Свобода социально-политическая самым неразрывным образом связана с свободой метафизической, на ней покоится и ей предполагается.

Раз навсегда нужно прекратить разговоры о той жалкой иллюзорной свободе, которая есть продукт необходимости, нельзя называть великим именем свободы простое отсутствие внешних стеснений, которое должно явиться результатом приспособления людей к общежитию. Бороться за свободу, жаждать свободы, видеть в ней величайшую ценность может только существо свободное по своей внутренней природе, по своему назначению и призванию в мире, образ и подобие высшего свободного бытия, которое оно может противополагать внешнему для себя, связанному природному бытию. Свобода может войти в наш связанный мир только из свободного источника, только от духа, в котором заложена величайшая потенция свободы; свобода, как мощь, и шествие свободы в мире упирается в мощь абсолютную, образ той высочайшей свободы, в которой мир превращается в свободную гармонию. Предельным идеалом общежития для нас может быть только окончательное устранение отношений властвования и насилия между людьми и замена их окончательно свободным, внутренним союзом. Практика позитивистов бесконечно выше их теории, и мы хотели бы, чтобы их теория сделалась достойной их практики, чтобы великой борьбе за освобождение соответствовала философия свободы.

VI.

В своей статье я сделал попытку в основных чертах характеризовать суть новейшего русского идеализма; но сделал это индивидуально, согласно личному своему пониманию. Выводы получились следующие: наше идеалистическое движение вполне национально и самобытно; оно пытается решить на почве традиций, завещанных нам историей философской мысли, проблему личности и проблему прогресса и приводит к философии свободы и освобождения. Я думаю, что не без основания можно было бы назвать наше молодое и не окрепшее еще идеалистическое движение своеобразным русским романтизмом, тесно сросшимся с освободительными стремлениями нашей эпохи. Романтизм может принимать очень разнообразные формы и некоторые черты романтизма прошлых времен погребены навеки; но есть в романтизме и что- то вечное: в нем узнается трагическая сущность человеческой природы, в нем находят себе опоэтизированное выражение наши неискоренимые религиозные стремления и чаяния. Мы хотели бы сохранить и передать будущему эти наши национальные черты мятежности и тревоги, эту упорную работу над проклятыми вопросами, это неустанное искание Бога и невозможность примириться с какой бы то ни было системой успокоения, с каким бы то ни было мещанским довольством. Романтизм — здоровое явление, поскольку он есть реакция против чисто рассудочной культуры.

Но мы многому научились и ничего не забыли, поэтому мы не можем повторять ошибок старой романтики. Мы не противополагаем своего направления позитивной науке и реалистической политике, наоборот, с нашей точки зрения и позитивизм в науке, и реализм в политике должны быть усилены, так как в научных и политических утопиях мы не считаем возможным искать Бога. Эта клевета на идеалистов, что они будто бы отрицают науку и отворачиваются от земли с происходящей на ней суровой борьбой, должна быть наконец окончательно отвергнута. Мы никогда не разделяли неба и земли; мы думаем, что так называемая земная жизнь вся наполнена метафизической природой людей; мы особенно подчеркиваем, что трансцендентное для нас не далекое, чуждое и оторванное от всего хода нашей жизни, а наоборот, близкое, родное, присутствующее в каждом акте нашей жизни. Мы хотели бы только охранить миссиони- стские чаяния, национальные и общечеловеческие, связанные с борьбой за свободу, отстоять смысл свободы. И исторически знаменательно, что эти стремления наши совпали не с упадком, а с общественным подъемом нашей родины, с ростом надежд на лучшее будущее.

А. С. ХОМЯКОВ КАК ФИЛОСОФ[69]

Теоретический глава славянофилов А. С. Хомяков по справедливости должен быть признан одним из крупнейших русских умов. Огромные умственные, силы Хомякова были оценены современными ему противниками западнического лагеря[70]. Человек необыкновенно многосторонний, философ, богослов, историк, публицист и поэт, Хомяков является видной фигурой эпохи 40-х годов, столь богатой яркими дарованиями. И вместе с тем Хомякова не знают и не читают, он забыт и не оценен. Целые поколения русской интеллигенции от Хомякова отделяли его славянофильские заблуждения, с которыми исторически ассоциировались слишком тягостные для нас впечатления. Некоторые стороны славянофильского учения Хомякова были захвачены нечистыми руками, и от прикосновения их были загублены мессианские мечты о высоком призвании русского народа; вера в самобытную национальную культуру, в национальное долженствование наше превратилась в проповедь человеконенавистничества и насильничества. Романтик и идеалист, Хомяков с ужасом должен был бы отвернуться от этих «русских собраний». Дорогой ценой искупает этот большой человек, так беззаветно любивший свою Россию и веривший в ее великое творческое будущее, свой грех перед будущим России — идеализацию отсталых форм жизни, пытавшуюся приковать творчество национального духа к этим застойным формам. Проглядели все, что было у Хомякова значительного и ценного, действительно пророческого* для нашей национальной культуры. Я предполагаю в своей заметке дать оценку Хомякова исключительно как философа.

