Religious problem in modern light

Contents I. The religious problem in modern light II. Religion and socialism I. The religious problem in modern light “We gathered a few guys in the village and began to argue among ourselves: who will make someone more impudent? Out of pride, I volunteered in front of everyone. Another guy took me away and talks to me face to face. It is in no way possible for you to do as you say. You brag. I began to give him an oath. No, stop, swear, he says, with your salvation in the next world, that you will do everything as I tell you. Now fasting will soon, he says, you will begin to fast. When you go to communion, take communion, but do not swallow it. When you leave, take it out with your hand and keep it. And there I will show you. So I did. He took me straight from the church to the garden. He took the pole, stuck it in the ground and said: put it down! I put it on the pole. Now, he says, bring the gun. I raised my hand and aimed... Dostoevsky conveys this in “The Diary of a Writer” and, having conveyed it, expresses his deep remarks. “Here two folk types appear before us, eminently representing to us the entire Russian people as a whole! This is, first of all, oblivion of any measure in everything (and, mind you, it is always almost temporary and transitory, being, as it were, some kind of obsession). This is the need to reach over the edge, the need for a frozen sensation, having reached the abyss, hanging halfway into it, looking into the very abyss and - in special cases, but very often - throwing yourself into it, as if stunned, upside down. This is the need for denial in a person, sometimes he does not deny and reveres, the denial of everything, the most important shrine of his heart, his most complete ideal, the entire people's shrine in all its fullness, which he now only revered, and which suddenly seemed to become some kind of unbearable burden for him. Particularly striking is the haste and impetuosity with which Russian people sometimes rush to declare themselves, in other characteristic moments of their or the people’s life, to declare themselves in good or bad. Sometimes I just can’t resist. Love, wine, revelry, pride, envy - here some Russian people give themselves up almost selflessly, ready to break everything, renounce everything: family, custom, God. Some kindest person can somehow suddenly become a disgusting ugly person and a criminal - as soon as he gets into this whirlwind, a fatal cycle for us of convulsive and instant self-denial and self-destruction, so characteristic of the Russian folk character in other fatal moments of his life. But with the same strength, with the same swiftness, with the same thirst for self-preservation and repentance, the Russian people, as well as the entire people, save themselves and usually when they reach the last line, that is, when there is nowhere else to go. But what is especially characteristic is that the reverse impulse, the impulse of restoration and self-salvation, is always more serious than the previous impulse - the impulse of denial and self-destruction. That is, it always happens due to some kind of petty cowardice; whereas the Russian person goes into restoration with the most enormous and serious effort, and looks at his negative previous movement with contempt for himself.”... This passage from “A Writer’s Diary” sticks in your mind when you survey our modern book market from a religious point of view. The shelves are bursting with the mass of religiously negative literature that is so helpfully offered to the gullible reader by bookstores and is so greedily devoured by buyers. Here, of course, it does not matter at all that a significant part of this literature is translated: it does not matter who supplies these books and brochures to the book market, what is important is this “hasty, impetuous” demand, which gives rise to both writers and especially translators, what is important is this “unrestrained” and “selfless” absorption of sheets that deny “all the people’s shrines in its entirety,” rejecting “family, customs and God.” The power of the phenomenon is not weakened, but only strengthened by the translated nature of atheistic literature, since old deniers, along with the newest ones, are translated into our history - and at the same time, in these days, long-standing writers are becoming popular among us, not only previously unknown to our general public, but also decidedly unpopular in their homeland. Characteristic of our days is the abundance and heterogeneity of atheistic books that appear without any philosophical and historical preparation, due to the simple inclination of the Russian person to “quickly declare himself,” “to reach the last line.” Everything speaks of the “convulsiveness” of religious denial and destruction. Books and brochures are effective, designed for a certain psychological predisposition, for certain expectations and searches. “Sebastian Faure Crimes of God. Translation from French." How do you like it? For 15 kopecks you can find out, within 5 minutes, about the crimes of God Himself! It’s interesting to hear about the tricks of some police chief, but here they are nothing more or less than the crimes of God! Here God is called a liar, an ignoramus, a scoundrel and a criminal. “Of all the executioners, this judge is the most unjust and the most painful.” Here religion is literally portrayed like this: “Religion is the property of slaves, it is slave morality. A believer who has eyes should not hear, who has hands should not touch (?!), who has a brain should not reason; he must not use his hands, his eyes, his mind. In all cases he is obliged to turn to revelation. Religion has the effect of fettering thought to the detriment of progress: is it possible to imagine a more terrible crime? The bloody massacres that were carried out in the name or to support various cults destroyed hundreds, thousands of generations, millions and hundreds of millions of combatants for their implementation. Who will list the conflicts, the source of which were religions, who will be able to count all the murders, beatings, hecatombs, executions, crimes; religious sectarianism and irreconcilable mysticism have bloodied the land on which humanity, crushed by a bloody tyrant, drags. Religion is hatred sown between people, it is the base slavery and humility of millions of subordinates, it is the arrogant cruelty of popes, high priests and priests, it is, finally, the triumph of an oppressive morality that disfigures beings; the morality of mortification of flesh and mind; morality of grief, renunciation, self-sacrifice; morality, which forces the individual to suppress his most generous impulses, curb his instinctive impulses and passions, stifle his aspirations; a morality that fills the mind with gross prejudices and torments the conscience with remorse and fear; finally, morality, which generates humility, breaks powerful impulses of energy, stifles the free impulse of indignation, revolution, perpetuates the despotism of the masters, the exploitation of the rich and the suspicious power of the priests. Ignorance in the mind, hatred in the heart, cowardice of the will - these are the crimes that I attribute to the idea of ​​"God" and its inevitable companion - religion. All these crimes which I accuse publicly, in the light of free inquiry, of false teachers who speak and act in the name of the existing God. This is what I call the crimes of God, and I call them because they are committed and were committed in His name, because they were generated and are generated through the idea of ​​God." S. Faure publicly accuses God, brings a claim against Him, calculates and proves His crimes. One could object to him: do you have any reason to attribute to religion the crimes that people commit in its name? We do not need to formulate this objection on our own; it has already been made in print. “You make the church responsible for the mistakes, and the religion for the shortcomings and sins of its followers. You place the blame of individuals on the whole society; you condemn the guilty as well as the innocent. Tell me any vice or shortcoming, if it is not rooted in the nature of all mortals, - some injustice or heinousness, which would not be strictly condemned and prohibited by the Christian religion and the teachings of the church. Tell me at least something that in your opinion is considered shameful and unworthy, that you are trying to destroy, and that at the same time would not be subject to destruction and eradication on the basis of the teachings of the Christian religion, if such were followed. Tell me also something good, noble, desirable, some virtue that would not flourish where the commandments of Christianity are fulfilled? This, of course, you cannot do, and therefore you must admit that the blame for the evil that you brand lies not with religion or the church, but with people.” But let us assume that the fault of people who believe or pretend to be believers is precisely the fault of religion. However, with even greater right one can pose the question: is the fault of religion the fault of God, which would give grounds to call Him a liar, an ignoramus, a scoundrel and a criminal? Not to mention the fact that these expressions are not judicial, they are vulgar abuse, possible only in the mouth of some drunkard; can this very imputation of the crimes of His worshipers to God be recognized? The enormous strength of this objection, as applied to Faure, is created by the fact that this author does not believe in the existence of God: for him, God is not a real being, but it is a fiction, an invention. The idea of ​​God is generated by the ignorance of primitive man; This is a hypothesis to which he resorted due to the extreme insignificance of his knowledge. But over the centuries, science has progressed. Having escaped from a long and painful period of searching, the human mind began to resolutely move towards the light. Brave individuals took the light of knowledge into their hands. Empty explanations can no longer satisfy the ardent curiosity of these seekers. They impatiently shake the burden of superstition. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, and natural sciences partially explain those phenomena that inspired fear and wonder in our ancestors. Old traditions have been shaken. The place of God without philosophy is replaced by philosophy without God. The ancient concepts of the universe are destroyed from top to bottom. Scientists' exploration of the sky with the help of powerful astronomical devices introduces us to the laws of celestial mechanics. Materialistic tendencies begin to emerge; they strengthen and develop, making a breach in the childish and crude spiritualism of previous centuries. An irresistible flow is driving our disappointed generations towards atheism. Nowadays the God hypothesis is no longer necessary, it is useless, it is absurd, it is criminal. There is eternal matter, which is characterized by movement. Everything is done according to iron necessity. And in the kingdom of this eternal matter and iron necessity there is no place for God. But if so, if it is criminal and absurd to believe in God, if in the world kingdom of eternal matter and inevitable laws there is no place for either creation or providence, then how is it possible to talk about the crimes of God, about the crimes of a non-existent God? Rejecting God in the name of the fatality of world laws, one must openly adhere to the teachings of the old Stoics, who considered complaints about heaven and dissatisfaction with fate unreasonable. Otherwise, it turns out to be a criminal play on words. Nothing else but a long series of other brochures designed for the same optical effect: “Karmelyuk New Sermon on the Mount”, “V. Veitliig The Gospel of the Poor Sinner”, “Demchinsky Christ in the Revolution”, etc. The first of these little books preaches: “Unhappy are the poor in spirit, who have reconciled themselves with their poverty and have not rebelled against untruth. The kingdom of heaven will not belong to them, for there is no other “kingdom of heaven” except the kingdom of righteousness on earth. Blessed are all those who are dissatisfied with their spiritual and worldly poverty, all who are indignant against their ignorance and humiliation, for only such are destined to realize the kingdom of God on earth. Unhappy are those who cry! For tears are a sign of weakness, a refusal to fight. We must seek consolation not in tears, but in resistance, in struggle. Blessed are those who struggle, for they do not cry and do not need consolation. Unhappy are the meek, who meet violence with stupid, humble, resigned meekness! They never inherit. the land, for the land has long been taken over by the strong and greedy, whose hearts have become numb, and whose minds have become sophisticated in defending what they have plundered. Expecting them to give the earth as an inheritance to the meek for their meekness is the same as expecting a cuckoo that, when it grows up in someone else’s nest, it will not throw out the chicks of its real mother. Blessed are the courageous and rebellious, for only they, strong in will and power, will conquer and inherit the earth. Unhappy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness if they do nothing to quench their thirst and place all their hopes in God. For they will never be satisfied. Blessed are all who rebel against unrighteousness, for they are already close to being satisfied. Unhappy are those who are merciful to unmercifulness, for they multiply evil on earth. Every mercy shown to the oppressor is cruelty towards the oppressed; every mercy shown to the executioner turns into a blow to his victim. Blessed are those who do not know mercy towards executioners and are submissive only to the voice of justice, for they do not need mercy. Unhappy are the peacemakers who put patches on worn-out clothing that no longer provides protection to those wearing it. The peacemakers are unhappy, for the fact that they will be called sons of God will not make them able to stand up for the truth. Carnage must be opposed to war, violence to force - this is the law of life and the work of love. Blessed are those who do not talk about peace when resistance is needed, and do not talk hypocritically about the possibility of brotherhood between wolves and sheep. Blessed are those who sow the seeds of struggle and rebellion against evil, for they will be called sons of righteousness. You are unhappy if they begin to persecute you with impunity, revile you and slander you in every possible way for speaking the truth. you are unhappy if such persecutions do not force you, the persecuted ones, to shake hands fraternally with each other and unite, and form a legion of righteousness and, having girded your loins with a sword, stand with a pure soul and a courageous heart against the wicked. The kingdom of heaven on earth does not belong to those who suffer patiently, even for the sake of righteousness. and to all those unable to tolerate falsehood and oppression. Blessed are those who do not want to patiently endure persecution even for the sake of truth, for truth should not be persecuted, but should shine for everyone like the sun, shedding light and warmth on everyone without restraint. Resist evil by all means, not excluding violence, and do not listen to those who preach to you to turn your left cheek when they hit you on the right; for these people, in their madness, only aggravate and perpetuate the untruth. No, respond to every blow with a blow, and thereby you will discourage the oppressors from hitting others. Do not listen to those who tell you that you should not resist when you are robbed and robbed, and that if your shirt is taken off, you should voluntarily give up the rest of your clothes. Don’t listen to them, for this is what bribed slaves and henchmen of your robbers say, or people whose hearts are flabby, like spoiled fruit, which neither pleases anyone’s eyes nor can satisfy hunger.” Well, isn't this the talk of a madman? After all, it is clear that to elevate force to a principle means to justify the violence from which the oppressed suffer; to oppose the absolute religious principle of the gospel to the principle of struggle - this means to destroy every principle and in place of the principle to put the pure kingdom of force: whose will take it! But violence has already taken over... It’s a different matter if this preacher had pursued the idea that a religiously absolute principle cannot serve as the determining principle of conditionally social life, one could agree with him, but then he would not have to talk about a new Sermon on the Mount, and that’s the whole point. And a spectacular absurdity was set in motion. We find literally the same thing in V. Weitling’s brochure, with the only difference that here such content is embedded in the gospel itself - it is not opposed to the gospel, but is presented as a commentary on the gospel. The speech goes like this: “... Banish your petty bourgeois concerns to hell. With your insignificant means, you still cannot accumulate much money and property. Do not worry about who or for whom you will work tomorrow. If you don't want to starve yourself, you won't starve. Don't worry about restaurants. The implementation of the community property will be our restaurant. We will not feed alone. If you want, we will all feed together. There is nothing easier than this. Don't worry about wedding funds. Let girls and women have patience and wait. Then at least we will save wedding expenses and not have to commit ourselves against our inclinations. Isn't it true, ladies, you'll wait? Of course, you will wait with the wedding, and not with friendship and love. So love and delight us with the last beautiful struggle. Don't worry about how to pay your debts. In the first days of freedom, all debts will be repaid. Don't worry about the future, about the days of old age. It is better for someone who does not yet have a single gray hair to set himself the task of at least every 14 days convincing at least one person to share the principle of community of property before he turns grey. This is the best savings bank for old age. This way you are most likely to achieve your goal. So, do not worry about all this rubbish, but “seek the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.” Did you understand this? It’s so clear, so understandable! Therefore, when it comes to the kingdom of God, do not look up there into the blue space. Here, below, it is also possible to create the kingdom of God. For how can we achieve eternal life unless we consider it possible and find the courage to fight for its realization? After all, eternal life in no case can be the lot of cowardly slaves, otherwise - I humbly thank you for it!”