Quid est Veritas? (the way it was in Antiquity)

The history of philosophy, in its substance, deals not with the past, but with what is eternal and fully determinate; in its result, it should be compared not to a gallery of human delusions, but rather to a pantheon of divine images.

                                                     Hegel

The question of Truth is not just the question of knowledge. As the matter of fact, it is a question of the knowledge of a certain Reality. More accurately, it is the question of What Truly Exists. That Which Truly Exists, the Reality Proper, the Reality Itself, may be preliminarily designated as a self-sufficient Being which, in a way, embodies all the rest of beings. The latter, taken independently, appear as just beings, or conditional beings which have true existence not in themselves, but in What Truly Exists. So, What Truly Exists is That Which the rest of beings depend upon, That Which affords the basis for all things in existence.

The True Reality is not readily manifest. Most of the time it remains hidden, dissolved, as it were, in all existing things, and, in this sense, there is nothing on earth or in heavens but This. And the problem is and has always been how to discern True Being among all the variety of beings, to distinguish It from what “just exists” or “conditionally exists”.

And yet, the time comes when True Being gets concentrated in One Particular Being and separates from other beings. Then True Being becomes fully available. But before this happens, man develops an anticipating image of True Being, which more or less correctly reflects some essential properties of the Latter. Even when hidden and dispersed throughout all beings, the True One somehow lets people know of Itself, makes Itself felt. It stirs human imagination, worries human minds, making up the source of religious beliefs and philosophical teachings. Anyway, man has always had some idea of What Truly Exists.

1. Primitive religion: True Being is anthropomorphous, immortal, and redoubtable

From the very outset, primitive people tried to single out something in their surroundings which was preferred to other things. This could be any inanimate object (fetish), an animal, a plant or an insect (totem) or even human genitals (phallicism) which man considered himself to vitally depend upon and which was revered.

As time went by, man was getting more and more prominent among the rest of beings. Eventually, he excelled the latter in beauty, power, and other properties. The time came when man found himself the most perfect of the beings in sight. So, the question could well have arisen: is it not man himself that truly exists?

But as soon as the above question might have been raised, man displayed an unfortunate drawback which prevented him from recognizing himself unreservedly as True Being. It was his mortality. In other respects, this drawback might have seemed of not so big importance; but when it comes to testing the truth of one’s being, this proves crucial. The point is that this drawback virtually nullified all man’s advantages and equated him to the most inferior of living things. Surely, what is mortal cannot be true.

On the other hand, man apparently remained the most perfect of living things, and mortality seemed to be the only obstacle barring him from being considered true. Therefore, rejecting himself as unfit for being unconditionally true, man, however, was firmly convinced that True Being must resemble a human, must be anthropomorphous.

Hence, True Being was assumed as a Being Which would have a human appearance and, at the same time, be immortal. Such beings were hardly to be encountered around. Still, ancient man was not that hopeless empiricist and was quick enough to make use of his imagination where it was needed. In other words, the problem was to imaginarily complete man to True Being. And that was done. There emerged imaginary anthropomorphic, immortal beings. They were Gods.

Recognition by man of his merits and, at the same time, refusing himself in being unconditionally true was laid in the foundation of figuring True Being in the person of Gods. The ambivalent position of man was reflected here: his superiority over the rest of beings and his inferiority towards the True One. Gods came as the first full-blooded image in which True Being heralded of Itself. And this image was bound to appear, anticipating the appearance of the Prototype Which was still to come.

Since those primary Gods were imaginary, not real, beings, they were necessarily burdened with purely human preconceptions and prejudices. Gods were often referred to as just immortal humans and were ascribed many purely human aspirations and passions, whereas real True Being might as well be much more modest and reserved.

As the time was passing by, the life of Gods was being supplemented with more fresh details. A hierarchy of Gods was formed with a supreme One being singled out, whom all the rest of Gods were subordinate to. In other versions, a single God emerged, with other Gods being relegated to just “heavenly beings”. Here, much depended on the people’s temperament, their historical background and natural surroundings. Anyway, this early image of True Being was just prospective and not yet corroborated by Its manifestation. Therefore, it is not without reason that those primitive religious ideas are most commonly referred to as rather mythology than religion proper.

The advent of pagan Gods signified the first, religious, or, to be more precise, religious-and-mythological, stage in the development of the ideas of True Being. At this stage, It was imagined in the form of anthopomorphous, immortals Persons. Man, however, being godlike and mortal at the same time, could not enjoy true existence in full. Nevertheless, he could somehow bring himself closer to and become familiar with true life, pleasing Gods, affecting Them with sacrifice and prayer.

A certain relationship was being established between the conditionally existing man and True Being, that is, Immortal Gods, and this relationship came to be known as “religion”. Thanks to this relationship, man did not retreat into himself and was not confined altogether within his finite world, but always had a way out to True Being, although peculiarly imagined. He could communicate with It somehow. Given this opportunity, Man’s life, while remaining mortal, was acquiring a certain fullness and even becoming “true” in a way, if one can say so.

Gods were believed to abide somewhere in a high place inaccessible to man or, according to later ideas, in an extramundane space. Yet, it would not be quite correct to believe that they only existed by themselves, having nothing to do with the world and just enjoyed true life. Since Gods represented the Truth, the Quintessence, of the world, Their life could not but acquire significance for the latter, and They were meant to manifest Themselves in the world now and then.

From it, another important property of True Being springs. No matter how It might be portrayed, It is not so innocuous or just “theoretical”, as It might seem, but fraught with tangible consequences for the rest of beings. It is not without reason that, according to ancient notions, the slightest movement or even slightest thought in someone of Gods could set in motion a whole array of world events. Ultimately, all that occurred on earth was proving just a visible manifestation of the life of Gods.

Actually incarnated or just imagined, True Being still permeates the whole world, influencing and governing the course of worldly events. Therefore, one should be careful towards It or even towards what is just assumed to be Such. Anyway, It is not something to be trifled with. As our poet Mikhail Lermontov put it:

• The abandoned temple is still a temple, • The fallen idol is still God.

Three major conclusions can be drawn from the above. True Being must be anthropomorphic, It must be immortal, and, being intrinsically connected with the rest of beings, It affects the latter.

2. The “philosophy of Nature”: True Being is not outwardly anthropomorphous

The time was going by. Man kept on exploring and cultivating his surroundings. The development of navigation helped open up and bring closer new lands. Curious new plants and animals were encountered by man, new tribes and races met each other. Many heroes and bright personalities turn up around, and some of them were even recognized as “God-like”. But Gods proper never were found anywhere. Their whereabouts were being moved farther and farther, and Their very existence was being called into question.

The enthusiasm for Gods was fading. Now They appeared rather as personifications of natural phenomena and various aspects of human life, or even human character, but Their position as Truly Existing Beings was getting more and more vulnerable. The point is that, despite all Their glamour, Gods suffered from the very start from an essential defect: They represented an imaginary, not real, True Being. This defect was firstly being left “unnoticed”, but gradually it undermined Gods’ might, giving rise to fresh doubts as to Their existence. This defect was more and more difficult to hide. True Being earnestly demanded a basically different approach to Itself.

Worshipping Gods was becoming more and more just honouring the tradition. Few people were convinced in the real existence of Gods, although as few dared to raise this question in public. Of course, theomachists had always been around, but no one could suggest something more convincing instead of Gods, something that would match a hugely increased volume of human knowledge.

Ordinary people could hardly recover from the avalanche of impressions that rushed into them. In the meantime, sages were already bored by this obtrusive variety, in which they discovered nothing new, but just the repetition of the same. And this made their yearning for True Being more acute. Attempts became more frequent to find It among things available in the vicinity, among so called “natural elements”, which entailed a denial of the anthropomorphism of True Being. Anyway, the time of Gods had passed. Philosophy was taking over.

Philosophers were the first to proclaim outright that Gods, as human-like Entities, were non-existent. They asserted that it would be naive to imagine True Being in the form of Gods. Instead, they proposed a more “realistic” approach by discerning True Being in Nature Itself without turning to Gods. So, first philosophers started to directly explore Nature trying to find the Primary Substance which everything had come from. At the same time, this Substance had to be intelligent enough, because It was not only supposed to be just a substance which everything consisted of, but also an entity capable of somehow governing whatever happened in the world.

European philosophy is known to have originated in Ancient Greece, approximately, in the 6th century B.C. Early philosophers tried to single out what was true in their surroundings, what was staying the same, despite whatever visible changes. In doing so, they first of all fixed their eyes on powerful and pervasive natural elements that raged or rested quietly around. Here is a brief review of the evolution of the antique philosophical notions of True Being.

Xenophanes “bridged” primary religious beliefs and philosophical ideas proper. He still called True Being a “God”. At the same time, he distinctly opposed likening It to Man. “Ethiopians claim that Gods are snub-nosed and swarthy, – wrote Xenophanes, – Thrakians insist that Gods are blue-eyed and red-haired. If bulls, horses, and lions had hands and could draw, – argued Xenophanes, – horses would picture their Gods horse-like, bulls, bull-like…”, etc.

Xenophanes defines True Being as a single “God” Who “does not resemble mortals neither in appearance or thought”. Xenophanes’ God is a stranger to bustling, He is absolutely immovable. In all His entirety, He sees, hears, and thinks, and is capable of shaking the whole world with the slightest flash of His thought. In the final analysis, however, Xenophanes’s “God” is proving to be nothing but Earth “Which everything comes from and returns to”. Of course, He is not just Earth. The Latter only makes up God’s body. Rather, He is a “thinking Earth”. He still resembles Man, although not in appearance, but in essence.

Thales made a point of the fact that all land and all therein was surrounded by water, contained water and, apparently, had originated from water. Hence Thales inferred that it was Water that was that very primordial element that existed in truth. According to him, everything comes from water and returns to It.

Anaximenes assumed Air as the truly existing substance. All comes from Air through cooling (condensing) and converts back to It in due time.

Heraclitus seems to have been the most paradoxical of ancient thinkers. Of all elements he picked the most detrimental, Fire. Nevertheless, he tended to treat Fire as identical with Reason or Logos, that is, the guarantor of the world order. Fire was considered by him the equivalent which everything was exchanged for. All that exists is born and perishes in a world fire. Heraclitus extolled war and struggle. Still, it was a “concealed harmony” that he valued most.

Empedocles in a conciliatory manner assumed all the Four Elements, that is, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, to be truly existing. In so doing, however, he got Love and Strife involved to put the Four in order, which, in his view should make the resultant Entity complete. Thus, Empedocles moves away from the purely “elemental” interpretation of True Being and again hints, although remotely, at the anthropomorphism of the Latter. Empedocles’ True Being comes out as a Super Entity, the body of Which consists of the above four elements, while Love and Strife make up Its spiritual faculty.

It should be noted that neither Thales’ Water, nor Anaximenes’ Air, or Heraclitus’ Fire were just elements the way they could be found in nature. Rather, They were living and thinking Super-Entities. In particular, Heraclitus identified his Fire as Logos, i. e. Law, or Reason, Which people become imparted to by inhaling It. The signs are that philosophers effectively conceive of True Being as the same single God, but devoid of the human appearance. This is exactly what mysticism of any philosophy consists in that it tries to breathe life into evidently nonviable, artificial formations.

Anaximander tried to put an end to the “elemental” interpretations of True Being and proclaimed the “Unlimited” to be Such. In Anaximander’s view, the whole world, including all the elements, comes from the Unlimited and disappears into It in due time. The Unlimited is quality free or, better to say, of infinite quality, any. It is not Water, not Air, not Earth, and not Fire. At the same time, It contains all these in Itself.

Anaximander’s teaching, as it seems, should have reconciled all the philosophers’ views. In reality, though, it was only the beginning of philosophy. The point was that True Being’s qualitative interpretations were largely exhausted.

If the quality of True Being can be any, it might as well be discarded. Here, quantitative regularities come forward. This was positively expressed by Pythagoras. According to him, what is true in all existing things is Number. The Latter appears here as cleared from material sediments and serves not only as a means of settlement between merchants, but gains, so to speak, Its own footing. All the variety of things turns out capable of being brought to mathematical ratios, or the “harmonies”. In Pythagoras’ view, with those harmonies, or “ties”, the entire world is fastened together.

So, the essence of the world revealed Itself to Pythagoras as Number. That was a real apotheosis of mathematics. Pythagoras’ teaching spurred immensely the development of science. Now, to get at the roots of things one only needed to expose mathematical ratios underlying them. Such an approach proved very fruitful and helped make many scientific discoveries. Operations with things could well be replaced by operations with numbers. And that came in handy.

Parmenides took up the line of the quantitative interpretation of True Being. He, however, stipulated that True Being was not just Number, it was the “One“. Parmenides did not allow for motion or multiplicity in True Being and considered It immovable and even finite. For visualization, he admitted perceiving of it as a sphere. And that was not only a metaphor. For all that, Number could not be long kept in Its fragile purity and little by little was starting to put up flesh again.

Parmenides’ follower Zenon the Elean pressed ahead with the idea of the “One”, showing what absurdities came about if one ascribed True Being motion, divisibility, or plurality. Motion was shown to be contradictory, because it would assume being present in two different places simultaneously. And that was considered unthinkable. For example, the assumption of infinite spatial divisibility resulted in the impossibility for a long-legged Achilles to catch up with a tardy tortoise, because he had to cover an infinite number of spatial stretches to do that. Therefore, True Being, again, should be “one and motionless”.

And yet, there was a different view allowing for both plurality and motion in True Being. Anaxagoras, for example, conceived of the Latter as representing the Infinite Number of infinitesimal particles which gave rise to all things in existence. According to Anaxagoras, those “Seeds of Things” are penetrating everywhere, so that in each particular thing there is a certain amount of all other things to be found. Still, those particles could not constitute by themselves a well-proportioned unity of the Cosmos. So, Anaxagoras introduces one more principle, Mind, as a harmonizing factor. Here again, as the case with Empedocles is, True Being come out in the form of a remotely anthropomorphic Entity, the body of Which represent the “seeds of things”, while Mind is drawn in as a spiritual faculty.

Democritus was also an adherent of True Being’s plurality and taught that in reality there only existed “Atoms”, or tiny, further indivisible, material particles of various shape. In his view, they fly in the void with great speed, come to grips and get coupled with each other, thereby forming all the variety of things. Democritus, however, introduces no regulating factor in this unchecked flux of atoms. For all that, he denied accident, and all that happened he accounted for by “Necessity”.

At that point, philosophy found itself running into a dead-end of sorts. Qualitative as well as quantitative interpretations of True Being proved exhausted. It turned out to be “anything you like”. So, a way was given to Its arbitrary interpretations, or even to an outright negation of Such. If True Being can be whatever you like, then why should It exist at all?

Then, there emerged fellows calling themselves not “philosophers”, but “sophists”. They argued that it was up to everyone to decide on what truly existed and what not. Whatever way a thing appeared to one, this is exactly the way it really is, sophists would reiterate. Man was proclaimed the “measure of all things”.

Especially, sophists succeeded in the art of controversy. To attain the needed end, they could invent most unlikely arguments which, however, might seem to be formally correct. They were often hired to help win a court suit. There is an anecdote about a sophist who once saw his neighbour battering his dog. “What are you doing, – cried the sophist, – don’t you know that this dog’s got puppies”. “Well, what of that?,” – replied the neighbour. “How what, – went on the sophist, – it means that this dog is a father”. “This doesn’t make any difference for me, either,” – answered the neighbour”. “Poor man, the dog you are beating is your dog, so it means that your are beating your own father”, – didactically concluded the sophist.

In the above case a sophism was used for a noble purpose, to stop the neighbour from beating the poor animal. For all that, nothing will prevent one from putting this confusion of ideas for evil ends, to justify murder, theft, lies, and many other such things. Then man can easily fall prey to cunning and unprincipled politicos, or demagogues, or, what even worse, to forget how to tell the truth to yourself.

Despite the apparent lack of principle, sophistic philosophy came as a natural and rightful enough, humanistic reaction to somewhat whimsical constructions by older philosophers. Despite all his weak points, man still remained the most prominent and tangible figure in sight, and, his likes and dislikes could not be completely ignored. Anyhow, this confusion was indicative of a new approach being needed to reinstate True Being.

It was exactly at the time of this philosophical mess that Socrates started his talks. Unlike sophists, he was convinced of the possibility of reaching true knowledge. In doing so, he would pretend to be a simpleton, asking naive, “innocent” questions. Step by step, gently, but stubbornly he would lead his interlocutor to admit the existence of eternal and universal values. Thus, the way was being cleared for reinstating True Being on a new basis.

For example, the question is discussed of what can be regarded as beautiful, or what makes a beautiful person or a beautiful thing beautiful. Because you know, one can decorate a person or a thing with jewellery, to heap one with gold, add other adornments, but all this will not necessarily make the object under discussion beautiful. The object in question may still be lacking something that Socrates designates as “Beauty Itself”.

Socrates arrived at the conclusion that there must exist the “idea” of Beauty, which, being impressed itself on an object, makes it beautiful. That is, there must exist Beauty Itself in contrast to a beautiful jug, a beautiful horse, or a beautiful youth. It is also the case with any other things or properties. They only become such, when they become to correspond to their “ideas”. So, the path of Socrates was that of ascending from individual beautiful things to Beauty Itself, from looking at individual things to Thing Itself, or its “idea”.

