Об экономическом идеале

Introductory lecture to the course “A Critical Introduction to Political Economy.” The emergence of scientific experience is determined by needs of two kinds: it either serves the interests of pure knowledge, is an end in itself, or is caused by extraneous human needs - no matter whether it is of a material or ideal order, and therefore has an external goal. In the first case we have science in the proper sense, in the second we have technology, of course understood in the broadest sense and including, along with technology, medicine, law, and scientific agronomy. Science is autonomous in its tasks and problems, technology is always heteronomous: it has a ready-made task to serve a given ideal from the outside, and therefore presupposes in advance the existence of a good that seems to it unconditional, absolute, and not subject to criticism within itself. Such an absolute benefit for medicine is human health, for technology - increasing the productivity of human labor, etc. However, the ideal that gives content to the absolute obligation of any branch of technology is only relatively absolute, no matter how contradictory such a phrase may seem; in itself it can still be very far from that point of human knowledge where it directly abuts the absolute and finds support in it; outside of this special discipline it is subject to critical discussion, but its very existence already presupposes it as an unconditional criterion for distinguishing good and evil within its limits. Political economy also belongs to the field of technology in the specified broad sense of the concept. It arose and exists, supported by the practical importance that economic issues currently have in the life of cultural humanity. It was born as the fruit of the search for modern consciousness and conscience for truth in economic life. It is caused not by theoretical, but by ethical demands of modern humanity. Political economy, according to this preliminary definition, is applied ethics, namely the ethics of economic life. Consequently, political economy is not autonomous, but heteronomous in its ideal, which is given or given to it, representing for it, as it were, a kind of axiom. However, until the moment we have crossed the threshold of political economy, while we are still stopping at its doors, we have the right and duty to freely criticize and discuss these final ideals of it, which, as in any technical discipline, are only relatively absolute. We can subject them to a critical test by bringing them into connection with what appears to us to be truly absolute and immutable. As a result of such a critical discussion, we will receive some guiding principles for judging to what extent the current political economy satisfies its tasks, how correctly and clearly it understands them. And from this point of view we will reconsider both the main problems and the general content of modern political economy. 204 Two great problems give life to political economy: the problem of the production of wealth and its distribution, the economic and social question. The task of political economy is therefore determined by two ideals: the economic ideal and the social ideal. The study of these ideals, these two orders of ought, absolute for political economy, should first of all constitute the subject of a critical introduction to political economy. Here we will deal with the ought of the first kind, or, what is the same, with the question of the ideal of economic policy. Wealth is an absolute good for political economy. It would not occur to any economist to doubt this or ask about it. Increase wealth - this is the law and prophets for political economy. And since the growth of wealth is in connection with the development of needs, the same commandment, expressed differently, reads as follows: multiply and refine needs and thereby create conditions for the growth of wealth. True, with the consistent development of this doctrine, economists encounter an unforeseen difficulty, a luxury. Luxury is an obvious evil in the eyes of an economist, for it leads to a decrease in wealth, therefore, it contradicts the first commandment of the economic catechism, although it sacredly follows the second. Therefore, debates about luxury and its meaning are of particular interest in economic literature, with some economists proceeding from the recognition of the utility, even the necessity, of luxury, since it fulfills the second commandment (for example, Malthus in his defense of luxurious landowners, defenders of militarism as creating demand for military items, etc.), others emphasize the harm of luxury, referring to the first commandment (and from this point of view they condemn both the luxurious classes and militarism). The dispute did not lead to anything indisputable and remains unfinished; and it is obvious that the antinomy here cannot be eliminated, and the question cannot be resolved by purely economic criteria, therefore, within the limits of political economy, no matter how much literature for and against luxury grows. It is permissible to ask the question how in political economy such a controversial doctrine as its main premise about the significance of the growth of needs acquired such an undeniable significance? This dogma was originally introduced into political economy as a methodological convention, a hypothetical assumption. U Hell. According to Smith, a person, as is known, appears in two different departments with completely opposite traits: in the department of ethics he is endowed with one altruism, and in the department of political economy - with one egoism, so that he portrays himself as the proverbial “economic man” 205 of political economy. And introduced Hell. Smith's premise received, with his light hand, a strong right of citizenship in political economy; The historical-ethical school tried to raise a weak and theoretically fruitless protest against the ethical materialism of political economy, but the doctrine of economic materialism, in general the school of Marx, sharpened this teaching even more, turning it from a methodological premise into the main position of the philosophy of history, into the doctrine of the economic struggle of classes as the true basis of the entire historical process. Apart from Ruskin, Tolstoy and some of the so-called utopian socialists, the question of wealth as a universal and ethical problem has not been raised in political economy. And this, without a doubt, is explained not by any personal materialism of economists, among whom we know the great representatives of practical idealism, but by the poverty of their general worldview, their positivism, which does not encourage them to critical reflection on the threshold of a scientific building, but immediately leads them into its nooks and crannies, from where broad prospects will no longer open. Questions of principle turn into facts and, in inverse proportion to the poverty of general ideas, special research grows. However, after a century of development of economic science, the time must come for critical reflection, when not only questio facti, but also questio iuris can be raised. So, let us pose a questio iuris regarding the absolute good of political economy, its economic ideal. Here lies a whole philosophy and a world-historical problem: is wealth and the growth of needs good in the light of not only political economy, but also moral philosophy? Is this not only an economically absolute good, but also a good in general? If yes, then in what sense, if not, then why and how? In the first case, political economy has a philosophical and ethical right to exist, in the second, all of it is reduced to some kind of misunderstanding or delusion. So, we are talking about the moral raison d'etre 206 of political economy. Such an external economic assessment of wealth obviously takes place only on the basis of a general philosophical worldview; This question is decided in a higher authority than political economy. Let us turn to this higher authority. On the question of wealth and