separate the theoretical or cognitive element from the moral or practical element and from the artistic or aesthetic element only in those cases if the human spirit were divided into several independent beings, of which one would be only will, another only reason, the third only feeling.” In fact, “the theoretical sphere of thought and knowledge, the practical sphere of will and activity and the aesthetic side of feeling and creativity differ from each other not by formative elements, which are the same in all of them, but only by the comparative degree of predominance of one or another element in one or another sphere.” 143 “If, in this way, truth, which constitutes the content of real philosophy, must be in a necessary relation to will and feeling, meeting their highest requirements, then, obviously, the starting point of this philosophy - the absolutely existing - cannot be determined by mental activity alone, but necessarily also by will and feeling. And indeed, the absolutely existing is required not only by our mind, as a logically necessary assumption of any particular truth, - it is also required by the will as a necessary assumption of all moral activity, as an absolute goal or good; finally, it is also required by feeling, as a necessary presupposition of any complete pleasure, as that absolute and eternal beauty, which alone can cover the visible disharmony of sensory phenomena “and resolve the painful discord with the solemn chord of their voices.” 144 So, the absolute origin, positive unity, is revealed to man under three aspects, as goodness, truth and beauty. The existence of this absolute or divine principle, as we already know, is affirmed only by faith. Soloviev has a completely negative attitude towards attempts to give a rational proof of the existence of God. “The content of the divine principle, as well as the content of external nature (the existence of which is also affirmed only by faith) is given by experience. That God exists, we believe, and that He exists, we experience and learn.” 145 “The totality of religious experience and religious thinking constitutes the content of religious consciousness. From the objective side, the content is the revelation of the divine principle, as a real object of religious consciousness. Since the human spirit in general, and therefore religious consciousness, is not something finished, ready-made, but something emerging and being accomplished (improved), something in process, then the revelation of the divine principle in this consciousness is necessarily gradual. Just as external nature is only gradually revealed to the mind of man and humanity, as a result of which we must talk about the development of experience and natural science, so the divine principle is gradually revealed to human consciousness, and we must talk about the development of religious experience and religious thinking. Since the divine principle is an actual object of religious consciousness, that is, acting on this consciousness and revealing its content in it, then religious development is a positive and objective process, it is a real interaction between God and man, a divine-human process. It is clear that due to the objective and positive nature of religious development, not one of its stages, not one of the moments of the religious process can in itself be a lie or delusion. “False religion” is a contradictio in adjecto. Religious progress cannot consist in pure lies being replaced by pure truth, for in that case the latter would appear all at once and without transition, without progress.” 146 Soloviev often repeats Leibniz’s expression that every religious and philosophical system is unjust not in what it affirms, but in what it denies, giving its statement the character of one-sidedness, an “abstract beginning.” “It is obvious that from a religious point of view, the goal is not a minimum, but a maximum of positive content; the richer, more lively, and more concrete the religious form is, the higher it is. A perfect religion is not one that is equally contained in everyone (the indifferent basis of religion), but one that contains everything and possesses everyone (complete religious synthesis). A perfect religion must be free from all limitations and exclusivity, but not because it is devoid of all positive particularity and individuality - such negative freedom is the freedom of emptiness, the freedom of a beggar, but because it contains all the particularities and, therefore, is not exclusively attached to any of them, possesses all and is therefore free from all. 147 These words contain the greatest wisdom, unfortunately alien to the philosophical consciousness of our era: now religious consciousness is considered the higher, the more meager and abstract it is, the closer to zero its positive content. For religious life, one of the aspects of the Divine, taken in their abstraction, is considered sufficient (naturalistic pantheism and especially the currently fashionable ethical pantheism). The same desire to reduce the religious principle to a minimum characterizes the latest development of free Protestant theology, which is under the strong influence of Kant and is characterized by theological agnosticism, reducing religion only to ethics (the teaching of Count L.N. Tolstoy is also related to this). We find the last word of this trend in the works of the most remarkable representative of the dominant school of Ritschl - the Berlin professor Hell. Harnack, whose lectures “Wesen des Christenthums” acquired the significance of a literary event and went through a number of publications in a short time (here he popularizes the main ideas of his major three-volume work Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte). “Readings on God-Humanity” by Solovyov and “Wesen des Christenthums” by Harnack, these are two classic works that express the extreme poles between which modern religious consciousness moves. At the first stages of religious consciousness, the divine principle remains hidden, indistinguishable from the elements of nature. This is the era of naturalistic polytheism, adoration of the forces of nature. The next stage is that nature loses power over man, he denies it as the highest principle. This purely negative stage of development found its full expression in Indian philosophy. In Kapila, one of the Indian sages, this thought is expressed as follows: “true or perfect knowledge, by which liberation from all evil is achieved, consists in a decisive and complete distinction between the material principles of the natural world from the feeling and knowing principle, i.e. I.” “Of course, already the recognition of nature for evil, deception and suffering deprives it of the meaning of an unconditional beginning, but since besides it there is no other content in the consciousness of a natural person, then the unconditional beginning, which is not nature, can only receive a negative definition: it appears as the absence of all being, as nothing, as nirvana. Nirvana is the central idea of ​​Buddhism." 148 In this sense, Buddhism is a negative religion, which understands the unconditional beginning as nothing. “And truly it is nothing, since it is not anything, is not some definite, limited being or being along with other beings, since it is above any definition, since it is free from everything.” 149 But being free from everything, it possesses everything, and in this sense the divine principle itself is everything. But all this can only be a combination of natural phenomena that do not have an enduring existence and continuously change in the flow of time. Behind the crust of nature, Plato already saw a world of ideal essences, an ideal cosmos, of which our natural world is a pale reflection. However, the pure teaching of Platonism is separated from modern consciousness by an abyss over which it is necessary to build a bridge. The basic concepts of modern critical philosophy and natural science will serve as a bridge. Kant’s subjective idealism provided the premises for the conclusion, most decisively made by Schopenhauer, that this world, ringing and sparkling, does not have an independent existence, but is our idea, determined by our representing ability (of course, this idea in one form or another is not at all news in the history of philosophy). This same truth is confirmed by natural science, which teaches us that heat, light, sound, electricity are only different types of motion and, therefore, even for experimental science they do not appear to be what they are for our sensory existence. The picture of the world given by dad’s feelings is determined by our perceptual abilities. According to an ancient Indian expression, the spirit is the spectator, and nature is the dancer before the spirit. At the same time, immediate consciousness tells us that this world, although it is our idea, is not, however, a matter of our will (as Fichte tried to present it for some time, who ultimately recognized the mysterious äussere Anstoss for his philosophy). It is not our will to arouse ideas within ourselves; here we are subject to some force external to us, the action of which we experience as a violent invasion of our subjectivity. How can one think of this force, what is the external world in this sense? Modern natural science answers this question with the doctrine of atoms, the philosophical foundations of which were laid by Democritus. Atoms, firstly, must be multiple, because without this condition the multiplicity of the phenomenon would be incomprehensible. Secondly, they are unchangeable, indecomposable, indivisible, simple, and therefore eternal. It must be said that natural science has not developed a general philosophical concept of the atom, which is understood differently in its different branches. Therefore, the last word here belongs to philosophy, which, first of all, reveals the main contradiction underlying the definition of an atom: an atom is indivisible, but everything that occupies space is divisible, therefore, either it does not occupy space and in this case cannot serve to explain the spatial world, or it is divisible, that is, it is not an atom. This fundamental and irremovable contradiction already warns us not to think of atoms as they are presented in the philosophy of vulgar materialism, that is, as material particles loitering in an empty bag of infinite space. This point of view is also abandoned by scientific natural science, which begins to replace the concept of the atom with the concept of energy and the concept of matter resolves into the concept of force. (Of the newest philosophers, the outstanding representative of this teaching is Ed. v. Hartmann, both in his first works and in his newest work Die Grundanschaungen der modernen Physik. Berlin. 1902). Think of atoms as particles of matter, i.e. something corporeal does not allow us the fact that corporeality, i.e. well-known tactile impressions, there is also one of our ideas that we want to get rid of here. The only sign of the atom in this case will be its impenetrability, or the resistance it exerts. Therefore, it is necessary to assume some counteracting force, to which reality belongs. So, atoms are elementary forces, the interaction of which creates the world. But interaction presupposes the ability not only to act, but also to perceive action. In order to act outside itself, on others, a force must strive away from itself, outward, and in order to perceive the action of others, a given force must give place to another force, attract it, put it in front of itself or represent it. Thus every fundamental force necessarily expresses itself in aspiration and representation, and the foundations of reality are striving and perceiving or representing forces; they can act on their own and perceive action, have reality not only for another, but also for themselves, such forces are more than forces, they are the essence of beings, monads, the concept of which was introduced into philosophy by Leibniz. Their interaction presupposes their qualitative differences, otherwise they would not differ and could not influence each other; these qualities of monads, eternal and unconditional in their concept, constitute the ideas of these beings 150 already in the sense as Plato taught. So, true reality, positive everything, is the kingdom of ideas, the ideal cosmos. The existence of ideas is confirmed, among other things, by the fact of artistic creativity, which is, as it were, some clairvoyance of ideas. Therefore, it is no coincidence that Hellenism, the highest product of which in philosophy is the truths of Platonism, in the field of religion created the cult of beauty, the kingdom of artistic intuition. Thus, Solovyov’s main ontological view can be defined as spiritualism, the doctrine of the universal animation and spirituality of the world substance. This view, which is in complete agreement with natural science, seems at present to be the only possible one in philosophy, and the times of crude atomistic materialism, hopefully, have irrevocably receded into eternity. At this point, Soloviev differs from other philosophers only in the greater completeness and clarity of monadology, which he brings in connection with Platonism. In general, the spiritualistic worldview in one form or another is now dominant in philosophy: the victorious struggle against natural-scientific materialism is a special merit of the philosophers of pessimism - Schopenhauer and Hartmann (representatives of spiritualism in modern times are also Lotze and Wundt). Uniting in a general recognition of the truth of spiritualism, philosophers diverge in the further development of this teaching. The distinctive features of Solovyov’s philosophy at this point are revealed to us only in the further development of monadology. A necessary condition for the interaction that serves as the source of all reality is the multiplicity of monads or ideas; but a significant internal connection between them is equally necessary, because from a multitude of alien, unconnected elements no unity can be obtained, which in any case is our world. The main flaw in Leibniz's monadology was his assumption that monads are "windowless", closed to each other; therefore, to explain the unity of the universe and even the possibility of its knowledge, the assumption of external intervention of the Divine, pre-established harmony was required; the world of monads is likened to a large number of clocks wound up and started at the same time; although there is complete correspondence in the movements of the hands, it does not at all testify to their internal unity, but only to the existence of a hand that once wound all these watches in the same way. The Divinity is also defined as a monad, albeit a central one; His relationship to the world remains purely external. All these strange opinions appeared in Leibniz as a consequence of his initial erroneous opinion about the mutual impenetrability of monads - a consequence of their mechanization, the application of the relations of matter to the realm of the spirit. It is at this point that Solovyov’s monadology takes a decisive step forward, establishing as a necessary condition for interaction the permeability of monads, not an external, but an internal relationship between them (the path indicated by Plato). It can be likened to the grouping of phenomena in concepts that simultaneously cover large groups of phenomena, with the difference, however, that in concepts the expansion of the scope of the concept is accompanied by a decrease in its content, that is, abstract features (monk, a concept broader in scope than the Franciscan, contains fewer features than the latter), while in the grouping of ideas the expansion of volume is directly proportional to the expansion of content. Therefore, it is more correct to define this grouping by the concept of an organism in which all the individual parts, without losing their characteristics, are part of the overall whole. Ascending upward in the organization of ideas, we reach an idea that is the unity of all ideas and contains everything. This idea will be defined as unconditional love or goodness. In fact, every idea is love and goodness for its bearer, every being is what it loves; therefore, the universal or universal idea is unconditional goodness or love. So, the fullness of ideas or the fullness of being should be thought of not as a mechanical totality, but precisely as their internal unity, which is love. We learned the basic concept of Solovyov’s entire philosophy, its unchanging center, this center is (in the words of his poem) “the motionless sun of love.” Solovyov’s ontology leads us to the formula: “God is love.” Let us turn to further analysis of the concept of a central idea. The more elements are connected in an organism, the more inextricable the connection of these elements and the less possible is the same connection of elements in another being, to another organism. Consequently, the more peculiarity, originality, and individuality such an organism has. It follows that the universal organism is distinguished by the greatest individuality or originality; it must be absolutely individual, one of a kind. And if every idea, as a being, has its own self-determination and exists in this sense not only for others, but also for itself, is not only an object, but also a subject, then the same must be recognized in relation to the all-unified idea, which “must be the own determination of a single central being.” 