Мировоззрение

The teaching of I. V. Kireevsky can be considered and can be assessed from various points of view. We can highlight in Kireevsky’s philosophical and historical system its exclusively historical side, the illumination of historical facts that serve the thinker as support for his conclusions, and evaluate his worldview on the basis of historical criticism. 191 On the other hand, we can take specifically the philosophical part of Kireevsky’s teaching, partly his epistemological views, and illuminate this thinker as a philosopher who set himself a certain philosophical problem of reconciling faith and knowledge. 192 But a third perspective is also possible in considering our thinker, which consists in outlining the ideals of thought and life shared by him. We are not asking ourselves here either the first or exclusively the second perspective, but mainly the third. Our interest is focused on the content predominantly given in Kireevsky’s works as its main theoretical and practical provisions. We approach this thinker not with the goal of criticizing his philosophical or historical views, proving or disproving them, but solely with the goal of a positive analysis of his ideals in life and thinking. Having set our immediate task to outline Kireevsky’s basic views on life and thinking, we also consider it necessary to clarify that the formulation of our task in this case is adapted to ordinary, commonly used terms, but from the point of view of Kireevsky himself, it would be more correct to designate his ideal as the ideal of life. In the works of I. V-cha, relatively few and often unfinished, many thoughts are scattered, usually included in systems of theoretical philosophy and in the philosophy of history and in systems of morality. We personally think that differentiation in this case is absent from the author not because he did not have time to give a finished form to his thoughts, presenting them in articles, for various random reasons, but also because such a mixed presentation of thoughts of a seemingly different order fully corresponded to Kireevsky’s personal views. Kireevsky, with his characteristic power of thought, was not only an abstract thinker, but also a publicist, therefore a writer with a strong interest in real life, and he understood philosophy itself not as the construction of pure reason, but as an understanding of this life invariably connected with life itself. For a complete picture of Kireevsky’s worldview, we will need to make (when presenting his worldview) a summary of his thoughts scattered in works of different times, since sometimes a thought that was incompletely expressed at one time was commented on by the author himself in another case. Combining more or less scattered material into a system 193 seems positively necessary for the purposes of clearer presentation. Journal work, even by a publicist with great discipline of thought, always suffers from many shortcomings that interfere with the clarity of the ideas being developed and sometimes stem from the haste of the work, sometimes from the confusion of the issue, or, finally, from the unsteadiness in judgment of the author himself. In the absence of strong fluctuations in the views expressed by Kireyevsky at different times, he, of course, could not always be free from the first and second of these circumstances. Finally, although we do not set ourselves the goal of philosophical criticism in relation to the thinker we are analyzing, we cannot, even within the framework of the historical and literary task, ignore those aspects of influence under which the ideal of I. V-cha Kireevsky took shape. From the point of view of the thinker himself, this ideal, however, is original, but, fully sharing this opinion, we cannot, in studying Kireyevsky, bypass those facts that, according to Kireyevsky himself, turned out to be to a certain extent the stimulants of our national consciousness. An original life, in order to recognize its peculiarity with any other, non-original one, must be aroused to conscious existence by some outside influences. And if the Western world is not a source of life for us in a positive sense, then it had at least a negative significance for our original development. That is why we cannot completely avoid touching upon, before presenting Kireevsky’s worldview, some phenomena of Western life relevant to our subject. From this point of view, reproducing Schelling's philosophical views in as brief a scheme as possible seems necessary for us. With this diagram of Schelling’s views we will preface the presentation of the views of I.V. Kireevsky. Schelling’s teaching, as we already partly know, did not satisfy Kireyevsky, and his influence on I. V-cha was not significant, but in order to state at least this fact we need, in addition to what was said above about Schelling, to add some other aspects of his system. In view of the fact that Kireyevsky himself has a very informative presentation of part of Schelling’s system, moreover, that part that in one way or another influenced Kireyevsky, we will present Schelling’s views mainly according to Kireyevsky himself, supplementing what he has from other sources. After Schelling's main views are presented, the features of originality that characterize Kireyevsky's worldview will become clearer. Schelling was at first a follower of Fichte's system, but soon became dissatisfied with a philosophy that focused exclusively on the study of the human spirit. Schelling began to look for new ways for philosophy. Studying nature, having extensive knowledge in the natural sciences, Schelling pays great attention to speculative physics and, in contrast to Fichte, contrasts being with thinking, the free activity of the spirit, with the mechanism of nature, and then connects both in something higher. Fichte already laid the foundation for the doctrine according to which being and thinking are identical, because Fichte saw in nature itself nothing more than one of the acts of the spirit. Schelling was, as it were, a successor to Fichte in pursuing the principle of the philosophy of identity. For Schelling, the stages of knowledge are in full accordance with the stages of being, since knowledge and being, subject and object are rooted in one common beginning. What is posited outside consciousness is essentially the same as what is posited in consciousness; the cognizable must itself bear the mark of the knower. Nature is a step preceding the spirit, and not its opposite; history is a continuation of the physical process. God and the world, the universe and I, spirit and matter, darkness and light - these, according to Schelling, are only visible opposites, manifestations of one principle, “identical in essence.” Schelling paints a poetic picture of the world, through which the idea of ​​the purposefulness of all things runs as a noticeable outline. All individual phenomena, all beings in the world, all their actions are parts of one organism, a manifestation of a single world soul. The unconditional is revealed in the world, 194 but the eternal or divine never manifests itself directly, only indirectly, “in guises” and is revealed only to those who know how to comprehend the original identity “with the help of ideas.” We directly observe two orders of phenomena: spiritual and material. However, one and the other order of phenomena is nowhere present in its, so to speak, pure form. The divine essence underlying the universe remains, is present in every phenomenon, and if we imagine matter and spirit as two poles of a world identical in their common basis, then at any point in the distance between the poles both principles will certainly be present, as they approach the opposite pole, gradually weakening in the degree of their intensity, but never completely destroyed. This relationship between two orders of forces arising from one source is quite understandable, because what comes from one essence cannot be alien to itself. That is why in the world there is no freedom without necessity, there is no material without the spiritual, there is no conscious independent of the unconscious - these opposites are closely connected with the very essence of the single world process. As has been said, in world life a single principle is manifested, representing the basis of spirit and nature. Regardless of the phenomena of world life, the beginning is the purest identity, in which both the mental and the material are reduced to indifference. But when this Divine and unconditional “enters into manifestation” (this transition is accomplished incomprehensibly), it becomes the inexhaustible source of all being and knowledge. Everything that exists exists in and through the divine: the universe is an eternal emergence or origination in opposites, which are again productive. Philosophy that loses sight of this circumstance glides over the surface of phenomena and looks at the world as if it were something dead. Dynamic philosophy monitors the internal activities of the world, requiring to explain the well-known fact of the duality of struggling forces. The continuous development of life from one beginning is composed precisely of a combination of opposites. For example, nature, as spiritualized, strives to achieve certain goals. She makes a whole series of efforts to rise in her development to self-knowledge and comes to the realization of this goal through unconscious processes. The same combination of opposites is observed in the discovery of another fact of spiritual life - freedom. At the lower stages of the life of nature we see only necessity, while in man the same nature reveals itself from the side of freedom. 195 This is how Schelling leads to the unity of consciousness and being, freedom and necessity, showing the meaning of all these phenomena in the whole organism of the world. Having identified being and thought, spirit and matter, Schelling, naturally, had to establish a special point of view in the knowledge of the world. The principle of knowledge in Schelling’s philosophy is artistic intuition, which was explained in detail by the philosopher in “The System of Transcendental Idealism.” In artistic contemplation, where all opposites are reconciled, that single beginning of the world is revealed to us, which is the task of philosophy. Art, therefore, is a reflection of the life of the absolute and the main organ of philosophy. But if art alone leads to knowledge of the absolute beginning of life, then, according to Schelling, it is easy to conclude that “philosophy, generated and nurtured by poetry, at the end of its development must again merge with it.” Mythology will serve as a means to such a merger. 196 The latter played a very prominent role in the range of subjects that interested Schelling and in his system. The irrational principles of the world and knowledge, to which Schelling assigned a prominent place in his worldview, found their explanation precisely in mythology. Schelling worked very hard on mythology, seeing in it the last explanation of the world process, a sphere that contains the mysterious roots of being and life. In mythology is the last clue to religion, philosophy, history, and finally art. What is religion? First of all, this is not simple knowledge about God, and not an ideal relationship between a person and God. Religion is real being in God, a real relationship with Him. We are obliged to such a definition of religion by the fact that without such a definition we will not understand mythology. Religions are usually divided into natural and revealed, but such a division does not at all note what is specifically religious in religions. After all, a person assimilates the content of even open religion in the same way that serves to assimilate all other knowledge - in this case, how does religious knowledge differ from any other knowledge! The same should be said about natural religion. Its content, based on the conclusions of natural reason, does not differ at all from, for example, the content of philosophy, which is also a discovery of natural reason and, therefore, natural religion does not contain anything specifically religious. To correctly understand religion, it is necessary to find the religious principle that essentially posits God in man. Such a beginning undoubtedly exists, since only through it can we understand the former religious life of people, which is excluded in mythology. There is no doubt that revelation is in close connection with mythology, since in it, as in mythology, the real relationship of man to God is posited pre-reasonably, before any knowledge, in everyday life, historically. Revelation, therefore, is not knowledge at all and does not stand in connection with rational religion: it has under it the irrational soil of mythological revelations and its only difference from the latter lies in the greater revelation of consciousness. Mythology is a dark, self-generating religion; revelation is liberation from the power of blind real fact. It is now clear that the irrational elements in Schelling’s philosophy found their main support in his philosophy of mythology and that the latter plays a dominant role in Schelling’s teaching. Conscious and unconscious, freedom and necessity, and other poles of existence, receive a very convenient explanation in the moments of the mythological process. This process is great and universal. It takes place throughout life, covering all aspects of it. Not only the philosophy of religion, in particular the philosophy of Christian revelation, is not possible without the philosophy of mythology, but also the philosophy of history and the philosophy of art and simply philosophy. We are not able to understand prehistoric time without the help of mythology, much less comprehend without its help the relationship of the new world to the old. In the old world, that principle acted through the force of necessity, from which the new world is liberated with the enlightenment of consciousness and which appeared in its time in mythology. In the mythological process are the roots of history, an explanation of its origins. It goes without saying that the philosophy of art is closely connected with the philosophy of mythology, since art is a reflection of the life of the absolute and is closely connected with religion. The philosophy of mythology explains the relationship of ancient art to new art and thereby solves many riddles “from the artistic relationship of mythology to revelation. For example: how did religious feeling not prevent the artists of the Middle Ages from merging pagan objects with Christian objects into one thought, into one image?” The philosophy of mythology, which reveals the relationship between the natural and the supernatural, between the pagan and the Christian, is quite capable of solving this and similar problems. Philosophy in the proper sense finally receives a completely special direction depending on the philosophy of mythology. Apparently, there is nothing in common between mythology, the focus of the irrational, and philosophy - clear knowledge, the kingdom of reason. But the very polarity of phenomena necessarily raises the question: “Is there reason in the visible unreason? Is it not possible to discover and present meaning in the external nonsense?” Philosophy, if it wants to become complete and illuminate all the facts that are subject to human knowledge, should not ignore mythology. Philosophy must comprehend the latter by connecting it with other facts observed in nature and life. Naturally, the limits of philosophy from such an introduction of mythology into it are significantly expanded, and in addition, the very starting point of philosophical constructions is transferred to a slightly different plane. Philosophy in this case should proceed from fact, and should not be the development of any abstract principle. In this practical way, Socrates and Plato once taught to philosophize, “not in such a way that they first prepared inquiries about thinking itself, but in such a way that they forced their students to think, starting from randomly encountered objects and ascending to higher questions through the sublime aspiration of the mind.” A system of philosophy built on facts is a positive system, a system of “objective being and deeds,” and only such a system can be desired in view of its essential significance for our mind. All other systems of philosophy did not arise out of an essential need of reason, but only as a surrogate for philosophy. It is quite clear that Schelling, attaching such importance to mythology, sees in it not the invention of an individual or the creation of a people, but a universal phenomenon in the world, a discovery of the absolute. No one could have invented mythology, since mythology is so fused with the people that “to consider it invented is the same as deducing the language of the people from someone else’s composition.” But on the other hand, an entire people could not invent mythology, because by the very fact of its existence it already presupposes mythology. After all, the coexistence of many individual people is formed by a people, but a community of consciousness, expressed outwardly in language, internally in the same view of the order of things and the world, and since this community of view is nothing more than religion, which among the ancients appears in the form of mythology, it is clear that mythology is closely connected with the very fact of “the people.” That is why it should be presented to us in no other way than in the form of a universal, natural process of life taking place in the depths of humanity and the world. The disintegration of the mythological process among individual peoples does not in the least speak against the universality of that process, just as the visible disintegration of the perishable principle of the world in phenomena does not violate the unity of the world. The mythology of a given people, it is true, is different from the mythology of another people, but both mythologies represent a “section of universal consciousness” with which the people emerged from primitive unity. Mythology is a heritage received by peoples from a single source, but each has its own special one and uniquely guides its destiny. How this disintegration of humanity into separate nationalities took place - each with its own religion, with its own morals and customs - is difficult to decide. This disintegration is just as incomprehensible as the reasons why the single, self-identical basis of the world was revealed in opposites are incomprehensible; All that can be said is that this disintegration occurred in a fatal manner. 197 We will begin to present Kireevsky’s worldview, as far as possible, from the critical elements of this worldview, which, of course, will be more consistent with the natural development of the positive views included in it. The usual fact is that the development of a certain stable view is preceded by criticism, which prepares the ground for a new idea. For Kireevsky, this criticism was directed at the West, Western science, art, and Western enlightenment in general, and in connection with this, the thinker’s own views developed. Like all educated Russian people of his time, Kireevsky first lived on intellectual wealth taken from the West, and soon, like many, he experienced dissatisfaction with Western enlightenment. The Enlightenment, the ideal of which was, of course, the West, promised to resolve all the questions that were then presented to the consciousness of Russian thinking people. Philosophy sought to penetrate the mysteries of existence and thereby calm the human spirit, troubled by knowledge; sciences with their applied side promised to furnish external life with hitherto unprecedented conveniences. Here, apparently, a solution to all problems was given, and Russian society, which was then faced with the task of defining itself, both in public consciousness and in personal consciousness, should seem to find in Western education everything it needed for itself according to the nature of the moment. And yet there were people who were dissatisfied with the nature of Western education, who understood the possibility of a different movement of mental development, on different principles, and among these people one of the first was I. V. Kireevsky. His views on the tasks of education are closely related to criticism of various types of education and can be presented in this form. Observations of the life of peoples, which are the only source of the correct concept of enlightenment, clearly show that the life of a people is not driven by an abstract idea, but by a living, strong desire, which, embracing the whole people, is reflected in each individual person. This desire, or, as Kireyevsky also calls it, conviction, serves as the basis from which the entire history of this or that people gradually develops. 198 The people themselves, in his definition, are nothing more than the totality of the beliefs of the people, one way or another reflected in their morals, customs, language, in the concepts of “heart and mind,” in religious, social and personal relationships. 199 This entire sum of vital manifestations grows and is composed on the basis of the initially unclear and even supraconscious desires of the nation. Over a certain period, an “unconscious thought” is embodied in history, it is suffered through life, and only then, as the people develop, this thought can be recognized as the fruit of the experience of previous history. The act of “self-knowledge” is accomplished in different ways, but they result in “the sum that is given the name enlightenment.” 200 One, aware of the inner strength in himself, the basis of his being, seeks to comprehend it with thought, the other expresses the same inner experiences in poetic sounds. Along the ladder of mental development, expressed in poetry, science, etc., the basic conviction of the people ascends from unconscious instincts to the last stages of consciousness. This is how education arises and develops among the people, which has its root in the original elements of people's life. Apparently, what can be common between the unconscious concepts of a craftsman, an illiterate plowman and between the harmonious world of art or the thought of a great thinker, but by carefully examining these at first glance very different facts, we will find that they are as naturally and firmly connected with each other as the seed, flower and fruit of one tree. A certain aspiration dominates the life of a people, and it is the seed from which both flowers and fruit grow. 201 In the absence of a fundamental conviction, on which alone national life can fruitfully develop, there could be neither poetry nor science. Poetry is an expression of the inner life of a people, its reciprocal aspirations and thoughts. The poet is created precisely by the “power of inner thought,” from the depths of his soul, resonant with the soul of the people, he brings out this thought “ringing and trembling.” Only through this connection of his “supraconscious conviction” with the conviction of the entire nation can a poet have a powerful influence on the souls of people. The same undoubted connection exists between the basic belief of the people and their science. Like poetry, science is a natural expression of the life of a people. 202 According to what are the first elements on the basis of which the people’s life is formed, the mental concepts of the people are also built; certain relations of life created by popular interest also serve as the basis for a certain way of thinking that distinguishes one people from another. Consequently, the whole difference between a people still deprived of education and the same people who have risen to a certain level of mental life comes down only to a more or less conscious perception and experience of the same fundamentals of national existence, which manifest themselves both in the semi-conscious period of the people’s life and during their conscious growth. And with the emergence of education, the people establish themselves on their previous foundation, develop it and live by it, but now they begin to consciously relate to the foundations of their life. The thought of the people has developed from its dark aspirations and now it returns again to the “beginning of its origin”, so the conclusion of the mind “to unsolved” circumstances, like the word of conscience to unconscious instincts. Therefore, enlightenment - a natural result of the historical development of the people or the principle underlying this development - not only constitutes “one inseparable, articulated whole”, where all individual branches are “in living co-permeation”, but is also an act of people’s “self-knowledge” and self-determination. 203 This view of education, according to which it is the development of the principle underlying this or that nation, does not mean, however, that all education is true and all enlightenment has the same value. Despite his repeatedly stated “respect for reality,” Kireyevsky does not make such an objective assessment of the education of different peoples. In every nation, its education is a natural manifestation of the main features of its character and, as a fact conditioned by a sufficient reason, “respect for reality” should be considered true, at least for its bearers, insistence on the idea that enlightenment is, so to speak, the product of life itself, should apparently force the thinker to recognize the legitimacy of all enlightenment. In one place, wanting to prove the inevitability of Russia borrowing into its enlightenment some features of Western enlightenment, Kireyevsky among other things says that “everything false is true, only put in someone else’s place.” Apparently, from this point of view, the thinker had to relate to any enlightenment, recognizing it as true in its place and at its time. But he doesn’t act like that, he acts completely opposite and is contrary to his demand for respect for reality. As we will see later, Kireevsky recognizes Western enlightenment as “false” not only for us, but also for the West itself, although it naturally developed there under the influence of reasons that determined its special character. And, besides, Kireevsky recognizes the “false” Western enlightenment to a certain extent as true even for Russia. 204 All this, revealing some bias of the thinker in his respect for only Russian reality, at the same time leaves no doubt that Kireevsky relates to the enlightenment of different peoples from the point of view of assessing the false and the true. This circumstance is very important, since it reveals to us one significant side in the views of I. V-cha. Explaining any enlightenment by the natural development of the principles underlying the people's life and thereby recognizing, as it were, some objective legitimacy of any historical fact, the thinker at the same time remains completely subjective in assessing the very direction in the life of this or that people. Noting supraconscious beliefs in the life of peoples and attaching great importance to them in the development of people's life, Kireyevsky is not at all inclined to take a fatalistic point of view on the course of historical events. The people only through a long path of development, and as if inevitably, come to understand the foundations of their life, but the thinker considers them responsible for the direction taken. Obviously, Kireevsky had some other criterion for determining the value of this or that enlightenment, in addition to knowledge of an (objective) known fact. Kireyevsky's point of view on the issue of enlightenment was, undoubtedly, only objective-historical, but also subjective-moral. Despite the importance of historical causes that naturally produce certain phenomena, one cannot completely ignore the free activity of peoples. A people, as it develops, can find its true essence, but it may also happen that it sees itself in a wrong light and misunderstands its destiny. Such an erroneous assessment of one’s own inner essence can occur from a distortion of reason and conscience among the people. Just as “falsity of reason and corruption of conscience” can occur in each individual person from personal depravity, similar states are possible in the mind and conscience of an entire people. Kireyevsky’s negative attitude towards Western enlightenment and blaming the West for the falsity of the direction he accepted stands, therefore, in connection with the recognition of freedom, spilling not only in the lives of individuals, but also in the lives of nations. Peoples develop different principles in their history precisely because of the fact of freedom, 205 which each people uses differently. The very plurality of principles underlying the life of peoples obviously does not indicate their legitimacy. The true and normal beginning of the life of any people can be only one thing, which is why only one true education, one true enlightenment is possible. In Kireevsky, the criterion 206 of true enlightenment is indicated only by the general features of correspondence or contradiction of a certain education with the needs of the human spirit. In this case, Kireevsky departs from life in his reasoning and, noticing in it, for example, in the West, a feeling of dissatisfaction, he concludes from this that the very enlightenment of the West does not meet the demands placed on it. In Kireyevsky's judgments, of course, in this case a certain amount of subjectivity appears. But condemning false enlightenment, he emphasizes the possibility of an objective point of view on various phenomena of human life. 207 A people may misunderstand its needs and the task of its development, but the path taken erroneously will certainly lead, sooner or later, to the realization of its falsity. The “feeling of discontent and desolate emptiness” that falls on human hearts clearly indicates the abnormality of the situation; the life of an entire people becomes unusually poor in its highest manifestations. A falsely set goal is achieved not by a vivid manifestation of all the inclinations of the people, but only by the exaggerated development of any individual ability of the human spirit, dooming its remaining forces to complete stagnation and gradual death. Thus, although the multiplicity of types of enlightenment may have its explanation from the different historical conditions in which the life of peoples took shape and took place, nevertheless from the point of view of the internal needs of man it seems to be an abnormal phenomenon. Geographical and historical facts, of course, had their influence on the fate of this or that nation, but the main reason for the certain direction of people's life is not in these, but in the well-known spiritual aspirations of nations. A person, and an entire people, by virtue of their freedom, can drown out the aspirations inherent in them by the very organization of their spirit, and when the voice of the latter falls silent, the seed of false development has already been sown, which is then nurtured by the falsely directed process of life and bears the corresponding fruit. The main task of enlightenment - self-knowledge - in this case is certainly violated, goes astray from the proper path, and the people, having reached the moment of conscious determination of the foundations of their life, begin to see themselves in a misrepresentation of their true essence. 208 From his point of view on true enlightenment, Kireevsky distinguishes two types of education, represented both by modernity and by the entire past history of peoples. One type of education is characterized by one-sided mental development, the development of formal thinking, external knowledge; the other is characterized by the internal, comprehensive structure of the spirit, “by the power of the truth communicated in it.” Education, which belongs to the first formal type, is the fruit of long hard work, centuries of effort, many experiences and failures and, in general, all the successively developing mental property of the human race. But no matter how enormous the efforts expended on its acquisition, this education is not of social importance for a person. The nature of such education is purely external and therefore it does not affect very many aspects of our spirit. Using the results obtained by it, a person improves the external side of his life and improves his rational ability, which is extremely necessary so that “logically technical” education can exist. But in such development, not only are the spiritual powers of man not exhausted, but the most important fundamental side of man, as a being striving to realize “this or that meaning” in his life, is not affected. Logical and technical education cannot, of course, impart essential meaning to life, since this education is nothing more than a means that can be used in very different ways. Historical facts are known when people lose the “internal basis” of their existence, their faith, and yet external education remained with them (precisely because it is external) and continued to develop. This fact, as well as those cases when one people passed on its external education to another people with completely different principles of life, clearly show the insignificance of such logical and technical education for the development of the driving forces of life. In human life there is not enough external progress, the products of which are neither good nor evil; the most important thing in it is a certain living attitude towards people, in it a very prominent place belongs along with the mental and moral. The same product of external progress can be used both “for good and for harm, to serve the truth or to reinforce a lie,” and the question of the moral significance of this or that fact, an indispensable and obligatory question, goes beyond the competence of external education. This reveals the extraordinary importance of education of a different nature, which in its meaning and in its foundations is very different from “logical-technical” education. This other type of education is based not on the logical work of thought, but on the recognition of a certain principle to which the whole person submits, and the significance of this education is that it is aimed at the inner structure of the human spirit. Therefore, for the specified type of education there cannot be “changing development”. In addition to the direct “recognition” of a certain principle, it is also possible for her to “preserve and spread” this principle “in the subordinate spheres of the spirit.” Communicated “directly” to its bearers, this education has an unusually powerful influence on the life of peoples. From its source flow those fundamental beliefs of man and entire peoples that play such an important role in history. Not only the internal way of life, the known character of popular sympathies, etc. have their basis in the beginning of this education, but also the manifestations of “external” being and the very direction of logical thinking have their main and initial cause in the source of this education. External education, consisting of a certain amount of technical acquisitions and formal-logical title, turns out to be inevitably subordinate to “higher” education, which gives the former “essential meaning.” Of course, it would be strange to deny that external education has any significance for the development of the life of the people. Logical and technical education, being the fruit of people’s long hard work, imparts completeness and content to enlightenment and, subject to its subordination to the basic “beginning” of life, can serve as a necessary element of progress. But in itself it does not contain any compulsory force towards one or another “direction” and due to this “characterlessness” it cannot be the basis of life. Continuously developing on the basis of logical reason alone, this education gets along well with any character of the people, but cannot fall into place. True, there are moments of decomposition of the foundations of people's life, when external education is the only support of unestablished thought: then, when the basic principle in the people's mind dies, the people lose their strength, which lies in the integrity of being, and the logical mind, cut off from other aspects of the human soul, tries to regain what was lost by its own means. The logical mind, which has not yet experienced the extent of its power, first promises a person to create a living view of the world and life, equivalent to the previous, lost view. But in reality, it is impossible to artificially create that “living understanding of the spirit”, which is the main source of all aspects of life, and the (logical) mind, having developed to the final boundaries of its scope, begins to realize the incompleteness of its knowledge and already requires “another higher principle”, “unattainable by its abstract mechanism.” This consciousness of the insufficiency of the rational foundations of life on the part of reason itself, in connection with the moral impersonality of education created by the logical mind, clearly exposes the features of both true and untrue enlightenment. True enlightenment corresponds in its character to the fullness of human powers, it gives a “living understanding of the spirit”, a “living view of the world”, while false enlightenment, being aimed exclusively at improving the rational side of the human mind, creates only an artificial conviction, devoid of completely living meaning. 