Collective limit

The question of the relationship between the individual and society can now be considered clarified to a large extent. The undoubted results to which the long scientific inheritance of this issue has come can be expressed in the following formula: society is unthinkable without individuals and an individual is unthinkable without society. The importance of individuals for society is most persistently revealed by the ethical-sociological, or subjective school, the best representatives of which are rightly considered Lavrov and Mikhailovsky. According to the beautiful words of the first of them, society does not contain anything real outside of individuals. Social goals can only be achieved in individuals. Progress lies only in individuals; only individuals can be its engines. This sociologist pinned all his hopes on a critically thinking person, whom he considered the best product of the historical process and the only agent of progress. He demanded that a person develop an independent, original personality, he demanded that society create favorable conditions for the activities of individuals, he cursed and considered degenerate that society, that people that does not cultivate, does not nurture individuals - with bold criticism and persistent energy. No less energetically, Mikhailovsky, the famous sociologist and publicist, fought against the organic theory of society and the eccentric way of life, contrasting them with a subjective anthropocentric theory. Man knows nothing either about the suffering and goals of those small units that are constituent elements in his organism, or about the sufferings and goals of the society in which he is a component unit: he knows only about the sufferings and goals of man, and human individuality is for him the central individuality, the anthropological or humane point of view is the most natural for him. “Any other points of view will only be attempts to become either higher or lower than that rung of the ladder of individuality on which a person stands by his very nature, and, therefore, are not befitting of human thought.” In his relations to society, whether as a sociologist or a public figure, a person must first of all be receptive to the position and condition of individuals, to their feelings and thoughts, to their sufferings and joys, sorrows and desires, must be able to enter into their interests, experience their lives, rethink their thoughts, re-feel their feelings, endure their suffering, weep their tears. If the sociologist does not rise to this sensitivity, if he studies society only objectively, he will never reach the truth; If a public figure is guided only by objective considerations, if he is inattentive to the interests of individuals, truth and justice will always elude him. There is an irreconcilable hostility between the objective attitude towards society and the subjective attitude towards it - an eternal antagonism plays out between man and society. If society, in this struggle with man for individuality, wins and organizes itself organically, absorbing the individual, then it must die. “If society wins, it becomes a strong, individual, indivisible unit, subjugating more and more the personality, which is reduced by this process to the level of a simple subordinate body. But, thus defeating the individual and itself turning into an organism, society is already subject to all the conditions of organic life. Like any organism, it must have its youth, youth, old age and, finally, death. These authors do not take their views to the repulsive extreme of a disdainful view of society. Far from it. They do not say that the personality is a self-sufficient principle, an agent who does not need either soil or material - the personality sets in motion the material that is supplied by humanity, expresses the word conceived by society, formalizes the idea instilled in it by the people. Lavrov, assimilating in the functioning of the social union, in the historical movement and in the life of historical eras, the reality is only for individuals, seeing only in a greater or lesser number of these individuals the embodiment of collective customs, affects, interests and beliefs, and from this point of view recognizing that all sociological and historical phenomena are carried out exclusively by individuals, at the same time professes the importance of society. “But at the same time, these only real agents of history - conscious individuals - are nothing more than products of social processes, conditioned in all their acts of intellectual and affective life, in all their life goals and practical manifestations of their will - by the structure and life of the collective organism of which these individuals form a part. The life of society is truly embodied in individuals. No individual can draw either motivation, understanding, habits of thought and life, goals or means from anywhere outside of society, among which the personality was developed and lives, of which it is a product.” And Mikhailovsky adopts Louis Blanc's view of the historical role of great people. “The power that powerful individuals possess is drawn from themselves only in a very small part; for the most part they draw it from their environment. Their life is nothing more than the concentration of the collective life in which they are immersed. The impulse they give to society is essentially small in comparison with the impulse they receive from it. Great people rule society only with the help of the power they receive from it. They illuminate it only by concentrating all the rays emanating from it into one focus. Great people, says Mikhailovsky, do not fall from heaven to earth, but grow from earth to heaven; they are created by the same environment that brings forward the crowd, only concentrating and embodying in them the forces, feelings, instincts, thoughts, desires wandering scatteredly in the crowd.” This is not the controversial hero cult that Carlyle preached, nor the disgusting theory of spiritual aristocracy and superman that belongs to the poet-philosophers Renan and Nietzsche. No. Subjectivist sociologists insist only on the indisputable truth that personal energy constitutes an inevitable stage, a necessary link in the historical chain, that individuals are the only focal points in which the combustion and radiance of collective power takes place. On the other hand, the conditioning of the individual by society has been sufficiently clarified, even in moral terms. Even A. Smith wittily revealed the genetic dependence of moral feeling on the public. According to him, the grounds on which we approve or disapprove of our own behavior are exactly the same as on which we judge the behavior of other people. We approve or disapprove of it, depending on whether we sympathize or not with the motives and feelings that guided us, if we imagine ourselves in the position of an outside observer. We approve or blame our own behavior, depending on whether we find the motives that gave rise to it praiseworthy or reprehensible, if we put ourselves in the place of another person, and look at ourselves from his point of view and, so to speak, through his eyes. We cannot judge the reasons that prompted us to act or aroused feelings in us unless we detach ourselves, so to speak, from ourselves and unless we try to look at them from some distance. It is necessary to look at them through the eyes of an outsider and from the point of view from which he would probably look at them. Whatever our judgment about ourselves, it is certainly in some intimate connection with the judgment that exists, that should exist, or that can, in our opinion, exist in other people. If it were possible to imagine a person who grew up on some uninhabited island, without any communication with people, then he would have no concept of the propriety or impropriety of his actions and his feelings, the merits or demerits of his thoughts, as well as the beauty or ugliness of his face. He could not have these abilities, because naturally he would not have any means at his disposal to distinguish them; he would be deprived of a reflecting mirror. But place this person among society - this mirror will return to him. This mirror is the judgment of other people about us, their praise or blame. Our first ideas of beauty or ugliness are caused by the contemplation of the appearance of other people, and not by consciousness of the forms of