the multiplication of needs, human thought moves between two extreme poles - Epicureanism and asceticism. We must first determine our attitude towards these two mutually contradictory teachings of moral philosophy. Let's start with Epicureanism. The philosophical side of this teaching is distinguished by extreme simplicity and crudeness - it is usually combined with positivism or materialism, with the denial of all absolute principles of life and all existence other than the sensory. Carpe diem 207 - do not miss any pleasant sensations of any kind - such is the immoral morality of Epicureanism. Epicureanism gradually develops from crude hedonism to aesthetic one: the range of physiological needs is too limited, therefore, in order to extract the greatest amount of pleasure with their help, they need to be refined and refined. And this is most likely accomplished by bringing aesthetics into the service of sensuality. This phrase alone contains a monstrous contradiction, for the beautiful, by its metaphysical nature, is inseparable from the good and aesthetics from ethics, but for Epicurean aestheticism, which sets the tone for modern decadence, it is precisely this aestheticism quand meme that is characteristic, 208 without any connection with the higher activities of the spirit, therefore, in subordination to the lower ones. So, Epicurean aestheticism is the last word in the philosophy of hedonism that dominates our days. Naive hedonism has always constituted the conscious or unconscious philosophy of political economy, since the latter accepted wealth and growth of needs as an absolute good, and this unites the most opposite economic trends. A completely conscious and very decisive formulation of the hedonic doctrine is given by the famous prof. W. Sombart, who is one of the brightest talents among modern economists and combines in his worldview the scientific elements of both Marxism and the historical school. In his newest work 209 Sombart expresses his views with complete frankness, so that in it we have, as it were, a clear mirror into which hedonism can look. Let us be grateful to him for his frankness and clarity and look in this mirror. We are talking about the art industry and the development of modern taste. According to Sombart, present-day Germany has achieved such success in this regard that, in comparison, the first half of the 19th century seems to be a time of terrible rudeness and bad taste. Sombart explains this difference by the special nature of education at that time. This is how he characterizes the age of Fichte and Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, Heine and Goethe: “It was an exclusively aesthetic-philosophical, literary, idealistic, insensitive and therefore non-artistic (unsinnliche und somit inktinstlerische) culture of the spirit, which alone was considered noble. Being poor in material goods, in a beggarly environment, they made a virtue out of poverty, built a world of ideals for themselves, and from there looked with contempt at all sensuality and physicality. Temperance and modesty were in vogue; humbly bowed before the invisible, sought kisses, shadows and the smells of blue flowers, abstained and groaned. Thought, idea, learning sat on the throne as unlimited rulers; the arts and even the plastic arts were to be subordinated to them.” “Who would find it surprising that this generation of writers, philosophers and aesthetics, poor in purse, but rich in heart, rich in “sentiments”, but terribly poor in “sensibilite”, 210 was, out of principle or due to lack of means, not characterized by a real understanding of material well-being, the decoration of external life. Even Goethe, who belonged to a more secular (weltverwandtere) era, who was no stranger to pleasure and who had no lack of taste for luxury and splendor, even Goethe lived in a house the decoration of which to our modern taste seems pitiful and beggarly, and even Goethe could express the idea that the elegant and luxurious decoration of rooms exists only for people who have no thoughts - a view adopted by Schopenhauer. “Even the artists did not know the magical charm of an environment of beautiful things, they did not understand anything about the art of living in beauty: they were ascetics and purists. They either dressed like Nazirites in camel’s hair and ate locusts and wild honey, or led the life of a school teacher or official.” Currently, “the entire understanding of life is undergoing change.” It becomes from predominantly literary to predominantly artistic, from abstract-idealistic to sensual. A taste for the visible world of this world, the beautiful form of even external objects, awakens for the joy of life and its pleasures. Artistic feeling becomes the determining principle of the entire way of life, the artistic ideal guiding in all areas. Just as before art was under the yoke of thought and literary fantasy, so now artistic vision dominates literature and all areas of the spirit. Apparently, an era of cultural flourishing is approaching, which has always been artistic and not ethical (kulturellen Hochbliite, die stets kunstlerisch und unetisch war).” For the next 20 or 30 years, Sombart makes the following prediction: “I foresee that the coming generation, after many centuries of hardship, will finally once again lead a life that will be imbued with beauty and contentment. A generation will appear which, from the fullness of wealth flowing to it with wasteful abundance, will create a whole world of desires and beautiful forms, a generation of people for whom pleasure, the joy of life will become self-evident companions of earthly wanderings, people with refined feelings, with an aesthetic worldview. This means: quantitatively, the need for the elegant takes on dimensions of which we now cannot form even the slightest idea; it increases immeasurably, to such colossality and splendor, in comparison with which the “luxury” of imperial Rome, the splendor of Venice, the extravagance of Versailles will turn into nothing.” Elsewhere, Sombart draws attention to “the more valuable, skillful and convenient arrangement of restaurants and hotels, cafes and taverns, railway trains and ships, trading houses, as well as all the business premises of capitalist enterprises. Currently, perfume and tie stores, lingerie stores, hair curling salons, haircut and shaving salons, photographic workshops, etc. are ahead of everyone in terms of aesthetic furnishings. Business and commercial life is imbued with beauty.” Naturally, the only sign of beauty here is technical feasibility: “we will learn to find beautiful what is technically perfect.” “The car contains the style of the future.” Of course, from his point of view, Sombart completely eliminates the concept and question of luxury. “There is no such wasteful expenditure, such refined pleasures of life, that could not find its sanction and therefore justification in the personality of its performer. The pearl of great price, which Cleopatra ordered to be crushed in order to pour the powder into a cup of wine offered to a guest, is mentioned in every treatise on luxury as an illustration of “extremes.” However, who of those who even to some extent understands the charm of extraordinary people would want to look for them in the image of this great wife? Or in the night rides of Ludwig II? Or in the luxury and splendor of the Sun King?” To complete the characterization of Sombart’s views, we also point out that in the same work he establishes the following position: “We became rich because entire races and tribes died for us, entire parts of the world were depopulated, entire countries and cultures were devastated” (Der moderne Kapitalismus. Erster Band. 326–48). This, therefore, is the price of this happiness for the present and future of humanity. But enough of this bourgeois nonsense, flavored with fashionable Nietzscheanism. This is what the mirror of hedonism shows. Historical development in Sombart’s ideas leads from bestial humanity (as Solovyov put it) 211 to pig-humanity, and at the end of the mournful historical path he sees as his goal a self-satisfied, “not ethical, but aesthetic” philistine, with the ideals of a fashionable lady! Where is the place here, in this barbershop civilization, for the torment of a nascent thought, the languor of a restless conscience, the feat of love and self-sacrifice, the tireless struggle with oneself, where in this world restaurant will our poor spirit fit with its worldly questions? The spirit is surrendered here without a fight to satisfied sensuality, its birthright is sold for lentil stew. The absence of ideals is replaced here by “life in beauty.” Drowning of the spirit in sensuality, life without ideals, spiritual philistinism - this is the inevitable logic of hedonism. And this feature does not represent a personal feature of Sombart’s views; he only has the merit of consistency, frank revelation of the entire content of the ideals of hedonism, bringing it to moral absurdity. 