151 Posing herself as an object, she is thereby a subject or person; possessing everything, she cannot be deprived of anything, in particular personal existence. So, the absolute origin is not only everything, but also the face. Thus, through philosophical analysis we obtain the concept of the living God, in Christian expression, the Almighty God, who gives place to the fullness of being, but does not merge with the world, as the philosophy of pantheism accepts. 152 The concept of a personal God (who is love) is the central concept of Solovyov’s metaphysics, constituting its distinctive feature. What is characteristic is that it is obtained in a purely speculative way, as a result of an analysis of the basic determinations of being, therefore, in complete independence from any historical religion or revelation, although it necessarily leads to it and is directly connected with it. God, as a subject or as a person, is the main content of the Old Testament religion, Jewish monotheism. The God of the Jewish people is an absolute subject, a person, a “burning fire.” “I am who is,” God reveals about Himself to Moses. So, speculation leads us to theism, to the definition of the absolute origin as a subject. Let us consider the new definitions that are obtained by further analysis of this concept. The absolute origin, as a being, must be characterized by being; without this, it would be deprived of all manifestation and would turn into nothing. Being, as we already know, is the relationship between what exists and its objective essence, which necessarily is not something separate and limited, but everything. So God manifests or affirms his essence as everyone else. But in order to affirm this all as his own, as a unity, God must contain everything in potential unity, possess everything, thus the first position of the Deity is that it contains everything potentially, as in the existent or in its root. But in order for all this to be valid, God must contain it not only within himself, but also affirm it for himself as his other, different from himself, distinguish it not only potentially, but also actually. We thus have a second type or second position of being: the hidden possibility of everything is posited as reality. A certain analogy here will be presented by the artist’s attitude to an artistic idea in the act of creativity: this idea is the spiritual essence of him as a subject, but, containing it potentially within himself, he nevertheless strives to imagine it for himself, to give it reality, to objectify it. In another, beings remain the same, in multitudes they remain one. But this identity and this unity necessarily differ from that sameness, that unity, which seems to be the first position of existence: there it is immediate and indifferent, but here it is affirmed, manifested or mediated. 153 We have here the third position of existence - complete or absolute unity, which has realized itself, established itself as such. An analogy for this trinity of relationships or positions of existence can be found in our inner life: a person exists as a subject containing in potential all manifestations of spiritual life, as manifesting externally or in many ways, and then as asserting himself or his unity in these manifestations, reflecting on himself. But in us these positions, incompatible at the same time, exist at different points in time. In an absolute being, not subject to time, all these three states can only be given at once. But since three mutually exclusive positions cannot be given in the same act of the same subject, then for these three eternal acts it is necessary to presuppose three subjects. “Of these, the second, directly generated by the first, is a direct image of its hypostasis, expresses with its reality the essential content of the first, serves as its eternal expression or Word, and the third, starting from the first, as already having its manifestation in the second, affirms it as expressed or in its expression.” 154 But don’t we fall into contradiction with the requirements of monotheism and aren’t these three hypostases three gods? “If we combine with the name of God the complete and actual possession of the fullness of divine content in all its forms, then the name of God belongs to the three divine subjects (hypostases) only insofar as they are necessarily in unconditional unity, in an inextricable internal connection with each other. Each of them is the true God, but precisely because each is inseparable from the other two. If one of them could exist separately from the other two, then, obviously, in this separation it would not be absolute, therefore, it would not be God in the proper sense, but it is precisely such separation that is impossible.” 155 Their separateness exists only for our distracting thoughts. Having defined the relationship of the three divine subjects in the most general logical form (as in oneself - being, for oneself - being and in oneself - being), we can also determine some ways or modes of this being. Thus, the first position of the Divine, where being is revealed as the beginning of its other, is will; the second position, where a being distinguishes the essence of its will as its other, is representation; finally, the third position, where being again unites with its essence, finds itself in it and it in itself, where essence and being thus become perceptible to each other, is nothing other than feeling. We distinguish within ourselves a will that is internally excited or creative (for example, the will of an artist to create) and externally excited or passive (lust), when its object is outside it, given, and not created by the will. This difference obviously cannot exist in an absolute subject, which contains everything within itself and has nothing outside itself; his will is directly creative or powerful. In the same way, we distinguish within ourselves ideas that correspond to reality and those that do not correspond or are fantastic, then contemplative or visual (intuitive) ideas and abstract ideas or thinking itself. This difference depends on the fact that individual beings, isolated from the whole, have outside themselves a whole world of external existence independent of them; this creates a difference between external and internal experience, true and untrue ideas. For the absolute, which has no independent existence, the difference between the objective and the subjective is determined by its own will. Since the represented essence is not only represented, but also affirmed by the will of beings as another, to that extent it receives the meaning of its own reality and how such affects the will in the form of feeling. In the realm of feeling in the absolute there can be, finally, no distinction between feeling excited by the external world or sensations and the internal one or excitement, for the distinction between external and internal does not exist here. “The three divine subjects, obviously, can be isolated in the sense that each of them has only will, only idea or only feeling; the peculiarity necessary for their existence can only consist in the isolation of the being itself, as, firstly, predominantly willing, secondly, predominantly representing and, thirdly, predominantly feeling. By attributing to each of the divine subjects a special will, idea and feeling, we understand that each of them is a willing, representing and feeling, i.e. each is an existing subject or hypostasis, the essence of their will, idea and feeling is one and the same, and only the relationship of these three ways of being is different for them. 156 According to the differences in the three main ways of being of a being, the ways of being of an idea or essence that represents the content of the will, ideas and feelings of a being are also different, as the content of the will of a being or as its desired idea is good, as the content of its representation it is truth, as the content of the feeling of a being - beauty. The Absolute wants as good the same thing that it represents as truth and feels as beauty, and precisely everything. Good, truth and beauty are three types or images of unity, under which for the absolute there is its content, that is, everything, and since every internal unity is love, then good, truth and beauty are three images of love. “The good is the unity of everything or everyone, that is, love, as desired, that is, as loved, - therefore, here we have love in a special primary sense, as the idea of ​​ideas: this is essential unity. Truth is the same love, i.e. the unity of everything, but already as objectively represented - this is ideal unity. Finally, beauty is the same love, but as manifested or tangible, it is a real unity. This relationship can be expressed in a short formula as follows: “the absolute realizes good through truth in beauty.” 157 The doctrine of the trinity of God is not news in the history of philosophy: in one form or another it was characteristic of Alexandrian philosophy, 158 it was quite consciously formulated in church dogmatic teaching at the councils of the 4th-7th centuries; this formulation was caused by the needs of Christology. church teaching about Christ. This teaching continues throughout the history of philosophy, appearing in the 19th century with Schelling and Hegel. Solovyov is credited with developing this philosophical and theological idea on the basis of critical philosophy and giving it a formulation that corresponds to the modern state of philosophical thought and eliminates the main speculative difficulties of the philosophy of theism-unitarianism. This philosophical doctrine leads us to the ground of positive Christian doctrine. Christianity, as a teaching, synthetically combines all the above-mentioned moments of the development of religious consciousness, as well as the philosophical teaching about God: the ascetic beginning of Buddhism, expressed in the teaching that “the world lies in evil”, Platonic idealism - the recognition of the ideal cosmos, “heaven”, next to the “earth”, the strict monotheism of the Jewish religion, on the basis of which Christianity arose, and finally, the doctrine of the Trinity hypostases, which organically follows from the teaching about Christ. In contrast to the modern sterilization of Christianity in the scientific theological literature of Protestantism, which seeks to eliminate the doctrine of Christ from Christianity and turn it into a moral doctrine (“cantize”), Solovyov rightly points out that the most essential content of Christianity is the doctrine of Christ as the God-man; on the contrary, the main features of Christian morality were encountered earlier (for example, the teaching of love in Buddhism, no matter how different it is from the Christian one). Therefore, those who completely reject the independent meaning of Christianity act more consistently than those who treat it with such half-heartedness. According to our task, we, however, leave aside the theological interpretation of this problem. In Solovyov's doctrine, Christ is the unifying principle of the universal organism, the positive everything. In this organism, therefore, one can distinguish between the producing unity - the divine Logos or Christ, and the produced unity, which perceives the unifying action of the Logos (just as “in every organism we have two unities: the unity of the active principle, which reduces the multiplicity of elements to itself as one; on the other hand, this multiplicity, as reduced to unity, as a certain image of this principle”). Solovyov calls the second, produced unity by its biblical name, Sophia. In the above we have an analysis of the content of the concept of existence, and the definitions of the absolute origin are closed into a harmonious and complete ontology. However, the work of the philosopher cannot be considered finished. Not all problems of existence (or, what is the same, world questions) have yet found an answer here. And above all, the cosmological and, in particular, the world-historical problem remained unanswered. In the ideal cosmos, which embodies the fullness of perfection, there is no place for process, development, transition from less perfect to more perfect, in short, for the entire historical drama, there is no place for evil, lies, ugliness, grief, thus, the real “mystery for the mind” is not this ideal and clear cosmos, but our world, incomprehensible, discordant and transient. It is not difficult, however, to see that this world presupposes the ideal world as its norm, as a criterion for its assessment. We would not find him full of errors if we had no idea of ​​the real truth, we would not consider him evil if we did not carry within us the idea of ​​goodness, we would not feel ugliness in him if we were blind to beauty. All those definitions that we give to the world and which make it so mysterious and irrational are possible only by recognizing the independent, abiding meaning of truth, goodness and beauty. That is why the formulation of the cosmological problem (the problem of theodicy), which Ivan Karamazov gives, expressing the most burning of his burning doubts, is philosophically impeccable: I do not accept God, but I do not accept His world. Indeed, without accepting God, we lose all basis for a conscious relationship to His world, and the conscious denial of the “world” is possible only with the recognition of an objective ideal norm, i.e. God. Therefore, the cosmological problem resolves itself into a problem about the relationship of God, or absolute perfection, to the imperfect world, that is, about the possibility of the existence of this imperfect world, about its origin and about the absolute meaning of its existence, its purpose. For Solovyov, the mediating link between the ideal and earthly world is man, who belongs to both worlds, has absolute or unconditional aspirations and at the same time is associated with the transitory phenomena of the natural world. Between God and the world stands humanity, Sophia; in relation to the world, it serves as a unifying principle, itself perceiving the beginning of unity from the Logos. Sophia, or humanity, forms a produced unity in the universal organism, the “body” of Christ, who is in this sense the God-man. Obviously, humanity is understood here not in the empirical sense, for empirical man appears and exists in time, and the unity of such empirical humanity is an abstraction, a collective concept. In this case, what is meant is ideal humanity, the intelligible essence that underlies the empirical phenomenon; humanity in this sense does not coincide with either individual or collective man. If collective man represents a logical abstraction, then individual man, strictly speaking, represents the same thing, for what can be accepted as the real basis of individual man? His physical body? But this organism consists of organs and cells, why not take each cell as such a unit, and the organism as a collective whole, which is in the same relationship to the cell as humanity is to an individual person? However, a cell is still a complex being; let’s go further and stop at the atom; but the atom, as an extended being, is still divisible and is not the last unit; thus we can only stop at zero. It will not be better if we base a person on his mental world, for this world represents a constant alternation of wakefulness and sleep, a change of experiences, the result of which is our empirical self: just as in a certain period of time our physical body is renewed, and a person in this sense is replaced by another, the same happens in the mental world. We must, while remaining consistent, either completely deny the existence of man, or see in him an ideal, intelligible essence that only finds expression in empirical man. “If man as a phenomenon is a temporary, transitory fact, then as an essence he is necessarily eternal and all-encompassing. What kind of ideal person is this? To be real, it must be one and many, therefore, it is not only the universal common essence of all human individuals, abstracted from them, but it is a universal and at the same time individual being that actually contains all these individuals. Each of us, each human being, is essentially and truly rooted and participating in the universal or absolute man.” 159 This ideal humanity forms, as it were, a world soul, a Platonic concept that plays a very important role in Solovyov’s system. The doctrine of the world soul, or universal humanity, will, of course, meet with the most unfavorable reception from positivists, but, apart from the term, it does not introduce anything that would not have long been familiar to the modern consciousness, brought up on positivism. Aren't positivists precisely representatives of a similar cosmological anthropocentrism? Doesn’t man serve as their center or king of the universe, if not in position, then in value? (Cf., for example, the frank and conscious anthropocentrism of Mr. Mikhailovsky in his famous articles on progress). Don't they treat humanity not as an abstract, collective concept, but as a real unity, even a deity? These ideas are based on the correct metaphysical thought about the essential ideal unity of humanity and its central importance in the universe and the world process. This idea, in one form or another, cannot be eliminated from developed human consciousness. But since the metaphysics of the positivists is contraband, it remains unconscious and dogmatic. 