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CIAO DATE: 5/00
Social Sciences
Vol. 31, No.1/2000
The Principle of Christian Realism or Against Utopian Self-will
By Vladimir Kantor
*
Christian realism is an awareness of the danger and falseness of the utopian desire to establish a perfect order, a perfect system in the life of man and the world.Semyon Frank
Disappointed with the failure to build a post-perestroika paradise, Russian culture, and above all literature, is fast falling, in my view, into post-modern cynicism whereby “all cats are gray” and all devils are equally acceptable and attractive. At the same time the borderline between good and evil is declared to be a mere convention. Unfortunately, this non-historical attitude towards life ignores the experience of the past centuries and primarily the 2000 year-old Christian experience. Christianity demonstrated its most profound intuition when it warned against any attempts to create a paradise on earth, offering us a way of quiet dignity and realism. The thing is that a call for realistic understanding of life is not the invention of the classical Russian literature but one of the fundamental precepts of Christianity as a leading factor of European development, that has been assimilated and absorbed by the great Russian culture.
The real achievement of Russian literature has been assimilated by major Russian emigre philosophers, who have interpreted it in terms of a pronounced rational word. To this day their spiritual experience is perceived only as a preservation of the interrupted Russian tradition. That alone would be a great deal – to preserve! But they have also assimilated, disseminated and adapted this experience to the changed historical situation.
Rejection of a realistic comprehension of the world leads, in fact, to a rejection of the very principle of Russian philosophizing which managed, despite the influence of contemporary Western philosophers, to preserve “their faith in reason amidst the night” (Naum Korzhavin). In Russia they still read texts without asking questions, let alone trying to place them into the context of problems of European and world culture. We take words on trust.
Yet, Russian philosophy in emigration was very much alive and it would be useful for us to have a taste of that vitality to get rid of the illusions, inculcated in us by the Soviet system, and of the spiritual disillusionment resulting from its downfall. It was, perhaps, the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank (1877-1950) who showed better than others the necessity of spiritual realism and courage in renouncing hopes for a utopian transformation of earthly life. Frank represented the central tendency in the world outlook developed by the Russian emigre thought, the outlook which “did not promise happiness but offered the truth.” 1 I believe that the familiar saying: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” acquires a more powerful metaphysical meaning if one takes a more profound look at the relationship of light and darkness, good and evil in conditions of earthly reality. And in this respect Frank’s works are indispensable.
Speaking of his main books the following triad is usually suggested: The Subject of Knowledge (1915), The Unknowable (1939) and The Light in the Darkness (1949). Whereas the first and the second book can be regarded as the books of discoveries, posing new questions, the third is the book which sums up the achievements where an attentive reader will find the themes and motifs from the philosopher’s previous works. The Light in the Darkness became a kind of an intellectual response to the catastrophes, befalling Europe twice in the 20 th century. The first was in 1914-21 (the First World War, the Russian revolution and the Civil War, when practically all the European countries were involved in the resolution of inter-dependent problems); and the second in 1933-45 (the Second World War preceded by the Nazi coup in Germany.) Both these catastrophes affected Frank very badly: after the first one he was evicted from Russia, and after the second he had to flee from Germany. But perhaps his constant reflections on the causes of the apocalyptic social outburst in Russia in October 1917 enabled Frank, at the time of intellectual confusion among Western philosophers, to formulate the principle of man’s dignified and conscious existence on Earth, allowing him to preserve light in the dark.
People in Western Europe were shocked by the outburst of evil. Theodore Adorno said something very significant, “great words” as Heinrich Boell put it. Adorno said that after Auschwitz it was impossible to love any more. As if the Battle of Verdun and other horrors were not enough to realize the nightmare of the approaching century! The premonitions of insane Nietzsche that “this age which is swept more and more by conflagrations” 2 were not heeded. People paid more attention to his damnation of Christianity, building up new metaphysics on that basis (Martin Heidegger). This is why people found themselves so helpless in the face of reality. Frank understood this very well and already in 1924, having witnessed utter confusion among his former teachers, he said: “Now that we, Russians, have been impoverished materially and spiritually, lost everything and are seeking instruction and understanding from the leaders of European thought, to whom most of us have always looked up for ideas, we, Russian, who have always been inclined to humility and never shown any national arrogance (and the least of all on our unfortunate epoch), we see with amazement that we have nothing to learn from anybody, and that we can even teach others a few things now that we have had a full share of bitter experiences and suffering.” 3
Russian thinkers were often able to foresee and forecast possible catastrophes. Suffice it to recall Vladimir Solovyov’s dark predictions about the 20 th century as the age of revolutions and wars, which were so obviously coming true. But it should also be remembered that the constituting Russian philosophical thought was still closely connected with the eternal book of Christianity, fed on its pathos and mysticism of world conception, and experienced typologically the kind of intuitions that Western Europe experienced in the period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. At that time almost every year Western Europe expected the end of the world, the advent of the Apocalypse, of the Dooms Day. Later, in the Modern Times, the Western world returned to the even flow of life. But Russian reality provided no basis for people’s stability. Already in the beginning of the 19 th century, Piotr Chaadayev summed up the specific features of Russian mentality in the following way: “...It still presents a chaotic fermentation process of the objects making up our moral world, similar to those turning points in the history of the Earth, which preceded the formation of our planet as we know it.” 4
Frank did not have to wait for the beginning of the Second World War to write his book, he lived with the awareness of the darkness and tragedy covering the world. In the introduction to his book The Light in the Darkness he says: “This work has been conceived before the war and written in the first year of the war, when it was still hardly possible to foresee the true scope and effect of the demoniac forces it had unleashed. The later events did not change my thoughts in any way, but rather strengthened me in my convictions.” 5
To put it in a nutshell, Frank’s main problem boils down to the following: if God, who is Light, created the world then how could he have created the Darkness? Goethe and ancient Greeks believed that Light was created from the darkness of Chaos. But according to Frank light itself created darkness. Such was the metaphysical task that he was trying to solve.