212 But if hedonism wants to surrender the spirit into captivity of matter, then asceticism strives to completely free it from it. The body and its life for an ascetic are absolute evil. Plotinus, the largest representative of Neoplatonism and one of the greatest philosophers of all time, according to the stories of his student and biographer Porphyry, seemed to be ashamed of living in a body, and therefore refused to give biographical information about himself and did not allow portraits to be drawn of himself or a statue to be made, to perpetuate the “ghost of a ghost,” as he told the artist Amelius. 213 All pleasure is captivity of the spirit. Life is a mirage, an evil deception, a mara. Suppress your needs so that you die alive, free yourself from the world’s evil, and enter the state of nirvana. The most consistent and decisive expression of the ascetic understanding of the world is the religion of Buddhism. Let us call forth from the darkness of time, from the depths of the mysterious East, the great shadow of the Buddha and listen to his opinion about life after we have just heard the opinion of a modern Western European scientist. In Sutta Nipata, the canonical book of Buddhism, 214 we read: “Whoever here does not take anything for himself, no matter what is given to him - be it long or short, big or small, bad or good, I will call him a Brahmana.” “Whoever is not attracted to himself by either this world or the next, who is not subject to any desire, I will call him a Brahmana.” “Whoever has forgotten all bodily pleasures, who has destroyed their very seed in himself and is coming around the world, having no refuge here, I will call him a brahmana.” “If one who yearns for them succeeds in achieving bodily joys, he becomes joyful, having found something dear to mortals; if he fails to achieve those joys, he suffers as if pierced by an arrow. He who avoids bodily joys, as if he were afraid to step on the head of a snake with his bare foot, will always drive away this thirst for joys by reflection. Whoever thirsts for those joys, thirsts for fields and goods, horses and cows, servants, loved ones and wives, he is overcome by sin, he is crushed by misfortunes and great suffering flows into his heart, like water through the cracks in a shuttle. So, by meditation, drive away carnal joys; freed from them, it is easy to swim across this sea; “scoop up all the water from your boat, and it will rush easily and cheerfully to the other shore.” “A person tied to the body, covered with the bark of sin, deceived, does not rejoice in solitude, is not cleansed from carnal pleasures. Whoever is led here by passions and lusts, who is taught by desires for joys, it is difficult to free himself, clinging to the past and the future, dreaming of new joys, sweetly remembering the past... I see in this world a fearful breed, enslaved by the thirst for life - these are unfortunate people, yearning in the jaws of death, absorbed in the stream of rebirth. Look at these people: like a fish trembles in a dry stream, so they tremble in constant worry and concern for themselves; “You walk in humility, not harboring any passion for life.” So, the main position of the pessimistic philosophy of asceticism is that life and all joy of life is evil, subject to suppression and denial. The ascetic worldview is found in various philosophical and religious sects. It was also adopted by that ascetic understanding of Christianity, which is closer to the teachings of Buddha than of Christ. Based on a one-sided and therefore incorrect interpretation of the Gospel teaching on wealth, this worldview often turns God's world into the exclusive kingdom of Satan, into which not a single ray of divine light penetrates. It is obvious what the practical conclusions of the ascetic worldview may be for history and political economy. First of all, if life is evil, and its joy is an unconditional sin, then for the frightened imagination of the ascetic, the only way out seems to be the suppression of this life in oneself, gradual self-mortification. Kill your flesh, reduce your needs, deny wealth as a temptation and the greatest evil - this is the commandment of asceticism. 215 So, the basic commandment is the opposite of the main premise of political economy, which is based on the recognition of the legitimacy and desirability of the growth of needs. Asceticism denies political economy, denies economic development, denies material culture. But the matter is not limited to this. For an ascetic worldview, there is no history as a planned development of the entire human race, as a reasonable and purposeful process. For him, historical life is not a task that can be solved by the collective humanity and imparts independent value and meaning to history, but only a numerous and diverse repetition of the same sad story - individual human life. For humanity, therefore, there is only one task - individual soul salvation, individual liberation from world evil (within these boundaries, the teachings of the Buddha are distinguished by high altruism), but outside of this, no historical tasks that survive the life of an individual exist. Thus, the doctrine of asceticism, which found its purest expression in Buddhism, is necessarily ahistorical and gives room only to moral individualism, denying collective moral or social tasks. These features of Buddhism - the denial of political economy and material culture, history and public morality - are resurrected in our time in the teachings that have adopted individual features of Buddhism to the greatest extent. All these features can be seen, for example, in the philosophy of L.N. Tolstoy; the denial of history is typical of Schopenhauer's philosophy, which is strongly colored by Buddhism. The ascetic worldview is nothing so alien to modern consciousness as in its denial of history in public morality. A modern person cannot adopt this point of view without doing moral violence to himself or without withdrawing from people. At these points, Buddhism, despite isolated cases of revival (which in the near future, apparently, will increase rapidly in Western Europe), is a stage in the development of thought that has finally been passed over by European humanity and a return to which is as impossible as to astronomy before Copernicus. Modern morality is based on the recognition of the value of history and the obligation of historical tasks, which do not fit into personal morality and necessarily require a person to recognize his ideal connection with all humanity, past, present and future; the most modest person in this sense should see in himself not only a moral person, but also a historical figure: few deserve the right to be called that, but historical duties exist for everyone. So, on the issue of wealth, we have two mutually contradictory and mutually destroying views. Will we stand helpless in the face of this contradiction and join one or the other of them, obeying only personal whim or taste? But this would mean the complete moral bankruptcy of political economy, since it is accepted that it rests only on caprice and can also be destroyed only by