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THE YOUNG BAKUN1N AND LEFr HEGELIANISM: ORIGINS OF RuSSlAN. RADICALISM AND THEOlJY OF P.RAXIS, .1814-1842

by

1.' p

M4rtine Del Giudice

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Gr.aduate Studies

and Research in partial fulfU'ment of the


requirements fpr the' degree pl Doctor of PhUosophy

Department of Hjstory
Mc Gill
Unive~s ity

Montral, Canada.
1\:'

August, 1981.

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THE'--YOUNG BAKUNIN AND LEFT HEGELIANISM: o


1814-1842

" 'by

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Martihe Del Giudtce

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." ABSTRACT..

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Although BakUnln'e 1842 article, ":nte Reactl ln. Germany, " pubUeH.cl ln the organ of the Dresden Let~ Hegeliane, Deutsche JahrbUcher tl generaUy held te, be the mOlt radi al and eloquent manlieeto of Lelt Hegeliantem, the S~dard' hlstorial cbmmentary tends to ,conelder hla pre-1842 Ru.sl~ ,worKa Ra fllr C'emoved -trom thl. 'r"vo1utlary Ideal;
,

Most hllltorians have long ~Ued to dls~em the Iogical contlnutty ln MlkhaU Baltunln1e ~tbought belore and alte,.! the "pivotai" date Of 1840. Indeed, hi.s Intellectual developmmt 18 usuallY dlvlded lnto
~.

iVfO

distinct, mutually

exclusive periode. Durlng the first perlod, ,pre-1840, BaKUJlln Is presented


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as a consprvatlve and a monarchlst, dedicated to a spiritual and pollUcal compromise with the '!ratlal reaUty" of the Tsarlst rgime. Mter hls arrlval ln Berlin ln 1840, however, one 18 8uddenly confrooted wUIt the polltlcaJ, anarchlst and lnstlgator of world revolutloo.. However, thi. abrupt , dlchotomy which appeau in molit hlstorical commentaries dealing wtth
1

BaJeunln's wrtting' and activltles cann?l be malntalned. The hypothesis that there even occurred a breu ln the evolutl of Buunin's thought ., rests on a mislnterpretation of hls early Russlan Hegel1an warka. The goal of this 8tudlfir Is ta demonstrate that the
con~ern

w,

the

practlcal application of phlloBophy lnto a poUtical tool for revolutionary , action forms the central theme of" BaKUnln'S. early warka; and to show \at his Berlin period const1tutes the

logtc~

continuation of hie early

theoretlcal position. In effect, the present study represents a revlndicaU


of the young Baxunln and allempts to plIove thal hls Hegellani8m wu

central to the formation of hl. radical

po~itlon.

Al the same Ume, il

situate. Ru.sian Left Hegellanllm in the malnslream of European radicallsm,


by shoWing how the 18ea. dev.loped by Baxunin ~re movln, ln a direction'

parallel to thON of the YOUIlI Repltan movemet ln German)'.

" "'~::~j 1lb"~' '~ 1rI~


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Martine .Del Glucflce. Th", Young 8~in and Left Hegel~ism: Orlglna
gf

Rulstan Ib.dlcall.m and Tbeory of r ruts, 1814-1842. HI.to Dodor


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P~t108oph)'.

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RESUME
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8il'lU't1c1e de BIlIWUn1ne IiiUtul "La r'action en Allem&(Clle,"


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pub1l6. Dreed4en 1842 par l'organe de la Gauche H.fUenne, le Dtutsehe


Jahrbtl~"er,

.st habltueUe~ent te~u pour 1. manUeste le plu. 6loquent et

-radlcaliite de cette Gauclle, ceci n'empche aucunement lei critique. tihltorique. de prfaenter l'ensemble de .l'oeuvre de 'B~()llnlne de sa priode' rp.se, an~rieure 1842, com';'e loigne l'extrm'e de cette optique rvolutionnaire.
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. Nombteux 8CJIlt ainli les historiens qui,. simplement, ne parviennen!


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pour.wvre le dveloppement continu et logique !e la pense de

M1khaU Bakounine et l'affublent de aurcrolt d'un retoumement idologique

,u'Us lituent

aut~r de la date

1840. C'elt ainsi qu'il e.t devenu habituel

de scinder danl

te

templ

l'~olutton

intellectuelle de Bakounine en deux

'1

priodes succe'lives et remarquablement antagoniites. Prcdent 1840, la premire priode n~1 Ilgure un ~kountne de - type conlervateur et 'monarchiste, dvou un ompromis poliUco-spirituel avec la "ralit rationnelle" du rgime Tlarlste. Suivant son stage l'UnlvenU de Berlin en 1840, la seconde priOde nOUI dvle loudain un BakOUnine qui a vers politiquement dans l'anarchl.me et la fomentattm d'une rvoluUm mondiale.

,1,-.

D n'apparat plui possible, raisonnablement, d~ persister


chang~ment

accepter

que Baxounine alt opr un

radical de direction

ld~ogique,

comme ie stipulent Ion su,et les critiquel historiques. L'hypothse de la ralll mme d'un tel revirement volutif repoee incontestablement aur une tnterpr,tatlon tQUt fait errone des crits "Htl.Uen." du Jeane Bkountne pendant la premire priode rulse.

. iJ-

Le but de l'tude prsente re;lent dmontrer que 1.. travaux de


Jeunes~e

de BaKounine ont pour clef de vote la radicalisation du concept

hglien en une pbUosophle de l'action politique et que la .econde priode


b~r1inOI..

ne constitue plui ainsi qu'un prolongermmt formel des =JIepuons


III

thoriques de

premire priode russe. Cette tude constitue finalement '!Re la base de la construction de

.00 h'glla.nisme aIt indiscutablement i


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rhabilitation laIIII,lectuelle du Jeune BaKOUnine pour taye El de facto que

la "sUlon rfvolutionnaire. Simultanment, elle situe dans le mme courant la Gauche Hfg~ienne russ. et le radicalisme europen, en rfylant comment les propres ide. de BaKounine cheminaient, comme ceuts des Jeunes Hgliens en Allemagne, vers un mme but. Nom:
,l'",

Martine.De1 Gludlee. radicalisme ruSIt et de la thorie de la Praxis, 1814-1842

Titre de la thse: Le Jeune Bak()lJnlne et la Gauche Hglienne: brigines du


Dparte~ent:

Histoire. Docteur en phUolOphle. '

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ABSTRACT . . .

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RESUM:re

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INT RODUCTION .
Chapter,

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vi

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH: THE E.c\RL Y


INFL UENCES . . . . . . . .

11

. MOSCOW,
1

THE ST ANKEVICH CIRCLE AND FICHTE'S PHILO:pr . . . . . . :


, \ , .

65

In

THE "RECONCILIATION! WITH 'REA~ITY": HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . .

151

..
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IV

BAKUNIN AND HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY: THE ~HILOSOPHY OF ACTION ..

280

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CONCLUSION: THE T~srrION TO REVOLUTrONARY P rB....


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Appen'dices

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E OF CONtENTS (Cool'

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"My Notes" ...
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419

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II
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erevodchUta.," ~~~~e~a- "Hegel's ~---.;=~~~..;..;.;..~


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424
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441

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IV

470
522

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'i"V'

INTRODUCTION

One does not ordfuarUy associate MlkhaU BakUIl!n aqd his


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tumultuous career 'as a political figute.tJd,d revolutiooary w1th' the' specu,'"


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lative metaphystcal doctrines contained in Hegel'~ Phenomeno,gi of Spirit" and in the Encyclopaedta of the PhUosophical Sttences. Inde'ed,
,
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mo~

striking .contrast than that between the Russian anarchist spreadpassion for

ing the

~creativ

destructi~n"'on

the barricades of Europe

in upheaval and the professorial German philosopher lecturing on the wisdom of Absolute Spirit in the Prssia of the restoration, would dtlficult

:to find. 'And yet

it was in the speculative ~ea~ch for truth that

the revolutionary activity had it origUi. . While Hegeliant8m in Europe i8 readUy aCknowledged to have given ri se to the most djverse political Ideologies, ranging from
.

Marxi~

. socialism ta conservative naonalism, its influence on the social and . . political life 'Of Russia has notbeen treated with the same thoroughness. Md although Hegel's phUosophy proVided the basis for the emergence of revolutionary radicalism in
nineteenth-c~ntury

' '

Russia, the presence

of a well-defined Left Hegelian movement amang the Russian intelligentsia has been somewhat overlooked, or limfted to a few pre-'1848 worltS by
' .

AleKsander Herzen.

Thf;! present essay constitutes an intellectual biography. of the


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fore~

Most Russian Hegelian, Mikhall Balrunin, and attempts to remonstrate how his Hegelianism was central ta the f~matttm of his radical outlOOlt. At the sme time, ft situates Rusaian Left Hegelianism in the m~instream

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of

Europ~an

radicalism, by showing 'how the ideas developed by BakWl.m


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were moving in a direction parallel '10 those of the Young Hegelian .movement . ,
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Germany.
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~though

Bakunin' s 1842 article, ",'The ~action

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th

Germany,

publlshed in the organ o,f the Hegelian...Le,t, Deutsche JahrOOcher, is


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gen~rally neld to -be the most r;ulical and eloquent manUesto of Left
, .

He'gelianism; the standard historical eom~entary tends to conslder his pre-1842 Russian writingS" as far removed:fronl this revolutionary ideal Indeed, MOSt Russian and Soviet historians, s weIl as their Western counterparts, have long failed to discern the logical cootinuity in the . . evlution of MiKhail Balrunin's thought before and aiter the "pivotai" date
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of 1840. 'His intellectual development is usually divided filto two distinct,


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mutually exclusive periods. It ls commonly maintained that during the first period" pre-1840, BalWnin's thought was dominated by theoretico. abstract considerations, whereas alter his departure for Germany, he
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became exclusively preoccupied wilh prOblepls of ~P01itico'!'economic natur. Whlle there is no doubt that 1840 was.an important date for

B~in

in terms of

h~s: int,ellectuaI ,formation,

it is highly

questi~~ble
Th~

whether the abrupt dichotomy which appears in Most historical studies dealing with his writings and actiyitie!i can l;>e maintained.
.

.. procedure
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of categorically divid~g the ideologtcal ~evelopment of a thinlter into two


, p~rCula~IY ln the calle of
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separate and irreconcUable pha~es haS' at .times been adoPted un'critically-

"

B~unln,

and 8'V8D"

~f

Hegel, -and without

thorough considration of the documentary sources.

BalruIlin' s early ,

works, written while Jtul in" Russia haye ca~gorically been dismissed

~s ~on,stvative an<f'1.eactionary, dedicated to a spiritual and politicaI

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compromise With the "rational reality" of the Tsarist rgime. After his arrivai in Berlin in 1840, however, one Is brusquely confronted wlth the
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apostle of univer Etal destfuctton, the" ublquitous anarchist and instigator , of world reyolution. The rapid transformation of BakUnin's theoret1cal .
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orie~tation during his two years in 'Bertn, as weIl as the iilconsiSf'nies


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- .which artse out of it, seem to pose absolutely no problems to the standard

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. histor1cal analysis:-

Furthermore, the. pr.oponents of this "bifurcation" , theory must be criticized for their collective fallure to provide 'either' a

legitimate explanation or an adequate justificatio for the allged shift in (


~

, Balrunin's position.

*,

'l'he hypothesis that there even Qccurred a break

in the .evolution of Bakunin's thought rests upon a misinterpretation of

his

~arly

Russian works .....

The dtificl!lties that arise from this "volte~facell theory, as de~ . scribed ab ove, are complex and of crucial importance; they have long .
1

demanded satisfactory clarification. The 'basic goal of this study ls twofold: 1) to dmonstrate that the concerri ;with the practical application of philosophy nto a political tool for re~olutionary action forms the central theme of Balrunin's early works;
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2)

~d

to
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show that his Berlin period represents the logial continVation of his
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early theoretical position.


l~ctual

The standard , Interpretation of BakUnin's intel- '


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development is ijessentially

mi~eading

for there was indeed a

logical progression and contlnuity in BaJmnin's thought. The present study , tnay appear to be a revindicatlon of the young Bakunin-and indeed, . ft ' is-and an attempt to show that his philosophy of action, based on the ' Hegelian system, was alrady elaborated in outline in 1;4e ~oscow and PriamUkhino worka, composed weIl before '~is departure for Berljn in"

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*For this line of interpretation, see the ,worKs of E.A- Carr, Arthur Lehning, D. ChizhevsKi, A. KeN.r, G. Planty-BonjUiP, V. Polonsldi, M. Dragomanov, A. Kornilov, Yu. Steldov, ,ZenKovsKii,' all of which , , we shall examine below.

viii

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July 1840. The evidence

JO be examinect suggests that as of 1837 Bakunin


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was in fact aIready formulating ~iS philosophy of rational action, b~,ed o~ the central idea of, a unity of theorY and practice, ,the entire theoretial conception of which,~re'sted solidly upon Hegel's philosophy" As such his
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revolutionary position constitutes both a consistent, andcs.a practical ex- . pression 'of his pre-Berlin ideas.
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Why has there been such a Widespread misrepresentation of ..... ~,Bakunin' s intellectual development W One can only sugges~ that this ls
,

due to the fact that his publishd works are almost exclusively confined
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to his mature and later writings; which deal with his anarchism, his
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conflict witn Marx and opposition to the authoritarian Marxist movement, and with his controversial role in the First International. Almost aIlr , " historical- studies on Balrunin are concemed with the analysis of his ,
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anarch ism, b~, curiously, few-have at~ched "any significan"ae to his ~rly works, written while still in Ru.ssia. Soviet historians have -preferred, 1 .. for obvious reasons, to concentrate on his Narodnichestvo. ,To date, no
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thorough study that f>cusses specifically on Balrunin's early works has

bee~ pubtsheq.

It is our

b~lief that the ''Wfitings of ,the young Ba~in

are . e'ssential to an understanding of his \ intelle~tual formation, and although '

"the final formulation of his doctrine of socialist anarhism was


,

r~ached

I...Only in _the-- 1860' s, the seminal ideas of his later thonght can be perceived, in a somewhat crystallized form, in his M'oscow and Priamukhino , \ essays. One May surmise thatl most historians have tended\ to overlook

,
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these works because they are- not' all publ-shed, ~ readily flccssible,

or
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~ranslat~d intp English. Furthermore, ~arly, studies ~n BaKwiip did not

utilize them in their research, which has

-cons~quenUy

perception of the importanee of these documents.

led to a narrow . Of equal significance

is the fact that even the Archives-BaKounine (Arthur Lhning, editor,


-lx

Leiden, 1961-

) claiming to be the definitive and first publication of has chosen to disregard chronological order. This
(

the omplte workS,

bas resulted in the appearance, to date, of Balrunin',s writings of the years 1871 to 1875, which ly serves to Wlderline the continued dis'" reg;u-d for bis early writings,' It is because C{f these numerous historio-

grphical lacunae that it became essential for the pur.poses of this sctY
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to pursue our research in the PriamUkhino-BaltUnin Archives of the


U.S. S. R.

''What little explanation Most historians offer to describe the radical reversal of BakUnin's PC?liticai position is," quite simply, limited to the influence of the German Hegelian Left, as well as of the European
rev~utionary movement~

of the late 1840's. However, important as the

latter May have been, they cannot completely account for such a sudden shift in orientation. Rather, they must be considered as factors conundergoin~
,

tributing to the ideological transition that Ba.lrunin was


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and

had begun to undergo, as of his first reading of Hegel in 1837. His radicalization of the Hegelian
~oncept

into a philosophy of acti, of

revolutiary praxis, can already be discerned in those writings dating from the period of his participation in the. philosophical circle of
StanK~

vich .. Balrunin's writings for this period reveal that the essential foundation of his "practical" philosophy were already talting shape\ at that time.
,

For it was in these early essays and letters, written between 1836 and 1840, that

th,

doctrine of the

concr~tization

of metaphysical thought was

elaborated for the first time in .'Russia-and, interestingly, weIl before Man's Theses on Feuerbach. By talting the step that would unite theory

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and abstract 'thought, with social

pr~cttee,

philosophy was transformed

into an instrument of political critique and action. The implications of

this new advance can be seen from the influence ft had upon Belinsltii, HerzeI), and, indeed, on the development of Russian radicalism. According to Berdyaev, Hegel had the same importance for Russian. thought as Plato hd for the patristics and Aristolle had for 'the scholae- '
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tics. Hegelian

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. of his day
1

this ie the

case, then Balrunin's raIe as the prinCipal

can hardly be underestimated. Not only was he in


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fact the first to translate several of Hegel's worltS into Russian, but he also represented one of the most energetic and ctive propagators of German idealism in his country.

himself to a reiteration of the tlegelian system, Balrunin rapidly sought to go beyond, it by transposing its method to the realm of practical activity, thus parallelling the efforts of CieszKowslti and of the Young Hegelians in Ge rm any . He recognized these revolutionary principles as inhrent in the philosophy of Hegel aiid attempte<l ta giye tangible expression ta them. deveIopment of a new philosophy of history, of his~ic of revoluti, and even of his critique of "pure" thought. Aside from his formulation of a philosophy of action, which maintaileq that the rational deed could
o

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However, rather than merely limting


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It was unquestionably Hegelianism which ;~~rved

a~

a catalyst in Balrunin's .\

transform reality even more effectively than Knowledge (Hegel) or the


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phenomena of production (Marx), BaKunin was the tirst to attribute an . exceptional place in his system to the Hegelian category of negation, endowing it With an almost regenerative creative function. The act of negation or of destructi became the necessary corollary of all historical progresse He drove this ccept ta its ultimate realization and brilliant conclusion in "The Reaction in Germany.
Il

An analysis of his early work.s,

his

1{0nspeKty,

the

lirst drafts of his writings, and of his Most illuminating and voluminous
xi

correspondence,

particul~with

the

mem~e~s

of the Stankevich circle

as weIl as with Herzen, Ogarev, and with members of bis fmily, maltes evident that while still in RU8Sia, the young Ba.lrunin had already arrived at a radical critique of society, firmly grounded in the Hegelian dialectical Methode Subsequently, he woold
elabo~ate

and develop

interpretation to the point of its IJlost radical implications.

H, as Martin Malia daims, the history of German idealism ~ Russia is limited to an ext~emely small number of- people, '" the history
\

of Hegelianism in Russia must even more so be approached in terms of


t~

handful of intelligenty

~ho

were responsible for its emergence.

Thus,

in dealing with the topic of "Balrunin and Left Hegelianism," we have


adopt~e'

format of the intel1ectual biography, beginning with Balrunin' s


0

birth in 1814 and concluding with the publication of "The Reaction in


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Germany," a date which marKS the end of his early activity in Russia , as weIl as of bis "Hegelian" period per se.

The first chapter, "Childhood and Youth: The Early Influelces,

Il

examines those early intellectual factors which exerted a direct influence

on the formation of the young Bakunin. Beginning with the isolated and rarefied atmosphere of Priamukhino, where he received a Western liberJ. educatioo in accordance. with the highest ideals _ . \ Enlightenof the French
c

ment and of German Romanticism, BaltUnin was exposed, from his earliest years, to European id, as and culblre, a- fact which is not without its

--------------------*

Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (New YorK, 1961), p. 6.
xii

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importance, as we shall see.

Ins childhood years, however, also witnessed at close hand the Tsarist
1

repression of the .Decembrists; the drama of the events of December 1825, in which his maternaI uncles were directly involved, left their marK upm the young BaKUhin. In,,"effect, the year 1825 symbolized the end of. the , "aesthetic education" and cultural life-style of PriamuKhino. Shortly thereafter, BaKunin was sent to the Officers' Artillery At!ademy in St. Petersburg. It was here, in the Russian capital, that he had a closer and more intimate contact with the ideas of German Romanticism, in particular with the worKS of Goethe and Schiller.
~

When, in the suin mer

of 1833, while on military duty, he discovered German idealist philosophy any Schellingian metaphys,ics, ohis infatuation was immedfate and total,ft was, in BaKunin's own terms,

"an intellectual revolution. ,,-l. Several


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months later, when BalCUnin 'decided to devote himself exclusively to nauKa -science, philosophy, or Knowledge, -the conversion was complete. The discovery of German idealism coincided with Bakunin's growing insistence upon the concepts of activism and voluntarism. In connection with this, his letters for this period reveal the
form~n
n

of an ui'gent

sense of mission and of a historical role to be played in world history. * * His emphasis on the notion of the will already represents an attempt to linK thought with reality, and as such, proves to be the guiding thread throughout BaKunin's involvement with German metaphysics. Furthermore,

as his correspdence maKes clear, BaKUnin had fully grasped the vital function of the dialectical category of negation, and underlined its primary role in the historical process weIl belore his study of Hegel' s philosophy *M. A. BaKUnin, "Pis'mo sestram, Il 25 yanvarya" 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii i pisem. 1828-1876, tom 1, pod red. Yu. M. SteKlova (MosKva, 1934-35), p.122.

** Bakunin,

( "Pis'mo. sestram Beyer, "_ 7 maya 1835, in ibid., p. 169.


xiii

in 1837.

...

The 1830' s in Moscow were truly a "remarKab le decade"; tt was this scintillating intellectual atmosphere which gave rise to the famou philosophical and literary KrUzhlti [circles] and salons. As

result of

the intense government reaction in St. Petersburg, followtng the repressi of the Decembrist uprising, Moscow was able to enjoy an
atm~sphere

of

relative freedom and soon became the intellectual and cultural centre of Russian life, drawing the best minds of the day tnto it~ clrc1es and sal91s. Indeed, these KruzhKi which were formed during this perlod constituted' the mainstay of progressive phUosophical and socio-political ideas in Russia throughout the next ftity years, a setting which largely contributed
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to the growth of the Russian intelligentsia.

The circle was a unique

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'phenomenon in. Russian le; infused with a strongly ethlcal sense of mission and totally
co~mitted

to the transformation of Russian society, its members


aspir~tions,

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were young men of high moral Ideals and of noble a new vision of Russian reality.

animated by

, ...,.l'he emergence of the Moscow philosophical circles coincided with the ascendance of
post-Kanti~

metaphysics on the intellectual lUe of

Russia-an influence which would culminate in the feverish wave of


He~elianism

in the 1840's. It was to German philosophy tha't the young

intelligenty of the 1830's turned, in the hope of finding a structured and unified view of reality which would give meaning to their existence and
~,

. to their society. Although their' goals were not political or "revolutionary"

fi-om the start, it was on the bas~s of German idealist philosophy that radical theories of social and political. change would subsequently arise.
It is against this baCKground of the activity.. of the M6scow circles, that

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the influence of German

i~ealism,

from Schelling to Hegel, ~ among the

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members of the newly-emerging Russian intelligentsia is examined. The


imp~ct of German 1 metaphysics' on the in~llectual and artistic ltfe of

Russia 'ln .the 1820's and 1830's ls evalua~ in an attempt to account


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for its wide appeal and dUfusion into aU facets of national lUe.
It was at the Ume of his conversion to Schellingianispl that Baxunin

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1
1

first came into contact with the circ1e of Stanltevich, whose participants held Many sitnilar beliefs on the role of philosophy in social lUe. Indeed, o Nlltolai Stanltevich, the mentor of the group, was the first important intellectual influence on BalaIntn. The two principal poles of attraction of the young Moscow intelligentsia were the circle of Stanltevich and the Herzen-Ogarev group. An analysis of the differences
~tween

l '

these two circ1es ls attempted in the

light of the numerous historiographical problems which have developed, resulting in a new interpretation of the importnce and contribution of the Stanltevich circle on Russian thought. When BaltUnin joined Stanltevich's circ1e
~

..

1836, the group was engaged in a serious study of Schelling's

system. However, in the course of the year 1836, Bakunin underwent a -/conversion to F~chte's phUosophy. Among the major reasons for BaltUnin's

adoption of this system, ,one must cite the practical dimension in Fichte' s
l'

philosophy, as weIl as the tone of activism and voluntarism which pervades his
WOI;ltS.

Fichteanism extended far beyond the confines lof metaphysical

speculation to include the fields of practical, socio-political activity. The central Fichtean concept of the historical transformation, in addition to the goal

"tafl:t,"

the theme ,Of morI

~edom-po1itical, economic

and social (in addition to moral), clearly corresponded to the young


~altunin's

own orientation and aspirations .. Fichte!s political and moral

commitment, his emphasis on the autopomy of the rational will, and his. stress on action, particularly appealed to BakUnin's own Ideal of a social
xv

transformati. The importatlce of Fichte's philosophy on

'--"

~alamin's

thought bas always been rather underestimated. In effect, Fichteanlsm must b~ seen as.. a source as well as

a logical

step in the elaboration

of Baxunin's concept of \-evolutionary praxis. For' in Fichte's practical phUosophy" tIi~ory was e~seJIltiallr Inseparable from ratiooal actioo, and the philosopher came to be ~en ts the vital linK between the ethical Ideal and ~ pracflcaf implemen~tion in the world. ~rthermore, PPllosophy was perceived by "Fichte as reform. )

"

an

essentlal Jlleans for social and political

to introduce Fichte to the Russian intellifl!ntsia, BaKunin chose to translate the Lectur,@S
al

.v

the Voc!tion of the Scholar for the Moscow


,

Telescope. What was tl}e reason fQr BaKunin's selection of the se lectures? ,
,

As we shaH see, the

ey lies in the activist-vol'Untarist direction as weil

as in their straightfor arclly engaged\ polltical position. The Lectures , clearly define the role f the
\

'p~Uoso~her

in society

anp

advance the ideal

of

educa~ion

as the tool

r moral reform. It is evident that Balrunin

identified with this social ~iSSion and

tull! adopted the

philosopher's taSk

"/

to act and transform society. "The Reconciliation .w1th Reality: Hegel's PhUosophy," deals with the first J'hase of BaltUnin' s Hegel,ianism, -the period extending from / early 1837 to' Mid, 1838. By late 1836, BalruDin had grown increasingly
disi11~sioned

"

with certain aspects of Fichte's philosophy, in particular

With the concept of the Sollen, which served to accentuate the schism

between the morally-active individual and his society, and which inevitably gave rise to an inusurmountable separati between Real and Ideal. ensumg state of unresolved, struggle and contradiction eventually led
\
,.
'

L 1

The

Ba.kUnin to reject what he perceived to be the excessively "abstract" or xvi

J'

"idealized" and subjectivist elements in the Fichtean position. However, at the time of ohis rejection of Fichte's system, Balmnin had already_ read Hegel and had adopted Hegel's own arguments to refute Fichte's , position. A 1 arge portion of this work ,is devoted to atl investigation into the statu s, the e~tent, and the nature of Hegelianism in Russla, focusses on severaI essential questions,
, 1

an~

notably: why did Balrunin turn


1

to Hegel' s philosophy? Our analysis will show the answer to be connected to problems of modern culture and society, to religion, and to pollUes. Furthermore, why did Bakunin address himself to those partieular workS by Hegel whieh he chose to study and translate? Finally, what were the full implications and the signUicance of his interpretation of Hegelianism? The Hegel phenomenon in Russia can basically be approached in terms of
o ..

'

a ,.2rise de cooscience of reality and of 'all its cncret e manifestations; it responded to the young intelligentsia' s newly-awakened preoccupation with
"
'

social, historieal and political prohlems.

A cOnlprehensive phUosophieal

system which eonsolidated a "retum to reality," could not fail to attract a generation which, while still captivated by German metaphysics, was begtnning t.P move away 'from an exeessively abstract romanticism and
.F

idealism \ irf order to confront the existential and practical questions of the day . . It was the eircle of Stankevieh which was chiefiy responsible for
J

the diffusion of Hegel's philosophy in Russia, and as the circle's leading authorlty in thls area, BakUnin' s influence on the orientation of Russlan thought cannot be underestimated.

Essentially, as we shall see, He gel's system eorresponded to BaiCunin's search for a philosophie al re~lsm, as weIl as to his increasing xvii

preoccupation With social forms of existence: the totality, ,the state. The shift

'com~unity,
" Il'.

the social

ot

emphasis from the individual ego to the

s~ial entity, to the idea of the- commUnity, constituted the means by ,.


which Balalnin was able to accomplish phUosophical transition from subjective to objective' Idealisme
Un~er

the impact of HegelianisI11, Balrunin

came to identify reason with the social and historical totality, and, with Us focus on reality, Hegel '8 phUosophy provided BakUntn with the means to bridge the problematic rift between theory and practtcal life.
~

ln Hegel, Balrunin found a systematically

point of view and a method by which he was able to address himself to the theoretical and practical questions of RusStan re-ality. As witnessed by the numerous unpublished konspekty [notebooKs] which he compiled during this period, Ba1runin had ,immediately seized upon reality as the foundation of the entire Hegelian system .. To the Fichtean principle" of voluntarism, Hegel 's system came 'to add a vital new inflection: the will . had to operate on the basis of a rational comprehension of reality. Con'11
/

develope~

phUosophical

sciousness or thought was now seen as liberation and the freedom inti: mated

richte' s practical philasophy was held to lie in phUosophical


/.

,
1 ,
i
1

Knowledg~y

Thus, the lirst step in


\
Il

this

direction consisted in a "recon-

clliation with reality,

or a rational comprehension of reality, as the


c~troversial

1 1-

necessary prelude to practical acti. This

"reconcUiation

with reality" has been the cause af endIess misinterpretation, but a careful study of BaltUnin' s writings and letters for thls periKi clearly reveals the radical implications of this appeal, long considered a conservative env

dorsement of the pollUcal status quo-i. e., Nicolaevan Russia. An investigation into the meaning of the concept reality, in the Hegelian context in which it .Wp.s articulated, rapidly dispels any doubts as to Bakunin' s xviii

-~-

(
o

intent and brings to light the critic

nature of his views on Russian

society. In accordance with Hegel1anlsm, Bakunin considered reason or reality as dialectical development, as constant
0

move~ent

and change,

driven fofoward by the force of negation or opposition. Balrunin's early Hegelian writmgs provide a key ta his subsequent intellectual orientation. "Moi zapiski" ["My Notes"], written in 1837, is an early essay dealing

With

the theme of reality in terms of the

~i

festatioo of reason; his approach to Hegelianism as method is emphasized throughout the work. "The Preface to Hegel' s Gymnasium Lectures, "
/

Bakunin's first original publication, appeared in the 1838 spring issue of the Moscow Observer; this !irst product of Russian Hegelianism is here re-appraised and its importance on the -<direction of Russian social thought re-evaluated. The significance bf Bakunin" s appr.oach, as reflected in its underlying structure, is ,founded upon the dynamic relationship between thought and social practice. By focussing Us attention on reality, as weIl as on the practical and socio-ethical implications of Hegel's system, this articl marks an important transition from t,hearetical speculation to social critique. As such, Us effect was to force his contemporaries to direct their a,ttention to the "cursed question 1,1 of Russian existence. Furthermore, in his "Preface," BalWnin deals with the S~!lisitive problem of alienation in modern society, and formulates bis theory of education as a response ta this crisis in contemporary culture.
o

"Bakunin and Hegel' s Philosophy: The Philosophy of Action, " examines the second phase of Balrunin' s Hegelianism (April 1838 up ta his departure for Berlin in JuIy 1840), at which time his philosophy of

action took shape. De'\feloping the theme .of rational action as the realiza-

..

tian of speculative thought, BalQInin insistently str.essed the necessity for


.xiX

theory to transform itself into

ration~

consclous action as the ultimate

actualization of phil 0 sophi al thought. Henceforth, BakUnin came to equate liberation with human action, rather than with consciousness,.
./'

3;8

previously, .

and basing himself on Hegel ',a Philosophy df Right and Eh!lpsophY of IUatory,
beg~
o

to envisage this view of liberation largely in terms of the identity

of the concepts of reason and freedom. At the sarne time,' the theme of negativity gained increasing importance in his view; in addition to being the driving force in the ,historical Jocess, it was held to be the necessary prelude to a higher level of rational reconciliation. Towards 1838 Balrunin first became aware of the ideas and activity of the Hegelian Left in Germany .. BakUnin's last "Russian Hegelian" worKs, composed in 1839 and 1840, in Many ways parallel the ideas developed by the Left Hegelians in Berlin and Dresden. "On' Philoaophy.," Parts 1 and il, rankS among
B~in's

most important the6retlcal writings. This

work effectively marks Balrunin' s ideological transition from philosophy' to praxis; indeed, by the conclusion of Part il, the transformation has been accomplished: the parameters of pure metaphysics have 'been ov~rstepped in order ta merge with practical life and action. In the .firat part of his study, Bakunin conducts an investigation !nta the use of philosophical Knowledg, and once again Hegelian theory is approached in terms of critical method and as an instrument of social and political change. Here the Balrun!nist doctrine of the unity of theory and praxis finds Us theoretic3.I Elaboration. At this time, the question as to the influence of fliugust von Cieszkowski's Prolegomena zur Historiosophie ia raised, in, view of the.
(
0

similarity of its orientation and parallel development of the concept of revolutionary praxis.
xx

--

--.-

.~--,----------

"

~~

. . . ~--*_. . ~-~-----

...~ -----,,-

,
,

'~The

second part of "{)n Phil 0 sophy " is structur,ed around the


L

pos~ate

ta actively transform the practical world !nto a realizatioo of


,

the ratiOnal idea through 'the agency ,of the ,rational will and in fuis fection, the notions ~ ch~ge and dialectical development are, heavily
"'

emphasized,. Th~ the~es of poteatiality, of becoming, nd of change, based on a 'rational comprehension of reality, constitut\; the dominant themes of this work, against which the goal of freedom 1 s positively articulated. Hegelianism provided Balrunin with a concrete content to his

.....

liitherto abstract notion of freedom, in addition ta a more practicaJ,. and historical dimension in his approach ta social and political forms of
,

existence.

Finally, "The Reaction in Germany" represents the culmination of Bakunin' s Hegelian


~period.
"

Al.l the essential themes developed in his

early Russian writings find their ultimate ,realization and structured place in this worK; the ideas sketched out and the questions raised in his early "
work~ are here unified in a systematic whole and are forcefully" and' con-

fidently stated. . As the. transition from radical theory ta revolutionary praxis, the article marks bath
th'lcu1rninati~

and the' conclusion of

Bakunin's He geli ani sin. The themes elaborated in the "Ractioo'in Germany" malte clear that Bakunin's position in J842 manests a oconsistent
__ ' <S>

ideol~ical

" continuity in his intellectual development. It ls only after a thorough

analysis of B.akunin's early works that "The Reaction in Germany" can be ' correctIy evaluated, not as a sudden expression of revolutionary radicalism, but.'" as the logical and consistent development of ,the thernes whih emerged CI' during Bakunin's Russian Hegelian period. -

..

xxi

<',_h _____

The dissertatim Is supple~ented by my translation of Ba.KUnin's

Russian
1
a

Heg~lian works, "My Notes,

Ir

"Preface to Hegel's

~mnasium'

Lectures," "On Pl).llosophy" Parts 1 and II, herewith inc1uded as ' ~ Appendices. l, II,

,)

m and

IV.

The method of transliteratipn employed throughout the text 1s ~ based on the Libl!ary of Congress system, including the diacritical
mar~

but excluding the ligatures. In .the case" of names which have accepted standardized spelling, such as BelinsKy, not been applied.
Granovs~,

this system has

1 wish to aCknowledge with kind appreciation the generous assistance of many distinguished indlviduals and institutions, without woom this dissertation would not have been possible.
In particular, 1 "wish
~o

express my most sincere gratitude and


,

appreciation to my advlser, Professor Valentin Boss, of the History Department, McGill University, for his invaluable guidance, support and
-

close supervision of the work at all stages of its development. His critical insight mto problems of philosophy and history were of inestimable value
in the conceptualization and the' writi;ng of this dissez:tation.

. , It is, with great pleasure that 1 wish to thank Proi'f,ssor Stepan


. d

~~

Stepanovich Vollt, director of the Faculty of PhUosophy at Leningrad State University, with whom 1 workd for a period of one year whUe
/~ ~

\/
(

in the Soviet Union. Professor Volk'S most generous assistance and his vast Knowledge of Nineteenth-Century Russian History were roost beneficial and trulY a source of inspiration to me.
,
'

-'

xxii

\
,-------"_. - --------_.

~.,I---_

. . . .-........-.
~--

..--,...~~

. . . ._.. "_.______________
follo~g -Ubraries~

Many th~s are due to the adh1Jnistrators of the manuscript

aJd archiva!
,

~ectims

of the

-.

1) in Leningra.d: the
'

,~Gosudarstvennaya

publichnaya biblioteka im. Saltykova-Schedrina; Institut 1 _


-'

russkoi liter~ture (Pushkinskii Dom); ~iblioteKa .Akademii NaUk (BAN);


Bibliot~ka lm.

Gor'kogo; 2) in M)scow: the Gos~d,rstvennaya ~~bl1oteka .

im. Lenina; and 3) also the Bibliothque Nationruf de Paris.


1 also wish to aCknowledg~ with deep app~eCiati~' the long~term

and, generous support

Of bOoth the Social Sciences 'and Humaniti~S Research, '


(Ministre de l'ducation du Qubec). 1 am
o

Council of Canada (SSHRCC) and Direction gnrale de l' .enseignement suprieur (D GES)

particularly ufdebted to the AssoeiatioIf of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), fQr sponsoring my one-year academic exchange to the U.S.S.R.
, f \
t

l
B~in, who supplied -me With
"

A special note of appreciation is extended to Madame Tat'yana


1:>

Ossorguina, great great niece

of MiKhaU

much interesting biographical information on her famous ancestor.

,-

My thanks is given to Mrs. Margaret Blevins for her conscientious , \ r not complaining .at nded upon her.
~

and efficient work in typing the manu script, and the lliegible mass of pages which erratically de
,
~
1

~--

Finally, 1 wish to extend my warmest g atitude to -Denis Del Giudice, a Hegel sCholar, for his thoughtful criticism' and for unravelling ._~_the

thrny intricacies of Hegelian thought.

_.-

"
'

.
"

.,.

xxiii

,
--~. -~~

-...-.-.....-....-~-~_

...._.---:--------_.---~~-

~---

~~

~.

"--~~--.

'il

....

CHAPTER 1

\
CHIT..DHOOD AND YOUTH: THE EARL Y INFLUENCES
1

Mikhail Aleksa,ndrovich Bakunin was perhaps the most illustrious and flamboyant representative of that peculiar class-within-a-class, commonly referred ta as the "gentry revolutionary. ,
Il

This group, which

i 1

included other .l'll-known figures such as the Decembrists, Herzen and Ogarev, was respoosible for the emergence of a revolutionary movement in Russia during the first haH of the Nineteenth Century-that those years corresponding to the reign of Nicholas 1.
It is curious
i~,

and paradoxical that the articulation of both a Tevoltionary attitude and

even of Russian revolutionary socialism was largely the work of individuals from the privileged, e.ristocratic class that had the
MOst

to lose

by the development of these radical theories. The "gentry revolutionary" is a striking example of the vic tory of Ideal over vested interest. As Count Rostopchin
remar~ed:

On a vu des nobles faire une rvolution pour s'emparer du pouvoir, on a vu la dmocratie se soulever contre les privilges de l'aristocratie. Mais il faut venir et vivre en Russie pour voir des privilgis et des nobles faire une rvolution n'ayant d'autre but que la destruction de leurs privilges. 1

'\

, The years of Nicholas l' s reign also witnessed the rise of the
1

intelligentsia in Russia-that indefinable grCAlp and "moral" category which defies classicatioo. Made up of dclasss intellectuals endowed
With a heightened sense of the ethical" this educated and cultured lite

lCited in M. A. Bakounine, "Ma Vie, " La Socit nouvelle / (septembre 1896), p~ 317.
1

...

experiea{ed a profound malaise and spiritual alienation from its society.


l,

Animated by the ideals of humanism and liberalism, the intelligentsia was led to revoIt against what it perceived to be the barbarie social and economic injustices of Russian existence, as weIl as against the mstrument for the repression of the masses, the autocratie tsarist '\ / state. Once again, in composition, this critical intelligentsia was-').

l-

~st

exclusively

d~

from the Russian aristocracy, with the notable

exceptions of Belinsky, Botkin and Polevo. It is only after 1848 that raznochintsy (or non-gentry) elements began ta penetrate this class in large numbers, imparting to the intelligentsia its henceforth more pragmatic, materiahst outlook. 2 However, the' initiative to revoit, albeit somewhat vague and illdefined at first, "as taken up by isolated individuals from the gentry, from the class of great landowners, who were willing to eut themselves off completely from their background, and to commit themselves exclusively to the attainment of a betler social arder. Although they

./

produced very little in terms of concrer! practical action or results, figures such as Bakunin and Herzen laid~' the theoretical framework for the ,subsequent sixty years of revolutionary activity in Russia. In fact, 2 For a discussion on the origins and nature of the Russian intelligentsia, see: Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, A History of Populist and Socialist Movements in 19th Century Russia (New YorK, 1960); Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (New York, 1965); Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intellientsia. The Ei hteenth Centur Nobili (New York, 1966); James Billington, The Icen and the Axe New York, 1970); E. Lampert" Studies in Rebellion: Belinsky, Bakunin, Herzen (London, 1959); M. O. Gershenzon, Istoriia molodoi Ross (Moskva, 1923); Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (New York, 1948); P. Miliukov, Iz istorii russkoi intelligentsii (St. Petersburg, 1903); R. Pipes, ed., The Russian Intelligentsia (New -York, 1961); P. V. Ivanon-R.azpmnik, Istoriia russkoi obshchestvennoi myslk 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1914); T. G. MasaryK, The Spirit of Russia ondon,. 1919).
1

they formulated the basis for a tiCal theory which was to be further elaborated by later .generations. It;'Shoold be in no way surprising that the only activity throogh early rintelligentsia could channel its energies was purely / theoretical, speculative,- or "philosophical"; for their formative years
(1830-1848) coincided with one of the most darkly oppressive periods

1
1

which~e

in all of Russia's history. These were years of intense police surveillance, of censorship, and of ruthless stifling of any intellectual initiative, free-thinking, or discussion. The July Revolution of Paris, the Polish Etevolt, as weIl as general political ,turmoil throughout Europe only served to reinforce Nicholas' already well-advanced paranoia and suspicion of liberalism. Controis were tightened everywhere, notably
in the universities and intellectual "salons," long viewed suspiciously by

the authorities as hot-beds of dissent and breeding-grounds of liberal thought. The Tsar profoundly distrusted the educated gentry, whi.ch had already rebelled against him once; the measures that he took to subdue
it further widened the gap between that c1ass and the monarchy. It was

a Ume when thinkers like Chaadev, the most vocal critic of "Official \ Nationality,
Il

could be dec1ared a certified lunatic and confined to

asylum for the publication of his Philosophie al Letier (1836), when periodicals were systematically shut down for diffusirfg "Western ideas. "
~

University students could be arrested and exiled for reading "seditious" Western literature. Following Bakunin's departure for Berlin in 1840, and with the increase in political turmoil in Europe, the intellectual life of Russia became almost totally atrophied. Up Wltil the death of Nicholas 1-

in 1855, the only other :' subversive" incident whieh the rgime was able

to uproot was the Petrashevsky Circle's activity.

Its members were

arrested and barely escaped the death penalty for the crime of having
,

toyect with the ideas of french socialism:


1848 was a significant date, ev en though there was no "1848"

per se in Russia. The Russian intelligentsia grimly observed the collapse of Western liberalism and the crushing defeat of the socialist revolutionary. movement. Their disillusionment with ready-made radical theories imported from Europe gave rtse to an intense re-evaluation of the revolutionary question within Russia, "and prompted them to focus their attention on problems of a more indigenous nature. This shift of

orientation initiated a transformation of hitherto abstract, theoretical schemes into far more tangible and concrete considerations. It is clear that for the Russian intelligentsia 1848 marked a radical turning away from sPeculative thought along with a renewal and pressing inter est in 3 local," practic:U, and material concerns. Specifically Russian' conditions began to be analysed; and general, abstract theory gave way, or
in many instances, became welded to, practical action. The framework

for this transition, however, had already been established by the men
\

of the 30' s and 40' s. By 1848 Bakunin was enthusiastically and with
,

magnificent gusto putting his new revolutionary principles into practice on the barricades of European capitals. Herzen had already left for Paris. Their departures symbolized the closing of an era. The new generation, that of the 50' s and 60' s, was of a greatly
dfe.r~nt

character., No longer interested in German metaphysics nor


50

in the Romantic idealism that had

failiers, these were hard-nosed realists, materialists, and positivists. 3Berlin, Russian Thinkers, p. 1.

captured the imaginations of their

_1

l(
5 They were much more intent on gathering statistics about rural dftions in Russia, and on examining sociologicai with objective, scintific detachment. ably more
d~awn

rd

COll-

ecoriomic data

The "new men" were unquestion-

to work.ing out problems of practical strategy and

tactics, than to contemplating the essence of Hegel 's Absolute Spirit. The striking differences between the two clashing generations are splendidly illustrated in Turgenev' s Fathers and Sons. The dissimilar-

ity between the men of the 40's and the men of the 60's can aiso be approached in terms of class background. Whereas previously the

1 1

revolutionary principle had been borne almost exclusively by the dvorianstvo, or nobility, it was now the raznochintsy, or people from "diverse, various ,rank," who began to assert their claim to participation in, and even leadership of tti'e political struggle. The "gentry-revolutionary" of 'the thirties was truly a peculiar to Eastern Europe and Russia.
spe~ies

1
1
~

f.

For, in the absence of a

large and vigorous middle and professional class, the nobility, as: the only educated stratum, was the only group ~oSed to liberal Western
'-

ideas and influences. Romanticism and

Beginning with French Encyclopdisme, German


" !

~s, up to "Utopian" Socialism,

it was the

cultivated gentry c;ass

whic~as

most receptive to this influx of pro-

gressive thought from the West, and which allowed for its penetration and diffusion in Russian intellectual circles. Throughout the Napoleonic campaigns or during years of study abroad, members of the educated nobility had inevitably come to com-

"

pare conditions in Europe with those of Russia, and in this comparison Russia had not fared very favourably at ail'.. As enlightened individuals,
(.

th'ey became increasingly conscious of the glaring injustices and re-

T\~~
r---~ press ive politics of the autocratie faarta! rlgime under which they
were forced to live. The majority of this cultured, critical lite,
\

however, realizing that its very raison d'tre would be jeopardized by any change in the status
~

and also overwhelmed by the massive

implications that any such reforms might entail, was simply subdued into a mood of quiet resignation and "oblomovism." Such was the attitude ultimately adopted by the fathers of both Mikhail Bakunin and Aleksandr Herzen.

"

The Bakunins, like the Iakovlevs (Herzen's family), were one of the oldest and wealthiest aristocratie families in Russia, with their .11 ancestry dating back to well before the time of Peter 1. Since the' 18th Century, the socially prominent and well-educated Bakunins had had brilliant careers in the government service, holding portfolios as state counsellors and ministers. They had held distinguished positions as

Presidents of the Russian Academy an as directors of the Academy of Sciences. Mikhail's grandfather, Mikhail Vasilievich Bakunin, after an
r

eminent career as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-President of the Cham ber '-Collegium under Catheripe the Great, retited from government service, and settle.d in the Torzhok district of Tver' Province.
,1

There, in 1779, he acquired a' magnificent estate near the village of Priamukhino, on the banks of the Osuga River, one of the tributaries of the Volga. 4 Situated halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Priamukhino was a very large property boasting sorne 2,000 "souls" or serfs. 5

4A. A.' Kornilov, Molodye gody M. A. Baldlnina (Moskva, 1915) p. 3 (hereafter cited as Molodye gody). 5Bakounine, "Ma Vie," p. 311; Yu. M. Steklov, Mikhail Alek-' sandrovich Bakunin: e 0 zhizn' i deiatl 'nost', 1814-1876, 3 toma, (Moskva, 1926- ), p. 26 hereafter cited as Zhizn' Bakunina).

..

"'~_.

\.

Bakunin' s father., Aleksandr Mikhailovich, had been a frail and sickly chUd, and consequently, at the age of nine, for reasons, of health, was. sent abroad to live with distant relatives. He grew up and

was educated in Italy, and remained in Europe for the next twenty ye3l's.6 After having obtained his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Padua7 he entered the government service and joined the Russian Ministry of Foreign Mfairs. He held varipus poetings throughout Italy, notably in Florence and Turin, as attach to the Russian Embassy. Aleksandr Mikhailovich also travelled extensively throughout Europe, and apocryphal family legend has it that he was even present during the storming of the Bastille; as well as during the revolution in \. , 8 Naples. His youth and formative years were thus spent entirely in Western Europe, where he was exposed to the liberal and democratic ideas of the period as well as td the political ferment that swept over France and Italy. However, at the request of his family, ohe returned

to Russia at the a"ge of 30. Despite the fact that a brilliant and suc cessfui career lay open to him in St. Petersburg, he apparently broke all

ties with society and with the capital, in order to retire to Priamukhino and take up his duties as landlord and serf-owner, As his son wrote: Le monde de la cour de Saint-Ptersbourg parut si rpugnant mon pre que, brisant volontairement sa carrire, il se refugia pour toute sa vie 1;1 cam-

Bakounine, "Ma Vie, "p. 311. 7 A copy of his dissertation, written in Latin, is still preserved in the Priamukhino family archives; Kornilov" Molodye gody, p. 7. SKornilov, Molodye gody, p. 7; Steklev, Zhizn' Bakunina,
p. 15.

" pagne et n'en sorti plus jamais. Pourtant, il tait si connu par presque tous les hommes clairs qui existaient en Russie de soo temps, que sa maison de campagne ne se dsemplissait presque jamais. 9
Aleksandr Mikhailovich B3.kunin had lived in Europe at a time when the ideas of the Enlightenment had reached their peak. The writings of the Philosophes, of Voltaire, Rousseau 3.Qd Diderot were widely d,.rfused
~oughout

ltaly

~d

easily

ac~essible

to him. It is hardly

surprising, ---tlterefore, that having acquired an eighteenth-century liberalhumanistic educatim, he should be morally outraged by the. glaring social inequalities and backwardness of Russian society. Aiter having been exposed for over two decades to the Ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy, he discov!3red, upon his retum, tht the outlook that he had formed in the West was in direct contradiction not only to the bitter realities of Russian existence, but also, ultimately, to his .own interests as a landowner and
m~ter

of "souls."

...
/(

Son libralisme se rvolta d'abord contre cette position horrible, infme, de martre d'esclaves; il fit mme. quelques efforts mal calculs et mal russis pour manciper ses serfs, puis l 'habitude et l'intret aidant, il devint un propritaire tranquille, .com.me tant d'autres de $es voisins, tranquille et rsign l'esclavage de ces centaines d'tres humains dont le travaU le nourrissait. 10 Somewhat ?aivelY and idealistically attempting to put into practice sorne of the democratic principles of the pEnlightenment that he had acquired in Western Europe, Aleksandr Mikhailovich magnanimously granted his serfs a "constitution. "11 Details of this constitution are 9ajkounine, "Ma Vie," p. 311. lOEbid.
~-

1
~ ,

l~ornilov, MolodIe gadI, p. 9.

.\

'

un,lmown, but Its contents could only have reflected a mildly liberal sentiment. What Is known, however, is thavthe peasants reacted violently against an'y changes and fiercely rejected his attempts at innovation. A somewhat disillusioned but wiser Aleksandr Mikhailovich had

no choice therefore but to revoke his cqnstitution and abandon plans for reforme The storm eventually subsided and the serfs were appeased by being 'allowed to continue to live as before. It is interesting to note
,

that this suspicious, even hostile, attitude of the peasantry vis--vis reform measures, was to prove one of the l1l1ajor obstacles to the success Qf the revolutionary movement in Russia and accounted for the disillusionment and failure of the "To the People" Movement in the later half of the Nineteenth Century. Alter ten years spent in semi-seclusion, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Bakunin, now weIl into his

forties~

married eighteen-year-old Varvara The Muravievs were a very old and

Aleksandrovna Muraviev in '1810.


1

illustrious St. Petersburg family, sVeral members of whom played a very prominent role in the Decembrist con~piracy and uprising of 18~5. His marriage caused Aleksandr Mikhailovich to re-enter society in the company of his new Wife, and for several years, Wltil the birth of their children, the BakWlinS were frequent and regular guests at the Court of the Grand ,Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna in Tver'.
1

1
j
1
1

In this eIt-

tourage, his European education, broad culture and esprit were held in high esteem and admiration, as demonstrated by the fact that BakWlin was even offered the curatorship of Kazan University, an honour which he, however, declined for 'persona! reasons. 12 The Tver' court was very
,

"

much alive with discussion, animated by sorne of the keenest minds of l2lbid., p. 16.

10

the period, and it provided a forum for the expression of new and pro1

gressive ideas imported from the West. Karamzin, a protg of Ekaterina Pavlovna, was a frequent visitor at the court, and his Notes on Old and New Russia (Zapiski
0

drevnei i novoi RossU) (1811) were written here

at the request of his patroness. 'His by-now conservative stance on the French Revolution as weIl as his endorsement of autocracy and orthodoxy in Russia, May weIl have contributed to the dampening of Aleksandr Mikhailovich's liber al , pro- Gallic sentiment: During the Napoleonic wars, the Tver' court dispersed, and it , never resumed after 1812. At this time, the first of eleven children was born to the Bakunins, and Aleksandr Mikhailovich now directed his
,1

energies towards his family and dedicated the next few years of his life to the upbringing of his children. Many of Mikhail Bakunin's friends and acquaintances were later to comment on the unique atmosphere that reigned at, Priamukhino. His father had, in effect, created an ambiance apparently isolated from the realities of' Russian existence-an idyllic and imaginative microcosm of eighteenth-century ideals and attitudes. He was able ta instill in aU of his children lofty humanistic principles, deep and lasting aesthetic values, as weIl as a profound love for nature
in the best Rousseauian tradition. 13

1
1 /'

Later. . . on in life, Mikhail de-

_ 13yenturi's claim that Bakunin and Herzen "appear to belong ta different generations" is misleading. He goes on to say: "Herzen had 'found in his own famUy and in the world of his early youth Jl direct link with the culture of the Enlightenment and the Oecembrist revoit. Bakunin, on the other hand, had to cover all this ground by' himself. Herzen was~' 'son of the Decembrist'S' ... Bakunin was a son of the age of Nicholas 1 and the atmosRhere of fear and concealedenthusiasms which oppressed the thirties" (Roots of Revolution, p. 36). The reverse of this statement would be more exact. Ba~in' s father was certainly more deeply influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, with which he had had a direct contact in Europe, than Iakovlev, and the Decembrist revoit (which was partly led by Mikhail Bakunin's maternai Wicles) had at least similarly profound impact on Bakunin, as

--

.~-- ~

- r

, Il

scribed his father in the following' terms, noting the tension between
,

the ideals of his Western education and the less-than-ideal Russian , conditions of the times: ... un homme qe 'beaucoup d'esprit, trs instruit, savant mme, trs libral, trs philanthrope, diste pas athe, mais libre penseur, en rapport aved tout ce qu'il y avait alors de clbrits phUosophiqu'es et scientifiques en Europe; et par consquent, encontradiction complte avec tout ce qui existait et respirait, de son temps, en Russie. . .. Nous fmes levs sous les auspices de mon pre, plutt la ~anire occidentale qu' la m~ire russe. -Nous vivions pour ainsi dire en dehors de la ralit russe dans un monde pJe in de sentiment et de fantaisie, mais dnu de toute ralit. 14 Priamukhino was in effect to become a -haven for progressive thinkers
c

of the next few decades. There were always large numbers of visitors, ranging from the founders of the secret DecemQrist societies in the 1820's, to university students and members of the Moscow philQsophical circles of the 30's and 40's. As Kornilov notes: '
--

[Aleksandr Mikhailovich Bakunin] totally submerged himself in his family life, striving to create in its midst a special, completely original cultural' hearth. And in reality, he suaceeded in creating a corner of highly-cultured life, ipto which subsequently gathered members of the new gerteration of the 30's, who leit a brilliant intellectual mark on the history of Russian society. 15 . who was not so directIy implicated. As we have pointed out, M. Bakunin was brought up in an Enlightenment milieu, with an education almost totally removed from Russian reality. Furthermore, Herzen~' )Vho was apprehended twice in a peripd of ten ye3;rs by the Tsarist gendarmes, had a closer and more intimate knowiedge of "the atmosphere of fear and concealed enthusiasms" than MikhaU Ba.kunin, who carried on in an atmosphere of relative liberty.
... 14 Bakounine, "Ma Vie," p. 311.
15 Kornilov, Molodye gody,
it did on Aleksandr Herzen,

xm.

.,

12
Belinsky, Stankevich, Turgenev, Botkin, Efremoy, all came to Pria(

mukhino, and here they spent many ,months engaged in passionate


(

discussion, indulged in long contemplative 'walks in the picturesque

countryside, and here they elaborated the principles of their philosophical systems which were to have such vital implications f.or Russian thought.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin was born on May 18, ,1814 (OId Style): the eidest son of the Bakunin family. yvears as the most serene and idyllic of his 11 He recalled his childhood spent in harmonious

communion with nature and in ships with his many brothers and slsters. 16 The childr.en's upbringing as very liberal, and followed the _pedagogical principles of Rousseau' s Emile. 17 Despite the family's considerable wealth and affiuence, Jife at Prial-

mukhino was one of simplicity, warmth and mutual affection; one in , which interior sentiment, "beauty of the soul" [prekrasnodu$hie], and moral virtue were highly valued. A mod of romnticism, largely
/

inspired and nourished by the reading of Goethe' s works, prevailed,


and each member was encouraged to seek the fulfilment of his or her
~

individual perscnality. The children 's education was Classical and well-rounded. ' Aleksandr Mikhailovich taught them history, geography, natural sciences,

-------------------'-----------

16B ak:unin , "Pis'mo 15 dekabrya 1837, Il MS, Priamukhinskie arkhivy, Rukopisnyi otdeI, Institut russkoi i.-t@ratury (Pushkinskii Dom), (Leningrad). Also, Bakunin, "Pis1 mo seslr~n," 4/16 dekabrya 1840, in M. A. Bakunin, Sobranie sochinenii i isem 1828-1876 poo red. Yu.M. Steklova (Moskva, 1934-35, tom 3, pp. 41-44 ereafter cited as Sobranie sochinenii). 17K orn il ov, Molodye gody, p. 36.

-.,. -

13

physics and "cosmography." 18 Together tltey read and diseussed , Rousseau, Goethe, Bossuet ~ Histoire ancie~ne), Titus Livius and Plutarch, to name but a few authors.
A series of tutors and govern-

esses instructed them in French, German, Italian and Engllsh. Mikhail had an excellent Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra and geometry, which he studied with an uncle (indeed, during one of the ffi9re destitute periods of his later lUe, he was able to maKe ends rneet by teaching mathernatics).
USiCal )

Varvara AleKsandrovna was in charge of the children's education; the girls studied l piano an~ the boys, violin. 19

.,.

The educational for~ation which the BaKunin children received at home in PriamuKhino was by any standard an excellent one. It was customary at that tirne for young noblemen ta study privately with tutors, and only rarely did sons of aristocrats attend university.

--------------------18Ibid., p. 39.

Secondary and

post-sec~dary

education was, for the most part, acquired


~

19rrhe art-form for which MiKhail feIt the greatest affinity was music. Music awaKned in him a "desire for action Il as weIl as a "revolutionary mood" (St~ldov, Zhizn' Bakunin, p. 16). He was ai ways to cherish it highly, particulariY the workS of Beethoven, which suited his stormy temperament (see Richard Wagner, M._Lffe [London, 1892]). During the revolutionary events of 1848-49 in Germany, two of his Most intimate frienc:fs, and indeed, collaborators, wre musicians: August Reichel and Richard Wagner (see Wagner, My Life). An interesting anecdote is recounted in one of his letters home (March 5, 1833), where MiKhaU describes a concert performance pf , Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, "The Pastorale," which he had attended in the company of his cO:Jsin, Marie Voeyl<ova. During the mov-emerit depicting the "Storm, Marie had glanced at Bakunin and
fi

. . . was frightened by the expression on my facE!, as 1 was listening to this music. It seems that 1 was ready to destroy the whole world ,20

.a

20BaKunin, "Pis'mo sestullVa,rvare," 5 marta 1833, in Sobranie . sochinenii, tom 1, p. 84. lfI'

.~

14

at home with private European tutors,v


,

oF

, at Cadet and MUitary

'

A~ad-

emies. A noticeable sht in attitude, -however, could he discerned ' following the Decembrist coup. Whereas the young ducated nobility had ttitherto been made up, almost extlusively, of army ofiicers, it now became much more "civilian" in outlook and character. The 30' and especially the -40's witnessed an unprecedented flocking to the . universities both by sons of the" nobility 'and of "commoners'- Il Much
,

more ~surprising, and unusuaI for the times, however, was the education received by the Baknin daughters. Many. a visitor to Priamukhino was captivated by the broad culture and the high level of intellectual formation that they displayed.
\

And it is in

~o

way amazing that most of

......
~

Bakunin's close friends, such as Stankevich, Be!insky, and Botkin, all fell in love with one or another of Bakunin's sisters, .at sorne point during their lives. 21 Another sound testimonial to the higb intellectual level of the Bakunitl sisters was their ability to grasp each 'phase of

the philosophical evolution that their brother MikhaU underwent durtng his Moscow years.
A large part of Bakunin's ~voluminous correspondence

is addressed to his sisters, and the fact that endless pages -are devoted to intricacies of metaphysical debates is a certain indication that they
IJ

were able not only to understand them, but aIso to ,tesI?ond intelligently 22 and appropriately.
,f

The aesthetic style of education that .the children were given at Priamukhino, where the ideals, of beauty, "feeling" 'and art were exl'"

to11ed, Qnly served to develop a sense of estrangement, and accentuate 21See Miliukov, Iz istorii russkoi intelligentsii, pp. 73-116.

..
(

:j

22See Kornilov for 'generous excerpts from letters written by . Varvara, Liubov, Tat'yana and Aleksandra ,Balcuninj aise "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 12 -24 oktyabrya 1838, in V. G. Belinskii, Izbrannye pis'ma t tom 1 (Moskva, 1955), pp. 176-21~ .

..

----~,

--.-

~
-~~.'-."~~--

--- - - -~': .1:-,-,- : - - -... _~

15
a . mood of isolation from the real world and its grim realities. Natural sentiment, fantasy, spontaneity of feeling, had been encouraged, and this cult of the "aesthetic" dominated Mikhail's childhood years. The

1 ,
j

closed environment of Priamukhino represented warmth, protection, shelter, and even intellectual and artistic creativity, and he would frequently return to it in times of moral crisis and turmoU. The rarefied

and romantic atmosphere fostered by Aleksandr Mikhailovich ws so far removed from and oblivious to the actual world in which
th~

children

were growing up, that a cultural "dualism" subsequently ensued which would have important repercussioris on Mikhail' s later intellectual and psychological development. 23 The questIon was further emphasized by the
). \

,-

fact that not only did there exist a cultural dualism, but also a linguistic one. Indeed, young Mikhail's nickname at home and among friends was not, as to be expected, the Russian diminutive "Misha." but rather the French "Michel." French was spoken at home, and the bulk of Michel's Thus, Upon

letters to his parents and sisters were written in French.

Michel's first language was French, closely followed by German.

leaving Priarnukhino at the age of fourteen, he recalled having had no formaI training in Russian, and no knowledge whatsoever of Russian grammaF. 24 While in no way fully accounting for the radicalization of Ba.lq.min's thought, the cultural and linguistic dualiSm fostered by h}s educati
~ay

have given rise to a profound gap between thought and

lUe. Balamin' s background would eventually clash with Russian social and political: reality, and result in first a ratial attitude of "reconcilia230ne immediately obviQUs reSult was the cosmopolibn or international nature of Bakunin's politi~s; he would participa~e lwith as much ease in the revolutionary activities of France, Germany, Italy, or Spain, ---as he did in Russia's.

24s~ine, "Ma Vie," p. 312.


/
'<

16

/'
tion with reality,
Il

followed by one of moral outrage and an impulse

to revolutionary action. '., The children 's education had indeed been in the best liberal But

tradition and had encouraged independent thought and expression.

the 1825 Decembrist revoit brought about Many changes in the Bakunin household. Aleksandr Mikhailovich's relationship witb the Decembrist

societies of the North has not, to date, been sufficiently elucidated. Family ties with the Muravievs were indeed strong and close, the two families corresponded regularly and there were the occasional visits to Priamukhino. In his autobiography ("Ma Vie"), written towards the end
~f

his lite, between 1869 and 1871, Bakunin daims that his father had
S~cieties

been a member of one of the Secret

of the North from 1817

to 1825, and that he had eve:1 been offered the leadership of this society on several occasions. 25 However, there exists no documentation
1

to support this assertion, and Bakunin' s statement appears to be pure embe!lishment of his revolutionary mystique. What is
knOWIl,

however,

is that Aleksandr Mikhailovich was consulted by the Muraviev brothers on severa! occasions, and that he emphatically rejected Pestel's position and tactics. Expressing disdain for revolutionary violence, he demonstrated a much greater concern for the problem of the enlightenment of the masses a..'1d (~r graduaI Social reform. 26 Existing records do also indicate that Aleksandr Mikhailovich did take part in discussions which led to the drafting of the charter for the of the
p. 15.
S~]Uz

Blgodenstviya (Union

commonw~)

in 1818, and held moderate views in the

..9~

25n,id.,' p. 311; Steklovalso affir)ms 'this, Zhizn' Bukw!.ina.

2~omilov, Molodye GOd!, p. 18.

17 Spase:1iy:i (Union of SalvationL 27 Furthermore, he supported A. N.


ri
1

Muraviev' s more moderate position against the revOlutionary extremism of Pestel'. 28 The execution in 1826 of the five Decembrist leaders,

1 1

including S.1. Muraviev-Apostol, a cou sin of Varvara Ale!{sanprovna, appears ta have caused profound shock and disbelief in the Bakunin . family. (Four other cousins were exiled ta Siberia.) As the death

pe!1alty had not been invoked by a Tsar since 1754, the gentry class was stu 1ned by the severity of this punishment. Nicholas' violent sup-

pression of the uprising cau3ed the rift between himself and the small in tell ec tuaI lite to
d~epe!1

considerably.

In the years following 1825,

the enlightened no!:>ility

becam'~

increasingly hostile towards the state


Ba:O.lI1~n's

and alienated from the Tsar. S:::>:ne, like

father, were shocKed

into disillusionment, b:It also frig!ltened into reaction and conservatism. Mikhail was only eleven years old at the time of the revoit, but he unquestionably must have been impressed not O:lIy with the drama of
th~
l

j
.'

events, but also deeply

mark~

by the agitatio:l in his hou se, Jince

members of his vry family were directly implicated in the affair.


It was
ine'/itahl~

that the younger generation should develop a


Il

"cult of the Decembrists,

and IO:lg cherish the cause of the "revoluBut considering

tio:lary martyrs" so ruthlessly crushed by Nicholas 1.

the very y<J.lng age of both Balrunin and Herzen at this time, it appears 27The Union of Salvation was renamed The Union of the Commo:lweal in i18. The change also in~olved the adoptim-of a new decentralized organizational structure. Among the founders who were related ta the BalWnins were: Aleksa:ldr a.,d ~ikita MJraviev, Sergei and Matvei Muraviev-Apostol. The Muravievs had also bee:t Masons until the government ukaz banning all secret societies in 1822.

2~orllilov, Molo:lye g~L p. 18.

18

somewhat simplistic a,d lalve to presume (as

S~viet

historians are wont

to do) that the Decembrist revoit aWakened them immediately' to their true vocatio:ls as revolutionaries. The effect must crrtainly have been profound and dramatic, but
on~y

at a later date could these early im"

i
1

pressions find a place and a significance wtthin a fully-formed revolutionary idiom and attitude. After a necessary period of intellectual incubation, they would later crystallize into an Bakunin and Herzen' s radical theory. Unlike AlekSandr Herze:l, who
~as in~erent

element of

1
always
convinc~

of his world-

historical mission and irnporta:1ce, and consequently began recording, at an early date, his youthful impressions and intellectual genealogy, B akun in,

UIlfo~\:atelY,

made no such attempt to chronicle his intellectual

development. More07er, there is pitifully little material on Bakunin's early years in Priamukhino, .and it is only when he leaves the family estate in 1828 and begins his
pro~ific ;

correspondence that one can form ,

Sorne idea of his character 3."1d reconstruct his intellectual formation.

Herzen, for example, dates

hi~iCal

awakening from the revulsion,


upl

anger and sense of betrayal that he feIt

hearing of the executio!'l of

the Decembrists. 29 ,When one considers that he was o'11y thirteen or fourteen at the time, and was convinced for

O'ler

a year that "the


011,

purpose of the uprising was ta place Constantine

the throne, ,,30 his

statement leaves O:le somewhat sceptical. Although drawn from personal notes
anj

diaries, My Past and

Tho~ght'!
~

was written much later in lUe

(from 1852), and one must attribute such statements as the ahove to
29A. J. Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy, Il S~ranie sochinenii v vos'mi tQmakh, tom 4 i 5 (M:J3kva, ,!975), pp. 52-80.
o
\J

30Malia, Alexander Herzen, p. 33.

,r

19 Herzen 's flair for' drama and effect as well as to his irresistible tendency to romanticize accounts of his life and struggles. Bakunin's recollection of the event is somewhat more prosaic th an Herze:1's. If 1825 did not signal the date of his political awakening, he does recall in retr03pect, and much to his chagrin, that it did mark a reversal in his father's pedagogical principles: . . . effray de cette dfaite du libralisme [il] changea de systme. n s'tudia depuis cette poque faire de nous des sujets fidles du tsar. C'est dans ce b:It qu'ag de quatorze ans je fus envoy en 1828 SaintPtersbourg pour e:1trer da..'1s l'Ecole d'artillerie. 31 While A. M. Bakunin never succeeded in making a "faithful subject of the Tsar" "out of his son, it was in this hope that young Michel was despatched to St. Petersbu rg in
Novemb~r
~

1828, in order ta ..prel

pare for the entrance examinatio'1s of the Officers' Cadet S~~.-- After his protected and isolated childltood spen t in Priamukhino, Michel' s arrivaI in the capital furnished his first real CO'1tact with Russian society and with Russian life. For someone steeped in sentimeRtalism and so
"

'<"

'"

i' . i
1

long preoccupied with the cuHivatio:1 of his "sehne Seele," it must have been- a brusque aWake:1ing indeed. The strict military discipline and spartan regimen imposed on the young cadets proved none too congenial to young Bakunin's more esoteric tastes. He later reeorded his initial impressions:
/"-

------"

From my native world of Priamukhino 1 suddenly found myself in an absolutely new and stra.'1ge world. Sinee that time, Prlamukhino became a M.:!cca for me, towards which strove aIl my deSires, all my movements, all my thoughts during the be$t moments of my life in St. Petersburg. 32
)

31Bakounine, "Ma Vie, ': "'P. 312.

32~akunin, "Pis'mo otsu, sochinenii, tom 2, p. 106.

fi

15 dekabrya 1839, in Sobranie

20 From letters to his parents and sisters, it is evident that


(

Michel took his studies very seriously, and was particularly attracted to the fields of
histo~

and philosophy. As before he also displayed a

remarkable aptitude and skill in mathematics. 33 .However, it is made' very clear from the start that Cadet Bakwlin never manested any particular enthusiasm for the military scie:tces; he expressed nothing but contempt for the narrow-mindedness and regimentation of army le. Yet he was not completely immune to the chauvinism and patriotism fostered by the military establishment. Reacting to the news of the Polish, insurrection, for example, the future pan-slavist and anarchist wrote his parents the following letter in which he included verses from Pushkin's Klevetnikam Rossii (Tp the Slanderers against the Poles: These verses are charming, are they not, dear parents? Full of fire and true patriotism. This is how a Russian must feel. Pushkin initially entitled them: 'Verses on a Speech by General Lafayette,' but the censors changed that and put: 'To the Slanderers of Russia. t That oid Lafayett~ is a great wind-bag. After having been one of the principal actors in the American Revolution and in both French Revolutions, he w!shes to rouse the Russians. But no, the Russians are not Frenchmen, they love their cowltry, they adore their Tsar, his will is law to them. There would not be one among' them who would hesitate to sacrice his dearest interests, and sven his le, for his well-being and for the well-b,eing of his co:.mtry. 34
1

of~ussia),

directed

Military academies were undoubtedly breeding-groWlds for Ruasian chauvinism, but nonetheleaa, the fact that Bakunin could be reduced to the expression of such rabid natiopalism aeems all the more ironie in 33Steklov, Zhizn' Bakunina, p. 20.

"Pis'mo roditelyam," 20 sentyabrya 1831, in Sobranie soehinenii, tom 1, p. 52.

3~akunin,

..

21 that one of his most passionate causes would later be the liberation of Poland from the "canaille Romanov." Throughout most of his life abroad he would fight indefatigably for the Polish cause, and this letter would have caused him endless embarrassment had he realized that it had been preserved for posterity. 35

In January 1833 Bakunin was promoted to the rank of Officer in


the Tsar's artillery. 36 This promotion entaile? greater freedom and mobility, since he no >nger had to live at the despised Academy. However, his curriculum still involved attending officers' classes for an additional year. Michel moved into a private apartment in the house of his aunt and uncle, the Nilovs, and began to enjoy his newly-acquirea sense of independence . . . . for the fiJost time, after such a long period of complete downfall, awakened in 'me once again the movement of spiritual life. 37 350ne of Bakunin's btes noires with regard to the Polish cause, and the Poles' distrust of him, was the rumour (initially published by Marx) persistently repeated by his political enemies, that he was a Russian spy and Tsarist agent. This le~r would certainly have provided fodder for their cannons, but, to or knowledge, it was never published during Bakun in , s lifetime. In the "Notice biographique" of Michel Bakounine, Oeuvres, 5 tomes (Paris, 1895), vol. II, p. 12, James Guillaume writes: "Vers l'ge de quinze ans, le jeune Michel entra l'Ecole d'artillerie Ptersbourg; il y passa trois ans. . .. C'tait au lendemain de l'crasement de l'insurrection polonaise: le spectacle de la Pologne terrorise agit puissament sur le coeur du jeune officier, et contribua lui inspirer l 'horreur du despotisme." This is sheer fan ta sy , as our documentation has shawn. 36He was promoted to the rank of praporshchik or ensign, Steklov, Zhizn' Bakunina, p. 21; see aIso Bakunin, "Pis'mo roditelyam i sestram," 17 yanvarya 1833, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, pp. 7072. _ 37Bakunin, "Pis' mo otsu," 15 dekabrya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 108.

'

- -. --

-..- --------22

During the next few months Mifhel. appears to have Wldergme a


r

romantic transformation undet the influence 6f Schiller, simar to the


1

experiences that Herzen and ogarev were undergoing. 38 The tone of his letters changed, and acquired an exalted character: feeling became intensied, sentiment elevated to a le-generating principle. And what better way to externalize this exquisite sensation than by sharing it \vith another
'~schne

,J

Seele"?

The object of Michel' s newly-found exaltation

was a distant cousin, Maria Alekseevna Voeykova. Together they indulged in endless discourse on the spiritual aspects of love, on "fulfillment of the individual, " and preoccupied themselves with the development of their inward beings. The two read poetry, listened to "music, and discussed the higher meaning of lUe and of art. Every possible variation of sentiment was scrupulously analysed: Nous avons dfini l'amour, l'exaltation, le sentiment et la sensibilit, que nous distinguions fort bien de la sensiblerie et de mille autres choses. 39
In effect, the 1830' s saw the flowering of German Romanticism

in Russia. If the previous generation (i. e., that of the Decembrists) had been raised on the French Philosophes,40 the "idealistSr' of the 30's, on the other hand, were deeply immersed in German Romanticism, Schiller, Goethe, Hoffmann, Schelling, and later Hegel. This turning away from the ideas of the Enlightenment and from French political radicalism, 38Gertsen, "Bvloe i dumy, " tom 4, pp. 143-157. 39Cited in Kornilov, Molodye godY, p.

51.

en ereafter

",- ------A
~'"

23 and looking to Germany for ideological leadership was a process begw1 in the mid- to late twenties by the Liubomudry~l The Liubomudry had

..

actively sought to propagate the ideas of German Romanticism and idea:" list philosophy in Russian intellectual circles, and its contemplative and introspective aspect seemed to find Immediate response in the m90d of resignation and despair which followed the suppression of the Decembrist uprising. The diffusion of German philosophy in Russia corresponded to a period where any practical, political action was entirely Impossible. 42 German philosophy

engend~r{a mood whereby ~tisin

and contemplation were able to thrive; intellectual energies were now directed inwards, away from external reality, to the individual personality, and to the more ethereal realms of pure thought, fantasy and imagination. 4:f German romanticism encouraged the transition away from interest in c.oncrete action and politics to the more intangible domains of moral s, aesthetics and metaphysics. The diffusion of idealism in Russia coincided with a period of forced political inactivity: . . the defeat of the Decembrists in Russia provoked the same'1o.'mu9dying of the intellectual wate,rs that the disappoint~g outcome of the French Revolution had provoked in Europe as a whole. The generation of the aftermath in Russia, lilte that of a few years earlier in the West, was driven to seek the explanation of . reality no longer clear and simple in the sinuosities of metaphysics rather than on the straight highway of empiricism. In their search for an explanation of life
1

"-

41An archaic Russ~an derivation of the Greek "philosopher." 42See Malia, Alexander Herzen, hapter V. See G. Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique en Russie, 1830-1917 (La. Haye, 1974), pp. 5-8; D. 1. Chiz~evski, Gegel' v Rossti (Paris; 1939), tPP. 7-8; Gershenzon, Istoriia molodoi Rossit, p. 6. 43

-,

.,

...

24 they turned inevitably to the school of frustration, Germany, just as their prede~~ssors had tumed to the school of action, France. Indeed, the crushing of the Decembrists did not destroy the striving . after politicaI liberty and reform, nor merely drive it underground, into secrecy and hiding, but rather, drove it upward, into the "stratosphere. ,,45 Conversely, the subsequent return to French innuenc~, to
,

the socialism of Saint... Simon, four-ieT Uld ultimately, to Proudhon in


f, ......"

,,~I

! J

the late 40' s, can be understo~ as a disenchantment with the political passivity and lethargy of German idealism. It symbolized a definite realization of the need for practical, positive action. Bakunin, however, was to use Hegelian philosophy (as Marx would aIso do) as his instrument for political praxis and revolutionary activity, as we shall examine in a later section. As we saw, Michel was a typical, exuberant product of this romanticism which was then in full swing in St. Petersburg, and both he and Marie Voeykova were much more infatuated with the idealization of love and sentiment than with any of its more concrete, and mundane, . implications. The roman came, to a hait when a worried Madame Voeykova, suspicious of all this "exaltation of sentiment," unceremoniousIy packed' off the "divine Marie" and hastUy left St. Petersburg. 46 . Fortunately, Michel was not left to pine away for very long, and in the summer of 1833 his brigade was despatched to a military training camp
)
,

,
1

for artillery manoeuvres. Bored and lonely in this desolate spot, he

4~alia, Alexander Herzen, p. .rr 1.


45 Ibid., pp. 43-44. 46 Bakunin , "Pis'mo roditelyam '. " 28 Marta 1833, sochinenii, tom 1, pp. ~5-98.

1.

iD

Sobranie

1f

1 ,
1

_ _ ,lI .. t . .....

25

here came across the philosophical works of Venevitinov, which he claimed had a most profound effect on his intellectual orientation. 47 The fact that Ba1runin was deeply inspired by the Russian poet and philosopher, Venevitinov, is of great importance and merits ample consideration, for it constitutes his first contact and strong attraction to idealist philosophy. D. Ve?evitinoV, the driving
~pirit

.
and most eloquent member of

the Liubomudry, 48 sought to give art a religious and myst,ic tint, in the manner of Novalis. and Schlegel. His poetry and essays, such as Skulptura, zhivopis' i
ITIl zyka

~SculPture,

Painting and Music), represent

an attempt to establish the foundations for a national art-form in Russia, as well as to explore the nature of poetic inspiration and artistic c reativity. Interestingly, Venevitinov seems to be the only Russian philosopher-poet deeply influenced by Hlderlin, and echoes the latter's idealJzation ol, and nostalgia for, the aesthetic harmony of Classical Greece. His Pis'mo k Grafine N.N" (Letter to Countess N.N.), which Bakunin read, is a series of lectures exposing the basic principles of German philosophy, and as such provided Michel with an excellent introduction to idealist metaphysics. In this letter, Venevitinov sought to define the nature of philosophy and its, fWlctions, and he poses essential

.
;'
i

questions concerning the possibility' of knowledge.


'

..

The letter is essen-

tially a summary of the views of Fichte and Schelling, as they had been

47Bakunin , "Pis'mo otsu," 15 dekabrya 1837, 'in Sobranie sochinenii,.. tom 2, pp. 109 ff.
C

48Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossii, p. 43.

26
c

expounded by Professor Davydov of Moscow University. 49

The "dramatic transformation" of which Bakunin speaks upon discovering Venevitinov's poetry and philosophical Letter, marks a signicant stage in his developmenl, and must b~ understooq as( a necessary step in his conversion to German metaphysics. Together with one of my comrades, with whom Il was sharing a tent, 1 began to read the poems of the late Venevitinov, as weIl as his letter to a countess. That marvellous night, that sky covered with stars, the fiickering and mysterious brilliance of the moon, and the verses of that lofty, noble poet moved .me completely. AlI this fUled me with a sad, painful beatitude. 0, 1 was pure and holy at that moment, 1 was totally permeated by a feeling of eternity and of ardent love, of powerful love for the entire wonderful, divine, world .... 50, The "intellectual revolution" that Bakunin was to speak of during the ensuing months can directly be related to his "discovery" of and infatuation with philosophy in the summer of 1833. How ta account for this? Although 1 know that there is a reason, 1 can 't explain it precisely. The past month has witnessed an intellectual revolution in me. 1 considered my inclinations, my feelings, my aptitudes, and reached, it appears, a definite decision regarding my future and my mode of lUe ~ 51~
1 haven 't written in a long time.

4~oyr, La philosophie et le problme national, p. 211. In fact, a large majority of the yolmg Russian intelligentsia, both of the twenties and thirties, rarely read German phUos6phy in the original, relying predomlnantly on the few Russian translatioQs available, as weIl as on French secondary sourc~ and 'Commentaries, the most popular of which were the studies by Victor Cousin and Barchou de Penhoen; see, for additional information, Koyr, p. 181, who notes how German idealism came to Russia Yi! France.
,"\

50Bakunin, "Pis'mo otsu, sochinenii, tom 2, p. 109.


,

fi

~ d~kabrya

1837, in Sobranie

51Bakunin, "Pis'mo ses tram, " 25 ynvarya 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 122.

27

The twenty-year old Bakunin goes on to


'?

~xpress

a disdain for

the contemporary mores and a feeling of "world-weariness": 1 never feIt any particular inclinations toward lUe in high society. 1 always feIt fooltsh and awkward there, never knowing what to say. 1 thought, however, that this was due to inexperience and to a faIse shyness resulting from this inexperience. 1 made one final attempt; 1 decided to overcome this: 1 entered into high society, 1 threw myself into it, and what did 1 find there? An awful emptiness. The diversions and pleasures which deli ght\1 others left me cold, ... bored me to death .... He had become disenchanted with the secular world and with the aristocratic
Il

society" of St. Petersburg which he found superfieial, vapid,

and hollow. Consequently, he began ta search for a means to fiU that

~Oid

in his life, 53, and

ar~ived

at the realization that he possessed within

himself exceptional though yet undeveloped intelleetual capacities. At the same time, Michel aeknowledged that he felt an irrepressible attraction for nauka. 54 This important letter reveals :sakunin's naseent awareness of a sense of mission, of a h1stor1eal role, akin to the famous Il Hannibalic Oath l1 taken a few years

e~lier

by Herzen and bgarev: 55 .

1 finally reaehed a decision, and as soon as 1 reached 1t, a swe'et warmth entered my heart. 1 threw myself , into sc ience, 1 threw myself into 1t with passion and this has benefited me. 1 feel that 1 am being reborn; 1 feel grown up in my own eyes. Up until the present, 1 CIlly lived an exterior lUe, whereas 1 now wish to form an interior existence. . .. It is only in the knQ,wledge of nature that 1 perceive happiness on earth .... ~6 52Ibid., pp. 122-123. 53Ibid. 54Literally, "science," philosophy or knowledge.
5,5 aertsen , "Byloe i dumy," tlfm 4, pp. 72-80.
( j

.. 56aakun in , "Pis'mo sestra~," 25 yanvarya 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 123-124.

-..

-~

~~-

~--

._------i!

-~

.
Bakunin's growing awareness of his sense of mission nd conviction in his calling so early in life is truly remarkable and reveals exceptional ... strength of character: He categorically described the purpose of his
existenc~

in these exalted terms:


... .q.. \

1 am a man of circumstance, and the hand of God has traced within my heart the following sacred words, which have marked my entire destiny: 'he shaH not live for himself alone.' 1 want to realize this wonderful . future. 1 wish to become worthy of it. To be in a position to sacrice everything for this sacred goalthis is my only ambition! 57

An9 again:
Henceforth, only my love for humanity, my faith in its progress, and friendship, must sustain me. But really, is this fate not a wonderful one? . . To live for one's brothers, to point out to them the' road to truth, to tear out from nature its secrets, in order to disc~ose them.l to humanity, to repress matter and habits by the sheer strength of one's idea, -really ls this not a wonderful vocation? Ah, once \ain 1 repeat to you: my ambition knows no other goal!
.'

As Koyr points out with acuity, idealism through the counter:

ak~in'S discovery of post-Kantian writing~itinOV was a most decisive en-

. . . travers lui [Venevitinov J, une lueur ~an~ de l'esprit de Schelling tombe sur Bakounine. Cela .suffit pour l'enflammer. n aspire dsormais la 'science', il veut se plonger dans les mystres de la nature, dans , , les profondeurs de la vie intrieure, Un vagu~ 'systeme,' conception du monde o des ides philosophiques re ... joignent des ides religieuses et mystiques, ou plus exactement thosophiques, s'bauche dans son esprit. La vie de fa nature, ainsi que la vie des hommes lui . apparaissent comme une aspiration vers Dieu .... Lorsque Bakounine c!couvre la philosophie, il est
57"PiS'JIlO sestram Beyer, " 7 maya 183) in SobrfUlie sochinenii. tom 1; p. 169. ,58Ibid., pp. 170-171.
...

- ~'

"

,-, . -'----,' ',"ft""'''--,"",,:'....._ .....

officier d'artilterie. Rencontre dcisive: pour ce caractre inflexible et entier, plus que pour quic que, la philosophie est affaire ~e vie, justement parcequ'elle es' affaire de pense. 5
In addition to the siren song of nauka, Bakunin' s
ri

intellectual

transformation" may also be partially attributed to the influence of his } uncle, Nikolai Nazarevich Muraviev, to whom he became exceptianally close in 1834. N. N. Mur avi ev, a retired Senator and former Governor

of Novgorod, lived on bis estate in Pokrovskoe, on the outskirts of St.


"

Petersburg.

Baltunin travelled there daily and spent Many long hours

engaged in conversation with Nikolai Nazarevich, as weIl as with a cousin, Sergei, the younger brother of those two Muravievs who had been directly implicated in the Decembrist mQVement. Although the "cult of the Decembrists" was then very much alive (especially in the military academies to which the rebels had once belonged and where f1secret literature"-i. e., sorne of the poetry of Pushkin, Ryleev and Baratynsky-circulated), and Bakunin had undeniably been exposed to
'.~ ~

."

its romantic

Il

aura" and appeal, the memory of the heroes had become

idealized over the years and accounts of their achievements somewhat mythologized. Thr'ough bis personal contact with the Muraviev family,

Michel 'must have, iilevitably been granted access

~a

host of detaiIS_,

hitherto only hinted at, and Many vague impressions on the actual social and political goals of the Northern societies clarified for him. Though none of bis letters of this period contain any explicit-references to the Decembrists, this was probably due to the ubiquitous and heavy-handed
II

<:.

censorship of tte times (many had been

~prised

for lesser offences).

59~exandre Koyr, Etudes sur l'histoire de la pense philosophig ue en Russie (Paris, 1959), p. 129.

.~- ,~"""'-"---~'" -'

30

.(

The Muravievs, especially, understood the nature of their precarious situation.


It would have been very foolish indeed for Balnmin to have
OWll.

jeopardized not only the position of his relatives but aIso his

However, his letters home do desc,fibe his frequent visits to Pokrovskoe, and long discussions with

ms uncle and cousin, which centered around

such alluded themes as Russian "history," "statistics, ,,60 philosophyand literature. 61 The tane of his correspondence also reflects a deep intellectual restlessness; Ba.kunin finally seems to have taken notice of the reality surrounding him. Russian history, Russian literature, Russian

issues sparked an interest in him, undoubtedly due to the influence of the politically-informed Muravievs. At the same time, however, his attraction to metaphysics persisted; he beganl to formulate general philosophical questions, on knowledge, on existence, on nature and on reality. 62 However vague these

questions may appear at this point, they nevertheless reveal keen insight, a voracious craving for knowledge, as weIl as a definite predilection for philosophie al enquiry. Under the guidance of Nikolai

Nazarevich and of Sergei Nikolaievich, bath of whom had an active interest in philosophy,63 Michel threw himself with a passi into his readings and set about on the formation of his "tre intrieur." Notes taken at this time during the study of Koch's Tableau des rv91utions64
i

60"Statistics" in Russi~ at that time included geography and political economy.


61B a.lrunin, "Pis'mo sestram," 25 yanvarya 1834, in Sobranie sOfi{hinenii, tom 1, p. 125. I!l

~1

6~id.

6~ornilov, Malodye gody, p. 60.


64salamin, "Konspekti po istarii," 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 127.

--

---------

31

demonslrate a high level of intellectual skill and

analytic~ '~der.tand

ing of the problems of historiography and philosophy of history. Historical process, reason in history, teleology and progress are examined by a sharp mind and already reveal the colossal intelligence of which Belinsky and Herzen would later speak with bOt.llld1ess admiration. 65 Indeed, Michel was so enthused by his discovery of philosophy and of history, and became
50

wrapped up in his personal readings,

that he inevitably fell behind in his school work at the Military Academy. For this "lack of interest in his studies" or for other unknown reasons~6 before the end of the academic term and his
~raduation

from the officers'

class, Bakunin was transferred to a remote artillery brigade in the province of Minsk.
In addition, he was to be clEtnied any promotion for

a period of three years, and deprived of all leaves of absence. 67 Leaving St. Petersburg, the Military Academy, and persona! debts to the tune of 1900 Roubles behind, Bakunin set out, in early 1834 for the far western regions of the Russian Empire.
,,\...

The accumulation of

debts was to be one of f'Bakunin's life-long habits, and his cavalier attitude with respect to repayment wood not endear him to Many an unsuspecting creditor; it would make him Many bitter enemies throughout his career and his political foes would consistently use this against him. 65Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy," tom 5, p. 124; V. G. Bel in skii, "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu, Il 15-21 noyabrya 1837, in Izbrannye pis'ma, tom l, pp. 100-111. 66Curiously, Bakunin himself never mentions the exact reason for his dismissal from the Artillery school either in his autobiography, in his letters, or in his Ccnfessi (perhaps out of vanity?). Kornilov attribtItes it to an incident wherebY Ensign BaJamin spoke "insolently" to Ge~eral Sukhozanet, the head of the Acad,emy (Molodye gody, p. 82).

'"

67M. A. Bakunin, Confession, 1851 (Paris, 1974), p. 54.

This nonchalant approach to finances was

perhaps~e

last link testying

to Bakunin's aristocratie background long after he had both formally and psychologically broke-n with that class. He continuously borrowed frorn

frienls, from newly-formed acquaintances, and even from perfect strangers, whom he was able to charm with his charisrnatic personality. Throughout his revolutlonary career, he

w~ able

to find contributors
f,

to finance even the most outlandish schemes, with never any intention of reimbursing~. Bakunin dismissed pecuniary affairs as "zhitel'skie

melochi" (worldly pettiness and trifles)68 with the "insouciance" of a "gr3l)d seigneur et un souverain mpris de l'argent; jamais il n'aquerra le sens des valeurs matriefies. ,,69 68 V. O. Polonskii, Zhizn' Mikh,aila Bakunina (Leningrad, 1926),
p. 24.

69H E Kaminski, Bakounine. la vie d'un rvolutionnaire (Paris, 1938), p. 22: For further descriptions of Bakunin's attitude towards money and debts, see Belinskii, "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 16 avgusta 1837, and "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 12-24 oktyabrya 1838, in Izbrannye pis'ma, tom 1. Belinsky, {who was also frequently in finanC4tal difficulty, good-naturedly blamed Baltunin' s irresponsibility \on his absentmindedness with regard ta social conventions and disdain for traditional bourgeois values: 1 even unders d your frivolity and your ease in borrowing; their sourc is your ideal 'Beautul soul' [prekrasnodushie-Schlls li keit. For you to ask' someone, 'do you have an~/ oney?' is the sarne thing as askbg, 'do 1 you have an~~wood-ChiPs?', and you take money just as easily as you ~WOod-ChiPS. However, you also share and distribute it s il it were wood-chips. 1 can't ever remember that, . ,g ~oubles in your poeket, you were not immediate~In'epared to give me five, and if 1 had expressed an extreme need, to give me the rest also, except for a few kopecks for tobacco ;md coach fare. . . . Moreover, having money, you did not wait for me to come to you and request some, but always asked 'Visyacha, do you need money?' And you gave me that which you had borrowed from others or which you had earned from your lessons.'

r'

Belinskii, ibid., p. 197.

Part of the debt was paid grudgingly by his father and by his relatives in St. Petersburg. However, large amounts were never paid back, and when Bakunin departed for Berlin in 1840, he was still being pursuM by angry creditors. Never having been particularly
k~en

33

on army duties, Bakunin

was now more than ever hostile to military existence, having to serve in a lonely and deserted outpost on the PoUsh frontier of the Tsarist empire. Spring and part of the summer of 1834 were spent near the village of Molodechno, and in the faU, the brigade moved on to its winter quarters in Kartus-Beriozka-, in the Grodno Province. From

here, Bakunin's brigade was sent on severa! assignments for manoeuvres to Vilnius in Lithuania. But, in the interim, he was somehow able to obtain a dispensation and make a visit to Priamukhino during the summer months. 8Genes erupted between Michel and his father, who had ooly just learned of his son's disgraceful dismissal from the Military academy as weB " as of his financial irregularities. Adding insult to injury was the fact

f
1 !
!

that}le had been informed of all this not directly by Michel himself, but from N. N. Muraviev. Michel further infuriated his father during his visit by waging the notori6us "struggie for the liberation of Liubov,
Il

which struck a discordant note in the family tradition of peace and harmony. On hearing that Aleksandr MikhaiJovich was attmpting to marry off his eldest daughter to a man for whom she did not particularly care, Michel, with his exalted cception of human passion and infused with the ideals of romanticism, waged a relentless campaign against the marriage in bold defiance of patriarchal authority. He openly challenged

his father's IIdespotism," pulled distant and near relatives into the

34 family scandaI (urging them to send letters of protest), and suceeded in dividing the 1amily into two feuding camps. IDtimately, Bakunin senior

was forced to admit defea.t and the engagement was called off. This scenario repeated itself when a similar attempt was'""1'hade second eldest daughter.
t~

marry off the

Michel, by now a specialist in family rebellion,

embarKed on the "struggle for the liberation of Varvara" which he conducted with considerable energy for several years. Minor as these

incide~

appear, they nevertheless constitute BaKUnin's first active campaign for a cause in which he passio:1ately believed. The relentless energy he demonstrated in waging it (e. g., bombarding both sides with

l~ters for over a year), 70 reveals something about the temperament-if

twenty~page

not about the "romanticism" -of the future agitator as weIl as the zeal with which he was to fight for principles to which he adhered. 71 70See his eorre~pondence for the year 1834 in So'branie_~~_hinenii

.!..pjsem, tom 1, pp. 120-159.


f

71The influence of the Romantic movement on BaKunin is amply demo:lstrated in the following passages, as weIl as that of his poetic eO:1ception of love as the highest and most saered ideal of the human spirit: We have been created for lofty, spiritual, happiness, for happiness founded on love. Love is the main reason for life, the principal law of harmonie relations reigrting in nature, . . . life without love is reptilian . . . . AlI objects, each plant, every flower speaKs to me in the language of love; in each of them 1 perceive a , particl,llar idea, a particular feeling, harmoniZing with the feeling of unlimited love and with the high ideal of the all-mighty reason of the enUre world! Then 1 myself\burn with an ardnt, a pure, self-sacrificing love, with love for you, my dear friends, with love for all humanlty. Balrun in, "Pis'mo rodnym," 22 iyunya 1834, in obr~ie sochinen!!, tom 1, pp. 132-133. For the influence of Russian Romanticism on other members of the lJellig!lntsia s~e, MiliUkOV, Iz-lstorii russkoi inJ!!lligMSii-; Kornilov, Molodye gody; E. H. Carr, The RO!,I13-ntic Exite,.!. iddle~ex, England, 1933); Gershenzo~, ll!toriia molodoi ].2sii; PereE.i~!a N_ikol~La VladiIl!.trovieh~..~ltevieha3 183Q..-J84_0, re:laktsiya i izdanie AleKseia StanKevicha (Mo3KVa, 1914). .

1
1 ,
1

1 1

1 !
1

'i--~::"

35
Leaving behind the strained atmosphere of Priamukhino, BakWlin returned ta his army post. He now more than ever found barracks lUe ....

intolerable and, feeling himself overcome by a deep depression and ennui in this deserte~ and "God-forsaken" posting, he sank into a mood of profound apathy. 72 Herzen described Bakwtin' s state of mind at this time: ... he grew farouche and unsociable, lett off performing his duties, and would lie for whole days together on his bed wrapped in a sheepskin coat. 73 His letters hotOO reflect this despair and loneliness: Etefnal silence~ eternal sorrow, eternal melancholythese are the companions of my solitude! And if the delight of a pure joy shines through and momentarily illuminates the gloom which pervades my soul, 1 must suppress it within me. No one can hear me! . .. 1 am alone! Separated from you by a distance of 1200 Versts, surrounded by strangers, who are incapable of understanding me, who se feelings and whose thoughts differ from mine and whose modes of lUe are intolerable ta me, 1 am absolutely in solitude. 74 Not one ta remain inactive for very long, however, Baknin -sought for a means to fill the emptiness which had pervaded his existence. This he found in intense study and readings. period in his life: The need for knowledge was my salvation. At that time, tl,lere reigned in my souI an abso1,tIte emptiness, a total religious indilferentism; the most'~acred moral laws were for me nothing more than formaI, conditional laws 72Bakunin, "Pis'mo rodnym," 22 iyunya 1834, 'in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 134. Ii' 73Gertsen, "Byloe i' dumy," 10m 5, p. 124. '14" Pis' mo roditelyam," 4 oktyabrya 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 141; "Pt~'m6 sestram, " 5 oktyabrya 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom l, p. 146.
o

He later recalled this difficult

36

of social existence ... through my own fault, 1 was transferred to Lithuania, and ther my morale grew even worse. A vile inactivity, apathy, and a cold indifference towards everything around me became for me a sec9fld nature, and 1 would have been 10st if within me there had not subsisted a single sacred, divine spark, and this spark was my \.Ulconseious, almost instinctive, thirst for knowledge. This was my salvation; it smouldered within me for a long time Wlder the cover of a vile, apathetie sensuality, but never died out. Gradually, it grew brighter and finally blazed up into a huge fire, which awakened in me botll faith and love, and all the sacred sentiments of ~'... this thirst for knowledge was truly my only ~~ion, and to eut myself off from it would be the same as to eut myself off from life itself. 75 Michel embarked upon a veritable project of self-improvement. His readings at this time included French, German, Polish, Russian language and grammar, mathematies, physics, polities and history (his letters contain references to, among other historical works, De l'histoire de la restauration et des causes gui ont amen la chute des

Bourbons, by M. de Capefigue). These constituted his "practical" studies. The remainder of his time was spent studying philosophical
1 ,

works, in both French and German. 76 Bakunin's letters already hint

at his desire to leave the army in order to dedieate himself exelusively


to learning.: 7 His language becomes imbued with such terminology as "dvizhenie dukha" ("movement, activity of the soult' and contain references to a "stremlenie k dukhovnomy. zhizni
lVnutrenn~"

("the striving

75Bakunin, "Pis'mo rooitelyam," 24 marta 1840, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 398. 76 Bakunin, "Pis'mo roditelyam," 19 dekabrya 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, P. 154. 77 1hid., p. 155.

'."~

1
37

,
(

taward the spiritual, towards the interior lile").'l6 Bakunin was begin~

ning ta feel surging within himself ir1-epressible energy, forces fighting ,. ta bll'W1leashed, practically bursting out of him: 1 am still young; passions, increased by repression, are raging inside af me; spiritual farces are boiling within, requiring nourishment, and all this must . L remain in inactivity and be ,limited ta dreams only, which are unable ta satisfy the emptiness of my heart. . .. Everything in me requires activity, motion. . .. Powerful mavements of the spirit, vainly struggling against the cold and insurmaWltable obstcles af the physical world, sometimes bri ng me to exhaustion, inducing astate af melancholy, ta which, hawever, 1 do not give in. At. those times, 1 perfunctarily begin to read a book; 1 became absorbed in my reading and thus wrestle myself from ' the painful state af insensibility and disillusianment. 79 The tragedy of the generatian of the 30's and 40's, certainly af men like B akun in, was that such dynamic energetic individuals made

'd

for action, movement, were thwarted in their efforts ta translate their ideals into concrete reality; they saw their drives frustrated and reduced to, a state of inertia by the repressive measure of the Nicholaevan rgime. For figures like Bakunin, Herzen and Belinsky, this energy and creative impulse had to be re-channelled (somewhat paradoxically) into abstract, metaphysical thought. At least temporarily, the urge to action was sublimated in the realm of metaphysics.
l

1 1
j
1 ,
j

AlI this introspection, solitude and auto-analysis confirmed in . Bakunin's mind his sense of mission, and he insistently wished to con-' secrate himself to his new calling in life. He feIt changes taking place
7811 Pis' mo Sergeiyu Nikolaevichu Muravievu," yanvar' 1835, in _Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 159. 01
( 1

79" Pis' mo "roditelyam," 19 dekabrya 1834; in Sobranie tom 1, p. 154.

so~binenii.

.,

38

within himself: ... sudden upheavals, overturning my way of thinking and feeling. This philosophy ... can oilly contribute to my improvement. . . The past year has revolutionized the enUre system of my interior being. 80 . During his stay in Vilnius, Bakunin was able to observe Polish
\,

society and the tsarist repression of Poland at close range.

Contrary

to Bakwlinist hagiography,81 Michel did not lmmediately become sensitive to the nationalist aspirations of the Poles (he believed, for'

\ example, that Lithuania had more common bonds with Russia than witll

Poland)~2 Rather, his views express th~t distinct Great Russian


chauvinism typical of his aristocratie dass. The newly-formed ac,quaintance of yet another Muraviev, Mikhail Nikolaevich (brother of

Sergei in St. Petersburg), then governor of Grodno, and later given the sobriquet of "Hangman of Poland, JI unquestionably contributed a certain anti- Polish sentiment. In a letter to Sergei Muraviev, Bakunin
~ven

retracted sorne liberal statements that he had voiced, in a dis-

cussion with the former, in connection with the Polish question. 83 One must attribute this highly cpnservative position to severa! factors. As during his Siberian exile, much later in lUe, when he was

to come under the influence of still another Muraviev uncle, Bakunin underwent a phase of excessive patriotism and right-wing views. In a 80"Pis'mo sestram," 5 oktyabrya 1834, in Sobranie sochinenii. tom 1, p. 147 and "Pis'mo Sergeiyu Nikolaevichu Muravievu," yanvar' 1835, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 159. 81See, for exarnple, Steklov, Zhizn' Bakunina, p. 24.

82 Balamin, "Pis'mo S, N. Mu~avievu," Sobranie sochinenii. tom 1, p. 161. ' 83lb 1d ., p. 164 .
1

39 brochure entitled Romanov,' Pugachev or Pestel'? (NarodnQe deloRomanov. Puchachev ili Pestel' ?), which he wrote in 1862, Bakunin still believed it possible for .reforms to originate. from above, from the Tsar himself, - because traditionally-'up until the obscurantism of Alexander l' s later years-these social
an~

"

political reforms had always been initiated

by the autocracy. Curiously, during his exile of 1834 te:) 1840, Herzen carne to uphold a similar position and extol the progressive achievements of the autocracy. 84 One must presumably attribute these aberrations from their more traditional (i. e., radical) viewpoints to their states of demoralization, extreme isol.ation and feelings of political impotence. Furthermore, given the massive nature of the reforms needed-nothing less than the total social and moral transformation of the nation-they were unable to believe that anything short of a ,highly centralized and powerful apparatus (i. e., the state) would be effectuaI in changing the status qUo. The change ln the autocracy's role from a progressive to a conservative political force, which occurred only after 1812, was still so recent that the, hope that it was not permanent was still possible. In spite of thirty years of political reaction under Nicholas, this possibUity remained an open one for the aristocratie radieals of Herzen's generation. Bamnin after 1848 actively considered it. Belinsky at the very end 'of his lUe was attraeted by the idea of a second Peter. Herzen, on the accession of Alexander n, at least had hopes. The first generation of 'socialist' radicals was not, sufficiently hardened by a long experienee of rebuffs and dlsappointments, and by the hardening of the autocraey itself, to take a definitive stand of no compromise with the enemy. This occurred "Only in the next generation, born under Nicholas, and made intransigent by his intransigence. 85 84see, for example, Herzen's 1836 essay, Mlscellaneous Remarks on Russian LegiSlation (Qtdelnye zamechaniia 0 russkom zakonodatelstve) . 85M al'la, Alexander Herzen, p. 142.

\
40

Also in Vilnius, Bakunin became friends with an army doctor

stationed in an auxiliary regiment. The latter

(Ba~in

does not mention

his name)86 had been a student at the University of Moscow, where he had become interested in German philosophy.
,

Furthermore, he was

actively engaged in a philosophical correspondence with Professor Vellanski, one of the foremost Schellingians in Russia. 87 Needless to say, Bakunin feIt as though he had finally found a soul-mate; with his friend's help, he set about studying the works of Oken, Galich,88 Vell an ski, and of "other writers of the German school. .. 89 Given the importance of Schelling' s NaturphUosoE,hie in Russian academic circles, the two

young scholars also d,evoted a considerable amount of their time to the


study of the natural sciences.

Bakunin was now systematica11y and

earnestly studying German philosophy (if mostly from secondary sources), and had a direct link with the tradition of
Ge~man

idealist philosophy in

Russia. At this point (viz., 1834), he was certainly weIl acquainted with the basic ouil in es and themes of Russian S,chellingianism, as the following letter testifies: The lUe of man, slmilarly to the life of humanity as a whole, involves the consistent and progressive development of all feelings and of all ideas. This is the eternal striving of the part' tO'\\Qrds the whole. . .. For him, who really feels lUe, who senses it in the beating of his pulse, this is not an illusion, these are not only facts nd circumstances, but the idea, which expresses itself through 86Chizhevski, Gage!' v Rossie, p. 87, refers to hixn as "Doctor Krasnopol 'skii," although he does not state his source. 87For more information on Vell an ski, see Qus~v Shpet, Ocherk razvitiya russkoi filosofii _(Petrograd, 1922), pp. 122-137. B8See Shpet, ibid., pp. 132-138.
J

89Bakunin, "Pis'mo S. N. Murav.tevu," yanvar' 1835, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 162.

_~.

P . f t ...... _

....

,...,.,I_

_ ..... __

~_

.. ___________
~

6 _ _ _ _ _ _

~.

_ _ _ _ _ _

___ 4

_.-...- _ _ _

41

And in what is the fundamental idea of lUe ~ontain~d? In love for man, for mank41d, and in the / striving towards the whole, towards perfection. . And these three ideas constitute but different expressions of the one creative, eternal, indestructible idea-of Gad. AlI the rest are merely episodes of the lamentable victory of matter over the idea. 90 At
in
~his

th~se.

point, it is necessary ta digress and to go back in Ume


Cl

order to examine the intellectual climate of the period which inevitahad a strong impact on Bakunin' s formative' years. We shall also

bly

deal with Schelling's philosophy and come to understand how it was interpreted by the Russian intelligentsia of the 1820's. For without Russian Schellingianism, the Hegelianism of the following decade cannot be comprehended, indeed, could not have been possible. 91
ln the early years of the 1820's, small intellectual kruzhki

(circ1es) began t<f form in Moscow, contemporaneous with the secret political societies of the north and of the south, 'the toundations of
.
~

the Decembrist movement. Unlike their political counterparts, the

Muscovite groups were of a distincUy apolitical, metaphysical and


---.1

speculative character; their interests Iay entirely outside the fields of practical politics or of social and economic reform. One of these Moscow circles was th""Arkhivnye Yunoshi' (Youths of the Archives), so calI,ed because most of its members were yung aristocrats employed
in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

Presided

over by Prince V. F. Odoevsky, its participa,pts included Ivan Kireevsky,


N. P. Titav, D. V. and A. V. Venevitinov, S. P. Shevyrev, Prince N.

Trubetskoi, as weIl as ',two students from Moscow University, M. P.


,
1

( )

90"Pi~'mo sestram Beyer, tom 1, pp. 169-170.

Il

7 maya 1835, in Sobranie sochinen1t,

i
~

91Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossli, P. 7.

1 ~
~

__

____

-,.A._

_ _ _ _ ...

y
~_

'.

~ :rt4~4-~:-::-:;-~':'~~~

----------------~_.--~~

42

, Pogodin and- M. A. Maximovich. What united the Youths of the Archives into a cohesive group was their common !nterest in the German Romantic movement, and ther attention centered mainly around literary and aesthetic issues. AlI were enthusiastic about the "new" literature from

Ge r!ll any' , and- in an effort to introduce it to Russian society, severaI

members of the group translated sorne of these works into Russian. From their initial interest in literature, they gradually expanded their studies tQ, include cttural' history and aesthetic the ory . Soon, a small

'splinter group emerged, the Obshchestvo LiuQomudriia (the Society of Philosophers), or Liubomudry, which wished to dedicate itself exclusively , to the study of German philosophy. Unlike the other literary circle;" the Liubomudry were a secret society, due ta the government campaign . then being waged against the teaching of phUosophy, and their sphere of interest lay predominantly in idealist metaphysics. Together they read dferent works from Kant, Fichte, Ok en and Schelling. Odoevsky also presidd over this group, and one of his major contributions ta the study of philosophy was his translation of . selections from O'kents Naturphtlosophie. 92 Howver, "the philosophical mentor of th~ society was Professor M. G. Pavlov of Moscow University. acquired
~e

Philosophy, which had

subversive reputation of being a potential rival and ()ubstitute

for theology, had been banned in Moscow as of 1826, immediately after . Nicholas' accession to the throne. 93 But the teaching of 'phUosophy was carried on nonetheless, albeit in camoufiaged form.' Pavlov, for ex-atnple, who was responsible for introducing almost an ,entire generation to Schelling (Herzen, Stankevich, Annenkov, among others, st1:ldied with
92

Ibid., 'P. 40.


:

93PUmty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense phUosophigu~, p. 3.

----,-,--

43

,
1

him), wa.s professor of physics, mineralogy and agriculture at Mosoow


*~

University. The other members Qf the Liubomu!fry included D. V.

T.

Venevitinov, A.I. Koshelev, S. P. Shevyrev, M. P. Pogodin, as well

as Ivan and Petr Kireevsky-for the most part, future Slavophiles and
ideologues of the doctrine of
fi

Official Nationalism.

fi

The fact that the

best eonservative talent should rally around Schelling' s philosophy is certainly Dot coineidental, as '1Qll be explained in a later chapter_ 'the official organ of the Liubomudry was the short-lived rewe, Mnemozina, whieh could boast such prestigious ctributors as Pushkin and Griboedov. The editors of Mnemozina attempted ta define and

\
,,--

develop the

proble~s

of aestheties, and despite Us short period of


~ertt,

/t>ublication, it succeeded, ta a certain among the Russian educated classes. disctinued

"

in spreading its ideas

\
f

an

activtty following the Decembrist uprising, lest the

Both the journal and the ,group

government interpret their ideas as seditious. 94 Sinee the early years of the nineteenth century, German idealism -had been gaining a foothold in Russia. Most intellectual historians attribute its rise in part to the increase in gallophobia engendered by the Napoleonic wars. 95 The rising importance of German philosophy can, also be seen
a~

1
1

repudiation of 18th -century rationalism, and, in sorne Manuscript

places, as an expression of anti-industrial anti-modemism.


translations of German philosophical worka were circulated
1

l'ath

in the

unioversities , privately. Moreover, with the rapid growth of institutes and . 4.j
and universities during the reign of
Aleks~der

1, many professors were

94mtimately, its spirit was .ctinued in Pogodin's Moskovskii Vestnik (Moscow Messenger) (1827~1830). ,. .;
,
~

95.see, for example, Chizhev~, Koyr, Malia, Miliukov, and V. V. ZenkovskU, Istoriia russkoi filosofii, 2 tom. (paris, 1948-1950).

44
imported directly from Oel:"many in order to occupy the newly -created teaching positions. The most ~amous of these were 1. T. Buhle and
1. B. Schad, both of whom arrived in Russia in 1804. The former, a

Kantian, taught philosophy at the University of Moscow, while Schad was appointed to the recently-founded University of Kharkov. Neither

Buhle nor Schad acquired much of a following (neither spoke any Russian, and had to lecture either in Latin or in German), and their influence was mainly due to their introduction of Kant, Fichte, and, especially, Schelling, to their Russian students, who constituted, in turn, the next generation of professors. 96 The first Russian Schellingian of any importance was D. Vellanski, who had studied with Oken in Germany and had atlended Schelling's Jena lectures from 1802-1805. 97 Upon returning to Russia, he was appointed to a professorship at the St. Petersburg Medical Academy. Here, he translated several of Schelling's and Olten t s works into Russian 'and exposed the basic tenets of the Naturphilosophie in his own monographs. Vellanski, a scientist, had come to study Schelling and Oken through the Pnilosophy of Nature

1 r
1

Oust as many young Russians would later tome to Hegel tbrough the '
study of
jurisprudenc~,

the philosophy of history and the philosophy of

law), and was particularly imp'ressed by the special importance that their respective systems accorded to the
"

of nature. Like most <. Russian Schellingians, Vellanski never manested any interest in ..,-'

rol~

Schelling' s later s~stems, and although

nr

a very original thinker, he

!IV

96For more information on Buhle and Schad, see Shpet, Ocherk razvitiya russkoi fUosofii, pp. 89-lfs;

97See Wsevolod Setscbkareff, Schellings Ein1luss in der russischen Literatur der 20er lDld 30er Jahre des XIX Jahrhunderls (Leipzig~ 1939), pp. 6-14. <\-

45 .
'4id a great deal to propagate the ideas of German idealism in Russian circles. Kant, long considered suspect and officially labelled an "atheistic" thinker,98 had never been particularly -p-6pular in Russia and failed to attract any substantiaI following.
~

His system was usually considered

far too complex, difficult and "dry" by the Russian intelligentsi;t, which

had received little or no formai training in philosophy.

Schelling, on

the other hand, created a genuine intellectual sensation, and seemed to correspond to a Zeitgeist or a need of the times. 99 Indeed, if any single characteristic can be used to describe the intellectual climate of the 1820' s, it wou! d unquestionably be that of "Schellingianism," just as the next decade wou.ld be the heyday of Russian ",Hegelianism." How does one account for this immediate and enthusiastic acceptance of Schelling' s philosophy by the Russian intelligentsia? Schelling' s system of transcendental idealism provided them with a totality, with a global vision of the worId, which united into a vast C metaphysical system the oppositions which had remained separate and
"..

dualistic in, Kant. The transcendental ego dissolved this dualism by linking together the realms of practica! and
theoretical..ifreaso~s

phUosophy of identity, furthermore, presented a conceptual ~amework in which Mind and Nature, Being and EXistence, could be united in a relationship of dynamic and dialectic interplay. Man and Nature were no longer perceived as opposite, hostile forces, struggling for domination over each other, but rather, as an identity within difference-i. e., 98Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 3.

99p . Miliukov, Gavnye techeniia russkoi istorichesKoi mysli (Moskva, 1898), p. 293.

----,--

46

~/

as dilferent

m~yestations

of the same Absolute essence. The knowing

Subject and the 'lnown Object were now understood to be two different aspects or "poles" of universal Reason-in Nature, however, there existed an excess of objectivity, whel'eas in Spirit, there prevailed a surplus of subjectivity. The study of the process of Nature was thus

an extension of, il not a prerequisite for, man's knowledge of himself. This. unilied tableau was all the more appehling to the Russian intelligentsia by the fact that Schelling offered them ... un monde pntr de vie, un monde formant un tout organique, dans lequel la puissance cratrice de la nature, s'exprimant par le jeu des oppositions dialectiques, st lvait, travers le~ degrs de l'existence naturelle, ju'sQu' la conscience et ses formes les plus hautes. 100 Nature, as the objectilicatlon of Spirit (or "slumbering," unconscious Spirit), was given a very special place -in Schelling' s early systems, and Schelling himself considered the philosophy of nature to be one of his MOst important cootributions to metaphysics. No longer seen in a static, mechanistic light, it was now revealed to be a living, vital organism which reached its culmination, from its early inarticulate,
uncon~cious

1
f

stages, to arrive at self-consciousness in the mind of man.

In contradistinction to the Kantian and espeeially Fichtean notions of .


nature
~s

an aHen lIimpact" (An stoss), and the field of resistance which


c~ception

must be overcome by moral acti, Schelling posited his


~

of

nature as a reflection of Spirit, a progressive and positive force, signilicant in and for itself. His revelation of the process of nature as one of perpetuai transformation, of vitalistic ctivity, and of teleological self-organization, was a dramatically bold 3Dd innovative interpretati,

10~oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 180.