our own body. We feel that in this respect other people judge us as we judge them. We are pleased when they like our face, and we are unpleasant when it disgusts them. We try to find out what impression our external image makes on them. We examine every feature of our face; standing in front of the mirror, we look at ourselves from the distance from which other people look at us. Concern about the merits and demerits of our appearance is generated solely by the effect it has on other people - and we would be completely indifferent to it if we did not live in society. Our judgments about moral worth are formed in the same way. We try to earn people's praise and avoid their censure. The initial form of the moral law is custom, which is only later decomposed into morality and law. Custom, or morality, is generated by the collective life of society, and does not develop from personal habits. The thorough judgments of W. Wundt on this issue are known. The individual is a Factor (doer) of general development, and not a Motor (engine). But as much as, on the one hand, it is necessary that the individual bear within himself the inclinations of everything that he develops in communication with his own kind, on the other hand it is undeniable that the most significant creations of the collective - language, myth, custom, law - although they are subject to the influence of the individual, however, in no case can they be created by him. Since every language is a way of exchanging thoughts, the initial creation of words cannot belong to any one inventor, but comes from a collection of beings equally gifted spiritually and facing the same external conditions. The situation is no different with custom, which is equally nothing more than general behavior arising from general ideas. Let one contribute one thing to him, another another, yet on the whole he is a common creation, which cannot be decomposed into individual elements, if only because the completely simultaneous action of many individual factors does not allow the individual to distinguish what comes from himself from what he owes to others. Of course, in the history of custom there has never been a lack of influence of outstanding minds, but insofar as we can trace it at all, it disappears all the more in the sum of boundless private forces, the further we penetrate into the past history of custom. Who would deny that Moses, Confucius, Buddha had an influence far beyond the boundaries of their time on the development of both religion and morality, and on the outer shell of the latter, that is, custom? But the appearance of such people with a wide influence everywhere is associated with the presence of a more developed culture, and the way of life of peoples remaining at primitive stages does not indicate that here individual influences would have the same significance, at least in a closer circle. Each individual owes too much to the cultural heritage of the social groups to which he belongs to be able to think about his individual self-sufficiency. Christianity itself could only emerge under certain conditions of cultural development, at certain stages of historical progress. This idea was passionately and persistently defended by the late V.S. Solovyov. “The opponents of culture,” he wrote, “who imagine that the existence of uneducated righteous people proves something in favor of their opinion, turn a blind eye to the fact that here too we have examples of only very relative ignorance. But the question that is of decisive importance here is: could such righteous people then appear in an absolutely wild environment?.. Why did the historical Buddha preach his teaching not to the semi-wild Aryans, for whom cow butter was the highest good, but to the inhabitants of cultural Indian states? Why could the God-Man Himself be born only when the fullness of times had come? Why did He appear only in the 8th century after the founding of the eternal city, within the great Roman state among the cultural population of Galilee and Jerusalem? So, collective power can only be revealed in individuals, but personality, even in an ethical-religious sense, can only grow in the atmosphere of society. This mutual conditionality of the individual and society can be considered indisputable. But this cannot be limited to when considering the question of the relationship of the individual to society. It is necessary to go even further. In all respects, including moral ones, a person can grow only on the foundation of society. In all respects, except moral, the individual serves only as a point of application of collective force, and even great men govern society only with the help of the force that they receive from society. But in ethical and religious terms, the individual develops beyond what society can give him and what society can demand from him. The morality to which social life leads and which society demands from the individual is social morality, which has as its final goal the common good and for which the highest scale is the average level, the first and last commandment is not to stand out from the general level, not to have your own face. The personality, developing in the depths of society, moves beyond this level, rises above this scale, and in its ethical-religious consciousness opposes itself to society. Society itself, naturally evolving, inevitably leads to such a rise of the individual above his own level. It is not difficult to indicate some stages along the path of this development of personality on a social foundation. We can imagine the lowest level of social life as a continuous conflict of forces, as a continuous struggle between neighboring societies and between individuals in society. But, if the forces are equal, their conflict leads to balance; the balance perceived by consciousness and covered by desire is sanctified by an agreement that generates equality, from which law, legal consciousness grows. (You can read about this in Lavrov’s book “Essays on Questions of Practical Philosophy”). Then the division of labor, forced by the struggle for existence, set its own task for the individual, distinguishing him from other individuals, created his personal significance, gave the opportunity to develop his personal talents, tastes and inclinations, gave him a personal physiognomy, and all this, of course, was accompanied by a corresponding psyche. (This meaning of the division of labor is discussed in detail in Durkheim’s book De la division du travail social). For the development of individuals in society, it is important to expand the boundaries of the social group to which the individual belongs. The tighter the circle to which we devote ourselves, the less individual freedom we have; if the circle in which we act and to which our interests belong expands, then this gives more scope for the development of our individuality. Therefore, the expansion of society, partly in the form of the formation of vast state bodies as a result of wars, partly in the form of the unification of peoples and states into a universal society in the interests of trade and other relations, naturally gives rise to the flourishing of individuality. (This idea is brilliantly developed in Simmel's article Die Erweiterung der Guppe und die Ausbildung der Individualität, originally published in Leitschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, then reprinted in the book Soziale Differenziergung - chapter three - and again in the recently published Soziologie - chapter ten). Freedom from society, the opportunity to place oneself outside any given group, the opportunity to oppose oneself to the changing demands of social groups - cultivates in the individual the consciousness of the individual as a stable center of moral assessment - personal moral consciousness, as internal and selfless, in contrast to external and selfish demands from the social group. The personality is already unfolding in full scope from social convention, goes into the boundless heights of spiritual absoluteness, escapes the shackles of the social level, and exceeds public consciousness. Whereas the individual, as a member of society, in any other respect than the ethical-religious one, is, even as a great man, only a point of intersection of social forces, a point of application of social energy, is in the service of social interests and remains bound by social opinions, the general spirit - he, as an ethical-religious