Why is there no classical Russian liberalism?

How many of your friends have read anti -liberal work, for example, Spengler 's Sunset ? And how much did Montesquieu’s “spirit ” of the laws or political works of Locke and Kant read ? It turns out that there is liberalism in Russia , but on bookshelves , and not in everyday speech. First , we will figure out what liberalism is , after we find out what exactly in Russian culture prevented liberal ideas from entering the canon of compulsory reading and finally - how to find out about liberalism, if not from books.

The main difference between the liberal position and the democratic is the recognition of two, and not one stage of decision -making. From the point of view of Democrat, the majority is a secular god: to make a decision, it is enough to vote for this decision. When the people, in an ancient policy or Italian commune, acted in the tough framework of existing institutions, whether labor, war, everyday life or leisure, then there could be no liberalism: democracy supported the survival of these institutions, and usurpation meant their death. If the correct distribution of labor and product is a matter of survival, if the adoption of defense and urban planning decisions is the issue of preserving the existing procedure for cases, then any usurpation destroys the strong wall of democratic survival.

Liberalism occurs when forms of existence change during one generation. Liberalism proceeds from the fact that the forms of political life can be changed: you can become a federal or unitary state, direct the budget for defense or the domestic development of the country, introduce local self -government or change the procedure for making decisions by central management. Such changes occur revolutionary, as a result of hidden micro -revolutions, pressure from the inside.

But here the question arises: will not a frequent change in forms to the fact that the forms will become cramped, and their pressure on each other will contradict them in contradiction with the “spirit of laws” (as Montesquieu said). For example, if we increase defense costs and introduce local government, then it will not be able to dispose of the budget - the treasury will be empty, and local government will be imaginary. Therefore, the second stage is required here: reconciliation with proper procedures. The liberal proceeds from the fact that some issues are considered at any time, some (as a budget) can be considered only once a year, some, like a defense policy, once every few years. Some issues should be considered only after long preparation, some-after a series of meetings at different levels, and some-only with the participation of international consultants.

Therefore, the liberal always enemy of direct democracy (the liberal of the first half of the nineteenth century, Tokhquilus, strongly condemned direct democracy in the United States) and a supporter of the creation of auxiliary institutions within democracy: legal education, trade unions, societies, associations. In this sense, there was no liberalism in the USSR: the system of direct democracy, which was completely under the control of partocracy, did not allow the creation of liberal institutions, and any societies and associations were sources of direct democracy, completely supervised, and not its limiters. And the modern concept of identity carries traces of both operations of liberalism, its A and B: both the defending of its own, not like nothing, and subordinate to this form a certain system of rules and procedures.

The top of the development of classical liberalism was the concept of “liberal democracy”, which does not mean at all the expansion of democratic freedoms, but such a comprehension of democracy in which any formal procedure is conceived and as constructing a democratic world. Elections, referendums, consultations, government reports are not only elements of “convenient” adoption of the necessary decisions, as in classical democracy, but ways to preserve democratic principles even in the most difficult ups and downs. If democracy opposes usurpation, then the liberal democracy confronts the dictatorship in a completely classical sense - as an “emergency” that requires temporarily eliminating democratic institutions.

When Nikolai Berdyaev tried to decide in the important book “Russian Idea”, when an independent, non -imitative philosophy began in Russia, it turned out that it was created by Ekaterina, dissatisfied with the “golden age”. It was they who were able to build not a one -sided, but a holistic version of the Enlightenment. But this enlightenment was dual: both the democratic and liberal ideas of encyclopedists and fighters against political superstitions, as well as the ideas of Masons, mysticists, pietists and the quotists, were eagerly picked up. Masonic education is a frequent phenomenon for Europe, but if in Europe a Freemason is a radical critic of discount religious establishments, while the moral and pious, distant predecessor of the current admirers of the “flying pasta” and other free-thinking, then in Russia Mason is an intellectual, willingly accepting the rational argumentation of the irrational one, which can also be irrational, which can also come in handy in the case. If he is the predecessor, then the principle of methodological anarchism by Anything Goes , and not rational argumentation in favor of liberal statements . Berdyaev calls the first Russian philosopher, capable of the theoretical substantiation of metaphysics, the Mason of the Catherine's time of Schwartz. The "Samizdat" of the Catherine era is the main lesson for Russian thought.