Khomiakov's philosophical articles, despite their fragmentary and unsystematic nature, are of outstanding interest, and nothing can justify ignoring Khomyakov in the history of our philosophical thought. Khomyakov's philosophical worldview was formed in the spiritual atmosphere of German classical idealism, and his thought worked tirelessly on the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel. The majestic system of Hegelian panlogism was the ultimate point in the development of German idealism. It was impossible to go further, the collapse of Hegel's system was a serious crisis for philosophy in general, and so Khomiakov reflected on those fundamental shortcomings and contradictions that led European philosophical thought to a complete collapse. And Khomiakov gave a brilliant and profound criticism of Hegelianism, a criticism of rationalism, this primordial sin of almost all European philosophy, and clearly realized the need for a transition from abstract idealism, which turned being into nothing, to concrete spiritualism. These rudiments of concrete spiritualism make Khomyakov the founder of independent Russian philosophy, so brilliantly presented later by Vl. Solovyov. Solovyov should have justly called Khomyakov his immediate predecessor.

First of all, let us see how Khomiakov criticized Hegel. "Existence," he says, "must be completely detached. The concept itself, in its utter abstraction, had to revive everything from its own depths. Rationalism or logical rationality had to find for itself the final crown and Divine sanctification in the new creation of the whole world. Such was the enormous task which the German mind set itself in Hegel, and one cannot but be amazed at the boldness with which it set about its solution. "Hegel's logic should be called the inspiration of abstract being. Such would be its fullest, it seems, never before expressed definition. Never had a man set himself such a terrible task, such a daring enterprise. An eternal, self-regenerating creation from the depths of an abstract concept that has no essence in itself" [73]. Khomiakov formulates the point at which the philosophical movement in Germany stopped: "the recreation of the integral mind (i.e., spirit) from the concepts of reason. As soon as the task defined itself in this way (and in fact this is the meaning of Hegel's activity), the path had to stop: every step was impossible." And further: "The general error of the whole school, which is not yet clearly prominent in its founder, Kant, and which sharply characterizes its culminator, Hegel, is that it constantly takes the movement of the concept in the personal sense as identical with the movement of reality itself." "It was impossible to begin development with that substratum, or rather, with the absence of a substratum, from which Hegel started; from this a whole series of mistakes, the confusion of personal laws with the laws of the world; hence also the constant confusion of the movements of the critical concept with the movement of the world of phenomena, in spite of their opposite; From this lies the destruction of all Titanic work. The root of Hegel's general error lay in the error of the whole school, which mistook reason for the integrity of the spirit. The whole school did not notice that, by taking the concept as the sole basis of all thought, it destroys the world: for the concept transforms every underlying reality into a pure, abstract possibility. Khomiakov deeply understood the impossibility of further development of philosophy along a rationalistic, rational, abstract path, since this path leads to absolute nothingness, turns the world into a shadow of a shadow. It is necessary to get out of this hopeless circle of concepts to being, to look for the substratum, for being. Hegel made a grandiose attempt to breathe a living spirit into abstract ideas, but it turned out to be impossible to create the world of existence by rationalistic deduction of concepts.