personality, rises above society, is freed from its judgment, from social-utilitarian evaluation, and becomes autonomous. The genetic dependence of moral consciousness on society is in no way weakened by this; A person becomes morally autonomous only by relying on society. But the fact is that, relying on society, the individual rises above it in a religious-ethical sense, rises to a personal-spiritual religion, to personal-absolute morality. Society, establishing itself on individuals as its members, on social elements, goes ahead of them in cultural and historical terms; the individual, relying on cultural society, becomes superior to it in religious and ethical terms. Society is a powerful blind man on firm and swift feet, moving forward without any sense of purpose; the personality is a weak midget with beautiful, wide-open eyes sitting on the shoulders of a blind giant. No matter how weak the individual is in cultural and historical terms, for he cannot take even a step forward apart from the collective; no matter how great his genetic dependence on society is in religious and moral terms, for he can only develop into a spiritual and autonomous personality in society, he is above the collective in a spiritual sense, above the public court. And society must not only cherish individuals as its elements, as focal points in which it burns and shines, and morally educate them as its members, for whom the public good serves as a practical norm, but it must also recognize another side in them - internal, spiritual, autonomous, escaping from public control, from collective judgment. In religious and ethical terms, the individual stands above what society can give him and what society can demand from him, and therefore he is not subject to the moral judgment of the collective. I want to talk to the reader about the boundaries of the collective formation of moral concepts, about the religious and ethical limit of the collective. In the old holy book we were commanded: do not judge! The great philosopher of modern times expressed the conviction that we cannot judge the moral side of actions, that the true morality of actions always remains hidden to us, that our moral judgment can never be fair *. The impossibility of public moral judgment over an individual follows from the fact that personal morality - spiritual, religious-absolute morality - is inexpressible in the external way of life. Personally, spiritual morality, in contrast to mystical contemplation and isolation, necessarily has an active character; Having positive freedom or love as its main content, it is inevitably accompanied by service to others and, as a result, social usefulness. But since service to a given society and usefulness for the immediate group do not constitute its direct task, since it comes from internal freedom that transcends all social boundaries, it does not have a specific external appearance by which it could be unmistakably recognized. It necessarily manifests itself in actions, and it cannot even bypass the use of established socio-ethical or legal orders, but there is no system of actions that would be adequate to religious-ethical consciousness; no behavior can be said to be inevitable for a person of such consciousness; no action can be said to be obligatory for him. In what exact actions a person’s intimate religious consciousness will be revealed, in what way of life it will be clothed, in what behavior it will be embodied - this is a matter of a person’s personal character, and this cannot be foreseen in any particular case. This is what a Christian ascetic says: “Everything for one is not like the other. There are many roads, and not one place at all. The closer they are to this many things, the closer they are to each other; and in the beginning how different they are, to the point of opposites, like from Tver to Ryazan to Moscow. That’s why it’s difficult to guess what someone needs and how” (Bishop Theophan). For the spiritual-absolute principle, appearance has no obligatory meaning, has no value in itself: it is revealed in the most ordinary behavior, in everyday actions. The personal-spiritual value of an act is not in its external appearance, but in what the human soul puts into it, in the principle in the name of which it is performed, in the internal content that is connected to it. This is not the same as social utility, which is completely accessible to the public court. If social virtue is for a person to justify public trust, to be a zealous owner, to help those in need of help, to maintain honesty in trade, then anyone who justifies public trust, is diligent in the economy, attentive to the poor, honest in commercial matters - everyone is worthy of praise, he does everything that is expected and demanded of him: in this case, the public court is adequate to the behavior in question, it exhausts the entire act to which it is attached. Society has no idea what motives a merchant has for being honest - whether for practical reasons, out of fear of public opinion, or out of natural simplicity. It doesn’t matter, as long as the motives are strong, as long as the honesty is real and not imaginary, as long as the scales are correct and the coin is full. Personal morality is determined by a special principle, which gives it all its meaning, all its originality - it has an inner side, its own soul. A person’s personal moral attitude towards an action is that he puts his whole soul into it, illuminates it with his entire principle. Morally appreciating an action or behavior means appreciating the whole soul of a person, his whole core, his whole root. To say that this act is immoral means to note a flaw in the very soul of a person, in his very heart, and to morally praise an act means to issue a certificate to his soul, his metaphysical essence, means to claim that we have penetrated into his “holy of holies”, have seen his God, have discovered what is known only to a person’s own spirit. Such knowledge is not based on an external act, external behavior, for an external act committed in the name of an absolute principle is no different from the same act committed for other reasons. The type of behavior is not inextricably linked with an absolute principle. A personal-religious principle is like an electric current, which will act equally whether we direct the wheel to which it is connected in one direction or another, forward or backward: by the direction of the wheel we cannot judge the source of the movement. To morally judge a person, you need to know his whole soul, but the sight of an action does not reveal the soul. If a person wants to be honest in trading, in the name of God, his honest trading will not differ in any way from the conduct of business by a merchant who is honest for practical reasons or out of fear of public opinion. If a Christian leaves his family at the call of the Heavenly Father, then this act of his will be in no way different in appearance from a divorce for the sake of a new marriage. Why did Tolstoy abandon his family - for God or out of disgust for his family? How do we know this? The social value of any marital dissolution is the same. The social scale cannot provide even the smallest, negative criterion for judging the human soul. Violation of a social commandment fully determines a person’s social guilt, his social inferiority, and the harm he causes to society. But further violation of a social commandment provides no grounds for a negative judgment about a person’s moral dignity. This is, firstly, because both elements that are worthless and excellent elements that society does not know how to use fall into social waste, into “social excrement”; secondly, there is no external difference between crimes, such as murder and theft, committed to prevent even greater evil, for example, killing a person intending to cause a train wreck, stealing someone else's bread to feed the hungry**, and the same crimes committed out of depravity of heart; thirdly, in relation to “real crimes” it is not possible to establish signs of absolute criminality. I will quote Tarde's words from his work La philosophie pénale. “Are we to understand by real criminals those who would be such in every society that we can imagine? No; These probably don't exist. In this case, shouldn’t we mean here those who would remain criminals in any well-established society? May be. But let's explain more clearly. I agree that there