The Beginning & The End

Berdyaev, Nicolas 1957. The Beginning & the End. Harper Torchbooks, New York

Nikolai (siin Nicolas) Berdyaev (või Berdiajev) on üks kõige tuntumaid vene filosoofe, kes õigupoolest on eksistentsialistlik-kristlik (või eshatoloogilise metafüüsika) filosoof. Käesolev raamat, "algus ja lõpp" või ülekantud tähenduses "A ja O" (ehk kristliku traditsiooni järgi... Jumal), on viimane raamat mille ta oma eluajal kirjutas (ilmus 1947. aastal ehk aasta enne tema surma Prantsusmaal oma kirjutuslaua taga). Seda võetakse kui kokkuvõtet kogu tema mõttetööst ja seda on lugedes ka tajuda, sest tal on komme hüpata teemalt teemale, filosoofilt filosoofile, et oma mõtteid selgeks teha. Kesksel kohal on vastandid necessity ja freedom ning spirit ja being. Kõik need on sealjuures mõisted, millele ta annab oma mõttetöös erilise tähenduse. Tinglikult võib öelda, et necessity on inimkeha füüsilised vajadused, freedom on kõik muu peale nende füüsiliste vajaduste rahuldamise - mõtlemine, nautimine, nö "vaimuviljad", vaba tahte rakendamine. Spirit on 'vaim' nagu seda filosoofilises kirjanduses mõeldakse (umkaudu inimese mõistus või teadvus, transendentaalsuse küsimus jääb siinkohal lahtiseks) ja being on maailm nagu see vaimus sisaldub - objektifitseeritud reaalsus. Selle pointi selgitamiseks pöördub ta järjepidevalt Kanti ja muude Saksa ja Prantsuse mõtlejate poole ning eristab subjekti- ja objektipõhiseid filosoofiaid. Tehes üpris põhjaliku ülevaate filosoofilisest maailmakäsitlusest (idealism ja epifenomenalism on sõnad, mida ta pillab tihti) jõuab Berdyaev järeldusele, et kreeka filosoofiast alates on filosoofia olnud objektipõhine, kuid alles Saksa traditsioonist alates tekib subjektipõhine filosoofia, mis tunnistab subjekti rolli maailma "loomisel" (väga palju on sarnasusi sotsiaalkonstruktivistliku kirjandusega nagu "The Social Construction of Reality").
Üks neist "märkamatult möödalipsavatest" nüanssidest tema mõtetes on eristus Tõe ja tõe vahel. Minu jaoks seostub see nö "saksa traditsiooni" järgiva Uexkülli mõistest "märkide privaatsus", mille järgi märgiseos ongi "subjektiivne tõde". Berdyaevi järgi on Tõde see, mida "mina pean õigeks" ja kui ma üritan seda edasi anda - suheldes teistele vahendada - saab sellest ühes tõest palju tõdesid, tõed väikese tähega. See on oluline ülestähendus, sest see ülim Tõde on tema jaoks üks Jumala nimedest ja siit ilmneb minu jaoks seos Alasuutari väitega, et iga kord kui me rakendame refleksiivsust mingi objekti suhtes, siis see objekt muutub. Ehk: iga kord kui mõtleme Jumalale, siis Jumala tähendus muutub. Berdyaevi järgi on Jumala tähendus aga Tõde suure tähega, sest ta on subjektiivne - privaatne - Tõde.
Internetist informatsiooni otsides olen kogunud nii palju, et teda on põhjalikumalt uurinud teoloogid, kuigi tema uurimine on ilmselgelt rännanud palju värvikamaid radu, näiteks sociology of knowledge või philosophy of creativity. Üks tema kõige esimestest raamatutestki kannab nime "Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy". Hoolimata eesmärgist selgitada Jumala olemust läbi eshatoloogia, sain sellest raamatust tsitaate märksa kaugemate arutluste tarbeks, sotsioloogiast ja politoloogiast kuni unenägude tõlgendamiseni. Üks kahest tema raamatust, mis inglise keeles on TÜR-i hoidlas olemas, kannabki pealkirja "Dreams and Reality". Mida ma tegelikult tahaksin lugeda, kuid millele muud moodi kui läbi RVL-i tasulise teenuse ei saa käsi külge, on "Solitude and Society", mille ainus kirjeldus internetis on järgnev lause: "Five philosophical "meditations" on the conflict between personality and society." - põnev!
Jätan siia hulganisti tsitaate sellest raamatust, andku autoriõigused mulle andeks.