Socrates was a crucial figure in the development of antique culture, philosophy, and religion. A humanlike What Truly Exists, represented by pagan Gods, was being replaced by a shapeless and faceless Nature, an assemblage of ideas and things, fastened together by the cosmic Soul. Socrates paid with his life for this “blasphemy”. But that was an imperative of those times: replacing Human the Primitive, Human the Cognizing was being born, in the throes, for Whom nothing existed, except Nature being cognized by Him.

In his views of Nature, Socrates preferred Ideas, not Things. Thus, the teaching of “ideas” emerged. It was further developed by Socrates’ disciple and friend Plato. He taught that, in truth, there only existed eternal and invariable Ideas, or the Ideal Prototypes of things, whereas worldly things were just reflections of their divine prototypes. Unlike worldly things which are always becoming and never are, ideas always are, and never becoming. It is exactly those ideas that come out as the source of true knowledge, which, as a matter of fact, is not just the knowledge of things but, ultimately, the knowledge of ideas.

In Plato’s teaching, at last, a full-fledged synthesis of qualitative and quantitative interpretations of True Being was reached. Here, the Pythagorean Number was filled with a content and became flesh, as it were, although remaining pure. At the same time, the discovery of the realm of “ideas” gave a fresh impetus to the development of scientific knowledge, since the latter immediately operates not with things themselves, but rather with their ideas.

Human soul can directly contemplate “ideas” only when it is free from its bodily capsule, that is, before birth or after death (that is, the death of the body). When in the world, however, the soul recollects and recognizes in things and persons around the gleams of what it has seen earlier. Hence, true cognition in Plato’s teaching is proving to be rather re-cognition, or recollection.

In Plato’s teaching, True Being was reinstated, this time in the form of eternal “ideas”. But it was not the end of the story with Plato. Further elaboration of his teaching, leads Plato to admit the existence of the Cosmic Mind in Which those ideas are contained. Hence, the cosmic process is taking the following shape. Mind the Father irradiates His ideas onto Cosmic Receptacle, Wetnurse the Mother, the recipient of ideas. As a result, World the Son is being born. So, True Being takes on the shape of World Mind overwhelmed with Ideas and fertilizing with them the Cosmic Receptacle. Eventually, Plato was inclined to a “chaster” interpretation of What Truly Exists, that is, as the Demiurge, or God the Creator, Who creates the Cosmos, or the “Minor God”, with regard to His ideas.

After Plato, there was his disciple Aristotle. He scrupulously decomposed and classified his teacher’s doctrine, developed basic tenets of logic, but failed to bring anything principally new into the interpretation of True Being. In the foundation of all that exists Aristotle lays the immovable God the Mind Who sets everything in motion while remaining in self-contemplating bliss.

With Plato and Aristotle, the ancient European philosophy was, in principle, completed. Further developments in the field failed to add anything essentially new to the cognition of True Being. It looked like the Universe was now resting on a reliable foundation, True Being was at last found, and philosophers could have a desirable and well-deserved respite. But, in reality, that was the point where the most tense and crucial stage in the development of philosophy, in the development of ideas of What Truly Exists, began. The fact was that all possible interpretations of It from an outsider’s viewpoint, as Something lying outside Human, had been exhausted. It was needed to take a step forward from knowing What Truly Exists towards being It. This meant that time was approaching for True Being to manifest Itself.

Despite the apparent “free-thinking” associated with the repudiation of pagan Gods, the deification of Nature, accomplished by philosophy, led ultimately to the deification of a secular Ruler. So, in anticipation of the manifestation of True Being in Its final shape, there appeared “earthly Gods”, such as Alexander the Macedonian, Julius Cesar, and Spartacus, as well as the unprecedented exaltation of “ethnic Romans” as compared to the barbarians. Here, finding their embodiment there were not only the deified Nature as a whole, by also philosophical materialism, philosophical idealism, as well as the teaching of Cosmic Soul singly. At the same time, the necessity of a new-type philosophy was dawning, turned towards Subject, and not only towards the “Cognizing One”.

3. The “philosophy of existence”

So, it looked like the philosophy of Nature was completed. But, contrary to expectations, this fact (or, maybe, appearance) failed to bring in a desirable peace and quiet to philosophers. Instead, they found themselves somewhat at a loss. On the one hand, one could contend that True Being had mainly been “cognized”. In general terms, It represents the Demiurge, or God the Creator, kind of Super-Craftsman, or Artist, Who creates Something, or rather Someone, resembling Himself, a certain Formation endowed with body, soul, and mind, that is, the Cosmos, in accordance with the ideas, or design, contained in His mind. It should seem, what else was left to be desired?

On the other hand, a doubt was ripening as to the finality of such an image of True Being. There was a feeling that It represented a Reality of a different nature, or of a higher order, that It did not quite fit into the framework of philosophical knowledge. In other words, It was not going to be complacent about the fate prepared for It by “academic” philosophers. Apparently, there was a special intrinsic logic inherent in It, which philosophers were yet unable to catch. In the meantime, what It was yearning for was not the matter of knowledge, but the matter of being. And this transition from the “subject of knowledge” to the “fact of being” was really painful.

It should be reiterated that the question of Truth is the question of a Reality. So, it cannot be confined to a purely theoretical solution, to cognition alone. A practical solution cannot be avoided here. It means that from a reality to cognize True Being turns into a reality to live through. In other words, True Being was poised to become a real, full-blooded, living and acting individual.

The approaching of True Being caused unprecedented social and emotional disturbances. Incomprehensible panic arose in many. This feeling was really frustrating. It urged people to turn to philosophy in order to find explanation of what it was all about. This suggested a completely new approach, and philosophizing was now becoming a psychotherapy of sorts, aimed not to learn what True Being was like, but, rather, how to live one’s life, keeping spiritual balance.

The source of anxiety aroused by the upcoming True Being remained obscure. It was commonly referred to as the dread of Gods, dread of fate, dread of death, dread of social instability, or even the perplexity caused by the contradictions True Being displayed in cognition. Philosophers used to be the “observers” of True Being, even though partial observers (as “philo-sophia” implies “love” for the subject of the study). They used to take a detached view while describing their Subject. And many thought such an approach would stay on. But now that True Being had drawn nearer, hardly anybody could get the point of it.

Hence, the peculiarity and ambiguity of the philosophy of that period of time. On the one hand, philosophers kept on pursuing a contemplative, detached onlooker’s line towards True Being. Here, philosophy was not noted for its originality and largely represented the repeats and elaborations of earlier doctrines (e. g. Neo-Platonism). On the other hand, philosophizing was urged by a mounting feeling of fear. In this case, people turned to philosophy, hoping to find consolation and get rid of this persisting anxiety. So, the basic question here was not “What is True Being like?”, but rather “How to live?”.

Nevertheless, philosophy remained such, that is, the science of What Truly Exists. Therefore, even if a mention of the Latter could somehow be found in those new-born teachings. Philosophical skepticism represents a good example of that mode of philosophizing. First of all, skeptic philosophers summed up all major philosophical teachings of the past and came out with a whole encyclopaedia of philosophical knowledge. In doing so, they exposed multiple unsolvable contradictions found in True Being. On these grounds, they suggested to abstain from giving any judgments on It. Freed from the necessity to comment on True Being, a philosopher was supposed to gain an unshakable spiritual stability, or “imperturbability”. That was a rather unexpected conclusion. In fact, lurking under “imperturbability” was silent desperation. In any case, philosophical scepticism cleared the way for the emergence and consolidation of new types of thinking.

Cynics were vivid representatives of this new philosophy. They led a simple and unpretentious life, being contented with what was only necessary. They admitted to being “not of this world” and called themselves “friends of Gods”. In their view, man suffers most, because he is a slave of his own passions. They considered it to be their main purpose to release man from this “addiction”. Accordingly, “dispassionateness”, or “apathy”, was their ideal. They condemned indulging in passions, lies and hypocrisy thriving in the world, and they were not afraid to speak it out loud to anybody, regardless of rank. Also, they made life hard for “academic” philosophers”. For example, some people were discussing the question of whether the Cosmos was animate or whether It was spherical. One of the cynics said to them the following. “You still keep on worrying about the Cosmos. Better think about the wicked life you lead”.

Epicurus volunteered to teach people how to get rid of fear and find peace of mind. He believed that Gods were the major source of fear for man, and people were mostly afraid of Gods intervening into their affairs. So, he tried to prove that “in reality” Gods were blissful beings who lived somewhere in the extramundane space, having nothing to do with the world. Therefore, Gods could not pose any threat to man, and man could safely go on with his life without being afraid of whatever supernatural interference. At the same time, Epicurus paid homage to “academic” philosophy, basing his teaching on Democritian atomism.

Crowning this new-type philosophy was stoicism. The stoic philosophers believed that is was death that people feared most. Therefore, much space in their works they devoted to how to get rid of this particular fear. Stoics attempted to base their fearlessness in the face of death on fatalism. In their view, everything in this world is predetermined. Therefore, man’s main purpose should be not to resist one’s fate, but, instead, accept the inevitable with serenity. Well-known is the stoic saying that “fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant”. So, the stoic ideal was “imperturbability”. Celebrated representatives of this trend, the citizen Seneca, the slave Epictetus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius, were convinced that all troubles could be minimized, provided that man lived his life in harmony with nature and acted according to reason.

In the meantime, a different formulation and different solution was being prepared to the above questions. To feel safe and secure in this life, man could not be contented with philosophic explanation alone. What he was actually yearning for was salvation. True Being, on Its part, was seeking to materialize in a more specific form; It was yearning for incarnation.

At this point, one cannot but make a mention of yet another thinker, who may rightfully be called the “philosophical Forerunner” of the upcoming event. It is Philo of Alexandria. He was an ethnic Jew, which was not quite typical of the antique philosophical community, since Jews had largely been famous for their prophets. Still, Philo combined in himself the reasonableness of a philosopher and the insight of a prophet. Moreover, his ethnic background pointed to where actually the Evangel should be expected to come from. Essentially, Philo’s message was that True Being, or God, not only creates the World, or Cosmos, but also gives birth to the Son, or Logos, Who is due to manifest Itself in human form.

4. The manifestation of True Being

Genuine salvation can only be reached on the crest of desperation, at the climax of loss. And when it really occurs, it commonly passes off unnoticed, and many people believe it is not the very thing. For gently and imperceptibly comes True Being into this world.

It happened in the outlying districts of the Roman Empire in the year which turned out to be the reference point of a new era for mankind. A man was born named Jesus Who was destined to live through and personify True Being.

At first sight, He did not differ from other people in any way. This corroborated the ancient conjecture of the anthropomorphism of True Being. But the anthropomorphism of Jesus differed from the fabulous anthropomorphism of ancient religions. Therefore, not everyone could identify Him as the One Who He really was. The then religious people expected to see a tremendous and omnipotent God, Who would appear in all His glory and immediately materialize His will, that is, punish sinners and reward the righteous. Compared to that image, Jesus might have seemed rather humble and even helpless. The majority of philosophers, in the meantime, were preoccupied with contemplating ideal entities or practicing “self-sufficiency”. So, they did not notice that the actual subject of philosophy had become manifest.

He was immortal. But, again, His immortality was not such in the sense of the vicious infinity of earthly existence. He enjoyed the actual immortality and could reach out into the realms where there was no time and where the eternal life reigned. He called It the Kingdom of Heaven. At the same time, His immortality was not just his personal quality or personal achievement that could have been hidden. It could not but entail consequences for the world. Having discovered this faculty in Himself, He was thereby becoming the manifested essence of the world, which, in particular, enabled Him to affect the natural course of events.

The one who has tasted immortality is redoubtable. Jesus could grant absolution, heal those fatally ill, even raise from the dead. But woe was to those hurting Him. The fig-tree that happened to have its fruit missing when He was hungry and thirsty, withered right away through His damnation. The disciple who had betrayed Him hanged himself thereafter. The temple of old faith turned down by Jesus was later demolished. The state that authorized his execution was soon swept off the face of the earth. Therefore, contacting Jesus required discretion, and sometimes it was better to please Him pouring most precious myrrh on His head than to show great zeal in public charity.

In the light of the above, it becomes clear what place philosophy occupies and what purpose it has in terms of the cognition of True Being (as well as in terms of the development of the Latter). Philosophy represents a higher stage of the process, compared to mythology based largely on imagination. Still, the mythical True Being turns out to contain many true features, and, in a sense, It does resemble Zeus. Ancient beliefs proved insightful enough to outline some essential traits of True Being. At the same time, True Being was ascribed many accidental qualities having nothing in common with Its actual distinctive characteristics. This Image needs to be verified. And this is where philosophy picks up the baton.

Philosophy, however, proceeds from what is available for perception, or determinate, and here lies its advantage compared to primitive religions. Eventually, this advantage turns into a drawback, resulting in the justification and perpetuation of what is determinate, to the substitution of True Being by what is available for perception. And yet, the most sensitive philosophical intellects timely feel the approaching of True Being and manage to somehow express this feeling. And now the time comes when True Being manifests Itself in full.

Benedictus de Spinoza: the deification of Nature

This philosopher conclusively “diluted” God in Nature. Thereby, he summarized the philosophical and scientific thought, which could be traced back to Nicholas of Cusa, taken up by N. Kopernicus and J. Kepler, continued by G. Bruno and G. Galilei, and also by T. Hobbes, F. Bacon, and R. Descartes. He may be called a classic of the philosophy of New Times, which replaced Medieval philosophy.

Baruch de Spinoza was born on the 24^th of November, 1632, in Amsterdam, then the largest city of the Dutch Republic, into a sephardic family of Portuguese immigrants. Accordingly, Baruch’s mother tongue was Ladino. His father was a successful trader. His mother died of tuberculosis, when he was 6. At that same age, he started attending an Orthodox Jewish school. There he studied Hebrew and learned to interpret the Torah, the Talmud, and other holy books of the Jews. Among the required subjects in the curriculum, there was also philosophy proper. Certainly, it was, again, Jewish philosophy. Yet, it did not always come to substantiating the tenets of Judaism, but would often urge one to an unbiased search for Truth. Many of the authors studied there had been imbibers of the ideas of antique philosophers, in particular, Plato and Aristotle, and had been noted for their educatedness, breadth of views, and versatility of interests. Besides, among the school’s teachers there were those touched by the spirit of freethinking, which was blowing in Europe’s most advanced country of its time.

After his elder brother’s death in 1649, the 17 year-old Baruch interrupted his education for a while to concentrate on the family business. In 1653, when he was 20, he resumed his studies, but not at a Jewish school, but at a secular private college. There, he perfected himself in Latin and changed his first mane into Benedictus. Also, he studied Ancient Greek, Antique and Medieval philosophy. He studied works of contemporary philosophers as well, including T. Hobbes, P. Gassendi, N. Machiavelli, G. Bruno, and R. Descartes. Besides, he studied there natural sciences and got trained in drawing. Finally, he mastered a handicraft, that is, optical lens grinding. While studying, Benedict chummed up to the college’s owner, Franciscus van den Enden, an ardent republican, who would be subsequently executed in France for preparing a plot against Louis 14^th. Simultaneously, Spinoza taught Hebrew at the college.

In 1654, his father died. Benedict inherited the family business, but kept on studying and teaching at the college.

During that period of time, a circle was formed among the students, where philosophical and religious issues were discussed. Many of the participants in the circle were representatives of a Protestant Christian sect, the Collegians. Those discussions prompted Spinoza to develop his own philosophical and religious teaching.

In 1660, Spinoza was excommunicated from Amsterdam’s Jewish community for freethinking and even expelled from the city as a person “threating piety and morality”. Thus, history had a second go. In 399 B. C. Socrates was accused of “blasphemy and corrupting the youth”.  Human the Cognizing, ripening in the bosom of Human the Primeval, is always born in pain. Rejecting the anthropomorphism of What Truly Exists, the transition from conventional religion to the deification of Nature is always painful.

Although one of Spinoza’s nearest predecessor, Giordano Bruno, had been burned at the stake, Spinoza himself got off with nothing but comparatively minor troubles (except for an event when one of his former brothers in faith rushed at him with a knife, screaming “you apostate”. Spinoza relinquished his family business in favour of his younger brother and retreated to the suburbs of the city of Leiden, where he was given shelter by his Collegian friends. There, he made a living by grinding lenses and wrote his early works, which were strongly influenced by Descartes.

Spinoza could not but admire Descartes, who was his older contemporary. Thanks to the efforts of this clear Gallic intellect, philosophy returned to itself the privilege of cognizing Truth after being treated for many centuries as a handmaiden of theology. Certainly, it was, first of all, the famous Cartesian “doubt” as the starting point for philosophizing, which implied putting everything to doubt. Is there anything trustworthy that is going to be left after such a doubt?  Yes, it is Doubt itself! “I am doubting”. that is, “I am thinking”, and there can be no doubt about it. This is where a return to Socrates’ elementary “I know” occurs. This is how philosophy returns to the position of the most natural Weltanschauung for Human, subjective idealism, to the recognition of the only foolproof Reality, the Cognizing Subject.