Through one of his heroes, Dostoyevsky formulated a thesis that left no space for theodicy. Ivan Karamazov says: “It is not God, I can’t accept the whole of God’s world.” In other words, it is God who is responsible for the world’s evil. Frank called that utterance “the strongest form of atheism”. However, it is Frank, a major Russian religious philosopher, who repeatedly expressed the idea that one can describe evil, reject evil, but by no means try to explain it.
He accepts God without making him responsible for all the evil in the world. In his opinion, evil emerges from the indescribable chaos that exists between God and Godlessness. That is a new interpretation of the traditional possibility of theodicy. Through Alyosha Karamazov, Dostoyevsky calls on people to love life more than the meaning of life. Frank thinks that it is impossible. There is a measure of evil that life can tolerate but once evil outstrips its bounds it may inspire hatred towards life. Therefore, unless you find some meaning in life you cannot exist in this world. Frank’s ideas fall within the range of context of the contemporary Russian thinkers’ search but at the same time correct some of their conclusions. With the help of “Russian ideas” Frank tried to tell the West about the tragedies and calamities threatening the world as he interpreted Russian ideas in the light of the world experiences of that time.
One of the central questions in the Russian thought of the 19 th and early 20 th century was the influence of the environment: is society guilty of the evil in human relationships, as Rousseau claims, or evil is inherent in people by nature? It should be noted that even the most confirmed adherents of the “environment” theory admitted the presence of the evil element in man. But they believed that the change in social relations would make it possible to change man’s nature for the better. However, they all agreed on one point: the world is ruled by the devil. Pertinently, Tolstoy called one of his most tragic plays The Power of Darkness . The outside world determines the structure of the human soul, penetrating only the outer layers but unable to reach its inner core. Hence the same idea, “to find the person in man” which came independently to such diametrically opposed thinkers as Chernyshevsky and Dostoyevsky. In his unfinished play, The Light Shines in Darkness (note the semblance to Frank’s book) Tolstoy juxtaposes a man, who tries to live according to his inner understanding of God’s truth, to the outside world of the church, family, and the state. In the end his autobiographical hero, Saryntsev, comes to complete failure because the world cannot be changed or transformed. And yet the task that the hero poses for himself is no more and no less than to let emanate from within his soul ...the heavenly Light of Transfiguration that is alone capable of changing the world.
This intuition, typical of the Russian thought, was most aptly formulated by Prince Evgeny Trubetskoi in 1914, right before the First World War. A contrast between the transformed and untransformed reality can be seen everywhere, but in the countries dominated by the European civilization this contrast is disguised by culture , making it less conspicuous for a superficial eye. In the West the devil wears a gentleman’s clothes, like Mephistopheles, while in Russia he openly shows his tail and hooves. In the countries of wealth, ruled by law and order, however relative, the devil is hold in check. But in our country the devil has for centuries been raging all over the place. Perhaps, that latter circumstance inspired an outburst of religious feeling in Russia among the devotees of Christ. Great Russian writers, too, followed the zealots in searching for the heavenly Light of Transfiguration... Whether consciously or subconsciously, the greatest representatives of the people’s genius have always been searching for the light that would heal and transform from withing both spiritual and corporeal life. And each time the impetus, making our writers to actively search for that Light of Transfiguration, was an acute awareness of the power of evil ruling the world.” 6
Various mystical experiences compelled Russian thinkers into believing that there was no other way out except a direct address to God. For example, in his Fundamentals and Affirmation of the Truth, also published before the start of the First World War, Pavel Florensky spoke of the presence of Gehenna (that he understood as “impenetrable darkness”) in our earthly life from which the only escape was, according to him, in the traditional appeal to God as the saintly Father. “Darkness gripped my whole being. My consciousness was almost gone and I knew that it was my absolute, metaphysical annihilation. In utter despair I shrieked with all my might: ‘Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplications from the depth!’ I put my whole soul into these words. Some powerful hands seized me firmly as I was drowning and threw me away from the abyss.” 7
In Orthodox Christianity a person does not fight for himself. He feels as a child without a will of his own and unable to withstand evil and darkness. Western Christianity is more cruel to the person, demanding of him to keep his evil in check and even “wage a heroic battle” against evil, as Lossky put it. To curb evil all sorts of norms and laws, constitutions and legal structures were created in the West. In Russia they simply appealed to the heavenly power of Transfiguration, in most cases without success. This expectation of the miracle of Transfiguration was helpless before the forces of evil, the same as the Faustian self-assertion of the individual. Having realized its own helplessness hope turned into self-will, suddenly coinciding with Western beliefs, and even exaggerating them in a grotesque way, now expecting the human will to establish reasonable world order on earth.