160 In any case, let the positivists recognize in the “world soul” the concept of “humanity” that is so familiar to them and so beloved by them. But in Solovyov we have this concept clarified by critical metaphysics, showing for “humanity” the possibility of not only an abstract, but an essential ideal unity. Turning directly to the problem of world evil, it must be stated that what is abnormal or improper in the world does not lie in the laws of the physical world, but in evil and suffering, phenomena of the moral world. Its source is egoism, the desire for exclusive self-affirmation, characteristic of everything living, and this “impossibility, remaining in its exclusivity. to be truly everything is fundamental suffering,” to which all others relate as special cases to the general law. Evil and suffering “are the essence of the state of an individual being: namely, evil is the tense state of its waves, affirming exclusively itself and denying everything else, and suffering is the necessary reaction of another against such a will.” (It is not difficult to detect an echo of Schopenhauer's philosophy here). The cause of evil obviously cannot be in God, who is goodness, nor outside of God, for he contains everything within himself. It can be explained, obviously, only by the special mutual relationship of the elements of being, their rearrangement, so that the ideal world and the real world differ from each other not in essence, but only in the position of the elements: the first “represents the unity of all beings, or their position in which everyone finds himself in everyone and everything in everyone; the other, on the contrary, represents such a state of beings in which each in himself or in his own will asserts himself outside of others and against others (which is evil) and thereby endures against his will the external reality of others (which is suffering).” “If evil or egoism is some actual tense state of individual will, opposing itself to everything, and every act of will is by definition free (as an action from oneself), then, consequently, evil is the free product of individual beings.” 161 But it cannot be a product of the will of man, as a physical being, for the latter is already born in evil and finds a world of discord, external, separate existence. Having no physicality, evil can only find a metaphysical explanation: “the original origin of evil can only take place in the area of ​​the eternal pre-natural world.” 162 In the original unity with the Divinity, beings form three spheres, depending on which of the divine actions they are determined by (will, idea and feeling). Pure spirits of the first sphere are in direct unity of love with the origin and do not have a special, expressed existence. Pure minds, which constitute the realm of the Divine Logos, have existence as separate representations not only for God, but also for each other. They are in a certain relationship with each other. Here, every “smart” creature is a certain idea that has its place in the ideal cosmos. But both spirits and minds, not having a separate and concentrated existence, are not capable of interacting with the Divine, which is required for the fullness of Divine existence. Therefore, the Divinity derives its will from the unconditional substantial unity of the first sphere of being, turns this will to the entire totality of ideal objects of the second sphere and, dwelling on each of them separately, “connects with it by an act of its will and thereby affirms and imprints it as an independent being, having the ability to influence the divine principle.” This is actually the act of divine creativity. Each idea, according to its content, perceives this will in its own way, for itself, and thereby stands out as a real being, having its own reality and from itself influencing the divine principle, becoming a soul. So, the eternal objects of divine contemplation, being isolated due to their inherent peculiarity, become “a living soul.” Their unity is the living center or soul of all creatures, the real form of the Divine. We already know that this unifying principle or world soul produces this unity not from itself, but from the divine Logos. “Therefore, although possessing everything, the world soul may want to possess it differently than it possesses, i.e. may want to possess it from herself as God, may strive so that absolute originality in the possession of this fullness, which does not belong to her, should be added to the fullness of being, which belongs to her. Because of this, the soul can separate the relative center of its life from the absolute center of divine life, it can assert itself outside of God, but thereby the world soul loses its central position and, out of everything, itself becomes one of many. At the same time, the unity of the universe is lost, the universal mechanism turns into a mechanical collection of atoms. The particular elements of the universal organism lose their common connection and, left to themselves, are doomed to a scattered egoistic existence, the root of which is evil, and the fruit of which is suffering. “Thus, the whole creation is subjected to vanity and the slavery of corruption not voluntarily, but by the will of the one who subjected it, that is, the world soul, as the only free principle of natural life.” 163 The world that has fallen away from divine unity is a chaos of disparate elements. Their impenetrability to each other creates real space; their mechanical interaction is the world of matter. The world retains a vague desire for ideal unity and its implementation is the meaning and goal of the world process. This process represents the interaction of the world soul, the passive principle, and the divine principle, which brings active unity. Before talking about the forms and aspects of the world process, let us dwell on the question of its general foundations. “Why is this connection of the divine principle with the world soul and the resulting birth of the universal organism, as an embodied divine idea (Sophia), why does this connection and this birth not occur simultaneously in one act of divine creativity? Why does this work and effort exist in world life, why should nature experience the pangs of birth, and why, before producing a perfect form corresponding to an idea, before giving birth to a perfect and eternal organism, does it produce so many ugly, monstrous creations that cannot withstand the struggle of life and perish without a trace? Why all these miscarriages and miscarriages of nature? Why does God leave nature to achieve its goal so slowly and by such bad means? Why is the realization of the divine idea in the world a gradual and complex process, and not one simple act? The answer to this question lies entirely in one word, expressing something without which neither God nor nature can be thought of; this word is freedom.” The union of everything that exists with the Divine, which constitutes the goal of existence, for its completeness must be mutual, and, not having this unity in an eternal act like God, the world soul must realize it in time and gradually. If this sought-after, i.e., “all-unity in its entirety, were immediately communicated or transmitted to her, then it would appear to her only as an external fact, as something fatal and violent, and in order to have it as a free idea, she herself must assimilate and master it. This is the general basis of the world process.” 164 So, world evil is, as it were, a ransom for the moral dignity of man as a rationally free being, capable “like gods” of knowing good and evil. And if moral freedom is the highest good and at the same time a condition for the highest, that is, conscious union with the Divine, then the world’s evil is thereby justified and understood in its highest expediency, no matter how painful the state of the world lying in evil may be. This recognition of evil as relative and, therefore, powerless is based, therefore, on the belief in the final real triumph of good; to those who do not have such faith, evil should seem absolute, ineradicable, humiliating existence with its presence; the dignity of the human person requires, in one form or another, to abandon this meaningless, because evil and deceitful world, which does not have in itself any reasonable justification for the world, to get away from it, such has always been the philosophy of pessimism. 165 The problem of world evil does not allow for a solution other than in a general form; this decision cannot be individualized. We will never fully understand the meaning of each individual fact, in which the combined actions of the physical world alienated from us, the elemental forces of history, and living human love and malice are intertwined. We will never understand the meaning of the Andijan earthquake, or some train accident, or the fanaticism of a despotic government. Taken individually, as special cases of inevitable evil, they seem completely irrational. The tragedy of Ivan Karamazov’s doubts lies precisely in the fact that he wants to find meaning in each individual fact of evil (“children”) in a precisely “Euclidean” way, i.e., isolated from unity with existence, the mind. We can still understand the rationality of evil in general; we can only believe in the future triumph of good (and it is faith that Ivan Karamazov seeks and cannot find), but individual cases of evil are always unreasonable for us. And in this, i.e. It is in unreasonableness that the real power of evil lies. Evil, understood in its rationality and expediency, is no longer evil, which is, first of all, nonsense. The incomprehensibility of individual evil follows, therefore, from its definition. One can also cite the following metaphysical and ethical grounds for the existence of evil as such, that is, first of all, as nonsense. If evil is a consequence of the separation of the world soul from the divine principle, then the direct consequence of this separation is the separation of all elements, therefore, of our self from the connection with the whole; the first result of this will be the loss of understanding of the connection of this whole; Remaining inevitably at one of the points on the periphery of existence, we cannot understand the connection that connects these points with the center and together forms a circle. Our fatal limitations are reflected in a meager and unclear understanding of everything that exists, not only evil, but also good, thus we get the conclusion that one and the same act is the cause not only of the origin of evil, but also of its irrationality. Communication with everything and understanding of everything is possible only with the restoration of the original divine unity, when there is no longer any place for evil. So, although irrationality is the main sign of objective evil, this truth cannot, however, contradict the belief that reason reigns in the world and therefore there are no absolutely irrational events. Philosophical and religious consciousness comes here into conflict with the rational, empirical, and the state of this discord, which always exists in human consciousness, is artistically embodied in the image of Ivan Karamazov. Philosophical and religious consciousness commands here to go against empirical evidence, to deny it in the name of higher knowledge, to give, indeed, “reproof of invisible things”, before which the colors of visible things fade; such faith is a moral task, a matter not so much of the mind as of the heart, which sees and understands more clearly in all basic life issues than reason. From here, by the way, the whole hopelessness of attempts to prove the ultimate powerlessness of evil by reason is clear. To prove this with reason means to go against rational evidence. Fortunately, reason in these matters is not the highest or only authority. Considering the same question from the ethical side, we will find that the full reality of evil (and, consequently, its irrationality) is the basic condition of moral life and development. Having before him a world consisting of broken elements, a person must build his life and activity, taking into account only these elements and evaluating them in one way or another, labeling them as good or evil. If we were given the ability to know the mind of everything that exists and therefore the entire plan of the world process, then these elements, which in their own right appear to be unconditional evil, would not turn out to be such from the point of view of this primordial plan, but in this case there is no room for moral differences. Therefore, evil would not be evil, could not affect our will in a certain, definite way, if it were clear in its immediate purpose: we once again come to the conclusion about the necessary irrationality of evil. Hegel’s system, which rationalizes everything that exists not from the point of view of a general plan and final goal, but directly as reality (“everything that is real is rational”), leaves absolutely no room for ought or morality: if everything is rational and cannot be unreasonable, then all discrimination and choice on which morality is based are excluded in advance. 166 But, depriving humanity of good and evil, it also deprives it of the ability to choose, i.e. moral freedom, leaving only necessity. So, in the end, we get a pair of polar and at the same time mutually dependent concepts, with irrationality and rationality setting boundaries for each other. Moral freedom, which requires irrationality, is reconciled with necessity or divine fate, which requires rationality, because this necessity is exercised freely. Here we reach the deepest basis of all metaphysics - the final and essential unity of freedom and necessity, where Kant and Hegel, these antipodes in the field of ethics, find reconciliation and mutual completion; Kant gives the thesis, Hegel gives the antithesis, and in Solovyov we find a synthesis. In Kant’s system and especially in Fichte’s ethical system, in which the last word of Kant’s ethics is said, the central place belongs to the idea of ​​obligation and the corresponding idea of ​​freedom, this is subjective or ethical idealism: as for objective idealism, Fichte does not go further than the idea of ​​a moral world order (ethical pantheism). On the contrary, Hegelian panlogism represents a system of the most decisive objective idealism, excluding subjective or ethical idealism. In Solovyov, both “abstract principles” are retained and reconciled, which, taken in abstraction, mutually exclude each other. In connection with this discussion of the problem of theodicy, we would like to emphasize the integral property of any teaching that tries to find meaning in the meaninglessness of world evil and harmony in world disharmony, this is its eschatological character. Any theodicy necessarily passes into open or hidden eschatology, and in this all philosophical and religious teachings agree, no matter how different in content their eschatologies may be. For example, the eschatological nature of the modern positive and atheistic teaching about progress, dreaming of an earthly paradise, is clear to everyone. Eschatology is not alien even to the philosophers of pessimism Hartmann and Schopenhauer, although their ideal is not positive, but negative - the peace of non-existence, the Nirvana of the Buddhists. In our time of the dominance of rational thinking, it is customary to be ashamed of outright eschatology, the thought of which is considered “unscientific”; this prevents, however, eschatology from penetrating into the most supposedly scientific constructions, an example of which we have in the mentioned theory of progress. This serves as the best proof that the eschatological problem cannot be eliminated from human consciousness, and therefore it is better to consciously and openly make it the subject of philosophical discussion, rather than cowardly hush it up, and then introduce eschatological teachings by smuggling and secretly. Without any restrictions, we can put forward the following proposition: just as every conscious person has his own philosophy (whatever it may be) and his own religion, in the same way every person has his own eschatology, lives not only in the present, but in the future and for the future, from which he expects the fulfillment of his best hopes. The worst thing for a person is to lose faith in the future. We have already said that the problem of theodicy drives us into eschatology, the need to find in this world lying in evil, and therefore, what is most important for us here, in our own life, a reasonable meaning, to justify the good