Spinoza would take part in gatherings arranged by the Collegians, where Leiden University students and professors would also turn up. At about that time, Spinoza was introduced to the secretary of the Royal Society of London, Henry Oldenburg, and they became lasting friends. Simultaneously, Spinoza began writing his fundamental work, “The Ethics”, in which he became free from Descartes’ influence and set forth his own doctrine. He wrote in Latin, the way it was accepted in scientific circles, and also to avoid excessive attention to his works from the censors.       

Initially, Human would be so amazed by Nature opening up before Him that He literally forgets Himself. He would omit Human’s primary unconscious activity of self-objectification, of self-externalization, of projecting Himself outwards, and leave for Himself only the “cognition” of His Own Product. Spinoza, too, falls into this historical error of “being charmed” and estranges his subjectivity in favour of Nature. As a result, the Latter finds Itself posited as existing “by Itself”, while the true, human Subject turns out to be imbedded in It as the Natura Naturans (the Generating Nature). That is why, Spinoza posits as What Truly Exists not the Cognizing Subject, not the “I,” but the Object of His cognition, the “Not-I,” i. e. Nature. It was precisely Nature, Which he believed to be God and Which he called “Substance”. Here, history, again, is repeating itself: taking the place of generally accepted religious beliefs there comes the religion of Nature, which philosophy proper essentially is.

Thus, Spinoza determines his Substance as the “Cause of Itself”. It is infinite and indivisible. Certain fundamental properties are inherent in It. At least, two of these, “extension” and “thought”, are known to us. And each object of Nature represents an inseparable unity of those properties. While recognizing the presence of Mind and Body in Nature, Spinoza fails to single out Soul as Its fundamental property (this deficiency would be made up in due time by Schelling). Still, he admits the animateness of all objects of Nature “to various degrees”.

Spinoza’s main work is titled “The Ethics”, not “Metaphysics”. It means that the purpose of his research was not to answer the question of “How the Universe is arranged?” but, rather, “How to live?” How then should the one who has grasped What Truly Exists as “Substance” live? What should you do, if you have perceived Substance being part of you, and yourself being part of Substance? According to Spinoza, all our feelings and passions are not at all the manifestation of our freedom, but, in reality, they are caused by “natural necessity”. The only thing that is truly free is Substance Itself. Therefore, one should not give way to one’s feelings and indulge one’s passions. Instead, one should try to be like Substance and perceive whatever happens “from the viewpoint of eternity”. Thus, Man’s supreme virtue is supposed to be the “cognitive love for God”. 

So, Man is left alone with Nature, and cognition is His lot. This implies discovering in the infinite Substance of ever new properties and new facets. In Spinoza’s teaching, the precept given by the initiator of the philosophy of New Times, Nicholas of Cusa, was executed: “A sound and free intellect, striving insatiably, by virtue of the quest inherent in it, to comprehend Truth, is bound to cognize It, embracing It tightly and affectionately”. Now we know that Truth is Substance, It is the deified Nature, and It is the deified Object of Human cognition.

In 1663, Spinoza moved to Hague’s suburb, and in 1670, settled in the city itself. During that time, he managed to publish some of his works, including “The Theological-Political Treatise”. In it, he criticizes the “God-inspiredness” of the Old Testament, as well as Jewish “chosenness”; he repudiates God’s interference the natural course of events. He criticized the Old Testament’s ideas of Truth and emphasized philosophy’s privilege of Its cognition. In this connection, he upheld the freedom of philosophizing and the freedom of thought in general as a condition of the spiritual development of personality and a sign of the well-being of the state. In doing so, Spinoza strongly opposed any interference of church with the affairs of the state. At the same time, Spinoza sees the supreme expression of the state in the person of the Ruler. According to Spinoza, citizens have to obey the laws, although they may not consider them to be correct. It is only the Ruler, who is entitled to change the laws, or else the state will be wrecked. In essence, Spinoza advocates enlightened monarchy, provided there are reliable mechanisms preventing it from degenerating into tyranny.

In 1672, Spinoza’s patron, head of the Dutch Republic, Johan de Witt was killed by an angry mob. The philosopher deeply deplored the death of a man, from whom he had painted the image of the ideal ruler. Besides, the allowance awarded to him was cancelled, the official press mounted attacks against him, and his “Theological-Political Treatise” was included in the list of banned books.

As for the rest, Spinoza’s unhurried daily routines virtually did not change. He continued working on his “Ethics” and wrote a number of miner pieces. His friends and like-minded people rendered him financial support. Besides, he kept on grinding optical lenses for eyeglasses, microscopes and telescopes, which were much in demand and noted for high quality. The latter, in particular, was estimated at its true worth by an eminent mechanician and astronomer, C. Huygens.

In 1673, Spinoza received an invitation to teach philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. However, he politely declined the invitation out of fear of losing the above-mentioned “freedom of philosophizing”.

In 1676, Spinoza met another eminent philosopher, G. W. Leibniz. Although they failed to make friends with each other, Leibniz took up Spinoza’s idea of Substance. In doing so, he decided to emphasize the moment of distinction in this Arche and put forward the idea of the multiplicity of Substances. For all that, he did not add to Spinoza’s teaching anything crucially new: he did not yet know that “quantity is a determinateness which is indifferent to being”.    

Spinoza passed away on February 21^st, 1677, at the age of 44, from ancestral tuberculosis, aggravated by inhaling glass dust while grinding lenses and insufficient diet (he would spend the bulk of his money on books). He was buried in a church cemetery in the centre of Hague.

Spinoza’s teaching had a great impact on subsequent philosophical thought, as well as on the entire European culture. The young Goethe would find consolation in Spinoza’s reflections. Albert Einstein openly declared his faith in “Spinoza’s God”. Verily, Nature for a scientist is the only God.

Yet, Spinoza’s philosophy had larger-scale consequences. Freethinking, preached by Spinoza, strictly speaking, referred only to conventional religious beliefs, but not to “Substance”. The faceless Substance proved to be a no less redoubtable God than the anthropomorphous God of Christianity.

Spinoza posits Nature as some oneness Which is only determined as the Cause of Itself and in Which only discernible are the “Generating Nature” and the “Generated Nature”, respectively. As to Nature’s Mind and Nature’s Body, They are only outlined in Spinoza’s teaching, while Nature’s Soul, as Such, is not yet isolated into an individual “Attribute”.

God, having become aware of Himself as “Nature”, will, nevertheless, be yearning for incarnation. On the other end, deification of Nature shows in the deification of secular power: Its kingdom is exactly “of this world”. At that historical stage, these processes resulted in turning of the state, as Hobbes put it, into a “single person”. All this showed as a parade of absolute monarchies, which put an end to Roman Catholic popes’ claims to secular power in Europe. Further development meant further differentiation of the triune divine Nature, entailing more clear-cut isolation and elaboration of Its Parts.

By then, Christianity had almost completely degenerated into primitive heathenism, directed by dexterous and grasping priests. At attempt of Protestantism to revive Christianity as a religion of the true God enjoyed but temporary success. The Renaissance epoch heralded that the history of mankind was having its second go, and Spinoza’s teaching of Substance afforded the needed philosophical evidence thereto. It resolutely finalized the history of “Christian civilization” and simultaneously became the starting point of a new cycle in the European (World) history.

Human truly is a stage in the development of the Divine Person, Nature being only Human’s Projection. Spinoza separates Human from His Projection and posits It as existing by Itself. Consequently, he believes the Cause of Nature to lie not in Human, but in Nature Itself (Natura Naturans), thereby provoking the question of Its Arche. On the other hand, Human immediately encounters nothing, except Nature. Therefore, Spinozism, i. e. deification of Nature will always accompany Human; It is going to be His eternal Truth and eternal temptation.

The above ambiguity of Nature was once rather successfully expressed by the poet Fyodor Tyutchev:

• Nature’s a Sphinx. And her ordeal
  Is all the more destructive to mankind
  Because, perhaps, she has no riddle.
  Nor did she ever have one.

Louis 14th: Nature’s Incarnate

If “Nature is God”, then the major consequence of such a state of affairs will be the deification of secular power, in general, and that of a secular Ruler, in particular. In the European Modern Era, the transition from the deification of Nature to Its incarnation manifested itself in the emergence of the so called “absolute monarchies”. The French king Louis 14th appeared as a “classical” representative of the said form of government with all its merits and demerits.

He would be compared to the sun. He himself felt one with the country entrusted to him and would do all in his power to make France richer, prettier, and larger. And what is most important, Europe’s parade of “absolute monarchies” put an end to any claims to power by the Popes of Rome.

Louis 14th de Bourbon was born on September 5th, 1638, near Paris, in the country residence of French kings. His father, Louis 13th, the “Just”, had been a son of Henry 4th, the leader of the Huguenots, who, in order to get hold of the French crown, converted to Catholicism, uttering the famous phrase: “Paris is well worth a mass”. Louis 13th was an ardent music lover: he perfectly played the harpsichord and would sing the bass line in secular and sacred choral music, which he would often compose himself. He had been taught ballet in early childhood and later would take part in ballet performances, which he would stage himself. Louis 14th’s mother, Anne “of Austria”, was a daughter of the king Philip 3d of Spain and Margaret of Austria. Louis 13th‘s relationship with his wife was rather the “discharge of a duty”, and he preferred to spend his time with his friends. Louis 13th‘s mother was Marie de’ Medici. So, the blood of virtually all basic West-European ethnoses was running through Louis 14th‘s veins.

Formally, Louis 14th began to reign in 1643, when he was under 5, immediately after his father was murdered by a Catholic fanatic. Then his mother became regent on behalf of him. However, the country was actually run by Cardinal G. Mazarin, who was the chief minister, and who had taken over the position from Cardinal Richelieu. Mazarin was the young monarch’s godfather, and he was charged with his upbringing and education. The cardinal managed it quite well, and, to some extent, became a replacement for the boy’s deceased father. Among the subjects taught to Louis were languages (French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin), mathematics, drawing, history, eloquence, and music (playing the lute, guitar, and harpsichords). Nevertheless, his capacity for knowledge was much higher than the scope supposed to be imparted to him; subsequently, Louis 14th would complain of the insufficiency of knowledge acquired during the years of his childhood, and he engaged in self-education throughout his life.

Much attention was paid to the monarch’s physical development, including gymnastics, fencing, riding, and hunting skills. When he turned 12, Louis would take part in ballet performances, where he would appear in various roles, and where he eventually found himself playing the part of the rising sun. Since childhood, he was instilled the feeling of royal dignity. At the same time, he was allowed to play with the commoners, implying that the monarch should be accessible for his subjects. The young king’s everyday life was more than modest: he was supposed to be given two sets of clothes a year, so wearing patches was not regarded as something to be ashamed of. He would sometimes be birched for disobedience. Besides, he had to turn up in the Parliament of Paris from time to time and utter prescribed words.

As a child, Louis was noted for reasonableness, and he rarely laughed. Still, he was loving and gentle by nature. He hardly remembered his father, but cherished most tender feelings toward him to the end of his life. He would call his mother “madam” only in public, while in private he would address her as “maman”. He would easily become attached to people, be it his valet, confessor, or even ordinary servants. Despite his complex relationship with Mazarin, who rather often had to resort to strictness toward his charge “for educational purposes”, Louis regarded him as his best friend, in the end. It was human sympathy, not social conditionalities, that was most important for him. Still, he was a king, so he learned to rank his duty higher than his sympathies and attachments.

In 1648, when the monarch just turned 10, disturbances broke out in the country, which was a natural consequence of the central power’s weakening. The disturbances came to be known in modern European history as the “Fronde”, and it can also be regarded as the last outbreak of freedom in anticipation of the triumph of absolutism. The Fronde participants represented a rather mixed company: the 3d estate demanded lower taxes, while the nobility demanded the return of privileges they had earlier been stripped of, all this occurring amid peasant revolts. Besides, the danger of outside intervention arose (from Spain, in the first place). Still, the mutineers did not put forward any principal demands over how the country should be governed, but they were largely aroused by the fact that the state power was usurped by “some Italian”. The Fronde proved to be a real “school of hard knocks” for the adolescent Louis. He came to know both the treachery of friends and the hypocrisy of foes. He became aware of the royal power’s fragility as well as of that of human life. He learned not to say too much, to hide his true feelings, and to sham, if necessary.

The Fronde died down in 1652, thanks, in many respects, to adequate measures taken by the same Mazarin. Louis reached youthful age by then, so the chief minister started actively familiarizing him with state affairs. Together with Mazarin, Louis would listen to the reports made by highest-ranking officials; he would be present at the Council of State’s meetings, and eventually, would chair them. It may have been precisely at that time, when Louis, addressing one of the parliament of Paris’ meetings, in a burst of youth maximalism and trying to pass the desirable for reality, uttered his famous phrase: “The state is me” (according to other sources, this happened later on, when the above declaration was already a statement of fact). In 1660, Louis married the King of Spain’s daughter, Maria Theresa, which, again, was part of Mazarin’s plan on securing peace with Spain.

In waiting to be the actual king, Louis also managed to engage in military operations. In 1655, when he just turned 17, he took part in the Anglo-Franco-Spanish war in Flanders. There, he often risked his life and proved to be a brave soldier. Subsequently, when already at the peak of his power, Louis would not shy away from harsh conditions associated with military life: he would take part in various campaigns in person, sharing with his subjects the hardships of military service and enrapturing them by his intrepidity and coolness.

Mazarin died in 1661. Louis immediately convened the Council of State’s emergency meeting. There, he announced that from then on he would not appoint the first minister and would rule alone. The statement, although caused some murmur, but was generally welcomed. At least, the power problem was solved rightfully and unequivocally, so there remained no formal reasons for “frondism”. The new king was handsome and had the governing skills. In his manners he displayed the true royal dignity and, at the same time, he was duly accessible for his subjects.

To prevent any doubt as to who’s boss, some “exemplary flagellation” was needed. Here, the king’s choice fell on the powerful and thievish head of the Parliament of Paris and finance minister N. Fouquet, who also had a claim on taking the position of chief minister. He was arrested, tried lingeringly and comprehensively, and sentenced to “eternal exile.” This is where Louis stepped in and successfully insisted on replacing the exile with imprisonment.

Louis gave managerial positions to the trusted people, earlier recommended to him by Mazarin and whose performance he had been following for a number of years. Here again, things could not be properly done without “chief minister”, although such a position was abolished. The new finance minister J.-B. Colbert became the actual chief minister under Louis. That was an exclusively good choice, and Louis would owe Colbert major accomplishments of his reign.

The choice of the sun as the guiding landmark brought Louis closer to Egyptian pharaohs. But not only that. Like pharaohs, who had built themselves pyramids, Louis immediately started building a monument to himself in conformity with the trends of his time – it was his new residence in Versailles, near Paris. The monarchial compound had the appearance of a majestic palace and park ensemble, and its construction was never completed during Louis’ lifetime.

Every minute of the king’s day was scheduled, holidays being out of the question. Louis thought he had a propensity for laziness, and he did his best to prove himself it was not so. “To reign is to labour, — he wrote, — otherwise this turns out to be ingratitude to God and tyranny to people”. By the way, the sun, which Louis chose as his emblem, was to him, first of all, a relentless toiler, who managed to endow with light and warmth the entire globe during the day.

What does it mean to labour for a king? It means to protect the freedom and property of those living in the kingdom, to observe justice and pass judgment. The point is, however, that “freedom” and “property,” strictly speaking, apply only to the king. So, the king’s labour can only be evaluated by the king himself, whereas his subjects are only supposed to unanimously accept whatever the product of his labour is. Louis’ youthful joke that “he was the state” turned out to be the real truth: nobody now speaks of the “good of the state,” but everyone speaks of the “good of the King”. The Latter’s thoughts and actions are believed to be guided by “God Himself” (viz., conformed to common sense and natural necessity). All in all, the King is God’s deputy on earth and the only Mediator between Him and the people.

Accordingly, the country’s legislative government bodies were no longer needed. City parliaments were losing their political weight. The Estates General had not been called since 1614. The royal court actually became the only supreme legislative body in the country, and those occupying positions in the court were politically most powerful. The royal court, in fact, became the country’s supreme governing body, so those occupying court positions were most powerful political figures, irrespective of their social background. The most important political and economic issues would be decided at the “royal council,” the members of which were selected by the King himself. At the local level, exercising authority were the King’s plenipotentiaries, or “intendants” (ministers) of provinces. Day-to-day problems would be solved by various “councils” and “commissions”, which were set up at various levels and permeated the country from top to bottom. The ideal form of governments, which Louis was striving to reach, had earlier been expressed by the French lawyer and poet G. Coquille: “The King is the head, while the 3 estates are the members, and together they constitute a political and mystical Body, the interconnection and unity of Which is inseparable and permanent”. That was not only a “word picture”: the French citizens were forbidden to leave the country under penalty of death, all the more, to seek employment abroad. The pertinent legislation read: “The ties of birth binding the natural citizens to their sovereign and fatherland are most close and most indissoluble of all those existing in civil society”.