209 Thus, Kireevsky refers to the issue of enlightenment in a particular people from a certain specific point of view, which can only accept one known type of enlightenment as true. Having recognized the power of “supraconscious beliefs” and even attaching special importance to them in the life of peoples, the thinker does not at all pursue a fatalistic point of view on history, but on the contrary, he leaves intact human freedom, which can develop in both a false and true direction. True enlightenment, in theory, is one, but a person and an entire people, being free creators of their spiritual appearance, can arbitrarily direct the activity of their spiritual forces, and from their uneven development the result is false enlightenment. It goes without saying that, as a product of a person’s free self-determination and with the possibility of normal development common to all people, false enlightenment can be blamed on the nation in which it exists. In this case, the people, deviating along the wrong path, deviate from the norm, do not fulfill some ideal that is revered by the thinker as true and universal. The main features of this ideal are already outlined in Kireyevsky’s general critical remarks on the issue of enlightenment and come down to a stable balance and harmonious development of human mental powers, but this ideal can be more fully revealed in the thinker’s specific instructions on actually existing types of enlightenment. We have to turn to the characteristics of one of them, Western enlightenment, in Kireevsky’s understanding. Once upon a time, Peter II, feasting with Russians dressed in German uniforms, warmly welcomed the cultural union of Russia with Europe. The transformer of the Russian state was then intoxicated by the successes of Western enlightenment, the stream of which began to flow into the Russian land. Peter looked broadly at the boundless field of science, and ahead, in the near future, he saw the enlightened face of Russia. Sciences, once concentrated in Greece, long ago left their ancient seat, moving to Italy and spreading throughout all European countries. The ignorance of our ancestors then prevented enlightenment from penetrating into Rus', but circumstances have changed and now Russia is becoming the heir to universal knowledge. After all, the movement of sciences among humanity is like the circulation of blood in the body, and there must be a moment when sciences leave their residence in England, France and Germany and establish themselves here for several centuries. Thus, fascinated by Western enlightenment, reasoned Peter, who saw the only salvation of Russia in the West. And after Peter, a whole century later, the same view of Western science, full of bright hopes, was invariably characteristic of all educated Russians. The path on which Russia was placed by the transformative activity of Peter seemed to be the only possible and desirable, and sympathy for the West, after Peter, received its further natural development, so that “for thirty years it was hardly possible to meet a thinking person who would comprehend the possibility of another enlightenment other than that borrowed from Western Europe. 210 But now, already in recent times, the shortcomings of Western European education have become noticeable to some, and the latter began to lose credit not only in the eyes of the Russians, but even in the eyes of the Europeans themselves. This fact was discovered by the second half of the nineteenth century and its discovery as a result of the complex and long development of European thought, of course, should give rise to many questions about the real value of Western education. It cannot be said that Western science has lost its vitality and has given rise to a feeling of dissatisfaction due to its practical inapplicability to life, and, moreover, it seems impossible to explain its shortcomings by any purely external circumstances. Science in the West in later times seems to have especially flourished, making progress that it had not had in the past, and external conditions were most favorable for its development. Under such circumstances, it seems that the extraordinary success of Western European science should have taken place, and yet the result of its centuries-long development turned out to be completely different. Science, constantly progressing, enriching life with various discoveries and conveniences, “for the inner consciousness of man” presented itself in the negative meaning of its general conclusion. While fully satisfying the external side of life, the needs of the moment and external well-being, Western education has instilled “a feeling of dissatisfaction and joyless emptiness” in the hearts of people of a certain spiritual disposition and sympathies. Everyone who wanted enlightenment that satisfied not the needs of “external improvement of life”, but also the inner consciousness of man, who wanted to find in enlightenment the fullness of psychological motives, felt deceived when the “result” of the mental development of Europe soon became clear. For minds at least somewhat observant, it soon became clear where the reason for dissatisfaction with Western education was hidden? This reason turned out to be the one-sidedness of mental aspirations that underlay Western European progress. Life, and in particular the science that is part of it, can only be completely satisfying to the inner feeling of people when it is imbued with one “common strong conviction”, which, concentrating their individual aspirations, crowns the whole of life with “high hope”, warms it with “deep sympathy”. 211 Western enlightenment lacked and lacks, as it turns out, precisely this kind of conviction, which is essential for life. Looking closely at the picture of the intellectual life of Europe, we are struck by the extreme heterogeneity of systems and opinions, not connected by any unifying idea. This heteroglossia tells us as clearly as possible that there is no basic common belief in the West. Characterized primarily by faith, this belief was once inherent in the West, but due to various historical reasons it had to be lost there sooner or later. 212 The state of fragmentation of public self-consciousness, characteristic of modern European life, which gives rise, as a natural result, to the same duality in personal consciousness, is a relatively new phenomenon in the life of the West. The eighteenth century, neighboring the nineteenth century, although it was predominantly non-believing, nevertheless had “its own ardent convictions.” The actual meaning of these beliefs, of course, was very doubtful, but the important thing in this case is that, whatever they were, the thought calmed down, they “deceived the feeling of the highest need of the human spirit.” The insufficiency of such faith was soon revealed: a person could not endure life “without heartfelt goals” and the despair that Byron testifies to became dominant in Europe for a time. The future path for Europe has been outlined in two directions. Human thought, not supported by the highest goals of the spirit, fell into the service of sensual interests and selfish views - this was one direction of life in the West. 213 On the other hand, the absence of basic convictions that would fully embrace absolutely all the needs of the spirit awakened in many the consciousness of their necessity. The need for faith arose and hence a number of attempts to bring it into agreement with the modern state of European science. But both the one and the other direction were characteristic of the West, if we bear in mind the main nerve by which all European enlightenment lived (just as the feeling of discontent and disappointed hope that visited Europe in the nineteenth century seems characteristic in this regard). The abstract-logical direction of Western thinking, which determined the eighteenth century characteristic of Europe and subsequent phenomena of its mental and cultural life, was a distinctive feature of Western European enlightenment throughout its history. In later times, when the outcome of this history could already be clearly determined, the rational direction of the West was clearly reflected in the fact that “cold analysis destroyed the foundations on which European enlightenment stood from the very beginning of its development.” 214 One of the trends that formed in the West as a result of dissatisfaction with previous mental development set its goal to return to Western enlightenment its main driving forces. The West was presented with a task: to create, or rather to recreate, the lost faith that the eighteenth century and other, earlier times had. Faith was understood here not in the sense of a living conviction that embraces all aspects of the human soul, but only as faith in the logical work of the mind, here it meant precisely that faith that had previously deceived in the West “the feeling of the highest need of the human spirit.” The attempt to recreate such a faith was undertaken by the same logical mind, and on this path of artificial development of life beliefs will be followed, so to speak, by a demonstrative destruction of the very foundations of Western thinking. The logical mind experienced all the possibilities contained within it for creating solid foundations of life, and when, through a series of attempts, it came to the consciousness of “its limited one-sidedness,” a new spirit breathed in Europe. The path of self-awareness of Europe was that, having realized the falsity of its historical beginnings, it felt a longing for a different life. But Western European thought, having turned in a certain period of its existence to the “beginning of its exodus,” as was said regarding the thought of each individual people, what could it find in this beginning?! In the later stage of self-knowledge of Europe, the falsity of the main aspirations of Western enlightenment was revealed, which could not, with their consistent development, lead to anything other (even with a thirst for this other), except for the fragmentation of “social self-consciousness.” In fact, where did the development of Western European thinking begin and isn’t its entire subsequent fate just the persistent pursuit of one goal set from the beginning?! Let us take a closer look at the picture of the development of Western education and a quick historical analysis will convince us of the validity of what has been said. Western European life, and with it, of course, Western science, developed in a unique way on the basis of three elements laid down from the very beginning of European history as its foundation. These elements are: the form of Christianity in which the West accepted the teachings of Christ, the special form in which the education of the ancient classical world passed to it, and, finally, the special character of Western statehood. We can discern the beginnings of the modern disintegration of European life already in that early time when the Western Church began, along with the discovery of some special features in the life of the tribes that comprised it, to strive for separation from other churches. Of course, every patriarchy, every tribe in the Christian world always did not cease to preserve their individual characteristics, but on the other hand they did not show any inclination towards particularism and always remained “in the general unity of the Church.” A well-known people, who, due to local, temporary and other “accidents,” developed in themselves one aspect of mental activity, naturally had to retain the same special character, their “natural physiognomy” in religious life. This circumstance had a particularly clear impact on the works of Christian writers. Thus, Syrian writers paid their main attention to the contemplative life of a person detached from the world, while Roman theologians were occupied with “the side of practical activity and the logical connection of concepts.” 215 Writers of Byzantium were primarily interested in the attitude of Christianity to various sciences, which at first were at enmity with Christianity and then submitted to it. The Alexandrian theologians, faced with the need to combat paganism and Judaism, turned to developing the speculative side of Christian teaching. Such a difference in the direction of Christian thinking did not at all lead to any break in the Church; on the contrary, in all these cases only the paths of mental development were different, which nevertheless led to the same goal. In connection with the dominant trend among one or another people, deviations from the true path of church life sometimes arose, which resulted in heresies that appeared at different times; but since all the private churches were united “by the unanimity of the Universal Church” into one holy agreement, heretical errors were soon condemned. There were moments when the danger of deviating from the truth threatened the entire patriarchate, but even in such cases the Lord saved His churches with the unanimity of the entire Orthodox world. The peculiarity of each private church, based on the special direction of life of the tribes that comprised it, could only lead the church to separation from universal unity when the private church refused to communicate with other churches, but, remaining faithful to the general church tradition, a certain church, by the special nature of the spiritual activity of its members, could only increase the richness and fullness of the life of the Universal Church. In particular, the Roman Church had its own spiritual peculiarity, which it could preserve without violating church unity with the rest of the Christian world. But Rome wanted to turn the particular peculiarity of its members into “an exclusive form through which Christian teaching alone could penetrate the minds of the peoples” subject to it. 216 What was the main reason for the isolation of the Western Church from communion with the Ecumenical Church can be guessed differently - one of the motives for the final falling away could be the “Roman spirit of predominance”, there could also be other particular reasons for this circumstance - but taking into account the main “pretext for falling away”, the addition of a new dogma, an addition motivated by logical considerations, we will not be mistaken if the main role in this is also. in fact, we attribute it to the share of the classical element, which has always lived in Western history and strongly influenced the character of Western European thinking. 217 Until the half of the 15th century, the education of the ancient, pre-Christian world was known to the West almost exclusively in the form it took in the life of pagan Rome. Greek and Asian education did not penetrate Western Europe until the almost conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, and this circumstance is very important, both in general for understanding the nature of Western life, and in particular for understanding the fact of the Western Church’s falling away from universal unity. The fact is that Rome and its education did not express the fullness of pagan enlightenment and, what is especially important for us, they lacked some very important features of Greek education. Rome had only material dominion over the world, while Greek education expressed mental domination. From this basic difference between the two types of pagan education, it is quite clear that to accept the property of the human mind in the form in which it received in Roman education meant condemning oneself to one-sidedness in all its subsequent development. This is what happened to the West. Having mastered the one-sided pagan enlightenment, he could not renounce his one-sidedness until very recently, when part of European minds sensed the age-old mistake of history. True, in the fifteenth century, Greek exiles appeared in the West with their “precious manuscripts” and the enlightenment of Western Europe, it seemed, should then have received what it lacked. But, as the facts showed, it was already too late. Western education has revived a little with the influx of new material, but its meaning and spirit remained the same as before, because the work of previous centuries had already firmly established the unique mentality and life of the West. Penetrating into the very basic structure of social relations, into laws, into language, into morals, customs, into the development of sciences and arts, ancient Rome was supposed to impart to the entire life of the West that special character by which it itself differed from other peoples. It is quite understandable that all extraneous influences were overshadowed by this main influence, penetrating the very “inner composition” of Western life, and the element of Greek enlightenment that appeared late in Western science did not take root in the West with living force, but itself submitted to the dominant trend, determined by the main feature of the mental character of Rome. 218 What was this peculiarity and how could it be connected and was actually connected with other elements that formed the basis of European life? If we briefly outline the dominant feature of Roman education, then we will not be mistaken if we say that the distinctive structure of the Roman mind was the predominance of external rationality over the internal essence. This character of all Roman education reveals both the social and family life of Rome, as well as Roman poetry and religion. What is striking about Roman laws is their extraordinary external harmony, brought to amazing logical perfection with an amazing lack of internal justice. 219 Corresponding to the form and spirit of the law in Roman morals, we notice the same character of formality. In Rome, the appearance of behavior was highly valued and very little attention was paid to the inner meaning of this behavior, based solely on logical calculation. Each member of Roman society had a personal logical conviction as the only guide for his actions, and that is why the Roman did not know any other connection between people other than the connection of common interest, another unity other than the unity of the party. Patriotism, the most disinterested form of human love, was imprinted in Rome with the same dry, logical calculation and party motives. The Roman treated his compatriots by the same external standard by which his Rome understood itself in relation to other cities that surrounded it. “Exactly ready for an alliance and for war, he decided on one or the other according to the instructions of calculation, constantly listening to the suggestions of that passion that usually dominates inside the dryly logical and selfishly active mind, the passion of domination over others. This passion for calculation dominated the Roman soul, being closely connected with the one-sided, logical direction of his mind. Formalism penetrated absolutely all the bends of the mental life of Rome. In poetry, the Roman genius focused mainly on the development of an artistic form, which was filled in the absence of significant content in life with borrowed material. Even the Roman language, which had lost its freedom and spontaneity in its artificial correctness, reflected the general one-sided direction of the nation. Finally, the Roman religion itself, instead of “an internal, living fullness of meaning,” represented only one external concatenation of thoughts. Here the external ritual dominated, behind which the innermost life of the spirit was forgotten - diverse, even contradictory deities were collected, but “logically agreed into one symbolic worship” and in all this religion “under the veil of a philosophical connection there was hidden an internal absence of faith.” In a word, in all types of activity of the Roman we see something characteristic that - “the external harmony of logical concepts was more essential for him than the essentiality itself and that the internal balance of his being ... was recognized by him only in the balance of rational concepts”; in this regard, his moral beliefs and the nature of his practical activity, driven by the goals of calculation, serving lower feelings, such as pride, vanity, etc., are explained. 220 In terms of their significance in the development of Western enlightenment, both the one-sided form of Christianity adopted by the West and the above-mentioned third original element of Western enlightenment—European statehood—completely coincide with this internal state of the ancient Roman world. The latter in almost no nation in the West arose from the calm development of national life and national self-awareness, when religious and social concepts that prevailed at a certain time are embodied and strengthened in certain everyday forms quite naturally without shocks. The social life of Europe, not representing unanimity and integrity in the present, and in its initial history is characterized by the struggle of hostile tribal forces, in which the basic concepts of Western man about personal rights, family rights, social relations, etc. were formed. Oppression by the conquerors and opposition from the conquered, all kinds of violence and hostility are a common picture in the history of Western European states. In this act of hostility and struggle, even at the very beginning of European history, the fundamental features of Western life were already manifested: advocacy for earthly goals, guidance by calculation and considerations of external well-being. Here was already rationality itself, which later led Europe to a kind of hopelessness, to oppressive internal discontent - in the absence of any common belief, with the loss of the solid foundations of life. 221 The teaching of Christ, at its very appearance in the pagan world, should have been in conflict with both “self-doubting rationality” and the selfish aspirations of a selfish individual. For the external rational wisdom of a pagan, the preaching of Christ, which directed the human spirit “toward the inner integrity of being,” “toward the living center of self-knowledge,” and toward the fragmentation of its powers, seemed foolishness and madness. And on the other hand, Christianity itself had to declare its denial of pagan life with a desire for one-sided rationality, which now appeared in the light of true teaching “in all the poverty of its insensible blindness.” Roman theologians naturally denounced pagan wisdom, but due to the conditions of their upbringing, they could not completely lose, even in this defense of Christianity from paganism, their “Roman physiognomy.” This influence of the specially Roman spirit is already noticeable in the very first Western Christian writers. Tertullian, perhaps the most eloquent of the theological writers of Rome, amazes with his brilliant logic and the outward coherence of his provisions. Tertullian's disciple St. Cyprian is no less than the first remarkable feature of his logical power, but he turned out to be happier than his teacher, having avoided his extremes. But none, perhaps, of the ancient and modern Fathers of the Church was distinguished by such a love for abstract, logical constructions as the “teacher of the West” Blessed Augustine. His passion for the logical coherence of truths is clearly manifested in the fact that many of Augustine’s works represent a tightly closed chain of syllogisms. Hence the noticeable one-sidedness of this writer, into which he was undoubtedly carried away by the peculiarity of his thinking and which in the last years of his life he himself had to refute. 222 Thus, even before the division of the churches, before the formal separation of the Western Church, some extremes of Western thought were already noticeable, which could be even more intensified if favorable conditions were available for this. As long as church unity was not violated and the Roman Church was a living part of the Ecumenical Church, the general knowledge of the entire Orthodox world kept each feature of the private church in balance with the whole, but when Rome fell away from the Ecumenical unity, its features could receive their full, unhindered development. From that time on, rationality and rationalism took a decisive advantage in the teaching of Roman theologians, because the very fall of Rome occurred as a result of the desire to enclose the comprehensive teaching of Christ in dead schemes of syllogisms. 223 Already from the ninth century, Roman rationality completely mastered the teaching of Western theologians, depriving it forever of the integrity of its inner view. Roman theologians discovered, first of all, a misunderstanding of the unity of the church without the outward unity of the bishopric. Concerned more about visible unity and visible dominion over minds than about internal truth, Rome proclaimed the primacy of the pope, and at the same time established a monopoly of understanding for its hierarchy. The people, according to Roman teaching, should represent a dead, inert unity, expressed exclusively externally. The people “could only listen without understanding, and obey without reasoning,” they were considered an unconscious mass on which the church building rests. Assuming rationalism in the processing of religious and church teaching, the silence of the people was the only means for “the church to stand” and not disintegrate due to the arbitrariness of individuals into many opinions. That is why “almost any original thinking that arose within the Roman Church” always turned out to be in opposition to it and was subjected to severe persecution by the church authorities. Church concepts, imprinted by the authority of the hierarchs, penetrated into all spheres of reason and life, and only such concepts had the rights of citizenship in the everyday life of Western thinking: everything that disagreed with them was not permitted and was considered heresy. Predilection for the appearance of a fact, with omission and complete misunderstanding of its inner essence, was also reflected in the fact that Western theologians (entirely in the spirit of Roman pagan ethics) attached significant importance to the external affairs of man, so that even with the presence of “the internal readiness of the soul and with a lack of ... external affairs, they understood for it no other means of salvation, except for a certain period of purgatory.” The concept of supererogatory affairs, imputing them instead of one person to another, exposes the same soulless rationality that Western theologians inherited from ancient Rome. The same reason that gave rise to the phenomena just mentioned should naturally have given rise to the doctrine of papal infallibility, since it was necessary to strengthen the external unity of the church and the temporal power of the pope, since the rational, dry mind is inclined to worldly predominance and the pursuit of narrow earthly goals. In the historical fact that the Frankish emperor could offer, and the Roman bishop accepted, secular rule in his diocese, that the semi-spiritual rule of the pope extended over all the rulers of the West and gave birth to the “Holy Roman Empire” and the Middle Ages, when secular power was so often mixed with spiritual power, one should see the manifestation of the same rational principle of Western life. With an extremely external way of thinking, inherited from the pagan Roman enlightenment and way of life, it was impossible to be satisfied with any other basis for power than the visible, worldly, and Western spiritual power seeks support “in secular power,” just as “the spiritual conviction of Western minds sought its foundation in rational syllogism.” Thus, “logical conviction” firmly lay at the very foundation of Catholicism and, due to the powerful influence that the church had on the entire course of Western history, should have manifested itself in all aspects of Western life. 224 The discovery of a rational, and essentially pagan, principle in the life of the West inevitably gave rise in Western history to many phenomena similar to the life of ancient Rome. The struggle of tribes arguing for different predominances, conditioned, so to speak, by the internal fragmentation of Western man, naturally should have produced in history a constant hatred of classes, “standing motionless against each other with their hostile rights.” In the absence of a tendency towards a harmonious structure of society, with the simultaneous action of many private interests directed in the most opposite directions, in the West only deep discontent of some, endless complaints of others, hatred, etc. could take place. In the constant fluctuation of class relations, each class took the opportunity to increase its rights, from which external, formal conditions were born, with which all parties remained dissatisfied and which could gain strength only by the force of an external fact. The class that came from the conquered tribe usually had very few rights and was in the position of the oppressed; on the other hand, in the concepts of the conquerors there was very little legitimacy. A person who found himself in a predominant position, a position determined by purely random external circumstances, considered himself noble and sought to become the supreme law of his relations with other people. Protected on all sides by iron and pride and filled with selfish lusts, the noble personality could not even understand what “common statehood” meant. The concept of individual independence was the point from which various rules developed that regulated the arbitrariness of the individual: in the West there were “laws of honor,” but by their nature, as established by people full of their own dignity, these laws expose the one-sidedness of social life, a vague consciousness of common interests and the dominance of external formal coercion. Every noble knight inside his castle was like a separate state, unlimited, self-sufficient. Given the extreme certainty of individual consciousness, there could be no other relations between the knights other than external, formal ones, and for the same reason their relations to other classes were the same. Hence the constant external character of all Western, European law, the extreme conditionality of the latter. 225 European history, having begun with violence and developing against the backdrop of the constant struggle of the peoples who created it, naturally does not reveal anywhere the prosperity of social life. European societies, bound by the formality of relations, imbued with the spirit of one-sided rationality, had to develop in themselves not a social spirit, but a spirit of personal individuality. Sometimes in Western history we come across facts that seem to speak for the success of the public, but such an impression is extremely deceptive and is a simple illusion resulting from insufficient observation of the life of the West. Under social forms, which sometimes create such an illusion, there usually lies not public interest in the true sense of the word, but only the purely egoistic aspirations of the party, which “for their private goals and personal systems” forgot about the life of the entire state. In Europe, different parties were constantly fighting: papal, imperial, urban, political, even metaphysical, and they all fought not for any social goals, but only for their class, estate, etc. The end of such one-sided development, revealed by the modern state of Europe and consisting in the absence of solid foundations in the life of the West, is of course quite natural and understandable, but once upon a time Western enlightenment deceived with its external brilliance, and Europe believed in what has now been discovered as worthless. 226 The main direction of European enlightenment became especially stronger in its one-sidedness, and became especially effective in creating various aspects of Western life, from the time when it absorbed the influence of Arab education. The already narrow, one-sided, rational European enlightenment has since become even more rational. For the Mohammedan Arab, by the very nature of his religious teaching, there could be no higher goal of mental development than the systematic connection of abstract concepts. Demanding from its confessors an abstract recognition of certain facts and, in particular, the unity of God, Mohammedanism did not teach about any “internal integrity of self-knowledge.” In this confession, human nature could calmly remain “in its unreconciled duality,” since no higher purpose of existence was indicated to it here, except for grossly sensual pleasures. The mind of a Mohammedan, like the mind of a Roman pagan, could only strive to find a logical unity that would embrace and explain “the connection between the laws of the superstellar world and the laws of the sublunary world.” Composing “visible formulas” for “invisible activities” and being completely satisfied with the resulting scheme, the Mohammedan Arab could not have a mental interest beyond logic, and it is clear that his education was expressed in various alchemies, palmistry and other “abstract-rational and sensual-spiritual sciences.” The Arab enlightenment had the strongest effect on Western Europe because this enlightenment penetrated there when Europe was almost in a state of complete ignorance. The Arabs introduced Europe to Aristotle, who was destined to play such a major role in the fate of Western enlightenment. 227 Characteristic of the entire history of European science, and of its medieval period in particular, scholasticism, born from the spiritual properties of Western peoples, undoubtedly had Aristotle as one of its sources. The fate of the West has developed surprisingly consistently with the fundamental beginnings of its history. Already at the very beginning of Western European education, sympathy for the thinking of Aristotle was laid down, and the acceptance of this thinker with Arabic commentaries and Arabic translations could not have been more consistent with the main trend of European enlightenment. Rational one-sidedness now blossomed into a lush tree of medieval philosophy and the consistent development of Europe was ensured. Aristotle's influence was undoubtedly harmful in this case. The system of this thinker was extremely rational and therefore lifeless. Based on the logical coupling of concepts, Aristotle transferred the base of a person’s internal beliefs “to the abstract consciousness of the reasoning mind.” In the eyes of Aristotle, reality was the complete “embodiment of the highest rationality.” The world, in his opinion, “has never been better and never will be,” remaining “eternally intact and unchanged in its overall scope.” Aristotle represented this completeness and “satisfaction” of the world “in the cold order of abstract unity,” considering thinking itself to be the highest good of life. With a certain contentment, physical and mental, a person begins to reflect and then he comprehends the rational unity of life through the diversity of particular phenomena. The ultimate conclusion from this rationality for a person is “the desire for the best in the circle of the ordinary, for the prudent in the everyday sense of the word, for the possible, as determined by external reality.” At one time, Aristotle's philosophy had a destructive effect on the moral dignity of man. “By undermining beliefs that lie above rational logic, she destroyed all victories” that could raise a person above his personal interests. Having adopted such an ordinary and “indifferent” system in its dry abstraction, a person naturally lost his moral energy and became an obedient instrument of surrounding circumstances, obeying exclusively “profit and fear.” It is quite clear what could be expected from such a philosophy when it became one of the stimuli of Western European life. The scholastics did not accept Aristotle as a source of positive truths, but only used him as a foundation for establishing what was accepted in the church according to tradition, and yet there is no doubt that Aristotle strongly influenced Western theological thinking, that he was the “soul” of scholasticism. The Western Church, having become detached from Ecumenical unity, had to seek support in some theological system; it is also clear that this system, in accordance with the basic character of Western thinking, had to be a rational construction. Aristotle in this case fully met the needs of Western thinking. Using Aristotle's logic, Western theologians, with a new logical knife in their hands, made their endless attempts to reach doctrinal truths through syllogisms. 