that we serve. In the existing world, the presence of evil is a negation and insult to this good, therefore one of two things: either good is a subjective creation of the human brain and is powerless in the world, incapable of victory over evil, of expelling evil from the world, or good is an objective and powerful principle, giving rise to both the world and man, and once having it will destroy evil. In the problem of theodicy, the all-good and omnipotent God and the evil imperfect world are contrasted, and the choice of each individual person is given to believe in God or the good, or in the power of the evil and weak world? Only those who are as happy as possible with this world do not suffer from this dilemma, they do not feel it (although there is one unpleasant circumstance in it for everyone, and especially for satisfied people, this is death). The eschatological solution to the problem of theodicy contains, first of all, the idea that the world itself and the evil in it cannot be justified, cannot find in itself the right to exist in the face of the omnipotent Good or God, and even in the face of a person capable of moral judgment. What meaning can be attributed to objective evil and suffering, which, as we know, by its very essence is nonsense? or what right to exist in the face of Good does moral evil, the superhumanity of Nebuchadnezzar or the betrayal of Judas? After all, asking these questions means answering them negatively. So, the world and the evil in it, if good is not just our subjective idea and therefore an illusion, cannot be considered as an end in itself, but only as a means leading to an extra-worldly and supra-worldly goal - the realization of good. The means have no independent meaning, but are determined and justified by the end. We already know that in Solovyov’s theodicy the world is a sorrowful means to the goal of conscious and free union with the Divine; this conscious and, so to speak, mediated connection is possible only for morally free beings who have the opportunity to choose and have actually experienced good and evil; this provides the general foundations of the world process, understandable to us in its idea, but incomprehensible in the details of its implementation, from which our individual life is composed. The evil in which the world lies has a dual character: subjective or moral evil (sin or vice), and objective evil or suffering (caused both by the hostile elements of the world and by human stupidity and malice). Moral eschatology necessarily includes, therefore, two questions: about the victory of subjective and objective good. In the first case, the matter is obviously about human conscience, as the only arena where good and evil meet in open and conscious battle. The victory of good here can be expressed in its subjective recognition: in a positive way - in conscious service to it, or in a negative way - in the pangs of conscience in case of betrayal of good, the latter path is the path of moral revival. The real arena for moral self-determination, where a person can test himself in good and evil, is human life. The natural form of life, consisting of feelings, is pleasure and displeasure, happiness and unhappiness. The moral nature of man tells him to seek happiness only in goodness, to determine his entire life by the guiding idea of ​​goodness. Meanwhile, in life people look for goodness and besides it there are other sources of happiness, this is the real power of moral temptation; a person can find pleasure in evil or remain indifferent to good, surrendering to his sensuality. 167 The victory of good in individual consciousness means such a state of consciousness when, free from the shackles of sensuality, it faces only the dilemma of good and evil in their pure form, and good exerts its irresistible effect on the soul through the medium of conscience (“My word will judge you on the last day”). So, the idea of ​​moral retribution is a necessary part of moral eschatology; good would be powerless and illusory if it did not have final triumph in human conscience. 168 It is not for nothing that Kant establishes the immortality of the soul as a postulate of moral consciousness or practical reason. But here we move on to objective eschatology. The existence of objective evil in the form of undeserved and senseless suffering requires its destruction if good is omnipotent. How can it be destroyed? If a person is sick, then there are two ways to destroy the disease: the first is recovery, and the second is death; If a tooth hurts, it can also be cured by two means: eliminate the cause of the pain or pull it out. Which of these methods can be considered a victory over the disease? In the life of the world that exists in time and space, the second method of solving the problem of evil and suffering is usually practiced: it is not they that are destroyed, but their objects, people, creatures of nature, etc., and the constant renewal of life is the constant renewal of evil. Is this victory and the omnipotence of good? Obviously, the logical conclusion from the recognition of the omnipotence of good is the restoration to a state of good of everything that exists in the world in a state of evil, and not the general destruction that constitutes the law of the natural world order. The need for such a conclusion can be explained by an analysis of positive eschatology or the theory of progress; positivists cannot eradicate from themselves the belief in existing, objective good, which their philosophy denies, they cannot call upon the world as it is. Therefore, they accept an eschatology supposedly based on science, but in fact, of course, rooted in faith, according to which in the historical development of mankind, evil will be overcome by good. Let us accept this eschatology in its entirety, even in its most extreme formulation, according to which evil will eventually be finally expelled from the world, and, starting from a certain point in historical development, we will have a generation of good, happy, wise people, man-gods or super-men. (In positive eschatology, it is usually silent about whether human history has an end or is endless, no matter how alien and contradictory the concept of infinity is for a positive philosopher). Is such an eschatology able to satisfy the demands of moral consciousness, which believes in objective and therefore all-conquering good? Of course not, because are the sufferings and all the lies of the early periods of history redeemed by the truth and happiness of the later ones? After all, even the mere idea of ​​such a price or the price of progress does not offend the moral sense and does not testify not to the all-conquering power of good, but to its impotence? They want to assure us that the part is equal to the whole, that the meaning of all historical development is determined by the life of the last few generations. Everything can have as its goal only everything: the triumph of good in everything therefore requires its restoration in everything and for this restoration of everything. Obviously, positive eschatology is even less capable of solving the problem of individual evil: those people who have served evil all their lives with impunity and enjoyed external well-being never recognize the omnipotent power of good in an enlightened human conscience - they died not only physically, but also for good. And next to this view, modern individualism proves the absolute value of the human personality, the latter inflates in its boundless pride into a superman, the microcosm wants to fill the macrocosm with itself. What inconsistency of thought! Representatives of a positive worldview have enough faith to create an idea of ​​​​the future of humanity (for, we repeat again, it is held on by faith, and only naive ignorance can consider that it is based on “science”), to allow the partial victory of good, but to give good the attribute of omnipotence, without which it ceases to be good, this is considered “unscientific” superstition. So, eschatology is a necessary conclusion from the analysis of the very concept of good: either good is an illusion, our subjective creation, then serving it and moral life in general is devoid of any meaning, or it exists and therefore is omnipotent, and in this case eschatology comes into its own. Both main ideas of philosophical eschatology - moral judgment and restoration of everything, constitute the main content of Christian eschatology, which now even theological science (in Protestantism) considers to be eliminated as a foreign appendage to pure ethical teaching, not noticing that this is only a necessary conclusion from this teaching. 169 As for Solovyov, he always stood on the basis of the eschatological teachings of Christianity and from this side was subjected to especially persistent misunderstanding. The last time these ideas were expressed by him was in “Three Conversations”, in a polemic with the ethical rationalism of Count L.N. Tolstoy. 170 But let us return to the interrupted presentation of Solovyov’s metaphysics. The Divine principle causes unity in cosmic chaos, first in the most external form of the law of gravity, mechanical unity, then a closer dynamic unity and, finally, organic unity. Here Soloviev goes hand in hand with modern natural science, up to and including Darwin's theory. It is known that Soloviev was an ardent supporter of natural science evolutionism. 171 The difference between him as a philosopher and natural scientists is that natural science gave him an answer to problems not of natural science, but of natural philosophy. There was no more compromised teaching in the history of philosophy than natural philosophy (which, however, does not prevent it from raising its head again recently), and nevertheless, the natural philosophical problem necessarily enters into metaphysics and meets one of the main aspirations of our spirit - to determine our relationship to nature. Actually, there are two questions here: what is nature in relation to us in its essence and in its development or process? The answer to the first question was already given above by the general teaching of spiritualism. According to this view, there is no qualitative difference between us and nature, there are only gradations. Nature is not a dead world of matter, “not a cast, not a soulless face,” but a living world of spiritual substances, indeed, “an otherness of the spirit,” as was accepted by German idealism. If we feel alien to nature and its language, which, however, is understandable to poets and poetically minded souls, then this is not due to its internal alienness to us, but to the general state of our world. From the point of view of natural philosophy, the evolutionary doctrine of modern natural science receives a special meaning: man is not only by origin and complexity of organization the most recent product of the natural world, but in essence he is the goal of this development, his last word in order not only genetic, but also metaphysical. With the advent of man, so-called natural history ends and human history opens: nature begins to serve man and man begins to conquer it. The idea of ​​natural philosophy is inextricably linked with the name of Schelling, who finally broke through the stuffy fence of Fichtean solipsism and discovered the natural world. But the same Schelling, especially his students, hopelessly compromised the idea of ​​natural philosophy by the fact that they sought not to transform natural science into philosophy, but to replace natural science with philosophy. They made an attempt (like Hegel) to deprive natural science of the indefinitely broad empirical basis that it should have, and to replace it with a priori schemes, which immediately came into conflict with facts and thus deprived natural philosophy of credit for a long time. Philosophy must go beyond strict natural science, raising new questions and introducing its results as an organic part into a broader synthesis. But it can never claim the rights of experimental science. In Solovyov's metaphysics we have an example of such a normal union of philosophy and natural science. With the advent of man, a new process of development of internal unity begins, which now appears not as just an external boundary, but in the form of consciousness and free activity. “In man, the world soul for the first time internally unites with the divine Logos in consciousness as a pure form of unity. Being in reality only one of many creatures in nature, man in his consciousness, having the ability to comprehend the mind or internal connection (λογος) of everything that exists, appears in the idea as everything and in this sense is the second all-unity, the image and likeness of God. In man, nature outgrows itself and passes (in consciousness) into the realm of absolute existence.” 172 Man is the second absolute or “becoming absolute.” Only one person is not limited to one material principle, but “having in himself, firstly, the elements of material existence that connect him with the natural world, having, secondly, an ideal consciousness of unity that connects him with God, a person, thirdly, not limiting himself exclusively to either one or the other, appears as a free “I”, able to define himself in one way or another in relation to the two sides of his being, able to incline to one side or the other, to establish himself in one or the other sphere. If in his ideal consciousness a person has the image of God, then his unconditional freedom from ideas as well as from fact, this formal infinity of the human “I”, represents in him the likeness of God. Man not only has the same inner essence of life - the unity that God also has, but he is free to desire to have it as God, that is, he can desire on his own to be like God.” 173 By asserting himself outside of God, man falls away or is separated from Him, like the world soul, and, like the latter, he loses his central position. He finds himself alienated from nature and loses the inner unity in his consciousness. Consciousness remains an empty form seeking its content. The gradual filling of this absolute form with absolute content or the spiritualization of man through his internal assimilation of the divine principle constitutes the historical process itself. He represents the transition from bestial humanity to divine humanity. The Divine principle reveals itself to man, now as suppressing evil will, now as enlightening, now as, finally, regenerating. The latter is possible only in an individual form, as the only form in which natural humanity exists; rebirth can only consist in the complete mutual penetration of the divine and human principles. And, indeed, the divine Logos is born as an individual man (Christ), holding within himself both divine and human nature. But what once happened in the absolute individual must also happen in humanity, before which the task of achieving positive unity in consciousness, mutual relationships and in life opens in historical life. This task must be carried out by him freely, that is, in historical development. The ideas of the philosophy of history are barely outlined in Solovyov, which is why we limit ourselves to this brief outline. At this point, philosophy in the proper sense ends, and the indisputable area of ​​theology begins, which goes beyond the scope of this essay (just like Solovyov’s aesthetics and ethics). 174 Thus, the main feature that penetrates through Solovyov’s entire system and characterizes it in the history of philosophy is the idea of God-manhood; it is its logical and moral center, all threads of argumentation converge to it, and it cannot be removed without destroying the entire edifice. Having outlined the general foundations of Solovyov’s philosophical system, let us pose our previous question: what does it give to modern consciousness? It provides a harmonious and harmonious synthesis of modern thought and knowledge, an integral worldview in which the demands of critical philosophy, metaphysical creativity, and natural science are taken into account and coordinated. There is not a single significant philosophical and scientific idea of ​​the 19th century that would not be reflected in one way or another in this construction, would not be taken into account in it. But there is one more feature that makes its significance completely exceptional for modern atheistic society, this is its relationship to the Christian religion. We see that Solovyov’s philosophy organically merges with Christian metaphysics, is, as it were, a critical introduction to theology, realizing in practice the ideal of “free theosophy.” Soloviev himself considered this inextricable connection to be the most essential feature of his worldview, so that he once directly stated that he did not have his own teaching and considered himself a faithful supporter of Christian teaching. One can generally understand the relationship between philosophy and religion differently: consider them completely independent, unrelated areas, therefore, completely separate philosophy from religion, or see in philosophy a free study of the content of religious consciousness; from this point of view, every philosophy necessarily justifies its theology. 