Under Louis 14, a full-fledged cult of the King’s personality was formed in France, which implied worshipping Him, praising Him, as well as offering sacrifices to Him. The King’s every step, from morning awakening to going to bed, was regarded as religiously significant and would be formalized as a certain ceremony. The cult was maintained by the multitude of courtiers, whom the King would select on his own discretion. To live at the court was a supreme honour, and the courtiers were politically more powerful than many eminent nobles or government ministers. Still, according to the Western European tradition, the King was well accessible to all His subjects. Those coming to have an audience with Him would normally not be even searched, and everyone would be listened to patiently and in a courteous manner. Besides, the King could well be encountered in Versailles’ palace park, which was open for a neatly-dressed and well-behaved public. Nevertheless, those having shown disrespect to the King could be sent to a madhouse or sentenced to have their tongue cut off. Similar measures, as well as imprisonment on the only grounds of the King’s written order (lettre de cachet) would hardly surprise anyone and, as a rule, would not even cause complaints on the part of those punished.

But the deputy of what God was the King? Anyway, not of the One Whose the Pope of Rome was. Achieving complete independence from the Roman Catholic Church and the unconditional assertion of secular power was the innermost goal of Louis 14th’s reign. Here, he would avoid sudden movements: he did not urge anyone to “crush the infamy”, neither was he going to create the national church. On the contrary, he would diligently observe the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church, demand that the others should do so, and equate sacrilege with an insult to a Sovereign. And yet, Church was to him nothing more than a component of the monarchical system of government, designed to strengthen the latter; so, he would never miss a chance to place the Church at the service of the State. In particular, since Louis was God the Nature’s Incarnate, he could not figure out what monks were for, and he tried every possible way to close down all the monasteries. However, he only managed to complicate the procedure for tonsure and close down a number of monasteries on the grounds of “indebtedness.” Citing the “diving nature of royal power”, he consistently pressed for the right to appoint and dismiss the abbots and bishops, but his endeavour would continuously dash against the “divine power” of the Roman Pontiff. Nevertheless, Louis succeeded in the toughening of qualification requirements for those seeking positions in the church hierarchy. In particular, he committed the bishops to report him on their parishioners’ sentiments and aspirations, for the Sovereign must be well-informed about everything that is going on in his country (here, he anticipated the part that Stalinist Russia’s NKVD would assign to the church).

Throughout his life, Louis fought for the unity of France’s Catholic Church, which was torn by internal conflicts (Jesuitism, Gallicanism, and Jansenism), regarding this unity as an essential condition of his own power’s durability. His attitude towards Protestantism was distinctly negative, and he rightfully perceived the revival of the original Christian values as a threat to secular power. He did not persecute the Huguenots physically, but would limit their rights in any possible way and encourage their return to Catholicism. Besides, the wars, which France waged against the Catholic Spain in alliance with Protestant countries prevented Louis from turning to outright violence against Huguenots. Nevertheless, the oppression of the Huguenots was on the rise during his rule, which culminated in 1685, when the Edict of Nantes, protecting the Huguenot rights, was abolished. As for the French Catholic (Gallican) Church, Louis managed to ensure effective control over it within his country’s borders, while retaining the nominal supremacy of the Pope.

But the more territory is embraced by the sunlight, the better for all. In 1667, after carrying out reforms of the French army, the respective diplomatic moves, and also customs measures, Louis began external expansion. To start with, he tried to seize Belgium, which was then part of the Netherlands remaining under Spanish rule. However, he did not quite manage it: the Netherlands, which had already gone through a bourgeois revolution by then, concluded an alliance with Britain and Sweden, so the French offensive was halted. In 1672, Louis, having enticed Britain and Sweden away, attacked Amsterdam. However, courageous and skillful defenders of the city opened the dams, brought their fleet into action and repelled the attack. Still, France managed to snatch up another little piece of Belgium. Then Louis turned his eyes eastward, and in 1684 he took hold of the border areas of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, including the Free City of Strasbourg. But how the Sun King longed to illuminate and warm up the whole of Europe by His rays!

In 1682, Louis, together with his court, moved to Versailles. Absolute monarchy appeared before the amazed world in all its splendour. France became an “exhibition” of European cultural achievements. Academies would be set up for each type of sciences and arts. Scientists and artists, generously promoted by the King, would make their discoveries and create their masterpieces to the glory of their Patron. That was the time, when the best works were created by the playwrights Molière, Racine, and Cornell, the poets Boileau-Desprèaux and La Fontaine, and also the court composer Lully.

But, obeying the same “natural necessity”, the Sun, having reached Its zenith, begins declining, the lower the faster. Like any person, who has been in power for too long, Louis starts losing touch with reality. Surrounded by a crowd of flatterers, he was getting increasingly prone to wishful thinking. In the meantime, the maintenance of the court, patronage of sciences and arts, but most of all, the nearly uninterrupted waging of annexationist wars required considerable amounts of money, which became an exorbitant burden for the 3d estate. So, the outward glitter of the reign of Louis 14th had on its reverse side the virtual robbery of the immediate producers of material values.

Louis passed away on September 1st, 1715, at the age of 77, 72 of which he spent sitting on the throne. Until the end of his days, he felt himself to be God’s deputy on earth, whom, in a certain sense, he really was. However, the role of the “absolute monarch”, which fell to his lot, failed to completely replace a purely human constituent of his personality: he increasingly realized the “excesses” of his rule, and he would be tormented by the sense of guilt for the lawlessness and poverty, into which he had driven the majority of his subjects. At the same time, Louis did not recognize any other form of government, except monarchy. In his declining years, he was rather leaning to some more “socially-oriented” monarchy with the elements of local “self-governance“. Feeling his death was approaching, he gathered his courtiers and begged their pardon for having given them “bad examples”. Turning to his successor, his 5-year-old great-grandson, he called on him to alleviate the life of his subjects. However, all these bitter regrets and good wishes could only postpone, but not vacate the historical verdict, that had already been passed on monarchic power. France’s bourgeois revolution was just 72 years away. From the viewpoint of Truth, this meant that the religion of Nature was going to be replaced by the religion of Mind.

I. Kant: the disclosure of Subject

This philosopher is considered the founding father of classical German philosophy. Unlike Spinoza, he put the self-evidence of Nature in doubt and for the 1st time in the philosophy of the Modern Era, deliberately posed the question of Subject.

Immanuel Kant was born on April 22nd, 1724, in Königsberg, the capital of the Prussian Kingdom’s eastern province, into a modest, simple, but pious family of a harness-maker. His paternal ancestors had come from Scotland. At baptism, he was given the name “Emmanuel”, which was Hebrew for “God (is) with us”. This name is originally mentioned in the Old Testament’s book of Isaiah, meaning Jesus Christ. Subsequently, when Kant had learned Hebrew, he changed his Christian name’s first letter, apparently, to make it closer to the original.

The Kant family had their good genius, who was their parish priest. He noted the boy’s outstanding mental abilities and taught him the first lessons in theology and Latin. It was not without his assistance that the philosopher-to-be, at the age of 8, was enrolled in one of the city’s best gymnasiums.

After brilliantly finishing the gymnasium in 1740 at the age of 16, Kant entered the University of Königsberg. There, apart from other disciplines, he intensely studied physics, where I. Newton‘s teaching was dominating at the time, and philosophy, which was largely influenced by G. W. Leibniz.

In 1746, Emmanuel’ father died. Kant terminated his studies at the university, and during the next decade he made his bread and supported his family working as a private tutor. In parallel, however, he was engaged in some research work. Carried away by the discovered laws of mechanics and also by the latest breakthroughs in astronomy, the young philosopher raised the question of the origin of the Solar System. Kant came to the conclusion that the Solar System had originated from the “primeval nebula,” that is, a huge accumulation of Matter in the vacuum state.

Kant was not inclined to extend this hypothesis into the entire Universe. Yet, his hypothesis, to some degree, revived the notions put forward by ancient philosophers, who had tried to deduce Nature from some primeval Substance. Compared to the ancients, however, Kant’s task appeared to be more complex, since those sages had imagined Substance to be a primordially living and rational Being. In the meantime, Kant tried to explain the emergence of a planetary system out of the “primeval nebula” by the operation of the laws of mechanics.

But here the following questions immediately arise. Where does “Matter”, that is, corporality, deprived of any life and reason, come from? Why does this Matter appear to be primordially sparse? Who imparts laws of mechanics to It? Why does the operation of these laws result exactly in the emergence of a planetary system, and not in something else? Why does it result in anything at all? And why does not the nebula stay the same? Then insuperable difficulties arise in explaining the emergence of life and mind out of Matter. True, when trying to explain motion, Kant, tended to believe in some “Vital Force” being inherent in Matter, that is, admitted a certain presence of Soul in It. But this assumption was not sufficient to solve all the questions raised.

In 1755, at the age of 31, Kant defended his thesis, and over the following 40 years he taught at the University of Königsberg. Interestingly, during his professorship there, East Prussia, including Königsberg, was captured for some time by the Russian Empire. For Professor Kant, however, it only meant that he was then supposed to submit his most important applications not to the King of Prussia, but to the Russian empress Elizabeth Petrovna.

As to Nature, not everything proved to be so simple with It. The time of the impetuous ardour for It was now over; the time came to turn to the Cognizing Subject. So, after many years of relentless research, Kant became seized by doubt: is Nature really such an unconditionally obvious Thing? The philosopher was becoming more and more convinced that the obviousness of Nature was deceptive, and “in reality” It was not quite such (and, maybe, not at all such) as It seemed to us. He returned to Descartes’ “doubt”. Now, he pursued this principle more consistently and repudiated not only Descartes’ “confidence” in in the true existence of God, but also Spinoza’s “confidence” in the true existence of “Substance”. So, the “Self”, the reality of the Cognizing Subject, became for him the solely trustworthy. From then on, Kant regarded as “dogmatism” recognition of anything, except It, as truly existent.

Thus, what truly exists is the Cognizing Subject and His “sensual experience”, which He collates using certain a priori forms of sensuality and thinking (e. g. “space” and “time”). In this way, Nature arises. In other words, Nature arises not because It exists “in reality”, but because the Cognizing Subject can only perceive something in such a way. That is exactly why, in particular, Man can get an idea of any science, however complex, only if it can be reduced to mechanics. And He cannot do otherwise.

The philosopher was becoming more and more convinced that the obviousness of Nature was deceptive, and “in reality” It was not quite (and, maybe, not at all) the way It appeared to us. Maybe, It is not at all “Nature”. To perceive something as “Nature”, or “Object”, one must first have a certain mode of perception. That is to say, to discern Nature, one should be Human. The presence of Human – that’s what makes Nature such, and, without Him, Nature is no one knows what, a “Thing-in-Itself”. So, Nature ceased to be the Primary Substance to Kant, and he, from a “philosopher of Nature”, turned into a “transcendental idealist”. It is accepted to date the period of “criticism” in the work of Kant starting from 1771, when he wrote his “Critique of Pure Reason”.

If Human Mind transcends beyond the sensually perceived Nature, it, according to Kant, falls into contradictions, and any propositions concerning supersensual objects may be considered to be equally true and false. In particular, this is the case, when Man tries to quest for such vital “metaphysical” issues as “the freedom of will”, “the immortality of the soul”, and ‘the existence of God”. Such issues remain out of reach for Human Reason.

How did Kant find the way out? The point is that Kant’s Cognizing Subject, after all, does not stay alone with Nature. He had to interact not only with the “Thing-in-Itself”, but with other “cognizing subjects”. Here, other regularities are valid, and the “Practical Reason” comes into force, which deals not with what “exists,” but with what is “due”.

For Kant, the sphere of “what is due” is of no less importance than that of “what exists.” Here, too, one cannot do without “a priori forms,” the principal of which is the sense of duty. This is where Kant sets out the moral law, based on this inherent sense, which basically appears to be the same as the “golden rule”, preached, in particular, by Jesus Christ: “Act to others in such a way that you would like others would act to you.” This law is largely necessitated by Man’s becoming conscious of the fact that other people are the same “cognizing subjects” as He Himself.

“Duty”, according to Kant, is the major regulator of inter-human relations, and he tended to consider emotional relationships between people to be a kind of pathology. Moreover, he would attach to Duty “existential” significance, asserting that Man lives not because He gets much enjoyment out of it, but, rather, out of a sense of duty.

For Christ, the freedom of will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God were evident things, so the moral law was ensuing from them in a natural way. For Kant, however, it was the moral law that was only evident, and it was exactly the presence of the moral law in Man that was pointing to the need for the above “metaphysical” things to be existent. They have to exist, because the moral law exists; they are needed to keep it operating. Otherwise, one cannot explain why Man has to be “good” and why He should avoid committing evil deeds. In the end, Human Mind does not embrace the entire Reality, and, if those things are unattainable for It, it does not mean that there are no such things at all. There must be something that Man has to believe in.

And yet, the faith Kant was suggesting ran very much counter to the conventional religious beliefs. In the meantime, because of the French Revolution, censorship toughened in the Prussian Kingdom. As a result, Kant failed to publish his work “Religion within the limits of Reason alone” in one of the journals. So, he decided to publish it in contravention of censorship. Consequences did not take long to appear. In 1794, Kant received a letter from the King of Prussia Wilhelm-Friedrich II, in which the monarch accused the philosopher of abusing his teaching to distort and depreciate some fundamental tenets of the Holy Script and Christian faith, and also of having bad influence on the youth. The king ordered Kant to refrain from publishing his works and delivering lectures relating to religious issues. In his reply letter, Kant politely rejected king’s accusations and confirmed that the religion of Reason remained for him the supreme basis of any true religion, and his Conscience had always been for him the divine judge. However, Kant observed etiquette: he assured the monarch of his loyalty and promised to obey. Another “condemnation of Socrates” came to nothing more than the above exchange of letters and passed off without casualties.

Interestingly, Wilhelm-Friedrich II was a nephew and the successor of the enlightened monarch Friedrich the Great, a philosopher and musician, who had met with J. S. Bach, whom K. F. E. Bach had served, and who had once had Voltaire as his guest. Wilhelm-Friedrich II was not as talented as his uncle had been, but, apparently, was not a bad guy: he played cello and did much to promote arts in the kingdom. He was largely bound to take “reactionary” measures by force of circumstances and also under pressure from the inveterate bureaucracy, which even the king was unable to resist. There are reasons suggesting that the notorious letter to Kant was incited by the then culture minister of Prussia.

That same year, 1794, a more joyous event happened in Kant’s life – he was elected member of the Imperial Russian Academy.

In 1795, Kant’s last work was out titled “Toward perpetual peace”, which came as his response to the conclusion of the Basel peace treaty between Prussia and France (despite the treaty, enmity between the two countries stayed on). Kant proposed to create a federation of European states and renounce violence in resolving conflicts. Politically, such a union would become possible, if republican rule was established in all the member countries (monarchy would also do, provided it is constitutional). Militarily, considering weapon upgrading, such a union would be not only possible, but necessary for self-preservation. “Progressive community” welcomed Kant’s writing enthusiastically. French newspapers wrote that Kant had accomplished in Germany a spiritual revolution resembling the one that had crushed the old regime in France. The philosopher was even invited to the revolutionary France to help draw up a new Constitution. Having declared his skepticism towards “metaphysical” issues, Kant effectively supported the victorious “religion of Reason”.

But Kant was already over 70 by then. Since childhood, he was noted for poor health. Only keeping to a very strict routine, he managed to maintain high capacity for work and to live until he was 79. He died on February 12th, 1804, in the same city of Königsberg.

Kant’s “critical” philosophy certified the only obvious Reality available, that of Subject transforming the data of His sensual experience into “Nature”. That was a fair statement of the situation Human found Himself in. Unfortunately, Kant did not tend to represent Human’s dynamics, and did not try to look at Him as a stage in some larger-scale development. The philosopher fails to pose a question of Who was Human before He has become Such, and Whom He will become after He has been Human. Neither did he try to interpret cognition as Human’s way of evolution. And yet, the quest for What Truly Exists, even within the distinctly delineated framework of “Human–Nature”, did not stop at that point. Man would nevertheless be striving to deify something, and God would take any occasion to become incarnate.

J. G. Fichte: an attempt at deifying Subject

Johann Gottlieb Fichte is another classic of the philosophy of Modern Times.

His childhood is in many respects reminiscent of that of his great predecessor, I. Kant. He was born on May 19th, 1762, in one of the villages in the Electorate of Saxony into a poor German peasant family. His father was a ribbon weaver, while mother descended from impoverished nobles. Both parents were profoundly religious, and a village church was for the young Fichte a window to the world.

The philosopher-to-be was noted for some outstanding abilities. But he would become a weaver, too, if it was not for an interference of a good genius. One day, a local landlord was late for a church service, and he was very much upset over his failure to listen to the pastor’s sermon. But the parishioners calmed him: there is a lad hereabouts who will retell you any sermon in every detail and with genuine expression. The landlord listened to the 8-year old Fichte and took him under his patronage.

The parents were happy about such a turn of events and started to prepare their son for a pastor’s career. Fichte embarked on his many years of education. Initially, it was primary school. At the age of 12, he entered the elite school at Pforta (which F. Nietzsche would be attending later on). After finishing Pforta, in 1780, Fichte continued his education at the faculty of theology at the University of Jena, then of Leipzig.

In 1784, his patron died, so Fichte had to terminate his studies and make a living by giving private lessons.

In the meantime, the truths of religion were gradually losing their obviousness for Fichte. The truths of philosophy, instead, were increasingly getting hold of him. Before long, he became an adherent of B. Spinoza’s teaching.