The historical situation at the beginning of the 20 th century compelled a re-thinking of the existing metaphysical interpretations. The factors, limiting evil in Europe in the last two centuries, disappeared and evil spread all over the planet. Russian thinkers were the first to take notice and formulate the victorious breakthrough of hellish forces in the world. In 1918, Trubetskoi wrote: “Before our very eyes Hell is asserting itself as the only meaning of human existence and, therefore, of the entire human culture. Our blood-thirsty Russian chaos presents an acute form of that worldwide disease and as such it represents a particular danger for all. Russia is a Christian country by faith. But how did it come to such cannibalistic strife in its internal relations, to that bloody class struggle raised to the point of principle, to that universal hate? This is nothing but a negation, in practice, of the very principle of Christian coexistence and, moreover, of the very essence of religion.” 8
What Dostoyevsky predicted when he spoke about “the killing of God”, what Nietzsche meant when he declared a bit later that “God is dead” suddenly became an everyday historical reality. The change from the quiet European life (including that one of the “Russian Europeans”) to social catastrophe was also described by Frank: “The former relatively well-ordered, smoothly-running life, albeit meaningless from the absolute point of view, at least provided opportunities for seeking a better life. But now a complete meaninglessness has set in, the chaos of bloodshed, hatred, evil and absurdity &-; life has become a veritable hell.” 9
This is precisely the reason why Western thinkers plunged into greater despair than their Russian counterparts when the external binding snapped. Later in his life Heidegger expressed some of this feeling of hopelessness in a summary of his main conceptions: “The world night spreads its gloom. This epoch is determined by the fact of the disregard of God, by his absence. The absence of God means that there is no more any visible God, that all people and things would unquestionably be drawn to and rally round a God, who would be able from within that gathering of people and things to shape world history and determine man’s place in it. But the absence of God means something even more terrible. Not only all gods and the Lord God slipped away but also the very heavenly radiance disappeared from world history. The time of the world night is poor indeed, because everybody is impoverished. Now it has become so impoverished that it is no longer able to notice the absence of God.” 10
It was to this despair experienced by Western philosophers that the Russian thinker tried to respond on the basis of his own intellectual and historical experience.
The thing is that Russian society has already lived through a similar period of fright and Frank had a chance to develop an ironic attitude towards it.
Apart from the irony he had to present a profound and well-substantiated explanation of how to live in darkness and how to withstand it. This is what his treatise The Light in the Darkness is devoted to. Note the subtitle: “An Experience of Christian Ethics and Social Philosophy”. In other words, he set himself the task of formulating a social and moral position of a Christian in the world, including a Christian’s attitude towards himself as a person, towards society, and towards evil that rules both man and society. Frank proceeded from the universalist, super-confessional position, typical of him, using the achievements of both Eastern and Western theological thought and expressing, in his view, “genuine, super-national and super-religious Christian consciousness.” 11 (See his last article “Vladimir Solovyov’s Spiritual Heritage”, 1950)
Modern-day social commentators usually say that Russian philosophy suffers from certain narrow-mindedness and is less developed than Western philosophy, that it is a strange symbiosis of philosophy and theology. They consider the so-called Russian religious philosophy to be a kind of an intellectual impasse, not possessing any potential for evolution or real intellectual value. Even the traditional Orthodox-Christian weekly Russkaya Mysl (Russian Thought) had to have its say on the subject: “Observing the obviously interrupted tradition of the Russian religious thought (academic studies on the subject do not count as its creative continuation) we become convinced of its paradoxical (strange, in Slavic terminology) nature. Its place is between philosophy and theology. It is in fact a historical creation, securing the return of some intellectuals from anti-religious humanism to Christianity and the Church. Whatever are the cultural and historical reasons for its appearance it has not had any continuation and neither could it have had any either as a ‘religious thought’ or ‘religious philosophy’. Strictly speaking, it is possible to have philosophical theism or philosophical religion, but not ‘religious philosophy’. Philosophical theism cannot appeal to Revelation as an authority.” 12
We have already mentioned the closeness of the Russian thought at the turn of the century to the medieval Western-European philosophy. Pushkin believed that the civilization gap between Russia and the West was 500 years. Alexei Khomyakov, a Russian Slavophile, believed the medieval West to be “the land of holy wonders”. Konstantin Leontyev juxtaposed the “blooming sophistication” as a model of medieval Western Europe to the “simplification and degradation” he observed there in his own times. Contemporary Russian cultural scientists also assure us that culturally and psychologically we are still in the Middle Ages. 13 The situation is further complicated by the fact that superimposed on the continued Middle Ages in Russia are the modern ideas coming from the West, the advances of technology and economics that have to be assimilated and employed. In reality, they are assimilated and employed. But in the spiritual and intellectual field the simple assimilation of modern philosophy, such as Marxism, turned into a cancer of ideocracy. It found