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
Электронная книга - «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». Краткое содержание книги:
“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 the ideas, which answered his needs. In St Isaac the Syrian (ca. 6th century AD) and Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662 AD) one finds, indeed, a profound and provocative conception of the human being. Reason, the Intellect, the Mind of Man — so much heralded and influential since the beginning of the “Age of Reason” in Europe, and which Kireyevsky had experienced in its impact on the intellectual life there — was, to them, a restricted, delimited, incomplete kind, and means, of knowledge, and being.
Though they lived in extremely different times and cultures, consider how contrary in epistemological essence, are the views of these Church fathers, to that of the Western philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) for example. Locke contrasted the ambiguity he considered to be inherent in any person’s “knowledge” derived from “supernatural light”, to the certitude of knowledge gained by the “natural light” of Reason, which, he held, all men shared. About this “natural light”, “Reason”, he wrote in his well-known Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “Reason must be our last judge and guide to everything.” [133] (It is interesting and telling, to at least mention here, that Locke, through Thomas Jefferson, directly influenced both the (political) Declaration Of Independence and the United States Constitution; including the idea of man and human society on which it is based. [134]) To these two Church Fathers, in contrast, the entire human soul, especially the human heart, must be included in any attempt to achieve knowledge and Truth; or a healthy fulfillment and completion of the human being. Reason, only one important part of the human psyche, could not, by itself alone, achieve either true knowledge or human felicity. The whole, ennobled inner life of the human being must needs be employed.
The world-view of Locke is so very different from that of either of these two Fathers of the Church, that it seems perhaps rather odd to contrast their views of “Reason” [135]. For central example, the “light” which the Fathers sought was not Locke’s “natural light”; their goal was the inner “supernatural light”, and all the experience of the divine, which Locke could only so tenuously and skeptically consider. But in fact, the profound and complete contrast, present, in these “philosophies of life”, makes abundantly clear the difference of a “horizontal” and “vertical” comprehension of Man, life and world. Thomas Jefferson could easily embrace Locke; but not Kireyevsky, or the Greek Church Fathers.
In his well-known short essay entitled “The Philosophy of I. Kireyevsky”, [136] Henry Lanz writes of St Isaac, that “in his work on The Contempt of the World, [St. Isaac] maintains that wisdom [sapientia] is only attainable by a concentration of all the mental forces, and has its location, not in the intellect but in the heart (cor)”, [137] the centre of the human psyche. [138] In the same study, Maximus the Confessor is described as holding that “Reason…is merely the organ of knowledge, whereas the organ of wisdom is the whole soul. The true personal unity is the only element in which absolute truth can live and move.” [139] If perhaps the West is rather more interested in knowledge (scientia [140]) than wisdom (sapiential); this would only further substantiate the differences of the Enlightenment philosophies of Man, which would tend to locate the “centre” of the human being inside of the skull, in the mind, in (natural) “Reason”; and religious anthropologies of Man which would locate such “centre” in the heart and soul.
Such ideas, which Kireyevsky wished to introduce to die Russian world around him — by helping to translate and publish them in Russian — contributed substantially towards his understanding and articulation of the human being. Thus, from this ancient source, as also from the personal relations Kireyevsky developed with Father Filaret of Novospasskii Monastery of Moscow and Father Makarii of Optina Pustyn, there was a strong influence of the Christian Orthodox conception of life and Mankind, which contributed to Kireyevsky’s “Slavophilism”. Even in his 1838-39 “Reply to Khomyakov” — a fundamental ‘document’ of Slavophilism — reference was made to St Isaac.
In 1852, for example, in a letter from Kireyevsky to Father Makarii, he wrote of the Greek Fathers in generaclass="underline"
In their pursuit of speculative truth, the Eastern thinkers pay attention chiefly to the right inward condition of the thinking mind; whereas the Western philosophers care more about the external connection of ideas. The former…seek an inner integrity of the mind, the centre of mental forces where all separate activities of the soul are united into a supreme living unity. The latter, on the contrary, believe that complete truth can be reached only by increased differentiation of the mental faculties. [141]
In order to achieve this “inner integrity of mind”, Kireyevsky, concurred with the deeper Orthodox view that faith (in Greek: pistis; in Latin: fides) must be added, as a real vital presence in the human soul, to yield “believing reason”. In an oft-cited passage, he describes it so:
The chief characteristic of believing thought consists in the striving to concentrate all the separate powers of the soul into a single power, to seek out that inner focus of being where reason, will, feeling and conscience, the beautiful and true, the wonderful and the desirable, the just and the merciful — and the whole sweep of the mind — are fused into one living unity, thus restoring the essential personality in all its primeval indivisibility . [142]
[133] Cited in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Bd. 5, “Licht”, s. 286; (Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, ch. XIX, sec. 14].