In 1790, one of his pupils asked him to tell something about Kant. To his shame, Fichte had so far a rather vague idea of who Kant was. Having run round book shops and sat reading at libraries, Fichte gathered the needed information about this philosopher who was his contemporary. But the deeper he dug into the study of his works, the more his astonishment grew. It turned out that Nature, Which he had worshipped, being under Spinoza’s influence, was, in fact, not so obvious a Reality, as It might seem to be. It turns out that It, to a large extent, depends on the One Who perceives It. And not only depends. Nature emerges and exists not “by Itself,” but thanks to Human’s activity. Its cause is not “It Itself”. Its true cause, Its Natura Naturans, is Subject.

As a matter of fact, Fichte’s rendition of Kant already differed from what Kant really meant. From the very start, Fichte tended to overestimate the capabilities of Subject, towards Which Kant was much more skeptical than towards Nature perceived by It. But as yet, the difference between the two philosophers was not pronounced.

In 1791, Fichte came to Königsberg to see Kant in person. Their meeting did take place. But Kant failed to understand what his young admirer actually wanted from him. All in all, Fichte was disappointed with the meeting. Still, it did not have any impact on his philosophical convictions or his attitude towards Kant. In order to prove his adherence to Kant’s “critical method”, Fichte wrote an essay, “The attempt at a critique of all revelation”. In it, he, in the spirit of Kant, elaborated on the idea of limiting knowledge so as to “make room for faith”.

Fichte’s work was published anonymously and was initially taken by the scientific community for the work of Kant himself. The confusion was soon cleared. Kant praised Fichte, and the latter started being referred to as a worthy successor of Kant’s “critical” philosophy. He was invited to teach at the University of Jena.

Fichte was rebellious by nature and, he did not really feel like limiting his mind. In 1792, his works appeared titled “Reclamation of the freedom of thought from the princes of Europe, who have oppressed it until now” and “Contribution to the correction of the public’s judgment of the French Revolution…” In them, he justified revolution and advocated the freedom of thought and speech as an inalienable human right and important condition for the development of human personality. Those works were published anonymously. Still, Fichte made no secret of his authorship, and somehow he managed to emerge unscathed so far.

Fichte lectured at the University of Jena in 1794-1799. It was exactly in those years that Fichte developed his own philosophical and religious teaching. He felt uneasy not only within the confines of total necessity implied in Spinoza’s doctrine; Kant’s “critical” philosophy did not seem to give him enough room to manoeuver, either. Fichte regarded Kant’s delicate suggestion of the existence of Subject as patently insufficient. He made up his mind to reinstate Subject’s rights in full and raise It to the level of the Spinozian Substance. First of all, according to Fichte, one has to do away with the remnants of “dogmatism” in the Kantian philosophy. He referred to as “dogmatism” the recognition of anything that can be inaccessible to Subject, namely, the existence of “things-in-themselves”. What kind of Subject is It, if It is faced with some obscure “things-in-themselves?” Subject cannot be considered full-fledged until they exist. If “critical” philosophy is to be consistent to the end, it should repudiate these vestiges of “dogmatism”. In other words, nothing can exist in Nature, except through Subject.

Subject is an acting Agent. Its primary, unconscious activity consists in Its self-objectification, self-materialization, Its outward projection. Accordingly, accounting for Its secondary, conscious activity is Its awareness of Itself as the “I”, and also the awareness of Nature as the “not-I”. Thus, Nature appears as something opposed to Subject, as some impediment to be overcome, as some challenge to be accepted. Here begins the cognition of Nature, Which, despite Its apparent independence, is truly Subject’s innermost Product. Therefore, cognition is essentially the recognition by Subject of Himself in Nature.

If there are no “things-in-themselves,” there is no longer any need in the “practical reason”, in the sphere of “what is due”. Then all the “unsolvable” metaphysical questions, of the freedom of will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God will solve themselves, for Subject is free, He is immortal, and He is God.

I. Kant did not accept such a development in his philosophy. He keeps on sticking to the purely human point of view, i. e. that of consistent skepticism. All things related to “absolute” he refers not to the sphere of what is existent, but to what is due. So, however much he would extol Duty and all that, “what is due” will always be rated lower than “what is existent”. Surely, God has to exist – otherwise the Universe will go to pieces. But never Kant asserted that “God exists”. And yet, What Truly Exists does exist. Moreover, It yearns to know what It is. Philosophy is qualified to give an unequivocal answer to this question, for it is an attempt by God to become aware of Himself, it is the science of What Truly Exists. Kant’s delicate treatment of the Latter as Something Which is “due” to exist, certainly, does him credit, but that was clearly not enough. After a timid attempt made by Kant, the philosophical Subject, thanks to Fichte’s efforts, rises to Its full height.

In 1799, after publication of Fichte’s another work, executed in the spirit of “freethinking”, he was accused of atheism and had to abandon his lecturing at the university. Surely, Fichte’s undisguised support of the French Revolution, interpretation of God as “Subject”, or even the “moral world order created by the efforts of the free human will” could please only few in the peaceful Electorate of Saxony. However, another “condemnation of Socrates” went off with no casualties this time around. Luckily, Germany was then a formation of many faces with a good variety to choose from. So, Fichte moved to Berlin, the capital of the neighbouring kingdom of Prussia, where he was received with open arms. Here, he was treated most kindly by the King of Prussia Friedrich-Wilhelm III (who, incidentally, would be grandfather of the Liberator tsar Alexander II of Russia).

Fichte plunged into the thick of cultural and social life of the Prussian capital city. He delivered public lectures and met with the theoreticians of German Romanticism, including his colleague, F. W. J. von Schelling. The Romanticists, influenced by Fichte, started emphasizing the exclusive role of Subject in artistic creativity. Fichte, in his turn, became more and more inclined to the idea of art being the supreme expression of human spirit. Also in Berlin, Fichte joined a masonic lodge.

Having developed Kant’s teaching, Fichte tried to advance his own teaching. Now, he was preoccupied with moral issues. Where, indeed, does morality come from, if Subject deals only with Nature? In other words, why should Subject, possessing free will, be good? Fichte supposes that Subject is faced not only by Nature. At some time, He finds out that He is not alone. That was an interesting turn in Fichte’s philosophy. However, he would not elaborate on the dialectics of the “One” and the “Other”. Instead of it, he posits the existence of a multitude of Subjects, Which his Absolute Subject falls into. Regarding the Latter, Fiche, thereby, turned out to be both Spinoza and Leibniz, all in one.

According to Fichte, Subject’s self-will is voluntarily limited for the sake of Its co-existence with other self-determining Subjects, other “I-s” Whom one cannot treat as ordinary objects of Nature, but only as Its own Self. Thus, Fichte’s Absolute Subject increasingly acquires the characteristic features of Humankind, or Human Society. Surely, each human person is unique. Nevertheless, all people, in essence, make up a single Subject, therefore, they all are brothers. Hence, Man’s mission is to improve Himself and Nature, actively streamline the Environment into What It is due to be, jointly transform Chaos into Cosmos, execute a grandiose leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom, from “what exists” to “what is due to exist”. Actually, Fichte’s Humankind is endowed with the powers of the Biblical God.

To accomplish the above mission, the fusion of all human wills of the entire world community will be needed. Certainly, this cannot be achieved right away. To start with, it is necessary to create the relevant “rational state”. Philosophers adherent to Fichte’s teaching must place themselves at the head of such a state. They should establish control over the production and distribution of material welfare and also limit contacts with other countries so as to completely concentrate on bringing up citizens in the spirit of “true philosophy”, aiming Man at transforming the World. The ideals of the French Revolution, according to Fichte, had been betrayed by Napoleon, so Frenchmen appeared unable to lead mankind forward. Now, the most educated, German nation was due to become a springboard for the future liberation of humankind. With that end in view, the German nation should achieve political unity and become a Collective Whole. And the time was not far off, when a man should appear, who was to lead such unification.

Thus, Fichte’s Absolute Subject, in point of fact, turns out to be a fairly natural, that is, objectified entity, namely, Humankind, or Human Society. In the final analysis, this “Subject” appears to be the German Nation, Who transforms Himself and Nature, driven by “rational”, that is, “moral” will. In the meantime, the true Subject, again, was omitted and overlooked. After all, Subject Proper is something, which entirely and intimately abides within us, and in no way outside us, even if “other egos” are at issue (except for the unique “other I”). In general, any plurality is indicative of the Object, or Nature, being there. Verily, Subject is Human, but only as a stage in the development of God. Therefore, exalting Him immediately to the level of the Creator God, or His more down-to-earth interpretation as “Humankind” is, although historically justified, but still not quite correct.

It looks like Fichte did not notice the substitution. True, he did not come to inferring Human from Nature and was not apt to go into the details about how Nature and Man had arisen, just mentioning that “reason could not have originated from unreason”. At the same time, he admitted the primordial existence of some “civilized race” amidst “savage peoples”.

In 1805, Fichte taught at the University of Erlangen. In 1806, after the Battle of Jena, in which Prussian and Saxon troops were routed by Napoleon, the philosopher moved to Königsberg. The next year, however, he had to return to the occupied Berlin, where his family was staying. There, Fichte would bravely speak out against the occupation regime. In his ardent speeches, he would glorify the cultural mission of the German people. He would call on the Germans for the overcoming of the spiritual crisis and for moral revival. After the University of Berlin was opened in 1809, Fiche headed the chair of philosophy there, and even was its rector for some time.

Napoleon’s defeat in the Russian campaign of 1812 caused widespread patriotic enthusiasm in Prussia. The next year, Prussia entered into a coalition with Russia against Napoleon, and in 1814, the German lands were completely cleared of the Napoleon’s troops.

Gradually, Fichte came to realize that he had gone too far in his patriotic ardour. Now, he changed his mind and admitted the incorrectness of the substitution of Absolute Subject for “Natural Human” in general, and for the German Nation, in particular. In his declining years, he no more referred to Absolute Subject as “I”, and increasingly tended to interpret It as some infinite, all-encompassing, rational (moral) and life-giving Will. Being de-humanized and de-personalized, Absolute Subject was inevitably being displaced into the Basis of Nature. It becomes the Latter’s Origin, Its Beginning, or, as Spinoza would put it, the Natura Naturans of Substance.

In the meantime, Fichte’s days were already numbered, and we will never know where he would have been led by the flight of his thought, had he lived any longer. His wife (incidentally, a niece of the eminent poet F. G. Klopstock) worked as a nurse at a hospital during the war against Napoleon. One day, Fichte contracted typhus from her. She managed to recover, while he proved less lucky. The philosopher died on January 29th, 1814. Their son, Immanuel Herman Fichte, so named after I. Kant, also became a philosopher. He failed to create his own philosophical teaching. He just tried to systematize the then existing philosophical doctrines.

Antique philosophy had posed the question of the Origin of Nature right away. The philosophy of Modern Times, however, started with positing the independence of Nature as a Whole. Only eventually, via skepticism, via subjectivity, it approached the question of Its Origin. Thus, philosophy returned, as it were, to the Spinozian Substance. This time around, it was not Substance proper, but Its “Free Cause”, Its Natura Naturans. Further development of philosophy would consist in the fact that Each of the Attributes of Substance, namely, Its Mind, Soul, and Body would find Itself in the capacity of Such.

W. F. J. Schelling: at the crossroads

In this philosopher’s works practically all the basic trends in the further development of European philosophy were outlined.

Wilhelm Friedrich Joseph Schelling (later, von Schelling) was born on January 27th, 1775, in a small town near Stuttgart in the Duchy of Württemberg within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. His father was a protestant theologian specializing in Oriental studies. Initially, the philosopher-to-be attended a cloistral school, where his father taught. The boy’s outstanding progress made him eligible to enter at the age of 15 a theological seminary in the city of Tübingen, which was, in fact, one of the faculties at the University of Tübingen.

In Tübingen, his closest friends were his colleague-to-be, G. F. W. Hegel, and the poet J. C. F. Hölderlin. At the university, as is the custom, a circle was formed among the students, where the burning issues of politics, philosophy and religion would be discussed. Surely, the French Revolution, started in 1789, became the predominant theme of the discussions. It seemed to the youths to be the implementation of the ideas of “reason and enlightenment,” first of all, of those suggested by J.-J. Rousseau. Nearly all the students felt united by a common impulse of passion against the power of feudal lords, against monarchy, for the republic, for freedom, equality, and brotherhood. The overall enthusiasm was crowned by the planting of the “Tree of Freedom” in Tübingen’s main square, while Schelling translated the “Marseillaise” into German.

News about the Tübingen students’ escapades reached the chief feudal lord, the Duke of Württemberg. He came to the city in person, so as to sort things out on-site. The students were called to his office one by one. When Schelling came in, the duke asked him outright: “Is it you who translated this gangster song?” Schelling’s answer was not at all insolent, but quite conciliatory: “You see, Your Highness, we all sometimes err…” The duke, too, decided not to dramatize matters. Certainly, he was a feudal lord. Still, he was not a cannibal. Moreover, he remembered that he, too, had been a bit of a revolutionary in his youth. All in all, none of the students were accused of “undermining the foundations of the state”, neither were they sent to prison or exiled. The boys were just admonished, and they went on with their studies at the university.

Schelling was specializing in interpreting Christian holy books. But he had no faith in him, neither had he any intention to conceal his unbelief. Accordingly, in his biblical interpretation an “historical approach” was predominant (which would subsequently find expression in the notorious book by D. F. Strauss “The Life of Jesus”). Gradually, Schelling altogether lost interest in religion and became increasingly focused on philosophy. To start with, it was antique philosophy. Eventually, he familiarized himself with contemporary philosophical doctrines, in particular, with I. Kant’s “critical philosophy” and with the development of such in J. G. Fichte’s works.

In 1795, Schelling graduated from the University of Tübingen, after which he worked as a tutor with an aristocratic family for some time. In the course of his tutorship, he visited Leipzig, where he listened to the lectures on natural sciences and familiarized himself with their latest advances. Also, he visited Dresden, where he admired the Saxon Electors’ collection of art.

Certainly, he continued his philosophical studies: here, he was almost wholly under the influence of Fichte’s doctrine of Absolute Subject. However, Schelling was not in a hurry with further specification of the Latter. As yet, he would rather speak of the equal status of the 2 philosophical approaches, “dogmatic” and “critical” ones. In the former case, Object is posited as primary, from Which Subject is to be inferred. In the latter case, it is Subject that is posited as primary, Object being inferred therefrom. Moreover, it seemed to Schelling that Fichte, while restoring Subject’s rights, had paid too little attention to Object, the “not-I”, or Nature. Therefore, he, encouraged by the latest scientific discoveries, decided, to try to look at Nature the way It is by Itself, separately from Subject, as it were.

It should be noted that Fichte’s Subject had been still a full-scale counterweight to Nature, being the unity of all Its essential properties, that is, of Mind, Soul, and Body. In other words, It had been still basically Human, although, ultimately, It did not differ in any way from B. Spinoza’s Substance any longer. Schelling, however, embarking on his study into Object, in effect, studies not Object as opposed to Subject, but Matter (corporeality) as opposed to Spirit (thinking). Thus, Schelling’s Object and Subject, in reality, stay within the limits of Nature. Strictly speaking, They appear as the “attributes” of Spinoza’s Substance, or the true Object, whereas the true Subject, again, slips away.

Schelling can be considered the founder of both philosophical idealism and philosophical materialism of Modern Times. He virtually formulated what subsequently would be termed in dialectical materialism as the “fundamental question of philosophy”. As for Schelling himself, he did not seem to show preference to any of these trends and would treat both with equal diligence. Proceeding from the primacy of Matter, he posited It as a self-developing entity and tried to trace all the stages of Its development, including the emergence of Life and Consciousness.

The development of Matter, according to Schelling, is caused by certain inner contradictions, or the “opposed forces”, for example, attraction and repulsion, expansion and compression. At a higher level, these are positive and negative magnetic poles, the respective electric charges, the opposition of acid and alkalies. Organic Matter emerges from inorganic Matter through “galvanism”. At this point, living Matter is already a short way off, where “irritability” comes into play, and where nutrition and oxidation are basic processes. At last, at the level of Consciousness, the major opposition is between “Subject” and “Object”.

Schelling’s ideas of Nature originating from a single corporeal Arche driven by Its own inner contradictory forces, or “dialectical materialism”, as it would be termed later (“higher physics”, as Schelling termed it then) provoked tremendous interest, and not only among the scientific community. In 1798, the poet J. W. von Goethe, who, in fact, headed the government of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, also became keen on Schelling’s ideas and invited the 23-year old philosopher to lecture at the University of Jena.

In Jena, Schelling came under the influence of the Jena romantics. It could not be managed without a feedback effect, though. Most of all, Schelling influenced the wife of the main theoretician of German Romanticism and the hostess of literary salons Caroline Schlegel, who became his ardent admirer and then (again, with Goethe’s assistance) his lawful wife. In 1803, the newly-weds moved from Jena to Würzburg, and in 1806, to Munich.

In the meantime, Schelling continued to develop his teaching. Having explored Object, i. e., having posited It as Developing Matter and having “inferred” Consciousness from It, Schelling now tried to approach the problem from the other end. This time, he took Subject as the starting point, with Nature appearing before It in due course as Its representation. Here, Schelling, in general, recreated the same scheme as Fichte had earlier put forward. The only difference was that by Subject, by the “I”, Schelling meant not quite the integral Human, but, rather a purely ideal entity, namely, “Consciousness”.