fertile soil in the world perception of the insufficiently christianized masses. As a result, Russia had been driven into a blind alley of its own spiritual evolution having failed to solve certain problems. Western-European medieval religious philosophy had solved them thanks to the arguments among “realists” and “nominalists”, its attempts to rationally prove God’s existence, its polemic about faith and knowledge, the relationship of God and the world, and, finally, its justification of God, the existence of evil and possibility of overcoming it. It was precisely all these questions that Russian religious philosophy was helping Russian culture to digest and assimilate, to make the familiar as a century before that Pushkin helped Russia to assimilate Western prose and poetry. This tradition was interrupted, but luckily Russian thinkers were destined to carry on their socially-important cause in Western Europe. They were fully aware of their mission. In 1922, Semyon Frank, expelled from Russia by the Bolsheviks, wrote: “To leave Russia the fruit of our spiritual work in the form of scholarly thought means to make a sizable contribution to history.” 14
The books by the expelled Russian thinkers have now returned to their homeland. Their ideas have filled the gap in Russia’s spiritual experience in assimilating medieval religious issues and today we perceive them as an organic part of our national heritage. Moreover, they have lost nothing of their spiritual significance and relevance (if you understand relevance in spiritual rather than journalistic terms). Their presence in Russian culture today is conducive to the country’s intellectual maturing and overtaking the West. Similarly, the presence in Western culture of the thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa has greatly enriched the development of theology as well as philosophy. It is not for nothing that neo-Thomism turned out to be so influential in our century. Russian philosophers themselves did not associate stricktly their way of thinking and approach to problems with theology. In the introduction to his treatise Frank writes: “At first glance my deliberations take the form of a theological treatise. But I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that this outer appearance does not really correspond to its inner contents, whether for better or for worse. By education and mentality I am not a theologian but a free philosopher. I did not wish to put my ideas in the form of an abstract theological treatise, the work offered here is a modest attempt at a religious interpretation of the author’s life and thoughts. My experience is, above all, of social and historical nature.” 15 It was a Russian experience in the first place, and yet Russia was undergoing it together with the other European countries as long as it was not yet isolated. Due to a number of factors, Russia became a focus of all the contradictions of European development, exacerbated by her own history. According to Frank, European ideas have been assimilated in Russia because Russia is a part of Europe. Moreover, he agreed with Trubetskoi that the Russian revolution was a manifestation of the all-European disease. “Russian sedition comes from Europe. We Russians, who have experienced it in full and studied it, became experts and diagnosticians on this European disease.” 16 He wrote the above in 1924. He also noted then that the Germans’ lapse into “unheard-of barbarity should be seen as a manifestation of the same spiritual disease that struck the entire European population.” 17
Frank repeatedly formulated the causes of this disease of sedition, and he reiterated his definition in his magnum opus as well. He said that this cause was not nihilism which rejects all the values associated with goodness and beauty, but utopianism that he described as “a faith in the feasibility and preordained realization of absolute good in this world.” 18 Other Russian thinkers also wrote about the negative effect of utopianism on the world. For example, Florovsky: “Only in the Church and through the Church the utopian temptation can be overcome. There is probably a secret sign in the fact that through God’s oversight the most poisonous utopian flower bloomed on Russian soil, in the Orthodox East. For only through the unspoiled purity of the Orthodox faith and experience the world can be truly, and not falsely, cured of it.” 19
As far as Frank is concerned, the salvation can be expected not from the Church, let alone any historically concrete one, although he recognized and, in his own way, valued the Orthodox Church, but from Christianity as a teaching, from the very personality of Christ. Frank had always emphasized that he was a free philosopher and, therefore, did not give preference to any faith. He opposed the one-sidedness of the traditional Christian dogma, he believed that “free Christian souls” are the only bridge between the Church and godlessness, and in this sense they function as missionaries in the godless world: “Amidst the eternally-pagan world every Christian must be a monk in a way.” In essence, he reiterated the ideas of Dostoyevsky, his favorite writer, who made Alyosha, one of the main characters in The Brothers Karamazov and a Christian zealot, leave the monastery to go into the secular world. Therefore, Frank saw the reality of the Christian Church not in any organization or system but in a “mysterious heavenly-human organism” 20 which appeared on earth thanks to a force entering the world through Christ.
According to Frank, utopianism inevitably brings in the power of darkness because it is based on self-will, that is, it desires the transformation of the world according to man’s will. In his article “The Heresy of Utopianism” Frank explains that he understands utopianism not as a common dream about establishing a perfect life on earth free of evil and suffering, but as a more specific idea whereby perfection can be – and therefore ought to be – automatically provided by a certain social order or organizational system. In other words, utopianism is a program of saving the world by man’s own self-will.