caprice. The disadvantage of both points of view is the ethical materialism they share, although it is strange to hear this reproach applied to asceticism along with hedonism. Both of these views consider material needs and material life, or even life in general, to be an independent goal or value and differ only in the fact that one view recognizes this goal, and the other denies it, although it is limited to this denial alone. They are both equally alien to the point of view according to which wealth and material life are not an end in themselves, but only a means for serving a higher, absolute goal, and therefore should not be assessed in themselves, but on the basis of the relationship in which they stand to this highest goal. What is the purpose and meaning of human life in general? This is a question that is inevitably dictated to a person by his human dignity; Without one solution or another to this question, he cannot begin any activity, be it political economy, or technology, or medicine. For that which gives the general meaning of life also comprehends any activity that fills it. But it is obvious that this question cannot be resolved within the framework of either political economy or any social science; on the contrary, a certain solution to this question is already assumed to be given or available in it. Therefore, every person is inevitably a philosopher, in the sense that whether good or bad, he solves these philosophical problems for himself. It is obvious that depending on one or another method of solving a philosophical problem, the political-economic problem is posed and resolved differently, but it is also obvious that this resolution takes place outside of political economy and political-economic arguments do not play any role here. Is man, and then humanity, and then its history, only a fact, an unforeseen result of causal series, having no internal necessity, but only an external necessity, or does man and historical humanity carry within themselves an absolute idea, perform an absolute task, exist not as a result of a random combination of causes, but in the name of a moral goal? This is the basic dilemma, the solution of which determines the philosophy of political economy. It is obvious that from the first view there is only one road - to Sombart’s epicureanism, one morality - “soul, eat, drink and be merry”, 216 one ideal - hairdressing civilization, ladies' boudoir. The second view allows for various exits. One of such solutions may be the philosophy of asceticism in its various shades. But it leads, as we have seen, to a dead end due to the narrowness of its principle. The philosophy of asceticism is based on the absolutely correct idea that animal, sensory life is considered only as a fact to be denied, but it turns this denial into destruction, instead of subordinating this fact to a higher, ideal principle, instead, in short, of its idealization or spiritualization. Human life has absolute meaning and value not in itself, but outside itself and above itself; it receives it not as an empirical or biological fact, but as service to a higher, ideal principle, the essence of good. Its ideal content therefore consists of the activity of the human spirit, morally self-determining, choosing by a free moral act one or another direction of will, spiritual work. Spiritual work is the goal of human life, and for this goal everything else should be considered only as a means. This work is expressed, of course, in various spiritual benefits, and their totality constitutes what is called culture or cultural acquisitions of a given historical era. The life of both an individual and the totality of them, or historical humanity, has the same ideal content, or rather the same task. But if so, then what is the special content of history? This question can most easily be answered by comparison with the development of an individual. Our consciousness at different ages of our lives and at different moments of spiritual development is faced with essentially the same questions about goodness, about truth, about our relationship to the world and people, about human life and its purpose, etc., the same questions, but how differently they are posed and resolved. Childhood consciousness copes with them with naive simplicity, youth cuts them down with frivolous determination, but they will again return to the calm spirit of mature age and the deepened consciousness of old age. Isn't that what we have in history? Is it not the same absolute content of human life and the ideal needs of the human spirit that are reproduced by historical humanity, but on a wider scale, with increasing depth and complexity? If the content of spiritual life is unchanged and absolute, determined by the same demands of the spirit, then the conditions of this life, and therefore the forms of satisfying the same requests, are changeable and subject to historical development. Spiritual life requires one, albeit negative, but priceless and irreplaceable condition for itself - freedom; moral self-determination can only be free, and vice versa, only free self-determination can have a moral value. It is useless to prove this self-evident truth. But only a pure spirit, free from all external influences and open only to the inner, has perfect freedom. Man exists in the body, therefore, he is connected with the external, material world, in which mechanical necessity reigns. The freedom of the human spirit is therefore necessarily subject to external (not to mention internal) restrictions; complete, spiritual freedom represents an unattainable ideal for empirical man. And yet ideal! Yet the closer a person is to the ideal, the more autonomous his moral life, the more fully he can express his spiritual self. What can be argued in this sense against the formula of Hegel, who sees the content of history in the development of the human spirit towards freedom and thereby towards self-consciousness! 217 The external lack of freedom of the human person has two main forms: dependence of a person on a person, i.e. political or social, and human dependence on nature - i.e. economic. We will focus on this last one here. 218 Man depends on nature—could there be anything more trivial than this situation? And yet, if you think about it, what a central place it occupies in human history. We are connected to nature and depend on it with our bodies. Our body needs food, clothing, a change of place, communication with other bodies, lighting, heating, etc. etc. And nature does not at all meet these needs. The land of curses produces thistles and thorns, and only by the sweat of the brow does man have his bread. 219 Nature is an alien and hostile element for us, with which we have to fight, defending our very existence. The corporeality, the materiality of our existence is recognized by us as fetters, as a burden, in the name of which we must bear the burden of the national and private economy. Matter is known to us precisely as matter from the side of impenetrability, alienation to human goals. And on the contrary, every victory over it, every economic conquest consists in subordinating it to the goals of the human spirit. The same force of heat operates in the Andijan earthquake, which seems to us such an evil act of a senseless element, and in a steam engine. The same force of electricity is destructive as lightning, but serves us in the telephone and telegraph. Matter ceases to be matter for us as soon as the forces of nature begin to serve our idea. The victories of technology are therefore nothing more than the spiritualization of matter, the destruction of it as such. The growth of national wealth, the success of technology and industry express the gradual spiritualization of matter. Isn’t the impenetrability of matter, which we actually experience as the space separating us, destroyed, at least partially, when it is overcome by steam transport, cut through by the spiritual lightning of the telephone or telegraph! In the chemical industry, are we now wresting from nature her charms and gifts that she hid