Khomiakov excellently explains the fatal inevitability of the transition from Hegelianism to materialism, which actually occurred in German philosophy and was an indicator of its painful crisis. "Criticism realized one thing: the complete inadequacy of Hegelianism, which sought to create a world without a substratum. His pupils did not understand that this was the whole task of the teacher, and very innocently imagined that it was only necessary to introduce this missing substratum into the system, and the matter would be harmonized. But where to get the substrate? The spirit was obviously not suitable, firstly, because Hegel's very task directly expressed itself as a search for a process that creates the spirit; and secondly, because the very character of Hegel's rationalism, which is highly idealistic, was not at all spiritualistic. And so the most abstract of human abstractions, Hegelianism, grasped at matter and passed over into the purest and crudest materialism. Matter will be the substratum, and then Hegel's system will be preserved, i.e., the terminology, most of the definitions, mental transitions, logical devices, etc., will be preserved, in a word, what may be called the factory process of the Hegelian mind. The great thinker did not live to see such a disgrace; but, perhaps, his disciples would not have dared to commit such a disgrace to their teacher, if the coffin had not hidden his formidable face"[77]. This is a very interesting page in the history of human thought. Thus was formed the "dialectical materialism" which still possesses many minds, or rather hearts, a strange and logically untenable combination of ideas mutually exclusive from one another. Dialectics presupposes panlogism, the dialectical logic of things is inconceivable if one accepts a material, material substratum, this would be a monstrous logization of matter, which makes materialists just as rationalists as idealists, and points to the impossibility, the inner inconsistency of materialism. Khomiakov understood all this better than many people of our time who claim to be philosophers. "The whole school, of which Feuerbach serves as a brilliant focus, considers itself Hegelian, and yet look at its relation to Hegel's fundamental propositions. Kant said that he could not know the things in herself. Hegel said that the thing in itself does not exist at all, but exists only in the concept. For him this thesis is not accidental, not introductory, but fundamental and directly connected with the very foundation of his philosophy; for his whole system is nothing but the possibility of a concept which develops to the whole variety of reality and culminates in the reality of the spirit. And so with his disciples the thing in general appears as a common substratum, and precisely the thing in itself, not as a self-limiting concept and not even as the object of the concept, but precisely in itself. You see that I was right in saying that the New German school, ostensibly Hegelian, took from the teacher only, so to speak, the factory process of thought and terminological graphs, while at the same time being completely alien to his spirit and meaning. A concept without a substratum, or the possibility of being a concept passing into reality apart from something understood and understood, such was Hegel's task, and it was of it that Schelling said in general that it is a thought in which nothing is thought. For the realization of the whole system, although, of course, with a complete distortion of it, a new principle was introduced—the thing as matter in general. Has at least the accusation that fell on the original, real Hegelism been removed, i.e., has a thought been received in which something is thought?" [79] "When the school, in its last, Hegelian development, came to the final negation of any substratum, it is understandable that its last pupils, in order to save the perishing doctrine with which they had grown together by all the habits of the mind, decided to introduce into it a substratum most tangible, the most opposite to the abstraction from which the teacher's system perished, and did not bother to ask themselves, whether the concepts that they forcibly brought together are reconcileable" [80]. Materialism does not stand up to the slightest scientific criticism; but it has this apparent superiority over pure rationalism in that it represents a (albeit imaginary) substratum, and thus satisfies the inner requirement of reality which lies in the soul of man; and both, pure rationalism and materialism, are nothing but two sides of one and the same system, which I can call nothing else than the system of non-Cessarianism, otherwise of weak-willedness.

I have made many callouts from Khomiakov in view of the great interest that his thoughts represent for our time. In this respect, Khomiakov is not in the least obsolete: we are confronted with the same philosophical problems, we are also keenly aware of the inadequacy of rationalism in all its forms and forms, even under the guise of criticism or empiricism, and we are also looking for a substratum, that which truly exists. The only difference is that we are now criticizing not so much Kant as the neo-Kantians; not so much Hegel as the neo-Hegelians, and experienced even more disappointments. Khomiakov anticipated Solovyov's theory of "mystical perception" and his "criticism of abstract principles," as well as all the latest searches for epistemological points of view that overcome rationalism, empiricism, and criticism. "All German criticism," he says, "all the philosophy of the Kantian school, still remained at the stage to which Kant placed it. It has not advanced beyond understanding, i.e., that analytic faculty of reason which is conscious of and examines the data it receives from the whole reason, and, dealing only with concepts, can never find within itself a criterion for determining the inner and the outer, for it deals only with that which has already been perceived, and consequently has become internal. You will remember that, in trying to expound in part the great step taken by our thinker, I. V. Kireevsky, who died too early, namely, the rational recognition of the wholeness of reason, which perceives the actual (real) data transmitted by it to the analysis and consciousness of the intellect. It is only in this sphere that data still bear in themselves the fullness of their character and the signs of their beginning. In this sphere, which precedes logical consciousness and is filled with vital consciousness, which does not need proof or argument, man realizes what belongs to his mental world and what belongs to the external world. Rationalism and empiricism abstractly dissect living consciousness and close from us that experience in which real being, being, is directly given. I do not consider the terms "mystical perception" or "faith" to be philosophically appropriate. This experience, in which our integral being comes into contact with being, and not rationalistically dissected, is obligatory for all, rises above the conditional opposition of the rational and the empirical, is the source of metaphysical knowledge and is processed by metaphysical reason.

Russian philosophical thought now stands at a crossroads, and it should remember that there are paths that have already been traversed and lead to the desert. Such are the paths of rationalism, the path of Kantianism, which leads with fatal inevitability to Hegelianism, which rests on nothing or phantom matter. For us there is only one path that leads to the consciousness of existence, and that is the path of spiritualism, cleansed of all the sins of rationalism and abstraction. Our philosophical thought is embarking on this path, and at the moment of its ascent it does not hurt to recall the first Russian thinker who showed the right path to our independent philosophy, A. S. Khomyakov.

N. K. MIKHAILOVSKY and B. N. CHICHERIN[84]

(On personality, rationalism, democracy, etc.)