P. Chaadaev and his Philosophical Letter

“It is your open-heartedness and your sincerity that I like most, it is precisely this that I value most in you. Judge how your letter must have surprised me. I was fascinated by these wonderful qualities of your character from the first minute of our acquaintance, and they prompted me to talk to you about religion. Everything around us could only keep me silent. Judge again what my amazement was when I received your letter! This is all I can tell you about the opinion that you suppose I have formed of your character. But let’s say no more about this and move on immediately to the serious part of your letter...”

Letter one

Thy kingdom come

Madam,

It is your open-heartedness and your sincerity that I like most, it is precisely this that I value most in you. Judge how your letter must have surprised me. I was fascinated by these wonderful qualities of your character from the first minute of our acquaintance, and they prompted me to talk to you about religion. Everything around us could only keep me silent. Judge again what my amazement was when I received your letter! This is all I can tell you about the opinion that you suppose I have formed of your character. But let's say no more about this and move immediately to the serious part of your letter.

Firstly, where does this turmoil in your thoughts come from, which worries you so much and exhausts you so much that, according to you, it even affected your health? Is this really the sad consequence of our conversations? Instead of peace and tranquility, which the new feeling awakened in your heart should have brought you, it caused you melancholy, anxiety, almost remorse. And yet, should I be surprised by this? This is a natural consequence of the sad order of things that governs all our hearts and all our minds. You have only succumbed to the influence of the forces that dominate everyone here, from the highest peaks of society to the slave who lives only for the pleasure of his master.

And how could you resist these conditions? The very qualities that distinguish you from the crowd should make you especially susceptible to the harmful influences of the air you breathe. Could the little that I allowed myself to tell you give strength to your thoughts amid everything that surrounds you? Could I clear the atmosphere we live in? I should have foreseen the consequences, and I did. Hence those frequent silences, which, of course, could least of all bring confidence to your soul and naturally should have led you into confusion. And if I were not sure that, no matter how severe the suffering that a religious feeling that is not fully awakened in the heart can cause, such a state is still better than complete lethargy, I would only have to repent of my decision. But I hope that the clouds now covering your sky will transform in time into fertile dew, which will fertilize the seed thrown into your heart, and the effect produced on you by a few insignificant words serves me as a sure guarantee of those even more important consequences that without doubts will result from the work of your own mind. Surrender fearlessly to the emotional movements that a religious idea will awaken in you: from this pure source only pure feelings can flow.

Concerning external conditions, then be content for the present with the knowledge that a doctrine based on the supreme principle unity and the direct transmission of the truth in an unbroken line of its ministers, of course, is most consistent with the true spirit of religion; for it comes down entirely to the idea of merging all the moral forces existing in the world into one thought, into one feeling and to the gradual establishment of such social system or churches, which should establish the kingdom of truth among people. Any other teaching, by the very fact of its falling away from the original doctrine, rejects in advance the effect of the high covenant of the Savior: Holy Father, keep them so that they may be one, as we are and does not strive to establish the kingdom of God on earth. It does not follow from this, however, that you are obliged to confess this truth in the face of the world: this, of course, is not your calling. On the contrary, the very principle from which this truth proceeds obliges you, in view of your position in society, to recognize in it only the inner light of your faith, and nothing more. I am happy that I have contributed to turning your thoughts towards religion; but I would be very unhappy if at the same time I plunged your conscience into confusion, which over time would inevitably cool your faith.