from us, forcing us to be slaves to her spontaneous and irrational processes? Trying to replace the natural with the artificial, i.e. irrational – rational, aren’t we imposing our own rationalism on nature, as if by force, and aren’t we really making it “another being of the spirit”? Modern technology turns nature with its forces into a material for artistic creativity, for the embodiment of ideas in sensual images. In this sense, we can talk about the aesthetic nature of technology and industry. Isn't a modern car, being the embodiment of an idea, a kind of work of art! Just as under the sculptor’s chisel a block of marble, rough matter, alien to any ideal content, turns into a miracle of art and gradually loses its materiality, deadness, and thoughtlessness until it is completely penetrated by an idea, so in a machine the forces of nature lose their materiality, i.e. alien to the idea, and become its obedient instrument. Is it not this artistic character of the modern machine that lies the reason for the irresistible and unique poetic charm that the picture of a train running at full steam or a working machine has for us! Modern technology in its tendencies shows that the existing relationship between man and nature, the state of mutual alienation and impenetrability, is not the only possible and normal one, that nature is capable of being imbued with the dictates of the human spirit, and that between it and man we can imagine another, close, intimate and harmonious union, in which electricity, light, and heat can be spiritual forces, in which every basis for distinguishing between the external, or alien, and the internal, or our own, will be established. The possible victory over matter and the spiritualization of the forces of nature is a great task that historical humanity sets itself and which it is solving with unprecedented success in our days. At the same time, that shameful and humiliating dependence that weighs on the so-called uncultured peoples, which is called poverty, is destroyed. A hungry person needs, first of all, food, a cold person needs clothing, and a homeless person needs shelter. Poverty creates suffering that humiliates a person and excludes the possibility of a truly human, spiritual life. Therefore, the fight against poverty is a fight for the rights of the human spirit. The ideal regarding these lower needs is the same as regarding health: it boils down to not feeling them, just as a healthy person does not feel his body; and conversely, their dissatisfaction, like illness of the body, tends to fill the consciousness and thereby suppress the free activity of the spirit. But the satisfaction of these urgent needs is only a minimum, absolutely obligatory, although far from being achieved everywhere, but in no way final. Having freed itself from iron bonds, human genius turns to the resolution of all other bonds, to further struggle with matter in the name of freedom of spirit. There is negative freedom and positive freedom. You can be free from material needs, having none at all or satisfying them. Thus, a savage is free from the need for clothing by remaining naked, and a cultured person by being clothed. In the same way, a child and a saint are free from the sin of vice, but the first because he cannot have sin due to the low level of development of his consciousness, in a certain sense he is lower than sin, and the second because he has conquered sin, therefore, above it. If desired, in characterizing negative freedom one can go even further and assert, for example, that a dead person is even freer than a savage, because he no longer has any needs. Obviously, this freedom of emptiness is not what is meant when we talk about the development of the human spirit towards freedom. Freedom is understood here as positive power, as the growing possession of wealth, and as a result, the growth of the potential for the emergence and self-affirmation of the human spirit. Wealth can be defined in this sense as a necessary condition for world history, although it is not yet history itself. Wild and poor peoples, captive of nature, have no history, stand outside it, and liberation from primitive poverty is the beginning of history. The turn of higher needs comes only when the lower ones are satisfied. It is no accident that the cultural flourishing of historical peoples, historical flowering coincides with the era of greatest material prosperity, and vice versa: cultural decline is accompanied by economic decline. Since, for one reason or another, we have recognized the growth of national wealth as a blessing, we must also recognize the necessary conditions for this growth. Among these necessary conditions is the growth of needs, which represents, as it were, the reverse side of the growth of national wealth. In order to make this or that conquest of nature, you must first feel the need for it: you need to have a need to communicate with people in order to use the telegraph or mail, you need to know the starry sky in order to use a telescope, you need to have a need for spiritual freedom, positive power in order to strive for domination over nature. The growth of needs is the law not only of material existence, but also of the spirit, and the development of the spirit consists precisely in the growth of its demands, in the fact that it sees problems and tasks where it had not seen before. So, we have reached the economic ideal and the basic commandment of political economy: increase your wealth and increase your needs. The issue is resolved in a positive sense, in favor of the recognition of political economy and its postulates. But at the same time, it became clear that this absolute-relative ideal (in the above sense) is not independent, not absolute in itself, as political economy accepts it, but receives its sanction from the outside, shines with reflected light, is allowed only as a means to a certain end. Consequently, it is not autonomous, but heteronomous, and in all decisive cases of economic policy an appeal to a higher, non-economic authority is possible, because political economy is not self-sufficient; Of course, this does not exclude the fact that in everyday, so to speak, economic life, this ideal is completely sufficient and, within certain limits, autonomous. 220 We have now reached a point from which we can look back at both mutually contradictory teachings, asceticism and hedonism, and show the truth and falsehood of both teachings. These teachings are an example of what Vl. Soloviev called abstract principles. Both of them take one side of the truth, distract it from its connection with the whole, and then, with the help of this abstract principle, begin to measure this whole. Both of them are therefore wrong not in what they affirm, but in what they deny; they are wrong precisely because of their limitations and abstraction. Obviously, only such a teaching can reconcile them, from the point of view in which their yes and no will seem relative and conditional, which will unite these thesis and antithesis in a higher synthesis. The main sin and delusion of asceticism is that it drives away human joy. In his exceptional and, in any case, un-Christian gloom, he branded the world as evil, life is for him some kind of mistake, the body is a vessel of the devil, any pleasure of this body is sin. One must be imbued with this pessimism of a metaphysical or religious nature in order to take such a point of view. After the Renaissance and all the spiritual conquests of modern times, we cannot return to this medieval point of view. Of course, the deification of the human body and the world in general for the sake of the beauty of its forms, as ancient and modern Hellenism does, or for the sake of the possibility of enjoying it, as Epicureanism does of all times, must be unconditionally rejected as idolatry unworthy of man. But it is absolutely impossible to find any convincing argument why all human joy should be persecuted. Of course, the desire for joy or happiness, arising from the very fact of life, cannot be considered a