[134] Jefferson’s “enlightened” view of the “vertical” in Christianity can be recognized by considering thoughts in the introduction to a recent edition of Jefferson’s own published extracts from the Bible. “Jefferson came of age at a critical point in the religious history of the Western world. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Enlightenment was in full swing in Europe and America. The Enlightenment was a highly complex movement but in general it represented a decisive shift, at least among the educated elite, from a predominately theological to a fundamentally secular world view…enlightened thinkers scorned metaphysical and theological speculation as useless and concentrated instead on the rational investigation of nature and society,… The rationalistic spirit that animated the Enlightenment brought it into conflict with organized Christianity, whose emphasis on the value of supernatural revelation, tradition and ecclesiastical authority was rejected by those who insisted that religion, like all other institutions, had to be justified instead on the twin grounds of reasonableness and social utility.”(p. 4-5) “Having rejected the dogma of the Trinity as a logical absurdity that could not be reconciled with human reason, Jefferson then subjected the rest of Christianity to the test of rational analysis and concluded that its basic doctrines were simply unacceptable to an enlightened man living in the eighteenth century.”(p. 5.) As Jefferson himself wrote: “the immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of hierarchy, &c,” are “artificial systems, invented by Ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by any single word ever uttered by [Jesus]” Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels, ed. D.W. Adams, p. 4-5,41-42.
[135] These two Church Fathers lived in a very different time, mind and culture than Locke. It could perhaps be said, that they lived in a time of the setting sun of the sacral sapiential and gnostic traditions of the “Ancient Near East”. Locke lived more in the bight day time of the “natural light” of Reason; the “supernatural light”, which he considered, belonged to an earlier, almost forgotten day. There is more than a temporal or geographical “night” between St Isaac or Maximus and Locke; there is also an inner psychological, perhaps even a spiritual night. One which such persons as are labeled “Romantics” often sought, in thought feeling, intuition, and etc., to penetrate to, with the hopes of reviewing the earlier day’s light. (Confer section Ex Occident Lux…).
[136] See Henry Lanz “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, Vol. IV, No. 12, March 1926, p. 594-604.
[137] From Henry Lanz, “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, Vol. IV, No. 12, March 1926, p. 602.
It was in Russia that I, for the first time, heard the expression: “think with the heart”, in such a way that it seemed to have a reality beyond mere intellectual or poetic intent and content.
[138] Cf. Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, p, 153.
[139] Henry Lanz “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, Vol. IV, No. 12; March, 1926, p. 603.
It is quite interesting and important to note, for those more familiar with the deeper currents of Russian, European and American intellectual and spiritual history, that, in Kireyevsky’s turning toward Maximus the Confessor, he was, as it were, looking in the direction of the Sophia. For Maximus held the deeper Christian conception of the androgynous, Sophianic Man. Emerson, in his own studies, and from his own perspective, engaged such ideas via Boehme and Swedenborg. (For more on the Sophia, see Notes 66; and 191, 215.)
[140] It is worth noting, especially considering the strong, almost “religious” presence of Science in the modern and contemporary world, that the root of the term “science” is from the Latin scire, to know; Latin scientia. It is a kind of knowledge. Yet, that “science” was not always considered the highest kind of human knowledge, can be found clearly stated in this quote by St Augustine, in which he contrasts science and wisdom. He wrote: “If therefore this is the right distinction between wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia), that the intellectual cognition of eternal things pertains to wisdom (sapientia), but the rational cognition of temporal things to knowledge (scientia), it is not difficult to judge which is to be esteemed more and which less.” Cited in An Augustine Synthesis, ed. Erich Przywara, 1958, p. 70; [Cf. De Trinitate, XV, 25].
(Both the words “conscience” and “conscious” are closely related to each other, and have scire as their main root. Cf. Eric Partridge, Origins.)
Emerson was certainly aware of the distinction here. In his extensive journals — in the months before he came to give his address to the divinity school (and wherein can be found many written notes which came to be included in this address) — he wrote the following: “God is pure Intellect. Where it becomes one with Truth. Or is it bipolar there also & to be called Reason subjectively, Truth objectively?…As it enters our lower sphere, the Vision, that high power which perceives the excellence of Truth & Justice — is called Reason; the perception of the relations of the apparent world is called Common Sense, and we apply the term Understanding to the activity of the mind upon the apparent objects, comparing, reasoning, constructing.” See Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Merton M. Sealts, vol. 5, Journal С ([256], Dec. 18, 1837) p. 446. (Compare with Khomyakov and Kireyevsky in section “Self-Reliance and Sobornost,” pages 101-2, and Note 205.)
[141] From Henry Lanz, “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, IV, No. 12; March, 1926, p. 603-4 [Kireyevsky Works, vol. I, p. 201].
It is more than a little fruitful and insightful to recognize, that a “modern scientist” is not considered to need (much other) than a rather full, long and complex mental, intellectual and informational training, to be a quite capable “scientist”. There is certainly nothing fundamental and inherent, to being a scientist as such, which would preclude that the private, personal and inner soul life, for example, be as undeveloped, unrefined, awkward and immature, as a 14 year old adolescent. It is certainly not necessary, that a “scientist” have an inner nobility or stature; they need only be intellectually trained.
[142] Quotation from V.V. Zenkovsky, History of Russian Philosophy, p. 216; [I. V. Kireevskij, Polnoe sobranie socinij (1911) vol. I, p. 275].