The philosopher believed that reason lifted him up to the world of ideas, to the noumenal world. This opinion Kant subjected to criticism. But almost throughout the history of philosophy the apprehending mind remained faithful to the conviction that cognition is a purely intellectual act, that there exists a universal reason and that reason is always one and the same and remains true to its nature. But in reality cognition is emotional and passionate in character. It is a spiritual struggle for meaning, and it is such not merely in this or that line of thought and school, but in every true philosopher even although he may not recognize the fact himself. (Berdyaev 1957: 36)

Comprehension of the mystery of the world in human existence is a possibility only because man is a microcosm and a microtheos. There is no cosmos in the object world of phenomena. There is no God in the objective world order, but there is a cosmos in man. God is in man, and through man there is a way out into another world. (Berdyaev 1957: 50)

Philosophy seeks to break out from the slavery of this world into another world, towards a perfect free life, and deliverance from the suffering and ugliness of the world as we have it. (Berdyaev 1957: 41)

The conflict between subject and object, between freedom and necessity, betwen meaning and the lack of it is, in the language of metaphysics, a symbolic conflict which in 'this' provides symbols of 'another'. Behind the finite the infinite is concealed, and it gives signs of its presence. The depth of my ego is steeped in infinity and eternity and it is only a superficial layer of my ego which is illuminated by the mind, rationalized, and recognized on the basis of the antithesis between subject and object. But out of the depth signs are given, whole worlds are there, and there is all our world and its destiny. (Berdyaev 1957: 42)

Dilthey says very rightly that the abstract relation of subject and object must be replaced by the vital relation of creature and environment. A metaphysics of the object is impossible, but a metaphysics of the subject is possibility. We must not think of the totality of the world as an object: that totality is in the subject. Objectification, as we shall see, ought to have been replaced by the expressiveness of life, by the expression of it in the external. Only the whole man himself, the active human spirit should have been acknowledged as a priori. (Berdyaev 1957: 55)

It is essential to grasp the mysterious process of objectification. I live in two worlds, in a subjective world which is my own proper world, and also in an objective world, the world of objects, which exists for my sake and at the same time is alien to me. This fact that I am cast into an objective world which acts forcefully upon me, has not merely an epistemological meaning, it has a metaphysical meaning also. (Berdyaev 1957: 56)

The objectification of the world takes place through our agency and for our sakes, and this is the fall of the world, this is its loss of freedom, and the alienation of its parts. It might be expressed by saying that the freedom of oumena passes into the necessity of phenomena. The world of appearances aquires a grandiose empirical reality which exercises compulsion and force upon us. (Berdyaev 1957: 56-57)

The natural world of phenomena is symbolic in character. It is full of signs of another world and it is a symptom of division and alienation in the sphere of spirit. There is no natural objective world in the sens of a reality in itself; the only world there is is the world which is divinely and humanly free. The objective world is enslaced and fall. But the whole cosmos enters into the true free world, whereas there is nothing of it in the world of appearances, the world of objects. How the two stand to each other may be put in this way; appearance is the objectified world, the natural and social world of necessity, servitude, enmity and dominance; whereas the noumenal world is spirit, freedom and creative power; it is the world of love and sympathy; it is the whole cosmos. What is called the other world is not an 'other' world to me it is pre-eminently my world. (Berdyaev 1957: 59)

Objectification is the ejection of man into the external, it is an exteriorization of him, it is the subjection of him to the conditions of space,time, causality and rationalization. [...] Objectification is the uprising of an exteriorized 'not-I' in place of the 'Thou' which exists interiorily. The subject matter of thought is the creation of thought itself; and that is the objectifying act. (Berdyaev 1957: 60)

The most remarkable thing is that the objectification of the constructions of the mind begins to live an indepenedent life and gives rise to pseudo-realities. In this respect the antidote should have been Kant, who showed that the existenece of an idea does not imply the existence of a reality. This is a very strong point with him. Objectification is rationalization. But it is not merely a perceptional process, it is still more an emotional process, the socialization of feelings and passions. And rationalization may itself be a passion. (Berdyaev 1957: 60)