... Christ himself appears here as a cheerful man. “Jesus Christ was not an obscurantist, a bigot, a swindler or a hypocrite, as he is sometimes portrayed, and as one might judge by his modern followers, religious obscurantists, scoundrels and saints. No! He was simply a socialite full of life, who on his thorny path plucked as many flowers of the pleasure of this short life as circumstances allowed him, without prejudice to his main life goal. Jesus, despite the prejudices of his time, attended festivals and feasts of sinners and did not refuse to touch and communicate with dishonored virgins and wives. To sin a lot, he said, means to love a lot. When at the wedding in Cana of Galilee there was already enough to drink. he also turned water into wine. Leaving this world, he said goodbye to his disciples over the Passover lamb and wine, and he recommended such meals of love to his successors and asked them to do this in memory of him. Wer nicht, lieht Wein, Weib und Gesang, Der·bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang. Jesus travels around the country with sinful virgins and wives who support him,” etc., etc. What is this other than conscious blasphemy - a conscious desire to say the most impudent thing of all, to laugh at the sacred image that millions of believers carry in their hearts, to distort the features of a dear face, knowing that this will cause pain to those who love? And what is most amazing here is this frivolity, playfulness in relation to the sacred object, the lack of consciousness of the shrine in general! The guy described by Dostoevsky could not stand his insolence. - “I raised my hand and aimed. And just as I was about to shoot, suddenly there was a cross in front of me, and on it the Crucified One. Then I fell with a gun in insensibility”... And these gentlemen who publish their five-kopeck brochures will not faint from the most extreme impudence. You will say: yes, they have no faith, while the guy was going against his heart - on this point there is simply emptiness in their hearts. Let it be so, but after all the abandoned church is all a church, The defeated idol is all God! You can deny, you can rebel, but mocking and joking is not worthy of a self-respecting person. Listen to what Nietzsche, also like a Russian guy, who could not bear his denial - listen to how he shuddered at the thought of a dead God. - “Have you heard about that crazy man who lit a lantern on a bright afternoon, ran out to the market and incessantly shouted: I’m looking for God, I’m looking for God... I’ll tell you where God is: we killed him - me and you. We are all killers. But how did we do it? How could we drink the sea? Who gave us this sponge to wipe the paint off the entire horizon? What did we do when we tore the earth away from its sun?... Is empty space breathing on us? Has it gotten colder? Is the night getting darker and darker? Do you have to light a lantern in broad daylight? Can't we hear the noise of the gravediggers burying God? Doesn't the smell of decay reach us? And the gods decay! God is dead! God will not rise again! And we killed him! How can we, the murderers of murderers, console ourselves? The most powerful and holy being that ever existed in the world bled to death under our knives. Who will wash this blood away from us? What water can we cleanse ourselves with? What redemptive festivals, what sacred games will need to be invented? Isn't the enormity of this matter too overwhelming for us? Shouldn't we ourselves turn into gods in order to prove worthy of him?... But these unbelievers turned not into gods and not into heroes, but into buffoons, having expelled all sacred things from their hearts - their unbelief turned not into uplifting of spirit, but into mental illness. Already in this hastily swirling whirlwind of negative sheets, something pathological is visible - it is also noticeable in their content. "AND. Aninsky Pseudo-Christianity as a brake on progress.” There is such a book. In it we read: “Conversation 11. (Instilled in me by my late wife, on the other day of her death, on the night of February 9, 1901. This may seem strange, and therefore I consider it necessary to make an explanation that these thoughts appeared to me as if against my will, as if by themselves, while I was thinking about the deceased).” The subsequent thoughts bear the stamp of something psychopathic and delusional. “The life of the universe,” the author writes, “consists and is expressed in its constant progression, because the Divinity itself progresses. It may be pointed out to me whether it would be logical to allow the progression of the perfect? To this I must note that progress, in my opinion, progress in the broadest sense of the word, is not at all what the majority mean by this word, i.e., strictly speaking, not at all the improvement that is accessible to our concepts, but rather, or more accurately, even a modification that leads us into the unknown, where bliss awaits us. And what can oblige the perfect to remain motionless and not change? The imperfect, by changing, can be improved, and the perfect, by changing, leads the imperfect to perfection. A non-progressing Deity, whether it is separate or merged with its creation (it makes no difference), could not lead its creation to progress. It would not be a living, but a dead Deity - an idol. God is as unchangeable as he is all-changeable, and therefore all-changing. In addition, to the properties usually attributed to Him, it is necessary to add one more thing, namely, that He is all-containing, that is, in Him there is not only goodness, truth, joy and limitlessness, but also evil and untruth, suffering and limitation.” Etc. In general, the pathological nature of our religious-negative movement of the last days is beyond doubt. Therefore, I would like to believe, together with Dostoevsky, that this is a temporary phenomenon in the life of our people, that this is one of the signs of the “fatal moments of its historical life.” The matter, apparently, has already reached the last line, and I would also like to believe that the reverse push, the push of restoration and self-rescue, will be more serious. And there is also no doubt that the Russian people will save themselves; nevertheless, it cannot be said that the intervention of theological science would be inappropriate here. On the contrary, silence on her part would be criminal in this case. It can and should help the crisis. Her calling is an apology for the Christian faith and polemics against negative literature. However, her work cannot be limited to this, partly because today pure apologetics is met with distrust from the first word. A certain modesty is necessary for theology; the conviction is necessary that the main thing in this matter of national salvation depends on the people themselves, the society itself. Under these conditions, the scientifically objective attitude of theology to the religiously negative movement appears to be more appropriate. It is necessary to show the beginning of this movement, its reasons, it is necessary to classify religiously negative literature, to separate the serious and basic from the fervent and tactical, the deeper from the militant. And then everyone will have the basis for their own judgment on a religious issue, for an independent assessment of religiously negative literature. This is the goal of our essay. And we hope that it will not be useless for everyone who has to conduct the immediate work of apologia and polemics, for pastors and teachers of the law. They will find a lot to learn here. It will be useful for them to look at the general picture of the modern negative movement in the field of faith, for this will give knowledge of the enemy and his forces, and knowledge is a necessary condition for victory. Then a systematic acquaintance with religiously negative literature will reveal the weaknesses of the latter, as well as those elements that can be used in polemical interests... In modern religiously negative literature one can easily distinguish two main classes, two main directions - socialist and anarchist. Let's look at the first and second ones in turn. Tracing the history of the socialist attitude towards religion, we come to L. Feuerbach. There can be no debate about the significance of Feuerbach in this regard. We will present a discussion on this issue from the authoritative article by S. Bulgakov “The Religion of Man-Deity in L. Feuerbach.” “Marx and Engels,” writes the named author, in religious and philosophical terms are students of Feuerbach, and, moreover, unoriginal students, who, for their part, have only dried up the doctrine of their teacher. Those familiar with the genesis of Marxism know how enormously influential Feuerbach's ideas were here. However, Engels himself talks about this in his brochure L. Feuerbach and the outcome of classical philosophy. Here we read the following: “then Feuerbach’s Wesen des Christenthums appeared. With one blow she destroyed the contradiction, without further ado, placing materialism back on the throne. It was necessary to experience the liberating influence of this book in order to form an idea of ​​it. There was general enthusiasm: we all instantly became Feuerbachians.” Marx's early writings reflect this fascination with Feuerbach. Marx and Engels later retreated from orthodox Feuerbachianism, but Engels undoubtedly greatly exaggerates the extent of this disagreement. The materialist understanding of history and the doctrine of class struggle were only a completion and concretization of Feuerbach’s general formula, but did not in any way affect its essence. With regard to general philosophical ideas, Marx did not take the slightest step forward against Feuerbach, and the latter’s teaching was the soil on which Marxism grew, and to this day remains its actual general philosophical foundation. Feuerbach's atheistic humanism constitutes the soul of Marxist socialism and is essential for it to a much greater extent than the political-economic doctrine of Marx himself, which can be compatible with a fundamentally opposite general worldview. Bearing in mind this side, the philosophical generation of ideas, we can safely put forward the seemingly paradoxical position that Feuerbach is to a much greater extent the spiritual father of Marxism than Marx himself, who gave only flesh for Feuerbach’s ideas, and if we deepen the current social democracy to its general philosophical foundations, then Feuerbach’s ideas will be at its foundation. In any case, if they want to criticize the essence of Marxism, then one must take into account not socialist ideas and not even “economic materialism,” which is only an ugly superstructure over the edifice of Feuerbach, but the religious and philosophical teachings of this latter. Here the religious - metaphysical center of Marxism or, in general, materialistic, atheistic socialism - for the purposes of religious and philosophical criticism, Marxism should be understood precisely as Feuerbachianism. But Feuerbach lives not only in Marxism, for Feuerbachianism is much broader than Marxism. the latter is only a special case of the first, and there may be as many similar special cases as possible; undoubtedly, Marxism does not limit the sphere of direct or indirect influence of Feuerbach. It is reflected in the entire new anti-religious-humanitarian movement, in all atheistic humanism, the atheistic religion of humanity, which characterizes the new time. Here his influence collides and merges with the unambiguous influence of Comte, also a preacher of the religion of humanity. Such different minds in different languages ​​at the same time said the same thing: they raised and then resolved to the best of their ability the question of religion without a personal God, but with God-humanity, and gave philosophical expression to the desire of modern humanity to “settle without God,” moreover, completely and finally. We knew and read Comte more. But as a thinker, Feuerbach is much deeper, more significant and more interesting than Comte. It was Feuerbach who gave a complete and possibly complete expression to the idea of ​​man-divinity, the religion of humanity. It is quite clear why Marxism is only a special case of Feuerbachianism or Kontism, which in essence represent the same thing. Atheistic humanism or the religion of humanity finds many forms of expression in modern history besides Marxism. It is a universal, generalizing phenomenon in the spiritual life of modern times, since it was defined outside of Christianity or even in conscious opposition to it. The religion of humanity is the most significant religious creation of modern times. This product of his religious creativity, so contradictory and complex, requires an attentive, conscientious and impartial attitude towards itself and careful testing." When starting to present Feuerbach’s religious philosophy, we are forced to limit ourselves to his main work, “The Essence of Christianity,” only occasionally turning to his other works, since Feuerbach’s views fluctuated in many ways and even often he contradicted himself, so presenting all of his works on religious philosophy would force us to face many problems. Feuerbach finds the primary foundations of religion in the very nature of human consciousness, precisely in its infinity, for such is human consciousness, in contrast to the consciousness of animals. Consciousness in the strict or proper sense and the consciousness of the infinite are identical; limited consciousness is not consciousness; consciousness by its very essence is characterized by an all-encompassing, infinite nature. The consciousness of the infinite is nothing other than the consciousness of the infinity of consciousness; or – in the consciousness of the infinite, the infinity of its own essence serves as an object for consciousness. What is it that a person recognizes as his own essence, as true humanity? Mind, will and heart. Man exists in order to know, love and want. Reason, will and heart, or love, are not forces that a person controls, but they are forces that animate a person, define him, dominate him - divine absolute forces that he cannot resist. In them his own essence is revealed - and the absolute being, the God of man, is his own essence. If you think the infinite, then you think and affirm the infinity of the ability of thinking; if you feel the infinite, then you feel and affirm the infinity of the ability of feeling. The object of the mind is the objectified mind; the object of feeling is an objectified feeling. Therefore, everything that, in the sense of transcendental speculation and religion, has the meaning of a derivative, subjective or human, means, organ, - in the sense of truth, has the meaning of an original, divine, essence, object. For example, if feeling is an essential organ of religion, then the being of God expresses nothing other than the essence of feeling. The true, but hidden meaning of the words: “feeling is the organ of the divine” is this: feeling is the most noble, beautiful, i.e., divine in man. How could you perceive the divine with your senses if the senses were not divine in nature? The Divine is perceived only by the Divine, “God is known only through himself.” The divine being, felt by feeling, is in fact nothing more than the self-admired and enchanted essence of feeling, an enthusiastic, blissful feeling in itself. In relation to sensory objects, the consciousness of the object differs sharply from self-consciousness, but in relation to a religious object, consciousness directly coincides with self-consciousness. A sensual object is located outside a person, a religious object is within him; it is an internal object, which, like self-consciousness and conscience, never leaves it - an intimate object, even the most intimate and closest. “God is closer and dearer to us, and therefore easier to know than sensory, physical things,” says Augustine. A sensual object is indifferent in itself, independent of our way of thinking, of our ability to judge, but the object of religion is our chosen object, a being that is better, first, supreme: it essentially presupposes an act of critical judgment, a distinction between the divine and the undivine, worthy and unworthy of worship. Here, therefore, the following proposition applies without any restrictions: a person’s object is nothing more than his own objectified essence. As is a man's thoughts and intentions, so is his God; whatever the value of a person is, the same, and not higher. the value of his God. The consciousness of God is the self-consciousness of man, the knowledge of God is the self-knowledge of man. You know a man by his God, and vice versa - by a man you know his God, for they are one in essence. What God is for a person is his spirit, soul, and what a person’s spirit is, his soul, heart, that is his God. God is the open interiority, the manifested self of man (Gott ist das offenbare Innere, das ausgesprochene Selbst des Menschen); religion is the solemn discovery of man's hidden treasures, the recognition of his most intimate thoughts, the open confession of his sacraments of love. Religion, at least Christian religion, is a person’s attitude towards himself, or, more correctly, towards his essence, but only as another essence. The divine being is nothing other than a human being or, better, the essence of man, freed from the boundaries of the individual, i.e., the real, corporeal man - objectified, i.e. contemplated and revered as another, distinct essence, all definitions of the divine essence are, therefore, definitions of the human essence. To know God and not be God himself, to know bliss and not enjoy it yourself, this is discord, misfortune. You believe in love as a divine property, because you yourself are a loving being; you believe that God is a wise, good being, because you do not know anything better in yourself than reason and goodness; you believe that God exists, that he is a subject or a being, because you yourself exist, you yourself are a being. You do not know any other, higher human good, except the ability to love, be kind and wise, and you believe your highest happiness is to exist in general: to be a being, for the consciousness of all good and happiness is associated with the consciousness of being a being, existence. God exists for you, is a being on the same basis on which he is for you a wise, blessed, good being... A person, and especially a religious person, is for himself the measure of all things, of all reality. He invariably objects everything that impresses, that makes a special impression on his soul, as a special independent divine being. Religion embraces all objects of the world; everything that exists has been the subject of religious veneration; in essence and consciousness of religion lies the same thing that is generally contained in the being and consciousness of man about himself and the world. Religion does not have its own, special content. But we have to note one essentially important phenomenon: the more human God is in his essence, the more he, apparently, differs from man, that is, the more religious reflection, theology, denies identity. the unity of the divine and human essence and the human is diminished, since it, as such, is an object of consciousness for man. The reason for this phenomenon is the following: since the positive, essential in the contemplation or determination of the divine essence is only human, therefore the view of man, as an object of consciousness, must be negative, misanthropic. To enrich God, man has to become poor; For God to be everything, man must become nothing. And at the same time, a person becomes dependent on his own object, that is, an object of an object... The secret of religion lies in the fact that a person objects his being, then again turns himself into the object of this - into the subject, the personality of a transformed, objectified essence... So, Feuerbach sees the essence of religion in the essence of man, he reduces all theology to anthropology, he explains all theology from the laws of human essence. And this is not only in general, but also in particular, and predominantly, this is how he explains the Christian religion, all its basic dogmas. To the question of what this or that point of Christian teaching means, it is very easy for him to answer: every religious Christian truth must be turned upside down, and we will receive its true meaning, the real truth. God the Father is the human mind, the Son is the human heart, love. The mystery of the Incarnation, subjected to anthropological criticism, comes down to the natural, innate elements of man, to his inner beginning and focus, to love. God suffers for man, which means that suffering for others is divine. We will understand the mystery of the Trinity if we begin to take what theology calls an imprint, an image, a likeness of the Trinity (i.e., mind, will and love) as the very essence, as the original, as the prototype. On the other hand, the mystery of the trinity is the truth of social life (I and you), as genuine human life. The cosmogonic process is nothing more than a mystical periphrasis of the psychological process, the objectification of the unity of consciousness with self-consciousness. The essence of creation is nothing more than the self-affirmation of the human being in contrast to nature. Etc. Let us pause for a moment from the presentation of Feuerbach’s religious philosophy and make some critical remarks. We must admit that the starting point of Feuerbach’s stated views is fully consistent with the evangelical point of view on religion, so that we can observe here the very first retreat of unbelieving philosophy from the Christian religion, positivism. When Feuerbach calls the Christian religion an absolute, perfect religion, when he says that in the Christian religion national limitations are discarded, that Judaism is secular Christianity, and Christianity is spiritual Judaism, that just as the Jews objectified their national essence in Jehovah, so the Christian objectifies in God his subjectively human essence, freed from nationalism; when he believes that the difference between Christianity and paganism is that the pagans religiously looked at the whole nature and at the whole society, considering man only a part of nature, on the one hand, and society, on the other, while in Christianity man concentrated in himself, renounced nature and looked at himself as an absolute being, which in Christianity is unlimited subjectivity, that Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity - in all this one must see almost the gospel truth. Feuerbach's first deviation from the gospel is apparently very insignificant, almost imperceptible, and yet all his further falling away from religion has its reason here. In the gospel, the absoluteness of religious experience has vital and precisely religious significance, while philosophy reduces Christian truth to a game of abstract thought. The starting point of the gospel is the absoluteness of the love revealed in Christ and communicated to believers. As absolute, religious love appears in the gospel with an unearthly and inhuman character, and it is given epistemological significance, that is, in religious (absolute) love the revelation of God is recognized, which is expressed in the thesis: God is love. This, however, does not mean that the God of the Gospel is nothing other than human love, this does not mean the deification of human love, for the very point of view of the Gospel is vital and religious. Human nature is not the