III

And here he comes so close to Dostoevsky that one can, without fear of reproach for exaggeration, call Dostoevsky a double of Kirgegard. Not only their ideas, but also their method of searching for truth, are exactly the same, and equally different from what constitutes the content of speculative philosophy. From Hegel, Kirgegard went to a private thinker – Job. Dostoevsky did the same. All the episodic insertions in his long novels – "The Confessions of Hippolyte" in "The Idiot", the reflections of Ivan and Mitya in "The Brothers Karamazov", Kirillov in "Demons", his "Notes from the Underground" and his short stories published by him in the last years of his life in "The Writer's Diary" ("The Dream of a Funny Man", "A Gentle One") – all of them, like Kirgegard's, are variations on the themes of the Book of Job. "Why did gloomy inertia break that which is most dear? - he writes in "A Gentle One". "I'm separating. Inertia! O nature! People are alone on earth – that's the trouble." Dostoevsky, like Kiergegard, "fell out of the general" or, as he himself puts it, out of the "all". And suddenly I felt that it was impossible and necessary to return to everything, that allness, that is, that which everyone, always and everywhere considers to be true, is a deception, a terrible delusion, that from the all-ness, to which our reason calls us, all the horrors of existence have come to earth. In "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" he, with unbearable clarity for our eyes, reveals the meaning of the "you will know" with which the biblical serpent seduced our forefather and continues to seduce us all to this day. Our reason, as Kant says, greedily strives for universality and necessity – Dostoevsky, inspired by the Scriptures, exerts all his strength to break free from the power of knowledge. Like Kiergegaard, he desperately struggles with speculative truth and with human dialectics, which reduces "revelation" to knowledge. When Hegel speaks of "love" – and Hegel speaks no less of love than of the unity of divine and human nature – Dostoevsky sees in this a betrayal: the divine word is betrayed. "I affirm," he writes in "The Diary of a Writer," i.e., already in the last years of his life, "that the consciousness of one's complete powerlessness to help or bring at least some benefit to suffering humanity, at the same time, with our full conviction of this suffering of humanity, can even turn in your heart love for humanity into hatred for it." This is the same as in Belinsky's writings: an account is required of every victim of chance and history, i.e., of what in principle does not deserve any attention for speculative philosophy, as created and finite, and which no one in the world, as speculative philosophy firmly knows, can help. With even greater passion, irrepressibility, and with a unique boldness, the idea of the vanity of speculative philosophy is expressed by Dostoevsky in the following excerpt from his Notes from the Underground. People, he writes, "immediately humble themselves in the face of impossibility. Impossibility, then, a stone wall! What stone wall? Well, of course, the laws of nature, the conclusions of the natural sciences, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for example, that you are descended from a monkey, there is no need to frown, take it as it is, because twice two is mathematics. Try to object! Have mercy, they will shout at you, it is impossible to object: this is two times two four. Nature does not ask you; She doesn't care about your desires and whether you like her laws or not. You are obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results. A wall, therefore, is a wall, and so on and so forth." You see that Dostoevsky, no worse than Kant and Hegel, is aware of the meaning and significance of those universal and necessary judgments, of that coercive, coercive truth to which man is called by his reason. But, in contrast to Kant and Hegel, not only does he not rest on these "twice two four" and "stone walls," but, on the contrary, the self-evidence discovered by reason arouses in him, as in Kirgegard, the greatest anxiety. What gave man over to the power of Necessity? How did it happen that the fate of living people became dependent on stone walls and twice two four, who do not care about people, who do not care about anyone or anything at all? The criticism of pure reason does not pose such a question, the criticism of pure reason would not have heard such a question – if it had been addressed with it. Dostoevsky, immediately after the above words, writes: "Lord God, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic, when for some reason I do not like these laws and twice two or four? Of course, I will not break through such a wall with my forehead if I really do not have the strength to break through it, but I will not reconcile myself to it just because it is a stone wall, and I did not have enough strength. As if such a wall were really peace, and really contained at least some word for peace. Oh, the absurdity of absurdities (emphasis added. – L. Sh.). Where speculative philosophy sees "truth," that truth which our reason has so greedily sought, and which we all worship, there Dostoevsky sees "the absurdity of absurdities." He refuses the guidance of reason, and not only refuses to accept its truths, but with all the energy of which he is capable, he pours down upon our truths; Where did they come from, who gave them such unlimited power over man? And how did it happen that people accepted them, accepted everything that they brought to the world, and not only accepted them, but deified them? It is enough to pose this question – I repeat, the criticism of pure reason has not raised such a question, has not dared to pose it – to make it clear that there is no answer to it and cannot be, or rather, that there is only one answer to it: the power of stone walls, the power of twice two four, or, to put it philosophically, the power of eternal self-evident truths over man, although it seems to us to lie at the very foundation of existence and therefore insurmountable. there is still a phantom power. And this brings us back to the biblical story of original sin and the fall of the first man. "Stone walls" and "two times two are four" are only concrete expressions of what was contained in the words of the adversary: "You will know." Knowledge did not lead man to freedom, as we are accustomed to think and as speculative philosophy proclaims, knowledge enslaved us, gave us over to the "flow and plunder" of eternal truths. This was comprehended by Dostoevsky, and this was revealed to Kirgegard. "Sin," wrote Kiergegaard, "is the swoon of freedom. Psychologically speaking, the Fall always occurs in a faint." "In the state of innocence," he continues, "there is peace and tranquillity, but at the same time there is something else, not confusion, not struggle—there is nothing to fight for. But what is it? Nothing. What effect does Nothing have? It arouses fear!" and again: "If we ask what is the object of fear, the answer will be one: Nothing. Nothing and fear go hand in hand, but as soon as the reality of the freedom of the spirit is revealed, fear disappears. What, on closer inspection, is the Nothing in the fear of the Gentiles? It is called fate. Fate is the Nothingness of fear." Few writers have been able to convey the meaning of the biblical account of the fall of man so vividly. Nothing that the tempter showed to our forefather inspired him with fear of the unlimited will of the Creator, and he rushed to knowledge, to eternal, uncreated truths, in order to protect himself from God. And so it continues to this day: we fear God, we see our salvation in knowledge, in gnosis. Could there be a deeper, more terrible fall? It is striking to what extent Dostoevsky's reflections on stone walls and twice two four resemble what we have just heard from Kiergegard. People give in to eternal truths and, whatever they bring them, they accept everything. When Belinsky "cried out" demanding an account of all the victims of chance and history, he was told that his words were devoid of any sense, that it was impossible to contradict speculative philosophy and Hegel in this way. When Kiergegard contrasts Hegel with Job as a thinker, his words fall on deaf ears. And when Dostoevsky wrote about the stone wall, no one guessed that there was a real criticism of pure reason: all eyes were riveted on speculative philosophy. We are all convinced that there is a vice in existence itself, which is not given to the Creator Himself to overcome. The "good" with which each day of creation ended, testifies, in our understanding, that the Creator Himself did not penetrate deeply enough into the essence of existence. Hegel would have advised Him to partake of the fruit of the forbidden tree in order to ascend to the proper height of "knowledge" and to comprehend that his nature, like the nature of man, is limited by eternal laws and powerless to change anything in the universe.