are forms of crime that are incompatible with the foundations of life of any people, such as murder and theft, committed without considered legal grounds, to the detriment of the public or considered such good. But I positively deny that there are people who, in any social conditions of any nation and in any era, would be murderers or thieves... Should it follow that all our murderers and incorrigible thieves are marked with the stamp of absolute criminality and that they alone are marked with it? Not at all... Many of our scoundrels and swindlers would never have killed or stolen if they had been born rich, if it had not fallen to their lot to be born and brought up in a dirty suburb and exposed there to the influence of their depraved comrades.” On the basis of this issue, the “original clash” described by Kony took place between the famous philanthropist Dr. Haaz and Metropolitan Philaret, who was also the chairman of the prison committee. “Filaret was tired of Haaz’s constant and, perhaps, not always strictly verified, but quite understandable petitions to represent the committee on behalf of the “innocently convicted” prisoners. “You keep talking, Fyodor Petrovich,” said Filaret, “about innocently convicted people... There are no such people. If a person is subjected to punishment, it means that he is guilty.” The hot-tempered and sanguine Haaz jumped up from his seat. “You have forgotten about Christ, sir!” - he cried, indicating both the callousness of such a statement in the mouth of the archpastor, and the gospel event - the condemnation of the Innocent. Everyone was embarrassed and froze in place: no one had ever dared to say such things to Filaret, who was in an exceptionally influential position. But the depth of Filaret’s mind was equivalent to the depth of Haaz’s heart. He hung his head and fell silent, and then, after several minutes of agonizing silence, he stood up and said: “No, Fyodor Petrovich! When I uttered my hasty words, it was not I who forgot about Christ, but Christ who forgot me.” The public court, as a legal one, is in no way canceled by this. Society has the right to say to every criminal: you have caused damage to society or its member, therefore bear the punishment and compensate for the damage caused. Society has the right not to trust such a person, for example, with public sums; neighbors have a right to beware of him. But this trial can only be legal, these measures can only be external - no one can pronounce moral condemnation on him, no one dares to brand his soul with shame. God gave Job’s body to Satan and forbade him to touch his soul (life): “only keep his soul.” And the voice of God allows us only legal judgment over a person and prohibits moral judgment - it allows penalties and punishments, but forbids pronouncing judgment over the human soul. Violation of a social commandment, which is completely accessible to our observation, does not authorize us to morally condemn a person; the presence of social virtues does not serve as a sufficient basis for moral approval. The social sphere is not deep enough to fully capture the entire human soul, to reveal its entire depth, to throw its entire core onto the surface of the worldly sea, to reveal its religious side, to give shape to its transcendental impulses? When a person has his own principles, stands on the stronghold of his personal worldview, carries God in his heart, knows the depths of inner freedom, then social virtues and crimes capture his soul only on the edge, excite only its surface, clothe it with illusory robes. But perhaps moral principles are revealed in special, immensely sublime actions, by which an external observer recognizes God’s chosen ones, marked with the heavenly seal? Isn’t this the significance of the heights of mystical contemplation, knowledge of hidden secrets, the gift of prophecy and miracles? Don’t feats of asceticism and self-sacrifice reveal the whole human soul? No, the moral value of these exploits and delights is in the depths of the soul, in the inner principle, and without this inner lining they have no moral value. Without this inner lining, the possession of a mystical word is the same as the playing of a soulless musical instrument, prophecy and miracles - nothing in the ethical-religious sense: there is social utility or pleasantness, which can be replaced by art and technology, and nothing more. If a person gives away all his property, even gives up his body to be burned, but does this not in the name of love, but for other reasons, then his exploits do not have the slightest moral value. And observing these heights and exploits from the side, we, ordinary citizens of the city of God, do not know whether spiritual value is hidden behind this brilliant appearance, or whether they constitute a soulless mask covering the inner emptiness: and by them we cannot judge the human soul, we cannot pronounce moral judgment. These exploits can be soulless, and the established custom of judging the moral worth of an individual by special actions causes widespread hypocrisy in life. For some, an ascetic appearance or charitable work poured out of the soul, others begin with this appearance in order to gain spiritual glory for themselves. And this is the ground on which such grandiose abuses of ascetic and charitable appearances unfold even today. Their root is the inability of society to stop at the border of the only assessment available to it from the point of view of social utility or harm, in the established external scale of moral assessment. This tangle contains a tragic internal contradiction: the first experiences of religious and ethical creativity, the dawn of each spiritual ascent, create external outlets for internal energy, an expressive language of spiritual life; but as soon as this language takes shape, takes on clear forms, becomes suitable for use: as soon as the opportunity arises to listen to this voice, to read the innermost life of the spirit in this appearance, the opportunity to trust it is already lost, it already becomes inevitable to interpret all words and actions in the opposite sense, the spiritual figures themselves are forced by internal decency to refrain from the appearance for which a reputation has been established, not to use the language that has come into use, do not utter words that are accessible to general understanding. And the refined language of spiritual life, that is, foolishness, becomes an unrefined language, a mere appearance. Everything is mixed up: the heroism of stilted people is glorified; the glory of cardboard swords and paper exploits is praised; true heroism moved into everyday work, true heroism became abstinence from heroic appearance. You can’t find out anything from the outside; you can’t see anything from a distance; everything was shrouded in fog, covered with ghosts. There is no word that would express the depth of spiritual knowledge, there is no action that would reflect the human soul, there is no behavior that would be its portrait. And hence the eternal melancholy of man - the melancholy of inexpressibility. “A spoken thought is a lie”; lies and all appearances as a support for moral judgment about a person; a lie is every action as the basis of spiritual knowledge. Understanding the human soul, understanding someone else’s heart goes past appearance, slides over actions, and uses words only as a pretext. There is knowledge that unites souls, unites hearts, penetrating into the last depths of another’s soul: this knowledge is intimate, heartfelt, friendly. It always surpasses a heard word, a seen deed; it is creative. This knowledge is not acquired on the street, nor is it given from afar; This management is private, this communication is intimate. Throw spiritual seeds, sow spiritual words - you don’t know where the heart is that will serve as good soil, where the soul is that will respond to your soul. An uninvited person will come, before whom the insides of your soul are open, there is someone unexpected, who knows secrets about you, to whom the secret is obvious. But those to whom you speak your word, whom you invite to the feast of your soul, seeing do not see, hearing do not hear. They laugh when your heart is breaking with grief, and shout: “Be more clownish, we are satisfied.” And no matter how hard you try, no matter how eloquent you are, no matter how hard you wriggle, you will not pour out your soul, you will not force