fruit of human consciousness, but phenomena are possible in nature that exceed its limits, and therefore turn out to be alien to man, otherworldly, heavenly: this is the religious-evangelical point of view. Completely different is the philosophical point of view of Feuerbach, a student of Hegel. He looks at the facts of human consciousness and the facts of religious life dialectically, or rationalistically. For him, thought is above everything and the creator of everything. Consciousness generates its objects, and all nature is explained from it. This is a specifically non-religious, abstract point of view. The words in Feuerbach's above arguments are taken from religious, evangelical language, but they receive a different meaning from him, due to a different point of view. It doesn't take any effort to prove this. Playing with words and concepts, Feuerbach argues that Christianity is only subjectivity, and therefore in Christianity there is absolutely no room for the recognition of natural and historical necessity, regularity. But contrary to this a priori statement of Feuerbach, we find in the Gospel the most decisive recognition of natural and historical law, so that the Gospel places us on the edge of dualism, which, however, it overcomes. It should be noted that natural-historical necessity receives such an open expression in the Gospel for the first time. And about this fact, Feuerbach’s main theory breaks down irrevocably. From his anthropological theory of religion, Feuerbach draws atheistic conclusions. He writes: The hidden essence of religion is revealed to the gaze of the thinker, for whom religion is an object of thought, which for itself it cannot be. But as soon as a person (thinker) realized that religious predicates are anthropomorphisms or human ideas, then doubt and disbelief take possession of his faith. – Religion is a person’s relationship to his own essence; this is its truth and moral saving power. But religion forces a person to see in his essence another being, different from him and opposite to him, and this is the lie and limitation of religion, its absurdity and immorality, this is the harmful source of religious fanaticism. – The hidden essence of religion is the identity of the being of God and man, and the form of religion or its obvious conscious essence is the difference. God is a human essence, but is known as another being. Love reveals the innermost essence of religion, and faith constitutes its conscious form. Faith puts religion in conflict with morality and reason and produces discord within a person... The anthropological interpretation of the Christian religion leads to atheism, and Feuerbach considers unbelief an inevitable conclusion from his theory. But he is mistaken in thinking that he is dealing here with a conclusion - this is not a conclusion, it is a previously acquired point of view. He approaches religious facts not religiously, but dialectically, as an unbeliever - and it is clear that he could not see anything in religion except the subject of thought. Religiosity on the one side and dialectic on the other, this is what distinguishes the gospel from Feuerbach in their apparently common starting point. Having arrived at unbelief on this path, Feuerbach hopes to erect a religion at another point - the religion of humanity. The concept of God, writes Feuerbach, coincides with the concept of humanity. All divine definitions, all definitions that turn God into a deity, are generic definitions, limited in the particular, individual being, but unlimited and absolute in the essence and existence of the genus, since the genus embraces all of humanity. My knowledge, my will are limited, but my ultimacy is not the ultimacy for a person, not to mention humanity; what is difficult for me is easy for another: what is impossible and incomprehensible for one era is possible and understandable for another. My life is limited in time, but the life of humanity is not limited. The history of mankind consists of the progressive overcoming of such facets that at a given, certain time were considered the facets of humanity and, therefore, absolute, insurmountable. But the future invariably reveals that the imaginary facets of the race were in fact only facets of the individual. The history of sciences, especially philosophy and natural science, confirms this most clearly. – The race is unlimited and only the individual is limited. But the feeling of uttermostness is painful; The individual is freed from this torment only by the contemplation of a perfect being who gives him what he lacks. The Christian God is nothing more than the idea of ​​the immediate unity of race and individuality, of the universal and the particular being. God is the concept of the genus, as an individual, the concept or essence of the genus, which, as a universal essence, as the totality of all perfections, all properties free from the imaginary or real finiteness of the individual, is at the same time a separate, individual being. Ipse suum esse est. “In God, being and being are identical” - this means that God is a generic concept, a generic essence, recognized at the same time as being, as a separate being. From the point of view of religion or theology, the highest idea is this: God is not a loving being, he is love itself; he is not a living being, he is life itself; he is not a just being, he is justice itself; he is not a person, he is a personality, a species, an idea directly as real. As a result of such immediate unity of race and individuality, such concentration of all universalities and essences in a single personal being, God is soulful and delights the imagination, while the abstract idea of ​​humanity is a soulless idea, because humanity is for us an abstract concept, and the real is depicted to us in the image of a countless number of separate limited individuals. On the contrary, the idea of ​​God satisfies the soul directly, because in Him everything is gathered together, everything exists at once, that is, the genus turns out to be an immediate being and an individual. The most precise expression, the most characteristic symbol of this immediate unity of race and individuality in Christianity is Christ, the real God of Christians. Christ is the prototype, the real concept of humanity, the totality of all moral and divine perfections, excluding everything negative and imperfect, - a pure heavenly sinless man, a man of the race, Adam Kadmon, contemplated, however, not as the totality of the race, humanity, but directly as a single individual, a single person. Therefore, Christ is not the central point of history, but its end. Communication with other people, Feuerbach continues, corrects and elevates a person; in society he involuntarily, without any pretense, is different than in solitude. Love works miracles, especially sexual love. Husband and wife mutually complement and correct each other and in unity represent a race, a perfect person. Love is not conceivable outside of gender; it is nothing more than the self-perception of the race on the basis of sexual difference. In love, the truth of the race, which in itself is an object of thought, reason, becomes an object of feeling, the truth of feeling, for in love a person expresses dissatisfaction with his individuality, postulates the existence of another person as a heartfelt need, - ranks the other person with his own being, - declares that truly human life, corresponding to the idea of ​​​​a person, i.e. of a race, is life connected through love with the life of another person. The personality, the individual, is insufficient, imperfect, weak, poor, but love is strong, perfect, all-satisfied, self-satisfied, endless, because in it the self-awareness of the individual turns into the self-awareness of the perfection of the species. Love is the subjective existence of the species, just as reason is its objective existence. Christ himself is only the image under which the idea of ​​the unity of the race was presented to the people's consciousness. Christ loved people, he wanted to bring them all closer and make them happy, without distinction of gender, age, condition or nationality. Christ is the love of humanity for itself, as an image corresponding to the developed nature of religion, or as a face, moreover, a figurative, ideal face. Therefore, the slogan of the followers of Christ is love, and love is only the realization of the unity of the race in thoughts. Gender is not just an idea, it is expressed in feeling, thought, in the energy of love, and it also arouses love in me. A loving heart is a generic heart; consequently, Christ is, as the consciousness of love, the consciousness of the race. We must all be one in Christ. Christ is the consciousness of our unity. Therefore, whoever loves man for man’s sake, who rises to generic love, universal love corresponding to the essence of the race, is a Christian and even Christ himself: he does the same thing that Christ did and what makes Christ Christ. Consequently, where the consciousness of the race as such arises, Christ is no longer there, but its true essence remains, for Christ was only the vicegerent of the race, the image of the consciousness of the idea of ​​the race. We, Feuerbach says in conclusion, have an attitude towards religion not only negatively, but also critically; we separate the true from the false, although, of course, the truth separated from lies is a new truth, significantly different from the old truth. Religion is the original self-consciousness of man. Religions are sacred because they are traditions of the primary consciousness. But what for religion appears to be first, that is, God, then, according to the testimony of truth, is second, because He is only the objectified essence of man, and what religion recognizes as second, that is, man, we must recognize as first. Love for a person should not be derivative love, it should be original love. Only then will love turn into a true, holy and reliable force. If human power is the highest being of man, then the practical love of man for man must be the highest and primary law of man. Homo homini deus est - such is the highest practical principle, such is the turning point of world history. The relationship of a child to his parents, a husband to his wife, a brother to his brother, a friend to a friend, in general a person to a person, in a word - all moral relations are, in essence, truly religious relations. In general, life in its essential respects is divine... In order to fairly evaluate this Feuerbachian (and related Comteian) religion of humanity, we must first of all recognize and highlight the truth contained in it. This is, firstly, the truth of the natural dependence of the human personality on society and history. Entire volumes could be written on this topic. But a lot has already been done on this issue and, in any case, quite enough for our purposes. We will limit ourselves to a simple reference, for example, to V. S. Solovyov, especially vol. YII, p. 211. Secondly, we must keep clearly in mind the idea of ​​a religious-ecclesiastical society. Here is how this idea is revealed by the same V.S. Solovyov (vol. II, p. 154): “Man’s striving for the unconditional, that is, the striving to be everything in unity or to be all-one, is an undoubted fact. In this aspiration, a person appears as a potentially or subjectively unconditional being. In reality, the objectively unconditional is that which does not strive only to be all or all-one, but act darkly includes everything (everyone) in its unity, or actu is all-one. Such real unconditionality is the real goal of man. But since indeed, in his given state, as a finite being, a person is not an all-one, but only an infinitely small unit that has everything else outside itself, then he can become everything only in positive interaction with all others, renouncing his individuality, perceiving and assimilating the life content of all others - treating them not as the limit of his freedom, but as its content and object. In such a positive relationship, each being is not limited by all others (as in the legal order), but is complemented by them. Such a unity of beings, determined by the unconditional or divine principle in man, based psychologically on the feeling of love and realizing the positive part of the general moral formula, forms a mystical or religious society, that is, the church.” Let us now apply both these ideas to the religion of mankind. Does the church, as a mystical or religious society, coincide with the generic principle, with the natural humanity that Feuerbach speaks of? No, it doesn't match. There is no longer a quantitative coincidence here, and then - in Feuerbach there is a natural unity, while in Solovyov there is “the unity of a being determined by the unconditional or divine principle in man.” Next. Does the natural dependence of the human personality on society and history, recognized on the widest scale, create a religion for humanity in the Christian sense? To recognize life as divine in its essential relations, to look religiously at the relations of a child to his parents, a husband to his wife, a brother to a brother, a friend to a friend - does it mean eo ipso to take a Christian point of view? No. Indeed. Let us recall Feuerbach’s interpretation of Christianity. He begins with the formal absoluteness of the human spirit, i.e. from the infinite individual consciousness, and then moves on to the religious-Christian absoluteness of the individual, to what he calls unlimited subjectivity - “in Christianity, a person concentrated in himself, renounced the world whole, turned into a self-sufficient whole, into an absolute being.” We ask now: is this formal and religious-Christian absoluteness of man characteristic of natural humanity? That the human personality is infinite is an axiom of moral philosophy, in the words of V.S. Solovyov. That, however, this infinity can be realized only in man’s relation to natural society and in the creation of a mystical society, this can also be accepted as undeniable. But the question raised by the idea of ​​the religion of mankind is the following: does natural society have the feature of absoluteness, for only this gives the right to talk about the religion of mankind? And Feuerbach, speaking about the religion of humanity, with all his effort proves exactly this, justifies a positive answer to this question. We can only answer it negatively and declare Feuerbach’s efforts futile. For all their significance for the individual, real humanity and real society are conditional and not unlimited. And so as not to confuse this issue with any hypothetical mysticism. it must be resolutely pointed out that Feuerbach has in mind the most real forms of human society. Feuerbach speaks of very real relationships, calling them religious. He reduces the sacrament of baptism to the fact that washing with water in itself has a sacred meaning; Likewise, eating and drinking are in themselves a religious act. “Let wine, bread and water be sacred to us.” In his response to Stirner (Werke, 1st volume ed. 1846, pp. 342–359 Ueber das Wesen des Christenthums in Beziehung auf den “Einzigen und sein Eigenthum,” translated into Russian in the edition “Max Stirner.” The One and His Property (Lightlight Library). Part two, p. 252–265) Feuerbach points out the theme of “The Essence of Christianity” solely and exclusively in eliminating the division into the essential and inessential “I” - in deification, that is, recognition of the whole person from head to toe, and only sensuality is the real meaning of individuality. To destroy a religion means to prove the identity of its consecrated object or individual with other, simple individuals of the same kind. This “simplicity” and “sensuality” inevitably presupposes real relations between family and society. A man essentially and necessarily has a relationship with another “I”, with another entity – with a woman. Recognition of an individual necessarily entails recognition of at least two individuals. But “two” has neither meaning nor end: two are followed by three, a woman is followed by a child, and love uncontrollably leads further, beyond the boundaries of one child. In this way, Feuerbach “does not stop at this one, unique and incomparable individual, but extends his thoughts and desires to the entire race, that is, to all other individuals. For him, genus does not mean abstraction, but, in contrast to the individual, self-affirming “I,” another “I,” “you,” in general, all existing individuals besides “me.” Therefore, if Feuerbach says: the individual is limited, but the race is unlimited, then this only means the following: the framework of this individual is not the framework for others, and what modern man cannot do does not mean that future man will not be able to do it. “The concept of the genus in this sense,” Feuerbach continues, “is necessary, integral for each individual, and each personality is separate, individual. “We are too perfect,” says the One truly and beautifully; but still we feel limited and imperfect, for we necessarily compare ourselves not only with other beings, but also with ourselves - we do this by drawing a parallel between what we have become and what we could be. But we feel limited, not only morally, but also sensually, spatially and temporally; We, these given individuals, exist only in this specific place, in this limited time. So how can we free ourselves from this feeling of limitation, if not with the help of the thought of the unlimited nature, that is, the thought of other people, in other circumstances and in another, happier era? Therefore, the one who does not put gender in the place of deity leaves an empty space in the personality, which will necessarily have to be filled by the one who again imagines God, i.e. the idea of ​​the personified essence of the genus. Only the clan is able to simultaneously bury and replace deity and religion. Not having religion means: thinking only about yourself; to have it means to think about others. And only such a religion is durable, at least until there is only one “single” person left on earth; for let there be only two of you, a man and a woman, and we already have religion. Two: difference is the origin of religion; “you” is God for “I”, for “I” without “you” is nothing; “I” depends on “you”; without “you” there is no “I”. A man is the Providence of a woman, a woman is the Providence of a man, doing a good deed is the Providence of the suffering, a doctor is the Providence of the sick, a father is the Providence of a child. The one who gives help must be something more and have more than the one in need of help. If I am a cripple, then the hands and the legs of another replace my organs of movement; if I am blind, then his eyes serve as my guide. This means that the God of man is man.” If, therefore, Feuerbach understands the most real things, the most real social relations, then how can he talk about unlimitedness and infinity, which are supposedly bestowed upon man by the idea of ​​the race and society? How can he present the thesis: Einsamkeit ist Endlichkeit und Beschränktheit, Gemeinschaftlichkeit ist Freiheit und Unendlichkeit (Werke, II, 1846, - p. 344?) What kind of infinity is there in real society? After all, practically, of course, every given limitation of an individual is infinitely overcome by the power of society, but from here it is too far from religious absoluteness. What kind of absoluteness is there if a cripple helps a blind man, and a blind man helps a cripple? This is simply a summation, which we do not see betrayed, but here there is no absoluteness either in individuals or in the sum. Rather, every society is essentially conditional, and if in Feuerbach politics becomes religion, then for this purpose first religion becomes politics, and only the latter is certain. Feuerbach thinks that he is stealing the very essence of Christianity, that he “had to take Christianity at its word, i.e. to make a word into a deed, an illusion into a being,” that he managed to “move from the kingdom of God to the kingdom of man, for love is practical atheism.” And S. Bulgakov asserts that “the truth of the greatest importance, underlying Feuerbach’s humanism or anthropotheism, is the idea that humanity is one, and that the race, the whole, exists prior to the individual and is a real being. The race is a deity to which every member of it, every individual is sacred: Feuerbach comes surprisingly close here to the essence of Christianity and its greatest truths.” But S. N. Bulgakov himself, following Feuerbach, deviates surprisingly far from the essence of Christianity. That empirically the genus exists prior to the individual is needless to say; but religiously, Christian-religiously, the individual exists before the species. The only bearer of religious-Christian absoluteness is not the race, not society, but the individual, the personality. And Feuerbach volens-noleus ran into this. “Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity... In Christianity, man concentrated in himself... Christianity ignored the race and considered only the individual. Christianity is the direct opposite of paganism... The pagans