Ilya Lepikhov. Aluluth

Alulut
B.N. Chicherin. Science and religion. - M.: Republic, 2000

Ilya Lepikhov

Publication date: December 6, 2000

Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin (1828-1904) stands somewhat apart from the ranks of Russian philosophers. Both in terms of the problematic and in the spirit derived from his works, it is difficult to classify him as one of the mental trends of his contemporary era. He firmly followed the chosen path once and for all, and therefore for a society predominantly concerned with questions , Chicherin seemed to not exist. Like a glass slipper, if such a frivolous metaphor is applicable to a serious scientist and prominent zemstvo figure, in particular, who served as the Moscow mayor, then, like a glass slipper, his philosophy did not suit Russian society. They preferred to forget about it or, as is often the case with us, to appreciate it . The shoe was rubbed with shoe polish - just as beautiful! - they carefully lowered it into an elegant bonbonniere, and then set it aside as unnecessary.

Since ancient times, it has been customary that in our country a lack of demand is called a “special situation” in a solemn manner. So, Chicherin’s special position is not least due to biographical features. It's not even that he lived a rather long life; less than seventy-six is ​​an age suitable for both life and death. The fact is that those three quarters of a century that he had to overcome were the most intense years of the mental life of Russia. It’s good for writers: to be born under Pushkin, and to die under Blok, in the end, is an honor and nothing more. Philosophy is another matter. To be born under Nadezhdin and Nikolai Turgenev, and to die under Cohen and Novgorodtsev - and not just to be born and die, but to be equally open to both eras - is, if I may say so...

It would be an exaggeration to say that Chicherin “laid the foundation,” “founded,” “anticipated”; rather, he “drew attention,” “systematized,” “clarified.” But this “explained” and “systematized” was worth other anticipations. The Russian philosophical tradition of that time developed in two mutually exclusive directions. Partly striving for the mountain heights, following the late Slavophiles, another part of it spread along the earth like a snake, following the European positivists, primarily Spencer and Taine. Speculative metaphysics clashed with an equally dubious empiricism. Selected passages from the Holy Fathers were contrasted with the latest advances in physiology. As the poet says: “The deaf man called the deaf man to court.”

Chicherin turned out to be one of the few who remained able to perceive the arguments of both sides. At the end of the sixties, his views took their final form, but this, however, did not prevent him from critically mastering the latest methods of accurate knowledge. Starting with historical and legal issues ("Regional institutions of Russia in the seventeenth century", 1853), paying tribute to issues of social structure ("On People's Representation", 1866), at the end of his life, without leaving his previous studies, he practiced mathematics and natural science. It would seem that it is time to talk about the titans of the spirit, the new encyclopedism and the universality of the Russian genius. Let us be careful, although this is partly true.

Chicherin's universalism, paradoxically, is a consequence of his monism, his striving for a single problematic. It itself can be defined in different ways, and we would never have taken the liberty of going into details if the essay under review had not provided ample reasons for this.

It is easiest to consider “Science and Religion” (the first edition of the book was published in 1879, the second - twenty-two years later) as a purely polemical work. Antipositivist pathos reveals itself on almost every page. In all controversial issues - be it the foundations of logic or self-awareness - the author's sympathies invariably fall on the side of the opponents of crude materialism. But debunking natural philosophical myths is just one of the auxiliary tasks that Chicherin sets for himself. The main goal is much more majestic: to defend the foundations of integral knowledge from the attacks of extreme thinkers.

The book is divided into three unequal parts, eloquently named "Science", "Religion" and "History of Mankind". Each of these sections is intended to consolidate in the reader’s mind the corresponding axiom: to God - God’s, to science - scientifically, and to the historical man - historical and human.

Chicherin's synthesis is moderate and accurate. The author consistently reveals the contradictions of all the great and small systems of the New Age: from Wolf and Kant to Lassalle and Tredlenburg. In his youth, having experienced the strong influence of Hegelianism, he found the strength to overcome it not on peripheral paths, as happened, say, with the younger Fichte or Feuerbach, but gradually shifted towards critical dialectics, thereby partially anticipating the later experiments of the Moscow school ( Lev Lopatin and his students). It was she (dialectics), according to Chicherin, that was the only one that made it possible to protect the foundations of integral knowledge.

Everything that is presented over the course of half a thousand pages can ultimately be reduced to a few simple formulas. Firstly, the latest achievements of the natural sciences should in no case be considered as something that poses fundamentally new problems to philosophical knowledge. Rather, on the contrary, philosophy - and here the author smoothly moves on to “secondly” - once again proves that it is its method that remains one of the few, if not the only, truly effective tool for modern knowledge of the world. Thirdly, consistent criticism of the “experimental” doctrines of recent times leads Chicherin to affirm the special role of history as a special, “experimental” science, the consistent application of which inevitably leads the unbiased researcher to the affirmation of the Existence of God.

Some arguments have not lost their strength even after more than a hundred years. We, accustomed to the fact that natural scientific argumentation is the only possible, since the only admissible, often simply do not come to mind considerations that seemed elementary to Chicherin and his contemporaries. Thus, considering the question of the immortality of the soul, the author cites a syllogism that is deadly in its simplicity: “It is known that cutting a nerve makes a member insensitive or incapable of movement, that damage to the brain deprives a person, in whole or in part, of consciousness. From here it is concluded that feelings and consciousness constitute the same functions of the nervous and brain systems as... breathing is the function of the lungs... But is this the only condition? Based on physiological experiments, we have no right to say this . " The Kantian background of evidence of this kind seems to us more than excusable, since in fact the arguments presented above are addressed not so much to the direct work of the author of the Critic, but to modern terminology, introduced into philosophical science with his direct blessing.