Objectification enslaces man and it is from a world other than the phenomenal world tha emancipation comes. Objective nature and objective society have no power to set themselves free, it is spirit alone that liberates.
Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself. And exteriorization gives rise to necessity, to determination from without. The horror which Pascal felt when confronted by the endless expanse of space is the horror of objectification, the horror of strangeness. (Berdyaev 1957: 63)

There is the possibility, not of symbolism, not of a symbolic ambodiment of spirit in the natural world, but of realization, of a real embodiment of spirit in a world which is being set free and transformed. Objectification is not true realization, it is merely a process of symbolizing; it presents us with signs but not with realities. And that has a telling effect upon all human creativity and upon all that creativity produces. (Berdyaev 1957: 66)

There is no reality without a creative attitude towards it on the part of the subject. Perception itself is creatively synthetic in character, spirit is active even in sensuous perceptions. (Berdyaev 1957: 69)

Kant was disturbed by the problem of how to arrive at the universality, the general validity (Allgemeingültigkeit) of knowledge. But that is a matter which belongs to the sociology of knowledge, a theme which he did not develop. Kant did not acknowledge the mobility and variability of the transcendental mind as the sociology of knowledge has to acknowledge it. It is not only primary intuition which is socialized. The rationalized consciousness too is exposed to the process of socialization, the apprehension and the very perception of the world depends upon the social relations which hold good among men and the degree to which the spirit of community is attained.
No form of human creative power in the field of knowledge or in any other field is of a social character on the ground of its origin, even when it is directed towards social life. But it is liable to socialization in its dealings with men. Cognition has a social character in its products, as a means of communication among people. The realm of objectification is a social realm, it is made for the average person, for mankind in the mass, for the ordinary and hum-drum, for das man. The 'objectivity' of perception and representation is social in character. It might be said that man receives in a certain way a picture of the world which depends upon the forms assumed by his social relations with other people. There are for that reason particular worlds which disclose themselves to religious confession, to nationalities, to professions, estates and classes. In this is to be found the measure of truth which belongs to the class ideologies of Marxism, but the way in which it is expressed is philosophically worthless. One can only speak of true creative inspiration when man is moves by the spirit and not by society, when he is determined from within and not from without, when he does not depend upon social suggestion and social imitation. (Berdyaev 1957: 69-70)

Truth is aristocratic, it is revealed only to the few, the dissemination of it takes for granted a violent shock to the mind, it involves the melting and the burning up of the petrified and ossified state of mind, of a petrified and ossified world. This is not to say that truth exists only for the sake of the few, it exists for all men, for the very last one of them. But for the time being it is revealed only to the few and to them it administers a shock. The majority are too much conditioned by the limitations of their minds, by social imitation, by what they find service in the struggle for life. (Berdyaev 1957: 71)

Knowledge takes two directions and has a twofold significance; it is on the one hand an active break-through towards meaning and truth, as it rises above the world, and on the other hand it is adjustment to the world as we are given it, the social dull routine. But even when it is of that second type, knowledge is a reflection of the Logos, it is a descent of the Logos into the world. In that fact the source of the high achievement of science, and of its independence is to be found.
Some of the greatest difficulties of knowledge are due to language and this is particularly telling in the case of philosophy, in which the problem of terminology has so vast a part to play. There is the interior logos, the inward word, which is in close proximity to the depth of one who exists, it is hard by the primary reality. And there is the exterior logos, the outward word which is oriented to this world and adjusted to its fallen state. In the first sense the word is not objectified, it is meaning. In the second sense, the word is objectified and alienated, remote from primordial meaning. Human language has its basis in the primordial unobjectified word and for that reason only it has meaning. But language is also a social fact and it is the chief means of communication among men. It is thanks to it that the existence of society is possible. Language is socialized, and the stamp of conventionality lies upon it; it bears the impress of enmity and of the limitations of all social organizations. The multitude of human tongues is the disintegrated, self-alienating primordial word - the Logos. (Berdyaev 1957: 73)

Consciousness is not to be thought of as static. It is only relatively stabilized. In principle change and a revolution in the mind are possibilities; consciousness can expand and it can also contract. It is possible to break through objectification which creates the lasting illusion of this unchangeable world. Images and pictures seen in dreams are connected with the loss of power on the part of the conscious mind, so also the shapes and pictures of the empirical world which presses upon our daytime awareness do not show us primary reality itself, but merely signs of it. Dreams have also a symbolical meaning. But at the same time the true, primordially real world of freedom, creativity and goodness does act within this deceptive and illusory world. We cannot make the decisive effor of the mind, and exertion of spirit to awaken our- selves from the deceptive, the illusory and the unreal which mark the empirical world of appearances. The structure of a mind adapted to the conditions of this world is too strong. But it is a mistake to regard the movement and plurality as deceptive and illusory, as Zeno and the Eleatic philosophers did. (Berdyaev 1957: 86-87)