saw the race as divine, and the Christians the individual... With the introduction of Christianity, the idea of ​​the race and, with it, the meaning of tribal life disappeared,” etc. Here Feuerbach is closer to Christianity than in his reasoning about the infinity of the race. That in these considerations Feuerbach does not take a Christian point of view is clear from his ethical views, which form the core of his religion of humanity. The basis of Feuerbach's ethics is eudaimonism. If, says Feuerbach, all ethics has as its subject the human will and its relation, then we must immediately add to this that there can be no will where there is no impulse, and where there is no impulse to happiness, there is no impulse at all. The impulse to happiness is the impulse of all motives; Everywhere where being is connected with will, desire and the desire to be happy are inseparable, even identical in the being. I wish means: I do not want to suffer, I do not want to suffer damage, to be destroyed, but I want to survive and prosper. Morality without beatitude is a word without meaning, Feuerbach insists. But how is the egoistic striving for happiness transformed into its visible opposite - into self-restraint and activity for the benefit of others? Undoubtedly, says Feuerbach, the principle of morality is bliss, but not bliss concentrated in one and the same person, but spreading to different persons, embracing “me” and “you,” i.e. bliss is not one-sided, but two-sided or many-sided. Feuerbach points out that the difference between “me” and “you,” on which our self-consciousness and all morality in general rests, in its ultimate basis is the opposition between man and woman; thus the sexual and family relation is the basic moral relation. The mutual dependence of the desires for happiness has its basis in the depths of human nature: the desire for happiness is manifested in sexual opposition, which cannot be satisfied otherwise than by simultaneously satisfying the desire for happiness of another individual. As a result of this dualistic desire for happiness, the existence of an egoistic person is from the very beginning connected with the existence of other people, even if only parents, brothers, sisters, his family; completely independent of his good will, from birth he must share the blessings of life with his neighbors; with the elements of life, he necessarily absorbs the elements of morality, such as: feelings of mutual connection, livability, limitation of the unlimited autocracy of his own desire for happiness. In no case can morality be derived from one “I” or from the pure mind of a thinking being alone, apart from another personality standing outside of me, existing outside of my will and reason, not only imagined, but given by the senses. Every ethics is at the same time autonomy and heteronomy: “I want,” says my own impulse to happiness, “you must,” says someone else’s impulse to happiness. All ethics require selflessness, but behind this selflessness, which is required of me, lies the undoubted egoism of another; for all moral precepts that contradict my egoism and cannot be explained by it are in complete agreement with the egoism of others. (See the History of Ethics by Friedrich Jodl). This is Feuerbach’s ethics—entirely empirical, eudaimonistic ethics. His religion of humanity, which has nothing in common with Christianity, has the same indelible feature. Based on conditional real relations, Feuerbach has no right to talk about the infinity of the race - his empirical society does not raise the individual to the height of absoluteness, and his religion does not replace Christianity. All real relationships - marriage, family, politics, the state - can be looked at religiously, but this will not be a Christian religion, and this will not replace Christianity. Feuerbach thinks that he “took Christianity at its word,” that is, that he transferred the most essential thing from Christianity into his religion of the family - but in fact, he took its soul out of Christianity and retained its soulless shell. His love, about which he talks so much, is not Christian-religious love. However, even this weak remnant of the Christian religion has erased the colors from his “religion of humanity,” from his “real relations.” Feuerbach wanted to mix Christianity with real forms of life - and this led him to inevitable defects on two sides. On the one hand, he curtailed Christianity, took the living soul out of it, but on the other hand, he did not even reach real life. He persistently talks about real life, about the whole person “from head to toe,” and yet his “man” turns out to be an abstraction - truly real life slips out of his hands like an elusive shadow. This constitutes Feuerbach’s weakest side, and at this point he himself is “taken at his word” by his inexorable critics Stirner, Marx. Engels... Stirner proves with inexorable logic that Feuerbach stopped halfway - that he rejected Christianity so much as not to be a Christian, but withheld from it so much as not to reach a truly real worldview. That liberation, writes Stirner, which Feuerbach is trying to reveal to us, is purely theological, theological. He says that we made a mistake in our own essence and therefore looked for it in the other world. Now, when we are convinced that God is only our human essence, we would have to recognize him again as ours and return him from the other world to our here existence. Feuerbach calls God, who is spirit, “our essence.” How can we allow “our essence” to be opposed to us, so that we are divided into an essential and an inessential “I”? After all, we return to our previous sad state: we were kicked out of ourselves. But what will we gain if, for a change, we move the divine, which is outside of us, inside ourselves? Are we what is in us? No - just like we are not what is outside of us. I am not my heart, just as I am not my beloved, whom I consider my “second self.” Precisely because we are not the spirit that lives in us, precisely because we had to place it outside of us: it was not us, did not merge with us, and therefore we cannot imagine it existing otherwise than outside of us, on the other side of us, beyond. Armed with the force of despair, Feuerbach attacks Christianity in its entirety, not in order to reject it, oh no! - but in order to attract him to yourself, in order to draw him, long desired, forever distant, with final tension, from his sky and forever keep him. Isn’t this a struggle of final despair, a struggle for life and death, and at the same time, isn’t this Christian longing and thirst for the beyond? The hero does not want to enter the otherworldly, but wants to attract it to himself and force him to become thisworldly! And since then the whole world has been shouting - some with greater, others with less consciousness - that the main thing is what is “here”, that heaven must descend to earth, and the kingdom of heaven will already be realized here. – Let us briefly contrast Feuerbach’s theological point of view and our objection to it. “The essence of man is the highest essence; the highest essence, although it is called God in religion and is considered as a material being, in reality it is only the true essence of man; The turning point of world history, therefore, lies in the fact that from now on, for man, it is not God, but man, who must be considered God.” We respond to this as follows. The highest being, of course, is the essence of man, but precisely because it is his essence, and not himself, it is completely indifferent whether we see this essence outside of man and contemplate it as “God,” or whether we find it in him and call him “the essence of man” or “man.” I am neither God, nor “man,” nor a supreme being, nor my essence, and therefore, in essence, it does not matter whether I believe that the essence is in me or outside of me. And we really always think of a supreme being in two other worlds: in the internal and in the external together, for the “spirit of God”, according to the Christian view, is also “your spirit” and “lives in us.” He lives in heaven and lives in us. We, miserable creatures, are only his “dwellings,” and if Feuerbach also destroys his heavenly home and forces him and all his belongings to move into us, then we, his earthly home, will already be too cluttered. Atheists, Stirner continues with irony, mock the supreme being, who is also worshiped under the name “supreme” or être supreme, and throw into the dust one after another the “proofs of his existence”; At the same time, they do not notice that they destroy the old only out of a desire for an even higher being, only in order to make room for the new. Is not “man” a higher being than the individual person? The debate about what to venerate as a supreme being is significant insofar as the most fierce opponents agree on the main thing, that there is a sublime being who must be worshiped. And who in this case is recognized as a higher being is completely indifferent to someone who denies the very concept of a higher being. – Proudhon fearlessly says: “Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law (la loi morale) is eternal and absolute. Who would dare attack morality? Moralists have skimmed the cream off religion, feasted on it, and now do not know how to free themselves from the resulting obesity. In absolute morality, just as in religion, it is a matter of a higher essence, and whether this essence is superhuman or human is indifferent to me, for in any case it is an essence that stands above me, exceeding me. The attitude towards the human essence or “man,” although it has cast off the snake skin of the old religion, will still put on the snake skin of religion again. Feuerbach teaches you that “if we reverse only speculative philosophy, that is, always put the predicate in the place of the subject, and thus make the subject an object and a principle, then we will receive naked, pure truth.” In this case, we lose, of course, the narrow religious point of view, we lose God, who from this point of view is a subject. But we are not changing to the other side of religious understanding - the moral one. We no longer say “God is love,” but we say: “love is divine.” If we replace the predicate “divine” with the equivalent word “sacred,” then everything that was before is restored. Love in this formulation of the question becomes the good in a person, his divinity, that which does him honor, his true humanity (it is the only thing that “makes him human”). More precisely, this is what follows from this: love is the human in man, and the inhuman is an egoist who does not know love. But precisely everything that Christianity, and with it speculative philosophy, i.e. theology, is called good, the absolute, in the isolated is no longer good (or, what is the same thing, it is only good), and the Christian essence would be even more strengthened by this transformation of the predicate into the subject. Thanks to this, God and the divine are so closely intertwined with me that it is absolutely impossible to separate us. One cannot claim complete victory by expelling God from his heaven and robbing him of his “transcendence” if he is driven into the human breast and endowed with an ineradicable immanence. The same people who protest against Christianity as the basis of the state, tirelessly repeat, however, that morality is “the basis of social life and the state.” As if the dominance of morality is not the complete dominance of the “sacred”, not a “hierarchy”. Etc. This is how Stirner deals with Feuerbach. We have made such significant excerpts from “The One” because we think they are worthy of attention. This is the most witty criticism, against which Feuerbach could not answer a single sensible word. And this criticism is such a treasure for apologetics, which it cannot but use. In general, apologetics, to its detriment, has not yet been accustomed to taking advantage of the benefits that its own history of this or that negative opinion gives it. For some reason, it has become the custom of apologists to object to the first word of their opponents, even if this word has a positive value, to not allow them to finish their thought. How much precious content has been lost by theology in this way, how many vulgarities have been attributed to Christianity by its imprudent defenders. If Tolstoy is an enemy of the church, then no matter what he says, the apologist rejects everything, attributing opposite thoughts to Christianity - everything “Tolstoy” is expelled from religion. And so in relation to every “heretical” movement. And therefore, every heresy is most harmful to religion not because of its errors, but because of its valuable content, which is already taken away from Christianity. No one wants to think that any heresy, along with lies, contains particles of truth that do not need to be conceded - that it is not necessary mit dem Bade das Kind ausschütten. It is even better, when the apologist is dealing with a negative system, not to dwell on individual thoughts, but to follow this system to the end, to trace its history to its utmost limits. History is the best judge. She will always show that everything valuable in extreme negative directions does not belong to them by right, that they are claiming it illegally. In relation to Feuerbach, this is what Stirner proves: Feuerbachianism is some kind of monstrous inconsistency, something intermediate between heaven and earth. There must be one thing: either the Christian religion, or the denial of Stirner, who based “his work” on the decisive “nothing.” But what is absolute morality, absolute love for a person who does not recognize religion - what is this if not complete absurdity? Marx's criticism hits Feuerbach on the same weak side: Feuerbach did not reach a realistic worldview, although he claims to do so. Feuerbach explains the essence of religion, Marx writes, by the essence of man. But the essence of a person is not at all an abstract characteristic of an individual. In reality, it is the totality of all social relations. Feuerbach does not go so far as to criticize this real essence. Therefore, he finds himself forced: Abstract from the course of historical development, consider religious feeling as something completely separate and unconnected with anything, and proceed from the assumption of an abstract - isolated - human individual. Therefore, the human essence could only appear to him as a “genus,” that is, as an internal, silent community that establishes only a natural connection between many individuals. Therefore, Feuerbach does not see that “religious feeling” is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual he analyzes actually belongs to a certain form of society. – Social life is essentially practical life. Everything mysterious, everything that leads theory to mysticism, finds a rational solution in human practice and in the understanding of this practice. Contemplative materialism, that is, materialism that does not look at the world of concrete phenomena as practical activity, rises only to the contemplation of an individual in “civil society” - the point of view of old materialism is “civil” society; the new materialism takes the point of view of human society or humanity living a social life. Philosophers only explained the world one way or another; but the point is to change it... What matters in these remarks of Marx is not only their critical force, but also the rejection of the path that leads from Feuerbachianism to socialism. In these same respects, Engels' critical review is also important. According to Engels, in trying to build a true religion on the basis of a materialistic understanding of nature, Feuerbach is likened to a man who would decide that modern chemistry is true alchemy. If religion is possible without God, then alchemy is possible without the philosopher's stone. – Feuerbach thoroughly studied only one religion: Christianity, this world religion of the West based on monotheism. He showed that the Christian God is a man depicted in the mirror of fantasy. But this God, in turn, is the fruit of a long process of abstraction. Accordingly, the person reflected in the Christian God is not a real person, but a similar quint - the essence of a multitude of real people; this is an abstract person, that is, a person who exists only in thought. And the same Feuerbach, who on every page invites us to plunge into the sensual, concrete, real world, becomes extremely abstract as soon as he happens to touch on any other relations between people, except for relations between the sexes. – All relationships between people have only one side in his eyes: morality. And here again we are struck by the amazing poverty of Feuerbach. In form he is a realist: he takes a person as his point of departure. But he does not mention a single word about the world around a person, and therefore his person remains the same abstract person who appears in religion, this person is not born of a woman, he flies out of the God of monotheistic religions, as if from a chrysalis. Therefore, he does not live in a real, historically developed and historically determined world. Although he communicates with his fellow men, his fellow men are also distracted. like him. Therefore, regarding morality, Feuerbach tells us something extremely meager. The desire for happiness is innate to man, so it should be the basis of morality. But by taking care of himself, a person only in very rare cases and far from benefiting himself or others satisfies his desire for happiness. He must have relations with the outside world, means to satisfy the named desire: food, a loved one of the other sex, books, conversations, disputes, activities, consumer goods and processing. One of two things: either Feuerbachian morality presupposes that all these means and objects are already given to man, or it gives good, but inapplicable advice, and then it is not worth a damn for people deprived of the above means. Is the situation better with the equal right of all people to happiness? Feuerbach unconditionally demands it, considers it obligatory at all times and under all circumstances. But since when has it been recognized by everyone? Was there ever any discussion in ancient times between slaves and their owners, or in the Middle Ages between serfs and their masters, about the equal right of all people to happiness? Was not the desire of the oppressed classes for happiness ruthlessly and “legally” sacrificed to the same desire of the ruling classes?.. For the desire for happiness, ideal rights are extremely insufficient food: it feeds most of all on material means. But love! – Yes, love is always and everywhere a miracle worker for Feuerbach, which must overcome all the difficulties of practical life, and this in a society divided into classes with directly opposing interests. The same thing happened to Feuerbach's morality as to all its predecessors. It is tailored for all times, for all peoples, for all conditions, and that is why it is not applicable anywhere and never. In relation to the real world, it is as powerless as Kant’s categorical imperative. In reality, each class, each occupation has its own morality, which it also violates whenever it can be done with impunity. And love, which supposedly unites everyone, manifests itself in wars, quarrels, litigation, domestic quarrels, divorces and in the strongest possible exploitation of some by others. - But how could it happen that for Feuerbach himself the powerful impetus that he gave to mental movement remained completely fruitless? Very simple. Feuerbach did not find the road that led from the realm of abstractions so hated by him into the living, real world. He firmly grasps nature and man. But both nature and man remain empty words for him. He cannot say anything definite either about real nature or about real man. In order to move from Feuerbach's abstract man to real, living people, it was necessary to study them in their historical actions. Feuerbach resisted this, and therefore the year 1848, which he did not understand, led him to a complete break with the real world, to complete recluse. But the step that Feuerbach did not take still had to be taken. It was necessary to change the cult of abstract man, this is the core of Feuerbach's new religion, by studying real man in his historical development. This further development of the Feuerbachian point of view was begun in 1845 by K. Marx... Before parting with Feuerbach, it is necessary to make one last note that on the question of religion he did not stop at the point of view of “The Essence of Christianity,” - he took another step and a rather decisive step towards naturalism in his later works “Wesen der Religion” and “Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion.” In this final form, Feuerbach's religious views are presented as follows. He places here at the center of religion, like Schleiermacher, the concept of man’s dependence on the universe or on nature, and Feuerbach’s religious sense of dependence, unlike Schleiermacher, acquires an active meaning. To feel dependent, he says, means not only to find oneself in the limitless, to lose oneself in quiet dreams of infinite connection, to