228 Scholasticism set itself the task of linking theological concepts into a reasonable system, of putting a rational-metaphysical foundation under them. All Western theologians tried to deduce the dogmas of faith “from their logical conclusions” and, starting from the Scot Erigena to the 14th century, it is difficult to point out a theologian in the West who would not try to “put his conviction in religious truths at the cutting edge of some skillfully chiseled syllogism.” The passion for syllogism was the nerve of scholasticism and this medieval philosophy was full of “abstract subtleties, logically woven from holo-rational concepts.” The main truth was given in scholasticism; all that remained was to agree with these concepts by the entire body of thinking, eliminating from the mind everything that could contradict them. Since the teaching of faith in the Western Church has deviated from its primitive purity, it was necessary to create at least the ghost of “its integrity and internal unity.” And that is the purpose that logical thinking served. 229 But it is quite clear that the one-sided activity of the spirit could not restore the integrity of faith, and the division between reason and faith continued to grow stronger. Scholastic philosophy, which sought to derive every dogma through logic, only finally deprived the West of “a living, integral understanding of the inner spiritual life” and gave rise to “blindness to those living convictions that lay above the sphere of reason and logic.” As mentioned above, even living Greek education, having penetrated into the West since the fall of Constantinople, could no longer bring the dead thought of the West back to life. Strong in its pagan one-sidedness, this thought continued to develop along its characteristic path of abstract categories, and all subsequent phenomena in the history of intellectual life in Europe following scholasticism, such as Protestantism and modern philosophy, were only a direct development of the main driving principles of Western thinking. 230 There is no doubt that the new fragmentation of the church, which took place already in the depths of Catholicism in the sixteenth century, was nothing more than a completely natural continuation and development of those very foundations of life that already at the beginning of Western history lay as the foundation of its subsequent development. “The Western Church, back in the ninth century, laid within itself the inevitable seed of the Reformation,” which later placed the Catholic Church before the court of that very logical reason that was at one time elevated by this church “above the general consciousness of the Universal Church.” Of course, in the fight against Protestantism, the Roman Church rejects rationalism and relies on tradition, but this is done “only in contradiction” to Protestantism, and in relation to “the Universal Church, in matters of faith, Rome gives preference to an abstract syllogism over holy tradition, which preserves the general consciousness of the entire Christian world in living and indivisible integrity.” Protestantism was only a further development of Catholicism, in which the reason of the hierarchy was recognized as the source of truth. The reformers only expanded the right to transgress the boundaries of Divine revelation and, to every private mind, the mind of each individual member of church society. The whole difference with Catholicism was that instead of one external arbitrary authority, the personal conviction of each member of the church community became the basis of faith. The logic of Protestantism was thus quite natural and clear, and “a thinking person, even because of Pope Nicholas I, could already see Luther, just as - according to Roman Catholics - in the 16th century, already because of Luther, one could see Strauss. 231 Within the limits of the Roman Catholic doctrine, the human mind could either entrust itself to the authority of church teachers, or, having refined itself in scholastic subtleties, fall into complete unbelief, and therefore the Reformation was inevitable, on the one hand, for the liberation of thought, especially scientific, and on the other, to satisfy the needs of every believing soul. The split in human mental powers that developed in Catholicism was clear to the leaders of the Reformation, but the influence of the “moral historical accident” was such that some of those dissatisfied with the scholastic Western Church not only did not return to the truth, but went even further along the path of error. Under the impression of various abuses of the Roman Church, Luther himself began to understand where the real path of church reforms was: “I am now studying,” Luther wrote, “the papal decretals and I find in them so many contradictions and lies that I cannot believe that the Holy Spirit himself inspired them, and that our faith should be based on them. After this, I will study the Ecumenical Councils and see if it is not on them, together with the Holy Scriptures, that the teaching of the church should be established?” But Luther also understood by Ecumenical Councils those that were recognized as Ecumenical only by the Roman Church and, having found various contradictions in their definitions, he proclaimed the only source of faith is the letter of Scripture, which can be interpreted according to the personal understanding of each Christian. Thus, the spirit of division and fragmentation, which has always permeated the organism of Western history, triumphed in Protestantism. 232 But if on the threshold of the Reformation the West was presented with the possibility of a different way out of the situation in which scholastic one-sidedness had placed it, then after the Reformation the traditional path of the West became, as it were, even more necessary and direct. The previously existing internal division in the depths of the personal consciousness of each member of Western church society (albeit with the external visible unity of the church) in Protestantism was to become even more intensified. “To build a building of faith on the personal convictions of the people is the same as building a tower according to the thoughts of each worker.” Everything common between the confessors of the Protestant doctrine came down to only some special views of their first teachers, the letter of Scripture and natural reason, “on which the doctrine of the faith had to be built.” But, in particular, for example, Holy Scripture, “not imbued with a unanimous understanding,” can take on a special meaning for each individual understanding, and in order to impart to it the character of universal bindingness, the scripture itself must be subordinated in relation to its understanding to some standard common to all. Protestantism never thought to find this unifying principle in the logical part of the human mind, which does not depend on any moral merits or shortcomings of the individual. But as the history of philosophy in modern times has shown, logical reason, for all its dispassionateness, is not so constant and immovable as to play the role of some kind of unshakable criterion. This mind develops, outgrows what it previously recognized as truth and creates new truths. It is also unlikely that there are many pastors at the present time who would agree in everything with the Augsburg Confession, although upon taking office they promise to recognize it as the basis of their faith. Natural reason has outgrown faith, and in modern times philosophical concepts are increasingly replacing religious ones. The lack of unity, both in thought and especially in life, became a distinctive feature of Protestant society, revealing with particular clarity the main germ of the one-sided education of modern Europe. 233 Almost all modern philosophy, the final link of which revealed the shortcomings of the age-old direction of the West, grew from a Protestant root, on the basis of logical reason; various social theories of later times also have their origin in the same mental one-sidedness that gave rise to the falling away of the Western Church from the Ecumenical Church, the casuistry of scholastic theology, the rationalism of Protestantism and many unsympathetic aspects of the practical life of the West, which will be discussed below. Rational philosophy developed almost exclusively in Protestant countries, but even in those cases where philosophical thought arose in a Catholic environment, it inevitably bore the character of rationalism. The famous Descartes was in a pleasant delusion that he managed to throw off the yoke of scholasticism, but his philosophy turned out to be very suitable for German rationalism. Despite the brilliant understanding of the formal laws of reason, Descartes was blind “to living truths” and considered his direct consciousness of his own existence not yet convincing, until he deduced it “from an abstract syllogistic conclusion.” This fact is very important, because it speaks not only about the personal characteristics of the philosopher, but also about the general direction of minds, which made us enthusiastically accept Descartes’ conclusion as the basis of modern thinking. German thinkers took advantage of the rational side of Descartes' system, whose rationalism led to the recognition of people and animals as some kind of machines, and he became the founder of German philosophy. France was not successful in finding new paths for philosophy either with Descartes or with Malebranche, since the new, in the sense of direction, that was in the systems of these philosophers did not fit “with the special character of popular thinking.” It is very likely that France could have its own philosophy if French education had freed itself from the mental oppression of Rome before it lost its faith. Signs of this possibility "were in what was common between the direction of Port-Royal and the opinions of Fenelon." Not resembling the official concepts of Rome, they sought “to develop inner life in its depths, looking for a living connection between faith and reason, above the sphere of external cohesion of concepts.” Port-Royal and Fenelon learned this direction from the writings of the ancient church fathers, from those very thoughts of theirs that rationalistic Rome could not understand and accommodate. Pascal, imbued with deep skepticism in relation to reason and deep confidence in religion, could provide a fruitful germ for a philosophy that would indicate new grounds for understanding the moral order of the world, would affirm a completely special way of thinking, different from the Roman scholastic and rational-philosophical. Pascal and Port-Royal, all Jansenists, understood well that “it is not enough to think, one must believe” 234 and if such thoughts were united with those that inspired Fenelon, who collected the thoughts of St. in defense of Guyon. fathers about inner life, then from such a combination a new original philosophy should have emerged, strong at that time to save France “from unbelief and its consequences.” True, this philosophy, as it arose outside the church, could not be completely true, but in any case it would be closer to the truth than any rationalistic speculation. However, the weak attempt of French thinking was not destined to come true: the Jesuits destroyed Port-Royal, which they hated, dispersed solitary thinkers, these ascetics “with thoughts directed towards God, with eyes directed solely to Him” and the nascent “life-giving direction” of thought died. Fenelon also suffered a setback: he was forced by the authority of the pope to renounce his cherished beliefs. The original philosophy of France froze at the very beginning and French education went along the mainstream of European rationalism, revealing in this direction no less jealousy than Germany and England. In comparison with England in particular, France turned out to be even more successful in destroying faith by subordinating all branches of the life of the spirit to one dry reason. In England, for example, Locke’s system still somehow coexisted alongside faith, but when the ideas of English thinkers fell on French soil (which actually began the development of French philosophy and the latter, more precisely, is essentially English), they acquired destructive force. English empiricism, which passed through Condillac to Helvetius and appeared here as pure materialism, served in France to radically destroy the last remnants of the surviving faith. Unrestrained in its one-sided development, European thought quickly followed its own path, dividing at the very beginning into two currents in the peoples of Romanesque origin, who “by their historical nature sought to merge internal self-consciousness with external life,” an experimental or sensual philosophy arose, ascending from external nature to the laws of being and life; The Germans, who constantly carried within themselves a “sense of separation of external from internal life,” created a philosophy that sought to derive the laws of existence from the very laws of reason. In both cases, rationalism played a major role, which can clearly be seen in the systems of all outstanding Western thinkers, representing, so to speak, the line of development of Western European philosophy. 235 The successor and student of Descartes in the sense of “dominance of philosophical development” was the famous Spinoza. This philosopher was not only not inferior to his predecessors in the power of formal thinking, but also surpassed them in his excess of logical rationality. He so skillfully and so firmly fettered “reasonable conclusions about the first cause, the highest order and structure of the entire universe” that behind this forest of syllogisms he could not “see the living Creator in the entire creation, notice his inner freedom in man.” The same mental cohesion of abstract concepts hid from the brilliant Leibniz the obvious connection of cause and action and forced him to assume a pre-established harmony, which partly compensates for the one-sided direction of his thinking with the “poetry of its main thought” - after all, when in a worldview the aesthetic or moral is added to the logical dignity, the mind returns to a greater extent to its primitive completeness and therefore comes closer to the truth. But Leibniz was a short glimpse of living thought in the general one-sidedness of Western philosophy. Subsequent representatives of Western philosophy remained faithful to the main philosophical tradition of the West. Trained by Bacon and Locke and homogeneous with them, Hume in his philosophizing relied exclusively on “impartial reason,” which gave him the opportunity to prove that there is no truth in the world and that both truth and lies are equally doubtful. Kant, prepared in turn by Hume, and at the same time by the German school, derived from the laws of pure reason the proposition that for this reason no evidence of higher truths exists. It is very possible that such a philosophy was only a short distance away from the complete truth, but the Western world was not yet ripe for it. The successor of Kant's work, Fichte, developed only one rational side of the Kantian system. Fichte, with the help of the same syllogisms, proved that the external world does not really exist and that it is nothing more than a peculiar manifestation of the self-developing “I”. Schelling turned Fichte's logic upside down, recognizing the external world as truly existing, and believed that the soul of the world is “the human self, developing in the existence of the universe in order only to recognize itself in man.” In Schelling’s system there was a significant innovation in the very direction of thinking, since now, instead of reason, with which the previous philosophy actually dealt, the center of gravity was transferred to reason, which receives its knowledge not from an abstract concept, but “from the very root of self-knowledge,” where thinking and being are united into an unconditional identity. This was a blow to rationalism, but it was not far from the living, integral understanding of the spirit. Schelling showed well the inconsistency of rational thinking, but the positive side of his system leaves much to be desired. 236 Demanding essential truth, based not on abstract speculation, but on thought imbued with faith, Schelling did not pay attention to “the special image of internal activity that constitutes the property of believing thinking.” Although there is one mind, the “images” of its action are different, depending on the degree to which the mind ascends, and the conclusions of the mind are also different, determined by the force that moves the mind. Schelling observed that the driving and animating force of the mind “does not come from the thought that is before the mind, but from the innermost state of the mind it comes to the thought in which it finds its peace and through which it is already communicated to other rational individuals.” This inner nature of the mind has always eluded the attention of Western thinkers, and Schelling, whose mind had inherited the habit of abstract logical thinking, could not pay attention to it. Schelling realized the one-sidedness of logical thinking under the influence of Hegel, in whom we have the extreme expression of European rationalism. Having delved more deeply than anyone before him into the very laws of logical thinking, Hegel brought them to the ultimate completeness and clarity of results. He, too, apparently operates with the mind, positing the thought process “not in logical development, moving through abstract conclusions, but in dialectical development, emanating from the very essence of the subject.” But “the circle of dialectical development of thought ascending from the first beginning of consciousness”, which is excited by the object of thinking that stands before the mind’s vision, “towards the general and pure abstraction of thinking, which at the same time is general essentiality”, exposes the true essence of Hegel’s philosophy. “Having spoken the last word, philosophical reason at the same time gave the mind the opportunity to recognize its limits.” Using the scheme of the dialectical process, which serves reason for the construction of philosophy, it is possible to decompose this very process, which turns out to embrace only possible, and not actual truth, while our knowledge is not limited to one negative side and requires thinking, “positively conscious and standing as much higher than logical self-development as a real event is higher than simple possibility.” 237 Logical consciousness does not fully grasp the subject. By translating “deeds into words and life into formulas,” it destroys the effect of an object on the soul. “By living in the mind, we live in a plan instead of living in a house.” True, at the present time a thinking person “willy-nilly must pass his knowledge through the logical yoke,” but he must remember that there is still a higher level of knowledge - hyper-logical knowledge, “where the light is not a candle, but life.” Western thought thought to be satisfied with logical reason, which, of course, has its legitimate rights as one of the tools of knowledge, but is not able to replace the whole light of truth. The latter is, as it were, merged with the fullness of life and must be comprehended in some other way, different from the path of exclusive rationalism. An entire area of ​​knowledge of the “hyper-logical” remains inaccessible to a person under the rationalism of thinking, and a person begins to feel and understand this, just as the modern West felt the “unsatisfactory” of its philosophy. 238 While Western rationalism, having made a desperate attempt to create a universal philosophy, has stopped in its development and continues only to move fruitlessly “in unimportant formulas,” in Europe, here and there, sparks of some new idea flare up. This is evidenced by the ferment that has emerged in various European countries, from France to Germany, a ferment that clearly indicates that the modern West is beginning to feel the “need for faith.” The new movement is still in its infancy, and judging by the material numerical majority, the dominance of the old rational trend continues, but for a real understanding of the modern condition of Europe one must “look not where there are more people, but where there is more inner vitality.” A numerical minority can express the “blatant needs of the age,” since a new movement must gradually begin with someone. In the future it will grow and take on wider dimensions, when the “disgusting results” of rationalism will become clear to many and when Europe will find firm convictions for its future existence. It is difficult to say when this will happen, but how it will happen is a question that seems quite clear. Having become, in view of the new emerging need for faith, in conflict with the (rational) foundations of its own development, Europe cannot be reborn on its own. The West is condemned to gradual extinction in the totality of its cultural activity, if it does not accept some new beginning from the outside, which would give the force of new life to its science and its art, etc. The search for such a beginning is noticeable in the West. The modern movement in the field of science, social and philosophical ideas clearly speaks of the desire to unite all aspects of life in any one center. Individual sciences no longer remain in their isolation, striving to join their common center - philosophy, philosophy itself is looking for a principle in the recognition of which it could merge with faith, and finally, Western peoples are showing a tendency to unite into one pan-European education. 239 But where will Europe find that center around which its disintegrated life will receive integrity? The new mood in Europe, emerging from the chaos of beliefs that have turned into fragments, must be attributed to the Christian principles preserved in the life of the West. Distorted by centuries of development, littered with rationalistic rubbish, they now declare about the decaying life in the West, and if Europe listens to its own voice, then it will have to turn to that Church where the truth of Christ has been preserved, alien to all distortions. Such a Church is the Russian Church, which accepted Christianity in its purest form. The West can quite naturally find the path of development that lies before it by listening to the inner voice of the human soul, in which “lies the possibility of consciousness” of the true paths of life. 240 Enlightenment based on Orthodox consciousness is the only true type of enlightenment, capable of satisfying the needs of living conviction, the faith that the West so needs now. Thus, Western European education is ready to take a new path; on the basis of its historical principles, it has developed to the point of contradicting itself and will be forced to seek reinforcement in principles previously alien to it, living in Russian education. But even Russian education itself, in its presence, is not completely alien to Western sourdough. Long-term contact with the enlightenment of the West and some other reasons that took place in our history delayed the development of Russian identity, so that at the present time, if there is a special element that is only characteristic of us in our education, it is not in a fully developed form, but only as hints of the true meaning of our enlightenment. We ourselves have only recently realized our peculiarities in comparison with the West. When Western enlightenment, which found relatively few supporters among us, revealed its inconsistency, only then did we pay attention to those special principles of enlightenment that once lived in Rus'. These principles, as it now turns out, have much in common with the new movements emerging in Europe, and this circumstance serves as a guarantee of our future connection with Europe. But before we attract the West to ourselves, we must clarify for ourselves the foundations of our historical existence, and work in this direction began already under the influence of European events. The actions of our government have been especially important in unlocking our identity. In the silence of monasteries, in the dust of forgotten archives, it discovered many precious monuments of Russian antiquity. 241 Under the influence of these discoveries, Russian scientists focused their attention on their native history and, to their great amazement, saw that they had previously been misled about the Russian people and, in particular, about their faith and the fundamental foundations of their way of life. Having impartially and deeply turned their attention inward to themselves and their fatherland, even former admirers of the West radically changed their views. However, due to the vagueness of the original Russian principles in the present Russia, it is not so easy to understand and express them. Long-term communication with the West, the Tatar yoke, which stopped the development of our identity for a long time, are a very noticeable raid on our history, as if darkening and obscuring its originality. It is necessary, therefore, in order to recognize ourselves, to turn to the circumstances of our initial development, when we began to stand firmly on our national soil, clearly revealing the first glimpses of our originality. Historical evidence tells us the following. The first stones laid at the foundation of our historical life are completely different from those elements from which the enlightenment of the West was composed. Of course, we also belong to Europe and in this sense, it would seem, we should share to a certain extent its fate (just as the individual peoples of Europe, to a certain extent, each should have their own originality), however, it is absolutely fair to divide the European world into two parts. “Each of the peoples of Europe has,” undoubtedly, “its own character of education,” “but these particular, tribal, state or historical characteristics do not prevent the peoples of Europe from forming a spiritual unity.” “In the midst of historical accidents” that distinguish the history of one people of Europe from the fate of another, the peoples of Europe “always developed in close and sympathetic” relation. On the contrary, Russia separated from Europe “in spirit” and lived for a long time “a life separate from it.” English, French, Italian, etc. never ceased to be Europeans, maintaining their nationality, and in order for a Russian to become a European, it was necessary to “destroy his national personality” and this fact clearly emphasizes the spiritual peculiarity of Russia. In a word, there is no doubt that Russian life stemmed from some other sources than Western life. 242 According to the way Kireevsky indicated three elements at the basis of the development of Western European life, which uniquely directed its course, he finds three similar facts at the basis of Russian historical life. The Russians adopted the Christian faith from Byzantium, from the east, and not from Rome, and by this alone they were guaranteed against being carried away into the one-sidedness of the West. The Eastern Church remained a representative of the Universal Church and the unanimity of the Orthodox East, unfamiliar to the West at a certain point, found full acceptance in the Russian Church. The Christian teaching, assimilated in its pure form, did not encounter any obstacles to the spread of its influence. In Greece and Rome, as well as in later Europe, imbued with the Roman spirit, Christianity found a hostile force in the life and other characteristics of Western peoples; in our country, on the contrary, our characteristics not only did not hinder the spread of Christ’s truth, but also contributed to its successful acceptance and establishment in the life of the people. This difference in the destinies of Christianity in the West and in our country was determined by the dissimilarity of the vital and practical concepts of our people with the same concepts in the West, and this dissimilarity, in turn, was explained by the position in our historical life of the classical element, which came to us not in its pure form, but already reworked under the influence of Christianity. The adoption of Christianity in the form of Orthodoxy, the unique way of life and the special position in our history of the ancient classical element - all this constitutes the distinctive features of our education, which began in our country in the pre-Mongol period. The named differences are partly rooted in Russian life, and partly they are the result of the influence of the East on us, in the light of whose history they appear, therefore, more clearly, just as the character of ancient Rome serves as a commentary on the history of the Christian West. 243 From the very beginning, the basis of Western European education was based on one-sided Roman elements, which determined in many essential features the general appearance of Western history. Rome, however, did not exhaust the legacy left by the classical world. Roman education had external dominance over life, while mental dominance was the lot of Greek education. If we take into account the advantages of the latter over the former, which consist in less one-sidedness of the direction of the mind and even in some versatility, it will be quite clear what advantages the education of the Orthodox East had, which accepted Greek science over Western science. 244 Roman education, built on a practical foundation, introduced special concepts, imbued with a practical meaning and rational character, into the life and customs of the West, splitting its life into internally incoherent parts and even disrupting church unity. The east was guaranteed from all this. The direction of thinking there was completely different from that in the West, which is why there could be neither scholasticism nor papacy there. While Western theologians for a very long time showed rationalism in revealing dogmas, eastern writers, without getting carried away into rational one-sidedness, constantly adhered to “that completeness and integrity of speculation that constitute the hallmark of Christian wisdom.” Already the first Eastern fathers of the church discovered a direction in which there were significant differences from the Western way of thinking, differences that later developed with greater clarity, just as in the West the first manifestations of rationalism later led to scholasticism. Eastern theologians, like Western theologians, tried to understand the revealed truth from reason alone, and at the same time, the Eastern Church was never a persecutor and persecutor of reason. 245 Both happened in the Western Church, which, due to the logical foundation laid in it, could not help but come to contradictions. Wanting to reconcile faith and reason exclusively through a syllogism, she first proved faith against reason (subordinating reason to faith by the power of rational arguments). But logically proven faith was no longer living, but formal faith; in essence, it was not even faith, but only the logical negation of reason. In this regard, the Western Church is undoubtedly the enemy of reason, and hence the persecution of those who thought in accordance with the teachings of the Church. At the same time there was the dominance of rationalism, which at first wriggled, so to speak, in faith, but later circumstances (Western philosophy) showed that Western rationalism was not as connected as it seemed. 246 This dual attitude towards reason, as the only means of comprehending the truths of faith, even as the means by which these truths can be obtained again and together as the enemy of faith, destroying it, speaks very clearly of the dichotomy that was the distinctive feature of the West. From the very beginning, the Orthodox East was alien to such a duality of faith and reason; at the same time, reason was never persecuted there. Pagan philosophy did not penetrate as deeply into the life of the Orthodox East as it did in the West, but it was not rejected there in the same form as was done again in the same West. Representatives of Eastern Christianity understood that “the harm and lies of philosophy lay not in the development of the mind it conveys, but in its latest conclusions, when it considered itself the highest and only true”; when the mind recognizes another truth, higher than it, then philosophy becomes a relative truth and serves as a means to establish a higher principle in the sphere of other education. Guided by precisely these views, the greatest luminaries of the Church: Justin, Clement, Origen (since he was Orthodox), Athanasius, Basil, Gregory and many others, not only became thoroughly familiar with pagan philosophy, but even used it to rationally construct Christian teaching. The true side of pagan philosophy appeared to them as a mediator between the faith of Christ and the external enlightenment of mankind that was dominant at that time, and such an attitude towards the pagan wisdom of Eastern Christian writers took place not only at the very beginning of the church in the east, but also after, both before the division of churches, and after their division. Traces of the acquaintance of Eastern theologians with pagan philosophy can be indicated before the half of the 15th century, and in this circumstance one cannot help but notice the difference with the West, which had very noticeable consequences in history. The West grew and developed on the basis of its primordial principles, feeding on the fruits of Latin thought and receiving very little (and even then it was too late) from the circle of Greek thinking (the works of writers of the Christian East little penetrated into the West and the principles of Eastern thinking could not take root there). The main difference between the two directions affected itself to such an extent that even the same phenomenon had a different fate in the west and east. The philosophy of Aristotle was known and could have influenced both in the West on scholasticism and in the East on the thinking of Eastern Orthodox theologians, but there and here this philosophy was accepted completely differently. In the West, Aristotle, with Arabic and Latin commentaries, became the alpha and omega of scholasticism, depending on which the building of Western European rationalism was further strengthened; in the East, the same Aristotle was known, but without additions, and besides, he was not accepted here willingly, preferring Aristotle to Plato, since the latter’s way of thinking “represents more integrity in mental movements, more warmth and harmony in the speculative activity of the mind." 247 After the Roman apostasy, the difference between Eastern Orthodox thinking and Western was especially noticeable, which boiled down to the fact that the Eastern direction, without rejecting reason and without elevating it to the criterion of faith, united in itself deep, living truths that elevate the mind from the rational direction to higher speculation. Orthodox thinking has never made any claims to rationally deduce the dogmas of faith or to accept only those doctrinal truths that can be justified by logic, and after the fall of Rome, the Orthodox East invariably adhered to the accepted direction. The Eastern Fathers, writing after the 10th century, did not bring anything new into the church consciousness. They held the pure truth of Christ, always being “at the center of true conviction,” from which they clearly illuminated the laws of the human mind and the path leading it to true knowledge. The thought of the Eastern fathers constantly turned “to the center of spiritual being,” to the voice of inner life, in tune with the truths of faith, and through this they created a special way of thinking that seeks not to arrange individual concepts of the mind, but to elevate the thinking spirit itself to a state of correctness. The individual activities of the spirit must merge “into one living and highest unity” - in order to achieve true knowledge, which, according to the West, was accessible “to the divided powers of the mind, acting self-propelled in their lonely separateness.” The West thought that with one sense one could understand the moral, another the graceful, the third the useful, etc., and when Western thinkers in the 14th century learned “about the desire of Eastern contemplatives to preserve the serenity of the inner integrity of the spirit”, they mocked this idea a lot. Meanwhile, for the East this thought contained all its highest wisdom, just as for the West the highest wisdom was rational philosophy. 