understanding, you will not break through the wall behind which everyone has hidden, you will not pierce the fog that separates everyone. Human society is structured in such a way that everyone, coming together, stands with their backs to each other; everyone, meeting each other, covers their eyes with a veil, shading them from the sunlight of someone else’s soul. And this is a reasonable economy of human life. After all, if our external senses were not limited to such a high threshold, because if we perceived and every minute - And the reptile of the sea underwater, And vegetation below the vine, then our hearing would be full of such “noise and ringing” that we could not pay due attention to the sounds of nearby life that are useful to us. The same is true in social relationships. If only the whole soul of our neighbors were revealed to us every minute; if we contemplated all the spiritual beauty or all the inner ugliness of our interlocutor; if we experienced the grief and joy of all human hearts, then no social relations would be possible, all life would turn into a sleeping kingdom. The buyer would be absorbed in the internal drama of the seller, the seller would forget his business in complete tenderness before the fullness of the buyer’s spiritual life; the customer and the shoemaker would freeze in the same pose; There would be no relationship between teacher and student, master and apprentice, contractor and worker. There would be a fusion of essences and all phenomenology, social life, the entire movement of cultural history would disappear. Living life is possible because, along with intimate human relationships, there are external relationships between buyer and seller, customer and master, teacher and students, artisan and apprentice, contractor and worker. There is a high threshold for our awareness of another's soul; all life is covered with a fog that weakens sensitivity. Communication between people at a low temperature, with suppressed sensitivity - this is social life, creating all cultural benefits, all historical progress. Medicine is possible because the surgeon calmly treats the patient, who is not his child; the therapist does not lose his head at the patient’s bedside, as he does at the bedside of his wife. Trade flourishes because the buyer counts out coins not out of compassion for any seller, but according to a strict assessment of the goods. Social life is a system of external relations in which there is no place for the human soul. Sociality captures our shells, not our cores; socially we collide not heart to heart, but with strong foreheads, thick calloused skins. Socially, each of us is worse than he can be in himself - each of us is below the height to which he alone can rise. This issue is well studied in the works of Tarde, Siegele, and Le Bon. “I have always thought,” says the author of Apologie dʼun fou (Chaadaev), “that the instincts of the majority are infinitely more passionate, narrow, selfish than those of the individual, that the truth is not squeezed out in the street crush and is not proven by numbers, and that, finally, human reasoning with full power, in all its greatness, is revealed only in the solitary mind, which is the center and sun of its own spiritual sphere.” Nietzsche, a friend of solo travel, thought a lot and said a lot of true things on the issue of loneliness. “Everything great is kept away from the market and fame; From time immemorial, inventors of new values ​​lived on the sidelines of the market and fame." In social life, which is filled with merchants, artisans, countrymen, neighbors, estates, classes, which provides the only opportunity to know about a person by his words and deeds, by his appearance, but by his various relationships - in this life everyone stands with their backs to each other, everyone adjusts to each other with their least sensitive parts. There is no place in the social system for knowing someone else's soul, there is no opportunity for a person to open his heart to the gaze of everyone, to open his soul before the eyes of the world, to approach everyone and shower him with the brilliance of his idea, the radiance of his impulses. Efforts will be in vain, hopes will be in vain! The soul cannot be reflected in the public language, in the language of the crowd... Raskolnikov “suddenly remembered Sonya’s words: “Go to the crossroads, bow to the people, kiss the ground, because you have sinned against it, and tell the whole world out loud: I am a murderer!” He trembled all over, remembering this. And the hopeless melancholy and anxiety of all this time had already crushed him to such an extent that he rushed into the possibility of this whole, new, complete sensation. It suddenly came to him like a fit: it ignited in his soul with one spark and, suddenly, like fire, it engulfed everyone. Everything around him softened at once, and tears flowed. As he stood, he fell to the ground... He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed to the ground and kissed this dirty earth with pleasure and happiness. He stood up and bowed a second time. - Look, I've had enough! – one guy noticed next to him. “He’s going to Jerusalem, brothers, with his children, saying goodbye to his homeland, bowing to the whole world, kissing the capital city of St. Petersburg and its soil,” added one of the drunken townspeople. - The boy is still young! - screwed up the third. - From the noble ones! – someone remarked in a respectable voice. - But you can’t tell them who is noble and who is not. All these responses and conversations restrained Raskolnikov and the words: “I killed,” perhaps preparing to fly from his tongue, froze in him.” The crowd does not exist for the purpose of containing and appreciating the human soul: through it, like a splinter of water, everything spiritual is erupted. A person must hide everything deep, mystical, transcendental, and sincere at the bottom of his heart. St. Francis of Assisi rebuked his companion, who was clearly lamenting his sins. “Why,” he said, do you show grief and sorrow over your sins? This sadness must remain between you and the Lord; pray to Him that, in His mercy, He will grant and restore to your soul the saving joy that it was deprived of due to sins. Always try to be joyful in front of me and others, for it is not fitting for a servant of God to show sadness or have an embarrassed face in front of his brother or anyone else.” You need to talk with God in a closed cage, God's works need to be done in such a way that the right hand does not know what the left is doing Blessed is he who hid to himself And from people, as from graves, I didn’t expect any reward for the feeling! After all, what is the only thing a person can value in his neighbor? What is the only thing his judgment can refer to? He can only value the benefit that he receives from another!) Therefore, for judging another, only the following formula is possible: “he is good for me,” “he is useful for me,” “he harmed me.” It is assumed that in the same degree that he is useful for me, he is useless or harmful for another, that he gave me what he did not give or what he took from another, and vice versa: whoever is useless or harmful for me is kind to others. It is impossible for a person to escape the chains of this limitation: only God can be good to everyone, can do good to everyone at the same time. And a person can be attentive to one only under the condition that at the same time he is inattentive to another, he gives to one what he cannot give to others and what he often takes away from others. A person's relationship to me is only his relationship to me, and nothing more. Meanwhile, in the matter of moral judgment, a most amazing leap is made, which always turns out to be salto mortale, an unforgivable logical error is committed. I do not say what I alone have the right to - I do not say: he is good for me, but I say what I do not have the slightest right to - I say: he is good, that is, I pronounce a moral judgment about him. Instead of saying: he harmed me, he was inattentive to me, I call him an immoral person, a low creature, a scoundrel, a lost creature. The callus that was stepped on becomes the root of moral condemnation. “A rude person considers a passer-by to be the meanest, most rejected creature in the world, just because this creature has stepped on his calluses. The calluses (Hühneraugen) became the eyes (Augen) with which this