rapturously listen to the music of the spheres: this feeling serves as an expression of a harsh, powerful fact that deeply cuts into our well-being - namely, the opposition between wanting and being able, desire and achievement. The purpose of religion is the destruction of this opposition; beings in whom it is truly destroyed, in whom that which is accessible to our desires and ideas, but not accessible to our powers, has become real—these are the gods. They, Feuerbach believes, are children of desire - creatures of fantasy, but such creatures of fantasy that are in the closest connection with the feeling of dependence, with the desire for happiness: the deity is a person’s desire for happiness satisfied in fantasy. If a person had no desires, then, despite fantasy and feeling, he would have no religion, there would be no gods. This understanding of religion puts it in the closest connection with culture. Religion is a Danish being in man: therefore it originates and has its true meaning only in the Danish period of mankind. The child is not able to satisfy his desires through self-activity; he turns with prayer to those beings on whom he feels dependent. The same applies to religion. Initially it has the same purpose as all later education or culture. Both strive to transform nature (including human nature) from the theoretical side into a rational being, and from the practical side into an obedient being that responds to human details - with the difference, however, that culture resorts to a certain kind of means for this purpose, moreover, means taken from nature itself, while religion does not use any means or, what is the same thing, uses supernatural means - prayer, faith, sacraments. Therefore, the real success of culture reveals the uselessness of religion. And although culture always remains behind human desires, and therefore behind the promises of religion, for it cannot destroy the boundaries that have their basis in the very essence of man, it would not be in the spirit of Feuerbach to expand this idea in the direction that for at least one part of humanity, religion must always remain a means of reconciling ideas with reality. The ever-increasing cultural work of your family leads to the gradual elimination of this ghost. The desires and ideals of man, unless they are fantastic dreams, come true over time, and therefore we can, even must, replace the deity, in which the magnificent, unrealizable desires of man are expressed, with the human race and nature, with education in the place of religion, and the historical future of humanity in the place of the afterlife. The fact that the current state and our legitimate desires are separated from each other by an abyss should only arouse in us a desire to change these disasters and injustices, and not a belief in the afterlife, which, on the contrary, folds hands and leaves disasters in their former form. If we do not believe in a better life, but want it - we want it not alone, but with united forces, then we will be able to create it. The true basis of the afterlife is the lack of initiative; The only providence of man is culture, the enlightenment of mankind... There is hardly anything that can be objected to these thoughts of Feuerbach from the point of view of Marx and Engels, and how true is their general statement that human cultural initiative replaces and abolishes religion, we will consider below... Along with Feuerbach, we will outline the main features of the religious worldview of D. Strauss - and we consider it necessary to do this not so much in the conviction that Strauss’s worldview brings something new to the philosophical and religious foundations of socialism, to the history of the religion of man-divinity, but in the hope of determining in this way the true significance of Strauss himself, whose books are now so diligently promoted in our country. We will have in mind Strauss’s essay “The Old and New Faith”, in which Strauss, at the end of “40 years of his work in the writing field in one direction,” sums up “the results of his economy” - he coherently sets out his worldview, about which until that time he “always spoke only in separate instructions.” It turns out that in this work Strauss comes very close to Feuerbach, so that the inconsistency of Feuerbach’s religion of man-divinity and Feuerbach’s morality is at the same time the inconsistency of Strauss’s religious and ethical worldview. Getting to know Strauss in this place, we can limit ourselves to just presenting his worldview, without having to resort to special criticism. In addition to the common Hegelian basis of his worldview with Feuerbach, Strauss’s foundation includes two more stones: biblical-theological criticism and natural scientific knowledge. The results of biblical-historical and theological criticism are given in the first part of “The Old and New Faith,” which answers the question: do we remain Christians? The answer is negative, but we will not set out the biblical-critical and theological-critical premises of Strauss's worldview: although his criticism played a major role in the history of philosophy (the division of the Hegelians into right and left) and theology, however, for us. Russians, it is all exhausted by vulgar Smerdyakovism. For those who have studied our Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solovyov, who have risen to the height of a religious-mystical attitude towards biblical facts and dogmatic formulas, for those Smerdyakovism is the lot of high school freethinking. For us, Strauss's religious and moral objections to Christianity are more important. He finds that Christianity, in its dualistic-ascetic side, is a countercultural principle, and that in this respect Christianity is similar to Buddhism. When applied to life, to human motives and the concepts by which people should be guided, Christian dualism and Buddhist nihilism lead to the same consequences. Absolutely everything that is considered useful work and a worthy subject of human activity has no value from this point of view; all efforts and aspirations for various acquisitions are not only vain, but prevent a person from achieving his true destination, whether it be “nothing” or the kingdom of heaven. Only the most passive behavior possible can lead to this goal, except for activities aimed at alleviating the suffering of others or spreading faith in redemption, whether this be the teaching of Buddha or Christ. The teaching of Jesus contains a complete denial of the passion for acquisition, like any other passion, a complete misunderstanding of its significance for the promotion of education and humanity; it has a negative attitude towards military virtues and does not even say anything in defense of family virtues. The denial of everything earthly, material interests and the blessings of life in the gospel is the other side of the position that true blessings and real satisfaction will be found only in the coming kingdom of heaven. If, writes Strauss, we open our eyes, then we will be convinced that the entire structure of life and aspirations of the cultural peoples of our time is built on a worldview diametrically opposed to the gospel worldview. The comparative assessment of earthly life and the afterlife is exactly the opposite. Our attitude towards earthly life serves as a source not only of the thirst for pleasure and so-called materialistic ideas - it determines not only the amazing progress of technology and industry, but also the discoveries of natural sciences, political aspirations, national self-determination, and finally even the latest trends in art and poetry. In a word, it determines everything that is most beautiful and fruitful in our activity, everything that is achievable only on the condition that we not only do not despise earthly life, but see in it the true arena of human activity, and find in it the content for our aspirations. Let us interrupt here the presentation of the negative criticism of Strauss. Is he right in considering Christianity as a countercultural principle? This critical thought may have had imaginary force in the past - at a time when not only in practice they called on Christianity to solve all socio-political issues and therefore ascetically curtailed natural life, but also theoretically considered such a use of Christianity inevitable and the only possible one, that is, they did not know a way out of the dilemma of either recognizing Christianity as the beginning of the socio-political system or completely rejecting Christianity as a religion; but now a new idea has been born that Christian-religious absoluteness is a completely heterogeneous principle along with the conventional principles of social life, that Christianity cannot determine the forms of the social system, cannot be a socially conventional norm, and that, therefore. it gives complete freedom to natural and cultural life - gives it the freedom to develop according to its own laws. And in view of this, Christianity can only be considered a countercultural principle due to a misunderstanding. Christianity deals with individuals, not with forms of social development. Although the latter should be somewhat reformed in view of the Christian mood of the individual, their moral erasure is far from the same as their abolition. There is property and there is passionate property, when a person puts his whole soul into his acquisitions and becomes their slave; there is family life and there is the cult of the family, when one’s own family becomes a religion, just as for others the womb becomes a god; there is a state in one form or another and there is a cult of the state, the cult of the Caesars. Christianity cannot allow passionate property, the cult of the womb, the cult of beauty, the cult of the family, the cult of the Caesars, but it is fully reconciled with property as an empirical fact and with an empirical condition of existence, it is reconciled with all natural necessity and social convention. Strauss could not understand this idea - because this religious radical was not only a musty conservative in socio-economic issues, but also looked at the bourgeois blessings of life and at certain forms of the social system religiously, considered property sacred, considered estates sacred, etc. We will return to this below. Of course, with such an attitude towards the natural blessings of existence and towards the conventional forms of social life, Strauss could understand only symbolically - the ascetic concept of Christianity and reject it in this concept. He was a radical religious thinker, but not a deep one. The second section of Strauss's book answers the question: do we still have religion? In this department, Strauss's dependence on Feuerbach is clearly evident. Already the opening words of this section: We are not inclined to abandon religion without further consideration, if only because we are accustomed to consider the inclination towards it not only an advantage of human nature, but also its noblest, so to speak, aristocratic privilege - these words alone make us remember Feuerbach. Also further. If, writes Strauss, everything happened according to a person’s desire, if he had everything he needed, if his plans were not destroyed and if, taught by bitter experience, he was not forced to look at the future with fear, then the thought of a higher being in the religious sense would hardly have arisen in him. Strauss agrees with Schleiermacher, who saw the source of religion in the feeling of dependence. However, noting that the purpose of the cult is to find an opportunity to influence the forces on which a person feels dependent, he does not consider it possible to dwell on Schleiermacher's theory. In this regard, he writes, Feuerbach is right when he says that desire is the original source and even the real essence of religion. If man had no desires, he would not have gods. Man creates God for himself as he himself would like, but cannot be; everything that he would like to have, but cannot create himself, must be created for him by God. So, the source of religion is not only addiction, but also the need to respond to it, to win freedom from it. But in the struggle against nature, on which man feels himself most dependent, the normal path to liberation is the path of labor, culture, and scientific discoveries. On this path, a person’s desires can find complete real fulfillment. Many of the attributes of power that man in ancient times attributed to the gods - for example, the ability to quickly move over vast distances - are now inherent in man, thanks to the victories of reason over nature. Therefore, the area of ​​supernatural or miraculous help is gradually shrinking. Many things still remain impossible to achieve despite the progress of reason and knowledge. However, for modern man it is already clear that only the rational, secular, and in the field of self-development, the moral path to the fulfillment of desires is the true and correct path, while the religious path represents only self-deception. Given a common starting point, a contradiction is revealed here between Feuerbach and Schleiermacher in their view of religion. The latter sees the essence of religion in the feeling of immediate dependence, and since this feeling undoubtedly reflects the actual position of man in nature, then religion is true. And Feuerbach also recognizes the feeling of dependence as the final cause of religion, but in order to create it, there must be a desire to give this dependence in the shortest possible way a turn favorable for man. Such a desire in itself is in the order of things, but in the means by which a person thinks to achieve this goal - in prayer, in sacrifices - there is superstition. This shortest path, however, belongs to every religion that has existed until now, and therefore religion from this point of view is superstition. Therefore, every enlightened person should strive to free himself and all humanity from this superstition. At this point, says Strauss, we are convinced that the assessment of religion from which we started at the beginning of this section has turned into its opposite. Instead of an advantage of human nature, it is here a weakness inherent in humanity mainly during its childhood, from which it must free itself upon entering adulthood. Religiosity and education are not in a direct but inverse relationship, and with the success of the latter, the former recedes into the background. However, this, according to Strauss, does not mean the complete destruction of religion. Religion no longer plays for us the role it played for our ancestors, but one should not conclude from this that religious feeling has extinguished in us. One way or another, we have retained the main component of any religion, namely the feeling of unconditional dependence. Whether we say “God” or “universe,” in both cases we are aware of our direct dependence 1 . And in the face of the universe, we must recognize ourselves as nothing more than “part of a part,” our powers are nothing in comparison with nature. According to Strauss, the old anthropomorphism is wrong even at its highest level, where God represents the deified self-consciousness of man - and yet the principle on which we feel ourselves in direct dependence is not a brute force to which we are forced to submit in silent humility, but it is at the same time order, law, reason and goodness, to which we lovingly entrust ourselves. Moreover, since we are not only aware of the rational and good principle existing in the world, but also feel the presence of this principle in ourselves, we consider ourselves beings capable of experiencing goodness in ourselves and embodying it, then on this basis we feel an internal affinity with what we depend on, we feel free in this dependence, and in our attitude towards the universe pride is mixed with humility, joy with humility. In his last words, Strauss takes a step away from Feuerbach in the direction of religious romanticism, but the latter is baseless sentimentality for him. In the third part of his book, Strauss answers the question: how do we understand the world? Here he gives a natural scientific justification for his religious and ethical worldview, and in particular sets out Kant’s theory of the origin of our solar system and Darwin’s theory of the development of life. We will not follow Strauss, because he reports here information that every high school student now has. And even if this were not popular, but naturally more solid scientific information, the main question would still be not the value of the information itself, but its application to the substantiation of a worldview. In this regard, it has already become clear that it is impossible to build a comprehensive worldview from the data of natural science alone and its methods alone. This idea does not need to be developed in application to IIItraus, since he hardly outlines the transition from the facts and hypotheses of natural science to the goals and norms of life 2 . Strauss seems to make such a transition in the concluding lines of the third section, where he writes: “We took from the second section, in place of the personified God, the idea of ​​the universe as a result to which our observation and thinking led us, or as a basic fact from the framework of which we cannot escape. In our further presentation, the content of this idea was defined more precisely for us: it is matter moving in infinity, which, through crushing and mixing, rises to ever higher forms and functions, and through progressive, regressive development and new formation describes an endless circle. Therefore, the world goal is, in general, the most varied movement or the greatest fullness of life; in particular, the moral and physical development of this movement or this life, striving to heights and even by the destruction of its individual parts preparing a new movement to heights.” However, in the fourth section of his book, which answers the question: how do we organize our lives? – Strauss does not develop these thoughts, but simply follows Feuerbach. All moral actions of a person - he writes here - are, in my opinion, the self-determination of a unit in accordance with the idea of ​​the genus. The realization of this idea in oneself, the subordination of one’s personality to the concept and purpose of humanity constitutes the meaning of man’s duties towards himself. The recognition and development of the generic idea in other people contains the essence of our duties towards others. In this case, one should distinguish between a negative duty - not to violate anyone’s equality, and a positive one - to help everyone as much as possible, in other words, the duty of justice and the duty of love. – In accordance with the narrower or wider circles in which humanity is located around us, these duties towards our neighbors are divided depending on what we owe to each of the circles. In the narrowest and closest circle, in the family, we must support and cultivate what we received from her: loving upbringing and care. We owe to the state a solid foundation of existence, provision of life and property, and thanks to schools, our preparation for public life. Every member of the state community is obliged to do everything for its preservation and prosperity, which makes it possible to achieve his position in society. From the nation we received the language and all the education that is associated with language and literature. Nationality and language constitute the internal connection of the state, national life is the basis of family life. For her sake, we must be ready to sacrifice our strength, and, in case of need, our lives. But in our nation we see only one member of the human body and do not want any other member, any other nation to suffer damage or decay: only in the harmonious development of all its members can humanity flourish as a whole. On the other hand, the universal imprint of humanity should be recognized and respected in every person, no matter what nation the person belongs to. Thus, just as in the field of religion man is guided by the idea of ​​the universe, this ultimate source of all being and life; Thus, in moral actions, he is guided by the idea of ​​the species, which he partly strives to embody in himself, and partly recognizes and supports in other people. The idea of ​​species also lives in animals as instinct; but only man possesses it in his consciousness as a thought. The species instinct does not prevent a predatory animal from destroying its own kind, just as it does not prevent people from killing each other. True, the consciousness of the species also does not serve as an obstacle to them: if we could not fear for our lives when meeting with everyone who knows how to develop in themselves an idea of ​​the species, which includes both them and us, then we could be satisfied with this situation. But you can think about this concept in different ways, and the whole point is to teach a person to think about it correctly. The word “man” is just a name, an empty phrase with no meaning. It must be reminded of it by all its contents for it to acquire meaning. The species concept of man consists of his position at the top of nature, his ability to counteract sensory irritation with the help of thinking. Further, the species concept also contains the unity of the species, not in the sense of the unity of the animal species, determined by the unity of origin and organic structure, but in the sense that a person becomes a person only with the harmonious life of people, only with the help of a person has a person risen above nature: he can maintain his height and rise higher, recognizing his own kind and respecting the institution of family, state, etc. At the same time, it is extremely necessary that this consciousness be embodied in a living feeling, and the morality acquired in this way the norm has become second nature to man. In relations with himself, his habit should be human dignity, in relations with others - compassion in its various forms. Any violation of both should resonate in his conscience with moral remorse. We have written out everything essential from IIItraus’s book on the religious and moral issue, without weakening the power of his expressions in any way, not even with an abbreviated presentation. We have brought to the reader's attention at most what Pitraus says. And from our presentation it is clear, first of all, that all the shortcomings of Feuerbach’s philosophy of religion and morality are repeated in the philosophy of Strauss. Not only that. Saying that the word “man” is just an empty sound that still needs to be filled with content, that the generic instinct itself cannot prevent a person from killing a person, Strauss shows that he is aware of the lack of ground under his feet. In his morality there is no absolute point of support, everything in it is unstable and random, everything depends on what content everyone will fill this sound form - “man”. It may be considered most likely that each will retain the moral content arising from the need for mutual assistance. However, how meager this content is and what diverse, unstable, and sometimes morally outrageous juxtaposition it makes room for. In order not to go far for examples, we can check this using the example of IIItraus himself. Following his empty, not at all substantiated speeches about “human dignity,” in the last chapters of the fourth section, he “sets out—in the words of the Russian translator—a whole system of reactionary views on the state and class system.” Here we encounter something like the pagan cult of the Caesars, a religious view of property, estates, etc. We should not be surprised at this. Having previously noted the closeness of Strauss to Feuerbach, since in Feuerbach we also encounter the deification of the state and its head. In one place Feuerbach expresses himself: “Das Staatsoberhaupt ist der Repräsentant des universalen Menschen” (Werke, vol. 2, Leipz. 