248 The way of thinking inherited by the East in the beginnings of Orthodox tradition and strengthened by the all-pervasive activity of Orthodox Eastern thought, determining many essential aspects of the life of the East itself, as well as the direction of thought of the West, powerfully affected the everyday phenomena of its history, the nature of law, the structure of society, and finally, the practical activities of each individual. In the history of Byzantium itself, the significance of Eastern Christian philosophy for the organization of various aspects of private and public life had not yet fully emerged, but a reliable foundation had already been given and the special happiness of the Russian people was that its history began precisely on this solid foundation, which is the teaching of the fathers of the Eastern Church. In Russian life, the eastern principles promised a lot, as can be seen on different sides of it in the past, but in Byzantium these principles encountered many obstacles to their full implementation. We must not forget that Christianity, before prevailing over the world, and even after that, waged a constant struggle with its constant enemy - paganism. The latter was not completely destroyed even when the state became Christian. Polytheism was abolished, but the pagan spirit continued to operate in the state structure, in the laws, in the selfish, soulless government of Rome. Paganism manifested itself in courts that observed formal truth instead of genuine truth, in the morals of the people prone to luxury, and in many other phenomena and aspects of personal and public life. Constantine the Great declared the government, like the entire state, Christian, but the embodiment of the new spirit in the state structure took time. It goes without saying that if Constantine’s successors had been imbued with the same sincere respect for the Church as he himself, Byzantium could have become Christian, but at its head, often as rulers were apostate heretics who oppressed the church and saw in it only a means to achieve personal goals. The tradition of state power, its abstract state character, inherited from Rome, also served as a significant obstacle to the implementation of Christian concepts. Paganism in this case crept unnoticed from the pre-Christian society, which, as explained above, was an artificial construct: the Roman government, being an external forceful connection of many nationalities, did not have a natural foundation - the people. In this situation, the entire fortress of power rested exclusively “on the balance of popular hostility” and any manifestation of the public spirit of any one nationality, as unprofitable for the government, was invariably suppressed. The peoples did not have a fatherland, which is, as it were, a symbol of unanimity, and united by the truth of Christ, they were deprived of the opportunity to practically implement it given the antagonism of political sympathies. Under such conditions, a Christian had to abandon any social tendency, or carry out his convictions as a clear protest to the world. And Christians went to martyrdom, or retired into the desert. The desert and the monastery became almost the only field for the moral and mental development of man. 249 Thus, the faith of Christ could not receive full embodiment in the life of Byzantium, forced, due to the conditions of place and time, to wage a constant struggle against the hidden paganism. Among the conditions of Russian life, Christian teaching found extremely convenient soil for itself precisely because in our history there was no place for artificially arose power and our entire past life was firmly and naturally established on the principles of the people's community. The precious thoughts of the fathers of the Orthodox Church, which represented a solid basis for the organization of the truths of Christian life, came to us in Russia “along with the first good news of the Christian bell.” The teaching of the Gospel found favorable soil here. Whatever our opinion about the appearance of the Varangians in Rus' - whether we accept it as a voluntary calling of them by the whole land, or by just one party - one thing remains certain for us, that the Russian state did not begin by violence, not by conquest. A convincing argument in favor of this truth is the fact of the quite easy removal of a large part of the Varangian newcomers one hundred and fifty years after their appearance: based on this fact, we can believe that our state and social relations developed without any violent innovations. Very naturally, from the beginning of communal life, moral concepts also developed, so that the unanimity rooted in our life, with the penetration of Christianity to us, was also manifested in relation to the new teaching. Christian principles left a noticeable mark on the concepts of the people already in the very first time of the spread of Christianity among us. To what extent, so to speak, the new teaching turned out to be akin to the spirit of the people, this can be evidenced by the first, still rash desire of the saint. Vladimir forgive all criminals.” Inspired by Christian truth, Russian life successfully began to reform according to the ideas of the new teaching, and if we look closely at the features of ancient Rus', we will find there the beginning of the implementation of a Christian community. “The vast Russian land, even during the time of division into small principalities, constituted itself as one living body,” finding its focus not so much in language as in the unity of church belief. The entire vast expanse of ancient Rus' was covered with many monasteries, each standing alone, but an internal invisible connection united them. Individual tribes and principalities borrowed spiritual light from these monasteries, and this was the key to unity not only of the state, but also of everyone else, mental, moral and other things. 250 Old Russian monasteries were the all-encompassing center of the life of the people. Not only spiritual concepts emanated from them, but also social and legal concepts, or more precisely, these latter concepts passed through the educational influence of monasteries and again returned to public consciousness. Having monasteries as the governing principle of people's life, the Russian clergy spread with them the same range of ideas of Christianity among all classes of society. Thanks to such unanimity in the inculcation of Christian life, Russian enlightenment began to develop successfully, feeding mainly on eastern writings coming out of Constantinople, Syria and St. Mountains. The Greek fathers, “not excluding the most profound,” were translated, read and copied in Russian monasteries. 251 Education grew so quickly in Russia that now one can only be surprised when we remember that the appanage princes of the 12th-13th centuries had libraries, “with which the Parisian library, then the first in the West, could hardly be equal in the number of volumes.” It is known that many of the Russian princes spoke Latin and Greek as fluently as their native Russian, and some of the princes knew other European languages. Other facts known to history also speak for the high degree of ancient Russian enlightenment. The works of Isaac the Syrian, the most profound of philosophical writings, are still in the lists of the 12th and 13th centuries, and other lists of Slavic translations often contain such deep patristic speculations that they are “hardly enough for every German professor of philosophy to match the powers of wisdom.” Finally, we must remember that already one and a half hundred years have passed since our monasteries, these unfulfilled national universities, ceased to be the center of education and “the thinking part of the people, with their upbringing and their concepts, deviated significantly” from the principles of Russian life, and yet the principles of Russian life still survived “in the lower classes of the people.” So powerful was the influence of ancient Russian education, imbued with the principles of Ecumenical Christianity. 252 How was this influence on the life of the people expressed and how, above all, did it determine the various aspects of the Orthodox-Russian view? Ancient Russia “did not shine with either artistic or scientific inventions, not having time to develop in this regard, but it contained the first condition for any correct development” - the organizing beginning of life, the beginnings of Christian philosophy. Just as in the life of the West throughout its history up to and including the present day, the rational principle lived and manifested itself in various one-sided ways, so in the life of ancient Russia the principles characteristic of a harmoniously developing spirit were always active. Hence, just as in the West, on certain concepts that dominated there in matters of faith and knowledge - the relationship of the church to the state in legal concepts, the same rational one-sidedness was manifested, so in the corresponding ancient Russian concepts an invariably “organizing” original Russian principle was revealed. The main, fundamental effect of that beginning in Russian life was expressed in the relations of the Orthodox mind to questions of faith, relations in which the boundaries of reason and faith stood firmly. “No matter how much believing thinking strives to reconcile reason with faith, it will never accept dogma as a simple conclusion of reason” and will never assign the meaning of revealed teaching to the conclusion of reason. Not only “the thoughtful consideration of a scientist,” but even “no assembly of bishops,” no authority, “no impulse of general opinion,” can introduce something new into the teaching of faith, destroy anything, or confuse the field of science with the truths of revelation. When Christian teaching goes beyond the boundaries of church tradition, it already “appears as a private opinion, more or less respectful, but subject to the judgment of reason.” On the other hand, when the opinion of an entire people, at least the majority of all Christians, not recognized by previous centuries, wanted to pass itself off as dogma, it could not be recognized by the Church. The Orthodox Church does not limit itself to any time, even if this time considers itself more reasonable than all other moments in history, but “the entire totality of Christians of all centuries, present and past, constitutes one indivisible, eternally living collection of the faithful, united by the unity of consciousness as much as by the communion of prayer.” “Protecting itself on the basis of universal religious consciousness from incorrect interpretations of natural reason,” the Orthodox Church at the same time represents freedom for this very reason on the path of its special rational activity. From the point of view of such principles of church consciousness, it is equally impossible to justify either the fanaticism of Catholics, who commanded the burning of Galileo, or the Protestant arbitrariness with which the reliability of the holy book was rejected, when the latter turned out to be out of compliance with the concepts of any private person. Thus, the Orthodox faith, establishing, in contrast to Catholicism and Protestantism, harmony between the individual forces of the human spirit, imparts to its bearer, be it an individual or a people, a holistic view that includes all aspects of life and constitutes a living, strong conviction of the people’s soul. 253 Taking shape on such a holistic basis, in contrast to the one-sided principles of the West, ancient Russian life naturally had to present a picture that was not similar to the phenomena that took place in the history of Western Europe. “Undistorted by conquest,” naturally growing on the soil of communal life, sanctified by the principles of the Gospel, “the Russian land was not embarrassed by those violent forms” that arose in the west from the struggle of tribes “forced to organize their life together in constant hostility.” In ancient Russian life there was no place for individualism, which in the West gave rise to the struggle of personal interests and conditional rights and all the details in general exposing the power of pagan principles in the life of the West. In the conditions of previous Russian life, the individual was not a legislator, because then there was no law, understood in the sense of external law. The countless small worlds that made up Rus', borrowing concepts about public and private relations from the teachings of the church, assimilated these concepts into custom, which replaced the law. Due to the dominance of the social and moral principle, a firm universal custom, any change in the social structure that was inconsistent with the structure of the whole was impossible. Family relations, for example, were determined for everyone “before his birth,” just as the relations of the family to the world, the world to the gathering, the gathering to the evening, were determined by the power of the same communal principle. It was a social order based not on private wisdom, but on public aspirations, and therefore free from the predominance of the interests of any particular group. Russian life “knew neither the iron demarcation of fixed classes,” nor the constraining advantages of one of them over the other, “neither political struggle, nor class contempt,” hatred, etc. There was no autocracy, no lordship, neither noble nor vile. Imagining “Western society of feudal times,” we can imagine its picture in no other way than in the form of many castles, “fortified by walls, inside which lives a noble knight... around which... - the vile mob.” In this case, only the knight, legislator and judge of those subordinate to him were a person; the mob was only a part of his castle. Continuous, unjust war - this is the history of the West, which began with war and division and developed with the same destructive phenomena. It’s not the same in Rus', which was formed on the basis of communal life and Orthodoxy. Imagining “Russian society of ancient times, you see neither castles, nor the vile mob surrounding them, nor noble knights. You see countless small communities, settled all over the face of the Russian land, each having, with certain rights, its own manager and each constituting its own special agreement or its own little world: these small worlds or agreements merge into other large agreements, which in turn constitute regional and, finally, tribal agreements, from which one common huge agreement of the entire Russian land is already formed, having above it the Grand Duke of All Rus', on which the entire roof of the public building is established, all the connections of his supreme structure rely.” 254 This is what ancient Rus' is, as an organized whole. It is quite understandable that in conditions of such a simple life, the laws should be the simplest, in any case, far removed from the egoistic casuistry of formal law. These were not even laws, but age-old customs, without written codes, “emanating from the church and strong in the agreement of morals with the teachings of the faith.” Coming from everyday life and legends, from internal conviction, ancient Russian laws, both in their spirit and in their composition and in their applications, should have been more internal in nature than external. The word right itself was unknown among us and was replaced by another concept of truth or justice. In the West, social relations were based on a condition that was an artificially constructed form. For Western jurisprudence, form is law; individual legal concepts there must be linked into one reasonable system, where each part logically and correctly develops from the whole. In compliance with the form, or what is also the condition, of the law, on the right relationship. It is obvious that with such legal concepts, all forces, all interests, all things exist separately and are united not according to the natural order of things, but either by chance or artificially, and that in Western life “material force” or “the sum of individual understandings” can dominate. Free from the rationalistic principles of life, which gave rise in the West to the desire for material interests and the dominance of the majority (which is essentially the same thing, since the goal of the majority is, again, material good), Rus' (ancient) did not invent the law; on the contrary, it grew on its own? by the force of the natural course of things. “The law in Russia was first invented by some scientists, legal advisers, was not discussed... eloquently in some meeting and did not then fall out of the blue in the midst of an astonished crowd of citizens.” The “logical movement of laws” can only exist where the public is based on an artificial foundation, but where it is established on a natural unanimity, there any violent change could be to the detriment of conviction, which in this case would be replaced by opinion. But opinion is not a reflection of common aspirations, but of the interests of one particular party, and it has no place in a social structure that has developed “according to the law of natural rebellion in a monosemantic existence.” 255 A particularly clear manifestation of the inner truth that lived in the structure of ancient Rus' is the legal position of princely power and the concept of land ownership. In contrast to the artificial power of the Roman and Byzantine, which was not the natural completion of the national structure 256, but, on the contrary, a violent form of the state, princely power in Rus' was determined in its special character by the totality of the conditions of the people's life. “We do not have... the exact boundaries of princely power before the subordination of the appanage principalities to Moscow,” but if we take into account “that the force of custom made any subordinate legislation impossible,” the general significance of princely power will be seen as the natural end of people’s life. The prince was responsible for the analysis of various cases and the trial, but he decided both according to a comprehensive custom - like orders and peaces. In case of violation of correct relations with the people, the prince was therefore often expelled. The same communal spirit was clearly evident in ancient Rus' on the nature of land ownership, while in the West land ownership was the source of the owner’s personal rights (just as Western law in general had material foundations and was bought in this sense), in our country it was in the possession of society. In the structure of ancient Russian life, personality was the first thing, and property was only a casual relationship. The land belonged to the community because the community consists of families, and families consist of individuals who can cultivate the land. “With an increase in the number of persons, the amount of land owned by a family increases, and with a decrease, it decreases.” “The right of the community over the land is limited by the right of the landowner,” the latter’s right, in turn, is limited by the law of the state. It is not the estate that determines the relationship of the landowner to the state, but the very fact of ownership depends on these relationships. In a word, a person participated in the right of ownership to the extent that he was part of society, and it was not property that determined the rights, but the personality, understood as part of the whole society. In the absence of individual isolation, characteristic of Western European life and conditioned there by the general one-sided direction of life, those abnormal relations between the church and civil spheres that took place in the West could not have appeared in ancient Rus'. The Western Church, driven to fall away from the Ecumenical Church, sought external support for itself in rational syllogism, in the secular power of its representatives. Having established external unity, placing a single head over itself, uniting spiritual and secular power, the Western Church only completed the division of its activities, which existed in the soul of each individual member of it as a division of faith and reason. The double tower, rising above the Catholic stake, serves as a symbol of this bifurcation. In the Russian Church, which inherited from the Orthodox East a complete understanding of Christ's truth, the boundaries of secular and spiritual power stood as firmly as the boundaries of reason and faith. Already at the very first stages of the assimilation of Christianity by the Russian people, the church defined once and for all the boundaries between the unconditional purity of its highest principles and the everyday confusion of the social structure. When Vladimir expressed a desire “to forgive all criminals, the church stopped him from fulfilling such a desire, putting ... a distinction between personal-spiritual and secular-governmental responsibilities.” Remaining in this, as in other cases, outside the state, its worldly relations, as an ideal, the church never showed any desire to forcibly control the will of the people. She extended her influence only to the personal conviction of everyone and did not at all think about acquiring secular government power. True, the state stood as a church; it was the stronger in its foundations the more it was imbued with the church spirit, but from this one cannot yet conclude that the church aspired to be a state. In turn, the state did not encroach on the affairs of the church. The state was conscious of its secular purpose and would never call itself “holy” in the sense in which the West called the “holy Roman empire.” We know the words “Holy Rus',” but they are said not because our state represents in its structure a mixture of ecclesiastical and secular power, but “solely with the thought of those holy relics and monasteries and churches of God,” which meant so much in Russian life. Our church ruled the worldly body as the spirit rules the body. Without resorting to external means of influence, it exclusively acted on the mental and moral convictions of people, as if by invisible paths it led the state to the implementation of the highest Christian principles, without at the same time interfering with its natural development. The absence in our life of such phenomena as knightly orders and the Inquisition, which took place in the West, especially emphasizes the basic nature of the relations of our church on the issue of measures of influence on the flock. It may sometimes even seem incomprehensible why something similar to chivalry did not arise among us, for example, during the Tatar rule? Our power did not have material strength at that time, society was in complete disorder, and the police had not yet been invented. Why, under such circumstances, would not people appear who would take advantage of “the superiority of their strength over peaceful farmers and townspeople... would seize individual lands, villages, and build fortresses there?” The Church could take advantage of this noble class by forming orders from it and using their power “against the infidels.” This, however, did not happen, no matter how natural such a course of things was from the point of view of worldly benefits. 257 Our “church did not sell its purity for temporary benefits” and therefore “did not invest the character of churchliness in worldly structures” similar to the various secular-spiritual institutions of the West. We had heroes only before the introduction of Christianity, after which we had robbers who were rejected by the church. If she had taken advantage of gangs of robbers, classifying them among the servants of the cause of God and promising forgiveness of sins for killing infidels, it would not have been easier to incite crusades among us. Catholicism did just that, renaming mere thieves into holy and honest thieves. But the Orthodox Church had a very special principle of activity, by virtue of which it did not use ready-made things for its own purposes, but produced from itself the characteristics characteristic of ancient Russian life, without submitting to the temptation of worldly benefits. The Church did not adapt to worldly interests, did not strive for external artificial unity, but, revealing its internal strength, quite naturally extended its influence to all classes, to all relationships, creating a strong internal unity, which was expressed externally by the same needs, the desire for the common good, and the consistency of all external activities. 258 The predominance of the internal over the external was the main feature of ancient Russian life, which distinguished it from the direction of life in the West. With such significance of the internal foundations of life in ancient Rus', with the completeness and purity of the expression of Christianity, the form of expression merged so closely with the expressed spirit that it was easy to confuse them with significance and accept the form on a par with its inner meaning. This fact especially needs to be borne in mind when we want to find out the significance of various historical circumstances that delayed the development of our original enlightenment. Our enlightenment, based on the internal integrity of thinking, did not fully develop, did not reveal either full prosperity in the mind or full fruit in life, but was delayed, first by the disasters of Tatar rule, then by the gradual penetration of foreign principles into Russian life, and, finally, by the reforms of Peter, who took a decisive step - to introduce Western principles into Russian history. The power of these external facts in the fate of Russian enlightenment is undoubtedly very great, but it alone cannot explain the changes in our history that have taken place contrary to the centuries-old foundations of Russian life. The most external circumstances could take place as a measure taken by Providence as a result of certain manifestations of human freedom, or rather human weakness. It was not without the inner guilt of the Russian man that circumstances favorable to our enlightenment arose, and this guilt consisted precisely in the confusion of form with the essential and even in the preference for form. In the 16th century we already clearly see “that respect for form largely prevails over respect for spirit,” but the beginning of this imbalance should be sought even earlier. “Some defects that crept into the liturgical books, peculiarities in the rituals” stubbornly persisted in our church, although relations with the East exposed the inconsistency of both the rituals and the liturgical text with what was accepted in the Ecumenical Church. In addition, it is known that even “at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries there were strong parties between representatives of the then educated Russia, who mixed Christian with Byzantine and wanted to determine the social life of Russia according to Byzantine laws.” “The private legal decrees of Byzantium were not only studied, but were respected almost on an equal basis with the general ecclesiastical decrees.” We have already seen how Byzantine laws affected the Christian life of Byzantium itself, and it is clear that their application in the conditions of Russian life should have had a harmful effect on our education. The moment of application of foreign laws was at the same time the beginning of decline in Russian life. Piety began to decline in the monasteries, “which had retained their outward splendor,” and mutual relations between the classes “began to take on the character of an ugly formality.” Little by little, the old Russian truth begins to be replaced by jurisprudence and the level of morality of the people decreases. A particular tendency to prefer form was revealed under the fear of the impending Union, and over a period of time, respect for the tradition that Rus' stood for turned into a commitment more to its external side. In this movement towards form, which clearly manifested itself primarily in the schism, the fate of indigenous Russian education was already decided. By subordinating his development to form, “Russian people thereby deprived themselves of the opportunity for living and correct growth in original enlightenment, and although they preserved the holy truth in a pure and undistorted form, they hindered the free development of the mind in it and thus were first subjected to ignorance and then, as a result of ignorance, submitted to the influence of someone else’s education.” The borrowing of Western enlightenment was reflected, on the one hand, by ignorance - for the loss of purity of originality, and on the other hand, by the one-sidedness that emerged as a result of this loss in the direction of the interests of the Russian mind. Thus, Russian life, especially since the time of Peter’s reform, lost its native soil and its development followed the same path along which the life of the West was directed at all moments of its history. 259 The hopelessness of Western enlightenment, clearly revealed recently, should become a compelling reason for us to return to the true beginnings of Russian life. This does not mean that we will completely reject the results of Western education. Not to mention the various shortcomings that were inherent in Russian life in its past and would now be undesirable, we cannot completely abandon much that was borrowed from the West. Russian life in the past represented a lot of good sides, but what was suitable in its time may turn out to be inappropriate now, and therefore, by maintaining the main direction of life, as it was determined in our country on the basis of original principles, we can discard from it everything bad, even if it arose a long time ago, filling in the gaps with the necessary borrowings from the West. In addition, no matter what enemies of Western enlightenment we may be, “is it possible without madness to think that someday, by any force, the memory of everything that it received from Europe will be destroyed in Russia” over the course of two centuries?! In addition to considering the good and bad features of our past life from a modern point of view, respect for reality requires that, on the one hand, we recognize the inevitability of including in the circle of our lives some results of the enlightenment of the West, and on the other, we need to determine the correct development of our own original Russian principles. The harm that foreign education produces in the mental and moral development of Russia cannot be removed by force. Thought cannot be stopped by any quarantines, and besides, the harm to our education would be even more noticeable if we completely broke with the West. There are so many foreign concepts moving into Russian education that further borrowings seem positively inevitable in the interests of that same education. Western enlightenment has recently reached its extreme limits, where its one-sidedness has been revealed and the assimilation of these extreme conclusions of the West can only be useful for determining the paths of Russia's original development. If Russia had not recognized Schelling and Hegel, how would the dominance of Voltaire and the encyclopedists have been destroyed in our country? Finally, let’s assume that we managed to completely eliminate all Western influence from our life, in which case Russia would have to fall into ignorance, a state in which the introduction of a foreign culture can be considered a bad thing. But such repetitions of experiments that were inevitable in their time are absurd, and therefore the task dictated by modernity does not include such extremes as completely ignoring the West, and on the other hand, it is the task of organizing Russian life on the basis of original Russian principles. 260 “Perhaps good Providence allowed the Russian people to move through ignorance to the subordination of foreign education, so that in the struggle against foreign elements, Orthodox enlightenment would take over the entire mental development of the modern world... and, enriched by worldly wisdom, Christian truth would more fully... demonstrate its dominance over the relative truths of the human mind.” The beginning of knowledge, living in the Orthodox Church, is “life-giving for the mind and science,” which will develop “in accordance with this beginning.” On the other hand, the wealth of knowledge achieved by the West can serve as an incentive for proper development and as a support for this development in the human mind. The natural acquisitions of the human mind are not rejected by church consciousness; on the contrary, it gives life and real strength to the acquisitions of human thought, and answers all questions of the mind and heart. Therefore, the reconciliation of Western and Russian education “in such thinking, the basis of which would contain the very root of ancient Russian education, and the development would consist in the consciousness of all Western education and in the subordination of its conclusions to the spirit of Orthodox Christian wisdom... could be the beginning of a new life here, and then in Europe. The possibility of such knowledge is close to the mind of “every educated and believing person.” Urgently required by the totality of our entire life, it is ready to ignite at the slightest spark of truth. This new knowledge must “harmonize faith and reason, fill the void that bifurcates the two worlds that require union, establish spiritual truth in the human mind by its visible dominance over natural truth and elevate natural truth by its correct relationship to the spiritual and, finally, connect both truths into one living thought, for truth is one, as one mind of man, created to strive for one God. 261 This path of development that lies before Russia is not only a path of thought, but at the same time a path of life. Our integrity of life in the past was expressed not in speculation, which we actually did not have then in the sense of a definite theory, but in the integrity of certain beliefs with activity. We establish the very concept of the integrity of our past life, or the loss of this integrity, on the basis of the facts of the external, practical life of ancient Rus'. The loss of integrity was accompanied in our country by a decrease in the quality of moral life or, what is the same, by losing virtue, Russian people lost the fundamental sign of their existence. That deviation from the path of original development, which was given to us under the dominance of foreign education, began precisely from the external side of life, from the infatuation or temptation of the benefits of Western life. Having inherited by tradition a special way of thinking that guarantees against deviating towards the path of rationalism, the Russian person, even when he has it, is inclined to disbelief not through logical arguments, but as a result of the temptations of life. In such cases, logic serves only as a means to justify one’s apostasy in one’s own eyes, for which purpose a theory is substituted for known facts. Over time, the invented system can completely replace faith, direct conviction, and then it is already difficult to return to the path of previous beliefs. The Russian people look very far from such a sad end. It is not even the people who betray our primordial beliefs, but only one class of this people - the educated part of Russian society. Immersed in ever more foreign education, the upper class is detached from the foundations of Russian life and through this introduces disharmony into its moral order. The other part of the nation, although also carried away by the temptations of external life, following the upper class, still retains within itself the grain of its former life - pure faith and other precious qualities. This tradition, living among the people, is the guarantee of our future development and the guarantee of the revival of Europe. Relying on the best part of the people’s soul, the part that has not yet been touched by the pernicious influence of the West, we will build our own religious and national ideal, which at the same time is a universal ideal. The content of this ideal is suggested by the past of Russian life, when it began to embody the features of a Christian community. From the facts of the past, imprinted by the spirit of the Christian idea, from the way of thinking inherited by tradition, should emerge that philosophy of life that we so need and which will be life-giving not only for us, but also for the West. 262 It was noted above that the integrity that Kireevsky sets as an ideal for both Russia and Europe is not only the integrity of view, but also of life itself. In fact, if the “way of thinking” was so important in the whole history that it determines its character in all aspects of human life, then, obviously, it is impossible to evaluate the whole life according to any aspect of it. Life must represent the moral meaning of our existence, and to qualify such a meaning, one thought, one view, even a whole one, is very little. On the contrary, the very integrity of thinking is recognized by the integrity of life. In our mind there is a norm that defines the correct “way of thinking”, indicating our fundamental relationship to God, but since there is a living, strong conviction here, the inner consciousness must manifest itself in the sum of external relations, completely consistent with the highest aspirations of our soul. With this understanding of the whole life, the external side of life acquires an extremely important meaning. Our inner content is reflected on it, like in a mirror. Through references to individual moments in the life of Russia and Europe, we have already seen how the noted fact was expressed in major historical events, but the same truth is even more clearly confirmed by the details of private spheres of life, various features of family life, and the everyday discovery of folk morals and customs. These less noticeable aspects of life, upon careful observation, turn out to be imprinted by the same general spirit, the same general conviction that prevails at a certain time among a certain people. There are moments when the harmony of the external side of life with its internal basis seems to be broken, practical life begins to develop contrary to basic beliefs, but in such cases we do not have the norm of life, but a deviation from it, a painful period of history from one path to another. For example, since the reform, Russian life has noticeably begun to lose its high moral properties, but this does not speak for the possibility of a bifurcation between belief and life, as is the norm. In conditions of true enlightenment there is no place for such a division, which can only be understood in an atmosphere of pagan unprincipledness. If, with the spread of Western influence in our lives, contradictions with our age-old beliefs were discovered, then these contradictions were soon smoothed out, since after practical deviations came theory, which also represented a deviation from previous views, but was completely consistent with the new direction of life. In this case of bifurcation, one can, therefore, rather see the interaction of practice and theory. This was the case in the educated Russian class, which, while changing the way of Russian life, at the same time changed its beliefs, its theory. A similar thing happened among the common people. Tempted by the external benefits that the West brought, the people discovered many things in their lives that were in conflict with its age-old principles. For example, the power of inner truth has been lost by our people, so that it is now “easy for a Russian person to lie.” Under the influence of Western concepts, which initially penetrated the upper class, the common people began to become infected with an external view of life. The lodge seems to him to be some kind of inevitable external sin, arising from the need for external relationships. Hence, our people have lost respect for the word. “His word is not he, but his thing, which he owns as Roman property. He doesn’t even value his oath.” It goes without saying that such a distortion of life, even if it did not begin with the theoretical destruction of previous norms, cannot, however, fail to influence theoretical beliefs. With a certain consistency in the destruction of the foundations of moral life and with attempts to logically justify this destruction, a change can and even must occur in the very direction of thinking, which wastes its integrity in the actual fragmentation of life. And indeed, following the loss of certain features of moral life, we could lose the very “way of thinking” characteristic of us, if the conviction that created our past life did not continue to live among the common people, at least in a limited form. Now, based on the remains, we can again restore the integrity we have lost, turning for lessons to the structure of ancient Russian life: there we will find specific features of the ideal that we have to realize on the path of original development. 