I think I told you once that The best way To preserve a religious feeling is to observe all the rituals prescribed by the church. This exercise of submission, which contains more than is usually thought, and which the greatest minds have imposed upon themselves consciously and deliberately, is the real service of God. Nothing strengthens the spirit in its beliefs so much as the strict fulfillment of all the duties related to them. Moreover, most rituals Christian religion, inspired by a higher mind, have real life-giving power for anyone who knows how to penetrate the truths contained in them. There is only one exception to this rule, which is generally unconditional - namely, when a person feels in himself beliefs of a higher order compared to those professed by the masses - beliefs that elevate the spirit to the very source of all certainty and at the same time do not in the least contradict folk beliefs, but, on the contrary, reinforcing them; then, and only then, is it permissible to neglect external rituals in order to freely devote ourselves to more important labors. But woe to him who would mistake the illusions of his vanity or the delusions of his mind for the highest enlightenment, which supposedly frees him from the general law! But you, madam, what better thing can you do than to put on the robe of humility, which is so becoming to your sex? Believe me, this will most likely pacify your troubled spirit and shed quiet joy into your existence.

And is it conceivable, tell me, even from the point of view of secular concepts, a more natural way of life for a woman whose developed mind knows how to find beauty in knowledge and in the majestic emotions of contemplation, rather than a life concentrated and devoted to a large extent to reflection and matters of religion. You say that when reading, nothing excites your imagination so much as pictures of peaceful and serious life, which, like the sight of a beautiful countryside at sunset, infuse peace into the soul and take us away for a moment from bitter or vulgar reality. But these paintings are not creations of fantasy; It depends on you alone to realize any of these captivating inventions; and for this you have everything you need. You see, I do not preach too harsh a moral: in your inclinations, in the most attractive dreams of your imagination, I try to find what can give peace to your soul.

There is a certain side to life that concerns not the physical, but the spiritual existence of a person. It should not be neglected; for the soul there is a certain regime in the same way as for the body; one must be able to obey him. It's an old truth, I know; but I think that in our country it still very often has all the value of novelty. One of the saddest features of our peculiar civilization is that we are still only discovering truths that have long since become hackneyed in other places and even among peoples who are in many ways far behind us. This happens because we have never walked hand in hand with other peoples; we do not belong to any of the great families of the human race; we belong neither to the West nor to the East, and we have no traditions of either. Standing as if outside of time, we were not affected by the worldwide education of the human race.

This marvelous connection of human ideas throughout the centuries, this history of the human spirit, which raised it to the height at which it now stands in the rest of the world, has had no influence on us. What in other countries has long been the very basis of community life, for us is only theory and speculation. And here is an example: you, who have such a happy organization for the perception of everything that is true and good in the world, you, who are destined by nature itself to know everything that gives the sweetest and purest joys to the soul - speaking frankly, what have you achieved in front of everyone? these advantages? You don’t even have to think about what to fill your life with, but what to fill your day with. The very conditions that in other countries constitute the necessary framework of life, in which all the events of the day are so naturally placed and without which a healthy moral existence is as impossible as a healthy physical life without fresh air - you have no trace of them. You understand that this is not at all about moral principles and not about philosophical truths, but simply about a well-ordered life, about those habits and skills of consciousness that impart ease to the mind and bring correctness to spiritual life person.

Take a look around you. Don't we all feel like we can't sit still? We all look like travelers. No one has a defined sphere of existence, no one has developed good habits for anything, no rules for anything; no even hearth and home; there is nothing that would bind you, that would awaken sympathy or love in you, nothing lasting, nothing permanent; everything flows, everything goes away, leaving no trace either outside or inside you. In our homes we seem to be stationed, in our families we look like strangers, in cities we seem to be nomads, and even more so than those nomads who graze their herds in our steppes, for they are more closely tied to their deserts than we are to our cities. And please do not think that the subject in question is not important. We are already offended by fate; let us not add to our other troubles a false idea of ourselves, let us not lay claim to a purely spiritual life; Let's learn to live wisely in empirical reality. – But first, let’s talk a little more about our country; we will not go beyond the scope of our topic. Without this introduction you would not understand what I have to tell you.

