Towards the Spiritual Convergence of America and Russia: American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community, and the Potent Alchemy of National Characteristics
- Автор: Lapeyrouse Stephen Ludger
- Год: 1990
- Язык: английский
- ISBN: 0-9628048-0-0
- Жанр: История
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“If my efforts in this work are adequate to the task, I wish to make substantial intellectual contributions towards a clear description of how essential and profound a spiritual, philosophical and psychological relation exists, between characteristic highest (“vertical”) conceptions and aspirations — and tasks — of Mankind in America and Russia. The hope is that such understanding could contribute, essentially, towards a clearer, creative, and mutually-beneficial spiritual orientation — in thoughtful and heartful individuals of both nationalities — which might lead to a more conscious spiritual meeting of “Russian” and “American”; and thereby, possibly, promote an alchemical blending of the American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community. Such a greater clarity towards a greater spiritual realization, and more complete wholeness, in some men and women of each country, and thereby, perhaps, in portions of Mankind as a whole.” — the Author
Let us consider more closely, that which should be especially recognized and remembered. First of all, and most obvious, is the centrality of the individual; an independent, even isolated entity — surrounded by “barriers of natural respect”, such that “man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state”. This individual must become somewhat of a ‘center of the universe’ — “a Man”, as one could say (adhering to the most profound philosophical, psychological and historical meanings here). The “American Scholar” has an historical necessity, so says Emerson, to become such an independent, self-guided, self-governed source, entity and presence. Joining past, present and future, he must be a “university of knowledges”; independent and sovereign, not only from the surrounding society, but also from the predominance of European cultures, traditions, ideas, etc. As the United States of America had declared and accomplished its political and national independence from Britain, so must the “American Scholar” — Emerson declared — achieve an intellectual independence and sovereignty from “the courtly muses of Europe”.
Emerson called for the American Scholar, the “sovereign state” man, to reject, to surpass, indeed, to redeem “the mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects”. As Emerson wrote elsewhere: “you will hear everyday the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. ‘What is this truth you seek? What is this beauty?’ men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God has called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true.” [108] Those who are influenced by the “stars of God”, must not be overcome by the worldly, mundane, temporal “principles on which business is managed”. The higher inner life must be held as their greatest task. Indeed, those who are shone upon by the “stars of God” have the task — as many “good and great” from the history of the world have similarly had — to help in “the conversion of the world”. This can be achieved not by some party, or mass collection of people of any sort; it can only be truly done — held Emerson — beginning with “a unit”, “one character” — the Individual. This individual man in America, must stand alone, independent and sovereign, before the humanity, nature and God, and “plant[ing] himself indomitably on his own instincts”, attempt to have “the huge world…come round to him”. So he conceived the “American Scholar”.
One year after this “Intellectual Declaration or Independence”, in Emerson’s “Address to the Divinity Class”, to the graduating senior class of Harvard’s Divinity School, we move into a different context and atmosphere — an even more profound consideration of Man in the world. It is not one of Man standing up sovereign in America, before European traditions, ideas, society and history — a somewhat secular call for a worldly aristocracy of the mind (“Reason” [109]) in America. It is a call for men and women of Mankind to be representatives of God on earth. We move here from a high scholarship of the mind, to a spirituality of the “Soul”. The cultured and independent ennoblement called for in an “American Scholar” — when realized in Emerson’s sense — is here surpassed by a summons to the humble dignity of the enthused man and woman of God. As will be evident in the following passage, it also is a “Declaration of Independence”; but one of spirit, declaring independence from old, imported religious forms and staid church tradition and doctrine.
It needs to be understood clearly, that when Emerson used the word “Soul” in this address, it had for him a much fuller and greater meaning, than merely the ‘middle-portion’: psyche (soul), of the tripartite anthropology of man, which consisted of body, soul and spirit [110] — which can be found, for example, in Plato, St. Paul, or the Greek Church Fathers. It would be closer to Emerson’s conception, and usage, to understand by “Soul”, generally, the deepest inner core, or the highest aspect of the human being — that portion in Man, which is most closely akin to Divinity. More commonly it could be simply described as the spiritual aspect of Man. Emerson:
And now, my brothers, you will ask, What in these desponding days can be done by us? The remedy is already declared in the ground of our complaint of the Church. We have contrasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul then let the redemption be sought Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves. When a man comes, all books are legible, all things transparent, all religions are forms. He is religious. Man is the Wonderworker. He is seen amid miracles… The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that die Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man; indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity — faith like Christ’s in the infinitude of men — is lost None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret…They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world. See how nations and races flit by on the sea of time and leave no ripple to tell where they floated or sunk, and one good soul shall make the name of Moses, or of Zeno, or of Zoroaster [111], reverend forever. None assayeth the stem ambition to be the Self of the nation and of nature, but each would be an easy secondary to some Christian scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent man. Once leave your own knowledge of God, your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, as St, Paul’s, or George Fox’s or Swedenborg’s, and you get wide from God with every year this secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries — the chasm yawns to that breadth, that men can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine.
[108] Citation from Oliver W. Holmes’, R. W. Emerson, p. 104 [R.W. Emerson, Complete Works, I, p. 186]
[109] See Note 120: for Kireyevsky’s view, Note 205.
[110] A very interesting and insightful lecture which deeply considers the tripartite conception of man (consisting of body, soul and spirit), was given in Berlin on 27 March, 1917 (amidst a lecture series) by the Austrian Dr. Rudolf Steiner — Goethe Scholar, Philosopher and Seer. Therein he spoke the following: “When we recognize that Western Christianity had of necessity to dethrone the spirit, innumerable questions of conscience and of epistemology are resolved. And this development led to the eighth Ecumenical Council of 869. This council laid down a dogma according to which it was contrary to Christianity to speak of man as consisting of body, soul and spirit, but truly Christian to speak of man as consisting of body and soul alone. The actual wording may not have been quite so explicit, but was later interpreted in this way. At first the Council simply stated that man possessed an intellectual soul and a spiritual soul. This formula was coined to avoid any reference to the spirit as a special entity, for the avowed object was to suppress all knowledge to the spirit.” See Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, p. 25; and Otto Willmann, Geschichte des Idealismus, (1896), Bd. 2, p. 111.
This essay should make clear that this conception of the “spirit” in man — be it termed nous, nous poieticus, pneuma, spiritus, Vernunft, “Reason” or other — is pivotal for the thought of Emerson, Kireyevsky and Khomyakov (Cf. Note 120: and for these men, Notes 140, 205, and pages 100-1), and all those in human history who have held to a “vertical”-spiritual view of man, life and history. The distinction between the life and persons of “psyche”, and those of “pneuma” (cf. St Paul for example), is critical and essential. Herein, it seems to this author, rests the crucial differences between “religion” and “spirituality”.
[111] Cf. Notes 154, 156.