263 The very content of the ideal consists of some kind of speculation, detached from life, but in a unifying synthesis of the principles of practical life with the speculative principles of knowledge, which in this unity constitute the integral life of a person. All human actions are subject to “the invisible, often imperceptible current of the moral order of things, which carries with it all general and private activity.” From this point of view, it seems very interesting to understand the theoretical foundations (in thinking) of the life of this or that people, or rather, to understand this life from the point of view of theory, to delve into its practical life, grasping its moral meaning. The study of this side of folk life is inextricably linked with the comprehension of all other aspects of it, and therefore the nature of Western and Russian life means a lot for understanding Western and Russian history. All the more important, of course, for this purpose are the private manifestations of this life in individual aspects of life, in more or less isolated, private facts. Taking into account the fact that any general order is formed on the basis of particular facts, from the “totality of private wills,” it will be very important to note, in order to reveal the ideal that lies before us, some individual facts in our past, facts that appeared there as the result of a living, immediate conviction, and with a certain development of national self-consciousness should become the basis for our philosophy, which will be built not only on new principles of thinking, but also on the reality itself that concealed these principles. 264 Imbued with a strong living aspiration that holistically embraces all the private actions and aspirations of people, the original Russian life was characteristically distinguished by a special meaning even in private facts. The true nature of Russian enlightenment was reflected in the unity of all its particular manifestations, in the coherence of moral life, determined by a single principle. The advantages of such a life stand out quite clearly in comparison with the life of the West, which was the result of other historical forces and represents a complete moral disorder. The private life of Europe was and is as disjointed as the whole life of the West, taken in the general picture of its history and in its most significant facts. The dividing principle carried out its crushing work, starting with the life of each individual consciousness, and from here private life first of all received that unsettled character that seals the general background of Western European enlightenment. In the West, family life, due to the general spirit of education, has come to complete disorder. Starting from the upper classes, who were representatives of education, the weakening of family ties passed to the lower ones, to all other layers of society, which, in the general direction of life, were in complete harmony with the higher ones. The usual picture of education that prevailed in the West, illustrating the most characteristic features of the way of family life, was such that children were brought up behind the eyes of the mother. In those states, especially where “the fashion of raising daughters in monasteries was a general custom of the upper class,” the mother of the family was something extraneous in relation to the interests of the family. She crossed the threshold of the monastery in order “to walk down the aisle,” and then immediately entered “the vicious circle of secular duties,” without recognizing family responsibilities. Relationships outside the family took precedence over family relationships and it is quite natural that “proud and noisy pleasures” replaced for such a mother “the anxieties and joys of a quiet nursery.” “The ability to live in society, salon courtesy,” having developed at the expense of all other interests that could have existed, but were absent, “became an essential part of female dignity.” It was not the family that served as the source of social life here, but the artificial atmosphere of the living room, where intelligence and education and, in general, everything valuable in life were concentrated. The consequence of such details of family life in the West was the development of “social sophistications”, the moral oppression that the lower classes experienced from the upper classes, stretching out behind the first in the structure of private life, and, finally, the beginnings of the doctrine of the emancipation of women. 265 Family life in Russia took a completely different direction. If in the West, the individualism characteristic of all Western life penetrated the family, splitting it into many parts, then in Rus' the family was a stronghold of popular solidarity, and, first of all, embodied the organizing principle of an integral life. The family meaning was not violated in the Russian person, since in the conditions of ancient Russian life, “the individual never sought to reveal his native peculiarity, as some kind of dignity.” Therefore, no form of community life in our country could accept a separate development, divorced from the life of the entire people. We were guided not by private opinion, not by the authority of the living room, but by a common conviction, which expressed the integrity of everyday life. The “whim of fashion” had no power with us. In the West, the pursuit of fashion, the desire for luxury, were a manifestation of the general one-sidedness of the West, and such facts could not take place here, with a completely different direction of life, which was primarily reflected in the family. The nature of family life in ancient Rus' can be judged partly by modern peasant life. Having delved into “the inner life of our hut,” we will see that “constant, every minute self-sacrifice” was not some kind of “heroic exception” here, but an ordinary, constant fact. “Each family member, with his incessant work and concern for the intensive progress of the entire economy, never has his own personal self-interest in mind.” The motivation for work here is not the thought of one’s own benefit, but the common interests of the family, which “has one common goal and spring,” the result of the work is entrusted to the head of the family, who is not controlled by anyone and whose trust rests only on the solidarity of the family. “The lifestyle of the entire family usually improves little from the excessive excesses of the head of the family” and individual family members “do not even seek to find out the magnitude” of these excesses, but with the same “self-forgetfulness” the common work continues, inspired by the duty of conscience. In earlier times, the manifestation of family solidarity in Russian life “was even more striking,” since “families were larger” and yet they “preserved their integrity.” And now, however, one can see the manifestation of the same family feelings of a Russian person. “In case of misfortunes in life,” how “willingly” and even “joyfully one member of the family is always ready to sacrifice himself for another.” All-pervasive love in Russian life was a natural manifestation of the general direction of Russian life, just as selfishness in social and family relations in the West was in complete harmony with the one-sided aspirations of Western man in all spheres of life According to these two laws, the law of love and the law of egoism, values ​​were created in the life of a Russian and in the life of a Western European. The latter, reaching in his individualism to the extent of trampling on family feelings and setting the goals of life to interests of a narrow personal nature, could not rise in his understanding of life beyond the grossly sensual side of it. Luxury in the West was the “legitimate consequence of the fragmented aspirations” of society and the individual; it was, so to speak, in the very nature of Western education. Luxury could be condemned by the spiritual there, “but in the general opinion it was almost a virtue.” “They did not give in to her as a weakness, but were proud of her as an enviable advantage. In the Middle Ages, people looked with respect at the external splendor surrounding a person, and merged their concept of this external splendor into one feeling with the concept of the very dignity of a person. A person was assessed in the West by external, accidental advantages, which were thought to replace the internal advantages of the human personality. Appearance, external well-being, external virtue are the main thing and when they exist, a Western person is completely satisfied with himself, proud of his advantages. By external means, he even thinks of “easing the burden of internal shortcomings” and in those cases when his external actions come into conflict with generally accepted concepts of morality, he invents some external justification for himself so that his internal proud well-being is not disturbed. This is not what we see in Russian morals. In the direction of enlightenment, when all particular manifestations of life are determined by the living consciousness of some higher goal, neither luxury nor other purely external values ​​can be the content of the ideal of life. The simplicity of life and the uncomplicated needs attract our attention as a complete contrast between the ancient Russian life and the Western one. And these facts were not a consequence of our lack of funds or poor development of education, but flowed from the very essence of our enlightenment. Luxury penetrated us, but like an infection. Adopting it from the West, they apologized for it, “they succumbed to it as a vice, always feeling its illegality not only religious, but also moral and social,” since public life was imprinted with a religious character. It can be argued, bearing in mind the integrity of our past way of life, that the artificial life of the West, with its comfort and effeminacy, would never have received citizenship rights from us - precisely because it contradicts the entire spirit of our education. Russian people, while in the West everyone was consumed by the desire for luxury and wealth, was very far from being committed to material wealth. He respected the rags of the holy fool more than gold and brocade. Brought up in the demands of the highest inner truth, he strove to rise internally “above external needs,” which he understood according to his practical view of life. “If the science of political economy existed then... it would not have been understandable to the Russians.” He would not have understood “how it is possible to irritate people’s sensitivity to external goods with the intention of irritating them.” Russian people understood wealth in such a way that it is one of the secondary conditions of life and therefore should “be not only in close connection with other, higher conditions,” but also completely subordinate to them. 266 Nevertheless, of course, the Russian man was capable of experiencing proud satisfaction with himself. He “always vividly feels his shortcomings, and the higher he ascends the ladder of moral development, the more he demands of himself and therefore the less satisfied with himself.” Self-satisfaction is not characteristic of the Russian person, and in those cases when he deviates from the true path, he does not seek to justify his deviation with a cunningly constructed system of syllogisms; on the contrary, in moments of passion he is always ready to recognize that he is wrong. This consciousness of one’s guilt before the court of a higher truth, not external, but internal, along with the fulfillment of the law of love in relation to one’s neighbors, distinguished and now partly distinguishes the Russian from the selfishly self-satisfied Western European. Based on the indicated features of our past and partly present life, we can rightfully say that if we had developed arts during a different course of Russian life, they would have been imprinted with a character that fully corresponded to the foundations of people's life. In the West, one-sided direction, rationality, individualism, and the field of art left their noticeable stamp. This, of course, is quite understandable from the connection between all aspects of life, because the arts developed in the West “sympathetically with the general movement of thought, and therefore the same fragmentation of the spirit, which in speculation produced logical abstraction, in the fine arts gave rise to dreaminess and fragmentation of heartfelt aspirations.” “Instead of keeping the meaning of beauty and truth in that inextricable connection that preserves the integrity of the human spirit, the West based its beauty on a deception of the imagination,” on a “one-sided feeling” born from a “double mind.” Hence the pagan worship of untrue beauty. Just as reason in the West became cunning, truth became opinion, science became syllogism, and feeling there turned into passion, receiving a false direction. On the basis of original Russian principles, under favorable conditions, art of a different nature should arise and develop. Proceeding from “the entire totality of human relationships and returning back to the very depths of the human spirit,” it would strengthen its strength, expressing and protecting “the internal integrity of being, necessary not only for the truth of reason” (in the sphere of mental activity), “but also for the fullness of the graceful” (enjoyment of true beauty. 267 Practical life in all its spheres is closely organically connected with a certain system of thinking, and from its various manifestations we guess about the most dominant direction of the mind. We observe manifestations of selfless love, popular humility, the people’s preference in life for values ​​of a certain order, and from these facts we determine the basis on which these facts themselves depend, being at the same time material for theory. The phenomena indicated in the private life of Rus', depicting its spiritual appearance, clearly show where the main reason for the various aspects of its life, which took shape exactly this way and not otherwise, is rooted. If a Western person prays with ardent zeal in the morning, then rests from zeal, forgetting prayer, doing his everyday work, from which he rests “with laughter and the ringing of drinking songs,” then wouldn’t his inner world be clear from this? We see in this mixture of contrasts in the way of private life of a Western European that his psyche is something extremely contradictory, without any uniform and strong conviction invariably operating in it. It’s as if in one corner of the soul of a Western person “a religious feeling lives,” “in another, separately, the powers of reason, in a third, the aspirations for sensuality,” etc. and all these and other forces and aspirations live in him “separately,” without interacting with each other at all and connected “only by abstract, rational recollection.” Observing opposite facts in the picture of Russian life, characterizing the psyche of the Russian person as integral, imbued with one desire, we come to understand those features in the structure of his thinking that determined the appearance of his life. A Russian person does every task, even the most insignificant, with prayer. With prayer he makes dinner, “With prayer he enters the house and leaves.” In the old days, “the last peasant, appearing in the palace in the presence of the Grand Duke, did not bow to the owner before bowing before the image of the shrine, which always stood in a corner of honor,” either in the palace or in a simple hut. Obviously, religion was the main thing in his life for a Russian, from which all other aspects of life derived their meaning. That integrity of aspirations, which is spoken of by various phenomena of ancient and present Russian life, obviously consisted in the fact that “Russian people always connected every important and unimportant matter directly with the highest concept of the mind and with the deepest center of the heart.” Religious living thinking is what connected the life of a Russian person in a single, highest principle, accordingly defining all its various aspects, clearly demonstrating the presence of a holistic thought. 268 Thought and life are thus presented as one inseparable whole, a unity, which is the desired ideal from the point of view of true enlightenment. The time of abstract systems of the past is either passing, and now even in the West the character of true philosophy has become clearer. Behind the enormity of social events, thinkers felt the work of a hidden moral spring, and as a result of this, the view of school doctrines completely changed. The practical meaning of philosophy is becoming increasingly clear, and if previously it was of interest as an abstract construction, now there is a desire to “connect every phenomenon in social life and every discovery in the sciences” “with questions of universal humanity.” “Every educated person strives to stretch the guiding thread of his abstract thought through all the labyrinths... of life, through all the wonders of discoveries... and all the infinity of their possible consequences.” This need that arose in the West to bring thought closer to life is very characteristic of understanding the true meaning of philosophy. The comparative narrowness of the new phenomenon cannot at all speak against its special significance. The new attitude to philosophy, however, is not represented by the majority, it is not dominant at the moment, but it is necessary to keep in mind “that the development of popular thought does not come from the numerical majority,” but from the center of real internal strength. “The majority expresses only the present moment and testifies more to the past, active force than to the advancing movement.” In order to understand the direction, we must “look not where there are more people, but where there is more... vitality.” From this point of view, a new understanding of the meaning of philosophy will be that it is an expression of living needs that have matured in society. Detached from life as a school doctrine, philosophy loses its influence on life and currently interest in such philosophy is waning, giving way to another, more serious interest in living philosophy. The new philosophy should not be an abstract system attached to a school, but, uniting the entire totality of aspirations of the human spirit, should belong to all life. The lie of typical Western philosophy was that, fragmenting spiritual forces and giving extreme development to one of them (logical reason), it tore man “in the depths of his self-consciousness from any connection with reality and was purely abstract. 269 ​​Guided by rationally minded thinking, Western man himself was a being, as it were, abstracted from living reality, something like a spectator in a theater. He was able to love and hate anything, to strive equally for everything, only under the only condition dictated by his rational thought, “that his physical personality should not suffer from anything and should not worry.” Hence it is quite understandable why the whole meaning of life in the West was reduced to the development of industry. Man did not feel, was not aware of the connection with society, in addition to the relations determined by the external law, and having isolated himself in his inner consciousness, as a self-sufficient (physical) personality, he naturally concentrated all his aspirations on serving his egoism. Having been torn away from the living root of his full existence, man condemned to death everything that was unable to feed on dry rationality alone - poetry and all art - and focused on industry, as the only thing understandable from his point of view and the only thing necessary in life... “Industry... without faith and poetry... rules the world.” In our time, “it connects and separates people, it defines the fatherland, it denotes classes.” It is the basis of the state structure, “moves the people, declares war and makes peace, changes morals” and so on. Material benefits have become the only goal in life; it is a kind of deity whose will controls peoples. Everything that raises the heart above personal self-interest seems not only incomprehensible from the point of view of serving this new god, but also funny, something like the exploits of Don Quixote. Already due to this nature of Western life, which is closely connected with the nature of Western thinking, it is impossible to recognize the enlightenment of the West as true. Whole thinking, which expresses the character of true enlightenment, is achieved not by any theoretical techniques, but by the internal integrity of being. Combining in itself the concepts of reason with the teaching of faith and being determined in its main direction by the nature of this faith, such thinking is not divorced from the entire totality of life phenomena. Truth by its very nature is one, and in man’s desire to unite faith and knowledge through a higher spiritual vision one cannot see anything other than a completely legitimate impulse for his rational activity, 270 but the unification itself, which paves the way for the creation of a certain philosophy, is not only a theoretical activity, completely independent of specific facts. When the believing mind, in which lies the possibility of consciousness of true relationships with God, freely and naturally unfolds its activity, it comes to the truth, but it seeks this truth “where it thinks to meet together with a pure, integral life, which vouches ... for the integrity of the mind.” After all, “it is not individual logical or metaphysical truths that constitute the final meaning of any philosophy, but the relationship in which it places a person with the final sought truth, the internal demand into which the mind, imbued with it, turns. In the fullness of its development, any philosophy has a double result: firstly, “the general result of consciousness,” and secondly, “the dominant demand arising from this result.” “The last truth on which the mind rests also points to the treasure that a person will go looking for in science and in life.” The practical side of life, therefore, is of utmost importance as a criterion of truth, “for only from actual relationships do those thoughts ignite that illuminate the mind and warm the soul.” A thought is recognized by the life from which it emerges and which it mutually determines depending on its mood, conditioned by the nature of faith. 271 It was said above that I. V-ch connected a certain system of thinking with the nature of the dominant faith and accepted as the norm of mental activity that structure of it, which is given in the works of the Eastern fathers and constitutes an integral part of the Orthodox consciousness. A certain balance of spiritual forces (which exists in Orthodoxy) gives the truth of our relationship to God, which is inherent in our mind as a possibility. But since there is only one truth, it is clear that “the same meaning with which a person understands the divine serves him to understand truth in general.” Now it is very important to note that this religious, or rather Orthodox, principle in Kireyevsky’s teaching has both an epistemological and a moral character. The “general result of consciousness” obtained on the basis of such a principle, no matter how important it is in itself, from the theoretical side, is precisely a result based on facts, and its reverse effect on the practice of life gives it extraordinary power. “All the movements of the soul of one who is convinced... of the truth... man" are imbued with the power of this truth, and hence his external actions should be of a character corresponding to his mood. 272 In the development of Byzantine enlightenment, I. V-ch noted the insufficient discovery in life of the inner meaning of education and thereby emphasized the essential side of the ideal that he envisioned for Russian life. The development of thinking must go hand in hand with practical activity, leaving life and returning to it again. New philosophical principles must also correspond to the principles of practical life. This is precisely how it was in our monasteries, which served as our sources of “folk thinking.” In the silence of a secluded cell, the humble monk not only “devoted himself... to the study of the highest spiritual truths,” but tried to combine the feats of “self-improvement” “with the work of self-knowledge.” “Having renounced all extraneous goals, not being entertained by the excitement of hopes and fears, joys and sufferings,” he combined “thought” with faith, “contemplation with prayer,” “not with just an abstract concept, but with the whole fullness of his being,” and comprehended the highest wisdom, which was revealed to him “in the Divine Scriptures” and in the works of “St. fathers." The disciples who gathered around the ascetic and the people did the same. “The upper classes, being in living and close contact with the monasteries and basing their beliefs on the same principles, developed in their life relationships “the same concepts” that lived in a solitary cell. The common people followed the same direction. 273 “The subjects that occupy the minds of the people and serve as the basis for their thinking are drawn by them from the deepest truths of our faith, that is, they are of a religious nature. Our enlightenment, by its very foundations, as based on the integrity of the mind created to strive for God, has as its goal the knowledge of the highest divine personality, since the epistemological principle is also moral here, it also determines the practice of life, inextricably linked with knowledge. Not being an abstract being, occupied exclusively with the theoretical side of cognition, a person with a normal structure of thinking in the depths of his self-awareness perceives the integrity of his being and therefore the process of cognition is determined for him simultaneously by the truths of religious doctrine and moral life. “He... seeks to form a concept about the Supreme Being, about His relationship to the world and man, about the beginning of good and evil... about the moral legitimacy of human actions.” The question “about the possibility of internal improvement of man”, about union with God, primarily occupied, or at least previously occupied, the Russian person, why “the favorite subject of his reading, the decoration of his evening conversations, the source of his spiritual songs” were the lives of the saints, the teachings of St. fathers and liturgical books, where he found examples of Christian life. 274 The integrity of our life was violated with the penetration of foreign education and the temptations of Western life, but not everything has been lost by us through communication with the West and there remains hope of returning to our previous path. The concepts and beliefs of the people have not yet lost all their original purity and, even now, being the main basis of morals and customs, the only content of their mental activity, they serve as a guarantee of our future. Now, however, we have very difficult work ahead of us on the path of recreating the original principles of our life, since we actually cannot reject the Western elements that have entered our lives, but it is possible to subordinate the external education of the West to the internal strength of our original conviction. We have to rework the mental acquisitions of the West according to the principles of our thinking - to bring Western science itself into harmony with our life. In this new light, Western education will receive its proper meaning, serving primarily a moral purpose. The consistent unification of the entire sum of knowledge and life according to the only true principle of both, living in the Orthodox Christian consciousness, should be our task. Due to the close connection that exists between practice and theory, between beliefs and activity, we cannot talk about any abstract ideal. Our ideal must arise from the basic content of our life, which equally includes thought and activity, and, therefore, our ideal will certainly be composed of beliefs that agree with practice, of thought and deed. It is difficult to say which of these two sides should be mastered by primacy in the proper sense, but, undoubtedly, since the practical side is, before any theory, the expression of the hidden forces of life, it, this side, plays a prominent role in the very process of cognition. But theory, since it, being clarified on the basis of known facts, indicates their nerve and becomes a consciously used regulator of life, is important in the matter of our mental and moral life. In true enlightenment both action and thinking are equally important. By showing us the moral meaning of our existence, true enlightenment gives norms for the moral assessment of all phenomena of life, and at the same time it manifests itself in certain practical activities by which these norms are determined. This, by the way, is the distinctive character of Russian enlightenment (it is also true), that it is entirely based on the basis of reality, which serves as a support for our original philosophy. But it does not follow from this that thinking has no independent meaning. In our nature lies the possibility of true knowledge (or, which is the same, but for Kireevsky, knowledge of God, since true knowledge indicates the relationship of everything to God) and by detaching ourselves from one-sided logical thinking, we can, if not come to the truth, then take the path to it. An example of the latter is Schelling. This philosopher was not satisfied with the one-sided development of German thought. Having been a Protestant by birth, he, of course, had in this case to renounce that specific direction of his mind that was imparted to him by the nature of the Protestant faith. Schelling did so, seeing the limitations of Protestantism, which rejected tradition; but on the other hand, in Catholicism he saw a confusion of true tradition with untrue, divine with human, as a result of which he could not convert to the Roman Church. The philosopher was vaguely aware of the truth, but due to the absence of certain conditions necessary to comprehend it, he could not come to the truth, but only stood on the way to it. When a philosopher chose from Christian tradition what corresponded to his concept of Christian truth, he had to be guided besides St. Scripture and the fact of God-consciousness of all humanity. “In the mythology of ancient peoples he found traces of a revelation that was distorted, but not lost. That essential relationship to God in which the first humanity found itself, breaking up into different species, according to the ramifications of different nationalities, appeared in each nationality in a special form... but within these more or less distorting restrictions, the unchanged features of the general essential character of revelation remained. The agreement ... of the internal and fundamental principles of each mythology with the fundamental principles of Christian tradition expressed for Schelling the pure mystery of divine revelation.” Such a view of the history of beliefs could only prove favorable to Christian thought if it were established on a solid basis. But in the absence of a firm “preliminary conviction” and with “the uncertainty of the inner meaning of mythology... Schelling’s Christian philosophy was both non-Christian and non-philosophy.” 275 People of faith, as well as people of science, were equally dissatisfied with the philosopher’s system. The first reproached and reproach him “for the excessive rights of reason and the special meaning that he puts into his concepts about the most basic dogmas of Christianity. Schelling’s closest friends see him as a thinker only on the path to faith.” “Philosophers, on the contrary, ... are offended by the fact that he accepts as the property of reason, dogmas of faith, not developed from reason according to the laws of logical necessity.” If Schelling's system turned out to be unsatisfactory in Germany, where the foundations of rationalism are still strong, then even more so it can be accepted here. A sense of truth then forced Schelling to turn to the writings of St. fathers, but he did not pay attention to the most important thing among them, to the nature of thinking, as it was determined depending on the prevailing faith in the East. Without firm criteria of genuine truth, Schelling could not evaluate the “speculative concepts of St. fathers about reason and the laws of higher knowledge." As a result, due to the absence of a pure expression of divine revelation in Protestantism and Catholicism, the philosopher was forced to “invent a faith for himself” to satisfy rational self-awareness. The main reason for his fruitless searches and for the failure that befell Schelling’s system - despite the new demands of European thought that clearly emerged in the West - was that the philosopher was cut off from the soil of genuine Christian thought and could not completely leave the soil of nationalism. 