47

..,
and its influence on the romantic movement has already been amply demonstrated. 101 It formed the basis for a view that the human spirit, , 'no longer faceq with a nature that was only an element external and inimical to man, could now see itself reflected in nature; and this new
../'

interpretation and perspective would give way to an unprecedented


Q

atti*ie of union and harmony, sometimes bordering on the mystical. The importance attributed tJnature, to the necessity of knowing and studying it, drew Many Russian scientists and physicists to the Naturphilosophie. As Koyr points out: La Naturphilosophie les sduisait par son caractre 'sCientifique,' par son ralisme, par le fait qu'elle permettait une connaissance relle de la ralit vraie; la mtaphysique raliste et vitaliste ... rendait l'univers son unit perdue et l 'homme, sa place dans l'univers. 102
In Russia, Schelling was thus approached by Ilis Naturphilosophie, and

as we have already seen, philosophy was generally taught, in most universities, conjunctly With the natural sciences, physics and mathematics. 103 M. G. Pavlov and I. I. Davydov, the two professors who

introduced Schelling to Moscow (and teachers of Odoevsky, Venevitinov, and Kireevsky), officially lectured in
mathemati~s,

physics and agron-

orny. 104 However, from the philosophy of nature and the empirical sciences, the next generation of Russian Schellingians, their students, progressed on to the aesthetis and to the philosophy of history. Their 101For the influenc of Schelling's Naturphilosophie on Russian literature, see Chizhevski and Setscbkareff.

10~Oyr,
p~.

La ehilosophie et le problme national en Russie,

182.

103zenkovskii,' !storUa russkoi

filosofii,~. 124.1

l4ghpet, Ocherk razvitiya rus~i fUosofii, 'pp. 9Off.

48

new reading of Schellin (/nd intellectuaJ orientation would be towards


,

more speculative thought, as governed by intuition and the imagination. To the Russians, Schelling' s metaphysical vision of the world, especially as elaborated in his System of Transcendental Idealism, in opposition to the analyticaJ and critical eth os of the Enlightenment, painted a conciliatory and unied picture of reaJity, one in which the creative or "productive" imagination, the human consciousness, could be taken to be the centre of the universe. Reality, in effect, was porAccording to Schelling,

trayed as an endless process of creative thought.

there were two knowable realms: Nature and Art (with' History being the recording of these in time). From the Knowledge and understanding of

f
1

nature, Mind ultimately came to know itself, its thought and its action. But beyond this rational understanding and cQnsciousness of itself, Mind couid r. soar" to new and lofty exploits. This -supreme achievement of man was the act of artistic creation. 105 Only in art was that fusion of the two great forces, Nature and Mind, of the Real and of the Ideal, actualized. Art, in Schelling's view, was the manestation of the infinite in finite form, and as such, the closest that man could arrive at a synthe sis with the Absolute. This apprehension in symbolic form of the Absolute, was the highest and most worthy vocation of man. Thus, the

role of the artistic genius, of the creator, became deied. In creating,


in the identity of the "cCllscious" with the "~conscious, " man became'

Gad. With this eievation of aesthetics to unprecedented heights, and


1

with the ipWitive aspects of cognition being stressed far beyond their rational and articulate implicatiCll and expression, Schelling' s philosophy of art became the philosophy of romanticism, and came to serve as a

"

,. 1 1
1

105~t is important to remember 1 that for Schelling, iOtuition is


not above understanding, but it is more fundamental.

,- ,r

49

metaphysical foundation for the entire movement.

~;'hiS

primaey of the aesthetie or "intuitive" factor, ev en beyond

the rational or the ethical, proved immensely appealing ta the Liubomudry, most of whom had literary and artistic aspirations. At its height, Schellingianism corresponded to, and indeed,
sus~,

the epoque of

high romanticism in aussia, and it ev en ean be said that the Liubomudry were brought to Sehelling's phil9Bophy via Romanticism. Eventually, Schelling's philosophy, as well as romantic theories in general, came to be associated with, and even encourage, n\tionalism; Schellingian-

ism, ultimately, became identied with social and political conservatism


in Russia. 106 ln the late thirties and early forties, a shift in the intel-

lectual climate would lead the next generation of Russian Schellingians away from the aesthetics to ponder Schelling's ideas on historieism and historiosophy. These "Slavophils" would advance the arguments of

Schelling's philosophy of history as a counter-attack. to the Hegelian "Westernizers" who upheld the panlogism of Hegel 's philosopqy of history. The Schellingians of t;he twenties, the Liubomudry, however, can be seen as moving in this direction and as symptomatic of the transition that was taking place: from a the ory of art ta a theory of history and culture. Over and above their formaI interest in aesthetic intuition and creativity, they called for the creation of a distinctly national identity and culture,
1. e., of a typically "Russian" aesthetic. This nasc,nt nationalism neces-

sarily had to find expression in art, sinee it was denied any other pos) sible outlet, (with the exception, of course, of the imposed "Official nationality" doctrine (offitsial'naia narodnost'. lO\oyr, La philosophie et le problme national en Russie, '

p. 215.

50

To a tradition such as Russia' s, where philosophy was a relatively "new" phenomenon, it is not difficult to understand why a system such as Schelling's could have taken root so readily. Those aspects of his philosophy which were adopted, or ev en for that matter, read, did not require too rigorous an intellectual training in order to be" assimilated. 107 Koyr explains the popularity of Schelling's system by the' fact that ... elle [la NaturphilosophieJ se prsentait comme une reconstruction totale de l'Univers et qu'elle se prtait, ou semblait 'se prter, la vulgarisation qui la rendait accessible, du moins pour ce qui est des 'ides fondamentales' de l'essence mme du systme, des esprits dnus de toute culture".,pDilosophique, et surtout scientifique. 108 Schelling's later and more "complicated" systems (and also many "logical" or strictly "philosophical" aspects of his earlier "works) did not draw so broad an audience in Russia, and, curiously, few "Schellingians" ev en bothered to read these works at all. FurtHermore, it was always the
l'

--

applied or "practical" disciplines, such as aesthetics, ethics, as weIl

as the philosophies of nature, of history and of law, which were focussed upon by the Russian intellectuals, to the detriment of the more "formal" or pure disciplines-Iogic, metaphysics, gnosology and epistemology. This point is further underlined by the comparative weakness of Kantianism and Fichteanism among proponents of German idealism in Russia. This lack of sustained interest in the more theoretical elements of philosophical studies, testifies to its non-autonomous character, i. e. , to the lack of interest in philosophy per se, throughout the Russian

i (
1

<

l07Besides:.... the Russian Schellingians were less interested in the Schelling who challenged the Kantian critique than in the Schelling, author of the Naturphilosophie or of the Aesthetics; Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense phUosophique, p. 6.

f f

lO~oyr, La pense ehilosophique en Russie, pp. 180-181.

51
-----:.,

intelligentsia's absorption in ideas imported from Germany.


,

Another

explanation for the wide scale attraction of Schellingianism in Russia \vas its three-pronged appeal: from the Naturphilosophie, subsequent

generations were able to move o. to the the philosophy of history.

~esthetics,

and ultimately, to

An additional factor responsible for its dtifusion, as suggested,

by Chizhevski, was the

preval~nce

of a strong religious tradition in

Russia (despite the vitriolic anti -clerical ideas of the Enlightenment which had succeeded in penetrating into Russia). The influence of German mysticism of the late Eighteenth Century (Boehme, Saint-Martin) had also prepared the terrain, indeed, even facilitated, the dissemination of Schellingianism. 110 The religio-pantheistic-mystic outlook of the early Russian Schellingians, as weIl as of the Liubomudry, would subsequently give way, in the 1830's, to the emergence of a new spirit of secular humanism, as exemplified by Belinsky, Bakunin Not surprisingly, this shift would correspond to the ado philosophy by the intelligentsia.
In Many instances, Schellingianism seemed to fulfil a quasi-

d Herzen.

f
1

1 1

religious function: 111 .. le besoin se faisait sentir d'une synthse ,intgrale, analogue celle que donne la religion. Ainsi la philosophie devenait le grand can~' des recherches cratriees justement parce qu'elle tait entendue comme un quivalent lique de la conception cclsiastique. 112 109C hizhevski,

Ge gel '

v Rossii, p. 34.

llO:rbid., pp. 10-11. 111S. Zenkovsky, Histoire de la philosophie russe, tome 2 (Paris, 1954), p. 152. )l:n 112Ibid., p. 124. For excellent discussions of the role of ~chelling' s phUosophy in RUBsia, see inter alia, Malia, Alexander Herzen, pp. 69-98; Chizevski, Gegel' v RossU. pp. 32-49; and Setschkareff, Shellings EinfluBS. .--v
"

52
r

Following Bakunin's familiarization with' the basic tenets of Schelling's theught, he began to sketch his phUosophical world-view in
(

which the Ideals of the "interior lUe," of Spirit and of Nature gained an increasing importance and reflected the immediate influence of Schelling upon his ideas. Nature is referred io as "the reflection of
God"; life is nothing eise that the striving of Nature and Man towards

union with the divine. Although his style would for a long time be tinted with religious overtones, the philosophical immanentism in Bakunin's thought, which would eventually lead him to Fichte, was 4lready evident
in his letters for the first half of the year 1835.

When BakWlin makes

referenees to "God," it is never in a transcendent, dogmatic context, but rather, in terms of an Absolute, of which man himself is an integral
,.1-'"

part. His "Gad" is actualized in man and in nature. In proclalming that 1t was high time to bring heaven down ta man, Bakunin was clearly moving on a path analogous to that of Ludwig Feuerbach. 113 Ther~~as no need, he asserted, to seek for a transcendent and outer-wordly deity, sinee "heaven is within us, "114 and man was his own end. What is man, Bakunin aSked, rhetorieally?-he is God revealed in matter. And what ls Gad, but "the spirit 01 humanity." 115 To Bakllnin, history constttuted
l

a process of striving towards freedom -a tendency of the part seeking to be united with the whoie. It is interesting
~d
,

important to note that


~

even at this early poinf in his development, Bakunln came to recognize and insist on the basic prineiple of struggle inherent in
~

life.

The

113sakunin, "Pis'mo A. P. Efremovu,1\ 14 noyabrya 1835, in Sobranie soehinenii. tom 1, pp. 179-191.

,1~4"Pis'mo

sestram," noyabr 1835, in ibid.: p. 181.

115"Pis"'mo A. P. Efremovu," 10 dekabrya 1835, in ibid, p. 185.


", "

53

-dialectical movement is predominant, and he perceived this confiict as the progressive factor, and as the .drlving force of hlstory. The life of manklnd constitutes an eternal struggle of the Idea agalnst matter. This Is the logical and pro gresslve process of the victory of God over matter. 116 The dialectical category of negation, as we shall examine later, came to occupy an excepUonally important place ln Bakunln' s thought, and was even endowed with regenerative and ,creative attributes. The fact
()

that he had already at thls Ume seized upon the dynamic element of contradiction in ideallst philosophy over and above its "ccnciliatory,"
'.

all-unifying factors, -tliat is to say, the manner in which Bakunin underBtood it, -was to have strong implications in his later Interpretation and transformatlon of Hegelianism.
In early 1835 Bakunin was despatched on assignment to Tver'.

Taking advantage of the proximlty t9 Priamukhino, ,he stole off without


,

permission.. to the family estate, and decided, much againSt- his/father' s will, not to return to army duty. cObtaining a dispensation from the army involved many bureaucratie complications, but famUy connections tnterceded and a court martial for desertioo was narrowly escaped. Bakunln received his formaI discharge from the Tsar's artillery ln
c

December 1835., While the army' s decislon was: pendtng, Michel spent part of
v

the fear 183~in Tver', and part in Priamu~inO, where relati~ns with his father had reached the breaking
pol~t ..

" The eider


~ol)

BakUn~,

havlng

now reconcUed hlmse}f to the fact that his

was totally agalnst

resuming his mUitary creer, was able to arrange, with the assistance

116sakunin, "Pls'mo sestram Beyer, " 7 maya 1835, in itiid. ,


p. 170.

r
. of a famUy acquaintance, Count Toistoy, the Governor of Tver'" for a sinecurial position in the civU service. But Michel had other plans.

54

...

He had nQt abandoned mUitary service only to have that replaeed by the odious and equally stifling government civil service. He violently opposed all
h~s

father's efforts, since he had already decided to pursue

an alternate route: the University. 1835 was very much a year of transition for Bakunin .. For in

March, whUe stUl an offlcer, he had made the acquaintance (during a brief trip to Moscow with his mother and slsters) of the man who was largely responsible for his new orientation. Nikolai Vladlmirovich Stankevlch (1813-1840) was the first important persmal influence on Michel. An exceptionally gifted young philosopher and ardent disciple of German idealism, Stankevich had been gathering around him in Moscow, for the- past few years, a group of intellectuals who shared his deep interest in phUosophy. BakUnin formaIly joined this "circle

"

of Stankevich" in the course of the followlng year.


1

However, Bakunin was already lnvolved in an inteasive study of phUosophy, independently of the .circle's activity, and had decided to devote himself entirely to an academic career. And although he did,

Dot yet dream of revolutionary activi1y, he was experiencing that' spiritual "conversion"
wh~ch

many young member$ of the enlightened

nobUity were undergoing concurrenUy, and whieh was responsible for


th~ formation ...

of the celebrated "phUosophical ircles" ln Moscow during

the 1830' s. Herzen once said that the n

e of the cannons

CIl

the

Senate Square (during the Decembrist 'revoit) had awakened an entire generation to a greater conaciousness C?f the soc~ and poUtical bjustices in Russia. And this generation, to which he himself belonged,

55 along with Stankevieh, Bakunin, Belinsky and Ogarev, was now coming of age, and was beeoming increasingly preoccupied with questions of Russian social life.

For Bakunin, 1835 was a year of complete immersion in German.

Romantic literature and philosophy. 117 During the course of the year Bakunin also met other members of tlie Stank.evich circle, such as Ya. M. Neverov, V.I. Krasov, and A. P. Efremov, and corresponded
with them on a regular basis. Stankevich and Efremov visited Pria,
~

(oU

mukhino in October, and the three young men spent their days literally
>

entrenched in heavy philosophical discussions.

It was about this time

that Bakunin decided to travel to Berlin in order to prepare for a professorship in philosophy, 118 probably.on Stankevich's advice, since th latter aIso had plans to go to Berlin for study purposes. 119 However, these plans had to be shelved temporarily sinee Balrunin's father vetoed his son's extravagant scheme and was unwi1ling to project.
In 1835 the StaDkevich c ircle was still plainly preoccupied With
f~ance

this outlandish

questions of an aesthetic and metaphysieal nature-as were the members of the Herzen-Ogarev group prior to their arrest and exile. 120 It is 117There are enthusiastic references to Herder and Hoffmann; Steklov, Zhizn' Bakunin~ p. 26, even claims that Ba.kUnin was reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, although he faUs to document this.
j

lISe in," Pis'mo A. P. Efrelllovu," 14 noyabrya 1835, in Sobranie soc inenii tom 1, p. 180. 119stan evich's influence on BakUnin's project is aIso evidenced' by the fact that akunin announced his desire to journey to Berlin scarcely two weeks after the former's departure from Priamukhino.

120Mali~ Alexander-Herzen, p. 8'1.

--4- - - - - -

56
interestlng
t~bserve

that, even before his departure for Moscow and

prior to formally joining the group in 1836, Bakunin was already lnfusing an "activist" element into its outlook, which had hitherto beeq of a much more abstract and speculative orientation. In a letter to Efrmov, Bakunin speaks of
: .. that thirst for activity, for a better, -a more poetical, lUe, a ~rst for the good of my coontry,

of all mankind, wh ch has, for such a long time, and 'almost always vain, comprised the object of my search in men. . .. My hopes are Dot liazy, but rather, bright, inspired, dreams. -They ,are not empty sounds, but of importance, of great importance. . . [and] must be our constant, unchanging guide, ,in the field of our' ctivity! 121 The concept of will (volya) begins to appear in his writings of this period and is stated wi\h such
;1

for~e

::)nd conviction for perhaps the first time

L,

in Russian phUosophical thought. Bakunin' s coming to terms with the concept of the will represents a new
lev~l

in his intellectual development.


~
~ ~

And his stress on the notion of the will can perhaps be seen as

attempt to break out of a purely speculative realm in order to venture out into the sphere of practical, concrete action. He begins to
emph~ize

the importance of will as the quintessence of the hu'man, spirit, as the highest expression of humanity. The wUl, he asserts, has come to replace thought
a'S

the most fuiulamental attribte of man. Thought must

...

be placed at the service of

in order to become the driving force of


"

human hlstory, and in this respect,

Ba~in

recognizes that Russians

are lacking; they are pitifully behind the Umes in practical, in revalu tionary development. i' Why is RUBsia in such an under-developed position? The twenty-one year old Bakunin bel1eved the answer to lie preciseIy

121aakunin, "Pi~'mo A. P. E-lremow," 29 sochinenii, tom 1, p. 174.

i~a

1835, in

Sobran~e

in this noti of will:

desire, but we do not yet want. It is the Will wmch cstitutes the principal essence of ~ when ft is mumiDat~ by the boly rays of feeling and of thght. But la (Ur COWltry, the will is still undeveloped; it bas not yet fr~ itself from the stifling swaddJjng diapers al our 18th Century, the cenbU'y of d;-uchery and hypocrisy, of volgarity and foolish pretensis 10 nobUity, of scepticism 10wards everything lofty, and of ..the petty and ctemptible fear of hello
(

~-:

U2
f
,

From bis study of history, be observed that Russia had Dot yet made the transitlm from the century of thought (the Eighteenth) tO" the century
of acti~ (the W-meteentb):
As if we, ourselve8, wre not made up of a strange blend of seeptkism and inspiration? The first, as ,an inheritance, beqoeatiled to us by the 18th CentUry, 'ls already living its last years. bur as il agmizingly ill, is gathering tts last strengtb, and is tormenting and devouring aIl our activity. The second, lil the Holy Ward, i8 presagmg a better worle!, more perfee!, more harmious! No, we do not yet belong to the 19th CeDtury. We ar.e still ly al the transltimal stage between the 18th and the 19tban agizing interregnum of two ctradictory, incompatible, and mutually-destructlve id~. Will titis ccntinue for - lg, and bo. must we disengage ourselves tram this? . ~ is the quest1, whose soluti Is our task, that of. the ftrst-born of a new motber {i. e., the present, new geoeratiJ _. 1 repeat ce gai& tIat the formati of OU' streDgtI1 of will is the onll vay, and _en we sball be-iD a positi-to say 'ee que je veux, Dieu le veut, , lY theD stmll we be happy, Iy tben will 0Ill' suff~S cease-Up until DOW we bave been deserving theml s

,,

AecordiDg to BalOJo,o'S analysis, it was tJCD1.y when


,

al the reaUuflon 1hat sbe had to taJ matters iBto her own bauds, and,
,

RussJa had

arrived

III effect, wDl

change, would tbat change te place, and 0Idy then

would sile become master

ber

O-WD destiny ..

1 l.
,
1

lzz..id.

r ,
,
.~

tu..id.,

pp. 174-175; lIlJ empa.sis.,

-' L___ ,_ -1

'"

"

'

58
Ba}mnin

\
l

was perfectIy willing ta come ta ter ms persaJI;y

~with

this voluntarism which he was advocating on a nati<mal scale. 'Discussing bis future in a letter once aga.in to Efremov, 124 he cfirmed bis unwavering belief ln his new vocati, bis preference for the more worthy calling, even 1t involved a thornier, more perilou.s path. The tOIle of bis words demstrate the cbnvicti that he felt in bis sense of missiOll: '
Each man must look intently within himse1f and )decide; but he must also bear in mind that, having chos'en one road, -he separates himself from the other. It is rare, very rare, ttiat both roads 1ead to the same goal. . . You say tbat the pa.th we have undertaken is desolate and wretched; 1 do not agree with you here; ..'-. everything sternal depends fate, but our internaI lVOrld depends mly and entirely upon ourselves. QnIy one misforbme in effect exists for man: not to have a goal, or to lose the' desire, the aspirati and the strength to act. Then not ooIy can a man, 1dll ~self, but he bas no Qiflr choice but to do BO. / You and 1 are still ly preparing for action: there ~ no lack of will or of strength~ us, and therefore, we still
-""1 __

have a chance for haPPiness. 125 Efremov was perfectIy justified in expres!;ing nervowmess and anxiety at their future prospects. ,.,. The kruzhlti or circles constitutedQ the main-

stay of Russia' s inte1lectual le when politlc:al repressioa under Nicholas

was at its peak. The very reason for their clandestlne existence w;tS
"

the fact that free discussim (albeit of ~act, apolitical ideas) else-

where, even

the universities, was an impossibility.


~~
l

Only in these
,

slll8ll, private circ1es oeald the Jntelleetual life of the nati somehow

survive. The later years

Alexander

Ps relgn

Jwf beeD
,
,

marJred by a

growlng suspicl of llberalism, and by a corresp*ung tom towards

re;aett and relIgls mystlcism. The teacbing of pbllosophy, aad the

free dtscusioa of Dew ideas came to be ,~ With the dreaded -------------------~$--~ -~. 124aalgmiD, aPis'me A.P. Efremovu, ft 14 noyabrJa 1835, ln
ibid! , pp. 17.181.
125Jbid. J pp. 1'l9-180.

J'

$'

........

'

,...

':'!!",.

59

"liberaJ.lsm,

fi

and clsequently, philosophy and other suspect disciplines,

such as Natural Law, were banned in the universities. These were now perceived to be threats to the basic doctrines of Chrlstianity, and, hence, subversive ta the foundatio ns of the autocrati state. imported just a few years earlier, were
DOW

German professors,

expelled from Russia. The

year 1819 wi1nessed the notorious purge of Kazan University of "seditious" elements, complete with confiscations of bookS, and imposed bible
j

readings for the entire student body (presumably to renew the faith
li

shaken by exposure to the atheism of metaphysics). Even mathematics came under suspicion for promoting "scepticism" and an inquisitive disposition;126 the teaching of logic was S\lsPe~ded.127 Repression

was even more thorou.ghgoing under the

fi

gendarme" Nicholas, who came


)

...

to be lmown as the arch-enemy of democracy and liberalism all over Europe. Bakunin
intellectu~
~scribed

the political atmosphere and the enfming

sterllity that prevailed under Nicholas 1:

La .raction qui suivit la rpression du souifvement de dcembre fut horrible. Tout ce qu'il y aVaJ.t d'humain, d'intelligent, de bon, de libre, fut dtruit, crastout ce qu'il. y avait de canaille, de brutal, de rampant, de cruel et de vil monta au trme avec l'empereur Nicolas. Ce fut une destructi systmatique, complte de l'humanit au prqfit de la brutalit et de toutes les stupidits et VUenie~ possibles .. Extirper' jusqu'aux' derniers germes de l'esprit libral dans la socit russe, craser jusqu' la moindre vellit d'ind~pendance de sentiments et de pense dans ses sujets, tel fut le

.1,
1

=!;;~:=U:;:::ib= :::;:~~e::r:~"a
12&..-_
p. VI.
~ayr, La.

.Philosophie et le pr~ln~ national en Russie,


, 0

J,

12'1Planty_Bjour, Hegel et la pense phiosophique, p. , 6. , , lZBaakonnfne, "Ma Vie, fi pp. 323-324.


"

__. .

_------'--c---~-

~~'

""

--.---------~,

,-- --:-r:.'!ji3::'"--:-.

~ ~

';:..; ...

--_.c_

60

With the suppression of "free thought" and of any forum for the discussion of ideas, energies were csequently channelled into small
1
\~

clandestine circles, primarUy in Moscow, far from the servile bur.eaucracy of St. Petersburg, the capital. A few of these secret cireles had been discovered, however, and ther members arrested;. their crimesthe singing of "revolutiary" soogs and the reading of "forbidden fi poetry. Herzen and Ogarev' s groop bad been ~aught the previous year
(i. e. , 1834) and charged with the dubious offence

ct "bQld free-

thinking. n129

The leader~ of this circle were exiled for close to six

years. B3.kunin, Stanltevich, Efremov, indeed, all the participants of " such secret societies, fully realized the enent of the risk they were , running as well as the implications involved. This is surely what Efremov had in mind when he
~ressed

his apprehension at the fi wretched


~

path" that they had chosen for themselves. If the most seditious author found in Herzen's possession was Saint-Simon, Balamin's reading of the socialist thinker, Sismondi (which he wasWldertaldng at the time), certainly 'coold not have been csidered any less dangerous. 130 Although Bakl1Din realized that volWltarism and action were nec essary for th~ future weUare and ultimately, the liberatlon of Russia, he

nevertheless fully understood that such concrete acti was, at the present tim and under the extant cdit1s,
ab~olutely

impossible.

Furthermore, bis "political" positi as a "revolutlonary" was

stm

too '\

nebulous and ill-defined to have supported any action of the sort. He possessed wlthin himseU an inherent, instinctive urge to rebel against any form of estabUshed, traditia1 authority
~r

se-a markecl penchant

12~a1ia, Alexander Herzen. p. 137. 3 1 Oaalnmin, ~nPis'mo A. P. Efremovu, Sobranie soch1nenli, tom -~ p. 185. 'f"

11

/ 10 dkabrya 1835, ln

--. - -----...r--------

61

for proselytizing, teaching, enIightening, 1eadtn g, propagandizing bis ideas. But to conclude at CIlce from these personality traits that he a1ready held a coherent revolutionary credo would be hasty and somewhat simplistic. Before any serious activity could be contemplated a

period of intense preparation and of self-disciplined study was paramount.


,

Activity and will would not be eclipsed-they woold be retnforced with thought. They would temporarily be directed inward, for a period of apprenticeship in theory. As Ba.kunin perceived, this preparatory stage involved the formati of an "attitude," and entailed the concntration
on one's tnterior being, on oners spiritual life:

. . . one must strive to escape more completely from the influences of the external wQrld. The principle of spiritual lUe, a lUe of self-sacrifice-where there is not yet an aspiration towards the goal, but where are frequently encountered passionate episodes, -in a word, a time of struggle-is very dtfficult. One must maintain every strength of wUl, and coocentrate, as much as possible, more on oneseU. But every trme can upset, and can bring one ta a state of despcndency. Yes, and one must also look ,?:Poll moments of despatr . as moments of illness, which Will pasSe If strength of cbaracter does not help in tearing one away from such moods, then me must not give in ta them; one must forget eself in something external, or even faU asleep, if possible. During such moments, one must absolutely not reflect or, meditate, 1 know this from experience. Logical. csistency can be serious and true, but during sucb moments, f;J1e first premise is alwa.ys incorrect, and therefore al.l c'structions always come out false as welle .And so, in the practtcal lUe of every man there must be two 'P s. (I = cne of these 18 the weak, particular-human, passiate,' capable of change; and the other (1s] ldentical with the goal, (is] unlversal-human, infallible, UDChanglng, lofty, and strictly attendtng t9 the first. The second must always be the doctor lnot jur1d1cal, , but medic~) and the ruler of the first. l3l

u_

1
j

!
1
~

n:

t'J"

.\
"

13lsaJpmln, "Pis'mo' A. P. Efremovu," 14 noyabrya 1835, in ibid., p. 180

~
-

_:, ~t: .:

.-~-:----:-r~~ l.~
..... ; ' l'

...

62

One must bear in mind, that for BaJrunln, will still seem8' at thls point a rather lndividualistlc, ,personal (and almost religious) impulse, and
\ it was as yet far removed from the social, historie al force that it

""

womd become Wlder the impact of Hegelian philosophy. Furthermore,


thiB passage on the "jesuitical" formation of the future activist strongly brings to mind Balamin's Iater criteria for membership in his cmspiratorial secret societies. The great importance that he attached to the notions of morality and ethics is all the more remarkable ln that
lt Is here described by a twenty-one year oId, with no experience whatso':

ever in the field of practical revolutionary tactlcs. The Idea of the asceticism and self-discipline requlred of the revolutionary came to play a much more crucial role in the~ghtly-organtzed

consptratorial

societies of the later half of the nineteenth century, as elaborated by such theorists as Chernyshevsky, Nechaev, and Tkachev. To BaJrunin, -ethics held a central position in his thought from the very
be~ings

of bis inteUectual development and would gain in importance with time. One May also see a parallel between the ethical Ideal and the aesthetlc perspective from which BakUnln was standing. The concept of the

.s

beautiful, sa central to the Ideal of the romantlcists of the 30's, held


.li ~

as Us necessary corollary, the notion of th good, of the ethica1; the

two were inextricably lntertw1ned. 132 However, the Immediate task of the day rematned the formation and development of ,a strong "internai being." Bakunin lamented the
state of lnertia in which the Russian Intelllgentsla found Itself, and, de-

plored the cditlons of this frustrati. Strength had to be conjured to


~

Cl

. 13~alia, Alexander Herzen, p. 55; molodol Rossl1, p. 4.

Gershenzon, Istortia

dl

--

63 overcome thts lethargy, and it was only Within themselves that they
,
\

would find it: We are all weak; we are Hamlets. Who among us has not thOlight that we are empty men, incapable of deeds, of even the slightest effort? But we must destroy these moments of moral Ulness through a great intellectual exertion, through an increase of attention-and they Will pass. No, Diy friend, there is a future in us, there Is strength: let us use them advantageously; we must not allow them to rust; we must not stop, and then our deed will not be in vain, our conscience will be clear. The most Important thing Is not ta allow our spiritual lUe ta be subdued by external circumstances. Hopes founded on the external world: this is the principal reas for our spiritual-moral ruine We forget that this basis Is unsteady and not dependent on us, and that it is only fate, or providence, which can create a harmony of the extemal and the internaI worlds, and that providence rarely grants anyone this harmony. We forget that the spiritual deed must be unselfish, that its basis Is within itself. . . We must fear nothing; we. do not ast for anythmg; everything depends on us alone. 133
t

Once agam, the element of voluntarism, of will, central to thought, is involted:

. "You claim,

Batunin s
t

that Man ka.nn nichL immer was man

will. Nonsense 1 Man kann alles, was man nur genug Kraft hat zu wollen. Btrength of will, my friend, Is everything. ,,134 Meanwhlle, the situation at home had become impossible for
Bakunin. His persistent refusa! to pursue a career in the government
'0(

service, as was customary for the nobUity, as weIl as his seemingly pecul1ar behavioor (Michel would lock himself up in his room for mths
..(JO'

end wrapped up in phllOSophy),135 had succeeded in completely

133Bakunin, "Pls'mo A. P. Efremovu," 10 dekabrya 1835, in Sobranie sochinenti, tom 1, p. 184. 134"]bid., p. 185. 135:Komnov, Molodye godJ, p. 161; see also letters from bis fatber ta Michel, clted in ibid., pp. 161-162.'
0

......- ...

_.... ,-

-'

\
64

e
alienating his father. Violent quarrels became a daily occurrence when Aleksandr MlkhaUovich for study in Germmty.
r

categori~allY

refpsed to finance BakUnin's plans

Finally, when his dispensation from the army

was obtained in December 1835, Michel took matters lnto his own hands. '
Putting into effect his maxim,

"ce que je veux, Dieu le veut," he im-

pulsively and suddenly ned to Moscow, the intellectual c.tre of Russia. This "fitght from Mecca to Medina, ,,136 as he later musingly came ta caU his escape from Priamulthino to Moscow, cstituted a definitive break with his famUy and with his class; it al8.0 marked the beginning of the bohemian type of existence which Balamln was to lead for the 'remainder of his life. He registered for classes
~t

Moscow

Unive~sity

and intended to support himself ftnancially by teaching mathematics prtvately. His Moscow years (1836-1840) and his association with the Stankevich circle, would wltness the apex of German idealist philosophy
in Russia, as well as Us transformation, in the bands of BakUnin, into

the most extreme form of political radicalism.

136Steldoy, Z}zn' Balamia. p. 2'1.

}
.. .
~

:........

...

CHAPTER II MOSCOW, THE STANKEVICH CIRCLE AND FICHTE'S PHll...OSOPHY

During the dark years of the Nicholaevan rgime, Moscow emerged as the uncontested intellectual centre of Russia. Whereas suppression of the Decembrist uprising had transformed the capital, St. Petersburg, into a bastion of reaction, Moscow, on the other hand, enjoyed an atniosphere of relative freedom. Government repression in St. Peters

burg, the "Nicholaevan terror, ,,1 arrested all progressive intellecbla1 activity in the city and reduced it to a state of stagnation and inertia. The 'tsarist police focussed its attention on rooting out all possible subversive elements in the capital, and, to a certain extent, tended to
"' overlook Moscow wb'ich was able, as Herzen described it, to become
"'\

more and mor .. the centre of Russian culture. AIl the conditions necessary for its development were combined-historical. importan~e, geographical poSition, and the absence of the Tsar. Spurred
al

by Us heroic role in 1812, the Moscow gentry acquired


conf~dence,

a feeling of greater

self-assurance and moved

~ith

a greater

sense of freedom. Far removed from the ponderous bureaucratie machine > , which dominated St. Petersburg society, the Muscovite arlstocracy took advantage of its relative freedom and independence from the oppressive tsarist autocracy.
It (the Moscow aristocracy) could set the tone itsqtf, and its tOIle was that of the Independence natural to'

G
1

Ipolons~i1; Zhizn' Mikhaila Bakunin~ p. 28.


2 Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy-," tom 4, p. 101.

65

..... --

--~

, __

~_r"-

66

any aristocracy, as well as of a sublimated fronde against the autocratic tum of affairs in st. Petersburg since 1825. After thlat date aristocratic Moscow gathered into itself ail the feeble energies of protest which had survived the advent of Nicholas, and granted them asylum ~ its salons and in the lecture halls of its university. And indeed, during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, progressive and t.maginative thinkers fled before the systematic persecution in St. Petersburg, to resume their activities in Moscow. The focal point for the intense intellectual discussion that followed for the next several generat'ions ws the University of Moscow. It was by far the oldest university in Russia and certainly the most soUd academically.4 The other universities, which had been fOWlded as recently as the lirst decade of the nineteenth century, had not reached a comparable level of development, and attracted only a Mediocre professorial staff. Throughout the twenties and thirties the newly-founded (and promising) University of Saint Petersburg suffered from acute and , sustained government harassment as weIl as periodic purges of its faculty.
~rowth,

Suh conditioos were hardly conducive to its normal and healthy despite the presence of gifted elements within it. On the other
<

hand, the stature of Moscow University was even further enhanced by a


edistinguished generation of Russian-born pedagogues of high calibre,

such as Professors Pa~)ov, Nadezhdin, and Pogodin, in addition to extremely talented students. The unique status of Moscow University was also reflected in its sociological constitution. For this university was a veritable island of democracy, a "rpublique galitaire Il 5, in one of the Most severely op-

'.

3Malia, Alexander Herzen, P. 59. 4lbid.


~oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie. p. 178. , ;
(

67
0

pressive and authoritarian societies in Europe. Paradoxically, admission to, the uniyersity was granted on a non-class basis: "Unt11 1848 the organization of our universities was purely democratic. The\l" doors

were open to everyone who could pass the examination, ,,6 [with the obvious exception of serfs). Children of village priests, of merchants,

of doctors, could compete on an equal footing with sons of the landed aristocracy. 7 This blending of raznochintsy elements, of co,mmoners, of members of the tiny
~rofessional

classes and DO! the lower gentry,

with' the upper echelons of Russian societ y was a singularly remarkable exercise in democratic principles and in social mobUity. As a result,

the university proved subversive of the status quo nqt only in exposing its students to the steady influX of potentially radical ideas from the West, but by its very
~

~xistence

and policy of admission.

The egalitarian

"

principle which prevailed at the University of Moscow, and which was reflected in Us composition, was in direct and striking contradiction to the dismal realities of Russian society of the Ume. Indeed, by sheer

-,

force of its existence ft constttuted a negation of the reigning autocratic '


,

ldeology.

Herzen shrewdly observed the pr>cess of democratization

which students underwent at the University of Moscow: . . The youthful strength of Russia streamed to ft from all sides, from all classes of society, as into a common reservoir; in its halls they were pur1fied. from the prejudices they had plcked up at the domestic hearth; reached a common level, became l1ke brothers and dispersed again to all parts of Russia and among all classes of its people. . .. Young men of all sorts and cClldit1~s coming from above and below, from the
,

1
1

6Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy," p. 102.

Ibid.

,)r

..l

"

68

south and from the north, wlre quicldy Iused into a compact mass of comrades.
0

This fusion of different layers of Russian society within the university

was Most certainly an isolated phenomenon, and its presence in the tsarist system was, as Malia emphasizes, "corrosive of the values of the surroWld~g world. ,, 9 Futthermore, this democratic and egalitarian setting and mood greatly contributed to the emergence of a supra-class revolutionary intelligentsia. best personified in the figure of Vissarlon Belinsky, who was able to transcend his modest backgroWld and rise ' to a preeminent role among the intellectual ,leaders of his time. However, even Moscow University ttself, 'that "island of the spirit, ,,10 was not totally exempt from the ubiquitous hand of the autoc,:", racy. The faculty, students and curriculum were subj'ected by the Ministry of Education to tight controls and to a rigorous censorship.
Crta~

disciplines, that were deemed subversive, were 'simply pro-

scribed by government ukaz, as we have already seen. Such \Vas the fate of philosophy as of 1826.
,

Th~s

control and restriction of free


p

intellectual discussion within the university drove avant-garde thought into para-university associations, such as the literary ,salons and the phUosophlcal circles; Il here debate could be carried on in a freer context and in more open fashlon. For the
n~xt
,

thirty years or so, the se philosophical and

circles ,would constitute the mainstay of polltical ideas' in Russia, and fr

progr~ssive

would spring the most diverse

1
i

Bn,id., p. 103.
~al1a, Alexander Herze

1
L

l~aminek1, >Bakounine. la ,

e d'un rvolutionnaire. p. 31. il

". ,

,.

I1 For a disc~sslon of the Balons and kruzhki, see Literaturnye kruzhki i salany. ed. N. Brodski (Moskva, 1930).

69
and far-reaching revolutionary theories, l'anging from, socialism to anarchism. The circle (or kruzhok) played a MOst outstanding and seminal l'ole in the intellectual lUe of Russia in the nineteenth~, eentury, and,
in fact, progressive intellectual activity wa~ almost exclusively carried

.'

on by the circle throughout the reign of Nicholas I.

That such a variety


"

and richness of ideas could not only take form but fiourish during one of the bleakest
an~

most stultifying epochs of Russia's past, ie a

slgnicant phenomenon in the social and- intellectual history of the period, and ls laden with many implications', which we shall below. The
origin~
~amine

of the main currents of lIDssian

radt~al

theory, can,

almost without exception, be traced back to the issues debated and ' elaborated within the Moscow circles, to which the best minds of, the
,

"day had gravitated. And, itldeed, Bakunin's intelleetual development


1

during those years cannot be properly understood apart from the context of his association with Stankevich and the kruzhki. As Malia states: The eircle of Herzen and Ogarl!v, along with Us pendant and rival, the eircle of Stankevich, . . . was one of the two pales of attraction among the serious-minded students of the day. Between them, they produced most of the phUosophically- and politically-minded talent of the 30's and 40's, and they dominated the intellectual lUe of Moscow and !ndeed of Russia for the bulk of the reign of Nicholas. 12 The pre-e~inence of the circles over the intellectual lUe of
UJi~versity
\

th

largely acc-ounts for the tone of Russlan ideas of this periode


~ormatt)l\'-'of

The conditions of the

ctrcles, th peculiar manner and

mode' of theoretical discussion that was typical " . ...

oj

them, set its distinc

tive mark on -~ whole of R~sslan social and polttieal -theory. o ,

"
12Malia,' Al exander H' erzen, p. 64

,
1
','

-----_

,
............ -~------~

)
(
1

'10

Although ~e circles ext~ded beyond the confines of ,the univ,ersity", they were nevertheless in a state of loose association and constant ex:' change with the academic milieu. "Membership consisted, for the most part, of students and former students, although professors also participated 'in the circles and came to assume the roles of ideological mentors and advisers._ However, the id~as which took root in these phUosophical
ft

_1

nd literary

kr~hld

were heavlly inDuenced by their place

~d

conditions .

of or,1gin. The fact that in Russia phUosophy was forced out of its usual habitat, 1. e., the classroom, and into small secret ! societies-"away , from the atmosphere of critical discipline and into unc,ritical enthusi-

aSn1"l~-helps to account for Us Iess scholarly, more mUitant charac..


ter. 14,
,

" . . la pense philosophique, prive de la transmission magistrale, n'aura ni le degr de technicit ni le degr d J;"igueur qu'elle aurait atteint d'Yls .les universits allemandes de la mme poque. 15
(

Ideas, whic~ could no longer freely develop in an academic setting


,

migrated todlte circles and salons; where they became more radical, politlcized, and- engag. This can be explained by the fact that the modeof discussion in the clrcles and salons rendered possible, and even
1>

'1

facUitated, a radicalizatlon of phUosophical thought. Away from the lecture halls, the issues acquired a more dynamic and immediate dimension, and the debates becanil! lnfused with a new and vital sense of urgency.
An analogous phenomenon can be obserVed 'in the fi~lds of literary

1
1

criticism and aesthetics, which ~a~quired dist)ctly

practic~

and social
o

11~3BUlingtO~'

The lcon and the Axe, p.

~10.
0

,,,~J
JI

~ l?lanty~Bjour, Hegel et la pense phUosophiQ1!e, p. 4.


"

00.

..
.

.)

..
. _._._~~ _____ .' .. ~ _ _ .. _ _ _ .. _ . , . _ _ , .....
,~ . . . . . . . __ .............. t--:~-