Orthodox literature usually insists that man’s self-will is primarily a Western feature. But already in Dostoyevsky the theme of self-will is presented as an anti-Christian idea even when it is Christ’s own confession, as an unheard-of phenomenon in our sinful world. In The Possessed Kirillov, a character that carries an important ideological function, reasons as follows: If God exists all is His will and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will and I’m bound to show self-will. I’m bound to shoot myself because the highest point of my self-will is to kill myself with my own hands.” Obviously, he wants to continue Christ’s cause in his own way and defeat the world that killed Christ. “Listen: that Man was the loftiest of all on earth. He was that which gave meaning to life. The whole planet, with everything on it, is mere madness without that man. If the laws of nature did not spare even him, have not spared even their miracle and made even Him live in a lie and die for a lie, then all the planet is a lie and rests on a lie and on mockery. So then, the very laws of the planet are a lie and the vaudeville of devils.” But then it becomes clear that Kirillov does not accept the central idea of the Son of God that “his kingdom is not of this world”. This is why Kirillov sees his mission in completely transforming the earthly world by his own self-will. “You’ve begun to believe in a future eternal life?” Stavrogin asks him. And Kirillov answers: “No, not in a future eternal life, but in eternal life here . There are moments, you reach moments, and time suddenly stands still, and it will become eternal .” (italics mine – V.K.) This is why a new savior is bound to come, not Christ. “He will come and his name will be man-god.” In other words, it will be a man who is capable of changing the very foundations of earthly existence. This approach towards overcoming earthly life leads us to the main question, that of the possibility of overcoming death. But since that is impossible then the only way out is suicide. The latter is unacceptable for the righteous and is only resorted to by the devils (Pyotr Verkhovensky).
The writer understood the inner pathos and the direction of Russian spirituality. And he disapproved of it. But even the philosophers who considered themselves to be Dostoyevsky’s followers still turned out to have expressed the secret wish of all Russians: to attain the Light of Transfiguration right here on earth . This wish can only lead to the same self-will that we see in the West. For example, Vladimir Solovyov believed that “a powerful impetus is needed in order to move and transform the earth.” 21 Such radical thinkers as Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev viewed even art as an effective tool for transforming the world. Despite Dostoyevsky’s clearly expressed intuition a thirst for transformation was attributed to him as well. “Educated Russian people have always expected ideas and artistic works to transform life (italics mine – V.K.) Even such antipodes as Pisarev with his utilitarian approach to art and Dostoyevsky with his slogan: “beauty will save the world” 22 agreed on this point. Russian art and philosophy have always thirsted for active rather than abstract truth. Universal recovery through universal transformation – in various versions we find this idea in many of our great writers: in Gogol, Dostoyevsky, even in Tolstoy (albeit in a distorted, rationalized form), in Slavophile philosophers, in Fyodorov, Solovyov, to name a few.” 22 It was not for nothing that Marx (a follower of Western European utopians such as Plato, Thomas Moore, Campanella) had such a strong impact on Russian mentality, especially Marx’s central idea: “Philosophers have all been trying to explain the world in their various ways, but the world needs more than that: it needs to be changed .” 23 In Bolshevism Western-European utopianism combined with the Russian drive for the universal transformation of the world. For Dostoyevsky, no earthly paradise is possible. In his story The Dream of a Funny Man he shows that a contact of a person from sinful Earth with the existing paradise on another planet results in its decay and destruction. Man is not destined to establish heavenly harmony, he can only destroy it.
Berdyaev once said in passing that the most terrible aspect of his times was a possibility to realize any utopia. Frank’s position is close to Dostoyevsky’s. According to Frank, realization of utopia is impossible in principle , because a realization of man’s will to restructure the whole world down to its roots can only lead to bloodshed and suffering while the radiant dream of saving the world and making all people happy inevitably turns into a cheerless glorification of hatred, cruelty, and inhumanity as normal driving forces of life. Any attempts to build a new, ideal world stumbles on a real-life obstacle: the existing world that is never perfect in the opinion of the utopians. Once utopia turns from a dream into practice it is confronted with the task to make way for the “new world”, which can only be done by destroying the old world completely as defective by its very nature. This can be done only with the help of something similar to the Deluge that was once organized by God. Characteristically, Mayakovsky, a great poet of the Russian revolution, writes: “We’ll wash the world with a second deluge...” (“Our March”). Finally, the deluge comes but there is no ark to be saved in . As Frank emphasized time and again: tragedy, frustration of hopes, the rule of evil in the world, meaninglessness of life, “these are not features of this particular epoch, they are immanent, eternal qualities of any human life in its empirical flow and appearance.” 24 Evil permeates every component part of this world so organically that an attempt to do away with evil can destroy the world as such. Moreover, a wish to destroy the basis of this imperfect world may only “unleash the forces of evil”. This is why Frank thinks that any attempt “to establish God’s kingdom or paradise on earth” in this inevitably imperfect world, degenerates into the actual rule of hellish forces with fateful predictability.” 25
He distinguishes two opposing principles underlying our perception of the world: recognition of “the power of darkness” in the world and “demoniac utopianism”, trying to overcome the former with violence. “Indeed, a conviction that ‘the power of darkness’ is inevitable is based on the rejection of utopianism and the possibility to establish ideal state in human life and in the world. Conversely, ‘demoniac utopianism’, based on the cult of darkness, is unnatural and contradictory because it combines a rejection of the power of good and a belief in the power of evil forces with a peculiar version of utopianism, that is, with the belief that darkness contains a creative potential capable of establishing an ideal order in the world and in human life.” 26
Since utopian self-will has to be based on the idea of darkness it seems that man’s existence within the historical process is deprived of either hope or any future. It is not for nothing that the world has become dominated by “regrettable faithlessness”, to use Frank’s phrase, which he calls “one of the most characteristic and moving phenomena of the present-day spiritual life.” Further he goes on to say that a sincere person, who can think and feel, has become “disappointed not only in the vane faith of utopianism but in the very possibility of realizing the highest values in this world. He became convinced that good and reason can never win, they are in fact destined to be defeated because in this world the forces of evil and madness reign supreme.” 27 But Frank provides a religious justification of human history in his book – which is precisely the task he sets himself . He makes an attempt to find the basis and, therefore, a possibility for man’s dignified existence in the world of darkness.