276 Above (X) we saw what the rationalism of Schelling’s system was, according to I.V. Kireyevsky: this Western thinker did not notice the driving force of reason, which imparts to the latter the correct mode of activity. For this reason, Schelling's philosophy did not receive a positive meaning, but still had a negative meaning for modern rationalism. Schelling pointed out the main drawback of the rational theory of knowledge correctly, but the West has become so intertwined with rationalism that Schelling’s philosophy there either arouses discontent, or its principles are understood more in accordance with the previous direction of thought than with the emerging new one. The last fact is especially characteristic of the rationalistic West. Feeling the need for a life-giving change in the development of philosophy, even the need for faith, Western thinkers, along with an ardent protest against the old prosperity, held back the oldest. This can be especially clearly observed in such prominent representatives of the new movement of thought in the West as Schleiermacher, who, despite all the claims of faith, remains to a large extent a rationalist. 277 It goes without saying that Schelling belongs to the same category. Obviously, Western thought, over the long path of its one-sided development, has acquired some habits that are difficult to eradicate, but this makes the centuries-old mistake of the West all the clearer for us, a nation with a different direction of thinking. After the first, youthful fascination with someone else’s system, we can now return all the more easily to “essential rationality.” “German philosophy, together with the development that it received in Schelling’s system, can only serve for us as a convenient step from borrowed systems to independent wisdom, corresponding to the basic principles of ancient Russian education and capable of subordinating the divided education of the West to the integral consciousness of the believing mind.” We may be carried away by the “logical systems of foreign philosophies,” which still seem new to us, but “for the wisdom of the believer,” we have “models of spiritual thinking in the ancient saints.” fathers and in spiritual writings of all times, not excluding the present.” 278 The fatherly works reflected the direction of thinking, which should be laid as the foundation of our Russian thought. That balance of spiritual forces, that harmonious agreement of all sides of our soul, which imprints the patristic thought (Eastern), must find expression in the future Russian philosophy. The latter is what we need and is possible. True, noting the completeness of truth in the past, we apparently exclude the possibility of the development of thought in the footsteps of ancient Christian thinkers, but thinking is closely connected with activity and, in accordance with the development of the latter, some new questions inevitably arise that require a reasonable solution. In the writings of St. fathers, the truth is preserved, like sparks, always “ready to flare up at the first touch of a believing thought,” “but to renew the philosophy of St. fathers in the form it was in their time,” seems impossible. Philosophy of St. fathers certainly corresponded to the issues of their time. Many (especially those related to the practical side of life) issues could not be resolved then, due to the historical circumstances already partly indicated in their place. The interests of Christianity strongly contradicted the interests of the pagan state in its structure, and the Byzantine Christian often preferred to die for public life, without trying to influence it. Due to extremely unfavorable conditions for Christianity, patristic philosophy had to limit itself to the development of the internally contemplative life itself. Bypassing inaccessible social facts, she dealt with moral questions exclusively insofar as they related to the solitary inner life. General principles for resolving questions about family, civil, and state relations were given in the fatherly writings, but all these relations were not presented in the form of a scientific conclusion. Protected by the wall of a monastery or the remoteness of the desert, general moral concepts developed, of course, the purer and deeper, but the purity and depth of the inner did not have the “fullness of external development.” This circumstance alone opens up the possibility for the further development of Christian philosophy. In addition, then there was not the same “degree of development of the sciences, not the same nature of this development, and it was not the same that excited and confused the heart of man that worries and confuses him now.” To understand what relation the philosophy of the ancient fathers may have to modern education, it is necessary to “keep in mind its connection with contemporary education,” distinguishing the essential from the temporary and relative; at the same time, the life-giving germ of thought, contained in the creations of our fathers, will remain unchanged and will serve as the foundation for philosophical creativity in all subsequent times. When turning to the intellectual wealth bequeathed by the tradition of the church, the same thing should happen to the modern education of Europe that the education of the pagan world once experienced under the influence of Christianity. Christianity did not completely reject the results of the centuries-old work of human thought, but by accepting one thing and rejecting the other, it illuminated the path of pagan development with its own special meaning. In particular, pagan philosophy then turned into a tool of Christian enlightenment and became part of Christian philosophy, “as a subordinate principle.” And now - “in the struggle with alien elements, Orthodox enlightenment,” delayed in its development by the will of Providence, must take possession of “all the mental wealth of the modern world” and, enriched with worldly wisdom, Christian truth must all the more clearly demonstrate its dominance over the relative truths of humanity. To accomplish such a task, no extraordinary means, exceptional mental gifts, or genius are required at all. “Genius, which presupposes originality,” some separateness of thought, “might even harm the completeness of truth.” Just as an abstract mind, acting separately from other forces, cannot come to the truth, the latter cannot be the property of a separate mind. Of course, not everyone has the ability to think abstractly and engage in theological issues, but the work of each individual consciousness is necessary in order for a true philosophy to be developed. Abstract thought cannot be considered the result of true wisdom, for it is the expression of a mind divorced from general sympathy and does not contain living social force. True wisdom is a living science of life, and philosophy, if it does not want to remain in a book and stand on a shelf, must certainly develop from the living interaction of beliefs directed towards one goal. The role of each individual consciousness in the creation of such a social philosophy does not exceed the most limited forces. After all, “there is no mind so dull that it cannot understand its insignificance and the need for a higher revelation, there is no heart so limited that it cannot understand the possibility of another love, higher than that which is aroused by earthly objects, and there is no conscience that does not feel the invisible existence of a higher moral order.” 279 Fundamental truths must be accepted as premises, for they cannot be guessed by abstract thinking. The Holy Fathers, from whom these truths were given, obtained them from direct internal experience and pass them on to us “not as a logical conclusion, which our mind could draw, but as the news of an eyewitness about the country in which he was.” Based on the speculations of St. fathers and having the consciousness of all “believers and thinkers” as a constant criterion of truth, we must develop our original philosophy, the main task of which is to destroy the painful contradiction between the mind and faith, beliefs and external life. 280 The difference between our Orthodox Christian philosophy and the systems of Western philosophy will lie, first of all, in the very way of thinking, why its content will also be different from the content of Western thinking. The human mind, by its very nature, is characterized by truth, as a possibility inherent in the organization of the spiritual essence of man. But as a result of freedom, a person deviates from the true truth and accepts as such “discrepant signs of private truths.” This fact can be designated as “the disintegration of the unity of the knowledge of God into various attractions,” which manifests itself in a one-sided direction in the theoretical field, and in practice this corresponds to an attraction to many “private goods.” We must consider our knowledge only from the point of view of the highest principle of all knowledge - the knowledge of God, and therefore any one-sidedness of thought that has deviated from its central center must be considered as untrue, distorted knowledge. Mental forces acting in addition to the consciousness of the living relationship of the Divine Person to us lead to precisely such distorted knowledge, the distinguishing feature of which is indifference to the moral meaning of life, limiting oneself to the indifferent logic of abstract concepts. Truths obtained rationally are not living truths. Dead capital is in a person’s mind, they lie, as it were, on the surface of his soul, expressed in frozen “school formulas”, they are “like a corpse”, they have no spirit. Genuine truth ignites the soul, gives “life to life” and is stored not in a ready-made word, not in a book formula, but in the secret of the heart. It can be expressed in a word, but not in that frozen, lifeless form that is so characteristic of one-sided truth, but in a living one that corresponds to all movements of thought. In this case, the word, “like the transparent body of the spirit,” “must constantly change its color,” according to the “ever-changing cohesion and resolution of thoughts.” The word “must breathe” here, “with the freedom of inner life,” “in its iridescent sense, every breath of the mind should tremble and respond.” Only in this case can the word express the true meaning of the cognizable, but such a living word is certainly in connection with the special structure of our thought. A word frozen in a formula does not express living thought, but it itself is a product of thought frozen in one-sidedness. “Abstract thinking deals only with the boundaries and relationships of concepts”, comprehends the “laws of mind and matter” and does not touch materiality. “The only thing essential in the world is the rationally free personality,” everything else is relative, “but for rational thinking, a living personality decomposes into abstract laws of self-development” and through this, as it were, loses “its real meaning.” That is why “abstract thinking, touching on objects of faith, in appearance can be very similar to its teaching,” but in fact it “lacks the sense of essentiality,” which arises only from the development of an integral personality. In many external philosophical systems, the rational nature of the dogmas: about the unity of the Divine, about His omnipotence, wisdom, spirituality, omnipresence and even the Trinity, are accessible to the abstract mind, having been brought under some special formula, but the knowledge obtained in this way does not have a religious character, because rational thinking “is inconceivable with the consciousness of the living personality of the Divine and its living relationship to the personality of man.” 281 “The immeasurability, harmony and wisdom of the universe” may lead the mind “to the consciousness of the omnipotence and wisdom of the Creator,” but unity, omnipotence and other concepts of the Divine, extracted by the mind from the contemplation of the external world, do not yet inspire the mind “with the consciousness of the living and personal self-existence of the Creator.” Consciousness of the living personality of the Divine is given not by the form of thought, where exclusively boundaries and relationships are marked, but by the “internal movement of our thoughts and feelings” towards God, and it arises in our soul only when “steady contemplation of the play of the internal and moral, revealing to the vision of the mind the side of higher vitality,” is added to the contemplation of the external world. It is obvious that the main task of philosophy is to find the correct path to truth, which lies not in the sphere of abstract thought, but in the direction of the consistent development of all aspects of the knowing spirit without exception. Depending on the nature of the dominant faith, thinking showed its true nature in the Orthodox consciousness. We have already seen that Orthodox teaching firmly establishes the boundaries of faith and reason, as a result of which it is impossible for an Orthodox believer to deviate into rational one-sidedness. “But the more clearly defined and the firmer the boundaries of divine revelation, the stronger the need of the believing mind to reconcile the concept of reason with the teaching of faith.” The very path of this reconciliation in the Orthodox consciousness is defined differently than in Protestantism and Catholicism. “In order to reconcile reason with faith, for an Orthodox thinker it is not enough to arrange rational concepts in accordance with the tenets of faith,” clearing the mind of everything contrary to faith. If the relationship of Orthodox thinking to faith were reduced to such a purely negative role, then the results of these relations would be the same as in the West. Indeed, in this case, concepts that disagree with faith would have the same source as those that agree with it, i.e. That is, - reason (or rather, reason) and sooner or later all thinking on this path must go beyond the limits of faith. The peculiarity of Orthodox thinking in the matter of reconciling faith and knowledge lies in the fact that it seeks to “raise reason itself” above its ordinary level, “to elevate the very way of thinking to “sensual agreement with faith.” In such a desire one cannot see anything unnatural. Separated from other cognitive forces, logical thinking, it is true, seems to be completely natural for our mind - a split in thought and a closely related split in the rest of life, intertwining and interacting, produce logical separation in thinking, as something permanent and legal - but faith seems to us to be superior to natural reason because the latter “sank below its primordial level.” 282 The elevation of the mind must occur through the power of faith, and the first condition for this elevation must be that the mind strives to “gather into one indivisible whole all its individual forces,” which are usually “in a state of disunity and contradiction.” The mind will achieve internal correctness when “it does not recognize its abstract logical ability as the only organ of understanding”, when “the voice of an enthusiastic feeling, not in agreement with other forces of the spirit, does not respect the “unmistakable indication of the truth”, when it does not accept “suggestions ... of aesthetic meaning” in its individuality and even the “dominant love of one’s heart” as an infallible guide to the understanding of the “highest world order” and “to the comprehension of the highest good.” Turning to comprehend the truth inside the soul, where all individual forces merge “into one living and integral vision of the mind,” the mind will not bring the thought ahead of it to the judgment of each of its abilities, trying to bring them together in one consonant verdict, “but in integral thinking” - all the strings of the soul “must be heard in full chord, merging into one harmonic sound.” This is the contemplation of the inner and moral world, which was noted above and which reveals the true truth to the vision of our mind. Hence, the constant task of an Orthodox believer should be the search for the integrity of the mind, in which the consciousness alone plays an important role that somewhere “in the depths of the soul there is a living common focus for all the individual powers of the mind.” “Such a consciousness constantly elevates the very way of thinking of a person.” By subduing “rational conceit,” this consciousness “does not constrain the freedom of the natural laws of reason,” but, on the contrary, “strengthens its originality and at the same time... subordinates it to faith.” Faith grows on the basis of the activity of our mind, heart and will, set within proper boundaries. “Exceeding the ordinary state of mind,” faith thereby “instructs him that he has deviated from his primary natural integrity and ... encourages him to return to the level of higher activity.” The development of natural reason serves only as steps for faith and, without restricting such development, believing thinking recognizes it as a relative expression of truth. The highest truth penetrates the mind and the latter cannot logically evade it due to the very way of thinking. Striving to constantly raise reason to a level at which it could “sympathize with faith,” one cannot incline toward logical one-sidedness; one cannot, for example, under the above condition, “come to unbelief by the natural development of reason.” If such a deviation is possible for an Orthodox thinker, it is not due to the demands of logic, but solely due to a lack of external education, due to ignorance. With every movement of the mind, “with every breath, so to speak... thoughts”, an Orthodox believer is characterized by a consciousness (separate, clear, or dark, instinctive) of the sought-after or the highest truth, which is revealed to the believing mind. Obviously, faith, as a property of the whole mind, is not a concept “which is only in a state of faith” because it has not yet been developed by natural reason (however, sooner or later it will become knowledge when logical analysis reveals its acceptability for the natural mind), it is also “not one external authority, before which the mind should be blind, but - an authority together external and internal, the highest rationality.” 283 Faith “does not constitute purely human knowledge, does not constitute a special concept... does not fit into any one cognitive ability, does not relate to one... reason or... feeling, but embraces the entire integrity of a person and appears only in moments of that integrity. Therefore, the main character of believing thinking lies in the desire to gather all the individual parts of the soul into one “force,” into that focus where “reason and will and feeling” merge “into one living unity” and through this “the essential personality of man is restored in its primordial indivisibility.” 284 “Faith is not a trust in someone else’s assurance, but a real event of inner life, through which a person enters into significant communication with divine things (with the higher world, with heaven, with the Divine). “To believe means to “receive from the heart that testimony which God himself gave to his Son.” “Faith is the gaze of the heart towards God.” The reconciliation of faith and reason, therefore, will not consist in limiting the rights of both, but in connecting two opposite ends of human thought: the one by which it is organically inextricably linked with the highest questions of faith and the one where it comes into contact with external education. The unification of opposite poles of thinking in a consistent living conviction should constitute the feature, task and result of Orthodox Christian philosophy. Philosophy itself is not faith and does not eat reason alone. Philosophy, based on the balance of spiritual forces, should be the general result and common foundation of all sciences. Trying to reconcile reason with faith, she strives to bring human rational activity into harmonious unity, directing it towards one goal. 285 Such a philosophy cannot be exclusively the work of specialists and higher minds, because it is not only a theory, interesting to some and completely indifferent to others. The foundation of Orthodox Christian philosophy is organically close to every believer. After all, what is faith itself, so necessary and essential in Orthodox thinking? Until now, we have seen the definition of faith as a fact inherent in the human psyche and connecting a person with a higher order of being. This definition concerns mainly the psychological side. But since faith in its manifestation, in a certain relation to natural reason, is an indispensable result of religious characteristics, it also has another, more specific definition, as Christian faith. Appearing with a certain content in every believer, faith, as well as the believing philosophy organically connected with it, has as its subject the basic, central fact of Christianity - redemption. In the very humility that a person must show in order for faith to strengthen and shine in him, nothing more than a “living need for redemption” and “gratitude” for it is manifested. Bearing in mind the central fact of Christianity, which is at the same time the central fact of Christian philosophy, we will understand those criteria, and in general all those features that distinguish Orthodox Christian philosophy. As has already been said, this philosophy is not exclusively the work of specialists. Of course, not everyone is capable of abstract thinking, and the acquisition of external education is not equally accessible to everyone, but the basic and main thing of a believer’s wisdom can be accessible to everyone, under the condition of faith alone. With the least development of rational concepts, every Orthodox Christian realizes in the depths of his soul, “that divine truth is not embraced by considerations of ordinary reason and requires a higher, spiritual vision, which is acquired not by external learning, but by the internal integrity of being.” In this regard, the uneducated believer thinks in complete agreement with the educated believer, to whom various “systems of thinking emanating from the lower degrees of reason” are available. Both are independent in their basic thought, which is at the same time fundamental in Orthodox philosophy. 286 As we will see later, the involvement of each individual believer in Orthodox philosophy should especially be revealed in the sphere of practical activity, but the theoretical side of this philosophy also comes close to each individual consciousness. Striving in this direction to reconcile faith and knowledge, Orthodox philosophy must, of course, have a solid criterion of truth on which individual consciousness could rely. Such a criterion is not found in personal understanding, not in the separate actions of private minds, even believers, but in the general consciousness of like-minded people. Any personal understanding is only in agreement with the truth when it responds to the voice of the general consciousness, where the true truth is stored. Every Christian is in communion with the Church and her voice carries out the work of private consciousnesses that interact with each other and with the whole. 287 The same criterion of community of consciousness, applied in the reconciliation of faith and knowledge, appears even more clearly when resolving the practical side of Christian philosophy through the implementation of the latter in life. The reconciliation of thought and life, as has been said, is one of the tasks of Orthodox philosophy. This side is closely connected with the basic fact around which the entire Christian doctrine grows, with the concept of Christian faith. Faith, as the need for redemption and gratitude for it, as imparting moral meaning to our life through the definition of our relationship to God, cannot be understood theoretically. She is a living touch to the Divine, expressed in moral activity. Having in his soul the inclinations of a right relationship with God, anyone who values ​​human dignity must connect the direction of his life with conviction. In this sense, Orthodox philosophy cannot be the property of a few, a select few. On the contrary, anyone who wants to be a man in the true meaning of the word can and should practice it. After all, for everyone “it is necessary to connect the direction of one’s life” with the fundamental dominant “conviction of faith”..., to agree with it the main occupation and each special task, so that every action is an expression of one aspiration, every thought seeks one foundation, every step leads to one goal.” Without fulfilling this condition, a person’s life is meaningless, the mind turns into a calculating machine, acting in the sphere of narrow egoistic interests and not seeing anything further, the heart becomes “a collection of soulless strings in which the random wind whistles.” With this direction of life, no human action will have a moral character, because in this case there will be no actual person: “for a person is his faith!” The task of true philosophy is to serve as a conductor of faith in life. 288 It is quite clear from here what enormous significance can be for philosophy, as a practical activity, that criterion of truth that ensures the believing mind the correctness of speculative philosophy. The general consciousness, living in all as one, and in one, in agreement with all, serves here, in resolving the practice of life, just as it ensures with its authority the correctness of the theory. We must not forget that the authority of the general consciousness is not only a human sanction, but at the same time a higher, divine one; it is nothing other than the authority of the infallible church. Just as faith in the sense of a mood that has not yet manifested itself outwardly is, in essence, a need for redemption, gratitude for it, and active faith, faith in the sense of putting our Christian convictions into practice is a phenomenon of the same order. Believing, a person is aroused in his inner life by the consciousness of a living connection with the saving church, and he is also encouraged to put into practice the saving faith by the same goal of Christian salvation. Realizing the possibility of other knowledge, in addition to the knowledge that is accessible to reason, feeling the beauty of another love, in addition to earthly, a person enters the realm of faith. But the thirst for redemption is not exclusively a fact of internal life: this internal thirst for a better order of life inevitably manifests itself externally - in activity. Of course, it cannot be otherwise. Conviction, imbued with moral elements, directing a person to transform the inner world of his soul, quite naturally and consistently sets before a person the task of doing, the obligation of good deeds, and conditioning the very moral disposition that simultaneously flows from it. Co-organization into a church union contributes as much as possible to the implementation of the moral and practical task. Every member of the church knows “that the same struggle is going on throughout the world” that is taking place in his private consciousness - the struggle of light with darkness, “between the desire for higher harmony and remaining in natural ... disunity,” between generosity and selfishness, “in a word: between the work of redemption and freedom” and the violence of “the natural disordered order of things.” To whatever extent, even the smallest, this consciousness is developed, the person who bears it knows that he “does not act alone,” “that he is doing the common work of the whole church,” of all humanity for which redemption has been accomplished. From this point of view, a moral victory in one Christian soul is a triumph for the entire Christian world and in one knowledge of the fact is already the support of a person’s moral activity. Thus, common interests, a common goal, which is salvation in the church, serve to acquire and strengthen inner conviction and at the same time determine the direction of active life. There is every reason to say, therefore, that “true convictions are beneficial and strong only in their totality” and that true philosophy should not be the creation of one private person, but a social matter, a theoretical expression and at the same time a practical manifestation of a single principle that animates life. For the development and implementation of such a philosophy, it is necessary to develop the data of the spiritual life of the people, or, in other words, it is necessary to “develop public self-consciousness.” Completing this task will gradually bring us closer to our ideal, the theoretical side of which has already been outlined above, and the practical side can be presented in this form 289 Based on the remnants of the past content of national life and looking into the prospects of the future, we can predict the basic nature of the social relations that we have in relation to the Orthodox-Russian ideal. If our past life is characterized by the primacy in all human relations of faith and the moral demands arising from it, then our present and future, when we consistently implement the principles inherent in us, will appear with the same character as our past. The communal spirit, characteristic of us from time immemorial, inspired by the gospel law, will serve to create an order of life that has turned out to be alien to the West. With the complete unity of people, which is so clearly visible in the Orthodox Church, we will retain the importance of each individual person, never suppressed (as in the West), but on the contrary, invariably protected in its moral dignity. The West, led by dry reason and considerations of material benefit, did not recognize, as it still does not know, the true moral truth, which was replaced there by law. When power in Western states passed from autocratic rulers to many individuals, the relationship between the individual and society remained in the West with the same basic character as it had there before. Once upon a time, the feudal knight had complete control over the fate of those subordinate to him, violating their truly human rights; later, with the expansion of the external rights of Western European classes, the previous power was transferred only to the material majority, and suffered a purely quantitative change, without gaining or changing at all in its quality. Power in the West still remains an expression of the interests and benefits of a certain circle of people, whose representatives cannot, therefore, embody internal truth in their legislation. The relationship between the individual and society is fully characterized by the concept of a “social contract”, established on the artificial interweaving of material benefits. In our Rus', on the contrary, the community represented a purely moral union, where moral, not material, interests were in the foreground, and where the individual was not sacrificed for profit. And according to the meaning of Christian life, embodied in church conciliarity, the individual is affirmed in its original meaning, as a morally valuable value. When united in the unity of faith and with complete submission to the church principle, individual forces do not experience the slightest constraint and can be fully used without harming the interests of the whole. If “in the physical world each creature lives and is supported by the destruction of other” beings, then in the spiritual world... “the creation of each person creates everyone and everyone breathes the life of everyone.” The spiritual power that is created within one person invisibly attracts the forces of the entire society to itself; just by being at a moral height, a person attracts to himself everything that is similar in the souls of people. The individual here serves not for himself, not for the benefit of the individual, but for the whole society, namely: the development of moral individual strength serves to more successfully achieve the common goal of Christian society, when “people imbued with the highest light, the power of faith” are the lights of Christian truth, not allowing this truth to fade from the false direction of human hearts. The same criterion of the common faith, living collectively and according to tradition, serving to support truth and good deeds, is obviously also the only normal measure of correct social relations and the only basis for the fairest distribution of the roles of society and the individual. 