175 This constitutes, in our opinion, its main task, its vital nerve, while in the first case philosophy either stops half-heartedly or turns into a jeu d’ésprit that has no serious significance. These or those conclusions of a religious nature, in general a certain attitude towards religion, is not, therefore, something accidental for philosophy, a foreign matter for it - such an opinion is an empty and harmful prejudice, which has a basis only in indifferentism - but a necessary, vital and important matter. This connection is obvious even in those cases where philosophy provides grounds for atheism, which is a definite, albeit negative, religion; the more it should exist in relation to positive religious and philosophical teachings. A change in the philosophical worldview is necessarily accompanied by a change in the religious one. 176 All the great philosophers of modern times exerted a powerful influence on theological thought, especially profound here was the influence of Kant, whom Paulsen, not without reason, characterizes “als Philosoph des Protestantismus” (in the collection Philosophia militans). Therefore, Solovyov’s connection between philosophy and religion is not a misunderstanding or weakness of the philosopher who gave philosophy to the service of theology, but, on the contrary, is a sign of its completeness, internal maturity, and the seriousness of its plan. “Cursed is everyone who does the Lord’s work with negligence,” Soloviev liked to repeat, and wouldn’t it be monstrous negligence on the part of a philosopher not to define his attitude to religion, not to bring his system to certain religious conclusions! The preaching of true Christianity must be carried out not only in the form of a powerful ethical call and personal example, but also fully armed with philosophy and science, and Solovyov strives to fulfill this last task with his philosophical activities. If the main content of Solovyov’s theoretical philosophy coincides with the metaphysics of Christianity, then Christian morality serves as the guiding principle of his journalistic activity. He tried to illuminate with them all the issues of public life, and if at the same time you can sometimes encounter individual errors of a private nature, then you will never encounter not only a betrayal of these principles, but even any kind of theoretical transaction with hostile reality or concession to it. There cannot be a publicist of more crystalline honesty and strict adherence to principles than Solovyov, and if we take into account that these guiding principles are his last conclusion of theoretical philosophy, then we must also add to what has been said that Solovyov’s worldview - regardless of its correctness or incorrectness - is distinguished by remarkable integrity, and this integrity is the result not of its forced simplicity, but of its internal completeness, based on the victorious “criticism of abstract began" and their conscious synthesis. Soloviev carried his banner faithfully and high, although this required true heroism, and the brave crusader did not find complete sympathy and understanding for himself in either of the two camps into which history had split Russian life. The tragic aura of forced loneliness, the inevitable fate of every person ahead of his time, illuminates this prematurely gray head. Solovyov had to fight all his life on two fronts: to denounce the anti-Christianity of those who have the name of Christ on their lips and crucify Him with their lives, and those who serve Him in deeds, but deny Him in thought. 177 This basic misunderstanding of Russian life can be completely eliminated only by great historical events that will radically change the conditions of not only the religious, but also the social life of the people, but first it must be recognized as such. This understanding, which at the same time is an ideal preliminary to the future, we find with the greatest clarity in Solovyov. Solovyov went to the camp of our “guardians,” where the name of Christ is most often taken in vain, to tell them what their verbal faith in Him really obliges them to do. The first and most important thing he said here comes down to the fact that Christianity, if it is truly a universal truth, must be implemented in the collective life of humanity and provide the highest criterion in assessing all phenomena and demands of current life. In a word, Christian politics is obligatory. The main sin of Byzantium, as Solovyov repeatedly points out, 178 is that it knew only domestic and church Christianity, leaving the entire area of ​​public and state life to the lower, dark elements of human nature. Modern life is something similar, and it is the duty of every sincere Christian to strive to eliminate such an abnormal state. “If the Russian national ideal is truly Christian, then it must thereby be the ideal of social truth and progress, i.e. practical implementation of Christianity in the world. An ideal that does not require such implementation. which does not impose any social duties, comes down to empty and false words. You cannot worship Christian truth and at the same time put up with anti-Christian reality, as with something eternally unchangeable and inevitable. The true Christian ideal of the Russian people is, at the same time, a broad practical task that embraces all social relations, internal and external.” 179 Attempts to present Christianity as a teaching of only personal soul salvation, justifying social indifference and denying the obligatory concern for the fate of the great whole - the nation and humanity, Solovyov rightly calls counterfeits of Christianity, and in the article “On counterfeits,” which is, as it were, his social credo, we find the following, deeply fair judgments: “The Kingdom of God, perfect in the eternal divine idea (“in heaven”), potentially inherent in our nature, is necessarily there at the same time, what is accomplished for us and through us. From this side it is our business, the task of our activity. This matter and this task cannot be limited to the isolated individual existence of individuals. Man is a social being, and the highest task of his life, the final goal of his efforts lies not in his personal destiny, but in the social destinies of all humanity. Just as the general internal potential of the kingdom of God, for its realization, must necessarily turn into an individual moral feat, so this latter, for its completeness, inevitably enters into the social movement of all humanity, adjoins one way or another at a given moment and under given conditions to the general theanthropic process of world history. If the kingdom of God is a combination of God’s grace with man, then, of course, not with man isolated in his egoism, but with man as a living member of the universal whole.” 180 For supporters of individualistic Christianity, the subject of the greatest temptation is the doctrine of progress, so popular, on the contrary, in the camp of “those who are perishing for the great cause of love,” and these latter are straining their strength in solving an insoluble task: to give a solid logical justification for this essentially religious teaching, to develop within the limits of “science” the doctrine of the kingdom of God without God. Against both of them, with the breadth of thought that is given only by understanding the justice and at the same time the one-sidedness of both points of view, both “abstract principles,” Soloviev develops the following view: “Because many evolutionists adhere to a one-sided mechanical concept of evolution, which excludes the action of a Higher Power and any teleology, because many preachers of historical progress understand by it the unlimited self-improvement of man without God and against God, - from this we hastily They clearly draw the absurd conclusion that the very ideas of development and progress have some kind of atheistic and anti-Christian character. Meanwhile, not only is this not so, but, on the contrary, these ideas are specifically Christian (or more precisely Jewish-Christian), they were brought into the consciousness of people only by the prophets of Israel and preachers of the Gospel.” 181 “Only the Christian (or, what is the same, messianic) idea of ​​the kingdom of God, consistently revealed in the life of mankind, gives the meaning of history and defines the true concept of progress. Christianity gives humanity not only the ideal of absolute perfection, but also the path to achieving this ideal, therefore, it is essentially progressive”... “By right, those bearing the name Christians must take care of the preservation and strengthening at all costs of these social groups and forms in worldly humanity, and, on the contrary, about their rebirth and transformation in the Christian spirit (as far as they are capable of this), - about their true introduction into the sphere of the kingdom of God. So, the idea of ​​the kingdom of God necessarily leads us (I mean every conscious and sincere Christian) to the obligation to act - within the limits of our calling - for the realization of Christian principles in the collective life of humanity, for the transformation in the spirit of the highest truth of all our social forms and relations, that is, it leads us to Christian politics. 182 Before all others, of course, those demands of Christian policy that relate to the Christian religion itself, that is, the demands of freedom of conscience and religious tolerance, must be implemented. These questions occupy the first place in the journalism of Solovyov, who continues the work of the Slavophiles, starting with Khomyakov and ending with Iv. O. Aksakov. “I consider religious tolerance or religious freedom to be as important and urgent a need for modern Russian life as the need for the liberation of the peasants was forty years ago.” 183 With his usual wit, he compared this side of his journalistic activity with the voluntary “obedience” imposed in monasteries and consisting in “sweeping away the printed rubbish and rubbish with which our pseudo-Orthodox false patriots are trying to drown in the public consciousness the great and vital issue of religious freedom.” 184 The bureaucracy, which had infiltrated church life, was the main evil that Solovyov fought here. This is how, in a letter to Rachinsky, he explained the undoubted spiritual impotence of the church, armed with all the means of earthly power: “Spiritual amateur activity is not allowed under one’s own moral responsibility. Religious and church truth is completely preserved in a strong government chest behind government seals and under the guard of case sentries. There is complete security, but no real interest. Somewhere far away there is a religious struggle going on, but this does not concern us. Our shepherds have no equal opponents. The enemies of Orthodoxy are outside the sphere of our action, but if they come to us, then only with their hands tied and their mouths gagged... We have been spared from the real serious struggle for Orthodoxy by state tutelage. But on the other hand, Orthodoxy itself, instead of the all-encompassing universal banner of peoples, becomes in our country a simple attribute or appendage of Russian statehood... Here is a clear, simple and easily fulfilled demand: to rid our church of criminal and censorship protection, under which there can be no direct and open struggle for religious truth. Abolishing forced Orthodoxy is the first elementary means for the revival of true Orthodoxy, for the general renewal of our church forces in pastors and flocks.” 185 As a special case of the struggle for religious tolerance is Solovyov’s well-known attitude to the Jewish question, which he considered in all fairness to be a Christian question, a question of Christian attitude towards Jews. Sometimes this anti-Semitism heats up in the name of religious differences, and even I. S. Aksakov, who identified its absence with religious indifference, was not free from such anti-Semitism. Here we thus have disguised or even undisguised religious intolerance, the lack of which made Aksakov himself grieve so much as far as Christians were concerned. The words of Christ are addressed to all such zealots: you do not know what kind of spirit you are. 186 The area of ​​Christian politics should, according to Solovyov, cover all aspects of social life, from international relations, where the principles of “cannibalism” reign, to economic and legal ones. The divine principle penetrates and transforms all spheres of human life, and this assimilation by collective humanity of the divine principle is the implementation of free theocracy, as Solovyov designated (not entirely successfully) the positive religious ideal of social development. The idea of ​​Christian politics represents a distinctive and, in our opinion, extremely valuable and fruitful feature of Solovyov’s philosophy. It frees the understanding of Christian teaching from the monastic one-sidedness with which it was interpreted exclusively as a teaching about personal salvation, coldly leaving “the world” to its sinful forces, and it does not mechanically but organically unite the practical aspirations of modern progressives, Christians without Christ, with Christ’s teaching. This aspiration, which vainly seeks justification in scientific constructs, is given absolute religious sanction; modern social science is crowned with the absolute ideal it lacks. And at the same time, those false Christians, representatives of evil obscurantism and wild reaction, who are our best preachers of unbelief, are exposed. Solovyov’s teaching on Christian politics provides a clear and “sufficient basis for the theoretical and practical overcoming of the discord and misunderstanding that lies in our society between religion and life and which is finally subject to destruction, for correctly understood religion not only does not liberate and does not command us to abandon those social responsibilities that conscience places on us, but even more consolidates them. The Gospel, with its teaching about the Kingdom of God, for the coming of which Christ taught to pray, with its teaching about the absolute value of the human person and with the commandment of love as the highest norm of human relations, sets the human will as an absolute requirement the very ideals that inspire modern humanity. 187 True, this humanity does not recognize and even denies this connection; its ideals are devoid of any religious basis, but this does not make the ideals themselves untrue or immoral. How can the idea of ​​love and the absolute value of the human soul sanction the political enslavement of the individual, lawlessness, arbitrariness or economic enslavement, the exploitation of child and female labor? After all, it is enough only to clearly pose this question in order to finally eliminate this blasphemous idea. There is no doubt that those demands for guarantees of personal freedom that are put forward by political democracy and those aspirations for the implementation of justice in economic relations, which are united in the concept of socialism, are also encompassed by the positive commandments of the Christian religion, and this can be denied either due to an inability to think logically, or due to bad faith, tertium non datur. The validity of this position is not destroyed by the fact that the forms and foundations that are given to these demands in modern life are alien and even hostile to Christianity; this depends on their transformation into “abstract principles”, seeking foundations in themselves, and not in a higher ideal. This is most clear in the fate of socialism. Socialism, in the most common form of the theory of economic materialism or Marxism, is a typical example of an abstract principle. Obviously, its main content - the requirement to introduce justice in economic relations - presupposes the idea of ​​justice, well-known ethical concepts are already given. From this point of view, the teaching of socialism should, it would seem, be included as part of a larger whole, integral philosophical worldview. But socialism, at least in Marxism, does not want to do this, it wants to be everything itself and thereby turns into an abstract principle, which is at the same time the beginning of a series of contradictions. If justice, as an absolute objective principle, does not exist, obviously, it must look for a surrogate in empirical reality, and here we have only the struggle of classes and their interests. The highest principle is class struggle and class egoism; but if we stand on this ground, alien to the question of justice, then how do the interests of the worker class differ from the interests of the capitalist class? Both classes are in their full right, and if, in the absence of ideal scales, issues of law are decided by their real relationship, i.e. force, then force still remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie, therefore, from the point of view of the law of the strong, the teaching not of the socialists, but of the apologists of the bourgeoisie, is correct. A consistently developed doctrine of class struggle should lead to an apology for the strong, and only logical inconsistency and the smuggled idea of ​​justice, loudly rejected as prejudice, saves us from this conclusion. 