In essence, the book by this Russian thinker is an attempt at a philosophical interpretation of the following passage from the Gospel according to St John (1:5): “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” According to Frank himself, he turned to this passage quite consciously because the range of spiritual and intellectual problems of his times compelled the human heart to embrace and affirm the truth of these words. This “light”, which had appeared in the earthly darkness and was not extinguished by it, was none other than Jesus Christ. Frank notes further that many people think that Christ’s cause had failed, but he disagrees with this, saying that “Christ’s cause is an absolute success, but not one which can be measured in earthly terms. Christ introduced into this world the eternal light of love ‘which shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it’. Christ knew from the beginning that this light would not have success in this world, that it would be persecuted, and he wanted it to be persecuted, because this light can only shine through suffering. And thus we have to follow Him, as someone forever persecuted, and celebrate the greatest and absolute victory over the world despite the persecution .” 28 Frank wrote the above in 1944 as he was finishing his book The Light in the Darkness . That was the spirit of his great treatise.
It should be noted that other thinkers, too, felt the need for Christ’s return into the world. I have already mentioned Heidegger and his fear of God’s absence in the world. But I would like to quote from brilliant Ludwig Wittgenstein who wrote his aphorisms in 1945: What would have happened if god-man have not appeared on earth at all? .. What would have been the point of departure in this life? Could we have had any history if the world were forever wrapped in darkness? Would that be just a non-historical existence of a human herd who had never become human beings? “What would it feel like not to have heard of Christ? Should we feel left alone in the dark? Do we escape such a feeling simply in the way a child escapes it when he knows there is someone in the room with him?” 29
Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon , one of the most important novels in the 20 th century, is based on the teaching of prophet Isaiah that if a person follows the truth passed down to us by God “then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as noonday.” ( Isaiah, 58:10) Utopian Bolsheviks managed to turn the light, they have promised, into “darkness at noon”, translated by the brilliant Russian translator Andrei Kistyakovsky as “blinding darkness”, that is, a darkness that knows no light, a radio-active darkness that burns down everything bearing light. In order to survive a person has to find an undying source of light. History did not give us another source of light except the god-man Christ who came into this world.
But how can we partake of this light? Does that mean to reject one’s individuality, one’s freedom of choice, and become a spiritual slave? When Nietzsche cursed Christianity he declared that "everyone is a child of God – Jesus definitely claimed nothing for himself alone – as a child of God everyone is equal to everyone else.” 30 The latter seems to be the highest praise. But the sick philosopher actually thought that the Christian God insisted on the lack of individuality, and poverty of spirit, “he has remained the God of the nook, the God of all the dark corners and places, of all unhealthy quarters throughout the world.” 31 Therefore Christianity is “mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the noble – and, at the same time, a covert secret competition: that is also Christian. Hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind is Christian.” 32 Many people, apart from Nietzsche, understood Christianity as a religion for slaves, for it was to the poor that Christ appeared, it was Christ who cursed wealth, preventing one from entering God’s kingdom.
It was precisely in this spirit of rejection of one’s aristocratic, intellectual, material and spiritual privileges – almost according to Nietzsche —that Lev Tolstoy propagated the idea of man as God’s son. In his play The Light Shines in the Darkness the main character says: “They are all half-starved; they have only bread and water, they are ill, and many of them are old. That old man, for instance, is ruptured and is suffering, and yet he works from four in the morning to ten at night, though he is only half alive. And we? Is it possible, realizing all this, to live comfortably and consider yourself a Christian? Or let alone a Christian – simply not a beast? Take no part in this evil. Not own land, or devour the fruit of their labor. How this can be arranged, I don’t yet know. I lived and did not realize how I was living. I did not realize that I am a son of God and that we are all sons of God – and all brothers. But as soon as I realized it – realized that we have all an equal right to live – my whole life turned upside down .” (Italics mine – V.K.)