It is important that rational education gave Russian thought a list of discussion problems, while the mysticism (dissolved equal in argumentation and life practices) and created a certain soul or spirit for this rational body. It was she who created the “common spirit” of thoughts, in which new ideas and suggestions for friends and for society can only arise. Ideas are not built into the experience of methodological reflection, but in the experience of reading, as the shortest way to experience this common spirit. From the very beginning, the Russian intellectual could say: Lego Ergo Sum (I read, therefore, I exist). Reading here is some kind of thoughts, Mood of Reading , replacing those practices of mystical or practical distinction (Greek διακρισις, lat. Distintio ), which European rationality could rely on.

Russian philosophy is trying to surpass this cognitive duality, simply abruptly spoiling with the rational procedures within the “body” or “spirit” of thought. It goes from the conceptual to descriptive philosophizing: we must consider the concepts of Russian philosophy not as sufficient grounds for reasoned decisions, but as “scenarios”. When we are dealing with Russian philosophy, we are not dealing with specific terminology, but with those algorithms of thinking that can be played at any moment as expressive and instructive scenarios. Russian philosophy can be called “practical” not in the sense that it methodically reveals the boundaries of practices, but in the sense that its language serves as the only expression of the entire amount of practices. The words “Sofia”, “Logos” or “socio-historical formation” in Russian use are precisely those magnifying glasses that reduce a bunch of practices into the only conceivable evidence-based self-evidence.

But if the “body” continues to be, as was originally, a designation for problems and their solutions, but metaphorically it has already become a knot of practices and scripts, then the body can receive an arbitrarily high status - the requirement to solve theoretical problems develops in Vladimir Solovyov into giving the body and organic life of the highest status. The body is not a “corps”, not a collection of opportunities and prospects for thought, but the bearer and purpose of evolution - “birth in beauty” of ideal experience, a new information on Earth. In fact, we are not talking about the properties of things studied metaphysically, but about the distribution of intentions: philosophy is needed to see the body as an independent subject, so that with the whole power of intelligence to keep some meaning in the world, because only then the body will not get bad intensities.

But if the spirit is understood as an area where any argument is possible, then the spirit can be understood only as a source of good intentions, as a fire that burns all the bad intentions - it is on this understanding of the spirit (aka mind, Greek vovg , lat. Mens , English Mind ) insists Berdyaev. For him, the tragedy of human life is to solidify the hot magma of the spirit, that is, the weakening of intentions. At the same time, it is interesting how much such an understanding of the spirit is inherited by the folk ( Vernaculaire ) usage: in folk use, the spirit is understood as vis vitalis , vitalit é , leb Enskraft . Such a mind or spirit, of course, can only flare up and fade away, but not by a measure, like a Heraclitus, but depending on the correctly selected reading practices. This fire of Shekhina, Gloria Dei , the doxes flare up on the pages, who told about it in sufficient detail, which serve as the “body of mysticism”, recessing in European traditions and stigmata, and burning the flame of divine love.

So, the classic mind (spirit) receives in Russian thought the body of reasonable reasoning is not as a list of problems and challenges, but as a list of experiences, as a list of read and experienced (nowhere as closely as in the Russian language, the “mind” is not associated with the experience of “correctness”, and not with experience of distinguishing and counting, which only has to establish the correctness and incorrectness of individual actions - as in European languages). Before us is not a “order of speech”, but the order of worries, not a list of philosophical problems, but a list of appropriations ( appropriations ) with the organic body of the same vital intentions. The philosopher is personally responsible for his experience, for the nuances of this experience.

But is this model compatible with liberalism? Liberalism requires precisely the recognition of the independence of the political body of each person or group, which defends its rights without assigning anything. And he also demands to observe procedures dictated by not spirit, but with a common mind. Liberalism in Russia is undoubtedly possible; But after the spirit is re -meaningful as a common mind, when thinking is not understood as a capricious choice of convenient or suitable thoughts, but as a Common Thing , as a common destiny of those who have something to say to each other.