man sees and judges.” Who has the moral strength to refrain from cursing and, writhing in pain, exclaim: “He crushed my callus, but I don’t know if he’s a bad person?” At every step we encounter the opposite: (no one makes a distinction between personal feeling and objective moral judgment. But do all those who pronounce a moral verdict look like calluses? Do all laudatory speeches, all denunciations come from calluses? There is also a feeling that feeds every passion for moral judgment - for approval and censure. This is a feeling of moral complacency, moral self-indulgence. He who judges is both in his conscience and in in the eyes of the listeners - he becomes superior to the one whom he judges, and superior to all those who do not judge. To judge means to prove one’s moral superiority, to enjoy one’s moral height. This is precisely the motive that prompts us to pronounce moral judgment on those persons who have not disturbed our calluses. Witty thinkers have focused their attention on this property of moral judgment. Hegel, discussing the psychological interpretation of history, which tries to reduce all the actions of great people to one passion or another, such as the love of fame, the passion for conquest, and through this to show that the heroes of history were immoral people, writes: “What school teacher did not testify about Alexander the Great, about Julius Caesar, that these people were obsessed with such passions and therefore were immoral people? From here the conclusion is immediately drawn that he, a school teacher, is much better than them, since he is not overwhelmed by such passions, and proves this by the fact that he did not conquer Asia, did not defeat Darius, Porus, but lived complacently and let others live” ***. Moral indignation and accusatory speeches, flowing from moral complacency, inspire others to respect the strict accuser. This is the surest way to gain an honorable position in society... and the surest way to humiliate your opponent. “If you want to really annoy and even harm your enemy,” one old scoundrel told me, “then reproach him for the very shortcoming or vice that you feel in yourself. - Be indignant... and reproach! Firstly, it will make others think that you do not have this vice. Secondly, your indignation may even be sincere... You can take advantage of the reproaches of your own conscience. If you, for example, are a renegade, reproach your opponent for having no convictions! If you yourself are a lackey at heart, tell him reproachfully that he is a lackey.” Turgenev wrote this in one of the “prose poems” that he formed “under one or another impression of current life.” In another of the same poems, he described a brainless vagabond who achieved universal respect solely by harshly condemning everyone. What about our eulogies? We are not talking about flattering speeches “in your face”, this selfish fiend of our social slavery and fear: what motivates our laudatory speeches in honor of absent persons, mainly in honor of the dead, to whom panegyrists are deeply indifferent? Where does this tendency to glorify other people’s virtues, to praise other people’s selflessness and warmth come from? generosity, selflessness? The one who praises always stands at the same height as the one who accuses: only the one who carries them in his own heart can appreciate the virtues of another. There is no doubt about the intimate relationship, the inner affinity between the speaker and his client. The reflection of the inscribed image falls on the face of the panegyrist, just as the face of Moses shone from the sacred tablets. To the same extent that the personality of the writer is elevated, the faces of the listeners are humbled. Each verse of the improvised akathist is accompanied by the same refrain: “not like you, my pathetic listeners.” If the spoken words are supplemented with the implied ones, then all laudatory speeches will receive the following scheme: “he (the name of the rivers) was selfless, you, the listeners, are all and always self-interested; he was a selfless activist, you are proud lazy people: he was courageous, you are cowards and slaves. This is a crime equal to desecration of a grave, exposure of a corpse. More common public approval is called popularity, or rather, it consists of popularity. Praising a popular person is a strange misunderstanding, a sentimental repetition of what has already been said, a meaningless chewing on what has already been said: popularity only needs to be pointed out. It does not need to be explained, justified, proven: popularity already contains all the glory, all the praise. This is where the well-known saying applies: It’s not because one is good, but because one is good. But what is popularity? Popularity on the visible side is the worship of the crowd before the chosen one, trust, disposition towards him, on the invisible side it is a suggestion to the crowd on the part of the chosen one, a type of hypnotism. Such is popularity both at its highest level, at the stage of the crowd’s admiration of the hero, which is tantamount to apotheosis, and at the lower levels, at which “dearest man”, “respectable person”, etc. appear. To comprehend the meaning of popularity, it is clear, at least to a small extent, to imagine the psychology of the crowd. I will use Le Bon's work. The most striking fact observed in a spiritualized crowd is this: whatever may be the individuals composing it, whatever may be their mode of life, whatever their occupation, their character or mind, their mere transformation into a crowd is enough for them to form a kind of collective soul, causing them to feel, think and act completely differently from what each of them would think, act and feel individually. There are ideas and feelings that arise and turn into actions only among the individuals who make up the crowd. The spiritualized crowd represents a temporary organism formed from heterogeneous elements, united together for one moment, just as the cells that make up a living body are united and through this connection form a new being, possessing properties different from those possessed by each cell individually. This difference between an isolated individual and an individual in a crowd is explained by the role that the unconscious plays not only in organic life, but also in the functions of the mind. The conscious life of the mind is only a very small part in comparison with its unconscious life. Our conscious actions arise from the substratum of the unconscious, created especially by the influences of heredity. And this substratum contains countless hereditary remnants that constitute the actual soul of the race. In addition to the openly recognized reasons that guide our actions, there are also secret reasons that we do not admit, but behind these secret reasons there are even more secret ones, because they are unknown to us. Most of our daily actions are caused by hidden engines that elude our observation. It is these qualities of character, controlled by the unconscious, that unite together in the crowd. In the collective soul, the intellectual abilities of individuals, and therefore their individuality, disappear; the heterogeneous is buried in the homogeneous, and unconscious qualities take over. On this common ground, new traits appear in the crowd that the individual components do not possess individually. The first reason for this is that an individual in a crowd acquires, as a result of sheer numbers, the consciousness of an irresistible force, and this consciousness allows him to succumb to such instincts as he never gives free rein to when he is alone. The second reason - infection - also contributes to the formation of special properties in the crowd and determines their direction. In a crowd, every feeling, every action is contagious. The third reason, and, moreover, the most important one, which determines the appearance in individuals in a crowd of such special properties that may not occur in them in an isolated position, is susceptibility to suggestion, and the infection that has just been mentioned is only a consequence of this susceptibility. An individual, having spent some time among the active crowd, whether under the influence of currents emanating from this crowd or some other reasons is unknown, soon comes to a state that is very reminiscent of the state of a hypnotized subject. Such a subject, due to the paralysis of his conscious brain