- ....-..-,..-....,,-

1I:-!.:-~.

~~~=

'"

--

..

"

71
,

overtone~

in the hands of"Belinsky during the 1830's and 1846's. Formal

"

aestheticism and "pure art" were rejected in favour of a Iiterature and an, art form 'inore deply, imbued ~th social, everi moral,"' dimensions. Both aesthetics and philosophy, the principal areas of study in the Moscow circles, lost the character of objectivity and detachment which they would 'have retained in an academic setting, taking on instei an .immedi3:te, practical turne Among these

'autodi~acts,
)

removed

from the critical atmosphere of the university, political and philosophical . , extremism found a fertil~ groun~ in which to' grow.

The kruzhki were initially composed of loose groupings of students who gathered together to discuss and exchange ideas on various literary, aesthetic and philosophical questions. The young men who participated
/
\

in the circles ~ared a common passiOl~ for new idea and a thirst for

knowledge. They were united by an intense feeling of solidarity, and their conduct was governed by a well-defined and self-imposed ethical cdde which reflected their high moral standards. True to the Most noble ideals of the German Burschenschaften, which served as a source of
r

v-fl
1
t

inspiration to them, af? weIl as to the best tradition of romanticism, the young men extolled the virtues of love, friendship and camaraderie.
,v

;Feeling themselves morally alienated from their society, they sought to mutually encourage and help each other in their common quest. 16 Furthermore, the membejf of the kruzhki espoused high humanistic ideals and were yuea with an urgent sense of mission. Indeed, it was this ethical sense of purpose which served as the cohesive force operatlve
in these circles.

From a strictly practical point of view, this "vocation"

was still, as yet, amorphous and ill-defined, for given the conditions
Il

16As Chizhev'ski descr1bed it, the atmosphere of the circ1es was enthusiastic, eschatological, fantastic, and romantic" (Gegel' v Rossii,
'

p. 55).

72

under whieh they lived, any concrete, practicaI (viZ.,' po\iticaI) activity
~

was an impossibility. However, in view of the dficulty of the situation,


it was commonly feIt that a period of intense self-preparation and

1
1

1
(

education ws the order ,of the day and aIso a necessary prerequisite to any future "activity. Fo'r tIlis "preliminary work;,17 ideas from the West
'"

-1

were eag,erly seized upon and avidly studied. For members of the ' , , kruzhki. the road to salvation was unanimously held to lie in the mastering and assimiIating of the more
"enlight~ned"

! ,
1

elements of progressive

European thought; they believed that Young Russia nEfcessarily had ta integrate itself to the mainstrea'm of contemporary WesterIt; thought.
,

Members of the circles provided one another with routual e~ouragement' and support in their intellectuaI endeavours, and helped each other during

tirnes of moral crisis and dejeetion.

The kruzhok furnished'thern with a

forum for the discussion and elaboration of philosophi~ ideas, and. as such, fulfilled 'primarily' a pedagogical purpose. A strong cohesive element of the ircle was a serious commitment ta progressive philosophie thought; whether it be German metaphysics or French soeialism, the

young Russian intelligentsia enthusiastieally studied, in turn, each and every major idea imported froro Europe. The publication of an obscure article in sorne unknown journal or the latest philosophie ai system of Schelling eould bath .be greeted with avid inter est and constitute a literary "event." Every new book from the West smuggle,d into Russia was taken to be the ne plus ultra 'of occidental thought. \ ' ,

The feeling of c10seness and cooperation that prevailed among the"" members of the cireles was fostered by the deep conviction that they were not only an intellectuaI minority, but aIso a w.eak, cl~~e group /' 17 Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy, ' tom 4, p. 138.
~

.
L....

!
i
1

i
>

.1

73

th.1 was 'vulnerable 10 the

arb!lr:;:y~easures of the~trglme.
'"

They were profound.ly aware of their spiritual isolation from R&sian -:>sqciety in general and of theirpretarious position within the autocratie state. Isaiah Berlin desribed the predicament of the circles in the

e>

..

following terms: Like persons in a dark wood,. tliey tended to fel a - -rtain solidarity simply beeal:it;e they wer so few and far between; because they were weak, beeause they were truthful, because they were sincere, because they were unlike the othe*'s. Moreover, they had accepted the romantie doctrine th'at every man is called upon to perform . a mission beYohd mere seUish purposes of material existence; that because they had had an education superior to that of their oppressed brothers they had a dire~t duty to help them toward the light; that this duty was uniquely binding upon them, and that, il they fulfilled it, as history surely intended' them to do, the future of Russia might yet be as glorious as her past had beet empty and dark; and that for this they plUst preserve their inner solidarity as a dedicated grouP. They were a persecuted minority who\.\drew strength from their very persecu~ion; they were the self-onscious bearers of a Western message, freed from the chains of ignorance and prejudice,. stupidity or cowardice, by sorne great Western liber; at6l-- a German romantic, a French soeialist-who had tr3.I)sformed their vision. 18 ' " The young intelligentsia of the 1830's deprived of any outlet for practical activity, political or otherwise, sought recourse in a period of relentless "education in ideology, ,,19 in preparation for the radical trans, formation of Russiart society. AlI these young men, whether they belonged to the circle of Herzen-Oragv or that of Stankevich, understood that because of the treacherous poli:tical climate in w~ih they lived, . . they nece~sarily had to draw thei: intellectual and moral resources
"

,1
l

exc1usively from within themselves. Hpwever, for ideological direction, 181, Berlin, "A Remarkable Decade," in R1(ssian Thinkers, pp. 126-127.
j, ,

l~alia, Alexander Herzen, p. 68.


1

74
they all turned to the West.. Sorne frond their panacea in Saint Simon or Lamennais, whil others looked to Fichte,
Schille~,

or Hegel. From

whichever side of the Rhine salvation was expected, the goal was ulti-

"

rnately the sarne: the social and political liberation of Russia. , The belief that Russia did have an important part to
pla~

on the

world-historical stage was to prove orie of the most vocal and persistent leitmotivs of the. c.entury. It has been pointed out that the circles of

the 30' s and 40's came into being during one of the bleakest epochs of Russian history, not only politcally, but also intellectually and culturally. Three foremost writers and critics of the day had succeasively declared

~t

RusBia

poss~ssed no
,

culture or history

wh~tsoever,

that it was an

artistic and intellectual wasteland. 20, ln his first polernical es say, Literaturnye mechtaniya (Literary Dreams), BelinsKy had deplored the fact that Russia had no "national" literatux+.e or art, apart from a few scattered and weak epigones of European genres. Chaadaev' s notorious first Philosophical Letter (1836), which provoked the ire of the tsar and caused the suppression of the Telescope, held as its central thesis RUBsia' s deviatiol1 from the main stream of European history and c~lture. The author blam,ed this deviation on Russia's unfortunate embracing of the Orthodox faith, rather than of Roman Catholic1sm. Fin all y , Ivan

Kireevsky's journal, Evropeets (The European), upheld the principle that since Russia had no philosophy or art forrn of !ts own, it was in its best interest to assimilate the finest in European culture. This unmasking of the Emperor as having no clothes hardty fitted in with Count Uvarov's scheme for an official national and "positive" ideology 20 ' Edward J. Brown, ~S~tan~k;.;;.e..;.v..;;.ic;;..;;h~an~~.;;.;is;;.....;;.M~0.;;.;s;;.,;;c;;.,;;0;;.,;;w.;.....;C;;..;i~rc.;;;.;l;;;..;e~...;;;1..;;.8~301840 (Stanford, Cal ifornia, 1966), p. 12; lanty-Bonjour, Hegel et la r pense philosophique, pp. 2-3. \
1

'f

'15
1 \

(offitsial'naia natodnost') and the jqurnal was prompUy banned. However,


' ..
1 (

the effct of all these attacks on Russia' s heritage and culture wa8 not
OIy
criti~al

and negative. One salutary result was the formation of

the Intellecht,al circles, whose pri!tcipal raison' d'tre was the formulati
Il
1
(

oZ a typically national aesthetic 'and philosophical tradition.


,

In the circles,.

these ideas of artistic and cultural self-identity fused with the -prevalent nationalist, sentiment of the romantic epoch. Reinforced with the political romanticism of Herder, Fichte and ScH~l1ing, who saw expressions of

national genius (Volksgeist) in aIl people" no matter at what stage of social


~d

political evolution they were, tl)e Russian intelligentsia ac-

quired a feeling of optimism and national confidence. 21 These romantic philosophies of history, which all looked to the future with optimism, , , provided them with the reassurance that no matter how Qackward their
,
,

country might appear _to them, it would nevertheles$ be called upon

e~ehfuahy

to play a foremost role in world history. Finding solace in

this tlhought, they set about on the prep~ratory theoretical work for impending transformation of their society. Under the influence of

the

!)

. German idealist ph il os ophy , the Russian integntsia sought


\

1
\
1

'

)
1
9

. . . ~ans une philosophie de l'histoire, dans une philos phie de l'art, dans Une philosophie de la lieligip', une solution au problme de son essence, propre, de Pessence nationale ou de l'tre national ar ost' VolkStum) de,. la Russie ... le problme de la c nsClence nationale, le problme du sens de l 'histOi~- russe, le GNOTHI SEAlITON historique qui tai,\ au premier plan,. 22 E:ven at

th~S
t

early stage, the Rusian intellectuals of the 30' s

unru:rstood the nefessth. of uslng theory as an Instrument for the :esolution of the social \questioo .. With the poss\ble except\on of Stankevich 21See Berlm, "A Rerparkable Decade," pp. 31-37. ", 22Koyr, La pense Shilosophique en Russie, p. 181.

'

78

....
J

himself, "the principal members of his circle, as weil as Herzen, "all

...

approached phUosophy Dot as an end in itself, but rather applied it to practical problems ~f everyday itfe, ta questions, of morality, and to social and national, issues. :An excellent example of the "prac tic al " dimension of the, circles' activ}ty was their
c~ose

association with the

periodical press throughout the 1830's and 40's. tThe intelligentsia's urge to activism, denied any other ouUet for Us expression, manifested , itself in an unpr'ecedented- er~ of critical journalism. 23 Philosophical and literary journalism became the new avenue for the propagation of progressive ideas. This serves to rej,nforce the interpretation that the orientation of the circles was definit~ly activist in nature, rather than
\

'<!--/o""

~.

self-~orbed and purely speculative, "as Marxist historians have per-

sisted

maintaining. 24 Advanced thought, in order ta outwit the censors,

needed to disguise itself in a literary idiom and to camouflage itself in complex philosophical jargon. Literary criticism, especially, under the .aegis of Belinsky, became a vehicle for onveying and debatmg issues which could not be openlf discu~sea, but which could be published in the guise of aesthetic treatises. The most eloquent thinkers of the period, Bakunin, Belinsky, Herzen, Chaadaev, the Slavophiles, all turned to journalism in order to disseminate their respective philosophical "systems" and there occurred during this period veritable polemical battles \ which even the Moscow public partfcipated and. took sides. Hence, the literary press acquired a distinctIy didactic and propagandist

"

23zenkoJ/sky, Histoire de la philosophie russe," p. 267. 24See, for exa~ple, Steklov, "Zhizn' Bakunina/ P. V. Sakulin, "Ideal1zm Stankevicha, It,J,n Vestnik EvropY (Moskva, 1915), pp. 246264; 1.1.' Gubar', Bakunin i Gegel' (Leningrad, 1973); N. Pirumova, Mildtail Bakunin: Zhizn' 1 delatel' nost' (Moskva, 1966)).

&

'17
o
4

n ature and was characterized throughout the period, and indeed throughoUt the rest of u}e century; by a "serious, intellectuai, 'and proselyttzing" tone.
25
1
1

The flourishing of the periodical press, ln ,the 1830's thus

parallelled an,d reflected the ~tensive activity of the circles. Like these kruzhki. from which it received its IHe-force and impulse, the majority of the journals were based in
Mos~ow

and were grouped" around the

univel'Sity. They constituted a challenge to the official "reptile" prefis of St. Petersburg, and furthermore cultivated an attitude quite Independent of the dictates of the Ministry of Education.
1

The scholarly and "serioue"

ton~

of the journals can in part be


1

accounted for by the fact that they were founded and edited by professors at the University of Moscow. Since they considered the periodical press

as a means for the propagation of prog:r:essive thought and general en1

lightenment, academics were regular and frequent collaborators, and encouraged their students to cootribute articles as well. The most , influential journals of the period were Polevoi's Moscow Telegraph (Moskovskii Telegraf), Pavlov's Atheneum, Ppgodin'e Moscow Messenger
Il

(Moskovskil Vesbik), Kachenovski's Messenger of~Europe (Vestnik evrop~),' Nadezhdin's Telescope (Teleskop), and 1 Kireevsky's European (Evropeets).
,

The journals fuUilled the dual function of education and

pr~ganda,

and

as such were tinged with very heavy moral overtones,26 Whether writing about European literature or translating works by Hegel, problems were
Ll

always related to the Russian

cond~tion,

and the most abstract philosophiconcrete1~'

cal

pos was almost always directly applied to

practical
1
1

issu s,27 as we shaH examine in connection w~th the writings of the


(

.
"

2~alia, Alexander Herzen, p. 59.


1

26ZenkOvsky, Histoire de la philosophie russe, p. 267. 27 Chizh~vski, GegeI' v Rossit, p. 56.

j
1

78

.
Stankevich circJe.' As noted earlier, the circles were initlally
~
,

i~ormal
1

groupings

which met irregularly to read and discuss romantic literature, epecially. the works of Schiller and Goethe. Their member~re unahashed ad,:"

mirers of modern Western ~hought arld they met to exchange these,'~ew philosophical and artistic theories which had succeeded in trlckling into Russia from Europe.
Ev~ntually,

two main poles of attracUcn came to


fi -

dominate the intellectual scene 'of the 30's-the circle of ,Stankevlch and
Il

the Herzen-Ogarv group. The mjority of historians have merely repeated Herzen' s characterization of the two 'circles) as being radia-.ally dferent. 28 Writing many years later in My Past and Thoughts, Herzen drew a sharp (and tactical) distinction between the two r)vaI factions: . . . there had been no great 'sympathy between our circle and Stankevich's. They disliked our aImost exclusively political tendency, while we disliked their aImost exclusively speculative orientatim. They considered' us to be Frondeurs and Frenchmen, w,e thought them sentimentalists and Germans. 29 Whereas il ls generally acknowledged that Stankevich and his colleagues were devotees of German idealistic philosophy and of romantic literature, the claim, that Herzen 's group was "almost exclusively political"
i~its

orientation seems to be an exercise in wishful th inkin g; it is certainly


fa~ile

and misleading.

As sharply as Herzen
1

underl~es

their differences,
esp~cially,

his attempt to minimize the impact of German idealism, and of Schellingianism on himself as weIl as He goes
00
QD

his own d~cle: ls erroneous. (/

to claim that nis group was preoccupied "rather with politics

28See, for example, Pirumova, Steklov, El H. Carr,' Michael Bakunin (London, 1937), Setschkareff, Venturi, Kornilov, Brown, Polonskii, Planty-Bonjour. Exceptions to this interpretation are Koyr and Malta.
,

29Gertsen, "Byloe i ~my," tom 5, p. 99. .

i\

\ 79
than with learning. 1130 Stankevich's circle, on the other hand, which was fonned du~ing the same period (that Is, in the early thirties), 18 said .to have pursued, according to Herzen, "interests [that wereJ
,

purely theoretical. 1131 He described their divergences in these termS':


In the 1830's our convictions were too yout\J.ful, too

ardent'".and too passionate, not to be exclusive. We could coldly respect Stankvich's circle, but we could not be intimate with its members. They tracEfd phUosophical systems, were absorbed in self-analysis, and found peace in a magnific/ent pantheism which did not exclude Christianity. We were dreaming how to set up a new society in Russia on the model of the Decembrists and considered learning itself as a means to our end. 32 Like Stankevich's circle, the 'Herzen-Ogarv group itselt was , heavily influenced by the wave of German Romanticism that had enveloped the young generation of Russian intelligenty, and th.ey operated within a common context of Russian Schellingtanism. Herzen 's youthful articles

written during his university days, and under the supervision of one of , . the foremost Russian Schellingians of the 1830'8, Professor Pavlov, were }leavily inspired by the Naturphilosophie. 33 Martin Malia, in his
in~tful
,

study, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Sociallsm,

is willing to concede that although influenced by philosophical idealism, , Herzen was Most attracted
t~

problems of a practical,

, and hence categorizes him aB a "Left Schellingian." 34 He maintains that 30Ibid .


~

Il

objective" nature,

31lbid .
32 lbid ., pp. 120-121.

33Malia, Alexander Herzen, pp. 90-98


(

3~ld.,

pp. 87, 93, 94.

...

(.80
r~

there were differences between the two clrcles, \ and mainly over politics, bt they existed within a commOn framework of Schellingian idealism and German 'sentimentality. ,35 While it is certainly not our intention to ininimize the importance
"\

of the Herzen-Ogarv circ1e, it is useful to counteract the prevailing tendency and place things in their proper perspective. Historians have, for
50

long, dQ.wnplayed the role of the Stankevich group by ontrasting

ft unfavourably

its rival, that

i~ appears

nec.essary to shed

so~e
~

new light On the significance of Stankevich and his colleagues in, the

de~lopmen-t

of ,Russian philosophy and revolutionary theory. 36


~s

As we have seen, it'

commonly maintained that Herzen's kruzhok

addresseq Uself, from an early date, to political questions and was responsible for the diffusion of French Socialism ID Russian' intellectual thought. On the other han d, the Stankevich circle is reputed to have esc,hewed practicaJ. activity 1 in favour of abstract speculation. While it ls clear that Stankevich and', his fellow "philosophers" were not exclu sively preoccupied with polit~cal issues, they had nonetheless adopted a critical attitude vis--vis their society and government,37 and indeed, held the
~und

conviction that ideological transformation was the key

to social change. In addition, the "political" nature of Herzen's circle has' not, to date, been adequately
~~id.
elucidate~,

and it remains unclear '

36See, inter alia, Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 121; Chizh-evski, Gegel' v Rossit, p. 50;
o

- 37In reference to the Stankevich circle, K. Aksakov,' a member, . wrote (cited in Kornilov, Molodye gody, p. 123): "The circle of Startkevich distinguished itself by an independent viewpoint, free from any authority, and later this freedom became ft violent negation of all authority, best manifested in the critical articles of Belinsky ... "

CIo

81

"'exactly as to what type of "political" illvolvement its members were allegedly contemplatiQg at. th~ time of their arrest. The
'Herzen-Ogar~v

""

kruzRoK ls usually regM:.ded as the


,

pro~agator

of French sociallsm in Russia. It ,is commonly undversity days they had already adopted practical revolutionary action. 38
>

ma~ta~ed

that in their

social~sm

as a tool for

The Stankevich circle IS unfavourably


J.

contrasted with Herzen's "political" , group and is presented as a circle whose interests lay solely in the realm of German metaphysiS, oblivious to all ,reality and absorbed in pure, theoretical thought. This
Il

French -

German" dichotomy has 'been unsparingly used by many specialists analyzing the intellectual activity of the 30's, with the stress lying on the activism of the Gallic school (i. e., Herzen) to the detriment of its passive German counterpart (typified by the Stankevich group). 39 . Such a cut and dried interpretation, albeit quitE!i dramatic; seems to have exhausted itself and is in direneed of revision: F'l!Irthermore, the fact that llerzen himself referred to Hegelianism as the "algebra of revolution, ,,40 clearly suggests that the distinction ls invalid. Upon returning from his exile in 1842, Herzen himself recognized the importance of the Stankevich ,
circle~s

pioneer work in philosophical studies, .


~

1.

and se.t about, many years after them, on 4nvestigation of Hegel. 41 38Pirumova; Mikhail Bakunih, p. 6.

s,erious and systematic

lii

l,

39See, for example, Kornilov, Molodye gody, Pol on skii, Zhizn' Mikhaila Bakunina, Pirumova, MiKhail BakUnin. inter alia. 4Gertsen, ,"Byloe i dumy," tom 5, pp. 104-5.
,
.
( 1

41Ibid.; also Chizhevski, Gege!' i Rossii, p. 52; Herzen in effect joined the Mos<row Hegelians after his return and took part in what remained of the Stankevich Circle aS of 1842.

82
There is also litt;1e evidence. that Herzen, at the time of the

"

\group' s arrest, h~ even_,read any ,of. the workS of Saint-Si~on, 42 relylng largely on secondary soUrces and an writings of his.disciples. It
1

has been correctly pointed out that Herzen

Ir

adopted from Saint-Simon

what was most general and abstract 'and hence nearest to German idealism"; 43 and thus hiS eSPousal of Frenco socialism at this timee was still very much in the spirit of Schellingianism. the 1830's, Saint-Simonism represented not
50
T~

1 j

th,e Herzen of

much a "scientific" tool

.1
1

ll

for political 'reform, as an all-ncompassing philosophy of history, marked by a profoundly Christian worid-view. . To him, it formed an
."

all-embracing totality, going beyond philosophy and speculation to include


!il'
~

\ l
l

1
1

; ,

the social sciences as weIl. One must agree whole-heartedly with Koyr' s interpretation of Herzen's " -, thirties: Le saint-simonisme se prsentait, en effet, ... /~-bm~e une religion. Ce n'tait pas, en fait, une nga~lOn pure et simple de la 'philosophie allemande'; bien au contraire, c'ep tait, dans l'esprit de ;Herzen, plutt un prolongement. .. ', Loin d'abandonner la philosophie allemande pour le saint-simonisme, il semble y tre ramen par~i.44 " Thus, far from rejecting his Sc hellingi an' conceptions in favour of a new vision, Herzen r~)her effected a 'merger of the two, an orientation
, , ' . !

j
!
1

conver~~

to Saint..;;-gimonism in the mid-

1 ,t

l
1

which stemmed 'from his tendency to infuse a more concrete socioreligious dimension into Ger~an metaphYSi~S. Saint-Simonism, as .

Herzen understood ft at this time, was above all a religious, moral 42With the pOSSible exception of the New Christianity, 'see Malia, Jo Alexander' Her zen, Pp. 99-133. 4?Malia, ibid., p. 127.
( 1

j
f

4\:oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p.' 182.

1._

83

and phUosophical doctrine, 45 which remained for hi~,' at least for the ne:ct decade, largely within the idealist idiom.
In yet another respect the 'Stanekvich circle's signicance has

suffered at the expense of Herzen's group. By Us very social composi-

of the same g~neration of Moscow University stu~ents, the majority "of


l'

whom had studied under Professor

P~vlov.

However, the Stankevich


o

circle, unlike its rival, was extremely varied in its social composition. Whereas the Hrzen-Ogarijv group, was drawn almost exchisively from
.
/

the upper ~istocracy, 46


\

the Stankevich circle was socially representa-

tive of dtlferent strata of Russian society, and as such, can be seen to reflect and even exemply the newly-emerginQg intelligentsia which cut across class ba.J;riers.
In addition to tpe de rigueur gentry, there wer~
\

...

\" ,

representatives of the middle and lower nobility, and of the

and merchant classes.


i~verished

Vissarion Belinsky, for e:x;ample, the' son of an


1:

~rofessipnal

arII1Y dOGtor, ~as able to riselabov~ his hu~ble origi~s,

and' ~come one, of the most prominent members of the Stankevich circle, not to mention one of the greatest and Most influential littra~

.j
1
1

teurs of the nineteenth century. In addition 10 social differences, the members of Stankevich' s circle would eventually diver,se politicaJ. and ideological

"

'

evolv~

in the most

directions~/"

From their common interest


\

in German romantic literature, there would sUbsequently' 'emerge both

1 1

Slavophiles and .Westernizer~, revolutionari~s and monarchists, liberals


\,.

....... ~

and reactionaries, idealists and positivists.


o

4~id., p. 184.
4~alia, Alexander Herzen, pp. 66-67.

----~

.. '

84 Furthermore, it must be remembered that the existence of

c
'---

Herzen' s group was limited to a period of appraximately three years,


"

as opposed to the much more prolonged activity of the Stankevich circle. AIter the group's arrest and exile in 1834, it was only Herzen and Ogarv who maintained their original commitment to the cause that they had esposed in their
"
~outh.

The other members of Herzen"s circle al.l

quickly abandoned their youthful ideaIism and retreated into conservatism. The activity of Stankevich's group shows a deeper commitment throughout, as weIl as a more thoughtful attachment to the ideals that animated the circles of the 30's.47 From its inception the Stankevich circ1e was characterized by a serious intellectual attitude, and by collective readings and study-sessions; this sort of mutual collaboration and work was not to be, found in the Herzen-Ogarl!v group.48 The Stankevich circle not ooly enjoyed -g.reater longevity, but could aIso boast extremely talented members-indeed, the leading minds of the generation-Bakunin, BelinsKy, Granovsky, and Aksakov-all participated
~

in the circle.

While Herzen and his friends da1lied with Schiller,

Schelling and Saint-Simon in a cursory fashion in debates which were, for the most part, dominated by Herzen himself, the Stankevich circle
0

proc,eeded carefully and systematically in their philosophical investigations, and held structured discussions in which aIl members freely Pa:ticipated.

..

..
..

Describing Stankevich' s influence on bis intellectuaI and personal development, Bakunin wrote, years later: 47A commitment' that could even survive the deparhlre of its principal member and founder in 1837. When Stankevich left for Germany, leadership of the circ1e 'was assum~ by the reS1dent expert in Hege1ian philosophy, Mikhail Bakunin. 48Chizhevskl, .. Gegel' v Rossii, p. 51.

!
~

t
!

~,

L_=_

85
Meeting Stankevich was salutary for me; this meeting marks a new epoch, a definite transition in my life. He influenced me not only by his deep, intellectual, noble aspiratioo, but also by the wonderful, completely transparent immediacy of ~l his being. The winter that 1 spent with him remains, up until the present, the happiest period of my life. 49
And, again:

His interior being completely manifested itself firstly in his relations with friends, and aIso with all those who had the good fortune to become close to him-a true joy, because it was impossible to live near him and not feel one self, in a certain sense, elevated and ennobled. In his presence, vile a.JIftl trivial ideas and poor instinct were impossible. Under his influence 50 even the most ordinary people became remarkable. Like Bakunin, other contemporaries had nothing but superlatives ta describe Stankevich' s character and influence. Eelinsky referred ta him

in such absolute terms, as "divine person.lity," (bozheBtvennaya lichnost'),

"holy, 1ofty , geniaI per sonality" (svyataI'lt, vy sOkaya, genial 'naya lichnost') , "great, genial soul" (velikaya geniaI'naya duldla) ,11Q..l~~~.. "ha-onious'
<

sweet, blessed" (garmanicheskii, blagoukhayushchii, blazhenii). He asserted that Stankevich "would always"illumine the way for us. ,,51 Other testimonials similarly lavish praise on the young philosopher. Konstantin Aksakov, the future Slavophile i<deologue, and a member of the circle, reminisced: Stankevich himself was an absolutely simple man, devoid of any pretensioos, and even, ta a certain extent, wary of pretensions; [he was) a man of unusual and deep 49aakunin , "Pis'mo sestre Varvare , " 15 marta 1840, in Sobranie sochinenii. tom 2, p. 386. 5Daakunin, cited in Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rassii, p. 71.

51Belinskii, in Izbrannye pistma, tom 1, pp. 293, 300, 193, 206; also Chizhevski, Gagel' v RoMLi, p. 69.

,
86
intelligence, whose prinCi~ interest l~y in pure thought. Although he him;;~as not a dialectician, he nevertheless argued so eoherently, logically and learly in qebates, that the most refined dialecticians like Nadezhdin and Ba.lrunin, hM to capitulate. In his nature there was no one-sidedness: art, beauty, elegance, meant much to him. He played an important role in his circle, but this importance was free and 1egitim ate, and the members' relationship to S~evich, while willingly aCKnowledging his supremacy, was permeated with sE~ntaneous feelings of love, devoid of any envy .... His friends and entourage were permanently and profound1y mar}{ed by their association with StanKevich. Pavel Annenkov, his, biographer, painted a portrait of Stankevich in the following idealtzed colours, testifyin~ to

1'.

the aura of moral authority which seemed to surround him: One cannot claim, of course, that everything that came into contact with Stankevich remained forever influenced }j) his mode of thought, or was permeated by the spirit of hisl...tigorous aspiration: sorne were incapable of completely imitating his example, in others, life... destroyed the fruitful seeds. But all, during Stankevich's lifetime, were morally elevated by hint. and were-U only for a moment-superi6r beings. And is this not the real anq most important aspect of any man? Is this not in fact the calling of the philosopher and mo~alist, and the most noble ,goal for which man must use all his strength and all the capabil1ties given to him by nature, to attain? 53

1.

When Stankevich died of tuberclosis at age 27, the sum total of his written work
~ounted

to no more than a few poe ms, a tragedy,

and a correspondence with family and several close friEmds. Yet he is credited with being the founder and the inspiration behind the new philosophical orientation which influenced an entire generation 'of Russian 52Cited in ChizhevsKi, ibid., p. 70.

53Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich, PerepiSka ego i biografiya, Napisannaya P. V. Annenkovym (MoskVa, 1857), pp. 10-11.
~.

1
87

intelli~enty. 54 His small literary and philosophical production is in no


....

, way proportional to his significance in for, as Chiz'heJKi maintains:

th~

history of Russian thought,

. . . he was the source from which emanated all the lines of philosophical d~velopment of the forties generation. 55
It is a widespread claim that StanKevich was principally responsible for

establishing a serious philosophical attitude among Russian thinkers of his time, and as such, was a driving force in his country's intellectual life. 56 Moving away from the tendency toward vague and hazy "philoso-

1 ., 1
1

phizing," so characteristic of his predecessors, Stankevich manifested, from the beginning, an unmistakable predilection for "c1ear, systematic and sharply contoured thought. ,,57 Rather than seeking in philosophy romantic and ready-made formulas and all-encompassing theorles, he
1

approached it as a 'rigorous 'science, as system, 'logic and method. preoccupation

His

wifu

the 'structure of philosdphical thougrt, with its

/" architectonie model,58 and his insistence on form as dynamic impulse, i8 perhaps what distinguishes him from the large majority of the Rus8ian intelligentsia. The distinctive standpoint and method of theoretical thought was, to Stankevich, more fundamental than the theses that could be derived from it. He was able to create around him a committed and disciplined
l......

"philosophical atmosphere," and initiated, for the lirst Ume, serious 54Ibid ., pp. 5-13. 55Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossli, p. 69. Ibid., pp. 76-79, and Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, pp. 13-21. 57 Brown, Stankevich and His Moscow Circle, p. 10. 56

58ChizhevsKi, Gegel' v Rossii, p. 78.

l {

88 and systematic philosophical study by a group. There gathered around Stankevich men who wanted to think and did, in effect, think, who accompl1shed phUosophlcal work, and who wanted to elevate phllosophy into a concrete science. 59 l!erhaps we find in Stankev1ch an unprecedented interest in pure, detached philosophlcal thought, a devotion to philosophy for Us own sake, as nauka (science,
ph~losophy,

or metaphysics) devold of any extraJI-

theoretical implications. Slgnlf1cantly, Stankevich was one of the few


~

-.

proponents of German idealism who recognized the importance of studyirrg Kant, and who embarked on a thorough and methodical investigation of the Critical philosophy. 60 And indeed certain commentators have pointed out that he was one of the few Russians who really understood
1

and mastered German idealist philosophy. 61 From Kant, he progressed

logically to Schelling, Fichte and Hegel. Herzen, who never met Stankevich, unflatteringly referred to him as "one of the idle people who accompl1sh nothing. ,,62 Nevertheless, he conceded that Stankevich . . . Was the !irst disciple of Hegel in the circle of young peoi>le in Moscow. He studied German philosophy seriously and aesthetically; endowed with excepUonal abllities, he drew a large clrcle of friends 'into his favourite study. This c1rcle was extremely remarkable: from 1t came a regular legion of 5cholars, litterateurs and professors, among whom were Belinsky, Bakunin and Granovsky.63 . 59rbid., p. 79. . 60S~kevich, Perepiska ego. i blografiya, pp. 337-38, 578. . 61See, for example, Venturi, ].<>ots of Revolution, p. 37. 62
i'

"

.,.

Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy," tom 5, p. 99.

63 Ib1d
"

1 1 i

/
89

One must acknowledge that although Stankevich wrote very Uttle and "accompUshed nothlng," he was nonetheless th intellectual impetus
,

,
1

and ctlriving force behind the emlnent figures which Herzen named
abov~-Belinsky,

.it

Bakunin, Granovsky, Turgenev, -in effect, behind aU


It was he who nurtured thelr potenttaI

the members of his cirde. 64

talents, nursed their fragile egos, encouraged thelr creativity and proyided them with insightful advice and guidance along the way. It is essential to perceive Stankevich's role as that of a spiritual catalyst, as a "formative factor,"
50

to speak, in the intellectual development

of the members of his circle. He should be assessed, not so much in terms of his limited l1terary output, but rather, for his "harmonious, " charismatic and coocUiatory personality, as weIl as for his maieutic skUIs, and his abUity to inspire and moUvate others, in bath their studies and in their acts. Like Bakunln, Herzen and Ogarv, Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich belonged to one of the wealthlest and oldest famUies of the Russian landed gentry class. He was barn in 1813 in the Ostrogozhsk district of Voronezh province. 65 At the age of ten, he was sent to the district
l'

"

public school, where he studied together with chUdren of commoners. This was" an exception to the habitUaI pedagogical practice

01

the Russian

aristocracy, but his Jather, an "enlightened" nobleman, wished to put loto practice certain democratic principles to whic~ he adhered. 66 Young 64Stankevich must also be credited ~ discoverlng and introducing the "peasant" poet, Aleks ei Kol\sov, to Russian society (Annenkov, Perepiska Stankevicha, p. 8). 65For a biography of Stankevich, see 'Annenkov,. ibid., and Brown, Stankevich and His Moscow Cir.cle. 6f>J<ornllov, Molodye gody, , pp. 92-:,93; Gertsen, "Byloe 1 dumy, " tom 5, p. 122.

1
j

90

Stankevich was later sent to attend a scte0l for sons of the nobility (blagorodnyl pension), in preparation for the university examinations. By the Ume he entered Moscow University in 1830 Stankevlch was fluent in Russian, German and

Fr~nch,

and was thoroughly tmmersed 10


;

German romantic l1terature, l1ke Most of 'his contemporarles. He was an ardent admirer of Schiller and had already composed several lyrical ; " verses highlyAmitative of the Schillerian style. 67 Howeverl as Brown critically note" poetry was not Stankevich's forte, for his sharply analytical ~ concise turn of mind was an obstacle ta the uninhibited
\

expression of aesthetic intuition:

...

. . . the main themes of Stankevich' s poems were furnished by the romantic idealism which was the intellectual style of his Ume. His poems have their sh~re of dreamy mysticism, panthelstic sensatiohs, and fllghts of religious emotion, and they express a striving for commwlion with an Ideal existence beyond the vulgar accidents of time and space. There are in them, ~owever, qualities pculiar to Stankevich., Curiously enough, thought is str;onger in them than feeling, and this in splte of constant emphasls on the prlmacy of feeling. His poetry conveys concepts rather than images, and in language that lacks p'oetic rhythm. His are not romantic poems at all, but philosophlcal meditations in the romantic manner, composed by a young man who has adopted a l1terary fasmon but is not at home in it. Thelr most characterlstic theme is the rel1gious one of renunclation; there Is not a scintilla of romantic rebellion in any of them. It is a paradox that they should have been written by the intellectual leader of a circle that included Belinsky and Baku.nin, and from which emerged the llberal movement of the forties. Contemporaries who lCnew Stankevich only thtough hls poems could not have supposed that the young mari had any special slgnif1cance. And his only published p~,ose, a febrUe daydream on the subject of early and untimely death "through excess of love and lUe, " i~ devoid of literary merit and deservedly forgotten. 68 67Brown, Stankevich and His ,Moscow Circle, p. 7.

68Ibid., p. 20.

1
i

91
Brown certainly passes stern judgement on the tirst (and timid) ltterary efforts of the nineteen-year old Stankevich, and seems 'to underestlmate, throughout his study, his positive influence on the foremost literary critic of the periode Indeed, Belinsky held Stankevich's aesthetic judge-~ ment and artistic ~sensitivity in very high esteem. 69<>\

1
r .
1

1
1

:
1

Throughout his four years at Moscow University, where he was a student of l1terature, Stankevich l1ved in the 1l0me of Professor Pavlov, , \ the major exponent of Schellingian phllosophy. The fact is not without importance, for it was in this setting that Stankevich was provided with an enthusiastic introduction to German idealism. Through Pavlov, he was able to meet and hold discussions with other prominent scholars, such as Professors Shevyrev, Pogodin and Maksimovich. Together with these personal contacts, as weIl as through the lectures of Pavlov and Nadezhdin, 70 another ardent proponent of Schelling' s philosophy at the University, Stankevich rapidly famUiarized himself with the basic tenets of idealist aesthetlcs and with
th~

,j

Naturphilosophie. And although he did

6~erzen wrote, somewhat venomously, that: Stankevich' s views on art, on poetry and on Us relation to lUe, grew in Belinsky'e articles into that powerful modern critical method, into that new view of the world and of life, which impressed all of 'thinking Russia and made all the pedante and doctrinaires recoU from Belinsky with horror. It befell Stankevich to form Belinsky; but the passionate, ruthless, fiercely Intolerant talent that carried Belinsky beyond all limits insulted the \ aesthetically harmonioue nature of Stankevich.
Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy," tom 5, p. 124; see also Annenkov, Perepiska Stankevicha,- pp. 73-74.

7~. J. Nadezhdin, professor of philology at Moscow University, lectured in theory of fine arts, history of art, and logic. EdUor of the Atheneum and the Telescope, he had a strong influence on Stankevich and Belineky. See P. N. MiliukOV, Il Nadezhdin i perviya kriticheskiya stat'yi Bel1nskago," in Iz lstorl1 russkoi intellige~, pp. 188-211; also Shpet, Ocherk razvitl1a russkoi fUosofii, pp. 284 ff.
.1

,
92

not set about _on a systematic study of Schelling's works until late 1834, 71 ,an unmistakablY Schellingian outlook and idiom permeates his university writings. Even before Stankevich's formai study of Schelling in the faU of 1834, his phUosophlcaI position and tone was heavily tingea with und'er-currents derived from the Naturphilosophie. The union of nature and mind corresponded to Stankevich's own metaphysicaI--tendency and intuitions, as gleaned from Pavlov, Nadezhdin, and Victor Cousin. An
(
,

essay written in 1833, entitled My Metaphysics, clearly outlines his theoretical orientation which was moving towards a definitely Schellingian
~eJtanschauung:

The various species make up an ascending ladder, through which lHe, con"scious of itself as a whole, moves towards self-reallzation ln indlviduaIs .... Man can leel an identity between hlmself and the world of reason, he can penetrate Us laws, foresee its purpose, and experlence the beauty of creation. In this sense, man is an image of the creator-of the world-reason. 72 This essay reveals a hazy mlange of notions taken trom Kant, Schelling and Herder, as weIl as other characteristtcaIly romantic inflexions from
,

!
1 \

!*

the traditionaI theme of the 'great chain of being.' Planty-Bonjour's reading of My Metaphystcs somewhat Schellingian tout _court: - [Ma mta2!yslgueJ nous rvle un Stankvl~ qui adopte les thses fondamentales de Schelling sur l'unit organiclste de la nature, de l'esprit et de l'histoire. Comme Schelling, il insiste sur l'interdpendance et 71However, Stankevich had read Schelling' s preface to Victor Cousin's Fragments philosophiques. See Kornilov, Molod~g~, p. 124; see aIso Stankevich, "Pis'mo k Neverovu" (1832), in Perepiska ego 1 ~iograf!Y.lb p. 210. 72"Moya metafisika," in Annenkov, Pere2!.s.Ka Stankevicha, pp. 171
(

ha~tily

makes Stankevich into a

l
i

(
1)

24.

1
)

le dveloppement des phnomnes qui forment un tout vivant et sont sO"\lmis la rgulati du principe spirituel. 73 Kornilov' s analysis cornes c10ser to an accurate description and sume

" marizes Stankevich's philosophwal development to date: The first line of this es say, which readily acknowledges Us experimental nature, recalls th opening lines of the Transcendental Aesthetic (in The Critique of Pure Reason), then follow theses inspired by the pantheistic views of Spinoza, alter which the author displays a tendency towards the monistic outlook on nature and reason in the spirit of Schelling. 74 t However, it was this "monistic" stance, this tendency towards a unified
,

v iewpoin t, which would subsequently lead Stankevich to a serious investigation of Schelling the following year. Initially, Stankevich's main interest lay in the sphere of artin Romantic poetry, l1terature and music. A small circle of friends
beg~

to gather in his apartment, as of f83!, in order to discuss

literary questions and to listen to Beethoven and Schubert (Stankevich was an accomplished pianist). Together, they read Go,pthe, Schiller,

Jean-p~u1,

Hoffmann, Bettina von Arnim and' other romantic authors. 75


\

The earliest participants in Stankevich's circle inc1uded his close friend, Yanuarii Neverov, the poets Ivan Kllushnikov' and Vassilii Krasov, as

weIl as the historian and paleographer Sergei Stroev. Other members


included Ivan Obolensky and Yakov Pochelka. Membership in the kruzhok varied from year to year, as students graduated from the University .and others arrived ln Moscow to begin their course. 73Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense

phil~SOphiqUe,

pp. 14-15.

7~ornUov, MolodIe godY, p. 125.


75Steklov, Zpizn' Bakunina, p. 31; also Annenkov, P.erepiska Stankevlcha, pp. 46 ff.

94

Stankevich, was discovering within himself an insistent urge towards speculative thought; going beYOIid mere aesthetic experience he sought a philosophical explanation for sensoriaI phenomena, and concerned himself increasingly with the rational ore of the concept of the beautiful. 76 Consequently, under his direction, his .-circ1e began
,j

to move away from Uterature and art on to aesthetics and to the philosophy of art. 77 The progression from here to metaphysic's would only be a matter" of Ume.
In 1833, the group acquired. sorne new and notable recruits:

Vissarion Belinsky, Konstantin Aksakov, Ossip Bodyansky, Pavel Petrov, Aleksandr Efremov, and Aleksandr Keller. The following year Stankevich completed his university course and graduated with high honours. 78 He was conferred the title of kandidat slovesnykh~. 79 In October 1834 he left Moscow and returned to his family estate, where he was appointed In~pector of Schools for the local school district,80 This positian, being largely an honorary one, left Stankevich ample time to devote himself to the study of Schelling, which he had now decided to undertake seliously on Pavlov's advice and
und~r

his academic supervision. He

thus spent the greater lJart of the faIl and winter (1834-35) as siduously"
'r

gra~pling with The Sysy~m of Transcendental Idealism, 81 a~ he had come,

76Stankevich, Ptrepiska ego i biografiya, pp. 235-239, for example; aIso Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossli, p. 73. 77See Perepiskg for September-October 1834; aIsa Annenkov, Perepiska Stankevicha, pp. 94-'150. 79

7~ornilov, Molodye S'Ody, p. 92. Annenkov, Perepiska


St~~~vlc~

1
p. 86.

1
~

8~id., p. 88; Kornilov, p. 97; Gertsen, ''Byloe i dumy," tom 5,


p. 124. 81StanKevich, Pe~pis:a_~ i biogratiya (19 Sept, 1834), Pp. 289292, and (16 Oct. 1834), pp. 92-294; see also Steklov, Zhizn' Bakun~a.l p. 33 and Kornilov, ~olodye gody, p. 128.

! \

95

to the realization that it was now necessary -to, embark on a systematic ,;

reading of the sources of ideal1st phUosophy. WhUe reading Schelling, he critically rmarked:
,

1 frequently don't understand the direction of his thought (das Verfahren). The system ta becoming more clear to me, but' 1 dislike his l (universal), from which he somehow and too mechanically derlves thought; I would have preferred that reason precede everything .... 82 Also from his study of Schelling, Stan){evlch rtained the predominance of religion over phil os ophy :83 Only one higher stage ls possible: the penetration into this system by religion, or the religion of thls system (1t 18 possible that there wUI be other systems but there can never be any (system} more complete, 'more darlng, superior to this o!1e). It" can develop into pure Christianism. 84 Stankevich's financial Independence permitted hlm to malte frequent and extended visits to Moscow, where he contlnu'!d to partake in the circle's activity and gently to guide tts philosophical orientation. In early 1835, he and sorne other members re-studied Th,e ,System of
,

Transcendental Idealism. This renewed interest in Schelling's philosophy by Stankevich's group can be seen as a continuation of the philosophical tradition established by the Liubomudry in the 1820's, as certain commentators have already noted. 85 82Cit ed in Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossif, p. 76. 83Thi !? confirms the idea that Stankevich embraced philosophy still very much in a predominantly religious spirit. Isaiah Berlin' s allegation that for Stankevich philosophy had replaced religion appears without foundation (in "A Remarkable Decade," p. 25). Brown's claim that "at no' time does Stankevich attempt to substitute reason for reli'gion, or German idealism for Christianity" Is much more accurate (Stankevich and His Moscow Circle, ,p. 99). -

.. 84Also, cited in Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossli, p. 76. .85see, for example, Chizhevski, Brown, Steldov, Kornilov, and Polonskii.

96
ln March 1835 Stankevich first made the acquaintance of Mikhail
,

Bakunin. The two felt an imrnediate affinity for each other, as well as cornmon phUosophical interests; the bond of friendship was further' intensHied when Stankevich and Efremov spent the mont1:I of October of
".

JI
~

the same year in Priamukh.ino. Following his visU, Stankevich wrote his impressions to his close friend Neverov:, Michel and l have bec orne friends: his is a pure and noble souf! . .. l am very pleased that he has chosen the sarne sU;dies as 1: we shaH correspond very seriously in connection with these studies. 86
It is olten clairned that StanKevich was mostly rsponsible for

"

introducing and directing Bakunin, - who, supposedly at this tirne had corne to a crossroad in his career, -to an intense study of phUosophy. The origin of this interpretation dates bacK to Herzen's somewhat sardonic (and distorted) account: 87 On receiving his discharge Bakunin came to Moscow, and from that date (about 1836) began his serious lHe. He had studied llOthing before, had read nothing, and hardly knew any German, With great dialectical abilities and a talent for obstlnate, persistent thinking, he had wandered without map or cornpass lnto fantastic constructions and auto-didactic efforts, Stankevich percelved his talents and set him down to philosophy. Bakunin learnt German from Kant and Fichte and then set to work on Hegel, whose method and logic he mastered to perfection-and to whom did he not preach it afterwards? To us and to B~. sky, to ladies and to Proudhon. 88
1

P. V, Annenhov, in h

literary memoirs, The Extraordinarf Decade,

slmply echoes Herzen's vew, and presents Stankevich as something of a/ philosophical talent-scout: /
1-

86"Pis'mo k Neverovu, " 26 oktyabrya 1835, ln Stankevich, Perepiska ego i biografiya, p. 334. 87One must remember that Herzen was in Vyatl. at the' time of the Bakunln-Stankevich rapprochement, , 88Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy," tom 5, pp. 124, 253.

. .

97

Hegel's phUosophy ... had found a particularly eloquent proselytizer' in the person of a certain young retired artlllery officer, who had rapidly learned German and who, in general, possessed an aptitude for mastering languages and abstract concepts. This persOn was M. Bakunin. In 1835 he did Dot know what to do with himseU; and came into contact with N. V, Stankevich, who. surmising his talents, set him studying German philosophy. The work went swiftly. Bakunin revealed, to a superior degree, dialectical aptitudes, s0.Aesential in order to infuse I1fe into abstract, logical rmulas and to obtain conclusions from them which ar applicable to le. ri was to him that one turned for the elucidation of any obscure or difficult _'passage in the ,system of the master. 89 , . 'The idea that Bakunin, as a young Qfficer, turned to a study of- philoso~

phy out of sheer boredom and ennui can hardly be taken seriously. There are
certainl~

more amusing, ways

tp

alleviat boredom than by Heden's inter-

coming to terms with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason!


\

pretation, furtherinore, is inconsistent and difficult\ to reconcUe with Bakunin's seU-willed, higly independent and headstr.ong character, as we have had occasion to observe in severaI instances. His correspondence, dating back to well before his encounter with
S~kevich

already

reveals Balfunin's profound conviction of his social J1d, moral mission ("h will not live for himselt". on ne budet zhit' dIya' sebya), of 'a' special calling over and above his own personal interest. We have, in ,addition, noted Ba.kUnin' s graduai
l

and

enthusiastic attraction ta philosophi,


1

...

cal questions as weIl as his predilection for rigorous metaphysical


1

.,

thought. Curiously, bath Herzen and Annen.kov readUy

r~cognize

Balrunin's

immense skilI and facUity in dialectics and philosophY-Surely this gt could not have been simply infused into him by Stankevich in so brie!
89 p . V. Annenkov, "Zamechatel 'noe decyatUee: )838-1848," in Literaturnye vospominaniya (Moskva, 1960), pp. 155-156. . ,

( "

J l '': . -+
.. " " v

---1---

<: " 1

98
a time span. Quite the contrary, in fact, one of the prlcipal reasons

1
1 , i ,
1

for the ltense friendship that developed between Stankevich and Bakunin was the similarfty of their philosophical orientations and parallel worldviews. They were drawn to each other precisely on account of these similarities of their philosophical outlook and affinities in their interests. As Brown correctly notes: Even before jOling the circle, Bakunin bad acquired a Schellingian view of the world and 01 man r 5 fate . . . we see . . . the presentiment that he [Bakunin] must not live for himsel~but for the general good-~6t he must relate bis own lile to the lile of the whole. Bakunl, in the independent formulation of his th ou ght, had come to have a vit al interest in the acquisition of philosophical knowledge as a key to the mysteries of liie. The aspirations of the two young men coincided on the question of the destiny of man (naznachenie cheloveka), each having realized that he was called upon to play a significant role
in the development of society. Kornilov describes Bakunin' s state of

mind at the time of his appearance in the Stankevich circle in the following terms:
1
/"

An ideationally-disposed, very self-sufficient and ambitious youth, who consciously scorned any usual worldly career, -which, given his capacities and cnections would not have been dilficult to attain,for the sake of fulfilling his mission which presented itself to him in extremely elevated terms. To all the dficulties and dangers of the path he had chosen, and which were evident to others, he paid no attention whatsoever. 91
Unquestionably, Stankevich was highly impressed With the boldness and originality of Bakunin's stance, and upon comparing outlooks, the 90arown, Stankevich and His Moscow Circle, pp. 61-62.

91Komilov, Molodye gody, p. 135.

,
j

l
1

\\

99 two men decided, at the time of the PriamUkhino visit, in October 1835, to travel the difficult road to and encouragement. Nikolai Stankevich, at this' ti~e, and alter his study of Schelling, had become convinced of the necessity of beginning the study of philosophy with Kant and Fichte, the direct predecessors of Schelling. 92 Not nIY id Schelling's system 1,lave, its origin in the Kantian problematic, \~-< '( / t he rec6gnized Kant' s critical philosophy as a new development in philosophical method. 93 As an important pew and vital method of
th ou ght , Kantian philosophical system had to be fully mastered. 94
knowl~ge

together and through mutual help

Stankevich imparted these convictions to Bakunin, and the two friends, one now in Moscow, the other in Priamukhino, began their investigation of Kant' s works, exchanging their impressions in an almost daily and voluminous correspondenc~. 95 Bakunin, who had undertaken a formal and rigorous study of philosophy at a particularly trying and unsettled moment in his life (it will be
remembG.~d

that he was still attempting,

at this time, to obtain his diSpensati~om the army and was involved
in bitter daily arguments with his father

04
"

his future career), was

experiencing profound difficulties With Kant' s system. The atmosphere of crisis at Priamukhino was hardly conducive to lu cid and calm

92StankeviCh, Perepiska ego i biograliya, pp. 337-338. 93Ibid., p. 578. 94" Pis'mo k Bakuninu," 12 noyabrya 1835, in ibid., pp. 586. 950f this correspondence, Stankevich's Ietters alone survive; most of Bakunin's letters to Stankevich are lost.

583~'

100
pbilosopbical readjng and reflexion. 96 !keViCb offered ,,,Iviee and

encouragement, and his letters prpvided Balrunin with c1ea" and concise rsums as weU as elucidations of particularly thorny seclltms. urged Michel to po/severe, work slowly, carefully, and not to devote
1

He

WU

J'ned him We

mof~' than two or three hoursa day to Kant. 07

f.~ )mow, from St~kevich's' letters, that Bakunin was studyinf,! the Critique
: l'of Pure Reason during the months of October and Novembf1 r 1835. 98 It is aIso revealed in the correspondence that StanKevich conlhed Moscow and St. Petersburg for French and German commentaries III help BaKunin. 99 Other cornmentators 100 maintain that Bakunin was also

reading The Critique of Judgement; while not documented, this is highly liKely, as StanKevich, Ba.lrunin' s "philosophical confidant," J CIl undoubtedly would have referred baCK to the Third Critique as the ori~11I and critical investigation of the theme of the "teleology of nature, " el~11i Irated by the romantics. This therne very much interested StanKevich, nll d he might 96BaKunin was undersiandably experiencing acute dl Hiculty with Kant' s austere and technical writing, as well as with the ('lllllplex terminology, but was determined to persevere. He assure' 1 StanKevich, that he would not rest until he had "penetrated the spirit or Kant. " Cited in Palonskii, Zhizn' Mikhaila Balrunina, p. 29. 97" Pis'mo k Balruninu," 4 noyabrya 1835, in Pere916Ka ego i biografiya, pp. 577-580, and 12 noyabrya 1835, pp. 583-5"t1, also 16-17 noyabrya 1835, pp. 587-591. 9800 November 4, 1835, Stankevich wrote to Nevel'ov, who ha'd . moved to St. Petersburg in 1833, "send me two copies of Ihe Critique of Pure Reason by Kant-one for me the other for Kliu sh Il 1KOV. Please hurry! 1 left my copy with Michel, Il' in Perepiska ego i r-bjll~rafiy~. p. 336. Also, in a letter to Bakun in , of Nov., 1835, ibid., Stanke\' Ich advlses Balrunin to study carefully the introduction and the transcell dental aesthetic, which belong, of course, ta the First Critique. 99perepisKa ego i biografiya, pp. 336, . 572, 576-97.

lO~oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. l ~~ 0, and ChizhevsKi, Gegel' v Rassii, p. 88.


101Br<>~, StanKevieh and His Mascow Circle, p. 6J

101 have recommended that Balrunin study its sources.


In early 1836, Bakunin moved to Moscow (the notorlous "flight

ta Mediljla"), where ne lodged alternately with Stankevich, Efremov and Krasov. 102 From his letters home, it is evident that he still intended
\

ta leave for Berlin in the near future, that is, as soon as he was able to finance this project. 103 In the meantime, he proposed to support himself by private tutoring in mathematics-once permission to teach
had been granted to him by Count Stroganov, the urator of the Moscow

educational district, Michel ordered ealling cards bearing the inscription, "M. de Bacounine, Matre de Mathmatique. ,,104 ~d although he did not recruit any students until April 1836, this "radical" course of action
(i. e.,

working for a living), marlCed a clear departure from the accepted


J

mode of conduct of the Russian aristocracy.l05 102See Balrunin, pp. 204-212, in tom 1, Sobranie sochinenii. 103BalCunin, "Pis'mo Ya. M. Neverovu," 15 fevralya 1836, in ibid., p.' 195. 104BelinSkii, "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 12-24 olCtyabrya 1838, in Izbrannye pis'ma, tom 1, p. 195. 105m a letter of March 8, 1836, Balrunin wrote: 1 have begun to lead a working life. 1 am working very hard and am making great progress. 1 feel that 1 am in my sphere! 1 feel alive! ' Bakunin, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 218. By working to support himself Bakunin broke with the habituai careers of the nobility, and rejected the standard aristocratie occupations of landlord or government service. He feH ennobled by his labour, and wrote on February 28, 1836: .., It i8 necessary to tear oneself away from the laws of the world, and 1 have begun that which 1 had decided to do: not to taKe a single step for the success of my political lUe, but to live instead as a professor of \ mathematic8. And so-to the world-I am a worthless c.reature, a nothing, a teaeher of mathemat~cs. But to myself,. to friends who understand me, 1 have beeome a betler person than before; 1 have destroyed the petty egoism of self-preservation, 1 have shaken oft all prejudices from myseU, 1 am a man! Ibid., p. 209.

i
j
1

102
\ Along with Stankevich, Bakunin plunged into a period of intense

intellef tual acti~ty and philosophical study. 106 However, B~in' s


l '

~'

"Kantian phase" was short-lived, as the complexies of Kant's system


" were discouraging to him.

There is already an enthusiastic

r~fer-

.-;
ence ta a discovery of Fichte's philosophy in his correspondence for the month of February.107 The impact was immediate and powerful. Fichtean terminology begins ta pervade Bakunin's vocabulary, and his preoccupation wj.th QI or al consciousness
an~

i
1
j

with the notions of subjec-

tivlty and freedom become increasingly more pronounced. BakUnin adopted into his own style Fichte's predominantly ethical tone. 108 He feH an irrepressible affinity for the central Fichtean themes of IIthe task l ' (die Aufgabe) and of moral activity. Bakunin described the sense

ot spiritual awakening that he experienced upon reading Fichte, in these


exalted terms: 1 have crossed over ta tha~ period of life which- fox: me begins in the field of activity; my soul, hithert~ in astate ot slumber, has awakened and become agitated. . .. 1 have thought over Many questions and 1 have suffered through much during th~s period. Thus began for me my new lite: the future 1'& obscure and mysterious; there are few comfortmg hopes. But my soul ls bright and clear; 1 have come to under myself; never before have 1 understood self s ruthfully, sa determinately as now. 109 106"1 spend MOst of my time With Stankevich. We are studying history and philosophy together," in Sgbranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 218; there are also frequent references to Kant, Herder, Karamzin, and Buhle's Uchebnik po istorii filosofii, 1796-1804, and Istoriia novai filosofii s epokhi vozrozhdeniia nauk, 1816. 107Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 204. 108See Koyr, La pense philosophique Chizhevski, Ge gel ' v ROBSii, p. 88; Kornilov, B. Jakowenko, Geschichte des Hegelianismus 1938), pp. 20-22. en Russie, p. 129; MolQ!iye gody, p. 143; in Russland, tom 1 (Prague, '
Il

. ,

I09 u Pis'mo sestram Tat'yane i Varvare, Sobranie ".,ehinenii, tom 1, p. 208.

28 fevralya 1836, in

1/

/l~'-" J '- --::<

103
since

Bakunin's, conversion to Fichteanism merits

s~ec~~ ~onsideration,

this philosophical system was highly instrumentJ in bringing about his endorsement of the concept of praxis and ultimately led to his UIlconditional adoption of the primacy of practical activity. It should immediately be underlined that Bakunin was principally attr~cted to Fichte' s political and social ph il os ophy , that is, to the practical dimension of his thought and especially to the notion of. activism, rather than to his other, more "theoretical" writings (i. e., Wissenschaftslehre and the epistemological foundations). These "practical" or < "programmatic" wo,rir/ of Fichte, to which Bakunin turned, were rich in and are animated by a thoroughgoing activism.
revolutionar~

concepts
/l

In effect, they constitute

\ ,
J

a real call to action, which revolves around the key notion of the "practical task" and of the realization of action. In Fichte's hands, Reason acquired a practical, concrete dimension; the idea that philosophy
.

could extend beyond the confines of "grey theory" and venture out into life, added an especially vital element to his system. Conse<pently, in Fichte, the philosopher, or the "scholar" ls given a special role to play, an important vocation to carry out, Within his given society. He becomes, in effee,t, the link between the moral idea and its. implementation. Thus, a dynamic sense of mission dominates Fichte's phUosophy, and corresponded, in a striking manner, to Bakunin's own frame of mind and psychological predisposition. The question of the "vocation

1 1
j
i
1

"

of man," which had been ceaselessly troubling Bakunin and his fellow intelligenty, ls a central concern of Fichte's "practical" philosophy, and the fact that it was able to find such an enthusiastic follower in the person of Balrunip testifies to the latter's receptivity to a ph-ilosophical

system which em),hasized moral activity and voluntarism. ~

104 Thus, it was not to Fichte' s transcendental idealism nor to fiis


epistemology that Bakunin was drawn, but rather, and very si gnificanUy, to his political and social philosophy, as well as to his emphasis on historical mission and moral activism. Balrunin's Fichtean phase has for too long been misunderstood and Wlderestimated.
It is of crucial

importance to understand Bakunin's adoption of Fichteanism as an indispensable step in his elaboration of a concept of
revolut~nary

praxis.

It has been convinfingly "argued in recent works that the origins

of the philosophy of praxis can be traced to Fichter's social and political works. 110 The influence of Fichte's views on Bakunin's thought cannot be neglected; we intend to show that it was deep and long-lasting. Furthermore, and quite interestingly, 'Bakunin was one of the few Russians to undertake a serious study of Fichte, and indeed, he himself undertboK to propagate his works, by publishing a translation of Fichte's Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar, a work that was particularly close to Bakunin's
OWl1

--

position and convictions. Ul

Fichte's system of ethical idealism is governed by the, principle that ideal activity is the only reality. The Ego can assert itself prim-

arily through its activity, through the Act; indeed, for Fichte, the nonEgo, that is to say nature or the object, is merely reduced to a field for the activity of the subject or will ,or ta an alien resistance to that activity. The dualism established by this Ego/non - Ego dichotQmy can effectively be surmounted only through, the agency of the moral conscious" 110 \ ~ , "'. Bee, for example, Martial Gu roult, Etudes sur Fichte (Paris, 1974); Alexis Phllonenko, Thorie et Praxis (Paris, 1968); see also Xavier Lon, Fichte et son temps, 2 vols. (Paris, 1922-27).

111KaminSki, Bakounine, la vie d'un rvolutionnaire, p. 37, erroneously claims that Bakunin published a translation of Fichte' s Guide to the Blessed LUe.

105 ness, acting according to the Imperatives of practical reason. 112 E')erything in Fichte's system, from his epistemology to his metaphysics, can be derived from this central ethical principle. CasuisticaUy, the ethical factor is logically applied to the social, Political, and even to the economic sphere. Fichte's belief in the primacy of moral activity was taken to its radical implications and, conclusions in his endorsement of egalitarian and

~enocratic

sentiments in the period following the Revolution


!

of 1789. He published, in 1793, a defence and explication of the French Revolution, entitled, Contributions to the Rectification of the Public' s Judgement on the French Revolution. This work, described Dot as a philosophical, "but a political justification of the ideals of the French Revolution;,113 ultimately brought down accusations of Jacobinism and political radicalism, and caused his expulsion from the Jena.
U~iversity

i
1
1

of

Fichte was an ardent proponent and admirer of the democratic


1

and humanitarian ideals proclatmed by the Revolution, which he saw as "the moral and political regeneration of the world in the -name of ReJson. "114 Emphasizing the intrinsic and indissoluble unity of

~ought

and action, he sought to justy the principles upheld by the Revolution, which constituted to him, "the tir st practical triumph of philosophy.'dI5 The central thesis of the Contr'ibutions concerns the legitimacy of the Revolution, as weIl as a defence 'of the doctrine of the Social Contract 112The Ego iB, for Fichte, the morally-active Ego. Fichte says "to act, that is man's vocation. tr Indeed, "to act" means to act morally, that is, to transform the world as one finds 1t in~o a world according to moral ideas, to establish the morally good world. 113LJn, Fichte et son temps, vol. 1, p. 14.
'""\
1

114n>id., p. 167.
ll~id.

1
1

i i

106

\
as the expression of the sovereignty of the general will. Fichte defends the rght of a people to any form of political change, even to revolution. This work represents a sca.thing and radical attlck on the status quo, and
1

.. , [une) justification juridique de la R~volution, au nom des principes de la Raison et de la thorie du Contrat Social; [une] condamnation de l'absolutisme mbnarchique, au nom de la libert de penser; [une) dnonciation, au nom de la justice, de tous les privilges du monde fodal et clrical, de la noblesse et du clerg, le servage et l'esclavage .... 116
It goes further to apply the ideas of the revolution ta thelr economic

!
l

and social corollaries: ... une conception de la proprit toute transforme par cette abolition du servage, par la proclamation de la libert du travail, du droit, et de la ncessit pour chacun de vivre de son travail; toute une rvolution conomique fonde sur les bases de Ja Rvolution politique; et aussi toute une rvolution religieuse; la thorie', du contrat applique l'Eglise, justifiant le droit d"expr.oprier l'Emse, au nom de l'mancipation des consciences .... Perhaps one of the main sources of attraction for Bakunin in Fichte' s ideas can be seen to lie precisely in this outright political and moral cornmitment, and the fact that Fichte est farouchement galitaire au plan politique, en contraste avec Kant et la plupart des Allemands, mais comme Herder (et Rousseau), et en parfaite consonance avec la Rvolution franaise dans son dveloppement jacobin. 118

IlGn,id., p. 203.
117Ibid ., p. 204.
1

11~ouis Dumont,
(

ilL' Allemagne rpond

la France: Le peuple

<

i
1

et la nation chez Herder et Fichte," dans Libre Politigue-AnthropologiePhilosophie (Paris, 1979). '

1
<

\1

-,. 107 Bakunin' s adoption of Fichte' s


revolutiona~y

tone and inflexions can he

appreciated by the tact that when he translated and introduced Fichte' s


"

PhilO~PhY
Il

to his friend Belinsky, the latter remarked that he immediately

smelled blood." 119 Fichte categorically upheld each nation's right to sovereignty and

to self-determination, and looked admiringly to France as the nation which had in effect successfully carried out its revolution. The ideals of liberty, r'eason and justice as espoused by the French Revolution were extolled by Fichte as an example to the whole of humanity. His Most insistent political preoccupation revolved around the question: how
l

is Germany ta make its revolution, how is it to set change into motion? (The equivalent of the Russian rhetorical question,
1
I1

what is to he don?"
1

chto delat'?) The origin of any change which lies in freedom, according to Fichte, cannot be imposed from without, nor can it be imitated in a display of mere "legality"; rather, it lies in one's interior life which contains a mission to transform the external world. The basis for any

j
j

1
J

transformation of society lies in the adoption of ethical motives and of a profoundly moral attitude according to which the Good can be established. Fichte' s philosophy involves a decisive prise de conscience of one's will and moral mission, a turning in ward, stern concentration on
th~ _~terior

50

to speak, and a

experience of the subject. This Is a

necessary stage on the way to any practical external action; regeneration passes through a moral re-education. 120 Fichte's distinction between the 119V. G. Belinskii, "Pis'mo M. A. BakUninU,'". 12-24 oktyabrya 1838, in Polnoe sobranie sochineJ:lii, tom XI, Pis'ma 1829-1840 (Mo skv a, 1956), p. 320.

'(

120See J. G. Fichte, Addresses ta the German Nation, ed. by George Armstrong Kelly (New York, 1968), pp. 145 ff.

108 "inner" and the "outer" already appea~s in Bakunin's vocabulary as

early as February 1836: 1 have bec orne convinced that the external lile must not be the goal of even the practical activity of man. But it is not so easy to renounce it; the spirit is sometimes 50 weak, that it is not able to be satislied with the interior consciousness of Us merit; it is sa weak that it olten requires rewards from the external world. It is difficult, painful, to destroy one after the other all these fantastic images whic:n-Con.stitute the poetic aspect of lUe, in which both elements of universal lite-the spiritual and the externalare 50 wonderfully, 50 harmoniously, fused. But 1 have finally achieved this; 1 ha,!e understood the ftrtility of these tfndencies; 1 have understood that outside of the spiritual world there is no true life, that the spirit must be its own end, and that it must not seek any other goal. The path, it is true, is 2 desolate, but, at the same time, worthy of man! 1 1 Bakunin has evidently grasped the Fichtean emphasis on the inner life of the soul, on moral comrnitment, and on spiritual activity, as well as the understanding that only herein }lites the true reality. Fichte's writings are dominated by an all-encompassing ethical principle and they are coloured by a deeply religious feeling. However, his belief in Gad was in no way a transcendental credo, but rather an immanenU, conception of the deity. God, according to Fichte, is simply present in the' recognition of the moral dynamic within oneself and in reality. 122 The supreme diVine authority, he held, like Kant, is the 121Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestramTat'yane i Varvare," 28 fevralya 1836, in Sobranie sochinenj.i, tom 1, pp. 208-209. ' 12 2rndeed, the notion of a transcendent, supernatupal God is unnecessary and has no place in Fichte's system, as man is absolutely free and responsible for his actions. Fichte emphasizes the~~tonomy and self-sufficiency of the practical subject, ideas which arf ~rawn from Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone.

! j l'
1

109 moral law itself: it is the ethical world arder which man can discover

as manilest withln hlmself in hls quest for the Good. At

th~me Ume,

this moral world-order is created and sustained by the human ethical will. Bakunin echoes this Fichtean conception of the deity: And so, the goal of life, the object of true love, i~ God. But not that God ta whom one prays in churches; not that God whom one wishes ta please by prost'rating oneself before him; not that God who, separated from the world, judges the living and the dead; no, not Hlm, but the one who lives in humanity, the one who ls elevated with the elevation of man. 123
g

Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Fichte's wrttings are

j
.1

imbued with a polemical character which revolves around crucial contemporary themes-the greater part of his works took on the form of "addresses," "lectures, Il "appeals" or '!an'swers. Il He addressed himself ta a wide range of issues, ranging from law and history to economics and poli tics. 124 Fichte not only regarded his system as the philosophical truth, , fn an abstract, metaphysical sense, but aIso as a saving truth, as al concrete science;. i. e., the proper application of its moral principles would lead to the reform of society. Implicit throughout Fichte' s writings

1
1
~

! ,
l
1

. Is the understanding that philosophy involves definite consequences in the reform of social practice; the unity of theory and praxis equals philosophical wisdom as an applied way of life, and not as a detached body - 123Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestram Tat'yane i Varvare, sochinenii, tom 1, pp. 210-211; my emphasis.
Il

in Sobranie

124See Fichte's A eal ta Princes t Demand the Restitution of Freedom of Thought (1793; Basis of Natural 'Right 1796); Lectures on the Vocation of the. Scholar (1794); The Closed Commercial State (1800); Characteristics of the Present A e (1804); Addresses to the German Nation 1807; Dialogue on Patriotism and on Its Opposite (1806-7), for example.
1

1____
r

... 110
of lmowledge.
( 1

Fichte, as a philosopher, .did not separate thought from

concrete, practical ~ction, 12 5 and lUte Hegel, his system came t\ grips with one of the fundamental concerns of political thought; the relayon of theory to practice. And significantly, in Fichte's philosophical )system,
o ,

theory of right, economics, political theory, are all inherently related to the central ethical principle, to form a totality, a global world-vision.
AH spheres of human existence and activity could be derived and related

to the over-riding notion of morality. Hence, action, activity, is the central Fichtean tenet:

)f

our vocation is not simply to KnOW, 'but to act according to your knowledge, . .. You are here, not for idle contemplation of yourself, or for brooding over devout sensations-no, you are here for action; your action and your action alone, determines your worth,126 ,

Fichte further elaborates his strongly activist credo:


, " . it is . . . the necessary faith in our own freedom and power, in our own real activity, and in the defirtite laws of human action which lies at the root of all our

consciousness of a reality external to ourselves .... From this necessity of action proceeds the consciousness of the actual world and not the reverse way; the consciousness of the actual world is derived from the necessity of action. We act not because we know; but we know because we are called. upon to act: the practical reason is the root of all reason. 127

.
v

Since theory, according to Fichte, is inseparabl from action, the thinKer,. the philosopher, taRes on the role of a "fighter" for the moral prin125Lon, Fichte et son temps, vol. 1, p. 174.

126 J. G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, ed. by Chisholm (New YorK, 1956), pp. 83-84. 127Ibid., pp. 98-99. tom 1, p. 215: Compare with Baltun in , in Sobranie sochinenii,
~

... ~y noble and energetic activity elevates the spirit and gives it strength to face arising struggles.
il-

1 t

. ,i

ciple. 128 The role of the (})1tilosopher or of the scholar is that of a link between the Moral IdJa and its pratical

'\

imple~e~tation

in the

surrounding world. Hence, the five Lectures on the Vocation of the , ~ Scholar. delivered by Fichte at Jena in 1794, are of special importance as they constitute an urgent calI to action, to a moral and s'ociaI awakening by the intelligentsia, and

f1

appeal for the decisive translation of '

the ethical ideal into its extetnal r-eaIization. The Vocation of the Scholar is characterize~ by:
4 ,

La soif d'agir Sur le monde, la volont de diriger l'esprit du temps par ses prineipes, tel tait, en effet ... le principal sQuci de Fichte. . .. Son enseignement, comme son temprament, ne sparait pas l'action de la pense. 129
It was precisely these lecture~ on the Vocation of the Scholar that B.akunin

chose to translate for the Moscow Telescope. In a letter of March 1836 he wrote: 1 am presently translating . . . severaI lectures by Fichte on the vocation of the scholar-Iectures, which are full of life, passion and enthusiasm. -These lectures will he published in the 'Teles-eope. '130
It is of particular signicance that Bakunin
,
initl~ted

his career as a

journalist, his "public" inauguration so to speak, with a translation of Fichte's Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar, as this wor}{ represents
IJ

a definite sht for Balrunln from a merely speculativl" position to one of energetic acti.,vism and voluntarism. In this work, Fichte's stance i8 one of uncompromising commitment to action 'and "practice." The

'"

12~on, Fichte et son temps, vol. 1, p. 181.


O"Pis'mo sestre Tat'yane, " 8 marta 1836, in Sobranie sochine~ti, tom 1, . 218. Bakunin's translation of four out of five Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar are pu~hed in the Teleskop (Moskva, XXIX, 1836).
ci

:J129Ibil.,

Pp. 283-284.,

-,

, ,'\
~

. :., \\ . ; ....
\

112 philosopher is addressing himself to


concr~te

and practical taskS, in,

particular to educati as the means for this moral reform of society. Un,derstood correctly, the role of the philosopher is ,to give a new direction to his age. Fichte' s heightened sense of mission and of ethical purpose is already eloquently re-stated in BalWnin's writings, dating from reading of Fichte's Lectures: Here [in MoscowJ, my lUe has begun anew. Here, all the capabilities of my soui have developed. Here, 1 have begun to breathe freely. 1 am now in my sphere and "~a can fulfll that mission which has been indicated to m by providence. 131

h~t

He goes to state with conviction: Never before have 1 enjoye~ such a wonderful, such a complete peace, as now . . . my tranquillity is full of lUe, full of strength. My sou! is once again open to an human and divine experiences. This peace is seUconsciousness, the consciousne ss of one's duty, the realization of one's goal and path. . .. 1 am now on my path and in my sphere. 3 .. 1 feel God within me. . .. 1 feel myself a man! 1 2

And,

,,'
1 feel my human dignity, 1 see the path along which 1 must travel, and 1 have the comforting conviction that 1 shall not stray from iL 133

Fichte's philosophy proposes to lead us iito a new lUe of the spirit; this IUe- is not like a paradise hovering above and beyond earthly existence, but, like freedom itself, it is contained within ourselves. Balrunin
has clearly captured this Fichtean image:

131B kunin, "Pis'mo sestre Tat'yane," 8 marta 1836, in ibid.,


p. 219.

( .

132"Pis'mo sestre Varvare,

Il

11 marta 1836, in ibid., p. 235.

133"Pis'mo sestre Varvare," 12 aprelya 1836, in ibid., p. 264.

'\

,.

113

The vocation of, man is not to suffer with folded arms on earth, in the hope of earning a mythical paradise. His vocation is rather to transport this heaven, this Gad, which he carries within himseU, anta the'.earth, - to elevate practical liie, to raise earth up to he aven herein lies his highest mission. May he be worthy of it, may he animate all his actions, even his Most insignificant deeds, with this most sacred goal. 134 The Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar (and Bakunin's translation of them), are important in the development of Bakunin's thought and strongly influenced his philosophical orientation. Bakunin' s choice of these particular lectures by Fichte was especially appropriate, as it permitted an accessible introduction to Fichte's system for his Russian readers.
It can be seen to constitute a move away from the hermetic and

esoteric philosophical societies in an effort to propagate German idealism (and, in particular, the ideas of Fichte) to as large an audience as possible. The Vocation of the Scholar, one of Fichte's "popular," public lectures, presents an introduction to the basic principles of his system for the uninitiated, in an idiom that is Simple, direct and unspecialized.
In addition, the fact that he selected one of Fichte's most ardenUy

polemical workS to translate for the tirst time ioto Russian, ooly serves to emphasize
Ba.lrun~' s

graduaI adoption of an engag philosophical stance.

The first lecture, On the Vocation of Man in Himself (0 naznachenii cheloveka, otdel 'no vzyatago), is centered around the concept of man considered in isolation from society, taKen individually, and is treated in accordance with the general principles of Fichte's philosophical system. Man's vocation, according to Fichte, is to live morally and to strive, through his action, for the general edtlication of humanity. His role is ta:

134"Pis'mo sestre Varvare, 222; my emphasis.

Il

9 marta 1836, in ibid., pp. 221-

114
'.

. . . propager largement la formation que vous-mmes avez reue, dans un cercle plus ou moins large, par l'enseignement ou par l'action, ou par les deux, et enfin lever d'une faon bienfaisante notre commune fraternit humaine [Brudergeschlecht) un degr plus haut de la culture [Kultur]. 135 Man must come to realize his
Il

sublime destiny" and embrace the lofty

mission of "c9ntributing to the progress of civilization and to the forward march of humanity." 136 Man is his own end, and he becomes totally free only through the exercising of his moral will. 137 It is important to remember that the essence of freedom is, in Fichte' s language, a "task.," something to be done, something to be attained or realized. Hegel expressed it, the goal of the spirit is to know itself, to malte itself into an "object" for itself (i. e., a "subject-object"). The nature of the realization (or, in more political terms, of the "struggle") is given by the force at work here, viz., freedom. Fichte equates the concepts As

of the Absolute, of Sp1rit, with Freedom; and Freedom can "appear" in the world only through the ethical will.

.-

The second lecture, On the V ation of' Man in Society (0 naznachenii

cheloveka v obshchestve), begins from the postulate that the pursuit

Reasan is inexorably linked to the life of society as a whole. good can be achieved only through the community. clear departure from Rousseau in claiming that:

The common

Here Fichte makes a

Confrences sur la Destination du Savant (1794), Introduction historique, traduction et commentaire par Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron (P~is, 1969), p. 43. Sinee the English translations of Fichte are inaccurate and inadequate, 1 used the recent French translation of The Vocation of the Scholar, which is much doser to the text-and , spirit-of the original.
136J.bid

----------------135J . G. Fichte,

La tendance communautaire fait donc ~artie des tendances fondamentales de l'homme. L'homme est destin

137Ibid., p. 38.

,/

115

vivre dans la sooit; il a l'obligation de vivre

dans la socit; il n'est-pas un homme entier, achev, et il se contredit lui-mme s'il vit isol. 138
In its discussion of society, national right and the state, this second

lecture conference is infused with highly revolutionary currents.

The

goal -of any society is the attainment of freedom and the elevation of hnmanity in its entirety. 139 As Xavier Lon underlines: Et effectivement la r.alisation de la Raison, le but de la conduite humaine, n'est pas la ralisation d'une raison toute individuelle, c'est la rlisation de la Raison au sein de l'humanit, d'une humanit non plus conue comme purement idale, mais comme constituant une ralit organique; or cette ralisation implique, avec la communadt des hommes, . leur action rciproque, une action qui revt le caractre ptme de la moralit, le respect de la libert d'autrui, la reconnaissance de l'gale dignit de tous les ho~es, et qui consiste toute entire dans une influence, dans une sollicitation un mutuel perfectionnement; elle s'oppose ainsi la contrainte physique et au rapport qu'elle comporte, le rapport du martre l'esclave, le rapport de la domination de l'un sur les autres. 140 Thus, the vocation of man lies within society, and he becomes truly free only when the human community in liberty. 141 This universal movement
w~~

he partakes has attained perfection is the

tow~moral

common goal shared by all members of society, and the gradual attainment of morality constitutes the force of progresse The third lecture, On the dUference in pOSitions within society
(0 razlichii sostoyaniy v obshchestve), examines the origins and causes

138Ibid ., p. 48. 139Ibid ., p. 50.

14~on, Fichte et son temps, vol. 1, pp. 286-287.


141Fichte, Confrences sur la Destination du Savant (1794), p.

5z.:-

116

of social inequality as well as the problem of the organization of classes within society.
It is up to society, says Fichte, to rectify the injustices

of nature and to grant equality to all its members. 142 Therefore, in a passage strongly reminiscent of the welfare socialist state that he later advocated in The Closed Commercial State, Fichte declares: La socit accumulera les avantages des particuliers, comme un- bien commun, pour le libre usage de tous et les multipliera ainsi au profit des individus; elle prendra en une charge commune ce qui manque aux particuliers et le divisera ainsi en une somme de parcelles infiniment petites. -Ou, comme je l'exprime dans une autre formule plus commode pour tre applique plusieurs objets: le but de toute culture de l 'habilit est de soumettre la nature la raison ... d'accorder l'exprience avec les concepts pratiques et ncessaires que nous avons, pour autant qu'elle n'est pas dpendante des lois de notre facult de reprsentation. Ainsi donc la raison est dans une lutte perptuelle avec la nature . . . . 143 The goal of any given society is the total equality of all ~f its members, 144 the triumph of the rational will over the obstacles of irrational nature. 145 It is the duty of each and every member of society to strive, to the best of his ability, for the attainment of this free and rational community. Man realizes his true vocation only through his deeds and actions within soc iety, and Cpacun a le devoir, non seulement de vwloir tre utile en gnral la socit, mais encore de diriger 142 Ibid ., p. 59. 143Ibid.; Bakunin's translation is very accurate, which leads one to believe that, once again, the censors were careless (Balrunin, "0 naznachenii ichenykh," in Teleskop. XXIX [Mosltva, 1836J, p. 33). 144Fichte, Confrences sur la Destination du Savant (1794), p. 58.
\

(
1

145sakunin 's translation here (perhaps he was not willing to push his IUCK with the censorship board) is not quite exact: he translates "total e~ity of all its members" as "sovershennoe soglasovanie- vsekh ego chlenov, " hoosing nc;>t to use the word for equality, "ravenstvo," in Il 0 naznachenii uchenykh, " in TelesKop, XXIX, p. 31.

(
~

')
tous ses efforts, selon ce qu'il sait le mieux, sur la fin ultime de la socit, fin qui consiste amliorer de plus en plus le genre humain, c'est--dire te librer de plus en plus de la contrainte de la nature, lui donner de plus en plus d'autonomie et d'activit indpendante-, et ainsi s'instaura en fait, grce cette nouvelle ingalit, une nouvelle galit, c'est-dire un progrs unorme de la culture chez tous les inrlividus. 146 .

117

(
",

Thus, the individu al defines himself most completely as a social being. with a definite and concrete role to play at the heart of society. His progress is indissolubly bound to the advancement and emancipation of humaniry in its entirety. Fichte.'s third lecture is an eloquent dec1aration

of the rights of man, but also an eloquent caU to action addressed to all members of the social community, an appeal to man to realize his social essence and to act in full accordance with it. The fourth lecture, On the Nature of the Scholar (0 naznachenii uchenYll),14'is by far the most important and significant. Having estab~ lished man's function in society, Fichte now goes on to define the role of the philosopher in one of his most truly inspi-red declamations.
In Fichte's view, the scholar, the ~an of science,148 is assigned

an exceptional role to play in society. For the philosophers are the "pedagogues" of humanity,149 the educators of society, guiding and directing their fellowmen towards freedom and rnorality. Their, mission consists in nothing less than the total transformation of society. Going

146Fichte, Confrences sur la Destination du S~vant (1794), p. 64. 147Bakunin utilizes the plural number. 148Science, of course, meaning speculative or metaphysical science, 1. e., philosophy. 149Fichte, Confrences sur la Destination du Savant (1794), p. 75.

,
1

....

---,---,

118

beyond a mere passive accumulation of knowledge, the scholar must act

..

to change the world. In a passage worthy of Marx's Theses on Feuer-. bach, Fichte states:
La connaissance de la premire espce se fonde sur des principes purs de la raison, et est philosophique;, celle de la seconde espce se fonde en partie sur 1 l'exprience et est dans cette mesure rattache lai connaissance philosophico-historique (pas seulement ~ l 'histoire; car il faut dans ce domains que je rapporte les fins qui ne peuvent tre reconnues que philosophiquement aux objets donns dans l'exprience, pour pouvoir apprcier ceux-ci comme lYJoyens d'atteindre ces fl'\.s). -e~~ c2J1Ea..!s~~c! !!o.!!: jJe.YfEi!. .!!tQ.e__l~ ~ocj.!...i. par consquent, sur ce sujet, !! !le_S!!fU.t ...Pl!.s JE!. ~a!.otr ..!ffi_ ~n~r~_ ~ege. .0Et_l~ !!i~Q.s!!iQ!1~ <le J ',h0.!p!!.le.,J. ~t""p!r_Q.!!e~ _m.2y~n. .!! I!. g!!,!.al_ Q!1"pQ..u!:!~t_l~ Ji~v~o.pp..!lr...i. .lffi~ .!e!!e_ c2fl.E a s..: l
~~c~ .!.e~t~~t_e!!cQr~ E.o.!!l2!.!e.!!l~~ s.!,!.il~._ ~

----.,-----------In other words, it is not enough to


KnOW

gu,:,el:!eJ~~e _el!.cQ.I"E!. 1:!!l..P~s _dEl.. ~us,L.,.. P2l!!' effectivemnt l'utilit souhaite. Tou

'p~v~nlr_

!.al!!:

the world, but one must also

act in order to transform i( Consequently, in Fichte's hands, passive philosophical contemplation becomes infused with an unprecedented activist dimension.

" It is interesting to note that Fichte's Scholar bears a striking


resemblance to the Philosopher-King of PlatJs Republie, in their eommon supervision of
hu~anity

and their direction of it towards the moral Good.

And like the Philosopher-King, the Scholar must possess not only the highest level of wisdom, of knowledge, and of "culture, ,,151 but he must aIso embody the highest degree of ethical perfection. He must, through his example, elevate humanity to this Ideal. For, as a "priest of the truth, ,,152 the Scholar' s mission is to work indefatigably for the progress 150n>id" pp. 70-71; broken underlining mine.

151Ib id., p. 77.

15~id., p. 78.

119

of the human race, for the aUainment of a higher stage of civilization. As Lon notes: ... il est celui en qui brille par exceIence la lumire de la Raison, il est donc ainsi vraiment le guide et l'ducateur de l 'humanit; sa fonction est essentiellement sociale. 153 Fichte emphatically stresses this social aspect of the Scholar's vocation; th philosopher must concern himself with the hic et nunc of the society in which he lives. It is not with humanity in abstracto, as a universal category, that the Scholar must preoccupy himself, but rather with man as a
c~crete,

particular and temporal entity.

Once again, his

taSK

lies not in the contemplation of abstractions and generalities, but instead in real, concrete, tangible action.
1]

The philosopher's glance must, at the same time, be directed towards the future, 154 and he must place his wisdom and foresight at the service of society in its quest for the moral goal. Thus, the raison d'tre of the Scholar is to act,. and his lofty mission is to
!1

1 1
1

... surveiller d'en-haut le progrs effect de l'humanit en gnral, et de favoriser sans relche ce progrs. , . de faire crotre la noblesse morale de l'homm~ entier. C'est le devoir du Savant dJdifier sans cesse cette fin ultime et de l'avoir devant les yeux en toutes ses actions dans la socit. 155 Balrunin chose not to translate Fichte's fifth lecture, An Examination of Rousseau' s Theses on the Influence of the Arts and Sciences on the
Goodn~ss

, "

of Humanity, preferring, rather, to close with the dynamic


!

153Lon, Fichte et son temps, vol. 1, p. 288.

154Fichte, Confrences sur la Destination du Savant (1794), p. 75.

1551b1 ., pp. 72 and 76. 'd

120 fourth lecture On the Vocation of the Scholar. Since the fUth lecture is a philosophical answer to Rausseau, Balrunin probably decided that his Russian readers would not be familiaT with the issues debated. Thus, from our analysis of the lectures, we have seen that Fichte' s ethical philosophy cannot be separated from his views on society, on politics, and even on economics. It is clear that in Fichte's system the "moral" good of a people (he would come to use the term "nation" later, in his Addresses to the German Nation) cannot be disUnguished from its political and cultural institutions, and that the ideals
~

of liberty and moral freedom are in every way as applicable to the individual will as to the life of the community taken as a whole. Fichte' s philosophy provided a criterion for revolutionary action by venturing out of the realm of speculative knowledge and under$nding)and applying this "theory" critically to the fields of practical activity. This practical dimension of Fichte's th ou ght, his tone of activism and voluntarism, proved particularly significant to the young Bakunin; by correspoItding to Bakunin's orientation and desire for concrete action, it facilitated the formation of his own philosophy, based on the primacy of the ethicaI will. While not yet '-attempting to act in any political arena, he was most definitely enthralled by the all-encompassing scope of Fichte's system, and he attempted to apply its moral principles to the society which surrounded' him. 156 The theme of moral transformation henceforth

became a ubiquitous leitmotiv in Bakunin's correspondence, dating from 156Venturi's daim that Bakunin turned to Fichte out of a "longing '. for detachment" Roots of Revolution, p. 39) seems ta miss the point completely; similarly, Carr Michael Bakunin, p. 37), who states that "Fichte provided Balrunin with refuge from reality in the contemplation of his own divine sOul," has misinterpreted Bakunin's Fichtean conversion.

1
J

121 his Fichtean period (i. e., early 1836 to mid-1837)-indeed, his lettera of these years are basicaIly a reiteration of the ideas that he acquired from Fichte's teachings. 157 Bakunin echoes Fichte's cali for moral activity [T1Uigkeit] in a rhetorical style highly reminiscent of the German philosopher' El: ... remember that faith without action is nothing. Everything wonderful, everything noble, belongs to tbe essence of the absolute-to God. The level of development and the action arising fT:orn this dev~~pment, ~his is what constitutes the individual, particular, life of man. Action is not ooly the necessary consequence of our consciousness, but rather, it is itself the necessary condition of consciousness. Withoot action, without the external expression of our interior world, there is no consciousness, there is no life. Therefore, act, my friends, do not allow that which 1 have awakened in you to die out; strive to make every minute of your existence become alive, conscious and in accordance with the universal world life. . .. Your sphere is the infinite and the unlimited. Your vocation is to manifest the eternal divine and eternal love outside yourselves. And so, be therefore worthy of your vO~ion; remember, that every unconscious minute, eve inactive minute is a step backward, Us] a criminal egation of truth, of ~ love and of your human dignity. . " Understand, that there is no intellectual realization without a moral one, that the mind is not separate from feelihgs. ,!,ruth is identical with the good and the beautiful. 158 Thus, it is only through his action that man can express and realize ,his human essence. And all moral action must be aimed at the generaI elevation of humanity to a "divine" state in which if -a.n achieve freedom and excellence. The following excerpt, part of which we have already quoted above,
repeat~

1
1
l
i
1

1 ,

this philosophical immanentism, behirid

which lurks an unmistakable ~evolutionary and anti-authoritarian impulse: 157Chizhevski, Ge gel ' v Rossit, p. 88.

11 sentyabrya 1836, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 352; my emphasis.


Il

15~akunin, "Pis'mo brat'yarn,

122 The vocation of man is not to suffer on earth with folded arms, in order to earn a mythical paradise. This vocation is rather to transport this heaven, this God, which he car ries within himself onto the earth below, to elevate practical lUe, to raise the earth up to heaven-herein lies his lofty mission. / May he be worthy of it, may it animate all his actions, even the most insignificant deeds, by this sacred goal. . .. Doyou understand that any attachment founded on such a base can never be passive, that it will be constantly inspired, and that there will never be anything so old that it c ould not be re-animated with a new life? 159
It is the problem' of the moral "inner" lUe and its realization,

the divine lUe in man

~r

the true "religion") that occupied BalruIlin at

this time. In this idiom, as adopted by 'akunin, religious, social and ethical questions came to be closely linked and even to overlap. Fichte, Balrunin identifies the essence of
fi

Like

God" with freedom, 160 the

movement toward which constitutes man's for ward march to Reason. There can be no God in slavery, he maintains, 161 as the divine is identified with the total emancipation of humanity. The divine lUe ls manifest in all of man' s moral acts, through which God reveals himself to humanity and through which man can attain freedom. 162 In Fichte's view, God is this moral dynamic in reality; therefore, he ia also thcbught comprehending itself. In effect, Bakunin does tend to identify the concepts of "God," of the "Absolute," with Mind, 163 and to him, 159" Pis'mo sestre Varvare," 9 marta 1836, in ibid., pp. 221-

1
1
1 . ,

222.
160" Pis 'mo Aleksandre Beyer," pervaya polovina marta 1836, in ibid., p. 231. 161"Pis'mo sestre Varvare," Il marta 1836, in ibid., p. 233. 162" Pis'mo Aleksandre Beyer," vtoraya polovina marta 1836, in ibid., p. 247.
1

1 -

163"p' , mo ses t ram Beyer, " 9 maya 1836' 1 1 ., p. 302 . 1S ,ID 'b'd

123

man' s ultimate and ma st noble goal is ta fuse with this divine Idea, indeed, ta "become God":
,

It is necessary to pury one' s soul in arder ta become God, for this is the goal of man: he strives ta become

God, and he Will aehieve this ... There are still man~ paths ta travel, many diffieul ties to surmount, i,n arder to reaeh this goal. These hardships a,.rise from egoism, and thus passion appears as a struggle between egoism and love, between the animalistic and the divine. Lil~e wise, man himself constitutes an eternal struggle between the animalistie and the divine. The animalistic will be overeome, and man will become God. And all mankind, aIl personalities~ will fuse into one personality, into love, into God. 1 4 He here repeats, in an impassioned excerpt", the necessity for man ta realize the divine essence tht is within him: How great 1 feel at this moment 1 1 feel myself a man! 1 am destined to beeome God. Mighty storms and thunder, quaKing earth, 1 do not fear you; 1 seorn you, because 1 am a man! My proud and unflinching will shall easily endure all your tremours, to reach its lofty destination f 1 am a man and 1 shaH become God f 165
?

,f'

The "animalistic" (zhivotnoe), to which Bakunin refers, is c1early an allusion to the Fichtean vision of nature as an obstacle ta b.e overcome by the practical will, as a field of actiOn for the moral self-realization of the Ego. Going
beyo~d

Kant, 'who could not overcome an ultimate

i
1

dichotomy between man as 'moral agent and man as element of nature, governed by irrational instincts and impulses, Fichte envisioned man as a morally-active being who gradually develops, in stages, out of the life of
natur~

(and egoism), and . . ultimately must transcend it ta coincide with

16411 Pis 'ma AleKsandre Beyer," 4 aprelya 1836, in ibid., p. '-252. l1Pis'mo Aleksandre Beyer," pervye chisla aprelya 1836, in ibid. , pp. 261-262; my emphasis. 165

t.

124 hi s, true essence

Jnd

the absolute will, to become God-lilte. Baltunin

adopted fichte's viewpoint and repeatedly stressed tl;le necessity of fully developing one's moral "l, " by concentrating on the interior, ethical, life. These habits, these weaknesses, ~this self-love, are not trivialities; no, they are of great importance, sinee they are grounded in egoism, since they develop out of the material, animalistie 1, since they destroy the moral.1 th~ divine 1: It is necessary to separate oneself from it and it is neeessary to liberate love from egoism, sinee everything which separates man from man is egoism (1 am spealting hre in an absolute, not a relative, sense), and everything which unites man with man i8 love. The more a man i8 "extemal," the more he hates, and, the more a man is "internal," the more he loves. \ And this is compl~tely natural, because in his externaI life he finds only material interests, which satisfy only one person . . . whereas in his futerior life he finds God, love, this di vine flame, which the more he shares it, gathers more strength.' The more a man is external, the more he separates himself from Gad, from love-which constitutes our common fatherland. The more he is internai, the closer he cornes to it, and his fortune, his wealth, become a common wealth, sinee Gad and love are our commonwealth. 166
\

lmplicit throughout this passage are communistic tendencies which reflect Fichte's similar pronouncments on economic welfare and distribution of weaIth. 167 In the above passage, Balrunin delivers" an attack on the materialistic mentality, which profits but one individual at the expense of the collective economic community; he further asserts that men must share their fortune, their prosperity, with others, and thus turn the 166"Pis'mo AleKsandre Beyer," 6 aprelya 1836, in ibid, pp. 254-255. 167See, for example, the third lecture of""l'he Vocation. of the Scholar, or T.Re Closed Commercial State.

r
1 ..

_-~\ 1 ...

/~

125
'"

rihes of ~e into a common weIth and heritage.

It is important to remember that Bakw;lin is here also repeating


." ..J'

the Fichtean idea of the inner life' s mission morally to transform the outer world, and he echoes Fichte' s demand fQI" a stern moral commitment on the part of all" self-conscious individuals. Freedom cannot be . , impsed from without, it can only spring Irom the innermost depths of the will, actirig in concordanc'e with the precepts of practical reason. 168 Only once an interior change has been effected, can ethical life be practically applied to all facets of existing society. Bearing this in mind, one can better understand what has been described as Balrunin 's excessive preoccupation with idealist
Il

"

subjectivism. "169
l1

Rather than aiming lat the complete annihilation of reality to the benefit of his "pure,
Il, Il

external" concrete

spe~l,llativ Ego, Bakunin, under

the influence of Fichte, rather was concerned with . . . establishing harmony be'twe,en the internai and the external.life-the external one is absorbed in the internai one, not to dissolve itself in it, but rather, to be regenerated in if and to regain a nw external ID acquires a IOOre definite expression. Love for, and active characte '. or B nin], and ... the great new question becomes the tran formation of the external world, the liberation of all mankind from any bonds of slavery. 170 /"
" 1

-'

Fichtean philosophy furnished Bakunin with an intellectual tool and a forceful vocabulary with which to. express the concepts which \ were animatedly fermenting' in his mind, and which had J::>~en latent prior 168Lon, Fichte et son temps, vol. 1, p. x. 1698ee, inter aIia, Pirumova, Mikhail Balrunin;'Steldov, Zhizn' Bakunina; Chizhevski, Gege!' v Rossii, pp. 86-89; Carr, Michael Bakunin, p. 37; and Brown, Stankevicn and His Moscow Circle, p. 67.
17~.ornilov, Molod~e gody, p. 232.

(1

126 to his encOWlter with Fichte's


sys~em.

His outIOOK

DOW

became en-

riched \Vith a humanistic faith in mankin~ 171 as well as a reinforced belief in ,the strength and active nature of the will. 172 The concept of the automous individual, of the persDn, herewith acquired a new and v.ital meaning for Bakunin, and a commitment 10 moral autonomy began to PTvade his world-view. Salvation was now seen as lying within man himself, not in
1~

som~

other-worldly entity-just as God exists only

through man, mPl himself is able to merge with the' divine life when

he develops his rational will to the utmost of his capacity. Bakunin clearly articulates Ulis humanism and immanentism: There is not yet in them [i. e., the Beyers] that tru'e religion, that religion of the spirit, which feels' its God within itself, and which knows Him only in its own spirit, only in the aspiration of that spirit towards everything truly wonderful and lofty. They do not yet know that religion . . . which impels them/ to search for happiness only in itself, in its own realizatiem, in its joy with God, -in other words, that religi which grants peace, full of strength and energy.173 !so, There is only one true man: that is God, Mmd, spirit, removed from matter . . . God Himself is the perfect man, and consequently, there is nothing superior to ~.174, ) Obviously, this anthropocentric immanentism could not tolerte the notion of a transcendent deity and found Jhe form of institutionalized 171Baklmin, npis'mo sestre Tat'yane, Sobranie sochinenii. tom 1, p. 288.
fi

28 aprelya 1836, in

172"Pis'mo ~e~andre Beyer," 26,.aprelya 1836, in ibid., p. 286. 173" Pis 'ma sestram Tat'yane i Varvare," 2~'1aprelya 1836, in ibid., p. 281. .., l'1 4n Pis',mo sestram, TI Nachalo yanvarya 1837, in ibid., p. 384;, my emphasis.

(
0/

127 religion totally alien to the human spirit. True religion is the inner"

Il

lUe, and thus, in Bakunin's view, the institutionalization of religi represented the inversim or destruction o,f this free inner lUe and of
its 4!yelopment. During the year 1836, Bakunin began to formulate a
u

series of scathing attacks on Christianity and on established religion, attacks which became increasingly venomous with time.
~

His espousal of

secular humanistic position is already clearly and directly stated in

a letter of March 183(l1 my love for humanity constitutes my religion,"175 and his rejection of a transcendent God would gain momentum during the remainder of his political career and culminate in his strident atheism of the 60's and 70's. Institutionalized religion, claimed Balrun in , only provides the state with a justification and an endorsement of its immoral conduct. 176 This pseudo-religion, he goes on, has 10st and distorted the real meaning of Christianity and the Gospels; it has emasculated true morality and the religious ardour of Christianity, substituting in its stead a "stillborn dogmaticism" and empty formalisme 177 The church has stifled

true ethical valour, and replaced it with rhetorical pomp and ritual. BaJrunin elaborates this idea in a lengthy epistle to his sisters, Tat'yana and Varvara, in an attempt to convert them to the "true religion"; May religion become the basis and essence of your lUe and of your actis; but May this be the pure and ooly true religion of divine reas and divirie love; and not that religion which you formerly professeti, and which 175"Pis'mo Natal'ye Beyer," Konets fevralya ili nachalo Marta 183,~ in inid., p. 216.

~-

176"Pis'mo sestre Varvare," 16 inarta 1836, 'in ibid., p. 238. 177Jbid

128 strives to separate you from everything which COllstitutes the content and le of true moral ex1 stence. Not that restrictive idea of a capricious Gad, not that limiting and c'old feeling, which negates everything beautul in the moral and intellectual world, and which threatens to be absorbed in a wretched field of activity devoid of ideas and feelings devoid of love; no, Dot that religion which can only destroy the soul, so ardent, so noble, and so hungry for love ... which cannot infuse any moral strength, and which is comple~ely irreconcilable with real love. 178 He criticizes "modern" religion for being founded on "habit" rather than on thought, 179 and lashes out against the blatant 'materialism of both church and society. 180 Bakunin 's "true religion" lies predomlnantly within the morally active individual.
It is to he fOWld in science (nauka) ,

in art and in philosophy-in summa, true religion is everything that favours a rapprochement between man and his "divine goal" 181 and the realization of his own "divinity." His religion, he maintains, is that of "Absolute Reason, ,,182 that "creative and dynamic force which unies people in one community and which elevates them towards the absolute ideal. ,,183 We shaH see, at a later date, how this understanding of the absplute in terms of the social community gave rise to Bakunin's conversi to Hegalianism. 178"Pis'mo sestram Tat'yane i Varvare," 10 avgusta 1836, in ibid., p. 328. 179"p' , mo Aleksandre Beyer, lS
p. 254.
Il

6 aprelya 1836, in ibid,

18~id.
.("1

..

'b'd 1 1 .,

181" Pis:"dh sestram Tat'yane i Varvare," la avgusta 1836, in p. 327 (li 182" PiS'~O sestram, " seredina yanvarya 1837, in ibid.,

p. 393.

181hid .

129
It was necessary, in order

to" achieve the ends that his creed

deinanded, to create a "new world order," one of "absolute freedom and 'absolute love." 184 Already from the correspondence of this period,
it is evident that Bakunin was moving more and more towards a nega-

-----/

tian or deniaI of God (in the usuaI sense of the word) and an assertion of the autonomy of man, a stance that would )timately lead him to the
~theism

of his later years. Bakunin's diatribes of 1836 against religion

and society prefigure, in a striking manner, his late works, FederaIism, Socialism and Antitheologism, and God and the State. Not only did

Bakun1n deploy his arsenal against the hypocrisy of the church, but his attacks on other social and political institutions are definitely cast in an anarchistic-revolutionary mould. Given the perilous conditions at the time, and the relentless surveillance of the secret police, which
\

necessitated the practice of self-censorship, Bakunin' stone and vitriolic

accu~tions are surprisingly candid and hardly restrained. 185 He lashed


out against the corrupt mores of contemporary society as
aga~st

the

absurd rules of social behaviour, "les convenances"; he UDmasked patriotism as an "empty phrase, taken from Kararnzin, learned by heart and devoid of any real significance"; 186 he deplored the lack of any true feelings of brotherly love and 'altruism within mankind; social practices, he claimed, were not grounded in a genuine humanism, but represented of ethical principles.
--------~--------------

He

look~

for ward , to the destructi

84"Pis'mo sestram Tat'yan~ i Varvare," 10 avgusta 1836, in ibid., p. 329.

1850thers had been arrested for lesser offenses; see, for example, the reason for Herzen' s second arrest. 186Bakunln, "p., mo ses t ram T a t' yane 1 V arvare, " 28 f evra'1ya . lS 1836, in ibid., p. 210 .

.,

130
,

of this decadent civilization and dramatically declaimed, in a Jassage

highly evocative of his revolutionary article of 1842, The Reaction in Germany: "0, may it perish! 1 shall not taKe one single step to save ft!" 187 Kornilov has argued that the logical Rrogression of Balrunin' s thought under the influence of Fichte would have brought him to a doctrine of Christian anarchism very mu ch analogous to that of Toisroy. 188 mittedly, certain parallels do exist,
especi~y

Ad-

in their revolutionary

and anti-authoritian attacKs on Church, State and society, as weIl as in their common condemnation of religious dogmatism as the prime evil in civilization.
.,~

And although Ba.kunin does temporarUy come close to a

Tolstoyan "Christian mysticism," it Is important to Keep in mind the highly immanentist aspect of his .thought; essentially inspired by the writings of Fichte, Balrunin would soon arrive at a renunciation of deism and of Christianity altogether, a viewpoint which Toistoy could never have endorsed. Man 15 God, Balrunin asserted, and he ls his own end (a statement that Tolstoy would emphatically reject).
It was unthinKable that man

should sacrifice earthly happiness in a futile pursuit of the herealterwhat was important, according to Bakunin, was maKing the here and now acquire a new slgnificance. A shift in one's perspective must be effected: from a teleological view of history to a voluntaristic one. Bakunin' s adherence to this immanentism drove him to an even more clearly-outlined sense of purpose in lite.
i

Under the influence of

The Vocation of the Scholar, his prose became totally imbued with such

\
131

terms as destiny, vocation (naznachenie), mission (missiya).

Witness

the following accounts which seern to gain in lntensity throughout the year 1836:
It ls here [in Moscow] that my lite really began; ft Is here that all the capabilities of my soul trul.y developed; it is here that 1 began to breathe freely. 1 am now in my sphere ... 1 can dedicate rnyself to

that mission which has been pointed out to me by providence. l'am a man, because 1 want to be, because 1 am destined to be one. 1 have no other goal than to be a man, and 1 shaH destroy everything which prevents me from achieving this goal. May an the conditions causing the abasement of man be damned, may all those relative ideas devoid of sense and which restrict his will be damned as well! We must destroy without mercy and without exception everything faIse, so that the truth may triumph; and it shaH triumph; its reign will come; and all those who were weak, all those who feared and ~ere captives of wretched illusions, all those who stopped half -way along the road, aIl those who tried to bar gain with the truth, will not be admitted into the kingdom. They will regret their errors, and they will bewail their weaknesses. 1 feel my human worth, 1 see the path along which 1 must travel, and have the comforting conviction that 1 shaH not deviate from it. . .. My spirit ls once again rich with ideas, with feelings, and ls open to all impressions. . .. 1 am living a true lite, 1 be lieve that the type of existence that 1 have selected is the only one which suits me under the given circumstances. 189 Ba1runin' stone became increasingly polemic as well as animated by a
dyn~mic

;~ 1
1

and energetic voluntarism: it was essential, he maintained,

for man to taxe his fate into his own hands and to forge his own destiny: 189" Pis'mo sestre Varvare, It 8 marta 1836, in ibid., p. 219; "Pis'mo sestre Varvare," pervaya polovina marta 1836, in ibid., p. 224; "Pis'mo sestre Varvare," 12 aprelya 1836, in ibid., pp. 264 and 267.

.
1 no longer want to be the pitilul play-thing of tate. 1 am a man and fate must recognize my ego. May everything issue directly from me. 1 have the Invigorating and comforting conviction that everything 1 will, Gad also wills, and that it will be realized. The will; when it ls moral, 18 a1(l-powerful. The moral will of man is God's will, and nothing .can stand in the way of the realization of lts plans. 1 realized ... that mine was such a lofty, such an elevated, mission to perform. 190 And, in accordance with Fichte's teachings, Bakunin's activism was
~

132

,~

1
1

not to be limited to a myre speculative level: To love the truth, to sacrifice everything for it, to suffer for it, even to die for its greater glory, il necessary. . . . '\ . Action constitutes my happiness. To act for those whom 1 love, to act, in order to elevate them, this is my blessedness. To expand the sphere of our activity more and more, and together with that, to widen the horizon of our love, of our blessedness . . . to transport the Infinite heaven of our souls to the external world and thus to elevate earth up to heaven; to forever realize in the external world the idea of the beautiful, the lofty, and the noble; to lorever bring closer the sacred harmony of the internaI world with. the external, and thus to fuse into a common goal, by common hopes, and common sacred love; to forever strengthen and purUy our individual love, our individual blessednessthis is our vocation. 19,1 Fichte's ethical Idealism and Schiller's \hilosophy of love and
...

,
J
1

f 1 1
!

freedom (on which he had been raised) fused in Balrunin's mind ta glve
190" Pis'mo Aleksandre Beyer," 21 aprelya 1836, in ibid., p. 286; "Pis'mo sestram," nachalo avgusta 1836, in ibid., p. 321; ibid., p. 327; "Pistmo sestram Beyer," aprel' 1836, in ibid., p. 296. 191" Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 7 maya 1836, in ibid., p. 300; "Pis'mo sstram Beyer," iyul' 1836, in ibid., p. 312; "Pis'mo sestram Tat'yane i Varvare," 10 avgusta 1836, in ibid., p. 327.

l _ __

133
expression to his own revolutionary impulses, but Us formulation was

still very much an abstract and ideal conception of freedom (as in Schiller himself), and an individualism as yet devoid of its full social and politica1 implications. Bakunfn would mal the transition to concrete pol1ttcal reaIism only later, through the phllosophy of 'Hegel. But, as

yet, his groptngs towards individualism and freedom, and indeed, activlsm, were still in idealized, abstract, form: e divine and free creatures, predestined for the Ilber on of m 'nd and the world, which is still ensI v ' d still ~e sacrice of the instinctive laws of unco seious existence. Everything which lives, which exists, which vegetates, or which even Just happens to be on earth. must be free. must attain self-consciousness, and must elevate itself to the divine centre whieh animates aU existence. Absolute freedom, and absolute love-this Is our goal: the liberation of mankind and of the entire world-this is our vocation. 192 The magnificent breadth and scope of the above statements on freedom and on the total emancipation of mankind are particularly good examples of the abstract revolutionism which still characterized Bakunin' s conception in 1836. However, once the political means and context had been

,j
1

1
j
1

fOtmd, this revolutionary urge would burst out of its idealist hUSK and throw itseU into a period of frenzied activity. But the groundwork had been established by Fichte's practical phUosophy and was awaiting an opportune moment for its realization; the intellectual shift from the ory to practice had aIready been made in Bakunln!s mlnd. Towards the end of 1836, the tendency towards a renunciation of his own particular interests in favour of those of the whole of society, along with accompanying moments of depression and dis1l1usionment,
1

,\

192"Pis'mo sestram Tat'yane i Varvare," ibid., p. 329; my emphasis.

1
1
!

134 can be discerned in his writings. Feelings of superfluousness, of

impotence, of the inability to put into practice the voluntaristic activism of which he despair and spaks, turned Bakunin' s mood into one 01 This "transition" period can be seen to mark his

-."

gradual moving away from Fichte' s philosophy and his subsequent conversion to Hegelianism in 1837, as we shaH come to see.

Bakunin became more and more engulfed in the concept of the Absolute and sank increasingly into abstractions; this culminated in his intellectual breakdown in early 1837. A similar type of breakdown would occur after his extende d study of Hegel' s philosophy and the repeated disillusionment and inability to exercise the principles which he had derived from lt. In December 1836, Bakunin began to express this denial of his own personal lUe and interests; one can easily \detect a sense of selfsacrifice of the individual ego to the lUe of the absolute (a term, which at this Ume becomes suspiciously vague and lacking in positive ccntent): Henceforth my studies will constitute my enUre lite. 1 am not made for a personal life. As of now"there must not exist in me anything of a personal nature, apart trom that which is closely l1nked with the general life. At that time, 1 still llved oniy for myself; 1 was too' preoccupied with my personal 1. This restricted me, it " aImost suffocated me. But 1 succe~ded in completely liberating myself from this. 193 .
J

1
1

j 1
1

..

A quasi-ascettc and stoical tone sets in: My lite is becoming "increaSingly simple. 1 ~ ~~~7" nounced all earthly goods, as the orthodox "W \~. Henceforth, my lUe wU! consist exclusively of learn193"Pis'mo s"estram, Il 8 dekabrya 1836, in ibid., p. 360; "Pis'mo .. sestram, " seredina dekabrya 1836, in ibid., p. 370.
1

- ,

135 ing. 1 have a partlcular" type of aversion to any exte!l"nal life. My extern~ life must be the expression of rrty lHe in the absolute, in Knowledge (nauKa).194 Bakunin' s interpretation of Fichte at this Ume seems to tatte on the form of a type of calI for "purification." Since the essence is the absolute will, everything which hampers its expression must be aboli shed; the sel!-seeKing individual the absolute1:

is tlus an obstacle to the pure expression of

In fact, in Bakunin's terms, It is a demand that the


l1~e

outer shaH become ,

the inner, that the inner shall manifest itself

,in its es senee, and not in a distorted manner. 195 It is important to note that this Fichtean structure ls extremely "revolutionary," sinee it is not only an "ideal" ta be sought, but alsd a standard by whlch to damn the wor1d as it exlsts. 196
In order to attain s alvati on, BaKunm now c1aims that it ls neces1

l
j

j ~ j

'1

sary to completely annihilate his individual ego and to live in and through the absolute: There is on1y one road to salvation: the complete annihilation of one' s personal ~ the destruction of everything which constitutes its life, its ambitions, and its particular beliefs. One must live and breathe only for the absolute: it is essential that each moment of my life be a moment of the absolute, and not of my own, personal 1: Happiness does exist for me, but 1t is possible oruy' through the complete renuneiation of myself, through complete self-denial.
1 have become myself. . .. 1 have understood, better than ever before, that 1 must not seek anything for myself outside of myself, that 1 must absolutely dis-

194"Pis'mo Aleksandre Beyer," 16 deJ.brya 1836, in ibid., pp. 372-373.

(
\ ,
1

195As in Rousseau: the inner l'voiee'' is heard, but then distorted. 196As in Marx, who sees in capitalism thtttrue essence (labour as self-expression) appearing in an inverted form (as alienated labour).

P .~ __ .
,/

,J

136
solv~ my own personality in that of the absolute .... 1 have a nery temperament, my feelings are exuberant. This means that only the absolute life can bring me happiness and redeem my dignity, otherwise, withdrawing from U, 1 can be capable of any crime. 1 am passionate, egotistical, jealous, -finally, 1 do not possess those, qualities which allow others to live a social existence. 1 can be happy onl y in solitude. Ch. 1 am capable of great dee~sJ 1 feel this stronglx, but in order to accomplish theIl) , 1 must forget abo'J.t mIseif l2erSor"IY, btherwtse, _my egotism will destroy my mission.
<

During this period Bakunin attempted a definitive break with his exterior

life,l~y destroying "the last link" which tied him to the external world.
He nc<;w proposed to confront the "struggle" and the "negation" of that world, which he considered his paramount calling. 199 However, it 18 important to note that at this stage in Bakunin' 8 Fichtean development, the revolutio:lary content of his activis m was still
80

"ldeal ll and abstract,

that it remained, so to speak, unsure of itself, and could easily pass (perhaps under the influence of certain personal problems, depression, etc.) into an
ascet~c,

quasi-religious point of view. As such, Bakunin's

Fichteanism would temporarily retreat into a period of necessary moral preparation, to full y emerge into an active revolutionary attitude, once the pro;>er context and structures had been come to see very shortIy.
establishe~

as we shall

"

To return to the activity of the Circle, ft 18 not spec1fied in thelr correspondence who first turned to Fichte's philosophy, B,akunin or StanKe-

197Bakunin, IIPis'mo sestre Varvare," 22 deKabrya 1836, p. 376; "Pis'mo sestre Varvare," 10 yanvarya 1837, PP. 386-387; my emphasis.
198" Pis'mo sestram," pervaya polovina yanvarya 1837, in ibid.,

p. 390.

137
vich,200 but what is perfectl~ clear la that Fichte never had the sarne importance for Stankevich's thought as he did for
Ba~nin's.

Indeed, so

ardently did Balrunin throw himself into a study of this Qhilosophical system, that he entirely dominated the Stankevich circle during his "Fichtean phase," that "la, the period from 1836 to m+id-i837, 201 zealously propagating this new doctrine ta all his friends and colleagues. Balrunin was responsible for the CO:lversion to Fichteanism of severaI
member~

of the circle; the most notable of his converts was Belinsky.

The Stankevich circle's shift from Schellingianism to Fichf's -system can, therefore, be primarily attributed to Balrunin's efforts. The latter had not really shared the "aesthetic" orientation of the circle (Of which the majority of members before Balrunin' s arrival in 1836 consisted of

l
1
, 1

.....

poets and phiIologists), and Fichteanism thus represented his first real in-depth study ot German philosophy.202 Therefore, unlike his colleagues,

Bakunin's espousal of philosophy did not stem from a preoccupation with art, beauty or aesthetics, or indeed, with a the ory of romanticism, but was rather grounded in ethics and morality; this background can partially account for his consequent "maximalist" approach to pollUcs-sinee a
1

1 ,
1

l,

new et;hics requires as its foundfLtion a total and radical transfo::-mation of the existing society. 203 Politics which are rooted in a highly ethical 200PolonSldi, Zhizn' Mikh.!lJla Ba~ina, p. 30, states that it was Stankevich who first introduced Bakunin to Fichte, although he provides na documentation for this claim. , 201Brovm, ~evich and His Moscow Cir.cle, p. 6B. 202Fichte had for Balrunin an unquestionably greater meaning and significance than either Kant or Schelling; see ChizhevSki,. Qegel' v Rossit, p. 88. See, for example, Bakunin's assertion that "_total destruction" must precede "total freedom," in The Reaction in" GermanL 1842. 203

138

perspective, which hol? as their central concern the notion of the

il

ought"

(d3J!..21Ien), usually tend towards greater radicalization, than politics that are based on the play of forces in society, on interest groups, on

'" the distribution of power and weaIth, or on demands for economlc reform, for example. The first work of Fichte' s that Stankevich and Bakunin set about studying together was the Anweisung zum seligen Leben (Guide ta the Blessed Life), a la te work on the philosophy of
rel~gion.

Bakunin then

embarked on The Vocation of the Scholar, as we have seen, in preparation for the publication of his translation in the Telescope. Stankevich,
,

however, turned ta the Bestimmung des Menschen (The Vocation of Man), taking this work with him when he departed for the Caucasus,

.....

for reasons of health, in April 1836. The Vocation of Man, a short but concise exposition of Fichte's entire philosophical system,' was much \ ' more in keeping with StanRevich's formai interest in !?ystems of thought as a whole. But, as witnessed by his letters, his references to Fichte are "sparse, critical, 11204 and unenthusiastic. In a letter to Bakunin Stankevich described his impressions and the confusion that he experienced upon reading Fichte:
" Dear friend Michel! Where am I? You will know from the above. What am I? Frankly, 1 no longer lmOW, Bince reading The Vocation of Man; .maybe 1'11 know better once l've read the last few pages. 1 don 't know what ls ta become of me. "Knowledge" [Wissen) caused such a confusion in my head which 1 could have hardly have sU,spected possible; ft th.rew me~ into such a strange, sickly state of indecision, of total doubt, that 1 am in a state of agony, and can 't seern to find the means to rid ,myself of ft. .. So subtly, sa satisfactorily does he [Fichte] transform the enUre world into a modification of thought; even 'thought it-------------------~

204Brown, Stankevich and His Moscow Circle, p. 67 . ,

._---~-----_.

----

-",~","'T

~r---'

139
self ls made into a modification of sorne unknown subject, and the thought about this subject is once f,again the creation of someone;-he constructs, out of the laws of mind, a whole Viorld of illusions, and out of the mmd itself he makes an illusion-and he do~s an thls sa prflcisely 1 Where now are we to find salvation? This doubt could be salvation. Li!tle by Httle the chaos in my head setUed down and 1 can see in it 'once gain the embryo of creation. . .. From Fichte, 1 already foresee the possibility of another system ... '. On the road, in the carriage, 1 fini shed "Knowledge" and started reading "Faith" [Glauben). It was a wonderful evening-but an oppressive sense of complete doubt prevented me from enjoying it. So strange and'inanimate does this nature seem to me, an illusion of myself; everything appeared deceptive, and hostile. . . Al.l the eonsoling things in life-deeds, art, knowledge, love, -everything has lost its meaning for me, -l, myself, do not know why.205 ,
c'

>, .....

Obviously, the romantte idealismoof Schelling proved far more congeniaI to Stankevich's personality, and he did not share Baktinin's enraptured reading of Fichte. The two friends' divergent interests in phUosophy are weIl illustrated by their respective "Fichtean" periode: whereas Stankevich's philosophie al tendency was more drawn towards metaphysical, formal and epistemQlogical questions, Bakunin's orientation was to lead

him towards Fichte's practical and political works, ".which _ corresponded much more vividly to his ativist penc,hant and, satisfied his immediate phU080phical enquiries.

,.

Planty-BoIljour's , statement that Bakuntn was


o.

primarUy interesied in "l'aspect logiclue~ du passage de Kant Fichte, ,,206 , eeems much better suited to Stankevich. The fact that Balrunin never attempt\!d to masUr ~(let alone. raad) Ficht~ s theory of lmowledge, in the Wissensohaftslehre, certainly justifies this claim. Nor ie there any 205 ' , Stankevich, "Pis'mo M; A. Bakuninu," Mteensk, 21 aprelya 1836, in Perepiska ego i biografiya, fP. 605-606. Compare with ~alrunin' s exaltation on discovering Fichte.

206Pl~ty-B~njOUr, Hegel et la pense philosophigue, 'P. 38. '

. "t)

140

indicati that Balmnin ever read The Vocation of Man,207 limiting ,himself, rather, to Fichte's "peripheral,,208 and polemical works.

Brojs observa11" lhat

"Balrunln

and Stanltevich seetned to be d1s-

cussmg two quite different philosOphers when they talked of Ficjtte" 209 is most certainly propos and reflects the different frames of mind
and philosophiCal tendencies of the two young men.

The philosophy of Fichte, however.., was primarUy resporuiible for the rapprochement that occurred between BelinsKy and Bakunin in the course of the year 1836. From this date until his departure for

Germany in 1840, Balrunin became Bellnsky's intellectual mentor and ..te~chr'


~

raIe that had been hitherto pIayed by Stankevich. Just as

Stankevi~~,~and Nadezhdin had introduced Belinslty' to Schelling' s philoso-

phy, a discovery which had inspired his Literaturnye Bakunin


DOW

mechtaniy~

succeeded iI converting him tirst to Fichteanism in 1836,

and then ta Hegelianism in 1837. ft was during an extended visit ta Priamukhino, from August ta November 1836, that BelinsKy first tell into the sphere of Ba.kUnin's intellectual and moral influence. Writing about this experience severa! years later, Belinsky recalled: . . . when 1 came ta PriamuKh.ino . . . yeu opened up for me a new unive~~, the universe of thought, and 1 was amazed, simarlj to Molire's "Boorgeois gentilhomme, Il who wa.s surprised ta learn from his teacher that he" spoke in prose. 1 bad written severa! articles which , had focused., attention upon me, but did not in any way ( suspect that the ideas that 1 exposed in them were a ,_- Briori ideas. You were the first ta show and to prOve 207Venturi, Raots of Revolution, p. 39, claims that Balamin did read The Voeatlon of Man; Kornilov doubts it. 2Bsrown, Stankevich and His Moscow Circle p. '68.
J

(,

209 Ibid., p. 66.

141

to me that thought is in effect something whole, something unifie<!, that there is in it nothing particular or accidental, but that everything em'anates from the
same basic, general source, which is God, and who gradually reveal.s himself thr-oogh creatioo.. 1 then rejected from my conceptions much that did not correspond with the whole, and which was, cODsequently, erroneous, as weIl as previous convictions which had become prejudiced. 210 And, Belinsky readily admits his intellectual debt to Balrunin:
1 have followed Many courses throughout my lite, but the most important for me was my !irst trip to Priamukhino. It iB from that date thaC we became friends, and since then you have known my life as you lmow your own. Yon imparted to me the Fichtean conception of life- 1 embraced it with energy, with fanaticlsm ...

You introduced thought, which is foreign to my nature, ioto my life, but without which it is impossible to live, without which sense turns into a chaos of contradictions, devours itself.
My nature is hostile to abstract thought, and only you were able to aomehow take hold of me and to force me to think and to rethink many things. This was for me both necessary and beneficial. This was your influence on me, this is how you entered into my lUe. No, Michel, did not impose your authorlty on me; rather, th e power of your thought imposed itelf al me, the infinite depth of your contemplations. 1 now deeply understand many things and 1 understand them through you. 1 clearly realize tlJ.is now. 211

'ou

21~elinskii, "Pis'mo M. A. Ba.kuninu, ft 21 noyabrya 1837, in Izbrann~ pie'ma, tom 1, p. 116; unfortunately, none of Belinsky's letters r the year 1836 lijlve been preserved. His correspdence for 1837-38 still maltes references to his Priamuldtinojvisit, but he has already adopted a critical tone and often antagonistic (ttitude, made so by the frequent and bitter quarrels with Bakunin, and they do not rellect that Fichte;m mood of exaltatioo that lettera of the year 1836 would have revealed. '

211 n Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 13 avgusta 1838, in ibid., p. 150; "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 20 iyu1ya 1838, in ibid., p. 126; ibid., p. 128.

142 Even at the height of their


polem~c,

Belinslty could still speak of

Bakunin's influence on him in these eulogistic terms:


1 made your acquaintance in '36 [Belinsky ls mistaken; he !irst met Bakunin in 1835J. Your outspokenness did not attract me to you, 1 even distln.tly disliked it; but 1 was captivated by the overfiowing vitality, by the agitation of your mind, by your ardent striving for truth, partIy also by your ideaI position vis--vis your family; and you became for me a fascinating and magnifieent phenomenon. . .. 1 saw that you were carefully reading Fichte, and that you were enthused by him; this raised you even more in my eyes. Vou translated severaI lectures of Fichte for the Telescope, and in these translations 1 discovered something of an intuitive knowledge of the Russian language, which you had never studied; 1 feIt life, strength, energy, and the ability ta' convey to others your deep impressioos. 1 began to look upon you as a fellow traveller on the same road that 1 was following, although you were taking your own path. AlI this elevated you even more in my eyes and had to elevate you; and more and more, 1 considered you as a friend. Stankevich left on a trip. Soon aft er, you left for Priamukhino. Upon departing, you invited me there; this invitation (a~ 1 recall today) caused my eyes to tear and the earth to swell up beneath my feet. But somehow 1 could not picture myself in tbis holy and mysterious setting; your invitation was nonetheless ~roof of your aIfection and of your esteem for me .... 12

And, again

You say that you once were able to awaken me from MY shameful slumber and ta show me a nw world of Ideal"; that ls tille, and 1 shall never forget it; you did i' great, great deal for me. But not only by means of the new, comforting ideas, but also by the fact that you summoned me to Priamukhino-you resurrected me! My soo1 was extenuated, its exasperation Ieft, and it became open and receptive ta salutary impressioos, ta the salutary truth. 213 212Belinsldi, "Pis'mo M.A. Bakuninu," 12 oktyabrya 1838, in

~
,

ibia., pp. 195-196.


(
213n Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 16 avgusta 1837, in Belinsltii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, tom XI, Pis'ma 1829-1840, p. 173. For more Bakunin's saIubrious influence Belinsky at the time of the Priamukhino visit, see Stankevich, Perepiska ego 1 blografiya, p. 363.' .

143 The first, and only, fruit of Fichte' s impact on BelinsKy, as

expounded by Ba1runin,

his critical review of A. Drozdov's work,

entitled Opyt sistemy nra~~tvennoi filosofii (Essay of a System of Moral PhUosophy). This article was written in PriamuKhino for the September issue of the Telescope,214 and Drozdov's rather insignificant study provided Belinsky with a literary excuse for an exposition of.. Fichte's moral philosophy, which he undertpok with ail the polemical' ardour of the neophyte. Ba.lrunin's hand is unmistakable in the text:

Man must strive towards his perfection and submit his blessedness only to that which corresponds to his duty: this is the basic law of morality. The reasoo for this law Is ccntained within itself, that is, in the fact that man ls man, -the organ of the consciousness of nature, the vessel of the' divine spirit, and also in the fact that man is a member of the great famny, which is called 'humanity.' Thus, this law completely conditions and determines the meaning of man, and is his duty. 215
f

The imprint of The Vocation of the Scholar, as well as of the GIide to


1

the Blessed Life, which Ba1runin had paraphrased and explained t9 BelinsKy (who did not know German), permeates the article: The attraction of man for other men stems from his kindred relation to them, from the identity of bis aspiration and goals with their aspirations and goals, , such that in them he loves himself, and he loves them in himself. In other words . . . he loves hls own consciousness in other subjects becaus~ love Is CCllsciousness knowing itself, and blessedness arises in this act of self-consciousness. 216 Unfortunately, once again, Belinsky' s article has not been preserved for

posterity in its entirety. Anticipating problems with the censorship 214releskop, XXX (Moskva, 1836), No. 21-24.

215V . G. Bel in Skii, Stat'i i retsensi1, 1834-1841, poct red. F. M. Golovenchenko (MoskVa, 1948), p. 297. 216n,id.

144
,
board, Nadezhdin, the editor of the Telescope, was forced to eut the
-'

text ,by two thirds of its length.217 In addition to this, the 108s of Belinsky's letters of 1836 (and of most of Bakunin's correspondence to Belinsky) reduced the output of his Fichtean period to a fraction of what it was in reality. 218 Furthermore, with the closing down of the Telescope by the authorities in 1836 (Nadezhdin's premonition and apprehenslon had b~n justified!) due to the publication of Chaadaev' s noiorious "Philosophical Letter," BelinsKy was

consequ~ntly

deprived of the organ

for the expositioo of his ideas, not to mention a regular source of revenue. He would resume his regular activities as a publicist only in 1838, by which time he had become a devoted Hegelian. The suppression of the Telescope did not only deprive historians of invaluable material on Belinsky's Fichteanism, but in addition the members of the Stankevich circle were left without their journal and regular mouthpiece.
~or,

ever

sinee Nadezhdin had appointed Belinsky assistant editor of the journal, the latter had succeeded in involving all of his friends in this project, and the most important members of the Stankevich circle had collaborated in its publication at one time or another.
In addition to being the nine-

teenth century Russian literary critic par excellence and the most active polemicist of the 1830's and 40"s, Belinsky was also unquestionably the 217BelinsKy's frequent allusions to the "vile reality of the Nicholaevan regime" (ibid., p. 771, Notes to the text) and his attackS CIl it as suppressing the free development of the moral personality were, needless to say, taken out by Nadezhdin, who leit in the original only, those sections dealing with moral realization in abstracto; Bee Notes 10 the text, Belinskii, ibid., p. 771, and Kornilov, Molcxlye gody, p. 243. 21Baelinsky undoubtedly himself destroyed B~in'S lengthy and discursive -Ietters tp him prior to the shutdown of the Telescope. the police raid his apartment and confiscation of his pers~a1 papers, followed by question~g by the Third Section.
1 1 1

I-

I l
l

145
porte-parole of the dtl!using and popularizing by
,

1
!
1

means of his articles and literary' reviews, those philosophical issues and debates which absorbed his intellectual friends. From this view-

1 1

point, BelmsKy largely contributed to the diffusion of progressive ideas


in Russian society of his time. Through the engaging and animated style

of his articles, advanced intellectual thought and philosophical issues emerged from their hermetic environment, i. e., the circles, and, to the extent that censorship permitted, came out into open debate-a debate whicb culminated in the great Slavophile-Westernizer ontroversy of the 1840'8. Also through the agency of BelinsKy, the specialized phiJosophical language, or jargon, of the circ1es penetrated into society and into the literary language of Russia. 219 The question of the originality of BelinsKy's th ou ght , as weIl as of bis many "philosophical infatuations" haB already been the subject of numerous and voluminous studies, and therefore, we do not propose to dwell on it. What does concern the present investigation, however, iB the -nature of Belinsky' s Fichteanism (and subsequently, Hegelianism), as communicated to him by Balrunin. For, by focussing on the manner

in which Belinsky assimilated the basic tenets of Fichte's philosophy, we gain a clearer insight into BalruJ1in's own understanding of the system. Letters referring to the
Priamu~ino

.,

period clearly indicate that the

conception of Fichte's philosophy that Belinsky acquired from Balrunin , . was highly revolutionary in particular stress
00

OUtlOOK.

He drew out of Fichte' s idas a

the notion of personal freedom and on the necessity As evidenced from his own

of struggle in order to attain this freedom.

219Chizhevski, Ge gel , v Rossii, p. 215; Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 146.

.
t

146 'accounts, Belinsky equated Fichteanism with revolutionary radicalism and

"Robespier~ism,"

and openly expressed his sympathy for the French

Revolution, causing a minor incident in the Bakunin household and scandalizing 'Michel's father, Aleksandr MikhaUovich. 220 Belinslty

further provoked the wrath of A. M. Balrunin by reading his revolutionary journalistic articles 221 out loud to Michel's siaters. Spurr,d- on by Michel, Belinsky declared:
1 thought in that manner at thel'time, becau8e 1 under8tood Fichteanism as Robespierrism, and in these new theories, 1 sensed the smell of blood. 222

And, although BakUnin and Belinsky were to become involved, a few years later, in a long and acrimoniou8 polemic which centered around the concepts of "reality" and philosophical "abstraction," Belinsky's interpretation of the idea of reality was still, in 1836, one which fully took into account its concrete aspects. As BelinsKy recollected: The harmony of Priamukhino and my acquaintance with the ideas of Fichte, thanKS to you, convinced me for the tirst time that the 80-called ideal lite, is precisely the real, the positive, the concrete (lite], and the socalled real lUe is negation, illusion, nothingness, emptiness. 223 "
1
l
J

1 !

220See Tat'yana Aleksandrovna BakUnina's "Pis'mo brat'yam," 20 oktyabrya 1836, cited in Kornilov, Molodye gody, pp. 257-58; alse, Belinskii, IIPis'mo Aleksandru Mikhailovichu Bakunmu," 10 avgusta, 1838, in' Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, tom XI, pp. 256-57; "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 12-24 oktyabrya 1838, in ibid., pp. 319-20; "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 1 noyabrya 1837, in ibid., pp. 185-186. ' 22L:rhese bave been lost. 222Belinskii, "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 12-24 oKtyabrya 1838, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, tom XI, p. 320.
(

223Belinskii, "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu, p. 175.

Il

16 avgusta 1837, in ibid.,

___

__

_ _ _ _ _ _ -- _ _ _ _ _

~-

147
It is important ta rememb~, that for Fichte, the "ideal" is not per-

<.

ceived as something alien or removed from the "real," but rather as , something more fundamental or original. In Fichte's ter ms, it is the Wesen (the essence) that is freedom, for which the "real" is only an appearance (Erscheinung). The essence of this freedom, in Fichte's

language, is the task- that which is to be realized or achieved. The nature of this realization, or the "vocation of man" (or, in more political language, the "struggle") is determined by the force at work here, 1. e., freedom.
It has been pointed out that the writings of both Balrunin and
1

Belinsky during this period are tinged with something akin ta a IItheo .-4~

sophic mysticism." This can be directly attributed to Fichte's philosophy of religion with which Bakunin had been familiar' since early 1836. Indeed, his ideas were deeply marked by Fichte's Anweisung zum seligen Leben. This Guide ta the Blessed Life, a relatively late work, must be understood in connection with Fichte's syste~' of moral idealism as it represents the systematic conclusion of his thought. It is only through the active ego that man could elevate himself and attain ta an authentic
1 ,

"

j ,

;-

Chrtstianity, to what he described as a state of "holiness" or "blessedness.


ft

"

It should be in no way surprising that Bakunin was interested in

the eschatological aspects of Fichte' s religiouB writings, Bince these works are primarily concerned with the realization of freedom, with the atlainment of the ideal moral society. For, as Fichte maintains, what saves the "real" world from being merely appearance ls its striving towarqs freedom, 224 and this freedom as manested in man's 224J. G. Fichte, The Way Toward~ the Blessed Life, or The Doctrine of Religin, William Smith, ed. (London, 1873); see aIso Ba.ttqnin, tom 1, Sobranie sochinenii, pp. 231, 233.

...

_____

.. ~

148 actions. 225


-"",

What stands out of Balrunin's reading of Fichte's doctrine of religion is his emphasis on the notion of suffering as the moment of negativity in the realization of the wUI. In BakUnin's understanding, suffering as "le moment ngatif essentiel de la ptogression dialect-

ique"226 is perceived as the sine qua non of all historical progressthis clearly prefigures his latr Hegelian conception o~ destruction as the logical prerequisite of creation. 227 Indeed, suffering is seen as "an act of liberation,,228 of the human will and constitutes its road to freedom. 229 AIready we can distinctIy observe sorne of the essential themes of Balrunin's thought (i. e., on negation) beginning to emerge and take form, but there would still he a long path
~

phUosophical develop-

ment ahead for him before these ideas could congeal in their definitive and mature structure. ..

-,

AIthough Bakunin's involvement with Fichte's phUosophy has con-

sistently been referred to as an escapist interlude in subjective and abstract idealism, and dismissed as an unhealthy and excessive preoccupation with the "unprogressive" elements of religious mysticism, 230

22~akunin, ibid., p. 231.

22~oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 108~


227see, for example, Bakunin, ,tom 1, Sobranie sochinenU, pp. 300, 328. 228Ibid., p. 328, 2291bid " p. 329. 230 See, for example, Steldov, Zhizn' Bakunina; Pirumova, ' Mikhail Bakunin.

"

"

..
1

149
it is nevertheless of paramount importance to reaIize that Bakunin's anti-authoritarian and anarchlstic position finds its roots in this period of his life. And aIthough the "Fichtean period" ascribed to Bakllnin's intellectual development 1s usually limited, grosso modosil to the year 1836, the influence of Fichte' s moral phUosophy was much more longterm and intrinsic to Ba.kunin rs later thought and worKs. Fichtean

philosophy, for BaIrunin, symbolized freedom, activism, voluntarism, and as such, extended beyond metaphysics and into the fields of practical, socio-political activity. Fichte' s lofty humanistic ethics, bis revolutionary ethos, his insistence on the issues of freedom, human and political rights, struck a respondent chord in. the youthful Bakunin, and it was ta these "practicaI" writings that he turned for gtAdance, .,. rather than ta the phUosopher's epistemological and theoretical works. Most important for Bakunin were Fichte's eloquent and inspiring elucidations on the vocation of the scholar, a theme which enflamed
h~

ardent sense of mission. The role and meaning of phUosophy as a tool for the reform of society, the creative activity of the Ego in its quest for truth and freedom, all this acquired an immediate and urgent signicance for the future revolutionary. Fichte' s revolutionary ideas
l

I~

on the philosophical basia of culture and on the enlightenment of the people, aa expounded in his Vocation of the Scholar, were particularly .J appealing to the young Bakunin
~o

saw as his vocation the moral

transformation of Russian society. This philosophical education or knowledge, was to be the basis for any impending social change, and a first step in this direction was Balrunin's translation and publication of the Lectures for the Telescope.

Writing on Fichte severaI years later, Bakunin recorded his impressions of the philosopher:

, -,:

150 Here is the true hero of our tirnes. 1 always loved hirn deeply and envied Ms extraordinary power, his ability to ignore every external eircumstance and public opinion of hirn, and to mo~e directIy and indefatigably towards the goal which he has set himself, guided by the knowledge of the truth and the 'blessing of God. 1 have similar qualities, but 1 must still develop my powers, the capacity for calmly relying upon myself and acting regardless of and in defiance of all external factors. 231 , This quote goes far in revealing Bakunin' s personal appropriation of the central Fichtean theme; the vocation of the scholar has clearly bec orne Balrunin's own task. Fichteanism in effect supplied Bakunin

with a systematic and coherent expression of the themes of activism and didacticism which had been gradually developing in bis thougbt; it furthermore provided Bakunin with a structured link between the notions of religious transformation and of social and political change. As sucb, Fichte's philosopby must be understood as the essential intellectual source of Balrunin's emerging revolutionary position, the next step of
)

wbich would be his passionate converSion to Hegelianism-the final'.-a.nd ,1

crucial stage in bis transition to radical revolutionism.

,.
,
1

231Bakunin, "Pis'mo Aleksandre Beyer," konets fevralya - nachalo Marta 1840," in Sobranle sochinenii, tom 2-, p. 306.
i

1 _____

_._-~,~---

"

,,,

..
CHAPTER ln

(
THE IIRECONCILIATION WITH REALITY": HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY

The first few months of 1837 witnessed Bakunin's growing disillusionment v.;ith the system of philosophy which he had const"!cted for himself, under' Fichte's
"-

influence~

during the course of the year


~

1836. His letters of this period reveal an augmenting mystical-ascetic \ disposition, as well as an excessive preoccupation with the notion of the personal "l''. 1 Inspired by the heroic individualism of Fichte~s moral philosophy, but frustrated by the state of forced inactivity in which he found him self, Bakunin
r~~reated

further and further into a hostile,

negative attitude, which reflected his conflict V?,ith reality. He now believed it necessary completely to .. destroy the last link tying me to that external world, which 1 negate ~d which 1 consider my vocation to struggle against. The centr_al Fichtean notion of the etnical. ego, alone in its struggle against the world, translated itself in Bakunints mind into an acute feeling of moral alienation. The separation of the Real and the Ideal, put into, play by the Fichtean concept of the Ought, accentuated the schism

bet~een the morally-acttve individu al and the so.ciety in which he

func-

tioned. By assigning to the moral will the mission of changing the world
in accordance with the Ideal, of transforming the Real-of which it was,

at the same Ume, an integral part-, Fichte's phUosophy inevitably , ,1See Letters for' December 1836 in Sobranie pp. 358-380.
i' t
('~')'
f

sochin~nii.

tom 1,

p. 390.

2"Pis'mo sestram," pervaya polovina yanvarya' 1837, in ibid., .'

151

1 __.)aL_'

.. ~ 7' ,.,

_-:;I~v>Fi1~-"~'"
'f

152 produeed a widening rift between the autonomous individual and the social whole. This ide a of unresolved struggle, of opposition, appealing as it initially was for BaKunin, subsequently resulted in an increasingly abstract pUbjectivism. The philosophical discrepancy between the Ideal .. and the Real became an even more acute, pressing issue, and gave
~ay

to a theoretical egoism, and even sOlipsism, asi...we had occasion Under conditions where concrete action was an impossibility,
d

to observe.

such as Nicolaevan RUBBia, this non-convergence of the Ideal and the Real became even more st:r:iking, and it is in no way surprising that
.)

energetic individuals, such as Bakun in, frustrated by this painful discrepancy of life as it was, and lUe as it ought to b,e, withdrew into a more and more abstract state of iBolationism. In effect, Balrunin 's growing dissatisfaction with Fichte's philosophy refleeted, in part, Hegel's own critique of Fichtean subjective idealism: for, by postulating the Sollen (the Ought) as a criterion for action,
~iehte

had provoke.d in the

subje ct a "never-ending approximation of the Law of Reason" without ever b'eing able to attain it. 3 This state of perpetual striving after the Moral Good in accordance with the formaI law of the CategoricaI ImperaUve, orny
res~ted in

alienating the ethical individual

fr~m

his socieo/,

and served to create a chasm between the ego and the social community. And this line of argume,nt would be precisely Balrunin' s angle of attac,k against what he perceived to be the unresolved oppositions produced by , Fichte's system. 3He el's LQ ie. Bein Part One of the Ene cIo aedia of the PhilosophicaI Sciences, translated by William Wallace Oxford, 1975), 894, p. 138 (hereafter Logic-Encyclopaedia). Note that Hegel's criticism is that the "Moral" position is formai, 1. e., the Law does not have real (i. e., social) content.

"'

(J

-,

WhiIe in Moscow,

ln!~'!.~
~

153 1837, Balrunin diBcovered Hegel'.

PhilOSO;hY-'OnCe again through

agency of Stankevicq. Immediately

thereafter, there occurred in Balrunin's thought an increasing concern with- the notion of the community, of ,the social entity: in Hegelian terms, a m'oving away from the. Fichtean "1" t~ the concrete totality of the "We.,,4 There is a new awareness in Balrunin's mind of forms of social existence and social consciousness-frienqship, love, art, religion, the fa~ilyby which man abandoned his isolated individualism to participate in
~e

activity of the social totality. AIready on February 11, '1837, Balrunin wrote:

... the movement of man, ,emerging from out of himself, in order to merge with others in God, is expressed in various forms, which are) just as absolute, as is God: stich as friendShip, love, art, creativity, learning [nauka), and finally, religion, whieh unites and concentrates in itself all these isolated, elements, rand) which is the continuous "feeling of the presence of God in man. 5

The "limitation" and "one-sidedness" of particularity must, according to Bakunin, give way ta the "totality. Il And the manner in which it does this ls through the forms in which the finite elevates itself ta th~ "divine" totality, where the finite, as it were, does away with or negates its own finitude. 6 As seen from this letter, BakUnin Is moving towards an under4See "The Truth of Self-Certainty," p. 227: the "experience of what mind is-this absolute substance, which is the unity of' the dilferent self-related and self-existent self-consciousnesses fn- the perfeet freedom and independenee of their opposition as component elements of that substance: Ego that is 'we,' a plurality of Egos, and 'we' that ls a single _ Ego"; see also introduction ta "Spirit," pp. 457ff. in G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, translated by J.B. Baillie {New York, 1967).

At.

~Bakunin,
sochinenii,
~aedia

t~m

"Pis'mo ~estra~," 11 fevralya 1837, in Sobranie 1, p. 404., .\,

6Hegel 's Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the Encyclo- _ of the -Philosophical -Sciences, translated by William Wallace Oxford, 1971), 552 (hereafter Philosophy of Mind-Eneyclop~ia).

154
standing of God-or of the Absolute-in terms of the Hegelian social community and its self-consciousness, which contrasts with the earlier cClltext of the deity as the morally-autonomous individual. His references

ta "the uniOIl of man in God" and of the "sacred community, in which man must live, in order ta be man, ,,7 underlines titis new conviction, whicb was moflvated by bis recent discovery and study of Hegel. 8 Thus, Bakunin' s shilt of emphasis from" the individu al ego ta society, to the idea of the community, would be the springboard which enabled him te(
,- ,

malte the phllosophical transition from Fichte to Hegal. And Hegel's system, by focussing his attention on ReaIity (Wirklichkeit), on the forms of social existence, would be the instrument by which Balamin would
,

overcome the ontological

d~vision

between tbeory and lUe, between

phUosophy and practice. But before analysing in detail Bakunin's cversiOll ta Hegel' s philosophical system, as well as examining the nature of his Hegelianism, it will first be nec essarr to study the influence of

Hegel in Russia and ta determine in wh'at manner this new system of German ide.alism was ta take root sa firmly among the Russian intelligentsia Of the 1830's and 184O's.
In essence, the discQVery
~d

adopti of Hegel's phllosophy by

Russian inte1.lectuals in the mid- to Iate-thirties can be seen in terms


, i

7Balgmin, "Pis'mo sestram," Il fevralya i837, in "'Sobranie sochineii, tom 1, p. 404.

8At this )oint, Bakunin still places religim above philosophy; by the time he bad completed bis article Hegel '8 Gymnasium Lectures (March 1838), however, phUosophy would be the superior form of repre8entati", of the Absolute. Also, the above-quoted passages ecbo Begel's cistant eoncem with "the elevati towards Gad, 11 e. g., PhilosophY of Mind-Encyclopaedia, 1552, ~ the transiti from ,Objective to AbsOlute
Spirit.

155 of a prise de conscience of cCllcrete reality and of its manestations,

as weIl as a new awareness of their relationship to it.

Whereas

Schellingianism had succeeded in attracting a few, isolated, proponents


in Russia, German idealism had not been able, in general, to secure

a firm foothold in Russian society as a whole. The situation changed drastically in the middle of the
1830'~:

Hegel's philosophy created a

genuine-,furore and suddenly permeated life. 9

aIt

facets of Russian national

And although the appeal of this new system started out, once

again, as a university phenomenon, it soon spread out beyond the confines of small student circles to eDgulf categorical: La vague hglienne fut sans aucun doute une des plus , violentes. Comme un vritable raz de mare elle dferle sur les salons et les cercles moscovites, et 1 1 submerge tout: vers 1840 tout le monde Moscouet non seulement Moscou *-est hglien. . .. Hegelest le dieu de la gnraticm nwnta.nte doot la pense est imprgne de l 'hglianisme bien plus profondment encore que celle de ses ams ne le fut de Schelling et de la Naturphilosophie. Il [*-Ole of the strong points of Chizhevski's study, Gegel' v Rossii (Hegel itf" Russia), is his research on Hegelian circles outside of Moscow and in the Russian provinces. He has successfully traclted down young Hegelian societies in Tver' Oed by M.A. Baltunin's brothers}, Khar'kov, Kazan', and Kiev, inter alia.]
~

all of society.

19

Koyr is

Russian society's infatuation with Hegelianism reached epide'mic proportions, and all elements of socie1:f2emed to express the same boundless ~ty-Bjour, Hegel et la pense philosophiqu~;&JJ. 8; M. Walicld., "Hegel., Feuerbach and the Russian PhUosophicaf Left, 18361848," in Annal1, Instituto Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (MUano, 196'3), p .. 105.
/
~

10~sk.i, Gegel' v Rossi!, p. 50.


l lKoyr, La pense philosophique en___sie, p. 104.

156
enthusiasm for the philosopher. An interesting, but cynical, contemporary

account is provided by Ivan Kireevsky: PhUosophical concepts' enjoyed a very large dUfusion here. There is aImost no one who, in the course of conversation, does not employ philosophical terms; there is not one adolescent who does not pronOWlce judgement on Hegel; there is not one book, and not ev en a newspaper article into which the influence of the German thinker cannot be discerned. Even among boys of ten, who speak only of concrete objectivity. . . 12 However, Kireevsky-who studied philosophy in Berlin with. Hegel him" self-disdainfully goes on to point out the superficiality of this rapture:
~

But in most cases, these worshippers of Hegel have not even read Hegel. And among those whp have read him, one has oo1y read wht concerns the application of principles to the other sciences, another has only read the Aesthetics, a thi,rd has oruy begun the Philosophy of J!istory, the fourth has glanced at the final section of the History of Mosophy, the fifth has read a few pages of Logic, the sixtll bas leaied through the Pltenomenology or has heard some trustworthy per son speaK about it. . .. 13 r, " Annenkov, another eontempora$r, confirms this opinion and testifies to the widespread and fanatical nature of the Hegelian phenomenon in Russia: A persoo unacquainted with Hegel was considered . . a nonentity, a fact which gave J?se to desperate efforts on the part of Many who possessed limited intellectual capacities, to become complete human beings at the priee of gruelling and brainwracking work which deprived them of the last vestigS-of any natural, simple, sptaneou8 feeling and understan'<iing about thing.. . . 14

y. , ,

12Cited in Koyr, ibid. 13Cited in ibid.,

p. 50.

p.

105; al_BO in ChiZhevs1ti, Gegel' v Rossit,


in Literatumye

14Annenkov, "Zamechatel'noe decyatiletie, vospominaniya. p. 156.

Il

157

But despite the severity of these accounts, and in spite of its popularity

<.

in secular society, Hegel 's philosophy was taken with the utlll.ost serious-

ness by the young Russian

intellige~tsia,

and the late 30' s and 1840 s

were characterized by a period of earnest, intense and dedicated intellectual activity. Seen as the culmination of German idealism and as the supreme and ultimate philosophical truth, Hegel 's system was received

with unsurpassed respect, the object of awe and faith. Not me to b"e
f

outdone in cynicism, Herzen recounts the philosophical attnosphere which ,1 he encountered upon returning from' exile in 1840. Bince the time of his activity in his philosophical circ1e in the early 30's, the intellectual tide had turned away from Schelling, and the Russian intelligentsia had

converted en masse to Hegelianism. Herzen, who had not yet read Hegel at the time, feIt somewhat isolated and "pass."
A heavy, but

.enterulining, sarcasm taints his description of the philosophical zeal and seriousness of the Moscow Hegelians: My new acquaintances received me as people receive emigrants and old warriors, people who come out of prison or retum from captivity or exile, that ls, With respectful condescension, with a r~adiness to receive us into their alliance, though at the sarne time refusing to yield a single point and hinting at the fact that they are tcday and we are already yesterday, and demanding an uncditional acceptance of Heger~ Phenomenology and Logic, and according to their interpretation of them, too. They discussed these subjec18 endlessly; there was Dot a single paragraph in all three parts of the Logic, in the two parts of the Aesthetics, in the Encyclopaedia, and so 00, which bad not c3USed. desperate disputes for severa! nights on end. People wlto loved each other parted company for entire weeks at a time because they had disagreeq 011 the definiti ,of "all-embracing spirit, " , or had taken as a persal insult an opinion on rt the absolute perscna1ity and i18 existence in itself." Every insignicant brochure Publ1shed in Berlin or in other provincial or district toWDs of German philo~ophy was

,
;

158 ordered and read to shreds and smudges, and, the pages fell out in a few days, if Hegel was even mentioned in it. Just as Francoeur in Paris had wept with emotion when he heard that in Russia he was considered a great mathematician and that all the younger generation made use of the same letters as he did when he solved equatiohs of various powers, tears might have been shed by all those forgotten Werders, Marheinekes, Michelets, 0008, Watkes, Schallers, Rosenkranzes, and ~ven Arnold Ruge himself, whom Heine so wonderfully well called 'the concierge of Hegelian phUosophy, t il they had known what bailles, what declarations, they were exciting in Moscow between the Maroseyka and the Mokhovaya [the area between Mokhovaya and Maroseyka. streets included the residences of Belinsky, BoUtin, and Moscow University 1, how they were being read, and how they were being bought. . .. Our young philosophers distorted not merely the phrases but also the meaning; their attitude to life, to reality, beame schoolboyish and literary; it was that learned conception of simple things at which Goethe mocles with such genius ,in the conversations of Mephistopheles with the student. Everything ~at in reality was direct, every simple feeling, was elevated into abstract categories, and retumed from them' without a drop of living blood, a pale algebraic shadow. In all this there was a naivet of a sort, because it was all perfectIy sincere. The man who went for a walk in Sokolniky, went in order to give himself up to the pantheisti~ feelirg of his unity with the cosmos; and il on the way, he met a drunken soldier, or a peasant woman, who got into a conversation with him, the philosopher did not simply talle to them, but defined the essential substance of the people in its immediate and fortuitous manestation. The very tear that started to the eye was strictly referred to its proper classification, to Gemth, ~r to 'the tragie in the heart ... ,15 Herzen's
d~er~Pti

of the Hegelian craze

Moscow is a very clever

little caridature, bu,t one must not forget (as he fails to remind us) that, like all his comrades, he himself also fell under the spell of the new German phUosophy
an~

l1kewise came to swear ly by the

categori~s

(,

'j

of Hegel. 15Gertsen, "Byloe 1 dumy, " tom 5, pp. 100-102.

,J

i
i
"

1 ----

----.~_

..

1,59

Several hypotheses

h~ve

been advanced to account for the im-

mense popularity of Hegel 's thought in the Russian intellectual life of. this period. It will be useful to examine some of these theories in ordr to explain this phenomenon. as Ivan Kireevs'ky, quoted ab ove, offered

an

explanation the widespread knowledge of the German language

among the ct4tured class in Russia, a fact which served to facilitate the diffusion of Hegelianism. 16 While a proficiency in German certa1nly did its part to facilitate
~e

adoption of this new philosophy, it can by

no means fully account for the impact of Hegel' s thought on Russian society. The assimilation of Kant, Fichte, or Schelling' s respective

systems would likewise require a sOWld lmowledge of the German language, but none of these philosophers was able to attract much of a tollowing ammg the intelligentsia, and furthermore, very few of the dedicated Russian ScheHingians later converted to Hegelianism. In addition, as Koyr astutely points out, the German influence, more often

th~ not, travelled to Moscow via Paris. 17 Another hypothesis to account


for the immediate impact of Hegelian philosophy ia the tact that Hegel' s ascendance in Russia during the late thirties coincided with the first publication of his complete.lworka, which was begun as of 1832. Moreover, other worka, BUch as
Rosenkranz'~

\-..,

biography, Hegels Leben

(Berlin, 1844), which contained generous excerpts from Hegel r s writings, as weIl as Michelet' s Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie in

1
1
1J

l~oyr, La penSe philosophique' en Russie, p. 112; PlantyBonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 12.
17Koyr, La pense philosophique en "Russie, p. 112; that ia to say, through French secondary sources~ commentartes and studies.
~

i _--"

..

9"'~

__

;--r,..-..v...

______ -'

160
Deutschland von Kant bis Hegel (Berlin, 1837/8), were readily available

to the Russian public. Both Koyr and Planty-Bonjour partIy support this explanation. 18 Once again, while undoubtedly contributing to the" diffusion of Hegel 's ideas, this theory cannot exclusively account for this trend, but rather must he taken in conjunction with other, more fundamental reasons. Koyr also proposes the thesis that the Schellingian
~henomenon

in the 1820' s prepared the ground for the subsequent growth of Hegelian-

ism. 19 It la natura! and perfectly consistent, he claims, that after having submerged themselves in Schelling's philosophy, Russian thinkers would logically move on to the latter' s
succe~sor

and rival-whose system

appeared to be the ultimate realization of German idealism, and who had been able to construct into a systematic and coh-esive whole the lines of development initiated

bY

Kant, Fichte and Schelling. 20 UnliKe Schelling's


,

numerous, and sometimes contradictory, systems, Hegel' s philosophy ... se" prsentait comme un systme achev et ralis-systme qui enlbrassait effectivement l'ensemble de l'tre et l'ensemble du savoir, qui offrait-Wlies et lies-et une philosophie de la nature, et une philosophie de l'esprit, une logique et Wle philosophie de la religion, de l'histoire, une philosophie d'art et une philosophie de la socit. 21 .. While it i8 impossible to
den~_

'.

the attraction that the magnitude and scope

of the Hegelian system exerted on the Rus8ians, one must remember,

: (

18Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 113; Planty/onjour, Hegel et la pense phUosoeJPque, p. 12.

l~oyr, La pense pht,losophigue en Russie, Pp. 112-113.


20n,id., p. 112.

2'1

Ibid., p. 113.

--_.

----------,--- --

--~-

\
161 once again, that Schelling's Slavic disciples of the Aenties did not as

a group convert to Hegelianism when

~t

system became prevalent in

Russian intellectual circles. Furthermore, the Russian Schellingians

,.

and the Russian Hegelians remained in two antagonistic, rival camps weIl into the middle of the Nineteenth Century; the debate between the two philosophical factions continued in the form of the controversy between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles, which reflected a concurrent trend in Germany. Slavophiles such as Khomiakov and Shevy'rev
"

" endorsed a philosophy of history largely inspired by Schelling and

presented it as a counter-argument to what they

p~rceived

to be the

"

pernicious influence of the Westernizers' Hegelian p,hilosophy of history; Thus, Schelling' s Russian followers did not automatically and as a group turn to
Heg~lianism

in the thirties. Nor, on the other hand, can

one agree with the claim that "les jeunes hgliens le furent, pour ainsi dire, ds le dbut. ,,22 One must 'qua!y this statement by saying that the foremost Russian Hegelians of the day-Bakunin, StanKevich, Bel in sKy, Herzen, Granovsky-had arrived at their Hegelian positions after having lirst been schooled in the teachings of Schelling, and, in sorne instances, of Kant and Fichte. However, it is true, their Schellingian phase had been relatively mUd and of short duration in comparison with the powerJ

1
'1

fuI and long-term impact whlch Hegel would exert on their lives and

thought. ~ Nonetheless, the Schellingian preparatioo that they had received unquestionably helped them to move on to Hegel. Another explanation for the drawing power of Hegelian phllosophy centres around the Russian intelligentsia's newly-awakened preoccupaticn '

f ..
>

.1

J
...- - : ; - - --.
- .........

1--------------------------162

with social, historical and poli tic al issu,es and problems. A generation
.. .J

( ,~

which was manifesting a new and vital interest in questions of concrete, positive existence would necessarily turn to a philosophy which, for the first time, accomplished Dy means of dialectical thought a unity of reality and mind, and which not only took into account external reality, but incorporated it as a vital component of the philosophical sciences.
1

The for ms, through which reality manifested itseIf, constituted an e~~"eI)1tial sphere of the Hegelian system and this was further underlined by the' important place his philoBophy accorded to Nature and to objective spirit (the state, politics, history, social institutions). Indeed, a philosophy that consolidated, in essence, a retum to reality, and which incorporated a political and a social philosophy, could not fail to
~ttract

a generatton
";~

which, while still captivated by the allure of metaphysics, )

was beginning to move away from romanticism and rhapsodie contemplation of nature. Dissatisfied with the excessive subjectivism and

concentration on the ego, it started to take into account phenomena external to this knowing subject: society, the state, economics and
h~Btory.

Koyr sees the Hegel phenomenon as an "existential" revoIt

which represented a change in orientation among the new generation: Tout ceci [l'appel la 'rconciliation avec la ralit') 1 avait un sens non seulement hglien, mais rel, existentiel. La jeune gnratioo ne voulait pas se rsigner la vie qu'avait mene ses ans. Passer 'sa '. vie rver un monde fantastique la Hoffmann, faire de la littrature, s'puiser en discussions interminables et sans issue sur l'avenir et le pass de la Russie, se consoler de la mdiocrit du prsent par des vision utopiques de l'avenir et du pass. S'isoler-mme en groupe-n'est-ce pas mener Wle vie qui ne mne rien, et qui n peut remplir et satisfaire les aspirations de l'homme. A quoi sert de s'Isoler du rel? A rien. . .. n faut, au contraire, chercher prendre

i_
'

..
------- -,di

..

z;_r

163

place dans la vie. Et l'enseignement de Hegel, dbarrass de ses interprtations mysti.que~ s'accordait fort bien avec cette attitude-l. z3 And it was no coincidence that Hegel was introduced to Russian
soc~ety

by jurists and historians. Just as Schellingianism had been

championed by natural sCientists, physicists, -and, to a lesser degree, artists and art crities, - (refiecting the important effect of the Natur~

EJ1ilosophie and of the philosophy of art on the previous generation), it was historians and philosophers of law who first brought Hegel' s philosophy to the University of Moscow, tstifying to the new stress on modes of socio-political and historical being. After having been trained academically in Berlin by Hegel himself (and later by Hegel's students),
P. G. Redkin, D. A. Kriukov, and T. N. GranovsKy returned to Russia

and were assigned professorial positions in the faculties of Jurisprudence and History at Moscow University. 24 This "return ta reality" was undeniably at the base of the Russian intelligentsia's espousal of Hegel's system.
Of course, the initial source.

of attraction was nO,t due to an Immediate perception of the potentiallyradical elements in his thought, nor to an understanding of the host of political implications inherent in the' dialectical method.
And although

progres~iVe-minded Russians did Aot at once transform Hegel's phUosophy


ioto a revolutionary manual, their adoption of this system signalled a nascent concem with questions of Russian reality, with social existence . as it was, and ultlmately, with political forms of IHe. As Planty-Bonjour 23Ibid., p. 135. 24.:rhe dates of their studies in Berlin: Redkin, 1829-34; KriU1rov, 1832,-35; Granovsky, 1837-39.

'Iif

-----:-;..-J--.

'7~"",8

-_._--

-----:--..,..;"f'*=.---il"' ....

'.

164 has correctly pointed out, the adoption of Hegelianism was not a political move right from the start: , . on se dtourne de Schelling pour aller vers Hegel non pas parce que ce dernier permet de rsoudre les problmes politiques, mais parce que sa philosophie apparat comme l'accomplissement de la phil osophie de l'Identit de Schelling, Les textes les plus cryptiques sont ceux qui' enivrent le plus: d'o cet engouement. Mais il est vrai que si l'intrt s'est d'abord port sur l'lment spculatif, il s'est ensuite dplac vers l 'histoire et la politique, 25
(

'

The Hegelian era in Russia signified the waning of interest in

abst~act

metaphysics and a retum to questions of objective reality-albeit still cloaked in the mantle of idealist jargon. Malia underlines the role of Hegel in the rediscovery of concrete existence: The Key terms of Russian Schellingianism had been-in addition to nature-' art,' t friendship, ' , love, ' and 'individual genius' viewed as the supreme expression of the nation, The Key terms of Hegelianism in the circle of StanKevich were 'objective reasOll, t 'reality, ' and something the Russians preferred to leave in the original German, Allgemeinheit. With Schelling the emphas~ had been on the intuitive and the individual; with Hegel it was on the rational and tl:le general. When the circle of StanKevich broke with its youthful idealism, the great sin of Schelling (and still more~ of Schiller) was declared to be something called prekrasnodushie [SchBnseeligkeit] or a subjective and 'dreamy' individualism, while Hegel was held ta offer a healthy and objective 'reconciliation with 'ty' real1 . " . 26 By the advent of the 1840's, the intelligentsia no longer looked to philosophy for mere ontological explanations of the world, but rather 25planty .. Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 13.
'1
1

1 1

,
1

2~alla, Alexander Herzen, pp. 235-36. The pejorative "prekrasnodushie" as weIl as the oft maligned and misunderstood appeal for a "reconcUiation with reality" were both, tntroduced into the Russian v philosophlcal language by Bakunin.
OC

-1-

---------

165 turned to it for 'definitive rules of lUe and norms for action. 27 And Hegelian philosophy precisely fulfilled this requirement and furnished them with this flexistential" dimension 28 which they sought. Henceforth, the distinction between philosophical thought and reality became ev en more blurred. The application of philosophicai doctrines to p~oblems of daily existence, to feelings and emotions, reached such proportions
/

as to e"lentually exceed the confines of theory and cause it to fuse irreversibly with practice and life. This helps to account for the fact that, much later, when the intelligentsia lost confidence. in and abandoned Hegel' s system (which they feIt could only explain the past),. their break , with Hegel represented a turning away from philosophy once and for all. 29 Although the Russian Hegeli.ans did not irnmediately see the Iink to be made between the notion of social progress and the tool for its implementation and critique-the dialectical method, - i t was their renewed interest in concrete reality' which sparked their categorical ,endorsement of this system, and which, paradoxically, caused them to 1 later arrive at a negation of phUosophy ~ philosophy. 30 Hegelianism began to trickle into Russia as of the mid-thirties. Jakowenko has claimed
~at

l'

j,

the first study on Hegel to appear in

print in a Russian periodical was the translation of an article by the French commentator, Amde Prvost, which was first published 27Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 114.
28Ibid ., p. 135.

29 lbid ., p. 11'4; Chizhevski, Gegel' v RossU, p. 150.


,

300f course, the sarne' ph en omen on jmanifested itself in Germany,


in the works of Marx, Feuerbach, CieszKowSKi, and also of KierKegaard.

J.

166
in the Telescope in 1833. 31 By 1835 the Journal of the Ministry of

Public Education (Zhurnal ministerstva narodnago prosveshcheniia) c ited Hegel' s philosophy in the form of a -public mise en garde. 32 Also in 1835, Nikolai Stankevich published his translation (from French) of a study by A. S. Willm, "Essay on Hegel's philosophy, " for the Telescope. 33 The 1836 publication of the very popular and ubiquitous study by Berchou de Penhoen, Histoire de la philosophie allemande, in addition to the
"

most influential and readily available work by Victor Cousin, certainly did its part to make Hegel a household name in Russia.
It was also

about this Ume that the first group of Russian stazhery who had studied '" at the University of Berlin with Hegel and his disciples, began returning to Russia, where they were assigned prominent teaching positions at the University of Moscow. 34
It was the circle of Stankevich which assumed the principal role

in the diffusion of Hegel's philosophy in Russia. 35 Whereas the study of Kant, Fichte or Schelling had been, to a great extent, the work underwen by individual members of the group, the study of Hegel marked an 31Jakowenko, Geschichte des 'Hegelianismus in Russland, tom 1, pp. 1-14; Planty-Bonjour, He el et la ense hiloso (hi ue' p. 8. The translation was by V. MeshchikOV, in Telescope. XVI Moskva, 1833), No. 15. 32Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, ~P. 135; PlantyBonjour,_ Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 8. 33Teleskop, xxvm (1835), No. 13, 14, 15. This article had appeared in the Revue Germanique.
;
1

1 i ,
1

34Among those who had studied in German universities were Kireevsky, Redkin, NevoHn, Kriu~ov, and at a later date, Granovsky, Turgenev, Neverov, Stankevicn, and finally, as of 1840, .Balrunin.
35 Chizhev'ski, Gege!' v Rossii, p. 50. "

'

"

'}

'.

-~

~.

-~.---~----~--

..

_--~-

'"

CI

R' ..ft .... __ "

,..
....~,

167

unprecedented period of generaI enthusiasm, of intensive group-work and mutual help and collaboration. 36 Planty-Bonjour describes the

relentless efforts of the young Russian Hegelians to master the works of Hegel andf.:oglves an accoWlt of Balrunin's invaluable role in the Stankevich circle: Perdu, on peut toujours demander un claircissement un autre plus dou ou pl~s avanc. On sait que M. Bakounine tait non seulement dispos rendre service, mais venait de lui -mme fustiger les retardataires. n y avait une ~mulation et une entraide vraiment extraordinaires. 3 . By 1835 Stankevich was a1ready well
awar~

of Hegel' s philosophi-

cali significance and was famUiar with the basic tenets of his' system, 38 although his Knowledge was largely founded upon such secondary studies 'as those of Penhoen, Rheinhold and Mich~let. 39 HoweveJ,', in March 1836, Stankevich requested his friend, Neverov, who was living ,in St. Petersburg at the time, to order the, ColleGted Warks
~f

Hegel for

him;40 and by November of that same year, the thirteen volume~ of Hegel's WorkS were in his possession. 41 Presumably, it was in Moscow

during the early months of 1837 that Stankevich firat introouced Balrunin 36n,id.) p. 51. , 37Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosphique, p. 10., It le a well-Known fact, for example, that BakWlin placed his extensive rsums and translations of Hegel 's v.t>rlts at Belinsky's (as weIl as other group members') disposai. Likewise, M. Katkov translated Hegel's Aesthetics for BelinsKy. 38Stankevich, "Pis'mo ,M. A. Bakuninu," 24 noyabrya 1835, in PerepisKa ego i biografiya, p. 695. 39 npis'tno M. A. Balruninu,
Il

",

19 oktyabrya 1836, in ibid., p. 368.


1836, in ibid., p. 604.

411~Pi~'~O :ya. M. Neverovu," 9 marta

, 41"Pis~mo M. A. BakWlinu, " 3 noyabrya 1836, p. 621; 7 noyabrya' 1836, .p. J624. l' )
:

..
1

....

...-:..,

,-:;'''';;'''

,it~...:.\,jtl~~T.r''';'''';.:'.()'' ~

1ft'

-~I

'i....

(
,
to Hegel's philosophy and presented him with the works to read .., wrote in his C:onfession: .. , j'tudiais les sciences, plus spcialement la mtaphysique allemande, dans laquelle je me suis plong exclusivement, presque jusqu' la folie; et nuit et jour; je ne voyais rien d'autre que les catgories de lIegel. 'i2 . . impact of Hegel's ideas on Bakunin was profound

16s.:

Many ye_ars later Bakunin recalled this period in' his life, and

and dramatic.

By early May 1837 he could state with conviction to his sisters: Hegel has introduced me to a totally new lUe, 1 am completely absorbed in him. 1 realize mo':J:e and more that philosophy [nauka) is the true elemenj of my life, that it must constitute the basic principle of all my actions, 43 Although Balrunin 's very first mention of Hegel is in a letter to his
/
1

sisters, dated F~ruary 20, 1837, 44 this same letter clearly indicates that he was by that time already weIl acquainted with certain basic elements of Hegel 's philosophy. The primacy of the Fichtean concept of ~ "Absolute Love" is henceforth supplanted by the Hegelian "Reason" or

"thought." In a particularly insightful passage on education, based on the Encyclopaedia as weIl


,1

a~

on the Philosophy of Right, Balrunin cites

Hegel on the different levels of development the individual must travel,


in order to reach the final stage: self-conscious tb,ought.

The self-

identical Fichtean "l," to which Balrunin had formerly adhered, is now seen as having to undergo ;ressary contradictions and negations, in arder ta find it8lt at a higher point of development. The immediacy
42 M A. Bakounine, Confession, 1851J traduit par P. Brupbacher, annotations de Max NetUau (Paris, 1974), p. 55. 43B a.lrun in, "Pis'mo sestram, " nachalo~maya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, p. 428.
44 Ibid ., pp. 407 ff.

, 169

of the harmony- of feeling (i. e., love) must give

way

to the reflected
\
-1

'

or mediated harmony of thought:

The beauty of nature, of poetry, art, in general must ed~ate feeling. Theae must creat in the sou! a , harmony as a presenttment of an even more wonderful harmony, . cTeated by thought. . .. Man must set ot into the world, he must be rendered to himself. This [initial] harmony must be destroyd by contact With the world, or, as Hegel says: harmony, carried out from the home, i5 not yet a /true harmony. It must. be subjected to the ontradictions of storms, endure awful struggles, indeed, give way to destruction, make man Buffer and force .him to rebel and to reconstruct it with the help of thought. 45 Thua, the road to the creation of the
Fichte~ ;new

J
l
1
!

external iWOrld" is

at the same time a road of destruction, mediated by the Hege}ian cate. "-. gory of negation, which leads man to thought. 46 Balrunin has once again seized upon the dominant role of negation and contradictir which presides at all levels of progressive development. Therefore, the immediacy
of the sensuous, of feeling, -i. e., the intuitive harmony, -ceds, after

.,

a dialectical struggle, to the calm of refiection and self-consciousness of thought:


Man becomes a "eal man, he once again buUds a temple even more wonderful, more 1ofty , -and divine., than that

which was destroyed by storms [<i contradiction]. Henceforth, this temple of absolute love will no longer fear tempests, because it has already gone through all the levels of its development. Instinctive harmony, the har- . mony of feeling is transformed into a harmony of thought. 47 45"Pis'mo sostram, " 20 fevralya 1837, in ibid., p. 408. 46.rhis passage bears a striKing to the closing line .. of Bakunin's 1842 article, The Reaction in Germany: "The passion for destruction is at the sarne time a creative passion!" See aIso Chizhevslti, Ga gel ' v Rossii, 'P. 90.

re~em~ce

l .....

~
;;

,.;

1'10

One' flnai po!"t deserves to


,

~'e ';;;'otlm'ed wlth re~o',!,e above-quot~


educ~tion.

letter: it i8 highly significant that B3kunin 's first referenee to Hegel was made within the ontext of a discussion on The idea of

\l
1
1
1

1')

education (obrazovanie-Bildung) was a1ways of primary importance.. and of special concern to Ba1runin, who saw in it a vital political tool for
c ,

the refor!Xl. society. It is therefore of no small importance that, in . presenting both Fichte and Hegel to Russian society, he chose to trans,
1

late works which addressed thentselves to the question of education, as we shall have occasion to see later. 48 SeveraI commentators have pointed out that, despite his recent conversion to Hegelia,nism, Balmnin still retnained largely under the influence of Fichte's thought. Sorne, like Planty-Bonjour 49 and Jako'\

l
;
1

wenko~O claim that the vocabulaP'Y became Hegelian, whereas the ideas

remained Fichtean. But others, lik.e Chizhevski,51 main tain that the
J

,
,

terminology stayed 'Fichtean.

Koyr, on the ot!!er hand, believes both

the language and the thought to be still highly within a Fichtean cmtext. 52 Althbugh Bakunin would remain marked by, Fichte's thought throughout the rest of his llie, anq while adrniUing, to a certain degree, the corr,ect" ness of these observatioos, we feel that very few historians have fully understood the nature of Balrunin's adoption of Hegelianisrn. This was

48Balrunin translated Fichte's Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar in 1836, and Hegel 's Gxmnasium Lectures in 1838.

49J1~gel et la pense ehilosophigue, p. 41.


5Geschichte des Heg~1ianismus in" Russland, p.' 31. 51 Gegel , v Rossii, p. 107 .. 52La

...

p~nse philosophique en Russie,' pp. 130-131.

! ,
l

171
...

not a point-blank rejection of Fichte; indeed, the notions of the will, of ethips, and of freedom, would always remain paramount in Balrunin's \' thought. But rather, it represented a logical advance to a bigher plane
) , , _ l ,

of development, while

stil~

retaining certain characteristically Fichtean

inflections. This progression can even be explained in Hegelian terms, as Bakunin did: the real target of the criticism of Fichte is the abstract thinking and formalism of "morality" (Mor al Wit) which entrenches Uself in the "negative" and which, in this one-sidedness, corresponds to both the historical and the philosophical annihilation of the totality of "individuality" -the ethical lUe as people (Sittlichl\.eit). The essence of the
'P'

pure Fichtean subject is that it is for itself; it has as such no real content' and no reality. It is pure ideality, pure identity, for only in thought are things identical. Hegel's critique of Fichte, as we have r , aIready observed, is an attacK on the ~l1en, and is directed againet the unity that is never attained. Thus, the "real" (or the practical) enda up by falling back into the "ideal" (the theoretical). To this ethical reason the "multiplicity," the non-ego, turnB out in fact to be real, and ethical
,

reason must therefore be ooly "ideal"; "the real remains natIy opposed," 1. e., the unity is never achieved. 53 And what should be the "absolute point of indUference, " or the Idea, the unity of subject and 53 G. W. F. Hegel, Natural Law, translated by T. M. Knox ,(University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), p. 72; see also Phenomenology, "The Moral View of the World" and tlDissemblance," pp. 615-642; also in Penomenology, "Absolute Freedom and the Terror," pp. 599-610; see also Philosophy of Spirit-Encyclopaedia rn, 8503-513, especially 8 472, 511; and finally, The Philosophy of Right __ (~ew' York, . 1956), 13 132-134, 135-136-137, 139, 140, and 141 (transition to Sittlichkeit): here the empty and subjective formalism of morality Is opposed to the filled content of social cooscience; note that the individu al subjective is used as a presupposition Slttlichlteit. ..

\0

172
object (that was intended by positing the opposi~i within the ego);
t

turns ,out to be just endless opposition, a "non-identity of real and "54 Thua, ii was time to move out from within the confines, ideal." limitations and contradictions of the "Interior l,
Il

and to come to terms.

With J the concrete reality surrounding it. With Hegelian philosophy, _ "la libration que l!on entrevoyait la lecture de Fichte -est maintenant une ralit .,,55 But this "Uberation II would primarily be, at least for
,

the time being, a liberation by ,thought or a speculative comprehension , of concrete reality. And whereas Fichte's system had involved a nega-tive position with regard ta extrnal reality, i. e., the desire to change
it, Hegel's philosophy, in that it strove for a reunication of reality

with thought, .of the indiv:idual witb the universal, and the subject with the totality, wa,s now perceived by Bakunin as a superior pne of development. And thus to the Fichtean principle of voluntarism, Hegel f s system . (1i~e to add a new infle~tion: the will ~ad to operate on the basis of a ratiop.al understanding of reality. And it was precisely these two crucial
t

notions of Reason nd Reality which lay at the base of Bakunin's

!) -,

Hegelianism. We shall come to see how;--up until 1842, these ,two principles formed the centre of Ba.kUnin 's philosophical preacupations., and exclusively constituted the dominant themes of his writings, around which all other issues revolved. In 1842, similarly to the

Left Hegelians in Berlin, a third factor, Revolution, affixed itself to Reason and Reality.
/

5~egel,
,(

Natural Law, p. 72.

55Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 40.

..
173
J

We -have seen how, as early as February 1837, :a,akwlln had already underUned the neceS'sity for self-conscious rational comprehen,

sion, which ecllpsed all ulterior 'references to love as the fundamental principle of being.
-

In acceding to the negation of the individuallstic subjective ego, ) . )

Balrunin began, under Hegel 's influence, to focus his attention upon the Ideal of the social community. The transition from the Fichtean "Interior 1" to the collective universal "We" must be seen as an essential compon~w!th motivated this shift. Balrunin now expresses bis underp

r
f

standing of the "Absolute" as representing the a9cial unit, the positive totality of ethical lUe: 1 have understood happiness, which ia destined for my fate: it is contained in the fact that 1 must never live for rityself, but 56 must live in the Absolute, in otberA.... 1 :;~ for myae]j. . . . .
J

i
f

Undeniably, ooe can also detect .a mlange of Balrunin's characteristic messianic trait with this identification oJ humanity and the Absolute: To mankind belong~ my life in the Ab solute, my actions, myopes .... 57 h
,

One can also trace to this period, 1. e., at the Ume of his first)
,
1

reading of Hegel, that which has been interpreted as Bakunin's "historical determinlsm," and which would CIlly be clarified in, the 11gbt of his later articles. To the layman, whose ear is untrained in Hegelian
\l 1

crfptology, Balrunin' s discussion of fre~dom and necessity undoubtedly appears ambiguous. But in terms of the Hegelitn framework in which
~

he was standing, Bakunin' a position ls entirely orthodox and justified . .

56Bakunin, "Pia'mo sestr~ Varvare," 27 marta 1837, in Sobranie sochinenU, tom 1, p. 419; my emphasis.
57

"Pis'mo sestram Beyer," vesna 1837, in ibid., p. 422.

174
Man, claims Bakunin, _ completely free ooly when he identifies his is
will with tlpt Of the Abso}ute. This view must he understood in the con ..
"

text of

Bakunin'~

(and opviously, Hegel's) critique of Fichtean subjectivism;


been

the tyranny of the individual will-aver the whole, which had

. given its phUosoppical Interpretation in Kant's and Fichte's ethics, necessarUy had to be C)vercome. ,What is implied in this rgument is the
)

need to unite the subjective ego and its interests with those of the totality, of the community, ratlier than a blind endorsement of htstorical
,

necessity. And whereas Bakunin's "Absolute" or "God" had hithertoand' under Fichte' s influence-been perc6ilved as the rational and moral . , , world order, it

~as

now envisioned as the idf of the social community,

,1
~1
1

in 'its higher manifestations as Hegel's Absolute ~pirit. Thua, the immanence of the following passage must be emphaaized:
Man becomes truly a mb in as much as ... he la ,iJ,ed to Go4. The more he dissolves himself in Htm, ~e more he identifies his wUI with Ged'a will, then the more free he becomes. Therefore, man ia free." only in God .. , 58 '" '

1
'1

And again, ... the divine will must be relized, and th.highest level -of freedom is nothing else than the idenf'ification of the human will with the divine. 59 Although the religious analogy Bakunin utUizes lends a quasi mystical' or quietistic colouring to these passages, to interpret th'em as an expression
'-.'

of reslgnation would be both misleading and inconsistent with Bakunin' s temperament.

" Far from' accepting the dictates of


1

blin~

fate "with folded

arms," Bakunin incessantly stressed the importance of human action and 58l1Pis'mo sestram," 11 fevralya 1837, in ibid., p. 404.

,
,

59"Pis'mo sestram," 24 aprelya 1837, in ibid., p. 424.

i,

'

.,

175 voluntarism in order to attain that fteedom for which manltind was destined. And freedom was and, remained in
Bakun~'s

understanding,

the highest possible goal of humanity. As a resqlt of his reading of Hegel's Philosophy of History. this concept(){ freedo'n became -even more aetual and concrete, as we shall come to see shortly. ,
,

Meanwhile in Moscow, fit the spring in.J.837, Stankevieh's health


~ad taken a turn for the worse and, on the advice o"his physiciahs, it '

,was dec1ded that he wou1d go abroad, ta Kttrlsbad, as soon as possible. Therefore, in preparation for this jou~ney', Stankevich retumed to his father's estate in April 1837 Md began to undertake the lengthy but'
.

necessary bureaucratie formalities, such as applying, for a passport and . his exit paper!!.60 He also had to obtain a. t~mporary l,eave of absence from his position as school inspector for the Ostrogozhsk district. 61 Stankevieh intended to leave Ruasia along with Neverov and Gran>vsKy ~
,
~

as saon as his papers came through: He had also led Bakunin to believe that he would be able to lend him the necessary funds, so that the latter could travel to Germany 'With the group. 62 As Belinsky had also departed from Moscow for the Caucasus in May (for reasons of health)63 which meant that BakUnin now found him,
1

self alone in Moscow, and sinee he

was convinced that he was about


r~turn

to realize his dream of studying 10 Berlin, he decided to 60Stankevich, PerepisKa ego i biografiya, -p. 208. 61KornUov, Molodye gody. p. 303.

to

(
1
\
1
'

62Stankevich, P~episka ego i biografiya, Pll. 629-635.

63Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestram," no def1nlte date, in .obranle sochinenii, tom 1, p. 451.

('

"

1.

176

'.

PriamuKhino. The reasons for Bakunin'e trip home

first,

to bid farewell to his famUy and to spend what he bel eved to be his last "few moftths in Russia in their company; and sec mUy; in order to
1

1
1

prepare' academlcally for his courses at the UniversJ,ty of Berlin. This'


1

preparation would require an intensive and serious


/'

~tudy

of Hegel' s

worlts. Sorne four hundred artd fifty pages of detall,ed notes (Konspekty) testify to Bakunin' s arduous readings 'durMlg the summer months of
1

."

1837. These unpublished konspekty, kept in the Priamukhino Archives ,

of Leningrad,64 were begun in June of 1837, and consist of concise summaries of the works by Hegel which Bakunin undertoolt to study, in addition to insightf{{l ari'aIyses and commentartes. The Priamukhino konspekty are precious documents and invaluable sources of information, not only because they reveal Balrunin's
cons.cientio~s an~

t
1 ,
l
1 ,

assiduous

assimilation of Hegel 's phUosophy, but aIso because they provide vital insight into the methodology and "systematic approach tb bis studies. Although they do not in themselves contain any original subject matter,

F;as hls letters or

artlc1~s do,

for example, they are nonetheIess

hi~y

.valuable documents in that they shed considerable light on the method, chronology and structure of Bakunin's studies. Even in the paraphrases
l

or summaries of Hegel, the kons]ekty reveal the Bakuninist process of seleEion and emphasis at work; the points he chose to highlight and
~

(
1\

the ideas he wished to emphasize clarify a great deal about Bakunin: s 64 "PriamuKhinskie arkhivy," Rultopisnyi otdel, Institut russkoi literatury (Pushkinskii Dom) (Leningrad, U. S. S. R. ), R. III, Op. 1, No. 489-1086, F134, Op. 5, No. 195 (hereafter cited ,as Konspekty); however, at the Ume of our research, severaI notebooks and entries were missing from the archives.

,
~,

177
j'

-,

understanding of Hegelian philosophy, Furthermore, as Jakowenko has

astutely stressed, the high quality of these excerpta and translations


0

were

a1s~ very important for their role

in the deve\opment

o~ RusSfan

philosophlcal vocabulary. 65 , The notebooks not only Ust all the workS that Bakunin studled, but also allow us to trace his develop:nent and progress in detall. In
.~

addition to liS~ing ~ the books ~hiCh he actua11y read, Balrunln quite obligingly wrote the date of each
ent~y,

considerably simplifying' the k

histor~an's task of following his progress. In effect, these kons

constitute a journal of Bakunin's intellectual development for bis He,gelian peI-iod, i. e" from 1837 to 1839, inclusive. 66

The tirst entry is dated June 28, 1837,- and this tirst Kons:eekt;. is devoted to a study 6f Krug's Logic. This worK was read in order to'

gain a better understaI)ding of- the basic principles of formal logic before turning to Hegel. But this notebooK, like a good number of them, remained incOmplete. (Others, mostly those compiled in Moscow, have One can

been lost, except for a few individual sbeets and fragments.)

assume that Ba.kunln intended to return to them at a later date. In his

flrBt kOnBpef Bakunln exposes the dlfferent categories of "pure loglc, "
65Jakowenko, Ge.chlchte des HegeliU)lsmus in Russland, p. 20;
ft will be remembered that these Kons:eekty were made avaUable to

Belinsky and to the other members of the Stankevich circle, and were 'subsequently diffused in the Russian language via the humerous pubUshed articles whieh appeared in various journals' o the nex!, few years. Moreover, sinee Herzen's Heg~lianism was highly influeneed by his contat wlth Belinsky at the time of tbeir sojourn in St. Petersburgj viz., 1840, and sinee it lS a well-known faet that Bakunin had been Belinsky's philosophieaI mentor, then it might also be inferred that Bakunin influenced Herzen's intellectual development. But this question Is beyond the scope of the present study.

ver

6~ornilov, Molodye

gody,' p. 3.89 .

. Ji

178

.
the laws of logic, as weIl as a bl-ief ov'erview' of "understanding" and
""

"judgement. ,,67 After perusing KI1Ig' s


Lo~

Balrunin evidltntly considered himself


""
'

ready to approach Hegel, sinee his next hotebooK,' begun on 'July 3,

..

1837,. is dedfeated to a study of the Phenomenology of Spirit. This


,
J ,

konspekt was begun in German, but by page two Balrunin reverted baek to Russian, obviously experieneing considerable difficulo/ with the abstruse text:
,

Omitting the lengthy and complex Preface and the IntroducIl

,tion, he went directIy to the first chapter of the Phenomenology:


~

Cer-

"

tainty at the Level of Sense-Experience-the 'this,' and 'Meaning. ,II In this


no~ebook

of eleven pages, Bakunin summarizes ,chapter one four

times in succession, going over and over sections Which proved particularly dUficult. According to the dates Bakunin has inscribed, his study of chapter one of the Phenomenology covers the period July 3rd to July 20th, inclusive. 68 But rather than moving on to chapter two of the Phenomenology, , BalruLlln decided to turn to another work by Hegel. Kornilov believes that the complexity of the Phenomenology diseouraged him, and that the task of ,mastering this work was made even more difficult by the lack of' good, rel1able commentaries,69 On July 21, Bakllnin therefore begn to study Hegel'f;! Encyclopaedia. The accompanying notebook, which we

examine in, greater detail beiow, shaH


,

consists of an expos of Hegel 's

three EtJ~ (to 'the 1817, 1827, and 1830 edUions), as weIl as of 67See Konsp~ and aIso Kornilov, Molodye gody, p. 390.

6~on!gekty.
6~ornnOlv, Molody gody, p. 390; also according to Kornilov, Barchou de Penhoen's study was more likely to confuse the . Russian raaders of, , Hegel than to belp them.

i 11 ___ , ___ _

179
t~e

Introduction to

the~:

T,he last entry Is dated JuJ,y 31, and

there i8 no vidence that Bakunin ventured, at this Ume, past the intro ' ductory sections: 70
In conjunction With his studies of th Phenomenology and of the

Encyc}opaedia, Bakunin also turned to an, area of phUosophy that was of "

particular interst ta him-Hegel's Lectures on the PhUosophy of Religion. The third konspekt, which provides an
acco~t qf

his study

of this worl'<:, was begun on July 13 (which coincided with his reading of the Phenomenology) and continues up untU July 21, at which time he suspended his study of the Philosophy of Religion in order '" to work on th Encyclopaedia. On July 31, Ba)runin returned to the Philosophy of
~

Religion and completed his study of it. 71 These konspekty for the month of july 1837 haye a distinct "reconnoitering ll quality about them, and convey the impression that ,
"

"'.~

Bakunin was trying to obtain a rapid and global overview of Hegel's


(

antire system

before attempting a closer study of any one particular

; work. AIter having famil1arized himself with the basic "contents of each work, as well as with the general ,outlines of Hegel' s system, Bakunin decided ta embark upon a very serious and rigorous plan of study. The month of August, !wever, was spent mostly in the ompany of his sisters an9

of

two friends from Moscow, the musicians Langer and He also devoted a

Paul, who had come to Priamukhino for a vi$it.


consider~ble

amount of time
n

~d

energy in waging his lIcampaign !or

the liberation of Varvara"-i. e., in trying to obtain a di\'orce from

her "unspiritual" husband, and arranging for her ta leave

for:1(ar~sbad

..
1\

70The Logic is, of course, Part 1 of the Encyclopaedia of the Philoso'phical Sciences. ~
71Konspekty .

--)

180

al.ong with Stankevich. Not until September 1837 did Bakunin succeed,

to a certain exterit, in putting these problems and aggravations behind him, which allowed him to \concentrate once aga,in exclusively on bis studies. On September 3, he returned to the PhenomenoloKY, and compiled twenty-four'pages of notes based on his study of it. , thls, he resumed his reading of the Encyclpaedia.
in H~37.
<

....

Parallel to .

These konspekty

seem to ldicate that Bakunin did not' finish his study of the Phenomnology

IIi

the notebook beginning on September 3, he gives a


1

siXth detailed summary of the Introduction (twice), and for the - - time PI ./ analyzes chapter one on Sens-perception. Mter yet anotpe; in
h~s

~ter.:uPtio~
more

notes"", Bakunin sl.1spended his rsums on the Phenomenology for

the year

18~~. 72 ~is konspekt


\

on the

Encylopaedi~advanced
a

1
.1
1

successfully, however. Unfortunately, only fragments of this notebdok have been p:reserved in

thEr family

archives of Priamukhino. These frag- , , ,

ments ascertain, however, that Bakunin did,_complete his ~tudy of the Logic, sinee' sectionf:! of

not~s

covering th doctrines of

Be~g,

1 !
j

Essence,
.

l
l
i

and the Concept, have been recovered.

other fragmepts indicate that

, after finishing the Logic,


,

Bakunin moved on The P~hosophy of Nature,


\

ma~g random~summaries

of sections which he found particularly


,
\
'

insightful or helpful. 73

Between September 4 . and November '9, 1837 Bakunin compiled severaI short essays which summarize his early impressions and conclusions pf Hegel's philosophy. These notes, "Mot z~piJki,
\
Il

are of major

72This does not 'IDean, however~ that he ~iid not ~ont~ue in hi~ " readings; "Moi zapiski," written during the summer and faH of 1837, seem ta iqdicate that he was familiar with sections of the Phenomenology which . were not summariz ed in his Kon spekty. 73 This konspekt continues until April 26, 1838; see also Kornilov, Molodye gody, p. 395.

181 significance "because they constitute Bakunin's first attempt to formulate those ideas which he drew from his first readings of the Phenomenology, the Encyclopaedia, and the Philosophy of Religion. The major themes of "Moi zapiski" deal with: Reasan as the highest principle of being; Reality as the external manestation and auto-development of this Reason; the struggle and final identitY of necessity and cantingency; and freed~m as the ultimate goal of mankind. These Hegelian themes are presentd

with authority by Bakunin, but some vestiges of his deep infatuation with

F~hte's AnweisWlg zum seligen Leben occasionally appear in his disc'Ussion ("lUe is holiness" ... "Spirit is Absolute love"), although these have now been incorporated into a Hegelian idiome It is quite clear that, QY this time, Hegel' s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion had exerted

a stronger influence on both the content and the style of Bakunin' s language' and eclipsed Fichte's religious doctrine. Basically, "My Notes" ("Moi zapiski") adopts the central Hegelian the sis that thought is liberation. The key ward here is Reason, or SelfConsclousness, as the highest principle of lUe.
In Bakunin's mind,

Reason has now taken over the function hitherto assumed by Fichte' s concept of Love. Koyr bas seized this inflectio~: Autant que jadis Bakouine demande la philosophie de ,le librer des bornes de sm moi isol, c'est l'acte de comprendre qui joue dsormais ce rle ... l'acte de comprendre qui nous montre que la ralit est espr~~ savoir, absolu . . . et qui nous unit l'esprit.
C onsciousness entails freedom, and hence the degree of. consciousness

that m3.9 has attained also determines the levei gf his freedom. 7 ~Oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 131.

Follow-

182

ing Hegel, Bakunin establishes an identity between consciousness and life, between thought and being: Yes, lUe is blessedness; to live means to understand, to understand [means) to live. . .. AlI existence is the life of spirit; everything is permeated by spirit, there is nothing outslde of spirit. Spirit is absolute knowledge, absolute freedom, absolute love, and 'consequently, absolute blessedness. Natural man, like everything natural, is a finite and limited moment of this absolute lUe. He is not yet free, but there lies in him the possibility of unlimited freedom, unlimited blessedness. This possibility- lies in consciousness [soznanieJ. Man is a conscious being. Consciousness is liberation, the return of spirit f.JIt)m the finitude and limitation of determination to its infinite essence. The level of consciousness in man is the level of his free: dom, the level of his humani% love, and consequently, the level of his blessedness. , 7 5Baku nin, "Moi zapiski," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 70; for the complete translation of "Moi zapiski," see Appendix 1; my emphasis. Compare the above passage with Heg.el, Introductory RemarKS ta the Philosophy of Religion in G. W. F. Hegel, on Art, Religion, and Philosophy (New York, 1970): "Our object is that which is true without qualUication, that which is the truth itself, the region in whic~ the riddles of the world, all the contradictions of the deeply thinkingfh.ought, al the pain of feeling are ,resolved, the region of eternal truth itself, the absolute satisfaction. That whereby man is man, by which he is distinct from the animal, is consciousness, thought in general, and more precisely that he is spirit. Man is eternal consciousness, because he thinks and is -s'Pirit. The point of spirit ri. e., the ne gative, Ego, th ou ght1 expands itself into many forms, and all the dUferences of the sciences issuing hence, of the arts and of the infini te complications of human relations, the interests of his poli tic al lUe, habits and morals, activities and ab il ities, pleasures and everything which for us has value and worth, which gives us respect and satisfaction, as aIso everything in which man seeks his vocation, his virtues and his happiness, in which his art and science lays its pri<fu and renown, also the relation which concern his freedom and his will-aU these things find their central point in religion, in th ou ght, a consciousness, feeling of Gad. . . ." Also, "The highest concern is . . . Freedom .. o. It is this concern in which the spirit is freed from all finitude, has assurance about all things and is preserved, i. e., it is the occupation with the eternal . . . the feeling of this is blessedness ... "; and again, "[ God) is the origin and the end of all things; from Him all things take their beginning, and all things return ta Him. He is that which animates all these forms in their existence, the means which animates them, vivifies the m, sustains them, inspires them. Since God is the principle and the end-point of ea'ch and every

183 Thus, it is thought and knowledge

th~' the Qridge between the finite

and the infinite. Balrunin has structured his discussion -along the division between totality -and individuality, between the authentic and the erroneous points of view. He elaborates the problems caused by this bifurcation in the following terms. It is ignorance or a lack ?f
"enlightenment"~hich

forms an obstacle to the attainment of the real, blessed lUe, claims Bakunin. It is the obstinacy of particularity (i. e., individualism), which remains closed within itself, in "unconsciousness" of the more profound essence that is within it, 'which is the source of evil and slavery. Those

who are "conscious" and have this essential knowledge, according to


~Bakunin,

are able to "do the will of God, " because they

KnOW

that they

live in and possess the truth of man: "man in himself is always free and e~rnal. ,,76 Basing himself on the Ency?lopaedia. 77 Bakunin ob-

serves that since the truth is infinite, then "unconsciousness, " like the finite or empirical ego, is a "limitation" or an "illu sion" of this essence. 78 Bakunin underlines that the essence of man is "consciousness"

or the true life, which is not visible to those who are in illusion, or who live exclusively within tlieir particularity and finitude. And hen,e, Bakunin

action, undertaking and will in g, so an men and peoples have a consciousness of God, a consciousness of the absolute substance as the truth, which is the truth both of things and of themselves, of aIl their being and doing." (PP. 128-129.) 76See "Moi zapiski, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 70, and Appendix 1 (my translation), para. 2. 77Especially 503-513. 78The dominant image which Hegel uses (and which Bakunin has appropriated) is that of the Fall, the fall out of the absolute. But, as Hegel stresses, "falIen" man has not really- fallen outside of the lUe of God, he still exists within it,- only he cannot see it, and cannot live in it knowingly.

1
184
')

can proclaim: "only limitation ls evil," which is to say that the real'
\Y

essence, which is good, can only 1;le rendered evil by the "limitation" of the individual point of view, living obstinately in its state of "fallen" unconsciousness. 79 Thus,

Part of his [man' s] freedom, of his con sciousness is good, [is] l:!lessedness. His limited, unconscious part is evil and misfortune. Only for the finite, limited consciousness do evil and misfortune exist; but in that same consciousness there lies the possibility and the ~cessity for liberation. And so, there is no evil, everything is good; life is blessedness. 80 Hence, the paradoxical situation: in truth, that is to say, in its essential or real sense, everything is good. But since man is also a natural
abs~lute

being, as lia finite and limited moment of this unconscious side, to which he can give in.

life," he has an

He can succumb to this un\

conscJousness and illusion (or be deluded and forced into it by a corrupt society-Bakunin will develop this issue later). Bakunin goes on to
~~

develop this dual aspect of man as both a finite and natural, yet as an eternal and free, being: ... only one thought distinguishes man from animal. The difference is infinite, it makes man an independent, eternal being. As a natural individual, he ls submitted to that same iron necessity [term frequently employed by Belinsky during his Hegelian period, undoubtedly borowed from Bakunin] , to that sarne slavery, ta which belong aU things natural. He is a mortal being, he is a slave,. he is even-a nonentity, as an individual. He has reality only as a species and is submitted to the 79See Encyclopaedia In, 472 (where ego equals evil); 511 (where ego i5 wickedness as the bad side of the real, social, good "conscience," in opposition ta the integrated ego or subject which ls the true substance). 80 "Moi zapiski," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 70; and Appendix I, para. 1. Compare with Hegel, Philosophy of Religion,

p. 201.

'

185 necessary laws of that species. But consciousness liberates him from this necessity, and maltes him an independent, free and eternal being. 81 Thus, the particularity of the individual Is juxtaposed to the universallty of the genus. Liberation, Ba.lrunin stresses, will be attained not through the individual but through the self-consciousness attalned by the genus. This statement represents a radical departure from Fichte' s notion of the autonomous legislating subject, and an endorsement of the Hegelian concept of the whole, of the concrete univeral, and ultimately, of Ahe soc i31 and spiritual totality. Hegelian philosophy considers the "Real" The individual,

to be the identity of the universal and the particular.

the particular, may consider itself to be the totality, but in effect, this is a taIse "theoretical" view, and "illusion" (prizrak), claims BakUnin. 82
In this passage, Bakunin echoes Hegel' s fundamental distinction between

the "finite" understanding and "infinite," unifying reason-which, of course, is the famous Hegelian critique of the Enlightenment. Thus, the individual, basing himself on the categories of the understanding, beHeves that the particular is everything. But, BaltUnin points out, he
,

must be made to realize that this is a limited, one-sided viewpoint, and that reality is supra-individual. The individual, through the opera-

tion of reasOll, must come to recognize himself as an Integral and .organtc part of the whole, and as constituting a vital aspect of a larger network of social interrelationships. Hegel, The true, BakUnin claims with

<:,;n

be apprehended only as the "concrete," as the 'unity of the

8,J,"Moi zapiski," in ibid., p. 71; and Appendix l, para. 2; see Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, p. 131.

82 As per Hegel, the "illusion" consists in the fact that the part e-gets or hides the whole from itself, and so taites itself to be the whole.

186

particular and the universal. Thus, the discussion ls .conducted on two levels: on the one hand, the re-Integration of the individual into
,

his true substance (viz., the social totality), and secondly, the attainA_

ment of consciousness by the genus or totality as a whole. And this concern with "totality," with the "real" renects Balrunin's preoccupation with the "practical" or concrete dimension of phUosophy, in that it coincided with his critique of pure, metaphysical thought, seen here as the activity of the individual, isolated ego. Balrunin continues: the superior law of reason demonstrates that being and consciousness are one, and that thought is the ultimate reality which man mllst discover within himself. And it is only when man has liberated himself from necessity and contingency, and arrived at a highe:t, rational viewpoint, does he realize that his c onsc iousness is identical with the reason that governs the world. But tirst he must fl'ee himseU from the limitation of the understattding and of the letters of "nature" and contingency: The unenlightened sides of man letter him, prevent him from merging with God, make him a slave of contingency. The accidental is false, it is illusion; in true and real life there is no accident, everything in it is holy necessity, divine blessing. Contingency is impotent against true reality; only nlusion~ only false interests and the desires of man, arfl subject to accident. Contingency limits the freedom of finite man; ontin~ency is the dark, unenlightened side of his 11fe. 8a-

l'

For Bakunin, reason is the

KnOWled~ things as they


'"

really are, in

their essence, and not the way they appear in the theories and artificial constructions of the understanding, which seems to deal more with its

83"Moi zapiski, Il in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 71; and Appendix 1, para. 2; see P~ilosophy of Religion, p. 130.

L.

187

own determinations than With the thing as such. BaJrunin treats reason

here as the identity of identity and difference (Hegel' s term); as such, it can contain within itseI! a moment of "otherness," of limitation or "Ulusion. Il But ulth~ately, in true lmowledge the ldentity is established,

and the illusion ls removed: Consciousness ls the liberation from immediacy, tt is th, enl1ghtenment of the nature of man by spirit. The less a man is conscious, the more he ls subjected to cootingency; the more a man ls conscious, the more he is independent of it. Only the illusory perishes from cootingency, and the illusory must perish. lliusion is destroyed by illusion-in this i8 contained the liberation of man. 84 4 Ultimately, what is at stake here is the relation between freedom and t:lecessity. In socio-ethical ter ms,

Heg~l

considers this to be the rela-

tion of the ethical whole to the individual. 85 . Absolute consciousness appears only in the shape of "the particularity and singularity of the individual," which has an unavoidable mate ria! and physical side (necesri

sity), and which ls subject to ,the "iron laws" of nature. But this necessity can be treated by freedom as a tool or a means for its ex'/ pression. In other words, the bodily (necessity) can become the vehicle of the spiritual. (freedom). Bakunin' s discussion of contingency and necessity attracted much , criticism, both among his ctemporarles and among historians. However, its context is profoundly Hegelian-and just as amblguous 1 But clearly, BakUnin has seized the pivotal Hegelian notion of the actual and the potential, whereby through a dialectical process of development, the
84

"Moi zapiski," in ibid., p. 71; and Appendix l, para. 2.

"

85 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right (Oxford, 1953); see the "State," pp. 155-223.

'!,
1
J

188 implicit idea of freedom which is the essence of man, goes thrOugh a stage of allenation -of separation from itself, to finally realtze itself in the whole. In hls essence, writes Balrunin, man is free, but he must come to realize this freedom, which Is potentially within him, thrOUJh an arduous path of progressive enlightenment: , Man in himself rpo sebe] is al ways free and eternalas consciousness, as understanding of that spirit whlch develops in his lHe. But for himself, [(fiya sebya] he be partIy ~ slave, a finite man. He ls a fillite ,man, who ls not yet completely permeated by selfeonscious spirit, in whom there are still aspects of immediacy, not yet enlightened by spirit. These parts malte him finite, by limiting the horizon of his spiritual eye; and any limitation la evil. 86 ' ," 1

can

,:

In Hegel 's view the Idea is the union of objective reality with

thought. actual:
lI

However, not all external reallty is classified. as real or existence ia in part mere appearance,' and only in part ac,tual-

ity!,87 Hegel continues to elaborate this point:~ IIIn comrnon lUe, any freait of faney, any error, evil and everything the nature of evil, as weIl as every degenerate anda transitory existence whatever, gets in a casual way the name of actuality. ,,88 But, he maintains, this Is a misconception. To become truly actual or real, the external world must be stripped of all accident, contingency, and sean in Us essential, substantial core or process. Bakunln has adopted Hegel 's conception of

the real, as expounded in his Introduction to the Encyclopaedia. Baltunin's 86"MOi zapisitl, " in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 71; and AppendiX I, para. 2; compare with Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, ~. 130. 87Hegel, Encyclopaedia, i 6.
s' . (
,;

88Ibid .

,{

189 statement that: "in true and actual life, there is no accident, in It everything ls holy necesslty" is far from being the mere articulation of a fatalistic view of hlstory. Rather, it reiterates the basic Hegelian world-view, whereby the universe is explained in terms of the se1lunfolding of the rational and necessary life of the Ab solute. But this rational and necessary arder is inherent in the universe and must not be confused with chance, accident, or the contingent. Not all transient appearance 'is necessary, only the truly actual is. This important dis~

tinction must be borne in mind at all times when analyzing BaKunin' s Hegelian writings, since his definition of "reality" ls a far cry from what it has been made out to be: 1. e" the Russia
~f

Nicholas 1. (This Furthermore, when

is a grave distortion of Balmnin's U13e of the term).

BaKunin proclaims that "there is no evil, everything is good, " he is here once again speaKing in a Hegelian context.
co

Far from implying a

passive and nai've acceptance-and ev en optimism, la Candide, -this statement is simply a reworKing of the famous Hegelian maxim: "the real is the rational, and the rational is the real. ,,89 To substantiate this claim, we shaH have to go bacK ta Balrunin's KonspeKty of 1837. On July 21, 1837, while reading the Preface to the Encyclopaedia, Baltunin wrote down in his notebooK (paraphrasing Hegel): . . . in God there cannot be evil, and therefore, there cannot be a difference between good and evil; Gad, the substantial unity, is Good. EvU is the bifurcation and consequenUy, oruy in this bifurcation can there be a' difference between good and evil; only in man, as in bifurcation, lies this difference and lt exists for him [onlyJ. 90 89First stated in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, later repeated in the Introduction to the Encyclopaedia. 90BaKunin, KonspeKty, 21-30 iyulya 1837, EntsyKlopediya Gegelya, predislovie K vtoromu izdaniu, III-XXXll, ~5, in PriamuKhinsKie arKhivy, R. In. Il
<

':

Because God, or 'the Absolute, ls self-conscious thought, anything that

divides man from God, or, -in other terms, -anything whlch prevents the individual from attaining real consciousness, is seen as "evil." Since Hegel t's great coneern was to reconeile all eontradictory and conflicting forces into one great int:uition of the 'whole, 91 the source of any division or separation had to be overcome. This "evil" is epitomized as "finitude, " or by the "illusion" <?f the partieular, imagining itself to be the totality . Balrunin devoted a considerable portion of his essay, "Moi zapisKl, " to a discussion of reality. AIready in the summer and fall of 1837, he had seized upon this term as the cornerstone of Hegelian phil os ophy . Bakunin saw Hegel's concept of reality as the all-encompassing selfrealization of reason, as the manifestation of the life of Absolute, as a rational process: Everything lives, everything is animated by spirit. Only to the dead eye is reality dead. Reality is the eternal life of God. The unconscious man liKewise lives in this reallty, but he does not realize it, to him all is dead, he sees death everywhere because his cQ11sciousness has not yet entered into lUe. The more a man is alive, the more he is permeated by self-conseious spirit, the more alive for him is re~ity, the closer it ls to him. What is real ls rational. ,'Spirit ls absolute might, the source of all might. Reality ls its life,' and consequently, reality i8 all-mighty as the will and deed of spirit. Finite man is separated from God, he i8 separated from reality beeause of illusions, because of his immediacy; for him reality and good are not identical for him there exists a division between good and evil. 9i
,

91EncYCIOpaedia, ~ 6. 92Bakunin, "Moi zap.isKi," in Sobranie soehinenii, tom 2, pp. 7172; Appendix l, para. 3 (my translation); compare with Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, p. 180; aI80 Hegel' 8 discussion of "reality" or "actuality" in Encyclopaedia, 142-159: "actuality" ... Is not ft existence, " but the unity of "essence" and "existence," nor is it "being," but rather the unity of "inner" and "outer," .142.

"

; !

191 This quote clearly captures Balrunin's correct understanding of Hegel's thought on rational actuality or reality. Therefore, when Planty-Bonjour maintains that Bakounine ne fait pas de distinction entre existence vritable et tant empirique .. , la ralit est tout ce qu'on rencontre dans le monde; il y a donc ~.ar faite convertibilit entre le rationnel et le re~ 1}3 it is obvious that it is he who has misunderstood efther Bakunin's use
r.

of the term' or Hegel 's. Balrunin most certainly made the important dis-

tinction between actual reality and empirical being or existence, and took considerable pains to underline what he meant by lt. Additional proof of thisrlies in the fact that he carefully entered the foll owing paraphrase of Hegel' s Encyclopaedia as a clarification of "rational reality'9nto his notebook. Thus, as early as July 1837, Balrunin had clearly recognized the distinction: . . . philosophy should understand that it has no other object of study than REALITY; the !irst and closst consciousness of this content is Experience [Erfahrung]. But even sensuous perception distinguishes momentary appearances from what ls truly real, -and since philosophy has, with natural cognition, one and the same object, and dUfers from it only in the form of its cog- " nition andcWlderstanding, thetefore, it must be in harmony with reality and with experience. This harmony may at l st serve as an external test of the. truth of a philos hy, -but, what fs still more important, this' harmo fs necessary as the highest and final aim of phil ophy so as to bring about a reconciliation of selfconscious Reason with existing Reason fSeyende Vernunft]. What is Ratio~al, is real, and what is real, is Rational. Against this proposition, first stated in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, accusations have been launched and are being launched from all sides. But tirst we must agree on what reality is, and on what distinguishes it from chance or the contingent. which may just as weIl be as not be. In Religion this proposition is articulated 93Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 44.
l

i
;

'.

j,

192
very clearly in the notion that God rules the world. This proposition is contradicted by the thought that Ideas 'are nothing but chimeras, and that all philosophy is a system of such chimeras, that Ideals are too excellent ta exist in reality, But this separation between Reality and Ideas taKes place most1.y in the undr standing, which takes its own abstract dreams are something true, and prescribes the OUGHT. For if th world were such as it ought to be according to this opinion, then what has become of its notorious Ought, and if it isn 't such, then is that truth not weaK, which does not have the strength to subjugate reality ta itse11? This judgement can sometimes he right, when together with its Ought it addresses itself ta external, contingent, commonplace objects, conditions and propositions, etc., which can, .in certain particular spheres and certain times, have a great relative reality. But in the sphere of' philosophy, this is absurd, because phijosophy has ~ for its abject the Idea, which is tao powerful sa as not to be able to manest itself in reality ,94 . a The fact that BaJtunin does establish a difference between empirical
eXis~ce and

J!

;1

"reality" or

lIa~tualityll

is further emphasized in the fol'\

lowin

letter, devoted ta a mise au point of the term "reality": . . . reality is the life of God, and distancing oneself from reality means distancing oneself from Gad, Ta understand and to love reality-this is the vocation of man. 1 do not speak here of that which is generally understood by the ward reality: chair, table, dog, Varvara Dmitrievna, Aleksandra Ivanovna-al! this is dead, Ulusory-and not living and true-reality. And in us there i8 also Ulusory reality: that is judgement .[rassudok] . 95

1
J

Here Bakunin is extremely precise and certainly does not leave room for misconceptions.

~y

, 1
j

94B~in, Konspekty, 27 iyulya 1837, Entsyklopediya Gegelya," 6, in l'riamukhinskie arkhivy, R. m.


.. 9~akunin," Pis'mo sestram," 2 marta 1838, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 150; my emphasis. ,

1
i

193
'Thus, the divine man, the enlightened man, sees that all is

good, that truth is his essence. The real is, in itself, rational, says Bakunin. The will and providence of God are always carried out, and ta think that this is not so, as many sometimes do, is only to give in ta the dark forces"of lIillusion" and "unconsciousness." Bakunin has shown, in the above quote, that reality is in fact nothing else than the
" '
'

1
J

"life" of spirit; it is its "will and deed ll everywhere. 96 However, it is n9t enough to remain at this level, il one is interested in changing the world, in the "saving truth"; one has to give an account of the disproportion of the Fall from the other side, namely, as the elevation of man, as the possibility of his re-unUication with the ral substance or spirit, from which he has, in his lIunconsctousness, " alienated himself.
96n is clear how much BaJ.runin bases himself on Hegel' s Philosophy of Religion (Introductory Remarks): "This image of the absolute in religious piety is no Ideal, no beyond. It May have more or less living presence, certainty ... or be something longed and hoped for, placed in a beyond. But it is never posited in isolation, its light shines into the darkness of 'the temporal present reality as the concrete, present substance. Faith recognizes the divine essence as the truth of that which exists, as the substance of the present accidentaI existence, and this content of piety is that which makes the happiness of the present world, it makes itslf effective in the life of the individual, governs his commissions and , omissions." (P. 129) Note how religion is both the "highest ll interest where the "finite vanishes" and also the principle that organizes all other spheres; it Is not the opposite of the "Real Il lUe, but rather, its truth, a puried expression of it. (Thus especially the '''Truth'' of human action, i. e., the highest value, which cannot be particular and individual.) , Balrunin's use of "substance" is very Hegelian. The knowledge of one's own "'substance ls .the highest activity in culture. Perhaps, in order to demystifythe traditional (idealist) religious language, an analogy might be drawn between Bakunin's view of religion and Marx's "Labour": botlP-as the MOst fundamental (or "foundattonal") activity. In thisQ.process of self-formation, thought and action are one. Furthermore, all spheres of lUe and all the specUic cultural configurations have their origin here. Finally, corruption at this level of life means total <:orruption.

1 ;
L.

j
~

l
i

! . ,

/
(

194.

Granted ,that in "Moi zapiski" Bakunin's discussion of the nature of this alienation is far from thorough (he will
de~elop

it in greater

detaU in the "Preface to Hegel '~s Gymnasium Lectures"), he has, however, , anncrimced in this text that he ls preoccupied primarUy with the notion of the dwelling in the truth. :The essay concludes with the declaration that "reality is . . . the ab~te good" .'; -.. "the divine will i8 his [man's) conscious will." But this conclusion comes only after "traversing the three
.

."

~pheres

ef development, " namely the Hegelian triad


.~

of Absolute Spirit: art, rellgiop. and philosophy. LiKe Hegel, Balrunin affirms that God or the Absolute is entirely knowable to mind through speculative thought. Bakunin has equated Reality with the Absolute (as
~

we saw 1 above), which is the divine Ilie revealing itself through history. And man's .ultimate vocation, c1aims Bakunin, iB to, understand this, in, other words, to arrive at a lmowledge of reality (or' God).
In poetry, in religion, and finally, in philosophy, is

realized the great act of the reconcUiation of man with God 9r t ,) Thus, by means of the ativities of Absolute Spirit man can finally
arriv~'

at a Knowledge (i. e., a reconciliation with) of Geist. It is important to


l

keep in mmd

rt

the thorny liegeli~ term, "reconcil~ation" (VersBhnung),


~mprehension

taken in this context, must be, understood as rational

or

consciousness, rather than as political passivity or stoicism, wtiich Most critics have tended to ascribe to BalCUnin's theory of "reconciliation with' reality. " Many ~mm~ntators hav suggested that a predominantly Fichtean'

spirit characterizes' "Moi zapis i." However, it must not be forgotten

97~akunin, "Moi zapiski,' in Sobranie -SOchinenii. tom 2, p. ~2; and Appendix 1, para. 3. "

....... -'
;

195 that by September 1837 Bakunin had already completed his reading of Hegel 's Lectures the Philosophy of Religion, and a comparative study

..

of the texis show the extent of Hegel 's influence on both the style and the content of "Moi zapiski." The Philosophy of Religion made a deep impression on Balrunin's thought and a close examination of bis essay reveals the unmistakable development in his position from Fichte's Anweisung to Hegel 's doctrine of religi.
ln Bakunin' s view of religion as the consciousness of the ethical

lUe of the whole, "Moi za~islti" constitutes a ,break with Fichte's moral subjectivisme
In effect, following Hegel, Bakunin uses the "religious

position" as a criterion to bring to light the inadequacies and limitations of the "moral" standpoint. The "moral" attitude which is described, is certainly a reference to Fichte' s ethics of individuIism, and in his critique, Bakunin is merely repeating Hegel. The "moral view of the world" (die moralische Weltanschauung) is in fact based exclusively on the metaphysic of the understanding; it maintains the latter' s absolute dichotomy between intuition and concept, particular and universal, and 1l.y transfers this division or separation into the practical sphere. 98 The true subject matter of ethics is not the individual,' continues Baltunin, but rather the universal. He directs his criticism at the doctrine of .:.r0rality," where, it is l:Daintained, the totality is not really present, and where
only the form of the concept, the analytical unity is the absolute and hence the negatively absolu te, because the content, by being specUie, contradicts the form. 99

98ge Hegel, Phenomenology, pp. 615-627.

9~egel, Natural Law, p. 114.

196

. ,
Hegel showed that the abstraction of Fichte' s rational subject was iust that, an abstraction and an impossibility; it went beyond real experience
IJ

and was constructed only in th ou ght, theory, and in the understanding. Secondly, its supposedly disembodied autonomy and rationality is likewise erroneous, -from the point of view of the whole and of real ex erience (both of which are the prime concerns of philosophy). It is
~e ~ression of abstrl~!/individualism and one-sided morality.
A

Bakunin highlights this dualism in a critique of "morality":


)

Finite man is separated frbm God, he is separated from reality because of illusions, because of his immediacy; for him reality and good are not identiC'3.l, for him there exists a division between good and evil. He can be a moral, but not a religious man, and because of that, he is a slave of reality; he fears il, he despises it. He who despises and does not know reality, despises and does not know God. . .. The moral point of\,.view is the separation of man from God, and consequently, also from reality. For him, evil exists, just as does goodness. He fears evil, he is troobled, there is a continuaI struggle within him between ~ood and evil, r~ween blessedness and mlsfortune. 100 ~
In contradistinction to the moral viewpoint, Bakunin hypostatized the

"religious" stance-that of Reason, of knowledge, and of philosophical reflection, -which seeks to heal and reconcile the split occasioned by the work of the understanding, as weIl as ta re-integrate the finite and the particular into the universal and the general.

IOsakunin, "Moi zapiski," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 72;


and Appendix l, para. 3. Compare the above pas s,age with Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 137 fi. Bakunin will analyze this dichotomy between the Understanding and Reason in greater detail in his "Preface to Hegel' s Gymasium Lectures." However, as the present essey bears witness, he bas already grasped the importance of this basic tenet of Hegelian philosophy. \
1

The religious man feels, that the divine will is the absolute, single good; he says: "May your will be done"; he says this although he may not yet r1ltionally understand that the divine will is in effect real blessedness, and that only in it lies ultimate satisfaction. . .. F;6r~1he religious man, there is no evil; he sees in it;Ulusion, death, limitation, vanquished by the r~veldtion of Christ. The .religious man feels his' individua1 impotence, Knowing that all might is from God, and awaits from him enlightenment and blessings. Blessings purify man from illusion~ scatter the fog which separates him from the sun. 01
The abstration of a transcendent, intangible

belie~s,

197

Gad, who is inaccessible

and only a source of authority, in addition to the alienation of the human consciousness from it, is thus resolved by reason or knowle.dge. This knowledge, as a "reconciliation of the opposition" 102 which arises from this dichotomy, resolves fuis division. And unlike the "moral" stance,

... thinking reason ... is no longer abstract, -but [which] sets Ott from the faith of man in the dignity

of his spirit, and is actuated by the courage of truth and freedom,\ grasps the truth as something concrete, as fullness of content, as Ideality, in which the determinateness-the finite-is contained as a moment. 103 And thus, reconciliation is achieved by reason's self-consciousness of itself as both reality and thought, as the finite moment and the infinite. The state induced by the "illusion" of the finite man-his mi sery, the "continuai struggle within him 11104 is described by Hegel as ... the discorp [which] has risen between intellectual ""'insight and religion, and which is not overcome in 101Bakunin, "Moi zapiski, " in ibid., p. 72; and Appendix l, para. 3.

10~egel, Philosophy of Religion, p. 158.


1031b1d ., p. 155 . '

14sakunin, "Moi zapiski, and Appendix l, para. 3.

If

in Sobranie sochinenii. tom 2, p. 72;

'1

198
knowl~ge

. . , leads to despair, which cornes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. This one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but man cannot find true peace in this way. 105
Il

The imagery Bakunin uses to depict the consciousness which brings liberation to man is strikingly similar to Hegel's. "The religious man," states Bakunin, "awaits from [God) enlightenment and blessings. . . . [which] purtly man from illusion, and scatter the fog which

separates him from the sun."

Likewis~,

the "rays" of Hegel 's absolute

knowledge, "stream as something divine into this present temporal life, giving the consciousness of the active presence of truth, even amidst the anxieties which torment the soul." 106 He goes on to say, "this condition of freedom is the sense of satisfaction which we caB blessedness ,,107

--'

Reasan puts an end to human alienation because it understands that "God is the Idea, the absolute, the essential reality, which is grasped
in. thought and in the concept. ,,108 It realizes, that in opposition to the

notion of a transcendent, supra-human God, "God only exists in so far as he manifests himself in the world, " and that knowledge of God and self-consciousness are one and the same thing. l09 Hegel's idea of Gad

as universal and necessaryllO represents at the same time consciousness of l05Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, p. 173.

lO6Ib1 . , p. 130, 'd l07 lbid . , p. 129' my emphasis, , lO8Ib1 . , p. 150. 'd lO9 : lb 1d ., p. 170, 110Ibid. , p. 139.

199
actual reality. Bakunin has, understood this point, when he identies the "divine will" with human reas, and reality with God: Reality is the divine will. . . reality has become [for manl' absolute good ' the divine will-is his [man's] conscious will. i Il The section above is largely inspired by Hegel 's account of the actuality of reason: there cannot be two ltinds of reason and two kinds of spirit; there cannot be a divine reason and a "human [reason] . . . there cannot be a divine spirit and a human one which are absolutely different. Human reason-the consciousness of one' s being--1.8 indeed reasoo; it is the divine in man, and spirit, insofar as it i8 the spirit. of God, is not a spirit beyond the stars, beyond the world. On the contrary, God is present, omnipresent, and exists as spirit in all spirit. For, says Hegel, "spirit which does not appear IS not." 112

~,

And as w.e

have seen from the text, Bakunin has understood reason to be aprocess of dialectical development inheren,t in the world itself.
It ls not ,sorne

other-worldly essence, but on the contrary, very much present both in reality and in human consciousness. Hence, once we
hav~acceded

to

this understanding, we realize that the divin-i. e., rational ;="'will, is nothing else than human reason actualizing it,Self in the world. This

bring~~
and

heart of Bakunin's argument: the distinctioo has placed this discussion

betw~en consciousn~ss

~onsciousness

squarely on the levei of cognition. Bakunin bas already asserted that thought fa liberation, but now thought itsel!, is subjected to a graded escalation, beginning in cOl1sciousness, progressing through the spheres ll1Bakunin, "Moi zapiski," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 72; and Appendix 1, para. 3 and 4. 112Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, p~. 157-158.

200

(/~~~-)
j

'"+---'-~;.....;&.

;;f -ar~ and religion, and culminating in

113 Philosophy has,


~he

for BaIrunin, finally taKen precedence ov r religion as festation of Absolute Spirit, in conformity with Hegel's

highest maniposition. 114

OWll

Balrunin considered philosophy as the "purification of thought" and the "purification of man from illusion and the re-unication of man with God." It is philosophical cognition which enables the restoration of unity with the real: "philosophy," Baya Hegel, "is the liberation of the spirit" from the"phantoms," " shadows" and "spectres" of the finite and contingent, 115 and its elevation into the higher sphere of self-conscious thought. Thus, philosophy, as the liberation from immediacy, particularity ,
J)

and contingency, must ultimately be identical with the true essence of man. The identity of thought with the life of spirit is therefore the condition sine qua non for its serving as liberation, and what it combats and does away with is the illusion or unconsciousness, namely the separation of man from Gad, or of man from reality. For, it is only

if "reality is rational, " that one can combat "un-reality," (limitation, alienation) with thought. Thus, ft ls only philosophy which allows for
S

the "reunUicatton of man with Gad," which

to say: the reconciliation

of human consciousness with reality. Most importantly, it is only when man has "traversed all these three spheres of development and education"

" that he has become a "complete and all"mighty man; reality far him is '
11311 the development of thought," Batrunin, "Moi zapiSKi," in Sobranie ~ochinenii, tom 2, p. 72; and Appendix l, para. 4.

11~ven at the height of his Hegelian phase, Stan):{evi~h adhered to his firm and lUe-long conviction in the primacy of religion.
(

115Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 161

ans -158.

..

201
absolute good; the divine will-is his conscious will. ,,_116 Thus we are brought again to the role of education, which 18 here injected with revolutionary implications. The fact that the absolute is inherent all along, Qeeding only to be manifested, maltes the "scholar's"
(1. e., Bakunin's) own role in the whole process quite clear-and also

.,
i

quite essentiall Education is the means of dispelling the "illusion" of non-reality, which the "scholar" or the "philosopher" puts into effect
in order tO' advance towards the true and the actual. 1

Which brings one absolute,

to wonder whether this concept of the real and

~elf-ex1stent

in the possession of the" scholar" who lives in the identity with this absolute, is not the most fanatic revolutionary position of all. Certainly, there cannot be a stronger justification for the zeal of destruction directed at "unconscious illusion," than the claim that one is restoring
it to its truth,
'"--Il

reconcUing" it with its real identity. This ls certainly

an important issue (in view of Balrunin's subsequent orientation), but in the present essay BaKunin has not provided enough material to allow any further legitimate specuJation. However, this thread of thought will be picked up again in Balrunin's next major article, the "Preface to
,;

Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures," which we shaH examine later in this chapter. Part 1 of "Moi zapiski" closes with the phrase, "Genius is the living consciousness of contemporary reality." Although this sentence
4

may at lirst seem out of context with the preceding argument, it does neverthless fit very neatly into the

abov~

discussion ort philosophy as

the highest expression of spirit. Here Bakunin emphasizes the actuality

(
,
f

116 BaKunin, "Moi zapiski, " in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 72.

202
o

of philosophy as a living, self-manifesting,

~rete

process.

This

id~a

is perfectIy within the framework of Hegel 's tirade 'against those

who wish to isolat phUosophy from real le and remove it from the real world:
it is apparent . . . that philosophy, does not etand above its age as il it were something ab~olutely differ .. ent trom the general character of the Ume, but that it is one spirit which pervades both the actual world, and philosophical thought, and that this last le only the true self-comprehension of what ,is actual. Or, in other words, it is ooe movement upon which both the age and its phUosophy are born, the distinction being only that the charactr of the time still appears to present itself as accidentai, and is not rationally justified, and May thus even stand in an unreconciled, hostile attitude towards the truly essential content; while philosophy, as the justilication of principles, ls at the same Ume, the universal peace bringer and universal reconciliation. 117

And thus, Bakunin and Hegel are in complete agreement: the only object of the philosophical sciences ls reality itself. 118 "Genius is the living consciousness of contemporary reality" may aIso be viewed through the Prisr of Hegel's Aesthetics, whereby the artist (the "Genlus") gives
I l ~egel, Philosophy of Religion, p. 171.

118:rbid., p. 180: "in philosophy we are not in the so-callecJ school, but are in the world of reality"; my emphasie. The cling pages of Hegel' s Philosophy of 'Religion made a strong impact upon the entire style of "Moi zapiski," and provided Balrunin with yet another elucidation of the formula "the real ls 'the rational." In describing the evolution of self-consclousness in the human spirit-as manilested in the development of religion-Hegal maintained: (in connectfon with primitive religions) "(we must] recognize the meaning, the truth, and the connection with truth; in short, to get to know what ie rational in them . . . there must be reason in them, and amidst all that Is accidentaI in them a higher neces~' . We must do them this justice, for what i5 human, rational in the 18 our own too, although it exists in our higher consciousness as a ornent only. To get a grasp of the history of religions in this sense means to reconcile ourselves even with what is horrible, dreadful, or absurd in the m, and to justy it." (Ibid., p. 200.)

203

\
sensuous and formaI expression to the absolute truth of his Ume. Finally, there may also be an allusion to Hegel's dictum in the Preface of the Philosophy of Right that philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought, but as far as we know (by the fact that he wrote a konspeKt) Balrun1n only read this work in April 1838. By stressing "consciousness" and "actuality"

O. e., non-illusion), Bakunin could also be restating his


\

view of the "philosopher," who i~nofCaUght up in the unconsciousness of his time', but sees and lives only in the truth, its conscious side,
i. e., he sees in it not evil, but only the life of spirit realizing itself.
It is interesting to note, in passing, with regard to Hegel 's

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion that Bakunin seems to have ignored an important section in which Hegel exposes his theory of the state, as the reflection of the stages of man's development. 119 There are no commentaries whatsoever accompanying this section, and it is rather curious that Balrunin should have' overlooked it in his Konspekt. Another somewhat disturbing point in "Moi zapisKi" Is the identication Bakunin establishes between the "finite" and "evil." Hegel tvoted a special place in his Lectures to the question of evil and how evil is ta be reconciled with the "absolute unity of God." 120 Although Hegel did situate the negative in the finite moment, the eut and dried separation that Bakunin reads into tJ:lis section appears ta be unwarranted by the Hegelian texts. Furthermore, Bakunin has aIso drawn a parallel between "individuality" and "evil," whereby the finite and individu al existence become mere "illusion" and "falsity." Hegel stressed that
119n>id., p. 199.
1
j

12<ibid., p. 194.

Reason unites, while recognizing and integrating difference, and maintained that This negative, in the first place, appears as the evil in the world, but it recalls itself into identity with itself, in which it is the being-for-itself of selfconsciousness-finite spirit. This negative which recalls itself into itself ia now once more a something positive, because it relates itself simply to itself. As avil, it appears as involved in positive existence. 121
,At this point, however,

1
1
i

Bakunin seems to believe that the "evil," finite

side of the subject must be negated. This suggests that the one-sided subject ts W1real, hence "contingent,
Il

and must disappear. In Balrunin's

hands, "le fini n'est plus qu'une ombre, et l'infini devient la doublure du monde temporel. ,,122 But this would only be a
,1

tem~orary

aberration,

and by 1838 Bakllnin had adjusted his position to coj.ncide with the more orthodox Hegelian conception of the finite always being within the infinite. Hence, it is clearly established that the possibility of "reconciliation" ls given at cnce, since it is merely the recovery, unveiling, or "consciousness" of this presence of the absolute.
In conclusion, it is useful ta point out that the general scheme

'within which Balrunin is working, in Part 1 of

II

Moi zapisKi," Is the basic

structural problematic of German Idealism, from Fichte to Schelling, and finally to Hegel. The secood entry of "Moi zapiski,
Il

dated November 2, 1837, Is

much more straightforward, and of a more ,personal, autobiographical nature. In it, Balrunin confesses to having succmbed to "sicldy, transient" moments, which he vows to eradicate in arder to attain that lI uninter-

121Ibid., pp. 194ff.

1~2Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 49 .

..
'

205

,
rupted harmony" to which he aspires.
1

One

could aIso perhaps ascribe

.his generaI mood of disillusionment, which transpires into this excerpt, to his repeated efforts to master the dUficult Phenomenology and Logic.
In addition,
>

,'"

it was becoming clear at iliis tirlte, that Stankevich would

not be able to finance Michel's trip abroad, and the fo~ was dropping hints ta the effect that Bakunin should find other means to get to Germany ~ 123 However, Bakunin had not lost hope of fulrttrfilg his long-term ambition, and calmly wrote in his notes: Next year, in the spring, 1 shall go abroad. This ls necessary, for it,ls time to come out of indetermination and to define , oneself [opredelit'syaJ. For this, 1 must prepare myself 1) intellectually, and 2) materially; 1) 1 am now reading the Phenomenology,12.4 123See Stankevich, "Pis'mo k BakUninu," 16 avgusta 1837, in Perepiska ego i biografiya, pp. 629-635. Stankevich began his long journey abroad on August 18, 1837, by way of Kiev (where he held a discussion wlth Professor Maksimov on Hegel (ibid . .,_ p. 638), On November 2, 1837, Stankevich wrote BalWnin from Berlin. However, by February 1838, the monetary question ,was still not resolved, and Stankevi'Ch wrote BaIrunin("Pis'mo k Balruninu," 21/9 fevralya 1838, in ibid., p. 655). And with regard ta the notion of reality, sa dear to Balrunin anq. the Russian intelligentsia of the 1830's, Stankevich offered the following practical advice (i. e., in terms of finarlcial matters): "You can cJW1t on me even less than before. For the rest of my stay abroad, 1 will be able to give you -only two thousand [Roubles J and probably, even less ... , Live more frugally, this way you will save, and get accustomed to it.. " You are just as disorganized as ~'rn and even more sa! Practicality i8 neces8ary for a strong~ indep dent ose existence. Confusion can be forgiven the poet, and, in general, for whom exterior lUe does not really matter. But we have exp rienced the desire to live in reality, therefore, we must put up with all its negative aspects, to which this rubbish also belongs" [emphasis mine); in a very small way, ,this letter can perhaps be seen to reflect the "practical" orientation among the members of the Stankevich circle, the abandonment of their youthful "idealism" and bohemian type of existence, in favour of a more "practical" and realist outlook.

12\aKunin, "Moi zapiski," in Sobranie sochinen( tom 2, p. 73; and AppendiX l, Section 2, ,para. 2.

>

:'

206
,

The third and final entry of "Moi zapiski" ia dated November 9, 1837. This complex passage seems to be the application of Bakunin 's
c

general position to Nature and singular being,which was\ probably derived from the closing section of Hegel's
Ency~lopaedia).

Pb~SOPhY of Nature (from the

.1

Bakunin relies heavily on the Hegelian doctrine of

Nature: the dialectic of life (universal) and the single living being. The individual or gani sm , observes a
~estation

~unin,

in the first part of hiS' text, is

of the genus, and is the only means by which the genus

can exi~ (i. e., as individuals in time and space). Individuals, he

continues, are "one-sided": they are not independent, slf-subsisting

realities, but only modications of the ssence, namely the species. 125 This is, so to speak, expressed naturally in the fact of their mortality, while the, genus lives on, and lives precisely through the mortality (the appearance and disappearance) of particulars. Bakunin expresses the

disproportion of the concept and the instance, and states this in very
id~alistic terms: "[they do J not contain in themselves an understancling

of the totality (rathe~ than the reality of the totality). ,,126 This relation of the mortal individual to the eternal genus is then easily extended to
, ,

indlviduals and Nature as a whole. Bakunin expresses it thus: Nature (relative to the one-sided particularities and individuals that are generated within it) is the negation (the fact of their mortality and return to
dec~y

in the earth), which is abstractly expressed as the unceasing

flow of time. 127 1251bid . 126.'Moi zapiski," in ibid., p. 73; my emphasis; and Appenclix l, Section 2, para. 1.

1271bid . The eternal, positive aspect of tllis "negation" seems to anticipate Bakunin 's Hegelian the ory of the' negative.

, " "

207
In the second part, Bakunin then turns to !!!!!l-as the natural

being who thinkS (perhaps echoing the .transition from -Nature to Spirit
in the Encyclopaedia).

Man is partly one-sided (and so l'passes away

likewlse," Utte any configuration of matter), but also has an understnding (1. e., an "understanding of the totality") which maltes him "eternal. ,,128 Bakunin uses the formula ';1 = 1" to express thought, and the word "identity" is employed to denote the fact that whereas in nature all things re multiplicity, -parts added to parts, -only thought Is identical, -which is to say, that only in thought are things, by reflection and abstracti07 identical. BalruIlin's claim tllat this capacity for thought "containy .. within [itselfJ all the totality of nega~ion" 129 is an arnbiguous staternent: and time ris] within him, and it manifests its power an contingent and inconsistent determinations of this pure identity, and in this aspect, time is the abstract base as the external life of nature, as [isJ the interior of life of Spirit. And it seems to me that the particular realization of nature is related to the totality of nature precisely in the sarne way as ,contingent and one-sided qualities or determinations of the subject [are related' toJ to theJ pure subject. 130
It could be meant to imply that man, in his ability to thinlt, is like
. . . in this identity, he [ts] outside of time,

Nature, in that the totality of negation is able to transcend (thus "negate") any and all single phenomena. Thus, in conjunction with Hegel's "negation of negatton," thought is held by Bakunin to be the negation of negativity (of finitude, transience, or any single content), or its spirU:ualizati"on.

12~id.
129Ibid .
)-;
t
a

130Ibid .

" 208

Certainly, man the thinker is "outside of time. ,:131 The ,rinadequate determinations" to which Bakunin makes reference are the multiple, finite, objects; they are inadequate, relative to the identity of thought
(i. e., only a partial instance of the thought).

So Bakuni1;t can,equate

Nature and thought [sic! J, in that they are both the negation of particu-

larity, which does not allow them to subsist in their individual, finite,
,

empirical reality. 132 In.,j conclusion, th~s line of argument appears to be a 10gica1 or natural foundation for Balrunin's doctrine of the absolute and the relation to it of the finite particulars, or "illusions, must be negated, as we saw in Part 1 of "Moi zapiski." The signifieance of "Moi zapisKi" must be
ev~uated
J ,
Il

which

in terms of

the insight it provides into BaK.utlin's mterpretation of Hegelianis~. Our analysis of these texts has brought to the forefront the importance that Bakunin
attr~but~d

to the concept of reality.

Given the f,aet thr this is

a very early essay, and that at the Urne of its composition' ~kunin was exclusively studying the Phenomenology, The, Philosophy of Religion,
i

and the Encyclopaedia, -three of Hegel 's most complex and dense works, this focus of attention upon the notion of reality is all the, more remarkable. In sa doing, Bakunin was able to go directly to the 'core of the 131lbid 132 11 the power over thern," ibid. In the last sentence, Balrunin wants to underline the fact that the sarne relation obtains as in the case of the individual 'subject; "the' single, particular realization of nature is ' related to the totality of nature in precisely the same way as contingent and ohe-sided qualities or determinations of the subject are related to the~~ubject." Which is ta say, that the finite, empirical subject, in those appects which are inadequate and do not "correspond" to his essence, which is identity, must be liKe the vanishing and transient phenomena of Nature: they must disapp~a~. Thus, the finite side of .the subject must be negated, so as to restore the absolute subject. / This fits wlth our previous diseuss'ion of Bakunin's equation of individuality, finitude and falsity or illusi"
f

,
j

r.

209
,

Hegelian problemafic and at the same .time come to grips with an issue of crucial ccern to bimself. FUrthermore, as we have seen, the

internal progressi of the texts (Parts 1 and ID, notably) demonstrate Bakunin' s able manipulation of Hegelianism as logical method. The schematic exposition and development is clearly and firmly grounded in the Hegelian structural framework and reveal the elements in play.
A

'-aIl

authoritative grasp of

Ba.kunin' s growing insistence on reality is likewise reflected in his correspondence for this period; in effect, his letters counterpoint
~

and, at times, serve to highlight certain key issues which emerged from his readings, and which he sought to put into rsum lorm in "Moi zapiski." Above aIl , the words 1!reality " "freedom, 0'
fi

the "Absolute fl

(deistvitel 'nost' , svoboda, Absolyut) glaringly dominate his letters, -and, signicantly en ou gtt, these three terms are intrinsically linked: le is the reality of the Absolute and only in this knowledge can one accede to true freedom. It is important to emphasize that under Hegel's influence, Bakunin' s ccepti of freedom, hitherto quite vague and abstract,
t-~

gradually acquired a more tangible character and became increasingly concrete:


It is necessary for your dignity, for the reality of your existence, to preserve for yourself complete freedom-but not only that interior freedom of the spirit, as you tried at some point to prove to me, no, but aIso external freedom of action, which is the oruy real freedom, and which constitutes the necessary condition of individual lUe. . .. This persal, total, unlimited freedom, in identity with the _divine kingdom, which must be your destiny, ' cstitutes the single reality Qf man. Without it [total freedo~] a man cannot be real, be cannot fulfill bis vocati. By submitting to external liligations, -this wretched procbct of commoo sense and non-faith, -you would lose the appella/

. (,

/
tion of 'man, ' you would lose the right and the possibility to live in the divine kingdom. 133

210

Bakunin is therefore no longer willing to allow for a separation between the notions of "internaI" and "extemaI"
fr~edom.

The freedom of action

must necessarily and consequentiaUy follow internal, subjective freedom: Once internaI freedom has really emerged, extemal freedom must appear as its naturaI coo.sequence. The human will, identical with the holy and divine will-,must necessar,ilY be realized, since it becomes strong and unwavering in God. 134

And the following quotation has an insistently activist ring, highly anticipatory of Bakunin' s later proclamations: One must be free in aU one's actions and in an aspects! Down with slavery and down with sacrifice! 135 Once aga in , Bakunin emphasizes that this freedom must be "in eonformity _ with" or "in a state of identity with the will of God" or reality, as per "Moi zapiski."
/

133Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 8 iyulya 1837, in Sobranie soc hin en ii, tom 2, p. 33; my emphasis. 134" Pis'mo sestram Beyer," avgust 1837, ln ibid., p. 59; my emphasis. 135" Pis'mo sestram i bratu Beyer," 22 iyulya 1837, in ibid., p. 44. A rather curious and remarkable document, found amidst Bakunin's papers, has an even more prophetie ring: "1, Mikhail Bakunin, sent by providence for world-wide revolution, to overthrow the eontemptuous forms of olden days and prejudice, to tear my fatherland away from the ignorant embrace of d iBm [despotism or dogmati.. cism ? ?? ] , to lead it to a new world, a holy world, in unlimited harmony .... " ("Pis'mo sestram," no date, in ibid., tom 1, p. 435.) SteKlov, note, in Sobranie sochinenii, p. 474 ) Bituates this letter ca. springsummer f 1837 due to the Fichtean - Hegelian vocabulary. There is no reas to dispute thls appraximate date; but it can" be placed even later, but no later than the summer of 1840, at which time Bakunin of course left Russia.

211
"

The question as to how man is to achieve this state of freedom, which remained nebulous during his Fichtean period, is now given Balrunin's full consideration. As stated in "Moi zapiski," Baltunin sees freedom in knowledge. It is consciousness which gives man freed<lm, and he maintains: "absolute consciousness of the absolute is complete, concrete, absolute freedom. ,,136 In- reference to the attainment of this freedom, Ba.lrunin provides his own personal account of the "Odyssey of
~

..r'

the Spirit," in which the initial moment of harmony is shattered by the awakening of consciousness, and then reconciled with its "otherness" by an independent act of self-consciousness.
In this account,

Bakunin

demonstrates his understanding of dialectical logic, particularly in terms of the force of negation. He chose (perhaps for the benefit of his cor-

respondent) to translate this process into the Christian allegory of the Fall (one of Hegel 's own favourites, as we have already seen), i. e., in religio-historical terms, rather than in "logical," atemporal terms: There was a time when man lived in truth; he immediately, uOConsciously, contemplated God. But this truth was Dot real-since man was enveloped in it uncon) sc iou sly, unwillingly. Man had to be separated from Gad, in order to understand the content-Iess, insufficiency, wretchedness, and falsity of bis- individual lHe. This separation was necessary for consciousness, and this lmowledge was liKewise necessary for man to retum to God as a self-conscious, independent being. He had, in his personal infinite freedom, to lmow God as his truth, as the single, absolute truth, in which he c ould obtain his reality. The first moment was truth without' reality, since the independent seU-consciousness of man cstitutes a form of reality, and this independence did not exist. The secd moment was reality without truth, incomplete and an empty form, a freedom without an
(

136aalrunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 13 iyulya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 41; see also "Pistmo sestram Beyer," 4 sentyabrya , 1837, in ibid., p. 62.

"

212

ooject, since Gad is the single, true, all-mighty, having true content, and man had 10st God. The third moment, the moment of resolutioo and reconciliation is that in which truth received its truth in reality, and reality received its reality in truth, since truth and reality are never separated f~om each other, because their separation would be their mutual destruction. 137 Thus, man becomes truly free only when he consciously recognizes

himsetf in God. In his discussion of consciousness, BakUnin has not avoided the thorny problem (that is, in the Hegelian philosophy of history)

of will. 138 In the Phenomenology,139 Hegel has shown the Categorical Imperative of Kant and Fichte to be an empty abstraction that presupposes (and so does not establish the social structure of ethics Ce. g. , property]). Likewise, Bakunin believed that the Categorical Imperative inhibited real action by postulating a purely formai idea of morality; 140 however, BakUnin's point here does not seem anti -Fichtean: it deals with the idea of action as the realization of the eternal will in the attainment of freedom. Once man has consciously identilied his will and his

reason with the rationality of the universe, says Bakun in , he must still act, he must give concrete content to the principle:

JI

. . . the human will, identical with the holy and eternal divine will, must necessarily be realized, since it becomes strong and unwavering in God... . . . we shall transform everything according to our wills .. . . we must have unlimited faith in Gad; everything that happens comes from his will. . .. This does not

137"Pis'mo sestram Beyer, n 27 iyulya 1837, in ibid., pp. 46-47; see also "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 13 iyulya 1837, in ibid., pp. 40-42. 138See the discussion by Eric Weil, in Hegel et l'tat (Paris, 1950), pp. 38-40.

139"Reason as lawgiver" and "Reason as test of laws, " pp. 439455.


..!
'/

14J1egel had emphasized the will as not formal.

213

( Mean that man must be passive and wait, -no, he must act, not merely to fill up his life and be usefuI . . action ia the expression and .the realization of truth . . . one must act on the way to truth, one must act with love, and only in this unity of God's blessings and man's actions is contained total truth. 141
t..

Thus, the absolute must manifest itself through the concrete action of men, otherwise it remains for-itself formai and devoid of content. Finally, Bakunin' s notion of "God Il bears examining, since it has undergone substantial modications under the impact of Hegel's ideas. Irldeed, around September-October 1837, the term "Gad" becomes interchangeable with the more global attribute of "Absolute." As of JuIy 1837, his reading of Hegel had already convinced Bakunin of the identity of God and Reality, as we have seen. Bakunin's thought had undergone a major
v
~

~-sich),

an abstraction, purely

transformation: from the Fichtean perspective of the deity as the moral ~. ' ~ j world-order, he now arrived at a n-ew Hegelian standpoint. He wrote: ' God is the truth of manltind and mankind is the reality of God. Therefore, the single, true and real world is the reciprocal love of men in absolute love towards Gad, and the existence of Gad is the reciproeal love of men. 142 Thus, Gad is realized in terms of the liVing human community; he is the "divine society" to which Bakunin frequently refers. And it is only in the 'rational recognition of this that man becomes truly free; 143 he obtains his reality, his truth and his freedom in Gad, 144 i. e., in the 141"Pis'mo sestram Beyer," avgust 1837, in ibid., p. 59; "Pis'mo sestram i bratu Beyer," 22 iyulya 1837, in ibid., p. 44; "Pis'mo sestram . Beyer," 27 iyulya 1837, in ibid., p. 48; my emphasis. 142"Pis'mo sestram Beyer, emphasis. 143Ibid ., pp. 41-42. 144n>id., p. 46.
Il

27 iyulya 1837, in ibid., p. 46; my

(
(
"i
J

214 living community. But similarly, the idea of God receives its actuality

and its "concreteness" only through the actions and Knowledge of the social totality. By October 1837, the term "Absolute" had bec orne prevalent in Bakunin' s writings, witnessing his growing assimilation of Hegelian terminology. The Absolute, or God, he dec1ared, is" the livirig whole, ,,145 the social totality, which contains within' itself' all of reality:~ The Absolute is .. the living whole, everything is ccntained within it and everything which is found outside of it does not have any life in itself . . . nothing outside of the Absolute has any reality ... all true, real, activity emanates from the Absolute. 146 Clarication is provided as to the actual, concrete nature of the Absolute, leaving no doubt as to Bakunin' s comprehension of this term as that of a living process and not as sorne ethereal, abstract, entity: The Absolute is not sorne distant region where man can ret ire in seclusion and hide from worldly vicissitudes, the Absolute is lUe itself, extending into the infinitv of time and space. Everything exists in the Absolute. 147 As Bakunin has shown, the Absolute is
noth~ng

else than the "living whole"

or the "divine society," whose members (or member!) are those who live in the truth and not in Hnite "Qlusion." 148 In view of Balrunin' s later enthusiasm for secret societies, the point might be somehow 145"Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 30-31 oKtyabrya 1837, in ibid, p. 69. 146Ibid . 14'7Ibid., my emphasis. Thus, Koyr' s observation that Balrunin has not understood the immanentism of Hegel '8 thought (Koyr, La pense philosophiquj! en Russie, p. 132) lacks credibility. See also Bakunin, ibid., p. 41, "Absolute consciousness of the Absolute is complete, concrete, absolute freedom." (See fn. 136.)

148As per "Moi zapiski. "

l:C-

215 stretched to suggest that his "divine society" represents a conspiratorial

..

/ 1

expression for the life in which the "philasopher" lives in immediate identity with the truth. This perspective could, once again, be attributed revolutionary connotations. However, it is more probaple that at this point, BaJrunin's understanding of the "divine society" was more in conjunction wtth the Hegelian viewpoint of God or the Absolute as the expression of the social community, as weIl as its 1Ol0wledge or selfconsciousness. Bakunin severely castigated Jthose who" adhered to a
C,

position of finite

ind~vidualism,

which barred their entrance ta this "holy

society, "and which alone constituted the truth and reality of human existence. 149 Only in this society could man attain the freedom for which he was destined. 150 We must liberate ourselves from one-sided individualism, dec1ared Ba.kun in , and "enter into the communal life of spirit," since only tls communal life was seen as the "real, true, life. ,,151 Thus, Bakunin fully seized the essential Hegelian notion of the Absolute as living process and as human activity. Perhaps this point can be noted as one of the most i~P3tant contributions of Hegelian philosophy to Bakunin's intellectual development. We shaH see, how, at a later date, this social (and historical) understanding of the Absolute would contribute to the emergence of Bakunin' s view of reality as that of a potentially changing, dynamic interplay of forces, capable of continuaI transformation and of radical upheavals. 149salrunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 24 iyunya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 22 and "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 27 iyulya 1837, in ibid., p. 46.
\

,,.

( .

15Ot'Pis'mo sestram Be~r," 2 iyulya 1837, in ibid., p. 31.. 151"Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 31 iyulya 1837, in ibid., p. 51.

, f

l,

However, at" this point, Bakunin still believed that the road to freedom, to the "divine society," was Absolute Spirit, -the highest form
"-

th;~.t

of knowledge, with Hegel's

of knowledge, -as the culmination


.'

of tfu;J.t road. In other words, he conceived it as something existent


",
"

and fully determinate, in which man participates through knowledge. Thus, . . . nature, art, religion and philosophy will be the levels by which we shaH come to the magnificent altar of eternaI truth. . .. The path by which finite man returns to the lost unity [is throughJ art, religion, and philosophy. . .. May our subjectivity be elevated up to the truth, be filled with holy content, may the paths of our subjectivity be enlightened by art, religion, and by an animated consciousness of the truth. 152 Moreover, Bakunin goes as far as ascribing to philosophy a messianic or redemptory role. No longer considered purely as an end in itself, as something to be acquired for its own sake, its vaIue or role became inaistently normative. Balrunin henceforth sought in Knowledge a blueprint for living, rules of action, and even a means of salvation: Philosophy ia the final and most dilficult stage; l!.l. the interest and need of our time-in it lies aU the fate of the future, it will be the basis for that reign of the sacred spirit, for that divine society, which is the result of the philosophy of Hegel. 153 152Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer, in ibid., pp. 31, 42, 53. The primacy of ,philosophy over other kinds of knowledge is now firmly established; echoing Hegel, Balrunin views thought as the highest activity of the human spirit. See aIso Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, p. 196, "Spirit ... exists only as activity; that is to say, in so far as ,it posits itself, as actual or for itself and produces itseIt. But in this activity it has the power of knowing, and only as it thus knows is it that which it is"; aIso, Encyclopaedia, 8 563, Il an existence 1 which is itself Knowledge .... " 153 Balrunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer, in ibid., p. 42; my emphasis.

!
,

217

No longer restricting itseI! to an explication of the past, henceforth , philosophy had to now direct ifs vision towards the future. Its function exceeded the usual confines of theory, 1. e., speculation, in order to address itself to daily, existential questions and to rules of living. Bakunin would carry this trend even further in his later
ff

articles,

On Philosophy," where the main theme centered upon an examination

of the nature of philosophy and of its use in society.

here to the transformation of theory into an instrument for practical action would only be a short one, as we shall come to see.
~

The step from

A letter, written by Bakunin in November 1837, and preserved in the Archives of the Lenin Library in Moscow, gives. a short but concise account of Bakunin's theoretical orientation at this time and measures the extent 9f the influence of Hegel' s philOiophy on his thought. The

focus of attention upon the single word "reality" is in itself an eloquent statement of the new direction of Bakunin' s ideas, set into motion by his recent study of Hegel: My personal studies are advancing quite successfully; 1 am more and more absorbed in Hegel and am increasin~y convinced in the absoluteness of content and in the absolute objectivity of the forms of this cmtent. Hegel is the complete reconciliation with reality, and this was so necessary for me, as there was so much emptiness, so much illusion, so much confusion [in me} ... 1 feel that my lite and the scope of my spiritual life are becoming more real, that 1 am becoming closer to a normal state. TIelieve in lite, 1 believe in 1 ts wonderful destiny, and hope that 1 shaH partake in it, in time, a real part. My studies have become more steady. 1 have gradually ceased to live by lits and starts as hitherto. It is time to come to one's senses, it is time to become a real man. 154

j
)

154sakunin, "Pis'mo k Ketcheru," noyabr' 1837, in Fond N. Kh. Ketchera, 5185, Bibliotelta im. Lenina, rultopisnyi otdel, Moskva; my emphasis.

218 As we have seen, Hegel's philosophy, by constituting a "reconciliation with reality, " brought Bakunin to a recognition of the importance of z:eality, of the external world, and of its social manifestations.

With his natural propensity for proselytism, Bakunin immediately set about transmitting his newly acquired ideas to his "disciples"; alter initiating his brothers and sisters, as well as his childhood friends and neighbours, Ale'ksandra and Natalya contacted Belinsky, summer of 1837.
Bey~,
... ' ) . , .
""'

into Hgelianism, he then

wh'~

was convalescing in the Caucasus during the

Bakunin's voluminous correspondence to BelinsKy has,


1 J

unfortunately, not survived. But already by August and September 1837 Belinsky's lettera were becoming enriched -with Hegelian terms, obvtously acquired from Bakunin. References to the "divine kingdom, ,,155 to the "absolute life, "156 to "divine blessings ,,157 to "a bsolute truth, 11158 and .' to the "Idea, 11159 are abundantly scattered throughout his letters, but more often than not ased out of context. Despite his attempts to emulate his mentor' s new philosophical orientation, Belinsky, who had not yet read Hegel, still remained very much Within a Fichtean frame of mind and continued to be inspired by the "moral" vlewpoint. He continued to dwell at length on the struggles between the "interior" lUe and the "exterior" world, whereas Bakun in , as we know, had already succeeded in transcending this dualism: 155:selinSkU, Izbrannye pis'ma, pp. 62-63. 156rbid., pp. 66, 79, 81. 157Ibid., pp. 68, 74, 80. 158Ibid., p. 81. 159Ib "d p. 72. 1 "'

l
(

219 it is time to stop speaking of external and internal life: this division does not exist, division testifies to an absence of any lUe. There is only one life, this life is eternal, infinite eternally-developing and eternallybreathing blessedness. i 60 Back in Moscow in the faIl of 1837, Belinsky continued his intensive

correspondence with Bakunin, who was becoming increasingly engulfed in his Hegelian studies. Since Bakunin' s letters to BelinsKy are lost, one cannot definitely ascertain whether the latter was sent a copy of "Moi zapiski ll to read. Wl1ether or not this work was despatched in its entirety is of secondary importance, but by November 1837, BelinsKy's letters reveal a strong influence of "Moi Z'iSki," and it appears clear
J

that Balrunin must have inc1uded generous excerpts from his notebooks in his missives to his friend. The hand of Balrunin is unmistaKable here: .. life in the good does not allow room for continuous thought about evil and hate for it; yes, and besides, as you justly and wonderfully wrote to me, in the universal life of the spirit, there is no evil, everything ls good. 161, As might be expected from a long-distance initiation to Hegel's philosophy, misunderstandings and confusion inevitably arose, and BelinsKy interpreted Bakunin's maxim "everything is good" much too literally: ... all hate, even towards evil i8 negative lUe, and all negation is illusion, non-being. 162 Belinsky thus deprived negation of all its vitality and power, something that Bakunin (both logically and temperamentally) would never have dreamt of doing. During this period, BelinsKy even annoWlced that he wished to 160Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer, 31 iyulya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 52; compare with Belinsldi, "Pis'mo M. A. Balruninu," 16 avgusta 1837, in Izbrannye pis'ma, tom 1, pp. 61-80 and "Pis'mo M.A. Bakuninu," 21 sentyabrya 1837, in ibid., pp. 80-82.

j ,

,
1

1
i
J ,
.!

161Belinskii, "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu, " 1 noyabrya 1837, in ibid. ,

p. 84.
1621bid

1 1
t
j
~

!--y

j
,

-_ . -

,----

.'

'1

220 do away with all negation,

an

contradictfon, and

an

polemics. in

generaI. 163 It should be remembered to what extent Bakunin stressed the importance of the dialectical struggle,,- of the moment of "disharmony, " and of the vital regenerative power of th'e- negative. 164 Belinsky'S distortion of the statement "there is no evil" represented!a radical departure from Bakunin' s understanding of it, and can be primarily

f'"

attributed to the misconceptions which arose out of Belinsky's insuffic'ient knowledge f the Hegelian system,165 and pernaps aIso to his characterisUc impetuosity. 166 Despite these mistakes, it is undeniable that there took place at this time, a new discovery of reality in Belinsky',s thoughts, which parallelled in many ways Bakunin's own orientation. Although Belinsky

clearly adopted Balrunin' s Hegelian terminology, it is difficult to determine 163IJ?id., pp. 84-85; ~ this letter, Belinsky informs Bakunin of the impending purchase of the Moskovskii Nabliudatel t by Polevoi (which was subsequently vetoed by the Ministry of Education), and of Palevoi's request that Belinsky take over as editor of this journal. He then announces that he plans to do away with polemical journalism 1 164See" inter alia, Bakunin, Sobranie soch'inenU, tom 2, pp. 25, 63, 69, for example. 165See Belinsldi, "Pis'mo M.A. Balruninu," 21 noyabrya 1837, in Izbrannye pis'ma. tom 2, p. 113, for example. 166At this time Katkov was reading Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics and translating them from German, presumably for Belin sky , s benefit (Belinsky intended to compose a series of articles on Hegel's Aesthetics); see Belinskii, in ibid., pp. 86-97. For another example of Belinsky's erroneous interpretation of Hegel, a mlange of Fichtean terminology and Hegelian impressions, see "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 15-21 noyabrya 183,7 in ibid.: >"in the interior life there Is no contingency or illusion: everythlng in it ls necessary and real," (p. 105), and again, "everything which is, ls a consequence of the laws of necessity, and must be as it is." "Pis'mo M. A. BaKuninu," 21 noyabrya 1837, in ibid., p. 116.

>

1"
1

221
whether this awaKening concern for reality by BelinsKy, can be directIy attributed to BaKunin' s (henc e Hegel' s)
innuenc~,

or wh ether this new

discovery of reality reflected a common trend among the Russian intelligentsia in the last years of this decade-which, in turn, accounted for their adoption of Hegelianism as the philosophy of the "reconciliation with reality."
In any case, shortIy after Balrunin
h~d

communicated

Hegel's theories on reality to him, BelinsKy wrote: 1. hid from reality in fantasy, and my return to real life from the realm of fantasy is' a bitter aWaKening. In this life [fantasy J there are wonderful moments, but 1 understand, that such a life is an illustpIl, because the true life is concrete with reality. 167
In connection with this newly-found (albeit difficult) return to reality,

BelinsKy expressed a desire to go to St. Petersburg, and partaKe in sorne active, real, concrete project.
1 have the feeling that only in St. Petersburg shaH 1 be able to live in a dUferent manner. In my thoughts about St. Petersburg, there is something bitter, a tightenmg in the heart with depression, but together' with that there is also something which gives strength, which aWaKens activity, and pride of the spirtt. 168

He believed that the intellectual life of Moscow was in a state of stagnation, and involved nothtng more than endless, fruitIess discussion which was leading Mm and his friends to a psychological impasse. "M,oscow lite," he claimed, "although it has given me wonderful moments, lulls one to sleep the rest of the time. . . And besides, 1 want to do sornething. ,,169 With the departure of StanKevich, with BaKUnin's prolonged 167BelinSKU, "Pis'mo M. A. BaKuninu, Il 1 noyabrya 1837, in Izbrannye pis'ma, tom 1, p. 88. Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 40, believes that during his stay in the Caucasus BelinSKy encountered the hard reality of Russian lUe for the first time, and consequentIy arrived at the firm conviction that t~e individual could not remain engulfed in his own self. "" 168"Pis'mo M. A. BaKllninu," 15 noyabrya 1837, in ibid., p. 98. 169rbid., p. 99.

"

'

..

222
. Priamukhino visits, together with growing felings of frustration at the

forced inertia of the Moscow intelligentsia, Belinsky sharply diagnosed


..,

'the malaise that was setting in on what remainep.' of the Stankevich circle: The charn of our little circle has disappeared, we begaq ta lOOK upon each other as upon sick men, and whenever w meet together we are afraid of opening up each- other's wounds. 170 Belinsky believed that a remedy to this lethargic, apathetic
disposi~ion,

a.t least in ,his case, would be to move ta St. Petersburg and to begin a period of energetic journalistic activity:
1 am sure that in moving to St. Petersburg,

r shall either live in sorne or another capacity; but only [it will bel a concrete lUe and not in illusion; or, be destroyed gradually, as are destroyed all illusions. . .. To Petersburg, to Petersburg, there lies my salvation. 171

Writing to Ba1runin from -Berlin;- where he had, begun his university courses, Stankevich seemed ta be undergoing a similar intellectual transi'" tion whereby reality came more and more into a sharply-contoured focus: Spirit, in Hegel,! goes through aIl levels, not only of cognition, in the proper sense of the term, but aIso of practical life, before arriving at the ~ure element of thought, at- which begins the Logic. 172
And again,

"

man a living sPir( thQUght must become lUe, and without this, one cannat go very far. And furthermore, [one must study] ancient history..'-. The Greeks and the Romans are capable of spirit, that love for the of forming th~.t virility universal, for stren~gthWpi sa Many of our compatriots lack. _
It is necessary ta give
0

170"Pis'mo M. A. Bakunin,'"

avgusta 1837, in ibid, p. 64.

171"Pis'mo M. A. Bakunin~," 15 noyabrya 1837, in ibid., p. 99, and "Pis'mo M. A. Balruninu," 15-21 n~abrya 1837, p. 109.
o

172Stank~vich, IIPis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 2 noyabrya 1837, in

,
1

Pe:repiska ego- i biografiya, p. 641.

- -:--:.:- ""'- ",

.-

...:~

223
(

,. , Frthermore, Stankevich offered Balrunin the much-solicited practical advice; which he had obtained from Hegel 's pupil, Professor Werder, as.
~

Reality is the field of the real. strong man -the weak . spirit lives in the Jenseits, in aspiratim., and in the striving of indeterminatim; it needs something or another, because there is in jtseU n~thing determinate which would cmstitute its nature and needs. As som as this indeterminati becomes etwas, the spirit 9!}ce again breaks forth beyd the ccmfines of reality. 1

to how one should proceed in the study of Hegel' s philosophy.

'"

To the

question of whether one could begin a reading of the Logj.c without having studied the PhenomeI\O!Ogy, 174 Stankevich replied: He [i. e., Werder] answered in the affirmative-the beginning justifies itself an sich. . .. The Logic presupposes the Phenom en 01 ogy , but since the Phenomenology, finally, is resolved in the LrgiC, 50 does the Logic lead ta the Phenomenology. The Phenomenology 1 was Hegel' s first work, where bis thought broke under the exertions of production, under the bastiness of deadlines; such that ta study it, means to dwell at length on the liWits of appearance, not grasping pure laws, expressions of logic. He said, . . . that Hegel did not like ta elaborate on the Phenomenal ogy, anQ referred one bacK to the Logic, where he [Hegel] demoostrated the method. 175 Stankevich also advised Balrunt1 ta read Hegef' s Philosophy of Right, -which Balrunin did in early 1838-in order ta familiarize himseU
wit~

the "objec-

tive ontents of human existence": the family, the communitY, civil society, the 1aw, and the state. 176 Stankevich's role in directing Bakunin's atten .. 173"Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu, 6 yanvarya 1838/25 dekabrya 1837 in ibid., p. 645; "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 21/9 yanvarya 1838, in ibid., p. 650.
Q

17 ~t will be remembered, Bakunin' s problem in the summer and


fall of 1837.
(1

175Stankevich, "Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 2 n6iahrya 1837, in Perepiska ego i biografiya, p. 641. 176"Pis'mo M. A. Balaminu," 21/9 yanvarya 1838, in ibid., pp. 651-53.

224 tion to political and social modes of csciousness cannot be neglected:

1 don 't think that you can master the Logic by yourself; this will be 10st time. Wouldn't it be betier to taclde the Rechtsphilosophie? 177 But BakU.nin's particular attraction to the Encyclopaedia Logic was primarily for methodological reasOIlS. He had sensed the immense implications of the Hegelian system in terms of its cohesive," unied structure and of fts organic dialectical move~ent. 178 BakUnin had immediately perceived
~

the supreIpe importance of the LOgic, which alone could provide him with the tools to master the Hegelian dialectical Methode Indeed, it

would be somewhat premature to suggest that Ba1ruIlin !irst turned to Hegel's Logic because he recognized the revolutionary implications of its method right from the start. But Bakunin quicldy grasped the importance of this work as establishing the groundwork on which Hegel's entire system rested. Not until he had fully assimUated the method would he move on to Hegel' s other works. Anxious to acquaint his friends with his discovery of Hegel, BakUDin left PriamuKhino at the end of November 1837, and was in Moscow by December lst. In order to support himself, he decided 10 lodge with the Levashov family (friends of Chaadaev), whose son he was to tutor in

177"Pis'mo M.A. Balruninu," 21/9 f~vralya 1838, in ibid., p. 656. He also informed Bakunin that he was preparing an article on Hegel for an encyclopaedia lexicon (ibid.); however, whether he actually completed this article or not is unknown Bince it has not survivM. 178He had written in his Konspekt 10 Hegel'-'s Encyclopaedia, Preface to the second edition, JuIy 21, 1837, 81: II Hegel says that the main subject of philosojmical studies has always been the scienticallyIbrmed knowledge of the truth; that is the Most difficult path, but at the same Ume, the only one for the attainment of truth; [he says] that Method is nothing other than the reconstructi of Absolute content, in a way peculiar to it, the most free Element of Spirit. Il

"

225 mathematics.

However, this scheme only lasted a weeK. Feeling lonelY( \

and homesick for his friends at a time when, as Kornilov puts it, "his soul was so full of new ideas and new experiences acquired from his study of Hegel, ,,179 he transferred his dwellings to Belinsky' s place of residence. Balrunin described the reasons for his short-term employment at the Levashovy's in these manly terms: "1 was sad . . . apart from , that, the Levashovy live so far from all my friends, that neither finances, nor time, llowed me to see them often. Vissarion's. ,,180 By December 7, Belin sky , s address. His further studies of Hegel in Moscow brought all aspects of the concrete even more sharply into relief, and his preoccupations at this time centered around the problems involved in the transition from the "ideal." Fichtean lUe to the "real" Hegelian position: Yes, lUe and happiness are identical., but only when both lUe and happiness ,come out of their abstraction and a.;e filled with a liVing, real, content. The transition from the abstract to the concrete is necessarily accompanied by suffering, by awful sufferings. But my friends, these suffering~ must not frighten us, this is a transition from death into lUe. . .. Yes, the abstract happiness of JENSEITS [i. e., otherworldliness.J is a weak illusion of happiness, and this death must be transformed into lUe. 181 He aIsa advised his sisters to "seek blessedness in reality; it will enlighten and strengthen you." 182 In Bakunin's thought, reaIity acquired This prompted me to move to

1837, Bakunin was writing from

17~ornilov, Molodye ~Y, p. 401.


180aakunin, "Pis'mo sestram," 7 dekabrya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 80; see aIso "Pis'mo sestram, Ct nachalo dekabrya 1837, in ibid., PP.) 75-77.

181"Pis'mo sestram,

ft

nachalo dekabrya 1837, in ibid., p. 75.

182"Pis'mo sestram," 14 dekabrya 1837, in ibid 1, p. 85.

226
an insistently gnoseological dimension: one had to aspire to a
1

~peculative

understanding of the concrete; "enlighten your spirit, . . ." he wrote, lido not allow it to slumber in subjectivity, but May it realize itself in reality. ,,183 Again, it was necessary to liberate oneself from the limitation, falsity, of finitude and to "live, not in illusion, but in reality, wnJ.ch constitutes the true source of. all the
str~

and mighty existence

and is the first condition of human dignity and strength." 184 PI3Ilty-Bonjour's remark to the effect that there is a conspicuous absence, in Bakunin's writings of this period, of ~the category of negation, 185 seems very misplaced. The almost cathartic "disharmony" which

the individual must undergo, through the negation of his iinite particularity, through suffering, is certainly a major componen!/of Bakunin's Hegelianism (and ev en , to a certain extent, antedates his discovery of Hegel). He repeats, time and time again, that the negative is a vital moment in the progression of the dialectic: . . . he who has not suffered cannot be happy. True harmony is the resolution of the disharmony of st-ru~gle, the reconciliation with oneself. He who has not suffered has not lived, he has not yet come out of the abstraction of lUe. Concrete le, concrete happiness, do not consist in one-sided blessedness, -no, they are realized oo1y wben man, by the strength of infinite and divine love, withhalds and finds himself in a1l oppositions and vissicitudes of external fate. External le-is the ground 00 which must grow our tnterior possibility of le. 186

c::::::83Ibid ., p. 83. 184"Pis'mo sestram Beyer," seredina deKabrya 1837, in ibid.,


p. 88.

c,

185Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 49.


/'

18~akunin, "Pis'mo sestram," nachalo dekabrya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 76.

227

The stress on suffering, far, from representing "une attitude orphtque," 187 or even "un hglianisme pseudo-mystique, ,,188 is clearly derived from Hegel. By way of example, compare with Hegl: . . . the content lies in the absolute history [the story of Christ' s. death and resurrection, which must repeat itself in every individual consciousnes~], which originates from the concept of the spirit itself, a history which maltes objective the conversion of the bodily and spiritual particularity into its essentiality and universal.ity. For the reconciliation of the particular subiectivity with God does not appear immediately as harmony, but rather as harmony which first arises out of the infinite suffering, from the sUl'render, sacrice and the putting to death of the finite, sensible and subjective. The finite and the infinite is here bound into one, and the reconciliation in its true depth, interiority and power of Mediation shows itself only through the magnitude and strength of the OPPosition which is to find its resolution. Hence the whole acuteness and dissonance of suffering, martyrdom and pain which such opposition introduces, belongs to the nature of the spirit itself, whose absolute satisfaction here constitutes the content. 189 Rather than indulging in exercises in the psycho-pathology of suffering, , as has been insinuated, Bakunin has merely utilized Hegel' s frequent analogy of suffering to describe the negation of the particular existence or the moment of separation. We shall return to this question later, when examining the Gymnasium Lectures. Bakunin's gradual shift to the idea of the social totality which, as we have already seen, he proposed as an antidote to the ills of individualism, was at this time given further elaboration. Man, the social 187Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 43. 188:rbid., p. 49. . . ' G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Asthetik, II, in Werka, vol. 14 (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), pp. 151-152. 189

i
1

1 j

\
228 being, could not live in apparent isolation of the social community. Concrete lite, states Bakunin, is the totality; spirit is universal, not particular. And spirit realizes itself only in the universal lUe of mankind: Love oruy exists where man feels the presence of God within him, and he [feels) this real movement oruy in the social lite of the world. . . . man is weak only when he is separated from the general life. 190 '
In a letter of December 14, 1837, Bakunin attacked the doctrine

i
1
1

of Roman Catholicism for placing undue emphasis on other-worldly values,


.\,

and for ignoring the importance of reality and earthly existence.

Using

Mozart's Requiem (a performance of which he had just attended) as a \symbol Of, the Catholic ethos, Bakunin gave a very vivid portrayal of the

~tate

of "unhappy consciousness" (derived from the Phenomenology)

which this religion fosterea. He then made a strong statement in defence '" of the real, the concrete and the actual: Mozart's Requiem:- divine music. In it is expressed everything lofty and everything terrible about Catholicism, that fantastic and great p~riod of the Middle Ages, where humanity, dazzled by the divine grandeur of the faith of Christ, did not desire that his teachings should be realized here on earth, and forgetting the earth, strove upwards towards the other-worldly, towards heaven. Catholicism, that religion of the . reign of God on the other side of lUe, established on earthly life some awful impression of a torn man, for whom there is no enjoyment here, and cannat, be any; for whom enjoyments in this life are crimes; where man is punished terribly for a drop of enjoyment that he drinks from the cup of earthly life. Imagine that Mozart wrote both the Requiem and.QQ!!. Giovanni: two antithetical poles of Catholicism. [Bakunin's perceptive comment here antedates Kierkegaard's lamous analysis of Don Giovanni as the spirit of Catholicism, in the Either /Or, which was written in 1843.] In it [the Requiem, i. e., Catholicism],
,

190s akunin ., "Pis'mo sestram, " 7 dekabrya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 78; and "Pis'mo sestram," konets dekabrya 1837, in ibid., p. 128.

~;-'->'---

229
everything is transposed there, to the seventh heavep.. Earth is something dferent, as a place of trial, and man, renouncing all earthly goods and coocentrating all his life in hope and faith in the future, there earns the k:Dgdom of God. This i8 the source of the innumerable monastic orders, of the knightly vows, of the crusades, and of all these strong manifestations in the Middle Ages. And woe to him who searches 'or blessedness here: eternal punishment, awful etemaI hell, awaits him . . . this ls what ls sung in the Requiem. 191
In this insi'ghtful account of the "divided" consciousness, of the state of

moral alienation, and of the l'-enunciation nurtured by Catholicism, Balrunin has restated with verve hiJ immanentist position, which is totally incompatible with the notion of' a transcendent creed. Repeating Hegel, 192

i
'1

!
,

Bakunin could not admit that religion was something separate, transcendent, or superior to man; the idea of the divine, he claimed, is not one which bears transposing into another, supra-human world, but rather, is realized immanently in the real, concrete world. Like Hegel, Bakunin envisaged God as the ethical totality, the ultimate reality, which is to say, the reconcUiation of the ideal with the real. The absolute, he