1846, p. 268), and in another place he says even more clearly: “The state is God for man.” (See Questions of Life, Oct. - November p. 257. - This place is not in my former edition of Feuerbach). These philosophers, while declaring politics to be a religion, first of all reduce religion to the level of real politics... Besides Feuerbach, and in some respects even primarily before him, Auguste Comte should be named as the founder of the religion of Humanity. Comte calls Humanity le Grand-Etre, le vrai Grand-Etre, 1st century Grand-Etre, 1'IStre-Supreme, le nouvel Etre-Supreme. Humanity is a limitless and eternal being. This is the great concept of Humanity, and it is the only one, it embraces “the totality of positive concepts” (l’ensemble des conceptions positives) 3, unites all scientific ideas. At the same time, it forms the basis of positive morality, since “the totality of the human race, present, past and future, constitutes a boundless and eternal social unity, the various organs of which, individual or national, continuously linked by intimate and universal solidarity, inevitably contribute, each in a certain way and to a certain extent, to the basic evolution of humanity, and this truly capital and newest concept (the concept of the evolution of humanity) should become the main rational basis of positive morality.” 4 All moral rules, even if they concern individual life, must be applied not to man, but to humanity (tout doit ötre sans cesse rapporte, non a I`humanite, mais ä I`humanite 5). must be considered only sub specie humanitatis. Finally, “near this vrai Grand Etge, the direct culprit of all existence, individual or collective, our feelings, as well as our thoughts and actions, naturally concentrate. The only idea of ​​Humanity inspires the sacred formula of positivism: I'Amour pour principe, l'Ordre pour base, et le Progres pour but. Such a Supreme Being, even more accessible to our feelings than to our understanding, due to the identity of nature, which, however, does not prevent him from surpassing all his servants, arouses deep activity aimed at his preservation and improvement” 6). Thus, in this object of religion, all aspects of our existence find satisfaction, love, thought and action, achieving unprecedented harmony 7). All of Comte's works are a continuous hymn in honor of Humanity. He considers the true point of view on human life to be not exclusively individual, but predominantly social, for - Comte expresses his famous paradox with complete certainty - man, strictly speaking, is essentially a pure abstraction; only humanity really exists, especially in intellectual and moral relations 8 . The main assumption of positive philosophy is the unity of the human race and the continuity of historical evolution. Humanity is a single organism; its development is the development of one people, or individual. The parallel between the development of the individual and the development of humanity is complete. From here follows the most decisive solidarity of the human race, and Comte considers the special merit of positive philosophy, which distinguishes it favorably from theological and metaphysical worldviews, to be that it fosters a feeling of solidarity (sentimentle sentiment de la solidaritö). “The general predominance in social-scientific pursuits of the historical method, in the strict sense of the word, has the happy property that it itself develops the social feeling, since it brings into full light that inevitable, as direct as it is continuous, concatenation of the various events of human life, which now inspires us with an immediate interest in the most remote of them, since it reminds us of the real influence which these events had on the timely advent of our own civilization. As Condorcet so beautifully observed, no enlightened person could now think, for example, of the battles of Marathon and Salamis, without immediately imagining their important consequences for the modern fate of mankind." 9 When true education has properly acquainted modern minds with those concepts of solidarity and continuity which are instilled by a positive consideration of social evolution, then they will deeply feel the inner moral superiority of the philosophy that connects each of us with the whole existence of humanity, represented in the totality time and space 10. Comte believes that the special advantage of Humanity as an object of religion is that it is not motionless, like an Absolute Being, but its relative nature makes it eminently capable of development: in a word, it is the most living of all known beings. It does not change its decisions on a whim; it develops according to immutable laws 11. But this is what determines the sense of responsibility that falls on us in relation to Humanity. There can be no talk of absolute immutability, since “the most complex phenomena are also the most changeable (les phenomenes les plus complexes sont aussi les plus modifiables), but this change is carried out with a plan that gives rise to a sense of responsibility in us. “Only from a limited individualistic point of view, life appears incomplete and unreconciled: to a deeper gaze, the history of mankind reveals everywhere the finger of Nemesis - the inexorably ruling law of nature. Retribution in that world is a chimera of young humanity, whose eye is not experienced enough to recognize the connection between cause and effect in the whirlpool of world history; As for the solidarity of human life, here we have before us a scientifically demonstrable truth, which, however, is still too little familiar at the present time, is still too covered up by individualistic considerations for it to have the influence on the thinking and action of people of which it is fully capable. It is the source of a new, incomparably more intense sense of responsibility; The more we realize that we ourselves are to blame for our most severe sufferings, the more bitterly we feel what we ourselves must endure thanks to the stupidity and anger of our fathers and our contemporaries, the more menacingly the voice of humanity rises against our own errors and omissions. If every action of an individual person finds a response in the whole race, then the Gospel word applies to it: what you do to the least of my brothers, you did to me” (Jodl). Here they also have their root and motives for active participation in the fate of humanity. Humanity is, according to Comte, the totality (l’ensemble) of human beings, past, future and present. This word totality sufficiently shows that humanity cannot be understood as all people, but only those alone who have actually merged with Humanity by truly contributing to the common existence. Although everyone by birth is necessarily a child of Humanity, not everyone turns out to be its servants, since many remain for the rest of their lives in that parasitic state, which is excusable only during the childhood period. Instead of these pitiful creatures, his worthy assistants from the animal world join the new Supreme Being. Useful animals, horses, dogs, bulls, etc., are more worthy of respect than some people. This religion maintains in us a constantly grateful memory towards our departed ancestors, the most distant. Consistent continuity is more important than true solidarity. The living are always, and more and more, inevitably guided by the dead: this is the fundamental law of the human order (les vivants sont tojours, et de plus en plus, gouvernes necessairement par les morts: telle est la loi fondamentale de l’ordre Immain). In every real event, the dead take more part than the living. Every true servant of humanity, after his death, continues to live invisibly in the hearts and minds of his descendants. This is the immortality that is the only one available to man. And we, religiously connected with the dead, in turn pass on to our descendants the inheritance we have received, increased by our labors. Be that as it may, Humanity really needs our assistance. Although the collective Humanity is always the chief author of all our actions, physical, intellectual or moral, yet the Supreme Being can act only through the individual organs. This gives scope to our individual efforts, and gives dignity to every active person in the eyes of the Supreme Being, who needs not our verbal praise, but our active cooperation. The development and even the preservation of the Supreme Being depends on the free services of his various children 12.. This basic idea of ​​the religion of Humanity (la religion de l'humanite) is clothed in Comte in a complex system of cult, dogma and regime. In Mill's words, here "we approach the funny side of the subject" and encounter "some things very funny." We do not need to present these details, which are not related to the essence of the main idea. But it is necessary to point out one point in this project of a reorganized society, in this plan of an ideal state - the establishment of spiritual power (le ponvoir spirituel) along with secular power (le pouvoir temporel). This is not a random thought in Comte's religious system. On the one hand, he is clearly aware of the connection of this institution with the basic view of the Supreme Being 13; on the other hand, Comte understands religion itself in the sense of universal unity. He defines religion as “the state of complete unity which distinguishes our existence—a unity at once personal and social, in which all its parts, both moral and physical, converge habitually in a common purpose. Thus, this term would be equivalent to the word synthesis, if the latter, not by its own philological composition, but by its general use, was not now limited to one intellectual area, while that term embraces the totality of human properties. Therefore religion is to control each individual life and to unite all individuals: these are only two different manifestations of the same problem. Given the impossibility of the complete realization of such harmony, individual or collective, in an existence as complex as ours, this definition of religion characterizes that immobile type towards which the totality of human efforts is increasingly tending." 14 An extremely systematic mind, Comte was excessively inclined to establish “unity.” His entire theoretical positive philosophy is a systematization of all human knowledge from the point of view of the highest and central idea of ​​evolving Humanity. The establishment of unity in thought and life is the final goal of his practical philosophy, which culminates in his religion. This unity is actually realized by spiritual power. We will not describe in detail the functions of this power in the words of Comte; we will limit ourselves to the apt critical remarks on this issue by D. S. Mill. Comte insists on the need for a special figure who, in all classes of people throughout their entire lives, would maintain consciousness of the main requirements of the general interest and clear concepts of which mode of human activity favors this interest and which violates it. Comte wants to create an authority in the mental and moral sphere in order to guide the opinions of people, to enlighten and protect their conscience: he demands the existence of a special spiritual authority, the judgments of which on all subjects of the highest importance would deserve and enjoy the same reverence and respect with which, for example, the general opinion of astronomers is treated regarding the subjects of their specialty. Freedom and spontaneity on the part of individuals have no place in Comte's system. He looks at them with the same distrust as a school teacher or a church preacher. Every little detail in a person’s public or private behavior should be in front of everyone and, by the force of general opinion, held in the direction that the spiritual authority will recognize as the most correct. So far as the doctrine of freedom of conscience has this meaning, that opinions and expressions thereof should be exempt from all legal compulsion, Comte is an unshakable adherent of it; but as regards the moral right of every man, however ill prepared he may be by the necessary education and discipline, to make himself the judge of the most intricate and important questions with which the human mind is capable of dealing, he emphatically denies it. There is no, he says in one of his early works, freedom of conscience in the matter of astronomy, physics, chemistry and even physiology, since everyone would consider it foolhardy not to take on faith the principles established in these sciences by competent people. If something else is noticed in politics. then this is solely on the basis that for some time there have been no established opinions in it. At first, when humanity had just risen above the old theories, the appeal of teachers and preachers to the masses outside this movement was necessary and inevitable, because, without research and criticism, tolerance and approval on all sides, no doctrine would have had the opportunity to develop. But the very habit of addressing issues that, compared to all others, require more specialized knowledge and preparation, to the incompetent tribunal of public opinion, is not rational at the very root and should stop as soon as humanity has once come to terms with the system of the new teaching. Comte thinks that the prolongation of this temporary state, which is reflected in an increasingly increasing fragmentation of opinions, threatens with extreme danger, because only with the existence of some agreement on the basic rules of life can real moral control be established over the private interests and passions of individuals. According to Comte, the special complexity and intricacy of sociological research, the large store of preliminary knowledge and the high degree of mental tact which these studies require, all this, together with the seriousness of the consequences that can arise from temporary errors regarding such subjects, makes it inevitable for ethics and politics, more than for mathematics and physics, that - whatever the legal freedom of research and criticism, only an extremely small number of minds of the highest order should approach their task by a comprehensive method. and difficult preparation, really established the opinions of mankind regarding the designated subjects. Due to the same considerations, doubting their conclusions on the part of people who do not have the same degree of mental ability and education should be considered impudent and more reprehensible than attempts to refute Newtonian astronomy, which are accidentally made by semi-scientific people... In a few words, Mill irrevocably exposes the inconsistency of this project. No special association or organization is necessary for the best thinkers to be able to exercise such a beneficent influence on popular opinion. This influence will come by itself, as soon as unanimity is established, without which it seems neither desirable nor possible. If astronomers enjoy trust, it is, of course, because they agree in their teachings, and not at all due to the fact that there is some kind of Academy of Sciences that gives definitions and makes decisions. Organized moral authority can be demanded only in the case when it is not just a question of carrying out and disseminating certain principles of activity, but also of directing the smallest details of their application, when they want to proclaim and instill not moral duties in general, but the duty of this or that person, as spiritual authority tried to do in the Middle Ages. Comte does not eliminate this extreme conclusion from his beginning. An office of this kind, no doubt, can often with greater benefit be exercised by individual members of the philosophizing class of people, but entrusted to some organized society or estate. it would contain nothing but spiritual despotism. Feuerbach, as we have seen, took as the starting point for his religious philosophy, under the influence of Protestantism, evangelical Christianity - in an abstract philosophical understanding. Comte, unlike Feuerbach, was under the undoubted influence of Catholicism, in which he was raised. He sharply condemned the individualistic tendencies in Christianity, but was always partial to the church system of medieval Catholicism. Le catholicisme moins le christianisme, Catholicism without Christianity: this is how the Frenchman called Comte's religion of humanity 15. And this review cannot but be called “unusually apt.” However, this review, like the above opinion of Mill, characterizes Comte’s own form of religion of Humanity, which Comte’s most prominent students and supporters of his positivism consider not to withstand the most lenient criticism from the point of view of positivism. But Comte's main idea of ​​religion has its roots in the very depths of his scientific and ethical views, in which he often resembles Feuerbach. So, first of all, Comte comes close to Feuerbach in the organic justification of morality and in the recognition of its family and social foundations. It should be noted that the popular ideas about Comte’s ethical positivism, scattered in all sorts of textbooks, are far from capturing its most characteristic aspects. The methodological principle of positivism is best known. This is how Comte himself speaks about this in the first lecture of the Course on Positive Philosophy. “By studying the entire course of development of the human mind in various spheres of its activity, from its first simplest manifestation to the present day, I discovered the main fundamental law to which this development is absolutely subject and which can be firmly established either through rational evidence provided by acquaintance with our body, or with the help of historical data extracted from a careful study of the past. This law consists in the fact that each of our main ideas, each of the branches of your knowledge passes successively through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictitious state; metaphysical or abstract state; scientific or positive state. In other words, the human spirit, by its very nature, in each of its studies uses successively three methods of thinking, essentially different in nature and even directly opposed to each other: first the theological method, then the metaphysical and finally the positive method. This is where three mutually exclusive types of philosophy arise, or three general systems of views on the totality of phenomena. In the theological