Every nation experiences a period of violent excitement, passionate anxiety, and thoughtless and aimless activity. At this time, people become wanderers in the world, physically and spiritually. This is an era of strong feelings, broad plans, and great passions of the people. The peoples then rush about excitedly, without apparent reason, but not without benefit for future generations. All societies went through such a period. To him they owe their most vivid memories, the heroic element of their history, their poetry, all their most powerful and fruitful ideas; This - necessary basis every society. Otherwise, there would be nothing in the memory of peoples that they could value, that they could love; they would be tied only to the dust of the earth on which they live. This fascinating phase in the history of nations is their youth, the era in which their abilities develop most strongly and the memory of which constitutes the joy and instruction of their mature age. We don't have any of this. First - savage barbarism, then gross ignorance, then ferocious and humiliating foreign dominion, the spirit of which our national power later inherited - such is sad story our youth. We did not have this period of vigorous activity, the vigorous play of the spiritual forces of the people. Our era social life, corresponding to this age, was filled with a dull and gloomy existence, devoid of strength and energy, which was enlivened by nothing except atrocities, nothing softened except slavery. No captivating memories, no graceful images in the memory of the people, no powerful teachings in their tradition. Take a look at all the centuries we have lived, all the space we occupy - you will not find a single attractive memory, not a single venerable monument that would powerfully speak to you about the past, that would recreate it before you vividly and picturesquely. We live alone in the present within its narrowest confines, without past and future, in the midst of dead stagnation. And if we sometimes worry, it is not at all in the hope or calculation of some common good, but out of the childish frivolity with which a child tries to get up and stretches out his hands to the rattle that the nanny shows him.

The true development of man in society has not yet begun for the people if their life has not become more comfortable, easier and more pleasant than in the unstable conditions of the primitive era. How do you want the seeds of good to ripen in any society while it still fluctuates without convictions and rules even in relation to everyday affairs and life is still completely unordered? This is chaotic fermentation in the spiritual world, similar to those revolutions in the history of the earth that preceded the modern state of our planet. We are still in this stage.

The years of early youth, spent by us in dull immobility, did not leave any trace on our soul, and we have nothing individual on which our thought could rely; but, isolated by a strange fate from the worldwide movement of mankind, we also did not perceive anything from successive ideas of the human race. Meanwhile, it is on these ideas that the life of peoples is based; From these ideas flows their future, their moral development. If we want to occupy a position similar to that of other civilized nations, we must in some way repeat in ourselves the entire education of the human race. For this purpose, the history of peoples is at our service and the fruits of the movement of centuries are before us. Of course, this task is difficult, and, perhaps, within the limits of one human life it is not possible to exhaust this vast subject; but first of all we need to find out what the matter is, what this education of the human race is and what is the place that we occupy in the general order.

Peoples live only by the powerful impressions that the passing centuries leave in their souls, and by communication with other peoples. That is why each individual person is imbued with the consciousness of his connection with all humanity.

What is human life, says Cicero, if the memory of past events does not connect the present with the past! We, having come into the world like illegitimate children, without an inheritance, without connection with the people who lived on earth before us, we do not keep in our hearts any of the lessons that preceded our own existence. Each of us has to tie up the broken thread of kinship ourselves. What other peoples have turned into a habit, an instinct, we have to hammer into our heads with hammer blows. Our memories go no further than yesterday; we are, so to speak, strangers to ourselves. We move in time so strangely that with every step we take forward, the past moment disappears for us irrevocably. This is the natural result of a culture based entirely on borrowing and imitation. We have absolutely no internal development, no natural progress; Every new idea displaces the old ones without a trace, because it does not follow from them, but comes to us from God knows where. Since we always perceive only ready-made ideas, then in our brain those indelible grooves are not formed that consistent development makes in the minds and which constitute their strength. We grow, but we do not mature; we move forward, but along a curved line, that is, along one that does not lead to the goal. We are like those children who have not been taught to think for themselves; in the period of maturity they have nothing of their own; all their knowledge is in their external life, their whole soul is outside them. That's exactly who we are.