188 Justice is sacrificed to the idea of theoretical truth, because a theory is established according to which the idea of justice and the whole “ideology” in general is a “reflex” of economic relations. But this also abolishes the concept of truth, for if every position is a reflex, necessary in its time, but devoid of any objective meaning, then economic materialism itself is the same reflex, the doctrine of reflexes is also a reflex, but in this case, on what are its claims based? The story of that Cretan is repeated, who, saying that all Cretans are liars, refuted himself, for he himself turned out to be a liar and therefore could not make a true statement. All these difficulties disappear if only we recognize that economic materialism is a harmful appendage to the ideas of socialism, and therefore its elimination in no way entails the destruction of the ideal it distorts. This is how, or approximately this, Soloviev looked at this question. He speaks more than once about the truth of socialism, which he fully recognizes. And yet, in his opinion, “the general essential sin of socialism lies in the assumption that a certain economic order (such as the merger of capital with labor, the union organization of industry, etc.) in itself is something proper, unconditionally normal and moral, i.e. That is, that this economic order, as such, already contains a moral principle and completely determines social morality, which cannot exist outside of it, so that here the moral principle, the beginning of what is due or normal, is determined exclusively by one of the elements of universal human life - the economic element, and is made completely dependent on one or another economic order, while truly, on the contrary, economic relations, being in themselves only facts of a material order, in order to have a normal or objective moral significance must be determined formally by the moral principle and therefore depend on it from this side... The main sin of the socialist teaching is not so much that it demands too much for the working classes, but that in the area of ​​the highest interests it demands too little for the poor classes and, trying to exalt the worker, limits and humiliates man. 189 “On the material basis on which economic socialism stands, it is impossible to find anything inviolable in a person, nothing that would make him a res sacra or a person in the proper sense of the word; there is not here that essential core against which every external force, every external oppression must break. In the absence of such an essential principle that makes a person an inviolable person, any protest against the exploitation of one class by another is only an expression of a subjective desire, not obligatory for anyone, thus, from this side, socialism falls into an internal contradiction, rebelling against economic exploitation and at the same time not recognizing for a person that unconditional significance, the only one by virtue of which such exploitation can in principle be condemned.” 190 The same fundamental point of view is expressed in “The Justification of the Good” (in the chapter “The Economic Question from a Moral Point of View”). However, it is necessary to make a reservation that no matter how deep Solovyov’s guiding ideas are on the question of socialism and no matter how essential their significance for a coherent worldview, political economy in general represents the philosopher’s Achilles’ heel, and in the field of purely economic issues, the reader who has gone through the proper economic school will find much that is incorrect, seductive, and generally inconsistent in its dignity with the general teaching of the philosopher. 191 Without considering Solovyov an economist (which he did not claim to be), we will pass in silence these purely economic judgments of his, as not being of significant interest when considering the general foundations of his worldview. In any case, in the economic field, Solovyov’s teaching must be supplemented in everything that concerns issues of real politics. Here Solovyov's doctrine can and should be supplemented with realistic elements of Marxism. The ideal of a free theocracy (in the indicated sense) was the guiding one for Solovyov in the theory of law, which we will not dwell on in detail here. Let us briefly note that that absolutely legitimate and inescapable need from the human spirit to criticize law from the point of view of ideal norms, ideal ought, in a word, the idea of ​​natural law, for all its indisputability, currently finds insufficient justification among lawyers. The fact is that they take natural law only as a fact of consciousness, while it is their responsibility to clarify the metaphysical nature and content of this fact, to bring the doctrine of natural law into connection with the general metaphysical worldview, the subordination of the former to the latter. And since any serious metaphysical system necessarily leads to a certain religious teaching, the problem of natural law consists not in the naked recognition of pale and bloodless ought as a fact of consciousness, but in the establishment of a living connection between the absolute dictates of religion and their implementation, in so far as it is possible in morality. The true rule of law, real natural law, is given by religion; in particular, from the point of view of the Christian religion, such a norm is the divine commandment of love, “the necessary form of which is justice.” 192 Regardless of whether Solovyov was right or wrong in some of his legal constructions, the problem of natural law or free theocracy as applied to law was formulated by him in all its philosophical breadth, and in this respect, again, as in political economy, his teaching is of great fundamental importance and reminds us of the best times of the philosophy of law, when the problem of natural law (for example, in Fichte) was posed in connection with the general philosophical worldview, and not just the epistemological one image as it is now. One of the most important aspects of Solovyov’s journalism is the correct formulation and resolution of the national question: Solovyov’s struggle with the epigones of Slavophilism is well known and, it seems, is considered by no one to be his merit. It is all the more important and interesting to establish Solovyov’s actual views in their entirety. In his polemics, he had to fight the extremes of nationalism and thus turn his back on the very idea of ​​nationality. Thanks to this, many may have the idea that Solovyov was a cosmopolitan or, which is practically the same thing, a “Westerner.” Meanwhile, this is completely false. Solovyov was a supporter of universalism, but not negative, cosmopolitan, non-national, but positive or super-national. 193 He often repeats that Christianity does not deny nationalities, although it itself is supranational. In his opinion, “a people or nationality is a positive force, and each people, by its special character, is appointed for a special service. Different nationalities are different organs in the whole body of humanity - for a Christian this is an obvious truth.” 194 Sharing the Slavophiles’ faith in the “ideally religious vocation of the Russian people,” 195 Solovyov, however, taught that “the idea of ​​a cultural vocation can be valid and fruitful only when this vocation is taken not as an imaginary privilege, but as a real duty, not as domination, but as service.” 196 The idea of ​​nationality, understood in the sense of a cultural mission, became in the hands of Solovyov a weapon in the fight against nationalism, and all the crushing power of his attacks is explained precisely by this: he fought against nationalism not empty-handed, not in the name of sterile and abstract cosmopolitanism, but standing on a common ground with him - the recognition of nationality as a positive force; Solovyov’s last word was not the precepts of cosmopolitanism, that nationality is a chimera or a natural fact that has no fundamental significance, but the Christian commandment: “love all other peoples as your own.” 197 European thought has never risen to such a height in the national question in all the centuries of its existence, in particular in the 19th century: one only has to remember the limited patriotism of Fichte and Hegel. The national question is currently being resolved either in the spirit of cosmopolitanism or zoological patriotism. Soloviev showed the possibility of a higher point of view, eliminating the limitations of the previous ones, posing and resolving the question in the spirit of positive Christian universalism. To understand Solovyov’s views on the national question, which were determined in his polemics with Slavophilism, it is necessary to give at least a brief description of the latter. Slavophilism and Westernism in Russian literature and life represent two mental movements that differ from each other not only in their attitude to the national question, but in the foundations of the entire worldview. And if the old forms of Slavophilism and, perhaps, Westernism have died, then the dispute between the two worldviews is far from over, it is still awaiting its resolution, which should consist in a higher synthesis of the positive elements of both. Initial Slavophilism is as much an ideological social movement as Westernism. Both directions proceeded from the denial of what existed, both equally suffered from censorship and were equally suspicious of the Nikolaev government and, at the same time, both denied each other to such an extent that they waged a constant fierce war. This initial Slavophilism of Khomyakov’s circle is characterized by the following features. Firstly, the Slavophiles had a negative attitude towards the Westernizing cosmopolitanism of their opponents and saw nationality as a positive force: they clearly recognized and formulated the idea of ​​a national calling. Of course, regardless of theoretical differences, both Slavophiles and Westerners were inspired by an equally passionate feeling of love for the oppressed homeland and fiery hatred of its oppressors. But this practical agreement does not at all eliminate philosophical disagreements. Holding the opinion that the idea of ​​nationality is a necessary element of the worldview and cosmopolitanism is nonsense, as Turgenev put it, we think that the Slavophiles were right here, not the Westerners, and the future on this point belongs to the Slavophile view. Secondly, the Slavophiles from the very beginning took a philosophical and religious basis. At all times of their existence, they consciously and invariably built their worldview on metaphysics and religion (we leave aside the particulars of their philosophical and religious opinions, which hardly anyone will fully support at the present time). On the contrary, in Western literature, starting with Belinsky and ending with the publicists of our days, the philosophy of atheism, appearing under various forms: positivism, materialism, agnosticism, is firmly rooted. If anywhere between both movements there exists not a misunderstanding or an accidental disagreement, but a point of fundamental difference, an entire philosophical abyss, then it is here. What tradition will young Russia, the future sons of a free fatherland, follow? Will they be satisfied with atheism and positivism or will they seek answers to the highest demands of the spirit in metaphysics and religion? One thing is certain that for this to happen one important reason must be eliminated, which is now a serious obstacle to free thought in Russia, namely the prejudice that certain philosophical and religious views are inextricably linked with certain political opinions, that a religious person can only be a reactionary, and a progressive must necessarily be an atheist. This prejudice takes its toll - alas! – there are too many historical foundations, and it can only be eliminated by the logic of events. In any case, the connection indicated is only factual, and not internal and logical. In the foundations of their philosophical worldview, the Slavophiles are superior to the Westerners and, I believe, their philosophical tradition will finally triumph, and the Russian intelligentsia will abandon the philosophy of positivism that has little to do with it. The third feature of the original Slavophilism is its fundamental democracy, which in the economic sphere turns into socialism (which is expressed in the doctrine of the socialist nature of the land community and, in general, the choral and artel principle, which is a feature of Slavophilism). 198 In connection with this there are Slavophil demands for the development of zemshchina and self-government and ardent hatred of the bureaucratic principle. The Slavophiles fundamentally stood on the same basis of love of freedom and love of the people as the Westerners. This third main feature of Slavophilism, which it has in common with Westernism, represents the main and irreducible feature of the Russian intelligentsia, which it, of course, cannot abandon without ceasing to be itself. Now we move on to the negative features of the Slavophil teaching. And first of all, it should be noted the political romanticism of the Slavophiles, which led them to a false idealization of reality and turned them in many respects into reactionaries. The Slavophiles made a positive mistake in believing that Russia could invent some new form of guaranteeing human rights in comparison with the West; they did not want to recognize the validity of the demand: wer A sagt, muss auch B sagen, and with this unfortunate mistake they most of all compromised themselves in the eyes of our advanced society, which was equally as dear to them as they were, but which rightly sought their guarantees, relying not on romantic fabrications, but on the historical examples of the West. Unfortunately, Vlad never completely freed himself from Slavophil narrow-mindedness and romanticism. Soloviev, whose political views leave much to be desired in terms of clarity and correctness. In general, he repeats the Slavophil teaching with all its advantages and disadvantages 199 (seasoning it with his own bad and unfounded schematization, the famous triad: king, high priest, prophet). Explaining the unfortunate weakness of the philosopher in this point by the incompleteness of his political views and some abstractness of his nature, as well as by the traditions of upbringing and the environment of his youth, with which he did not have time to completely break, we do not see any organic connection between the general teaching and the political views of the philosopher, which reactionaries so love to interpret in their favor, covering their own dark lusts with his authority. In any case, for me there is no doubt that Slavophilism as a political worldview has died and will never be resurrected; at this point it must be replenished by the teachings of Westernism. The same can be said regarding economic Slavophilism - the old populism, which completely disintegrated before our eyes under the pressure of historical facts, thanks to which, until recently, such a sharp antithesis between Marxism and populism has completely disappeared. 