duty, but, without representing a moral duty, it does not contradict it within certain limits; on the contrary, it is the natural and legal right of every living being. Consequently, to this extent, hedonism can constitute a legitimate incentive for economic development, for the growth of national wealth, comfort, aesthetic needs and the artistic industry so dear to the heart of Sombart (distorting Ruskin here). But if hedonism of a positive nature is, from a moral point of view, only tolerable, then negative hedonism or altruistic hedonism determines the very first and most sacred duties of our era. We mean here the fight against popular poverty, helplessness, and ruin. To indulge in a cold and heartless discussion of saving asceticism and the corrupting meaning of hedonism in view of the hungry and cold peasantry, in view of children and mothers working to death in factories, in view of millions of people eking out a joyless, hopeless existence as pack animals, would be criminal, bloodthirsty and hypocritical. Raising the existing level of the masses, instilling the tastes and needs of cultural life and in this sense conquering them for hedonism is the most sacred duty of our century. After all, asceticism, the renunciation of pleasures, has value only when it is free, and freedom presupposes prior possession. Buddha was a king's son before becoming an ascetic; Francis of Assisi was the son of a wealthy merchant. But what can be said about those involuntary fasters and vegetarians who see meat two or three times a year, about those ascetics who do not wash because they do not have soap, walk along the railway track because they do not have a ticket, etc.? Only one thing should be said about them: it is our duty to promote their liberation from this involuntary asceticism, to give them what we have set forth as the basic condition of moral life, gradually realized in history: freedom from poverty, this is the basic, albeit negative, condition of freedom of moral self-determination. Responsibilities to the country and the poor people, the commandments of negative hedonism are persistent in the modern Russian consciousness, and perhaps that is why it can too easily be inclined to see in hedonism in general the highest moral principle, the positive principle of morality. But we have already seen what consistent hedonism leads to. Although asceticism as a philosophical worldview should be rejected, the ascetic principle of morality remains indisputable. If the meaning of life is not in pleasures, but in the blessings of the spirit, then the inner life of man and human society represents a constant struggle of spirit and sensuality for the possession of man. Economic progress, while weakening man’s dependence on nature, experienced as an external limitation, does not free him from internal dependence on his body. Wealth becomes a spiritual force, influencing the human spirit from the inside; it turns from a limitation into a temptation. You cannot serve God and mammon at the same time; this word retains its meaning forever. Some principle wins in a person, ideal or base, carnal, and the latter must always be under the control of the spirit. The correct relationship between the various needs of the spirit and the flesh is given through spiritual struggle, defined by the Greek word asceticism (which means, in fact, an exercise in struggle), or asceticism. Of course, the forms of asceticism and its degrees change throughout history. The time when the spiritual principle of life was preached among wild barbarians required those heroes of physical asceticism that would be completely unthinkable in our time, with a different level of physical needs and general development. But our time also knows ascetics, whose life is a constant feat of spirit, constant sacrifice and self-sacrifice, although nowadays these ascetics can often be found in the world, and not in a monastery or in the desert. The beauty of ascetic or moral achievement remains accessible to our time to the same extent as to centuries of monastic asceticism. Is it possible that even now the image of Francis of Assisi, the apostle of voluntary poverty, does not remain captivating for a healthy moral feeling, or will it prefer the depraved Cleopatra or the Sun King, in whom perverted taste finds some kind of aesthetic appeal? The control of the spirit over sensuality, the victory of God over mammon is, of course, an internal, moral act, not necessarily confined to the same external manifestations. The latter are determined both by individual properties and by the era. Therefore, the ascetic principle of morality in itself does not contradict the basic economic commandment to multiply needs, since it means the liberation of historical humanity from the power of nature in the form of creating a broader basis for spiritual culture. That asceticism that would call us to renounce the gains of culture, from railways, the printing press, postal services, science and literature, would be reactionary obscurantism, advocating not for the freedom of the spirit, but for its enslavement. And on the contrary, the rise of human dignity, the spiritual growth of the individual is necessarily expressed in the growth of material needs, an example of which is given to us by the modern democratic movement. So, here, as elsewhere in the field of moral life, the spiritual side of a person, the direction of his will, is of decisive importance. Increase your needs as long as the life of the spirit and human dignity require it, but also know how to reduce them, since it also requires it - this is a formula free from the extremes of both hedonism and asceticism. From this point of view, we can also give a definition of luxury, which Sombart refuses, rightly pointing out that there are no external signs of distinction for luxury goods and its concept is changeable and relative. There are no external signs of luxury, therefore, there can only be internal ones, although, however, for a certain era one can easily indicate its external manifestations. Luxury is the victory of sensuality over the spirit, of mammon over God in the ideal soul and in the whole society; since the cult of pleasure, aesthetic or non-aesthetic, becomes the guiding principle, we are dealing with luxury. Luxury is the downside and constant danger of wealth. Just as in poverty freedom of spirit is abolished by external limitation, so in wealth it is abolished by internal temptation. Luxury and poverty are equally anti-cultural, and the same spiritual poverty can reign in the hovel of a beggar and in the chambers of a nobleman. Spiritual decline associated with luxury sooner or later leads to economic decline, so economic luxury also carries its own condemnation. This or that spiritual state of the people is far from indifferent to their economic life. No one will argue that intemperance is better than abstinence, modesty of needs is worse than their excess, and yet in pictures of the future this moment of the internal struggle between God and mammon in the human soul is completely eliminated. Modern consciousness, excessively mechanizing life, is especially eager to imagine such an ideal social system in which people will be virtuous, as if automatically, without any struggle with themselves. No, virtue is always given and created only by moral struggle, and if our lot falls primarily on the struggle against poverty and all kinds of despotism, then the lot of the future of humanity, in addition to other types of struggle, remains the struggle against wealth or luxury. Wealth creates only walls for civilization, but within these walls both a bright church of the spirit and a fornication can be built equally. It seems to us that this is exactly the attitude towards wealth that the Gospel teaches. It does not drive away human joy and does not stigmatize any sensual pleasure. But it warns against the captivity of the spirit in worries about wealth and tomorrow, condemns “those who hope for wealth,” 222 and commands to make a decisive choice between serving God or mammon, considering both to be incompatible. Preaching life in spirit and truth, turning to a spiritual person, the Gospel equally moves away from both abstract asceticism and even more from sensual hedonism, but it does not condemn culture and the economic progress necessary for it; humanity must not bury its talent in the ground, as asceticism teaches it, but multiply it in history. 