life, becomes a slave to the unconscious activity of his spinal cord, which the hypnotist controls at will. The crowd is the most convenient environment for suggestion. We pose a highly interesting question: which persons are most capable of hypnotizing a crowd, instilling in it certain ideas and certain desires, uniting it and dominating it? This issue has been well studied in the literature. All the authors who have studied it come to the undoubted conclusion that the ability of a person to hypnotize a crowd, to control it, does not depend in any way on the moral merits of the person. Here the whole point is in the specific property of the organization of a given person, in that special property that makes him akin to the crowd. The hero who commands the crowd must have in himself something of the madness of this very crowd, must stand on the same level with it in this regard. Therefore, it is not only impossible to say that the heroes before whom the crowd bows are always persons of high morality, - on the contrary, they can and most often are persons of a low moral level. Mikhailovsky, who was very interested in the question of the relationship between the hero and the crowd, decisively declared that this was not a question of the real greatness of the hero. “Having our own measure of greatness, which is quite suitable for certain purposes, we cannot be guided by it when studying the question we pose... The task is to study the mechanics of the relationship between the crowd and the person whom it recognizes as great, and not to find a measure of greatness. Therefore, a known villain, a fool, a nonentity, a half-smart person are just as important for us, within the limits of the task at hand, as a universal genius or an angel in the flesh, if the crowd followed them, if they obeyed them sincerely and not out of external motives, if they imitated and prayed to them.” Let us read further what Tarde says. “The active crowd is of two kinds: recognizing and hating. But to what business is the first to devote its activities? It is difficult to decide what is more fatal: the hatred or love of the crowd, its indignation or its enthusiasm. When she bawles, overcome by cannibal fever, she is undeniably terrible; but when she bows before her human idol, unharnesses his carriage, lifts him onto her shoulders, then in most cases the object of her adoration, this embryo of dictatorship and tyranny, is some half-mad man like Masaniello, a wild beast like Marat, a charlatan general like Boulanger... The infectious power of people in a crowd is far from proportional to the degree of their moral or intellectual height. In a meeting, and even more so in a crowd, it is not the chosen ones, but rather the scum of society, who are usually carried away by the vulgum pecus. It is not known exactly why some people have the gift of influencing others and causing admiration, just as it is not known exactly why they have the gift of hypnosis. The best hypnotists very often turn out to be mediocre minds, while sometimes outstanding doctors fail in any attempt at hypnosis. How often does an outstanding person submit to authoritarian mediocrity, which immodestly takes possession of him and forces him to follow himself in everything! She's very intimidating, he values ​​her opinions and doesn't do anything against her will. And sometimes, underneath these indulgences there is not even a shadow of sympathy. In schools, the stars of the class rarely have the greatest influence and the greatest popularity; The most desperate lazy people, pompous proud people with an intolerant character are more successful. The energy of the will here must be assumed to play a more important role than the abilities and even powers of the mind. But this is probably accompanied by some physical action that cannot be analyzed and is produced by the characteristics of facial features and physique.” Le Bon says the same thing. “Usually leaders are not thinkers, they are people of action. They do not have insight, since insight usually leads to doubt and inaction. Most often, the leaders are nervously excited people, half-crazed, on the border of madness. No matter how absurd the idea they defend and the goal they strive for, their convictions cannot be shaken by any arguments of reason. Contempt and persecution make no impression on them, or only excite them even more. Personal interest, family - everything is sacrificed by them. Their instinct of self-preservation disappears to such an extent that the only reward they strive for is martyrdom. The intensity of their own faith gives their words enormous power of suggestion. The crowd is always ready to listen to a person gifted with a strong will and able to influence it in an impressive way. People in a crowd lose their will and instinctively turn to the one who has preserved it. Nations have never lacked leaders, but these leaders must always have very strong convictions, since only such convictions create apostles. Often the leaders are cunning orators who pursue only their own personal interests and act by indulging the base instincts of the crowd. The influence they enjoy may be very great, but it is always very ephemeral. The great fanatics who captivated the soul of the crowd, Peter the Hermit, Luther, Savonarola, the leaders of the revolution - only then subjugated it to their charm when they themselves fell under the spell of a well-known idea. Then they managed to create in the soul of the crowd that formidable force, which is called faith and contributes to the transformation of a person into an absolute slave of his dreams... History shows us that the most ridiculous ideas have always fanatized people the most and played the most important role.” If we move from a crowd, as such a collection of people in which their physical contact already influences their psyche, in which the collective soul completely captures individuals for a short or long time, we move on to a more or less specific group of individuals uniting for some private purpose and entering the group as if only part of the soul, such as a corporation, a party, an audience, the reading public, etc., then we will see that here the characteristic properties of a crowd are not so manifested relief. However, this is only a difference of degree, and popularity among these groups has the same characteristics that characterize it as are inherent in the influence of the heroes of the crowd and the leaders of the people. And in these more superficial and more ordinary crowd formations, popularity is based on suggestion, although suggestion here is achieved in more simplified ways. If we carefully search for the last reason why this or that person is considered to be a person selflessly devoted to his work, unselfish, trustworthy, then we will always reach the real source of good rumors: “the man himself said so about himself.” Real dedication to a cause, real unselfishness or honesty is still far from being enough for popularity: for this you need to be spectacularly unselfish, spectacularly honest. There is a big difference between genuine suffering or need and that expression of suffering that evokes compassion. You can suffer and not evoke compassion, you can not suffer, not be in need, but put on such a mask that the viewer cannot avoid compassion. This art of touching people's hearts is well known to all professional beggars who take alms from those who are truly in need. So, in the same way, there is a difference between a good deed or virtue and the showiness of a good deed or virtue - and this is well known to all lovers of popularity, these professional beggars for good rumors. The most important thing in this profession is conceit and arrogance. And Mephistopheles’ advice is true: Take self-confidence as a rule, And you will understand the ability to live with people, However unlikely it may be, each one weaves his own glory with his own hands, each one is the first bard of his own virtues. And if you are not the first to sing of your exploits, if you do not show off your virtues to advantage, if you are modest and truthful, you, like your shadow, will not catch up with good fame. You need to be able to appear, and it makes no difference: to be and seem or not to be and seem. “To be and not to seem” is equally far from “to be and to seem” and from “not to be and to seem.” From the point of view of popularity and good fame, it is better not to be, but to