290 Kireyevsky’s religious and philosophical worldview, as was clear from the entire previous presentation, is an unusually integral system. By affirming the meaning of thought on the living content of specific facts and demanding the mutual verification of practice by theory, the thinker obviously does not give primary attention to either theoretical philosophy or practical matters, but in the mutual agreement of these two sides, equally related to life, he sees the only true philosophy. From the point of view of such a principled view of philosophy, it seems impossible to ignore theoretical thinking in its basic character, tasks and means. We have already clearly seen the far from indifferent attitude of I.V. Kireevsky on the issue of the theoretical side of philosophy in the parallel of differences that the thinker establishes between Eastern and Western thinking, sympathetically accepting the first and condemning the second. We also saw the idea clearly expressed by Kireyevsky that the character of philosophy, as of all enlightenment, depends a lot on the character of the dominant faith. Kireyevsky’s recognition of the advantages of thinking of one specific type, namely the one that was developed in Orthodoxy, is beyond doubt from Kireyevsky’s reasoning that we have outlined, but I.V. had the opportunity to speak out more definitely about the meaning of religious differences and the need for anyone who wants to know the truth to follow only a certain line of thought. “It is not important,” you say 291, whether I am Orthodox, or Roman Catholic, or Protestant; but the main thing is to be a Christian. The difference of confessions belongs to school issues; the real significance lies in human life.” Formulating this objection to the essential importance of the doctrinal side in Christianity, I.V. does not agree that anywhere besides divine truth there could be a life-giving force that makes life morally valuable. If in the history of paganism and Mohammedanism one can find people “with commendable morality,” then it is hardly permissible to conclude from this that Mohammedanism leads to salvation: the observed facts only indicate that people very often lack internal integrity, as a result of which there can be commendable morality in spite of false teaching, just as there can be a bad life in spite of true convictions. But that life is “blind”, which does not go according to convictions, but is accomplished “according to unconscious aspirations not connected in the unity of consciousness” - and this “inner darkness ... does not allow us to call it moral.” Our actions receive moral significance not from the action (commitment) itself, but from the intention with which we perform them, and “the moral dignity of intention is determined ... by its relationship to the entire integrity of self-consciousness.” A moral person is not a combination of these or other qualities, but “a living integrity of originality”, which is why every act “receives its real meaning... from that basic impulse that lies at the bottom of the human heart." These considerations are applicable not only to assessing the moral worth of a pagan and a Mohammedan, but also of a Christian. Given the fragmentation of the Christian world into three confessions, each group apparently has something in common with other groups, so that there should not be a significant difference between Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, or this difference should not in any case be considered important. However, “what are common Christian beliefs” and can religious differences be considered something unimportant for life? If we call common Christian beliefs what belongs to everyone, even sects that arose around the Christian teaching, then we will be left with only one abstract concept of the Divine from Christianity, but even in this case, when we limit the circle of confessions that have common beliefs to Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Catholicism, our conclusion in determining what the three Christian confessions have in common will be completely uncertain. In different confessions, not only the faith is different, but also morality receives, depending on this difference, a special meaning, its own in Orthodoxy, its own in Catholicism and its own in Protestantism. What the three confessions have in common is only the letter of Scripture, which they understand differently. The divinity of Scripture can, regardless of the accepted dogmas of faith, lead the mind to a correct understanding of the truth contained in Scripture, but such understanding requires special conditions that are not inherent in all confessions. An Orthodox, a Catholic, a Protestant “can sympathize with each other in many ways,” but in this case this sympathy never goes “to the depth of the basic convictions of the mind and heart,” and yet in the fundamental convictions, which are different in each confession (as a special type of fusion of the mind and heart) lies the basis of this or that understanding of Christianity. Let school definitions 292 have no special meaning (even if these definitions themselves are nothing more than a theoretical expression of well-known living convictions), but there is no doubt that religious teaching has a certain effect on life itself. Orthodoxy, firmly adhering to the boundaries “between revelation and human reason... preserves the dogmas of revelation without any change,” and on the other hand does not constrain the natural activity of the mind, Catholicism does not know the firm boundaries of reason and faith, introduces new dogmas, Protestantism opens up full scope for personal understanding. These differences in confessions from the perspective of the relationship of reason to faith create “three main images of the activity of man’s mental powers, and at the same time three main forms of development of his moral meaning.” The presence of the necessary conditions for a correct understanding of the Christian faith was given only in the Orthodox consciousness, and since there is a mutually dependent connection between the practical side of Christianity and its speculation, there is absolutely no reason to consider the doctrinal side of Christianity as unimportant. Even if there is often a contradiction between belief and activity, even if sometimes, professing one creed, a person “by the cast of his soul belongs to another” - all this does not in the least speak against the need for an organic connection between moral activity and theoretical beliefs. The usual fact of contradiction between one and the other is not a norm; on the contrary, it is not a normality that stems from “human weakness” and has nothing to do with the merits or demerits of a creed. “Where a person is in agreement with himself and is consistent..., there a special mood of spirit must correspond to each special creed” - and such a fact should be the norm, the ideal. In the Orthodox confession, which is characterized by integrity in thinking itself, which determines the integrity of the entire moral being of a person, the specified norm must certainly have its implementation. Holistic thinking and the integrity of practical doing, which is completely consistent with it, is the ideal that, in connection with the historical foundations of Russian life, becomes clear for our future and which in its content is nothing other than the Orthodox Faith taken in all its purity. From the concept of this Faith, as from a premise, Kireyevsky developed the sum of those thoughts that he mostly expounded fragmentarily on various occasions in his articles and which we tried to bring together into one whole in the previous presentation. I. V. Kireevsky himself sometimes stated that in everything that he writes in his works there is nothing new, unknown to him, but that, on the contrary, he repeats old thoughts that only require reminders and repetitions. Such a statement is very typical for a religious thinker who adheres to a certain church belief. If thought, divorced from traditional views, can create something conditionally new, then, on the contrary, thinking based on a traditional foundation can only develop and improve previous views. Hence, the just cited statement by I.V. Kireyevsky about the nature of his literary works, when comparing this statement with the content of the religious and philosophical views of Kireyevsky just stated, indicates the historical and genetic path of these views in the history of Russian thought. This path is essentially the same as that observed in relation to Kireyevsky personally during a brief outline of his individual development, and can be outlined in a summary consideration of the socio-historical development of the church-religious tradition, which found relief expression in Kireyevsky’s worldview. The history of the Russian intelligentsia, and therefore its worldviews, is usually carried out from a relatively late time, namely, mainly from the second half of the 18th century, although it is usually indicated at the origin of the Russian intelligentsia in previous centuries. 293 As a result of such attention to the post-Petrine period in the history of the intelligentsia, the line separating two periods in the history of our “educated society”, which was drawn by both the so-called Westerners and the so-called Slavophiles, seems to deepen even more. Meanwhile, this dividing line is not so deep in reality as it is in the imagination. All this talk about the extraordinary significance of Peter’s revolution for the mental life of Russia, about the break, as a result of this revolution, between the intelligentsia and the people, etc., turns out to be extremely exaggerated, and sometimes downright incorrect. 294 The explanation for the harshness of these provisions must in most cases be sought in the temperament of those who literary tried to give such a philosophy to our history. But with a calmer attitude to this issue, it is easy to see that the activity of any Peter is not able, even in alliance with many sympathizers of this activity, to tear the development of the people away from the sphere of action of the age-old laws of its history, and that the abyss formed between the intelligentsia and the people, as a result of the invasion of Russian life by Western science, is not so terrible. In the worldview of I.V. Kireevsky, as was said in the sketch of his life and as can be seen from the just made presentation of this worldview, the main points around which the rest, more or less secondary, are grouped are the following: 1) the teaching of the Orthodox Church should be the basis for the correct mental and civil development of human society, 2) the Orthodox Christian teaching, as fully corresponding to the norm of the correlation of human mental powers in the field thoughts can give rise to the only true philosophy - the philosophy of integral knowledge, 3) being closely connected, in its moral aspect, with life itself, the Orthodox Christian teaching is, at the same time, the only ideal norm of social life. If the worldviews of those representatives of Russian thought, who were based in their theoretical constructions not on a religious and, in any case, not on an Orthodox idea, have their distant roots in not so distant centuries of Russian history, 295 then the roots of the worldview of the so-called Slavophiles are hidden in the very first centuries of this history; a worldview that has Orthodoxy as its main subject, and its cause, its starting point historically, is this same Orthodoxy, the establishment of Orthodox Eastern Christianity in Russia. If among the relatively closest ancestors of I.V. Kireyevsky there were also people who declared themselves opponents of Peter’s coup, and people who declared themselves Christian piety 296, then behind them there are many other, sometimes even more distant ancestors, both in life and, what is especially important, in ancient Russian literature. The attention that Kireevsky pays to Catholicism and Protestantism, wanting to find out the true ideal of religious life, has precedents in past Russian life. Orthodox consciousness declared itself in ancient Russian writing very early; With the name of Theodosius of Pechersk, a message directed against Latinism was known in ancient Rus'. Over the course of several centuries of our ancient writing, we can point out more than one example of literary action against Latinism (Metropolitan Nikephoros in his letters to Vladimir Monomakh and the Volyn prince Yaroslav Svyatopolkovich, Metropolitan Cyprian in his letters, Kurbsky, John IV). Particularly interesting, as a distant precedent for discussions about Catholicism (in its relation to the historical life of peoples) among our Slavophiles, in particular Kireevsky, are the epistles of Elder Eleazar of the Monastery Philotheus. This author of the 16th century, polemicizing against the Latins, recognizes only the Orthodox faith as the true basis of the life of peoples, 297 directly, one might say, similar in this respect to the future Slavophiles, with whom, as we will see, he has more than just this similarity. The Orthodox Christian trend in Old Russian 298 writing was also revealed in relation to Protestantism, or in relation to the spirit of rationalism that constitutes the essence of Protestantism. The dislike of Russian people towards Western science, their “fear of thoughts” initially stemmed from the awareness of the anti-religion of this science and its contradiction with the requirements of morality. Therefore, it was the Russian book people of the 16th and 17th centuries. Orthodox teaching was considered the source of true knowledge, and any development of “opinions” and excessive philosophizing were considered harmful. 299 The just mentioned writer of the 16th century, the Elder of the Eleazar Monastery Philotheus, among other things, wrote in his epistles that human knowledge is limited and that, as a result, a person must subjugate his mind to revelation. 300 When, especially since the 17th century. Western influences became too noticeable in Rus' and when, in addition to Catholicism, Protestantism began to penetrate us, the protest of Orthodox Russian people in the name of Orthodoxy was directed simultaneously at everything heterogeneous, Western, that penetrated into our concepts, into our morals, into our practical life. Along with the heresies: “Latin”, “Luthorian”, “Calvinist”, various customs in home and public life were rejected as closely related to them. 301 What is very characteristic of all this is that in the worldview of the Russian people of the 16th and 17th centuries. external manifestations of Russian life, for example everyday life, were closely connected with the most cherished beliefs - religious ones. In the worldview of Russian book people of that time, we thus encounter not only a protest against the rationalism of Western science, which makes them similar to the future Slavophiles, but also this, perhaps weakly recognized by them, organic connection between religious concepts and religious life and social life, which, as we have seen, is established by I.V. Kireyevsky for ancient Russia and what he sets as the norm for the life of Orthodox Russian society and state. It remains for us to point out one more similarity between the views of Russian book people of the 16th century. and our thinker. In the messages of the same elder Philotheus, the idea of ​​Rus' as the third Rome was developed. Old Russian publicists came to this idea under the strong impression on them of the fact of the fall of the Byzantine Empire and because of the consciousness of the extraordinary value of Russia, called by Divine Providence to be the guardian of the true faith. 302 Subsequently, new Russian Slavophile publicists taught approximately the same about the historical role of Russia, and in particular Kireyevsky, the most modest, so to speak, of all Slavophiles in his political worldview, highly valued Rus' for the principles of integral knowledge (and life) living in it and pointed out precisely in it the source of renewal for Western Europe. It is very easy to guess that the basis of the views of publicists of the 16th and 19th centuries. one and the same, and that it should be looked for in a deeper antiquity than the 16th century. in Russian history, cited by us for reference solely as a vivid analogy with later phenomena of Russian life. Indeed, both the facts just mentioned in ancient Russian literature, and all this literature, insofar as it was of a religious nature, had its main reason in the Christian enlightenment of Rus', in the sacred and religious-moral books that came to us along with Christianity from Byzantium. In the Holy Scriptures and patristic works one can indicate the source of many monuments of our ancient writing. The religious and philosophical worldview of Kireevsky ultimately comes down to this same basis, which makes us understand this both by his definition of the nature of Russian philosophy, which should be based on a patristic basis, and by his sympathetic attitude towards the ancient Russian monasteries, which spread enlightenment in the spirit of patristic writing, and by his sympathetic response to some representatives of this writing, especially those close to him. We will next turn to the presentation of patristic thought in relation to the issues that interest us. But before doing this, it is necessary to pay attention to the fate of the worldview that interests us in the 18th and 19th centuries. 303, since Kireevsky belongs to the 19th century and the closest relationship to him in the historical and genetic sense is the 18th century. Since the 18th century, Western influences began to operate especially noticeably in the life of Russia; one’s own, Russian, begins to get very mixed up with someone else’s, so that in the resulting confusion of concepts it is easy to sometimes recognize one’s own as someone else’s. Let's briefly talk about the most noticeable discoveries of our own, Russian, in the field of worldview (actually in the field of religious and moral outlook on life) during the indicated time. The undoubted successor of the religiously minded Russian people of ancient Rus' in the 18th century. can be considered N.I. Novikov. Placing religion at the forefront of life, Novikov’s understanding of Christianity not only as a theory, but also as a corresponding activity, the justification of such an understanding of Christianity by broad philanthropic activities, Novikov’s interest in the life of ancient Rus' (hence his collection of materials for Russian history) undoubtedly makes Novikov related to representatives of the Orthodox worldview in ancient Russian literature. True, on the other hand, in Novikov we see a significant step forward compared to his predecessors, since he did not deny the positive significance of Western science 304, however, Western European ideas were for Novikov, at the same time, not a goal, but a means for the development of domestic education. It is well known 305 what Novikov’s “Freemasonry” and Russian Freemasonry of the 18th century in general was, which pursued the sole goal of raising the level of religious and moral life; It is known that, taking care of the dissemination of books in Russia, Novikov chose for this purpose books mainly of religious and moral content and, finally, for the magazines he published, Novikov selected articles that would express his own convictions, the convictions of a person who had developed spiritually in the atmosphere of primordial Russian concepts. And in one of Novikov’s journals, researcher 306 notes the following ideas: “thought and faith should not contradict each other; faith complements the searches of the mind, the mind supports faith with its arguments. Our mind is limited, where the area accessible to it ends, there the area of ​​faith begins.” Wasn’t this, in general, the epistemology of the ancient Russian scribes, and isn’t this, in essence, the epistemology (at least on the issue of the relationship between faith and knowledge) expounded by I.V. Kireevsky? And here is the other side of the epistemological problem, formulated by Novikov: “If a scientist... despite his learning has an evil heart, then he is worthy of regret and with all his knowledge is a complete ignoramus.” 307 This already completely convinces us of the similarity of views on the tasks and nature of knowledge of Novikov and Kireyevsky, since in Kireyevsky’s epistemology the moral principle, as we have seen, plays a very important role. It is quite understandable, therefore, that one of the first in our critical literature to appreciate Novikov, and to appreciate it enthusiastically, was Kireyevsky. In the article “Review of Russian Literature for 1829” Kireyevsky wrote (speaking about Karamzin): “But let us stop here and marvel at the strangeness of human fate. The one to whom our enlightenment owes such rapid successes, who advanced the education of our people by half a century, who spent his whole life in the blog of the fatherland and has already seen the fruits of his influence in all corners of the Russian kingdom, the man to whom Russia owes so much - he died recently, almost forgotten by everyone, near that Moscow, which was the witness and focus of his brilliant activity. His name is now barely known to most of our contemporaries; and if Karamzin had not spoken about him, then perhaps many, reading this article, would have heard for the first time about the affairs of Novikov and his comrades, and would have doubted the reliability of events so close to us. The memory of him has almost disappeared; the participants in his labors dispersed, drowned in the dark worries of private activity; many are no longer there; but the deed they accomplished remains: it lives, it bears fruit and seeks the gratitude of posterity.” 308 The Novikov society, indeed, left its mark on Russian life. The ideas that this society preached had their effect in the generations of Russian people who followed it. This, perhaps, was reflected, in addition to everything, by the organic development of these ideas in Russian life (which is especially important), but one cannot, for example, not see the influence of Novikov’s ideas in the organization of teaching and educational work in the Free Noble Boarding School, which arose according to the thoughts of people from the Novikov circle 309, who adopted their religious and moral direction, which later affected the literary activity of many representatives of our literature who came out of the walls of this boarding house. In this case, we do not need to go into the details of our social and literary development in the first decades of the 19th century, but it will be enough to point out such facts in our literature, the relationship of which to Kireevsky is established by direct indications of his biography. Some points of similarity between the views of Kireevsky on the one hand and V.A. Zhukovsky and Prince were indicated in their place (briefly). V. Odoevsky on the other. In view of the fact that Zhukovsky had a close relationship with Kireyevsky, being with him mainly in correspondence, and in view of the fact that Kireyevsky greatly valued Zhukovsky’s opinions, we will supplement what was said in his place about Zhukovsky with a somewhat more complete presentation of his views, revealing in him a Russian thinker. 310 Zhukovsky's religious and philosophical views closely resemble the views of Novikov and Kireevsky. Zhukovsky's worldview, without a doubt, is imprinted with a religious character. “There must always be,” he says, “we mean by the word truth its source - God. Find Him and you will find everything... Every philosophy that leads us to truth must begin with faith in God, and this faith must be the first link in our mental chain.” 311 Defining then faith itself as an event of inner life, as the subjugation of the mind to revelation, Zhukovsky comes in his philosophy to the idea of ​​the Church. Faith is aroused in people by the power of grace, the guardian of which is the Church. 312 Similar to Kireevsky, Zhukovsky looks at the relationship between faith and life, considering virtue to be the main duty of a person and an ideal, and religion to be the main basis of life, 313 and at the relationship between life and true knowledge. Understanding by true knowledge the knowledge of God, Zhukovsky points out, like Kireevsky, the moral basis for true knowledge, and hence for true enlightenment: the truth is revealed only to a pure heart and only enlightenment, closely connected with virtue, is genuine. 314 Therefore, Zhukovsky completely takes the side not of a rationalistic worldview, far from life, for whose interests only the development of the mind is important, but on the side of Christian philosophy, opposite to rationalism, reconciling faith and knowledge and close, in its foundations (religious and moral), to life itself. 315 Further, somewhat similar to Kireevsky, Zhukovsky looks at the role and unique position of Russia in European history, similar - since both see the triumph of the Christian principle in the life of Russia. 316 It is not our task to fully and broadly interpret the question of the religious state of Russian society in the 30s and 40s; for our purpose - to explain the genesis of Kireyevsky’s worldview, it is enough to point out facts that not so much illustrate the life of an entire society, but rather speak for the validity of the importance we emphasize of the church-religious tradition in Kireyevsky’s worldview. At the same time, even from the few facts of a certain order, we point out only those that, as already said, are suggested by the biography of Kireyevsky and his writings. Hence, for example, such extremely interesting material for studying the religious life of Russian society of that time, as some of Gogol’s works, cannot be directly related to our subject. True, Gogol, without a doubt, was close to Slavophile circles, but in this case we do not ask the question of what was the possible share of influence that Gogol contributed to the development of the Slavophile doctrine, as well as what was the role of the first Slavophiles in this matter, besides I.V. Kireevsky. And we touched upon the views of V. A. Zhukovsky not at all in order to accurately determine his role in the emergence of the Slavophil teaching (it even seems to us that Zhukovsky did not so much influence the emergence of Slavophilism as he himself, and precisely in the 40s, found himself in the grip of Slavophile trends), but solely in order to note the historical and genetic path of the ideas that formed Kireyevsky’s worldview. At the very end of our work, we will say, in addition to what was indicated in the section about the personality of I.V. Kireevsky, a few words about how the later history of Slavophilism seems to us, i.e. its very emergence in the 40s, but for now we only needed to outline its past history, more distant and closer, but equally related to the worldview of I.V. Kireevsky - in the person of Novikov, who interested I. V-cha, Zhukovsky, close to Kireyevsky, or in the person of the writers - monks of ancient Rus', with whom Kireyevsky’s ancestors had something in common (see Chapter I of this present op.), and maybe even I. V-cha himself. Now let us turn to clarifying the elements of patristic thought in the worldview of I. V. Kireevsky. The solution to mainly two questions in Kireyevskaya depends on the holy fathers: the epistemological question - about faith and knowledge, and the closely related question about true Christian life. Turning to the works of his fathers, I. V-ch found there an understanding of Christian life that fully met his aspirations. In the most profound, from the point of view of I. V-cha himself, the eastern writer, Isaac the Syrian, 317 he could find something clearly expressed, with references to the Holy. Scripture teaches that for a truly Christian life it is necessary not only to profess known dogmas and generally theoretically accept the faith, but must also justify the confession of the truth by deeds, by which we mean deeds of love for one’s neighbors—one must act in accordance with the commandments. The Holy Father repeatedly emphasizes that agreement between deeds and teaching is necessary both to receive the fruits of our faith and as evidence of it. “Do you believe in God?” - he asks and answers: “Do good, but this faith requires works, and even hope in God from suffering, which is about virtues. Do you believe that God provides for His creatures and is strong in all? but let your faith be followed by appropriate deeds, and then he will hear you.” 318 Not only should we bring our behavior into harmony with faith in order to be worthy of divine help, but deeds are evidence of our faith. “Other is a word that comes from an action, and another is good (i.e. beautiful, eloquent). And besides the skill of things (i.e., without experience in business), the message is the wisdom of decorating one’s words and speaking the truth without knowing it and expressing virtue, but never the skill of doing it. The word is it; the hedgehog of action is the storehouse of hope; and unactual wisdom is a canopy (i.e., a container) of cold.” 319 "Every person's desire is shown by his deeds." 320 That is why both "vision" and "deeds" are necessary. Just as an artist who paints water cannot quench his thirst from a picture, so one who talks about faith, but does not fulfill it in deeds, creates only ghosts. 321 The same idea about the need to harmonize faith and deeds is also found in other Eastern ascetic writers. "The sign of a good soul is a good deed," says 322 Blessed Abba Fallasius. “Faith,” writes 323 Mark the Ascetic, “consists not only in being baptized into Christ, but also in fulfilling his commandments.” We are reborn in baptism, but our will does not lose its freedom, hence both good and evil deeds are possible for us. Works are necessary for us, for the Lord himself and the apostles showed works, suffering for our salvation. Therefore, for example, Mark the Ascetic understands repentance as, first of all, the fulfillment of the commandments: give to anyone who asks you (Luke 6:30), sell your property (Matthew 19:21). Abba Dorotheos 324 writes about the rules of Christian life: “do this in practice and then you will clearly understand what you hear; for truly, if you do not do this, you cannot learn this with words alone. What kind of person, wanting to learn art, comprehends it from words alone? No, at first he works and spoils, and little by little he learns the art. But we want to learn the art of art with words alone, without getting down to business. Is this possible? 325 Justification of faith by works - this is the main requirement of the ascetic fathers for Christian life. Here, obviously, we are talking about the very integrity of thought with life that Kireevsky demands. According to him, true philosophy (I.V. speaks in this case of Christian philosophy) should be a public matter both in the sense of the development of its speculative side and in the sense of practical activity. In ancient Rus', Kireyevsky saw a relatively complete manifestation of the Orthodox faith and argued this, based on the nature of family, social and other relations in ancient Russian society, i.e., on the actual facts of life. Deriving an ideal for the future based on the experience of the past, Kireevsky set as the main requirement for each individual consciousness: “to connect the direction of one’s life with the fundamental conviction of faith.” Similar in this requirement to the views of Christian Eastern writers, I. V-ch developed the thoughts of the same writers in justifying it. This, of course, is to be expected after the thinker’s statement that original Russian philosophy should be the application of patristic wisdom to the given moment. Here we must not forget that Kireyevsky, for all his interest in practical life, was still a thinker, a philosopher, and of all the questions that present themselves to the human mind, he was primarily occupied with the question of knowledge. This problem, central to modern philosophy, was solved by Kireyevsky, as we have already tried to show this in the systematic presentation of his religious and philosophical views, depending on certain moral requirements, as a result of which he has a moral principle at the same time and an epistemological one. This is the integrity of the worldview outlined by Kireyevsky: our thinker could not write, like Kant, two books, one of which would be devoted to pure reason, and the other to practical reason. In this case, we are interested in clarifying the moral premises underlying Kireyevsky’s views, in comparison with the teachings of Eastern Christian ascetic writers. As we have seen, Isaac the Syrian, Mark the Ascetic, Abba Dorotheos and Abba Fallasius agree to formulate the basic rule of Christian life in the sense of the need to harmonize thought and deed. By deeds they all mean deeds towards their neighbors, which is also deeds for God. The above-mentioned writers depend, so to speak, on the good quality of faith itself: the absence of works is understood by them as evidence of unbelief. 326 He who does not show himself through deeds in his relations with his neighbors is busy with his own well-being, serving his selfish inclinations. The latter come from the body and are undoubtedly associated with the desire for well-being in this world. A person has a fear of the world, which is expressed in the fact that a person tries in every possible way to protect his interests in the world, satisfying his carnal needs. Following the path of the world, the flesh, caring about personal physical well-being, a person forgets about his neighbors and, in the absence of good deeds for them, reveals his unbelief: “the message of faith is revealed to be high in souls, according to the morals of those who listen and... testament of the commandments of the Lord." 327 Works are obviously necessary not only as a guarantee of heavenly reward, or as an external evidence of faith: faith itself depends on them. A person cannot know God, cannot understand the true meaning of his existence (and this meaning lies in God) without good deeds. This view of Christian ascetics on knowledge, which also determines their speculation on the issue of faith and knowledge, depends on certain views on the world and man. The world, according to the teachings of Isaac the Syrian, is a collection of passions that prevent a person from knowing his purpose. Drawn by passions, a person loses the integrity of his cognitive powers and mistakenly finds his goals. This state of a person is a consequence of his sins. True knowledge is possible for a person under the condition that he rises above the world, if, having conquered the fear of the earth in himself, he acquires the fear of God. Let only a person have a spark of love, love will certainly instill in him the fear of God, a feeling that will give him the strength to have a negative attitude towards earthly blessings. By resorting to prayer, good deeds, and constant observation of oneself, a person will gradually die to earthly things and a light will open in him that he had not previously seen. Through the exercise of the will in goodness it is only possible to achieve true knowledge, which is why the Lord commanded “before all others, to hold on to non-covetousness and to retreat from the rebellion of this world.” Overwhelmed by passions, in the power of the world, a person does not hear his true nature: impressions from the outside pour abundantly into his soul, preventing it from concentrating. By deepening ourselves, we gain the ability to feel our “natural nature,” since under this condition nothing extraneous enters our inner world. And so, when the treasure of our soul is cleansed, when the powers of the mind are gathered, then the mind turns “from external cares and soaring and calms down about itself and the heart is excited to experience thoughts, even within the soul” 328 then the sky opens to man and he “sees his Lord within the interior of his heart.” 