state, the human spirit, directing its investigations mainly to the inner nature of things, the first and final causes of the phenomena that strike it, strives. in a word, to absolute knowledge, imagines that phenomena are produced by the direct and constant influence of more or less numerous supernatural factors, the arbitrary intervention of which explains all the apparent anomalies of the world. In the metaphysical state, which in reality is only a general modification of the theological, supernatural factors are replaced by abstract forces, real essences (personified abstractions), inextricably connected with various things, and which can themselves produce all observable phenomena, the explanation of which then consists only in finding the corresponding essence. Finally, in a positive state, the human spirit recognizes the impossibility of achieving absolute knowledge, refuses to study the origin and purpose of the existing world and from knowledge of the internal causes of phenomena, and strives, correctly combining reasoning and observation, to know the actual laws of phenomena, that is, their base relations of consistency and similarity. The explanation of phenomena, brought to its actual limits, is now only the establishment of connections between various individual phenomena and several general facts, the number of which decreases more and more as science progresses. The main characteristic feature of positive philosophy is the recognition of all phenomena as subject to immutable natural laws, the discovery and reduction of the number of which to a minimum is the goal of all our efforts, although we recognize the search for first or final causes as absolutely inaccessible and meaningless.”16 This epistemological thesis of positivism has important consequences for ethics, since it makes its intuitive construction impossible. The relativity of our knowledge, both in the sense that it is limited only to the realm of phenomena, and in the sense that the human race and each individual is mentally subject to constant change, this relativity also forces us to recognize the relativity of moral views and rules. In this regard, of course, it is worth limiting the goals of life to the boundaries of the earth, concentrating all human efforts on real life, and moral rules are one of the means of achieving these goals 17 However, when characterizing Comte’s positive ethics, one cannot limit oneself to this methodological principle; one cannot deductively construct from this epistemological thesis the entire content of positive morality, which in this case would be extremely meaningless and crude eudaimonism. We must keep in mind the second thesis of positive ethics, that the rules of human life are derived from the laws that govern individual and social life. We must remember Comte’s view in general on the relationship of practical knowledge to theoretical knowledge, of the arts to the sciences. This is what we read on this issue in the second lecture of the Course in Positive Philosophy. “Considering the totality of human activities, it should be recognized that the study of nature is destined to serve as a true rational basis for human influence on nature, for knowledge of the laws governing phenomena, which allows us to constantly foresee the phenomena themselves, alone can give us the opportunity in our activities to modify some phenomena with the help of others to our benefit. Our natural and direct means of influencing the bodies around us are completely disproportionate to our needs. Every time we make some strong impact, this is possible only because our knowledge of the laws of nature allows us to introduce into the number of certain circumstances under the influence of which phenomena occur several new elements, which in certain cases turn out to be, despite all their insignificance, strong enough to change in our favor the final result of the action of all external causes taken together. In a word, foresight is based on science, and action is based on foresight. This very simple formula accurately expresses the relationship of science to art, if we take these two words in their full meaning 18 . Comte adds important reservations to this formula. He points out that a crude understanding of the practical significance of science would lead to the limitation of scientific pursuits to studies that have immediate practical application, which would stop mental progress even in relation to those practical applications for which purely theoretical work would be so unwisely sacrificed, since the most important applications constantly follow from theories created with purely scientific goals and which sometimes existed for entire centuries without any practical results. Nevertheless, this formula remains unchanged for Comte, and he returns to it more than once. So, in particular, he considers ethics an art, the rules of which are derived from the laws of science. Comte considers sociology to be a science that establishes laws from which moral rules flow. But you need to keep in mind the classification of sciences proposed by Comte. Using the word philosophy in the sense of “a general system of human concepts,” Comte divides all positive philosophy into six sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology (biology) and social physics (sociology). The principle of this encyclopedic system - assuming that it comprehensively embraces all phenomena accessible to our observation and knowledge - is that each subsequent science deals with more complex phenomena that are subject to all the laws established by previous sciences, but do not influence back. Thus, astronomy studies the most general, simplest, most abstract and most distant phenomena from humanity, which influence all others without being influenced by the latter. On the contrary, in social physics the most particular, most complex, most concrete and most affecting the direct interests of humanity are considered: these phenomena more or less depend on all previous ones, without in turn exerting any influence on them. Sociology, dealing with the great concept of humanity, embracing the totality of human concepts, is the most important science (principale Science), embracing all other sciences. And by saying that ethics is based on sociology, just as technology is based on the mathematical sciences and medicine on biology, we thereby say that ethics is based on the totality of all positive sciences, that it is the most important application of all positive philosophy. The immediate basis of ethics is the same as for every art: scientific foresight, which is given by all positive philosophy and, ultimately, sociology - and precisely the foreknowledge of the influence that our actions and our inclinations have on human life, both private and public 19. This second thesis of positive morality is less noted than the first in popular expositions of positivism. However, a third feature of positive philosophy, which is not indicated at all in these expositions, is worthy of serious attention. In addition to its indicated aspects, positive philosophy is characterized by the fact that, in contrast to any revolutionary, negative and destructive direction of philosophical and political thought, it is a conservative - creative philosophy. Armed against the theological and metaphysical worldview and contrasting them with a positive worldview, Comte does not go against the goal that theological and metaphysical philosophy set for themselves - to achieve a strict unity of minds and rule the world, he preserves the old principle that ideas rule the world (les idees gouvernent et bouleversent le monde, ou, en d'autres termes, tout le mecanisme social repose finalement sur des opinions) 20, he only wants to substantiate these goals on a natural scientific foundation, to connect unity with progress. The desire to morally educate and reorganize society, stemming from love for humanity, serves as the only motive for his philosophical and scientific activity, since he places all his moral and political hopes on positive philosophy. “The main property of science, which I called positive philosophy, which, due to its enormous practical significance, should most of all attract everyone’s attention to it, is that positive philosophy can be considered the only solid basis for social transformation, which will put an end to the critical state in which the most civilized peoples have been for so long.” 21 Hence the sacred formula of positivism: l'amour pour pour sipi, l'ordre pour base, et le progres pour but. From this side, Comte stands in genetic kinship with the ideological philosophical school that developed in France after the revolution and to which Cabanis, Condorcet, Volney, and Saint-Simon belong: this, after Catholicism, is the second school in which Comte was brought up, although he subsequently renounced Saint-Simon, to whom he owed especially much 22. How clearly Comte himself was aware of his creative tendencies is shown by his following words in the preface to Catichisme positiviste. “During the thirty years of my philosophical and social career,” he wrote here, “I always felt a deep contempt for what was called, under our various regimes, the opposition, and a hidden affinity for any creators. Even those who wanted to build from clearly unsuitable materials always seemed to me more worthy of preference than pure destroyers - in an age when universal restoration is becoming the main need everywhere. For all the backwardness of our official conservatives, our pure revolutionaries seem to me even more distant from the true spirit of our time” 23. All these aspects of positivism must be kept in mind in order to understand its moral teaching, in the proper sense of the word. We have already said that Comte's ethics is an application of sociology. Sociology is divided into statics and dynamics, which correspond to the division of biology into anatomy and physiology: sociological statics deals with the conditions of sociological existence, with the relationship of elements of the social system - with the individual, family and society, and dynamics studies the laws of continuous development of mankind. In other words, the first studies the conditions of order, the second studies the laws of progress. For ethics, the chapter devoted to social statics (50 lecon in Volume IV of the Course of Positive Philosophy) is of primary importance. This is where Comte comes closest to Feuerbach. He argues that man is characterized by la sociabilite fondamentale, l’irresistible tendance sociale, that he has an innate instinct for sociality, altruism, which primarily explains human morality, which has this organic basis. Comte, understanding the sensualistic philosophy of the 16th century, considers it a delusion, on the one hand, to give the highest leadership of human life exclusively to reason (attribuer aux combinaisons iutell eciuelles une chimerique preponderance dans la conduite generale de la vie humaine), and on the other hand, he absurdly exaggerates the unconditional influence of needs on the imaginary formation of our abilities (exagerer, au degre le plus absurde, l'influence absolue des besoins sur la pretendue creation des facultes) 24 . This does not mean that Comte denies the importance of reason in ethical culture - far from it. He equally recognized the two foundations of this culture - organic and intellectual: morality arises from feelings, but develops with the assistance of our reason, as a result of which morality, elementarily characteristic of animals, in a strict sense constitutes the property of man. It is reason that convinces a person that social unity is possible only on the basis of altruism, and not egoism, that in this way a person can most likely achieve his happiness 25. Human organization is not entirely conducive to ethical progress, since by nature, firstly, egoism over altruism and, secondly, affective forces over intellectual ones predominate in us. However, historical development should only modify this natural relationship of altruism to egoism and reason to feeling, should give a relative predominance to altruism over egoism and reason over feeling, while a complete revolution (l’inversion totale) in this respect, guided by an imaginary ideal, leads only to transcendental idiocy (une sorte d’idiotisme transcendant). Kont, like Feuerbach, speaks decisively about the benefits of egoism in the general economy of our lives. In his view of the socio-moral significance of the family, Comte also resembles Feuerbach. The family is a true school of social feelings: only here does a person first learn to leave the narrow boundaries of his egoism and learn to live for others. This amazing primitive union, in which two beings merge completely into one, surpasses any other community in its intimacy. The family, according to Comte, should be monogamous and built on the principle of the strictest subordination. Society, in the proper sense of the word, gives further development to the moral principles of human life: it achieves this with a new principle - cooperation, which is only vaguely anticipated in family life and is fully developed in social life. In the latter, the division of labor finds its application, naturally leading to a combination of forces. This leads to a strong development of the social instinct, since each family feels its close dependence on all others and, at the same time, is aware of its own importance, performing one or another, in any case, a truly social function, more or less necessary in the general economy 26. True, the consistently applied principle of division of labor leads to atomistic fragmentation and extinguishes the consciousness of common interests; but this only makes it necessary to carry this principle to the last betrayal and to establish a special class of people whose concern is common interests. Thus, the elementary principles of positive morality already contain within themselves the roots of the religion of humanity. If social statics deals, in essence, with the moral foundations of society, then dynamic sociology, in its assumptions and its conclusions, has important ethical significance. In this case, we understand not only that the evolution of humanity, according to Comte, leads to the predominance of purely human properties over the animal properties of man, but also the ethical significance of the basic concept of humanity, as already outlined above. In the end, for Comte, the concepts of positivity and sociality coincide, and throughout his philosophy, socially creative interest is predominant. We see that morality, as the crowning application of all positive philosophy, finds its natural conclusion in the religion of Humanity: there can be no talk of any break here. The spiritual despotism of the religion of Humanity fully corresponds to the retrograde direction of positivism. Meanwhile, there is every reason to talk about a more or less significant revolution in Comte’s philosophical beliefs, about a new period in his life - ma seconde vie, as he himself puts it 27. And we hasten to note that this revolution is connected with his attitude to the moral problem and, in particular, to the position of ethical science in the encyclopedic system. Moral interest has always been predominant in Comte's philosophical career. In Mill's words, Comte was a morally intoxicated man (just as Spinoza was, as Novalis put it, a God-intoxicated man). In this regard, Comte was dissatisfied with his first system, which he set out in the Cours de philosophie positive, on the precise side that there the encyclopedic system was completed by sociology, and in the new system, in the Systeme de politique positive 28 , this role belongs to science, again attached to the previous encyclopedic system - moral philosophy 29 . Methodologically, this change can be expressed as follows: before, Comte built his encyclopedic system according to an objective method, and now according to a subjective method, previously he attributed the predominant role to reason, and now to feeling or heart 30. Previously, Comte looked at man from a cosmological point of view, and morality, as an art, was for him an application of scientifically positive philosophy; in the System of Positive Politics, Comte strives to achieve unity in knowledge and life from a subjective point of view, 31, from the point of view not of reason, but of feeling, and moral science is already the pinnacle of his encyclopedic system. It is easy to understand that we must encounter considerable ambiguities, since the movement of the main point of view occurred during the work itself. Thus, the subjectivity of the method at first had the meaning of generic subjectivity, a view of everything from the point of view of humanity, 32 but then this subjectivity was gradually replaced by individual subjectivity when Comte's new system reached its completion. Apparently, the transition from generic subjectivity to individual subjectivity seems insignificant, unimportant - in fact, speaking about generic subjectivity, Comte still remains on the point of view of the Course of Positive Philosophy, but, moving to individual subjectivity, breaks with it. There is no gap between positive philosophy and the religion of humanity, nor is there a gap between the positive philosophy of the Course and the subjective-generic synthesis, but it is necessary to state a decisive gap between positive philosophy and the subjective-individual point of view. The relationship between the objective-scientific system and the subjective worldview forms the central point in the religious-ethical problem, and, noting the presence of awareness of this relationship in Comte’s philosophy, we eo ipso make it the best recommendation from the point of view of modern religious-ethical consciousness: Comte rose to the highest formulation of the religious-ethical question. And what he did on this issue is very instructive. In deciding this question now, we cannot neglect what has already been done, among others, by Comte. His main idea, that the objective scientific and subjective ethical points of view can be harmoniously combined, is distinguished by its depth and fidelity. But nothing more. Comte deeply and correctly posed the problem, but did not solve it. He implemented his first system too one-sidedly and far to be free from its consequences in the second period. Subjective synthesis is in harmony with a positive explanation of nature and history, but it is not in harmony with the understanding of morality, as an application of positive philosophy, with the denial of psychology. A whole series of contradictions open up between the Course of Positive Philosophy and the System of Positive Politics, a whole series of inconsistencies 33 - especially in the second system. Comte could not make a more or less decisive division between politics, as a conclusion from sociology, and morality, as an application of the science of individual human nature: he introduces the religious principle of spiritual despotism into politics, and imposes the rigoristic principle of subordination on individual moral life - instead of setting as an ideal the freedom of the conditional development of social forms of life and the free combination of all aspects of personal life. In this the religion of Humanity also finds its final verdict. Comte builds religion on the moral ideal of unity. But the project of such a religion can be successful only if it, in direct and immediate application, is limited to the personal-spiritual area. Otherwise, the eternal tragedy that arises from the application of religious and ethical absoluteness to the conventional field of politics is inevitable, and this was not the first time that this eternal tragedy played out in the fate of Comte. All of Comte’s arguments about subjective-individual synthesis, no matter how valuable they are in themselves, remain an empty phrase in the whole system of his philosophy, since he could never free himself from the oppressive weight of his idol le Grand Etre. And it turned out that to the early paradox that man is a pure abstraction, in his “second life” he, in essence, added only a rigoristic demand for a decisive sacrifice of personality in favor of this idol - Humanity. La personnalite appears in sharp contrast to la sociabilite 34 . Vivre pour autrui turns into a supreme duty, which allows everyone to care for their body and enjoy natural benefits only to the extent that this is in accordance with social destination (destination sociale) 35, which requires that the strong sacrifice themselves to the weak (le devouement des forts aux faibles) 36. What justifies such a sacrifice? A terrible suspicion creeps into the soul, but is this a sacrifice of the living to the dead who dominate them - a sacrifice to abstract Humanity? Humanity cannot be recognized as an Absolute that would justify such sacrifices. Feuerbach's criticism is also quite applicable to Comte. We find an exhaustive and thorough judgment about Comte's positive sociologism in Foulier, 37 who wittily proves the impossibility of sociological universality (absoluteness), since universality can only be logical and metaphysical. With all the enormous