Also in Jena, Schelling started publishing “The Journal of Speculative Physics”. However, when he focused on Subject, the periodical was renamed into “The Critical Philosophical Journal”. The latter was published jointly with Hegel, with whom Schelling was still marching in step. Soon, however, their ways would part, too.

Schelling did justice both to materialism and idealism. He would emphasize in every possible way the inner affinity of Spirit and Matter (“Nature”), he would reiterate Spinoza’s idea of “the order and connection of things being exactly the same as the order and connection of thoughts”, and he would call Matter (“Nature”) the visible Spirit, and Spirit, the invisible Matter (“Nature”). And yet, he regarded either trend as insufficient and one-sided. He wanted to create a teaching, which would be a synthesis of both. So, he embarked on developing the “philosophy of identity”.

Schelling puts forward the “true” Arche of all that exists, Which is neither Spirit nor Matter, and Which he calls the “Absolute”. According to Schelling, Nature emanates from the Absolute as the expression of Its inscrutable will. In his view, the Identity of “Object” and “Subject” lies in the fact that the “emanation” of Nature from the “Absolute” comes about exactly the same way as the creation by the artist of a work of art. Schelling tends to think that it is not purely rational cognition, but preeminently art that is the ultimate expression of Truth. Of all the arts, he rated most highly music, which he called “the voice of the innermost essence of the Universe”.

Following Fichte, Schelling emphasized the significance of art, which, in the end, came out for him as the supreme mode of comprehending Truth. Certainly, he is broadly right. And still, it is not quite correct to resort to the artist’s job as a visual aid to demonstrate the creation of the Universe. The point is that creating a work of art by the Artist is not the creation of Nature, but exactly the transformation of It, aimed at disclosing Its being essentially Human. On the other hand, only such “assimilation” of Nature can release Man from the endless circle of the “Subject-Object,” which He finds Himself in.

Caroline’s sudden death in 1809 crushed Schelling down. Earlier, he had broken up with his spiritual parent, Fichte, and his best friend and initially like-minded fellow, Hegel. To prevent him from falling into depression, Goethe selected a suitable mistress for him, who really became his faithful companion to the end of his days. And yet, Schelling could never fully recover from those blows. Thereafter, he failed to publish any of his works and devoted himself exclusively to lecturing. However, his effort was appreciated at its true value: in 1827, he was elected president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kingdom of Bavaria.

Schelling’s emotional turmoil was accompanied by the perturbed state of his mind. The “Absolute” Which had taken so much effort to erect and Which crowned his “philosophy of identity” failed to become the long-awaited, universal Truth and, in the last analysis, turned out to be the very same World Soul, Which he had casually mentioned in his works on “higher physics” and Which had been known to European mankind, at least, from the times of Plato as the 3d, “medial” Arche of Nature. This could suit him in no way, and this is where he experienced, perhaps, the deepest disappointment of his life: his quest for Truth, in fact, resulted in nothing.

Schelling could never give preference either to Object in the impersonality of Nature, or to Subject in the person of Human, as well as to either of Human’s essential properties, estranged from Him and posited in the foundation of Nature. Something suggested to him that he would never find what could be recognized as What Truly Exists within the narrow confines of “Human–Nature” available to him, Which he proved unable to outstep. He no more treated philosophy as the appropriate means of comprehending Truth. Schelling laid out routes for new revelations of God, but he would not wait until they come. He did not see any other way out except returning to the bosom of traditional faith; now he felt like seeking peace of mind in the already accomplished Revelation.

Now, Schelling posits God proper as What Truly Exists, and the fundamental question for him becomes that of how He reveals Himself to Man. Consequently, if philosophy exists, it can only be justified as “the philosophy of revelation”. Here, Schelling did not try to invent any new God or create a religion of his own, as, say, Leo Tolstoy would do. He turned to the true God of a religion, which was most available to him, Christianity, and tended to interpret Him in quite a conservative spirit. Thus, in his declining years, Schelling returned to the once terminated theological studies of his youth, the only difference being that the approach employed by him now was not at all critical, but fairly “dogmatic”. Actually, he was becoming a Christian religious philosopher, while philosophy itself was being returned its “honorary” title of the “maidservant of theology”.

No wonder that Schelling’s lectures on the “philosophy of revelation” provoked bewilderment in many of those attending them. The bewilderment was also aggravated by the fact that those lectures were being delivered in the University of Berlin, where the genius of absolute idealism, Hegel, had reigned not so long ago. So, Schelling was expected to produce something, if not in the same spirit, then, at least, at the same level. However, he failed to live up to many people’s expectations. Negative opinions of his lectures would come from advocates of diverse philosophical trends. From the viewpoint of the Danish religious thinker S. Kierkegaard, Schelling talked “quite insufferable nonsense”. A materialist-to-be, F. Engels, called the late-period Schelling “spiritually dead”, while an anarchist-to-be, M. Bakunin, characterized Schelling’s Berlin lectures as a “reactionary attempt on philosophy”.

There were positive opinions, though. For example, his “conservative” Russian friend Alexander Turgenev (incidentally, brother of a Decembrist and theoretician of Russian political liberalism, Nikolay Turgenev) characterized Schelling as a “Christian genius, who has returned to the path of Truth and is now propagating Christ in higher philosophy”.

Schelling’s Berlin lectures turned out badly for him also in terms of sheer everydayness. They were published without his knowledge or consent. This prompted him to start lengthy litigations, which he lost in the end.

He died on August 20th, 1854, in Switzerland. Soon after his death, his son, K. F. A. Schelling, published his father’s works. Shortly before the philosopher’s death, the King Maximilian II of Bavaria, who also was Schelling’s pupil, dedicated to him a sonnet, the final lines of which read:

• Thou darest to step over chasms
  For which sages could find no bridges,
  And which have always sowed discord
  Between thinkers and believers.

The king’s feelings of gratitude were quite understandable. Still, Maximilian indulged in wishful thinking. Actually, there were hardly many to be found, whom Schelling had brought together, while there were a great number, whom he had effectively put at loggerheads. By the way, Maximilian II also went against the stream in his policies. He was one of the few German rulers to come out against the unification of Germany.

Hegel: the deification of Mind

Fichte’s attempt to deify Subject (Human) to counterbalance Substance (Nature) had proved a failure. Philosophy was returning to although not quite trustworthy, but still more habitual for it ground of Nature. Now it was, in essence, that same Spinozan “Substance”, but somewhat modified. It was still the “Cause of Itself,” but as Its Cause now there appeared not just “It Itself”, but one of Its attributes, namely, “Mind”. Hegel himself did not believe he was returning to Nature. He was sure he kept on exploring Subject, the only difference being that now in the capacity of the Latter there appeared not Human, but Mind.

The greatest of the philosophers of Modern Times, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, was born on 27th of August, 1770, in Stuttgart, Germany. His father was a court official. Wilhelm (as the philosopher-to-be was called in the family) started his studies very early, with his mother as his first teacher. His Latin classes began when he was five.

In 1776, Wilhelm entered a gymnasium. During those years, he read voraciously and kept a diary. Especially he liked the poet F. G. Klopstock (incidentally, J. G. Fichte’s father-in-law) and writers associated with the German Enlightenment, in particular, G. E. Lessing.

In 1781, Wilhelm’s mother died, presumably from typhoid. He was 11 then. The boy and his father also caught the disease, but survived.

In 1788 Wilhelm Hegel entered the faculty of theology at Tübingen University. There, he made friends with two fellow students, the poet J. C. F. Hölderlin and another philosopher to be, F. W. J. Schelling. This friendship greatly influenced the three’s personality formation. They watched the unfolding of the French Revolution with shared enthusiasm. As a sign of their commitment to its ideals, the friends planted the “Tree of Freedom” in Tübingen’s central square.

In 1793, having graduated from the university, Hegel worked as a house tutor for several years. His manuscripts of that period largely dealt with the study of Christianity.

In 1801, Hegel submitted a thesis on the orbits of the planets at the University of Jena and became a lecturer there in logic and metaphysics. Soon his first book appeared entitled “The difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s systems of philosophy”. In parallel, Hegel and Schelling founded “The Critical Journal of Philosophy”. Interestingly, the great poet J. W. von Goethe was the minister of culture and higher education in the duchy of Saxony-Weimar, when Jena then belonged.

In 1806, Napoleon entered Jena. Hegel welcomed this event, regarding the French emperor as an “extraordinary man, whom it is impossible not to admire”. Moreover, Hegel seemed to recognize in Napoleon his “godson”, the incarnation of Absolute Spirit. In a letter to one of his friends, Hegel wrote: “I saw the Emperor, this Wold-Soul, riding out of the city on reconnaissance; it is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it” (subsequently, the “Wold-Soul” would be quite rightfully changed by commentators into the “World Spirit”, or “World Mind”). By the way, Wilhelm’s younger brother was killed in Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812.

On the 14th of October, 1806, the Battle of Jena took place near the city, in which Prussia suffered a crushing defeat. From the devastated Jena Hegel moved to Bamberg, then to Nuremberg. There, he was employed as a headmaster of a gymnasium.

In 1807, Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” came out. In this work, he, for the first time, tried to state his philosophical teaching, which he called the “system of absolute idealism”, or the “system of absolute knowledge”. The “Phenomenology” represented his account of the evolution of consciousness from sense-perception to absolute knowledge. In its most coherent form, his teaching was later stated in his “The Science of Logic” (Die Wissenschaft der Logik) published in 1812-1816.

Hegel’s own teaching formed to a large extent as criticism of I. Kant’s teaching, and also as the rethinking of I. G. Fichte’s, and Schelling’s, doctrines. In contrast to Kant, who doubted the capabilities of human cognition, Hegel argued that there was no sufficient reason to doubt the trustworthiness of human knowledge. It was exactly “Absolute Knowledge” (which may also be designated as “Absolute (i. e. objective) Notion” or “Absolute Spirit”) that he put forward as the starting point of his philosophy. Surely, Human Himself cannot be recognized as Absolute Subject. Mind – That’s the only “real” Absolute available to Human.

Certainly, Absolute Knowledge is thoroughly theoretical and even “empty” in the beginning. But this is what cognition exists for – to move from the “abstract” to the “concrete” and from the “known” to the cognized. So, the world is cognizable, since cognition is, in essence, none other than the self-cognition of Absolute Spirit.

Hegel’s teaching has sometimes been characterized as a combination of the Spinozean “Substance” and the Fichtean “I.” He takes up the theme of Absolute Subject suggested and developed by Fichte. But, unlike the latter, Hegel means by Absolute Spirit not the “Rational Will”, but pure Mind, without any hints of anthropomorphism. But what causes Mind to move, if not Will? This question, too, was decided by Hegel purely logically: he evokes Heraclitus’ idea of a contradiction “lying in the foundation of the world that is incomprehensible for human mind”. Hegel names this contradiction, that is, between Being and Nothing, and lays it as the foundation of his teaching. “Contradiction – this is truly what makes the world moving”, – he argues. The Hegelian principle of development implies repudiation of the basic law of classical logic, formulated as early as by Aristotle, the law of non-contradiction. In this way, the term “dialectics” is being reinstated, which formerly designated “controversy”, and now it designates a development based on contradiction. Therefore, Hegel defined Truth as the “unity of contradictory propositions”.

Thus, Hegel’s Absolute Spirit is an acting agent, it is Subject laid as the foundation of Nature, or, as Spinoza would put it, the “Natura Naturans” of Substance. However, in Its activity there can be no willfulness; it is “forced”, so to speak. Absolute Spirit acts by virtue of Its inherent contradictoriness. And Its activity is development.

How, indeed, does development proceed? It proceeds as a successive relay of identities and distinctions. In the beginning, there is absolute identity, or primordial rest. And now, in this primordial rest some unrest arises – in this way a distinction (contradiction) hidden there is being displayed. This distinction manifests itself and reaches its full expression. But, having shown, it retreats and gives way to identity. It looks like the same primordial rest restores. But, in reality, it is not so. The restored identity is another, new identity, not that which was in the beginning (before distinction shows). The new identity is an identity of a higher level, with a new distinction ripening in it, which corresponds to this level. And this new distinction is also due to manifest itself in its own way.

Such is a general scheme of development, according to Hegel. As aforesaid, Hegel lays in the foundation of his dialectics the contradiction between Being and Nothing. In the beginning, this contradiction is purely declarative, as it were, and becomes apparent in no way; it is as much Being, as it is Nothing. Still, there is contraction between Them, and it cannot but manifest itself, either. And it really shows. In this way, the first unrest arises here, Becoming. The Latter, however, is not eternal, either. Having duly manifested Itself, this contradiction is being sublated, or overcome, thanks, again, to the identity of Being and Nothing, which is also cannot but show.

Whereas Plato’s “Ideas” are, in fact, thoughts in the “head” of the Creator God, Hegel completely repudiates the remnants of anthropomorphism in What Truly Exists and puts forward the principle of self-development of the Divine Mind, or Absolute Spirit. Verily, Hegel’s philosophy represents God’s becoming aware of Himself as Reason.

In the course of Its development, Hegel’s “Absolute Spirit” goes through three major stages. At first, It develops in Its purity, in the sphere of logic. Having displayed and overcome necessary distinctions in Itself, It estranges Itself into Nature. At this stage, being in the form of Nature, Absolute Spirit abides “away from Itself”, so to speak. Here, It also goes through a series of identities and distinctions specific of this, “natural”, stage of development. Finally, Absolute Spirit is born again in human consciousness. It reaches Its full expression in art, religion, and philosophy. And It completely returns to Itself in Hegel’s teaching of Absolute Spirit.

In 1816, Hegel moved to Heidelberg, and in 1818, to Berlin. It was at Berlin University that his lecturing activity reached its climax. His lectures were attended by many people from all over Germany and also from abroad, including Russia. It should be noted that the extremely lofty matters dealt with by the lecturer did not result in any “wall” appearing between him and the students. Hegel always remained accessible, and in personal communication he showed himself to be an exceptionally modest and responsive man, which, too, might be indicative of genuine greatness.

Hegel was also keen on music. In 1829, he attended a celebrated concert, arranged by F. Mendelssohn, where J. S. Bach’s “Matthew Passion” was performed after nearly a century of oblivion. Subsequently, he called Bach “a great and true Protestant”. Hegel would often visit the Mendelssohns’ house, where an intellectual and creative atmosphere reigned, inherited from Felix’s grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, who had initiated the Jewish Enlightenment and who would be otherwise known as the “German Socrates”.

In 1830, Hegel became rector of Berlin University. But his rectorship did not last long. Soon he fell ill with a severe gastric abdominal infection (possibly, cholera), and on the 14th of November, 1831, the great philosopher left this world. He had wished to be buried beside J. G. Fichte, which was fulfilled.

Many people would admire Hegel’s teaching of the development of Absolute Spirit. And yet, a doubt would creep in: whether it was really Spirit? The Russian revolutionary A. I. Herzen, for one, was leaning to its “corporeal” interpretation (to Marxism, in the end) and perceived Hegel’s “Logic” as the “algebra of revolution”. A breakthrough interpretation of the Hegelian dialectics was undertaken by the Russian writer and thinker L. N. Tolstoy: he attempted to apply the idea of absolute development to the development of the Person.

Hegel’s teaching had a tremendous impact not only on the further development of philosophy proper, but on the entire European culture, including the Russian culture. As Dmitry Chizhevsky mentions in his book “Hegel in Russia”, the influence of Hegel’s philosophy was the “culmination of the German influence in Russia”.

The pre-revolutionary Russia saw a real craze for Hegel. Ivan Kireyevsky, one of the founders of the Slavophile movement, wrote: “There is no youth here in Russia, who would not reflect on Hegel”. Leo Tolstoy noted that in Russia “those who wanted to cognize Truth, studied Hegel”. Among those Russians who were keen on Hegel there were: the poet V.A. Zhukovsky, literary critic V. G. Belinsky, writers N. V. Gogol and I. S. Turgenev, composers M. P. Musorgsky and A. N. Serov, revolutionaries A. I. Herzen and M. A. Bakunin. Such a prominent figure in the Russian culture as K. C. Aksakov was convinced that the “Russian people are advantageously, compared to all others, destined to comprehend Hegel”.

Maybe, it is not by chance that the first attempt at interpreting the Hegelian dialectics – with regard to the development of Personality – was undertaken precisely in Russia. It was done in the trilogy “Childhood, Adolescence, Youth” by Leo Tolstoy, added by his idea of “comprehensive self-improvement”. It should be noted here, too, that is was not the last attempt to interpret Hegel’s dialectics in Russia.

Napoleon: the incarnated Mind

Hegel, having picked up the baton from the “age of reason and enlightenment”, created the philosophical system of “objective idealism”. In doing so, he believed that was the end of it, and Nature’s deified Mind would only be embodied in his philosophy, and the Prussian constitutional monarchy would remain the implemented ideal social order. True, he once called Napoleon the “World Spirit on horseback”, but that was rather a “figure of speech”. Being an objective idealist, Hegel could not imagine that the supreme expression of “Spirit” was going to by neither his philosophical teaching, nor the Prussian constitutional monarchy, but exactly a specific human being. The point is that God is basically a person, who yearns not only to become aware of Himself, but, ultimately, to incarnate Himself. So, the matter here could not limit itself to the emergence of Hegel’s “Logic”, as well as a rational state structure. Incarnation has its own logic, which, in this particular case, showed in an attempt to assert the religious cult of Reason, and, ultimately, resulted in the deification of an individual person. This person’s name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleone Buonaparte (this is how he was called in the local dialect of the Italian language) was born on August 15th , 1769, into a large noble family in the Mediterranean island of Corsica, which was actually an independent state at the time. His father was a lawyer and diplomat, and, in general, the second-ranking man in the island. However, Corsica was conquered by the French later that same year.