stressed, is not absolute in spite of its social content, but rather because of it: it is the expression of the unity of 'the real and the ideal. Parallelling the evolution of Feuerbach and the Left Hegelians in Germany, and of Ciezskowski in Poland, Balrunin eventually came to a total rejectiOll of religion and its replacement by an activiMt and anthropocentric humaniem. And it was Hegel's philosophy of the concrete, of reality,

"

whi~h

served as a vehicle for bringing Bak-unin into a c10ser contact with the

.
191"Pis'mo sestram," 14 dekabrya 1837, in ibid., p. 84.

192Hegel, Encyclopaedia, 8552, and Philosophy of Right, 6270.

230

forms of actual existence, of political and social relations and structures, as the ultimate expression of the human spirit. This move would gradually replace any notion of a deity. Family problems and
ag~ravations

once again interrupted the


\

serene atmosphere of Bakunin' s Hegelian studies, and forced him to leave Moscow temporarily. In mid-December, Bakunin had received a bitter letter ~rom his father, who had become exasperated with hls son's repeated eifo to break up Varvara's marriage. Aleksandr
M~ailovich

1 .
j

addressed 1~ g -' ~ angry letter to Michel, accusing him of a long litany of crimes: dis'riIpting his family's life; turning the children against their parents; educating his sisters in the dangerous ideas of SaintSimonism (presumably on the emancipation of women); of sophism masquerading as Christianity; of perpetually instigating rebellion among his brothers and sisters; of destroying Varvara Aleksandrovna's "happy" marriage; of inciting hjs brothers to run away from the Tver'
~

nasium. 193" The letter ended in an ultimatum: either Michel must become a good, Christian son, or he must put an end to his "philosophical visits to Priamukhino" once and fm; all. 194 /
In response to thls denunciation, BakUnin wrote his father a very

long "polemical" letter, in which he attempted to justy his behaviour and actions. This letter constitutes a very revealing, but highly tendenti ou s, biographical essay, in which Balrunin recounts his entire life, beginning with his early childhood, -explaining it in terms of his phUosophie al beliefs and mission. He presented his conception of what the 193Michel's brothers had, 'unfortunately, misinterpreted his eloquent sermOns on "freedom, n and ned from their school.

194Balrunin, "Pis'mo sestram, 13 dekabrya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 86-87.

~ --- --

231 paternal-filial relationship should be, and gave his views on freedom: ... where obedience i8 the exclusive and single frm of love, there cannat be independent and free lUe of children; and where there is no independent and free lUe, there cannat be frankness, there cannat be love, and there can only exist a slave-like relationship . '.. only a free man can love another free man ... a slave cannat love his master. 195

Bakunin even attempted to introduce. his father ta the mysterib of Hegelian philosophy, and ta win him over to his views on religion, on man's vocation, on the sanctity of marriage, and on woman's dignity , and equality with man. 196 This letter is a fascinating testament to Bakunin's own view of his intellectual developmertt, -from his happy childhood days in Priamukhino, his years at the Artillery School in

Saint Petersburg, to his Moscow lUe; it traces his discovery and immediate infatuation with German idealist phUosophy, his plans ta continue his studies in Berlin, and includes an up-to-date ing of Hegel's philosophical system. But, Bakunin was not content to sit idly by and let events take their course. With the inlt on this (more or less) conciliatdry letter hardly dry, Bakunin was in Torzhok, at the end of December, agitating on behalf of his most recent cause. The purpose of ibis journey was to visit his Aunt, Anna Mikhailovna Ba.lWnina, and to win her over ta his side of the campaign for the liberation or' Varvara. 197 Early January 1838 found
him~

~\atement

on the mean-

in Priamukhino,

whe~e

he was able ta malte peace, at least for

195aakunin, "Pis'mo otsu, " 15 dekabrya 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 100.

196Ibid ., pp. 97-128.

1975ee Balrunin, "Pis'II.?-0 ses tram, " 31 deKabrya 1837, Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 129-130.

"

232 a short while, with his ailing father.


A min or vietory had been aehieved

by Michel's camp, as D'yakov, Varvara AleKsandrovna's husband, had " .Jinally granted his wife permission to go abroad, with their son." 98 And Michel was ta accompany them; but, he would still have to rai se the necessary funds himself. Therefore, believing these to be his final months on Russian sail (once again !), Bakunin went to paya farewell visit ta his long-time friends, the Beyer sisters, in Shashkino. 199 Returning to Moscow, Balrunin lived alternately with Belinsky and Botkin, an\l resumed his intensive study of Hegel. He spent the win ter

months of 1838 reading the Encyclopaedia several times over; by March, he had finally mastered the first two parts, and was ready ta move on ta the third, The Philosophy of SPiri( 200 According' to Belinsky's account, Balrunin ~so worked on the Philosophy of Right during the win ter of 1838. 201 198v. A. Bakunina sailed from St. Petersburg in June 1838, and eventually met St:a.nkevich in ltaly and Germany. 199It is interesting ta note that in a letter to the Beyer sisters of June 24, 1937, Bakunin was already thinking offimig"rting, on a permanent basis, to Europe, Il 1 shall go abroad, . . p&haps in Order never to re"turn, Il in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. ~4. 200As we mentioned earlier, only a \few isolated -the~ts from BaKunin's 1838 Moscow konspelcty have been' preserved in th~ Priamukhino Archives; see Kornilov, Molodye gody, p. 395'~in's 18~8 konspekty include: 1) February 11: translation of Bettina von Arnim'S""Journal with _ - , dedication of October 18, 1838, ta his sisters (230 pages): 2) May 18' '\ translation of von Arnim (5 pages); 3) Mareh 16: PhUoso h of t \ from Encyclc:.paedia (9 pages); 4) March 27: Margeine' s Die GrundIehren \ des christlchen Do matiK als Wissenschaft, 1827 (8 1/2 pages); 5) Hegel' s L)ogiC from Encyclopaedia 45 + 9 pages); 6) June 16: Logi~ (8 pages); ) 7 September 5: Neander's History of the Christian Church (20 pages); / October Il: Hegel 's Logic (20 pages); 9) October 20: Neander continued (20 pages); 10) October 29: Logie continued (14 + 8 pages); 11) Neander ( continued (20 pages); 12) Neander continued (12 pages); aIso one page '--- ____ excerpt (no date) from Hegel's Philosophy of History, 8548-550; see Konspekt.Y; also see SteKlov, in Bakunn, Sobranie sochinenii, "Introduction," tom 2, pp. 10ff.
1 \
1

i.

(. ,

201Although no Konspekt of this work has survived; see Belinskii, "Pis'ma N. V. Stankevichu," 29 sentyabrya 1839, in Izbrannye pis'ma, p. 245.

'Y

1 ,

lt
j

233
Gtven the fact that Bakunin was, by far, the Most advanced in Hegelian studies (not to mention the force of his dominant personaIity), he quicKly assumed the reins of leadership in the StanKevich circle. Unlike the gentle and pnassuming StanKevich, the rather despotic and domineering traits of Balrunin's character seem to have shocked severaI members of the circle, who smarted under the "yoKe" of BalruJ1in's ideologicaJ. "dictatorship. 11202. Obviously, Bakunin would tolerate no he~erodoxy: Bakounine, ... la grande autorit en hglianisme ... servi par une dialectique implacable et une ironie " redoutable ... est certainement l'esprit le plus remarquable du groupe, et... effectivement connat et comprend Hegel bien mieux, et de beaucoup, que les autres, [et] aura tt fait de ramener l'ordre et l'orthodoxie les membres recalcitrants du groupe. 203 In liA RemarKable Decade," Pavel AnnenKov, a contemporary (but not an

intimate friend) of .Bakunin, provided a somewhat biased and affected, but nonetheless interesting, account: For a short time, Balrunin.. . reigned over the circle of phUosophizers. He imbued it with' his own attitude of mmd, an attitude which can only be defined in terms of the result of voluptuous exercises in philosophy. For Bakunin at that time it was exclusively a matter of intellectual- pleasure; and since the very versatility,
)

202ChiZhevski, Gegel' v RossU, pp. 51, 84-85; Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 145; Chizhevski descril:>es Baltunin's control (lf the 'circle in these terms: "With his usual schematic intellectuaI enthusiasm, he arranged ail the dferent members of the circ1e according to Hegel '8 different stages of development. Konstantin Aksakov, he placed on the level of the 'beautiful soul' [1. e., the lowest level of development], and himself at the levei of 'enlightened spirit' [the highest level], with others at 'reflection, '-all, with the exception of Bakunin, , remained in 'abstraction. ," (PP. 51~52). Although the authenticity of this particular account has not been documented, Many contemporaries have substantiated the accusations of despotism and arrogance lev-eledat Balrunin. 203Koyr, ibid., p. 108.

234 rapiditY, and elasticity of his intellect required that it constantly be given new nourishment and stimulation, nothing could have been more apropos than the vast and boundless sea of Hegel' s philosophy. It allowed free play for all Bakunin's powers and abilities-his passion for the intricately elaborate, his innate mental ingenuity incessantly seeking and finding occasions to score triumphs and victories, and, finally, his grandiloquent speech, always somehow declamatory in form and stentorian, thbugh also somewhat cold, unimaginative and artificial. Yet precisely this declamatory speech was what comprised BakUnin's power ta subjugate his peers: Us poUsh and brilUance captivated even those who were indifferent to the ide as it was meant to promulgate. And it was not only when expounding the essence of philosophical theses that Balrunin enjoyed rapt attention from his listeners, but also when he lectured dispassionately and with decorum on the necessity of errors, failures, profoWld misfortunes, and severe afflictions as inevitable conditions of truly human existence. 204

It is a well-lmown fact that there was no love lost between Annenkov

and Bakunin. As the official biographer of Stankevich, AnnenKov''S opinion of Bakunin was somewhat marred by his attempt to make Stankevich look like a saint. and, 'by contrast, paint a blacker picture of his "rival" and successor. 205 However, what does stand out from all of the above testaments is Balrunin' s
unconte~ted

expertise in Hegelian philosophy.

This proficiency is Wlanimously recognized not only by MOSt historians, but also by Bakunin's contemporaries, Herzen, Gran ov Sky , Marx, Engels, 204Annenkov, "Zamechatel'noe decyatil~tie, "1838-1848," in Literaturnye vospominaniya, pp. 158-159. 205 Furthermore, there appears to have been a fair bit of envy on Annenkov' s part, as he seemed destined' ta remain in the shadows of other revolutionary luminaries, like B~in and Marx. Incidentally, one is struck by the similarity in Annenkov's description of both Marx and Bakunin, both of whom he portrayed as demagogues. Not surprisingly, neither Marx nor Bakunin had. any sympathy Jor Annenl;tov, whom they considered a dUettante and "an intellectual tourist."

it
\

235 Proudhon, Arnold Ruge, to cite but a few. 206 Bakunin's correspondence for the first four montha of 1838 reveals to what extent his thoughts had been permeated by his rigorous study of the Encyclopaedia. Two principal ideas stand in the forefront
aroun~

of his speculative activity of this period. The Urst revolves

the

idea that Reason must manifest itself through the concrete whole, rather than in the "illusion" of individuality. Only when the particular arrives at the realization that it forms an integral part of the whole (after a long dialectical process, whereby, in Hegelian terms, it exists in-itself, followed by a for-itself existence"-in which the alienated particular erroneously considers itself to be the whole or the real), can spirit
20~oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, pp. 108-128; Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossii, p. 98: "BalruIlin's Knowledge of Hegel was serious and thorough"; Jakowenko, Geschichte des Hegelianismus in Russland, p. 31: "Bakunin was the major expert and interpreter of Hegel's writings and ideas . . . he showed a rare speculative and dia].ectical talent"; Steklov, Zhizn' Bakunina, p. 50; Annenkov, "Zamechatel'noe decyatiletie, 1838-1848," p. 156: "Bakunin revealed to a superlative degree a facility for dialectics, so indispensabl,e if one is to infuse llie into abstract logical formulas and to obtain conclusions from them applicable to llie. He was the one consulted whenever anyobscure or dlificult point in the master's system required elucidation. Belinsky, much later on ... , could still say that he had not come upon anyone more adept than Bakunin{:.at extirpating, one way or an oth er, any doubt as to the inevitability ana grandeur of all the postulates in a system of thought. Indeed, none who approached Bakunin failed to obtain a satis-, factory response ... "; Herzen, "Bakunin could speak for hours on end, argue from evening tUl fnorning, without becoming exhausted, without losing a single dialectical thread of the argument. . .. And he was always ready to commentat, explain, clartly, repeat, without the slightest dogmatism. This man was a born missionary, propagandist, preacher. Independence, autonomy of reason-this was his motto .... " A. 1. Gertsen, "MikhaU Bakunin," (1851) in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, i pisem, poo. red. M.K. Lemke (St. Petersburg, 1919-1925), tom 6, p. 447. (Herzen's sharp tongue is somewhat ,mellowed here, due to the fact that this essay, in the form of a letter to Michelet, was written at the Ume of Bakunin's arrest for taKing part in the 1849 revolutions in Germany.) See also Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy." The only exception here is E. H. Carr, Michael Bakunin, who inexplicably maintains: "Bakunin never achieved any thorough mastery of Hegel's system, " p. 61.
'1

1
l i
cl

j
!

1 ,
r
)

",

236

finally actualize 'itself, as the in-and-for-itself. Bakunin's mastery of Hegel t s method has, by now, been honed to a high level

o.f

perfection:

The entire chain of ail the particularities of man's life are immediately linked to his general [1. e., social] lUe, and immediately emanate from tliis generI life; they constitute the c'oncreteness, t1).e animation of his life. But only the particular must not chain man to itself; the prticular ls essential for the concreteness of man's lite, the general without the particular i8 basically dead, inanimate, illusory, just as the particular without tl1e general iB unenlightened, vulgar, matter. But for the concreteness of the whole is necessary not sorne determinate and known particular, but an infinite row of particulars, progressing the one from the other and annihilating each other. Such a gradation is the rational experience of life, the stairs by which man cornes c10ser to the enlightened truth. Furthermore, under such conditions depending on . contingency, the particular can fuse with the general and permeate it such that it itseI! is t'ransformed into the general and earns the right to eternity. 207

....

From this passage, it is evident that Bakunin had now arrived at an understanding of the necessity for the particular, finite and the indiv~dual existence, 208 and ~ealized the importance of the moment of separation from the whole, whereby reality is made into the "other. important, for
Ba~in:,
fi

This step is

hereby seized the meaning of the real as the

phj1osophical intuition of the identity ,of the universal and the particular. The second dominant idea v:hich emerges from Bakunint~ letters of early 1838 clearIy situates the concept of reality in his thought. At this' time,

he; elpcidated

the meaning of the word reality in the Hegelian

context-and this clarificUon ts of crucial signlficance, since this wo~d (and the subsequent misinterpretations it provoked) caused endless contro"
;'

1 ,

.
~

l '( 1
1 .

207Bakunin," "Pis'mo sestram, fi pervaya polovlna Marta 1838, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 152-153. 208C f. "Moi zapisld."

, t

r~'"

... ::--

.. ~ ...........

237

versy amOI;lg bis contemporaries and among historians. AlI of Ba.Kuni,n' s

"

subsequent pronouncements on reality should be understood in light

of"-'~I"

bis explanation of the term reality. 209 In a letter of early March 1838 Ba.KUnj spelled out what the concept of "reality" meant. This letter,-

part Of which we have already quoted, but which we shall quote .again
for purposes of emphasis, -bas been largely ignored or passed over in silence by historians who ascribe a conservative character ta Balrunin's Hegelianism. We shall frequently refer tO" this letler in examining
Ba.lrunin' s later articles on reality:

\
\

... the closer we are ta reality, the cl oser we are ta the truth . . . ta understand and ta love realitythis is the vocation of man . .! !!o_n.Qt_sI!.e~_her~ Q! !.h~t ~ic. is_g~n~rall.1 .!IDde..!"s.!oQd_br th~ ~oEd_r~3lity:
~h!i~ J:.a!>I~_dQg.z... ~~v~a 'p~itr~~a~ A~~ka_

~Q !!Ue=-re~i!y:- And there is in us also illusory

Iy~Q...vn~-a!! !!t~ .!s_d~a4 _i.!!.u~0!Y.z...-i!!d_nQt J.iyiJ.!g

reality. That is judgement [rassudoK), when emerging from its legitimate spllere, from the sphere of lmOWledge of finite abjects, it enters into the sphere of the infinite. We are all educated in this lliusi, in judgement, and for this reason we must liberate ourselves from it. The liberation from judgement ls "thought, based on revelation [i. e., reasonJ -not judgement, which is always based on illusion and on the finite contemplation of the understanding, -but no, thought based on revelation. In us an there exist and struggle two contradictory elements: these are revelation 'and judgement ... the middle teTm between these two opposite elements of our lite is thg!t' [mys! ' J, which tears away our mind [!!!!J from the finite determinatian of judgement, and transforms it intt> Reas [razum J, for which there are no contradictions and for which everything is good and eversthing is wonderful. And therefore, my friends, thinK., but do not judge [myslite, a ne ras~hdaiteJ. 210
2090f course, this applies to his "Hegelian Tl period.

,-'
\

210aa.Kuni.n, "Pis'mo sestram, "nachalo marta 1838, 'hl Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 1"50-151, broKen underlining mine.' Ccerning BaKUnin's use of the term nrev~atiOll": the central idea of Hegel's Phil os ophy of Religi is Revelation or Mani-

..,...~-:.,,~f-: ---~._- ... ~I

238

This passage is vital, because it shows Bakunin's understanding of "rational reality,


ft

whicb he has clearly interpreted according to Hegel's

oWn precepts. 211 Thus, as Ba.Kunin emphasizes, reality is not to be understood as immediate, contingent existence-whieh, according to Hegel, is Mere aeeidentality, illusion, one-sidedness.
In addition, he has once

again invoKed the central Hegelian theme of the disruptive aspects of the understanding. Whereas reason is the intuition or the experience of the
A

whole, - (although in this act of unification, it recognizes and incorporates difference), the understanding destroys this unity, shatlers the identity of the universal and the particular. We shall see how, in his next article,
mechani~m

Balrunin further analyzed this logical

and transformed it into For the time

a practical expression of social and political criticism.


'-

being, however, Batrunin merely presents the ubiquitous Hegelian thesis on the oppositioo of reas and thought to judgement and the understanding as a philosophie al problem. Reason, he claims, is the reconciliation

of the contradict ions and oppositions brought into play by the analytic faculty of judgement. The most pressing tasK of philosbphy is to over,

come and to reconeile the se divisions and contradictions to which the philosophy of the etiIightenment (i. e., the philosophy of the understanding) has given rise. This comprehensive, all-encompassing reconciliation The 'categories of empiricism, of
representing~.

can be ichieved ooly through r~ason. . formalism, of the understandmg, -in

difference or

festation. According to Hegel, the "absolute religioo" is absolute because God manests himself, which lS to say, he is lm.qwn. The fi revealed religi" is the "manifest religion," see closing chapters of Phenomenology . ..... 211As per Bakunin' s Konspelrt to his study of 6 of the Encyclopaedia which we examined earlier.

239

multiplieity-are illusory and eontradietory, says BakUnin, elearly repeating Hegel: Think, but do not judge. Thought feeds, enlightens the spirit; judgement destroys it. Thought eomprehends feeling and thus strengthens it; judge'ment is unable to understaod the holy harmony of feeling and thus suppresses it. Develop your reason as a holy eonseiousness of the divine and submit it to your understanding as an individual, finite to the general and eternal. 212 Balrunin has thus gone to the crux of the Hegelian problematie en "theoretical alienation," and would continue to explore the sources of the reason/understanding dichotomy in greater detail in his "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures. ,,213 Meanwhile, events took an interesting turn in Moscow. The MOSKoVSKii Nabliudatel' (Moscow Observer), formerly a reactionary journal published by a group of conservative nationalists under the direction of Shevyrev, changed hands in 1838. It was purchased by the publisher Stepanov, who then immediately entrusted BelinsKy with the editorial' responsibilities. And just as he had done with the now defunet Telescope.
"
1'1

Belinsky recruited aIl his friends for this new enterprise: V. Botkin, K. Aksakov, the poet Koltsov, and, of eoorse, the philosophie al "sage, Il Milthail Ba.lWnD. AnnenKov writes, not without a certain irooy: When Belinslty once again returned to journalism and took over the publication of the Moscow Observer in 1838, the pages of the journal no longer featured expositioos of Schellingian concepts written in that lofty, 212BakWlin, "Ps'mo sestram Beyer," 18 fevralya 1838, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 137. 213sa.1Wnin had discerned the signicance of this reason/understanding opposition :pluch earlier, ~s seen from his Correspoodenee: see, for example, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 24 iyunya 1837, pp. 17-25; "Pis'mo sestram Beyer, fi 31 iyulya 1837, pp. 48-54; see also "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 18 fevralya 1838, in ibid., pp. 133-134.
iIf

,.-

. ...
)

240 lyrical tone they always assumed with BelinsKy, but of rigorous Hegelian schemas of thought written with due severity of Jtmguage and expression and often with a certain sicred obscurity. . . In addition, M. Bakunin was now one of the journal's collaborators, the one who was expected to bring about a revolution in the field of literature and of thought. And he did indeed initiate a new phase of philosophism on Russian soil with bis proclamation of the doctrine that all that really exists is sacred. 214 /1' The Moscow Observer was, in effect, to become the forum for the dis~

semination 'of the Stanltevich circle's (i. e., BaKw'lin's) new theoretical orientation. The first issue, under BelinsKy's direction, appeared in

April 1838, and Bakunin's article, which "was expected to bring about a revolution in the field of thought," was indeed an important landmarlt in the history of Russiah Hegelianism.
In March 1838, BakUnin was avidly preparing his article fOf the

journal 's first issue, and enthusiastically wrote to the Beyer sisters,
1

announcing his invalvement in the new Nabliudatel r project: This surprises you, isn 't that true? The Nabliudatel' and us, strange! We banished Shevyrev*from it by our combined efforts and we are assuming our possession of it. It has lied far too much, it was time for it to be silent-now the nightingales will sing. Vissarion has already composed a long and eloquent piece, and sa have 1. My article will be my first li. e., original] and at the end will be signed "Mikhail Bakunin." My name will be printed for the first time. This is my first appearance on the. literary field. It is time ta , speak up, and 1 have made a good beginning. 215 214Annenkov, "Zamechatel"noe decyatiletie, 1838-1848," in Literaturnye vospominaniya, p. 158. "

"l.

215"Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 13 marta 1838, in ibid., p. 154. *rhere were antagonistic ideological feelings be~een Shevyrev, the' Slavophiles, on the one hand, and the members of the Stankevich circle, the other; see Ba.lrunin, Il Pis'mo sestre Varvare," 27 marta 1838, in ibid., p. 418, where he informs her that he is writing an article attacking t!te "idiocy of Shevyrev"; see, also' Belinskii, "Pis 'mo M. A. BalWninu, " 21 noyabrya 1837, in PoInoe sobranie sochinehii, tom XI, p. 117; also,

241 Bakunin goes on to describe his long-range plans with the Nabliudatel ':
<.

The first issue will come out in a few days-my article will appear in it . . . [it is] a good article. In the third issue will appear another one of my articles, "On how we understand philosophy, Il and in the fourth issue, an article on Hegel, and another on Goethe, -and then, farewell, 1 shall leave for far, far away places. At the presenti 1 am composing a preface to Bettina [to his translation of B. von Arnim], which will be so good, that it will make you cry, ~rothers and sisters. 216 Bakunin's "Preface to Hegel 's Qymnasfum Lectures," published in tht! ~pril 1838 issue of the Moskovskii Nabliudatel' was the first major

study by a Russian on Hegel to appear in print, and has deservedly been labelled '''the manesto of Russian Hegelianism. ,,217 A convincing interN. T.Granovskii, "Pis'mo Stankevichu," 12-18 fevralya 1840, in PerepisKa Granovskago, tom II (Moskva, 1897), p. 375, in which he mentions having had an argument with Balrunin over the fact that Granovsky frequented the Slavophiles' company, of which Baklmin disapproved. 216Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestram," 4 aprelya 1838, in Sobranie sochinenii,. tom 2, p. 163. Only the "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures, " and the first of two articles "On Philosophy," (the latter in the Otechestvennye z api ski, 1840) appeared in print; the second article, "On Philosophy," was completed but remained unpublished. Likewise, Baku.nin's translation of Bettina von Arnim's Tagebcher, as well as the Introduction to her Correspondence, remained unpublished. However, von Arnim heard about Bakunin' s translation and expressed the desire to meet him (see Stankevich, "PisJmo k Balruninu," 24 marta/5 aprelya 1838, in Perepiska ego i biografiya, p. 665). Bakunin later made her acquaintance in Berlin, but was very disappointed in the authoress who had been one of the idols of his youth. 217MoSKoVSkii Nabliudatel " March 1838, part XVI, pp. 5-21. See Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossii, p. 96; Steldov, Zhizn' Baku.nina, p. 56; Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, pp. 134-135; Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, pp. 44-45, 49. Sorne commentators also consider this article a joint enterprise of the Stankevich circle. Dynnik, for example, writes: "The first published appeal for a 'reconciliation with reality' on the basis of Hegelian philosophy was not only the persmal declaration --of Balmllin, but also [marked] an event in Russian social thought, and in its way, a political declaration . .. [it wa~ a published thesis thought out, in a striking manner, by aU the members of the circle conjunctly, " pp. 30-31. M. Dynnik, "Ot primireniya s deistvitel' nostyu k apologii razrusheniya," in Letopisi m!ksizma, tom IV (Moskva,
1

242 pretation of this article has not, to date, been presented;. neither the

signicance of this work on BakWlid's intellectual development, nor the impact of Bakuflin's Hegelianism on the orientation of Russian thought, has been correctly evaluated. The "Preface to Hegel' s Gymnasium Lectures," is perhaps the

most widely misunderstood of all Bakunin 's theoretical writings, essentially because of its controversial and misrepresented appeal for a "reconciliation with reality." Generally described as a reactionary, politically conservative, right-wing defence of Russian absolutism and of the ideological status quo, this work is commonly dismissed a.s an insignificant aberration, completely inconsistent with Bakunin's later revolutionary convictions, and as the manifestation of an inexplicable
,
1

espousal of political obscurantism of the worst Kind~ 218

Long considered

a "paean in praise of Russian reality," as it has gratuitously been termed,219 the "Preface" has been consequently neglected by Bakunin specialists, apparently at a
.'

105S

to explain his youthful "reactionary" or

"conservative" position. However, a close examination of the text does much to dispel all the fundamental errors of interpretation, to which this article has been suBjected as a result of superficial and cursory 1927, pp. 30-31. In view of Bakunin's undisputed expertise and superiority over the other members of the Stankevich circle (most of whom he introduced to Hegelianism), this hypothesis is highly unlikely, and would require adequate documentation in order to be given any serious consideration . 218See Carr, Michael Bakunin, pp. 66-67; Annenko\r, "Zamechatel'noe decyatiletie, 1838-1848," in Literaturnye vospominaniya, Chapter IV; Kornilov, Moladye gody, pp. 450ff.; Steklov, Zhizn' BaKunina, pp. 50-56; .Polonskii, Zhizn' MiKhaila Balrunina, pp. 40-48, who refers to the "Preface" as the "apotheosis of reconciliation and conservatism"; Pirumov&, Mikhail Balrunin. p. 12; Walicki, "Hegel, Feuerbach and the Russian PhUosophical Left," in Annali, p. 109; Malia, Alexander Herzen, pp. 202-5, inter alia. 219Carr , Michel Balrun in , p. 66.

243
treatment. For, in effect, the "Preface to flegel's Gymnasium Lectures"
impo~t

marks an

,\

achievement, not on1y in Bakunin' s

OWIl,

intellectual

development, but also in that it brought the Russian intelligentsia to that vital prise de conscience of objective reality and of its concrete manestations. As an early formulation of Bakunin's Hegelianism, where he articulated his philosophy of the "concrete," it
~eralded ~e "r~tum

to reality" of an entire generation of Russian thinkers in the thirties and forties, whfch included Belinsky and Her~en among its numbers. Thus,

the "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures" as a critique of philosophical abstraction and subjectivism, can be seen to symbolize the closing of the era of abstract metaphysics, of aesthetic "interiority," largely inspired by Schelling, which had dominated Russian of the Decembrists. As such it
ma~ked
int~llectual

lUe sinee the defeat

an aWakening, an energetic taking

into aecount of external, phenomenal reality. The" Preface," as the !irst statement of Hegelianism in Russia and as the rallying-call for a reappraisal of reality, deserves the utmost consideration and attention which
it has been denied for so long a period of time.

In Hegel Bakunin found a systematically-developed phUosophical

point of view and a method by means of which he was able to address him self to the theoretical and practical questions of Russian reality. The signieance of Bakunin' 8 approach, reflected in the underlying structure
,

of the "Preface," is founded upon the dynamic relationship between thought


i'

and social practice. By focussing his attention on reality, as weIl as on the practical and socio-ethical implications of Hegel 's system, Bakunin accomplished a signicant transition from theoretical speculation to social

critique. Basing himself on Hegel 's Logic, he systematically applied philosophical principles to problems of moral, social, and even political

244 existence, and arrived at a; e'itical analysis of Russian society. And although Bakunin' s essay appears to be conducted on the level of the problematic of theoretical speculation, it becomes clear, -in view of his doctrine of the inter-relationship of theory and practice, -that the real object of his critique ls the concrete social implications of philoscphical constructions; its effect was to force the intelligentsia to direct Us attentiOn to the "cursed questions" of Russian existence. 220 To articulate his criticism, Bakunin constructed the argument of the "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures" around an authoritative investigation into the modern problem of alienation, both philosophical and social.' Bakunin shrewdly analyzed the prevailing sense of estrange,

ment, which disassociated man from reality, as weIl as the corrosive effect of this alienation on contemporary culture. Alienation, as the loss of reality, accentuated the need for a moral and spiritual regeneration of mankind; Bakunin' s theory of education, -which he proposed as a solution-constitutes his response to this crisis in modern society. The tragic condition of alienation, brought into sharp focus by his analysis, is one where signicant, rational action becomes completely problematic. His formulation of the ideal of education is hence intended as the vital link between theory and practice: for education, as the re-integration of the individual into the social totality, constitutes the essential condition and pre-supposition of rational action. 220Aleksander Gertsen's "Diletantizm v nauke" ["DUettantism in Science" J, in Sobfa:nie sochinenii (Moscow, 1975), tom 2, pp. 5-84, tirst published in 1843, ,has long been considered the most important production of Russian Left Hegelianism, ,Qut in reality, most of Herzen 's material and ideas are deriV\ed from Bakunin's "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures, Il which ajeared !ive years earlier, and with which Herzen was most probably amiliar.
,
,

1
f 1

L__
,

(
'"

245

This brings us to a second point. It is indeed remarltable tht-)

none of the Bakunin specialists have attempted ta explain, -or, for that matter, have even expressed wonder at, -why Bakunin chose to translate these particular lectures by Hegel, rather than, for example, the
,
.' '1

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion or selections from the Phenomenology of Spirit or from the Encyclopaedia (large sections of which he had already prepared in his Priamukhino notebooks [konspekty)).221 Balrunin's choice of this work was, however, highly pertinent and logical; his selection of the Gymnasium Lectures is heavily laden with critical implications, and cannot simply be overlooked. For, as with his translation of Fichte's

1
f
1.

Lectures on the Vocation of the &holar in 1836, Bakunin once again directed his attention (and, of course, that of his. readers) ta the importance of the role of education as a practical tool for any reform of society. The idea of education was always of primary significance for Balrunin, who
c

saw in it a vital ideological instrument for social and politlcal change. It


tg.

fuerefore of no small importance that, in presenting both Fichte and

Hegel to the Russian public, he chose ta translate and introduce works

" which addressed themselves to this central question of education. 222


Therefore, the role of education in the present essay is essential ta any intelligent feading of it, in addition to being the guiding threarl bearing witness to the logical continuity in Bakunin's thought. 221Steklov notes: "These public speeches of the philosopher U. e., Hegel 'a Gymnasium Lectures] contain nothing special. They are ordinary official declarationa, devoid of any serioua content and permeated by a spirit of typical monarchistic servility. Why Bakunin selected them ia not understood .. ," in 1 Bakunin, Sobr:plie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 4~9450. l,.,

222see aIso Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestram," February 20, 1837, in Sobranie sochinenii. tom 1, p. 408.

'J.

246 We now propose an in-depth analysis of the "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures" in view of the
abo~e

introductory remarks.

The work opens with a scathing and acerbic attack on the contemporary abuses of the word "philosophi' in an attempt to vindicate its utility and worth. In that polemical tone, so characteristic of his journalistic style, Bakunin proclaims: Philosophy 1 How many diIferent feelings and thoughts tkis one word aWakens; who nowadays does not fancy himself a philosopher, who does not speak today with conviction on what truth is and on what truth constitutes? Everyone wants to have his own, personal, particular system; he who does not think in his own original way, in accordance with his own arbitrary feelings, does not possess an independent spirit, he is considered a colourless, insipia man; he who has not thought up his own little ideas, well then, he i-.. not a genius, there is no profW1dity in him, and nowadays no matter where one turns, one encounters genii everywhere. And what have these so-called genii thought up, what have been the fruits of their profound little ideas ~d views, what have they advanced, and . what have they accomplished of real significance 1 223 From the very beginning of his text, Bakunin has underlined Hegel 's maxim that truth (and therefore, the study of it) is something W1iversal, self-contained and complete;
, 11

c~quently,

1t was impossible to have an

infinite number of "individual truths. II 2(24 This subjective "particularity" 223Bakunin, "Predislovie pere~odchika, Gimnazichesk1e rechi Gegelya," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 166-167 (he5eafter cited as, "Predislovie"; also para. 1, for a complete translation, see Appendix II. if"'224Compare with Hegel'a discussion of the opposition to individualism in philoaophy (p, 87): "Nor is it more corre~t to spealC of personal views entertained in philosophy than of its steady improvement. How could the rational be a persona! idiosyncracy?", also (P. 88): "The essence of philosophy, on the contrary, ls a bottomless abyss for personal idiosyncracy. In order to reach philosophy it is ncessary to thro'W oneself ioto it' corps perdu'-meaning by 'body' here, the sum of one's idiosyncracles. For Reason, finding consciousness caught in particularitis, only becomes philosophical speculation by ralsing itseI! to Itself, putting

,'
\

247" is, in) effect, singled out by Bakunin as the enemy of truth. The uni;

versality of truth is , the term around which Bakunin will group the positive ideas, -such as actuality, concreteness,
rec~~niat1on,

-and which he

sharply opposes to the negative aspect, represented by particularity, estrangement, illusion and false abstraction. He then continues to expose all this abuse of philosophy, this "noise, empty chatter" as the "only result of that awful, senseless anarchy of minds, "225 which constitutes the principlt:! illness of the new Russian generation, a generation which he den ounces as lia bstract, illusory and foreign to any reality. ,,226 Already iIl this early portion of his essay, Bakunin brings to light the dialectical relationship that obtains between false philosophical systems and alienated modes of existence. He goes on to state with disdain: ... and all this noise, all this chatter, all this takes place in the name of philosophy. And no wonder that the intelligent, real, Russian people does not allow itself to be blinded by these verbal fireworks devoid of content, and thoughts without sense; no wonder that it does not trust philosophy, which is presented to it from such a disadvantageous, illusory side. Up until now, philosophy and abstraction, illusion and the abts trust only in itself and in the Absolute which at that moment becomes its objecte In this process Reason stakes nothing but finitudes of con~ciousness. In order to overcome these finitudes and construct the Absolute in consciousness, Reason lUts itself into speculation, and in the groundIessness of the limitations and personal peculiarities it grasps its own grounding within itself," in G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference' Betranslated by H. S. tween Fichte's and Schellin's st ID of Philoso h Harris and Walter Cerf Albany, N. Y., 1977, pp. 87-88. Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 167; 225Bakunin, "PrediSlOVie," 'Appendix II, pa?a. 2; interestingly enough, one of BaKunin's ~a\7ourite expressions at this time,~see also "Pisrmo sestram Beyer," 24 iyunya ," , 1837, in ibid., pp 24. ... 226 ~ Balrunin, "Predislovie," in ibid.; Appendix li, para. 2.

1
1
/
1

1
j

"

1
1

'1
1

tit

Ci

..

248

sence of any reality, were synonymous; he who studied. philQsophy necessarily.bid farewell to reality and wandered in a state of sickly estrangement from any natural and spiritual reality, in sorne fantastic, arbitrary, imaginary world, or rose up against ~e real world and believed, that with his illusory strength he could destroy its mighty existence. He thinks that all the good of mankind is contained in the realization of the finite conditions of his finite understanding and of the finite goals of his finite, arbitrary will. He does not KnOW, poor fool, that the real world is superlor to his wretched and powerless individuality, he doesn't see that sickness atltL. evil lie, not in reality, but within hlmself, in his own abstraction. He does not have eyes for the harmony of the wonderful, divine world; he ls unable to understand the truth and holiness of real lUe. The finite understanding prevents him from seeing, that in lUe everything ls wonderful, everything is good, and that even suffering in it is necessary as a purication of the spirit, as a 'passage from darknes s to light, to enlightenment. 227 This segment constitutes a diatribe against that brand of philosophi!al

,.

idealism which gives rise to a state of alienation from the real world .

Bakunin criticizes the notions of subjectivity and individuality, expressed in particular in the Kantian- Fichtean tradition of the autonomous, legis-

lating ego. The indivitlual, believing himself. to be the only source of truth, separates himself from objective reality, and perceives the real world as' just a series of facts or objects, which can be altered through the exercise of his independent will. The relation between individualism , and the faculty of the Wlderstanding which cannot grasp the whole in its totality, causes the individual to "abstract" himself from objective lUe,
, 1

believing himself alone to passess real and positiv value. This viewpoint, claims BakWlin in the Hegelian t:radition, is faulty, since it places undue emphasis on the side of the subjective ego and thus wldens the

(
1

227Bakunin, "Predi~lovie, para. 2.

'\
Il

in ibid., p. 167; Appendix II,

1__ - .

249 chasm between the thinking subject and objective reality. By placing itself outside the ontological unity of being and thought, the
,

ego,

"

in_

asserting its autonomy, becomes alienated and separated, from f,lle world.
It fails
t~

see, from its perspective of finite

unde~standing,

that

r~ality

1s infinitJty more "concrete" than both its subjective indivlduality and


t~e

empirical world, as this autonomous

subj~ct

envisages it. For Reason,

states Bakunin, ls not some individually held possession, but rather a communally. and historically elaborated process, from which the individual
will cannot abstract itseI!.
In essence, this section is a reiteration of

Bakunin's earlier critique of Fichtean subjectivism, which we have al-:ready examined. The core of reality, in Bakunin's philosophic! outlook, ls constituted by a gnoseological movement, perceived as the "passage from darkness to light, to enlightenment, ,,228 that is to say, as involving a process from unconsciousness and "illusion" to Knowledge, reason, and
"

'education. Thus, by placing his discussion squarely on the levl of cog":'J


~ition,

Bakunin has indlcated the critical function that education will

assume, as the antidote for the alienation which is consuming modern society. Bakunin limits himl3elf at this point to outlining this central idea, which he will pick up ,only later in his text; in preparation for that discussion, he now turns to an analysis of the causes for this "sickly estrangement. 1I229 The prevailing state of alienation ill society is blamed. on the sense of abstraction and illusion fostered by the critical faculty of the
____________________

understanding.

Bakunin's argument here ls taken directly from Hegel's

228" Predislovie," p. 167, emphasis mine; Appendix II, para. 2. 229Appendix Il, para. 2,

1
\

Log~C230 as well as fro

' J

...

~~pening chapters of the ~henomenology

'.

250

,(which, as' we have seen, B~~ ltnew almost by he art !). 231 Thua, through its formalistic, divisive operation, the ~de~standing destroys oncrete life. Hence, what has been masqueJ.l'ading as philosophy (viz.,
(

the philosophy of the 'understanding, of

judgemen~),

has, only been an

ab stract, analytical and "sickly" individualism. Real pqilosophy., on the other hand, states Bakunin, taking a practicaI turn, maltes man a conscious part' >f the social totality and a useful mmber of society. 232
It is essential for man to re-inte,grate himself into reaiity ip order to

overcome his social alienation. Balrunin continues the articulation of


/

this point: this internal disintegration, this internal disruption, is the necessary consequence of abst~.a,ction and illusion, of the f~nite understanding, for which there is nothing 230Hegel, 'IIEmpiricism;' and "The Critical Philosophy," in Logic, especially 37 to 60, in addition to the" Introduction. " 231The distinction between Reason and the Understanding was originally a Kantian concept. See :LogiC t:J45. The Understanding, Hegel argues, operates in terms of pre-philosophical categories, of observation, classification, and of differentiation. The sphere of the Understanding is the~ flnite, the relative and the incomplete, which places the abstractions of the universal aI).d the particular in constant opposition to one another. It thus gives way to a faIse type of infinity (the oxymoron "sensuous infinit{!"), where the infinite Ideal reappears ceaselessly in opposition to finite r~ality. It 18 the taslt of phUosophy, claims Hegel, to bring these oppositions and contradic...tions to a state of harmony, whereby all negativity becomes an essential component in the fundamental un1ty. Therefore, the Understanding must give way to the 'unifying, ",conciliatGl'y" power of Reason. Reason reconstructs the Absolute Whole (as the totality differentiating Uslf 1oto its particular moments), 'Which the Understanding had dismembered. . 232See G. W. F. Hegel, "Gymnasialreden, '! in WerKe 4 (Franldurt am Main, 1970). See also the French- translation: G. W. F. Hegel, Textes pdagogiques, traduction et prsentation par Bernard Bourgeois (Paris, 1978), where Hegel" spealts of "the man useful to his 'state, " p. 80. ...

l'
1

~
d'~
~

--(

251 concrete and which transforms all life into death. And 1 repeat once again: the general suspicion, with respect to phUosophy ls very weIl grounded, beeause what bas been given out ta us as phUosophy up until the present time, has destroyed m~ r~ther than enIivening him, instead of forming out of him a truly useful member of societY. 233 Here the signicance of Balrunin"'s method and approach must be Wlderlined.
~

bis criticism ls at once phUosophical and social. A false


~

or Inadequate the ory is seen as the necessary and logical counterpart

of an erroneous practice (or as the justication or expressi of sueh' a practice). Hence the result of the phUosophy of the understanding and of subjectivism has been the poisonous individualism, the atomism of modem society, both as a theory and as a way of IHe. Lilte Hegel, Baltunin traces the roots of modern allenati to the Protestant Reformation. 234 This secti closely foUows Hegel 's account of the rise of individual cscien'ce, indlvidual morality and freedom, which lPtimately culminated ,in the Fr~cb Ivolutic:n. 235 The Reformation is credited with having given rise ta the principle of individual freedom,
0'

'ta the notion of autonomous subjectiVity, as weIl as ta empiripism in


,
\

philosophy and the sciences. BaltUnin also provides a dialectical account


~,

~'the

progressive aspects of the Protestant principle, whicb


~

put an end ta the obscurantism, othr-worldliness, and authoritarianism


of, the Catholic Cburch (which, in turn, was aIredy being consumed by
~

233haktJDtn, "Predislgvie," "in Appendix II, para. 3.

Sobr~e sochineni~

tom 2, p. 168;

234see BakUDin's Konspeltty to Entsydopediya Gegely~ 7, 8 and

19.
235see Hegel~ PhUosophy of History, "The ,Germani~ World" and 1'tThe Reformatioo, ft also the PhenomenolQgY, "Certainty 'and the Truth of Reas," pp. 272-283.

..,
252 internaI cmflicts and moral cootradictions).236 Protestantism promoted . a renewed inter est in the secular, " phenomenal world, an attitude which permitted the "brilliant successes" and brealrthroughs in the empirical sciences. 237 Reason-hitherto held in the tutelage of Catholic theology
statu~.

and doctrine, -was now accorded unprecedented independence and

However, in spite of the progressive ~elements that it introduced, BakU1ltn aIso trac'es the origins of the "philosophy of the understanding" to the Reformatioo.

Freed from the oppressive bonds of authority, the intellect And individual, subjec-

was no longer willing to depend merely on faith.

tive reasoo henceforth established itself as the supreme criterion of truth and reality, and sought' to derive everything else from itself. )ndividual Knowledge or reasoo (as exemplied in the Cartesian ideal) based aIl
truth on raticnal, scientic observation, and became more
'L

~gulf~

in 'a

concentric circle of subjectivism: The begtnning of all this evil [1. e., alienation] is coocealed in the Reformation. . .. The Refotmation shook. his fi. e., the Pope's] authority, but alf!o shoolt all other aqthority an~ gave occasion for unlimited investigatio:} aIl spheres of lie. To this period belongs the rebirth of the empirical sciences and of philosophy. The empirical sciences, limited to the observati of the finite world, a world accessible t 0 the finitude of sense, inner and outer, and to clemplati., quicldy pushed ahead and in a short lime achieved brilliant successes. But outside of the iinite world lay another sphere, Jnaccessible to sensory observation, the sphere of spirit, absolute and unconditiOal;~and this sphere became the object of philosophy. The awakened intellect, freed from. the swaddUng clothes of authority, was no longe~ wUling to accept anything al faith, and, separating itself from the real worleI, and immersfng itself in itself, ~shed

inm

-,~

236saklmln, "Predislovie," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 168; Appendix, n, para. 4. 237Ibid

.....

~J

....

253

to derive everything from itself, to find the orlg1n and the basis of lmowledge within itself. '1 thinlt, therefore 1 am.' Rere i8 how the new phUosophy began in the person of Descartes. Doubt before all existing things, refutati, of everything which hrui been lmown and established by mea.ns other than phUosophical cognition. And this, together with the main principle of experimental Knowledge, empiricism, which held that all lmowledge is necessarUy conditioned by the immediacy of the presence of the knowing subject:, constituted the main attribute of the mind, freed by the Reformation from Jl3:.~ authority, the characteristic which was preeminentlr expressed in the 18th Century. . .. 238 Bakunin then attempts an examination of the main characteristics
.'<.

of the 18th Century intellect, as seen from two diff'ernt perspectives, France and Germany. The new principle, empiricism, manifested itself The first

in two distinct ways: one theoretical and the other practical.


i1 "

trend was represented by the German school of philosophical idealismKant, Fichte and Jacobi; the secon~ by the French philosophes. BalruI1in's characterization of empiricism is ce again substantia1ly derived from Hegel, whose critique of the "metaphysics of empiricism Il BalruJlin knew from the discussi of IISense Certainty" in the Phenomenology.239 What
18 wrmg with empirictsm, he 'points
',/1

r1,

is that it is a theory of the

238:Ibid., pp. 168-169; Appendix fi, para. 4 and 5. BaKUDin's s'ource of information ls clear: compare with bis Konspekt to Enti;yklopedia GegeIya 7. "Following the Reformation, when freedom was returned to thought:, one called phUosophy any the ory embracing generaI, cstant laws in the infinlte world of empir~cal, transien~ singularity, and for tbis reas, the content of phllosophy was talten from empirical, extemal and internaI ctemplation and observation." AIso 68: "Experimental knowledge, at first satisfactory, did not include in itself other sphere of abjects: freedom, spirit, Gad. Not because experience did -not DOW, -no, it Knows about them, beeause they enter into lmowledge in the form of sensati, -but because they appear .as infinite according ta !ts ctent." 2390f whtch Bakunin had made seVeral rsums in his Konspekty.

254

finite and of division, a theory to which the infinite

IJ

sphere of spirit"

becomes completely inaccessible. Developtng his historical analysis of the ethos of the Enlightenment, Ba.\runin calls it the century of the second faIl of man, the fall in the realm of culture and thought. Man, he claims, had now lost all visi and in tuitton of the infinite. To the 18th Century mind, the only reality...

was that of lmowledge, and therefore, the only content which ultimatety had any validity for it was Us cognitive ego-the "real. thing" became the thlnking process itself. Everything was now leaning towards
~ubjectiv

ity, to the detriment of the objective, real world. In this connection,'" BalWnin
provid~s

a summary of Kant's crit1cal phUosophy in very

Hegelian ter ms :
Into Kant's head came a strange thought: to establ1sh

the possibUity of cognition before the onset of cognition itself. This verification constitutes the content of his Critique' of Pure Reason. But, ooe askS, what other inatrument did he use ta check the cognitive possibUity other than titis sarne cognitive possibUity? He recognized the beg1miing of 'any cognition as the original identity of 1 and thought. Representations, given in sense and in perception, are manifold in their content, but in thetr forms, in space and in time, they belong to the pure, sensible contemplation of the pure 1. The union of this multiwicity in the consclousness of the pure 1 is carried out liltewise by means of the pure forms of the understanding, by means of the categories; but these categories are appl1ed only to appearances, givfi!D in sensuous perceptipn, and consequantly, ~e understanding can OO1y lmoW phenomena of the fintte worlel, because the absolute and the unconditional are not subjected to the conditions of spa.ce and time, and are inaccessible to sensuous perception. Applyfng 1ts categories to the unconditima1 and resolving aIl questions belonging to tbis sphere according ta the law of necessity, results in the pure understanding's fall into antinomy, lnto contradicti, into the assertioo of t'Wo completely antithetical propositions. ,And therefore, the world of the pure understandlng is the world

,,

255

of finite phenomena. And what does 1t know in these phenome:'1a? Space and Ume, necessarily conditioning any phenomeno!}, do not belong to the ltnown object, and L'1 essence are nothing else than the pure forms o~ftf1sUOUS perception, forms belonging to the lmowing

!:
Thus, as Bakunin has explained, Kant laid down the conditions for analyzing the appearance of lO1owledge. One could define an object a
prior~

as

an object in general, befora actually intuiting it. According to Kant, there were two sources of Knowledge: sensation and thought, and the se two were unified by means of the judgement through the agency of the categories. Since all appearance is spatio-temporal, and so, finite, and since the Absolute, by definition, is not suhject to these conditions, -he
co~cluded

that one could not have true Knowledge of the Absolute. There-

1
1

fore, only appearances coald really be Known, since one possesses o:11y the subjective forms of intuition
(n~mely,

Ume and space); and if one


Il

attempts to directIy know the "thing-in-ltself,

then one falls into the

240salrunin, Il Predislovie, " in Sobranie sochinenil.J tom 2, PP. 169170; Appendix II, para. 6. The structure of Ba.kun1n's argument 'is derived from the Logic 40-41 (PP. 64-68): "Kant undertooK 'to ex~m1ne how far the forms of thought were capalie of leading to the Imowledge of truth. In particular, he demanded a criUcism of the faculty of cognition as prel1minary to Us exercise. That Is a fair demand, if It means that even the forms of thought must be made an object of investigation. Unfortunately, there soon creeps in the misconception of aIready ltnowing before you know-the error of refusing to enter the water untU you have learnt to swim. True, indeed, the forms of thought should be subjected to a scrutiny' beiore the] are used: yet what 18 thls scrutiny' but !Eso facto a cognitIon? Sa that what we want Is to combine in wr process of Inqulry the a~t1on of the forms of thought with a criticlsm of them. . ." fi. See aIso BaJrunin ' s Konspekt te Hegel's Encyclop!edla. li10: "The main basis of the crlt1cal phtlosophy 18 the invstigation, the Cognition of the cognitive faculty before acceding te Cognition. This tbought, whlch for a long Ume fascmated everyone, ctradicts itseH-in order to know the cognitive posslbllity, it is necessary to use non-analytical c ognltive possibllities." Compare wlth Hegel, Introduction to the Encycl9P3-edia, 110. The same argument ls al~ found in the Introduction to the Phenomenology. of whlch Balrunin matie numel'OllS rsums in hls !9!!spe~.
i

i 1
!
i

(---

1 ,. "
,- rllor _ _ _

- .r....

1
-.lo.

256 antinomy of the Dialectic. HLce, for Kant, there ls ooly subjective
1

Knowledge, and lt ls, in effect, impossible to' know the true essence of
thin~s.

Therefore, BaKunin summarizes, the result of Kant's formalism

was' to create a dichotomy between partlcular intultion and universal concept, and an
ab~olute

antithesis between the world of phenomena and the

world of "things-in-themselves." Having thus dissected the lntellectual structure of the Kantian system, Balrunin then proceeds to an analysis of Fichte, agaln from a Hegelian perspective. Fichte, whose philosophy was a "logical and

necessary continuation of Kant' s critical system, destroyed this final illusion of external existence. ,,241 ln Fichte's doctrine only the ego was taKen as real, and Kant's "thing-in-itseU" was declared to be inconsistent with the basic premlses of his system. Thus, the "thing-in-itself" was but an lllusion, and with the phenomenal world and nature, was llkewise

considered only secondary and derivative. Only the 1 had any true realifY and substance. In consequence, Ba.kunin denounces Fichte's idealism for being conducted at the levei of the Understanding, and henc(committed to the primacy of dichotomy, and ta an irremovable opposition between ego and non-ego. Heri Baltunin has completely adopted Hegel's interpretation, and critique of Fichte:
, Jr

And thus, the result of the philosophy of the understanding, the result of the subjective systems of Kant and Fichte, was the destruction of all objectlvity, of aIl reality, and the fmmerslon of the ab strac t, empty 1 in vain, egotistical self-contemplation, the destruction of al1 love, and cODsequently, of all lite and of any possibUity of blessedless, because love ooly exists where !WO subjects, external-to-one,-another, are Wlited ln one comprehension, unable to imagine being differ-

C"
'.

241Bakunin, "Predlslovie," in ibid;, p., 170; Appendix II, para. 6

and 7.
/

o
l ,

257

ent, -and not there, where one abstracts itself from the other and immerses itself in self-contemplation. Such self-contemplation ls the source of infernal torment, unbearable sufferings" because where there is no love, there ls suffering. ~42 Relying upon Hegel' s critique of subjective idealism, BaJrunin attacKs the systems of Kant and Fichte for being founded upon the flnUe
~d

divisive

Understanding; and thus, he rejects thelr phUosophical conclusions as destroying the Unit between the ego and objective reality. This disruption,
in Balrunin's terms, is the brealtdown of "love" or "l1fe."

Subjective

ideallsm, Balrunin argues, in isolating the subject from the world, and by insisting on the independence of the Knowing ego from objective existence, in effect results in and expresses a'" social dichotomy. Thus, on the basls' of a phUosophical principle, BaKunin has moved to the culture that su ch a theory produces. Hence, the individuallsm of the Protestant princlple" gave rise to the subjective inflection of modern society and thought; the subjectivism and particularism of Kant and Fihte
~

1 1
1

in fact articulate the condition of aIienation and the disintegration of social

and political relationships. He draws the conclusion that the autonomous subjectivlty and particularism of the phUosophy of the Enl1ghtenment, and its development, had a corrosive and negative effect on culture and had as its result an atomlstic, indivlduallstic political attiWde. 243 Heret one
18 tempted to say !hat BaKunin views the theory of
subjectivis~
1
0

as the deals

"ideology" of contemporary society. And even though

th~ discu8B.1~

explicltly only with the French and German Enllghtenment; it 18 clear, that, -given the precarious. state of censorship in Nicholaevan RU8Sia,242"Predislovie," in ibid., Pp. 170-171; Appendix
243Ibid
,

n,

parr1

7.

.t l,

\,
1

258

hls argument

orientation mise en

prt~alent ln RUBsia in the

,1. also

an atlck directed against theQdealistic phUosophical

y30's. His criticlsm amounts to a

1
l

r e against the pernic10us social consequences that accompany

.' this theoret cal subjectivism.


B analysis manner
0

l1
j
1

ln's method, in thls section, constitutes a most tnsightful the tnter-relationship between theory and practice, ahd of t!te which philosophical and theoretical ideas have a direct, im1

ll

mediate ilnpact upon practical, social and political existence. Thus, start" a philosophical concept, Balrunin has arrived at the deductioo of

Us soc o-political and cultural implications; the phllosophy of idealism and s jectivism had as its necessary and 10gicaI conclusion a condition

of so iaI alienation. Having introduced the principles of his critical method and the the retical and historical structure upon which Hs rests, Bakunin can pr ceed with a more detailed examination of the concrete forms of this alienation from reality. This dichotomy taKes two possible forms for
\

.j
1
1

aakW1in, represented, as we have seen, by France and Germany. Let us now tum to France and Bee in what manner occurred the separation of the 1 with reality ln that country. . The entire lUe of France i8 nothing other than the consciousness of Us emptiness and of the tormented striving to fll up this emptinesB by any possible means. 2 Balrunin' s treatment of France ls particularly harsh and intranslgent; it Is condemned in its entirety. For in France, he states, the 1 has become separated from reality or actuality, as a result of the philosophy of the Enl1ghtenment.
244BaJrunin, "Predislovie," in ibid., pp. 172-173; AJ?PE'ndix fi, para. 9 and 10.

}
--.
~

....

...

--~_

...

"

259 The French never emerged from the sphere of empirical, arbitrary ratiocinations, aIid everything sacred, great and noble in life fell under the blow of the blind, dead, understanding. The result of French philosophism was materialism, a celebration of uninspired flesh. The last spark of revelatlon disappeared from the French nation. Christianity, that eternal and intransient proof of the love of the Creator for his creation, became the object of mocKery, of general contempt, and the wretched human understanding', unable to penetrate into the deep and sacred mystery of lUe, rejected everything that was inaccessible to 1t; and everything true apd everything real ls inaccessible to it. It demanded clarity, but what c1arity! Not that which lies in the depth of the object, but that which lies merely on its surface; it presumed to explain religion, but religion, inaccessible to Us finite efforts, disappeared and led off with it the happiness and tranquillity of France; he presumed to transform the sanctuary of science into general Knowledge, and the Most secret sense of true knowledge disappeared, and all that was laft were fruitless,illusory ratiocinations. 245 Under these conditions, Balrunin argues, speculative thought was never able tria gain a firm foothold in France. 246
In general, he observes, the

French remained in the sphere of the finite Understanding and within the boundaries of the empirical. The Revolution of 1789 was, in Bakunin' s eyes, nothing else than the immediate and tangible manifestation of
mat~rialism

and subjectivism:

. .. and there took place in France ln the practical sphere that v.thich in Germant had occurred in the theoretical sphere; the revol~tiQll was the necessary consequence of this spiritual depravity. 247 245 l1 Predislovie,
in ibid., p. 172; Appendix fi, para. 9.

Il

24~owever, lilte Hegel, Ba.lrunin Is wUling ta malte an exception


in the cases of Descartes and Malebranche, whom he calls the only two

speculative French thinkers, although in a very limited sense of the word.


App~ndix.
1

247BaltWlin, "Predislovie," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 172; n, para. 9 and 10.

~-----

-.~-_

.. ,--

260
\

LiKe Hegel, for whom the Terror was the logical outcome of the Revolu-

tion, Bakunin labels the French Revolution

Il

abstracto Il The revolutionary

ideal, he claims, was only an abstract freedom, the inevitable corollary of subjectivism, based on the view that subjective freedom or will, as such, ls adequate for a rational reform and organization of society, The Revolution happened in France, Balrul1in argues, preci8ely because of the p11edominance 'of the subjectivist factor; the individualism and formaIA

"

ism which accompanied subjectivism inhibited the development of any true aesthetic or religious feeling. For this true
relig~ous

and aesthetic intui-

tion, -antithetical to abstraction and particularism, -fB precisely what saved Germany from revolution and from its effects. The French empirical attitude also manifested itself as atheism, and Bak.unin, in a Hegelian fashion, 248 articulates his criticism by viewing this theoretico-religious phenomenon in terms of its practical and social correlatives. And thus, it Is maintained, philosophical has resulted in a culture of religious and social alienation.
empirie~sm

1
j

Materialism

and deism, in BaKUnin's view, i8 the death of God, where the "wretched human understanding [is] unable to penetrate into the deep and sacred, mystery of lUe, ,,2~9 and lives ,in ignorance of the Absolute and in separa- r tion. fr0tll the organic totality. Materialism and the sc-ientifle culture 1t ehtailed has destroyed the idea of a living religion. The Enlightenment, he continues, claims to have achieved an understanding of religion, but
ln rejecting the unat~able (or the unKnowable), and by grounding itself

248This passage ls entirely drawn from .Tne Phenomenology. "Belie! and Pure Insight" and "The Struggle of Enlightenment with Sperstition, Il pp. 549-561.

Cl

249J3akuntn, "Predislovie," in Sobranie soehinenii, tom 2, p. 172; Appendix II, pa,ra. 9,

.~

261

on the level of the Understanding, lt uprooted any true religlous feeling.


{

Balrunin, however, singles out Rousseau as the one thinker, who, while standing within the ideas of the Age of Reason, denounced its destructive effects on society. And therefore, Ba.Kunin concludes, in a pure Hegelian

vein, "where there is no religion, there can be no state, ,,250 since religion ls the foun'dation of any legal order.
It ls the seU-knowledge of

the social community which the state formalizes or institutionalizes, in objective mode,s of consciousness. ReligIon ls, seen as the substance, the people's consciousness in representational forro, of the Absolute. 251 And as the consciousness of the Ab solute, religion has for its object the totality, the infinite whole, which cannot be concret~ly grasped by any finite, individual point of viW. 252 It is against the background of his opposition to French agnosticism that the BaKu.ninist idea of the reconciliation with reality is positively articulated. Religion, as a conscious-

ness of the Ab solute, provides the possibility for, or perhaps, the expression of, the elevation out of finitude and particularity Into the reconciled totality and the whole. Religion, it must be emphasized, 18 /1 Balrunin's term for his positive Ideal; in fact, one could even say that in the present essay, it functions more as the antithetical term to alienation,hence as its remedy, ....,.rather than as the religious phenomenon as such.
!

f
.1

It

250aaxunin, "Predislovie," in ibid., pp. 172-173. 251gee Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, 6552 on "elevation" and the State/Religion transition to Ab80lute Spirit, especially pp. 285-291. 252See BaltUDin, Sobranie sochinenil 1 pisem, tom 2, p. 46: 11 God Is the truth of mankind and mankind 18 the reality of God . : "; p. 69: "the Ab801ute i8 the living whole, everything i8 contained within it ~d nothing outslde the Absolute has any reallty. . .. The Absolute ls not sorne dIstant region where man can retire in seclusion and hlqe from worldly vissicltudes, -the Absolute ls lUe itself. Il

()

.,

.,~

. ,

262

is the idea uwhic~ best captures Balrunin' s goal of the elevation into the union with the totality. Therefore, when religion is discussed in connection with French deism and materialism, Balrunin 's intent is to indicate precisely the loss of reality which true religion, as the regaining of
!.E!.~ must seek to rectify. 253 The future anarchist declares:

Where there' is no r~1igion, there can be no state, and revolution was the negation of any state of any lawful order, and the guillotine conducted its e., the revolution's] bloody levelling and executed ahyone who elevated himself, however Utile, above the senseless crowd. Napoleon halted the" revolution and restored the social order, but he could not cure the main illness of France: he did not restore to it its religious feeling, and religion is the substance, the essence of the life of any state. And this absence of religion is the principal internal reason for the illusory nature of Us ! France's] present , condition. 254

fi.

('
r (,

the principle of mind li. e., protestant], which is aware of its own essence, is implicitly in absolte liberty, and has Us actuality in the act of self-liberation, does the absolute possibility and necessity exist for political power, religion, and the principles of philosophy coinciding in one, and for accompl1shing the reonciliation of actuality in general with the mind, of the state with the rel~gious conscience as weIl as with the philosophical consciousness. . .. Thus, ultimately, in the P~otestant conscience the principles of the religious and of the ethical conscience come to be one and the sarne: the free spirit learning to see itself in its reasonableness and truth. In the Protestant state, the constituti and the code, as well as their severaI applications, embody the principle and the development of the moral lUe, which proceeds and can only proceed from the truth of religion, when reinstated in its original prin'Ciple and in that way as such first become actual. The moral life of the state and the religious spirituality of the state are thus reciprocal guarantees _ of strength. Il See aIso Weil, _Hegel et l'tat. especially Chapter ID, Il L'tat comme ralit de l'ide morale, Il pp. 4,3-54.
" 254_, " , -Baxunin," Predislovie," in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, P." 173; Appendix fi," pa~a. 9.

2538ee Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, 552, pp. 290-291: "Ooly in

1 1 1
1

l'

o ,

263 Following Hegel, BakUnin has condemned the revolution "levelling" work of th Terror. He
n

beca~se

of the
Q

cre~its

Napoleon with restoring law

and order, but recognizes that even he could not recapture the integrative dimensions of the religlous experience. Balrunin has here touched upon a central Hegelian theme: the !onvergence of religion and Reason. reality of religion is thus the reality of Reason.
A

The

Religion, the spiritual


Il

truth which never found Us manifestation in France, }s the "substiulce, and refIects a culture in which the individual ean live in the whole and in the totality, rather than in th~ alienated and alienating particuIarism of pseudo-freedom.
,

For it ls Ireedom that Bakunin's "religious" Ideal

aims at, the politically and socially reconciled life of the free man in the good state. The foundation of this rational state, c1aims Balrunin,. is Christianity, the "absolute religion,
Il

which embodies the momentous truth that "all

are Iree." Henee, a modern state not Iounded on the principles of the Christian religion ls one wherein the basic notion of freedom cannot be aetualized. 255 Balrunin then returns to Germany, the paradigm of theoretteal subjectivism (and a lesser culprit in his eyes). Unlike the French, the

Germans were able to give a concrete content to tllir religious lUe. The German thinkers, whom he discusses, gave form .to theorieS of the '" totality. From this Jligher standpoint, they were enabled to recognize the finitude of the understanding, 256. which deals only with empirical: 255.rhe glaring im~erfections oi the Tsarist state, ~anting in' (respect, would be obvious to Balrunin's readers, but could not, for reasons of" censorship, be spelled out more explicitly. ".

~is

. "256Bakunin, "?redislo~ie," in Bobr.anie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 1'121'13; Appenqix II, para '1.

-f

;.

.L.__ _

. . .' ............

'1~.;""'"
'jli;
<.

'""CJ....,.'--_ .".-.. .~,6

264
phenomena and cannot arrive at ca KnowJedge of the Ab solute. And yet, by coming to terms with this limitati.on, the German consciousness elevated itself to a sq,perior p~an of thOlight-to Reason, "which resolves
all contradictions within itself. "257
. '-.

\
1
,

There were, according to Bakunin, two alternatives ta the dilemma

of subjectivism in Germany: either, on the one hand, to renounce thought altogether and to "throw oneself futo another, even worse abstraction: into the immedHtcy of one's subjective feeling, ,,258 or, on the other hand, to
,
J-

resolv~

the dichotomy in thought itself. Jacobi, the religious intuitionalist,

epitomized the first option, whereas Schiller represented the second solution. The result of Jacobi's system was that which Hegel termed Schn seeligkeit. . . . This is a wonderful, wealC, wretched soul, engulfed in the contemplation of its wonderful, but iruitless qualities. . Schiller, as a student of Kant and Fichte, lik.ewise emerged out of subjectivity, which cle~rly manifested itself in two schBnseelig dramas, The' Robbers, and Love and Intrigue, where he rebels against the social order. But the rich substance of Schiller carried him out of abstraction, from this world of empty illusions, and every new year of his lUe was a step towards reconciliation with reality. 259. 257Bakunin, ~'Predislovie,
Il

in ibid.

258Ibid ., p. 171; Appendix fi, para. 7. 259:Ibid. See Phenomenology, on the "Beautiful soul," pp. 644681, especially pp. 6?5-76. BakUnin introduced SchBnseeligKeit into the Russian phil os ophic al language as the pejorative preKrasnodushie; as he explained :ln a ,letter of September 4, 1837, Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 61-64; it is the Bphere of fee.ling, but a higlier level of human development, already beyond mere sensual exteriority. The struggles at this stage, exp~ains BaKunin, are self-made and illusory; they do not even concern truth, sine the spirit, wrapped up in its sicldy individualism, or ~stractioo, i8 not yet in the real sphere of life. Belinsky also / appr priated this term from Balrunin, and used it to describe his earlier phas of development, as living in sensuous contemplation of the beautiful, belte ing i'eason to be the death of feeling, see BelinsKii, IzbrannIe
'1
1

"1

j'

tom l'Ill" 65-86.

.
'~"f~-.--"""''>._!..

1
1
l.
,
. . .-

(
"" For Bakunin, therefore, Schiller was at tirst exemplary of thEl, first
~

265
~

"

tendency, ' in his intuitive, subjective, poetic consciousness; be revolted


.

against the wOrld,260 but)ater came to reconcile himSelf With reality.


Balrunin refers ta Schiller's Letters on the Aestbetic Education of Mn

as the first work which attempted ta overcome the dichotomy between subjective cmsciousness and objective existence,
~d

to seek for ,the

harmonious re-integrati of the ego with reality. Balrunin's reference to this work, in which phil 0 sophie al theory and social existence are . , brought into a dramatic fusion, is once again indicative of his central interest in education, which serves as the guiding thread of his argument throughout the text. Continuing in his survey of the German ethos, Ba.lrunin acknow- _

ledges tlie grea\

c~ntribution of Schelling, who structured

the

subject-

object identity into a primary philosophie al principle, The development . is 'finallyshown to culminate in Hegel himself, who represents the
,

'''ctrowning of this long striVing of the mind towards reality, ,,261 which
iB to say, the re-integration of the subject into the world.
1

We have now come to the famous Hegelian maxim:


JI

~eart

of the texte Bakunin cites the

What is ral, is ratial, and What is rational, is real. 262


It has been evident throoghout that the structural organization of Bakunin' s

text is bullt around two

~at

contradictory poles of attraction . . On the

260rhe "lbstraction of revoIt"; see Phenomenology, "The law' or the heart and the frenzy of self-conceit," pp. 390-400, in which Hegel discusses The Robbers.

~61Balrunm' , "Pr'esislovl'e, I l m '


Appendix

n, para. 7.

Bob' sochO' t om 2,p. 171 ; rame menll,

(
.i .

26~alrunin,

"PredisloVie," in ibid .

L-

c_
oP

one side, there is the negative factor, Abstrattion, under which heading Bakunin includes'
th~'

,-

266

principle of subjectivism and alienation, the onto-

logical, division of subject and object, which is the source and' origin of the culture of individualism and egotism. On the other side, he places Actuality or Reality, which is to say, Reasan, or the unity of subject
~

and object; this unity is referred to, by both Balrunin and Hegel, as that
~

of reconciliation. Thus, the controversial and so often misunderstood term, "reconciliation" is seen to consist in the overcoming of separation, of alienation, and to effect a return to the totality from out of "onesidedness" and particularity.

Rati~ality or actuality ls no,some~g


Reason, in the

"

1\
1

ready-made and given from the start, but rather is achieved when the Rational Idea and its historical manestations coincide.

Hegelian framework, considered as hist~rical progre~~ implies the movement of factors which must be considered in dialectical interrelationship. When external modes of existence, -political, social,

1
1

religious institutions-and the internal principle or substance converge, thep one can speak of reconcUiation in the Rational Idea. The prototype for this unity, which Bakunin caUs "lUe," is of course, classical Greece. Since Reason is both concrete and ac tual , it must necessarily manest or embody itseI! in extemal reality; this is the Hegelian notion of 1:I1e
~oncrete

Universgl, which Is at the core of the above formula on the


re~

identity of the

and the rational.

Far

fr~m

being the' conservative

and reactionary doctrine which 4t has been m~ out to be, this thesis,
with its identity of the real and the rational, supplied Bakunin with a

phUosophical tool with which to address himself to thermter-relationship

c'

of theory and practice,

h~s

central and constant preoccupation. This

doctrine aIso has a critical function, as Balrunin has sharply discerned:

.'
1>

'-

the concept it sets up in fact functions as a

Cr~.with

~67

Whlch to

measure events. In, the mo<!ern state, for example, one can critically examine the external manifestations, political and social, in terms of

..

their correspondence-or lack of orrespondence, -with the Rational


iJ ,

Idea. 263 And although Bakunin' s argument in this essay ls condacted in the--ldguage of metaphysics (needless to say, the Oly safe vehicle . for the discussion of social questions in Russia at thls time), the ;'" radical implications of thesel' ideas could not escape his Russian readers. The gap between the ideal Hegelian state (to which Balrunin refers) 'l{hich safeguarded the "real" and the "true," and the oppressive Tsarist govern_ ment, was enormous apd did not need to be stated any more explicitly in print.
)

" Secondly, Ba.lrunin had already clartfied what he understood by th~


term ";eality. ,,264

Ji.s

of

~arlY

1
J

1838 Bakunin had elucidated his understand-

ing of the word "reality, " which was not to be taken in terms Of mere Immediate, contingent existence. Therefore, when Bakunin refers to the "rationality of the real" or stresses the importance of a "reconciliaUon with reality,
If

it i.s by now clear that he is thereby not cOJnmitted to

condoning the existing forms of social life, which involve historical contingency (1. e.,
~ussian

society as it was), but rather intends the har-

monious re-integration of Russian society with its/"~irue and real substance, a coincidence of social life and Us Rational Idea. With this clarication
~

263This Is the essence of Hegel t s project in The Philosophy of Right, which has also mistaltenly been jnterpreted as a stra:ightforwardly co~servative work. See Weil, Hegel et l'tat, and Walter Kaufmann, . "The Hegel Myth and its Method," f1 Hegel, A Collection of Critical' Essays (New York, 1972). .

264As per Bakunn, "Pis'mo sestram, " nachalo marta 1838, in, Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, PP. 150-151, aIso Priamukhino notebooKs of July 1837, Konsp~ Entsyklopediya Gegelya, 66.

1 ~ ____ _

\
.., 1

~~

- - -

- -- -

- - -- --~.~.~.-.- _ -~ -----_.. --........


268

in mind, we can' now

r~turn

to our analysis of the text.

Applying this critical tool ta his discussion, BakUnin cootinues to describe the historical manifestations of "abstraction," and once ~ain, his prime target is France. In the aesthetic phenomenon, Bakunin finds additional confirmation of his thesis. Following the Hegelian pattern,

Balrunin parallels Religion and Art as twin manifestations of the Ab solute, different in form, but es~tially idntical in content . for where there is no contemplation of the Infinite, then ther must necessarUy be phrases, and where there is no living religion, there c"annot be any contemplation of the infinite ... , An<l is it any wonder, that in the face of such an absence 1)f religious and aesthetic sense, which constitute the liVing essence of a people, is ft any wonder that France fell into , such a sickly and tormented state ?265
A,

r-

LUte religion, th aesthetic experience reveals reaIity, and where there


t.---

i8 no true "contemplation of the infinite," but only empty "phrases" or "words," and no "living religion," there can be no knowledge of the infinite. Not ooly are the French lacking in any reUgious feeling, insists
,
"(

1
1

1
1
1
!

Bakqnin, but thy are also totally wanting in aesthetic intuition. As further proof of this identity, he proceeds to cite the lack of true aesthetic sentiment in France, in a passage not without a certain Gallophobia: Let us observe both moments of French poetfY, classicism and romanticism, and we can see that in these . two opposites there ls a common absence of true poetry. French classicism is not that Greek classiciam, predominanUy wonderful, plastic, serene and lu cid, lUte a faithful reflection of the wonderlul and bright world of the GreeKs; no, this i8 a pitiful and wretched imitation of the andents, this ia a transplant of the living and eternally youthful, not into the aesthetic substance of an entire nation, but into the style of a small, depraved,
174~

25salrunin, "Predislovte," Appendix D, para 10.

in\ Sobranie

sochinenii, tom 2, pp. "173-

. .
"

"

.
f. 1
..1

269
\

corrupt circle, devoid of thar- sense of the Infinite, which constitutes the necessary condition of all poetry. . .. The revolution overturn~ France, and it crossed over from one unenllghtened one-sidedness into anotber antithetlcal one-sldedness; ln romantlcism there is likewise a lack of poetry, as there ls in classlcism [In France). Classicism was the decayed manifestati of a small,' exclusive circle, wherea8 romanticlsm was the expression of an enUre unenllghtened and uninsplred crowd. And that i8 why the new literature of France ls 80 full of bloody and excitable scenes, and that Is why it Is also suffused with phrases, only with that difference that the phrases of its classicism were prim and prudish but, the phrases of its' romanticism are fnzied. ~66

In this entire section highly ulspired by Herder, Balrunin holds up religion

and art as the livittg foundation of a people, without which they can have no positive spiritual IUe. 267 , In the context of this 'SOCiological analysis of art, he has shown how the aesthetic lUe of a country ois a refiection , daits inner substance. It is Important to note that BaKunints enUre discussion of art
~s

eonducted !rom the point of view of its social importe

Thu~, the contemporary poetic eonsciousness Is examined in terms of


;

the problem of social allenation; since art ls indicative of the nation's

.f)

Knowledge or ignorance of the reeonclled totality. 268 On ~ls basis, Bakunin can rejeet romantieism in art as well as Us politic8I counterpart, 26an;ld. Compare With Herzen 's discussion of ciassicism and romanticlsm, of Catholicism and Protestantism, in Gertsents secmd essay of "Diletantlzm v naulte," "DUetanty-romantiki, Il ln Sobranle sochinnii. tom 2, pp. 21-38. ' 26'lBakunin studied Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie des Ge-. 'schichte' des Menscbheit, see "Pis'IIlO Natal 'ya Beyer, il ltOnets fevralya - , \ nachalo marta 1836, in BakUnin, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 1, pp. 216217; "Pis'mo brat'yam," 1 sn1pbrya 1836, in ibid., p. 344; "Pis~mo sestram i brat'yam," 4 fev:ralya 183't, in ibid., pp. 398-402; also compare Bakunln's r~ference to Greece as the "true spifit" or as lUe in the Immediate identification with the substance with Hegel's, in T,mes pdagogiques [Qymnasium Lectures], p. 82. 268See Hegel, Textes pdagogiques, p. 84.
1

'-

had

,.

l "

'.
.

..

270

the isolatiottlst sect, Sa~t-S1mism, for inducing a cooditiCll of a1ienation'from the social whole. 269 , '''. . Therefore, to summarize, France and the EnlightenmeJ].t represent
1

the apex of the modern principle of sbjectivism and "individual freedom in thelr Most negative

~ects. As we have seen, this trend manUested ,

.
.

Uself in the social and political sphere. as individualisrn, atheism, and egotism, -gence, ;ts opposition to religious feeling, and the breakdown of the social, totality. 270 Thus, rationalism and empirlcism, -what ls termtp th "philosophy of the Understanding" -is heI9 respoosibiEi for the general illness of the 1 18th and early 19th Century. Its symptoms, as a diagnosed by Baknin, are Il emptiness, " separation from reality, moral
/

alienation, and loss of the "substance, " of the totality or of Il 1ife . " Throughout the text, Bakunin has .used "abstraction" as a pejorative term, as a synonym for l'illusion,"-since in abstractioo. one pulls oneself out of, or leaves behind, concrete reality. Abstraction and aliena-

tion are types of "illusion" ol- igllorance, in that they embody the belief of the particular subject that It8 truth can be, found in fsolation from the r('al totallty. Abstractioo ls therefore the separation from lUe, from the social whole or essence; and Bakunin has insisted On the fact that reality, the totality or the Absolute,

i~ concre~
ali~tion
_

and uni:versal1ife, into

whith it ls the duty of phUo~ophy to re\.integrfte man. The solution to this dUemma of

to be found in education, Bakunin annOWlces. Since he has approached

..

or "particularism" ls

the social phenomenon of al1en!ltion from the perspective of lmowledge or ignorance (1. e., "illusi"), the real and ratioo.al knowledge 'of the 269aakunin; "Predislovie," in Sobranie soch!neni1, tom 2, p. 174; Appendix n, para. Il. / 270s~in, "Predislovie, in -ibid., p ..175.
t

,.
phUosop_r can be brought to bear directly
1

271

on the polluo-cultural crlsis.' .


,

Eduation must remedy the present state of .separation from real1ty: It . must form the aesthetic and religlous sense in man and free hlm from . . the fetters of t4e "une~lghtened aspects of lUe. !t2'1~ ~ost bnportantly, It must supply man Wlth tl\e
M

Mans

to live withln the rat1al reality.

Educatl ls seen as an "elevation" lnto the totallty, lnto the truth of history, the !twill of God" or real1ty. Once agaln, Ba'lamin's conception
,
,

of Ir elevatioo" Is not a transcendent ooe: elevation, in terms of overcomel

lng the flnite, la in fact a pracess 0Vacceding to a more fundamental r a more "real ll sphere of existence, lnto onefs social substance. For through education, a society acquires consciousness .of, and transmite
<!

to future generatis, that whlch- 1t holds to be most val'uable and essential.


In recelving educati, individuals are imparted this lmowledge, and come , to consclously and Treely partalte ln the social whole in whlch they see

themselves refiected. The reason for Ba.la.U1ln's selechon of France as bis main object of criticism has by now become clear: the sad sae of affairs ln RUBsia can be directIy attrlbuted to the lact that the Russian intelligentsia ls educated the French model. Bakuntn examines the deplorable condition,
0 "

of education in Russia; but, at the Bame Ume, there' ls contained a germ


<.1

of Russian populi sm in hls belief that desplte the penetration of the decayed French culture, there Is netheless hope for a regeneration ln Russia: lmowledge or educati ia the Key to this Uberatlon. But France's dlsease 18 not limited to France: this absence of religion, thts tnterlor empUness, this pttosopMe du bon sens spread far beyond the bordera a France and cstituted the general Ulness of the 18th
2?11b1d.;

CI

(ltppendlx II,

para. 14.

---".--

272 .

Century. . This illness, unfortunately" also spread to our cruntry .... And this one-slg~,ss, this emptineS$ our national edueatl Is the principal reas for the Ul\lsory nature of oor ~er'ti. Jnstead of l'gh~ing up in the young heart the divtne, sPark, placed ther.e by providence itseU. instead of awakening!(n it deep rellgi~s feelings, Without which lifei does, nOt have and cannot have any meaning and i.~'ltransformed into senseIest;l vegetat1on~ instead of fo~ing Jn-it a deep aesthetic' feeling, which saves man from the-vUe, \Ulenlightened aspect of lUe, instead of alT thls, they fUI the YOng heart with empty, ,senseless "French phrases which destroy th~ sou!' in its eQlbryo, and expell an that ,is sae,red and wderful from il. Instead of training the young mind to do real w;ork, inatead of kindUng in it love for knowledge and of insplril)g in, it the. idea that knowledge is Us own end, that it ls the source of great, inexhaustible satisfaction, and that using it as a means of shining in society i8 a sacrUege, instead of all thls, they train him to seorn work, -ta be credulous, to indul~e in y glitte~ing chatter on every possible . sub]ect. 27

!in,

It is in the light of this entire theory of education that Bakunin's

rather perplexing remark on the formation of the Ifreal Russian man" must be understood. - A properly educated individual would find hilI\self in an identity with his surrounding" reality, and would Ideally live in a
1

society Which could S\1Pply him with a totaUty in which he could partake freely and ratially. The fallure of 'Russia's political lUe is a faUure of Us education system:
,

And ls 1t surprising therefore, that such an education dqes not form a strong and real Russian man, devoted ( to the Tsar and to his fatherland, but -rather something medlocre, cd10urless and without char acter ? And once again, 1 repeat: this ls the source of our social Ulness. 273 272 BakUnin, Predislovie," in ibid., pp. 165-176; Appendix II, para. 12, 13, 14. Bee also Bakunin, "Mol zapiski," in Sobranie sochinenii. tom 2. 273Baltunln, "Predlslovie," in ibid., pp. 175-176; Append~II, para. 14. It ls interesting ta note that Bakunin's satirizing of French education ia taken from Pushldn's Onegin. I, 3; 1,4; and 1,5.

-....

_, ...

273
.
,

Bakunin' is clsistent with his principle and with 'bis Ideal of the rec .. ciled social life; but in view of the eensQrship, he is eompelled to state
~

his positioo in an indirect and circulI}spect ,manner-and the referenee

ta the Tsar would not have misled thf) initiate among his readers. Given
the fact at the language of metaphyslcs was the only safe channel for political critieism, the Interpreter must cstantIy bear in mmd tpe

tradition of
,

~direct
~

discourse,

th~

"Aesopian language,,274 in the

Rus~ia

of NicholaS' versed.

in which Bakunin and the other intelligenty were well

.
'ThEf~sections

education in Balrunin's "Preface" can

b~

directIy

related to his study of Fichte' s Lectures on the Vocatioo of the Scholar. J!I ' Education or "enllghtenment" ls approached 'in terme of an elevation of, , man out of the finitude of subjectlvity and into his univers al, eseential reality. Seen through the religious metaphor which Balrunin, lilte Hegel,
'!..

employs, education Is the secular equivalent of the

~hrlstian

doctrine of
subjectivi~

the Redemption. Its function ls to remove the obstacles, the

rand flnite particularism, which prevent the Indlvidual from gaining a Knowledge of his "real life," whlch Fichte calls "blessedness. 'J275
In the 11gbt of Bakunin's thesis on the, inter-relationshlp of theory

and practice, the practical dimension of

educat~on

Is Immediately impned.

Slnee education ls seen as the process of destroymg the illusions; of enterlng, -or
re-entering~

into the substance, ft becomes iD fact the

equivalent of real action, which presupposes the negation of pa.rtieularity,' as mentioned in Bakunin's Letter of juIy 27, 1~37. 276 Only that action
27 ~alia, Alexander Herzen, p. 236.
1

" ~
i
~

(1
... '

2758ee aIso Fichte's Agweisunfit zum seligen Leben. 276B8kUnin, in Sobranle sochinenU, tom 2, p. 4.

~.Jr

..~.

."

"

,1 ,

274
o

ls real aiid significant whi~h does not isse from, mid ia lot directed to, one's finite Ulusory, subjective side, but rather issues from a' knowl~ge of the total1' and is addressed toc the
sub~ce.

Just as ctingent

existence must be distinguished from" actuality or reaUty, sa too not all aets are rational actions. This Is essentialIy a re'Working of the Hegelian idea that if, ac~ons are ta bfi! .real and objective, ~ey I~ust take !heir
1

place ln
r

~ syste~

of social

institu~ions,

in an ethical totality.'277 And

etcation, s th ascent ioto this realm of the real, Is nothing ,else than the capacity to attain to the identification with reality. In true action,

'this , rational t:ontent of history, which Baltunin, like Hegel, calls "Provi .. . dence" finds Its concrete manifestation, The educated, reccnciled,
rational man "lets Goc\'s will be done," realizlng that "God's will" la (

in effect

".!!!! [man's]
t

conscious Will. ,,278 The similarity b~tween Hegel's is truly remarkable: "let the kingdom of God

and Bakunin's come, Il

th~ghts
1

~~YS ~egel, "and let not our hands be Idle in our laps. 11279 BakUnin was tully: conscious of the practtcal implications of his theory
1
1

of education, and Jas we have already seen, the voluntaristic element had

already beeri ie~Cltly formulated by the Ume he wrote Hegel' s or1aslum Lectures":

. '

Il

Preface to
,

The vocation of man is not to suffet, With folded arma on earth, in order to eam sorne mythical paradlse. His vocation Is rather to transport ~ls heaven, this "God, which he carries within himself, to our earth, 277See, for example, Hegel, "Virtue and the course of the world, " ' in Phenomenology, pp. 401-412. ~ 278aakunin, "Moi zaplskl, Il in Sobranie sochinenii, t0111 2, p. 72. Hegel, "Letter ta Sc'helling of January 1795, Il quoted in Introduction,' Natural Law, p. 13.
279
l

--

~-.,....

.....

.
---"'---:-~~"'HJ.M.. ~
l

," .

275

ta elevate practical life~ to z:aise the earth, toward , heaven-:-this' 18 his 10ftY mission. 280 ' " ,..... The formation of Batrunin's phUosophy of action can, clearly he ,.perceived. Tpe n sicldy, beautiful soulsn at which h~ points an accusing
~
)

, 1

fi~ge~, le an allusion to the passive, inffectual 'Russian intelligentsia:


if one were to cCllsider them in terms of action, ,then il appears clear

_-

that they do not act at all. Their supposed, action exists only in thelr minds. But} for BakUnin,,' he who can: .. be "reconcUd," or
, ,

"

",..

~ist

in a

non-aIienated ,manner, has c,ome to an identification w1.th-or Knowledge


'

of--the truth of life. If one now appUs this conclusion to the "march
p ,

of history," this non-alienated subject "lets God's will be done, n and actually does it himself, since, as we have sean above, there ie an identification of the divine will and man' s conscious will. Thus, ta' Balrunin, the content of non-alienated action would appear to be nothing less than the "will of God, Il that ls to say, the rational procss 6f hls~ory itself. The central idea here ls that true action 18 real or actual action. ,

"

'.
r
1

And the potential revolutionary impUcations of this statement ar obvious, sinc'e' it supplies the most comple,te justifiation for opposition to a form of, le which one can show to be
~Iuntrue,"

"one-sided", or "illusory."

The assertion that the content -of .~e "real" man's action, iD -the ,identificat ion, ia history itself, seems to be an indirect refer,enc'e, to
,

l '

Hegel's "world"'historical indiVidual, Il who carries out or actualizes feats that are "ripe" for accompllshment, but which are beyond the scop of the Unite indvidual will as such. But here Bakunin's view alloVis for a much ,more activlst and voluntaristic Interpretation, ln view ,of his' the ory
of the "philosopher-scl}olar, 11281 who can really lOl0W, understand, and
,

280BakW1in,' hPis'mo ~iestre Var,vare, Il 9 Marta 1836, in Sobrani8' sochlnenii, tom 1, pp: 22'1-222. 281As per "Moi zapisKi."

--'-

--- ---,---

-.~- -~-.-~- ~~-,

. ..
,

"

.... ..
,

-~--

..

276 .

"

..
1
1 1 "

i'
1

-, \ C
1

enforce the will of Gad. For Bakunin, then, -it .would appeax: that a
-,

'

specifie individual could actually stPt as it were, in,to the shoes of


<;1

co

10,

hisfory, and realiZe the Idea himself. Unfortunately, in this essay,


, If

Bakun~

does nQt 'further' elaborate"on th role of the "philosopher,

Il

as

'-'
.... '

- 'he dld in' the 1837 work, "Moi zapiski" [ II My, !'Iotes', J. At that ~oint, th function of the sage was to appropriate lmowledge of th& -lruth, or as
,

Planty~Bonjour aptly puts it: / "oeuvre,r par la pense. ,,282

But in the
\

"Preface," 'Baktmin does go a step further in a practical dir~ction. , And the impulse of 'in Bakunin's , concept 'of education. The" Key to BakuniA's theory of education is found ,
"
"
'

" this JIlovement to action, is contained

in Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures; the, trans!ation of ~h~ch immedifttely

followed Bakunin's "Prefae,e." Let us pause for a moment to examine --.. these Lectures and t~ determine exactly wrat ideas BakllniIL;fe,riVed from them. .'
c ' ( ,

The Gymnasium Lectures - consist of five public aqdresses' delivered

hY

Hegel as rector and professor at the Nuremburg \~mnasium, a position '


,

he held iro~ ~808-1816. These -lecture~ "introduce a ~ essential a)pects of Hegel 's theory of education, the cntral theme of whirevolvel aroWld
, , d

\ '

the integration, of fle ethical ,indiV'idual into the ,social to~ity. As such, Hegel's pedagogical principles have ~eir or,igin in both the Kantian- ' Fichtean' theory of education (the realization of ethical autonomy), and in the romantico-Herderian Hleal (the cuitivifton as forming. an
C

6t. 'man's

consciousness
'

int?gr~

part of the cmtu,.al

who~e).

Education la seen .to,


.

<i'

mold the ethical character of individuals, to elaborate and devEfiop the concept of morallty and freedom within society, and thus, to hold within
'~

'l,

itselfthe possibUity for a social, moral, and even pol1tical regeneration 282Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, p. 41l.

,
0\- ,,-- - -- -_." ~-- - -

"

.,
~--_

...
1

----~

277
of society. Through educ.Uoo, ch In!vidual

m~.r .of siety trartl~rger

:' CI

scends his own finite individualism to participate in the


-

networlt
~

of social inter-r,elatipnships. It is the means b"y which each historical culture or nation
co~es

to consciously pOSS"EtSS and give continuity to

that which it holds as the "true." Moreover, Hegel's conception of education marKS
*

an essential
1

point of contact between philosophy and existence; education constitutes , . ~e living link between theor-}!', as a bod.y 'of acquired 1mbwledge, and ') prac'tice, the application of that knowledge -t? lite. It represents: . . . a passage in both directions betwe~n the parti cu lar and the universal . .. [Education]' exercises the sense of relations and is a constant passage in the . .elev~tion of the particular t9 universal_ p~s of view, and inverse~y, to the applidltion of the -Uni ~sal to the particular. Scientic education has, in eneral,--'" this effect on the spirit, of separating it from itself, of raising it out of its Immediate, natural existence, out of the unfree sphere of feeljng Rl}.d impulse, and of placing It in thought. It thereby acquires a confCiousne.ss of the reaction to external impr~ssi6ns, which otherwise is merely necessary a(1d instinctive. And through. this liberation it [the spirit] becomes the power over the immediate representations and sensations; this liberation constitutes the' formaI foundatiCll of the moral mode of action in general. 283
,,1".
~I>

Th~s, as the" bridg~ betw~en philosophy ~d practice, education )lrovides


the point of departure for the elaboration of a practical metaphysics,
~hich formed the central concern of Balrunin"s preoccupations.

1........
1 1

Therefore, 'in view of the above elements, BakUn'in's selection qt the '9Ymnasium Lectures for prposes of translaUon le extremely significant and serves to emphasize his oWn Ideal of education as exposed in the "Preface."
He~e~,~_~ v~ew

of education as the passage from theory to

.28~egel, "Gymnas!alreden, Il in Werke 4, pp. 333 and 348.


\

278 m-actice provided Ba.kUnin \Vith the long-missing Unk that would allow for the transiti from knowledge to reality, from theory ta the world of ccrete action. 284 Educati dispels "abstracti" and ignorance: the "illusion" that it overcomes is the alienated finitude of impotent subjectivity. And so, Balrunin coocludes: Indeed, happiness lies not in illusion, nar in abstract dreams, but in living reality. To rebel against reality and to destroy in eself any living source of life, is one and the same thing. Recciliation with reality in aIl Us aspects and in all spheres of lUe is the---great question of our time, and bath Hegel and Goethe are the leaders of this recciliation, of this retum from death to llie. Let us hope that our new generation w1ll likewise come out of illusion, that it will abandoo empty and senseless chatter, that it will recognize that que Knowledge and anarchy of the mind, arbl:rariness of opinion, are complete opposites, and that there reigns in knowldge a strict discipline; and that withou~ this discipline, there can be no lmowledge. Let us hope that the new generatioo will at last become intimately linked With our wonderful Russian reality and that, leaving behind all v~in pretensions to genius, it will feel Within itseU the legitimate deire ta be real Russian people. 285 Thus, as our analysis has shown, Balrunin's "Preface to Hegel's .Q2;mnasium Lectures" i8 structured around the basic Hegelian opposion between the "totality, " which i8 actual or real, and the "illusion" or fall from that reaIity, expressed in subjectivity and in the hardening of the finite
~

1
1
1
1

'.

.flbstract individualism. Bence, the major distinction at

~ork

is that made between "real lUe" or actuality, on the one hand, and
,\

alienated life, empirical, illusory existence, on the other. The appe1' for a "reconciliati with reality," far from being a nave and uncritical
, 4
IJ

28~t must l1e remembered that Wirldichkeit, like its Russian


Il

counterpart, deistvitel 'nost', signUies "reality/f4iut also impliea acting. " 285Balrunin, "Predislovie," in Sobranie sochinen, tom 2, pp. 177-178.
1

:
1

~J---:-- -

j --

279
endorsement of the status quo (as it bas repeate<B:y been made out to bel, was rather formulated by Balrunin as a direct respoose to the modem crisis of alienation. It is in this light that the significance of
11'

the "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures" must be considered. For, , through his ideal of education, Ba.klin was led to t:ake the crucial step of establiShing a link between theory and practice, since, in his view, the problems of alienati and individualism could only be met by such a unified tlleoretico-practical approach. And it is in this 1838 article that, for the first time, B3.kUnin artict4a.tJ the structured and coherent method which provided the foundation for his development of a philosophy of action and which formed the basis for his subsequent revolutionary activity.

BAKUNIN AND HEGELIS PHILOSOPHY:


THE PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION

Towards the end of April 1838, BakUnin G returned to

Pria~ino

where, except for a few short trips to Tver' and Moscow, he was to remain for the next year and a half. The years 1838 and 1839 were characterized by a period, of intense and serious study, introspection, and by the intrOduction of severaI new phll os ophic ai , elements into Ba.lrunin's predominantly Hegelian outlOOK. Overcome by a m'ood of despair and depression, largely induced by the continuous postponement of his Berlin plans; by the quarrels with his Moscow circle and consequent feeling of in'tellectual isolation; by the frustrations of solitary and intense academic worK; by family problems, of which the most pressing- Varvara AleKsandrowa' s departure for abroad and Liubov AleKSandrovna's grave illness-required his Immediate attention, Ba1runin left Moscow for PriamuKhino in late April 1~,38. 1 The ensuing months were, -p~rhap~, the most dilficult emotionally for Bakllnin, and his correspondence for this period reveaIs uncharac-

teristic states of despondency and resignation, which would rarely manifest themselves again with such intensity, even during the MOSt bleaK periods of BaKunin's Ilfetime. Following the family crisis surrounding

Varvara's departure in May 1838, and Michel's repeated efforts to obtain a formal divorce for her, 2 dis aster struCK the B~in household IBa.Kunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," nachalo maya 1838, Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 180-181. -

(,

2"PI's'mo s8stre Varvare, " mai 1838, m' ibl'd . , p 183 . .


280

"

,~

..

281

once again in August 1838, when Liubov, who was engaged to Stankevich, died of tberculosis. Furthermore, financial problems plagued. the

BaKunin estate-the newly-constructed paper factory in PtiamuKhino, which Michel aided his father in running throughoot 1838 an:l 1839, was undergoing operational dilficulties, and the prospect of his father
,

bein~

in a position to advance him the 2, 000 Roubles which he needed for study

in Berlin, seemed more and more improbable. 3 Moreover, with Michel now almost twenty-five years old, and with his father quite advanced in years and in failing health, the pressure to assume the responsibility of running the Priamukhino estate was feIt even more Keenly by the eldest son. Matters were not helped any by the graduai dissolution of the StanKevich circle in Moscow, as weU as by Vissarion BelinsKy's intellectual and person.a! "rebellion" against his te~her and philosophical '--, mentor. Indeed, a
h~ated
\
(

and bitter "polemical correspondence" reached

its peaK during the fall and winter of 1838-39, and occupied a large proportion of BaKunin's intellectual energies. Moreover, the feeling that his spiritual authority over the remaining members of the c ircle was also declining, undoubtedly played its part to further undermine BaKunin' s sagging
mo~ale

and confirmed the beltef that he needed a frash source of

inspiration --and Knowledze (i. e., Berlin University), in order to regain his predominance
~

bis coUeagues.

The summer and fall of 1838 were spent in a continued study of Hegel' s Philosophy of Right and History of Philosophy, 4 as weIl as in 3"Pis'mo materi," 16 iyunya 1838, in ibid., p. 189.

~orni1ov, Molodye gotiy, pp. 559-560.

282 selected readings in Christian theology ahd history of the Churh, .such

as Marheinecke's "Die Grundlehren der christischen Dogmatik als Wissenschalt" and Neander's History of the Christian Church, for which he made extensive kOnSpeltty.5 In addition to repeating the themes which he had elaborated in his recent article, "The Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures, " on the distinction between judgement and reason, 6 on the dUference between accidentai reality and actual reality, 7 Ba.lrunin's jetters inistently stress the idea of Knowledge as the source of liberation the necessity for rn-an to achieve this emanclpation through rational thought. 8 However, a new theme emerges in his correspondence during this period: an emphasis on rational action as the p'ostulate for lUe in the universal. Balrunin now declared the need for theory to transform

'"

am

itself into action-in which the ultimate realization of thought is seen to

lie:
... lUe in the universal, or action-activity-is nothihg else than the realization of thought. 9 .Hence, from the basis of a liberation in the world of thought, BakW1in was now advancing towards the idea of a liberation in the real, objective world of human action. And although his stance in 1838 on the
parall~l

to be drawn between rational consciousness and the rationalization of 5See Konspeltty. 6Ba.Kunin, "Pis'mo sestre Varvare, " mai 1~38, in Sobranie sochinanii, tom 2, pp. 185-186. .7 . Ibid., p. 185.
~

"

..,.

8See ibid., and "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," mai 1838, in ibid., p. 187; "Pis'mo sestre Varvare," sentyabr' 1838" in ibid., p. 203 . 9"Pis'mo sestre Varvare," in ibid., p. 186.

283 social relationships was not yet as articulate as ft would be ln 1842,

the tendency l' towards a reassessment ol action, within the historical pro cess, can nonetheless already be clearly discerned in his thought ( this periode It i8 evident that BaltUnin now came to underline the neces8ity , for the self-realization of thought in objective, external reality: . . . the totality of all these circumstances, COJlst1tuting
al.l the enUrety of exteriority, is infinitely important, and spirit, not yet knowlng it, not yet testing Us strength in it, 18 nothing more than an ab8tract, Ideal

spirit, which still does not lmOW elther life or ttself;


it does not lmOW life, because exteriority, taiten in Us

entirety, is the entire half, the entire side of life, necessary for totality, for the completion of its infinity: It does not knOW itself because it can only KnOW itself in realization, in reality. Without exteriority, in abstraction from it, there is' not and cannot be realization and reality. 10 ' Thus, in.order to be real or actual, the idea must actualize itself in concrete life, in phenomenal reality, otherwise it disintegrates in!o pure abstraction and "phantomicity" [,Erizrachnost']. BaKUnin sharply criticizes .

that brand of abstract idealism which seeks to divorce thought from reality and from actual life: . . . abstract idealism, abstract love, not having in itself the strength of reallzation, Is afraid to descend into this prose of life. It fear~, because it 'senses that ft will be lost in it, that it wUI lose i1s abstract energy in it. Il Under the influence of
Hegel's~SOPhY

'f

(notably the PhUosophy


en~lsage

of History and the Philosophy of Right), BalWJlin began to

an

idea of liberatlm, largely basad on the identtty of the concepts of Reasoo and Freedom. 12 It was through thought' that man had to emane1pate hlmJ

lJbid., p. 202. I1Ibid. 12"Pis'mo AleltSandre Beyer," 10 noyabrya 1838, in 'ibid., pp. 220 and 185.

284 self from the confines of his subjectivity and to partaKe in the shaping of the hlstorical process through the free 8Xerclse of his rational will and consclous action. \ve shaH see how Baltunin would elaborate the se themes in his forthcorning articles liOn PhUosophy, of the years 1839-1840.
Il

written in the course

Facing insurmountable obstacles in his own persona! l1le and having


~

plans continually thwarted by clrcumstances beyond his control Balrunin to seriously refIect upon the central role of negation,
h~story.

perha~led

struggle and contradlctloo in the dialectical process of

..

Para-

phrasing Hegel, he stressed the prirnacy and vital element of negation: To carry through this proces~ of opposition, of contradiction, and of the resolution of the 'contradiction -such ls the highest privilege of living nature. That, which, from the very beginning, is and remams affirmative, Is and remains inanlmate. Lite moves towards negation and suffering and appears positive for itseW only as a result of the elim1nat~on of opposition and contradiction. If it remains at the level of ~ontradiction, without resolvmg it, then it also sulfers ruin and destruction in contradictl .... 13 '
I.J

..

)
)

Negation becornes, as It were, the gauge of progress and social develop ment, as weil as the motbr force behind human actions and accomplishmenta.
,

. . . negations are continuously encountered in life,any positive good is bbught at the price of negation. Man can totally recognize and realize ln himself the greatness of humanity only .when he experiences in hitnself all the difficulty and all the boundlessness of humanlty; only then does he knOW rea! happiness, when his happiness has already' drunK from the bitter cup of unhappiness; and etemity Is gtven to him. at the priee of the most a~ul negaUons, at the priee of death. By the rpower of negation whlch man endures, is

"r\ (1 : i f ,
!

13 11 Pis'mo sestre Varvare," 16 sentyabrya 1838, in ibid., p. 208.


(lt .'

)'

285 diseovered his personal strength and the' strength of his vocation and of his right to lUe and happtness. 14 BakUnin thus approael'1es negation and eCllflict as the neeessary prelude
'Ill

to a higher level of rational reconcUiation.


,
B~nin's

favourite Lozung in 1838 was an excerpt from Goethe's


'\

Faust, which he, was especially fond of transeribing at the end of missives, or inscribing on ,his portraits sent to family and fl'iends; this quotation highlights the esseoUa! role which he ascribed to the notions of struggle and conflict: Nur der verdient die Freiheit, wie das Leben, Der Ulglieh sie erobern muss. 15 Interestingly enough, it was aIso about this Ume that the characteristically vivid "fire" imagery and, metaphors, -so typical of his later anarehistic writings, -begin to perv'ade Ba.knin's literary style. References to the "flame of love," the "purUying fire of negation," the "bright rays of th'e- ternal sun" (1. e., Reason), 16 the "universal spark," 17 are abundantly seattered throughout his writings. In Bakunln's idiom, flames would henceforth indicate a purUying, cleansing function, destined-like the power of negation which they symbolized', -to allow for a regeneratJve process: the fire, in whlch bums and must burn e'terything false, and [which) purifies ~d enlightens everything tru~ . . Much has been consumed, and much will still burn, everything which was only external, will be de14"Pis'mo sestre Varvare, " iyun' 1839 in ., . 255 , ibid P 15Clted in hnd., on p. 255, for example. L.f 16"PiB'mo Aleksandre Beyer," kOnets noyabrya 1838, in ibid., pp. 222-223. 17"PlB'mo sestram Beyer.," vtoraya polovina iyulya 1838, in ,ibid., . (

"

p. 195.

.f

286 stroyed, and 0I11y that, which was both externaI and internaI at the same Ume will be preserved. 18
It was towards the end of 1838 that BalCUnin first became aware

(,

..

of the activiUes of the Hegelian Left in Berlin: He note,d with interest

that the German HegeUans had broken up lnto two rival camps, and writers such as Feuerbach, Michelet, Bauer, Strauss, GBschel, RosenKranz, and Leo, are mentioned in hls correspondence and personaI notes. 19 He was famUiar With ti\e Hallische Jahrbcher, the new organ

of the ,LeCt Hegelians, which Botkln, a regular subscriber, frequently sent him from Moscow, 20 and expressed interest (aIthough With certain reservations) in David Strauss' ic9l1oclastic LUe of Jesus and in the Streitschrlften. 21 His reading lists for 1838-39 'indicate a healthy dose of workS by both Left and Right HegeUans, 22 in an attelJ1).t to form an ,objective pinion and evaluation of the ongoing debat-es and to weigh both sides of the issue. However, ti1 view of his formulation, as of 1839, of an increasingly radical "philosophy of action, "-which culminated in the 1842 article, "The Reaction in Germany,"-it is evident that Ba1ruJlin's tendencies coincided more with the aspirations and mood of the Left wing. , It was this des ire for concrete action which motivated his trip to St. Petersburg in July of 1839. Desplte the hardships and difftculties encountered during the bleak year of 1838, Balrunin's sense of mission 18lbid. 19"Pis'mo sestre Varvare," !tonets marta 1839, in ibid., p. 232; "ZapiSka, Il ., aprelya 1839, in ibid., pp. 235-236, 232. 2<1cornuov, Molodye godl, p. 518.

~ ~

1
'1

1 J
1
1

21Balrunin, "Pistmo sestre Varvare, " kOnets Marta 1839, in Sobranie sochinenl1. tom 2, pp. 232, 236. 22lbid., pp. 235-236.
<.
>,

281
and beltef in his vocation had with8tood a trying test of fortitUde: 0, there c are many, 1 feel that there are difficulties for me. the lofty digI1ity and weapon, fat he who fallure. 2 Many deeds still ahead of me; no longer any insurmountable Faith ln IUe, in my calling, in vocation of man, i8 such a is master of 1t cannot fear .

The primary reason for Balrunin' 8 trip to the capital was to try and obtain Varvara Aleksandrovna' s official divorce papers, wblch required a formaI governmental' dispensation. 24 Alter months of "agitation and propaganda," BalruniQ had finally succeeded in convincing his father to agree in princfple to his daughter's divorce from D'yak.Ov. To that end;. Michel had made severaI short trips to Tver' with his
fath~r,

and to Moscow

alone, in the faU and winter of 1838, but without any tangible results. It was decided that St. Petersburg was the last resort. There were, however, other reason8 for undertaking the trip: Balrunin stlll entertained the idea of raising sufficient funds through litera:y publications and
,

translations to finance his voyage to Berlin, and with that goal in mind, he hop~d to malie some IqcI1t1ve contacts among the important publ1shers and edit ors in the capital. As in BelinsKy' s case, St. Petersburg also symbolized an inner yearning for activity, for reality. There . . 1 shall fIy there, where 1 shall find a rea1ization of my lUe, up untn now, inactive Cnedeistvitel 'naya] . . . . 25 But before dealing with BaltUnin' s sojourn in St. Petersburg, which extended into a sfx-month .stay, 1t will be necessary for us to pause 23"Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 16 iyunya 1838, in ibid., p. 191.

'1

24"Pis'mo sestre Varvare," pervaya pol ovin a iyulya 1839, in ibid., p. 256.

..

288 briefly, and to go back in time in order to examme the controversy with Belinsky over

the

nature of Hegelian "reality," which brought their

relationship to a stormy conclusion. As of the spring of 1838, relations between the two friends began to deteriorate considerably. Balrunin, who had been living in BelinsKy' s quarters since December of the previous year, suddenly moved out of the latter's apartment, and transferred his dwellings to Botldn' s place of reidence, in March or April 1838. 26 The Immediate cause of the dispute was two-fold: on the one hand, Ba.kUnin seems to have disapproved of Belinsky's employment at the Mezhevoi Institute in Moscow as a teacher of Russian language and linguistics-for reasons which remain unclear, Bakunin viewed this as a moral "compromise." The other reason is equally ambiguous: it concerned the editorship of the journal, MOSkoVSkii Nabliudatel' . As we have seen from his letters, Baxunin had at firat been extremely enthusiastic and favourably disposed towards the project, and
}

..
-

'

displayed every intention of collaborating actively in the journal' s public a o

tion . But in May 1838, relations between editor and collaborator grew quite tense: BaltUnin suddenly announcedcto BelinSky that he round him absolutely "unprepared" for the editorial responsibi1ities of such an important journal, es"" ntially because of his glaring "lack of objective formation "[ob'kt' mutual friends
0

oe na olnenieJ,27 and set about convinc4tg their

}
. 1

this-a step which particularly infuriated BelinsKy. 28

26gee Belinskii, "PiS'~o M. A. BakIlninu," 9-27 maya, 1838, in 'Izbrai1.nye Ris'ma. tom 1, pp. 121-123. 27 1 Bee Belinskii, ibid., p. 12.2.
, t~
~

C-,

28" Pis'mo M. A. Bakuninu," 12 oldyabrya 1838, in ibid., p. 203.

~ t

289

BakUnin's accusations seemed to have coincided with a

per~od in

Belinsky's

evolution during, whlch the latter had begun to feel his intellectual independence, and lncreasingly sought to Uberate hlmself from BakUnin' s possessive and dEtspotic authorlty. As E. H. Carr notes: The cause of the dispute ls not far to seek. So long as Michael wore the prophet's manUe and BellnSky, \Vas content with the humble posture of a disciple, thelr friendship was unassailable. But when Belinsky became an editor and Michael a mere contributor, the latter qulcldy found the position too galling to be borne. 29 Violent quarre1s between the two friends ensued; Belinsky refused to
,

-,

concede, and a furious BakUnin 1eft Moscow for Prlamuldtino on April 16,
1838. Immediate1y thereafter, the heated and bitter ."po1emical correspond-

ence" began between Moscow and Priamukhino, alleviated on1y by a short truce in July 1838, when Belinsky travelled to the BakUnin estate, in the .' company of Botkin, Langer, Efremov and KUushnikov, to pay hls visit to the. fatal1y ill Liubov. Although initlally
provo~<ed
final~

by Inevitable personality clashes,{ the

debate soon assumed a more philosophical overtone, with the two antagon'ists disagreeing on almost everything, and in particular upon the meaning of the term "reality. Il
\

Unfortunately, since most of BakUnln' s letters to Be1insljY have, once agam, been lost, the po1emic has been presented ln an extremely unilateral manner; nevertheless" it is still possible ta reconstruct Bakqnin's position on the issue, on the basls of Bel1nsKy's response," as weIl as from Bakunin' s letters to other parties, and in partlcular, to Stan\tevieh, to whom he gave a detalled account of the dispute. .
29Carr, Michael' Bakunln, pp. 67-68.

"

Belinsky forcefully asserted his rnew..found s~se of intellectUal \ freedom from 'Bal.runin's tutelage, and his missives
~

in

1838 amount to a

declaration of 1ndependence from his frien~~ authority an~ "dspotism."


In one of his more cOIlcUlatory, moods, he wrote:
l1berat~d from your influence ... Your boundless arrogance insulted me, but ft now repre'Sents for me-a pawn-of y<>ur lofty vocation, evidence of the depth of your ,substance. You were never satisfted with your prsent determination, you always despised ft, -both in yourself and in others. Having crossed over into a new moment, you demanded that we also cross over into it as weIl, and yoo despised us, seeing that we were still in our particular moment, and not in yours. 30

l' am now completely

)
/

He added, in a more
4

nos~g1c,

but still resolute, tone:

Michel, 1 was- 1 pJroaned under the yoke of your authority. It was oppressive, but necessary, for me. 1 liberated myself from lt only on the 16th day .. of this month. 31 Gradually, Belinsky!s letters
~ssu~ed

a critical attitude not only towards

Bakunin himself, but also towards all that Balrunin stood for: . thought, . philosophy, and knowledge; as a reaction, he henceforth asserted the superiority of spontaneous feeling, of over lmowledge and l'eason.
y

b~ind

instinct, of irrational intuition,

Belinsky's rrew theory of "rational reallty"

essentially constituted a, rebellion. against phllosophy, against rational ldeallsm, and against abstraction. ,(In this respect, Belinsky
~~

Bakllnin

were in total agreement, as we have seen trom Bakunin's letters; but each persisted in labelling the other' s world view as "abstract" -the

ultimate insult.) In an apotheosis of anti-intellectualism, Belinsky pro" claimed:


3~eitnskii, "Pis'mo M. A. BakUninu, Il 20 iyunya 1838, in Izbrannye pis'm~ tom 1, Pp. 123-124.
3 Ilbfd

".

';.,
r ,

291 . 1 now: . . gladly: spit on phllosophy, on science" on tl,te jOrnal, on thought, and on everything. Feeling.t me sensati of lif~, -th~t is the MOSt important. 3~ Ackiiowledging his laCk of talent and training in the field of speculative

, \ '
\

thinktng, and recognizing his inferior position with regard to BakUnin in


J

this respect, Belinsky' continued:


1 know that one must strive towards the liberation from subjec'tivity, and towards absolute ,truth; but what can,I do, if for me truth exists not in knowledge, liot in science, but in lite ?33

To this effect, BelinsKy accused BakUnin of over-intellectualism and academic dogmatism 34 at the expense of "simplicity, Il natu~al feeling and spontaneity. AIthough they basically agreed on the llecessity of knowing reality, claimed Belinsky, Bakunin was among t\os who "excellently , underst~~ reality in thought,

contj.nued to attack Bakunin fol'. "pretentiousness," for his cerebral approach to reality, and for living in "abstract thought.- II Perhaps sensing
~

hut live completely outside of it. "35 He '"

the enormity of his accusations~ Belinsky added appeasingly,


-\

1 knOW no one equal to you in power and might of thought.'

You are-a lucid and logical mind. You think about reality '. excellently, and in this respect 1 renounceany quarrel with' you, immediately aClmowledging my defeat. Your thinKlng is not mere stratagem, it is not m-erely words without content, but the articulati6n of a profound and wide con' . ' templation. : . 36
q ,

32"Pis'mo Ba.kuninu,'" 1~ sentyabrya 1838, in ibid., p. 163.


"
,
.

.
"

RUkopisnyi otdel, '~shkinskii Dom (Leningrad), Fond 134,

33V. G. Belinskii, "Pis'mo k Balq1hinu, Il 13 avgusta 1838, Arkhiv,

1~411 Pis'mo, Balruninu," 10 sentyabrya' 1838, ~ .Izbr~ye pistIna, ' tom 1, pp. 163-164.
35Ibid ., p. 16p.'

.,

6p.

5, 195.

(J

"

(7

/\

>
292

Indeed, the interpretation of reality formed the focus of debate


in the "polemicl correspondence" between BelinsKy and' BaltUIlin. In

mid-1838 BeliDSKy began to formulate his notorioos theory of "rational reality" and to adopt a curiously non-critical attitude with regard to
1

Russian reality, l005ely based on a fatalistic interpretatim of the Hegelian formula, "the real is the rational, and the ratial is the real. Il This

narrow and literal understanding of the "reconciliation with reality" was diametrically opposed to Balmnin' s views, and the two men waged a year-Iong epistolary campaign, in an

"" correctness of his ideas.

a~mpt' to
(Hl

convince the other of the


.

We shall not dwell

the literary expressions


,

of Belinsky'S conservative and reactionary reconciliation with reality,37 but deal oo1y with those writings which directly concern BaltUIlin and which have an immediate and direct bearing on our topic. Essentially, BelinsKy's new concept of reality consisted in a fatalistic and submissive approach to history: Reality is a monster, armed with iron claws and Iron jaws: he, who does not readily surrender to it, it seizes by force and devours him. 38 He claimed to have arrived at a new awareness and understanding of the meaning of lile, based
CIl

an immediate, intuitive perception of its sign-

canee; his new approach entailed a justication and glorification of all existing reality:
1 glance at reality, which 1 previously despised so, and 1 tremble with a secret rapture, lmowing its

rationality, seeing that one must not discard anything from it, and that one must not reject anything in
it ....

Annivers~

37See, in particular, Belinsky's 1839 and 1840 articles, "The of Borodino" and "Menzel, Critic of Goethe. /1
k

38BelinSltii, "Pis'mo pis'ma, , tom 1 p. 157.

BaltUninu," 10 sentyabrya 1838, in Izbrannye

'"
1
",
1

,
-~-~-'

"':,,

293 Reality ! - 1 repeat, when 1 aWake and when 1 lie down to rest, day and nighf;, -and reality surroWlds me, 1 feel its presence everywhere and in everything, even in myself, in that ~ change, which becomes more evident from day to day. 39 Thus, Bel in slty' s
i

repr~sentation

of reality, -a term, of which he had

gleaned the importance from Bakunin 40 -mane sted itseU as a theory of necessity and of wi.llJng submission to the existing order of things as and as a
_L_

~_~al,

coofil1!!l~

belief in their inevitability.

'The reception of such a lette~ obviously threw Balrunin into a rage,

for he immediately lashed out against Belinsky'S "idiotie" fatalism and "monster with steel [sic) jaws" in a "twenty-one page dissertation on reality.,.41 Although Brurunin' s angry retort has not survived, Belinslty

generously quotes from it, thus permitting us to reconstruct the main points of Brurunin's
a~ments.

Furthermore, in a letter to his brothers

of October 11, 1838, Balrunin announces that he bas just received Belinslty' s Letter of September 10, and that: 1 could not permit such an outrage to go Without a strong punishment, and 1 \Vrote Vissarion Grigorievich a twenty-one page answer, where 1 gave him such a thrashing on the backSide and 00 other parts, 2 that he will, for a long Ume yet, rub his trousers. ~ Bakunin not 0111y rejected Belinsky's new"views on reality, but firmly attacked the latter' s denunciation of rational thought and lmowledge. He criticized Belinsky's view of history as belng "meehanistic,"43 and under39nJid., pp. 155, 157. 4Jbid., p. 164. ,/ 41,'Pis'mo k Balruninu," 12 oktyabrya 1838, in ibid., p. 176. 42 B akunin , "Pis'mo brat'yam," 11 oldyabrya 1838, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 213.

,43Belinskii, "Pis'mo pis 'ma, tom 1, p. 181.

Bakuninu," 12 oldyabrya 1838, in Izbrannye

1--

294 lined his errOlleous confusion 01 Ba.lrunin had long sensed the

"lryday

life" with rational reality.

dan~ers

of a fatalistic interpretation of

history, WhiCh~' the energy and actions of manKind:


, ;1' f ism is the negation 01 spirit, of the freedom of sp rit, and of any religion, for religion i8 the realikation of fI'eedom. 44

In a forty-page answer to BaKUJ1in, which brought their friendship


to an end, . BelinsKy refused to capitulate and reiterated his earlier views on the primacy of natural teel ing over thought, and of empirical experience over philosophy, 45 Furthermore, BelinsKy added, taking a certain glee in his new-found anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, ev en an
1I

0rdinary, chap" was superior to a philosopher, because the former had

a better, and a more immediate contact with everyday reality, As prool of this, he cited
~eter

the Great as an example,

, , , who was a very poor philosopher, but understood reality better and more than Fichte. Any historical figure understood it [reality J better than he, 46 Moreover, BelinsKy maintained the identity of reality with necessity, with blind fatum, and insisted on the importance of bowing to its higher wisdom
and rationality, 47 As a parting shot, Belinsky declared that he hencefo"rth

completely rejected Schiller, long a favourite poet of Balrunin's, as a symbol of his rebellion against "abstract idealism." 48
b

""

44Ba.lrunin, "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 16 iunya 1838, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 192. r45selinsltii, "Pis'mo K BaKuninu," 12 oKtyabrya 1838, in Izbrannye pis' ma, tom 1, pp. 183-186. 46tbid., p. 183.
471b1 , p. 184 . 'd.

4~id., p. 181. This new apsthetic view ls expressed with wlUSUal vehemence in BelinsKy's 1840 article in the Otechestvennye zapisKi (Notes of the Fatherland) , in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, tom VIn, No. 1, pp. 2564, entitled "Menzel, -Critic of Goethe."
l

295 By the end of 1838, the two friends had arrived at a complete pl1llosphical and personal breaK. Each "'rote to Stanllevich, explaining
~

the circumstances behind the quarrei. BelinSKy was the tirst to write, giving . a long

ana

detailed account of his fight with Balrunin, of his recent

t,

"liberation" from his mentor, and of his new independent stance,. He announced to StanKevich that he had finally arrived at a new-found awareness of his own potenUal, which ultimately led him to rebel against the constraints of Brurunin's authority. In his letter to StanKevich, dated November 8, 1838, BelinsKy wrote: Michel and 1 have parted company. He i5 a wonderful man, -a profound, original, leonine, nature-this one cannot deny in him, but there is also in him pretension, childishnes5, officiousness, un scrupulousnes s, and uncon ... scientiousness, - all this maltes friendship with him impossible. He loves ideas, but not men; he wants to dominate by his authority, but not to love. 49 BelinsKy also informed StanKevich of his new OUtlOOK on Schiller, 50 whose workS he labelled "the apotheosis of abstract love for manKind, devoid of any content;51, he blamed Schiller for having created in him an attitude of "abstract heroism, outside of which 1 hated, despised everything. ,,52 The Most vivid account of BelinsKy's mysticism and reactionary interpretation of
Hegel'~

philosophy, as weIl as his of belief in the II rationality"

of Russian absolutism, is in a passage of this same letter, where lie .., recounts the enthusiasm he experienced upon formulating tIlis new con49selinsKii, "Pis' mo K StanKevichu, p,'ma, tom 1, pp. 214-215.
Il

8 noyabrya 1838, in Izbrannye

5~id., pp. 215-216.


, 1

51 l1Pis 'mo K StanKevichu," 29 sentyabrya 1839, in ibid., p. 244.

521bid .

i ...

1
....... ...
~ ~

1
-

296

servative Weltant;;hauung:

l.

. . [upon reading Hegel 'a Philoaophy of Rlght1 a new world ws opened to us: power is right and rlght ls might; no, 1 cannot describe to you with what feelings 1 heard these words, it was a liberation, 1 understood the reason for the faH of ldngdoms, the legitimacy of conquerors, 1 understood that there ls no wild materia! power, that there is no rule of the bayonet and of the sword, there is no arbitrariness, there ls no contingeney, and dtlficult tutelage over the human race ended, and the signilicanee .of my fatherland was presented to me in a Dew light. 53

mi

In this letter BelinsKy aIso aCKnowledged how this new politieal phUosophy

brought him into conflict with Balrunin, and how the latter strongly disagreed with his interpretation of Hegelianism: My teacher [i. e., BalruI1in] was revolted,' seeing th.e ,fruits of his teachings [which became] too precocious, too abundant, and too premature; he wished to stop, me, but it was too late; 1 had already broKen my -, chains and was running ahead at full speed. 54 The quarreI, he admits, centered around their divergent views on reality, 55 and once .again, BelinsKy accuses BaKunin of "abstraction"
1

and of living outside of true reaIity:

Michel is an abstract hero. He ~asters a powerful mind, a strong dialectic; there ls depth in his soul, his speculation is vast; he thirsts for action, he seekS for storms and struggle, -this is my present, completely free and impartial opinion of him. But 1 also believe that when the matter concerns the realization of his ideas, he Is eompletely abstract, because he lacKs any sense of reality. 56
531bid. , p. 245. 541bid , p. 246. 551bid .

~"

.
l'

(-

'

561bid .

'.

! ,

1 -----

b'c

(/~->~ -~
Thus, -Belinsiy'S "reconeiliation

W19' reality"-in

297 contradistinction

to Balrunin' s advocacy of this postulate-involved a complete rejeetion of any subjective individualism before the all-pervading Reason in the in the face of which it was both futile and irrational to revolt. His
~orld,

writings of this period urged an attitude of total quietism and fatalistic submission to the necessary laws of history, an attitude whieh manifested itself in his published, articles as a startling glorification of the Russian state and of the political status qUO; they even go so far as to justy the "rationality" of the Tsar's absolutism as the most perleet e;x:pression of reason in the world. In effeet; BelinsKy's_ onservative "reconcUiation"
,1\

amounts to a total renunciation of individu al action of the subjectivist factor in history, and an exhortation for the individual to bow passively before the universal laws of necessity, before which he was powerless. His later rejection and denunciation of his "reconciliation" period-which would occur during the cop,rse of the 'year 1840 in St. Petersburg, -was motivated precisely by the role of the individual in history, which he came to re-evaluate. It entailed the emancipation of the concept of personality based on a more serious reading-and understanding-of
l,

Hegelian philosophy. For his part, Balrunin also wrote to Stankevich on May 13, 183"9, exposing his side of the quarrel with BelinSky, and aSKing him to aet as arbiter in the dispute. Balrunin attributed BelinsKy's misinterpretation of Hegelianism to 'his lack of "objective formation" and to his charaeteristic impetuosity and hastiness in adopting new theories, without giving these newly-acquired ideas sufficient and thorough consideration. 'Balrunin then
1;
i'
1

C'

denounced Belinsky's views on reality as a

distortion~ of

the original "

Hegelian doctrine, and pointed out that, in his glorication of "naturality"

..

298

and "simplicity," Bel1nsKy had now come ta consider "eyeryday lUe" as 'the rational reality of Hegel's phllosophy: He [i. e., BeUnskyJ has obviously completely giyen himself up to the movement and impulses o( his crude naturalism, in whieh he sees that holy real1ty of which Hegel, spealtS. He has gone ta sueh extremes, such that any common, ordinary man has become, in his eyes, an Ideal, and in one letter to me, he seriously enviedand advised me ta envy~the reality of a certain Mossolov, who loves horses and who learned the EngUsh language, because thete are many works dealing wlth the characterisUcs and value of horses, written ip that language; he curses Schiller (or, at least, cursed) and calls him an idiot, apparently because the latter did him much harm by his idealistic orientation. 57
1

Balrunin then goes on to describe the origin of the confiict concerning

the editorship of the MOS!toVSkii Nai?liudatel': The;,rincipal source of all our misunderstandings arose from the fact that, first 1, then also Botkin, bagan to persuade him that without lmowledge and without learning, it was impossible to be a competent editor of an important journal; that to' deduce history, art, religion, etc., from within himself, was ridiculous and absurd, and that, limiting himself to his Immediate sensatis and not attempting to elevate them ta the certainty of rational thought, could merely lead him, to state a few correct ob se rV'B.tions, but nothing more, and that a journal, not cootaining in itself anything more than a few platitudes could not have :very much value. He became very angry with us .... 58 . WhUe admitting that BelinsKy' s search for true reality was legitimate and necessary, Bakunin noted that the latter had unfortunately fallen into another extreme, that of mistaking contingency for true actuality.
In

eff~ct,

Bakunin remarked to Stanke\-ich that Il our fanerai tllness [in

57BakUIlin, "Pis'mo Stankevichu, If 13 maya 1839, in Sobranie sochinenl1, tom 2, pp. 240-241.
58Ibid .

t
--""w~_~_. ~

L
___
~

J __________

"

299
~ussiaJ

cmsists in
w~

~e

fact that we are completely separated from

Russian reality:

do not have one point of contact with it, we do not

recogntze ourselves in it. ,,59 This quotaUon goes far in shedding light on the "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures" and its appeal for a "reconciliation wtth reality." LiKe Belinsky, BaKUIiin deplored his own and
t~contemporari~s'

alienation from socieo/ and laclt of cootact with

Russian reality, but, unliKe his friend, Ba.laJnin had adopted a crittcal, negative attitude with. regard to it. At about the same Ume, he wrote to his brother, Pavel, about the period they were living in: . . . we were born in dark Urnes, where world not ooly cannot give us that wh;.ch on the contrary, produces doubt, maKes legitimacy of the question itseU.60 the external we need, but, ridiculous the .

Admittedly, Stankevich, who had been receiving other reports of these Moscow disputes, which had by no~ achieved notorlety, was tremely perplexed by this news. on July 24, 1839: ...

x-

He wrote to Efremov from Salzbrunn

. . how absurd are all the se Moscow quarrels and how annoyed 1 am by them. 1 dld not suspect that there could be so much vanlty in Blinsky-but the wealter Is a certain aspect of a man, the more sensitive it is. On~ must forgive thisi 1 can undersland il. 61

He pleaded with both Belfnf?Ky and Baxunin to put an end to their squabbling,62 in an attempt to Mediate the dispute and reccile the two friends. However, il ls evident from StanKevich's replies that he was repelled by Belinsky'S ne", theories, and tended ta side more with Ba.lrunin in this

;!9

1bid., p. 244; my emphasis.

60s aKUn in, "Pie'mo bratu Pavlu," 12 fevralya 1839, in ibid.,


p. 230.
t

f 1

,i
J
~--~-

61StanKeVich, PereptsKa ego i biografiy~ p. 432. 62"Pis'mo BakWlinu," Jo ibid., p. 658.

......

-~-

- ---

300 respect. In a letter to Granovsky' from Florence, he admitted his surprise

(:

at Belin SKy , s most recent aesthetic viewpolnt and literary exercises, where he articulated ln print his new conservative creed of "reconciliation" with Russian reality as it existed: News of the literary works and concepts of our friends are not comforting. What has Schiller done to them? Why this hatred? .. Absurd people! Since they do not understand what reality ls, then 1 thlnk that they respect the word of Hegel. And if his authority carries weight with them, then let them read what he says about Schiller in the Aesthetigs, in various places, liKewise on Wallenstein, ln smaIler works. And on .realtty, let them read in the Logic, that reality, in the sense of immediacy, of external existence, -is contingenc Y that reality, in its truth ls reason, spirit. ... d 3 .'
As we can see, Stankevich and Ba.1runin were in perfect agreement as to

the distinction to be made between contingent existence and rational reality, and both rejected BelinsKy's erroneous identUication of

the two concepts. Confirmation of BaltUnin's disagreement is aIso provided by GranovsKy, who promptly informed Stankevich that "Mic~el and
1 are reading Schiller. He la of our opinion. ,,64
In "Byloe i dumy" ("My Past and Thoughts"), Herzen aIso provided

i
1

an account of the much-discussed BelinSky-BaKunln polemic, which had


succeeded in di"iding the Moscow intelligentsia ioto two r1val, feuding factions. Herzen's satii'ial essay, "Moscow Buddhists," in his 1843 article, "Buddhism in Science,
Il

in Dilettantism in Science, is another

portrayaI of the famous c ontroversy. He entered the followtng comptrendu in "My Past and Thoughts":
~

ibid"

63Stankevlch, "Pis' mo k Granovskomu," 1 fevraIya 1840, in p. 486.


Il

64GranovskU, tom n,' p. 378.

Pis' mo Stankevichu, Il in Perepiska GranovSkagO,

J.

301

Belinsky, the MOSt active, impulsive, and dialectl- ally passionate, fighting nature, 'was at that Ume preaching an Indian passivity of contemplation and theoretical reflection instead of confiict. He believed in that view and did not pale before any of its consequences, nor was he held back by consid~rations of moral decency, nor by the opinion' of others, which so terrifies the weax and those who lack independence ... 'Do yru KIlOW that from your point of view,' 1 said to him, thinldng to impress him with my revolutionary ul'timatum, 'you can prove that the monstrous tyranny under which we live ls rational and ought to exist ?' 'Without any doubt'-answered Belinsky, and read PushKin's 'Annivers~lrY of Borodino' to me. That l'las more than 1 could stand ang a desperate battle raged between us. Our quarrei affected the others, and the circle fell apart into two camps. BakUIlin wanted to reconcile, to explain, to exorcize, but there was no real peace. 'Belinsky, irritated and dissatisfied, weot off to St. Petersburg, and from there fired off his last furious shot at us in an article which he likewise called 'The Anniversary of Borodino. ' Then 1 broke off all relations with him. BaKunin, though he argued heatedly, began to reconsider things; his sound revolutionary judgement pushed him in another direction. BelinsKy reproached him with weakness, for concessions, and went to such exaggerated extremes that he scared his own friends and admlrers. The chorus was on Belinsky's side, and looked down up6n us, haughtily, shrugging their shoulders and considering us behind the times. 65 Herzen's vivid and entertaining .account sutfers from severaI

Once

~gain,

inaccuracies. Herzen situates these disputes in 1839, although it would have been impossible for the three men to have been in Moscow at the , same time: BalruIlin was in St. Petersburg fro'm JuIy until mid-Nov-ember 1839. When he returned to Moscow at that time, Belinsky was no longer
,
,
L

the,re, having left for St. Petersburg in October 1839, where he was to

t t
!

(t

~5Gertsen, "Byloe i dumy," tom 5, pp. 103-104.

..
--

------~--

---- - - - -

---",

-----

, begin worlting for the journal, techestvennye zapislti (Notes of the


l "

302

Fatherland). He~ken obtained his formaI pardon in July 1839. and travelled from his place of exile, Vladimir, to Moscow in Augu~t of that same year. Therefore, the heated debates on the "rationality 'f(f the real" between BelinsKy and BaltUIlin allegedly, on one side, and ~rzen, on the other, as described in Herzen's "My Past and Thoughts" appear apocryphal; it is clear that he could not have quarrelled with
~

men simul-

taneously. In any case, Herzen has his facts somewhat confused. Furthermore, Herzen imp'lies in his narrative that the sarne reactionary outlook
~n ~akunin

a/elinSKy shared

Russian reality (albeit temporarily), yet


,

the evitlence has shown that Bakunin violenUy opposed BelincsKy' s faulty Interpretation of Hegelian philosophy. In effect, Belinslty's conservative political philosophy and extreme nationalism of the period 1838-"840 is generally attributed to Baitunin' s influence on him. Many historians have
,

--

simply repeated Herzen' s inaccurate account, without checKing the sources, and severaI commentators have inexplicably gone so far as to blame Balrunin for Belinslty's misinterpretation of H~ge1. 66
~

This view of BaltUnin's position

fs. absolutely false and contra-

dicted by the evidence which, we have examined. Malia's .attempt to ascribe Belinsky' s extreme conservatism and historical mysticism to 66See, for example, Malia, Alexander Herzen, pp. 204-205, who states: "It wa the period of their H.e., Belinslty and BakUnin'sl lamous 'recclliation with reality' founded on HegePs well-lmown dictum ID 'the int roduction to the PhUosophy of Right that 'the real is the rational and the rational ls the real.' The pair tnterpreted this phrase, and indeed the whole of Hegel's philosophy, as meaning that everything which in fact existed was reasonable and hence should be accepted EYhecessary and just. by rational men, whatever their 'subjective' feelin~s might be . Worlting within this framework the pair proceeded to glorify the Russian autocracy, serfdom, and anti-Western nationalism with a gusto equal to that of the most reactionary supporters of the regime."

'.
1"

an

303
r

Bakunin's outlook is highly gratuitous and obviously false. when he claims that "Batrunln had led off the

fttaek

Furthermore,

by an article ln

March 1838, proclaiming on behalf of Russian Hegelianlsm the foUy of struggling against the 'objective' reason of existing reality," it i8 quite clear that Malia's reading of BJunin'S
1

"Prefa~e

ta Hegel's

Gyntnasiu~
.

Lectures" is superficial and erroneous. 67 Several historians share this opinion and blame Bakunin for Belinsky's excesses. 68 As we have ob,

s'e~ved from the polemical correspondence between the two rrlen, as 'Yell
as from the testimonials of friends, Balrunin absolutely rejected Belinsky' s conservative apologias of the Russian autocracy, and herein lay the principal source of their final break which occurred at the Ume of Belinslty' s "reconciliatory" article on Borodino, 1. e., towards the end of 1839. Moreover, by early 1840, Bakunin and Herzen had become close
~

friends, 69 and held simUar philosophicaI outlOOltS, 70 which serves ta


,

underline the ideological distance which separated

~elinsky

and Balrunin

prior to the latter's departure from RUBsia in July 1840.

1 !1
1 ,

67MaIia, ibid.

"

6aSee Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique. pp. 45-50, who aIso add8, "la raison qui conduit Blinski et Bakounine interprter Hegel dans la plus pure ligne conservatrice, c'est l'absence chez ces auteurs de la catgorie de Nr.tion, pourtant si fondamentale dans la phUosophie hglienne" (p. 49~ Considering the primary importance which Bkuntn accorded to 1he principl {!f negation and contradiction, Planty-Bonjour's allegation proves totallyLUj).founded. Bee aIso Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, P..... 1%': Polonski1, Zhizn' Mikhaila Bakunina, pp. 43 ff.
69See, for e~ample, Bakunin, "Pis'mo Gertsenu," 20 aprelya 1840, in Sobranie sochinenii. tom 2, pp.. 421-422.
~

7p>id., p. 422.


304

It 'ns amidst the reverberations of these end.less ,disputes and


polemics that Bakunin left for St. Petersburg in July 1839, with a duaI mission to accomplish:' to obtain his sister's formai divorce papers, and to arrange a journalistic activity for 'himself. Upon arriving in the capital, he settled in with his cousin, Sergei Nikolaevich Murav'ev, 71 and immediately set about undertaking his twin projects. The bureaucratie atmosphere of the capital weighed ponderously upon 'Balrunin, grown
j

accustomed to the relative freedom of actj.vity and movement in Moscow.

He reC'ed his mood ln a letter bome: -

.-

. . . you cannot imagine what an oppressive impressim it [St. Petersburg] had upon me. 72 ' .' However, within several days, Bakunin had arranged to meet with
L. V. Duppelt, head of the Third Section, under whose jurisdiction of

internai affairs were inciuded family matters and divorce questions.. 73


In his letters to PriamuKhino Batrunin also reports having met A, A.

Kraevskii, the editor of the periodicaI, AImais of the Fatherland, with whom Bakunin hoped' to collaborate.
(Otechestvenny~

The Annals of the Fatherland

zapisKi), which had begun publication under the new

editorial direction of Kraevskii abd 1.1. Panaev in January 1839, was soon ta becorne the mos! progressive journal of the 1840's as weil as the leading organ of the. Russian "Westernizers,
,i

boasting such literary

and phUosophical talent as BelinsKy, Bakunin and Herzen. By September 1839,


, :t
/
' ,

'fakunin was still in St


Il

P~tersburg

(the trip
"' <

wa~,. origin~y intended to la~t one ~onth at the most), havin~. achieved
71Bakunin,
fi

~:

Pis'mo' s~strarn,

21 iyulya 1839,

~ ibid., p. 257.

.1 0
J

72 Thid., p. 256.

73Ibid ., p. 257.

f_'

, ,

305

no viSible success either >with the divorce papere or with his literary ".. ~ plans (it will be
f
~emembered

that Bakunin originally hopf:!d to finance


act~vityj

, 'his entire Berlin project by ineans of his literary

his encountet

with several prominent St. Petersburg publishers must have finally con"

vinced him of the UItrealistic nature .of' his expectations). Overcome by


a.- mood of de jection, Bakunin' s letters to his famUy had ceased,' causing

general

constern~.tion.

Furthermore, becoming impatient with his son's

utlsettletl existence, quixotic behaviour and n'loodiness, Aleksandr Mikhailovich wrote Michel a long, angry letter, taking him to task for his latest "scheme. ,,74 The most recent accusation levelled against Michel nvol\7ed his complicity in the Botkin-Aleksandra BalWnina rOPlance. These two had been engaged for sorne Ume in a romantic correspondence, which had just come to the attention of the eIder Ba.kunin;
onc~

""

again, sensing

Michel's revolutionary hand in this affair, AleKsandr Mikhai10vich accused his son of disturbing the family peace and of seditious
conspirac~ ~gainst

his sister's honour, since Botkin, the son of. a wealthy tea mer chant, was judged an unsuitable match for a member of the landed aristocracy. Michel was
\

urg~

to ceme finally to his senses, to assume a "normall1


fi (

lifestyle as , noblem.an and serf-owner,' 01' to hoose between the- two ' , careers open to his class:
ei~er

to involve himself in agriculture and

~acy.

- >
~

in the rwming of the estate, or to taxe up service in the government

Sensing his

f~eedom

and independence threatened once

again, Michells plans for study in Berlin aquired -an increasingly urgent tone in his correspondence. The issue, he declared" had become lia
1) ,

" ~uestion of life and, death" for ~. 74gee Kornilov, MOlodye,gody, PP,. 568-571.

,
,A!.

"'.-l . ~.-:"'."'--