As a polemic with this principle, but mainly accepting the idea of each person being God’s child, Frank by no means belittles people but affirms their lofty aristocratic dignity. He says: “Contrary to the widespread notions, both in Christian and non-Christian circles, the Gospel proclaims not man’s weakness and insignificance but his eternal aristocratic dignity . That is, the dignity of each human being by virtue of his being born (endowing him with aristocracy which makes the only legal basis for democracy, that is, the universal highest dignity of each person as his inborn right acquired at birth) is determined by his descent from God . The entire Christian morality derives from this new awareness of one’s aristocracy. Disagreeing with Nietzsche who was deluded by the historical distortion of the Christian faith, the latter is not a morality of slaves or an uprising of slaves in morality, but it is based on the aristocratic principle of “ noblesse oblige” , on the one hand, and on man’s awareness of his holiness as a creature descended from God, on the other hand.” 33
Why was it so important to Frank? Because it provided the basis for democracy, for those gains of human civilization which he believed to be the result of the world’s Christianization. Here we come closer to his understanding of “Christian realism”. For Marx, Christianity is just an “opium for the people”. Nietzsche calls Christianity the most hostile enemy of reality that has ever existed before. But Frank speaks of Christian realism , which is different from the earthly realism with its indifference to the evil reigning supreme in the world. Realizing the danger of utopianism Christian realism aims at a free improvement of life and human relationships. Frank believes that the humanitarian faith in man, which has led to the abolishing of slavery through “profane humanism”, and also to political freedoms, personal inviolability guarantees, and social and humanitarian reforms, is “of Christian origin”. 34 Towards the end of the book he formulates this idea in very clear terms: “It is at this difficult time of condensed darkness overhanging the world when the main moral achievements of the European culture are threatened with destruction it should be understood that these achievements (such as the abolishing of slavery, ban on torture, freedom of thinking and faith, monogamous family and equality of sexes, political inviolability, legal protection from arbitrary authorities, equality of all people irrespective of class affiliation or race, the society’s responsibility for each of its members) have been gained on the way to Christianization of life, to bringing life closer to the ideal of Christ’s truth. All those things that have an undying value in the light of democratic and socialist ideals – not as specifically socio-political systems but as freedom and equality among people, the value of man as God’s image and child, and fraternal solidaristic responsibility of everybody for everybody – originated as a result of establishing certain order and recognizing certain duties, reflecting the new moral consciousness, enlightened by Christian truth despite the evil and imperfection of the earthly existence and, indirectly, of its law and order.” 35
On the one hand, Christian realism is opposed to pharisaism, pretending to be interested in religion and spiritual search, but in actual fact making people indifferent to the earthly, material needs of their near ones which is incompatible with true Christian faith. On the other hand, Christian realism is opposed to the everyday egotism in relation to the sufferings of one’s near ones and is often mistakenly justified as the inevitable lack of harmony and perfection in the world, while in actual fact it is an adaptation to evil. For Frank “Christian realism is grief for the imperfection of the world.” This grief compels responsibility for the otherworldly force of heavenly goodness, penetrating this world. Proceeding from the Gospel, Frank emphasizes throughout his book the absolute religious significance of an active love for one’s neighbor which one reveals by feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless and clothes to the naked, visiting the sick. Moreover, for Frank it is almost an axiom, as for Russian thinkers in general, that the future judgement of the human soul depends directly on how these Gospel commandments on helping people have been carried out in life.
Florovsky regarded this position of his compatriot as lack of faith in the need to fight for the victory of good. Characteristically for Frank, the world cannot be cured completely. The light shines in the dark but it fails to illuminate the dark world or make it any lighter, it can only pierce the darkness with its rays, reminding of a different world. The supreme forces seem to be powerless in this dark world, even God himself is not all-powerful here. A victory of good and truth is never stable in this world, which can only be tolerated. One should not so much strive towards a victory of good as keep evil in check. In other words, one should not hope for the transformation of this world but await its end, that is await for the disappearance of this layer of life as such. According to Frank, that will be a final eschatological victory of Light over Darkness, that will be the onset of true God’s kingdom which has been announced and shown to people but has never really happened in this world.” 36
As we have tried to show in this essay, Frank’s position is far from being pessimistic. It is true that a complete victory of good is impossible in this world. But the world itself can be greatly improved. “Although the world is, indeed, plunged into darkness it does not consist of darkness alone in its primary composition. The world is a creation of Heavenly Light and Logos and it bears the stamp of its origin. Therefore it still contains the beginning of light in its depths and this ‘natural light’ makes up its original substance.” 37 Therefore all efforts to establish light in the darkness have a real support in the heavenly origin of the world.
In his novel Doctor Zhivago , describing the most tragic years of post-revolutionary Russia, Boris Pasternak created a striking image of a light burning in the dark and winter storm: “It swept, it swept on all the earth,/ At every turning,/ A candle on the table flared,/ A candle burning.”
Christian realism is indeed true love. Vladimir Solovyov in his treatise “The Meaning of Love” said that an earthly love for a woman is the first step towards religious love, “a living ideal for the love of God and it precedes our love, carrying the secret of its idealization. Here an idealization of a lower being is a prelude to the realization of the higher being in man. The latter constitutes the essence of the feeling of love.” 38 Frank wrote in a similar vein that love for a human being, blessed by a Christian revelation, derives from the ontological essence of Christian life as a confirmation of ‘God who is love’. Such love may not be aware of its religious basis which does not prevent it from being based in God anyway.” 39 (Italics mine – V.K.)