And so the existential philosophy of Kirgegard, like the philosophy of Dostoevsky, dares to oppose the truth of speculation with the revealed truth. Sin is not in being, not in what has come out of the hands of the Creator, sin, vice, lack of our "knowledge." The first man was frightened by the unlimited will of the Creator, saw in it such a terrible "arbitrariness" for us, and began to seek protection from God in knowledge, which, as the tempter suggested to him, equated him with God, i.e., placed him and God in equal dependence on eternal, uncreated truths, revealing the unity of human and divine nature. And this "knowledge" flattened and crushed his consciousness, driving him into the plane of limited possibilities, which now determine both his earthly and his eternal destiny. This is how the Scriptures depict the "fall" of man. And only faith, which, as also in accordance with the Scriptures, Kiergegard understands as a mad struggle about the possible, i.e., in our language about the impossible, for it is the overcoming of self-evidence, only faith can throw off from us the exorbitant weight of original sin, give us the opportunity to straighten up again, to "get up." Faith, therefore, is not trust in what we have been told, heard, and taught. Faith is a new dimension of thinking, unknown and alien to speculative philosophy, which opens the way to the Creator of everything that exists in the world, to the source of all possibilities, to the One for whom there are no boundaries between the possible and the impossible. This is difficult, immensely difficult not only to realize, but even to imagine. Jacob Boehme said that when God takes His right hand away from him, he himself does not understand what he has written. I think that Dostoevsky and Kirgegaard could have repeated Böhme's words. It is not for nothing that Kiergegard said: to believe, contrary to reason, is martyrdom. It is not for nothing that Dostoevsky's works are full of such superhuman tension. That is why Dostoevsky and Kirgegard are listened to so little and heard so little. Their voices have been and will remain the voices of those crying in the wilderness.