Nations are just as much moral beings as individuals. They are raised by centuries, just as individuals are raised by years. But we can be said, in some way, to be an exceptional people. We belong to those nations that do not seem to be part of humanity, but exist only to teach the world some important lesson. The instruction we are called to impart will certainly not be lost; but who can say when we will find ourselves among humanity and how many troubles we are destined to experience before our destiny is fulfilled?

All the peoples of Europe have a common physiognomy, some family resemblance. Despite their indiscriminate division into the Latin and Teutonic races, into southerners and northerners, there is still a common connection that connects them all into one whole and is clearly visible to anyone who has delved deeper into their common history. You know that until relatively recently all of Europe was called the Christian world, and this expression was used in public law. In addition to the general character, each of these peoples also has its own private character, but both are entirely woven from history and tradition. They constitute the continuous ideological heritage of these peoples. Each individual person uses his share of this inheritance there; without labor and excessive effort, he accumulates a supply of this knowledge and skills in his life and derives his benefit from them. Compare for yourself and tell me, how many elementary ideas do we find in our everyday life that could guide us in life? And note, here we are not talking about the acquisition of knowledge and not about reading, not about anything related to literature or science, but simply about the mutual communication of minds, about those ideas that take possession of a child in the cradle, surround him among children's games and are transmitted to him with by the affection of his mother, which, in the form of various feelings, penetrate to the marrow of his bones along with the air he breathes, and create his moral being even before he enters society and society. Do you want to know what these ideas are? These are ideas of duty, justice, law, order. They were born from the very events that formed society there, they are included necessary element into the social structure of these countries.

This is the atmosphere of the West; it is more than history, more than psychology; This is the physiology of European man. What will you replace this with us? I don’t know whether it is possible to deduce something completely unconditional from what has been said now and to extract from it any immutable principle; but one cannot help but see the strange position of a people whose thought does not adhere to any series of ideas that gradually developed in society and slowly grew from one another, and whose participation in the general forward movement of the human mind was limited only to blind, superficial and often unskillful imitation to other nations, must powerfully influence the spirit of every individual in that nation.

As a result of this, you will find that we all lack a certain confidence, mental methodology, and logic. Western syllogism is unfamiliar to us. Our best minds suffer from something more than simple unfoundedness. Best ideas, for lack of connection or consistency, freeze in our brain and turn into barren ghosts. It is natural for a person to get lost when he does not find a way to bring himself into connection with what precedes him and with what follows him. He is then deprived of all firmness, all confidence. Not guided by a sense of continuity, he sees himself as lost in the world. Such confused people are found in all countries; This is something we have in common. This is not at all the frivolity for which the French were once reproached and which, in essence, was nothing more than the ability to easily assimilate things, which did not exclude either depth or breadth of mind and brought extraordinary charm and grace to circulation; this is the carelessness of life, devoid of experience and foresight, not taking into account anything except the fleeting existence of an individual, cut off from the clan, a life that does not value either honor, or the success of any system of ideas and interests, or even that family heritage and those countless prescriptions and prospects, which, in the conditions of everyday life, based on the memory of the past and the provision of the future, constitute both public and private life. There is absolutely nothing in common in our heads; everything about them is individual and everything is shaky and incomplete. It even seems to me that there is some strange uncertainty in our gaze, something cold and uncertain, partly reminiscent of the physiognomy of those peoples who stand on the lower steps of the social ladder. In foreign countries, especially in the south, where faces are so expressive and so animated, more than once, comparing the faces of my compatriots with the faces of the natives, I was amazed at the muteness of our faces.