The question of what are known as collective, suprapersonal realities and communities, or collective "symphonic" personalities, is one of great difficulty and it still remains an unsolved problem. It is, of course, connected with the controversy about realism and nominalism, but present-day thought, which is steeped in sociology, raises the question from entirely new angles. THe conflict is carried on not so much in the sphere of logic as it was in mediaeval philosophy, as in the sphere of sociology. And it is quite understandable that the question should become particularly acute in the realm of sociology.
The question of the sense in which collective communities exist and represent realities, and whether it is possible to recognize the existence of collective personalities cannot be decided by rational, conceptual knowledge. The decision presupposes a choice, a line taken by the will, an act of moral appraisal. The hoice of the will and the establishment of a hierarchy of values create realities. The act of volition is objectified, the chosen qualities are hypostatized. Man lives in the midst of realities which are created by himself. What presents itself to him as most objectively actual and in the highest degree real, is the objectification of the subject's intention, the hypostatization of its qualitative states.
Man's inclination for self-alienation and self-enslavement is one of the most astonishing things in the life of the world. To the man who has made for himself an idol out of the nation or the State, the nation and the State are realities immeasurably greater and more 'objective' than man, than personality; in any case realities which are more primary and more dominant. All nationalists and étatists are like that. The nation and the State do, of course, represent a certain degree of reality in world life, but their overwhelming grandiose and compelling 'objectivity' is created by the 'subjective' state of society, by the beliefs of the people, by the objectification of a state mind. (Berdyaev 1957: 126-127)

Collective realities may be regarded as individualities, but not by any means as personalities; they have no existential centre and are not capable of experiencing suffering or joy. The existential subject, whether of the cosmos, of society, of the nation or of the State, can be sought only in existing man, in the qualitative character of personality. The universal is found in what is individual, the suprapersonal in the person. Man is a micocosm and a microtheos. It is in the depth of man that world history works itself out and society is assembled and dissolved. But the microcosmic nature of man undergoes a process of exteriorization, it is projected into the external, its qualities are hypostatized, and realities are objectified which have no extistential centre.
There are no such things as nations, States and societies existing as collective common realities which stand on a higher level than personality and turn it into a part of themselves. But there is such a thing as, for instance, 'Russianness' which exists as a qualitative factor uniting like to like among people and charging the life of personality to the full with concrete content. There is that community and communion among men and women without which personality is unable to realize itself, and there are functions of the State which are necessary to the corporate life of men. (Berdyaev 1957: 129)

The establishment of value is of the first importance in the matter of judgement about reality. People regard such and such a thing as a reality, and even as the highes value, because they had already chosen it as a value beforehand. The State is accepted as an ontological reality because people see a high value in it, because they love the principle of authority. This phenomenal natural world, this 'objective' world they look upon as absolutely real. They bow with reverent submission before the grandiose scale of it, before its coercive power, because they are tied to it and adjusted to it by the whole structure of their minds. Man always lives not only in the 'empirical' world but also in the world of 'ideas', and the ideas by which it is determined are of a character which is above all concerned with value. (Berdyaev 1957: 133)

The motive which led to investing kingship and other historical institutions with a sacred character is plainly sociological. In order to force the masses of mankind into submission, discipline and order, it was necessary to inspire them with a belief in the sanctity of authority, of the State, of the nation, of war, to make them believe that the subordination of the individual to the common, of the person to the race, was sancrosanct. A fiction and a lie were required for the government of men and peoples. And fear lest this lie should be exposed has risen to an insane degree, men were in dread lest the disclosure of the truth should lead to the collapse of society. How great a value the Roman Catholic Church has set upon such a lie, as, for instance, the Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals, already exposed as it was!
Nations cannot exist without myths nor can even the power to govern human societies exist without them. Myths unite, reduce to submission, and inspire. Society is protected by them, and by means of them revolutions are brought about. Such myths are those of the sacrosanct character of kingly power and of papal authority, or of the sanctity of the volontè gènèrale, of popular sovereignty in a democracy, of the sancrosanct character of a chosen class or a chosen race, of the sanctity of the Leader, and all the rest. All these are fictions which are built up in the collective social process. They are of enormous strenght even in the life of the Churches and tradition is to some extent filled with them. (Berdyaev 1957: 149)