Napoleon’s father promptly insinuated himself into the new authorities’ confidence, thanks to which he managed to send his two elder sons to France for education. Moreover, Napoleon was right away intended for a military career, while his brother was supposed to be a priest.

At a military college, Napoleon carried himself independently, was unsociable and avoidant, as he considered the French the occupants of His homeland. His fellow students had no special liking for the arrogant outlander, either. Mathematics and ballistics came easier to him, than humanities.

Anyway, Napoleon read heavily since childhood. Mastering French enabled him to hugely expand his reading. Travel and history books carried Him away. This youth did not ponder long over whose pattern to build his life upon. Alexander the Great and Julius Cesar had always been His idols. Following their example may well have awakened his interest in philosophy. At least, he was bound to know who Alexander’s educator and who Cesar’s assassin had been (meaning respectively Plato’s pupil Aristotle and the stoic Brutus).

The young Napoleon’s advances were so impressive that he, having won the relevant contest, matriculated at the Royal Cadet School in Paris. His love of reading did not show any sign of abating: now he would not only read, but take detailed notes while reading.

In 1785, his father died. Napoleon graduated from the Cadet School before the appointed time. At the final examinations, his high level of knowledge was certified, in particular, by an outstanding French mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, P.-S. Laplace. That same year, Napoleon started his military service as a lieutenant. A huge share of His salary would be sent to His mother. Besides, He had to take care of His 11 year-old brother. In those hard times of his life, French enlighteners Voltaire and Rousseau, and also tragic dramatist Corneille became His favourite authors. But the most profound impact was made on him by Goethe’s novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, which Napoleon read over and over again.

In 1788, an episode took place, which could have changed the course of world history. During just another Russo-Turkish war, Napoleon attempted to enlist in the Russian army. However, according to the then-existing rules, foreigners accepted into the Russian armed forces had to be lowered in rank. This could not suit an ambitious Napoleon.

He unreservedly welcomed the French Revolution that broke out in 1789. He was in his native Corsica, when the news reached him. Siding with the revolutionary France, He fell into disagreement with the local authorities, who, again, insisted on the island’s independence. Pressurized by the separatists, he, together with the family, left the island. This is how Napoleon’s width of views showed: He discarded his childish, parochial fancies for the sake of the lofty ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. It was not only ambition that he was guided by.

In 1793, troops led by Napoleon gained a splendid victory over the British forces, which fought on the Royalist side. By a clever manoeuvre, they were dislodged from the city of Toulon. For this victory, Napoleon was promoted to brigadier general. He was 24 then.

In the meantime, the Revolution’s hidden motive was laid bare in France. A new religion was proclaimed there, “the cult of Reason”. That was a more serious bid, than just “philosophical idealism,” showing that God was no more content with only becoming conscious of Himself as the Mind of Nature. And even this rather full-fledged religious cult was still a too remote embodiment of the Deity. A certain Human Being was needed, Who would become the personification of this cult.

After the Thermidorian coup, Napoleon fell into disgrace because of his connections with the Jakobins. Yet, he was soon called up again to suppress a royalist rebellion in Paris. Having brilliantly coped with the task, Napoleon was promoted to general of division and appointed Commander of the Interior.

In 1796, Napoleon got married to a daughter of a general executed during the Jacobin dictatorship.

That same year, he was sent to Italy. French troops under the command of Napoleon freed a considerable part of this country from Austrian rule. The French would rarely outnumber the enemy in manpower or arms, and their victories in Italy could largely be accounted for by their martial, revolutionary spirit, but, most of all, by Napoleon’s generalship.

Napoleon’s popularity started to worry the French authorities. They would like him to protect French interests somewhere further away. Then, sorting Great Britain out was on the agenda. To weaken the enemy, it was decided to capture Egypt. And this is where Napoleon was sent to.

But Napoleon did not fight long in Egypt. He was made uneasy by the alarming dispatches from other fronts, as well as by the exacerbated situation in France itself. Support from the army had already been secured for him by then, so he decided it was time for him to “cross the Rubicon”. In 1799, he suddenly turned up in Paris, dispersed the “incapable” state government bodies, and became the country’s de-facto ruler. In historical science, this event has commonly been interpreted as the end of the French Revolution. In reality, however, the Revolution, in Itself, is only a stage in God’s attempt to incarnate Himself. Each great revolution is crowned with the deification of the leader, which is always fraught both with internal dictatorship and external expansion.

In 1804, Napoleon declared himself emperor. This move scared some of his admirers away from him – they failed to conceive the religious background of what was going on. They would tend to think of Napoleon as just an outstanding person, who was supposed to implement the lofty ideals of “reason and enlightenment” (for example, such was Beethoven’s attitude). Therefore, having declared himself emperor, Napoleon acted even modestly. Verily, He was although “historically limited”, but still the actual embodiment of God, that is, of the deified Mind of Nature.

Napoleon’s dictatorship was not power for power’s sake. First of all, it was aimed at gaining political and economic stability in the country. But its innermost purport was to preserve the achievements of the Revolution. After lawlessness inherent in absolute monarchy, relationships between people were now built on the basis of Natural Law. The new legal order was enshrined in the Napoleonic “Civil Code”.

Then Napoleon continued his campaigns abroad to share with other nations the ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood, which had prevailed on the French soil. Certainly, somewhere deep inside he could not but feel some discomfort, because, for all that, he remained an absolute monarch, a usurper at that, and, in relation to other peoples, an occupant. On occasion, he had no aversion towards using purely feudalistic methods of capturing foreign lands, for example, by “dynastic marriage”. In particular, he twice made a proposal of marriage to Russian female august personages, but was refused both times (incidentally, the same trick worked with an Austrian princess). At the same time, Napoleon’s above-noted unscrupulousness in the methods employed was, again, not an end in itself, but, as the saying goes, “for the good of the cause”. However, his true mission remained for him as incomprehensible, as is everything in this world, until being viewed “sub specie Dei”.

By 1811, the bulk of Europe was “enjoying freedom” within a single French Empire. Yet, Napoleon’s star, having reached its zenith, began to decline. Possibly, at bottom, Napoleon could feel it. But, like any ruler who has stayed in power for too long, he lost the sense of reality. He started making desperate moves to perpetuate his power (these moves, however, did not go beyond Napoleon’s fulfillment of his mission). In 1810, in order to provide Himself with a successor, he divorced with his 1st, infertile wife, and contracted matrimony with the Austrian emperor’s daughter. This marriage, however, was received in France without enthusiasm, and the fate of “the Eaglet” born of this marriage would be unenviable. The campaign of 1812 in Russia proved fatal for Napoleon. The worn-out remainder of his troops, diluted with unseasoned reinforcements, suffered a crushing defeat in the “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig in 1813.

The disgraced Napoleon attempted to commit a suicide. But the poison, which he had long been carrying with him, did not take effect, and Napoleon kept alive. He abdicated the French crown and was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. Still, this exile was far from being tantamount to imprisonment. The island was transferred to his possession, and he retained the title of emperor (within the island’s limits). Moreover, he was allowed to have a miniature army as his “lifeguard”.

Most of the time, he would be absorbed in deep reflection. Little by little, he got engaged in beautifying his mini-empire. He would receive local peasant petitioners and tried to carry out some reforms, in particular, to improve agricultural practices. He would be visited by his friends, relatives, notably, by his mother, and also, perhaps, the only woman, who would stay true to Him to the end, the Polish countess Marie Walewska. Having abdicated as the emperor of the Great France, he still remained a living personification of Nature’s Reason, from which rank nobody could demote Him. With peripheral vision, Napoleon kept on following the developments on the mainland.

In the meantime, the things on the mainland were taking a turn for the worse. The Bourbon dynasty was restored to the French throne. Along with them, feudal lords were returning, who had been deprived of property and privileges during the Revolution. Napoleon could not just look on how His life’s work was going to rack and ruin. In 1815, Napoleon, accompanied by a small detachment, landed on the French coast. Government forces, sent to stop him, went over to his side. In a few days, he was already in Paris, welcomed by rapturous crowds.

In contrast to the French, the rest of Europe was not so happy about Napoleon’s “Second Coming”. The heads of state gathered at the Congress of Vienna declared the recalcitrant Corsican an outlaw and started mustering forces for a decisive battle. Soon, the Battle of Waterloo took place, which Napoleon lost.

Nevertheless, Napoleon’s defeat was far from devastating, and not only in purely military terms. The principles of philosophical idealism, the tenets of the religion of Reason, which Napoleon personified, had already been deep-rooted in the European social life and were set to spread all over the world. This is how a powerful new ideology asserted itself, namely, “liberalism”. That was a force to be reckoned with, and which could protect itself, when necessary. The Bourbons, restored to the French throne, could be no more the sole rulers of the country.

As to Napoleon, He surrendered to the discretion of the British authorities and was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean. He was given prisoner of war status, not that of political refugee, and His incarceration conditions were, as Napoleon put it, “worse than in the cage of Tamerlane”. However, He tried to retain His presence of mind. The fallen Idol, again, turned to writing, which He would find time for in his early years (after all, Napoleon was the author of novels, pamphlets, and even of the philosophical treatise “The Dialogue on Love”). At St. Helena, he dictated his “Memoires”.

Napoleon’s admirers did not abandon attempts to set the kingly prisoner free and recreate the “Napoleonic Empire” now in Africa, now in America. But this time, Napoleon’s guard was impenetrable, and all those attempts proved unsuccessful.

In the meantime, the Image of Napoleon was being increasingly idealized. It was being endowed with the characteristics of a romantic hero. Being associated with it, there were such motifs as: loneliness, not being understood, rebelliousness, expulsion, escape, etc. Napoleon’s fate became a source of inspiration for such poets as Byron and Lermontov. Even for the classical Pushkin, watching the unharnessed element of the sea awakened the memories of both Byron and Napoleon, as the two men of genius, after the departure of whom “the world grew empty”.

Napoleon passed away on May 5th, 1821. He had wanted to be buried on the banks of the Seine. But the British authorities decided to bury him at St. Helena. It was not until 1840 that Napoleon’s remains were allowed to be taken to France. In the end, his tomb was placed at Paris’s Les Invalides. It is noteworthy that the material for the tomb was provided by the Russian emperor Nicolas I. Apparently, robing the propagator of freethinking in Karelian porphyry made the tyrant feel safer.

So, what conclusions can one draw from the deification of Nature’s Mind and Its subsequent incarnation? What new features does this Attempt add to the Image of God being painted? Apparently, It reveals “enlightenment”, “educatedness”, and “preferring Law to willfulness” in the Divine Person.

Ludwig Feuerbach: the deification of Human

Feuerbach’s teaching came as, perhaps, the 2nd attempt to deify Subject in the philosophy of Modern Times. The 1st one had been made by J. G. Fichte, who had tried to exalt It to the status of “Absolute Ego”, which had subsequently urged G. W. F. Hegel to reinterpret the Latter as the “Absolute Mind”. Feuerbach opposed any “supernatural”, including idealistic, interpretations of Subject and proposed to deify Human the way He is. In doing so, however, Feuerbach ran into another extreme: he would interpret Subject not as Human Proper, but as “Human Race” emerging from the depths of Nature. It was exactly this “earthly” interpretation of Subject that would be taken up and elaborated by K. Marx, who would reinterpret It as a developing “Absolute Body”, reaching rationality with the emergence of “Human Society”.

Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was born on July 28th,1804, in the city of Landshut (Lower Bavaria) into a family rich in talent. His father was a prominent lawyer, uncle, a mathematician, and his nephew was to become a famous painter.

While attending a classical school, Ludwig showed a clear religious tendency and even studied Hebrew, so as to read the Bible in the original. In 1823, he entered the faculty of theology at the University of Heidelberg. There, the young Feuerbach became keen on Hegel’s teaching and “traded theology for philosophy”. He transferred to the University of Berlin in order to listen to the lectures delivered by the master himself.

It should be noted that, although Feuerbach was not at all a revolutionary, he was, perhaps, the first classical philosopher into whose life politics would intrude from his very youth. He was under police surveillance for his participation in the student movement, while his brother was taken to prison. Subsequently, Feuerbach’s works were heavily censored, some of them banned, and his house was once searched.

In 1826, Feuerbach submitted his thesis “De ratione una, universali, infinita” (On the single, universal, and infinite Mind) to the University of Erlangen, after which he began lecturing there. However, his lecturing did not last long.

In 1830, Feuerbach anonymously published his first book “Thoughts on death and immortality”. In it, he repudiated the idea of the immortality of the soul as “egotism” and argued that true immortality can only be reached in Mind. Besides, he contended that the idea of personal immortality obstructed a fully lived life. That still could be tolerated. But Feuerbach indiscreetly supplemented his book with satirical epigrams ridiculing some fundamental Christian tenets. As a result, the book was confiscated, while Feuerbach, having acknowledged his authorship, was stripped of the right to teach.

At one time, Feuerbach felt like emigrating. But he was short of money for a journey. So, he kept engaging in scientific work in his homeland and even managed to publish several books on the history of philosophy. In 1837 he got married and settled in a village near Nuremberg, where he lived practically without break for almost a quarter of a century. During that time he contributed to the liberal journal “The Halle Yearbooks for German Science and Art.” The journal was published by the so called “Young Hegelians” who tried to interpret Hegel in a “revolutionary” spirit and regarded Feuerbach as their “rising star”. The journal would be repeatedly attacked by the German authorities and finally became printed in Paris with Karl Marx as an editor.

At the same time, Feuerbach’s criticism of his teacher’s philosophical doctrine was gaining strength. As had been the case with Aristotle and Plato, “a foal kicks his mother”. Differences between Feuerbach and Hegel concerning religion had already shown. Whereas Hegel had tactfully “integrated” religion into the development of his Absolute Spirit, Feuerbach, well in the vein of the Enlightenment, insisted that traditional religion should be completely done away with.

In 1839, Feuerbach’s essay “Towards a critique of Hegel’s philosophy” came out. In it, an outright criticism of the Hegelian teaching “from below”, on the part of Matter, was undertaken. Thus, Feuerbach was destined to eliminate a bias formed in philosophy as to the question of the origin of Nature towards Mind. It is exactly by his mouth that Nature’s outraged Body cried out, saying: “I am primary”.

This criticism was also reflected in a manifesto, “Principles of the philosophy of the future”, where Feuerbach declared the creation of a new philosophy that proceeds from “sensuality”, from “material reality”, from the impact on our sense organs of the objects of the “external world.” Under such an approach, the “Universal Mind” is relegated to the mere abstraction of the minds of individual material beings.

And yet, what Feuerbach put forward was, strictly speaking, not philosophical materialism. Paradoxical as it was, it was again a religion – this time, it was some “materialistic humanism”, or the religion of Man. It appears that, in fact, philosophy had always been to Feuerbach a form of religion, and he sought in it not so much Truth, as Salvation. Hegel’s philosophy satisfied this need only for some time and turned out to be just the “religion of Mind”, which could bring saturation to his mind, not heart.

The above-mentioned ideas were elaborated by Feuerbach in his most famous book “The essence of Christianity” issued in 1841. It appears that Feuerbach’s “true God” is Man. Or, rather, not just Man, but the “Human Species”. Therefore, according to Feuerbach, the “religion of Man” should become the only “true religion”.

Where, in Feuerbach’s view, do “false” religions, like Christianity or philosophical idealism, come from? These, he argues, arise as a result of the “estrangement” and “externalization” of individual human qualities or even the entire “generic essence” of Man.

What then are the causes of such an estrangement? Feuerbach supposes it to be an indispensable stage on the way to the “right” awareness by Man of His Essence. “Religion, – he writes, – is the first, oblique self-consciousness of Man”. The same way as Absolute Spirit cognizes Itself by externalizing Itself in the finite world, the finite spirit cognizes itself by externalizing itself in the idea of God, becoming subsequently aware that such an estrangement is only a way by which the human spirit discloses its essence.

According to Feuerbach, the factors preventing Man from becoming aware of his “generic essence” in the “right” way include ignorance, dread of the elemental forces of Nature, and also the misery of Man’s “earthly” existence. So, in the image of a Deity people’s unfulfilled desires and unmet expectations are reflected: God is what Man wants to be.

Feuerbach proposes to “illume life with religious significance” and make love for Man its corner stone. “Sacred is friendship, sacred is property, sacred is marriage, sacred is the good of every man”, – he declares. Feuerbach puts forward a new, “true” religion on the banner of which the slogan is written “homo homini Deus est” (man is a God to man). In fact, Feuerbach calls for what Jesus Christ has earlier called for, that is “love your neighbour”. But, unlike Christ, Feuerbach argues that one can do without God and urges love of one’s neighbour as a value “in itself”, since he or she is the supreme Product of Matter.