Foreigners credit us with a kind of reckless courage, found especially in the lower strata of the people; but, having the opportunity to observe only individual manifestations of the national character, they are not able to judge the whole. They do not see that the same principle, thanks to which we are sometimes so courageous, always makes us incapable of deepening and perseverance; they do not see that this indifference to everyday dangers corresponds in us to the same complete indifference to good and evil, to truth and to lies, and that it is precisely this that deprives us of all the powerful incentives that push people along the path of improvement; they do not see that it is precisely thanks to this careless courage that even upper classes In our country, unfortunately, we are not free from those vices that in other countries are characteristic only of the lowest strata of society; they do not see, finally, that although we have some of the virtues of young and underdeveloped peoples, we do not possess any of the virtues that distinguish mature and highly cultured peoples.

I don’t want to say, of course, that we have the same vices, and the European peoples have the same virtues; God forbid! But I say that in order to make a correct judgment about peoples, one should study the general spirit that constitutes their vital principle, for only this, and not this or that trait of their character, can lead them to the path of moral perfection and endless development.

The masses of the people are subordinate to certain forces at the top of society. They don't think for themselves; among them there is a certain number of thinkers who think for them, impart impetus to the collective mind of the people and move them forward. While a small group of people thinks, the rest feel, and as a result a general movement occurs. With the exception of some stupid tribes who have retained only appearance man, what has been said is true for all peoples inhabiting the earth. The primitive peoples of Europe - the Celts, Scandinavians, Germans - had their own druids, skalds and bards, who were strong thinkers in their own way. Look at the tribes North America, which the material culture of the United States is trying so hard to exterminate: among them there are people of amazing depth.

And so I ask you, where are our sages, our thinkers? Who ever thought for us, who now thinks for us? But, standing between the two main parts of the world, East and West, with one elbow resting on China, the other on Germany, we would have to combine in ourselves both great principles of spiritual nature: imagination and reason, and combine in our civilization the history of the entire globe. But this is not the role provided for us by providence. Moreover, it seemed not at all concerned about our fate. Having excluded us from its beneficial effect on the human mind, it completely left us to ourselves, refused to interfere in any way in our affairs, and did not want to teach us anything. Historical experience does not exist for us; generations and centuries have passed without benefit to us. Looking at us, one could say that the general law of humanity has been abolished in relation to us. Alone in the world, we have given the world nothing, taught it nothing; We have not contributed a single idea to the mass of human ideas, we have not contributed in any way to the progress of the human mind, and we have distorted everything that we got from this progress. From the first minute of our social existence we have done nothing for the common good of people; not a single useful thought was born on the barren soil of our homeland; no great truth has come out of our midst; We did not take the trouble to invent anything ourselves, and from what others invented, we adopted only deceptive appearances and useless luxury.

It’s a strange thing: even in the world of science, which embraces everything, our history does not add up to anything, does not clarify anything, does not prove anything. If the wild hordes that have troubled the world had not passed through the country in which we live before rushing to the West, we would hardly have been given a page in world history. If we had not spread from the Bering Strait to the Oder, we would not have been noticed. Once upon a time, a great man wanted to enlighten us, and in order to make us want education, he threw us the cloak of civilization; we lifted the cloak, but did not touch enlightenment. Another time, another great sovereign, introducing us to his glorious destiny, led us victoriously from one end of Europe to the other; Having returned from this triumphal march through the most enlightened countries of the world, we brought with us only ideas and aspirations, the fruit of which was an enormous misfortune that threw us back half a century. There is something in our blood that is hostile to all true progress. And in general, we lived and continue to live only to serve as some important lesson for distant generations who will be able to understand it; Nowadays, in any case, we constitute a gap in the moral world order. I cannot be amazed enough at this extraordinary emptiness and isolation of our social existence. Of course, an inscrutable fate is partly to blame for this, but, as with everything that happens in the moral world, the person himself is partly to blame. Let us turn once again to history: it is the key to understanding peoples.