The romantics have been fond of connecting the creative artistic process with the fruitful imagination experienced in dreams. This cannot be accepted in the form in which the romantics asserti it, but it does contain a certain amount of truth. The images which arise in dreams are not called up by impressions received from the external empirical world immediately, but are due to those that have been preserved in the depth of the subconscious. The state of dreaming is not dependent upon the perception of images of the world of sense at the given moment, it is a passive condition, not active. Consciousness is supressed and almost paralyzed. When a man is dreaming he may be absolutely overwhelmed by the past. In creative activity, on the other hand, images arise which are not determined by the empirical world, or if they are determined by it, it is through the medium of creative transformation. And they bring with them liberation from subjection to the past, from impressions and injuries which have accumulated in the subconscious, and from the wounds which the past has inflicted. There occur, it is true, radiant, luminous visions, and there are dreams which are prophetic, (though such conditions are comparatively rare), and in them the creative exalting impulse has a place. It is not only the subconscious which is operating in creative activity but the supra-conscious also; there is a movement upwards. (Berdyaev 1957: 179-180)

Man is not only an historical being, he is a social being also, and that by no means in the sense that he is a determined part of society and a member of society in the way the sociologists assert. On the contrary, society is in man and sociality is one of the aspects of human nature. Man realizes himself in community with other human beings. Sociality is indeed already embedded in the foundations of cosmic liffe. It is there amond the animals, too, and human beings even copy social life as seen in the animal world, the ant heap and the bee hive, for example. The world of nature sought to live in union and it lives in discord. Human life does actually realize unity in that it has created society which potentially is included in it. Without society and outside it man could notcarry on the struggle for life against the menacing elements of the world. (Berdyaev 1957: 213)

The idea of anarchism, if accepted in its ultimate depth, is an ideal which marks the limit of human liberation. It ought not by any means be taken to denote the rejection of the functional importance of the State in this objective world. WHat anarchism ought to oppose is not order and harmony, but the principle of power, that is to say, of force excercised from without. The optimism of most of the theories of anarchism is false. In the conditions of this objectified world we cannot conceive of the ideal society, without evil, strife and war. Absolute pacifism in this world is a false ideal, because it is anti-eschatological. There is a great deal of truth on this subject in Proudhon.
All political forms, democracy and monarchy alike, are relative. What must be supported throughout to the end are those forms, relative as they are, which provide the greatest possibility of real freedom, of the recognition of the value of personality, and which acknowledge the supremacy of truth and right over the State. But the ideal can be norhing but the supersession of all power, on the grounds that it rests upon alienation and exteriorization, and means enslavement. The Kingdom of God can only be thought of apophatically, as achieved absence of power and a kingdom of freedom. Hegel says that 'lave is the objectivity of spirit', and thus admits that he assigns a realm to objectification. Ant it is he too who says that the State is a spiritual idea in the Äusserlichkeit of the human will to freedom. Äusserlichkeit is indeed the fundamental mark of the State of power. (Berdyaev 1957: 217)

In a bourgeois age of technical civilization an unbounded increase of wealth takes place and these riches are periodically destroyed by fearful wars. There is a sense in which these destructive wars which are brought about by the will to power are the fate of societies which are based upon the dominating influence of technical civilization and steeped in bourgeois contentment. The instruments of destructionare immeasurably more powerful than those of construction. Civilization at its height is extraordinarily inventive in devising means of killing, but it has no resuscitating forces in it. And that is its condemnation. (Berdyaev 1957: 224)

Freedom ilvolves the freedom for evil as well. Without the freedom of evil, good would not be free, it would be determined and imposed by force. At the same time, however, the freedom of evil gives rise to the necessity of servitude. Slavery itelf can be the child of freedom, and there would be no freedom if it did not carry with it this possibility of giving rise to slavery; there would be but the servitude of good. But the servitude of good is an evil thing, and the freedom of evil can be a greater good than the good which is a result of compulsion. It is a paradox to which no solution can be found within the confines of the history of objective world, and it exerts a pull towards the end. (Berdyaev 1957: 247)