223 So, the antithesis of hedonism and asceticism, a certain kind of moral dualism that lays the foundation for constant internal struggle, cannot be eliminated from human consciousness and human history. Control of the ascetic principle over hedonism, finding the correct relationship between them is a task that is constantly re-posed and resolved both in individual life and in human history, and the correctness of its resolution determines the creation of a true civilization, which is abolished equally by one-sided asceticism, which destroys rather than resolves its problem (an example of which we have in the teachings of L.N. Tolstoy), and one-sided hedonism, leading it to moral degeneration, to philistinism. Luxury, or spiritual philistinism, was one of the strongest poisons that corrupted ancient civilization. Its heirs turned out to be completely uncultured barbarians, whose whole advantage was that they were free from spiritual philistinism, their hearts were open to good and evil. Throughout the Middle Ages, their moral ideal, or norm, was not hedonism, but asceticism. On the contrary, modern Western culture has grown and still stands under the sign of the Renaissance, preserving its one-sided hedonistic character, defined as the opposite of medieval asceticism. Perhaps it will seem excessively bold if I make the statement that the true, i.e. spiritual, a civilization that would be equally free from abstract spiritualism, or asceticism, and from bourgeois hedonism, has not yet been found and still constitutes the world-historical sought-after, although individual historical eras are more or less approaching the ideal. This cannot, in any case, be said about the current state of Western civilization, which, with its ever-increasing tilt towards hedonism, is moving away from ideal harmony rather than approaching it. The human spirit seems to be stunned by the wealth that it has created, and this state of stupefaction and some spiritual enslavement, which is definitely heard in Sombart’s speeches, is not yet a state of complete and therefore free possession of wealth. And what seems to Sombart an ideal is a simple delay in spiritual development, which history can still cope with. Or maybe peoples in their historical life are given only at certain historical moments or epochs to reveal the whole truth of their spiritual existence, just as this is characteristic of an individual person; Perhaps here, finally, there is a historical division of labor and different peoples in different historical eras are destined to express with the greatest sharpness any one aspect or condition of historical development. In this case, the last word of history has not yet been spoken, and a normal or ideal civilization, a synthesis of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the rights of the spirit and the rights of the flesh, is still ahead. Which of the historical peoples is destined to accomplish this synthesis? M.g.! You understand that we are entering here into an area where evidence stops and the area of ​​wishes and beliefs begins. But the gaze involuntarily dwells on the fate of our people, whose historical future is still ahead, who have not yet said their word, have not fulfilled their historical destiny. Of course, there is no reason to attribute such a task to your people as a right or privilege, as the old Slavophilism did, and would constitute a sin of conceit. But a high or even exaggerated understanding of one’s tasks must be accompanied by a corresponding understanding of one’s responsibilities. It is only in this sense that we can talk about historical tasks. It is not for us to hide or turn a blind eye to all the ills of our life, about which the founder of Slavophilism, Khomyakov, with all the fervor of his patriotism, wrote: “we see modern Russia: it both pleases and oppresses us, we can talk about it with pride to foreigners, and sometimes we are ashamed to talk even to our own”; 224 but with all these ulcers of poverty, darkness and lack of rights, one spiritual disease still has no place on Russian soil - spiritual philistinism, hedonism of the kind that you heard about today from Sombart. And how could he have appeared! Our intelligentsia, who grew up under the heavy historical hammer, which crushes glass but forges damask steel, 225 considers hedonism, or “philistine happiness,” a kind of moral decline and all its sympathies belong to ethical asceticism, ideological self-sacrifice, although, of course, in its modern forms, in this sense it is closer to the Middle Ages than to the Renaissance. I will not confirm this with evidence and examples from the surrounding life; it is already well known to my listeners. But I will refer to the main object of our national pride, all of our fiction, which already in the person of Pushkin noticed and appreciated the spiritual image of the Russian woman and which, in its best representatives, is a continuous protest against philistinism, the apotheosis of spirituality and... moral asceticism. I will name our great Herzen, who made the fight against philistinism as a specialty of his literary activity; Let me remind you of the great names of V. Solovyov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, which mark the moral life of our society in the last quarter of the 19th century, precisely that era when Epicurean aestheticism most raised its head in the West. We had almost no major writers of the opposite direction (except for the youthful hobbies of Pisarev, who was, however, precisely a contemporary of the ascetic Dobrolyubov). And I don’t know a more instructive example in this sense than Chernyshevsky with his novel What to Do, where, along with the systematic preaching of utilitarianism and eudaimonism (and his heroes are justified in their altruistic feelings and diligently derive them from egoistic motives), the main character Nikitushka Silin turns out to be not an aesthetic eudaimonist in the taste of Sombart, but... an ascetic. So, Balaam, called to curse Israel, against his will, pronounced a blessing on him. 226 Such is our literature and intelligentsia. Our bourgeoisie is still too weak to exert a decisive influence on the spiritual life of the people, and the bureaucracy, by its very essence, is devoid of spiritual strength and can only externally temporarily paralyze the people's development. As for the people, for them their historical existence is still ahead and in their current situation they are deprived of the main, albeit negative, conditions for their moral self-determination and historical existence. Forced asceticism and humility, poverty and lack of rights still stand in the way of its development. Liberating him, creating conditions not for zoological, but for human existence, is an urgent historical necessity. Our historical moment stands under the sign of the science of law and national economy. The bright kingdom of the spirit, true civilization can only be built on a solid and material foundation. But by laying the foundation, we are already building a building. That is why, while denying hedonism as a moral philosophy, in fact, in social relations we must deal primarily with the commandments of hedonism, without entering into the slightest contradiction with ourselves. The concept of the individual, her rights, needs and property well-being, in a word, our Russian renaissance, this remains the slogan of our time, our historical task, our civic duty. For more information, see the article “Problems of Political Economy.” Economic man (English) is one of the basic premises of classical political economy. “Bentham’s idea of ​​interest as the main engine of human psychology,” wrote S.N. Bulgakov in “Philosophy of Economics,” translated free trader political economy with Ricardo at the head into its own language. The fiction of the “economic man”, a Benthamist in the field of economics, appeared, and since political economy viewed life only through the glasses of its special scientific interest, forgetting or ignoring everything else, it sometimes gave the impression that for it the economic man was a man in general, or that by nature he was only an economic egoist. A. Smith isolated the sympathetic, or altruistic, side of man from the egoistic, or economic. He subjected the first to detailed study in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the second in The Wealth of Nations. His successors completely forgot about this division (of course, also very controversial) and, with the help of Bentham, turned the methodological premise of the “Wealth of Nations” into a general doctrine of man” (Bulgakov S.N. Philosophy of Economics. M., 1990. P. 237). See also: P. Weise. Homo economicus and Homo sociologicus: monsters of the social sciences//THESIS. 