I. Job and Hegel

Instead of seeking the help of a world-famous philosopher or a professor publicus ordinarius, my friend takes refuge in a private thinker who knew all that is best in the world, but who later had to pass away from life: Job, who, sitting on the ashes and scraping the scabs on his body with his scabs, hurls cursory remarks and hints. Here the truth will be expressed more convincingly than in the Greek symposion.

Kirgegaard

Kirgegaard passed by Russia. I have never heard even his name in philosophical or literary circles. I'm ashamed to admit, but it's a sin to hide it - a few years ago I knew nothing about Kirgegard. And in France it is almost unknown: it has only recently begun to be translated. But his influence in Germany and the Nordic countries is very great. And it is a fact of great importance: it has taken hold not only of the most eminent German theologians, but also of philosophers, even professors of philosophy: suffice it to mention Karl Barth and his school on the one hand, and Jaspers and Heidegger on the other. The publisher of Philosoph. Hefte was not even afraid to say that an exhaustive exposition of Heidegger's philosophy would give us Kiergegaard. And there is every reason to think that the ideas of Kiergegard are destined to play a very large role in the spiritual development of mankind. The role, however, is peculiar. He is unlikely to get into the classics of philosophy, and perhaps he will not receive universal external recognition. But his thought will be invisibly present in the souls of people. This has already happened: the voice of one crying in the wilderness is not only a majestic metaphor. In the general economy of spiritual existence, the voices of those crying in the wilderness are just as necessary as the voices heard in crowded places, in squares and in churches. And, perhaps, in some sense, even more necessary.

Kiergegaard called his philosophy existential, a word that in itself does not tell us much. And although Kiergegard uses it often, he did not give us what could be called a definition of existential philosophy.

«По отношению к экзистенциальным понятиям желание избегнуть определений свидетельствует о такте[13] – пишет он. Киргегард и вообще избегает исчерпывающих определений: это связано у него с убеждением, что лучший способ общения с людьми есть «непрямое высказывание». Он перенял этот метод у Сократа, который видел свое предназначение не в том, чтобы нести людям готовые истины, а в том, чтобы помогать им самим рождать истины. Только рожденная человеком истина может пойти ему на потребу. Соответственно этому, киргегардовская философия так построена, что усвоить ее, как мы обыкновенно усваиваем какой-либо строй идей, невозможно. Тут требуется не усвоение, а что-то другое. Он заранее приходит в ужас и бешенство при мысли, что после его смерти «приват-доценты» будут излагать его философию как законченную систему идей, расположенных по отделам, главам и параграфам, и что любители интересных философских конструкций будут испытывать умственное наслаждение, следя за развитием его мыслей. Философия для Киргегарда отнюдь не есть чисто интеллектуальная деятельность души. Начало философии не удивление, как учили Платон и Аристотель, а отчаяние. В отчаянии, в ужасах человеческая мысль перерождается и обретает новые силы, подводящие ее к несуществующим для других людей источникам истины. Человек продолжает думать, но он думает совсем не так, как думают люди, которые, удивляясь тому, что мироздание открывает им, стремятся понять строй бытия.