329 This is true knowledge. Mark the Ascetic and Abba Fallasius look at the relationship between good activity and knowledge of the true purpose of man in the same way. The first writes that by gaining victory over sin, we receive the gifts of St. The Spirit, which according to the Apostle: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, mercy, faith, meekness, self-control. We receive all this as we do the commandments, for doing good deeds. We can rise to the goal of our knowledge - God - only through the struggle with thoughts, through moral efforts, so that everyone’s knowledge is as true as it confirms his meekness, humility and love. 330 According to Fallasius, the mind, freed from passions, becomes light-like, being constantly illuminated by contemplations of all things. “Guard your thoughts and flee from evil, so that your mind is not darkened.” By faith in Christ, who delivered us from death, we must fight against sin, against the world. In this struggle, cleansing ourselves of passions, we become accessible to the influence of the Spirit of God, which leads us into the knowledge of those who trust. Abba Fallasius, like Mark the Ascetic and Isaac the Syrian, understands true knowledge as knowledge of God: “The mind tends to dwell in God and think about Him.” 331 So, this is why Christian ascetics placed Christian teaching and life in such a close connection. Behavior, good or evil deeds served for them as a clear indicator of where a person’s inner being is directed. Based on the significance of the central facts in the history of true religion: the Fall and redemption and accepting a dualistic (in the moral sense) view of the world, Christian ascetics naturally had to merge the moral and epistemological principle in their understanding, which is quite correct in the sense of the biblical teaching of both testaments. Our first Slavophiles, with the theological basis of their worldview, in particular Kireevsky, who paid special attention to the teachings of Eastern Christian ascetics, adopted precisely this point of view. According to Kireevsky, the means of knowledge is not abstract reason, but the total integrity of all spiritual aspects of a person. For Kireevsky, the rational direction was inevitably associated with the moral fragmentation of a person, when life represents not a harmonious development, but a struggle of people’s egoistic inclinations. Internal integrity, on the contrary, was associated in the understanding of I. V-cha with the moral meaning of human actions, when each individual phenomenon in life stands in a certain relationship to a single life principle. Kireyevsky, in the few fragmentary works that we have from him, does not pose or solve the central problems of Christianity - we find only a few words from him about redemption, there are not even any mentions of other cardinal subjects in the system of the Christian worldview - but the general nature of his views allows us to assert that Kireyevsky undoubtedly builds his entire worldview on a Christian basis. This is especially supported by the merging of moral and epistemological principles in K’s teaching, indicating the dependence of Kireyevsky’s philosophy on the wisdom of Eastern ascetic writers. The subject or goal of knowledge, supplied by both, especially clearly emphasizes the undoubted similarity here. According to Isaac the Syrian and others, the path of true knowledge is nothing other than the knowledge of God, to Whom the human soul, pure from passions, rises. According to Kireevsky, in our soul lies the ability to recognize the correct relationship to God: by learning our duties to God, we thereby already know everything else, since everything must be known depending on one highest principle of knowledge of the Divine. As a means to true knowledge, Kireevsky points to self-deepening, the collection of all the forces of the spirit into one efficient vision of the mind, achieved through the preference of the highest values ​​of life over everything else; also among the ascetics, who, in the struggle against passions, against the flesh, pointed out the path of true knowledge. Thus, in a very understandable logical connection with moral and epistemological views, identical in Kireevsky with the views of Eastern Christian ascetics, both he and they have a requirement for complete compliance of Christian life with teaching. In fact: if the significance of moral activity is so great that it determines, to a certain extent, theoretical beliefs, then isn’t it clear that without moral achievement, genuine truth cannot be achieved? To achieve the latter, it is necessary to gather all the forces of the soul into one vision of the mind, but this gathering, in turn, can only be achieved through the moral efforts necessary to do good. By purifying himself with a virtuous life, a person discovers within himself the “natural nature”, or that, as Kireyevsky puts it, the island that exists in the soul of every person, and which is invisible to the mind, blinded by passion, among the randomly rising waves of the ocean of life. The moral path of knowledge, or rather the knowledge of God, is an essential point that makes Kireyevsky’s view akin to the wisdom of Christian Eastern ascetics. Taking into account the prominent position that the ethical element occupies in the views of the Slavophiles, their teaching is usually characterized as moral, 333 i.e. this characteristic emphasizes the practical nature of the teaching, which is also characteristic of many other constructs of Russian thought (journalistic and philosophical). This characterization is true, but only within certain limits. True, practical interest in the systems of Russian publicists and thinkers (of different directions) always occupied a prominent place (this feature of Russian thought is usually designated as realism), but if the Russian mind is not characterized by speculation detached from life, then the preference for the practical, the desire to create a system that meets real needs, does not in the least exclude interest in the theoretical side of the worldview. In particular, among the older Slavophiles, especially Khomyakov, recognized the essential role of the development of consciousness. Kireevsky, similar to Khomyakov in basic philosophical concepts, also never denied the positive role of consciousness. In his criticism of the principles of Western European philosophy, I. V-ch, however, strongly emphasized the complete inconsistency of abstract thought in the knowledge of truth, but, as a man of a strong logical mind, he could not completely deny attempts to rationally assimilate even the highest religious truths. Kireevsky believed that logical reasoning is not dangerous for a believer in his heart. From this point of view, everything achieved by one-sided development has its meaning in the general treasury of true knowledge; only the results of the logical mind should be looked at as the lowest level of truth and the logical mind itself is only a step to the believing mind, comprehending what is essential in human knowledge. “What kind of truth is this, or is it unable to bear the light of thought, when its persistence rests on one blind confession?” - Kireyevsky reasoned, and from here the possibility of a problem about the mutual relations of faith and reason opened up for him. In posing this problem, Kireevsky proceeded from the conviction that there is only one truth and, therefore, it is possible to reconcile the results of natural thought with the truths of revealed teaching. The solution to the question of faith and reason, as can be seen from the fragmentary remarks about this by I. V-cha, as well as from what Kireyevsky says about the type of true philosophy, understood as a mediation between the sciences and faith, is similar in our thinker to the speculations of Eastern ascetics. According to ascetics, reason is the opposite of faith, but on the other hand, degrees and states are possible for reason when it seems to merge with faith. There is knowledge by nature and there is knowledge through nature. The first kind of knowledge is inherent in natural reason, the second - in reason illuminated by faith. Natural reason “does not attempt to abandon every thing that ruins nature, that is, to allow it), but moves away from it.” 334 He preserves nature, and therefore for his conviction he seeks visible images for everything that seems strange to him, which he forbids his disciples to approach. Following carnal desire, the mind is inclined towards wealth, vanity, decoration, and in general everything that crowns the body. It is quite clear that such (natural) reason should be contrary to faith. Faith is higher than nature; it does not require the kind of evidence that is necessary for natural reason. Faith does not exalt itself by imputing its works to the work of grace. The principle of faith is expressed in the words: “unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3)”, “all things are possible to him who believes.” It goes without saying that the deeds in which faith is manifested are significantly different from the deeds of the carnal mind, these are: fasting, almsgiving, love for neighbors, etc. This is the difference between natural reason and faith. When, through the will 335, the mind turns from the carnal to the spiritual, to prayer, reading divine scriptures, and the struggle with passions, it becomes a step to faith. In this new state, the mind puts on fiery thoughts, receives the wings of dispassion and becomes able to rise to heights and “see the dawn, incomprehensible to the mind.” 336 Rising further in its perfection, reason is absorbed by faith, which gives birth to it “from the beginning,” that is, as if again. In this state of higher illumination, knowledge becomes available to the mind not through nature, but by nature. The carnal or natural mind knows through nature, that is, through the use of things by passion, while the mind, illuminated by faith, knows by nature. (For example, the idea of ​​gold as a creation of God is knowledge of things by nature, and the idea of ​​gold with selfish lust is knowledge of things through nature). 337 This is how Isaac the Syrian talks about reason and faith, who devotes several “words” to explaining the various degrees of reason. Isaac the Syrian, however, does not have a clear indication of how the elevation of reason begins from the level of natural to faith. It is true that this father indicates a certain kind of disposition, a desire, which is believed to be the beginning of true life and true knowledge - with them, therefore, the elevation of the mind to truth begins - but this idea is more definitely expressed by other ascetic writers. According to Abba Fallasius, the elevation of the natural mind to faith begins with faith, which in this case should be distinguished from the contemplation of the hidden, that is, from the highest faith. “The mind that begins to philosophize,” writes Abba Fallasius, “about Divine things, begins from faith and then, turning and walking among these things, again reaches faith, but a higher one.” The mind begins from listening faith and reaches into theology, which extends beyond the limits of any mind, to faith, always inherent in consciousness, immovably abiding in it. 338 St. Mark the ascetic, noting the starting point of true faith, distinguishes between faith from hearing (reference to Rom. 10:17) and faith - notification of those who hope (reference to Heb. 11:1). The first type of faith is obviously only the beginning, from which the elevation of reason to higher faith takes place, which the Apostle defines as “notice to those who hope” 339... The importance of reason, therefore, is not denied by ascetics, but in accordance with their basic view of the world and man, they indicate the highest level for natural reason, where it already appears in faith. Created capable of knowing God, man through moral effort can rise to such knowledge and this is accomplished in faith, which gives meaning to natural reason, uniting it together with other spiritual powers of man into one integral vision of the mind. Without faith in God there can be no true knowledge, and since true knowledge is the knowledge of God inherent in man in the possibility, it is clear that faith is also inherent in man and only the predominance of natural reason can lead a person’s mind to unbelief. I. V. Kireevsky’s doctrine of faith and reason includes all the above considerations. Let us remember how Kireyevsky defined philosophy: “Philosophy is not one of the sciences and is not faith. It is the general result and common foundation of all sciences and the conductor of thought between them and faith.” This is how the ideal philosophy that seemed desirable to Kireyevsky is defined, and should have been based on the wisdom of the fathers. The believing mind, which distinguishes Orthodox thinking, should serve as an organ of knowledge for this philosophy. This concept of the believing mind is very expressive in order to clearly see in Kireyevsky’s teaching about reason and faith the similarity with the teaching on the same issue of Eastern Christian ascetics. In agreement with Isaac the Syrian and others, I. V. definitely emphasizes reason and knowledge through faith, as one cannot be reduced to the other, but at the same time, as we saw among Christian ascetics, I. V. allows for the co-penetration of reason and faith. “Faith is not a blind concept, which is only in a state of faith because it is not developed by natural reason and which reason must raise to the level of knowledge” - it is “the highest rationality, life-giving for the mind.” Reason is only the lowest level of knowledge and is characterized by relative truth. Being at a lower level, the mind is not able to understand the truths that make up the area of ​​​​higher knowledge, why these truths seem to it unreason - just as the carnal, natural mind, according to ascetics, is not accessible to the spiritual. From lower levels, the mind can move to higher ones, for which it is necessary to elevate the very “way of thinking” to a sympathetic relationship with faith. According to the teachings of the ascetics, for this purpose an effort of will is required, a desire that is initially expressed in faith from hearing, and according to Kireyevsky, you need to “follow” the way of thinking, constantly elevate the mind until the assimilation of faith. “The inner consciousness that in the depths of the soul there is a living common focus for all the individual powers of the mind constantly elevates the very way of thinking of a person.” In this case, rational conceit is humbled and the mind voluntarily submits to faith; the very elevation of the mind, obviously, is accomplished through some effort of will, as is the case with ascetics. In accordance with the latter, Kireevsky also defines the significance of the lower degrees of reason in the total sum of knowledge, which, like the ascetics, is reduced by our thinker to the knowledge of God. Reason, elevated to faith, looks at all knowledge coming from a lower source, at all systems of thinking coming from the lower levels of reason, as incomplete, limited, not expressing the highest truth, although not useless in its subordinate place. From this point of view, I. V-ch allows the free development of the natural laws of reason, in the confidence that if this development is normal, reason cannot help but come to the highest truth and submit to it. It is only necessary to observe the consonant action of cognitive forces, since integral truth requires the integrity of the mind - and under this condition, the mind cannot help but be imbued with faith, which is inherent in a person, as an event of his inner life. In accordance with the teachings of the ascetics, Kireyevsky looks at faith, penetrating the mind, as a revelation of the realm of the spirit before the mental gaze of a person, an area inaccessible to the natural mind, darkened by passions. Thus, the doctrine of faith and reason, as well as the doctrine of the integrity of life, in a word, the main points of Kireyevsky’s philosophy are in very clear similarity with the views of ascetics. Believing it expedient for the development of original Russian philosophy to turn to the philosophy of the fathers, Kireevsky was aware at the same time that to resume the fatherly philosophy without any changes would be completely inconsistent with the tasks of the time. There were completely different conditions of mental and social life when the eastern ascetics built their speculations. In particular, for example, the question of faith and knowledge cannot be resolved, many centuries later, in exactly the same way as it was resolved in the 6th or 7th century. This question is generated by the conflict between religious truths and the results of progressive science, and therefore for the new time there must be a new formulation of the question, corresponding to the level of scientific knowledge. I. V-ch, however, only managed to write an introduction to the system he had conceived, and could only outline a solution to the question of faith and knowledge in the spirit (as we have shown) of the speculations of Eastern ascetics. I. V-chu failed to explain the philosophy of the ancient fathers in another important point, in the application of this philosophy, as a practical teaching, to social life. Due to various circumstances, paternal philosophy was limited to the development of internal contemplative life, and now, under changed circumstances, the basic principles of this philosophy should be applied to family, social, and state relations. This idea is persistently emphasized by Kireyevsky, but in this case he again only repeats patristic thoughts, with the difference that the ancient fathers, realizing the need to implement Christian teaching, turned directly to the individual, and Kireyevsky would like to make philosophy a public matter, both in relation to practice and in the sense of working out and developing the speculative side of it. The plans of I. V-cha “to contrast the precious truths of paternal wisdom with the modern state of philosophy, to consider all the issues of modern education in relation to them” remained unfulfilled for the most part. Kireyevsky only managed to clarify a few, albeit basic, questions of his system, and he did this in the light of the thinking of the fathers, from whom he found a genuine living philosophy that surpassed in depth and inner truth the newest systems of Western philosophy. In the light of the patristic works, the boundaries of the influence of Western philosophical systems on Kireyevsky are also revealed. Two significant points attracted the attention of I.V., in particular in Schelling’s teaching: the expansion of the sphere of knowledge beyond the boundaries of abstract thought into the field of contemplation and feelings and the doctrine of nationality. After we have presented the sum of the main provisions of Schellingism, systematically presented the views of Kireyevsky and indicated his attitude towards the ancient Eastern fathers, the significance of Schelling for our thinker becomes very clear. Revealing the completely Christian content in his system, Kireyevsky used Western wisdom as a form, a means of methodological substantiation of his ideas, taken from completely different sources. It is indeed not difficult to notice that Kireyevsky borrows quite a lot from Schelling, but it is also clear that their significance does not extend beyond a purely formal role. In Schelling's system, the entire sum of ideas, as we know, was confined to mythology, as a point where all the phenomena of reality were affirmed in a mysterious soil. Consciousness, freedom, knowledge of the world - everything that is in a person and around him, all this develops from the mysterious depths of the Absolute through a series of unconscious, logical steps. In Kireevsky's discussions of enlightenment, which he understands in the sense of a conscious appeal of popular thought to the previously unconscious foundations of life, the assimilation of Schelling's ideas about the unconscious is noticeable. This point is closely connected in Kireevsky, as well as in Schelling, with the doctrine of nationalities - bearers of various principles. The unity of the mythological process, according to Schelling, was broken due to random reasons into several branches, therefore each nation, expressing part of the mythological content in its history, appears with its own special purpose. The concept of the unconscious turned out to be very convenient for substantiating the doctrine of nationality for Kireyevsky. In connection with the same idea of ​​the unconscious, Kireyevsky borrows aesthetic considerations from Schelling. Art, according to Sh., constitutes one of the aspects of the mythological process, expressing its essence, as a result of which it is related to knowledge. Kireevsky, like Schelling, recognizes such a significance for art, believing that truth becomes more reliable when aesthetic dignity is added to its logical dignity. Thus, the principle of knowledge comes into close contact in Kireevsky, as well as in Schelling, with the theory of the unconscious, which is expressed, among other things, in art. Expanding the boundaries of knowledge through the assumption of the sphere of the irrational and recognizing the importance of the means of knowledge behind aesthetic emotion, Kireevsky, however, coincides with Schelling only in understanding the principle of knowledge, but the very content of knowledge differs from the ideas of the German philosopher. Kireevsky especially attracts attention to the concept of integrity of spirit, closely connected with the idea of ​​moral perfection. This predominance of the moral point of view, or more specifically, this directly ascetic principle in his worldview could not have been borrowed by Kireyevsky from Schelling’s philosophy. The idea of ​​moral improvement is not characteristic of Schelling (it distinguished the system of another German philosopher, Fichte) and in the special meaning in which this idea is in Kireyevsky, it could only be taken from ascetic creations. Corresponding in the recognition of some formal criteria of truth with Schelling’s views on this subject, I. V-ch, in the content of the ideas he develops, is aligned with Christian ascetics. In fact, according to the same, in general, principles of knowledge, very different comprehension of the world can be affirmed. Schelling gave a view of the world that was different from the Christian knowledge of this world. For example, in the Christian understanding of Eastern ascetics, spirit and matter did not merge in an indifferent identity, and the aesthetic point of view of the world that prevailed in Schelling was replaced by them with the primacy of a moral idea. Dualism, understood in the Christian sense, is what underlies ascetic philosophy, distinguishing it from constructions in the spirit of aesthetic and any other indifference. We note this difference as important in essence, closely related to the very essence of Christianity. The main problems in the Christian worldview are the doctrine of the Fall and redemption, the doctrine of evil and the victory of good over it; It is quite clear from this that moral ideas that are closely related to the essence of Christianity receive special interest in Christian philosophy. Although Kireevsky does not specifically examine the problems of evil and salvation, the content of his thoughts fully corresponds to the Christian solution to them, since the thinker is affirmed on a moral principle and develops an ideal that is completely consistent with the foundations of Christianity. Whatever borrowings from Schelling we point out to Kireyevsky, all this will relate to the formal elements of his worldview, but in essence, in content, this worldview is an expression of Christian ideas, assimilated in their Orthodox understanding. Everything said above about Kireyevsky’s attitude towards St. Fathers and Schelling must be convinced of the correctness of this conclusion. There is no doubt that all these thoughts of I. V-cha: about knowledge through moral perfection, through an active life aimed at the benefit of one’s neighbor, about faith as the highest insight into the natural powers of the human mind, about the ideal structure of social life - all these are purely Christian ideas that can be formulated in literal expressions from the books that constitute the primary source of Christian wisdom and life. Among the views expressed on the question of the origin of Slavophilism as a doctrine, there is, among other things, the view according to which Slavophilism appears to be the creation of a collective mind. The first Slavophiles, the Kireevskys, Khomyakovs, Aksakovs, were so closely connected with each other in life itself that their literary works themselves bear traces of inevitable mutual influence. However, in the above explanation, what can be extracted from it to clarify the meaning of Slavophilism is more correct than an explanation of the literary relationship between the first Slavophiles. From a chronological point of view and in the sense of an earlier, in comparison with others, literary statement of his views, I. V. Kireyevsky, as was said in his place, can be considered the founder of the Slavophil doctrine, but in its significance this doctrine exceeds the role of an individual. Slavophilism is nothing more than a vivid manifestation of religious-national consciousness, and in this sense it could be created, and therefore expressed, by the efforts of many individuals. 340 Slavophil thought was created socially. This understanding of Slavophilism fully corresponds to the views of Kireyevsky, according to whom our philosophy should be the result of the activity of society, and not just an individual. At the same time, the indicated understanding of Slavophilism is suggested by those historical precedents of Slavophilism, which were indicated above and which also have a social character. In a word, the historical-genetic path of Slavophilism up to and including its final stage is the gradual revelation of the religious church idea in the best representatives of Russian society, and the first Slavophiles, with some differences in the views that existed between them, are similar to each other in that they all revealed in their writings the ideal of Orthodoxy, some mainly from the philosophical side (Kireevsky), others from the theological (Khomyakov), others mainly from the historical (K. Aksakov), prompted by requests of a personal and social nature. From this concept of the nature of Slavophil teaching (a concept that we have emphasized repeatedly in different places of this essay), the later fate of Slavophilism or the influence of Slavophil ideas on representatives of Russian thought in later times becomes quite clear, without much lengthy reasoning. Based on the understanding of Slavophilism as an experience in the philosophy of religious-national self-consciousness, as a social philosophy, one can discern its influence in all the later phenomena of Russian thought, imprinted with such a character. In view of the fact that there are very many facts of such a discovery of Russian thought in a time later than the era of Slavophilism, we do not need to indicate them in full, especially since many of these facts are a deviation from the teachings of the first Slavophilism. Therefore, it is enough to point out the most important and undoubted facts of the influence of Slavophilism in later times, bearing in mind the range of thoughts of Slavophilism as given in the works of Kireyevsky. Since Slavophilism touched upon questions of a religious nature, which constitute the subject of research into spiritual or theological literature, we can first of all note the influence of Slavophilism on theological literature. The reasoning of Slavophilism on the religious issue, built on an epistemological and moral basis, undoubtedly provided new living material for the science of confessions, in particular, the moral side of Slavophilism, which occupies such a prominent place in this teaching, created interest in explaining the moral side of Christianity, which can especially be observed in authors who respect the teachings of the Slavophiles. 341 Kireyevsky’s idea to create Russian philosophy on a patristic basis also finds fruition. 342 The influence of Slavophile ideas in other areas of literature is very wide: the thoughts of Slavophilism were often accepted here not only by its friends, but also by its opponents. The idea of ​​Slavophilism about the rationalism of Western culture was accepted and developed in detail by Vl. Solovyov (as already mentioned above), the morality of Slavophilism is felt in the writings of the so-called pochvenniki, these successors of Slavophilism, Apollo Grigoriev, Strakhov, Dostoevsky. The idea of ​​“developing social self-awareness” found a talented successor in the person of S. N. Trubetskoy, in his teaching about the nature of consciousness. In more recent times, we also find ideas, or at least interests, akin to Slavophilism in “Problems of Idealism” and in “Vekhi”, mainly in the works of S. N. Bulgakov and N. A. Berdyaev. In the works of recent authors, as well as other modern thinkers who have an ideological affinity with Slavophilism, one can, of course, according to the time, note a lot of things extraneous to Slavophilism that do not fit in with it, but we mean the similarity of those named by the author with Slavophilism in some essential points and, above all, in their interest in the faith and life of Orthodoxy. One can even say that modernity is especially rich in Slavophile ideas and sentiments, understanding by Slavophilism the religious and social worldview given by Kireyevsky. And it may be that this “social philosophy,” which currently lives only in the best Russian people, will in the future become truly social and become a powerful means of reviving the Russian people. See eg. article by S. M. Solovyov in the Russian Bulletin, 1857, revealing the unhistorical nature of Slavophile views. Response to this article in Rumor of 1857: “Opposition of Mr. Solovyov to Kireevsky” K-va. Finally, there is a work on Kireyevsky, in which the metaphysical foundations of his worldview are revealed. Gershenzon. I. V. Kireevsky, doctrine of personality. Historical notes, M. 190? Although this material was always presented by the author himself almost in the form of reasoning and, therefore, logically. Our systematization of Kireyevsky's views will consist of a summary of the contents of his various articles. Galich. History of philosophical systems according to foreign manuals, II. 1819, pp. 255, 256, 257. Or cf. presentation of the Schelling system in new, foreign courses. Galich, pp. 259, 264, 267. Vellansky. Prolusion to medicine, II, 1805, 16, 17 pp. Mikhnevich. Experience of a simple presentation of the Schelling system, Odessa, 1850, pp. 28, 31. Galich, p. 279. Vellansky. The main outline of general and particular physiology or physics of the organic world. II. 1836, p. 188. Mikhnevich, p. 35. On art as an organ of philosophy, cf. accordingly paragraphs in Transcendent. ideal. Schelling. Kireyevsky. Schelling's speech, vol. II, ed. 1861 Collection op. in ed. 1861 vol. II, p. 6. II, 29. This idea of ​​enlightenment as an act of self-knowledge is expressed more clearly by D. Venevitinov: “Self-knowledge is the only idea that can animate the universe: this is the goal and crown of man. The sciences and arts, eternal monuments of the efforts of the mind, the only signs of its existence, represent nothing more than the development of this initial and therefore unlimited thought. The artist animates canvas and marble only to realize his feeling, to be convinced of its strength; the poet artificially transfers himself into a struggle with nature, fate, in order to test his spirit in this contradiction and proudly proclaim the triumph of the mind. History convinces us that this goal of man is the goal of all humanity” (Works by Venevitinov, Trans. 1855, p. 138). II, 39, 35, 97; I, 189; II, 330. II. 301, even clearer at 304. In his early writings, K. does not indicate the basis for accepting his views as objective truth. As we will see, such a basis for him was “believing thinking,” which gave him the right to recognize the Orthodox beginning of life as the only legitimate one. I. V-chu generally failed to give his points of view a more or less objective meaning, and in the works that we have from him, direct religious conviction, or the dogmatically posited foundations of the philosophical and theological system presented to him, dominates more. In the “Excerpts” of I. V-cha, found in his papers, among other things, the idea is given about the need, through the “development of social self-consciousness,” to impart to the Orthodox view on the development of the human spirit a possible degree of objectivity and universal bindingness. II, 334, 331, 338, 339. Below we will see what these reasons were. II, 287, 246, 247; I, 193. II, 247, 248; I, 192, 193. I, 191; II, 246, 284, 285, 286. II, 283, 286, 287, 288, 304, 303. II, 252, 253, 289, 185, 189. Letter to Khomyakov. "Materials for biogr." p. 90; II, 336, 318, 320. II, 256, 257, 309, 310, 258. II, 260; I, 198, 199; II, 279. I, 194. 195; II, 264, 265. I, 199, 195; II, 265, 266. II, 247. 202, 263; I, 196. II, 277, 269, 278, 327, 328. II, 4, 282, 283, 12, 233, 305. II, 314–317, 331, 332, 338, 339. I, 196–198; II, 339, 340. “From the Letter of I.V. Kireevsky to N.” See Home Conversation, 1801, no. 46, article “Indifferentism”. The above words represent an extract from Letter N to which Kireyevsky responds. Here again Kireyevsky makes reference to a literally written passage from the letter. For example, in the book by Ivanov-Razumnik “History of Russian Social Thought”, see the first chapters of volume 1. A similar idea is expressed, for example, by the famous critic M. A. Protopopov. See in his book: “Critical Articles”, M., 1903, articles about populist writers. The critic drew, and quite rightly, attention to the fact that between the intelligentsia and the people there is only a quantitative difference, but qualitatively the people and the intelligentsia are one and the same. We speak here conditionally, not in the sense of facon parle, but in the literal sense, because on very many constructions in the field of Russian thought, which are not established on a religious basis, one can indicate certain traces of the influence of the religious past, sometimes in the sense of the presence of formal mental traits, and sometimes in the content. See Chapter I real work. See research by prof. Malinin: “Elder Philatheus of the Eleazar Monastery and his messages,” Kiev, 1901, 316–324. A detailed examination of this trend in our ancient literature can be the subject of independent work: for some details we refer to the same study by Prof. Malinina, pp. 82–113. Here the patristic basis of ancient Russian writing is indicated in a larger number of literary works than we do, with the goal of indicating the genetic connection between the spatially separated facts of our literature, ancient and modern. Prof. Arkhangelsky, Education and literature in the Moscow state conc. XV-XVII centuries, Kazan, 1898, pp. 27, 30. Prof. Malinin, cit. cit., p. 241. Prof. Arkhangelsk. Education and literature... pp. 31–33. Prof. Malinin, cit. op. pp. 383–442. We, quite understandably, cannot give an exhaustive history of this entire question here, since for this we would have to write a huge book specifically devoted to religious and moral ideas in Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. We dwell, as was done above (relative to ancient Russian history), only on some literary facts, from our point of view the most noticeable. Novikov, however, had an aversion to natural sciences. East. r. With. Porfiryeva Part II, Dept. 2, p. 290. But there is no doubt that Novikov was a champion of humanitarian education in our country. His activities in educating Russian youth are well known. Ibid., p. 287. About Novikov, see Pypin, History of Russian Literature, vol. IV and his “Russian Freemasonry of the 18th century. ed. "Lights." Nezelenov, N.I. Novikov, magazine publisher. II. 1875. p. 307. Having outlined the “philosophical views of Vechernyaya Zarya” (one of Novikov’s journals), the researcher says: “I have dwelt in great detail on the presentation of all these views of the journal, firstly, because their influence was reflected, as we will see, in many important provisions of Novikov’s publications, and secondly, because they have, perhaps, a very important place in the history of the development of our thought: in them, it seems, we should see the germs of that philosophy which has developed so holistically in modern times in the works of Kireyevsky and Khomyakov.” Moscow Monthly Edition 1781, part 1, preface. Quote according to I.r. With. Porfiryev, part II, from. 2, 4th ed. pp. 296 and 297. Collection op. in ed. 1861, I, 20, 21. The boarding house owed its existence to Kheraskov, who was an active member of the Novikovsky Philanthropic and Educational Society. About the boarding house, see N. S. Tikhonravov. Rus. lit. vol. III, part 2, M. 1898, p. 87 and following. Zhukovsky discovered the Russian way of thinking not only in his prose articles, letters, etc., but also in his poetic works: as in the first, Zhukovsky expressed in them the way of the Russian soul, although he did not give in them images of pictures of Russian life. Zhukovsky's sentimental worldview is essentially the same in content as Novikov's, which is understandable even historically, because Zhukovsky was brought up in the Free Noble boarding school. – M. O. Gershenzon, in an article about Kireevsky, in the book “Historical Notes,” also quite correctly points out the connection between Slavophilism and Russian romanticism. Touching on the connection with Kireyevsky's worldview of some of the views of V.A. Zhukovsky, we do not touch in detail on the side of the matter indicated by M.O.G., since we are interested primarily in the content of the worldview, and a reference to romanticism could take us far away from the main subject. Collection op. Zhukovsky, ed. prof. Arkhangelsky, XI, 3. Collection composition XI, 4: X, 83; XI, 17, and other places. See also “Diary” of Zh. II. 1901, 51. Collection op. X, 132; IX, 9, 24. “What is enlightenment? The art of living, the art of acting and improving;... to find inalienable happiness in oneself.” In parallel to this thought of Zhukovsky, the following words of I. V. Kireevsky in his story “The Island” suggest themselves. The old man says to the young man who finds himself on a desert island: “look at this beautiful island... life on it is not like yours... people don’t know it... In the soul of every person there is the same lost island... Just look for it.” Collection op. in ed. 1861, I, pp. 160–161. Collection op. Zhukovsky, XI, 19. Collection op. Zhukovsky, X, 120–128. Isaac the Syrian was an ascetic who lived at the end of the 5th century. His “Words of Spiritual Asceticism,” translated from Greek by Elder Paisius Velichkovsky, was published in a translation corrected from the original and with notes by Optina Pustyn in 1854. Is. Sirin, Words of spiritual asceticism, p. 388. Philokalia, vol. III, ed. sec. M. 1900, “Abba Fallasius about love, abstinence”... and so on. Philokalia, vol. I, ed. Thursday, M. 1904, “Instructions on spiritual life.” Mark Podvnzhnik + early 5th century; Abba Fallasius - in the 7th century. The life of Abba Dorotheus dates back to the 7th century. It was these writers, and above all Isaac the Syrian, who were recommended by the spiritual father of I.V. I.V. not only carefully read the works of these fathers, but also translated and edited translations from them (see his letters to Elder Macarius in the edition of works edited by Gershenzon). Abba Dorotheus is spiritually beneficial. teaching, ed. ninth, page 105. Is. Sirin, p. 103, etc. Philokalia, vol. I, “Instructions on Spiritual Life”,.. “To those who think to be justified by works.” Philokalia, vol. III, “Abba Fallasius on love, temperance and spirit. life"... In this term it was noted by Tsypin. For example O. Miller. Fundamentals of the teachings of the original Slavophiles. Russian M. 1880, book. 1 and 3. Is. Sirin, pp. and 133 ff. Is. Sirin, p. 109 and note. Philokalia, vol. I, “To those who think to be justified by works.” The originality of Slavophilism as a national worldview is not undermined by the fact that some so-called alien thoughts are used as material for its construction. In addition to the formal influences indicated in their place in the doctrine of Slavophilism, some borrowings of Kireyevsky from Guizot were noted long ago in his views on the composition of Western culture - but this does not destroy the soul of Slavophilism, the essential content of which is completely original. If Kireyevsky, in agreement with Guizot, indicates elements of Western culture (See Works of D.I. Pisarev, article “Russian Don Quixote”), then the essence of Kireyevsky’s articles on Western enlightenment is not in this indication, and, finally, the center of gravity in Kireyevsky’s articles is not in his views on Western enlightenment, but in his views on the enlightenment of Russia. Such are, for example, the theological works of Kharkov Metropolitan Anthony. We have in mind numerous theological works devoted to the study of the speculation of St. fathers.