200 One should say about both political and economic Slavophilism: requiescant in pace. Along with political romanticism, one should put the second negative feature of the old Slavophilism, its national exclusivity, its tendency to national self-exaltation about the “rotting” West. This nationalism introduced a foreign addition to Slavophilism, which was very pleasing to obscurantists and reactionaries, but compromised it in the eyes of right-thinking people. Justification for Slavophilism can be found in the extremes of Westernism, but after Solovyov exposed all the lies of such nationalism and discovered the real content of the national idea, hostile to any exclusivity, spending a lot of words to fight it means breaking into an open door. The original Slavophil teaching contained contradictory elements, and these elements, standing out and becoming isolated in further development, determined the two main currents of Slavophil thought, its right and left wings. The right turned out to be through the one-sided development and strengthening of the negative elements of the Slavophile worldview. National exclusivity found a theoretician in the person of Danilevsky, in his extremely interesting essay “Russia and Europe”. Protective tendencies are most decisively expressed by K. Leontyev with his doctrine of “freezing” for the sake of protection. Finally, the original political romanticism, freed from all theoretical embellishments and illusions and reduced to the cult of brute force, said its last word in Katkov, this “Nemesis of Slavophilism,” and his epigones, who finally lost the right to be considered representatives of an ideological movement and descended to the level of voluntary literary denunciations and investigation. Solovyov was deliberately called upon to expose the lies of this degeneration of Slavophilism, for he stood on a common theoretical ground with him; the attack turned out to be true because it was, in a certain sense, carried out in one’s own camp. Criticism coming from Westerners could not have such persuasiveness here, because it would have come from an alien point of view of principle. It was necessary, without denying the idea of ​​nationality, to show that a certain kind of patriotism is zoological and immoral, that the Christian religion does not tolerate either the preaching of international hatred or the preaching of the deification of state power as such. To present here the glorious and victorious struggle of Solovyov against the right of Slavophilism would mean to convey the content of the “National Question”; We will limit ourselves only to Solovyov’s general conclusion regarding protective Slavophilism: “about half of historical humanity has long lived by faith in God as an absolute power, before which man is destroyed. This belief has found its full expression in the Muslim religion, which calls itself Islam, which means submission or resignation to a higher power. Here in Russia, among a pseudo-Christian society, such “Islam” has appeared, but not in relation to God, but in relation to the state. Katkov was the prophet of this new or, better said, renewed religion during the last 25 years of his activity. With genuine Muslim fanaticism, Katkov believed in the Russian state as the absolute embodiment of our people's strength. Just as for a faithful follower of the Koran, any discussion about the essence and attributes of a deity seems idle talk or criminal blasphemy, so Katkov saw in every ideal request addressed to his idol either meaningless phrases or disguised treason. The invisible power of the people was embodied in the visible power of the state. This force does not at all need to express any idea, correspond to any ideal, it does not need any justification, it is a fact, it simply is, and that is enough. A person is required to recognize it unconditionally and irrevocably, to submit and surrender to it completely, to perform in one word an act of “Islam.” “Recently, an important change has taken place everywhere: the main obstacle to true progress is not this or that institution, but the wildness of thought and the decline of public morality. It would be absurd to believe in the final victory of the dark forces in humanity, but the near future is preparing for us such tests as history has never known. It is comforting that the situation is becoming clearer and, as if on the eve of the Last Judgment, some separation of the wheat from the chaff is already beginning. In the realm of ideas, at least, this is already very clear. Representatives of the dark force, who until now, partly through misunderstanding, partly through hypocrisy, were defenders of “all that is holy and lofty,” finally agreed to a fundamental denial of goodness, truth and all human ideals, and instead of the name of Christ, which was so abused, revelation swear by the name of Ivan the Terrible. What is comforting here is not only the clarity, but also the completeness of thought: obviously, this trend has been fully expressed, and its representatives have nothing further to say or talk about.” 201 These significant lines were written more than 10 years ago, and how the history of this decade confirmed the justice of Solovyov’s sentence! Despite the degeneration of right-wing Slavophilism, the latter found in itself elements of positive development, and they were expressed in its left, the representatives of which are Iv. Aksakov and the publicists grouped around him, Dostoevsky and Vl. Soloviev. This movement was more akin to democracy, on a national-religious basis. However, bearing within itself contradictory elements, Slavophilism had to overcome these contradictions in its development and free itself from them. And above all, the contradiction existed between the positive universalism of Christian teaching, which was professed by Slavophilism, and nationalism, understood in the sense of national exclusivity. The reconciling formula here was first given in Pushkin’s speech by Dostoevsky, who, in his teaching about all-man and all-humanity, as the main element of the Russian soul, finally broke through the dam that separated “abstract” (in Solovyov’s sense) Slavophilism from “abstract” Westernism, and with the inspiration of prophetic ecstasy reconciled them. However, this reconciliation was only a prophecy, the content of which had to be, firstly, properly understood and further theoretically substantiated, and, secondly, it had to be fulfilled, practically put into practice, that is, it had to be made the guiding principle of journalism and politics. Dostoevsky himself only at the end of his sorrowful life rose to this prophetic contemplation; Even in his own journalistic activities, he sometimes grossly contradicted these principles, falling into nationalism, chauvinism, and anti-Semitism. 202 Dostoevsky’s behest was fulfilled by Solovyov, who resolved the issue not on the basis of the fact (whether it is true or false) of the pan-humanity of the Russian people, but on the basis of principle. He proclaimed the principle of recognition of the rights of every nationality, setting the highest norm of international relations to be love, not hatred, of peoples towards each other. The internal contradiction of Slavophilism was thereby overcome and eliminated, thus the desired synthesis of Slavophilism and Westernism, national universalism, was accomplished in its main features by Solovyov. However, there is a small or even rather big “but” here. We have already seen that Slavophilism contained elements that could give rise to Katkov and his associates. This same political romanticism, which is at the same time a national identity, separated Slavophilism from the democratic elements of our intelligentsia, while Westernism, which looked reality straight in the eye, had its main attractive force precisely in its freedom from the political prejudices of Slavophilism. The original worldview of Slavophilism must certainly be freed from this unfortunate peculiarity, and neither Dostoevsky nor Solovyov freed it from it. Dostoevsky, together with Aksakov, shared all the prejudices of Slavophilism, according to which the greatest national freedom is achievable in the absence of any legal guarantees that exist in the West. But, considering Western freedom insufficient for us, Dostoevsky practically turned out to be a political reactionary. Solovyov knew how to value legal guarantees and ridiculed the prejudices of the Slavophiles, as if all legal guarantees were disgusting to the spirit of the Russian people, rightly considering this to be a preaching of fundamental lack of rights. However, as we already know, Solovyov himself did not draw all the conclusions arising from the recognition of the importance and necessity of legal guarantees, because there can only be one consistent conclusion from here - the political credo of Russian Westernism. This last step now remains to be taken in the matter of purifying Slavophil teaching and replenishing it with positive elements of Westernism. Such a step cannot meet absolutely any fundamental objections, because nationality does not consist of one or another historical remnant, but represents a positive spiritual force that requires their elimination for its full and free manifestation. 203 Having completed its final transformation, reformed Slavophilism or, better said, national universalism will be able to become a political banner for the progressive elements of our society, and at the same time quench its philosophical and religious thirst; the shaky foundations of the positive worldview of “Westernism,” now attractive due to the progressive political aspirations associated with them, would quickly lose their charm once it became clear that the transition to a new worldview does not oblige them to be abandoned and the main historical misunderstanding of Russian life would finally be exhausted. It's time! Solovyov had to defend the idea of ​​Christian politics not only against those who believed it to be fundamentally violent, but also against those who considered its main requirement to be the preaching of fundamental impotence. We mean the preaching of non-resistance to evil by force, associated with the name of L.N. Tolstoy. “The great writer of the Russian land” has immortal merits in the religious life of Russian society, for he was the first with his powerful preaching to attract the attention of the Russian intelligentsia to issues of religion at a time when it was considered an outdated and outdated prejudice. In recent years, Tolstoy has become, as it were, the social conscience of Russia, impartial and mercilessly denouncing all untruths. He strives to make his Christianity not only a teaching, but first of all, a life, and he makes this demand to everyone who calls themselves Christians. For this reason alone, Tolstoy's sermon represents a colossal religious event in Russian history. But at the same time, he acquired such an understanding of Christian teaching, which, being at least controversial, is accepted by many as the only possible one, and the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, the fundamental denial of the state and its institutions, science, culture and the division of labor that underlies it, is carelessly presented as the true essence of Christian teaching. Many, especially those who are indifferent or hostile to religion, quite sincerely believe that a consistent Christian must deny culture and the active struggle against evil. And yet, both of them are in reality only an accessory to the religious ideal of Buddhism. But this is not at all the ideal of the Christian religion, which teaches that the world and history are a divine-human process, good in its design, necessary in its results, requiring the active participation of both individual man and collective humanity. The ideal of the Kingdom of God is realized not only within us, where this realization can be a matter of personal conscience and personal efforts, but also outside of us, as the ideal of a normally organized human society and at the same time the result of the cultural development of mankind. Negative morality, abstinence from evil, and with it from active participation in life, where good is mixed with evil, is sufficient for Buddhism, which requires monastic hermitage associated with renunciation of the world, while Christianity requires active feat and denies all quietism. Nothing is more capable of substantiating the idea of ​​absolute duties resting on each individual person than the Christian doctrine of the divine dignity and essence of the human soul. That which God has had the idea of ​​from time immemorial, which God does not despise, and should not itself despise, and man, recognizing himself as a bearer of absolute dignity, thereby assumes absolute responsibilities. Individual strengths and abilities are different, but each personality, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem, is irreplaceable simply because it is individual, that is, it has absolute originality and unrepeatability. We may not understand our role in the world; it appears to us as a task that needs to be found, but it exists. After all, if you remove even a grain of sand from the world, the entire universe, which is a mechanically connected whole, will collapse. There is a well-known aphorism that if Cleopatra’s nose had been a little shorter, world history would have been different, but the same can be said about Quasimodo’s nose, although its meaning in world history is not as clear to us as Cleopatra’s nose. So, Christianity teaches us that the work of history is an important, good, necessary matter, and the obligation of our participation in it is determined not by the negative commandment of abstinence, but by the positive requirement of active participation. But history and the development of culture are one and the same; culture is denied only by those who deny both history and the only area of ​​the kingdom of God that sees only in us, but not outside of us. And if this is so, then a simplified guide for activity, consisting of negative commandments alone, is not enough; a positive goal of activity is also needed. Although this goal, of course, must be fundamentally determined by the commandments of religion, only reason, which selects and evaluates various means, can enlighten us regarding the possible means of achieving it. Moreover, it is quite possible that the only means under the given circumstances will be one that, in itself, regardless of the goal, seems reprehensible and even prohibited by the same religion. Of course, a supporter of negative morality will refuse such means, but he will be doomed to the role of a spectator, shamefully indifferent to good and evil; the result will be what in the Gospel is called straining out a mosquito and swallowing a camel. In a remarkable article entitled “Idols and Ideals,” Soloviev spoke in defense of culture against the preaching of simplification as the simplest solution to the problem of social duties. Instead of “the desire to merge the entire nation into a shapeless mass,” he affirms here “moral-organic solidarity between the common people and the educated class, the obligation for this latter to culturally serve the people, introducing into their lives not their own inventions and selfish undertakings, but the only solid and only fruitful principles of universal human enlightenment and universal truth.” Together with all representatives of our intelligentsia, Solovyov mourned the lack of culture of our people and considered the rise of this culture to be a Christian, not a pagan matter. Soloviev made an open attack on the doctrine of non-resistance to evil from a theological, metaphysical and general ethical point of view only in his last dialogical work, “Three Conversations,” and the arguments he presented here against this doctrine seem irrefutable to me and still remain in no way shaken. Thus, in general, Solovyov’s entire practical philosophy was only an application of the foundations of his theoretical philosophy, and the main principle of this philosophy is the vital principle of Christianity. A holistic and consistently developed Christian worldview is what Solovyov’s philosophy gives to the modern consciousness. And in this worldview, some needs of the spirit are not suppressed in the name of others, complete spiritual freedom reigns here, modern philosophy, science, and the demands of practical life find their place in it, and all this is illuminated by one common light. Solovyov's philosophy, therefore, responds to the deepest and highest demands of the human spirit - the desire for an integral worldview that would be not only theoretical, but also practical. Many people called Solovyov, both mockingly and seriously, a prophet, both for his appearance and for his teaching. His ministry was, indeed, prophetic and, misunderstood and ridiculed by his contemporaries, he is beginning to be increasingly appreciated before our eyes. Humanity has endured centuries of dominance by abstract clericalism, hostile to free thought and scientific research; We are now living through an age of abstract rationalism, which rejected first religion and then philosophy in the name of exact knowledge and free research. But there is reason to think that this period is coming to an end and is already exhausting its positive potential. Next in line is a new higher synthesis, in which the testing spirit returns to itself, to its original needs and, enriched by all the acquisitions of the age-old development of knowledge and thought, frees itself from the dominance of one or another abstract principle, and harmoniously unites them all. The search for this synthesis was Solovyov’s life’s work. In the twilight of existence, we take as the source of barely glimmering light one or another object, only reflecting it more strongly than others. With the clairvoyance of the prophet, Solovyov saw its true source, the unfading, unevening light. All his life he himself walked towards this light and called to it. Let's go get him! This essay is an extended revision of a public lecture given in Kyiv, Poltava, and Chisinau. Published in “Questions of Philosophy and Psychology”, 1903, book. I-II. Solipsism (from solus ipse) is the denial of any existence other than the cognizing subject and his ideas, therefore, the denial of the existence not only of the external world, but also of other people. V. Soloviev. Philosophical principles of integral knowledge. Collection cit., I, 276. Later, Solovyov abandoned this argument: see his article on Hegel in the appendix to Caird’s book (reprinted from the Encyclop. Dictionary), p. 299. But, in our opinion, Solovyov did not refute himself at this point. Soloviev. Criticism of abstract principles. Collection cit., vol. II, 308–9. V. Soloviev. Criticism of abstract principles. Collection cit., vol. II, 284. The doctrine, very close to Solovyov’s, although independently of him, is developed by Prince. S. N Trubetskoy in his wonderful articles “Foundations of Idealism” (“Questions of Phil. and Psych.” 