appear, than to be and not to appear. Plato in his Republic depicts the fate of the most just and the fate of the most unjust. A fair person does not want to appear, but to be kind; without doing any untruth, he will be known as extremely unrighteous. Such a righteous man will be whipped, tortured and kept in chains by his fellow citizens, they will burn him out and gouge out his eyes and, subjecting him to all kinds of torture, will nail him to the cross, so that he will finally learn that a person should not want to be, but to appear righteous. On the contrary, the unjust through the greatest untruths will acquire for himself the greatest glory of justice. He is full of wise desires - first, seeming fair, to get a government position in the city, then to marry wherever he wants, to marry whomever he wants, to enter into connections and intercourse with whomever he pleases, and, in addition to all this, to combine with the acquired benefits the benefit of peace of mind when inflicting insults; entering into disputes, overcome your enemies privately and publicly and gain the upper hand over them; having gained the upper hand, become rich and do good to friends, and harm enemies; to bring sacrifices to the gods with contentment and pomp and place gifts on the altar - in general, to honor the gods and whoever the people want - is much better than the just one, so that he, apparently, should be much more pleasant to the gods than the just one. Contemplating this and that fate, the young man poses a painful question to himself: “Should I climb a high wall and fence myself with it in order to spend my life through the truth, or through the meanders of deception? Judging by the stories, if I am fair without appearing to be fair, I will not receive, they say, any benefit, but I will be subjected to labor and obvious misfortunes; on the contrary, a wonderful life is attributed to the unjust, who is considered just.” Yes, there are, as Turgenev says, blows that strike to the very heart. “The man did everything he could; he worked hard, lovingly, honestly... And honest souls disgustingly turn away from him; honest faces light up with indignation at his name... What then should this man do? For him, of course, there can be no choice between, on the one hand, “one must be outlined in front by the shadow of virtue, as if by a vestibule or outward appearance, and from behind, draw behind one the helpful and cunning fox of the wise Archilochus” and between, on the other hand, “one must continue to work, not try to make excuses - and not even wait for a fairer assessment.” However, why not choose a third way? In addition to one path: “to be and not seem kind” and another path: “not to be and seem to be kind” - a third path is possible: to be and seem to be. One would only have to take into account the inclination of people towards a spectacular appearance, towards a beautiful pose, towards a sonorous word, which Lucretius spoke about: Omni stolidi magis admirantur amantque, inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernun, veraque constituunt, quae belle tangere possunt auris et lepido, quae sunt fucata sonore. And to this extent, popularity is difficult for those who want to be “fair.” Popularity inevitably contains something humiliating for a person, vulgarizing him. You know that vulgar race of philosophers who, as Nietzsche puts it, “muddy their waters so that they seem deep.” Just as in the old days the “philosopher” tried to amaze the public’s imagination with his appearance - inevitably, long hair, the exquisite carelessness of his suit, so now “philosophers” seeking popularity try to influence the imagination of readers with the pretentiousness of their concepts, the virtuosity of their constructions. Goethe also noted: people are angry that the truth is so simple. And “philosophers” try to be acrobats of thought. In front of a cheering crowd, they perform logical tricks, come up with tricky words, riddles and charades. Vague mysticism and dizzying aestheticism are the real sphere in which popular philosophers feel at home. All other popularity went the same way. Open charity is humiliating to the spirit, and every praised virtue is humiliating. This is an old truth, for it has long been said that it is bad for a person when everyone speaks well of him. But we all know that the earth moves, and we all see the movement of the sun; So we all know this old truth, that all popularity is gone, and we all consider popularity the highest praise for a person. It all seems to us that an error could only happen with the court that sentenced to crucifixion or burning at the stake, only with that assessment that was guided by classical criteria, which have now become the property of historical textbooks, that only the judges of Christ, the judges of Socrates could make mistakes... It seems to us that in our days, in our society, in relation to our criteria, judicial errors are no longer possible, that according to the guidance of our social principles we can accurately judge the human soul. No, and in our time, as always, two truths are possible in each particular case - the visible truth and the invisible, internal truth - and by the first we cannot judge the second. Thomas More, the famous author of Utopia, was a free thinker and openly expressed his belief in the futility of the political activity of a philosopher. And suddenly he became close to the king. We know that this closeness of Thomas More to the king ended with him laying his head on the block, and he proved by his death that he had never been a court flatterer, that he had never betrayed his convictions. But could his contemporaries judge him correctly during the period of his strange closeness to the king? They couldn't help but condemn him, and they were dead wrong. And each of our contemporaries can always be wrong outwardly and right internally. But this is true heroism - to take on the shame of visible untruth and stand for the invisible truth, to stand alone against everyone. But this is a real, unrecognized and unidentifiable sign of spiritual height - to raise a value spat upon by everyone, to follow a path abandoned by everyone, to lag behind the crowd, which takes every principle to a vulgar extreme, to be conservative when the carnival of freedom is wildly celebrated, and to be liberal in the days of a reactionary bacchanalia, to cry during a national celebration and to rejoice in moments of universal sorrow. Why, this is the praise that all sons of light should strive for - to bear the shame of unpopularity. But how hard it is. Many, too many, are frightened by this heaviness, and they leave the living paths for the wide, torn roads, lie flat on the surface of the sea of ​​life, and are afraid of their own depths. The beautiful, wide-open eyes of the clairvoyant are filled with horror, and the blind giant is senselessly marking time. A kingdom of fashion, public opinion, an established template, a frozen stencil, a Panurgian herd is being erected, in which there is no place for personal creativity, high impulse, clear truthfulness. This is your business, judges of someone else's soul, you are the builders of this city! One thing we can without hesitation call evil in human life - moral judgment over someone else's soul. Kritik derroinen Vernunft: Die eigentliche Moralität der Handlungen (Verdienst und Schuld) bleibt uns, selbst die unseres eigenen Verhaltens, gänzlich verborgen. Unsere Zurechnungen können nur auf den empirischen Charakter bezogen warden. Wie viel aber davon reine Wirkung der Freiheit, wie viel der blossen Natur und dem unverschuldeten Fehler des Temperaments oder dessen glücklicher Beschaffenheit (merito fortunae) zuzusehreiben sei, kann Niemand ergründen und daher auch nicht nach völliger Gerechtigkeit richten. In the Catholic calendar, he is listed as removed (Crispin), who prepared shoes for the poor from stolen leather. Vorlesuneen über die Philosophie der Geschichte – Einleitung: Welcher Schulmeister hat nicht von Alexander dem Grossen, von Julius Cäsar vordemonetrirt dass diese Menschen von solchen Leidenschaften getrieben, und daher unmoralische Menschen gewesen seyen? woraus sogleich folgt, dass er, der Schulmeister, ein vortrefflicherer Mensch sey, als jene, weil er solche Leidenschaften nicht besässe, und den Beweis dadurch gebe, das erobere, den Darius, Porus nicht besiege, sondern freilich wohl lebe, aber auch leben lasses.