306 1 feel (and this is not a deceptive feeling), that if 1 renoun~e my intention, i. e., if 1 renounc lmowledge, then 1 'shall lose all my power [ strengthJ , 1 shall lose the possibUity of being useful to others. 75 Adding a "Mercha1tt of Venice" twist to his argument, BakUnin continued, 1 have the right to sacrice my physical lHe, and wruld gladly sacrice it for my sisters and for my father, but 1 have not the riKht to sacrifice my spiritual lUe, my salvation. 16 He revealed that Berlin had now come to represent "an internaI and externaI .necessity, ,,77 and passionately declared that he expected nothing less than "a re,birth" and a "baptism of water and the spirit"78 from Ms journey to the font of Hegelian science. Bakunin' s stay in St. Petersburg aIso coincided with a transformation in his position, whereby his outlook acquired a. more "reaIist" colouring. Perhaps, this movement can be partially attributed to Balrunin's closer contact with the reaIities of Russian lHe surrounding him, and also perhaps to his own thwarted need for dynamic activity, as BelinsKy had shrewdly observed. Gr3I).ovsky, who had rehlrned to Russia in August 1839, after two years of study in Germany, aIso remarKed en the repressed energy of B3.lruDin' s temperament, on his desire for practicaI action, stagnated by the inertia of his sedentary and "intellectual" existence. He note to Stankevich:
In science [ i. e., phUosophy J, he May accomplish great

deeds, he bas dene much during your absence: a real


tom 2, p. 247.

75Bakunin, "Pis'mo Efremovu" " mai 1839

in Sobranie sochinenii. .

76" Pis'mo Stankevichu," 13 maya 1839, in ,ibid., p. 246.

..
l

77"Pis'mo sesttam, ~I dekabr' 1839, in ibid., p. 274. 78"fiS'mo sestram," 21 iyu1ya 1839, in ibid., pp. 256, 297, and "Pis'mo Stanltevichu," 11 fevralya 1840, in ibid., p. 297.

307 speculative talent, but in everyday life, he is useless. [Granovsky, ~o had become intimate friends with Belinsky, i8 here merely repeating the Iatter's opinionand very words-of MicheL] There are no subjects for hi m, -only objects. Amazing character! Perhaps without the se Daws, his personality would not be sa powerful. It is impossible to love him warmly, but he compels admiration, respect and interest from eacJt and everye. What ls to become of him? May God giant him to go ta Berlin soon, and from there, to a welldefined sphere of activity-otherwise, this perpetuaI interior work will destroy him. His clashes with himseU and with the world grow more violent every day.79 BaIrunin's insistence on the realization of action, on the need for a new awareness of the realities of Russian llie, seems to have involved more of a "temperamental ll crisis, than, as yet, a political one. His

letters dating from the second half of 1839 abound with references ta facing reality, ta the need for activity, ta the necessity of turning to face the concrete, existential aspects of life, and Dot merely dealing with them in a purely theoretical, abstract fashion: 80
Vou only KnOW one side of Iife, only the side of its ideality, but you do not ,knoW the side of its reaIity, of its immediate existence, and this side is necessary, withrut it the former is transformed into a sicldy illusion. 81
It is, of course, dficult ta ascertain exactly what provoked this new

practical, realist inflection ln Balrunin's thinlting. Could it be partially ascribed to his cfron4ttion with the numerous and petty difficulties of everyday Russian life, which Bakunin was experiencing at close range; 79Granovskii, "Pis'mo Stankevichu," in PerepiSka GranOVSkago, tom II, p. 383. 8 alam in, "Pis'mo sestram," seredina sentYabrya 1839, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 261-274.

Da

81Ibid., p. 271.

308

1
i

to an exasperation with the countless bureaucratie and financial problems

which constituted the very social fibre of Petersburg, which Balrunin had not experienced since his days at the Artillery school? For here was a brusque change from the sheltered, 'hermetic, and intimate existence of the Moscow circles, as weIl as from the charmed and fantasy-liKe atmosphere of Priamukhino. The answer probably lies in a combination of these factors, but, it is clear that his stay in the capital seems to have had a most sobering effect on Bakunin's mood. For, wh,en he
(

returned to Moscow, his changed countenance prompted the cynical GranovsKy to exc1aim:
r

To:lay 1 saw Michel Ba.lrunin, just returning from Petersburg. It immediately struck me tl1at he has become mee.ker and not as abrupt and as abstract, as before. 82 Another possible explanation fol' this phenomenon centres around the prosaic fact that Bakunin was rapidly approaching Middle age, and it was r,ther inevitable that the romantic idealism of his youth should be replaced by a growing maturity and realist approach to life. Incr~asingly disenchanted with the heady idealism of the Moscow intelligentsia, j and confronted with the hard realities of having to work for a living, BakUnin seemed plagued by the troubling and disconcerting realization that, approaching age thirty, he had accomplished precious little. 83 He adroits

ta being "fed up" with "the j;neral and empty discussions on the lofty,
wonderful and etemal spirit in general "84 and stresses his need for 82 Granovskii, "PiS'mo Stankevichu," in Perepiska Granovs!go, p. 3'11.

tom

n,

83Balrunin, "Pis'mo k roditelyam," 24 marta \840, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 393-405.

84"Pis'ma Aleksandre Beyer," 22 fevralya 1840, in ibid., p. 302.

309 Upractical, CQIlcrete knowledge. ,,85 The urge toward the active realization of his youthful ideal was becoming increasingly desperate, and it was high time, he claimed, for him to begn lia new, decisive period of active lUe. ,,86 And, in an extraordinarily revealing declaration on the superiority of concrete life over the grey, colourless world of abstract speculation, Balrunin proclmmeeJ;. Action-die That-this ls the single realization of lUe! 87 Although BalWnin's conception of positive action was still, as yet, vague, ill-defined, and lacKing in either revolutionary substance or direction, it nonetheless anticipates, in his celebration of the dynamic exhilaration of concrete, rational action, the radical BaKunin of the 1840's. Balrunin's immanent transition to Left Hegelianism and to a philosophy of praxis is c1early discernible. Pushed towafds this impulse to action by external circumstance, the theoretical transition to a philosophy of praxis and action, based
CIl

a re-evaluation of the Hegelian system, would follow

short/, . For the Ume being, the urge 10


temperamental liberation:

Involved a persona!,

1 thirst for a well-defined and real external activity, as a ~eans of saIvation, as the single outlet from the disagreeable and oppressive indetermination of my present situation. 88
1

Balrunin' s disposition underwent such a change during this Ume, that a temporary reconcUiation even With the incensed BelinsKy was
ach~eved.

8611Pis'mo sestram," seredina sentyabrya 1839, in ibid., pp. 263; and "Pis'mo sestram," deltabr' 1839, in ibid., p. 276.
, ~
F ,

, . 87"Pis'mo sestram," seredina sentyabrya 1839, . in ibid., p. ~62; my emphasis. 88 n Pis'mo le roditelyam,1I 24 marta 1840, in ibid., p. 394.

1 ----

310
In a lette,r to BoUtin of November 22, 1839, ftom St. Petersburg,

.J

Belinsky wrote:
1 saw Michelon the third day of my arrival. From his !irst l'lords, 1 noticed . . . that he has grown much l'liser and has become a man, . .. In general, Piter [St, Petersburg] is a gloriously salutary place and it has very IIIlCh improved Michel. 1 originally intended to see Michel as a good acquaintance, but l'le parted as friends and as soul-brothers, .. , Here now is a man in the full sense of the word, 89

BelinsKy reported with amazement that even Michel's "mannerisms had changed-gone were the absurd
jOlS

'and aIfected compliments; his pipe

did not fall from his hands" 90 (a habit which apparently particularly irritated Belinsky). Finally, in one of his more generous and candid

evaluations of Balrunin, BelinsKy made the following statement: . , . so much depth, such an instinct for the truth, such a powerful movement of spirit in that deuce 1 1 did not spend that much Ume With him in Piter e., St. Petersburg], but 1 learned many new things from him, much was explained to me, ... Here is one man, being' With whom means, -for me, -to taKe a huge step forward in thought-a diabo~ical capacity to teach! Yes, 1 once again made the acquaintance of Michel, and with all my ,heart, as a friend and as a brother, . , ,91

ri.

Unfortunately, the truce was not long-lived; by early 1840, hostllities l'lere once again resumed, but BelinsKy had, at least temporarUy, been captivated by Baltunin's new realist orientation, . The philosophico-theoretical manifestati of this new direction in Balrunin's thought was expressed in his last
8~elinsldi, "Pis'mo
k
Il

Russian Hegelian" works,

Botldnu,

Il

in Izbrannye pis'ma, tom 1,

p. 268.

9~id., p. 269.

(.

91Ibid ., p. 271 .

..._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _--"''''--------- -4

(
)
of the year 1839, and published in Kraevskii's Notes of the Fatherland in 1840. 92 Divided into two separate parts, and ant,tcipating two others which were, in written in the
cours~

311

an

probability, never fini shed,

"On PhUosophy" was begun in Priamukhino in early 1839, and then com-

pleted during Balrunin's stay in St. Petersburg. Although Part


,

aIso cornpleted weIl before Ba.lrunin's departure from Russia in July 1840, and intended for publication in the sarne year, it ls clear from the dates inscribed on his draft versions that 'Balrunin had sketched-if not completed-the second half of his article also in 1839. It is evident that Balrunin had finished his . final draft of Part 1 of "On Philosophy" by the end of 1839, as witnessed by Granovsky' s letter of December 10, 1839, ta StanKevich, in which he related having read-and been impressed withBaKunin's latest article: Michel has written a very intelligent article for the Notes of the Fatherland. 1 read the manuscript. It is intelligent, competent and concise. 93
"On Philosophy," ranks among the most important philosophical

n was

worKS to emerge in Russia in the 1840's. It constitutes one

o~

BakUnin's

most lengthy and significant theoretical writings, which contributed notably to the development of the philosophical sciences, specifically, of objective idealism, in Russia. This worK effectively marks Batrunin' s ideological
~

transition from philosophy to praxis; by the end of Part


,

n, the trans-

formation has clearly been aeco,mpshed, ,and oversteps the parameters of pure metaphysics in order to merge with concrete life and acti~. , Moreover, the conclusion of Part II symbolically coincided with Bakunin's

-92 part I was published in Book 4 of the Otechestvennye zapisld,


~etersburg.

tom IX, part D, pp. 51-78, March 14, 1840, St. tom

n,

93Grano~SKii,
p. 376.

"Pis'mo Stankevichu," in Perepiska Granovskago,

" - .... -:~!""~

~-~R'

312

departure from Russia to engage in a new field of practical-indeed revolutionary-activity. "On Ph1losophy" can be seen to represent BaltUnin' s own biographical "phenomenological progressioo," so to speaK, as it systematically traces liis development within the Hegelian frameworlt, analyzing a1l the stages traversed, to arrive finally at the state of rational self-consciousness, which ultimately transcends lmowledge in order to be superseded by practical, real, life. According to Hegel,
)

reason represented the apex of human conscio,,!sness and liberation; Ba.kWlin


nOW

tOOk this doctrine one step further, and demandd rational

action, based on the principle of rational becoming. This bold new use of the Hegelian dialectic as the basis for change proved one of the truly innovative elements and strong-points of "On Philosophy"; in this worlt, Ba.kWlin added a vitalJlew dimension to Hegelian ph11osophy by approaching Hegelianism in terms of critical method and as a tool for social change. From the onset, BakUnin centered his discussion of philosophy around the concepts of utility and~. Phllosophical" Knowledge is seen as giving way to the liberation of mankind from the socially-ravaging 111s of alienation, and hence, as permitting, once again, the "reconclliation of man with reality," the ultimate goal of philosophy. 94 Thus, Hegelian phUosophy, as the science of sciences, retums man from the illusory and sickly realms of "fantasies" and abstraction and back to the concrete world of reality and society.
In the present article, BakWlin goes a step further in situating

'1,

} ,
,
1

the problem of

ali~ation

more in a 'national context than he did in "The


J

94See "O fUosofii" - (stat'ya pervaya) in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 317; Appendix m, para. 1.

",,*,,,I

.. -

<. -


313

Preface ta Hegel's Gymnasium Letres," where the discussion was conducted more on -a universal le~~1.
_ l'

non

Philosophy" deals With more

concrete, socio-political issues, -i. e., Russian society, -and thts orientation, along with the, notion of the utility of Knowledge, indicates a move in an increasingly and insistently practieal direction. 95 Once again, Bakunin's approach i8 basically gnoseological. The enemy of elightenment, and therefore, of liberation, -sinee the two
o

concepts are synonymous in BalWJlin~s mind-is ignorance,96 and, on a higher 1evel , scepticism, since it questions the very reliability of philosophie al Knowledge. He firmly repudiates the view of philosophy as a body of abstract, hermetic, lmowledge, having no relevanee to real, eoncrete lUe. Philosophy, as truth, must become vitally linlted to the practical existen'e of man; it must be infused with a more pragmatic, utilitarian, dimension. Balrunin then poses the three questioos which he wUI attempt to answer in his essay [Parts 1 and n]:, 1) what is philosophy? 2) is philosophy useful? and 3) is philosophy possible?

The fitst criterion of phUosophical lmowledge, according to Ba.lrunin, is that if be accessible to all men. To this effect, he criticizes the Russian
Schellingian~

.'

and Liubomudry for being basically anti -populist

and elitist in their approach. 97 The Ideal he sets up lB, once agam, classical Greece, where there existed a continuity or a unity between worldly !'lsdom and philosophical wlsdom-where philosophy was considered pOlitic,ally and socially uBeful and the populace could commune in this'

.
~,

95"0 filosofii," pp. 317-318; Appendix

m,

para. 2.

96As per "Moi zapiski" and "Gymnasium Lectures. It 97"0 filosofli," p. 318; Appendix III, para. 4.

tC>

1 _._-_
.
\

....

314

general wisdom. But in the mcxtern atate, BakUnin points out, these t"o areas have become separated, resulting in the isolation of the phtlosophical sciences in the hands of a few "specialists." Thus, the question of whether knowledge can be useful and put into practice in the modern
~ te~ms

becomes the locus of interest. The separation ia articulated in of the divorce of the philosopher from his practical, political

vocation; in the modern state, Batrunin deplores, the intellectuals are nqt the politicians,98 and, in a sarcastic aSide, poltes fun at the Russian

" bureaucracy as being the absolute antithesis of the philosophie ideal. 99


Bakunin continues his analysis of talse philosophical systems and doctrines and "pseudo-sciences" to finally arrive at the conclusion that the highest goal of philosophy consists in t,pe union of theoretical lmowledge with practical lUe: The object of philosophy is not the abstract finite, just as it Is not the non-abstract infinite, but rather, the concrete, indissoluble unity of the one and of the other: the real truth and true reaIity.100
On the basis of Hegel 's doctrine of the concrete universal, BakUnin has

t
1

emphasized that the object of phil080phy 18 nothing else than Reality, and, using a similar structure as that of "the real la the rational, and the rational Is the real, Il Bakunin has postulated the -maxlm that reality Is truth and that truth is reality. Hence, philosophy must necessarUy

encompass the fmite in Us scope-it must ground itself in nature, and 98Compare with Plato'slThe Republic, and with Marx's Introduction, Contributl ta a CritiQ.le of Hegel' Iii Philosophy of Right, 1844, where he voices the same argument, and, defines the triumph of the proletar-iat as the realization of phUosophy. In Marx-Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York, 1975), p. 187. 99"0 fUosofii~ " p. 318; Appendix nI, para, 4., 100110 fijosofU,
Il

pp. 319-320; Appendix ID, para 7.

315 in political and social existence, and yet transcend the limitations of

(~

(, their finitude. Having established the object of philosophical knowledge, Bakunin then proceeds to distinguish contingent knowledge from necessary 'know-

le~e, 101 and ultimately announces that true cognition ls "the necessary
truJh. 1I102 True knowledge is that
t"j ~

'"

~hiCh

~--..\/--'-

is

~'ssary.

ab solute, or Real;

"

and, as expressed by Hegel in the Philosophy of History. true philosophlcal Knowledge is an understanding of the real figure that the absolute must assume, and which are the true manifestations of the real. Thus,
it is the mslt of philosophy to recognize which manestat ions of the

absolute.. are rational and which are contingent; and, it must recognize the necessary in the contingent, and grasp the concept in the state of historical change and becoming in order to arrive at a rational comprehension of the real in its movement. Implicit in Balrunin 1 s presentation

of the truth as continuously changing, is contained the notion that the social forms of its . manestation are in a constant state of flux and be~

coming. With change, therefore,' elevated ta a primary force in the historical process, the ooly absolute left standing, in this flurry of dialectical activity, i8 the reason of man, which can see these forms for what they really are-i. e., temporary and 'relative moments of the ever-changing idea. Having thus shawn' that the rational is necessary, Bakunin stresses that there can be no Knowledge of the contingent, strictly spealdng. In examining the notion of change and the idea of progress in historical development, Balrunin observes:

(-1

101 110 fUosofil, "_ p. 320 Appendix , 102"0 filosofii,


Il

p. 321 Appndix ,

m, m,

para. 8. para. 9.

\
\

316

. . . if universal history is, in effect, nothing more than a senseless succession of accidents, then it cannot be of inter est to man, it cannot be an object of his knowledge, and it cannot be useful to him. . .. Only that which has some meaning in itself or sorne coherence can interest man and he useful to him; but if this link Is contingent, then ail human knowledge is reduced to the dead work of meJ!lory, the duty of which is contained only in the .ereservation of the accidentai existence of contingent, singu1ar facts. 103

The germs of a politica1.,or ideological critique are contained in this statement; for given the primacy of change and the progressive evolution of the essential reality, BakUnin's refere,e ta IImemory" entails a pOIitically-conservative position: the work of memory involves a merely repetitive, static, non-progressive cycle, whereby
~e

past is constantly

repeated without the possibility of any significant alteration or advance. Memory simply puts into effect that which it has done before. And those who see only accidents or the contingent in history, Bakunin implies, represent the conservative element of society; these people can not see progress or understand dialectical change in history. The basis for Bakunin t s discussion is provided by Hegel' s Philospphy of History, in which the contingent and the necessary aspects of history are disttnguished; there are both irrational facts and rational facts. The memory, Bakunin states, addresses itself exclusively to those which axist accidentally and repetitively; its work is therefore unidimensional. The conservative elements maintain certain structures which have no justificati other than their surface "extertority" and previous existence. These "accidentai, singular facts" have no basis in the Idea or in Reality; if they axist however, it is ooly because they are maintained by their, external linkS with other lacts (which we tOOay might term "vested interest"), rather 103 110 fUosofii,
li

p. 321; Appendix

m,

para. 9.

. ,

"\
.
.

'

.........

__ "",

~~

___ ..

".... "'-'O ....

. . . , ......... " ' , ...

317
than by any internaI, necessary logic. The intellectuaI, claims Bakunin, must malte a critique of this phenomenon of preservation, through a radical and progressive "negation of contingency. ,,104 Hence, the vocation of the scholar lies in finding the internai link within' faJs isolated

in

exteriority, as well as in negating the contingent and accidentai in tCm: He must flnd ln the contingent political configurations those aspects which are rational and necessary, and thus giv-e the direction for change by understandlng the "self-activity of the spirit," 1. e., finding the embodiment of Reason in reality. In advocating the ulity of speculative
,
~

Knowledge Md political wisdom; Bakunin sets up a .critical taSlt for the philosopher. It is made clear in this section, that Ba.KUnin is steadily moving towards the equation of reason with social change; and the dynamic "negation of contingency" cornes to oppose the statlc work of memory and "preservation." At this point, the question arises as to whether Bakunin had read August von Cieszkowski's Prolegomena zur Historiosophie, published in Berlin in 1838. The question ls a .provocative one, ,aince CiesZkowski
~as

the first post-Hegelian thinker to re-evaluate the Hegelian concept of

history (on which BakUnin's thesis, as we have seen, rl1es heavily), and because a similar problematic as BakWlln' a forms the basls of Cleszkowski' s study. ,Balruninls philosophy of action, es,peclally as developed in tlOn
1

PhUosophy," Part
,
,

n,
)

displays Many elements in common with CieszKow-

ski's Prolegomena zur Historiosophie; in both workS the poetulate to transform the practical world actively into a realization of rational theory ls clearly articulated. We 104"0 filosofii,
ii
beli~ve,

,
,

1 (,
~'

.'

that Cfeszkowski's work did in fact

p. 321; Appendix ID, para. 9.

318 exert an influence on Balrunin's thought in the course of the year immediately prlor ta his departure for Berlin. It will thus be necessary ta examine briefly the principal
themes~of

the Prolegomena in order to

assess the extent and effect of Cieszkowsld's philosophy of praxis on Ba.kUnin's thought, or, in any case, to underline the simUarity of their intellectual evolution in their parallel transformation of Hegelian philosophy into a vital instrument of social and political change. Although 'Ci88ZkOWski's name is not mentioned in any of Balrunin's surviving letters of this period, several of his contemporaries malte reference to this worl(, and
,

'

given the exchange and interpenetration of ideas that prevailed in the 'Moscow intelligentsia, it is quite reasonable ta assume that Balrunin was

familiar with the Prolegomena (or at least with its

ma~

arguments).

The reading lists of Herzen, Stankevich, GranovsKy, Ogarv and BakUnin bear a striking similarity during the years 1836-1840, and we have evidence of the fact that as soon as a phil os oph i cal work even remotely concerning Hegel was introduced into the Moscow circles, it was immediately circulated and avidly read by all the members of the Inte111gen~sia.
"

Cieszkowski' s book had become the rallying point for the nascent

Young Hegelian movement in Berlin, and soon achieved notoriety ln view of this. It was widely discussed and lengthily reviewed ln th~ Hallische . ~ 1n5 Jahrbcher. me 1eft Hegelian journal wit~ w~ich, as we noted earller, Balrunin was familiar and frequently read. 106 Gran ov SKy , who returned 105Cieszkowski's Prolegomena received a detaUed summary by J. Frauenstadt. in nos. 60-61 of the Hallische Jahrbcher (March 11-12, 1839); Botkin and Belinsky were both in possession of these issues as of July 1839 (see Belinsky, Izbrannye pis'ma). Since.BO~in frequ~ntly sent Ba.kUnin copies of ~e Hallische Jahrbcher. ft is fair ta assume that BakUnin ha,? read this important issue; in any case, the influence of Cieszltowslti' s Jhought on Bakunin ls evident. 106David Mc Lellan, The Young Hegeiians and 'Karl Marx (London, 1969), p. 11.
4

l ,

l'

3-19 ta RUBsia from Berlin in August 1839, eertainly would have spread the word about the important and radical new Hegeli@ll thillker who was causing such a stir in Germany.
0

,\..

Furthermore, Herzen, who had become a

close friend of oBa!l\min'sJ reported having diBcovered the work in July 1839, 107 and OgarAv following faithfu1ly in his footsteps, as ever, notes ( having read the work shortIy thereafter. In addition~ Stankevich wrote ta, Bakunin from Rome in early 1840 108 and urged him to read Feuerbach and Cieszkowski, if he had not already done so: This passage is a clear statement of Stankevich's rapprochement with the Left Hegelian movement, as well as of his endorsement of a new, dynamic, philosophy of action, which so Many historians and commentatoras tnd to deny in his intellectual evolution. 109
r_

science disappears. But from the idea it i8 possible to b1fild life, 1. e., the ide a necessarily becomes an act. it )mows its act and js satisfied by it. There is a ,pamp1,et by Cieszkowski, Prolegomena zur Historiosophie; for him there are three periods in history; Kun st, , Wissen8chaft (we are now at the end of this era), and.!h!! (action). The division ls not' accurate, because ft ls not based on the idea of history, but the la st thougbt, that science must cross over into action, fuse into it, is correct. This- general need ls now obvious: to link togethe:r more closely these isolated categories with the lffe of the heart, . to fuse philosophy . . . [missing fragment of MS] .'. . into \
l,
l ,

107Malia, AlexMder Herzen, p. 197; WaliCki, "Hegel, Feuerbach and the Russian Philosophical Left, ~ in Annali, p. "(18.
o

108Stankevich, "Pls'mo BakUninu,", 19/7 maya 1840, ln PerepisKa ego i biograflya, pp. 672-673. . S tankevich and His Moscow Circle; . Chizhevski, Gegel' v Rossit. Koyr, La pense philosophique en a,ussie; exceptions to this interpretation are Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philo~f&higu~ and Annenkov, Perepiska Stankevicha. l,, 1
In particular, see Brown,

~ ,

..

109

320

feeling, s blood, ib 'legitimate imprudent, the genius of feelings been 'Ph


#,

that it were not in the head, but in the e body, in trte entire being. 1 lUte this equirement: to satisfy it gradually i8 1 ls possible to grant it presently, sinee of Hegel finally freed the representations and thought, Before him, -it would have tasterei.' 110

CieszKowsld was the first of Hegel's disciples to articulate the for a decisive transition from speculative theory ta practical action.

nee~)

Founding his analysis on Hegel's philosophy of history, he attempted to apply the postulates of the Hegelian method, hitherto confined to an analysis-and explicatiOn-of the historical past, to a greater sphere and wilfully shape the futtIre course of manKind, through the exercise of human actiat, He reproached Hegel 's system with having failed ta put into effect the implicatioos of its dialectical method (a standard argument of the Young Hegelians), and with being limited to a mere lmowlecige of the laws of historical development. Hegel, according to CieszKowsKi, shirked from the practicaJ.. implications of his philosophy of history. Although the latter represented the culmination of speculatile reasOll,
,

speculative progress, this "cceptual" progress in history still remained ta be realized in fact: Manldnd has indeed conceptually pereeived the nec~esty , and regulation of thiS progress, from a speculative int of view, but it has not yet actually realized it, ac ord-, ing ta its concept, through the whole content of history ,Ill Cieszkowsld, in effect, criticizes Hegel for having separated the "method"
<

from the "reality, ,, 112e>-and for not having progressed, in his own system, 110Stankevich, "Pis'mo k Balruninu," in PerepisKa ego i biografiya, pp. 672-673.
6

1 CI i
J

111August von Cieszkowski, Prolegomena zur J;l1.storiosophie f (Berlin, 1838), p. 2. 112Ib1 ., p. 3 'd

"

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ - ---:..

Lr:::--_-~-.

---

~_k_

'f'-:

..

~.>;r4~

321 from the methodic and formaI to the substantial" and organic. 11113

Il

If

Tbe problem, as indicated in the

Prolegomen~

i8 one of disproportion,

in that bistory (as per Hegel) does not show the pure rationality of the

Logic, 61" does not "manifest" or "realize" it. 114 Not only must history manifest the laws of the logic, says Cieszkowski, but .indeed, it is the test of all formai laws: 115 . . . either the laws of the dialectic are universal and irrefutable, and they ought ta find their real manif estation in history; or they are weaK, partial or insufficient, and then they must not manifest themsel ves in other spheres of Knowledge, their deductions mst lack all necessity. But the laws carry in themselves the criterion of their necessity; bence, history, this touchstone of all speculation, must reveaI these laws to us sub specie aeternitatis in the S}>here of actions. 116 Hegel's greatest flaw, in CieszkOwski's eyes, was that "he was not able to realize all the consequences of his standpoint," 117 in other words, that he failed to fully and systematicaHy apply his revolutionary dialectical
{I/f

spec~atiar.,

the support of the

method to the pbenomenon of history.

This, according to CieszkOwsld,

remains the greatest and most pressing task of philosophy, and of 113Ibid .

11~his argument resembles Hegel's own critique of Kant and Fichte, the philosophy of the "Sollen" (what ought to be, but never is); .. except it is the reverse here: what is, ls just short of what rugltt ta be. If 80, then one must perhaps give histQry a little "push," to erase the disproporti, to bring it up to the "pure" level of the demands of the dialectic. This would be revolutionary praxis in {avour of, and bebalf of, pure thought. McLellan aIso points out that Cieszkowski, lilte the Yoong Hegelians, i8 in Many ways closer to Fichte than to Hegel (The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, p. 10.
115ciesZkc)wski,~, Prolegomena, p. &.
11~id.
\

117Ibid ., p. 7.

322

"historiosophy." This task falls to the future; for the historlcal


of
~'tota1ity"

conc~)
J

must necessarily include the future in its scope-:-as this

knowability of the future is paramount to any notion of human pr~ss.118 And il reason must henceforth concem itself with ,"the essence

0.;1 the

future,"119 and since the absoiute must appear and must be realized in history, then, a philosophy of action which operates in accordance with that ouUme of the future, finds \ts perfect justication in action as the practical realization of the absolute. Thus, it was no longer sufficient to comprehend the laws of the past (liKe Hegel); it was now imperative to use this knowledge in order to consciously direct the course of the future. Koyr summarizes CieszkowsKi' s intent: . . . l'avenir est le domaine de l'action, et l 'historiosophie nous en donne le programm~:. . . il consiste raliser par l'action consciente et libre de l'humanit la synthse, conue dj-mais seulement conue-par la philosophie, par la pense, par la raison. . . . L'humanit a atteint sa vritable conscience de soi. Aussi doit-elle dsormais, consciemment et conformment l'ide, accomplir ses propres actions. 120 Thus, theory was no longer considered as an end in itself, but rather, as a preliminary stage to
~onal

praxis; hence for th, Cieszkowsld

maintained, man must apply thls phUosophical knowledge in exercising his conscious will to direct the course of events. Will represented 'the synthesis of theory and action, an application of praxis.

. r

Cieszkowsld divided history into three great pe~iods (which generally follow the oatline of Illgel's PhUosophY of History): 1) the age of 1181bid., pp. 8-9. (l19n,id.,

~.

10.

12~oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, iP. 190.

323 intuitive feeling (antiquity); '2) the age of theoretical, cooscioos thought (the ,Christian Germanie world); and 3) the age of the "actual-practical," of the Will. 121 This third moment Is that of the future, which
,
Il

grasps

the whole sphere of action, grasps facts and their meaning, theory and praxis, the concept and its reality; it gives riss to the reaJ.izers of history. "122 Therefore, titis ,third age,
11

;ked and

free" constitutes the

0 bjective

realization of a subjectively lmown teleology,,;123 thu~, will,

and action constitute CieszkowsKi' s response to the "disproportion" in

Hegel' s phil osophy of hi story , and are valued as superior to rational speculation and theoretical knowledge. CieSZKowski' s emphasis on praetical action (which he calls
11

post-

theoretical praxis,'? 124 based on a rational comprehension of the world;


on the will as the ultimate realization of history; as well as his elucidation of the concept of praxis as the practical application of philosophical

knowledge, marks a dramatic and revolutionary turning-point in the


"

history of p,?st-Hegelian thought. 125


,1

Thus, the third moment involves the synthesis of the theoretical and the practical: The third determination belongs to the future, and it will be the objective, actual realization of the truth 12lcieszkowsld, Prolegomena, pp. 15-16; 24.

~122u,id.,
12=ibid.

p. 16.

12-L -n>id., p. 19. 125Compare with Marx's later Theses on Feuerbach, IItpe philosophers have only interpreted the world ... ," written Bev~ years after the Pro1egomen~ i. e., in 1845.

324 which ls lmown; and that lB just the GoQ9, 1. e., the practlcal which contains the theoretical withm itse1f.126 The will-the synthesis of thought and action, became, in CieszKowsld's hands, the supreme realization of phUosophical lmowledge; praxis represented the culmination of speculative, thought \ as applied to the h1storical development.
Will was:
f

It ls thought actualized. 127 The great new taSl( of the

To realize the ide a of beauty and truth in practical lUe, in the lmown world of objectivity; to grasp an the onesided and partial elements of mankind organically and to bring them to a living co-operation; finally, to actualize the Idea of the absolute good and the absolute teleology in our world. 128 J. Therefore, as we have seen, CieSZl>WSki's ritique of Hegel lies basically in the fact that the Hegelian system of categories remained

.
incomplete, because it lacked concrete content in the whole of htstory and because it therefore presented only a logic of the surface; he thus accuses Hegel of faUing to carry through, in the realm of history, his own princlples, since history constitutes, for CieszKowsk, the substance and the exemplification of the Logic. 129 Seen in thi~ght, the Prolegomena
'-

establishes a revindication of the hlstorical; only the historical, claims Cieszkowskl, Is the real, since all existence and thought ultimately converges in the historical. 130 The goal of his work was to re-mstore the
,

active attitude in phUosophy, Ilthe active seeking of the logical. in world 126CieSZKowsld, Prolegomena, p. 17. 127Ibid ., p. 18.

12~ld., PP. 29-30.


129n>id., pp. 22-23. 130Ibid ., p. 49.

325 history, ,,131 in contradlstinction to Hegel, in whom "we reco~ize only a speculative finding of it. "132 The worlt of the intellectual involvednothing less than the transformation of the rational Idea
into.~

act.

The realizatiim of the system.ii. e., Hegel's) 18 now the taSlt of active thinkers. l~ Like Hegel, and indeed, Balrunin, Cleszkowskl's principal concern
) revolved around the Idea of reconcUiatloo. 134 Thbuters of boUt prevlous

great historical epochs attempted to attain this state through divergent methods: the. classical world sO'Jght for a JlreconcUiation through art, " through the creation of an aesthetic culture 135 which rested upon the
~ot1ons of Immediate and external betng. From the immediacy of antiquity,

~e

historical dialectic brought man to the "phUosophical culture, ,,136 the

"standpotnt of the present, Ir 137 whose culmination ls seen to be Hegel' s system of thought. This" culture of the intellect" is the modern Christian world, a world mediated by thought, reflection and introspection, giving rise t 0 a phUosophy of consciousnesa, of rationality, of the phUosophical intellect, whose goal Is to ls the realm of theory.
knOW,

to understand, and to comprehend. This

In terms of Hegel t s phenomenologtcal development

of consciousness, this progression taltes the natura! cOIlsciousness up to the level of self-coDsciousness or to absolute Knowledge. 131Ibid . , p. 51. 132lb1d .
"

And thus, the

133Ib1d . , p .. 74. 134n,id. , see Chapter 135rbid

m.

pp. 86-87. p. 87.

1371b1d . , p. 91.

326 culminating point of the present moment is phUosop!!I or Knowledge: Consciousness Is in fact the alpha and omega in Hegeli. from it he derives the whole system 'of phUosophy, towards it he leads, as we see, the whole process of world history. 138 But CieszkowslCi argues the insufficien~ of this conclusion:

Consciousness, ft is true, occupies a specifie place in the true system of philosophy; but the universe does not end with it. What lies behind 1t is unconscious, i. e" fact; but what lies ahead of it must develop itself consciously, and that is action. 139 . CieazKowsKi's critique; Hegel Is radical; and although he still coosidered himself a Hegel1an
thin~er,

the prevalence of action over thought, of

praxis over the ory, places him definitely beyond the limita of Heglian thought, as such. The Hegel1an identlty of beinK and thought is revealed as purely one-sided, as only a theoretical identity; it Is "the thinldng of the identity of being and thinlCing." 140 In accordance with CieSZKowsld's claim that Hegel is the culminating point of the epoch of thought, the basic error of the Hegelian system is seen to lie in an over-emphasls on the rational intellect. Cieszkowski's "third moment" is intended to correct the imbalance so as to allow for the true and equiUbrated identity of being and thOUght. Ciszkow8ki's critique of Hegelianism as mere "thought" and of
self-consc~ousness

as "theory," contains an important

diatribe against phUosophy for it8 own 88..\\e, 141 an argument which ls aIso forcefully stated in Bakunin' 8 "On PhitosOPhy." 13Bn>id. , p. 96. 139n,id., p. 97. 1401bid . , p. 1~4. 1411bid. , pp. 102-104. Hence, phUosophy

1-

c
327

Is found to yield "merely an Ideallstic ldentity, ,,142 a statement whtch bears a strUdng slmUarlty to Marx's objection to Hegel;143 phllosophy Is only one type, clalms CieszKQ.wsld, but not the highest expression of thls Identlty. ClesZKowsld' 8 principal diagnosls of the lis of modern culture, simllar to Bafnin 1 s, Is that of an oV,er-intellectualized, hyper-reGecttve society, ha~st the totality of Immediate experience, He believed the world to be etanVng at a major transition point ln hlstory, on the eve of a new age, ln ~Ich the harmonie reconcUiatlon of man with reality wO'Jld be effectuated, not through art or thought, but through rational action, as the true Identity of belng and thought. However, it i8 important to bear in mind the role of phllosophy ln thls new age: 144 " there will stUI be a great need for
the~retical

"

Knowledge, ft 15 malntained,

but the goal and expression of an enUre culture will no longer be reduced to pure knowledge. Thought will "partially retreat, "145 and will serve as a
~ans~

or as a tool for action; - however, ft would no longer be merely

an end in itself. Later, CleszkowsKi sp"eaKS of ft as belng "appl1ed," ft muet lipase beyond ftself" 146_1. e., it must form the fOWldation for rational action. C1eszkowskl announce8 the dlalectical formation of the third moment,

that of the future, as that in whlch "tIlls Identity becomes even higher,
142Ibld ., p. 103. 143ln the Economie and Philosophie Manuscrlpts. 144CleSZkowsld, Prolegomena, pp.. 100-101.
1

j-

145Ib1d ., p. 101. 146 Ibid.

......

1 ,

f<

t,

Cf

~ ...

--.--~

----~-

, - - - .....- " ' " ' . . .

328
more perfect and more concrete" 147 and which contains "withtn UseIt
1:lt9 different states of Us development." 148 This thlrd level aIso had
"

as Us mission nothing Iess than the resolution of the contradiction between the external
Immedl~cy

of aesthetic expression and

tht internal,

mediated refiection of thought (the 'first and second moments of worldhistory). 149 The third moment, tl}e "harmonious identification, "150 the resolution of the contradiction between art and ph 11 a sophy, la !irst introduced by CieszKowsld in terms of "social in Part
l1fe~'

(as Bakunin would do

n of

"On PhUosophy"): by a return of the seco!ld moment into

the first. Thus, thought returns tO; betng, or, gives Uself a new existence, a "new figure"; the need for thought to realize itself, and ta give itself a new content is thereby emphasized: To resolve this contradiction and at th~ same time ta fiU this abyss, is the vocation of the highest, practtcal, social life, whlch wUl animate anew bath the art which has declined and the phijosophy which, in a certain respect, ~as grown rigid. 151

The condition for this "non-alienating" 152 reconciliation ~d realization of phllosophy ts actioo, the only means by which thought must "retum ta 147Ib1d ., p. 106. 14Bn,id. 149n,id., p. 108., The implications here are tempting: .o..'le could speculate that the now culture must form both the artist and the philosopher. It is also interesting that art plays such an important role in CieszKOwski's world .. view, in view of the fact that Marx's conception of non-alienated labour ("action") Is largely an artistlc and creative one1. e., man the attist, aIso Qecause Bakunin' s vision of emancipatim was largely expressed in aesthetfc terms, as per his later works.

"

150Clesz~owSld, Prolegomena. p. 111.


\,

Cl

151Ibid ., p. 110.

15~id., p. 111.

1_

329

being," while remainlng rational consciousness: This being which ls brought about anew (or ls newly produced) will not b the' first, passive and merely given being, but rather the being which is produced, engendered with consciousness; this is the absolute deed [das ThunJ.153 The tlgroundtl154 or basis for this new moment ln world-history is a totality within whlch the two previous moments can find their place: The absolutely practical, social action and lite in the , state will from now on be that which is determinant, \ while art and phllosophy, which untll now had been taken as the hiW1est identities, will be lowered to the significance of abstract prethises of lite in the state. Thus being and thinKing must go to their ground [hence the l1ttle pun in German: ~ Grunde gehen-"to go to the ground," which means both to be destroyed and to return to one's foundation] in acting (art 'and philosophy in social life)-in order to emerge and blossom anew there, in accordance with thelr final vocation. 155 The vehicle which would introduce the age of act10n is, tor CieszKowsld, "the absolute will." The Fichtean intonation of this concept ia unmis . takaole. This stage of the will Is referred to as "the new direction which the spirit has now to taKe, and where philosophy, abandoning Us most appropriate standpoint, passes out beyond itself into a domain that Is
~~

forelgn to it, yet which conditions its further development, i. e., '. into the absolutely practical domain of the will. ,,156
It is clear then, that

philosophy is not to be merely discarded, but must relinqulsh what 18 most natural to it (that ls, truth and Imowledge, for Us own sake, theory)
and enter into a region which is "foreign" to ft (1. e., action); phUosophy

153lbld. 154lbid . , p. 112. 155rbid.

156rbld, , p. 115.

"

is thus to be put to practical use or "applied."

330 And, albeit phUosophy' s

ideological supremacy would necessarUy decline, what remained of paraMount importance, acordmg to Cieszkowsld' s world-historical vision, was to bring about the development of "the lUe of the spirit, usinee phUosophy itself was just a form that the spirit gave itself temporarily, , a stage within Us historical expression. Therefore, according to the historie al plan of the Prolegomena,the highest level of man's development is activlty. 157 The primary attribute, the highest expression and essence of spirit was declaFed to be human actiQ!!.1 58 . . . spirit ls self-action, that ls, free activity as such, which ls the Most concrete evolution of the spirit. This auto!lomy of self-action ls th.e hlghest quality that can be predicated of the spirit. 159
It Is no longer through thought, but through action, that man fully reallzes

his true essence, and accompllshes the final synthesis of his ulterior stages o! evolution. Action "reproduces consciousness practically and out of itself and ... translates thinKing into betng.' Il 160 Thus, action or Eraxls, a superior stage of development, which has already assimUated theory (and so now contains it within itself), ls the truly concrete and
Cl

real aetualizaUon of the idea.

For theory i8

)
1

. . . merely an integral moment of wilUng: for thinking which again becomes belng Is tirst wUl and action,16r " 157Compare Cieszkowski's triad of Art/PhUosophy/Action with Hegel' Absolute Spirit: Art/Rellgion/PhUospphy. 158Cieszkowsld, Prolegomena, p. 121.
\

159n,ld. , p. 117. 16Orbid. , p.


118,~

i
t

.,

'-'>

t Cl

161Ibld. , pp. 119-120.

f----

~---------:-~

- --

331
which goes beyond the sensible immediacy of natural existence. It
(~~

.-

transcends th& "inward'1 and cerebral structure of phUosophy, unlfying the se two moments in 'a "harmonious synthesis" and "reC'McUiation of the real and the Ideal" 162 through -the intermediary of the

win.

The practical phlloaophy, or more precisely, the J?hUosophy of practi!,-lta most concrete influence on lite and social relations, the development of lruth ln concrete activity-this la the future destiny of phllosophy as a whole. 163 With the se words, a new era in the history of philosophy has been iniUated. The superiority of action over philosophical thought ia categorically stated; 1t was no longer enough for consciousness to ,"recognize reality" -what was hencefo!"th needed was ta determine the course of reallty through the rational exercise of the will, 164 w~se Immediate task was "!!.le translat ion of th,e tfuth fr~m thcr~ght into action." 165 CieszKowsKi's influence on" Balrunin 'e thought-or, in any event, \ the similario/ between the two men's'intellectual orientation-poses an interesting historical question. The Balru.ninist notion of phllosophy as

a tool for rational action, the elaboration of Hegelian phUosophy into a


. .,

method for practical activity, and

~,;,e

insistence on the rational or moral

will as the principal agent of social transformation, all these ideas are stated with convictiQn in the writings of both thinkers. 166 Likewise, the
,

preoccupa~on

with the overcoming of moral and social alienatlon through

"

162n,id. , p. 127.
-

.
f
1

163Ibid . , p. 129.

16~id. , p. 132.
165n,id. , p. 145.
1

()

166 ' See ibid., pp. 19,

1~1,

in particular.

--

~---

f"~-

- -,..

' ........,...........

'.-

---

,>

332

the exercise of th will, whlch would achiev,e a higher state of recon1 ."
",F

ciliation," tals up an important place in both BaKUnin's< and CleS2fKOWSlti'a thought. Even the messianic and eschatological language of bo~ men have Many parallel traits: the stress on the "vocation of ll!anltind, "167 as weil as the activist and voluntarlst infiectlons of tbeir thinKing (which testify , , , to their Fichtean origina, an influence that both CieszKowsKi and BaltUnin .., readily aCKnowledge), likewise the identity of Reason and Revelation, of the human will with Providence, 168 refiect the common Hegelian framework within which both writers (and indeed, the early Young Hegelian movement in general) were operating. FinalIy, both CieSZKowslti and Bakunin believed that a higher level of
tonsciousnes~

necessarily had to

precede action, that a "theoretical" basis for reconciliation had to be firmly established before venturing out into the realm of pratical activity.
-.1

We believe tht the ideas and general mood of CieSZKowslti's Prolegomena


,

are strongly refiected in Balrunin's easay "On PhUosophy," most particu,


-----'

)arly in Part II, where he articulates his philosophy of action. We shall therefore repeatedly refer to CieszkowsKi's worK

th)~ghout our analysis

of Bakunin's article, in the hope that th,e above' treatment of ~the essential ideas of the Prolegomena

~l enable us to s~e cl'early the points of con,

tact between the two worKS. Anad it was at this point that we left off our
discu8~ion of "On Phil o sophy " , Part I, in which B~kUnin was establishing

the theoretical justification for his subsequent \ioctrine of the unity the ory and praxis. We now, return to our analysls.

of

In the quest for the universal truth, BakWlin once again

elaborates on one of his tayourite topics:


167Ibid~, P: 21.

the

critique of

-168Ibid ., p. 20.

-------.- ...

~-~ ~

---

........

-_ - ------...
~

......

333
,

empiriCism 169 and its relation to social alienatioll. Inlerestingiy enough, Balrunin found a confirmation of his views,
00

the. insufflclency ,of, the

empirical sciences in CieszKowski, wh 0 al80 ,attacked the disruptive


m.nu~nce

of empiricism and linked subjectivity}o tlie protestant prin"'


,

Cipl. 170 As in "The Preface ta oHegel's Gymnasium Lectures," Bakunin'

If

attr!buted the brealrup and compartmentalization 01 truth to ,the emergence of the empirical ,,~thos, J and, adding a new pragmatic dimensiop ta his critique, Bakunin here linits empiricism with political conservatlsm, in .
cl>

- ---"\

that it fosters the

II

worK of memory," the mindless repetition of facts,

'

and the accumulative work of preservation. Furthermore, there is a new perspective in

B~in's

outlook,

~erhaps due

to the inrluence of the

Prolegomena; the theme of htstoric:ity has become fundamental in his approach ta philosophy: 171 .. the law of any natioh i8 understandable only, in the contex! of. its history and .. the h1story of a particular people recei'ves lUe and 'meaning only in 11s Unk with the totality of manltind. 172 ' ,In addition," 13alrunin has" now ome to emphasize the dialectical
1 -

y-.. .

cllaracter of historical progress, and

view~

empiricism as a necessary
s~iFit.,

and "'-rational moment in the developmel)t of the human in containing its own inherent to ~ead to its own dstruclion:
,
,

However,

contr~~ctions,

empiricism tnevitably had.

. COl Ithe one han~, it was extremely. useful, but, on the other, ft completely destroyed the living link, unit-

169B~in, "'0 filosofii," PP. 321-323; Appendix III, para. 10.,

.
~

",

170C1eszltoWSld, Prolegomena; pp. 140-142,' 171Bakunin, "0 lUosoflt," p. 327;- Appendix

..

,
\

~
!
~

m,

para. 15.
,

Cl

172Bakunin, "0 fUosofH," p. 322; Appendlx nI,' para. 10.

"

"

---~-:-----

----.-_.

334 ing lmowled.ge with lUe, and gave rise to a multitude of sufferings and limitations. 173 Thus, in isolating theory from life, from reality, and in ccentrating on the 'inite moment, empiricism lost the thread of the dialectical interplay bJween lmowledge and practieal ijfe and eonsequently, destPoyed itseH. Here Balrunin has once again brought ta light the doctrine of the eoncrete wlversal, the unity of the wliversal and the particular, which
,

is for him, the "living" unity, 1. e., the d'ialectical inter-relatiship of absolute lmowledge and rational reality: Tlie universal has an actual realization: it realizes itself as the real, natural and spiritual world; this is the essential and neeessary moment of its eternal lUe, and the great merit pf empiricism consista in the fact t4at it turned the attention of the thinking spirit onto )lie reality of the universal, ta the finite moment of the infinite, ta the diversity of natural and spiritual lUe. It fell, and by its essential eharacter necessarily had to fall, into- another extreme: beyond the diverse, finite multiplicity of the real world, it lost the unity of the infinite from its sight. But no lie can be sustained in tlle all-powerful dialeetic of the historieal developmen t of spirit, and for this reason, this err~r disappeared, and it was granted to our century to uilderstand the indissoluble and ratial unity of the universal and the parti.cular, of the infinite and of the finite, of the single and ,of the manifold. 174

The pext section of Baklmin' s article examines the phenomenologie al development of


f,

conscio~~;

by contrasting it with the structure of the


1

empirical sciences, 175 he proves that empiricism is simply a system('


a~ati

of the principles of the ordinary

con~iousness.

The reason for

this attack on empircism ls made clear whe\ Ba.KUJlin brings the discus-

17~id. 174~O fUosofii, " p. 323; Appendix nI, p,ara.l0.

175"0 filosofii, " pp. 323~6; Appendix DI, para. 11-13.

_---:----~

-,.

~--~---._. ---- -- - - -":":i''''-;-

.,

,-

335

sion back to Russia, where empiricism was still the dominant phUosophi1

cal system. 176 His critique can thus be considered as an attempt to overthrow the stronghold of tbis position in Russia and thereby guard against the twin dangers and "necessary results of empiricism, " 1 materialism and naturalisme
1

For, this materialistic attitude stood in direct

opposition to Balrunin's doctrine 'of the "unity of knowledge and life." Having demonstrated that empiricism is only a theory of the finite, that it operates simply in accordance with the principles of natura! consciousness, 177 and that its goal and its Object is merely an aggregate
~

of facts not derived from any single, unied or internaI principle, BaKunin goes on to examine a 10gicaI development of the empirical sciences, , . Theory. 178 Theory is liKewise founded upon empiricaI facts and sclentific observation which, on the basis of a particular premise or idea, deduces the facts. Theory only operates by 10gicaI induction (or a posteriori verification), and hence, Balrunin argues, it does not allow for an interrelationshtp between particular and universal, which forms the underlying structure of any true knowledge. Hence, theory ls lik,wise denounced as faIse knowledge and as merely a sterile continuation of, empiricism, which offers no unified or organic account, of knowledge. 179 Theory is the necessary result, flIld-if ft is possible to express it in this way, -the fiower of __ empiricism, such that there is no theorist, who Is not an empiriciBt, just as there is no em!5!ist who 1s not a theori&.t; and the struggle b""'Ten
176"0 filosofil," pp. 325-326; Appendix Ill, para. 13. 177"0 fil08~f," pp. 3Z8-329; Appendix DI, para. 18-19.

>

178"0

fi1~SOfii,

If

pp. 329-330; ApplbJ.dix Ill, para. 20.

179"0 fUosofii," pp. 330-332; Appendix Ill,. para. 21-22.

-----

---~'"

336 empiricists and theorists is nothing else than an internaI struggle , an internaI contradiction of empiricism within itself, -a struggle in which it realizes its own limitation, its own inadequacy, and points beyond itself to a higher reaIm of Knowledge, to speculation. 180 Thus, according to Ba.lrunin's analysis, empiricism and theory are ooly ,
1

(,

formal mirror-images of each other, caught in a dialecticaI situation from which neither can emerge. What is needed, he claims, ls a Kind of configuration of reality which embodies both the idea and Us coofrete manifestation, a rational unity of universal and particular: ... they [empiricists and theorists) do not understand that a lalowledge of facts without thought and without any unity i8 not true lQlowledge, but a dead heap of inanimate matter, awaUing the vivying contact with thought in arder ta become alive, transparent and rational reality; they do not understand that the essence of the spirit consists precisely in the penetration and di~()very of oneself in the real world appearing to us, and until the idea is found in existing reality, then the realization of this higher vocation of the human spirit i8 impossible. 161 Thus; the "higher vocation" of man is ta infuse reality with thought, and endow thaught with reality; an added activist element must thus be brought

ta the purely passive worK of the "dry collectors of facts," the empiricists
and theorists. Implicit in BaKunin's critique of these two schoo1s is an attacK on the political attitude with which they may be lintd: emP iriCls
'

passively observes that which is, and "preserves" facts for the "con ..

servative" memory; theary, on the other band, tends ta disregareJ real1ty and proceed only by way of formalistic induction. The correct position, according' to Brurunin's view, is to overcome the errars of both, and to

\-

instore a vital unity of thought and reality (1. e., a convergence of political

16"0 filosofii," p. 331; Ap:\lendix


181"0 filosofii," p. 332; Appendix

m,
m,

para. 22. para. 23.

---:--,,-, :~"

,r

337

and social facts with

po1itic~

and social reality), which, once again, is the applied theory or the concrete uni-

a statement of his doctrine

versal. This standpoint is substantiated by Balrunin t s doctrine of change, which we shaH examine below. Having thus "unmasked" or discredited both empiricism and theory
p

on their own ground and from within their own categories, Bakunin has established that the truth cannot be apprehended by empirlcal or theoreti-

cal means, but rather through the synthesis of thought and action. 182

.,.

'" ... philosophical lmowledge . .. [ta} that which, firstly, embraces the entire, undivided totality of absolute truth, and which, secondly, is able to prove 'the necessity of its content. 18~ ~ Philosophical thought is the thought that develops from pure univers al, abstract isolation to manest itself in the reality of the concrete, 3lld so requires their unication.

Balrunin then ventures into a lengthy digression on the historical


.

development and structure of the philosophical categories, from Aristotle to Hegel, in a structured explanation of the innovative char acter of the Hegelian system of categories. He then attempts to demonstrate (using , charts and diagrams) how Kantian epistemology is a synthesis of the formalism of theory and of the lllethod of. empirical investigatiQn. Once

agafn, Hegel's categories, as defined in the Logic. are presented as the


apex of modern thooght, in that they are accorded independent, concrete content for the first time. Bakunin' s first essay
rr On

Philosophy" concludes with the state-

, ,

ment that phllosophical Knowledge, as opposed 10 E!mpirical knowledge, J82,,0 filosofit," pp. 333-334; Appendix ID, para. 14. 183"0 filosofii," p. 334; Appendix

m,

pa;a. 16.

338

is indeed possible, and that it must necessarUy manest itself concretel,y in reality in order to be truly such. The "true vocation ri of philosophy or of rationality is an activity, of recognition, whereby man realizes that the reason that is Wtthin him is also in the world surrounding him. 184 Thus, "rationality" can be termed a "subject-object"; in the context of historical
r
Q

development, th. thesis advanced by Batrunin concerns' the fact that not all

~~tence is rational, but that the rational idea has necessarUy to

embody Jself in historical reality, whereas the purely subjective ideas of talse philosophical conceptions are merely ideals or beliefs, since they are based on the auto-activity of subjective thought alone. 185 The schema for this tirst article "On Philosophy" i8 expressed structurally in terms of the phenomenologtcal progression, beginning with natural consciousness, and finally culminating in absolute self-consciousness~

this formal structure is of course taKen from Hegel 's Introduction to the Encyclopaedia, from the Introduction and opening chapters of the PhenomenoloGY, and from the Philosophy of History. which provides the historico-concrete dimension in BakUnin 1 S argument. At the end of the
,

present article, Bakunin has led his readers to the stage of phUosophical consciousness, but concludes at this point, promising to continue its
,

development in the subsequent installment.


"On Ph il osophy " , Part 1, constitutes a clear and concise intro-

duction to the. problems of philosophical theory and method, and provided its Russian readers with a remarkably compact-if somewhat dficult, , ,

explication of the basic tenets of Hegelian phUosophy. Ba.Kunin argues ingeniously and d'emonstrates the superiority of Hegelianism to other
~

i (,
f

,"

184" 0 filosofii , Il pp. 338-339; Appendix ,

para. 28-29.

185" 0 filosof, " pp. 339-340; Appendix In para. 29.

..
..

---

....

--------

- ----:-:;;,

339

.
philosophical systems, using
,

Hegel'~,own

",//

arguments, and wes great


1

pains to disprove the validity and basic premises of their schools of thought, on their own principles. However, the most important aspect underlying the text of "On PhUosophy" Part l, and indeed, the most radical idea implicit, centres aroWld the u se of phUosophy, its utility as a social and political too1. LiKe CieszKowsKi before him, BaKunin no longer approaches philosophical Knowledge as a passive end in itself, as a pure and detached body of abstract ideas, but as a social and historical phenomenon, having .concrete implications for reality and fundamental to any social change. Given the fact that he was probably una~quainted with Hegel's early theological manuscripts and early writings, such as Thel German Constitution, Faith and Knowledge or the Essay on Natural Law, for example, Balrunin's view of the use of phU080phy, of the application of theory to llie, is a highly remarKable and progressive interpretation. Just as the young Hegel assigned himself the tas}{, in his early worKa, of laying the foundations for a new order in Germany, liKewise Balrunin's "On PhUosophy" established the criteria for rational action leading to social transformations as applied to his Russian society. The importance of this article also largely rests on Balrunin' s concept of the dialectic as the driving force in historical change and
,

"

development. In his analysis,r' BaKUntn examines the ideas of confiict and progress, and continuously emphasizes the role that contradiction

1 f

...
(~

'and negation play in bringing historical forms inta states of opposition with one another, conflicts which ultimately lead to higher stages of
"recon~niation." In
'.,

juxtaposing dialectical historicism to cooservative'

"preservation" of the past, Balrunin has ably highlighted the potential

........._1"...-- - - - - ....

340
dialectic~

transformation of all existent and historical forms. And


,

whereas emPiritsm was held ta refiect a conservative (if not reactionary) political ideology, in!ts passive and non-critical acceptance of all facts as equally rational, Balrunin'S' doctrine of the unity of theory and practice ta this ( line of thought; it presents a radical departure from this cooservative attitude, in that it actively sets up criteria for measuring change, in accordance with its interna! principle of progresse Although Balrunin could not be more explicit, the implications of this doctrine are transparent (and would receive further elaboratioD in Part II): those facts which are not rational must be chan ged, in arder ta conform ta the rational idea. IDtimately, this the ory would provide the foundation for the most extreme type of revolutionary activity, for an "oligarchy of reason," so to speaK, since ooly philosophical Knowledge was in possession of the absolute truth. As yet, Bakunin's goal was still basically gnoseological, and the entire text of "On Philosophy" primarUy constitutes the philosophical underpinninga for his centra! idea: if philosophy is possible (as he has just proven, by the end of Part l, that indeed, it ia), then it is nec eSJ sary ta transform Hegeli'anism into the dominant ideology of the Russian intelligentsia, with Bakunin himself as "high-priest" of the new system.
il any event, the "vocation of the scholar" has now received further

constitutes a systematic retort, structured in conscious

oppo~tion

l'
1
1

elaboration: on the basis of an acquired rational phUosophical' underatanding of reality, it was now Imperative to move towards the cOI)crete application of this knowledge ta "life" and ta practical activity in the historical process. The actualization, of thought into rational action was the order

1 (1
t.

of the day, and this problematic would constitute the context for Bakunin's treatment of Part

n.

;Io~

___

-'= __

"""'~

341
"On Philosophy" (1) was very well-received 10 Russia. Kraevsky,

the editor of the Notes of the Fatherland (in w,hich the article was pub1ished), who had commissioned the work, wrote Balmnin a highly enthusiastic and complimentary letter:

1 have wanted to write ta you for a long Ume, my delr Mikhail Aleksandrovich, and thank you for the wonderful article, which, in my eyes, is simply the model for philosophical articles in the Russian language. Better than this on the subject of phUosophy, 1 could not expect to read -nor to publish in Russian. For God's sake, send me quickly, -if possible, beiore June 15 (for the June edition), -the conclusion of this article. 1 request this most assiduously. It is not for you ta judge or doubt your own capabilities in literary matters; leave this ta others, and yourself, write only.~. 1 impatiently look forward ta embracing you in St. Petersburg in June. 186 Even BelinsKy, one of the associate editors of the Notes of the Fatherland could not conceal his admiration for Balrunin' s literary efforts, and, once again, temporarily putting aside his animosity, wrote to Botkin on April 16, 1840:
l'

Balrunin's article is wonderful, sa wonderful, as it is wickedly observant: 1 do not know any praise higher than this. This man can and must write-he will do much for the advancement of thought in his country. 187 BelinfiJKy even wrote directly to Ba.lrunin himself; the letter is stUI full of persona! reprimands and reproaches, but Bel1nsky does nevertheless, and somewhat' begrudgingly, -express his respect for Balrunin's intellectuaI skills,' as displayed in this article. In addition, Belinsky aIso provides , Ba.kunin with severaI technical recommendations with regard to the sequel which the latter was preparlng at this time:

1 . j
1

18~raevskii, "Pis'm BakUninu," 28 maya 1840, cited in Balmnin, Sobranie sochinenii. tom 2, p. 475; also in Kornilov, Molodye gody, p. 582.
Bel1nskii, IIPis'mo V. P. Botkinu," in Izbrannye pis'ma, tom 2, p. 66.

187

i
\
(~

342 Let me begin with the fact that your article is already printed and that Us clarity, consistency, lucidity and simplicity delighted Kraevsky; he especially was impressed by your blow to empiricism. .. Kraevslty does not limit your literary activity to two .articles: there can be five of them, or even more, but only with different conditions and" limitations .... [MS ls torn here.] 188 The treatment accorded by historlans to Bakunin's first article
"On Philosophy" is somewhat more ambiguous and
~arded.

)
,;
total

It ranges from

sUence, 189 to the outright laudatory. 190

Several commentators'

approach is totally uncritical and devoid of any kind of analysis;191 these provide loog paraphrases of Bakunin' s text, giving detailed summaries of
1

the basic lines of argument. Planty-Bonjour merely credits the article with the accomplishment of haVing understood the fr'amework of Hegelian philosophy: Bakounine a donc clairement peru que la nouveaut de la philosophie hglienne fut d'oprer la synthse entre le ralisme d'Aristote et l'idalisme de Kant. 192 However, this achievement was realized by BaKUnin' s earlier wtitings,
~

----'

such as the 1837 essay, "Moi zapisKi."

Planty-Bonjour's single critical

observatioo /;Ieems ta have missed the point 7e1Y. BakUnin, he states, 18 8Belinskii, "Pis'mo M. A. BalWninu," 14-18 aprelya 1840, in PoInoe sobranie sochinenit, tom 12, p. 501 (unfinished letter).
'>l

18gearr, Michael Balrunin. p. 73, states, "the interval of twenty months between Michael's quarre 1 With BelinsKy and his departure for Berlin cantains no significant landmark in his spiritual development." 190JakoWenlto, Geschichte des Hegelianismus in Russland. p. 34, states "a highly significant document of the origins of Russian Hegeltanism," although Jakowenko does not say why, or expound upon the "significance" of the article. t 191JakoWenkO, ibid., pp. 34.,.35; Planty-Bonjour, mgel et la pens philosophique. pp. 42-43; Koyr~, La pense philosophique en Russie, pp. 133-136. . 192planty-Bonjour, ibid., p. 42.

.,

.,-- ,

..

-..,.... ----

.....

~'.

343 ... n'a pas saisi l'importance de l'entendement. Ebloui[ s] par ce que dit Hegel sur la place de la Raison, les] [s'est] trop vite abandonnes] aux dlices de la Raison. Telle est, notre avis ttl l'erreur fondamentale qu'U(s1 commit en lisant Hegel la ralit historique est mconnue. 193
It 18 clear-l-.in view of our analysis of "On Philosq>hy,1\ Part l, that

(.

Balrunin does indeed incorporate a historical dimension in his analysis of


1

philosophical consciousness, and secondly, goes ta great lengths to stress the importance of judgement and of the empirical moment in the phenomenological process. Although Koyr provocatively labels the article "programmatique, paraissant dans la revue qui devait devenir l'organe des hgliens, 11194
,
/'

he unfortunately does not elaborate upon this statement. Furthermore, he seems to confuse arguments taxon from the IIPreface ta Hegel's

Qymnasi~m Lectures" with those of "On Philosophy," Part 1. 1~5

"

ChizhevsKi' s analysis ia much more substantial and critical, if decidedly negative. He attacKs the article for being written in a "purely theoretical style," of being lIuseless ta the Russian reader," and accuses Baku.nin of "vagueness" and of a dense phUosophical jarg. He notes that
(

... although Bakunin's article ls completely clear and accessible ta any Hegelian, it can hardly be considered a successful populariZation, as indeed, it aspires ta being a popularization. The central part -is lu-cld and transparent. The positive' [part] is noth~g more than a manifesta, not explaining anything, and Is incapable of satisfying a non ... Hegelian. 196 193Ibid., p. 49; 'Planty-Bonjour attrlbutes this error ta both Belinsky and Bakunin, hence, the plural number. 194J(oyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 133.
t

t 'C)
r

195Ibid., see eSl,>ecially pp. 133-134. . 196Chizhevskt, Gegel' v,Rosati, p. 98.

344 Howe'ler, he does concede that "On Philosophy" (1) demonstrates beyond 1 a doubt "tha~ Ba.lrunin's knowledge of Hegel W'\S thorough and serious. rr197

(;

In a typical Marxist vein, Steklov cornes down hard against


phUosophical idealism, and his attitude to Balrunin's Hegelian writings in general is outrightly hostile. He has nothing but contempt for "On Philosophy" (I): ... the article is written in the usual spirit of right Hegelianism, and among other things shows, what a "huge step backwards Russian thought took following the suppression of the December 14, 1825 uprising and after the restoration of the Nicholaevan reaction (paralleI, it must be noted, with the intellectual reaction in the whole of Europe, where idealists la Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and where especially such nonentities as Cousin, replaced the spokesmen of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, of the Encyclopaedists of the 18th Century). In: this article Ba.lrunirr continues that sarne philosophica and political line, which he maintained in his tir st article ("Preface to Hegel 's .Qymnasium Lectures"), ,that is, idealism in theory and conservatism with a reactionary shade in the political field. . . . ' In comparison with Herzen' s circle, Bakunin appears, in this articl~, as a formal teactionary, attempting to substantiate idealisti philosophy among other things, as an instrument of struggle against atheism and revolutidn. 198

Adhlittedly, no one could accuse Steklov, Bakunin's biographer and, the editor of hise complete' works, of being excessively sympathetic towards his subject. Furthermore, the comparison with Herzen is unwarrantedj ,as late as 1843,'Herzen was writing phUosophical treatises, coml'osed in
~

highly abstract and ideali idiom, which w,~re not only directly ,inspired by , 199 but were praised ~s the first Balrunin's Hegelian worka and language 197Ibid. 198steklov, in Bakunin, Sobranie, soclnenii, tom 2, p. 474.

~ ~
t

, "

l")

1995ee, in particular, Herzen's "DUettantism ln Science," in which he adopts such key terms and concepts as "reonciliaUon," "coosciousness ~s liberation. " ," .

....

_-----;,

-:;:'-.-- - ,'.-,

... - - - - ) - -. . c.

"

--

.
,

'"~-

--.,.- ...-..... -

. .;'rt,-~~-..j..w-. . . . ,.., --.-:..;::.--~:


T~
(
, 1 ~ _,.,'

ft.' ___

""_-pt-_ ..

'-'"~_,

....

JO

.. if

............4U 1

=a_U.!'f:

345 product of Ru~sian Left Hegelianism. 200 Steldov continu~s"

...

[,On PhUosophy'] does not present anything of particular tnterest ... this ie an ordinary, lilthtlywrltten [sic 1J and animated product of phUosophizing idealism, springing from the identity of objective and subjective thought, based on the fact that the real world i~ nothing eise than the realization of thought. ... 01

From what we have seen, it is clear that Baxunin would have been the first to reject such a position of extreme subjectivism, not to say s'Olipcism. However, Steldov do~s include, somewhat hastUy, the merits
of BalruIlin' s work and Us important influence on Russian intellectuallife:

For the first time inJthe Russian language, the funda" mental principles of Hegelian phUosophy were stated with such simplicity and clarity, and the most complex "'" theoretical questions were discussed in such an easily understandable, popular, and generally accessible form. 202
,
~

Steklov therefore, in contradistinction to Chizhevski, praises the article for its lucid forro, while criticizing its idealistic content. The most perceptive and insightful critique of "On PhUosophy" (1)
,

ls provided by DynniK, who terms th essay,an analysis of the problem of "rational reality," and thus, a continuation and elaboration of BalWI1in's first pubiication. 203 His first article [i. e., 'Prelac to Hegel 's Gymnasium Lectures' J, was, in Us genre, an agitational declaration on behalf of Hegelianism, ,in the form of an ap:peal for a reconciliation ,with reality; the second article [te e., 'On Philosophy' (1) J, completing the first, essentially
"

,l' ,

200See Malta's and Walicki's Interpretation of "DUettantism in Sience"; a cl oser examination of the simUarities, -and indeed, of Balrunin's influence on Herzen's Hegelianism-between the two worka is beyond the' SCQpe of the pres,ent study. 201Steldov, Zhizn' BalW1lina, p. 59.' 202 ~ Steldov, BaKUnin, ~ Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 474.
t.

203DynniK, "Ot' primirtlniya s dettvitel 'nost'yu k apologii razrusheniya, If in Letopisi markSizm~ tom IV, pp. 38-39.
i

\
!

.'

346
had to expose the basic t'enet's of the philosophy of reality. Moreover, ft ls necessary to 'underline also, that the social direction of BaKlln in ,s thought, which dl5tin,guishes the' first article, remains a chal-acterisUc feature of the second. The phllosophy of reality, according to this interpretation, -ls the viewpoint of the real, useful, member of society ..204

..

"

Furthermore, Dynnik underlines the importance of the historical context which BaJrunin has incorporated in his argument, 205 in addition, to the new theme of the sO,cial contradictions wlch characterize reality. Dynnilt also sharply observes that, iD his analysis of reality, Balrunin has ad.

vanced the ide a of necessity as the primary criterion of truth, and herein lies its radical potential:
. . in. necessity as an attribute of real1ty' 1s containe<!

one of' the revolutionary, explosive strengths of Hegelian phllosophy. The overcoming of fatalistic reality 'with its Iron claws and iron jaws' [BelinsKy's famous description of reality] was possible (even if it appears strange at first glanee) prc1sely by way' of the con.. . sideration of necessity as an attribute of" reality. AlI reality ls ratia1, but everything necessarUy develops; and thus, the formerly rational eventually beomes irrational. One must not identify' the real \vitli the existing. 205 ' Moreover, Dynni,k has clearly discerned the ,key factor in BaKunin:'S' treatment of Hegelian phUosophy,
.. the anaIy~is of such concepts' as 'necessity,' 'historical determinism, ,: , 'the unity of truth, 1 brought Balrunin to a serious consideration of the methOd of Hegel 's phUosophy .. " .206 -

Ibid., p. 38.' 20~ -IDid., p. 39.


,

204

206

lPid~;

p. 40.

"'",

347

This last remarlC brings us

to

a c,onsideratton of BakUnin' s second

.
o

article' "On PhUosophy. 1\ The principal question which cornes to ~ind in

c?nne~tion with this- worlt, is vwhy 'Put n ~s nevet: publlsh~ auring ,


Bakunin's lifetime; thls is. d'estin'ed to remain ano enigma, since not only
l '

was part 1 extremely well-r,ecei~ed by the eclitors and publlSherg of the


j

...

1-

Nots of the Fatherland, but, as we saw, KraevsKy hi1l!self wrote


"

to

Bakunin, urging him to send/the sequel to St.' Petersburg as soon as possible. We aIso know that BakWlin did cOnlI?lete "On PhUosopijy" (fi)
"

' .

. . . .

by June 1840, and fully expected it to be published in the summer' 1840 issue of the Notes of the Fatherland, for in a letter from Berlin
(

(October 23, 1~40, New Style), Balrunin wrote to Her~en, who was still living in St. Petersburg at the time: Has the' second haIf of my article been published yet, and if so, how does the publie like it, and how do you in particular lUte iJ ?2~7 ." In addition, further proof that Bakunin had finished his article in Ume for the June 1840 deadline assignel to him, is substanttated by, the ~act that the unpublished man~script-of "On Philosophy" part

Kraevsky's papers at the Ume of the latter's death, and was kept .in the Kraevsky Archives (of Leningrad Public Library) until its' first publication by Steklov-in 1934 ,~in M. A. Bakunl, Sobranie sochinenii). Why, then, did this worlt remain unpublished in tll~ Notes of the "
,
,

was found in

'Fatberland? There are several possible explanations for this fact: il few , commentators attribute its having been shelved to the BelinSky-BakUnin
, , '

. _ _ _ _ _Indeed, _ ' quarreI. 208 --"\...i.'_ Belinsky and ,Bakunin had a violent fight (which aImost , 207Ba)runin, "Pis'mo A.I. Oertsenu," 23, oktyabrya 1840, in '; Sobranf:!. socginenii, tom 3, pp. 31-35.

()

"

"L

208JakoWenkO, .Qeschichte des Hegelianismus ,in RussIand, p. 36; , , Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophigue, p. 41. , ,

348 came to blows and.a duel) in St. Petersburg, and at the time of the latter's departure from Russi~ in June 1840, the two men were obviousiy no longer even on speaking terms. 209 The question still remains as to the extnt of Belinsky' s powers cm the editorial board of the Notes of the Fatherland;, was he able to dissuade KraevSky from publishing Part fi simply on the grounds of a persal quarrel between himself aad Balrunin?
Steldov also draws attenti to the, fact that the letter in which

BelinsKy supplied Balrunln with furthef and more precise in&tructis as


,

to' the length ~d technical desiderata of his next ctributis is incom,


~-

"

plete;210 the final portim of the manuscript, in which Belinsky stipulated the conditions and editorial requirements for Part II, is mtssing, and
f"o

publicati. 211~

wood have undoubtedl.y shed some light on this mystery surrolD1ding its ...
l '

Planty-Bonjour also attributes part of the blame to government censorship, although, once again, he does not elaborate at aIl this

interes~g

theory.

, ~

. . . le deuxime article sur la philosophie ne para.J.1:ra ,pas du vivant de l'auteur, soit cause de la brouille entre Bakounine et Bl.mSKY, soit tout simplement par crainte de la censure. 212 t ' 'Chizhevski's explanatioo is mpre prosaic,.. The article did not
in the Annals of the Fatherland. he claims, simply because f'
Izbr~1e
fi

app~

it probably
in

~09See Be1inmal, "Pis'mo Botldnu," 12-16 av~sta, 1840,


pis'ma, tom 2, pp.
~8-91.
,;<

o
"

'210seUDSKii, "Pis'mo M. A. Ba1mpinu, If 14-18 aprelya 1840, in Pplnoe sobranle sochin!J1U., tom 12, p. ~1. , 1 211' , ~e also Steldov, ln Baltunin.' Sobranle soeh1nenli. tom 2, p. 475. It 18 thus a posslbillty that the article was Dot published because BakUnin cHd Dot comply 'With the requ1r:ed formai' structure.
1

212P1anty-Bjour, Hegel et la pense philosoPJnque, p. 41.

,
! '

~ ~~~I._,,~~""" ---=-<,==~.--".,...".t.~, l '

--.._ _ _ _ _ _. _ _ _
~~_.

T___......... ...., _ _

- - - -.._------_..
349

"

1/'

did not malte as good an impression on Kraevsky as did the first. ,,213 And this, he attributes to the fact that Part II was "twice as lmg as the first," and still to be continued in a subsequent series al articles.
ln additi, he makes a reference to the complexity and density of the

text:
and certainly 214 even more difficult than the Hegelian textl
'.

.. it ls just as difflcult as the

ori~al,

,~

This allegtion is not upheld by Koyr, who insists that "On PhUosOphy" Part II was a more accessible work and "philosophiquement, plus intressante,,215 thap its predecessor. Unfortunately since nowhere in his corresponpence does BalDmin

" explain why this text never appeared, one can ly 'speculate as to the
\.

inexplicable fate of this secd article. But the answer proba,bly somewhere in a combination of a certain element of truth. We now propose to examine the foundations new "phllosophy of acti" as developed in Part
"On PhUosophy."
~r

1i~s

an

the above factors, all of which

bonbin

Balrunin1 s radical

of his major production,

In the form of a masterful analysis, of the phe nomenological

development of coosciousness, Baaamm ccentrates his attentioa upan the dynamic implications of
"On PhUosopby" Part
Hegelian~sm

as critical Methode The

articl~
\

!(-..

focusses

._u~

the force of negati in the pro- ,

\
\\

gressi of csciousness as well as on the vital role of contradiotioo in the social process al history. 'Elaborating
1

'011

the Une of arguMent intro-

. 213ChizhevSki, Geg! t v Rossit. p. 99.

214n,id.
21~Of.1", La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 133. ~
\t

~.

....

_~,.-

.........---,
~

:-.,-;-;;:,~: ~;;=-=;.-:--~~

..-:;:-;-:-;.--, ..:,-~~-

-~,:~:;:-j,
.

r-

....

...

350

duced in the first essay, Balamin presents the dialectical experience of consciousness in its long evolution from sense-certainty to reason. 216 , Negatioo as the source of movement from the start:
In himself [an sich), in potentiality, he [man) i8

and

of progress, ls highlighted right

infinite truth, and for this reasoo, then, lies the contradiction of his potentiality with his limited actuality. This ctradiction does not allow IHm to axist f.or long in limitation, but continually drives him forward towards the reaIizatf.on of the internaI, potential truth, and~ elevates hirn continuously above his extemal, temporary limitation. 217 Hence, negation, contradictioo, struggle, as the motor forces of history,
,

','

incessantly propel man forward, towards the ultimate reaIizatioo of the


~

truth that is potentially within him. Already in this early portion of the essay, the grounds for social\ reform have been announced: the reality of
man, aJwnin has e~tabl.ished, cOnsists in his ctinuou's evolution and

development-"the real" thus becomes "the rational. Il The theme of potentiality. of becoming, of change. would provide the leitmotiv for the entire work. The formaI aspects of BakUnin' s thesis in this
,
f
articl~
~

deal with

the evolution ,of csciousness, from the-)owest level of develo~ment,, sense-certainty-and lead right up te the highest stage, that of absolqte self-cODscipusness-.The virtuosity of BakunIn's
,
'

t i
f ,

dia).ecti~aI

argumentation

1
~.

18

truly impressive; the trai1siti from the "singular

and inarticulated

world of infinlte diversityfl (1. e .. , sense-certainty) to the "universal world

216.. 0 fllosofii," stat'ya vtoraya, in Sobranie soehin_ti. tom 2, pp. 341-344; Appendix IV, para. 4.
217" 0

fllosofli~" p~ 349; Appendix IV, para. Il.

..,.-

351

..
of experimental observaticn Il (1. e., judgement) 218 provldes an excellent demonstration of bis tec.hnique, as well as his proticient manipula.tion of the Hegelian dlalectical method: The object of empirical observation, on the one hand, Is already abstraction, thougbt, as an abject not having existence as a unlversal, but existing only in the plurality of insignicant and transient singularities corresponding ta it, from whlch tt ls a,n abstraction; on the other hand, this abstraction is not a pure abstraction, because it has in itself a moment of sensual diversity, Us essence is ccntained in the plura11ty of sensual attrlbutes . , , the observin~ consclousness appears, on the one band, as sensual certainty, because the 'previous levels of development are preserved in the latter ~s '., moments, but on the other hand, elevats itself above it and searches for Us truth not in the singular abject, but III its species .. ,. Consequently, the experimental, observation cstitutes a transition from sense certainty, the truth of which ls the, sensual singular this, to the realm of the abstracting and understanding judgement, having Us truth in the invisible, ' interior world of power and laws, manesting themselves in exteriority, ... But the object of observation Is not retained, just as the object of sensual certainty is not retained, and l~e the latter, destroys itself by Us own d.1alectical movement, and it is precisely an internai contradiction. 219

'

The dialectical move,ment, incorporating contradiction, des,truction and preservation, is clearly emphastzed in the above passage, However, as
Bakunin shows, the phenomenological process does not rest at judgement:

. . . judgement, through its own diaIectical movement elevates itseI! to reason and negates ltself in it as in the sphere of bsolute, true lalowledge. 0220 The sections dealing with emplricism, ta which BakUIlin characteristically devotes a lengthy discussicn and a great deal of energy, 218"0 fllosofl1,," p. 3'50; Appendix IV, para. 13. " 219"0 fUosofii," pp. ,352-355; Appendix IV, para. 17-18.
3l"~,

as we saw

()

22"0 fllosofl1, "P. 356; Appendtx IV, para. 19.

. '1

~....

,~~

.... _

~7<

-" _ _

-._t-

"


352 in the first part, no longer exclusively critical. The emptrical csciousness is now seen to be a vital and neeessary moment in which the "universal subj,ect" comes to operate by means of theoretical or scientifie abstraction. 221 As before, BaKUnin's examination of the empirical moment is presented Wlder the light of social allenation. This aspect is intensified in the present article. In

th

development of the

analytical consciouSness, "the sensual, transient phenomenon ceased being true"; conseiousness now "searches for the truth in the internai. unchanging world of laws, in the laws of the physical as weIl as of the intellectual world. ,,222 It therefore "elevated itself above the transient exterlorlty to the intransient internai world" of laws: 223 Once agaln,
ernpir~clsm

is presented as a conservative, statie, hermetie ideology,

imposing Us rigid, unchanging structure of laws on the world, and stifling any progress or development. The cognitive judgement at thls stage structurally divides the objective world into: 1) the essential internai world of laws, and 2) into the insignifieant world of their external manifestations; the latter, as sltuated between the cognitive judgernent and the internaI world, separates the one from the other and does not permit the Immediate relationshtp of the one wlth the other. 224 Basing itself on the inherent notions of division and separation, the empirical experience has invariably set the stage for a classic,
ca~e

of

social and political alienation; for, judgement sees real1ty as "somethlng 221Ibld. 222';0 fUosoflt, 223110 fU~sofii,
Il

p. 356; Appendix IV, para. 20. p. 356; Appendix IV, para. 21. p. 357; Appendix IV, para. 21.

11

()

224"0 fnos~fU,

11

______________~_~'____._,.__~'___~ ..___ .. .

~..,..........~ ..... ~.--

---- - - _ . ..-,

~-r--~;~"~",-~-~--"""",,,,,,,,,.~,,,

.'.~_

';;.- ... - , . . . ..,.... .. _ .. --~~~""P'----"""'4

_'

-: ;.r:I~>:,_

.In.'

.
The only real1ty left to the understanding is the abstract and formaI
~

353

outside' of itself and foreign to tt. ,,225 Baltunin demonstrates how, in , relat1o~ to Us own abstract~ universal laws goveming reality, lt "taites them) but does not understand them, it does not find Uself in them. ,,226

acttvity of its own thoughts: ... tts abstracticn and one-sidedness constst primarUy in the fact that differentiating and dlviding-itself into univers al and particular, it remains at this difference or division and cannat restore Its ~I.tt ta it, such that partlcUlar thoughts in Us real existence appear as externaI and indifferent to one another, and as lndependent from lts universal and single prlnclple. They are led by judgement to the external system and as particular are subsumed under the unlversal; and this constitutes the abject of ordinary formal logic; but such an externaI system is not a real, necessary system, emanating from the nature of the abject ttself, but an extemal and arbitrary division of the lmowtng subject, and for this reason cannot satisfy the Knowtng cODsciousness .... 227
As accordlng ta his general plan, BakUnin has shawn that empiriclsm
J.
~"""

as a phUosophical doctrine ls totally unsatisfactory, and that lt presents ' man with a warped world-view. And most importantly, a new dimension

in Bal:wnln's analysls of' empiriclsm is incorporated into the present discussion of !ts lnadequacy. The emplrical ethos has now been attacked for being unable to gras-B the dynamlc and (J\\tptessential notion of change
in the phenomenal world:

If a Iaw Is discovered, then the external dlverstty of Immediate existence, in whlch lt appears, loses all

stgniflcance, as itlsignificant and unessentlal. A law does not change; but. tts external manifestaticn cmstantly changes . . . ~e law is nothtng Iess than a
-~

----------------225"0 fUosoftt,
Il

p. 358; Appendix IV, para. 23.

226rbtd. 227"0 fUosoftt," pp. 359-360; Append1x "IV, ,para. "33 ......

---",.

~';:(~~'";:----:""-'-""~7:",

il,

,....
~

_~!

~_ .. _: ~~

~J,.,... ..

354

(;

universal and unchanging expression, of the changing appearance ... the conscious judgement must uncondltionally conform with it [the internal world of unlvers~~aws] and must not allow itself the least change. Bakunin views the phUosophy of the 18th Century as essenUally
~

historical, and as oblivlous to the real, phenomenal world of change, ln Us tendency to freeze universal laws tnto dflnite a-temporal and
,

a-spatial fixed patterns. This critique of empiricism ls crucial., since Ba.lruI1in has henceforth introduced the concept of historlcal
change~

exte.rnal forms of consciousness must correspond to the ever-developlng internai idea. The implications of this theory are Most important and quite radical; this theme will be elaboratecF later in the paper. However,

the mark of Herder's histo:-icism and of Hegel's phUosophy of history . . on this new orientation is, unmlstaltable: To understand diverslty means to find ln 1t such a univerSal and living unity, which would penetrate 1tsuch that all fixed particularittes and their parts, would be transformed into the fluidity of members of a single, unlversal and living org~ism; and consequenUy, in order to understand the dlversity of laws or thoughts, 1t is necessary to find in 1t such a Wllversal and unified prineiple, which would have in all partlcular laws or thoughts Its limited, necessary members ensuing from itself, being the single principle and source, which would also be their single end, their single goal. 229

'(

Continutng ln his study of consclousness, BalWnin then traces


the dialectical progression of empirlcal judgement

ta the stage of self-

consciousness, where in recognizing the "dlversity of universal laws"

"
()

~s merely 1ts own "activity of abstraction and analysls;'230 consciousness

f ~

22&10 fUosofii," pp. 356-7; Appendix IV, para. 21 ... 22. 229" 0 fUosoftt," p. 359; .t\ppendlx IV, para. 23.

1
,l'lI'

23'Thld .

:"':-::---:~-~-r-=- ~ _:~~ _.
.:
)

,,""f";;- ., 6 .:

-", ":O~

becomes self-consctousness, the

355

... self-knowtn..z.subject, having in Us ~tho'ughts all the 1nfinite truth of rthe object1v~ phenomenal world, such that Us th oughts , as subjective, are not in opposition to the obje~, lmown world of nature and spirit, but, on the contrary, permeate it and constitute its essentiality; and they are subjective, on the one hand, and on the other, they are objective determinations, simple unaversal essences and single truth of all existence. 2 1 Wlth self-consciousness, we are finally in the domain of phUosophy and reason; the identity of being and thought has been achieved. Balrunin ls careful to point out 232 that even il the dlalectical process of consciousness consists in an elevation aboye-or negation of-exteriority and that'

'"

which is transient, and so this process leads to the' claim mat the "internal" world of thought is the true,233 still Us "essence" la "that it manifests itseI! in the externaJ.," because there exists an identity of internal essence and external being. This ls the "self -realization " of the idea, 234 the external as manifestation of the internal. The division , , of "abstract universal" and "concrete particular" is overcome by the concrete universal of reason: the thoughts which are "subjective" and "objective. ,,235 Just as Hegel considers "Spirit," 1. e., the social forms of selfconsciousness,. in the second prt of the PhenomenologY, so here BakUnin maintains that this result, the single or individu al self-consciousness (the 231"0 fllosofil," p. 364; Appendix IV, para. 26. 232"0 fllosofii, "PP. ~62-364; Appendix IV, para. 26. 233 Ibid. 234"0 fllosofii, ," pp. 360-362'; Appendix' IV, para., 25. 235"0 {llosofii,
Il

'PP. 362-364; Appendix IV, para. 26.

356

rational subject) is "true and rational, Dut only an sich." 236 This theme of the insufficiency of singularity will lead Ba.kUnin directly to the necessity of historical_ action, as we shaH soon see. Having arrived at the level of rational self-consciousness,

man

has "Iready achieved complete self-realization of his human vocation, of his interior goal, and of his potential1ty. ,,237 But, -and here Balrunin takes-.. a giant step in a new direction-theoretical se lf-consciousness ln itself is inswficient: to have real and actual value, ft must be Eractically applied, to the reality of the, world surrounding it. Here BalCUnin strikingly adjoins CieszKowsld' s theory of praxis; he further elucidates this practical
1

dimen sion of reason: . . the true reality of man consists precisely in liis intellectual development, ln the realization of his reason; he must know the Infinite truth constituting' his substance, his essence, and realize them in his actions, such that in the identity of true Knowledge and the actions of man, in the truth of his theoretical world and in the c9rrespondence, of the Eractical world with the theoretical, is contained all his reallty. 238 , The scope of thi's statement is immense; Balru11in has made clear that theoretical Knowledge of "the truth" Is, in itseIf, not enough, it must henceforth be aP,Elied to ,reality through human action. For the !irst Ume
" 1

in Russian thought, the unity of theory and praxis had been announced on
, ,

the basis of Hegelian philosophy.

And if "actions" had Dot yet superseded

-the realm of rational cognition (a furthr development that would require two years for Bakunin), they have at this point manifestly acquired equal
",'

;
{ !

standing With the latter, since BakUnln clearly states that there must
236"0 fUosofli," p. 364; Appendix IV, para. 27.

237lbid o

238"0 filosofii," p. 365; Appendix IV, para. 28.

,.

357

exi t an "identity of true Knowledge and the

actio~

of man." Thua,

, the world must be made to correspcnd to the inner

the activist infiection of the statement,

~'the

cor-

ractical world with the theoretical, " contains a plethora of potentially radical implications: the identity of the theoreti-

...

cal and the practical is not given from the start-as i,ndeed. Bakunin asserts that it Is not-, then it bec ornes evldent that. the practical must be changed. transforrned, in order to correspond to the rational idea, through the agency of human action. Given Bakunin's doctrine of social

change, as elucidated above, this identity constitutes a revolutionary cali to restore or to bring about the identity, to actively transform the real world into a concrete application of the internal Idea. Ski's
~rolegomena,

As in CieszKow-

this vision, of rational

act~on

marKS a projection into

the future, the field of concrete activity. On the framework of Hegel1an philosophy, Balrunin has thus established the foundations of his phUosophy of action, which presented the , , solution to one of ,the most urgent questions of his Ume-the problem of the dynamic
~

interrelation~hip

b,etween theory and praxis, and

of

the

conscious, active realizatiOij of truth as known through reason and speculative philosophy. T,he notion of change, based on a rational comprehension of the wo{ld, enabling reality to correspond to the theoretical cognition 01 the truth becomes the dominant, theme in BalWnin' s work.
i
f

Theory iB henceforth approached in terms of a rational prelude to action


in the real world;' thus, ~ce man has understood reality, he must then

, exerc1se his conscious wUI, act, to transform the world into a "rational reality. "

"--.,.,r-,~---

--~-

--~

-,----

358
{

The impulse to this rational action, as postulated by Balrunin, 18 provided by the dynatbic forces of confIiet and contradiction: ... [the) contradiction between the infinity of his [1. e., man's,) internaI ideal essence and the limitation of his external existence: contrAdiction is the source of movemeut, of development, striving only toward~ its resoluti. 239 Balrunin sees negatipn as the prime moving forCe of history; perpetua! struggle and confIiet leads man through actions: ta attain a higher form of "reconciliation." Thus, contradiction ls ~ecognized by J3a1tUntn as the
)

prime agent of social development and progress. The arising forces of ontradiction and social oppositions drive man to undertak.e rational action, or, as it were, to .active negation, in order to attai,n the higher goal of, identity between Kno.wledge and practice;
1

.. in the discovery. in the self-realization of the internal rationality and in the negation of the exteriorit! not corresponding to U, such that the external existence of developing man corresponds to his Infinite essence. 24Q What must be stressed in this section is the crucial statement that, even before concrete action ls undertaken, Balrunin values intellectual negation as a positive act in' itself. Thus, a critical view Vis--ViS existtng realit}Tr, the formation of a "negative" consciQUsness,
, 1

''\

SQ

to sp_eak, conThe

stitutes the necessary and preliminary basis for pra.ctical action. element of voluntarism cold not be stated more explicitly, It was therefore up to man to .. lmow the universal, the true, and [to] rej1ize it by the strength of his free will. 241 :. 239,,'0 fUosofii,
,
Il

p. 366; Appendix~, para, 28; my emph:asis.

240" 0 fUosofil," p. 366; Appendix IV, para. 241Ibid.; my emphasis.


,

29.
'

Il

,-

359
"",'

Thus, theoretical- self-consciousness havi9g been attairied, 'the focus of history nOw turns to the will, whose taSK ls to accomplish the deed of hlstory. As ''ln CieszKowsKi; the emphsls has shifted from speculative lQlowledge to the realm of free human action.
(,. ,'1

What lB to be the

g~

of thls human action to which BaltUnin

ad,d.resses himself? The answer ls explicitly stated: -. . . the. esse nce of the human spirit is freedom. 242 , And the ultimate destiny of man 18 llliberation. 11243 The attainment of freedom, the liberation from, external con~traints hence forms the highest , goal of history. This insistent preoccupation with the emancipation of the person ls now stated with a new awareness ~d .ls .highllghted in one of Bakunin's letters of the same period, in which he writes: "the personality Uichnost'] of man must be absolutely independent and free.,,244 As we can see, this concept of liberation 18 not fil any way an abstra:ct one-it deals directly with the concrete human person as Buch, as well
~

as with its total emancipation; man, claims BaKUnin,. 18 "capable of, ...
r _' '"

unlimited f~eedom, ',,245 and. it Is up ta the will ta,' ensure that this potential liberation ls actualized in the real' world. Man, Ba.KUnin declares, "must strive towards- the realization of his
fre~om"

and t<?wards "the negation

of exteriorlty alien to him. "246 The' wU1 must C'Onscia,usly app!y the. 242110 filosofif," p. ,367; Appendix IV, para. 30; my emphasts.
r

1
r,

243 lb1d
18~O, in' Sobranie d
o

,1

2'4'4BakWlin, "Pis' mo sestraJ;,n AlekSandre l' Tat'yane, Il ,13 marta sochinen1i, tom 2, p. 311.

245f!O fiiosofii,
,

fi

p. ~'10; Appendix

'IV,

para. "34.
_par~.

246

"0 fUosofii,

Il

p. 371; Appendix IV,

34.

.'

360
internai possibility of "unlimited freedom lr to external reality, so that
1

there cornes ta be an identity, a coincidence, of the theoretical with the practical. Balrunin approprlately re-introduces Fichte at this point in his argument, 247 fo~, once again the Fihtean iilfi"uence upon hi~ thaught Is truly strildng: as previously shawn) the

- 1

!!!!

has as-sumed its

primary rol in the, shaping of moral and so,:ial IU and in the reallzatian of human freedom, However, Balrunin carefully stresses thaLthe Fichtean ethic formerly gave rise to a faIse and "abst"ract freedorn,"248 an empty concept, an "abstract univerSallty" totallY devoid content. ,p249 BaKunin maltes thoughts' and
concre~e

of

"concrete

a:

point ~ differentiating between "Ideal"


,
' '

reality, for

. . . truth, as a concrete, must necessarily have content; and, ab~tract self-consciousness, as true and non":true at ' one and the sarne time, ls the 1!osslbUity of concret~, -real truth, a possibility, not yet realizing itself in reality, still not producing its content. 250' _ Thus, Fichtean philosophy, with its voluntaristic - inhection, Is theoretiQ

caUy vaUd, but lacks

~e
,

concl'ete dimension-necessary to ieal acti9n,


i

whfch BakUnin seeks to incorporate into the will and into human action. The systematic problem of -the paragraphs has been, as
~e
,,

begi~ing

with XXIX
,

have observed, that of' "content." In philosophical reason

there' cannat be jus! an empty intellectal form (1. e., an internal,' 'or~~v ' -

.-

pure identity, 1. e., formalism);2,51- r~ther the cont~nt, must. be given to~'
6

r. ,
"

24'7"0 fUosofii," p. 372; Appendix IV, para. 37. 248"0 IUosofli, " P:, 373; Appendix IV, para. 40.

f
1

24~id.

J'

()

2~0n;~. "
25!compare with Cieszkowslti, Prolegomena~
,',

...
-

<'

"

361
,

gether, or it must be "produced" by J,elf-consciousness itself, That is, truth must be "concrete" and pure intellect. Npw the truth has been described as self-consciousness, but selfconsciousness at this level appears to be "abstract" or empty of concrete . content. This ls the :problem, and Bakunin' s (Hegelian) answer ls pro
~

cann~

be an "abstractll formalism of the

'i

ff'

vided in terms of development: "it is true and rational, but ollly in potency," it is "true and ,non-bue, IJ" ,which is to, say-, it is the notion of
[

'

"b~COming. 252,

So one

ha~

to begin with the

abst~act

self-consciQusness

and show how, properly grasped, it gives itself reality and content. Thua, , BalWIlin will show how this process will malte , it phUosophical reason, and ,

at the saure Ume will therefore. answer th~ questions posed at the beginning of the article concerning the possibiUty of phUosophical knowledge. BaKUnin tiea the concept of the abstract self-consciouaness to the
,

themes of finitude, limitation and illusion elaborated in his earlier works. Thus, self-consciousness which arose in the phenomenological process from the negati of the singular is stUI very much abstract, because --'the content ls not its' own. 253 The liberation from exterlority, singularity ,
[

and- finitude was only by "abstraction": intellectual laws and cCllcepts

t
" !'
"

gained by abstract thought. This, claims Ba.lrullin, la

..p

n~ -the

real "victory"

yet: it has not done away with finitude as such, and espectally not with "singularlty." As before, Balrunm articulates this notion in terms of
,
~

. 'i
~

his favourite theme of "egoiSDl, ,,254


252"0 fUosof1i," p. 373; Appendix IV, as per para 40.
\
,

i
i ~
;,
'.

253"0 filsofii," pp. 374-376; Appendix IV, ~ra, 42-43",


\

()

254"0

fnoso~'i~i',"
. "il.

p. 375,' ?-ppeI)d"- IV,see para, - ~ ' ~{44 lA. l , ,

..
,
_ _ _"
H~-

_ _ _.- -__. " . _ >t .

~!t.

..... '

,\

~2 ;

Inferestingly, BaKllIlin presents the dialectic of this abstract self1 consc1ousness in very political terms.' The contradiction of tiniversal
/'

subject and individual object leads ta the struggle of Master and Slave, which ultimately gives rise to "reciprocal recognition," with-in the sphere of UDiversal rational self-consciousness. The abstract concept of freedom results, according to Bakunin's view, in social and political enmy and strife beleen men. BaKunin draws heavily from Hegel 's "Master-Slave dialectic," as depicted in the Phenomen 01 ogy , and provides his account of the struggle in very action-oriented
terms~

! ,
, 1
1

,
!

1 1

Furthermore, the living subjects, abstractly Knowing themselves, as limitless in the abstract universality of their self-consciousness, and ,as limiting each other in reality, encounter one another, and, driven by the tendency to realize thei~interior universality, their internai abstract freedom in the enUre world surrounding and limiting them, enter into a struggle among themselves, ' the result of which is either the death of on,.e, preferring abstract freedom of his self-consciousness, of IHe, or the s~avery of the' other, sacrificing the dignity of free univers.~ity for the preservation of his singular existence, -into a fight, in which their living individualities separating them from each other were gradually negated, and as singular and not true, submits them to the truth of self-consciousness, and which, finally, is crowned by the reciprocal recognition of singular subjects in the UDiversal sphere of universal. rational self-consciousness, that is, o! that, in which one free and independent singular subject is not limited by another, opposed to him, but continues, finds 'and recognizes himself in him. 255
15

..

It must be noted that BalruDin' 5 descripti of reason

context; the politicalt structure is a demlratic roe-one of mutual recog,nitioo and (reedom. It is very strongly implied in the text that this community of free individuals is the social counterpart to philosophical reason,

provided in a social

.
1

or even, its , conorete realizatioo. The true goal of humanity is a unity 255"0 filosofii, " p. 376; Appendix IV, para. 45.

1
-----

.1
.'

363 free subjects; this unity and tolality of subjets, the "1" that ls the "we 1l256 must form the basis f9r the\reallzation of of these man's freedom.
JI

indi~dual,

(
'--

lnd-ividualism must b surpassed and give rise to a For one man to be free,

communal, so~ial attalnment of Ilberation.

says Baxunin, all men must be free. The foundation of this social and political liberation must inc1ude a reform of society as a whole. and" not entail merely bldividual emancJpation;257 "the unity of subjects
,f

among themselves" forms the basis upon which rests "the complete realization of infinite truth and freedom~ ,,258 We have finally arrived at the solution of the problem: reasOIl is the II goal. ,,259 The "true realm" described philosophically is reason,\ as "the realization of ~ternaI content. ,;260 This reason solves the philosophical, as weil as the social, problem: the unity of subjective thought and objective externality, the identity of subject and Object,Amich is philosophical.
Thu~, lnowl~dge.

the major elements of Balrunin's philosophy of action have Reason is announced as the IIresolution" of the

l
J ,

now been artfculated.

contradictions: i. e., as the manifestation of internai ratiooality and as the negation of the inadequate (i. e., non-corresponding) exteriority. Itis clear that this is a programmatic statement, according to which reason.!!!, or cornes to !, when: a) it appears or manests itself in. 256" 0 filosofi4., " p. 379; Appendix IV, para. 51. 257" 0 filosofii, " p. 37-9; Appendix IV, para. 52, 258Ibid . 2591bid.

260Ibid.

.'

364 the externai ",orId, events, or

f~'etS:' and

h) when It
,

~ away witll)

Cnegates or de~,troys) the non-rational structur~s, "situ~tions and events. Hence Balrunin's particular attachment to the notion of development, because in the course of development the programme (9r latent reasoo) .. cornes into being. As we stajed ea:rlier, "the real" becomes "the rational";

so reason depends on _~.Q.II!iradiction, since contradiction and struggle constitute the very essence of change and becoming. The themes of dialecti'6 .

cal social conflict and development, of potenfiality, as the phenomenologie al expression of the. unity of the finite and infinite, a1l find their place ln a well-balanced structure, the entire mechanism of which is put into play by the dynamlc force of action and will, as the practical translation of theor"etical lCnowledge.
A further mise-au-point on "r!ltional reality,,261 as well as a long
C

...

digression on >philosophicaJjcategories, conclude Balrunin's second article,


f
\

"On Philosophy. Il As tQ,. the third question posed in his paper, that of

the use of philosophy, Balrunin promises to deal with that issue in a subsequent'~stallment

;
!

of the Notes of the Fatherland. However, sin ce no

manuscripts or dralts of Part

m were

evel" found, it remains open' to

speculation whether or not Balrunin ever completed (or, for that matter, e\'en began) this section of his study "On Philosophy." Reaction to' Part II by historians and commentators, ":"'despite the radical new , theories that it presented for the first Ume, -remains as ' ambiguous and uncritical as thel!' commentaries to Part I. Steldov' s analysis of the work, however, is quite }fredic,table: . . . . lilce the first pubLished article, the second unpublished half of 'On Philosophy' likewise completely

261"0 fUosofii," pp. 380-81; Appendix IV, para. 55.

365
\

stands on the territory Of Hegellan Idealism. Moreover, as 18 well-Known, for another two years abroad, BaKWiin continued to maintain that s,ame position of Right-wing Hegelianism, and only towards . the end of the year 1842 did there taKe place in hlm a breaKthrough towar-ds th~ Left Hegelians, and later, towards Feuerbachianism. 62 , ;' DynniK, Koyr and Kornilov hardly discuss the second article at all; Chizhevsld notes, with hi habitual irOriy, that ,Part il is almost drawn from Hegel's_ PhenomenologY.263 and, that o .. it shows ,in its entirety the lev~l of Baxunin's i9towledge of Hegel, his capacity to translate Hegel, ~d to expose his thoughts in ~ssian. But ft has considerably less in~ependent interest and -value than the other two articles (i. e 0' GymnasiaI Lecturq and 'On Philosophy,' Part 1). . .. It adheres too closely to the Hegelian texl and does not present itl?elf as an organic whole. 264
r ,

entire,l~

J.

Gener;ally, most of ChizhevsKi's comments with respect to this article are formaI and technical; he also conclude,\--with the statement-in view of ouI' analysis-that o . this article provides us With very BtUe [which would] help \I.S understand Balrunin's philosophical development. 265
0

r~er

remarkable

Planty-Bonjbur's analyse de texte is somewhat more accurate and closely follows the line of Baldmin's argument; however, Planty-Bonjour also seems to have missed the point and the deeper implications of BalWnin's ' worK:
01' il se rapproche de Hegel sans pourtant se dfaire c,iompltement de cette attitude orphique. En tout cas,

262Steldov, in BaKun in , Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, p. 477. 263ChizhevsKl, Gegel' v RossU," p. 97. 264rbido, p. 101.
265n,id.
.""

..

il comprend mieux. prsent, comment la dialectique unit le moi individuel et le moi universel. La cmnaissance individuelle est le premter degr de la cmnaissance; c'est le moment de la certitude sensible o ce qui est vrai pour mot ne l'est pas, ncessaire- \ 'ment pour autrui. n faut donc s'lever au domaine de l'entendement qui est celui de l'universel abstrait. Dans Uge analyse assez prcise, BaKounine ,montre que 'le monde intrieur n'est tel que par rapport au monde extrieur, et que le monde extrieur n'a pas d'existence autonome, indpendamment du mde F.trieut, et que, par consquent, il n'est rien de plus que la manifestation du monde interne' . . . le deuxime article sera encore plus expllcite et conforme jusqu' dans la littralit du texte de' Hegel. 266

This time, Planty,-Bjour has not missed Balrunin's clarification 01 the term "realitytr:
,

Bakounine prend soin de bien prciser le sens du mot 'Wirldichkeit, ,267 ~


,

although, for some reason, he did not tue note of the same explanation in Balrunin' s earller writings .
. (}.l

~Adherents

of the thesis that Balrunin' s philosophy of action, as

weIl as 11is doctrine of the unity of theo,ry and praxis, were formulated only in late 1842, while under th,e influence of Ruge and of the Left . liegeRans in Germany, must csequentIy be';;iticized for their faUure to recognize the basic principles of these ideas in Baxunin's secOnd article
,

"On Phtlosophy, written ln the course of,the years 1839-1840. Desplte

the fact that these vital arguments are elucidated in the complex idiom of

idealist metaphysics, and require 'lextensive transposition.

~st

decod-

ing, ,,268 the outUnes of the phUosophy of action are nevertheless clearly \, 266Planty-Bonjour, Hegel et la pense philosophique, pp. 44-45.
267

.r \

Ibid., p~ 45.

"

_ f

'

26\talia, Alexander HerztH!, p. 237.

"

367
1

laid out and manifesUy 'recognizable~ The fact that B~in'~ elabora.tion' of a "practical phUosophy" wa~ ,cOllstructed l~gely wtth~n the structural
1

-\

..

. framework of Hegelian metaphysics must be constantly


.
,

~or~e
~

in mlnd

when analyzing this text, ,and admitted1y, does tnvolve


, )

certain amOWlt

"of "transPOSitia:." 'Furthermore,as Malia correctIy pdints out, even


1

wlthout the realities of state censorship, the first poUtlcal bttles would have necessarUy been fought in phUosophical terms, slnce German idealism " had become so deeply encrusted in the very fibre of Russian society by the mid-Nineteenth Century. 269 Even when Balrunin's ideas completely surpassed the limits of Hegellan phUosophy and advocated outright revolutionary action, as in the 1842 manifesto, "The Reactioo in Germany, " the arguments were still conducted in a highly "abstract" phUosophical
,r
1

'language-Hegelianism had to be overcome, so to speaK, on its own ground and by means of its
v~ry

own dialectical method.

Finally, with regard to the !'religious overtones" of BaltUnin's Hegellan writings, such as the themes of "elevation," "purification," "suffering"-and whlch commenfutors insistently refer to as "mysticaJ,"it ls useful ta remember that the origins of the Hegelian Left movement
<?

in Germany \\tere predominantly theological and that the debates on

religion were the source of the later political debates. 270 Up untU 1842, the Young Hegelians were exclusively preoccupied with Hegel's religious phUosophy (they were, ft must be remem6ered, almost all former theology students), and the great centres of debate and the-most controversial questions centered around "theological" worKs, such as Da"id

Strauss' Das Leben Jesu and Feuerbach's GedanKen ber Tod und Unster-

.'

269n,id., p. 236.
-

2708ee Mc Lellan , The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, PP. 5-6.

1
_

, 1 -

"

"

'

, 368

1
r

bl1ch11t. Bince religion and phUosophy were held to have the same content, the saille reality (only wtth different modes of representatron), it
. .
coot~
,

( ..

was natura! in this

that the "religious" in the special post-Hegelian

sense came to include social and politlcal issues, as they did in Bal:tUIlin' s writings aIso. Hence, in view of this factor, the parallel evolution between
j

Bakunin and the Left Hegel1an ~ovement in Germany becomes even more .'. strJk~g, and serves to refute the arguments of those commentators who deny any similarities in their outlookS.

It remains ,for us to resume our biographicfl account of Bakunin' s.

activities prior to his departure from Russia. Towards the end of November 1839, Baxunin left St. Petersburg, .
4

and by December, he was already sttled in Moscow, living wtth his .

younger brothers who were now attending M08COW University. 271 The ,
1

winter of 1839-1840 was spent quietly in by


AleK8an~r

Mo~cow,

in an apartment rented
~tudying a~he

Mikhailovich for

~iS

sons

w~o

were

uni-

versity. Michel' s time was devoted almost exclusively to his studies, and his readings for this period reveal a' healthy dose of historical worKs, aIong with the de rigueur phUosophicaJ. writings. 272 There are references,
in his Konspekty, to the historical and political writings of LOCke, Herdr,

Heeren (!deen ber die Politik, den Verkehr und den Hahdel der vorL.l

nehmsten Vlker der o alten Welt), RottecK, Raumer (the !ive-volume history . 271see Balrunin, "Pis'mo sestram, If deKabr' 1839, in Sobranie sochinenii. tdm 2, p. 271.
lA

272Hegel's PhUosophy of Spirit and Kmt's Critique of Pure Reason, of which KOnspeKty dealing with the Introduction, the Transcendental Aesthet1c and the Transcendental Logic, have been recovered; also see K9mUov, Malgdye g~y, pp. 559-560 .

"

':
~69

of the Romans), tuden and" Leo, in addition ta Ouizot's Histoire de la civUisation en France, which undoubtedly were meant ta provide a con~

crete, historical substance to Balmnin's studies in the phUosop~y of history.273 Furthermore, Bakunln also read Michelet's Geschi,~te. der letzten Systeme der PhUosophie in Deutschland von Knt bis Hegel, and studied several manuals of GreeK grammar, to complete his "classical" educathm. 274 TQe winter of 1839-1840 waf3 ertainly one of the lowest points
ln BakUnin's entire existence; his .state of miIld, usually optimistic aJ),d

--

confident, waa- quite poor and overcome

by

apathy and depressiCll. His

sense of mission, once unfiinching, faltered. This moad of despair transpires in a letter to his sisters: 1 am no longer able to preach -to others; 1 must teach myself flr!Jt .. , ,275 , His missives for this period betray an uncharacteristi lacK of seU,;, confidence and despondeney. Overcome by the immensity of his intellectual lacWlae and lack of "formaI" training, Bakunin became

pla~ed

by doubts

..

a,s to his -future. He ie unusu,ally candid about his present condition tri a . letter to St311kevich:
.

The richness of your persality and external clrcumstances' allowed you to remain true to yourself and to reaIize your vast, intedority. But me~all my lUe and 2738ee BalWnin, Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 250-251; Kornilov, Molodye gody, pp. 560-561. Pyziur's claim' that Guizot May have provided Ba.kunin with "some presentiments of the class ccept" ta an interesting one and certain1y Merite serious coosideratton. 8ee Eugene Pyziur, The Doctrine of Anarchism of Michael A. Ba.kUIlin (Chicago, 1955), p. 26. 274BalWnin, ibid., pp. 250-251. "

..

275BalWnin, "Pis'mo ,sestram," pervaya polovina fevralya 1840, in ibid., p. 295.

370
>

\ \

all my merit have consisted in some abstract strength of the spirit, yes, and even that has been destroyed by the' vUe pettiness of everyday f~mUy lUe rutd by vain internecine dissension among famUy members and friends, and even, 1t is possible, by my own worthlessness. There is atUl in me, as before, a 'stroog need which dominates aU others, for living lCIlowledge, but this thirst, remains Wlsatisfied by anything, despite aIl my wfetched and aeJ!ious effor.ts. Ali my KIlowledge is limited ta the fact that 1 do not lmOW anything; this consciousness is necessary, as a transition, 'as the -.peginning of true lalowledge, but is also extremely dis~?certing2tt6 him, who is destined to stop at this
pOUlt. .
L.

The pessimism brought on by his continued state of inactivity and by the . necessary limitations of auto-didacticism, now convinced Bakunin more than ever of the urgency of going ta Berlin, where life. ,,277
~'will

begin my real

He was very much ~onscious of "wasting my lUe on empti-

ness, ,,~78 for indeed, Moscow life had degeneraiecr lnto evenings of idle . . chatter and gossip, dinner parties at Ogar~v' s, musical soires at t3otKin's, chess games,_ or
.JI
~ings

to the theatre.i-all "worldly events"

which hardly corresponded to Bakunin' s tastes or temperament) and for

~h

whi'ch

he.~ had

earlier expressed nothiQg but disdain. The c ircle of Stanke-

had' completely' fallen apart, gone were the serious intellectual dis and readings of yesteryear, and Balrunin,o having become

cu~sions

ali~ted
"-

from virtually all of his former friends and colleagues, -notably BeUnsky', Botkin, ..Katl,tov, and GranovsKy', -feIt himseU lncreaslngly isolated and . , atone. His l~rs refleot this feeling of stagnation

an

claustrophobia

, ft
c

(.

276Bakunin, "Pis' ~o . S~evichu," 11 fevralya 1840, in S~branie sochinenii. tom 2, p,~ 296. 277 . Bakunin, "Pis'mo Natalye Beyer," seredina fevralya 1840, in ibid., p. 298. 278 "Pis'mo Aleksandre Beyer," 22 fevralya 1840, in ibid., . p. 303.
, (j

{'

371 engendered by the decompositlon of his pr~vious Moseow existence: 1 need a vast, Iree sphere of lUe and truth, in order to spread out, the compressed powers of my spirit, constricted br illusions and by the pettiness of 11f~. 1 feel that the golden period of my life is still before me, and ~at all the past as well as the present i, nothing else than a pt;eparation. for it. This golden period wUI begin when 1 shall finally Itear myself away from the constraining confines of our reality, and when 1 will completely submerge myself in the vivifying at~osphere of Eur~an life, where everything ls, animated with the d ine idea: science, religion, art, nature, p'eoNle. 0, 1 wait a baptism, a transformation .... 27 ~ ,.\

li

Testilying to his ~ontempt for this life of inactivity and passivity, and to his despair of ever getting to Berlin, is the surprising admission that

he is ready to return to army duty, if ooly to find action and reality in that type of existence. Since he could not ever realize his plans of study

abroad, he confided ta his closest sister, Tat'yana, that he had decided tO,leave Moscow forever, t and, if necessary, rejoin the army and go to ,. the Caucasus. In any event, BaKUnin states, he is no longer wil1ing ta sIt and vegetate in either Moscow or Priamukhino: .

If 1 become convin~ed that my trip to Berlin

definitely not be realized, and that 1 can only expect a quiet and gradual tlebasement, then, leaving all my studies and aIl bOOks behind, l would again wear the military coat and would set out for the Caucasus: there, at least, would 1 find living activity and the living movement 'of life. 280 . Hoping to avoid this last drastic course of action at all costs, flIld in a last desperate effort to change the course of his destiny, BakUnin addressed a very long and emotional appeal for assistance ta his parents. 279" Pis'mo sestram," pervaya polovina fe~ya 1840, in ibid., p. 294; "Pis'mo Aleksandre Beyer," 22 fevralya 1840, in ibid., p. 303.

can

,
l
J

1 1

1
1

"

, 281 Pis'mo sestre Tat'yane," 25 marta 1840, in ibid., p. 40e.


\

372

His timing could not have been \Vorse: AleltSandr Mikhailovich wa. stni

'. ..
:

()
,
'

fumlng over the'last antics of BaltUDin's campaign for the liberation of"
,

Varvara, as weIl as over the Aleksandra-Botkin affair. which had ... '>.'

recently come to his attention. Of course, Aleksandr MildlaUovich aIso attributed all blame in this latest conspiracy to his rebellious eidest son,
f..
J
P

by DOW considered the t'specialist" in famU~ feuds.

Michel's too was'

,.

therefore understandably conciliatory and humble. This letter is an Il. important autobiographical document, and a vital testament to Bakunin's argumentative skills and strong. powers of persuasion.
, 0

The ''Let.ter to h.i.s parents"of March 24, 1840, ls an eloquent expression of Bakunin' 9- irrepressible urge for action, and of his desire to fully partake in the true reality of lUe. Indeed, the twin concepts of reality and activity constitute the recurring themes of fuis appeal, and they are invested with a s,?ecial sense of urgency, revealtvg BakUnin's dUficuit position. Uncompromising in his Ideals, ;right. from the
,

s~rt,

BakUnin announces that his external activity must correspond to his inner

'.

ideas, echoing the dominant theme of "On Philosophy," Part II: 1 realize that it is impossible to live only by means of an interior lUe,' that the truth of this same life requires an external ralizatioD, that it requires re3Jity, and that any, interior lUe, -no matter how true ft is, -is nothing "more than an illusion, wasted talent, if it does not have an external manifestation, an that, finally, any interior life, which remains interior for a long time, and which does not manifest itself in external action, decays and is transformed into a. sickly? crippled existence, unworthy of the human vocation, Every citizen must be useful to his country, he ,must be an active member of his society; but for the realization of thie civil . obligation, which, at the same time, ia a necessary condition of his own interior tranquUlity, he must not see~__ unusual meane and forms, but (rather] conform to those forms and means, given to him by
J

~._.

__ ....._ 1'.-.- _ _.......__.... ...... ,


~ ~

_~

_ "_. __ ,

373 the direction and spirit. of tht societY to which }-' he 'blongs ... 281 Adding a note of appeasement, witlJ.out compromising-- his principles,' BakuI).in1 the master strategist, continued: .
Q

'"

r realize more and more the neeessity of merging' from the Indetermination .of my ext~rnal and, therefore, of my interior position, and of choosPlg a tY-PiL.of activity which would provicle me with a piece of bread and a plac~ in society, and which would also allow me to be useful to rily country, useful in ac(" cordance with my ab11ities. 1 have already abandoned . that mood of exaltation, which gave you to think that a man could remove himself from all social obligations, unpunished, and as a {esuIt of which any determination appeared to me as ,a constraint upon the Infinite interior world of man. 1 thirst for determinate and real externat activity, as a salvation:' as the only means from the unbearable and difficult Indetermination of my present situation. 282

Balrunin then goes on to express his deep need for Kno;wledge, "the, single source of aIl

my moral and intelleetu,al' ~life"283 and "te only

condition

.... of my human di~ity, ,,284 without which lUe had no meaning whatsoever for him. 28' ~e then provides his parents with a lengthy and detailed autobiographical account of his youth and army days, where "the need for knowledge was my. salvation. ,,286 Rapidly (or conveniently). forgetting his earlier resolutions stated iD his letter to Tat'yana, BakUnin
.

~',

28L' Pis"mo roditelyam,", 24 marta 1840, in ibid., p. 393.


28~'d,., p. 394; my emphasis. l
if

2831bid . , p. 396. ,...

2841bid . , p. 399. 285 Ibia. ,

".

pp. 396-397.
Il

i ,

.. ~.

Cli,'

2861bid . , p. 398.

,,

~-

---

-----_.~\-----~.-----

.....,
-. .
.

';

i.

3'74

"

\'

prQceeds systematically to enumerate the reasons.. why he could not underte' government or military service, and states his refUsa! to become a "landlord"; all the se occupations, he
de~lares,

ta hls pr Inclpl es: " His only mbltion Is ta earn

~. doct~r~te and to

run contrary

assume a useful position in societt by, becbming a university professor. 1 Baxunin emphasizes that, to thts end, he desperately needs a formaI,
~classical

education, pi w~ich he has been deprived. otherwise, he la


\

doomed to forever remain a dilettante. ~87 LOgically, BakUnin' th'Ul in-. gepiously proceeds to disqualUy all Russlan universities as Inadequate,
1
T,
p

and concludes that he has no choice, therefore, than to be granted l1er-. mission to sfudy' in Berlin, where he would speciali~e. in phUosophy, history and law. 288 <?oming to the crux ~f the ~attr~ Balrun~ forc.ed to

~dmit that he has been unable to raise the nehessary funds on his awn, by ~eans of his translations and articles, and slts ~Lfather for.
. ' . ' y

the "rtasonable" sum of 1500 or 2000 of tltree ~ars.

Rouble~

a year for a maximuJI?

Having m~e tilts project sound as attrctive a bargain

as possible (with accompanying promises to return pramp,tly to RUBsia and assume a .respectable positi as a university professor), ~aKunin - . 1,' ~ posted his letter and anxiously awaited bis parents' reply, upon which
,

:
"

1
\

his fate depended.


:0

",,
~O,
\
)

..

\ :--

Aleksandr MiKhailovich's answer (dated March .

1840) was positive

\,i

\1

and favourably disposed towards his son (an unmistakable tribute to Michel' s masterful rhetoric 1); although he accused his son of "Don QuixbUsm, ,,289 he
J.

287lbd., p~ 400.
288Ibid., p. 402.
0

~89"LiKe a new Don Quixote, you have been captivated by a new Dulcinea [i. e., Hegel!], aJ)d seduced by her chimericai charms, you have completely fargotten all your obligations, in A, M. BalruJlin, "Pis'mo synu, Il 30 marta 1840, fu''''Xarnilov, Malodye gody, pp. 637-638.

ri

l'

"

'

\
__
'-"h'_~

-----""'"

375

agred

ui principle to Michel' s trip, but could not give him a definite

answer with regard te funds before the fall of 1840, having experienced at this time, some financial difficulties of his own. 290 If the finances of the Priamukhino paper factory improved, the eIder BakUnin stated, then Michel would be allotted an allowance of 1500 Roubles per year. Michel,Balrunin's state of uncertainty was thus prolonged until the fall' of 1840. But, at this point, it will be Iiecessaxy to introduce a few of Ba.lamin's new friends, one of whom would soon play a decisive role in the dnouement of the Berlin project. With Belinsky now living in

St. Petersburg and harbouring hostile feelings towards him, and with Botkin's increasingly antagonistic attitude (due to th predictable consequences of his involvement with Aleksandra Ba.lrun in a) , Michel
naturall~

gravitated towards a new circle of acquaintances. It was logical that he should feel an attraction for Gran ov slty , W!to not only had been StanKevich 's closest friend while abroad, but who had aIso studied at tIle University of Berlin, which served to elevate him considerably in BalCunin' s esteem. Relations between the two men were poUte, but never

cordial; the moderate GranovslCy could hardly accept the "maximalist" temperament and. extremism of Ba.lrunin' s philosophical position, and tempers som flared.
In a letler of 12/24 February 1840 to Stankevich,
"

Granovsky desct:ibed the activities of their mutul friends, and provided


an account of Belinsky's
~

cserv~tive

nationalism and uncritical worship


4

of Russian reality. This letler furthermore serves to clarify the fact that BalruIlin sharply disagreed With Belinslty' s new views: Michel tt'as been here [i. e., Moscow] for a long-Ume. 'ie You will ha"e noticed that my feelings for him were 29On,id.

376 not entirely friendly. He repaid me in ltind. ~ met for the first time at Botldn' s and said t Vy' to each other {the poUte, formai use of the second person]. Gradually this constraint disappeared, and we got almg welle To get along with him the way 1 get almg with Botltin, is impossible for me; but 1 highly value his friendship. His is a vast, powerful, nature, of strength and nobility. He wanted me to explain something in the Logic to hi1;Ili., but 1 refused, because in these matters, he is far more advanced than 1 am. We see each other frequently . . . Michel and 1 are reading Schiller. He is of our opinion. 291
0

Despite the fact that both men admired each other from an intellectual point of view, the incompatibility of their way of a close relationship.
,
temperamen!~Aood

in the

"This Balrunin is a strange man," wrote

GranovsKy, "of rare intelligence, with a deep understanding for sciencebut without any moral convictions. It is the first Ume that 1 encountr such a fantastic creature. "292 Relations with GranovsKy soon came to a head over the "Slavophile affair," when Balrunin publicly reprimanded Granovsky for associating
with Kireevsky, KhomiaKov, ~d their circle.
;

Granovsky compla~d to

Stankevich: Yesterday, 1 had a quarrel with Baltunin. He informed me that 1 acted foolishly in frequenting the company of Kireevsky. Strange man! Now 1 understand what Botkin and BelinsKy call his 'absolutisme ,293 As we have a1ready seen, Bakunin disagreed philosophically with the Slavophiles, and stayed away from their "soires" (Chaadaev's were held on Mondays, while KireevsKy's tOOK place on Wednesdays) on principle. 291Granovskii, "Pis'mo Stanltevichu," in Perepislt. GranovsKago, tom II, pp. 377-378. 292GranOVSltii, "Pis'mo Neverovu," 18 iyulya 1840, in ibid., p. 403.

(
p. 378.

293 Gran ov ski i, " Pis' mo Stanltevichu," 17 fevralya 1840, in ibid.,

377

Being despotic by nature, he, of course,

exPe~S friends to do

liKewise-hence the clash with Granovslty. Steldov 294 claims that the "aristocratie atmosphere" and "reactipnary political attitude" of haadaev's and KireevsKy' s circles "irritated" Balrunin; and despite the fact that Ba.lrunin, at this time, "did not yet have any definite political convictions," his avoidance of their company i8 nonetheless tionary instincts."

attr~buted

to his

"rev~-

Pol on sltii, liKe Kornilov, does not attribute Balrunin's

hostility to the Slavophiles to his political tendencies, but rather to ".Eure1y philosophical" dilferences. 295 Kornilov sees the dispute as "lar.gely a ques.on of ,philosophical- religious viewpolnts. ,,296 This latter

. '!iD
interpretation appears much more liKely, since, as stated earlier, in
\~

the late thirties and early {orties, the political and social debates were still largely fought on philosophical ground. The Slavophiles, it will be
philos~hy

remembered, endorsed Schelling's philosophy of history and

of "revelation," a position with which an avid young Hegelian, liKe Balrunin could not agree.
,

Furthermore, BakUnin's negative views on tradition al

orthodox religion were hostile to those of KhomyaKov, pogodin, Shevyrev and Samarin, whose entire concept of Russian nationalism was based on
r,

the principle of orthodoxy.

The Slavophiles' ideology of religious nation-

alism, the rejection of Western rationalism and Hegelianism, as weIl as the strcng element of mysticism in their views, were in direct oppositi to the principles upheld by the young BaKuIlin.

'

294gteldov, Zhizn' Balrunin~ p. 62 .. 295polonsKii, Zhizn' MildlaUa BakUnina, p. 50; Kornilov, Molodye godr, pp. 617-619.
t

29~o~ni1ov, in ibid., p. 618.

..

!
378 With the <;Iissolution of ,. the StanKevich Circle, more and more of Hs former members, such as AKS3.k.OV, BotJdn, and Granovsky, as weIl as other young 'professor~ returning from study abroad, such as KriuKov and RedKin, began gathering together (and eventually, merged) with the Slavophiles and with Chaadaev's circle. 297 Despairing over his former friends' inconsistency and abandonment of their beliefs, it was inevitable that B3.k.unin moved closer to another group inimical to Slavophile ideology: to this period belongs the rapprochement between Batrunin and AleKsandr Herzen. The former circle of Herzen and Ogarl!v had resumed its activity on a smaller scale after Herzen's return from exile, and its present pa,rticipants now included Ogarv, Ketcher, and Satin. 298 Perhaps due to the similarity of their bacKgrounds and outloOKs (and despite the account given in' My Past and Thoughts), Baxunin and Herzen became very close friends by the spring of 1840. 299 They quicldy
c

'l

.,

assumed the "ty" form (familiar fortn of the second'erson singular), a.nd although only one letter of this period survives, 300 it does nevertheless underline the proximity of their views: ... despite the fact that our acquaintance is fairly recent, it did not take me long to love. you warmly and to realize that there are Many common elements in our intellectual and innermost aspirations, and that 1 can tum to you without fearing any misunderstandings. 301 297 Ibid ., pp. 617-618. 298salrunin, Pis' mo -brat'yam," Konets maya 1840, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 2, pp. 426-427.
fi

f 1

299See BaJrun in , "Pis'mo Natal'ye Beyer," 21 marta 1840, in ibid.,


p. 390.

30Os aKUn in, "Pis'mo Gertsenu,

Il

20 aprelya 1840, in ibid.,

(
1

pp. 421-422.

301UOid ., p. 422.

"

379

.
It also did not taKe Brurunin long to introduce bis new-found friends to
~

bis scheme of travel and study in Berlin. Being from the afiluent

land~

lord class, both Ogarv and Herzen were in a position to offer Balrunln financial assistance. By AprU 1840, Herzen and Ogar!v had generously agreed to lend him the hefty sum of 5000 Roubles. Writing to Herzen from Tver', Balrunin informed hlm of the fact that bis father was experiencing temporary financial difficulties, due to a bad harvest and drought, and
there~re,

was not able to support 'Michel immediately;

. . . and for this reason, my dear Herzen, in order to give rny trip to Berlin a solid and unshaKable basls, 1 must turn to you. If you and your friends can give me the 5000 Roubles, of which you spoke, this would guarantee rny trip. 302
It must be mentioned that, as usual, Bakunin did not repay this "loan,"

and Herzen would tirne and tirne again generously finance various Bakuninist projects throughout the next three decades. Attempting to convince bis friends of the soundness of their financial investrnent, Baltufiin continued:

"

1 await a spiritual re-birth and a baptism from this voyage, 1 feel so many powerful and profound possibilities within myself, and have accomplished so little to date, that every extra kopeika [penny] will be important to ~e as a new means for the attainment of my goal. 3
Th\1~,

it was Aleksandr Herzen who fulfilled BaKunin's long-term

dream of travel to the West. It was decided that Michel would sail from
St. Petersburg on June 29, 1840. Through the auspices of Kraevsky, a

tiCket on the. ship, was purchased.


!

. . the "Alexandra," sailing from Kronstadt to Lbeck,


.~

302 Ibid ., p. 421.

0- 303 Ibid

380 BakUnin's Russian period was rapidly drawing to a close; he


would never again w1llingly return to his country.

Partaldng in the

1848-1849 revolutionary insurrections in France, Germany and Austria, he chose to renounce his Russian citizenship as well as his Priamuldrlno estate, and consequent;Iy became a wanted political agitator, pursued by the Tsarist secret police. It was only in 1851 that BalWldn would set foot once again on Russian soil, chained and fettered, handed over bl' the Austrian government to the Tsarist police, to be sentenced for revolutionary activity, imprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress, in Schlusselburg, and finally exiled to Siberia.
With, his future finally settled, Balrunin returned to Priamukhino

in May 1840 to spend bis last few weeKS in Russia with his family and to maKe the final preparations for his departure.,304 Peace was made in the family, and Bakunin was reconciled with his parents. 305 From Priamukhino, Balrunin wrote to StanKevich, joyfully announcing his impending arrivaI in Germany,
It was necessary for me to leave, for my soul reached su ch a state of sickness that there was not one healthy place left in it. l' But now 1 am healthy again and am preparing to devote all my efforts and all my time to learning [nauKa). There has awaKened in me once a~in the belief in the possibUity of attaining my goal. 30~
It was with great impatience that BakU.nin looKed forward to being re\lllited
"

with StanKevich, his oldest and dearest friend-the only one who, in
~~..... in's

eyes, truly understood him,

"gave me the best years

304"Pis'mo brat'yam," konets maya 1840, in ibid., pp. 426-427. 305BaK.unin, "Pis'mo sestre Varvare, tom 3, p. 4. .
Il

8/20 iyulya 1840, in ibid.,

(
p. 432.

306" Pis' mo N. StanKevichu," 18/30 iunya 1840, in ibid., tom 2,

381 of my personal existence. ,,30,? However, this letter dated June 18/30 1840, did not reach 8tanKevich in time, since the latter died in a Uttle village neal' Lal Como, ltaly, on J-.me 25, 1840. Of some consolation to Bakunin was the fact \hat with 8tankevlcb, at the tUne of his death, were his sister, Varvara, and thelr mutual friend, Efremov. BakUnm only received news of bis friend's death upon arriving in Berlin. After an e Dl>tional farewell, BakUnin left Priamukhlno and arrived in St. Petersburg on June 25, 1840, three days before bis ship's sailing date. 308 ~s last days in Russia wltnessed another unpleasant scene with
0

'--"

Belins~d
.

a physical fight with KatKov;

the latter in a compromising situation

~th Ogar~v' s
,

ap~arently,

BaKunin had caugtlt

wife, and had spoKen

of this incident' to others of their mutual friends. Mter a scene complete with insults and fi ghtin g, BalruJlin impetuously challenged KatKov to a duel, but fortunately tlie event did not taKe place, since BaltUnin aSKed to have it deferred to Berlin (as duels were illegal in Russia), and
f

eventually sent KatKov a note of apology for his indiscreti. However, this incident created a hostile atmosphere, so that Belinsky, BotKin,
)

Panaev, and surprisingly, the offended Ogarv, all sided wlth KatKov. 309

Only Herzen attempted to remain neutral, '-"but eventually sided with Michel. Thus, feeling himself surrounded by enmity and contempt, and having broken all tles with his former friends, Bakunin spent his last days on
"

Russlan soil exclustvely in the company of Herzen and his wife, Natalie, whom he described as "wonderful people," and to whom he was able to 3071bid: 308" Pis'mo brat'yam 1 sesh,'am, " konets lunya 1840, in ibid.,
u

p. 433.
_1

3098ee K crn~ov, Moiodye gody, pp. 675-680. il

<'

382

"unburden [his) sout. ,,310 According to all of BaKunin's accounts, he and Herzen got on famou sly . In his first letter from aerlin, he wrote: "Herzen ... was my comfort in Petersburg. He is a wonderful, intelll-

"

gent, noble, man. ,,311 With regard to BelinsKy, the disputes over reaJlty
had continued while Balrunin was in Petersburg; in his tirst letter to the

Beyer slsters from Berlin, 312 he still complained about Belinsky's ,"false direction" (Iozhnoe napravlenie), thus underlining the fact that on the eve of his voyage, they still he1d conflicting views art the meaning of reality. When Baltunin finally leit St. Petersburg on June 29, 1840, ooly Herzen came to see him off. Herzen's description of the deptrture recaptures a very moving scene: , . of all his friends, ooly 1 accompanied him to Kronstadt~ The ship had hardly emerged from the mouth of the Neva, when one of those fierce Baltic squalls, accompanied by a torrent of cold rain, fell upen us. The captain was obliged to tum bacK. The --return had an extremely painful effect on us both. BaKunin grimly watched the banKS of St. Petersburg, which he thought he had left behind fot' many years, draw nearer to us, its shores dtted witll athe ominous figures of soldiers, customs officials, fSDl1ce officers and spies, shivering from the cold under' their shabby umbrellas. Was thls an omen, a sign from providence? SimUar conditims held Cromwell baclt, when he set sail for America. But Cromwell was leaving 'old England,' and deep down was delighted to have found eXcuse to remain there longer. BaKunin, however, was leaving the new city of the tsars. Oh 1 one must see the immeasurable rapture, the joy, the tears of happiness, each Ume a Russian crosses the border of his country and thinKs that he ls now beyond the power of his Tsar 1. . . Baxunin did not want to disembarlt onto the banK, preferring to watt for the hour of departure ln the cabin

1
l,
;

\an

310s aKunin, "Pis'mo brat'yam i sestram," 29 iunya 1840, in Sobranie sOchinenit, tom 2, pp. 434-435; alsd "Pis'mo ,rodnym, " 4 iyulya 1840, in ibid., tom 3, p. 1.

(
tr.-

311"Pis'mo sestram Beyer,


p. 6.

Il

13/25 iyulya 1840, in Ibid., tom 3,

I
~

'"

312 Ibld

- - - - . ........ ~_r

-383

\.

of the ship. 1 left him and 1 still remember his taU and great figure, wrapped in a black rain coat, drenched by an inexorable .rain; 1 remember how he stood on the front decit of the ship and waved to me for the last Ume with his hat, as 1 turned into a side street. . . . 313 After a stormy voyage, Ba.lrunin reached the
Prussi~

capital on

July 13, 1840; this date marks a new and decisive period for Balrunin, and indeed, for European radical thought. The quarreis with Belinslty, Stankevich's death, and Balrunin's departure from St. Petersburg, ail cap be seen to symbolize the c1oSin~ of an important era in Russian intellectuaf history: the Moscow intelligentsia's period of apprenticeship in German idealist philosophy. After 1840, revolutionary and socialist theories, formulated on the basis of this philosophical formation, rapidly emerged from the pens of BalWIlin, Belinsky and Herzen, each thinker evolving in his own particular direction, but each highly influenced by the Hegelian schooling which he had received in the Moscow circles of the 1830's and 40's. Thus, for Mikhail BakW1in, the years 1836 - 1840 represented a period of ideological "incubation," which would soon give way ta a, vital new period of revolutionary activity. And at this point, Bakunin' s activity and thought merges with the main stream of the revolutionary movenient in Europe.

"

313Gertsen, "MikhaU Baxunin," (1851) in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 1 pisem, tom 6, pp. 478-479; originally published as "Lettre Michelet, " in Revue bleue (Paris, 17 octobre 1908), pp. 492-493. Lest any confusion should arise, it should be clarified that Herzen was accompanying Balrunin to Krstadt, from where his ship, the "Alexandra" would sail. The incident described above tOOlt place Con board the smaller steamship which toOk the passengers from St. Petersburg to Krons~t.

.~

(
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION: THE TRANSITION TO REVOLUTIONARY PRAXIS

Balrunin' s ar'~ivai in Berlin in July 1840.' marked the beginning of a Most important and fruitful periode in his intellectual development; the next twenty-six months in Germany would witness the gradual and" systematic crystallization of his phUosophical principles into a rational and well-defined theory of revolution. The rapidity of the process of radicalization of Balrunin's philosophical ideas, however, has led many historians to uphold a the ory of a sudden "break" in BalruIlin' s ideological orientation,; Walicki summarizes this trend:
In Germany (the 'holy land') Balrunin' s thoughts start

to evolve with such intensity and speed that it gives the impression of sudden leaps 'from one extreme to the other. 1 The radical ft sht" in Balrun in , s political OUtlOOK has hence been attributed to the impact of various external factors and events-, upon his thought. , The most common explanation provided by commentators for the perceived "change" in Bakunin's intellectual orientation consists in ascribing his new views to the ftstormt" political climate of Europe, whieh exerted a dramatic impact upon him and caused him to radically reconsider his ideological position. 2 DynniK maintains that Bakunin was heavily infiuenced by the "revolutionary movements" of Germany and of all the European capitals;3 Steldov offers the folloWI\g ambivalent explanation: lWalicki, "Heger, Feuerbach and tbe Russian Philosophical Left, " in Annali, p. 109.
2S ee, for example, Pyziur, The Doctrine of Anarc'hism of Michael A. Balmnin, p. 27.

(,

3DynniK, "Ot primireniya s deistvitel 'nost 'yu k apologii razrusheniya, ,; in Letopisi marKs1zma, tom IV, p. 40. 384

"

-_co

..
It was enough to come under the influence of the

385

contemporary fermentation of European lUe and to remember the vUeness of Russian life, in order to completely cast off the yolte of quietism, forcibly imposed upon himself, and artificially put on in desperation and incredulity at the,' possibUity of revoit, to cast off the blinders 'of admiration before the 'rational reality,' in order to immediately turn around by 180 degrees. 4 Although Steklov attributes the cause of Baltunin' s shift in p'osition to the political atmosphere of Germany in the 1840's, he concedes, nonetheless (and for the first time), that)1t the seeds of this sharp turn were implanted through those impressions of Russian llie, It and that despite his "quietistic and conservative" outloOlt, he was "not without a critical attitude," and even displayed a "negative position with regard to the manliestations of Russian social life of that time. It 5 However, it must be borne in mind that it is impossible to speaK
~

any coherent Itrevolu-

tionary movement" per se in Germany during the years 1840-1842-the years when BalWnin 's ideological transformation allegedly toOlt place. Moreover, his revolutionary programme had been fully articulated by
}

October 1842, six years before the onset of the "revolutionary movements tt of 1848-49. In the early 40's, the Prussian capital was the stranghQld of conservative ideology, which inevitably gave way to government suppression of heterodox efents, to active press censorship, and to the

rootin~"

out of any pote~lY radical sentiments. In addition, it is important to remember that the religious radicalism of the Young Hegelian movement did not as yet extend to a critique of the political rgime; the
" ".
Il

early

~ (t " "

4steldov, Baltunin, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 3, p. XL VIn; Bee also Steklov, Zhizn' Bakunina, p. 113. 5Steldov, Baltunin, in Sobranie sochinenii, tom 3, pp. XL VIIXLVDI.

386 essays in the Jahrbcher [the organ of the Left Hegelians), especially Ruge's, were aIl favourabl~ to the Prussian state. ,,6 Furthermore, McLellan maltes clear that: Up Wltil the end of the 18aO's the political attitude of the Yoimg Hegelians was one of loyal opposition: they believed that their Ideals could be realized within the framewo'rk of the Prussian state. . ~ Like their Master, the Young Hegelians held an ideal-view of the state, and particularly the Prussian state, as the incarnation of objective morality. . .. In the late 1830's, the Young Hegelians were definitely opposed to revolution: they advocated reform in order to avoid it. . .. In line with the rest of the Young Hegelians, Marx defended the, rational state against its falsication and called it 'the great organism in which legal, moral and political freedom ls to find its realization.' The state's taSk was to bring into order the opposing fore es of what Hegel had called 'civil society. ,7
It is against this baCkground that Baltunin 1 S elaboration of a revolutionary
"

, '

-.

praxis must be

co~sidered.

Furthermore, it is impossible to refer to a

"Young Hegelian movement" in Germany before about 1840, 8 the year of BalCUnin's arrival in Germany. This brings us to the second MOst widely stated reason fol" Balrunin's sudden radicalism: the influence of the Left Hegelians upon his intellectual formation. 9 However, when one realizes that
~e

formation of the Young Hegelian movement, as a cohesive and


,

homogeneous group, was

6McLellan, Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians, p. 14.


7Ibid., pp. 14, 15, 22, 23, 24.

..

itsel~

talting shape at the same time as BakUnin's

8 . Ibid., p. 6.

9 . This Interpretation is almost universally accepted; see, inte,r alia Planty-Bonjour, Hegel ef la pense phUosophiQ\!e; p. 61; Chiz'hevsKi, Gegel' v Rossli, p. 103; DynniK, ': Ot primireniya s deistvitel 'nost'yu k apologii razrusheniya," in Letopisi marksizma, tom IV, p. 41; SteKIov, in Zhizn' PaKUn!na, pp. 114-,115. I11terestingly enough, Koyr proves to be the exception and attributes BaKunin' s change in orientation to "une nouvelle lecture de Hegel et, notamment, de la Phnomnologie, " La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 144.

---

o
__

~. ~p

__

......

__

........ _

,.~ r>---.. .........~..........-.-.,... .... _. ""

lb

... ~~"

~'*.I!IiI>t i~JttQtiftiJ!1IS)M'I"" C~.~~

\
387

process of pratical radicalization, lt becomes obvious that the two were operating conjunctly and moving in parallel directions. In addition, conside~ing

the importance and widespread effect of BakUnin's 1842 article,

"The Reaction in Germany," rightfully considered one of 'the Most radical


~

and "classic expressions" of revolutionary dialectics, 10 it becomes evident , . that they exerted a mutual influence upon each other' s development. Moreover, in 1842, when Balrunin had alrady directed his radical critique to the
,
"
""Il

realm of politics, Many of the Left-Hegelians were still primarily preoccupied with a critique of religion. Hence, it is misleading to speak of any decisive influence of the Young Hegelian movement-in terms of a cohesive, structured, and well-articulated
radic~

Ideology-which exerted

a powerful impact on the orientation of BalruIlin' s thought, compelling him to abandon his previous "conservative" convictions in favour of a sudden., extrem and unharnessed revolutionary activity. Throughout this. study, we have systematically ouUined the foundations of BalruIlin's philosophy of action based on the framework of Hegelian phU os aphy, by tracing the inner logic and conslstency of his evolutian. The transitiOn from philosaphical speculation to an assertion of the pririlacy

of revolutionary praxis and of political action, of which the Uleoretical " structure and elaboration was formed while still in Russia, would naw , " undergo a rapid process of radicalization, due to the momentum supplied,
it ls true, by Beverat external catalysts. The internai principle of Balrunin's

unity of theary and actiow\rould now follow a necessary pattern of growth /


1

and structurization, in accordance with its Inherent tendencies and essenUa! direction. But this pracess of rapid evolution towards the left and , lOMcLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, p. 52; Malia, Alexander Herzen, p. 251.
,"

" t :.(
)

1{

-~- ~~