В этом отношении особенно показательной является его небольшая книжечка «Повторение». Она принадлежит к той группе сочинений Киргегарда, которые были написаны и опубликованы им непосредственно после разрыва и в связи с разрывом с невестой, Региной Ольсен. В самое короткое время Киргегард написал сперва свою огромную книгу «Entweder-Oder», потом «Страх и Трепет», который вместе с «Повторением» был выпущен в одном томе, и, наконец, «Что такое страх» (Der Begriff der Angst). Все эти книги написаны на одну тему, которая варьируется у него на тысячу ладов. Я уже указал на нее: философия имеет своим началом не удивление, как думали греки, а отчаяние. В «Повторении» он ей дает такое выражение: «Вместо того, чтоб обратиться за помощью ко всемирно знаменитому философу или к professor’y publicus ordinarius (т. е. к Гегелю), мой друг (Киргегард всегда говорит в третьем лице, когда ему нужно высказать свою наиболее заветную мысль) ищет прибежища у частного мыслителя, который знал все, что есть лучшего в мире, но которому потом пришлось уйти из жизни: у Иова… который, сидя на пепле и скребя черепками струпья на своем теле, бросает беглые замечания и намеки. Здесь истина выразится убедительней, чем в греческом симпозионе».[13]

Частный мыслитель Иов противопоставляется всемирно знаменитому Гегелю, и даже греческому симпозиону – т. е. самому Платону. Имеет ли смысл такое противопоставление и дано ли самому Киргегарду осуществить его? Т. е. принять за истину не то, что ему открывает философская мысль просвещенного эллина, а то, что вещает обезумевший от ужаса и притом невежественный герой одного из повествований Старой Книги? Почему истина Иова «убедительней», чем истина Гегеля или Платона? И точно ли она убедительней?

Киргегарду не так легко было разделаться со всемирно знаменитым философом. Он сам свидетельствует об этом: «Он не смеет кому-либо довериться и рассказать о своем позоре и о своем несчастии, что он не понимает великого человека».[14] И еще: «Диалектическое бесстрашие не так легко добывается, и только через кризис решаешься пойти против удивительного учителя, который все лучше знает и только твою проблему обошел! Обыкновенные люди, – продолжает Киргегард, – пожалуй, и не догадаются, о чем тут идет речь. Для них гегелевская философия – только теоретическое построение, очень интересное и занимательное. Но есть “юноши”, которые свои души отдали Гегелю, которые в трудную минуту, когда человек идет к философии за тем, чтобы добыть у нее “единое на потребу”, – готовы скорей отчаяться в самих себе, чем допустить, что их учитель не искал истины, а преследовал совсем иные задачи. Такие люди, если им суждено обрести себя, заплатят Гегелю смехом и презрением: и в этом будет великая справедливость».

Быть может, они еще суровее поступят. Уйти от Гегеля к Иову! если бы Гегель мог бы хоть на мгновение допустить, что такое возможно, что истина не у него, а у невежественного Иова, что метод разыскания истины есть не выслеживание открытого им «самодвижения понятия», а дикие и бессмысленные, с его точки зрения, вопли отчаяния, он должен был бы признаться, что все дело его жизни сведено на нет, что он сам сведен на нет. И, пожалуй, не один Гегель и не в Гегеле одном тут дело. Пойти к Иову за истиной значит усомниться в основах и принципах философского мышления. Можно отдавать предпочтение Лейбницу, или Спинозе, или древним и противопоставлять их Гегелю. Но променять Гегеля на Иова – это все равно, что заставить время обратиться вспять, вернуться к тому, что было много тысяч лет назад, когда люди не подозревали даже того, что принесли нам наше познание и наши науки. Но Киргегард не удовольствуется и Иовом. Он рвется еще дальше в глубь времен – к Аврааму. И ему противопоставляет даже не Гегеля, а того, кого Дельфийский оракул, а за оракулом все человечество, признал мудрейшим из людей: Сократа.