Thus, the philosopher Feuerbach by no means repudiates religion. On the contrary, he is convinced of the necessity of it. Such a stance may be partly justified though, since the truth of religion consists in the fact that What Truly Exists is ultimately God. But, for all that, Nature is not God. And the deification of Matter, that is, Nature’s Body, is no better than the deification of (Its) Mind. So, this philosophical materialist might well be reproached for inconsistency. The sources of Feuerbach’s teaching may be traced back to pantheism, while its continuation can be found in our Russian God-seeking and God-building.

On the other hand, Feuerbach’s teaching is not so innocuous, because the actual deification of Matter does occur, one way or another. And, in the process, the picture turns out to be not so mellow, as Feuerbach could imagine it to be. The “materialistic God” is far from being Love. When “becoming flesh”, He displays not only positive, but also most disgustful “human” qualities, all this assuming the form of a specific religious cult requiring its own worship and sacrifices, which showed in full in Russia’s history.

Feuerbach welcomed the revolutionary events of 1848 in Europe. He went to Frankfurt, where he took part in the first German parliament. In parallel, he gave lectures on the origin of religion in Heidelberg. But, discouraged by the failure of the Frankfurt Parliament and the political reaction that ensued, he retreated to his village.

In 1860, Feuerbach’s financial situation dramatically deteriorated. He had to move to another place, also near Nuremberg, and he spent his declining years in poverty. During that time, he was steadily evolving from his materialism “with human face” towards an unvarnished socialism. He studied Marx’s “Das Kapital” and even joined the German Social Democratic Workers’ Party.

Feuerbach died on September 13th, 1872, after a serious of strokes and was buried in Nuremberg.

So, to the question “Is there life after Hegel?” Feuerbach responded in the affirmative. Life goes on, history goes on. Therefore, one should do something, one should change something. As idealism, philosophy had been completed. It meant that Truth was to be found in other realms of Nature, for instance, in human history. Not long before his death, Feuerbach made the following confession:

“My first desire was to make philosophy an all-human activity. But the one who ever embarks on this path, will eventually come to the necessity to make man the subject of philosophical activity and reject philosophy itself; for it will in as far become an all-human activity, as it ceases to be philosophy. In the old days, thinking was my life’s objective; now, however, life is the object of thinking to me. Creating people, not books – that is what true philosophy is all about”.

Only one more step is left from here to the “revolutionary transformation of reality”, suggested by Marx.

But Feuerbach never made this step. The crucial discovery made by Feuerbach is that the philosophical Subject, revealed by Kant and Fichte, is effectively Human, and not at all Mind, and that Mind is effectively Human Mind. Deification of Human implied here is the origin of such an ideology as “humanism”. Yes, it is that very “abstract humanism” repudiated by Monarchists, Communists, Nazis, and even Liberals, which, however, has reached its manifestation in the “human rights issue”, thanks to which capital punishment is abolished, and “crimes against humanity” are condemned, thanks to which one sometimes can see the “human face” showing through the intrusive “images of Nature”.

But, having declared Subject to be Human, Feuerbach still fails to recognize Human as a stage in God’s development and, again, strives to infer Human from Nature, and even from Matter. This is where Feuerbach’s error (or, rather, “historical limitedness”) shows. He would criticize idealism for estranging from Human His Mind. At the same time, he loses himself in the arms of materialism, which estranges from Human His Body.

And yet, while descending from idealism to materialism, Feuerbach, strictly speaking, failed to reach the bottom and stopped at the point of (theoretical) Man. It was Marx who really finalized the above transition and managed to determine Man, proceeding from Matter, that is, as a set of individuals driven, ultimately, by “material” requirements and cemented, ultimately, by “material” relationships. Thence, the supreme manifestation of Matter there will be not Human, but “Proletarian”.

Karl Marx: the deification of Matter

This prophet of the philosophical and religious materialism of Modern Times deified Nature’s Body.

Marx’s teaching emerged, first of all, as a criticism of the Hegelian interpretation of Subject as Mind. Certainly, Marx, like many of his contemporaries, was impressed by a grandiose and, at the same time, elegant picture of Mind’s development, painted by Hegel, and he had nearly no objections as to the content of this development. Only… is it Mind that really develops? For Marx, in the capacity of What Truly Exists there can only be some developing Body, Which only at a certain stage of Its development becomes rational. An attempt at interpreting Subject as Body had been demonstrated by Schelling, but he, as Soviet philosophers would put it, was “hesitating” between materialism and idealism. Marx, however, in collaboration with Engels, unhesitatingly continued Schelling’s materialistic line and extended the action of materialistically interpreted dialectical laws of development to Human Society.

Karl was born on May 5th, 1818, in Germany’s oldest city, Trier, also known as the “Rome of the North”, into a Jewish family. His father was a well-to-do lawyer and also a progressive-minded man, an admirer of Voltaire, who had taken an active part in political reforms brought about in the Kingdom of Prussia under the patronage of an enlightened autocrat. Karl’s mother was only a model house-wife, although she later turned out to be a grand aunt of the founder of a transnational corporation, Philips Electronics. Soon after Karl’s birth, his father was baptized as a Lutheran.

Initially, the little Karl received home education. At the age of 12, he began to attend a gymnasium, the headmaster of which was his father’s friend, with whom he shared the ideas of freedom of thought. At 17, Karl entered the University of Bonn, but soon transferred to the University of Berlin. At his father’s insistence, he intensively studied law. However, the youth Marx’s own interests were concentrated in the field of history, then philosophy. During his university years, he also tried to compose poems, novels, and even plays. Besides, he learned languages, including English and Italian.

In 1841, he presented his graduate thesis titled “The difference between Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of nature”. This testifies to Marx’s ardour for spontaneous materialism at the time. And it is no mere chance: he was destined to take up the materialistic line in philosophy, but at a new level.

At the University of Berlin, the memories were still fresh of the “absolute idealist” Hegel who had reigned there just over a decade ago. Sure enough, the young Marx could not escape the great philosopher’s influence. He became a Hegelian, more precisely, “Young Hegelian”; he joined those who tried to fill Hegel’s “Logic” with a “real content”, that is, interpret it not as the development of Spirit, but as the development of Matter.

After graduating from university, Marx initially planned to engage himself in scientific research. But soon he realized that he could not openly express his atheistic views in the academic community under a “reactionary” political regime. For some time, he became a journalist and the editor of the “Rheinische Zeitung” newspaper. In parallel, he continued his philosophical quest.

In the meantime, Marx’s older fellow-philosopher, L. Feuerbach, had already “disclosed” the essence of religion. God had turned out to be an “alienated generic essence of Man”, whereas philosophical idealism had appeared as a “refined form of religion”. Marx enthusiastically welcomed those “discoveries” and set himself the task of the returning to Man of His lost essence, to “liberate” Him from religion and, at the same time, do away with philosophical idealism which “deified Man’s mind”.

So, “in reality” there is no God whatsoever, just as well as there is no Consciousness existing separately from Man. There is only Man, or, more precisely, Humankind. Why then does Man alienate Himself and deify His essence? Among the causes of such alienation, Feuerbach cites the misery of “man’s earthly existence”. And yet, the main cause, according to Feuerbach, is that Human Consciousness develops, and religion arises in the process as the early, oblique, self-consciousness of Man. In the course of Its development, Human Consciousness overcomes this alienation, after which the true religion will reign on earth, guided by the principle “Homo Homini Deus Est”. For Man is the supreme manifestation of Nature, so there is nobody to deify here, except Man.

Marx decisively rejects the last remnants of idealism and religion in Feuerbachian “materialism” (actually, it was not materialism, but rather an attempt at interpreting Subject as Human). Marx saw the causes of the above alienation of Man of His own essence exactly in the misery of “man’s earthly existence”. Thus, the point was to eliminate this misery. Marx focuses on studying the “material” side of people’s life and tries to find the decision to the basic problems of existence in the field of economics. First of all, he specified the concept of Man. He comes to the conclusion that Man, in real terms, is a community of people brought together by material, that is, economic relations (the relations of production, in the first place).

Marx sees the roots of the alienation of Man from His essence exactly in the sphere of production, when a thing produced by people is taken away from them and rules over them in the form of money, and when people themselves become a “commodity”. The logic of such a mode of production’s development results in a situation when the overwhelming majority of people, in fact, find themselves proletarians working for a handful of the owners of the means of production. Such an order of things can only be changed by a revolution: “the weapon of criticism cannot be replaced by the criticism by weapons”.

So, that’s what philosophy is turning out to be all about: “Just as well as philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy”, – declares Marx. It means that “true” philosophy, compared to religion and philosophical idealism, is materialist philosophy, which, ultimately, is none other than the self-consciousness of the Proletariat and no less than Its awareness of the necessity to forcibly seize political power.

In 1843, the “Rheinische Zeitung” was closed by the authorities. Soon Marx married one of his high-ranking friends’ daughter with whom he had been engaged for many years, and moved with her to Paris. There, he established another newspaper, “The German-French Yearbooks”, contributing to which there were many eminent people of the time, among them the German poet H. Heine, the Russian revolutionary M. A. Bakunin, and also the merchant and journalist F. Engels, with whom Marx forged a life-long and fruitful friendship.

“The German-French Yearbooks” existed for as little as about a year. In 1845, Marx was expelled from Paris. He was allowed to move to Brussels provided that he should not publish materials in response to the latest political events. There, together with Engels, he wrote the work “The German ideology”, in which they, proceeding from the criticism of the newest German philosophy, formulated an integral concept of the materialist interpretation of history. They again concentrated on criticizing the inconsistency of Feuerbachian “materialism”, in which thinking had still been considered man’s basic activity. For Marx and Engels, however, man’s primary activity was precisely “material”, or “sensuous-and-objective” activity, which became being conscious of, in one way or another.

Incidentally, the famous “Theses on Feuerbach” were written by Marx as an outline for “The German ideology”. In them, he again tries to make it clear that the true Absolute Subject is not Mind, but Developing Matter. Hence, at the stage of Its development, when Human Society emerges, as primary should be recognized not thinking, but sensuous human activity, that is, “practice”. So, the proof of thinking is in practice. Ultimately, as the true human activity should be recognized the practical-and-critical, that is, revolutionary activity of transforming Nature, including Human Society.

Having reached the stage of Human Society, Matter keeps on developing basically as a “class struggle”. The main contradiction here is the one between the level of the production forces’ development and the form of their ownership. This contradiction is every time solved by a revolution directed against the ruling class of owners. This contradiction reaches its climax at the stage of “bourgeois” mode of production, when Society becomes split into the overwhelming indigent majority and a handful of the owners of the means of production. Then a communist revolution is brought about, which does not replace one ruling class by another, but results in the elimination of any social classes. A classless society that now emerges represents a certain return to primitive, pre-class society, but at a new level.

In 1847, Marx and Engels joined a secret society, “The League of the Just”, after which it came to be called more specifically, “The Communist League”. It was for this association that the friends wrote in 1848 “The Communist Manifesto”, which came out in London. In the manifesto, concrete measures were listed to be taken by the Proletariat after It had seized political power. These measures include, among other things, expropriating the “bourgeoisie” and introducing compulsory labour for all. Who could ever think that as little as the recognition of Nature as True Being and giving primacy to Its Body would be fraught with such upheavals for the mankind! Matter, wakened up by Marx, would give rise to a new religion which would be little different from both the historical Christianity and the religion of Reason that had swept through Europe.

Thanks to a cascade of 1848 democratic revolutions in Europe, Marx returned to Paris, and then went to Germany. There in Cologne, he started publishing the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” daily, which became the press organ of the above “Communist League”. The next year, after the revolution wave had subsided, the newspaper was closed by the authorities, and Marx eventually found himself in London, where he spent the rest of his days.

In London, the Marx family lived in relative poverty, getting by with much help from Engels. Marx spent most of his time at the British Museum libraries, working on his “Das Kapital”. In it, Marx explored the “material” side of human society’s life, in particular, on the transformation of money into capital, and of labour power, into a commodity. Marx’s main idea is that a wage labourer, when working for the owner of the means of production, produces commodities costing much higher than his wage. The surplus value that ensues as a result of such “exploitation” will be spent by the owner not on development or for the common good, but mostly for his own enrichment. This leads to wage labourers being impoverished, small owners, going bankrupt, mainstream population being proletarized, and all the riches being concentrated in the hands of the few.

According to Marx, man’s helplessness in the face of these elemental processes finds expression in religion, while striving of the propertied few to perpetuate their rule, in philosophical idealism. It is only a materialistic approach to human history and the “correct” awareness of the above processes, for Marx, enables one to curb the element of commodity production, bring about a communist revolution, and direct all the riches, whether stored or being produced, to the benefit of the entire society.

When in London, Marx would supplement his theoretical work with organizational activity. In 1864, he set up an international workers’ association, the First International.

In 1871, Marx evidenced a communist reformation attempt in France. He perceived the Paris Commune as the first experience of proletarian dictatorship and a prototype of a new-type state.

Marx also kept an eye on the processes going on in Russia. Considering the peculiarity of the country’s historical path, he did not rule out using certain features of its peasant community for the country’s communist reformation and thought highly of Russia’s Populist movement. Engels, who outlived his friend, had no more illusions about the Russian peasant community, which had already yielded to bourgeois decomposition by then. Giving the Populist movement its due, he, however, pinned his best hopes on the Marxist “Liberation of Labour” group set up by G. V. Plekhanov.

Karl Marx died in London on March 14th 1883, when he was 64.

Thus, the philosophical materialism of Modern Times, in its theoretical section, reached with K. Marx’s and F. Engels’ works its absolute climax and, actually, became a religion. They neglected Kant’s warning about Nature’s “subjectivity” and again recognized It as What Truly Exists. In doing so, they sincerely believed that they were reinterpreting the “Absolute Subject”, put forward by Fichte, reinterpreted by Hegel as “Mind”, and Which Feuerbach tried to revert to human appearance.

Marx and Engels put forward “Matter” in the capacity of “Absolute Subject,” i. e., out of Nature’s 3 Components they recognized Its Body as primary. Sure enough, they faced problems in explaining the emergence of Life and then Rationality. They found a way out by declaring Them to be stages in Body’s development, which seemed more “natural”, than inferring all the totality of Nature from Mind or Soul (Will-to-Life).

Originally, Body develops “groping in the dark”, driven by Its “inner contradictions”. The emergence of Consciousness means that Nature’s Body becomes conscious of Its being, that is to say, It becomes conscious of Its inner contradictions. At this stage, Matter appears as Human Society. Thus, all that happens in reality can be concisely characterized as the “material process of life”, which becomes “aware of itself”.

But you can be conscious of your existence “rightly” or “wrongly”. E. g., the right knowledge of the laws of Nature enables Man to use It to suit His own ends. In Human Society, too, certain laws are operating, which can be cognized “rightly” or “wrongly”. For example, the emergence of the idea of God or Gods, or of Absolute Mind are erroneous ideas, although quite explicable historically. Such erroneous ideas originate, first of all, from natural phenomena that are not yet cognized. But, most of all, they originate from the “wrong” awareness of what “really” goes on in Human Society.

What “really” goes on in Human Society can be designated as “production”, including human reproduction and also the production of things needed for survival (food, clothing, etc.). The development of production results in social inequality. Eventually, the means of production (tools, land, etc.) find themselves in the hands of some group of people, who do not work, but only own the means of production. Working are other people, who use those means of production, which they do not possess. Respectively, the labourers do not possess the product they have produced. They just get money for their labour, with which they can (or cannot) buy that product. As a result, Human Society finds Itself divided into “classes”, of which fundamental are the “owners of the means of production” and the “labourers”.

Respectively, philosophical idealism arises as a world outlook, servicing the owners of the means of production, who want to retain their property. They are quite content with “pure reason” or any purely theoretical constructions. Philosophical materialism, however, emerges as a world outlook of people, who express the interests of the indigent, who are not content with the existing relations of production and seek to change them. As for religion (faith in God or Gods), it appears as a world outlook of the poor themselves, expressing their helplessness in the face of the established relations of production. A “common” revolution only results in the change in the existing property relations. The proletarian revolution, however, leads to the complete socialization of the means of production and to the disappearance of social classes.

Such was roughly Marx’s train of thought. Materialism seems to be more “natural” philosophical teaching than idealism or the “philosophy of life”. But this “naturalness” is perceived rather than real. Being Human’s projection, Nature truly is an undivided unity of Mind, Soul, and Body. And any attempt to deify one of those Principles and infer the Other Two from It will be doomed to failure. And yet, all these three deification endeavours are necessary attempts by God, Who abides in Human, to define Himself, proceeding from a triune Nature that has revealed Herself to Him. In this sense, Feuerbach, who had tried to deify Human, was, perhaps, closer to truth. But he was mistaken, considering Human to be a natural being, and not a stage in the development of the Divine Person. Marx, however, while “correcting” Feuerbach, actually proposed to deify not just “Human”, but “Proletariat”.

Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. Philosophical materialism, i. e. the effective deification of Nature’s Body would inevitably result in an attempt of this Body’s incarnation, causing unprecedented social upheavals and find its supreme expression in the cult of the Leader. Then there will really be neither traditional religion, nor philosophical idealism, nor even the philosophy of life. But there will be no such things not due to natural causes, but because they will be banned, and their ideologists, crushed.