1993. T. 1. Issue. 3. pp. 115–150. Reasonable basis, meaning (French). Lit.: seize the day, take advantage of the day (lat.). The expression belongs to Horace (Odes, I, 11, 8): “Take advantage of the day (the present), least of all trust the future.” By all means; no matter what (French). Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2-ter Band, Leipzig. 1902. Feeling, sensitivity (French). An expression from “The Justification of Good”: “The historical process is a long and difficult transition from bestial humanity to divine humanity.” (Soloviev V.S. Works: In 2 volumes. M., 1988. T. 1. P. 257). Professor Anton Menger in his newest work “Neue Staatslehre”, 1903 (deserving full sympathy for its democratic tendencies, but not of great scientific value) asks, among other things, the following question: “It is impossible not to admit,” he says, “that modernity, unless new foundations (Ordnungen) of morality are developed (instead of religious morality losing its force), is threatened by the same moral the decline that befell ancient civilization after the destruction of the popular religions of paganism” (74). Menger sees these new foundations in... the newspaper press, which, subject to certain precautions in drafting the editorial board possible in a future people's state, is “a real means for promoting morality, independent of any belief in dogma” (75). “Of course, along with these institutions, there could also be a moral education of youth, in which virtue would be recommended for its own sake, but a people’s labor state cannot expect much success from moral precepts, which, like Kant’s categorical imperative, are devoid of any sanction” (76). This idea of ​​Menger is quite worthy of inclusion in the construction of the future created by Sombart. Porfiry in “The Life of Plotinus” says: “Plotinus, the philosopher of our time, seemed to always feel ashamed of living in bodily form, and because of this mood he always avoided talking about his origin, his parents, and his homeland. And posing for a painter or sculptor was so disgusting for him that he once said to Amelia, when he asked him to let him take off his portrait: “Isn’t this likeness in which nature has dressed me enough for you, that you still want to make a likeness of the likeness and leave it for many years, as if there is something to look at in it?” So he refused, not wanting to sit in front of the artist for such a reason; but Amelius had a friend, Carterius, the best painter of our time, and Amelius asked him to attend their classes more often (where anyone was allowed to attend) in order to carefully peer and remember all the most expressive things that he saw. And according to the image that remained in his memory, Carterius painted an image of Plotinus, and Amelius himself made the final amendments to it for the sake of similarity: this is how the art of Carterius created a very similar portrait of Plotinus without any of his knowledge” (Diogenes Laertius. On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers. M., 1979. P. 462). Translated by N.V. Gerasimova (from English). Here are some examples of Christian asceticism. “Bl. Jerome cut his hair only on Easter and fasted until his eyes became cloudy and his skin hardened like flint; St. Macarius slept in a swamp for 6 months and fought passions by allowing insects to bite his body; St. Pachomius did not sleep lying down for 15 years; St. Abraham did not wash his face for 50 years; St. Eupraxia trembled at the thought of bathing, and St. Simeon stood on a pillar for 30 years, chaining himself to it, and constantly bowed to the ground. One of those who visited him tried to determine their number, counted 1240 in a row and lost count. These were real heroes in a purely barbaric taste, and the best righteous people of the religion of the spirit cannot be imagined among sensual semi-savages” (M.S. Korelin. The most important moments in the history of the medieval papacy. St. Petersburg, 1901. pp. 27–28). OK. 12, 19–20: “And I will say to my soul: soul! you have a lot of good things lying around for many years: rest, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him: crazy! this night your soul will be taken from you; who will get what you have prepared? (Parable of the rich man). According to Hegel's formula, "world history is progress in the consciousness of freedom." (Hegel G.V.F. Lectures on the philosophy of history. St. Petersburg, 1993. P. 72). On social addiction, see the following article. Life 3, 17-19: “And he said to Adam: ... in sorrow you will eat from it (from the earth) all the days of your life. She will produce thorns and thistles for you.” My view on this point does not differ significantly from the opinions of Sombart, developed by him in the article “Ideals of Social Policy” (Russian translation Teplova - St. Petersburg, 1900), if only we take seriously Sombart’s statement that the economic ideal for him “does not represent an absolute final goal, and its implementation represents only a means to the realization of higher goals. Providing for the necessary necessities of our existence can never give the highest satisfaction to the deity who dwells in our bosom” (73). It is difficult, however, to reconcile this statement with the later arguments in Der moderne Kapitalismus cited above. A special article by S.N. is dedicated to Ruskin. Bulgakov’s “The Social Worldview of John Ruskin,” in which, as a specific feature of “Ruskin, Carlyle, Tolstoy and other thinkers of this type,” noted “the desire to ethicize political economy, to make it not only a technical science, exploring special issues and the technology of means, but also to force it to take into account the needs of ethical consciousness. This desire to ethicize political economy and social science in general, if it goes further than it should, if it does not lead to the destruction of the very foundations of science, can only be useful, because indeed political economy, in its tasks and foundations, can be an ethical science, as if applied ethics” (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology. 1909. Book V (100), p. 413). Mk. 10:24: “But Jesus answered them again: Children! how difficult it is for those who hope for wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!” This side of the Gospel is admirably explained by Harnack in his lectures on the Wesen des Christentums. Wed. also Prof. Francis Peaboby lesus Christus und die sociale Frage. Auto-risierte. Ubersetzung. Ciessen. 1903. Chapter IV et seq. Quote from the article by A.S. Khomyakov “About the old and the new” (Khomyakov A.S. About the old and the new. M., 1988. P. 44). Paraphrase of a quote from “Poltava” by A.S. Pushkin: Rus' has grown stronger. So heavy bastard (Pushkin A.S. Collected works: In 10 volumes. M., 1981. T. 3. P. 175). Balaam was sent by the king of the Moabites to curse the Israelites, but he, on behalf of God, uttered three oracles containing a blessing to Israel instead of a curse. See: Number 22, 7–34.