According to Frank, that is what determines the essence and nature of moral perfection in human life in general, because the way leading to most effective and stable results is the way “from private life to public life.” 40 Moreover, in the conclusion to his book Frank again insists on a deep-going, essential, existential reason for the need and possibility of perfecting earthly life. “The possibility and the moral imperative for perfecting the world are based ontologically on the relationship between God and the world . Until the end of the world or its complete transformation God is transcendental to the world and, therefore, ‘God’s kingdom’ in principle and in essence cannot fit into the boundaries of this world.” 41 The above only speaks about the impossibility of utopianism, requiring human efforts for the final transformation of the world in order to turn it into an earthly paradise. This can only be done by God. However, inasmuch as man and the world have been created in God’s image, being reflections of his light and glory, they are not in disagreement with God’s light but, on the contrary, they are permeated with God’s light. “Therefore, through man and his creative energy the benefic force of God’s light reveals itself in the process of creativity.” 42
But that victory and that transformation are beyond the abilities of any mortals or any earthly forces. They may be possible at the very end of the world’s existence, when death will be overcome and “other worlds” will open to each person and to the humankind. The latter does not exclude man’s initiative but it requires that his activity should be conscious, taking into account the earthly reality. That is why Christian realism does not weaken Christian activities in all the fields of human existence, from private life to political activities. “Christian realism does not lead to passivity but, on the contrary, it requires a great tension of moral activity. ...Christian activity is a manifestation of heroism... by the sons of Light in the kingdom of darkness, who combine an unshakable faith in their mission with a humble and sober awareness of their imperfection.” 43 And that is the Russian thinker’s moral, human and philosophical creed.
Translated by Natalia Perova
Endnotes:
Note 1: A. Ermichev, “Semyon Frank: Philosopher of the Russian Worldview”, in the book: Semyon Frank, Russian Worldview . St Petersburg, 196, p. 35 (in Russia). Back.
Note 2: Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits. Aphorism 38. Chicago, 1915, p74. Back.
Note 3: S. Frank, The Collapse of Idols , Berlin, 1924, p. 24 (in Russia). Back.
Note 4: Pyotr Chaadayev, Collected Works in 2 vols, Vol 1, Moscow 1989, p. 20 (in Russia). Back.
Note 5: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness. An Attempt at Christian Ethics and Social Philosophy , Paris, 1949, p. 9 (in Russia). Back.
Note 6: E.N. Trubetskoi, “The Light of Transfiguration and the Transformation of the Mind”, Voprosy filosofii , 1989, No.12, pp.112-13. Back.
Note 7: Pavel Florensky, Affirmation of the Truth , Vol 1, Moscow, 1990, p. 205 (in Russia). Back.
Note 8: E.N. Trubetskoi, The Meaning of Life , Moscow, 1994, pp.191, 192 (in Russia). Back.
Note 9: S. Frank, “The Meaning of Life”, In: S. Frank, The Society’s Spiritual Foundations, Moscow, 1992, p. 157 (in Russia). Back.
Note 10: Martin Heidegger, “Wozu Dichter?” In: Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, Frankfurt/Main, 1950, S. 265. Back.
Note 11: S. Frank, Russian Worldview , p. 397. Back.
Note 12: Alexander Krylezhev, “Religious Philosophy as a Servant of Russian Boys”, Russkaya Mysl , 20-26 November 1997, p. 15. Back.
Note 13: B. Elistratov, “On Medieval Eurasian Development of the Russian Language and Culture”, In the collection: Russia and the West: a Cultural Dialogue, Moscow, 1996, p. 44. Back.
Note 14: “A Test by Revolution and Counter-revolution. Correspondence between Pyotr Struve and Semyon Frank (1922-1925)”, Voprosy filosofii , 1993, No. 2, p. 44. Back.
Note 15: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness , pp. 9, 10, 13. Back.
Note 16: S. Frank, “Religious and Historical Essence of the Russian Revolution”. In the book: S. Frank. On the Other Side of the Left and Right , collected essays, Paris, 1972, p. 15. Back.
Note 17: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness , p. 36. Back.
Note 19: G. Florovsky, “The Metaphysical Precondition of Utopianism”. Voprosy filosofii , 1990, No. 10, p. 98. Back.
Note 20: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness , pp. 252, 136. Back.
Note 21: Collected Works by Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov , 2 nd ed. Vol.3, St Petersburg, p. 190. Back.
Note 22: This phrase is ascribed to Dostoyevsky by Vladimir Solovyov. In fact, there is only one relevant mention in Dostoyevsky, when Prince Myshkin says: “the world will be saved by beauty”. But then in the course of his novel The Idiot Dostoyevsky disproves this idea: beauty, personified by Nastasya Filipovna, perishes at the hands of this very world; E.N. Trubetskoi, “The Light of Transfiguration of the Transformation of the Mind”, p. 113. Back.
Note 23: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Collected Works , p. 4. Back.
Note 24: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness , p. 78. Back.
Note 28: S. Frank, “On the Impossibility of Philosophy (Letter to a Friend)”. In: S. Frank, Russian Worldview , p. 91. Back.
Note 29: Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Culture and Value”. Oxford, 1980, p. 13. Back.
Note 30: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Aphorism 29. Harmondsworth, 1972, p. 141. Back.
Note 31: Ibid, Aphorism 17, p. 128. Back.
Note 32: Ibid, Aphorism 21, p. 131. Back.
Note 33: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness , pp. 124-125. Back.
Note 35: Ibid, pp. 394-95. Back.
Note 36: Georgy Florovsky, “Semyon Frank: Religious Metaphysics”, In the collection: In Memory of Semyon Frank , p. 150 (in Russia). Back.
Note 37: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness , p. 318. Back.
Note 38: Collected Works of Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov , Vol. 7, p. 45. Back.
Note 39: S. Frank, The Light in the Darkness , p. 278. Back.
Note 43: Ibid, pp. 402-403. Back.