~~~

--...- -

--~

--- ->-

~.-'..

_ _...... -

............ 4\,

--

388

to.,'a,rds radical 'fuories, whUe certainly being infiuenced by extemal circumstances iid events, nevertheless corresponded to the basic

~orientat1on of Bakunin's vi~ws, and conformed to general temperamental,


activist traits Inherent ta his nature. thus, external circumstances and situations accelerated and intensified the process of his ideological development, but without altering its essential character or orientation .
, 1

Upon reaching Berlin, Ba.kUnin received news of Stankevich's tragic


1

and premature demiS'e, an event which made a profound impression upon him. The death of his close friend prompted BalWIlin to reconsider the
1 0

"

question of the immortality of the soul, and to arrive at a new affirmation of the concept of personality Q.ichnost,).l1 The idea' of the concrete,
c

individual human personality, which had overcome the limitations of its

immediacy" and asserted itseU through creative and free action, would ) constitute the bridge by which BakUnin would reach the realm dl revoluIl

tionary activity and politics. The vindication of the free personality, from the confines of Hegelian historical determinism, and which Balamin henceforth linked to the concepts1 0f reality, wUl, and 'action, formd the Key factor in this graduaI transition: .. 'true reality, not that which necessarUy expound inteiUgent people surrounding you, ls close to you. It ls withln yourselves, in your personalitles, but ft ls accessible only to those who approach it freely, purely and humbly; It ls simple, and therefore inaccessible to thearetical constructions. Only free a'tion can under. ',. stand it~ -life can be understood only by lUe, _~d action only by action. This humillty, of whlah 1 speak, once, again, ls not that false and faint-hearted humUlty, whlch ls so often preached to you, but, on the contrary, it ls the hlghest pride of man. It i8 only oppose(i to theoretlcal and inactive arrogance, but n~.!9 pride, not to the hlghest I1BaKnin, "Pi8'mo Gertsenu," 23 oktyabrya 1840,,;. Sobranle sochinenii, tom 3, p. 31.

....--c//

"

:
~

, ,
\-

~
~
'c

CI

(\
389

l,'

~"

dignity of man who KnOWS Gad oo1y t hrough free unlimited acti. God is freedom, and freedom knpWS only through freedom. Freedom, therefore, is the highest actioo, which produces and creates itself ctinuously. The persality of Gad, lilte the immortality and the dignity of man, -and, in my opinion, these are closely linked, -can only be comprehended practically, only by the free act, arising from the original depths of the persality and fecundated by it, since God himself is nothing clse than a wooder-working selfcreation, a creation, which, in order to be really 'understood and grasped, must ech time be understood anew: and the natQfe of the deed csists -precisely in the fact that it continually :Iirms God within itself. [, Gott selbst nichts anderes ais das wunderthlltige Thun seiner se Ibst ist, -etn Thun das um Wirldich begriffen und ergriffen zu werden immer neu begriffen werden muss, -und das ist dt e Natur der That bestilndig Gott innerhalb seiner selbst zu betr[tigen.'] This action is the highest pride and the greatest humility of man before God, -and only this acti, 'ccnsummating itself within itself, in the simple, innocent heart, is the transparent realization of the etema! personality of man. 12 Thus, reality is henceforth perceived in terms of the human personality, wl1ich expresses itself concretely and practically through the free act in the historical process. Likewise, the concepts of Gad and freedom have come to merge with the ratial activity of man, which continually renews itself in time. The affirmati of the concept of persmality gave cOllcrete expression" to the roles that action and will were to play in the emancipation of the Quman pers. The process of the concretizat1 of theory, begun , while ;still in Rus~a, acquired increasing importance in Ger many , and can "be noted as of Bakmlin's first few letters to Priamuldno:
Man must not remain in the infinite and general indetermination .of bis existence-although he will be infinite
12Bakunin, "Pis'mo sestre Tai'yane,
Il

;,

t l
,

lwnets leta 1842, in ibid.,

pp. 111-112.

390 in this abstract existence, he Will aIso be without content and without action. He must live and act. 13 As expounded in his last worle, "On PhUosophy," Baltunin continued to stress the necessity of infusing a concrete, pratical dimension into philosophical thought.
~eory

is coosidered as a prelude, but henceforth

only as secondary, to practical, rational. actioo: )

~eoretiGl

not and cru;mot( be limited oo1y to coo.cepts, ta a \ec{mprehension of the otheronly that love ls real and alive, which acts . . . love must be ~ctive and daring; it must not fear any obstacles. 14
re~lity

~~e' must

Gradually, theoretical Knowledge is completely superseded by the

of true action; Bakunin sharply recognizes the dangers of slipping into

an equally inactive theoretical praxis:


. . . cne must live according to one' s own self, never losing aners own mean,,: this is your only goal, and it will be resolved only in action, 1. e., not in the abstract-theoretical, nor in the abstract-practical. 15 Furthermore, Now is the time for courage, for reality, for action. 16 Lilcewise, the concept of will is elevated to a p!ime principle in the dialectic of history, 17 and merges With the idea of actl'ft n~gation, 13"Pis'mo brat'yam i sestram," 18/39 avgusta 1840, in ibid., p. 15; my emphasis. 14"Pis'mo bratu Nikolayu," 17/29 marta 1841, in ibid., pp. 52-54; my emphasis. 15"Pis'mo sestre Varvare i p. 81. 16"Pis'mo sestram," nachalo yanvarya 1842, in ibid., p. 86. 17 r See uPis'mo brat'yam i sestram," 18/30 avgusta 1840, in ibid. ~
i ,..

bra~

Pavlu," dellabr' 1841, in ibid.,

,
1
!

-1

p. 18.

391
,

which gives impulse to concrete actioo.


. . . lthe will is all-powerful, there i8 nothing impossible for it, becaus _ t8 nature ts infinite, because its essence is inf ite freedom. Tbe will ls infinite strength of self - gation in the truth, the negation of aU the narrow d contradictory drives of human . nature and of e flnlte opposition of true thought. . . 18

J 1

1
!
1

~,

~ Negativity was the Hegelian concept which perhaps underwent the

1 1

most dramatic and radical transformation during this perlod, and flnally reached its political culmination in Balrunin's "Reaction in Germany." Negativity, in effect, becomes the essential criterion of, or the necessary prerequisite for, the emergence of rational human action: Only action is the true lUe, and real action is possible only in the reality of contradicti, only in real obstacles. We do not iIitend to yield anything from our previous idealism, on the contrary, we wish to strengtben it and expand it with the wonder of living action. 19 The themes of struggle and contradiction are ubiquitous in BakUnin' s Berlin writings; he relentlessly emphasizes the neces i llie as conducive to that emancipatory action w
~
~)

~,
J

of negation in buman
will liberate man from

external constraints. Thus, he states, "with this negation of negation, man elevates himself to his true essence." 20 As before, negation is coosidered by BakUnin to constitute the essential moving force in history, the vital impulse of life itself.
~ready,

the central Balruninist (.octrine

of IIcreative negation ll was clearly being formed. EventuaIly, by the end of the year 1842, the shift of emphasis of the Hegelian dialectic from the notion of positive, harmonious recoocniation, had moved to absolute 18I1Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 28 avgusta!9 sentyabrya 1840, in ibid., p. 20.

19"Pis'mo sestre Varvare," vtoraya polovina iyunya 1842, in ibid., pp. 104-105.
20npis 'mo brat'yam i sestram," 18/30 avgusta 1840, in ibid., p. 14.

l'

-.

392
,

negation of existing reality (as in Bruno Bauer's late. worka). .From


'thi~

viewpoint, change became the Key factor, put into play by the forces

of contradictiqn and negation. \ Suffering .[i. e., negatioo, struggle, contradiction] ls the animating principle of existence; 1t enlightens the immediate, elevating it to the spiritual. Without suffer1' ing, withou~ regation, everything would be leless and motionless.

1
1
J

At this point, however, Ba.kunin still relied upon the notion of contradiction as permitting a higher level of harmonie reconciliation, in which the past was consciously retained as a necessary and integral moment of its rational development. In a letter of 3/22 October 1841, he wrote: When we say that life is wonderful and divine, by these very words we are saying that it is full of contradictions; and when we spealt of ctradiction, then this also is not an empty word. We are speaking of those contradictions which appear, not as empty shadows, but rather, which are real, violent contradictions. And only the se contradictions can appear as such, which can resolve themselves in a total harmony of love and blessedness; and they must resolve themselves precisely because they are ~ contradictions. And this is not simply verbal games, - used and expressed only for momentary satisfaction, 'but th'e holy truth, as weIl as the most profound and basic law of \all life and of all reality. To reject this basic law would Mean to remove all the divine meaning from life and to plunge it into the platitude of everyday existence. There is no Mean between these \wo vtewpoints: either nothing div.ine, nothing human, nothing meaningfu1 in lUe exists, or life, despite all its finite manifestatis, is only divine, is only love, only blessedness. But, one will say to you, sur~ly contradictions exist in reality. This is absolutely true, but precisely due to their realtty, they must be resolved, because in the harmonie power of love is contained oo1y the real, and only that i8 real which beats in the harmony of the totality. Contradictions constitute IHe. the beauty of liiez and he who is not able? to evercome them. cannot master lile either. But every man must. can, attain this goal; in this i8 contained aU 21nPis'mo lyulii Nindel'," 20 olttyabrya 1840, in ibid., pp. 34-35.
t

. ,, ,

1 !

,
393

his humanity. . .. with this faith, one can suifer, suffer deeply and greatly, but not perish, since it ls nothing else than the eternally-alive and eternallypersonal action of human becoming. This faith ls the preservation in itself of one's acts for ete.rn1ty; this faith, like heaven from earth, is far from passive cootem~lation of the truth-it 1s action and. only personal action. 2 Severa! weeKS after BalruIlin's arrivai in Germany, his sister Varvara and her young son "retumed from Italy and joined him in Berlin. 23 Shortly thereafter, Efremov also retuined to Berlin. 24 During his first month in the Prussian capital, Ba.lruIlin made the acquaintance of another Russian student, Ivan Turgenev, who had been attending the University of Berlin for the past two years; the two men soon became inseparable, and a close and intense friendship rapidly developed between them. 25 Turgenev
a.~ted
,

as guide, drew Bakunin into Berlin society and introduced

him to the small but tightlY-knit Russian emigr community. The relationship quickly assumed the standard teacher-student pattern, with Tur gen ev, following in the footprints' of Belinslty and Botltin, willingly playing the role of eager disciple and audience. Furthermore, being the only son of a wealthy Russian wdow, Turgenev disposed of large sums of

l
j ,
f
j
{

~ey,

which he generously placed at Balrunin's disposal (needless to say, the latter had quicldy squandered the amount provlded by Herzen and was ooly too pleased to find another benefactor). 22 l1 Pis'mo rodnym, 23"Pis'mo rodnym, 24tbid., p. 20.
Il

However, Bakunin' s fondness

3/22 oktyabrya 1840, in ibid., pp. 68-69.

Il

28 iyu1ya/9 avgusta 1840, in ibid., pp. 8-10.

25See "Pis'mo sestram," 4/16 noyabrya 1840, in ibid., pp. 37-41 and "Pis'mo brat'yam i sestram," 3/15 aprelya 1841, in ibid., pp. 5960.

1
1

394

for the yrung Turgenev was indeed genuine, and the persona! and intellectua! exchange which prevalled during the ~ 1840 and 1841 was highly beneficia! and of lasting value to both men.
In the faU of 1840, Bakunin finally realized his long-term ambition

and registered at the University of Berlin. In his letters home he reports attending the following lectures: Logtc and RistoIT of modern philosophy, glven by Professor Werder (a disciple of Hegel); Theology (Menschenwurdung Gottes),

bY

Professor Vatke; Phenomenology and

Physics, by Professor Gabier (another student of Hegel); Aesthetics, by Professor Hatho;


hi~

curriculum aIsa included ather activities, such as


privat~ly

fencing and riding.

In addition, he spent many hours

studying

modern history. 26 Balrunin had come to Berlin equipped with letters of introduction to Professor Werder, the reigning Hegelian, from Stankevich and Gran ovsKy , both of whom had studied with him while attending the Un.iversity. Apparently, Werder found the company of the young Balrunin particularly congenial and stimulating, for the two spent many evenings engaged in long phil 0 sophic al discussions at each other's houses. 27 The winter term was spent in intensive study and adjusting to the demanding crriculum of his first year of formal study' at a university.
ln his letters, Bakunin -reports having undergone Many changes and new
"

experiences; "1 am living through a process of a new formation .. my spirit ls becoming lucid and powerful," he annQU1lced. 28 A new "trans-

26~e "Pis'mo sestram Beyer," 28 avgusta/9 sentyabrya 1840,


in ibid., pp. 19-22.

27"Pis'mo rodnym," 28 iyulya!9 avgusta 1840, in ibid., pp. 8-10; alsQ< "Pis'mo rodnym," 3/22 oktyabrya 1841, in ibid" PP. 65-67,
28

"Pis'mo bratu Pavlu," konets yanvarya 1841, in ibid., p. 47.

395 formation,,29 and a "rebirth" are mentied as taldng place in his thought.

(.

"My old faith and my strength are gathering as il they were being resur'-

rected, " he claimed, and declared that henceforth his new 'lozung was "faith and courage. ,,30 Unfortunately, no detaUs as to the nature of this radical new "transformation" are supplied in' any of qis letters for this periode Bakunin soon conceived the plaIi of importing his brother, Pavel, already an ardent Hegelian, as weil as his favourit sister, Tat'yana, to Berlin, the whole scheme finan1::ed, of- course, by the magnanimous Turgenev. 31 Only Pavel managed to obtain patenta! permission, however, and arrived in Berlin to join his brother in August 1841, just in time to replace Tur gen ev, who had to ,retum to Russia for a few months, as disciple and follower. The three
Balrun~s

spent the summer months

travelling through southeast Germany, and eventually settled in Dresden for severaI months. Upen returning to " Berlin from Dresden, where he had left

Varvara and Pavel for the winter season, Bakunin 's ideas seem to have undergone a significant modification, occasioned by a recent reading of
o

" Lamennais' Politique du peuple. It is difficult to determine whether BakUnin ;;:


was influenced by the new socialistic and democratic views expressed in Lamennais' work, or wh ether he was simply delighted to discover that these ideas corresponded to his own views on religion and politics. In any case, Balrunin categorically stated his enthusiasm for Politique du

29Jbid. 3'\t,id.

31"PiS'mo Pavlu," konets yanvarya 184,1, in ibid., '"pp. 44-48.

396

peuple in these terms: "1 was enraptured by it, ,,32 and "my soul was fUled with t1ie MOst ,lively, the Most vast animation." He announced that he was much more impressed with Politique du peuple (1839) than with an earlier work by Lamennais which he had studied, De 1 a religion considre dans ses rapports avec l'ordre politique et civil, an essay written
,

in 1824 and establishing the framework for Christian socialism in France.

The re~~s question, Bakunin claimed, could not be resolved by rational means, because its very nature demanded a practicaI resolution; its foundation was practical action and hence tran\cended the interior, ctemplative realm of theoreticaI speculation. 33 Balrunin clearly manifests . a pronounced dissatisfaction with the passive
cha~acter

of the religious

question and is directly moving towards a merging of the concepts of religion and practical action or .EoHtics: This work by Lamennais Is much better than his 'Religion.' In the latter, one senses the presence of a true instinct in him, but an instinct which is still undefined, unfree, and bound by forms of cventional reality. The question on religion ~annot be resolved positively, by ration~liza tin and refiection, because its c oncern in this sphere iB only a negation of that, which, having lost its living spirit, no longer belongs to the present, but to the pasto (The question on religion will only be 'resolved by him, who expresses simplicity, and for that reason, 1t ls aIso universaI and prlJ,ctical) and the vivifying principle of the new religion, of the new life and of the new reality. But this expression Will take place not in the field of theory and books, but in the field of l,Ife, and for this reason will aIso be a new revelatioo., and thus, we cannot define 1t in booKs. 34 32

~Pls'mo

sestre Varvare i bratu Pavlu," 15/27 oktyabrya 1841,

in ibid. r/p. 62.

33 1bid.

34n>id., pp. 62 .. 63

...

397 Balrunin has expressed his preference for Politique du peuple, and c1early maintains that politics bas a better grasp on reality precise1y because
it is able ta understand the dynamics of dialectical development:

"La Politique du peuple" is better because, embracing


all of present real1ty, and pointing to its continuaI and universal contradictions, . . Lamennais nurtures in 1t that simple love and that deep unfiinching falth ln the

future of mankind, which constitutes the single basls of any true apostolate. 36 Thus, politlcs, or "the new religion," directs its gaze towards the
, ,
,

futur~

and concentrates on praxis; 1t must necessarUy "compel man to action."

Bakunin straightforwardly equates truth with action, and in this respect,


<ll

views it as a continuous process of dynamic change and becoming. The simple truth does not even have to cross o\fer into action, because ft already is action by its very nature. 36 Sinee both religion and democratic politics are primarUy eoncerned with the attainment of freedom, Bakunin ls able to readily equate them, and dec1are: .. he who wants to penetrate into the questions of our Ume must absolutely read and study him [Lamennais). WhUe 1 was reading the book, many good ideas came to me on how one must nowadays study history and pollties. During the coming winter, 1 will necessarily realize them; and this study is even closer to my heart, precisely beeause now ia ~~ time when politics is religion, and religion la politics. 3 The transition
fro~

"

religion ta polities was a logieal ooe for BakuAin,

sinee in his mind Many rel1gious questions had been inexorably interwoven
with social and political ones.

A simUar phenomenon la ta be found in

the evolution 'of the Young Hegelian movement, which originated primarUy
35Ibid., p. 63.
:>-

1\.

36n,id . 37lbid.; my emphasis.

,L_-

398

--

as a theological-religious phenomenon, and ultimately moved on to a direct critique of pollUes and the state via Regel's political philosophy. Generally speaking, the shift from the, discussion of religious questions to a
c~itlque

of politics among the Left Hegelians (notably in the hands

of Ruge) occurred in the c ruree of the year 1842. 38


It was also during bis stay of one month in Dresden that Bakunin

made the acquaintance of Arnold Ruge, the editor of the Deutsche (formerly Hallische) JahrbUcher, who had been forced, due to severe government censorship, to leave Prussla for Saxony, where a more liberal politieal climate prevailed. Here in Drsden he set up the publication of the Deutsche Jahrbcher which continued to be the organ of the Left Hegelians, which included
~

the Hst of its regular contributors Feuerbach, Bruno Bakunin's initial impresston of Arnold Ruge

Bauer, and Ruge himseU. was quite mixed:

... an interesting, remarkable man-more remarkable as a joumalist, as a man With an Wlusually strong will and clarity of reasoning, than for his speculative talents. Without any exc~ptions, he ls hostile to everything which ~RPeara to be in the least mystlcal. Of course, as a result of this, he la very one-aided with regard to everythlng which concerns religion, art and philosophy. But in many other aspects, thls one-sidedness and his abstract tendency Is very useful to the Germans, tearlng them away from the stagnant, golden and sluggtsh means, in which they have been resting for 80 long. 39 Balcunin returned to Berlin from Dresden, in time to register for the faU semester of 1841. This term his lectures comprised: two
c~urses.

.given by Professor Werder, Logic and .The PhUosophy of Fichte

and Schelling; Modern Ristory by Professor Leopold Ranke; Po\itical

3~cLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, pp. 23-24.


39aakunin, "Pis'mo rodnym," 3/22 oktyabrya 1841, in Sobranie sochinenil, tom 3, pp. 65-66.

399 Economy; Latin; and finally, The PhilosOphy of Revelation, a series of lectures delivered by Schelling himself. In 1841 Schelling had been sumn

moned to the University of Berlin by the new anti-Heselian Minister of Culture, Eichhorn, in order to "root out the dragon-seed O~egelian ism.,,40 In the audience of the se famous Berlin lectures sat three men whose ideas would have a profound impact on the direction of post-Hegelian thought: Kierkegaard, Engels, and Bakunin. In effect, Bak.unin and Engels both lived on the sarne street in 1841, the Dorotheenstrasse, in Berlin, although thet:e ls no record of Engels' na me in BaKunin's correspondence , \ for this periode Many yeats later, however, Engels recollected: Stimer has been reborn ln the person of BakUn~, who was alsa in Berlin at the same Ume as 1, and who sat in front of me on a bench, along With four or five other Russians at Werder's course on Logic. 41 Balrunin personally made the acquaintance of Schelling, and called on the famous philosopher severaI Urnes in his home. Although he found Schelling1 s company very pleasant and congeniaI, he was not particularly impressed with his phUosophical conferences at the University, and he displayed a , keener interest in the attractive Fraulein Schelling than in her famous father. 42 The winter and spring 1841-42 marked a decisive p~riod in Birunin's development, during which emerged severaI pronounced changes in' his 'outlook as weIl as the progressin radicalization of his philosophical views;

4~cLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, p. 27.


41Cited in "Friedrich Engels Max Hildebrand" (1889), Michel Bakounine et les autres, Esquisses et portraits contemporains d'un rvolutionnaire, prsent par Arthur Lehning (Paris, 19('1' pp. 83-84 .
{i

"
i

\-.

1-"- ~

. 42B~kunin, "Pis'mo rodnym," 3/22 oktyabrya 1841, ln Sobranle sochlnenil. tom 3, pp. 66-67; and "Pis'mo sestre Varvare, fi 3!i5noyabrya 1841, ln ibid., p. 67.

400
('

the elaboration of his philosophy of action and of concrete reality re-

~ ceived Us substantiation and theoretical elaboratlon during this period. 43


For the first Ume in Many years, he was left completely on his own to study and reflect upon the implications of his new ideas. His correspondence for this
,

p~riod

reveals the full extent of this re-examination

of Hegelian phUosophy and of its lsm. The emphasis


00

~aniPulation

into phUosophical
'

r~ieal-

concrete lUe and living reality consistently recurs

with a new sense of urgency in each of his letters to Priamukhino. If


thi~

new tendency can be attributed to his association with ,the

~erlin
.'

Young Hegelian, as ls frequently maintained,44 his cQrrespondence lacKs any direct reference to the movement and to 1ta pbssible influence upon \ his new line of th inkin g. By January 1842,' Bakunin had already made the transition to revolutionary praxis, as witnessed by his decision never to return to Russia and dedicate
hi~mself to~a l~

of radical activity:

'1 invite you here [1. e., to Berlin], because otherwise, we riSK the possibUity of never seeing each other again . . :. Because, you see, AleKsandra .. 1 pave beeome . more of an idealist than ever; 1 h~ve only 2 or ,3 months of existence 'provided for, and 1 shall attempt to spend them in accordance with my ideas and beliefs, not caring about the rest. In the times we live in, it i s necessary to be consistent and true to one's convictions even at the riSK of ane's le, because this consistence and this loyalty conatitute the only safeguard of our dignity. It is very dUficult to be csistent, but otherwise one is only a shameless poseu:t:,.45 43See, for example, "Pis'mo rodnym," 3/22 oktyabrya 1841, in ibid., pp. 68-69; "Pis'mo sestre Varvare 1 bratu Pavlu," deKabr' 1841, in ibid., pp. 81-86; "Pis'mo sestre Varv~ vtoraraya polovina iyunya 1842, in ibid., pp. 104-105. ... / .
\,

44See, inter alia, Pyziur, The Doctrine of Anarchism of Michael A. Bakunin, p. 27; Carr, Michael Balrunin, p. 109; ChizhevaKi, Ge gel ' v Rossti, p. 103. ,

~5Bakunin; "Pis'mo AleKsandr~- Beyer;" yanvar' ,1842, in Sobranie sochlnenii, tom 3, p. 91 .

..........

-......

.-

. .,.---. ,::-

401

ln another letter, he repeated his decision not to return to Russia, stating

that his decision was undertaken out of "consciousness of [his] duty, ,,~6 and in a very moving
an~ beaut~

passage on his sense of mission and,

purpose, he decl3.!ed that "it is btter to have one mom~t of real lUe, than an entire /teries of years lived in dead illusion. ,,47
c

ln Aprfi 1842 Balrunin moved to Dresden, a move which can be

sean to symbolize his

fin~

break with both academics and with Russia,

as weIl as a new dedlcation to a lUe of radical journalism and political activity. He formed a close associatlo:!1 wlth Ruge and presumably wlth other Young

Hegel~~

ln Dreaden, and .dready by June nnounced hl.

forthcoming article "The Reaction in Germany," which was to be published in the fall issue of Ruge' s Deutsche Jahrbcher:
1 am wtiting an article in German, in which 1 strike a strong blow to the Germans and to philosophers. The article is dev:eIoping very well and wU! soon' be completed. 48

Ruge, al sa, seemed highly

impre~sed, with

the young Balrunin, and de-

scribed him as "a very educated man, who passes ses an outstauding phllosophical talent. ,,49 The next .few months immediately preceding the publication of IIThe Reaction in GeI'many'~, revealed Bakunin' s growing insistence on the para- , MOunt role of the live, concrete act, as the fO'Jndatlon of reality, and which had necessarlly to replace theoretical abstract thought in the 46l1Pis'mo sestre Taty'ane, Il konets leta 1842, in ibid., p.
l1
I

devel~p- 1 ..
..
,
\

,.:1

rio.

4'1

Ibid., p. 111.

48"Pis'mo bratu Alekseiyu," nachalo iyu1ya 1842, in ibid. J .. p. 108. 49Ruge, "Letter to his brother," September_ 26, 1842, cited in Bakunin, Sobranie sochinenil, tom 3, p. 437.

-- -r-","h_-="__

..... i).-~ ... ~1,7;r--... ,~~" l:MtR

;"l"

........-----'-

.-~----- ---------~-------'--

402
0

ment of hUlnan consciousness and liberation. One must no longer let one' s imagination run wUd wlth logical and theoretioo-religious fantasies: one can o~y Wlderstand such things [1. e., realityJ with the help of the living act. ~O ,
B

His polemic against "illusion., Il

Il

abstraeti,

Il

"phantoms, Il - and "lUeless

dreams" was intensified, and the accent Qf his writings vlsibly shifts from the realm of theory to E,ractice, to lUe, and to the liviQ.g ~eed: 51 . . . practicalt1 must be our law, the first condition ~ , of our lives.
In his

w~r against "theoretical superstition," 53 the concept of reality

emerges as the basis of Bakunin's activist inclination. It was high Ume, he declared, to "tear ourse Ives away from that world of phantoms., of
,

.\

impotent feelings and lifeless ide as, 'in which we all at one time more or less lived" and to "call things by their real names. ,,54 It was time to affirm the , supremacy of concrete reality over theoretial and abstract constructiO:l s.
[It is necessary] to live ooly by those feelings aIl(~ _ tboughts which have the power of immediate, live, realization. Only reality can satisfy us, a.'"ld this is because only reality i8 strong, energetic, -that ls to say, the real truth. Everyth~ng eise i8 nonsense, illusion, -and, if Varenka will allow me to use the expression-Iean [1. e. ~ lenten] ideaHsD)-.55
c

At this Ume ,it is Hegelian

important~to

note, Bakunin had not yet renounced his

f~

and intense}y -blieved

~t th..e ~rticulation

of his con-

50BalamfD,. _-"Pi,tmo rodnym," iyul' b18,42, in Sobranie sochinenH, . tom 3, p. 109.

51Ibid., p. 113.
52"Pis'mo rodnym,
S3Ibid., p. 1l3 ..
Il

osen' 1842, ~id., p. 114.

.,

54rbid., p. 115.

55"Pt~'mo rodnym," 9 oktyabrya 1842,


, ~l'!'~-----:-:-.....::;,~-...--::.~,-----_..~-:;:-----~ 1
'\)
"

in ibid;, p. 115.

.'

,-~~~-~-;--.i..~' .=~ ~

::

403
cept of reality as well as of his philosophy of action had to be firmly grounded in the spirit and method of Hegel's philosopby: The worth of a man is inseparable from the reality of his life; [Hegelian] idealism is sacred and true, because it is the idealism of the living real world, and JUly idealist, even if be la exceptial.ly clever, if he la only an idealist, if be does not pLssiO:lately and boldly throw himseH into the magnHicent and at tirat, strange, waves of real lUe, U he does Dot realize his interior world in living love and in the living deed, if he does not Submit bis theoretical pride, bis wise, Ideal world, to the evangelical simplicity of reality, -then such an " Idealist, despite the fact that be contains in bis soo the ~oftigr thougbts and the deepest feelings, ls worth nothing. Furthermore, the fact that the C9Dcept of personality stood at the root of bis new interpretati of Hegel's philosopby is repeatedly emphasized: "what is not pers mal, " he claimed, "is abstract, and. therefore faIse. ,,57
<

In June 1842, Varvara Aleksandrovna left Dresden in order to

return to Russia; and when in the fall of that same year, Pavel and
,

Turgenev (who had briefly returned to Germany earlier in the year) finally departed for Moscow, the b,reak with Russia wa.s cmpplete. Tbe publication of his article for the Deutsche Jahrbcher coincided with Baklmin's lrreversible decisi never to rehIrn to Russia, and marked, to a certain

extent, a turning-point in bis life. Balamin sensed the finality of this


decision:
Gad ly IDOWS when and how we sball m~~ again! Our , paths are sa different and so far apart from each other. With Pavel' s departure, a new lUe will begin for me, a Ilfe-extremely sad, extremely difficult, and extremely lo~ely, yet, at the same time-serirus and active.'58

56n,ld., p. 116.
571bid., p. \ 117. /

5~id., p. 120.
/

---.---

~~....,-

....

404
He entrhsted Pavel and Turgenev with a farewell letter addressed to his brother Niltolai, whom be henceforth considered the head of the family in his absence. Since this letter was not sent through the regular postal channel s, it is consequently much more candid and straightlorwa.rd in tone and testifies to the ctinuity in Balrunin' s thought:
,t

After much reflection and for reaSS which furgenev will explain to you, 1 have decided never to return to Russia. Do not think that this was a frivolous decisi: no, it is linKed with the interior meaning of an my past and of my present existence. . .. 1 do not fit into ctemporary Russia. . . here 1 can act there is 50 much youth and energy in me for Europe. ,,9 Having no precise employment or means of support, Baxunin also requested that Nikolai send him bis share of the Priamukhino estate and capital, a sum which he however received ly towards the end of his life. Mter announcing that his plans for the near future involved a move to Paris, Balrunin ended with these parting words, which underlined bis invigorated sense of missi in life: Do not fear for me, because 1 have a deed to accomplish, which 1 love, and to which 1 am devoted with all the totality of all my existence; 1 have never betrayed it: all my life, all my actions, even if they appeared absurd to others, were necessary steps in approaching jt [my goal). And now 1 am ce again true to myself, and whatever might happen, 1 shall never renounce tbat which 1 consider my vocation. 60

1
j

i
~ 1

'1

1 i " ,

_"The Reaction in Germany-A Fragment by a Frenchman," signed pseudymously by Jules Elyzard, 61 represents the culmination of BalOJnjn's
59n Pis'mo bratu Nikolayu," 9 oktyabrya 1842, in ibid., pp. 120121.

(
\.

6On,id. , pp. 125-126.

'"&1Jules Elyzard (pseud.), "Oie ReaJrtion j.n Deutschland. Ein -Fragment v einm Franzosen, Il in Deutscbe Jahrbtlcher ft1r Wissenschaft und Kunst, nos. 247-251 (Leipzig, October 17-21, 18~, pp. 985-1002.~

.# \

.....- -------,

405

Il

Philosophical ll period. AlI the important themes elaborated in his early

Russian writings find their ultimate realization and legitimate place in this work; in fact, the ideas sketched out and initially dveloped in bis
earl~er

writings are unied in a systematic whole and are stated with


(

vigour and cviction in Il The Reaction in Germany. Il As the transiti from radical theory to revolutionarJ- praxis, this article markS the culmination-and conclusion-of Bakunin's Hegelian period and thus brings our study to its rightful end.
AB the final statement1f BalWnin's philosophical development, it

will be useful to examine sorne of the principal ideas exposed in it, as

weil as their relation to B3lruI1in's PriamUkhino and Moscow works. "The Reaction in Germany" coostitutes the first direct application of Hegelian philosophy to the realm of practical politics and political strategy; it contains the theoretical formulation of Balrunin's revolutionary programme as weIl as his IIphilosophy of action," as elucidated eve of the 1848 "revolutions.
It was one of the first serious .a,ttempts to ~e a
00

the

radical leftist interpretation of H-egelianism and' to demonstrate in the dialectic the 'algebra of revolution. ,62 Chizhevski rankS IlThe Reaction" among the Most original and brilliant publications of the Deutsche Jahrbilcher, on a par with the articles of

Feu~rbach, R~,

and Bruno Brer. 63 Bakunin' s article in effect became

quite ~ cause clbre bath in \festern Europe and, in Russia, leaving readers intrigued as to the real identity of IIJules Elyzard. Il Even Belin;

62Walicld., "Hegel, Feuerbach and the Russian Philosophical Left, Il in Armali, p. 110. See also Koyr, La pense philosophique en Russie, p. 138, "des principes de la dialectique hglienne, il tire le manuel du parfait rvolutioonaire. " 63ChizhevSld, Gegel' v Ross, p.. 105. il

~"

J
406

sky and the shrewd Herzen faUed to recognize the band of their friend
in the work which caused such a sensation in intellectual circles. Upon

reading "The Reaction in Germany" in . the Jahrbcher, Herzen recorded the following impression in his diary entry for January 7, 1843:
In one of the latest issues was an article by a Frenchman, Jules Elyzard, on the contemporary spirit of reaction in Germany. An artistic and splendid article. This is really the first Frenchman (of whom 1 lalow) capable of understanding Hegel and German thought. This ls a vocal, public, and solemn proclamati by , the democratic party, full of power, strg in its mastery of the present and confident in the future of the world; he extends his band to the conservatives as to those holding power, reveals with an incredible lucidity of thought their anachronistic tendency and invites them to jon humanity. The entire article, from coyer to cover, is remarKable. When the French begin to generalize and to popularize German science, that is to say, when they have understood it, then Will begin the great phase der Bethlltiromg. The Germans do not yet have the language for this .... 64

What Herzen in effect perceived as "remarKable," accomplishment of a synthesis between German French revolutionary activism.

w~e

author' s thought and

spec~ve

The reason for the use of a pseudmym was two-fold. Primarily,


ft was a security precauti: to protect the precarious position and

identity of a Russian immigrant, With pronounced radical tendencies, in conservative Prussia and Saxony., Secondly, the adoption of the French nom de plume "Jules Elyzard" can be seen to symbolize, as Herzen sharply discemed, the fusion of German philosophical ideallsm wlth the French revolutiary tradition and theories of socialism whicb Bakunin
~

J,
j

64Cited in Steklov, Sobrani~ sochinenii. tom 3, p. 438.

__

__ _

'.

407

./ was disc overing during this period. 65 Subsequently, Balrunin came to

consider French socialism as the most perfeet applicati or praxis of Hegelian philosophy, which he viewed as the highest realization of theoretical coosciousness. The German Young Hegelians long csidered France as the land of revolutlon and of "will, .. 66 and it was natural that Balrunin should come to adopt this attitude and view French radicalism and republicanism as the new Ideal, putting into practice the ideas contained in German philosophy. "The Reaction in Germany" marKs the culmination of B3.lrunin's
,

phUosophical development; the transition from theory to praxis, from Hegelianism as rational conseiousness of reality to radical philosophy of ac tioo , has finally been accomplished. As such, it leaves the ory behind, as ft were, in order to resolutely venture out into the world of 65At the time of his writing of "The Reaction," Ba.Kunin was reading Lorenz Stein's Socialism and Communism in Contemporary France (1842), which introduced him to the ideas of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, and Leroux. Furthermore, Balrunin later wr.~te in his Confession : C'est cette poque que, pour la premire fois, j'entendis parler du commWlisme; il avait paru un . livre intitul: Die Sozialisten in Franueich, par Stein, livre qui avait un retentissement presqu'aussi universel qu'auparavant l'oeuvre de Strauss sur La Vie de Jsus; ce livre me rvla un nouvel unirus o je me prcipitai avec toute l'ardeur ~ toute la fougue d'un homme altr et mourant de soif. Je crus assister l'annonciatt d'Wle nouvelle grce divine, avoir la rvlation' d'une nouvelle religion de la digniti, de l' lvati, du bonheur, de la libration de tout le genl1e humain; je me mis lire les oeuvres des dmocrates et des socialistes franais et lus avidement tOut ce que je pls me procurer Dresde.

Confe~si, p. 56. Also "Pis'mo bl-atu Pavlu," 6 noyabrya 1842, in Sobranie 8Ochinenii, tom 3, pp. 153-155. 6~cLellan, The Young Hegelians and' Karl iMarx, p. 24. P

1.. ,

practical revolutionary action. The essay is still largely grounded in Hegelian philosophy-the arguments are conducted in strictly idealist terms-but although the categories are metaphysical, the logic has been transposed to an analysis of the contemporary political situation in GerMany, France and Russia. By a masterful strolte of dialectical virtuosity, Balrunin has here transformed Hegelianism lnto ap ideological instrument and into a social philosophy geared to active, practical politics. As such, this essay initiated a landmarlt not only in BalWnin's personal intellectual ev olu ti on, but also strongly influenced the direction and tcne of the Left Hegelian movement as a whole. "The Reaction in Germany" constitutes a concise analysis of historical forces in play in terms of Hegel 's dialectical method; BaltW1in presents an examination of the prevaUing social and political contradictions in contemporary Europe in the light of the Hegelian philosophy of

" history and logic. In fact, the Most extreme revolutionarr conclusions
are drawn by Jules Elyzard on the basis of the Hegelian dialectical method and are systematically applied to practical, political circumstances.

An important new achievement elaborated in this article is Bakunin's


present identieatioo of the realization of freedom with the idea of revolution. Hence, on the basis of the analysis of the dialectical nature of reality untlrtaken in his early wr iting s, BaltWlin has now logically arrived at a theory of revolutiary transformation and of dialectical change. As J?YlUlik notes, That reconciliation with reality of which BalWnin spolte in the Preface, augmented by an analysis of reality presented in the article On Philosophy, here appears as a demand for real politics, as ,the substantiation

409

of revolutionary problems on the basis of a dialectical exammatioo of the moving forces of history and revolution. 67 The structure of "The Reaction in Germany" is buUt upon the dynamic dialectical inter-relationship between theory and practice, and as such, provides the groundworlt for the transition to revolutiooary praxis which is achieved towards the end of the worlt. A raptd textual nalysis wU1 bring to light the essential points of Bakunin's argument. The work opens with the central Hegelian premise that the goal of the historical proceS8'lis "the realization of treedom. ,,68 However,
'f

..
.

Bakunin is quick to point out that the modern conception of: freedom is only a theoretical concept and not yet a practical reality. Thus, the most pressing question of our time invol ves the realization of this

theoretical concept, or the transformation of theoretical freedom into practical, living reality. The need for the actualization of the ory into
'il.

praxis is thus articulated from the start. BaKunin has immediately linKed the idea of freedom to the "principle of revolution," which he establishes as the positive goal of history.
~s

his next step, Balmnin analyzes the ,tacles to the actualization of

this theoretical freedom, and focusses his attention upon the contemporary adversaries of. the principle of revolution: the Reactionary party, political and historical conservatism, and positive philosophy (a direct allusion to Schelling' s latest system). He' aCKnowledges that the present domination 67Dynnik, If Ot primireniya s deistvitel 'n9st~u k apologii razrusheniya," in Letopisi marKSizm~ tom IV, p. 41. 68An Englislt translation of "The Reaction in Germany" by M. B. Zeldih, in Michael Bakunin. Selected Writings, redited and int roduced by ArthUr Lehning (New York, 1973), ls avaUable and we have chosen ta quote from it, p. 37.


410

of the Reactionary party is far from tring a contingent haphazard occurrence, but rather, an intrinsic historlco-Iogial necessity. 69 The Democratic party, to whose ideology BakUnin firmly adheres, and "whlch uniquely and alone ls founded 'on the unconditional freedom of Spirit, ,,70 must primarUy and necessarily recognize the strength of its adversary. Thus, the first 8tep in its "party strategy" is an act of rational cognition or consciousness of existing reality. It must recognize that:
<.

Democracy not only stands in opposition to the government and is not only a particular constitutional or politicoeconomic change, but a total transformation of that world condition and a herald of an original, new ltfe which has not yet existed in history; especially only if it first cornes to understand that Democracy is a religion, if 1t thus thrrugh this awareness itself becomes religious, that i8, permeated by its principle not ooly in thought and reasoning, but true to it aIso in real life down to life's smallest manifestations, only theJ1 will the Democratie party really conquer the world. 71 Hence, Democracy involves not ()nly a quantitative change (1. e., mere
~",

-..

social or political reforma), but an entire qualitative transformation, an upheaval in the very foundations of modern society upon which con~

temporary culture rests. The Balruninist approach to politics as practical religion must here also be emphasized, and serves as a linK with bis earlier theory of religion as actualized socio-religious IUe. 72 As with the Young He gelian s,

the rel1gious question in BaKunin's thought is inexorably linKed with the idea of political and t social change. In "The Reaction in Germany,
Il

6Su, id. , pp. 38-39.


70lb id.

71 Ibid ., p. 39.

72 y!!: , earlier letters, especially letter on Lamennais.

1 -_.. - r:-

.-.
<

411
Balrunin continues to adhere to his earl1er conceptioo of true' Christianity as the ultimate realization of freedom, -and thus as synonymous with Reason-, and hence in complete identity with democratic politics. The identity of politics and religion is clearly articulated: We must eternally transe end ourselves as this onesided, merely political existence in the religion of our all-embracing and all-sided principle. We must not only act politically, but in our pollUes also act religiously, religiously in the sense of freedom of which the one true expression is justice and love. 73 Having attained this level of ratiooal self-consciousness, the Democratie party must come to understand itself as a positive principle, and not only as the negation of the prevailing political reality. Since Democracy has not yet arrived at an independent status, but merely
~ ~

exists as the negation of the positive (the Reactionary party), it must therefore also be' destroyed along with the positive, in order to be infused with a vita1ly new existence: . . . and this self-change of the Democratie party will be a .. gualitative transformation, a new, vital, and ' life -creating revelation, a new heaven and a new earth, a young and magniflcent world ln which al1 present discords will resolve themselves into harmonious unity.74 However, an important new factor introouced by Bakunin in "The Reaction in Germany" is the impossibUity of reconcUiation, 75 the inherent incompatibUity of the positive aild negative elements. Therefore, ,the central Hegelian Idea of Mediation in, the dlalectical progression Is
73Z eldin, ln Michael Balrunin, Selected' Writings. p. 43.
1 ;
l

1
..
l
1

1
1

,
i
1; ~

74 Ibid. "p. 40.

li

75~d.,

p. 43.

~,.....-

412

here categorically abandoned, replaced by the notion of "absolute negation" and of permanent revolutlon. LiKe the Most extreme proponents of Left Hegelianism, Edgar Bauer and Arnold Ruge, who completely rEliected all possibillty of conciliation, and in whom

. . . ~e Hegelian notion of a compromise mediated between two opposing poles gave place to the idea of two contrad\f~ory. parties, one of which mpS\ triu~ph utterly, . \ "',-, . BaKunm now came to attacK the position of a ,',
-<

rr

conciliatoryll and liberal

middle-road, as historically un-progressive and in basic contradiction to the notion of dialectical movement. Reconciliation was
DOW

declared

to be anathema, and the negative gained supreme importance in the dialectical process: Contradiction is total and true. . . but as total it is wholly vital and the energy of its all-embracing vitality consists . . . just in this incessant selfcombustion of the Positive in the pure fire of the Negative. 77
As in BaKunin' s earlier worKs, the negative is held to be the primary

..

principle of the dialectical movement, the source of all change and progress; in evitably , the Hegelian ideal of a synthesis, or of mediated
~

reconcili,ation between opposites is supplanted by the novel idea of permanent struggle or revolution~ 78 ln conjunctlon with this view, it is natural that the main target of BaKUnin' s polemic would be not the
1

rrtonsistent,1/ but rather the rrcompromisingrr reactionaries, the liberals and moderates who maintain the position of a juste-milieu, and who are
7~cLellan, The Young Hegelian and Karl Marx, p. 18.

77Z eldin, in Michael BaKunin, Selected Writings, p. 50.


7 Su, id. , p. 43.

413 perfectly willing to enter into a coalition with other parties for the Salee of political opportunism. 79 Furthermore, the originality of Balrunin's approach conststs in his view of truth as that of a dialectical process, hence as changing; ooly contradiction, as the "embracing of its two-sided members" ts consequently total, absolu~e, truth,80 and ly contradiction cao grasp truth in its absolute t'itality., Thus, as. motion, movement, dynamism, only the negative constitutes a truly vital and creative principle. 81 In contradistinction ta the flaccld "immobility" and lethargy of the positive (which involves no movement, sinee aU movement Is neJssary negation), the negative is seen as "the practieal spirit of the times,,82 and as the motor force of all historical progresse

In effect, the supreme value of He gelian i sm, aecording to "The


Reaction ln Germany," consists in the fact that it recognized and demonstrated the dynamic vitality of the principle of negatlon. Like CieszKowsld,

Balrunin credits the Hegelian system with being the apex of "the modern, one-sided, theoretical cultural formatton";83 yet, he maintains, Hegel nevertheless succeeded in transcending theory and . postulated a new practical world which will bring itself to completion by no means through a formal application and diffusion of theortes already worKed out, but through an original act of the practical autonomous Spirit. 84 79n,id., pp. 43-44. 80Ib1d ., p. 47. 81 lbid ., p. 53. 82 Ibid

83 Jbid., p. 47.

'- .
....

84n>id.; emphasis mine.

_~--~--

.. ,.

....

-~.,._

. . ._ _ _

414
Thus, the ubiquitous BakUIlinist theme of voluntarism has here fused with the Hegelian notion of negation in order to form the dynamic new Ideal of the rational conscious, historlcal act. and praxis is thus appropriately provided by the The linK between theory

~Otiol'l

al contradiction: (

Contradiction is the essence not only of every specifie, particular theory, but also of theory in general, and so the dialectieal phase of its comprehension is simultaneously the phase of the fulfillment of theory; but Us fulfUlment is its self-resolution into an original and new practical world, into the real presence of freedom. 85 Therefore, the negative, as the actualization of thoght, represents the practical historical manestation of the rational, and its principal raison d'tre coosists in nothing less than "the denial, destruction, pa.ssionate consumption of the positive." 86 This movement of negation, this destructive action, claims BaltUnin, has "absolute justification," , since it Is in effect . . . the action of the practical Spirit invlsibly present in the contradiction itself, the Spirit which, throogh this storm of destruction . . . announces its imminent coming, . fts imminent revelation in a really democratic and universally human religion of freedom. 87 The Balruninist idea of the apocalyptic "religion of freedom Il is perfectIy consistent with his earlier views, developed in his Russian writings, which find the Ir complete corroboration in these pages of the text. The "religion of freedom" is ln fact achieved by the conscious application of philosophlcal
,

praxis to the surrounding social and political world. And to this effect,

Ba.Kunin has clearly transformed Hegel,ian 'phUosophy into an active 85n>id., p. 47. 'd 86Ib1. , p. 49. ' 87Ibid , pp. "9-50; emphasis mine.

-_

.... _----

.. .....- .. _ ... ~,.:

"

."f7,~-~;;-- ~

.""It' ,.. . . - ..

415

re:volutionarl principle:

"

[phUosophy] . . . wh1ch established the same levelIng revolutionary principle in the intellectuaI worldnamely, the principle of the autQQomy of Spirit . . . stands ln the higheat contradiction to all current positive , religions, to aIl present-day churches,88 which negates, by Us very existence, the politicaI reality and social , structures of the contemporary world. Hence, Ba.kU.Ilin states, the Key to liberation lies in the adoption of this "~iversally practical principle, ,,89 which, as he observes, ls' totally lacKing in institutionalized ("positive") religion and in the modern state. As expressed in his 1838 article, "Preface to Hegel's Gymnasium Lectures, life: The atate Is currently in the throes of the deepest internai conflict, for without religion, Without a powerful universal convictioo, the state is impossible, 90 Consequently, he applauds the formation of social and religious societies "wholly alien to ~e present political world," 91 referring to these as the negative principle, as the underground preparatory worle of the "mole. ,,92 ... The theoretical groundworle of negation having already been established, he points to the practical manifestation and articulation of this principle
in the form of a political critique, wh~ch he recognizes in the 'warkS of
Il

Balrunin re-affirms his identification of ,religion and poli tic al

Strauss, Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer. Towards ,the conclusion of his 88lbid., p. 55. 89zbid., p. 56. 90n,id., p. 57 ..
.,

91lbid . 92lbid., pp. 56, 57; as pr Hegel's o~ term,

--- ---.:.. -- ...."..,,------

///

416
article Balrunin even voices a protest on behalf of the proletarian class, the "poor class, which without doubt constitutes the greatest part of
/

humanity, ,,93 and loudly demands the "actuallzation of the rights already conceded to it ... in , theory.,,94 Thus, applYing the method of H~ge1iari phUosophy to the extant political structure, Balrunin has elaborated a defence of the oppressed classes, whose demands for their democratic
~

rights he recognlzes

a~

eminently justified and historically necessary as

the practical realization of the abstract Ideal of freedom.


It ls interesting that in concludlng his article, Balrunln c t

final glance at the political situation in Russia and, despite the g1 omy political atmosphere, optimistically forecast the imminent momen the negative in that country: Even ~ Russia, in this endless and snow-c;overed Kingdom which we KnOW so little and which perhaps a great future awaits, even in Russia dark clouds ar,e gathering, heralding storm. 95 The closing paragraph of "Th Reaction ln Germany" has achieved notoriety in its fJomewhat frepzied celebration of destruction. It remains, however, profoundly Hegelian in !ts adoptioo of the twin concepts of negation and regeneration: Let us therefore tTUst the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihUates only because it is the unfathomable )bd \ eternally creative source of aIl lUe. The passion" for destruction is a creative passion, too. 96
"
~

,,
l

'-

93u,;id. , p. 51. 94Ibid .

;"

~'

fi' ri
'>

"

()

95Ibid , p. 58. 96Ibid

__

~_______

,.

,~~I

",,'"

..

417
Therefore, as we 'have seen in our analysis, the significance of "The Reaction in Germany" rests primary on its
re-~aluati

of the negative

as the pivotaI category of the Hegelian dialectic; as the central instrument for critique and change, the negative mode of thought performs an inherently
lib~rating

.,

functioo in the bistorical process. In fact, in the

present essay/ Balmnin bas elevated negation to the status of a ccnscious, positive act, indispensable Jo the realization of reason and freedom in reality. Moreover, by identifying reason with freedom, and by insisting on the essentially historical nature of reality, rational thought bas hereby
t1

come to assume a vitally- new critical social and political ccntext, leading to a re-interpretation of negation in terms of political ideology. Clearly, for the overcoming of the prevailing forms of political inequality and of social oppression, it was necessary for philosophical thought to become politicized and to assume a critical position with regard to historical and social reality. Thus, as Ba.lrunin
per~eived,

for the realization of reasoo,


~,

it was imperative to heighten the negative mode of thought in order to

fully grasp the basic contradictions which constitute realitY and to change social institutions so that they conformed to the rAJtional idea of freedom. We have seen how the theme of permanent social and political revolutiont//

as the applicati, of reas-systematically developed trom BaKunin's

c.cept . of "absolute negativity. "


In ccluding, our
~ussi bas shown that

Ba'OJDin's positi in
)

1842 manests a consistent -ideological ctinuity in his intellectual

development, and we have repeatedly underlined how liis ideas at the

t
t
1 ~

time of the publicati of "The Reactioo in Germany"

sys~matilly

(
...

evolved oo.t of bis earIier coocepts, in a logical and coherent fasbion. Rather than the expressi of an abrupt ideological change from philosopby

.. l

____

--~---

418
,

...

to poUtics, it represents the crystallizatiof BalQmjn's Hegelian ideas; his


poli~cal

radicalism, as formulated in this article, developed out of, was

firmly grounded in, and was even expressed in the ctext of the Hegelian

system. The "religi of freedom,


the concept of "reality,
Il

Il

the primacy of the negative dialectic,

-'

and especially Ba!gmjn's insistence rational

consciousness as a prelude to ratial acti, -themes whicb emerged

ln bis Russian writings, notably, in "Preface to Regel's Qymnasium

-Lectures" ad in "On Philosophy, " Parts 1 Dd

n, -all

find their

elaboration, justification and structured place in "The Reaction in Germany)' In fact, it is ly in tenns of a careful study of BaJamin's early worl that this 1842 article can be fully understood and appreciated.

FC?r il was the basis of his analysis of the


and of the primacy of ctradiction

~ectical

nature of reality

tha~ B31alDD

was able to integrate

his thesis of a ratial reccUiation witb reality and to resolve it into the context of active, concrete political praxis.

\.

CJ

---_ . , .....

_~fJ ._~:-"'~~~-:<..l - ~ _ _ _ ...:...-_

- ,------

APPENDIX 1

"Moi zapiski" - "My notes" MiKhaUBa.kunin PriamUkh!l0, 4 sentyabrya - 9 noyabrya 1837 4


sert~rya

1837

Yes, lHe is blessedness; to live means to understand, to understand [means ) to live; there is no evU,. everything is /good; only limitation is evil, the limitation of the spiritual eye. AlI existence is the lUe of spirit, everything is permeated by spirit, there is nothing outside of spirit. Spirit is absolute knowledge, absolute freedom, absolute love,

and consequently, absolute blessedness. Natural man, liKe everything natural, i5 a finite and limited moment of this absolute lUe. He ls not
Wl-

yet free, but there lies in him the possibility of unlimited freedom,

limited l'ftessednes8. This possibility lies in consciousness. Man is a conscious being. Consciousness is liberation, the return of spirit from the finitude and limitation of determination to lts infinite essence. The

lev el of coosciousness in man is the level of ~8 freedom, the level of his humanity, love, and consequently, the level of bis blessedness.
of his freedom, of his conscirusness is good, ris] blessedness. His

Part

limited, Wlcscious part is evil and misfortune. Only for the finite, limited consciousness do evil and misfortune exist, but in tha.t sarne consciousness there lies the
possibili~ and

the necessity for liberatioo.

And r;;o, there is no evil, everything is good; life is beatitude. Hegel states that

onJy

one thought distinguishes man from animal.

The difference 18 infinite, it maltes man an independent, eternal being.


(

As a natural individual, he is submitted

ta

that sarne Iron nece'jslty, to

..,

419

\_-- -

c '.-'

420

that same slavery, to which belong all things natural. He is a mortal being, he i8 a stave, he is even a nonentity, as an individual. He has reality oruy as a species and is submitted to the necessary laws of that species. But cCllsciousness liberates him from this necessity, maltes him an independent, free and eternal beirig.
Man in himself ls always

free and eternaI-as consciousness, as understanding of that spirit which develops in his lUe. But for himself,

h~ c~e partIy a

slave, a finite

man. He is a finite man, who is not yet completely permeated by selfconscious spirit, in whom there are still aspects of immediacy, not yet enlightened by spirit. These parts make him finite, by limiting the horizon of his spiritual eye; and any limitation is eVil, misfortune, separation frOm God. The unenlightened sides of man fetter him, prevent him from merging with God, make him a slave of contingency. The accidentaI is faIse, it is illusion; in true and real lUe, there is no accident, everything in it is holy necessity, divine blessing. Contingency

ts impotent again st true reality; only illusion, only false interests and
the desires of man, are subject to accident. ContD1gency limits the free-

1 ~
1

dom of finite man; contingency is the dark, unenlightened side of his lUe. ConsciOllsness is the liberation from immediacy, it ls the enlightenment of the nature of man by spirit. The less a man is con scious, the more he is subjected to contingency; the more he is conscious, the more he is independent of it. Only the illusory perishes from contingency, and the illusory must perish. illusion ls de8troyed by illusion-in this is contained the Iiberation of man. Everything lives, everything is animated by spirit. Only to the

1
j

(,
~
~

dead eye is reality dead. Reality is the eternal lite of God.

The uncon-

scious man likewise lives in tIlis reality, but he does Dot realize it, to

r--*'" - -

421 h im all is dead, he sees de,ath everywbere because bis consciousness has not yet entered into life. The more a man is alive, the more he is permeated by self-conscious spirit, the more alive for him ls reality, the closer it is to him. What is real a is rational. might, the source of aJ.l might. Reality is its life, Spirit is absolute
an~

consequently,

reality is all-mighty as the will and ded of spirit. Finite man ls separated from God, he is separated from reality because of
Ulusions~

because of bis immediacy; for him reality and good are not identical, for him there exists a division between good and evU. He can be a moral, but not a religious
m~,

and because of that, he is a slave of

,
i
J

1
1

reality, he fears it, he despises it. He who despises andJoes not know reality, despises and does not know God. Reality ls the 'iVine will. In poetry, in religion, and finally, in phil os ophy , is realized the great act of the reconciliation of man with God. The religious man feels, believes,

1
l ,

that the divine will i8 the absolute, single good, he says: "May your will be done," he says this although he may not yet rationally understand that the divine will is in effect real blessedness, and that ooly in it lies tlltimate satisfaction. The moral point of view is the separation of good and eVil, the separation of man from God, and consequently, also from reality. For hlm, evil exista just as does goodness. He fears evil, he
G

ls troubled, there is a continuaI struggle within him between good and eVil, betweeq blessedDess and mi sfortune. For the religious man, there is no evU: he sees in it illusion, death, limitation vanquished by the revelation of Christ. Tbe religious man feels his individual impotence, knowing that all might is from God, and awaits from him enlightenment
J ,, !

and blessings. 'Blessings purtly man from illusion, scatter the fog which separates him from the
SUD.

422

Phil 0 sophy , as the independent development and purication of thought, is a humanistic science, beeause il originates dJ-rectly from him [man], and a divine [science), beeause it cantains Within itself a

might of blessings: the purication of man from illusion and the Wlication of man with God. A man, having traversed all these three spheres of development and education-is a perfeet and all-mighty man; for him reality has become absolute good; the (Jivine will-is his cooscious will. Genius is the living consciousness of contemporary reality.

...

'

2 noyabrya 1837 \ Much time has passed since 1 conceived the idea of describing

here my interior Ilie. My sou! has endured many shockS; once again 1 almost fell. No, 1 am not yet sufficiently enlightened by truth, there Is still not enough love within me so that 1 do not have to watch myself, indiscriminately indulging in

"

an

sensatims. There are still many unen-

lightened sides in me, and the se sides malte Wlinterrupted harmony impossible for me yet. In me there are dry and cold moments, and 1 must be strg during those moments; 1 must look upon them as sickly, transient moments, 1 must study some means to destroy them. Next year, in the spring, 1 shall go abroad. This is necessary, for it iS I time to come out of indeterminatioo and to define oneself. For

this, 1 must prepare myself 1) intellectually and 2) materially; 1) 1 am now reading the Phenomenology.

* '

__

_ 1

423

9 noyabrya 1837

Nature does not pass, it cCIltainS within itseU an the totality of negation; time la in it and not outslde of it, and for that reason,it [ time ) does not have power over it, but acts as might to the single, to subjective realizations and realities of nature, which are one-sided and do not cootain in themselves an understanding of the totallty of negation. For that reason, Ume ie a11-powerful on them, they take place and pase
in time. The human singularity, the buman subject as a single realization
/

"

of nature, ls subjected ta those

s~e

laws of time, he aIso passes like-

wise. But he contains within himself aU the totality of negation, as the


1, complete abstract identitY 1 = and in this identity, he [ts] outside of

Ume and time (i8] within him, and it manifests its power on contingent and indonstant determinations of this pure identity, and in this aspect, time is the abstract base as the external llie of nature, as fis) the interior lUe of spirit. And it seems to me that the particular realizatlon

of nature le related to the totality of nature, precisely in the sarne way as contingent and cne-sided qualities or determinatioDs of the subject [are related] to the pure subject.

*******

'Appendix I, translated from Bakunin,< Sobranie sochinenii i pisern, tom 2" pp. 70-73.

APPENDIX II

"Predi8lovie perevodchika," Gimnazichesltie rechi Gegelya "Hegel' 8 Gymnasium


~ectures"

Translator's Preface by MiKhail BaltUnin Moscow, April 1838

PhUosophy! How word aWaKens; who now

ci:

.,.

any dilferent feelings and thoughts this one


~

does not fancy himself a philosopher, who

does not today speak,W:ith conviction on what truth i8 and on what truth constitutes? Everyone

~ts to have his own,

personal, particular sysin accordance with

,1

tem; he who does not think in his own original way

his own arbitrary feelings, does not possess an independent spirit, he is considered a colourless, insipid man; he who has not thought up his own little ideas, well then, he 'is not a genius, there is no profundity in him, and nowadays no matter where one turns, one encounters genii everywhere. And what have the se so-called genii thought up, what have been the fruits of their profound little ideas and views, what have they advanced, what have they accomplished of real significance? "Let us be ooisy, dear brother, let us malte noise, "-Repetilov answers for them, in Griboyedov's comedy. Yes, noise, empty chatterthis is the only result of that awful, senseless anarchy of minds, which constitutes the main Ulness of our new generation, -a generation which ls abstract, illusory, and foreign to any realtty; and all this noise, all this chatter,
~

this takes place in the

na~e

of phUosophy. And no wondet

utat .the intelligent, real Russian people'does not allow Itself ta be blinded

by these verbal fireworks devoid of content and thoughts without sense; wonder that it does "not trust phU os ophy , which is presented ta it from
424

no

' ..... 'A

425

such a disadvantageous, illusory side. Up until now, philosophy and

c.

abstraction, illus,1on and the absence of any reality, were synonymous; he who studied philosophy necessarily bid farewell ta rea11ty and wandered ;,.. in a . .te of aickly estrangement from any natural and spiritual reality,
in some fantaatic, arbitrary, 1maginary world, or rose up against the

real world and believed, that with his illusory strength, he could destroy its mighty existence. He thinkS that all the good of mankind 1s contained
in the realization of the finite conditions of his fin1te
unders~ing
KnOW,

and

of the finite goals of his finite arbitrary will. He does not

poor

fool, that the real world Is superior to his wretched and powerless ind1viduallty, he doesn't see that 'slClmess and evil lie, not in reality, but within himself, in his own abstraction. He does DOt have eyes for the harmony of the wonderful, divine world; he Is unable ta understand the truth and holiness' of real lite. The flnite
understandin~

,'

prevents him

from seeing, that in llie everything is wonderful, everything is good, and that even suffering in it is necessary as a purification of the spirit, as a transition from darlmess to ,11ght, to enl1ghtenment. Indeed, the illusory man cannot say, together wi~e poet:
\

\.,

0, .. pyr MOit, RCKaB Jl3MeBJII)IIUIX (5J1ar,


BCKaB HaCJla~eBHitM.HYTBHX,

TH lepXHe (5J1ara yTpaTRJI CBOZ,


TH
C
CHM

lDI8B& npeaBpaT& aayllBJICR!

rH6eJl!1I1IDI qyBCTBON yuceH H CBeT 1 ,lla. pyxy: (5JIH3 BepBoro ~pyra C npHpo.. oit H D3Hbll OIIS'!'b npHMHpaCb! 0, Bepb UHe, npeXpGCHa BCeJleHBal

_.------426
He60 HaM Aa~o, Mol APyr, c 6wTHeu: Bee 15 :l:K3HR - K SeJlHKoMy cpe,aoT80: ' H ropec'D: Il paAOCTIt - Bee K ue.lH OlHOlh IsaJlB ZH3HOAaBIIY 3esecyJ
Boe

V. A. ZhUltOVSkii, "Teon '1 Esldlin."

He cannot say thls because his life Is a succession of continuai torments, endless disappointments, a struggle without resolution and without end; this int.rnal disintegration, this internal di s rupti on, is the necessary consequence of abstraction and ,illusion, of the finite understanding, for which there is nothing consrete and
w~ich

transforms ail

llie into death. And 1 repeat once again: the general suspicion with respect to philosoplty ls very well grounded, because what has been given out to us as phllosophy up'tuntil the present time, has destroyed man rather than enlivening him, instead of forming out of him a truly useful member of society. The beginning of this evil is concealed in the Reformation. When

the destiny of papism-the substituting of an external centre for lacK of an internai centre-ended, when he lost that interior, purely1 spiritual strength, by which he concentrated in himself so many heterogeneous elements of European lUe, -then this magnificent edifice of his unlimited might was destroyed, and his final measure- indulgence-was already an obvious sign of destruction. The Reformation shOOK his authority, but also shooK aU other authority and gave occasion for unlimited investigations into aIl spheres of lUe. To this period belongs the rebirth of the empirical sciences and of phUosophy. The empirical sciences, limited to the observation of the finite world, a world accessible-to the finitude of ,

,.

"

427

sense, innet- and outer, and to contemplation, quicKly pushed ahead and

in a short time achieved brilliant successes. But outside of the finite world lay another sphere, inaccessible to sensory observation, the sphere of spirit; absolute and
~conditional,

..... and this sphere became the object

of philosophy. The awaxened intellect, freed from the swaddling clothes of authority, was no longer willing to accept anything on faith, and, separating itself from the real world, and immersing itself in itself, wished ta derive everything from itself, to find the origin and basis of Knowledge within itself. "1 think, therefore 1 am. " Here is how the new philosophy began in the person of Descartes.
\

Doubt before all existing things, refutation of everything which had been known and established by means other than philosophical cognition. And this, together with the main principle of experimental Knowledge, empiricism, \Wlich held that all knowiedge is necessarily conditioned by the , immediacy of the presence of the Knowing subject, constituted the main attribute of the mind, freed by the Reformation from papal authority, the characteristic of which was pre-eminently expressed in the 18th Century in two different, opposite, but indissolubly United spheres, in both the theoretical and the practical, in the philosophy of Kant, Ficht,j Jacobiin Germany, and in the empirical philosophizings and reasonings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, D'Alembert, and other French writers, who invested
'

themselves with the loud and undeserved appellation of philosophers. But the human intellect, only just awaitened from a long slumber, could not immediately know the truth: the real world of truth was not
with~n

its

t ( t

power, . it had not yet advanced to this leveI, and necessarily had to travel a long path of trials, struggles and suffering, before reactrtrrg-its maturity. Truth is not granted gratuitously, no, it is the fruit of dtlficult sufferings,

"

428

of long tormenting strivings. Yes, suffering ie good: it is that purifying flame, which transforms and gives strength ta the spirit; suffering ls the education, the rational experience of spirit, and a spirit, which has not yet received this education, which is not yet purlfied and consecrated
)

by suffering, is nothing more than a chUd, which has not yet lived and which will have to experience llfe with Ml Us joys and griefs. He who has not suffered has not tnown, and cannat
knOW,

the blessedness of

healing and enlightening by means of the strength of beneficial love, which is the source of all life and outside of which there is no life. The 18th Century was the century of the second faIl of man in the field of thought. He lost his contemplatlon of the infini te and, engulfed
in the finite contemplation of the finite world, he did not find, and could

not Und another support for his thinlting, apart from his 1, -which is abstract and illusory, when it is in a state of enmity with reality. .!nto Kant' s head came a strange thought: ta establish the possibility of cog- , nition before the onset of cognition itseI!. This verification constitutes the content of his Critique of Pure Reason. But, one aSKs, what other instrument did he use to cheCk the cognitive possibillty other than this
. ,

"

same cognitive possibUity? He rehgnized the beginning of any cognition as the original identity of J and thought. Representations, given in sense and in perception, ire manifold in their content, but in their forms, in space and in time, they belong ~o the pur, sensible contempiation. of the pure J. The union of this multiplicity in the consciousness of the pure.! fs carried out liKewise by means of the pur_e forms, of the understanding, by meane of the categories; but these categories are applied only 10 appearances given in sensuous perceptioq, and, consequently, the understanding can only
KnOW ph~nomena

of the finite world, because the

. -- --- -

-~

..

~--

.t,~

,~-"--

429

absolute and the uncopditional are not subjected to the conditions of space

(t

and Ume, and are inaccessible to sensuous' perception. Applying its categories to th e unconditional and resolving a11 questls'
belongin~

to

this sphere according to the law of necessity, results in the pure

unde~

standing's fall into antinomy, into contradiction, into the assertion of two completely antitheUcal propositions. And therefore, the world of the pure understanding is the world of finite phenomena, and what does it
KnOW

in

these phenomena? Space and time, necessarily conditioning any phenomenon, do not belong to the known object, and in essence are nothing else than the pure forms of sensuous perception, forms belonging to the Knowing 1. The dtlferences between objects likewise do not
bel(~ng

to the objects, but

....

in essence are nothing else than the pure forms of the understanding . What then remains in the llown ,object? Abstraction, the thing in ~tself 1 Fichte, whose system is the logical and necessary continuation of Kant's ...
,,'

.~

critical system, destroyed this final illusion of external existence, proving that the thing in itself is likewise a production, ,an appearance, of the pure.1 and the enUre external world and all of nature was -declared to be an illusion, only the 1 was real, Any determination, any
~ntent

~d

everything else-:-was illusion.

had ta be destroyed ln the face of this

ab strac tj empty, and-according to Fichte, -sbsolute identity: 1 =I. And thus, the result of the phUosophy of the understanding, the result of the subjective systems of Kant and Fichte, was the destruction of all objectivity" f all reality, and the immeJ;'\sion of the abstract, empty

!
,

in vain, egotistical self-contemplation, the destruction o~ all love, and


'/

r,

consequently, of an life and of any possibUity 'of blessedness, because

(1

love only
\

ex;i~ts

where two suqjects, external-to-one-another, are. united


u

in' one comprehension, unable to imagine being different, -and not there, where one abstracts itself from the other and immerss itself in self- '

-- .............-,,........

_ ,----:.-,~~_

..........

---

.
o

430

contemplation. Such self-eontmplation Is the saure of infernal torment,

()

unbearable sufferings, because where[ there is no love, there 18 Suffering. But the German nation is too strong and too real ta sacrifice itself ta empty ilhision; such a phllosophy is' the destruction of., religion and art, and ~e religious and aesthetic sense of Germany was tao deep and saved
it from this abstract and infinite state which shook and almost annihUated

France through bloody and violent scenes of revolution.

From this
w~re

terrible condition of indifferent and empty subjectivity there

two

possibilities: elther to renounce thought and to- throw oneself into another,
c-

even worse, ab~traction-into the immediacy of one's subjective feeling,or ta resoive this awful contradiction in the field of. thought itself: J,acobi opted for the first solution, and Schiller-for the second. The result of
Ja~obi's

system was that which Hegel termed Schl>nseel1gkeit and tllat

which could aIso be called' self-mockery. This ls a wonderful, weak, ,wr'efched s,oul, engulfed in the contemplation of its wonderful but fruitless qualities, and speaking phrases not because it wishes to uttE!.r phrases, but because the live word is the expression of living reality, and the expression of emptiness must be necessarUy aIso empty and dead. Schiller, as a student of
K~t

and Fichte, liKewise emerged out of subjectivity,


Robb~rs

which clearly manifested itself in two sch8nseelig dramas, The


" 1

and Love and 1ntrigue, where, he rebeis against the social order. But the rlch substance of SchUler carrid him out of abstraction,. from this world
Cf
1

of empty illusions, and every new year of his life was a step towards reconciliation vdth real1ty. In his work on aesthetic education he estab"" lished the first basis of the rational phUosophicaI prfhcipl'e as the concrete unitY Qf subject and abject. Schellin elevated this unity into an absolute principte, and finally the system of Hegel crowned this ,long strtvin'g of

431 the mind towards reality:


What is real, is rational and What is ratal, is real.
J

Here is th; basis of Hegel's philosophy, a basis which still found


,

many adversaries among the illusory contemporaries of the great Berlin philosopher, and especially awaltened the indignatioo among the rankS of

that ridiculous Young

Ger~y,

which wanted to r-educate its intelligent

fatherland according to its childish fantasies. Let us now tum 10 France and see in what manner occurred the separation of the 1 with reality in that country. The French, with the exceptis of

D~sC8{tes
..j

and Malebranche, never ascended to speculative

thought. The so-dled philosophy of the 18th Century was the immediate result of empirical investigations; the ratiocinations of the French never
\.
"

emerged from the finite categories of the understanding, ly with this difference,
tha~

the Germans-tbat predominantly speculative people-

elevated themselves ,al)ove empiricism to that abstract element of the pure understanding, and for that reas quicldy recognized the finitude and inability to grasp it uncooditimally and absolutely. This recognition

of the finitude of the understanding was the sign of


, ,

its elevatioo to a

. higher element of thght, to reasoo, -which resolves all cootradictims


within itself. The French., on the other band, never emerged from the

sphere of empirical, arbitrary ratiqcinatis, and

ev~rything

sacred,

great and noble in life fell under the blow of the blind, dead, understanding. The result of French philosophism was materialism, a celebratioo

..,o!

uninspired flesh.

The last sparlt of revelatioo: disappeared from the


tha.t etemal and intransient proof of the

French natioo.

~ty,

f~ve

of the Creator for his creati, became the abject of moclry, of

432
general. cmtempt, and the wretched human understanding, unable ta penetrate into the deep and sacred mystery of lUe, \rejected everytbing that was inaccessible to it; and everything true and everything real is
...

inaccessible ta it. It demanded clarity, but what clarity! Not that which lies in the depth of the abject, but that which lies merely on its surface;
it presumed ta expl.ain religim, but religi, inaccessible ta its finite

-...,.-

efforts, disappeared and led off with it the happiness and tranquillity of France; it presumed to transform the sanctuary of science into general
lm owl edge,

and the most secret sense of this true Knowledge disappeared, Jean

and'",all that was left was fruitless, illusory ratiocinatis.

Jacques Rousseau declared that the e nlightened man was a depraved creature, and there took place in'France in the practica! sphere that which in Germany bad occurred in the theoretical sphere; the revolution was the necessary csequence of this spiritual depravity. Where there is no religion, there can be no state, and revolution was the negation of any state, or any lawful arder, and the guillotine conducted its bloody levelling and executed anyone who 'elevated himself, however lif~le, above the senseless crowd. Napoleon halted the revolutim and restored the social arder, but he could not cure the main
illne~s

of France: he did

not restore ta it ts religious feeling, and religim is the substance, the essence of the

J.i1t!

of any sta.te.

And
v

absence of religion is the prin-

cipal interna! reason for the illusory ~ture of its present c~ti. 1 lmow, that me shouldn't pronounce any definitive juckement on
~

any nation. If me can be mistalcen ,in jUdging a man, then this error is

even more possible when one i8 spea1dng about an entire~ people, whose , substance is deeper and more mysterious, than the substance of me pa.rticu1ar man. But we are to judge by the fact, then we are forced

433
to 'conclude that the French people is lacking in aesthetic sense.
)

Let us

observe both moments

?f

French poetry, classicism and romanticism,

and we can see that in these two opposites there is a common absence of true poetry. French classicism is not that Greek classi.cim, predomi-

nantly wOAderful, plastic, serene and lucid, lik.e a faithful reflection of the wonderful and bright world of the Gree.k.S; no, this is a pitiful and wretched imitation of the ancients, this is a transplant of 'the living and etemally youthful, not into the aesthetical substance of an entire nation,? but into the style of a small, depraved, corrupt circle, devoid of that sense of the Infinite, which constitutes the necessary condition of all poetry, and this is why the simple world of the GreekS was transformed in France into a prim prudery, into a commonplace, cold sensuality ,

and into the absense of any simplicity and naturalness. The revoluti overturned France, and it crossed over from one unenlightened onesidedness into another antithetical one-sidedness; in romanticism there is likewise a lack of poetry, as there is in classicism. Classicism was the decayed manestati of a small, exclusive circle, whereas romanticism was the manestation of an entire unenlightened and uninspired crowd. , And that is why the new literature of France is full of bloody and excitable scenes, and that is why it is also suffused wlth phrases, only with tha.t difference that the phrases of its classicism were prim

. and prudish,
\

but the phrases of its romanticism are frenzied.

Where

there ls no contemplati of the infinite, then there must necessarUy be phrases, and where there is no living religion, there cannot be any contemplation of the infinite. From affectation, the French fell i nto natural-

ism, but not into inspired, enIightened naturalism, but into the disgusting

naturality of Meat. And is it any wonder, that in the face of such an absence of religious and aesthetic sense, which coostitute the living

434

essence of a people, ls it any wonder that France fen into such a sicdy

l.

and tormented state? The entire lif8l!fof France is nothing other than the :. consciousness of its emptiness and of the tormented striving to fill up this emptiness by any possible means. But

"J

an

the means used by it

tf

this effect, are illusory and fruitless, because the true and infinite means lies in religion, in holy divine revelation-in Christianity, whreas the French do not lmow and do not want to lmOw Christianlty; they. need . ... novelty, in the words of their atheistic patriarch, Voltaire, who stated:

"n nous faut du nouveau n'en ft-il plus au monde. If


Situated outside of Christianity, they feel the need for religion, and strive to thinlc up their own, not lmowing that religion does not sp:rtng from human hands, but is the revelation of God, and that outside of Christianity there is not
~d

,crot be a true religion: this is the source

of that ridiculous Saint-Simonism and of other religious sects, if indeed


1

one can call them "religious." The French throw themselves into phUosophy, borrowed from the English, from the Germans, and because of that same absence of infinite substance, transform ph il os ophy and any truth into empty, senseless phrases, into arbitr!riness and ,anarchy of tbought and into a concoction of
n~w

Uttle ideas. Something new, something new,

the old bores us-this ls the general motto of young France, and this incessant 'tendency from the empty oid to the empty new i8 the source of "fashion, her

n.\

one constant goddess of the French, and they sacrifice ta that is sacred and truly great in life. And much, much

eve~g

time will pss belore France maltes of itseU that great nation whlch it fane ies itself to be.

But France's disase is not limited to France~ this absence of 'religion, ~thls interior emptiness, this philosophie du bon sens spread

435

far beyond the borders of France and constituted the, /general illness of the 18th Century. A terrible, tormeilting illness, a solution ta which is the consciousness of its" Infinite emptiness, and the great Byron was the poetic expressi of this consciousness, of thls tormented transition from the 18th to the 19th Centuries, from siCkness to convalescence. His poetry
~s

the wail of desgair, the cry of an an gui shed soul, engulfed in

the contemplation of Us emptiness and of its indUferenc'e\. to everything which is sacred and wonderful in lUe; this ls the deep need for love, maldng him incapable of attaclunent to finite goods of thls earth, and
,

the inabUity to elevate himself above the finite and above the illusion of the cold world of the all-destroying understanding.
~d

the only possible

solution for it is stoicism, the petrUied and forced indfet"ence of the empty 1; a pitiful, weal<: solution in comparison with that which our
divin~

religion offers us, in comparison with the solution by means of enlightenment and of beneficial love, which heals all wounds of the striving and thirsting man. This illness, unfortunately, aIso spread to our cowltry. Despite the noble efforts of V. A. Zhultovskii and of several other writers to acquaint us with the Germanic world, most of us were raised in the French manner, in the French language and ideas. Accusations against French tutors are nothing new: one entrusts the education of me's chUdren to some tallor or cobbler driven out of France because of poverty, or because he practised his craft poorly.

436

MH Bee yqB~HC~ nOHeMBory ~eMy-HH6y~~ KaK-HB6y~~:

<

TaK npoeBemeH~eM, e~aBa 6ory, y Ba HeMy~peHo 6~eeHyT~.

And this one-sidedness, this emptiness of our national educatioo ls the principal reason for the illusory nature of our new generation. Instead of lighting up in the young heart the divine spark, placed there by providence itself, instead of aWakening in ft deep religious feelings, without which lUe does not and cannot have any meaning, and Is transformed into senseless vegetation; instead of forming in it a deep aesthetic
feel~g,

which saves man from all the vUe, unenlightened aspects of lUe, lstead of all this, they fUI the young heart with empty, senseless French phrases which destroy the soul in its embryo, and expel all that is sacred and wonderful from it. Instead of training the yoong mind to do real work, instead of kindling in ft love for knowledge and of insplring in it the idea that KIlowledge is Us own end, that it is the source of great, lnexhaustible satisfacti, and that using it as a means of shining ln society ls a sacrilege, instead of all thls, they train it to scorn worK, to be credulous, to indulge in vain, glittering chatter on every possible subject. And lt is

surprising therefore, that snch an educati does not form a ,Stroog and . real Russian man, devoted to the Tsar and to his fatherland, but rather something Mediocre, colourIess and without charader? And once again, 1 repeat: this Is the source of our social illness, and of our illusion. Leaf through any collection of Russian poetry and you will see what constitutes, and especiilly, what constituted, the nourishment for the daily

i_-_:...--....

Il.''.
437

~'Splration

of our so-called poeta: wea.K.. and


.'f:>'

feeble Sch6nseel1glteit.

One announces that he doesn't believe in life, that he ls dtsappointed; another, that he doesn't believe in frtendship; a third, that he doesn't belleve in love; a fourth, that he would, have l1lted to malte his fellowmen happy, but since they d't Hsten to hlm, this maltes him MoSt unhappy. But let us leave behind these illusory poeta of Ulusory selfmockery and let us turn our attention to the great A. S. Pushldn, that (_. pure Russian genius, let us examine the great moments of 11is life, and
fJ'!
"

we can see that in his development there is an incredibly logical continuity. He similarly received a false, illusory education and was, for a certain length of time, in that state which he so clearly, so magnifloently " described in his Onegfn; he likewise began with a Sch&lseel1glteit struggle against reallty and went through long and tormenttng trials. The struggle and the reconcUlation with reallty cost him dearly: the struggle againSt reality had to precipitate him to despair, because real1ty is always
r'

.
,

victorious, and man bas to elther reconcile himself to it, to recognlze himself in it, and to ldVe it, -or to destroy himself-and observe how deep was Pushldn's despair:

.D.ap K8lJpacmdt, .Ia1' cJIY'laihudt, EB3B~t 3aqeM TH Mse ,1aHa? HJIh aaqeM CY.l~~OD TalBol

TH

Ha Ka3H& ~CYKAeBa?

KTO Mesa spaZ.le~Boft SJI80T&m Ha HH'lTO~CTBa B033SaJI,

.D.ymy MBe HanOJIHBJI oTpaCT~m, Yw OOMHeH~eM OKOBaJI?

/'

438

HeT nepe~o M~Om, CepAue nyc~o, npa3~eR yw. H TOMaT MeRR TOCKOD OAHOBByQHwA aBSRH myM.
Ue~H

(!}

\
But PushKin could not remain ln thier illusory state for long: his gentaI substance tore him away from this inflnite emptlness of the

(souI

and forclbly led him to a reconcUlation with reaIity. Alter thl~ derPalr, after this aridness of the souI, there folIowed a reslgned, saIutary sadness, liKe a luminous ray from heaven, as a messenger of purUication and enlightenment, ana he expressed his transformatiOJl,.Jn these wonderful verses:

Be3YMH~ ~eT yracmee Bece~be MHe THae~o, KaK cMyTHoe DOXMe~be. Ho KaK BHRO, neqa~b YHHysmHx ~HeA B Moel Ayse qeM cTape, TeM CH~bHeA. MoA nyTh ~. CynKT YRe TPYA B rope rpgx~ero BonHyeMoe MOpe.

,.

Ro He Xoqy, 0 APyr., yYHp8Tb; fi DTh XOqy, qTo6 MHCJlBT& .' cTpaAaTh, H Bexam: MHe ~YAyT HaCJlaZ~eHbR Mez ropecTel, sa60T B TpesonHeHbR. nopoA onR~. rapMoHBeA ynbDcb, Ha~ BHMHCJlOM cnesaMB 060~&DCb, H, MozeT 6HTh, Ha MoA saKST neqa~.KHI B~ecHeT nm60Bh ynH~Kom npo~anhHoA.

. .. '

.,....~)z

........ __ .
~

:~~-,.--.."

Yes, sadness is the beginning of enlightenrnent of the spirit; 1t refreshes the soul, it is the beginning of faith, the begbming of love; sadness ls the beginning of
r~covery,

439

and PushKin soon recovered. At

the sarne Ume, when everyone thought that hls' poetic genius had expired \d was extinct due "t() worldly troubles, he accornplished his great rec~iation with reality, and his last works, published in The Contemporary
'f

[Sovremennik], majestically confirm this. hldeed, happiness lies not in illusion, nor in bstract dreams, but in living reality. To rebel against reality and to destroy in oneself any living source of llie, Is one and the sarne thing. Reconciliation with

realit y in all its aspects and in aU spheres of life ls the great question of our time, and bath Hegel and Goethe are the leaders of .this reconciliation, of this return frorn death ta life. Let us hope that our new generation will likewise come out of illusion, that it will abandon empty and senseless chatter, that ft will recognize that true Knowledge and anarchy of the mind;- arbitrariness of opinion, are complete opposites, and that there reigns in 1010wledge a strict discipline, and that without this discipline there can be no Knowledge. Let us hope that the new generaUon

~,/

will at last bec orne intimately linked with our wderful Russian reality and that, leaving behind all vain pretensions ta genius, 1t will feel within
~

itself the legitimate desire to be real

Russi~

people.

Hegel rose up agalnst the concelted

td rldlculous arrogance 01
J;.~.

our Urnes, that one could be a philosopher and a scholar without any work or effort; he claims that this foolish confidence which lures weak
1

people, tears th-em away from any other field, in' which they could be real and useful people. As proof of this, we translated three lectures

'---.

--

---- ,--

-~---

- -- 440-

delivered by hlm at public conferences of the... Nuremburg Gymnaslum,


,
~-

one of which, accordlng to the Instructions of the. edltors, ls publ1shed here; the other 18 due in subsequent booldets of the Observer.

Appen~ix n, translated from Balqmln, "Predls1ovle perevodchilta;' Gtmnaztcheskte" rechl Gagelya, ln Sobranle sochlnenU 1 plsem, tom 2, pp. 166-178.

---,""",,,,,,,,,--,------ -

APPENDIX III "0 filoscfii, fi stat'ya pervaya \ "On Philosophy," Part 1


MiKhail BaKunin

Nowhere does the discord, which constitutes the essential character of our contemporary literature, appear so forcefully as in the debate on philosophy. Some maintain that philosophy is a real, superior science, bestowing 11ght on all other branches of Knowledge, and which requires a positive study; others, on the contrary, maintain that it is nothing more than a rabble of fantasies, the empty play of the imagination, hindering the development of other positive sciences. Some claim that

anyone who studies philosophy is a lost man, because it tears him away from any reality, destroys' in him any faith, inspires doubt, and transforms him from a healthy, strong and useful man, both to himse If and to his societyl into a sicldy, dream-liKe and definitely useless being;
!

others, on the contrary, main tain that philosophy is the single means for the annihilation of aIl doubt, of all spiritual illness, the one means for the reconcUiation of man, -who has already fallen once under the pernicious influence of scepticism, -with reality, with heaven and with the earth. From where then' does this contradiction arise, and Is there any possibility of resolving 1t? Its
r~olutton

"

must interest all serious-

thinkers, aIl spporters of enlightenment, heca~se the benefit, 'promised


,0

from the one side, and the harm, as represented by the other

sid~,

are

i, ! ,
~
~

so strong and marked, that they cannot faU to attract attention upon themselves. This question is one of the Most important questions of

,--

441

"

442

our time, and for this reason, anyone who takes an interest in our national, Russian enlightenment, must contribute to Us resolution, in accordance with his ability. \ OI& of the principal reasons for the misunderstanding is

'"

la~gely

due to the indeterminacy of concepts and expressions, and for this reason we shall above all attempt to determine what philosophy ia, in order that later, basing ourselves on a well-defined definition of it, we shall be in a position to answer two other questions: ls philosophy useful and is philosophy possible? What is philosophy, and in what does Us object consist ?-this i8 the tirst question which presents itself to our investigation. Philosophy, in the translated sense of this word, means "love of wisdom" [Lyubomu4Qe), -an expression which up until the present time is still being used' by some of our writers; but this is- too vague; anyone can love wisdom, 1without being a philpsopher or studying philosophy as a science. It would be a great pitY if wisdom, and love of it were the exclusive property of only a small number of people who .studied philosophy, and remained inaccessible to the reste These others constitute the majoz:ity of the human race, and mankind, no
m~tter

at what level of development it is, thirsts for wisdom


,

and cannot exist without it. There is practical wisdom, resulting from the reli~ious education of man, and which constitutes one of the' essential bases of national well-being: thiS is the wisdom of the family man, the wisdom of the member of civil society, of the state, of the man who has acquired a religious education, Knowledge, and experience of life. Peter the Great was ,not a philosopher, but no one will, deny in him both
~ wisdom

and love of wisdom. Evidently, the word "1yubomudrie" [love \of


w~en

wisdom) was formed in Gr.eece,

science had not yet acquired inde-

pendence and where the word "philosophy" meant political wisdom and

,'.,.....,.~....

,1<"-'"

f) --, - _.- ,-, .-----

443,

worldly prudence in general. The words "phHosophy" and "philosopher" are still used by us in another sense; a government official, who faUs to receive an tptpected reward, says: nI am a philosopher and w1!1
'" , J

endur~

my misfortune lIith strength." Not in the least Wshing to deny the fortitude and noble virtue, necessary for such heroic feats, we nonetheless
j

cannot accept this very

limited

meaning of the word "phUosophy" ln

the sphere of our investigation. For some time now a custom was introduced into our COWltryand this custom came to us from the French, ...,.;.that of calling any

"raisonnement" phUosophy; in this connection Famusov, discussing the pernicious consequences of Intemperance, declares: .'
KYAa KaK qy,JJ;HO c03~a,H cBeTI nO~H~Oco~cTByI - yN BCXpYZHTCSr To ~epezem~cR, TO o~eA; TpH qaca, a B TpU
~HR

Em~

He CBapHTCRI

'l>

In France there continually appear novels under the tUle of "Roman

philosophique"; some of these are deep with meaning, inspired by most important questions of our tt~~, but nonetheless, they do not have a right to the name philosophical: 1t is possible to be an extremely educated and cultured man, to taxe a strong, and active interest ln the questions of the time, without being a philosopher.
~hUosophy

is a positive, self-

contained and methodical science; "raisonnements'" and ordinary ratiocina tions do not ,have and cannot have a claim to scientific authenticity. This practice, which was forOled ln the school of the so-called French philosophes of the 18th Century, had the 1~l"ost dangerous effect
01}.

philosophy: -

empty "raisonnements," superficial"'and fr'ivolous ratIOcinations produced

.-

~,

------~-

-~

.....

~-~.-.-~~""'~~--~

- -~
1

-~

-- -

- -

-~

------

~-"-

444

much harm in the world and ruined Many young men by tearing them .
u

away from essential and. important interests of Ule, and by subjecting them .
~

to the pernicious rule of rash and senseless arbitrariness.' And since they \ ., invested themselves with the Ioud appellation of philosopher, this cseo
~
r

quntly gave rise to tte general opinion that phllosophy, atheism and liberalism, were dangerous to the well-being of society, and were one and th~ sarne thing. But thiS opinion !iS' absolutely false: a man, who ,
1

truly t!1inks and who really studies philosophy, ,C3JUlot be frivolous and , will never b an atheist or! a liberal windbag;, the first reaI

'

~tep

in t!te

realm of true philosophy is already in itself the negation of aIl frivolityj in its graduai development philosophy may fau into one-sldedness, into
,

abstraction, but its direction ls always important, always permeated by


(

a deep love for truth: such a philosophy will never be atheistic and anarchistic, because the essenc of its lUe and of its movement ls contained in the search for God and for the eternal, rational order. What then is philosophy? A few German wrlters of the 18th Century called it "secular, worldly wisdorn" [WeltweisheitJ in contradistinction to religious knowledge. * But this expressi ls likewise vague and does not embrace the entire essence of phUosophy: practicaI experience of life, ,
~

knowledge of the world, and particulat circumstances, which constitute . \


!

its contemporary condition, can aIso be called worldly. wisdorn, despite the fact
tha~
,

they do Dot belong ,to phUosophy and are 'possible outside of

it. Philosophy was probably given this definiti because it does not exclusively UmU itself to the abstract, Infinite, but aIso etntyaces the finite side of life-natuz:e, and the hman spirit. But surely it does not

(J

likewise limit itseU only to the flnite, but turns to it [the finite] not so *See the Schlegel brothers and their school. ,M. B.

'j',

L-

, ", ..~_

..

........ ,....,.-..,~....-~.,.. . . I:u..-.J_......-......., _ ~.;.

",

-~_

WIiiIo.,

<~'~~:

'

,?

445

that it May dwell

(Xl

il, but rather in order to understand the linK, its

unity with the infinite. The object of philosophy is not the abstract finite,
just as it is not the non-abstract infinlte, but rather, the ccncrete,

,indissoluble 1Dlib- of the one and of the other: the real truth and true
reality [deistvitel'naya istina i istinnaya deistvitel'nost'J. And

!!9'
1

philosophy is lmoWledge of the truth. Hegel,

who with

his system crowned the grand edifice of the ne. German phllosophy, says

that the time has now come to transform. philosophy from love of wisdom, of,
~th,

into real mowledge of the truth. But even this determinati is

still not definite enough for us. What is implied here by the words.!!!!!!'-

}edge and truth?

When 1 mow, for example, ,that


~

~ere is

a table in my

room, surely this is also mowledge

the truth, beC3l,lSe in effect, there

J a table in my room; at least Many of our enemies of philosophy are

not ashamed of calling suell lCnowledge truth; and if they are ashamed, then this is no different than betraying their secret principle, which

consists in the negati of any other truth apart fr,am the infinite, variOlls

accidents, which fm the world. 'Iha.t the table is in my room, may be


ahsblute1y correct, but this i5 nothing more than ctingency,
not ctain in Usd
~~

does

~ intereBt and which 'does not have the right to

the name of truth, since one of the

main deter~inatis
~~ ~

of tru1h is

,
i ,

aecessitt.

~ 'ln our times, many ~eoy tlle existence of "necessity" 'ln history,

and

~tly Bee

in it noChing but the empty play of ctingency and,

despite tbis, 'assert the utility ~ history and 'ca1l it a science. But
1

this t~ an Otmous CODtradicti: if univer~ history ts, in effect, nothing

more tban a sense1ess SUccessi of accidents, Ibm it cannot be of interest


~

!17

to ~ it camaot be an abject of bis mowledge, -and it cannot 'be useful

446

to him. By contingent we mean that which does not bave in itseH a necessary reason for its existence, which exists not according ta an
internai necessity, but according to exteriority. and csequently, through

accidental collision With other accidents. That is accidental, which could have been different.
~

that which bas some meaning in itself or some

coherence, can interest man and can be useful to him; but if this Unit is ctingent, then "il-buman lmowledge is reduced to the dead work of memory, the duty of which is ctained

nIy

in the preservation of the

accidental existence of contingent, singular facts. But the essence of any mowledge csists precisely in the self-activity of spirit, finding the
internai, necessary link within facts, isolated in
~riority;

spirit ap-

..

proaches lmowledge With 'belief in necessity, and the first step of }mowledge is already the negatim of contingency and the affirmati of necessity. ( And for this reason, in spealdng of truth, we shall already imply by this word not the accidental, but necessary truth.
In additicn, the word "truth" is aIso ~sed in the pluril number;

usually, me speakS of mathematical, l1istorical, and of other truths,

each one of. these bas ifs particul.ar internaI link, its particular neessity.
~

But are these particular truths somehow united by some superior liDk?

Is there a

universal~unity

'in them? There was a time when each of these

,particularities became the exclusive and almost single object of study, such
that scholars, studying me of them, did not wish to, and did not csider

--

themselves ciill.ged to

DOW

about the others; th1s breaking up of


sectis external and
empiric~

the single
to
c

1 J
f

and indivisible truIh into particular

ob~

one another, was the Immediate result of

founded

at the end

Cj

of the 16t1l Century by the EDgUsb lord Bac~

the

Verulam. This

was necessary for the eomplete and exact elaborati of the vast field of

447

activity of the natural and spiritual world; its infinite variety had to be broken up into partieular and limited parts in order to be accessible to detailed investigati, and there were formed in the IDth Century a multitude of partieular, completely :Ildependent scientific orientations. Some were limited to the investigati of nature, and did Dot venture into the realm of spiritual life; others, on the contrary, choosing the realm
of spirit, had no understanding of nature.

Moreover, not trusting their .)

power, scholars of the 17th and the greater hall of the 18th Centuries ~ attempted

as

much as possible aIso to break. up these twQ immense

halves of the real world: some devoted themselves exclusively to a study


of Roman law, not suspecting the fact that the

standahle only in the context of its .history and that the listory of a

!aV! of any nation' is underwith the history

,'"

partiuIar people receives life and meaning only in its link


9
On the one hand, it was
extreme~

of the totality of manltind. Thus, the diVisiqn reached improbable extremes.

useful, but

al

' the other, it completely

destroyed the living link, uniting lmowledge with life, and gave rise ta

a multitude of sufferings, limitatioos, to pedantic and lifeless scholars,


toreign ta everything wderful and lofty in life, inaccessible to the universal and infmite interests of spirit, blind and dead in relati to the needs and to the movement of the present time,
1
1

anJ

enamoured of the

inanimate letter, with the inanimate details of their specialized science.


l'

ABd up, until now, we still encounter mathematic3ns, buried in their formulas, who do not suspect that beyond these formulas, there surges

.
,

a wderful lUe, full of deep, infinite ctent;* and we stnl encOlDtter


l
'

doctors, who do not understand that there 1s a life and development of '.

Goethe says that myone who bas a calendar will never forget the great achievementB of mathematicians, but that mathemat1cians, in tum likewise, must DOt forget that they possess everything ~ept two tbtnp: love and spirit.

.,

.
~

---....

--:--:--:-

- -

---

------"-

I~"

~~

.. : : _ ....>t

448 the
spiri~

which is independent of the laws of organic lite. But in our

tirnes, such manestatioos are anachronistic. Our epoch, in contradistinction to the past century, is striving towards universal, living KnOW1

ledge; it has, thanldully, understood that only living lmowledge is true and real, that life is an immense, forever surging spring, which gives
it ~inite cootent; it has finally understood that the letter deadens and

that only the spirit animates, and it has also recognized that one must not seareh for this living and le-creating spirit in petty and isolated particularities, but in the universal which realizes itseH in them, and , that all these dferent branches of Knowledge constitute one great and

..

organic whole, animated by the universal unity, just as

an

the different

realms of the real world are essentially nothing els'e than the different, harmonie organization of the manifestation of the single universal and eternal truth. Th) univer~ has always been the prmcipal object of phllos ophy, and this is ooe of its highest privileges and merits; it [philosophy] has always searched for thrught, for the rneaning of the ... real world. Thought, by its very essence, is universal; striving to understand one or another of its rnanestations and to seek the general in it, is one and the same thing. But until the appearance of the so-called
\,

empirical philosophy, this tendency was abstract; it limited itself ly to the abstract
under~tanding,

to the abstract universal, abstractJng itself

from its reality. and for this reasoo did not embrace all the concreteness and totality of truth, which consists irl their fldissoluble unity. The
,

universal has no actual realizatioo: ft realizes itseU as the rea1, natura! and spiritual world;: this is the essential and necessary moment of its .' etemal life, and the great merit of empiricism cmsists in the fact that , .