What did we do at that time when, in the struggle between the energetic barbarism of the northern peoples and the lofty thought of Christianity, a temple was formed modern civilization? Obeying our evil fate, we turned to the pitiful Byzantium, deeply despised by these peoples, for the moral charter that was to form the basis of our education. By the will of one ambitious man, this family of peoples has just been torn away from the universal brotherhood, and we have, therefore, accepted an idea distorted by human passion. In Europe at that time everything was animated by the life-giving principle of unity. Everything came from him and everything came down to him. The whole mental movement of that era was aimed at unifying human thinking; all impulses were rooted in that powerful need to find a universal idea, which is the inspiring genius of the new time. Uninvolved in this miraculous beginning, we became victims of conquest. When did we overthrow the foreign yoke and only our isolation from joint family prevented us from taking advantage of the ideas that arose during this time among our Western brothers, we fell into even more cruel slavery, sanctified, moreover, by the fact of our liberation.

How many bright rays already illuminated Europe, seemingly shrouded in darkness! Most of the knowledge of which man is now proud has already been foreseen by individual minds; the character of society had already been determined, and, having joined the world of pagan antiquity, the Christian peoples acquired those forms of beauty that they still lacked. We became isolated in our religious isolation, and nothing that happened in Europe reached us. We had nothing to do with the great world work. High quality, which religion brought as a gift to new peoples and which, in the eyes of common sense, elevate them as much above the ancient peoples as the latter stood above the Hottentots and Laplanders; these new powers with which she has enriched the human mind; these morals, which, as a result of submission to unarmed power, became as soft as they were previously rude - all this has completely passed us by. While the Christian world marched majestically along the path destined by its divine founder, drawing generations with us, we, although we bore the name of Christians, did not move. The whole world was being rebuilt anew, but nothing was being created here; we still vegetated, huddled in our huts made of logs and straw. In a word, new destinies of the human race took place besides us. Although we were called Christians, the fruit of Christianity did not ripen for us.

I ask you, is it not naive to assume, as is usually done among us, that this progress of the European peoples, which took place so slowly and under the direct and obvious influence of a single moral force, we can assimilate immediately, without even taking the trouble to find out how it was carried out? ?

Anyone who does not see that it has a purely historical side, which is one of the most essential elements of dogma and which contains, one might say, the entire philosophy of Christianity, since it shows what it has given people and what it will give, does not understand Christianity at all. them in the future. From this point of view, the Christian religion is not only a moral system contained in the transitory forms of the human mind, but an eternal divine power, operating universally in the spiritual world, and whose manifest manifestation should serve as a constant lesson to us. This is precisely the true meaning of the dogma of faith in a single church, included in the symbol of faith. In the Christian world, everything must necessarily contribute - and indeed contributes - to the establishment of a perfect order on earth; otherwise, the word of the Lord that he would remain in his church until the end of the age would not have come true. Then the new order, the kingdom of God, which should be the fruit of redemption, would be no different from the old order, the kingdom of evil, which should be destroyed by redemption, and we would again be left only with that illusory dream of perfection that cherished by philosophers and which every page of history refutes - an empty game of the mind, capable of satisfying only the material needs of man and raising him to a certain height only to immediately cast him into even deeper abysses.

However, you say, aren’t we Christians? and isn’t another civilization conceivable other than European? – Without a doubt, we are Christians; But aren’t the Abyssinians also Christians? Of course, an education different from the European one is also possible; Isn’t Japan educated, and, according to one of our compatriots, even more so than Russia? But do you really think that the order of things that I just spoke about and which is the ultimate destiny of humanity can be realized by Abyssinian Christianity and Japanese culture? Do you really think that heaven will be brought to earth by these absurd deviations from divine and human truths?

In Christianity we must distinguish two completely different things: its effect on the individual and its influence on the general mind. Both naturally merge in the higher mind and inevitably lead to the same goal. But the period in which the eternal plans of divine wisdom are realized cannot be grasped by our limited view. And therefore we must distinguish the divine action that manifests itself at any specific time in human life from that which takes place in infinity. On the day when the work of redemption is finally completed, all hearts and minds will merge into one feeling, into one thought, and then all the walls separating peoples and confessions will fall. But now it is important for everyone to know what place is assigned to him in the general vocation of Christians, that is, what means he can find in himself and around him in order to contribute to the achievement of the goal set for all humanity.