1896). Readings about God-manhood. Collection works., vol. III, 31. “To understand what an idea is, an indication of the internal character of the human personality can serve. Each human person is, first of all, a natural phenomenon, subject to external conditions and determined by them in his actions and perceptions. But at the same time, each human personality has in itself something completely special, completely indefinable externally, not amenable to any formula, and despite this, it leaves a certain individual imprint on all actions and on all perceptions of the individual.” (Readings on God-manhood, collected works, III, 51). Let us not forget that we had the same concept of “existence” in epistemology and in objective (organic) logic. Ibid., 87. Author's italics. Wed. in general the book S. Trubetskoy. The doctrine of Logos in its history. For the history of the development of the idea of ​​Logos in ancient Greek philosophy, cf. his: Metaphysics in ancient Greece. Ibid, 116. Solovyov connects with this the doctrine of human free will and immortality or, more precisely, the eternity of the soul. I tried to show the main contradictions and ambiguities in the concept of humanity and the powerlessness of positivism to eliminate them in the article “The Main Problems of the Theory of Progress.” Ibid. 124. It should be noted that this part of Solovyov’s teaching is imposed by him in “Readings on God-manhood” in general philosophical concepts, on the contrary, in La Russie et l᾽eglise universelle. Livre troisieme, as well as in “The History and Future of Theocracy,” chapter II (Collected works, vol. IV) mainly in theological concepts, in relation to the biblical narrative. According to our task, here we will adhere, as far as possible, to the first formulation. There is some difference between the one and the other presentation, but it is not of fundamental importance. Thurs. O Bogochel., collection. cit., vol. III, 131. Let us note that between metaphysical optimism (more precisely, optimo-pessimism) and pessimism there is and cannot be anything in between. No relative solution, as positivism wants to be content with, is possible here. Hegel's formula, of course, has undeniable significance, since it contains the idea of ​​​​the rationality of the world plan, the idea of ​​theodicy. Wed. post-scriptum to the article “Basic ideas of the theory of progress”. The previous reasoning, of course, does not make any sense for those who, by denying the freedom of human will and moral self-determination, thereby fundamentally undermine morality and give the meaning of an illusion to goodness itself, a necessary link in the causal connection of events. Of course, assessing a person’s moral state based on his actions is an extremely crude and imperfect scale, because this leaves the main and only arena of the struggle between good and evil – human conscience – closed. In general, to determine what in each individual life belongs to external circumstances independent of the will, and what belongs to the free morally self-determining will, to sum up, in other words, the balance of good and evil in each individual life, is a completely insoluble task for empirical consciousness. Given the tendency of modern German thought to sublimate, often scholastic, ethical and especially religious concepts, it is not at all surprising to find, for example, in Wundt the idea that the idea of ​​personal immortality (which Wundt does not deny at all) is dictated by egoistic hedonism. See his obscure and confused discussions on this subject in the System of Philosophy, translated by A. M. Woden. St. Petersburg 1902, pp. 413–20. We cite the original passage in a note: “Evil really exists, and it is expressed not in the absence of good alone, but in a positive ratio and preponderance of lower qualities over higher ones in all areas of existence. There is individual evil - it is expressed in the fact that the lower side of man, bestial and bestial passions, resists the best aspirations of the soul and overpowers them in the vast majority of people. There is social evil: it lies in the fact that the human crowd, individually already enslaved to evil, resists the saving efforts of the few best people and overcomes them; Finally, there is physical evil in man - in the fact that the lower material elements of his tag resist the living and light force that binds them into a beautiful form of organization, resist and dissolve this form, destroying the real lining of everything higher. This is the extreme evil called death. And if the victory of this extreme, physical evil had to be recognized as final and unconditional, then no imaginary victories of good in the personal moral and social sphere could be considered serious successes. In fact, let us imagine that a good man, say Socrates, triumphed not only over his internal enemies - bad passions, but that he also managed to convince and correct his public enemies, to transform the Hellenic polity - what is the use of this ephemeral and superficial victory over evil, if it finally triumphs in the deepest layer of existence over the very foundations of life? After all, both the corrector and the corrected have the same end - death. By what logic could one appreciate the moral victories of Socrates' goodness over the moral microbes of bad passions in his chest and over the social microbes of the Athenian squares, if the real winners were the even worse, lower, grosser microbes of physical decay... Our support is one: real resurrection. We know that the struggle between good and evil is waged not only in the soul and in society, but deeper: in the physical world. And here we already know in the past one victory of the good beginning of life in personal resurrection. We are waiting for one thing, future victories in the collective resurrection of all. Here evil receives its meaning, or the final explanation of its existence, in the fact that it serves to greater and greater triumph, realization and strengthening of good... The Kingdom of God is the kingdom of life triumphant through the resurrection - in it is real, realized, final good. This is the whole power and the whole work of Christ.” Wed. V. Nesmelov has deep and interesting thoughts. Science about man. Volume two. Metaphysics of life and Christian revelation. Kazan. 1903. Soloviev therefore recognized Hegel’s “great merit in decisively establishing in science and general consciousness the true and fruitful concepts of process and development.” (Hegel. Works of Prof. Caird. Appendix of Solovyov, p. 300). Thurs. O God, III, 138. Ethics represents - and in fact cannot but represent the least original part of Solovyov's teaching: in its formal development he follows Kant, and from the content side, the teaching of religion. The treatise “The Justification of Good” is an excellent book to read; while reading it, you experience, as it were, personal communication with the high and original personality of the philosopher. It contains brilliant and thoughtful chapters and pages (along with completely weak ones on special issues, for example, economics). But on the whole, this work adds very little to Solovyov’s purely philosophical work. I hold the same opinion about his three epistemological articles (“The First Principle of Theoretical Philosophy”, “The Reliability of Reason” and “The Form of Reason and the Reason of Truth”), where he abandons some old epistemological opinions; his objections are unconvincing and have already found some strong, albeit friendly criticism in the article by prof. Lopatin “The Question of the Real Unity of Consciousness” (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology, 1899, V). In general, the period of Solovyov’s most intense and productive philosophical creativity occurs before the age of 30 (in this he draws closer to Schelling and partly Schopenhauer). Then he leaves the philosopher’s office and enters the arena of a journalistic fighter. Death found him at the beginning of his return to philosophy. This is also true regarding the philosophy of atheism - positivism, because here, too, a unique theology or religious teaching is substantiated - about humanity and its future destinies. I have already had to point out that the modern theory of progress is the theology of atheism. To this, perhaps, they will object that religion is a matter of the heart and that we want to rationalize it. Without denying that religious life is primarily a matter of the heart, we will point out that a certain teaching is included as an irreducible element in it, and a conscious attitude towards it necessarily presupposes a certain rationalism, i.e. philosophy; and the broader this purely philosophical consciousness, the richer the religious worldview. Modern theological agnosticism, striving to completely eliminate philosophy or any teaching from religion, in fact, thereby offers a well-known philosophical and theological teaching, albeit a very bad one. As for those who deny the rights of reason in religion simply out of obscurantism, there is no need to talk about them here. “The lack of consciousness in Russian society also explains the special oddities in our recent history. On the one hand, people who demanded moral regeneration and selfless deeds for the good of the people associated these demands with such teachings that abolish the very concept of morality: “nothing exists except matter and force, man is only a kind of monkey, and therefore we must think only about the good of the people and lay down our souls for our lesser brothers.” On the other hand, people who professed, and even with special zeal, Christian principles, at the same time preached the most savage anti-Christian policy of violence and extermination. The first contradiction belongs to the past. The second, deeper and more destructive, still looms over us. It’s time to finally free ourselves from this historical poison that affects the very sources of our life.” (Collected works, g. V, p. 529). In his famous essay, read in 1891 at the Moscow Psychological Society, Solovyov uses the evangelical parable “About two sons: one said: I will go - and did not go, the other said: I will not go - and went. Which of the two, Christ asks, did the will of the Father?” (Questions of Phil. and Psychology, 1901, Book I). See La Russie et l'eglise universelle, part one. Collection cit., vol. IV, pp. 40–41 et seq., vol. V, pp. 514 15 et seq. Collection cit., vol. V, p. 386. "Questions of Philosophy and Psychology", 1891, book. 8, p. 1545. Ibid. 161. Solovyov remained faithful to this view until the end of his life and the ideas of “The Tale of the Antichrist” do not contradict him, which poses the problem of the end of world history, so alien to modern consciousness, although representing a necessary element of the philosophical and religious worldview. I will not dwell on this problem here; it is obvious, however, that the doctrine of progress and the necessity of striving for it is completely compatible with the opinion of the finitude, relativity and general limitations of this progress; the same thing is individual life, which, although it ends in death, gives place to individual development and the requirements determined by it, both in relation to oneself and to the environment. As for Solovyov’s general pessimism in the last years of his life and his gloomy forebodings, generally speaking, these can be considered his personal opinions, which, having support in the subjective mood, are of great biographical interest, but do not have objective persuasiveness by the very essence of the matter and cannot even claim it. Collection cit., vol. V, 474. Cf. "The National Question", passim, e.g., vol. V, pp. 74–75. Collection cit., vol. IV, 179–180. Kazenshchina, as the main evil of church life, was perfectly formulated by Yu Samarin: “the demand from faith for any kind of police service is nothing more than a kind of preaching of unbelief, perhaps the most dangerous of all” (Yu. Samarin. Preface to the theological work. Khomyakov). It is remarkable that the Slavophile limitations of the political horizon of both Samarin and Solovyov prevented them from giving the question of freedom of conscience an extra-church formulation, i.e. bring it into connection with the basic conditions of Russian life that transform faith into “police service,” and direct the main blows against these conditions. The question of general church reformation is necessarily connected with the attitude of the church to the “power that is”, unfortunately, cannot be discussed here. Obviously, having this kind of Christian in mind, Solovyov wrote in “Three Conversations”: “It is difficult for me to convey to you with what special pleasure I look at the obvious open enemy of Christianity. In almost every one of them I am ready to see the future Apostle Paul, while in other zealots of Christianity I could not help but imagine Judas the traitor.” It’s fortunate that Soloviev did not live to see the horrors of Chisinau! Prof. says rightly. Harnack: “Der Gedanke des unschätz-baren Werthes, den jede einzelne Menschenseele besitzt, tritt in der Verkundigund Jesu dentlich hervor und bildet das Complement, zur Botschaft vondem in der Liebe sich verwirklichenden Reiche Gottes. In diesem Sinne ist das Evangelium imtiefsten individualistisch und socialistich zugleich" (Prof. Ad. Harnack. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. Erster Hand. Freiburg i. B., 1886, p. 53). Cp. Peabody. Iesus Christus u. Sociale Frage. 1903. See the article “On the Social Ideal” about this. Criticism of abstract principles, collection. cit., vol. II, 129–30. Ibid, 137. It is remarkable that the validity of these remarks, made a quarter of a century ago, is only now beginning to be recognized, both here and in the West. This example makes it clear how ahead of his time Solovyov was. Solovyov’s economic articles, now collected in the fifth volume of his complete works, as well as the chapter on the economic question in “The Justification of Good,” represent, in our opinion, the weakest and most colorless of all that Solovyov wrote. Some of his judgments directly contradict and distort his fundamental point of view. Soloviev, coll. cit., II, 173. Soloviev saw an example of true patriotism in the Jewish prophets: “the example of the Jewish prophets, the greatest patriots and at the same time exalted representatives of universalism, is highly instructive for us, pointing out that if true patriotism is necessarily free from national exclusivity and selfishness, then at the same time and thereby a true universal view, true universalism, in order to be something, to have real strength and positive content, must necessarily be an extension or universalization of a positive popular idea, and not an empty and indifferent cosmopolitanism.” (Readings about God-manhood. Collected works, vol. III, 73–4). National Question, collection. cit., vol. V, 10. Justifying the Good, 2nd ed., 374. Of course, one can speak of the socialism of the Slavophiles only in the sense of their general recognition of the ideals of economic solidarity and democracy, and not of a specific economic program, which they did not have. On the contrary, the historical forms of the socialist movement often met with harsh and not always fair criticism from the Slavophiles (for example, from Dostoevsky). The Slavophiles did not produce a single outstanding economist among their number. In their specific demands, they often acted as representatives of the interests of the propertied classes. In general, we are talking only about general ideological traditions, which subsequently passed from Slavophilism to populism. For the best and most dramatic expression of Solovyov’s political Slavophilism, see his article “State Philosophy according to the Program of the Ministry of Public Education.” Collection cit., vol. V. If there is an area in which the original worldview of Russian Marxism remains valid without any significant changes, then it is precisely the understanding of the economic development of Russia as a capitalist process associated with the development of industrialism. National Question, collection. cit., vol. V, 196, 221. Solovyov rightly wrote about Dostoevsky, pointing out this inconsistency in his journalism: “if we agree with D. that the true essence of the Russian national spirit, its great dignity and advantage lies in the fact that it can internally understand all foreign elements, love them, reincarnate in them, if we recognize the Russian people, together with Dostoevsky, as capable and called upon to realize the ideal of pan-humanity in a fraternal union with other peoples, then we can no longer We cannot sympathize with the antics of the same D. against the “Jews,” the Poles,” the French, the Germans, against all of Europe, against all foreign religions.” (Collected works, vol. V. 382–3). This basic requirement of the true policy of nationalism was formulated with great journalistic enthusiasm in the article “What does true nationalism consist of?” (Struve. “On various topics.” Previously published in Vopr. Phil. and Psych., 1901. IV).