Of course, from the point of view of banal “common sense”, which empiricists so like to hide behind, the category of unknown regularity is a very dubious specification. But from the point of view of the scientific argument itself, Chicherin is impeccable, and, perhaps, the only one that protects modern knowledge from excessive fascination with the truth of an isolated fact, which more and more definitely takes precedence in the newest synthesis of the universe.

How receptive the subsequent tradition of Russian idealism turned out to be to Chicherin’s discourse is evidenced by the fact that half a century later V. Zenkovsky would adhere to a similar argument, defending the rights of a “miracle” in material reality precisely as a manifestation of an unknown pattern. Significant identity!

However, Chicherin’s legacy, as already mentioned, “occupied a special place” in the history of Russian thought, which means that it turned out to be in demand in an extremely one-sided way. The conservative synthesis of Chicherin's philosophy, naively sweet in its consistency, was overturned by the social upheavals of the twentieth century. Dreams of a reasonable or at least natural structure of society, which until recently lived in thinking Europe, have faded into the realm of legend. Appealing to the rational has become a kind of bad taste, something like salon foul language. The severity of Chicherin's formulations and their precise legalism were presented as childish - nothing more. Another thing is: what replaced them?

It is extremely difficult to answer this question in a positive sense - the modern world is desolate . The place of great systems is taken by great methods. Modern civilization, it seems, has once and for all sworn off the passion for synthetism, no matter how captivating and fruitful it may seem. There is a great truth in this - too high a price has been paid for great delusions. But this, in our opinion, is no less dangerous.

The insufficiency of Chicherin's, as, indeed, of any other - whether Simmel's, Windelband's or Merlopontiev's - synthesis lay in its speculativeness, constructed on the basis of external premises. A fact, if it did not come to court, often simply had no place in the universe - it was sacrificed with a light heart to hypothetical harmony.

But there is also another extreme. Its supporters believe that the mechanical unification of facts is the only possible form of knowledge. At the same time, the obvious imperfection of methods and the fundamental incompleteness of modern knowledge seem to be not taken into account at all. It is easier for them to proclaim the fundamental impossibility of monistic knowledge than to try to derive a primary meaning from two facts that contradict each other.

Such a position, albeit very vulnerable from a philosophical point of view, could not fail to evoke respect for its consistency, if not for one circumstance. It is precisely the consistency that is not found in it upon closer examination. It would be one thing if we were talking about banal positivistic barbarism in the spirit of Comte or Mill, who abolished God, history, the world and carried His Majesty Experience on nickel-plated ramens. Here everything is clear. It is a different matter for their modern followers, who disdain history and God, but do not even think about abolishing the world. It’s clear - otherwise they would have to face insoluble contradictions.

In order to somehow make ends meet, the newest empiricists have to resort to assumptions that are very dubious even from the point of view of their own method. The most important of them is the phenomenon of “social axiomatics”. So, for example, questions of state structure, the origin and essence of public institutions and institutions are completely removed from the field of critical consideration and declared to be something like a priori granted by the Supreme Being. In relation to such arbitrarily chosen fundamental principles - social contract, democracy, etc. - in the end, a bizarre pattern of facts, hypotheses and theories is formed. As a result, within the framework of a single structure, the latest achievements of empirical science and philosophical definitions of more than two centuries ago coexist, which do not stand up to any, even the most superficial criticism. Locke is adjacent to field theory, Hobbes - with neo-Lamarckism, Hugo Grotius - with fuel injection. But what is permissible for Brabant lace is not always good for philosophy. Is not it? However, how fruitful such a “synthesis” is is ultimately up to you to judge.

Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin believed that this synthesis was not only not viable, but simply harmful. Alas, he was not, and, apparently, could not be heard. Such was the time then. The roar of the alarm, as the poet wrote, blocked not only the lips, but also the hearing and the eyelids.

So much the worse for the era, so much the worse for the thinker.

Chicherin was unlucky. I was unlucky more than once. As a first-rate thinker, they chose not to notice him; as a first-rate city mayor, they were forced to resign; as Boris Nikolayevich, the leader in Russian history, he was pushed out. And even in the nomination “the most famous Chicherin”, for some time now he has been noticeably inferior to Yu. Chicherina, the soloist of the group of the same name - without the “Yu” -. This is something we strongly disagree with. In our opinion - albeit biased and unenlightened, so be it! - in the opinion, “Course of State Science” (1894-1898) is worth “Roasted Sun” (the day before yesterday at dinner), and the essay under review (1879) is worth the ardent “Tu-lu-ly” (at night, on my knees). So we decided to take the liberty of restoring historical justice by turning public opinion inside out: it was “Tu-lu-la” - it became “Alulut”. There was Julia - now Boris Nikolaevich.

And there is no need to reproach us for inconsistency: they say that at the decisive moment we are ready to sacrifice the innermost and resort to imperfect arguments of empiricists, just to prove that we are right.

Well, we're ready. Well, so what?