- it turned the attent1 ol the thinking

spirit to the reality of the unlversal,


f

to the finite moment of the infbitte, ta the diver$ity Of natural and spiritual
~

.-'

-_..:.~
0,

_.! . . . . . .

,"'

~-

449

lite. It fell, and by its essential ~ character necessarily had to fall, into another extreme: beyond the diverse, finite multiplicity of the real
w~rld,

it lost the Wlity of the infinite from its sigbt. But no lie can be sustained

in the all-powerful dialectic of the historical development of spirit, and for this reason, this error disappeared, and it was granted to our century to Wlderstand the indissoluble and rational unity of the
univ~rsal

and of

the particular, of the infinite and of the finite, of the single and of the manifold. In consequence of this, we shall already Wlderstand by the
,

word "truth" the ab solute , i. e., the single, necessary, universal and
<>

infinite truth, realizing itseU in the diversity and in the finitude of the real world. And thus, philosophy is lmowledge of the absolute truth. We are already famUiar with the meaning of the word "trUth," but not yet with the meaning of philosophical Knowledge: in Vlhat does it csist, and what is the difference between it and ordinary knowledge? Here is the
que~ti;

whose resolution depends upon the resolution of our principal question, the question on the essence of philosophy ~ The concept of absolute truth, our determinatfon of this, must lead us to the forthcoming investigation. The absolute truth is
th~

single object of philosophy and for this reason


1

'only knowledge which embraces it' can be called philosophical. Consequently, Knowledge of the contingent, of whatever kind it be, already in itself is excluded from the realm of philosophie,al cogniti, the principal
.., 0

j-)

! 1

,.

object of whieh is the universal and the necessary. But likewise the empirical sciences have no other object: they llkewise do not stop at appearances, at parttcular facts, but seek the universal and necessary laws in th~ as weil as the reasons for thelr' existence. What then 18 the difference between them and philosophy?

.
'

. -

-'

..,....---~-_

........

~--

450

For the explanation of this questitn, let uS first examine the essence of empir'icism. What is its principal basis? Experiment 1

O!.!!I.

t" that which enters into the , realm of human experimental observati is

authentic; this \s Us basic thesis. But what then enters into the realm \ of experiment? That which gjves itself to us through our external or
~

interna! perception, -exterior and interior impressions; this is the !irst thing. But immediate perception does not limit itself to impressims; it groups them around a single centre and gives us a multitude of separate objects, having ntanilold qualities and arranged the one beside the other in space and the lone after the other in time; impressions, given to us above all through sensuous perception, do not remain isolated, but are gathered around severa! centres and constitute dilferent qualities of dUferent objects. For example, 1 see before me severa! hou ses, a road, the sKy, and so forth; if 1 begin to investigate this perception, then 1 see that there are two things in it: firstly, impressions: yellow, red, blue, and others, and secondly, the collection of all these impressiOl)s around a few centres, composed separately the one from the other and objects external to O:le another; the hou se, the
Sky,

streets, and so forth,

the qualities of which initia1ly appeared to me in the form of different impressions. Consequently, we must differentiate in sensual, external perception two dferent activities: f 1) receptivity-perception, which gives us diverse "impressions in time..,and space, and 2}. the self-activity of thought, which briDgs diverslty" to unlty, which recetves different impresstOns af;J quallt1es of singularities, objects separate from me another, and
~which

perceives the

reciproc~

relatiship of these objects. To sumo

marize, the unconscious activity of thought (that ,ls, universal) already appears in sensorial perception itself, as in human perceptloo; it ls , unconscious because sensorial perception itself does not ,perceive it: both
/
(

,U

.-

_ _ _ _~-

_ .. -

.-

_ __

451

activitie" in it are simultaneous and indissolubly linlted. The pme thing happens in the internal, spiritual perception of man, where his enUre spiritual world immediately appears to him. Internal perception liKewise gives us a diversity of interior sensations: anger, joy, suffering, inclination, and so
011,

and the reduction /01 this diversity into unity. Thus, our

lmowledge, based on Immediate perception, is at first the representation of separate and different objects of the sensual and spiritual world; this lmowledge is a necessary stage in the phenomenological deveJopment of man and belongs equally to the ordinary consciousness, as to empiricism. But empiricism, just as the ordinary consciousness, does not stop at this: neither stops the indifferent existence of objects, the one beside the other, and the one after the other, -both try to' find the active relationship of objects among each other, to find the universal and the necessary in their diversity; both
ob~in
il"

content and authenticity of their content

from Immediate perception, ,from interior or exterior sense, and both strive to permeate it with the universal, with thought. What then is the essen,tial differenee between them? It is difficult to
deter~ine

it, beeause

there i8 no characteristic boundary between them, because they more or less fuse with one another, and because the diseoveries made by empiricism, sOCller or later cross over into the realm of the ordinary, educated eonsciousness; both belong to experimental lmowledge; their
activit~es

are

'fi
1

entirely identtcal, and there exists between them only lat difference, that the ordinary consc1ousness reasons without any system, 1t does not have
1

!
1
<

t
t

pretensions to scientifie csistency and jumps from e Kind of oojeet

to anotber, whUe empiricism invests itself with le loud titIe of science,


ft attempts to glve its discoveries at least the external appearance

of necessary consistency and to bring lem under an enemal sys-

---

--~------

,.' . - 'Y'ttr:-----~.~> ...


~. ~...~
il

",

\
tem.

i
452

*
We said that the activity of the ordinary consc\ousness and the

activity of empiricism are entirely identica1: let us attempt to' explain

,.

and to prove this, in arder to anticipate and to prvent any misunderstandings. The answer to this question is still more important here in Russia, because we have hardly followed the development of contemporary philosophical thought. If we lmew, for example, that the Immediate and necessary result of empiricism was the materiallsm and naturalism of the 18th Century, then we probably would not have

---

. 5tood so

strongly and

sa obstinately for the infallibility of empiricism, but would have attempted ta see Us weak. side and liberate ourselves from the odious nets, by which
it entangles the free and immortal soul of man.

How ls the ordinary consciousness formed? The infinite variety of the sensuous and spiritual world is presented ta man; he penetrates into this diversity, wishes to understand it, to .relate himself to it; the infinite plurality of transient and accidentai isolated ob' ects surrounds him, and he searches for the constant and the permanent in them; he wants to lmow the universal and
th~

necessary reason for their existence,

the permanent law of their lives, of their change 'and development. The ratial and unified spirit of man, by Us essence, searches for rationality
'. *In order to be cvinced el this, it suffices to lOOk through Shcheglov's "Physics" or Schultz' "Anthropology" or even "An essay on the history of phUosbphy according to Rheinhold,n compUed by F. Nadezhdin (St. Petersburg, 1,837). G. Nadezhdin is a very intelligent man, he KnOWS a host of facts; but enriched wlth a multitude of lalowledge, he, in our opinion, forgot to acqutre e-true lmowledge; csequently, he ratiocinates there, where he ought to understand and thlnk, and his "Outline the history of phUosophy" ls notbing more than an arid compUat1. - The author.

, '

t
,
1

,
and the essence of rain,

453

and unity in the diversity 01 the world +rrounding "him. What then does

he do ta satisfy this need? He does not stop at the singularity of


\>il

appearances, but compares them among leach other and abstracts qualities from them in order to find the univeI:.sal and the necessary in them. For example, in order to understand the
rea~on

thunder, wind, and so on, man at first observes, these singular isolated appearances, but then abstracts from this rain, from this thunder, from those accidental and external circumstances, during
whi~h

they appeared

precisely at this moment, and with wlilich 'rey are ftxed, in order ta

lIase himself on many similar observations

and ta elevate himself ta


1

the universal and necessary laws of the foJmation of clouds, to t:he nature of electricity, and so forth. Moreover,

mt

does not limit himself ta the

investigation of any single type of appearan1e; he searches for ~e original and bigher law of the natural and spi ritual lworld, and this law must , embrace all appearances, all the different realms of the real world. What
i (

then is the way to

KnOW

it? For this, it iJ:! necessary to observe its

manestations in all fields of reality without exception; it is necessary to study all natural, historlcal and other' facts; in addition, it ls necessary ta understand the living link between nature and spirit, of their reciprocal relationshlp. In a word, man, starting from the external and contingent diverslty whlch 'surrounds hlm, must elevate himself to the unity, the
, '*

universality and to the necessary principle; he must understand the necessary particularization (Besonderungl of the original law in the

..

diversity of other particular laws and its realization in the real world The
ordina~y

consciousness

st~ives

towards this goal by means of ob-

servation, comparison, abstraction" and analogy; but are these means sufficient and can they lead him to his goal?

..
.'

454

AlI men are formed under the immediate influence of that society, in which they were born. But each nation, each state has' tts particular
4 fI

moral sphere, its popular beliefs, its prejudices, Us particular limitations, depending in part on its individu al character, on its historical
de~opment and on Us relationship to the history of all mankind. Each

state and each time has Us particular concepts and Us particular world view; in addition, each state i8 broKen up into. severa! different social strata, and each one of thesein turn, its individual character, its own particularity, such that the ordinary consciousness develops. under the most diverse influences. With the education of the mind, 'ready-made concepts, a ready-made moral' and spiritual sphere are absorbed, and
<

Us activity, which in its essence is always the same, alters the physical and spiritual circumstances which sur round it. Consequently, its develop,ment is a1ways limited and one-sided, and it is incapable absolute truth. The ordinary consciousness approaches the real, natural and
c

Qf

embracing the

spiritual world with the unconscious belief that the absolute truth abides in the external diverstty of this world. This belief appears in the faet that lt does not' stop at the indifferent and contingent diverslty of singular isolated abjeCts, but search~s for, unity; universality and necessity in the m, it 18 not tisfied with some' particular law or with several relatively-universal laws, but attempt8 to bring them to a 'universal, absolute Wlity. This beliet ls unconscious because it does not have a clear conscioosness of the sirikle and principal goal of Us tendency, or of the absolute truth.
In conformity with Us essence, the ordinary consciousness can

find the
,

absolut~

truth only in its [the truth's] diverse manUestations,

. and for this it has ta embrace the entire Infinite diversity of the real
II'

,455

world. But it ls always one-slded and limited; and embraces ooly a

(.

very small part of this diversity, a part which is in need of the addition of other parts, and for this reason it cannat embrace the absolute truth.
/

How ls one to rectify this problem, and how is ohe to ove'rcome the limitations of the natural consciousness? Here is contained the principal problem of empiricism as a science, -and we shaH investigate it in greater detail, in order to determine precisely whether it reaches its goal. Empiricism as a science liberates the natural consclousness from Hs individual limitations, from its prejudiceS', and
tear~
,

it away from

the fetters of determined space and of, determined Ume, enriching its experience with its experiments, carried out in different spaces and tirnes. As much as possible, it xpands the spiritual sphere of ordinary' consciousnes8. But in order
f "

to

attain its goal, it must destroy any limita-

tion, any one-sidedness, it must embrace the past, present and future appearances of the real world. Can it do this? No, and consequently, empiricism i8 liKewise incapable of Knowledge of the absolute truth. It greatly contr:J:tiutes to the expansion of the scope of the ordinary consciousness; it does not Umit itself to experiences of one nation or of one determlned time, but strives to enrich the experlences of all peoples
,

and all Urnes. But even thts attempt has Us limits, and as long as thls UmU exists, lalowledge of the absolute truth ls impossible. How ls one to overcome this? and are there any means to cornpletely liberate empiricism, experimental Knowledge, from the finite conditions of and Ume? Definitely note In addition, we stated ear11er that one of the essential differences between the ordinary consciousness and empir.lclsrn copslst in the fact
s~ce

'..___r'~~";'''-;'':-::
;t
~.

.-~-";:-~~~-

-;::;:

,1

456

,1
that the ordmary consciosness lmOWS without--any "scientiflc" authority; empiricisrn, however, atternpts to invest its lmowledge with a scientiflc form. In what then does this science consist? In completely external and mor~ or less arbitrary subdivlsioti. In order' to b~ convinced of this,
it ls necessary only to lOOK over any course in physics, chemistry or ven
,

logic, because even logic, the way it is usually taught to us, belongs liKewtse to the category of the pure empirical sciences. example, one firat examines
Il

In physics, for

general properties of bodies and their

different states," then' "general concepts of equilibriurn and motion," then one goes on ta statics, to dynamics, and then one speaKs of soUd bodies
,

in partic,ular, of their

structure,

porosity, imper~eability,

and then on to fluid droplets, to gaseous fluidity,

. and so forth;

and so on, and 'one

must not thinK that all these items have a necessary link, such that their order was fixed by the
ne~essary

development of the Known object itself,

in a word, such that they . constitpted an organic, living whole, permeated ,

by one universal thought. No, this is nothing more than a collection of particular data, nothing more than a completely atbitrary and external
, J

classification, contributing only to th,e possible completeness and accuracy of facts and particular laws, which appear to them. But such a lmowledge, such a pseudo-SCience, cannot satisfy man: he strives towards a complete understanding of reality which sur rounds him, t09lards the annihilation of exteriority which is foreign to him, and the only means for the attainment
,

of this goal Is complete understanding. The Knowledge of diverse facts or


,.,

even of diverse particular laws Is, not true Knowledge: true lmowledge searches for the universal unity, for the existence of the single unlversal , ' thought ln the div~rsity which pres~nts Itse1f to him v1Uld until this vivifying
0

" '

. ()
"

thQught Is found, untU diversity is permeated by it and has bec orne trans-

--~-'-'--~'

'

....

_~.

________ , ______

~..,...W'

___ ___,___ ... !d...,. d .1._' ,sa....,.",

457
1
1

parent to the cognitive spirit, up Wltil that time true knowledge has not been realized, and th spirit of man, perce1ved as empiriclsm, as experimental knowledge, does not stop' at diversity, external and Incomprehensible to hln, but strives to destroy the senseless shell, which prevents hirn from penetrating it: empiricism becomes theorI. There .has existed a long and still unresolved argument between
l'

pu;re empiricists and theorists: the theorists claim that empiriclsm, limitrrg itself only ta facts, is submerged in the letter, does not find
,

spirit in it and does not satisfy the principal criterion of knowledge, which requires thought, but not dry facts; the empil'icists, on the other hand, assert that theGries do not .accornplish anything and a,re nothing more than fantastic flashes, not based on anything and provlng nothing. Both are right. We noticed ear1.ier that facts, not permeated by the unifying
,

and universal thought, annot satisfy the cognitive spirit, and for this reason we cannot but agree with the reproaches, made to the arid collectors of facts; and it only remains for us to investigate the. essence ap,d formation of the ory, so as to be convinced that the dry empiricists, rebelling against theory; are also right. How are theories formed and what ls their point of departure'?
Experime~tal

observation, diversity of facts, and paTticular laws, as


~ot

observed by empiricism. But knowledge ls

satisfied with diversity:


do~

1"

1:

lmowledge requlres Wllty in diversity. What do the theorists

in

order to find it? They go running to hmotbeses, to pre-suppositis:

'

the theorist takes some thought or other, sorne general determination as a prinCiple and attemllts to explain and deduce all facts, ,all part;;:ular
/.Jo

laws, enterblg into the structure of his etudied science from it. But how can truth, the
~

n~cessity
,

of sucb a thought, be proved? It is nothing

more than a pre-suppositi: on the one hand, ft bases itself on that

~~_.

___ . . . . .

.,

.. ..,

..

4_,.f,"~

._

,!~

1 .
li.

"

-------~-----

c,

458
more or less vast experience of observation, from' which ft is eXtracted,

()

on the other hand, it is justified by the fact that the large number of facts can in effect be categorized under it, Another proof for it ls im-

possible. If the theorist wished to prove the truth and necessity of bis main principle, not resorting to obseryation and not testing his expriment, if he decided to rem ove himself from empirical reliabUity, then
/(

he would be deprived

~f

the last bais, his last point of support, becaitse


.1

it is possible to prove thought only in two ways: either a priori, in the

pure reall of thought, -and sdch a proof pre-supposes a posteriori, by the indication in the
e~perimental

phi1osophy~

-or

J
.'

world of faets, cor~dry

empiricists, . not only in that they are only slighUy acquainted with philosophy, but largely oeglect it, and for this reason )nly a posteriori proof, the verification of thoughts, of
th~ir

responding to thought. But the theorists are, just lilte, the -

:~
o'

principles by means of experimental observa-

tion, remains to them. But observation, serving as a basis, as a source for the universal principle of the theorist, is more or less limited, ooesided, and for this reason this principle cannot have a claim ta absolute universality and is real only for that part of the real wQr1d, from whlch it originated and received its meaning, such that if even aU known .., appearances confbrmed to some or another princlple, still me could never be certain, that later facts did not appear, which refuted it completely. Moreover, to understand a manifestation or sorne -particular law means to understand its neces,sary origin and development from a single
CI ,

1
t,

and universal princlple, but for .this, knowledge 'of the universal ae pure,
c

self-developing thought ls necessary; and this knowledge, once again, enters to the field "Of phUosophy and le not pOssible withoUt it. For

:'

'

.0 - '\ '

tbls rea on, theorlsts usuaJ.iy.' subordinate only the particular to the,

459
.,

abstract, ta the universal, such- that particulara remain\indifferent ta , one another, and to their universal.
/

Finally, no theory has as yet satisfied

or could satisfy the prin-

cipal requirement of the lmowing subject: not one theory has yet penetrated into that single and universal principle, on which could be based and out of which could develop all the infinity of the real as of the natural and of the spiritual world. Up until now there were spedalized theories of electricity, of light, of magnetism, and so forth, tiKewise theories, sornehow embracing entire sciences; the theory of physics, of therapy, of law, of art, and so forth. But there was not one, which could include the entire totality of the real worid. From where does

",thiS limitation arise? The reason for this insufficiency is contained in the fact that

an

theories without exception not ooly emerge from the

realm of empiricism, but in essence are its necessary continuation: any theorist is at the sarne time an empiricist. Empiricism, the experimental world, i8 the begiIming and the end of any theory; the theorist starts from the diversity of the real worId, discovers the thought, which in his mind must explain and embrace this world, and returns to that same diversity, in order to find' in it the justification and proof of his thoughts. Theory is the necessary result, and-if it is possible to express it in this way, -the flower of empiricism, such that there is no theorist, who is not an empiricist, just as there is no empiricist who is not a theorist; flld the

l j
!
)

S~ggle between empiricists and theorists

is nothing eise than an

internal struggIe, an internal contradiction of empiricism itself,-a struggle in which it realizes its own limitations, its own inadequacy, and

r:
j,
~

points beyond itself to a higher realm of Knowledge, to speculation. In

(,

this struggle with itseU, empiricism is olten unjust to itself, but abstraction and extremism is an inevitable result of any struggle, and for this

f:
~

li
!'

l .--

,460

reason even this unfairness is understood.. Thus, reproaching completely justiliably the dry collection of facts, that remaining with -lifeless aiid
;

indifferent diversity, .they do not .satisft the principal requirement of . the Knowing spirit, theorists olten lorget that such workers are necessary, that without them the accurate and oomplete accumulation of facts would

be impossible: such Bcholars are in essence toilers, day-Iabourers, "gathering materials for the great temple of true science; they do not understand and cannot understand either the totality of the plan, or the stately beauty of that edtlice, the constnIction of which they are worKing
50

hard, and they would merit sympathy, if fate, which doomed them to

!
,
,
)

such menial labout, did not aIso endow thlr wtth sorne strange love and attachment to the dead letter, an attachment which compels them to
~y

burrow in the dust

the sweat of their brow, to search for the external

expressions of spirit, withrut caring\,6r its internaI meaning. Wie anders tragen uns die Geistesfreuden Von Buch zu Buch, von Blatt zu Blatt! Da werden Winternftchte hold und schn Ein selig Leben wH.rmet alle Glieder, Und ach! entroll'st du gar ein wrdig Pergament, So steigt der ganze Himmel zu dir nieder. The dry collectors of facts, in their turn, absolutely correctIy reproach the theorists with unfoundedness and with inadequacy of their theories, but they forget, or better to say, do not understand, that in this tendency to permeate the indilferent multiplicity with the general, the
~

l
j ,

untlied and lile-creating thought exprsses all the merit, all the rationality

c
1
!

of the human spirit; they do not understand, that a Knowledge of facts without thought and without unity is not true Knowledge, but a dead heap

ft

"

461 of inanim~te matter, awaiting the ,:~vy~~ng c,ontact with~ght in order to become alive, fransparent, and rationi ,reality;
,
~

~-1

~ey

,1

do \ot understand

that the essence of the spirit consists precisely in the penetration and the discovery of oneself in the real world appearing to us, and until the
:

idea existing in reality ia found, then the realization of this hlgher voca-"
1/

tion of the human spirit Is impossible. In addition, the gentlemen collectors _of facts, who revoit so fiercely
ag~inst

theorists', prove their ingrati-

tude by this; t~y forget that notJling so much promoted the discovery of new facts, nothing so animated experimental Knowledge, as theory. Finally, aIthough the theorist is not in a position to prove the necessity of his
\

supposed principle, although he i9 also not able to

~e~lop

all the multitude

of facts and particular laws of the real world from hi~principal idea, but
in his conjectures, he is capable of much truth and profundity, of much

that will later be proven both by facts and before the higher judgement
. 1 .

of speculative thought-befo~ the judgement of philosophy: this depends on the personality of the theorist ,as weIl as on the level of development of that nation and Ume, to which he belongs, Goethe, Cuvier, Herder,
1

and Many"~ others, driven by their genius, df?stroyed the outer crust which coverd the object
analyz~d

by them, and did not stop at the superficlality

of the object, but penetrated into its very depth .. "The Ideas the philosophy of history" of Herder belM.g to the realm of theory, but, despite this, they contain mucb. depth, much that i5 true,

In a word,

part of the works which emerged and which up until the present are emerging in France under the title of phUosophical belong to the realm of theory-for example, Mo'htesquieu's "Esprit des lois," Ballancheis "Palingenis," and many others. Most of ,these are mO,st remarKable manifestations of the past and present century; they are permeated by contemporary' ideas, contemporary 11fe; one can find in them many profound and true ideas, interlaced with loud and resonant phrases, a necessary tribute to the I:...rench ch~racter, -but they are nothing more than theories and are absolutely incor:rectly called phi1osophic~. There Is no scientic form in the m, not a trace of true philosophical formation; in them ideas

*A large

462

the arid colleetors of faets prepare the mater1 als for the theorists; the theorlsts elaborate and work them in all directions, elevate them to
rel~tive-un1versal

..
)

thoughts, and hand over the great deed of human

knOW-

1edge ta phil os ophy , whieh crowns it, producing out of aU these fractions a united, organic and absolutely transparent whole. .

And thus, it is now clear, that empirieism (implying by that word both the lifeless collection of faets, and theory), cannot satisf)' the knowing spirit. One an not calI it a real Knowledge of the truth, because it ls not abi e to embrace it; it is not in a position to elev.ate 11se11 to the true uniyersal unified principJ.e and it is not able to indicate the necessity
"t

of\development and realization of this principle in

real world. Consequently, it cannot even prove the necessity of those


;

~e

diversity of the

general laws, of those relative universalities which are accessible to it; and if- apart from ft there were no other means of cognition, then man would have had to
definit~ly
,~ .'

renounce Kn@vledge of the truth.


. f

This final and higher means is

~eculative

thought-philosophy.

We shaH later discuss the 'possibility of philosophical knowledge, but Umit ourselves now only to a definition of its concept. From all the aforesaid, ft follows that one can cali phtlosophical lmowledge only that which, firsUy, embraces the entire, undivided totality of absolute truth, and which, secondly, ls able to prove the necessity of Us content. We saw that the principal insufficiency of empiricism c1

are confused with empirical content not penetrable by them. In addition, there frequenUy reigns Pl them an absolute arbi~rariness and this ls the necessary r~sult of the present condition of France, which feels the strong need for religioo, but together wlth that is deprived of any religious faith. Mter Descartes and Malebranche, the French had no philosophy in the proper sense of that word; later we ,shall attempt to prove this. -Author's remarkS.

\
1"

i
1

463
\
J

sists in the fractionalism of its cognition, -as" a result of thls lacuna,

(
",;',
1

it ls incapable of elevating itself .to the universal and single truth; it

...

cannat embrace the entire infinite diversity of the real world. Moreover, elevating itself to the multitude of the relative-universal laws belonging
1 1
J

to different realms of reality, it is incapable of understanding their necessity. their rational unity, and must he limited to their external classification, bec;ause ft cannat derive them in necessary development

from the isolation of the single, absolute principle. Such a conclusion cannot be based on facts, because facts give only that meaning to the particular law, which it has in rel,atton ta them, such that ootside this relation to facts the law loses any meaning for them; starting from experimental observation it does not yet have any signiflcance for us of independent, determinate and inteligible thought. True, any law, ta whichever realm of the re31 world it belongs,' is a determinate, thought,

a~~*
*The word category 'was first used by Aristotle for the designation ofsimple st>stances, general determinations of determinate thoughts, predtcated of being in general. After AristoUe, Kant, maldng the laws and conditions of our cognition the obect of his <:tllica1 investigation, was the .tirst ta re-use this expression; and since accarding ta his critical philosophy, thinldng, 'in contradistinction to being, is nothing else than' formal . ' activity, not having in itseU any content and which brings oo1y diversity of sensual content, given to it from without, towards unity, -then as a result of this, the categories, as the pure determinatls of thought or as pure determinations, are at the same Ume empty (that is, not having in themselves any content) forms of this actfvity, and have only subjective significance devoid of objective importe Such a limitation of the meaning of the categories, was the necessary result of the basls of his crltical investigation. And precisely, Wishing t~ avoid any unproven pre-supposition' as inconsistent with the essence and the goal of phUosophlcal Knowledge and ~B leading to dogmatism, he nevertheless presupposed the absolute oJ:position of thmltlng and being, form and content, subjective Knowledge and objective truth. "Before accedinc to ~al cognition, -he states in his Critique of Pure Reasan, -we must ihvestTgate our cognitive faculty, in arder to discover whether ft can know the truth. Assigning himseU this question, he was compelled to separate subjective 1Ol0wiedge from objective

1
1
1

,"
1

(
,

...
'>

464

We saw earlier, that eved in sensuaI perception and observation-

[Wahrnehmung] of ,?~jectsJ the uncqnscious activity of thought artd the ... categories of gual tty , quantity, relation, and oiliers are already present, and art! being used; these categories constitute the essence of objects
l ,

'

which are observed and perceived. 'Liltewis, any law ls a relativeuniversal th ou ght, as _determinaie ,relationship of known categories; for . example, in the law of the faU of bodies, "distance increases as the
,

square of Ume, 1. the combined thoughts or categories of space, acceleratlon, .relation, square and body" just as development

':D

the law of progressive ~istorical

"the subsequent level of development is the resu1t of all the

preceding," there are contained the categories of development, and of truth, ~d be~an to examine the lirst not as it exi.s~8 iri 'uo1ty with the truth, but as 1t lB outside of it. As a result, he necessarily had to presuppose that truth is given to us trom outside, through the means of our cognitive faculty, such that the ltnown truth is broken up intQ three parts external to one another = 1) the Knowing subject;~ the subjective forms of its cognition; and 3) the objective, ltnoWn trulli. The necessary resu1t of this dissolution was the fact that we KnOW the truth not as it is in tt'self [an sich) but as it appears to 1.1S through the means of our Ognitive faculty; thus we know oruy the appearane [Erscheinung] and not the th1ngin-itself [Ding-an-sich]. ' Thua, differenUating three principal moments in our' cognitive faculty: 1) sensual perception; 2) ~dgement~ and 3) reasoo, determining sensual perception as the P9ssibUity of receiving a multitude of diverse, extemal and internai impressions, and proving that space and~ t1me are in essence nothing eIse than pyre subjective forma and a priori of our sen8ual cmtent, Kant cmclu~ed that appearance ~s. not possible without the m, because any appearance ls conditioned by our cognition; space and time are in essence the necessary forms of our perceptive cognition. But from this, one must not conclude that t~e thing-in~it8elf, the thing, such as it ls outside of our cognition, Is conditioned by tqeni;, as the necessal\y condition of our perception; they Mmited themselves to our subjectiv.ity and have nothing in common with objective truth, With the thing-in-itself. And so, sensuous perception gives us divers~ty in space and in Ume, but in t!t1s diversity there Is no .unlty, and the juc!K.ement 18 the formaI activity of the pure. subjective l, bringing diversity to unity; the. determinate forms of this activity are in essence the categorle~ - the pure, determinate concepts or thoughts .. It i8 now clear that the categories, determined thus, have orny subjective significance, and cannot be used' for the Knowledge of

degree, etc. In a ward, the determlnatlons

tthv~ght
1

ln essence are the

objective truth" Kant's table conststs of 12 main categories:


1 QUALITY

a) unity b) plurality j c) totality of al! objects y/ithout excepticn [Allhelt]


\

-.

TI QUANTITY

a) Reality b) Negaticn c) Limitation [Limitation)


~

ID

RELATION

a) ,Substance and Accfdent b) Cause and Effect, c) Reclprocal action


IV
MODALITY'

a) PossibUity ... ImpossibUity b) Being [Daseyn] - Non-Being [Nichtseyn) c) Necessity - Contingency . Neither Aritotle norltant gave a derivatiOll for their categories and did not prove, that apart fropt what ls introduced by them, there are not and cooI'd not be others; however, they' recognized the insufficiency and the incompleteness of their tables and attempted to complete thetn with other, secondary min or categories. Fichte attempted to derlve them from pure, independent thooght, but was not successful because of the one-sided subjectivity of his system. Hegel was the lirst to accomp~ish thls great deed in his Logic, and returned to the categories their objec- . tive significance, such that they received once again a meaning of objective determinatlons, of determinations of objective truty. There ls no room here to enlarge upon this subject, to which we shall devote a special article. Let us now llmit ourselves to . .the words tntroduced by Bairhofer, one of the most remarkable followers of Hegel. An'alyztng sorne of the categories, he stated: "even if they are nothtnl eise than . abstractions [Abstractionen), stUI one must not forget that there is,,-contained in them the moveUlent and the lUe of the world; one must not look upon these universa1itl~" [~lgemelnheitel1) with contempt, because the world is directed by ~ -universa1ity qf thought; belng-, thinktng, sqpstantionality, subjectivlty, freedom, ncessity, etc., in essence are nothing else than simple categories, abstracl univE!rsa1itie~; but these universalities all move and create." - Author's remarKS.
C

t ,( t
)

1
;

\ .

"

466
, l'

fruit8 of empirical investigation and these constitute the essential content of any emplrical lalowledge; not pnly Is empirical science limited to
'\\
,
'
'

the knowledge of facts, but any science strives towards knowledge of laws, such- that facts do, not cons~ltute and cannot constltute its content, but 8erve as the initial point of departure for the formation of the thoughts , and categories existing in them. But these categories do not have independent
slgnifi~ance

in empiriclsm, they are not known

Jt, ft as. pure,

independent thoughts, having independent, concrete content; they occur through abstraction lrom the determtnate circle of experimental observation, and consequently, they are nothtng more than abstractions, acquirtng concrete content from ,their empirical source, f~-om facts, and are meaninglul only in relation to these facts. For this rea,son they cannot be aggregated in one rational unity, independenf and developtng out of ttse If, and they do not constitute particular and necessary parts ol. the one higher thought, developtng out of itself, but exis,t the one beside the other, tndependently, not tnteriorly, but completely exteriorly, in the collective unity, and are linked 'only by their common source-the actuai world. We know, that they all exist tri one real world, but we do not 8ee and understand thir internal I:JlK. Consequently, empirical knowledge is limited only to external classification, such that the law of electricity " exist8 alongside the law of 11ght, . alongside the law' of hlstorical development, alongside the law of logical cognition and 80 forth. / F'Or this reason . lt [empirical cognition) can ne~er be certain of the fact 6tat it embraces
\

"

all the laws of the real world without exception. Such certainty Is only possible when all laws are understood in terms of pure thoughts, neces,.\

sarUy. developing from the one single and wllversal thought, such that

.,
!

thelr number and relation is . determined by the deyelopment.

nL,~ssity

of its sel!J

(
."

'"

..

467
But these laws, on the one hand, are essentially objective thoughta,

(:

objective because they are not the arbitrary productiOn of the knowing subject, but rather th ou ght s, whlch really exist in the real
worl~;

they

are not invented by man, but are found by .him in, real existing facts; on the other hand, they are subjective thoughts, because if they were not,
/

man, the
~

~nowing

subjective spirit, could not understand and appropriate


-

them. To understand an object means to find oneself, the determination: of one's own .spirit[}n it, and if a law, discovered by me in reaUty, was only an objective, but not a subjective th ou ght, then it would remain inaccessible to my understanding.

.'

For this reason, the isolatd fact,

remaining isolated, cannot be the object of my knowledge, cannot be .penetrated by me; as isolated it always remains an object foreign and external, to me, and if 1 want to destroy this exteriority, if 1 want to find myself in it, and
~

und~rstand

it, then 1 must find the universal, the

thought in' it, which would be, on the one hand, an objective thought, a
-

thought, which really exists in it, and on the other hand, ,a subjective thoght, determined by my own spirit. Consequently, empi~icism never f'bPs at isolated facts, but searches for universal thoughts, and laws in the m, -and not for isolated facts, but
,

1~~ "-

whicb manifest themselves in The

them, constitute the essentlal content of any empir.icJ. science.

lsolated fact ls elusive and transient, and only laws, as constant and unchanging, an be maintained by empiricism. And in this there is no ,. loss: all tranaient things must pass away as finite, as not having in
1

themselves any reason for their existence. Contingency does not have . any right to an interest for man, and only true real1ty, only the actual realization of thoughts can interest him; what ls coly transient cannot

elevate itself over the transient and is destroyed together with ft; but
t

m an, on t11e one han d, ia finite, and on .the other hand, he is infinite,

;;

,_____-+-____,.___
;
\

>oe .................. ,,_.,,__

~""''''''''''J7_~

468

and all his wisdom and all -the vocation of bis lUe consists in the fact that,
~s

a result of his development he tears himself away from any con-

tingency and

ext~r10rity1

and elevatfug himself

~ove

the

finitud~'of ~~s

world, as' above h1s own finitude, he becomes attached to that; which "neither moth nor rust can consume." And for this reason the insufficlency of empirlcism consists not in the fact that, abstracting itself from
\~Olated

and

tran~i<ent

facts, it leaves them as insignificant and unessential,

add elevates itself above them to unlversal and constant laws, -on the contrary, in this is contalned its merit, -bu.t, in the fact that it 1s unable to understand the unity of laws among themselves, in the fact that it does not ernbrace all thelr totality and finally in the fact that, acquiring them through abstraction from facts, it does not understand in what way they emerge from their abstration and are realized in the real world. This insufficiency, then, arises. out of the fact that it perceives them not as
" t

pure thoughts, but from experimental observation. And


thu~,

if knowledge is possible, laws are known not through

experience, but a priori, as a system of pure thoughts, necessarily dveloplng independently orPexperience, then such a knowledge completely satisfies all the requirements of the knowing spirit. Firstly, it [knowledge] will have a character of necessity, which is lacKing in empiricism, such that the developinent of thought as necessary will together wlth that 'constitute its proof. Secondly, ft will be really universal knowledge, because
ft will not rise like empiricism from the isolated and the' particular ta
~

i, j

!
1 ,
,

aD! ab'stract and unintelligible universal, but rather will understand the particular and the isolated out of the particular, immanent, inherent
~
,..}:::;

development of the universal, such that not one particularity escapes from the necessity of this development. FJnally, if the real world in
\'

effect is nOthing other than implemented, realized, actualized thought,

--.- --

---

--_._--------~-_._--

-------

-t------,

.
"

469

and we saw that bellef ln the e~tstence of thoug~t -in real1ty constitutes
.
~

th ,essence both of ordlnary consclousness ,and of emptrlcism, -then tt


,

'JO

f}

....
'

:~

hmowledge] will be able to exp1~1n .the mystezw of thls real1zatlon, the


1

secret illaccesible to empirlcism . This 'knowledge ls phUqsot4Y .


)
.

Thus, from our analysis of emplrlcal ,knowledge was formed the o '
....

~'i

not{on

oi

the true vocation of philosophy and without strict/observance of _


,

these conditions, knowledge cannoJ be truly phUosophlcal. It noW remaille to decide wh ether their .fuIfUment Is possible, and if they are possible, .

then 41 wbat manner and prectsely by what means. In th~ second hatf
of our article,

Wh~ch

will be pubiiShed hl

th~ 'fo110Will~

booldet, we shaIl

attempt to demons,trate how this -question le resolved by the independent and neceesary development of consciousness itself.

M.B.

..

Appendix m, translated from Bakunln, Sobranle sochinenl1 i pisem. tom 2, pp. 317.. 340.

"

C'

\f

...

APPENDIX IV

()

l'

"0 filosofii," stat'ya vtoraya "On PhUosophy," Part TI

.-

MiKhall BaltUnm ~ tIn the first haU of our article, we ,posed ours'Mves the question on the essence and on the possldllty of phllosophfeal Jmowledge. For its resolution" we first dlssected the meaning of the word ",ihllosophy"
, 1
~

and saw that philosophy ls a 'science, requiring absolut Knowledge. Such lmowledge would embraee all the totality of the infinite, realizing itself. in the finite, all the totality of the physical as wen as the spirUual world, which would understand its organi and, nece,sar y unit Y, and would, , together with that, prove its absolute content. Then, in ,order to grasp the difference

c-

~tween P~~lOSOPhiCal knOWledge

and

~m~iriCiSIl}.,

we sub-

...

. jected the latter to ,a detaiied analysis, examined its nature, and w~re conv.inced that elPpiricism, ,since it does not embrace within itself, u Jhe absolute content, and sinee it does not understand it, is incapable of satisfying th requirements Qf the thinking spIrit, and cannot be called philosophie al. Firially, recognizing that any knowledge,
b~ginning

from

ordinary cons,ciousness and up to empiricism, does not stop at singularities, abstracts .itself from them, as insignificant and ,false, and elevates itself to the universal and necessary laws, which appear in them, 'as to the only true and essential, -we ended by concluding that if there were no k,nowledge other tl}an the empirical, and if this knowledge were

, not possible a priori, which by its pure, immanent development would embrace a.ll the laws of the physical and of 'the spiritual world, then
,
'

abSolutr'philosophiCal knowledge would be impossible, and we wuld have


/

470

--...........

-~--- -~--_ .... --------...:::.--._-

abandoned the resolution of this last question, . th~ question on the POSSi-'
<

(.'

bility of philosophy, to the independent and necessary development of


~onsciousne9s

itseU. And (thus, .let us now turn to the latter.

Consciousaess is the relation of spirit to another, to -a known


1 ---

ebject~ But relation to another presupposes difererice from anothe"r; the 1 , , kno~ing 1 differentiates itseU .from the .world, external and objective to
,

l,

hfm; but the differentiation of itself from another presupposes the


'V

~f'.

...

"tinguishing of oneself from on eself, and consciousness presupposes selfconsciousness. The pure 1, knowing itself, is onscious of
th~

objective

world; it lmOWS itself and kIlows the 'other as well, -and this oilier is for him;
th~ ~ If

'rny lmowledge of an obj ect


;'

di~

,I).ot correspond to an q,bject (the

it, if a subject (the

kno~ng

1)

not t

corresp~nd 'to
1,

lmown -cbject), then my Knowiedge would be false; and for tliis reason;
it is not the object which must conform

t~' my

,b~t, ~n th~ontrarYI

the latter, as the faIse, which must conform to.the first, as to the true.
T~ first levei of consciousness ls sensual certin!y [sinnliche

GewissheitJ, the immediate consciousness of the sensual. , ,


object~:

s~gularity

of .

this table, this tree, et\ To

sensual'cer~inty,

the truth ls

contalned in the diversity of sensual objects, eXisting in exteriority. l, this, singular subject, see
~

4lble, and it ls for me an undoubtable


.

truth. That this unlimit~) belief in the truth of the sensual singularlty

, ; ,

of being really constitutes ah integral belonging of consciodsness, can . \ . be ' proven by the fact,' that a large number of people are mo~e quiCK to 1 , doubt in the truth of the reality of thOl,lght, than to ~ubject the truth to .

C>

a doobt of the real, sensual world; doubt in the reality" of sensual objects would seem absurd and foolish ta thos.e, who at the sarne time are not at
,

,.'
1

all surprised by the conclJlsion and explanation of thought frorn sensual

','

............

'_..

-_.-.-"-

----_

... -

--,---

--_Tr-<'

... ~~-

....

--.~-"""'"

If

</. . . .

472 being. The materialism of the 18th Century confirms the possibility of this strange manestati. But in order to believe the truth of something or an other , one

must have a universal measure of the truth, and no one will probably contradict us, li we say that truth must be 1. universal {what is true only for ,me, and not for

au, does not have the right to be called truth};


Let us now

2) constant and intransient. Everything, which does not correspd to these three conditions of the truth, is faIs and illusive.

turn to" sensual certainty. It has, as an object, the infinite diversity of sensual singularities; but we saw that immediate perception, as a limitatiOl1 by time and space, is not able to grasp aU the infinite diversity of the sensual world; furthermore, it cannot articulate its singular object
f

and cannot retain it; it cannot articulate it because whatever expression


it used for the determination of the singular,

isolated object presented

to it, would rticulate only the universal, belonging not only to it, but to a multitude of other, similar objects,
~d

for this reas does not

articulate its individuaI particularity. The word, as the immediate expression of the single universal, but not of the singular spirit, articulates ooly the essential and carries the immediate singularity into the reaIm of the universal; it is a universal property, a universal medium, in which aIl singularities, different the one from the other, understand each other as individu al s, and would cease to be so, li in the place of universal determinatis, accessible to aU singularities of individuals and < beloilging equally to all singular objects, it began tO, articulate singular perceptis of singular
individu~.,

or singular determinations, exclusively

belonging to singular objects. There would then be as Many languages as there are singular individualities or perceptions: a tower of Babel, in which it would be impossible to understand one another and in which

473
the great Kingdom of the rational, universal spirit, which constitutes the essence of man, and which distinguishes him from the dumb animal would be destroyed. The word is rational precisely because it articulates

only -the universal; all, then, that is inarticulable, Is irrational and insignicant, and for this reason is nothing more than illusion. The

attempt to articulate the singular object which 1 perceive will always be futile. For example, how shall 1 describe a tree, standing here and now
Oak;

before me? It is an have the very same

but apart from it a number of other trees i5 tall; it has branches, etc.; but aIl

nam~ ...""U

these determinations are essentially universal expressions, equally applicable to other objects. Such that only one means ls left to sensual perception: the indication of its object: this table, this tree. this means is insufficient to retain the, objecte

--

---

But even

That which was here, is

already no longer heret but there, and finally not even there anymore, but has completely disappeared and been
,
r~ by

...

another. Not only

that, but one Knowing 1 j;ays: here is a tree, and at the sarne time, another 1 maintains that here is a house; and both are equally right,

'" because both indicate, basing themselves on their immediate perception.


Finally, both one 1 and another,

in different moments of time, maintain


{*

dferent, opposite truths: here is al\ree, it is

DOW

night, and also:

here is a house, it is now morning; such that one truth negates and annihilates the other, and substituting supposed singular objects, sensual certainty must limit itself to the indication of the universal here, which is at one Ume a house, and at another time, a tree, and.of the Uhiversal now, which can be at once night and day, etc. But one means is left to

sensual certainty for the retaining of its singular objecte The Knowing l,

abstracting itself from the perception of others and frorn its own past

474

or future

perceptiCll~serts,

for examPle: that it 18 now nlght, and

that here is a house, and does not wish to know what other l's main tain, not caring about the fact that it itself spoKe before or will say later, and does not even compare its present .!!.Q!' with its present here. In order to be convinced of this truth, we must enter into the perception
rJ
~

of this, singular.1 limited by this singular now and by this singular here. Let it point them out to us. It indicates the single, isolated now to us: this is now; but it already disappeared in the time of indication itseU, and it already does not exist, but is passed, replaced by other "now's," which liKewise will disappear and give place to others. But what has passed is already not, whereas what is being indicated to us is the existing now, and we return to the first now, but no longer as to a singularity, but as to a universal, ha ving in itseU an infinite diversity of singular isolated now's. Thus, indication is a aialectical experience

[Erfahrung) of sensual certainty itself, discovering from it, that what , is indicated by it now is not that singul;tr and immediate,
/

which it tbought

[meinte l, but the universal, simple now reflecting in itself, containing in itself a multitude of other now's, or Time in general.
G

The same movement repeats itself l,l the indication of the singular here. This here has its top, its bottom, its right and left sides, which in their turn, have their top, bottom, etc.,

su~(that

ijle indicated here

reveals itself not as singular and immediate, but as space in general, as the simple and universal medium, containing in itself a multitude of ,ather here's. Here we cannot but repeat Hegel's own words the result of our investigation:
*In Ph!!nomenologie des Geistes, 81-84 Seite.

which best explain

1
475
" It is clear from all this that the dialectical process

involved in sense-certainty is nothing else than the'Wmere history of its movement-of its experience; and sense certainty itself is nothing else than simply this history. The ordinary consciousness, too, for that reasbn, is of itself ~ways coming to this result, which is the real truth in this case, and is always having experience of it: but it is always forgetting it again and beginning the process all over. It is 'therefore astonishing when, in defiance of this experience, it is announced as 'universal experience , no, even as a philosophical doctrine, the outcame, in fact, of scepticism-that the reality or being of external things in the sense of 'Thises,' particular sense objects, has absolute validity and truth for consciousness. One who maKes such an assertion really does not lmoW what he is saying, does not KnOW that he is stating the opposite of what he wants to say. The truth for consciousness of a 'This' of sense is said to be universal experience; but the very opposite is universal experience. Every consciousness of itself cancels again, as soon as made, such a truth as, e. g., the Here is ~ tree, or the Now is noon, and express~ th~ very opp~te: the Her~ is not a tree but a' h6use. And similarly it straightway cancels again the assertion which 'here annuls the first, and which is also just such an assertion of a sensuous This. And~ in all sense certainty whaf we find by experience is in truth merely, as we have seen, that 'This' is a universal, the very opposite of what that assertion maintained to be uni - versaI experience. We may be permitted here, in this appeal to universal experience, to anticipate with, a reference to the practical sphere. In this connection we may answer those who thus insist on the truth and certainty of the reality of objects of sense, by saying that they had better be sent back to the most elementary school of wisdom, the ancient Eleusinian mysteries of Cefes and Bacchus; they have not yet learnt the inner secret of the eating of bread and-the drink!!tg of win. For one who is initiated into these mysteries not only cornes to doubt the being of things of sense, but gets into a state of despair about their reality altogether; and in dealing with them he partIy himself brings about the no~ingness of those things, partIy he sees them bring about their own nothirrgness. Even animals are not excluded from this wisdom, but show they are deeply initiated into it. For they do not stand stock still before things of sense as if these were

476
things per se, with be1n~ in themselves: they despair of this reality altogether, and in complete assurance of the nothingness of things they fall-to without more ado and eat them up. And all nature proclaims, as animals do, the se open secrets, these mysteries revealed to all, wbich teach what the truth of thin~s of sense is. Those who put for ward such assertions [on the reality of sensual singularity] really. themselves say, il we bear 1n mind what we remarld before, the direct opposite of what they mean: a fact which ls perhaps best ble to bring them to reflect on the na,ture of the certainty of sense-experience. They speaK of the 'existence' of external objects, which can he more precisely characterized as actual, absolutely particular, wholly personal, individual things, each of them not lilte anything or anyone else; this is the existence which they say has absolute certainty and truth. They 'Mean' this bit of paper 1 am writing lIOn, or rather have written on: but they do not say what they 'mean.' If they really wanted to say this bit of paper whlch they 'mean,' and they wanted to say so, that is impossible, because the This of sense, which is 'meant,' cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i. e., to what is inherently universal. In the very attempt to say it, it would, therefore, crumble in their hands; those who have begun to describe it wou1d not be able to finish doing so: they would have to hand it over to others, who would themselves in the last resort have to confess to speaking about a thing that has no being. They 'mean,' then, doubtless this bit of paper here, which is quite different from that bit over there; but they speak of actual things, external or sensible objects, absolutely individual, real, and so on; that is, they say about them what is simply Ul!iversal. Consequently what is called unspeaKable is nothing else than what is untrue, irrational, something barely apd simply 'meant.' If nothing is said of a thing except that it is an actual thing, an external object, this only maltes it the MOSt universal of all possible things, and thereby we express . its l.ilteness, its iden tity , with everything, rather than its difference from everything eise. When 1 S3Y 'an individual thing,' 1 at once state}t .to be really quite a universal, for everything is an j,JtdividUal thing: and in the same say 'this thing' is everyt:hing and anything we 0- lilte. More precisely, as this bit of paper, each and~ every paper ls a 'this bi,t of paper,' and 1 have thus

.~. .

477

said all the whUe what ls unlversal. If 1 want, however, to help out speech--wh.ich has the divine nature of dlrectly turning the Mere 'meaning' right round ( about, JIlaKing ft into something else, and so not letting it ever come the length of words at a1l-by pointing out thls bit o~ paper, then 1 get th experlence of what is, in point of fact, the real truth of sense-certainty. 1 point it out as a Here, which 18 a Here of other Heres, or ls in itself slmply Many Heres together, 1. e., ls a unlversal. 1 taxe it up then, as in truth it ls; and instead of Knowing something Immediate, l'taxe' something 'truly,' 1 perceive [wahrnehme, per-cipio]. This conclusion may appear sophistic at first; Immediate sensual existence is the necessary conditicn, the necessary moment of any true reality, but nothing more than a moment, receiving its meaning from another, higher,
~mportance,

not having independent significance outside

from this relation with the other. The mistake" or, better to say, the limitation of sensual certainty consists ,in the fact that, not developing itself to the universal and ta the really essential, it attributes importance and truth to singular sensual objects, althoogh according to the aforesid
it continually recognizes their insignilicance.

The species [genusJ of

animal s, for example, would be nothing more than an abstract concept,


if ft were not realized in immediate being, in the multitude of singlari-

ties of these animals; but no one will maintain that its reaJity depended
,
'

,0

on the existence of precisely these animals, perceived by hs; on the contrary, they die as illusions, not having in themselves truth, and return to the bosom of their substance, -to the idea, which, since it has in itself the power of self-realization in the immediacy. of sensual being lDaseyn), is always real and will never die. Nourlshment ls a

..

necessary' cdition of organic lUe and its use would be impossible il food did not exist in the form of singular sensual objects, whlch are

478

independent from eaeh of these objects in particular. The existence of


l

singular sensual being in general Is necessary for its possibUity, but not precisely as this sensual objecte On the contrary the singular these eontlnually disappear in th\' process of digesti, but th~ existence of singular sensual objects in general always remains as a necessary condition of organic life. Finally the right to property occupies an important

place in social lUe tnd likewise necessarily conditions the existence of singular, sensual being: countries, houses, things, etc.,' but just as organic life, does not at all depend on the existence of precisely these
4

singular objects, on the existence of namely this house, of these things,

which are continually destroyed or which approach


,

~estruction,

leaving

the right of property 'untouched. Here it May be -objected that man is not and cannot be indferent to sensual objects which surround him to such a degree, and that a particular attachment to this hou se, to ,this

place and to these things is the mo'st normal and the mQst human manifestation, sinee man, not having such attachment, usually is reproached
<'

with coldness, with a lack of love. But this ,objection does not ) us ln the least: such an
,

attachment

emba~rass

to sensual objects does not immedi-

ately bear upon them., but upon a higher spuitual world, which consecrates them by its presence. This house, this place are essential and important to me not in themselves, but because they are dedicated to the memory of my parents, my relatives, friends, reminiscent of my childhood or my yruth, such that in the very attaehment to them is al ways contained their negation, the realization of their insignlficance; a man, not stopping at
them~

but awakened by their perception, leaves them in


whic~

(~

order to be carried away to a higher, spiritual world,

exists ln

contact with them, sueh that they do not have significanee in themselves,

)'

,
but receiv,e it from the love and memories of man.
h~use,

479
Fin ally , it can be

remarked to us, . that man cannot be indifferent to the destructi of his to the theft of his things; but firstly, as we already stated

earlier, property is the necessary cdition of social life and that it ,js impossible without the existence of singular, sensual objects; secondly,
w~

-permit ourselves to repeat the words of the G:>spel: Do not lay up for yourielves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up fot yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do Dot break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Christian revelation tears man away from the illusion of sensul
'.

existence and' car ries him to the eternal ldngdom of the Spirit, where his true fatherland and his true holiness is. There ls religion, belonging to the 10west level of development of the human spirit, -this is fetishism, consisting in the adoration of
~

singular, sensual objects: rags, a piece of wood, etc. One must not
~,

confuse it with other religions, whtch seemingly likewise worship sensual objects-statues, sculptures made from wood, from granite or from marble, _as, for example, in India, in anient Egypt and in ancient Greece. These religions are incomparably superior to fetishism, because here the sensual object does not constitute in itself the object of adoration, -not this piece of wood or stone, but the representation, sculpted in it, such that the singular, sensual object serves only as a means of representatiori of the spiritual content. In all these religions, beginning with the Indian, whe:e r i t stUI fights with
"l)o

-Q

th~

vulgar and formless

'matter of sensual eXlstnce, the spiritual content gradually l1berates itself from sensuality, attempts its subjugation and finally attains its complete Uberati in the form of Jupiter Olympus, sculpted by Phidias,

,\
,>
\

480

and constituting the transition to the free and Infinite realm of the beautUul, where sensuality already does not have the U1sion of independent existence, but is totally subordinated to the spiritual content.
In

fetishism, on the contrary, one simply adores the singular sensual object, this stone, this rag, without any relation to the higher spiritual content. Man, finding himself on such a level of development, hardly has any self-consciousness and has no other needs, apart from the sensual and

instinctive needs of the animal. But the human spirit cannot stop for long at this low, limited level of his(development. In himself [an sich),
~

in potentialtty, man is infinite truth, and for this reason, then, lies the contradiction of his potentiality with his limited
ac~ality.

This contra-

diction does not allow him to exist for long in limitation, but continually drives him forward towards the realization of the internal, potential truth, and elevates him continually above his external, temporary l1mitation. They say that the J(almYKS each have their own little god or idol, which they worship and, aS' a sign of particular respect, they smear his mouth with soqr
,
cream~

..

but if this little god does not answer their

prayer!?, then they beat him, and finally completely breaK him to pieces and replace him wlth another. In this contradiction already appears the irony of the adoration of singular sensual being, and the consclousness of its worthlessness shines through.
In sensual certainty, the natural consclousness wished to name

and indlcate this singular object as the truth; we saw that neither one nor the other was successful, because the supposed truth of the singular
,

objects turned out to be faise. In sensual certainty Spirit KnOWS not as

a universal; the object of the universal can only be the universal; 1t wishes to embrace the singuIar, and consequently, it itself relates to
"

it as a singular.

Immediate sensual singularity cannot be the object of

the universal consciousness of spirit, but ls accessible only to sensual certainty; sensual certaiI}ty then does not exist as univers'al, as
sensu~l

certainty in general, but as the plurallty of immediately singular, sensual certainttes, as the plurality of Immediate, sb;lgular Individuallties, the immediately perceived singularities or non-articulated objects. But universality and intransience constitute two principal and necessary conditions of the truth; what ls true only for me, in its essence cannot be an object of consciousness for others, and does not have the right to the name of truth; and we saw that the singular object of
s~nsual

cer-

tainty, cann'ot be articulated, and cannot cross over from the consciousness of one into the consclousness of another. Furthermore, the singular

object perceived by me and for me alone, does not remain constantly true, -it disappears and Is replaced by others, and because of that, from this aspect, cannot be called true. And the natural consciousness elevates itself above it to the real truth, that is, to
th~

unlversal and

intransient objecte It does not stop on this sblgu1ar object, but itself above it to its universal, t0.j.ts genus, determining and

~levates

differen~i

ating itself from other similar universal objects by means of many essential qUalities; it already does not
~e

this singular birch-tree as the truth,

but, elevating itself above it to Us species, distinguishes the general species of birches -from the species of oaKs, dogs, etc., 1 and distinguishes U by f means of essential attributes, of which the indissoluble constitutes its essence. lWe use the word "species" [rod] here in the sense of the universal, and in relation to the singular, despite the fact that the species of birches, for example, is a type with relation to the general species of trees. [BaKunin's 'note. ]
~ity

482

Thus, it cros,ses over from the singular and inarticulated world of sensual certainty to the universal world of experimental observation. Let us now' examine this new sphere and the relationship of the natural consciousness to it. Firstly, it must be remarked that with the modification of the obj'ect, the natura! consciousness has also changed; in sensual certainty the object was the singular this, and for this reason the Knowing subject was also this singular 1; in experimental observation the object Is no \ longer singular, but universal, and consequenUy, its Knowing subject ls liKewise unlversal. The truth of experlmental observation no longer

depends on the perception of this singular individual," but, on the con'trary, conditions its elevation over any indlviduality; it mu'st be true
~

fo~

all

individuals without exception. The Knowledge of this birch-tree, standing now before me, ls conditioned by my indivldual perception and exists only for me as indlvidual, and consequently is not true. The Knowledge
\

of birches in general, of the species or of the type of birch, as condit100ed by Knowledge of constant, essential quaIities existing equally for that spe etes, independent of individual perception, constitutes the property
0

of the universal human consciousness, of the universaI subj ect. course, the observing subject Is aIso an individu al

Of

which was aIso the

Knowing subject in sensual certainty, with only that difference, that in sensual certainty it relates to the object as to an Immediate singular, and takes as the truth its Immediate, inarticulate perception: this birch, that house, and others. Now it has not ceased to be sensual certainty and as sensual certainty continues to perceive singular, inarticulable objects: if it did not have Immediate, singular perception, then it would not have objects for observation; if 1t did not perceive, for
e~mple,

48.3

these singular birches, then it could not elevate itself above them to the consciousness of birches in general. But the observing l differ-

entiates itself from the immediately perceiving l, by the fact that it does not stop on the singularities whlch 1t perceives, and does not taite them , as
~e

truth, but elevates itself above them to the Universal, to the

species (for example, to birches in general), already not subjected to its Immediate perception, such that, elevating itself ovet the immediacy of singular objects, ft elevates itself also over the immediacy of Us own perception and already as universal consciousness. Secondly, . the univers al observing consciousness' relates to the universal object, observed by it as an unessential -to an essential, just . as in sensual certainty: the universal observed object is to the universal

KnOWS

not as this singular individual, but

.! the

tru~,

in which it must not alter anything and wliich it must taite

as it is, and as it was prior to its observation. Now let


UiJ

turn to the object itself. We saw that it is no longer

a singular this, as the object of the sensual certainty, but a universal: not this birch-tree, but a blrch in generaI. something
perceptible~

A birch in generaI is not

-',

sensual.
:

As universal, ft Is inaccessible ta sensual


C "

perception apd Is nothlpg more than an intranslent abstraction trom the multitude of transient and inarticulable, and consequently, un-true
.;>

'-~

singularities; ,but, on the other hand, this universal abstraction distingulshes itself from other wdversal abstractions similar to it by its
~ssential

qualities, and for this reaSOllj it is, on the one hand, abstract
(.

and suprasensual, and, on the other, sensual: sensual Unlversal. A birch ln generi, for example, does not have the sensual. .immediacy of existence, and as 'an abstraction from the multitude of singular, immedlately existing

'/

484

birche's, it is unlversal, but, as distinguishing itself from other uni-

(1

ver.sal objects by its flower, by the form of its leaves, by its bark, by Us sensual properties or by its attributes in general, it ls a sensual Universal. Observation ls the sphere of both the
ord~ary,

everyday conThe. observing

sclousness and of the empirical sciences in general.

. -'

consciousness appears, on the one hand, as sensual certainty, because the previous levels of development are preserv;J in the latter as moments,
,

but on the other hand, elevates itself above it and searches for its truth not in the singular object, but in its species; specles ls, as aforesaid, a sensual Universal, 1. e., a simple Universal, having its reality in sensual determinations and attributes. Consequently: experimental ob-

servation constitutes a transition from sensual certainty, the truth of whlch ls the sensual singular thls, to the realm of the abstracting and understanding [reflectierenden] judgenient, which has Us truth in the invisible, interior world of power and laws, manifesting themselves in
\

exteriority. The object of experimental observation, on the one hand, 18 , " alrady abstraction, thought, as an object not having existence as a unlversal but existing oruy in the plurality of inslgnificant and transient singularities corresponding to it, from which it is an abstraction; on the other hand, this abstraction is not a pure abstraction, because it
'1

"-

has in itself a moment of

sens~al

diversity, Us essence ls contained in

the plurality of sensual attributes. But 'the object of observation ls not retained, Just as the object of sensual certainty is not retained, and lUte the latter, it destroys itself by its own dialectical movement, and it is precisely an internal contra'"

diction, having Us entire essence in qualities, which-for this reason, as only Us qualities, must be indissolubly United with it, and outside of its
,lf

485
exclusive unity cannot have independent and self... dependent
~istence:

(J

salt is white, ~ has a cubic form, welght, etc., and all~ hs essence ls
~ontained

in Its quaijtative determinations, whlch for this reason, must

be with it in indissoluble unity. But the qualities, manifest themselves


1

liKewise as independent,

. self.. dependent, as universal


"
1

determlnations,

not lim1ting themselves only to one object, but applying to several dif .. ferent objects: salt is white, but whiteness ls not Us exclusive froperty, ~,

8ugar and, chail{ are

al~o

white. It will be said that there i8 a

difference between the whiten~Ss of snow, of sugar and of chalK, etc., but, this difference is inexpressible, and for this reason cannot 'be an, object of universal conscioosness, and thus, it iB nothing
Si

~ore

than an insignifi-

cant difference, -the essential is contained in the universaI, articulable determination, independent from one, or another objee,t. As a result of this, the object of observation i~ destroyed precisely with that aspect which constitutes its essence or r.eality: 1t breaKS down into Us attiibies manesting themselves as essential, in contradistinction to the object as non ... essential. This May appear strange, but it Is enoogh to give the . .
~ ~

Illost minute attention to the objeet :vith 1ts Many attribu~es: in orde~ to
-

be convineed of the truth expressed by

u~.

In effect, what ls an object,

taKen apart from its attributes? Surely all Us essence ls contained in


"

its qualities: tliat by whieh it distinguishes ltself from all oth~r objects , and is, precisely t6Js particular object. How does one, for example, distinguish )sugar from salt? No other way than by means of their different ~

"qualit~,

'without

whic~

they constitute one or the,other objet Jf~r us;


..~nd so, all the ,es;~nee of "an

if, for instance, sugar had completely the sarne properties as salt, then

they would be for us one and the same.

object .ts contain~d in the attributes whieh manliest themselves as the .

, '
, __
-~'-u,

...

.,..-~

--,-

486
universal and indifferent medium, in which the dferent attributes interpenetrate: salt is white and cubic and salty, and all these properties do not have different places, but occupy one and the same place and extend as tar as salt itsell. When we speaK of an object with many qualities, in this same expression is already contained the proposition that the

object is something independent, not depending on the diversity of Us

\.

qualities.

Let us assume that in effect each object apart from and out-

" side of the qiversity of its qualities has really total independent exmtence,

a pure""and' Simple
subject.

relationshtp to itself, sucb that, united and undivided


it is diverse only in relation to the 1Ol0wing

in Ws pure relati to itself,

For example, salt, unied in itself, the same in its essence,

becomes manifold in relation ta the five senses of man: it is white to my sigbt, salty to my taste, and
50 011.

But if diverse. properties of an

'abject constitute its non-essential aspect, an aspect of its contingent relationship to me, and Us essence consists in Us equal and indifferent untty and relatien ta itself, then the objects cease being different from one another, and instead of many different abjects we have only one' object, because any object ls pure, indifferent relation ta itself and undivided unIty with itsella and only through diversity of properties does an abject distinguish Uself from another. Consequently, atiributes constitut the essential property, the essence of the object itself, such that apart from them they are reduced ta nothingness. ft aU the essence, aIl the indepndent exclusivity of an abject, is cmtained in its properties, then they must for thls reasOll be indissolubly linked with ft, and consUtute its exclusIve property. But we saw earlier, that properties are

not limited to the exclusive unity of a sin'gle object, but as unlversal determinations are appUed to Many objects, and the essentiality, the exclusive independence of objects is resolved and is
d~stroyed

in the

487
j

universallty of thelr determinations and of their quallties. Moreover, the qualities themselves, in abandoning their unity with the object, cease to be sensual. 1 can sense _the whiteness of this sugar lying before r, but

not whiteness in general, which as such, as a universal object of observation, Is inaccessible to my sensual perception (for example, a tree in geneJ."al). Thus, properties, whlch manl1ested themselves to us as tirst sensual, tangible determinations, now appear as
!...
~ ~--'

'

and supra-sensual

universaliUes, in which the last trace of sensuality vanlshes. When we say: this oak ls growing, then we see in vegetation the sensual, tangible quality of precisely this OaK; but grass U.ltewise grows, a dog also, and vegetation is transformed from a sensual, perceptible quality into a supra-sensual unlversality and becomes a supra-sensual and unlversal predicate of organism in general, an unchanging law of organic lUe, invis1hle and intangible ta sensual perception and occurring for consciousness only through abstraction from the diversity of the external, sensual world. Thus, starting from the diverslty of the sensual world, consciousness elevates itseU ta the invisible, universal and infinite internaI world, having in ltself the essential diversity of universal laws manifesting themselves in exteriority, and views ft as essenti1 in contradistinction to the externaI, changing
worl~

which reveals itseU to them as an

insignl1icant and transient manifestation of the internaI. Consciousness, having as an object the internal world of universal and unchanging laws, is ~gement [VerstandJ. And thus, we have now returned ta the latest result' of our enUre investigation. At first, we examined al.l the stages of the lmowing spirit,

starting from sensual consciousness to theoretical KIlowledge, shown to be incapable of satisfying the principal requirements of the lmowing

spirit, not having in itself either organic unity or necessity, and indic ating beyond itself to a higher level of cognition, -ta philosophy. Theo we
r~ed

\
>

488

all that we stated in the first half of our article, in order to

Jihow that the result of our !nvestigation iJJ not only a subjective and lone-sided result ofl our individual opinion, but an objecti~e, -that 18 to say, necessary result of the developing consciousness, crossing through an these levels as necessary stages of its development and finally negating them at the highest level, at the level of the universal, abstract judgement, on which, however, it does not stop. Judgement, through Us own dialectical movement elevates itself to reason and negates itself in 1t as
in the sphere of absolute, true Knowledge.
r

This transition of judgement

wuf nOw be

~ particular object of our investigation.

The lmowing consCou8l1ess has now developed ta such a level, that sensual, transient appearance ceased being true for it. It searche8 for the truth in the internai, constant world of laws, in the laws of the physical as of the spiritual world: of mechanics, physics, chemistry, physlo10gy, anthropology, psychology, law, aesthetics, history, etc. The external manifestation of laws, the sensual world of appearances, continual1y changes, passes, and continually realizes its own , non-enttty; and the Knowing consciousness elevates itself above
transl~t

exteriority to the intransient internaI world. But this internal world i8 not Indifferent; no, 1t disttngulsh,es itself and breakS into a multitude of particular, liKewise tntransient laws. Moreover, the interior world of laws could not be real, essential, could not be true, if it did not have
".

manifestations in the inslgnificant sphere of appearances. The internaI world of laws is interior only in relation ta the world of external appearance8 manifesting themselves to U; and for thls reason the judging
l

489

c on sc10usnes s must turn to the- latter, must observe it ln order to find laws manilesting themselves ln it, which, as diverse appearances, always
j

re~ain ~

and unchanging to themselves. If a law is discovered,

then the external diverslty of Immediate exIstence, in which 1t appears, loses all ,signifiance, as insignificant and unessential. A law does not change; but Us external manifestation constantly changes. The law of refraction of rays, for example, i8 always and everywhere one and the same, but the external existence, the external appearance of thls la W
J\

contlnually varies due to external and contingent conditions, 8uch that not one ls identical to another. But the dlversity and the contingency of singular appearances, in opposition to the unity and necessity of universal ' laws, are insignlflcant for the Knowing judgement, which analyzes them not ln order to stop at them, but in order to abstract a unlversal unchanging law from them. Consequently, for the cognitive judgement, the objective world breaKS up lnto two antithetical worlds: 1) the essential internal world of laws, and 2) the insignificant world of their external manifestations; the latter, as situated between the cognItive judgement and the internaI world, separates the one from the other and gt>es not
. \
/

permit the immediate relationshlp of one with the other. Judgement relates to the internal world of laws not immediately, but through the means of the external -world of appearances. But the difference between
thes~

two worlds, the internal and the external-is a false and unessen-

Ual difference: the law ls nothlng less than a universal and constant expression of the changing appearance, whtch, in Us turn, is nothlng more than a concrete display of the law, a revelaU<:)fi, differentiating itself from the unlversality of the law only by contingent and insignificant

modilications.

Consequently, the content of sensual exteriority and of

490

supra-sensual interlortty are completely IdenticaI, and the cognitive

judgement, relattng to the external world of appearances, immediately relatee to the internaI world of laws. Let ue now examine this relation...... ehip.
It relates to lt as exterlor to andQindependent of U, finding lt ae

an lndependent object of hie cognition a8 the truth in opp081tion to ltself as untrue. ThUl!!I,

- unCOndit1onall~onform the consclous judgement must

to it and must not allow itself the least change. It abstracts from the . instgnificant diversity of exteriority, and by elevating itself to th lnner~

most essence of the physical as well as of the spiritual world, !inds in


1t the essenttal diversity of eternal unchangtng laws. What then are these

laws? They are already nO!l-Immediate singularities and not sensual universalities, as objects of sensual certainty and of experimental observation, but pure, supra-sensual universalities, -thoughts, in consciousness through its
o~
occu~g

conscious activity and through Us own

abstraction from everything particular and sensual. But as thoughts, they cease to be external and
forei~to

the cognitive judgement, because

thoughts are ln essence personal determmations [Bestimmungen), the internal property of judgement; and for this reason they. are objective" i. e., really actual, on the one hand, but on the other hand, they are subjective thoughts, 1. e., thoughts conceived by the cognitive subjective consciousness. Thus, consciotl,Bness, whlch consldered everything up untll now as belonging to ft and everythtng occurring from lt as untrue and as unessential, through Us own, Inherent movement arrives at the cO!lsclousness of the truth of lts own thoughts, at the cognition that they,
"

despite the fact that they are Us thoughts, have objective reality. Consc10usness of another external object was trausformed into consciousness
\

491

of its .2.!!.l thoughts, of Us own essence, of ttself as true, and becomes


self-consciousn~.

But there arises a new contradiction. Knowing the laws of the physical as of the spiritual world, the judging consiousness
OWD lmOWS

US

determinations, Us own th ou ght; and despite this 1t

KnOWS

them as

something existtng outslde of UseI! and as foreign to it. The empirical cognitive judgement re'Ceives them through the abstraction from external
1

dlversity of sensual certatnty and of experimental observation; 1t taKes them, but does not understand the m, does not find itself in them. Consequently, emplricists and theorists continually negate the
pO~!llbUity

of

real penetration into the interlor essence and the necessity of laws; but these laws-are 1ts own thoughts; indeed, Us cognitive consciousnese, unlfied and' indivisible in 1ts essence, cannot find itself in the anarchisti multitude of laws; but these laws are Us
t'
~
./

thoughts; indeed, tts own,

but only isolate~ broKen up, external to(~ach other, existing in diversity, and deprived of organi, all-penetrating untty. To understand dlversity
1

means to nnd in lt such a universal and living unity, whlch would pen~trate it-such that all fixed parUculariUes and their parts would be transformed into", the fiu1dity of members of a single, universal and livirig organism; and consequently,. in order to understand the dlversity of laws or thoughts, 1t ls necessary to find in 1t such a universal and untfied princlple, which would have in aIl parUcular laws or thoughtsdts l1mlted, necessary members ensuing from itself, being the single principle and source, whlch would also be thelr single end, their only goal. How does one find this unlversal and single princlple? The external world cannot ,... give it to consc1ousness, because 1t gives it only the unessential dlverslty

of sensual, singular objects, such that to consciousness Us own activUy

492
of abstraction and analxsis is already necessary, in order to elevate itself to the essential diversity of laws; now, then, seeking for the universal and single principle in the multitude of laws or thoughts, it

must still rather tum to itself as to the single source of these thoughts . The diversity of laws is the diversity of Us own thoughts, of its own unified and indivisible understanding activi!I. The understanding judgement Is the source of these thoughts; it Uself 1solates ltself [be8ondet1. 8ich) ( realizes itself in them. ID ltself [an 81ch), in potentiality they already are found in living, necessary unity among themselves, because they have the indivisible unity of the cognitive judgement as a united and un1versal source and as a basis. Judgement ie an abetract univereal, having its reality, its real existence in the ,conrete diversity of partlculars, 'from its emanating thoughts. li it stopped at its abstract and united universality and did not realize itself in the diversity of particular thoughts, then it would not be the reality, but only the possibUity of understanding. ConsequenUy, it must come out from its abstract universality and realize itself in particular thoughts; but its abstraction and one-sidecmess consists precisely in the Jact that differentiating and dividing itsel1 into universal and particular, it remains at this difference or division and cannot restore its unlty to it, such that particular thoughts in its real existence appear as external and indifferent one to another, and as independent from its universal and single principle. They are led 4by judgement to the external ,ystem and as particular are subsumed under the unlversal. thiB constitutes the object of ordinary formal

l~iC;

but' such

an external system is not a real, necessary system, emanating from the

nature of the abject itself, but an external and arbitrary division of the knowing subject, and for this rQason cannot satisfy the kllowing conscious-

493

ness, which; having become self-consciousness. turns to itself for the

solution of this final contradiction. As coosciousness, it still searched for the truth in the other, in the external to it, but in the gradualness of its development 1t tested the volatility of any sensual and Immediate singularity and unlversality in the supra-sensual and constant world of eternal truth arzt.-:eality of all existence.
la~s,

as the only

Finally, ft turned out that Knowing

the diversity of laws, it lmows the diversity of its own thoughts, -and consciousness crossed over to self-consciousness. Consciousness as the preceding level already supposes selfconsciousness. but as the subordinate moment, as the non-true in opposition to the external lmown object as the true; and consciousness precisely as 1Ol0wiedge of an other is impossible without dferentiating itself from another, and consequently, also without lmowledge of itself, without self-con~ciousness. But we saw that consclousness 1ol0ws itself as not-true and as having to conform to the truth of the external object;

...

in a word, truth for consciousness Is not. the self-Knowing subjective J, but the object, the external object in' contradistin.ction to it. Now this relationshlp has completely changed. Consciousness, by its own dialec'tical movement, has arrived at consciousness of the insignicance of the external world of appearances and at the consciousness that the infinlty and universality of the internai world, . in opposition to him, containing in itself the essential diversity of particular universalities or laws, Is the only truth. But the
_infini~

and the universality of the internai world

ia nOthing)lse than abstract thought, infinite universality of the cognitive judgement itself, universality, produced by the activity of its own abstraction from the changing anti from the insignicant diversity of the external world of appearances. For this reasOD, in speaking of the

494

impenetrability of the internai world, empiricists and theorists never

(.

elevate themselves above the level of th abstracting and investigative


'

judgement, and they themselves do not lalow what and about what they are speaking. They speak of the internaI world, as of something having independent existence, independent of exteriority, and containing in itself concrete content, inaccessible to us, because, not having externaI manifestations' it is closed to us by the exteriority of the world of appearanees. 2 But we saw that the internai world is internaI only in relation to the external, and that the externaI world does not have independent
existenc~,

independently of the interior, suchll that it is nothing more


4

than a manifestation of the internai world; il we pre-supposed that the latter had a partieular existence, separate from the existence of the external world, and a particular concrete cqntent, closed from us and for this reason not appearing to us in exteriority, then we should necessarBy also admit the independent existence of the external world, separate from the internai and in opposition to it' Thus, as it turned out in our
1

investigation, exteriority, a transient and unessential manilestation of the


essenti~

interior world, now beeomes independent, autonomous and

essential. But we saw that the entire development of consciousness is 2We cannot but cite here Goethe's answer to a poem, which maintained that: Ins Innere der Natur ..... Dringt kein erschaffner Geist, Zu glcklich, ,wenn er nur Die ussere Sehaale weist.
1

To this, Goethe answers: Das hiir' ich sechzig Jahre wiederholen, Und fluche drauf, aber verstohlen: N"atur bat weder Kern, noeh Schaale, Alles ist sie mit einem Male, etc.

(,

[BaltUnin's note].

495

contained precisely in the fact that it elevates itself above exteriority

as over something

insignific~t

and unessential to the essentiaIity of tl)e

internal world, and ,this was not our individual opinion, but the necessary dialectical path of consciousness itseIf; exteriority

and unessential indicates beyond itself to the essential internaI world,


J

its~lf

as transient

as to the single truth in contradistinction to it as non-true, insignicant and non-independent.


And so, we must recognize the internai world as

the only truth, as a result of which we cannot recognize' the, importance and independence of the external, because, according to the aforementioned, one negates the other. a,ejecting the importance and independence of the external world, we cannot admit the particular and hidden existence of the internai world, the entire essence of which consists precisely in the fact that it manifests itself in the externaI. Moreover,
li the content of the internaI world does not manifest itself in the external,

then it is an inSignificant, impotent content, not having the strength, the energy of self-reaIization, and for this reason, it is non-true. Conse-

quently, the pre-supposition of messrs, empiricists and theorists is compietely absurdo . But from where does this mistake, this opinion on the supposed impenetrabUity of the interior world, arise? The univer;sty of the interior world is not a particular object and for this rea on cannat be the object of either sensual perception or of experimental obse vation; in what way, then, does judgement find it? In no other way than as the activi,ty of Us own persona! abstraction from the sensual diversity of the . external world. And thus, it does not find the internaI world in exteriority as a particular existence, but as the result, the eroduction of its abstracting activity.

o.wn

The internaI worid is universaI abstract thought, the

abstract universalitx of judgement itf;lelf, and despite this, the only true

496
~

and essential object.

Bpt as essential and true, it cannot be empty, for

if it ls not empty, then it has concrete content, and if it has concrete content, then, as pointed out above, it must not and cannot contain it .... in itself, but must have th~ energy of self-reallzation, it must manifest
'

itself in exteriority. And for this reas~, Its content must be ~ent. From where th en does the opinion arise, that It is hidden and impenetrable? The interior world has its real concrete content in the essential diversity of laws, of which each has an external manifestation. But we saw that the interior world is nothing else than universal abstract thought, abstract univez:sality of
judg~ment

itself. The different laws, likewise,

are nothing else than particular universalities, particular laws, produced


"'f,

by the activity' of the realizing, abstracting and understanding judgement. They similarly are not subjected to sensual perception and

t~exp~ri

mental observation, like the abstract universallty of the interior world, and exactly in the same way cannot be found by it in exteriority as particular, sensual existence, but as the product of the independent activity of its abstraction and understanding. 3 But we saw that the insufficiency
\

of judgement consists in the fact that, in realizing its abstract universality , in the diversity of particular thoughts, and by thus dferentiating itself into the abstract-universal and into the concrete-particular, it stops at 3To whomever it appears strange, that laws are determi;ned by us' as pure thoughts, produced by the activity of judgement, and that despite this, we ascribe to them objective value, then that person should ooly , turn, his attention to mathematical calculations, in order to agree with us. Mathematics and pure mechanics are essentially pure sciences, not in the least depending on, and borrowing nothing from, experience. Their content is pure content a priori: numbers, Ideal measurements, laws,.Eure thoughts, based solely and only on judgement and developing through its pure, completely independent activity without any reference to experience. And, despite this, mathematicians calculate the Elovement of planets, -by means of these pure thoughts, calcula~e It with azing accuracy. This can serve as proof that ure sub'ective thou ts are also 'deterininations of the objective Wally existing world. BalruIlin's not] .

497

this dtiference, and cannot restore its original

~ity

to it, and as an,

abstract-universal, is not able to find itself in the concrete-particular. Consequently, it breaks up into abstract, empty universaliq and into an anarchistic diversity of particular thoughts. Thus, having in the objective worlel, on the one hand, the abstract and infinite universality of the interior world, and, on the other, the concrete diversity of laws, It does not KnOW that this diversity is the

r~

and essential content of the


\

universality of the interior world. But since the latter appeared as essential to it, and since the es sentiality, and emptiness are incompatible, then i( pre-supposes that the interior world has a particular, 'hidden
;t

content which does not mapifest itself, and it thus falls into contradiction, the resolution of which already belongs not to it, but to self-consciousnesh. And, s~ce the interior world is Us

.,
1-

own infinite universality,,,-and

the diversity of laws is the -diversity of its own thoughts, then, relating to the interior world of laws, judging consciousness relates to 1tse1l and becomes self-consciousnesEj, the S/,-knOWing subject,
h~Ving

in its

thoughts all the infinite truth of the objective, phenomenal world, such that its thoughts, as subjctive, are not in opposition to the objective, known world of nature and Spirit, but on the contrary, permeate it and constitute its essentiality. And they are subjective, on the one band, and

"" on the other they are objective determinations, simple universal eSSnces
and the single truth
o~

all existence.

From this, one can conciude that any Single self-conscio,usness, the self-consciousness of any single
individu~~~
\

'contradistinctioo to

the entire world surrounding lt, is the abs01U!:,rtruth, such that any man, arriving at. this level of development, has already achieved complete self-realization of his human vocation, of his interlor goal, and potentiality. And to contradict this alleged result of our investigation,. they con':

498

tinually point out to us the daily experience of people, who have selfconseiousness
(b~t

even the mos,t limited people reaeh abstract self-

conseiousness very early), and in spite of this are still not true, not perfeet, not satisfied with the internal and external content of their lives
,

and strive towards the truth and t0r.rds objection does not upset us at all.
~he

exter~al

well-being. But this is true

single

S'elf-conscious~ess

and rational, but oruy in itself [an sich], and not for-itself [fr sich] , in potentiality.. but not in reality, such that the child is <nIy an embryo of a rational man; rationality is not given.and is not acquired by ft externally, but constitutes its essential substance-an essence, on the

basis of which it belongs precisely to the human race and not ta the animal. The latter cannot achieve rationality, because it does not have it within itself. Consequently, the child, as belonging ta the human race,
,
+ ,
,
Q.

is rational, but no one will maintain that it is really rational., In arder to be really rational, it must develop to adulthood. And so, on the one hand rational, it is also irrationalj 1. e., it is only potentiality, and not reality of reason; in order for it ta become in reality (for itself) tltat which it ls in potentiality (in itself), lt must develop. In what, then, doe-s this development consist? Surely not only in the fact that its organism attains adulthood. We very frequently encounter adults, whom all calI ,ehUdren, ir rational , precisely because, having developed physically, they did not develop mentally, who stopped at only the poss.ibility of reason, w ithout realizing it in reality. And 'so, the true reality of man
1
<

consists precisely in his intelleetual development, in the realization of his reason; he must know the infinite truth eonstituting his substance, his essence, and realize them in his actions, such that in the
~dentity

of true knowledge and of the actions of man, in the truth of his theoretical

~-----------------~------

499

world and in the correspondence' of the practical world with the theoretical,
,

i i
i

is contained all his reality. A child, tllen, as belongfug to the human race, the single essence of wJiich is reason, is rtionalj but in not developing Us rationality, it is oruy an internal possibllity of reason, and not its reality. It does not
KI10W

the truth and cannot acf in accordance

with it, -this constitutes its innocence, -an innocence,' which vanishes in
,

the development of self-consciousness; not Knowing the truth, it also does not
KnOW

lies, not knowing good, it 'does not 1Ol0w evil, for in the cog-

pitiop of evU lies the source of all sin. But, despite the fact that it is not really rational, it nonetheless exists, lives, has external ~existenceJ
_ f

and all its existence, aU its external reality consists in the 'satisfaction of its needs as a living organisme It is
~rue

that th rays of infinite


~

Spirit alread~ appear in the impenetrabloe haze of his sensual lUe; but this is nothing more than a momentary illumination, testifying only to its divine origine By not attaining real existence its real existence is limited by its sensual life, which, as not fixed 1gesetztJ, Is not produced by his rational essence, is not the self-realization of the reaspn in him, and does not correspond to his internal,
infini~e

ex1s~ing

potentiality.

Thus the chUd is an internal contradiction-a contradiction between the infinity of his internal Ideal essence and the limitation of bis external
\ .,. 4

.,

existence, a contradiction whicb

i~
/

the source of movement, of develop-

ment, striving' towards Us resolution. In what, then, doe~ this resoluti consist?
.

In the discovery. in the seIf-realization of the internal rattonality

and in the ~gation of the exteriority not corresponding ,to it- in order
t

that the external existence of developing man corresponds to his in,terior, infinite essence. LUte Spirit, every man has substance, being. the single 'source of his human life, the absolute truth, infinite universality and total
, ..

~~-,

-_

.....

_-~~--

-~-

500
reasoo. And for this reason, any man in bis singuiarity is Universal, and, as having in himself the universal, can elevate himseU to it, without coming out of his singularity, he can
lmOW

the universal, the

tru~

and

realize it by the strength of his free will. We saw that the universal is the single basis, the truth and the necessity of aIl existence, a necessity, to which everything is submitled, and which not hing can escape. AlI existence of the physical as well as of the spiritual worJd, taKes )llace, develops, lives and passes, according to necessary and determinate laws, and these laws, as determinate and particular th ou ghts , are essentially
neceSSary~~mbers of the single, infinite and indissoluble organism of

the universal~~of reason. Consequently, we are not yet speaking of the organic development of man, completely subjected to the laws of organic lUe, but spiritual development, as development and self-realization cootain.ing in it reason, is submitted to necessity, and precisely to the necessity of developing reasoo, of the Universal. Reason penetrates the entire universe, of which the unconscious development, just as the conscious development of Itlan, is submttted ta its necessary and eternaI laws. From this, one

could cODclude that man is not a free creature, and this would contradict the essential determination of the human spirit, the essence of which is freedom. But does necessity really exclude- freedom? Not in the least. Submitting to ext emal necessity, 1 am not free as cooditioned and limited externaIly, because the laws which condition and determine my existence are not within me, but outside of me'. As a sensual, singular
,.".

organism, 1 am not free because 1 am unconditionally submitted to UDiversal laws of organic lUe, which exist independently of my singular
~ ~

('/

individuality and completely embrace it; the awaKening ,and satisfaction of my physical ,
ne~s

and the entire life-process of my organism are

501
independent of me as necessary determinations of the universality of

organic lUe, -universality, of which, 1, as a singular organism, am only a partial, transient realization. This absolute enslavement of the singular organism appears even more sharply
Il

the animal, as an instance of its

singularity and not having a powerful means of liberation in free thought.


It is not free, because it is, on the one band, a realization of the

universal, having its single reality in it, but on the other hand, it does not embrace it, it does not contain it within' itself, and for this reason is unable to elevate itself to it-to truth. It is not able to tear itself a way from its singularity, from the narrow sphere of its sensual egoism; which confines it and in which is exclusively contained all its existence. 4 And the entire animal, organic lUe is nothing else than the continuous, not unresolved contradiction of the universality of the species, actually realizing itself only in the infinite plurality of singular, animal organisms, and not achieving itself in them, because each singularity, Dot correspooding to the universal and exteriorly supplemented with other animal organisms, is finite, and as a result of its finitude, it disappears into the infinite substantiality of its species and yields its
place~

to other singular

organisms, just as finite and insufficient and just as transient and morta! as it. Man, as a singular animal organism, finds himself in an exactly similar relation to bis species and is liltewise finite and transient as is the animal. But, on the other band, he is, in bis singularity and finitude,

~'The animal, -says Rosenkranz in his psychology, -is glebae adscriptus; it must act as it acts, and cannot ac~ dferently. By the limitation of its lHe, it is confined to a fascinattg circle, out of which it can never emerge-hence the striKing faultlessness of its instinct. " [BattunD's note).

502

also infinite and universal. 5 Each man" in his singularity, contains the

entire infinite and all-embracing totality of the universal absolute truth, and for this reason, he does not need the supplement of others, since infinity cannot be F.iupplemented. The essence of the human spirit is freedom, since, existing in himself, existing in the interiority of his essence, he exists in the free truth, not limited by anything, and in the necessity of all existence. The universal. develops, lives and isolates itself in accordance with necessary unchanging laws; but this necessity does not restrain his freedom, because it is not fixed, and does n<x lim it him externally, but constitutes his own and single essence, which embraces everything in itself, and is externally unconditioned. Consequently, the human spirit, as in, the singularity of its universality, isby its essence-just as free and is liKewise not limited by anything, as is the universal necessary truth. But li man is in effect free, if he

really contains within himself the who1e totality of infinite truth, why then is he also limited and finite and insufficient? In what way can he err,
pO

suffer and striv towards liberation? One contradicts the other; how, then, is one to resolve this contradiction? It necessarily ensues from
1

the dual nature of the human spirit, which is infnite totality and freedc/m of universal truth, on the one hand, and on the other-singular, finite and transient individuality. As a natural being, man is just as bound and lim'ited as is the animal. It is true that his organism is superior, , more complete, and for this reasOD, more free than all the other animal organisms; the hurmn body, as a complete realization of organic and 5.rhe man, in. whom the identity of singularity and universality is destroyed, becomes an animal, because outside of this identity, he ceases to be rational, he. ceases to follow the rational laws of UDiversality and is only submitted to the animal drives of his singular organism. [ Ba1Wnin t S note 1. ~

503
natural lUe in general, harmonically unites in itseU all the particular

forms and processes of

org~ic

and of inorganic nature.

Having a

presentiment of this totality and completeness of the human organism, the ancient mystics called him a microcosm (a small world), and this appellation has proven to be true in view of the latest discoveries of natural science.
>,

Consequently, man is not bound liKe other animal s, to particular climates, to particular types of liIe and nourishment; the wiversalJty of his nature elevates him above any limitation and maKes possible that domination over all realms of nature, to which he is destined as a rational creature, as a self-conscious son of the living God and as part of His infinite spirit. And despite this perfection, completeness and freedom of his organism, man is subject to deficiencies, to illness, to suffering. From where do _ these arise, and are they not another contradiction? Up unt,il now, we spoKe of man in general, of the universal concept of the human

organism which does Dot

~ as universal,

but which realizes itself in

the plurality of singular, natural individuals. The concept, the universal essence of the human organism, as existing in the transparent and free ether of the creating, self-realizing thought, does not contain in itseli defects, and is not subject to destruction, but likewise does not have any reality. It is real only in its
actualization~

only in the plurality of .

singular, natural individuals, which, as singulars existing in exteriority, are found in an immediate unity with nature and are determined by climate, geographic position, type of nourishment, etc. This ls the origin of the dferences between races-national, family, and finally, individual dferences. Natural individuals, as singulars, despite their intermU, rational identity with nature and themselves, despite the inIinite

'.

504
,

totality of the Wliversal, existing in each one, relate to nature and to each other as external and as foreign to one-another; consequently, eacb./ individual is subjected to the contingent influence of exteriorities; each individual is deficient, limited, and just as everything external and limited, is subject to destruction and death. In the finitude of man i8
--,.

contained the single source of all his sufferings, of everything endured by him. Everything finite, as finite, presupposes its other, is limited by it, and has it in itself as its limitation. Everything finite, as nontrue and having its other in itself, changes and passes. But does everything finite feel its limitation and ability to sufier? No, only those who are in themselves, in potentiality, already elevated beyond their limitations, can feel their limitation and suffer, and there is for this reason, an internaI contradiction, striving towards its resolution., etfsqu en tl y ,
>...

mechanical and chemical oqjects, as finite and not contaC; in themselves the infinity of concepts, of the universal, do not feel their deficiency; their finitude and limitations exist only for a third: for consciousness. Hegel states: The sense of insufficiency and suffering is a superior advantage of living, organic nature. Only the animate as infinite in its essence and, substance, in the universality of its concept and as limited in its singularity, feels an insufficiency; suffering is a higher advantage of the living over the leless. The animal, as complete in its Immediate unity, universality and singularity, and as finite in its external existence, feels this internal contradiction and strives to resolve it, strives towards the realZatioD of its inner totality; and it attains this resolution; but since it is only an Immediate Wlity of universal and singularity, a unity, which exists iD it as the totality of autO- sensation, but does not exist for it as self-consciousness, since life of the animal is lUe in exteriority, then the resolution of the internaI contradiction, th satisfaction of !lis needs, occurs likewise in exteriority as singular and transient; the animal attains only transient satisfaction, a satisfaction, after which, once again, there follows a new aWaKening of needs and new suffering. "

505
"-

As a natu ral , singular organism, man ls subject to that same

fat-e.

Like the animal also feels needs, but containing _in himself the

real possibility of the totality of the universal, and is capale of selfconsciousness and of unlimited freedom, man is capable of stronger sufferings than the animal. His suffering is deeper, and as really infinite

in his singularity, he can endure infinfte contradiction and preserve

himself in it; but in this infinity of contradiction there is also contained the guarantee of a resolution no longer external and transient as in animal, organic lUe, but as intransient and infinite resolution in the limitless and free realm of eternal spirit; suffering is the necessary condition of human development; the sacred voice of the immortal spirit strives towards the realization of its freedom and of its infinity and towards the negation of exteriority foreign to it. Suffering is the single path of purification and of liberation for the human spirit, -the path, by which 1t elevates itself ab ove the narrow and hazy sphere of its earthly singular life, throws off frpm itself ev..erything fleeting and transient, and rises to the boundless and serene heaven of free and eternal thought. Let us now rapidly review everything discussed to date. In its phenomenological process, consciousness, starting from sensual certainty, talting as the truth the diversity of sensual, singular being, has preserved itself [hat sich aufgehobenJ as a subordinate moment in self-consciousness; the sensual diversity of singular being vanished into the universal and was dismissed as a transient and insigntficant appearance of the essential and universal laws of the physical, as of the spiritual world. Then, not in the least deviating from the immanent and necessary development of cdnsciousness itself, we saw that these universal laws, which contal in themselves the entire infinite world of truth and

reali~,

are in essence

506

nothing eise than determinate thoughi's, particular universalities, and that these determined thoughts are essentially nothing more than the productions of the abstract universality of cognitive judgement, such that, Knowing them, judgement lmows itself, and consciousness then became selfconsciousness. Thus, as a result of the entire phenomenological process, we discovered that each singular spirit contains in itself the entire infinite universality of truth; however, we also observed that individual spirit was at the sarne tirne a singular organism, a finite individual, which, like everything finite, is subject to inescapable enslavement, destruction and
--"

death; we saw that this finitude is the source of suffering-suffering which appeared to us as a necessary condition of development and liberation. In what, then, do this development and liberation consist?
In the fact that individual spirit, as of the initial moment of birth,

where it is still nothing more than a self-snsing, animal or gani sm ,


fi

mere potentiality, and not the reality of consciousness, progresses through aIl levels of consciousness and grdually elevates itself above Us

singularity, to its true universal essence and becomes self-consclousness. Fichte celebrated the day on which his son said time, and he was right: he who says

1 \trreadY

KnOWS

hi~self,

''l'~

for the first and has

already torn himself away from the hazy sphere of sensations, perceptions and representations; he has elevated himself to the universal realm of
th ou ght, to the free realm of truly human lUe, the sun of self-

consciousness has already shone in him, and the potentiality of freedom o and light has bec orne a reality. The awakening of 'self-consciousness in man is a second birth, -the birth of the reality of spirit. "The
e~ression

of self-consciousness, -says Hegel in his Encyclo-

paedia, is 1 = 1; abstract freedom, pure ideality." Analyzing this determination, we can see that we have not been mistalten in speaking of the


507 indlvidual abstract self-consciousnes8. We stated that it is true and .,.
,

rational, but only in potentiality not in re~ity. As a possibility of the ' truth, it is both tru and untrue at the sarne Ume .
. 1. The expression of the inlividual abstract self-consciousness

i8 1

=I. 1.

is the expression of pure abstract universality, setting itself .

as object; this is the breaking down of universality into the subjective and objective: the total equality of subject and objecte The movement of self-consiousness is already no longer
s~nsation,

because the universal

cannot be the object of sensation; yet it is not yet thought, because thought requires a concrete, determinate content, and the pure! does not yet have any determination and is nothing more than an ab stract, indeterminate universality, an abstract basis of thinKing-the thinKing intellectual perception [intellectuelle Anschauung], in which the singular object elevates itself to its universality, distinguishes itself from itself, and becomes an object for itself. Self-consciousness is the renewing activity of its intellectual self-the observation accompanying al1 representations of the subject and remaining identical in all changes occurring in it. Furthermore, my 1. is in no way different from the.l oI another man. Abstract seU-consciousness, taKen separately from c-oncrete individuality which serves ft as a basis, is not a singular, but a universal

.1

1 dferentiate myself from another by my individuality, by my organism, by my development, and so forth. But as abstract seU-consciousness, as 1
= ~

1 am not different from others, and this non-difference ls the

principal basis for the unlty, for the identity of men among themselves and for all spiritual organisms-the state, art, religion, science, in which the life of universal spirit is realized. Consequently, abstract

self-consciousness is infinite universality and, as universal and not having. another object apart from itself, it is infinitely free and true.

508

2. But on the other hand, abstract self-consciousness is only flabstract freedom.


fi

'.

As universal, it turned out

t~e

infinite truth,-

truth, in which everything singular and external has vanished. But as abstract, it is nothing more than indeterminate, and hence, empty universality, -a universality which has not produced its concrete content from itself: 1 = 1 ls non-different difference. We stated earlier, that

in,order to become an object for myself, 1 must distinguish myself from myself, divid,e myself into Knowing and Known. But in this differentiation the Knowing and lmown 1 are in no way different from each other, but, on

.1

the contrary, are absolutely similar; and for this reason abstract Selfconsciousness is abstract universality, in abstract identity with itself. But any concrete content presupposes a real differe~ce, a real determination; and abstract Self-consciousneJs, not

h~ving

within itself such


\

difference and such determination, does not have any content. But we saw above that seU-consclousness was the only and infinite truth; truth, as a concrete, must necessarily have content: and abstract selfconsciousness, as true and non-true at one and the same time, is the PQtentiality of concrete, real truth, a ,possibility, which has not yet realized itself in reality nor produced lts content. But an abstract and empty unlversality cannot exist; only something can exist, onlY)eterminate befng can exist. How, th~n, does abstract, empty self-consciousness exist? It exists as concrete and animate, and for this reason, determinate individuality, taken as its truth and together preserving itself in 1t as a subordinate moment. The singular, concrete individuality, organic lUe and all

\-i1

~on~,

perceptions and representa'1

tions of the living individual form the sole content of abstract self-

consciousness, -content ta which it relates as consciousness.

"

509 The abstract, self-Knowing..!. knows the concrete cmtent of living indivlduallty and has in It its only content. In what then dos the content of living indlviduallty conslst? Firstly, it itself ls nothing more than a

Sin~arity,

and thus, a finite and translent organlsm; moreover, as

aiDgular, living indiviquaij.tY, it does not have objects other than singular!ties. The

-uni~rSal exlst-~

,,-

only to the universal.

But we knOW that

the singular, which does not have the unlversal in itself, ls not true and not free; we saw, that co1Jsequently the living subject, in order to be
~-

true and free, had to abstract itself from the slngularity of its concrete indivlduality and elevate itself above itself to its universal essence. Through the negation of itself as a singular, concrete individuality, the subject became free and true as self-consciousness: But self-consciousness, having crossed through this first n egati on, is still abstract, it has still not produced its own content corresponding to it, and all its reality is contained in living, singular individuality, which in it itself was taken as not-true and not-free.

..

And for thls reason,

the subject, elevating itself only to abstract self-consciousness, was liberated from the slavery of the world of his indlviduality only through abstraction, and did not really overcome ft, and hence remained tied to it, and achieved only an abstract basis and a possibllity of the unlversal, of truth, but not its actual realization; It achieved only abstract freedom
1

and, truth. We noticed earlier, that abstract

s~lf-consciousness

is the

basis for the ratiooal unity of men among themselves. But since it ls abstract, and since singular individualities are different the one from . the other and relate to each other as external and foreign, all its concrete content ls contained in singular individuality, -then it is nothing more than the potentiality of this unity, the possibility, not at all realized in anything; such a possibility, which ls
contain~

in abstraction .and whlch

510

stops at the singularity of its individual content, becomes a criminal

egoism. With the transition of consciousness to self-consciousness the difference between subject and object disappears. In consciousness, the k,nowing

the subject, related to the known object, to the phenomenon,


t~

as dtlferentiating itself from it, as to something with which ft had conform. This dtfference arOBe from the fact singular;' Immediate
tha~ubject

was this

and the object-was the~xternal diversity of

Immediate singularities. But in the phenomenological process of consciousness exteriority anJ singularity of the subject as of the object vanished, and together with this the distinction between them also dis,

appeared, because both proved to be universals. The singular

L became

the universality of the subjective 1. which knows the universality of the objective world of laws or thoughts, and consciousness crossed over to self-consciousness. Consequently, in self-consciousness th,e identity of

subject and object ls established. But the first form of self-consclousness, which occurs for us in the phenomenological process is
~bstract

self-

consciousness, as yet non .. realized; it has its en tire content in the exteriority and in the singularity of the living and concrete individual, a content, which was taken in itself as non-true in Us
truth~

and which

was distinguished from' it as singular and sensual as against the universal and supra-sensual. The universal, abstract subject relates to external
o

and sensual diversity as to something foreign and as t6 an object of cognition dtlferent from it; the identity of subject and object is once again destroyed. 3. But there ls a difference between abstract
self-con~ciousness

and c'onsciousness in that in the latter, singularity and exteriority of the object are taken as the truth, whereas in the first they were removed

511
with the Immediate individuality of the subject. In abstract selfconsciousness there is already implied the insignificance of the singular .. and transient world; and as an internal contradictioo of the abstract universality of the .pure.l and of the Immediate singularity' an~ exteriority' of the individual and sensual worlft, ft [self-consciousness] strives towards the discovery of the internal, self-immanent, niversal content
1

('P

and towards the real negation of everything Immediate and external. The subject abstractly knowing itself cornes into contact with sensual singularities which limit his freedom, and feeling his power over them and sensing the truth of his universality, subjugates them to his own subjective goals and thus restores the unity of subject and objecte Furthermore, the

living subjects, abstractly Knowing themselves, as boundless in the ab-

stract universality of their self-cons~iousness, and as limiting each other "'. in reality, encounter one another, and, driven by the tendency to realize
,

their interior universality, their internal abstract freedom in the enUre world surrounding and limiting them, enter into a strugs!e among themselves, the result of which is either death of one, preferring abstract freedom of his self-consciousness, of lUe, or the slavery of the other, sacricing the dignity of- free universality for the preservation of his singular existence, -into a fight, in which their living indivlduallties whih separat.. them from each other are gradually negated, and as singular and not true, submits them to the truth of self-consciousness, which, finally, is crowned by the reciprocal recognition of singular subjects in the universal sphere of universal. rational self-consciousness, that
~

of that, in which one free and independent singular subject ta

not limited by another opposed ta him but continues, finds and recognizes himself in him.

512

Universal self-consciousness is positive lmowledge of oneself as

one singular entity, of one singular subject in another, in opposition to it-tbis lmowledge is only possible through the negation of both immediacy and sensuality. Perhaps, many disciples of philosophical lmowledge will here again find an occasion for disagreement; basing themselves on their own experience, as well as on the experience of many people lUte them, they will maintain, in opposition to what we have said, that there is not in mflll the slightest desire to negate his Immediate or :ensual

singu1~rity and to ~e

vate himself above the insignificance of the sensual world surrounding him. Butl firstly, it suffices to point out to universal history, to the existence of ciyil societies, of art, of religion and of sCienc, ,in order to prove that this striving is not our imagination, but that without its actual '
)

realization, man would have remained at the levei of an animal; secondly, this objection does not surprise us at aIl, because, in speaking of the development of the human spirit, we are speakmg of man in general, and not of empirically existing individuals, of
wh~ch

many, because of their

deficiencies or the poverty of their natures, do not correspond to the universal concept and determination of man. We lmow that the existence of finite spirit, as conditioned by exteriority and naturality, is subject to infinite contingencies and depends on the greater or lesser perfection of organization. Many are born freaks or idiots, such that in spite of

their human form, they appear c10ser to the animal than to the human race. Others, without visible deficiencies, are so weak of charact.er and inclinations, that they ~re unhare of the contradiction between their . . infinite. lnteriority and their finite exteriority and the se will always prefer

()
\

a piece ... of steak as something absolutely real, -to thought, which for.

.~

-------

- - ---

-------------,

513
them always remains an illusion. 11 they are ever illuminated, by the infinite essence of spirit, then it is not strong enough, to tear them away from the constrained sphere of natural llie, which llnked to the" feeling of impotence, often awakens in them envy, which 'frequently gives rlse to evil, ignoble acts. Il' is possible and highly probable that. a large number of our enemies of philosophy fall under this category, and for this reason an answer to their objections belongs more to the realm of anthropological physiology; we retum, then, to our topic. We saw that self-consciousness contains all the infinite truth and reality of the objective -world, no longer in opposition to it in its ttiough~e, in the pure determinations of its essence, of the universal. For this reason, it is not limited by it, and, as the u~ity

oi

subject and object,


~

it ls infinite truth. But in its first immediate existence, as immediately

singular self-consciousnss, it siul does not correspond to its concept

and its unity of subject and object or truth, onlY' in potentiality but not in reality. We saw that as a result of this contradiction, the singular self-consciousness negates its immediacy as weIl as the immediacy of the sensual world and of singular en titi es similar to it, and becomes

universal self-consciousness. Let us now examine the latter.

\,

Having experienced the reciprocal self-negation of

i~mediately

singular subject ivities, it is the universal rational subject, in which singular subjects renouncing their immectiacy, do not disappear, but are preserved, and at the same tim'e cease to be different the one from the other, and coo.stitute one universal, indissoluble unity. The universal rational subject ie the gene'ral _spiritual ground, the general invisible spiritual t,atherland of all immediately singular subjectivities, the fatherl -....

~4

land which ')s found not outside of them, such that in order to attain It they wouJ.d have to come out of themselves and cese being themselves, ,
-

514
,

but rather is ctained within themselves as their true essence, such

..

that in order to attain it, they must only be puried of the limitati and egoism of their sensual immediacy, separating and opposing them to each other, and elevate themselves to the interiority of their own essence and trulli, where there is no limitati and egotistical enmity, but
unlimit~

rational and loving mutual recogniti, recognition in the


indiv1:~ Wlity

u,niversal and

of ratial self-consciousness, of the

" universal subject.

'/--1

"The struggle of self-consciousness, -says Rosenkranz in his p'sychology, -has as its true result the univers;!! recognition of subjects, differentiating themselves by their individualities. Each one of them
lmOWS

itself as self-con sciousness, to which the auto-sensation of


KnOWS

singular Ilie is submitted, and each one


\

the other, opposite

su~-

ject as self-consciousness, the essence of which is identical with its own


esse~.

Thus, the individual dference of subjects among themselvrs

1
l

disappoears, and is replared by their rational, self-mowing unity; the abject of seU-coosciousness becomes 1tself; it
lmOWS

itself in the other,

and the ather in itself, and objectivity becomes the identify with subjectivity.
/;,

"Tlie identity of subject and object ~~e form of any spiri!uf consciousness; one self-consciousness is to others exactly as they are to
it.

The one

lmOWS

itself in others. One reflects in itself, and conversely, Love, friendshlp, patriotism, faith., the family,

is reflected in the other. the state, and

an

spiritual organisms in general, as weIl as aIl virtues,


~

have as their basis this others. 'l' is 'we. '"

of

self-csciouSlle~s

with itself and with

CI

In the phenomenological process of consciousness and in its eleva-

tion to se!f-consciousness, the qifference between subject and object

,~ ,.

-----

-.-'.----

7-- -

'1

515
disappeared; self-consciousness turned out to be the truth of ionscious-

ness, the identity of subject and object, and in!inite truth and freedom. But the first form of se lf-consciousness proved to be the singular, lmowing subject abstracting itself as abstract universality, not realizing its interior content, and having all its reality in the exteriority and singularity of the liVing individual-a subject .in which truth, freedom, the unity of subject and object, and the unity of subjects among themselves is achieved, moving from unrealized potentiality-to the possibUity, limited by Us reality not corresponding to it. From here arose the striv-

ing towards liberltion, a striving, which had as its goal the discovery of its internaI content, and the negation of insignific,ant exteriority: submission of 'the singularities of the sensual world to the subjective goals of self-consciousness and the struggle of subjects among themselves, the reciprocal negation of living individuaIities and the elevation beyond them to the true realm of universal, rational subject, in which there is complete realization of the internaI content of self-consciousness, the complete reaIization of the identity of subject and object and the unity of subjects among themselves, the complete realization of infinite truth and freedom. We stated, that universal self-consciousness is the spiritual and invisible ground, in which singular subjects, dferentiating each other
\,

1
i
i
f
.;

1
t

by ther individualities, merge into one indivisible unity. This universal


~

groun~

in which the differences between singular subjects among them-

selves disappear, is in itself the essential universality and objectivity of s~lf-consciousness.......reas. "Self-cODSciousness, -says Rosenkranz, -appears to iteelf as rational. Objectivity, deprived of the exterior crust which separates it from subjectivity, ceased being foreign to it; and since each of them

received the signicance of universality, their reciprcfal opposition thus

()

516

disappeared; The subject acquired the certalnty that its thoughts contain in themselves the objective truth, or that the phenomenological, objective world in its determinations cootains content, identical with the selfdetermined content of its own determined thoughts. This strildng and important result lies in the fact, that the subject says to the world: "You are my world." In this certainty is contained the infinite reconciliation of consciousness: it does not have anything outside of itself, which , would contradict it, just as it does not find anything outside of itself which does not have a reality corresponding to it. Con sequ en tly, the rationality of self-consciousness is the apex of phenomenological development. Thus, the questioo which constitutes the main subject of the second hall of our article, is resolved in a Most satisfying manner; it was necessary for us to determine whether such Knowledge was possible a priori, -which while embracing the entirety of subjective thoughts, would also embrace the totality of the objective, real world at the same time.
r

But reason occurrct as the simple identity of subject and abject, as the unity of being and thought, as the infinite truth and freedom, as a truth, which in order to attain, man did not have to come out of himself, but only had to elevate himself above himself, above the constraining and false world of his individuality to his universal and ratial essence, to the single.. truth of his being. And, for this reasoo, the entire infinite
~

totality of reason is accessible to his knowledge, in this totality all the


)

truth and all the reality of the physicaJ. as well as of the spiritual world is contained. What is rational is real, and what is real, is ratiooal, says Hegel, and this determination of truth and reality produced many arguments and gave occasi for many misunderstandings, which for the
, '1

517

/
(

most part, arose from the fact that meaning given to the word "reality"

was m isunderstood.

Usually one calls

Il

real" everything which exists,


11

any finite being. This is an error; only that being, in which the entirety of reason, of the idea, of the truth, exists, is real; all the rest-is an illusion [ScheinJ and a lie. "The idea is true-says Hegel in his Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, ~-beCa\lSe , truth consists precisely

in the fact that objectivity corresponds to the concept, but not in that external objects cooform to my representations: these will be the true representations, given to me. The idea does not concern itself with this, with representations, nor with external objects. But everything is real and

in accordance with which it is truth, with which it is aIso the idea,

all its truth emanates only from the idea. Singular being expresses only one side of the idea and thus needs the supplement of other one-sided ____ realities, likewise appearing as particular and independent; only in their ' complete accumulation and in their reciprocal relationship is the concept realized. The sin gular , taken separately, does not correspond to its concept; this one-sidedness constitutes its finitude and is the Source of its necessary destruction.
Il

It is now clear that man can

KnOW

the absolute truth and that

philosophy is possible; and for this reason we can attempt the resolution' of our third question, -the question of the use of philosophy. But before undert:.aking it, we shall say a few words as a science.
al

philosophy

We shall not dwell upon this subject, since the development

of philosophy as a science must be scientic in form and thus would exeed the confines of journalistic articles. Having first examined the

principal divisions of philosophical kIlowledge, we will then say a few 6.rhird edition, p. 203. ( Balrunin' s note 1.

518
words on its relation to
empir~cism.

We saw that reason is the infinite truth, the subject-object, the entirety of subjective thoughts, and the totality of objective, real being. Reasan is the single and infinite substance of the world, but also the single subject, which
KnOWS

it, the single cause and the oo1y goal, the


,

beginning, the middle, and the end of all existence. 1. But taken as the abstract element of pure thought, reason, or, -what is the same thing, -the idea, is the totality of pure categories or thoughts. Thus, it constitutes the object of Logic.

Here, it must he remembered that thoughts which constitute the content of 10gic, are not only subjective, and are not in opposition to being, but are also objective, since they are identical and united with being. Consequently, logic, having them as an object, must not be con,. fused with ordinary, formai logic. The latter has as its object only forms without' content, ooly subjective thoughts, as opposed to being, and relate ta it in an external manner. Speculative logic has, reason as its content, which is the unit y of absolute thought and absolute being; absolute being constitutes its single object, but only absolute being, which
it contains in itseH, in the abstract element of thought and not yet realiz-

ing itself in the reaI world of nature and spirit. Another essential difference between speculative and formal logic lie s in the fact that the latter is a purely empiricaI science, and, as empirical, does not even deserve the name of science, since science requires a strict and organic order of necessary development, and we saw above that empirictsm ts nothing else than a 'collection of particular
,

cognitions,

~d

that all its activity is limited to external classication.

How did formaI logic develop? Tbe observing sp'irit turned its attention to the interior and pure activity of its thinking and, noticing the cate-

"

519
gories appearing in it, classified them in order. Sensing that they were

necessary moments of the united and indivisible activity of thought, it attempted to elevate itself ta this unity,
but,,~ince

it was situated in the

realm of empiricism, it could not attain nor understand it, and had to be satisfied with the external classification of categories. Thus, formaI logic ls divided into the study of the concept, of judgement, and deduction, which, in their turn, are subdivided even further, and there is not the slightest necessity in all these divisions, there is no trace of that internaI, immanent and necessary development, which is the conditio sine qua non of science in the strict sense of this word. Speculative 10giC then, completely deserves the name of

r from\ the

sCien~e,

because, starting

idea in potentiality or from abstract, indeterminate being, it


whic~

progresses up to the idea

produces from itself all the infinity of

its content, up to concrete" being, and all the categories develop in it in a necessary, immanent order. 2. The idea in exteriority, in its-for-itself-external existence, or nature, constitutes the subject of philosophy of nature. 3. And finally, the idea, returning from exteriority to itself, to the infini te interiority of its essence, and knowing itself in this return .... to itself, is spirit and constitutes the subject of philosophy of spirit, which,
~

its turn, is subdivided into the philosophy of subjective, objec-

. tive, and finally absolute, spirit. But one must not forget that this division, as philosophical and as truly scientific in form, ls not arbitrary, but arises out of the necessary development of the absolute content itself, in which all the

(,

separate, particular parts constitute the necessary fiuctuating moments, which elevate themselves over themselves by their own immanent move-

..
520 ment, and negate themselves in the subsequent higher moments and

..

finally in the infinite totality of the whole. As a result of this sequence, the necessity of the division of phlosophy can be proven only in science
"-

and is inaccessibie to the narrow limitations of a journalistic' article. How, th en, to

r~late

philosophy to

empiric~sm,

and is the first

possible without the latter? Up until now

Je

pointed to the insufficiency

of empiricism, now, however, we must show Us necessity. We saw that in the phenomenological development of spirit, sensual certainty,
/~

"

experi~,ntal

observation and judging empiricism precede rational self-

consciousness, precisely as sense perception, and representation precede pure thought, but in addition to this psychological necessity of empiricism, <
it is still necessary from another point of view.

It is empiricism that

collects materials for philosophy; it continually and indefatigably swarms in the real world of nature and spirit, continually acquires materials which it cannot understand, and which it is not able to permeate with vivying th ou ght, but it passes on to the absolute understanding of pure, philosophic; thought. Thus, .Aristotle. a speculative thinker in Many respects, compiled his table of categories in a
\ 1

pur~ly

empirical manner.

After him Kant compiled his own table of categories, which differentiated itself from Aristotle's tables in Many respects; and although he spoke of the necessity of their deduction from the single universal principle, he did not deduce and prove them and was not content with their derivation from the different forms of judgement.
l

Fichte attempted to derive them from


A

a single principle, but could not achieve his gOal~1as a result of the subjective one-sidedness of his sy'stem. , Schelling, in many of his works,

c.

prefigured the forthcoming formation of the pure, absolute form of the absolute content of philosophy, but did not fulfll his goal. It was granted to the great genius of Hegel to lead philosophy as science to the realm

521 of pure, logical thought; he created speculative logic from the rnaterials,

collected by his forerunners, from the categories, existing before him


in the dark region of empiricisrn and elevated them to the. transparent

c,

'\

realm of pure, speculative thought, where they forrned a single, organic

~
d

necessary system.

The sarne was accomplished 1h the sciences

dealing with nature and spirit. Empiricism prefigured them in the osophical understanding; pure speculative thought does not derive
.J

the facts of the real world of nature and spirit from itself, but receives

them from empiricism an~pproaches thern with the belief that in these facts of the ~ctive, real world reason exists, and that they are therefore acces~ble to philosophical cognition. It receives them from

empiricism, but understands them and proves them from itself, by its own immanent dialectical movernent.
In one of the following issues, we sh.all attempt the resolution

of the question on the use of phD0 sophy . [ inc omplete J


1

**********
,-

Appendix IV, translated from BakUnin, Sobranle sochinenii ,1 pisem, tom 2, pp. 340-385.

1 ,

BIBLIOGRAP~
(
:,.

"-

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/

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/'

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..

<-

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1

m,

ed. Khr., 202, 256


355~

Fond 2197, PK, Op l, ed. Khr., 9, 10, 684, 536, 537, Tsentral 'nyi Partiinyi ArKhiv Pri "KolleKtsiya BaKunina,
Il

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(a, b, c)

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