Hence, a special circle of ideas necessarily arises, in which the minds of the society revolve, where this goal should be realized, that is, where the idea that God revealed to people should mature and reach its fullness. This circle of ideas, this moral sphere, in turn, naturally determine a certain way of life and a certain worldview, which, while not being identical for everyone, nevertheless create for us, as for all non-European peoples, the same way of life, which is the fruit that enormous 18-century spiritual work in which all the passions, all the interests, all the suffering, all the dreams, all the efforts of the mind participated.

All European peoples moved forward through the centuries hand in hand; and no matter how hard they now try to go their separate ways, they constantly converge on the same path. To be convinced of how related the development of these peoples is, there is no need to study history; read only Tassa, and you will see them all prostrate at the foot of the Jerusalem walls. Remember that for fifteen centuries they had one language for addressing God, one spiritual authority and one belief. Think that for fifteen centuries, every year on the same day, at the same hour, they raised their voices in the same words to the supreme being, glorifying him for the greatest of his benefits. A wondrous consonance, a thousand times more majestic than all the harmonies of the physical world! So, if this sphere in which Europeans live and in which alone the human race can fulfill its final destiny, is the result of the influence of religion and if, on the other hand, the weakness of our faith or the imperfection of our dogmas has hitherto kept us aloof from it general movement, where the social idea of Christianity was developed and formulated, and relegated us to the host of peoples who are destined only indirectly and late to benefit from all the fruits of Christianity, it is clear that we must first of all revive our faith in all possible ways and give ourselves a truly Christian impulse, since in the West everything was created by Christianity. This is what I meant when I said that we must repeat on ourselves from the beginning the entire education of the human race.

The entire history of modern society is based on opinions; thus, it represents real education. Established from the beginning on this basis, society moved forward only by the power of thought. Interests always followed ideas there, and did not precede them; convictions never arose there from interests, but interests were always born from convictions. All political revolutions there were, in essence, spiritual revolutions: people sought the truth and along the way found freedom and prosperity. This explains the character modern society and its civilization; otherwise it would be completely impossible to understand him.

Religious persecution, martyrdom for the faith, preaching of Christianity, heresies, councils - these are the events that filled the first centuries. The entire movement of this era, not excluding the invasion of the barbarians, is connected with these first, infant efforts of new thinking. The next era is occupied by the formation of a hierarchy, the centralization of spiritual power and the continuous spread of Christianity among the northern peoples. What follows is the highest rise of religious feeling and the consolidation of religious power. The philosophical and literary development of the mind and the improvement of morals under the power of religion complete this history of new peoples, which can just as rightly be called sacred as the history of the ancient chosen people. Finally, a new religious turn, a new scope imparted by religion to the human spirit, determined the current structure of society. Thus, the main and, one might say, the only interest of new peoples has always been in the idea. All positive, material, personal interests were absorbed by her.

I know - instead of admiring this wondrous impulse human nature to the perfection possible for her, they saw in him only fanaticism and superstition; but no matter what they say about it, judge for yourself what a deep mark such a social development, which flowed entirely from one feeling, indifferently to good and evil, should have left in the character of these peoples. Let superficial philosophy cry as much as it wants about religious wars and bonfires lit by intolerance - we can only envy the share of peoples who have created for themselves, in the struggle of opinions, in bloody battles for the cause of truth, a whole world of ideas that we cannot even imagine , not to mention being transported into it body and soul, as we dream about it.