importance of society for the individual, it is necessary to recognize the individual as real strength and real value. Although the full development of the human mind is possible only in society, however, by its nature, reason is an individual force: human society presupposes the mind, and not the mind presupposes society (c'est la societe huraaine qui presuppose rintelligence, ce n'est pas l'intelligence qui presuppose ia societe humaine). It cannot be said that the individual owes everything to society, that individuality itself is created by society. The full human personality can only be revealed in society, but this does not mean that individuality itself is an abstraction. for in that case society would be composed of abstractions. By calling humanity eternal and immeasurable, Comte plunges into the fog of ontology. Whatever Comte may say, humanity cannot be the Supreme Being: it is only a real and practical substitute for a universal society (quoi qu’en dise Comte, 1’ liumanite n’ est pas le grand Etre: eile n’ est que le substitut reel et pratique de la societe universelle). But any human sociality, in its reality, present or future, is not identical with a moral goal. Morality is the realization of an ideal life, which stands above the distinction between self and others, considered as centers of private desires and interests. From an ideal point of view, truth, for example, has value in itself, regardless of its utility, personal or even social. How would a public good be possible if there were no private good? If my life is not good in itself and good for myself, then how does it become good for you at the moment when you throw yourself into the water to pull me out? Zeros of value multiplied by infinity of space and time add up to no real value. In order for me to feel obligated towards another, it is necessary that in the other and at the same time in myself there is something in the name of which I would feel obligated, there is something more valuable than everything else. Duty to others is essentially debt to oneself. I cannot respect you if I do not respect myself: justice demands that the conscious self be sacred in every being, that my self be as inviolable to you as yours is to me. Not only that. I can even love you only if I love myself, if I love in myself what I consider worthy of love in you. Not only by condescension towards others, but by mercy towards them - I must be fair and kind: I owe it to myself to be kind towards you (je suis oblige envers moi a être bon envers vous). Without respecting your dignity, I at the same time do not respect my own dignity; By humiliating your human personality, I humiliate my own; if I show anger towards you, I do harm to myself. By hitting you, I hit myself, I humiliate myself to the point of brutality. Whatever I owe to you, I owe to myself; What I do for you, I do for myself - what I sin against you, I sin against myself. The point here is not just a mechanical reflection of my every action towards you, a mechanical reaction on your part - here the point is the essential identity of true human goods. My highest selflessness is my highest interest - perfect love for another is perfect love for oneself (mon supreme desinteressement est mon supreme interet, le parfait amour d'autrui est le parfait amour de moi-meme). From a moral point of view, other people are my other selves. Therefore, in order to be socially connected and dependent, we need to be morally independent: the stronger our individual existence, the more we can realize collective existence, and vice versa. Comte's absolute altruism falls into the same hopeless circle as absolute egoism. We need to look for synthesis, and the elements of this synthesis need to be realized in the individual. The true nature of man does not find its highest and complete expression in sociality. Moral judgment must embrace not only the social consequences of human actions; must seek their principles or sources in the individual, in his own character and in his personal conscience 38 .. Wed. Guyot Irreligiousness of the future (which we will discuss below): “In our opinion, the elements of religion that distinguish it from metaphysics or morality and make it a truly positive religion are fragile and transitional. That is why we reject the religion of the future, just as we would reject the alchemy of the future or the astrology of the future. But it does not at all follow from this that irreligiosity, which is simply the denial of every dogma, every traditional and supernatural authority, every revelation, every miracle, every myth, every church custom elevated to duty, that this irreligiosity is a synonym for wickedness, contempt for the metaphysical and moral basis of ancient beliefs. In no case: to be irreligious or non-religious does not mean to be anti-religious. Not only that. The irreligiosity of the future will be able to preserve from religious feeling everything that was most pure in it: on the one hand, admiration for the cosmos and those endless forces that develop in it; on the other hand, the search for an ideal not only individual, but also social and even cosmic, exceeding existing reality.” This is done more decisively by various representatives of evolutionary ethics and, in particular, by Haeckel. (See the article Evolutionary Ethics in Christian (May and June 1908) and its continuation articles in God. Bulletin for the same year: Monistic Ethics (July-August) and Orthobiosis (December). Meanwhile, the zealots of “public education” diligently translate and disseminate not only IIItrauss and Haeckel, but even such curiosities of the past as Buchner, Vogt and Moleschott. It is curious, however, the attitude towards these latter on the part of Feuerbach, Engels and other more serious representatives of the materialist worldview. As is known, Feuerbach, in the course of his philosophical development, came from Hegelianism to decisive materialism, and nevertheless he disowned the “materialism of natural scientists.” naturalists in the narrow sense, for example, Moleschott. For them, it is not the basis of the building, but the building itself. Going backward from this point, I completely agree with the materialists; going forward, I disagree with them.” Engels partly does not approve of Feuerbach’s attitude towards materialism, as expressed in the above words, but fully accepts his assessment of Moleschott’s materialism. “Feuerbach,” writes Engels, “confuses here materialism, as a general worldview arising from a well-known view of the mutual relationship of matter and spirit, with the special form in which this worldview was expressed at a certain historical stage, namely in the 18th century. Moreover, he attributes to materialism in general that vulgarized, vulgar form that the materialism of the 18th century has now taken on in the minds of doctors and natural scientists and in which it was preached by Buchner, Vogt and Moleschott in the fifties... The materialism of the past (18th) century was predominantly mechanical, because of all the natural sciences by that time only the mechanics of solid bodies had reached a certain degree of completeness. The second specific feature of the limitations of this materialism is its inability to look at the world as a process. In the field of history, there is the same lack of a historical view of things... The people who in the fifties in Germany took on the role of peddlers of cheap materialism did not go one step further than their teachers. All the new successes of the natural sciences served them only as new arguments against the existence of the creator of the universe. Yes, they had no vocation for further development of the theory. Idealism, the wisdom of which by that time had already been completely exhausted and which was mortally wounded by the revolution of 1848, had at least the consolation that materialism had fallen even lower. Feuerbach was absolutely right in rejecting all responsibility for this materialism.” Of course, these materialists lived long after the fifties and, in particular, Buchner (continued in 1899) in his later works and in the latest editions of the works “Force and Matter” used the works of not only Feuerbach and Schraus, but also Darwin and Haeckel. However, there is no doubt that the named materialists are entirely limited to the negative task of a cheap struggle against faith in God and did nothing to positively substantiate the materialist worldview. Thus, Buchner’s book “Force and Matter” has the subtitle: “An experience of the natural world order with morality based on it, or the doctrine of morality.” But the few final pages devoted to the question of morality in the book are astonishing in their rudeness and naivety. Compared to what has been done in this regard by Skhirier, Nietzsche, socialism, even Haeckel, this is a pitiful insignificance. Catechisuie positiviste, 2 ed., p. 5(i; Cours de pliilosopliie positi\e. 2 ed..t. VI, p. 700: le principal resultat... consiste dans ia convergence spontanee de toutes les conceptions modernes vers la grande uotion de rinimanite Cours de pliilosopliie positive, Ιλ'. p. 293–294. Cours de pliilosopliie posiiive, VI, 743 Catechisme positiviste, p. 57. Cours de pliilosophie positive, VI, 59; Systeme de politique positive, I. p. 334: l'homme, pvoprement dit, n'existe que dans le cerveau troji abstraii de nos metaphysiciens. II n'y a. au fond. de reel que rhumanite. Courses de philosophie positive, IV’, 320. ) Cours de philosophie positive VI, 743. Syvteme de politique positive, I, 335 Catechisme positiviste, p. 66 Here is the ode of ii.i relating to the situation of many places (Systeme de politique positive, t.I, p. 334–335λ· in 1' E tre-Sapreme Comte distinguishes deux ordres de fonctions fondamentales, les unes d’activite’, les autres de En effet, il n'y a l a d e directement actif que les parties separables; mais i'efficacite de leurs operations depend de leur concours, spontane ou concerte. inte'rieures, specialement destinies a combiner ses ele'ments mobiles... C'est la qu'il faut saisir la vraie source systematique de la Separation normale de deux pouvoirs sociaux. Le pouvoir temporel, seni directeur, emane de la personnalite, et developpe l' activitfi, d'ou resulte l'ordre fondamental: tandis que le pouvoiruel, purement moderateur, represente imme'diatement la sociabilite', et institue le concours, qui determinino le progres. Ainsi, dans la conception du Grand-Etre. correspond a l'appareil n u tritif et le second a l'appareil nerveux de l'organisme imlividuel. Cate'chisme positiviste, p. 42. See Jodl's History of Ethics Cours de philosophie positive, t. 1, p. 8,9,16 .– rus. Per. vol. 1, pp. 3, 4 Cours de philosophie positive, t. Vi, 739– 740 Courses de philosophie positive, I. 5 0–51, p. nep. 27. Cours de philosophie positive, VI, 737: les repdes morales... pourront ainsi reposer convenablement sur une irre'cusable appreeiatiou de l'inlluence reelle, directe ou indirecte, speciale ou ge'n e ra le, qu e l'existence liumaine, soit privee, soit publique, doit habituellement recevoir de nos a ctes et de nos tendances quelconques, successivement ju g e s d'apres l'ensemble des luis de uotre nature, a la fois individuelle et sociale ) Cours de philosophie positive, I. 40–41, pye. nep. 21. ) See Fr. Picavet Les ideologues (Paris 1891) and A. Sehaefer Die Moral- Philosophie Auguste Comte's (Basel 1906)–Einleitung. On Comte’s dependence on Saint-Simon, see also P. Wart, Philosophy of History as Sociology. The retrograde meaning of positivism is wittily explained in the book by E. Spectorsky, Essays on the Philosophy of Social Sciences, vol. 1 (Warsaw 1907). Promoted by Comte as early as 1819, positivism was proclaimed in all its details in 1822, in the “Plan of Scientific Works Necessary for the Transformation of Society.” And so, as the title already shows, the main goal that was pursued was not so much scientific, educational, but practical, social in nature. Positivism, according to this plan, was supposed to be not so much a coordination of facts as a means to end the “anarchy of minds,” that “deep moral and political anarchy which, apparently, threatens society with imminent and inevitable decay. As such a means, positivism meant "an organic doctrine that would force kings out of the retrograde direction and people into the critical direction," which would create a new "moral government" called upon as a "true compact and active coalition." apparently, to compete with none other than the then holy alliance of monarchs. Thus, positivism was called for the knowledge of objective truth, and for social transformation, and for calming agitated thoughts and feelings. In other words, it meant not only a new science, but also a new social program and (even then) even a new religion... In France, the word positivism was first uttered in connection with the great revolution by those publicists who either became disillusioned with it, or immediately became in opposition to it, or contemplated and assessed it from the side, from afar, from a foreign land, as emigrants. Bonald contrasted “negative society” with “positive society”, based on “positive ideas”; and for the implementation of such a society, he considered it necessary to have a “single philosophy” that would be able to displace many competing philosophies and thus bind people by a community of theoretical confession. Barant, Saint-Simon, already before Comte, called “critical” what Bonald called “negative”. Barant, like Bonald, saw the only way out of the “critical epoch of the human spirit” in calming minds with a new worldview. In a word, as Mrs. Stahl hoped in her project to stop the revolution, if “philosophers made a revolution, then they will stop it” by influencing minds with a doctrine capable of calming them down, a doctrine that, unlike previous “negative” teachings, should be of a “positive” character or, as J. de Maistre, who dreamed of the same thing, more definitely expressed it, should mean the victory of “Christianism” over "philosophism". Thus, positivism is a much broader and more significant phenomenon than is commonly believed; it is not exclusively a “theoretical-cognitive” phenomenon, but a social one. Due to insufficient attention to this circumstance, although a lot has been written about it, perhaps even much more than is really required by the essence of the matter, it is far from clear in all its significance, both historical and fundamental. And this explains many misunderstandings associated with it. The main two misunderstandings are that it is extremely often seen as an exclusively scientific-philosophical theory, and that it is claimed that, in its application to common life, it replaces the lower levels of theoreticality with a higher and even highest one. Meanwhile, in positivism, a very important, if not dominant, role was played by extra-scientific, perhaps even anti-scientific, aspects of a socio-religious nature. And thanks to this, supporters of positivism, as if exclusively scientific theory, have to have such a strange and ambivalent attitude towards Comte: on the one hand, he is glorified in every possible way as the apostle of real, the only possible science, as the inspirer of all theoretical philosophy of the 19th century; on the other hand, the same people declare that Comte has gone mad and wrote all sorts of nonsense, and therefore consider it necessary to at least half renounce him. No matter how unpleasant and unsympathetic many admirers of positivism may be those extra-scientific elements that are associated with it, perhaps only accidentally or pathologically, these elements still remain visible. And to ignore or reject them, while maintaining positivism, does not mean really doing away with them or really preserving positivism. Comte himself categorically declared that positivism is essentially composed of philosophy and politics, which are necessarily inseparable.” To arbitrarily select from this program only what one likes means to cut a living whole into parts and take a piece of carrion for the whole whole and, moreover, a living whole... Being a reaction against the revolution and, as Comte put it, “a doctrine that always sought to radically discredit the revolutionary leaders,” positivism also reacted against those theories that, as it seemed to the positivists, contributed to the revolution, if not even caused it. Accordingly, this doctrine was reactionary in theoretical terms. (Pages 189–197). Etc. Catechisme positiviste, p. 4 Cours de philosophie positive, IV, 384 – 385. In Systeme de politique positive, IV, 20, Comte says: la doctrine de l’altruisme inne permet seule d’instituer une morale syste/matique To what pathos positive ethics can rise here is shown, for example, by this page from Cate'chisme positivinie (278). (Cf. Guyot's ethics). Ces etres de'grade's, qui n'aspirent aujourd'hui qu'a vivre, seraient teutes de renoncer a leur brutal e'go'isme s'ils avaient une fois goute' sufi'isamment... les plaisirs du devouement. Ils comprendraient alors que vivre pour autrui fournit le seul moyen de developper librement toute l'existence humaine; en l'etendant simultanement au present le plus vaste, au plus antique passe', et meine au plus lointain avenir. Les instincts sympathiques comportent seuls un essor inalterable, paree que chaque individu s’y trouve seconde' par tous les autres, qui compriment, au contraire, ses tendances personnelles. Yoila comment le bonheur coincidera ne'cessairement aves le devoir. Sans deute, la belle deflnition de la vertu,... comme un e/fort sur soi-nifme en faeeuv des autres, ne ce s se ra jam a is d’e tre applicable. Notre imparfaite nature au ra tnujours besoin d'un veritable efforl pour subordonner a la sociabilite' cette personnalite' qu'excitent continuellement nos conditions d'existence. Mais, quand ce triomphe est enfln obtenu, il tend spontanement, outre la puissance de 1'habitude, a se consolider et se developper d'apres le charme incoraparable inherent aux emotions et aux a c te s sympathiques Cours de philisophie positive, IV, 420 Systeme de politique positive, III, 5. More precisely, Comte's seconde vie began not with the first volume of the Systeme de politique positive, which still adheres to the point of view of the Course, but with the second volume and with the Catechisme positiviste, which appeared between the first and second volumes of the System of Positive Politics. This is how Comte himself speaks about it in Systeme de politique positive, III, 5: principal contraste encyclopedique de ma construction religieuse (one must keep in mind that Systeme de politique positive has the subtitle ou traite' de sociologie, instituant la religion de rhumanite') envers mon elaboratiun philosophique. Celleci representa la sociologie comme l'aboutissant universel; tandis qu'ici cette Suprematie n'appart.ient qu'a la morale, qui, d'apres l'ensemble du volume precedent, constitue seule le terme de la Science et la source de l'art. Cp. (and for further) A. Schaefer Die Morolphilosophie A. Comte's, 75. Systeme de politique positive. II, 30: Toute synthese doit être subjective, quoiqu'elle ne comporte de r 'alite' que d'apres une base objective. Systeme de politique positive, I, 579: il n'y a plus de veritable unite que par la methode subjective, en rapportant au vrai Grand-Ktre toutes les 'tudes re'elles, tant abstraites que concretes. It is enough to point out that elements of intuitive ethics find a place in the system of positive philosophy, as noted by I. Martineau Types of ethical theory, vol. I, 501–5 0 2: The defect was in his theory, non in himself: his writings are imbued with an intense moral feeling: he iays the utmost stress upon the Sentiment of Duty; and its deeji ront in its nature may perhaps be the very reason why he gives no account of it, but assumes it as self-evident th a t the social sympathies ought to prevail, and so sets himself to make out th a t they can prevail. Need I say, that this is not Positive Science, but intuitive \Vhat eise indeed can we make of his remarkable Statement, th a t moral rules are to be laid down as self-evident and beyond disseussion; inasmuch as, by a true knowledye of ourselves, we read them in every affection. thought, habit. And action, with a conviction as complete as the strictest demonstrations could give, – a conviction arising simply from their intimate relation to the noblest instincts. Yet more explicitly he adds, that the reason whv \ve must not rely on proof to produce moral convictions is, that proof is necessarily objective, fetched from observation and judgment exercised on others; vhereas appreciation, to be moral, must be subjective, drawn from the inward con- sciousness of our own cliarakter. These propositions alight upon momentous truths; but it is curious to receive them front one who habituaily ridicule? the “tended possibility” of self-knowledge, amounting to how they do to ait, explicit assertion of intuitive and psychological morals. Systeme de politique positive, II, 387. Systeme de politique positive, IV, 285 A. Fouillee Les e'le'ments sociologiques de la morale, 1905, p. 283–285. In the February book. B.–V. on pp. 247–248 a reference should have been made to Jodl's History of Ethics.