I say again: of course, not everything in European countries is imbued with reason, virtue and religion - far from it. But everything in them mysteriously obeys the force that has reigned imperiously there for so many centuries; everything is generated by that long sequence of facts and ideas that determined current state society. Here is one example that proves this. The people whose physiognomy is most sharply expressed and whose institutions are most imbued with the spirit of the new time, the English, strictly speaking, have no history other than religious. Their last revolution, to which they owe their freedom and their prosperity, as well as the whole series of events leading to this revolution, beginning with the era of Henry VIII, is nothing more than a phase of religious development. Throughout the entire era, strictly political interest is only a secondary motive force and at times disappears completely or is sacrificed to the idea. And at the moment when I write these lines, the same religious interest is agitating this chosen country. And in general, which of the European peoples would not find in their national consciousness, if they took the trouble to understand it, that special element which, in the form of religious thought, was invariably the life-giving principle, the soul of its social body, throughout the entire duration of its existence?

The effect of Christianity is by no means limited to its direct and immediate influence on the human spirit. The enormous task that it is called upon to fulfill can only be accomplished through countless moral, mental and social combinations, where the unconditional victory of the human spirit must find full scope. From here it is clear that everything that has happened since the first day of our era, or rather, from the moment when the savior said to his disciples: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, - including all attacks on Christianity - is completely covered by this general idea of \u200b\u200bhis influence. One has only to pay attention to how the authority of Christ is immutably exercised in all hearts, whether consciously or unconsciously, by free will or compulsion, to be convinced of the fulfillment of his prophecies. Therefore, despite all the incompleteness, imperfection and depravity inherent in the European world in its modern form, it cannot be denied that the kingdom of God is to a certain extent realized in it, for it contains within itself the beginning of endless development and possesses in germs and elements everything that is necessary for its final establishment on earth.

Before finishing these reflections on the role played by religion in the history of society, I want to cite here what I once said about this in an essay unknown to you.

Undoubtedly, I wrote, that until we learn to recognize the action of Christianity everywhere where human thought in any way comes into contact with it, at least with the goal of opposing it, we do not have a clear concept of it. As soon as the name of Christ is uttered, this name alone captivates people, no matter what they do. Nothing reveals so clearly the divine origin of the Christian religion as this unconditional universality of it, which is reflected in the fact that it penetrates souls in all possible ways, takes possession of the mind without its knowledge, and even in those cases when it seems to prefer it most. resists, subjugates it and dominates it, bringing into consciousness truths that were not there before, awakening sensations in the hearts that were hitherto alien to them, and instilling in us feelings that, without our knowledge, introduce us into the general order. This is how she defines the role of each individual in general work and makes everything contribute to one goal. With this understanding of Christianity, every prophecy of Christ takes on the character of tangible truth. Then you begin to clearly discern the movement of all the levers that his almighty right hand sets in motion in order to lead a person to his final goal, without encroaching on his freedom, without killing any of his natural abilities, but, on the contrary, tenfolding their strength and bringing them to immeasurable tension that share of power that is inherent in himself. Then you see that not a single moral element remains inactive in the new system, that the most energetic efforts of the mind, like a hot impulse of feeling, the heroism of a strong spirit, like the obedience of a meek soul - everything finds a place and application in it. Accessible to every rational being, combined with every beat of our heart, no matter what it beats about, the Christian idea carries everything along with it, and the very obstacles it encounters help it grow and strengthen. With genius she rises to a height inaccessible to other people; with a timid spirit she moves gropingly and walks forward with measured steps; in the contemplative mind it is unconditional and deep; in the soul, subject to the imagination, it is airy and rich in images; in a tender and loving heart it resolves into mercy and love; - and every consciousness surrendered to her, she imperiously leads forward, filling it with heat, clarity and strength. See how diverse the characters are, how multiple the forces it sets in motion, what dissimilar elements serve the same purpose, how many different hearts beat for one idea! But even more surprising is the influence of Christianity on society as a whole. Completely develop the picture of the evolution of the new society, and you will see how Christianity transforms all the interests of people into its own, replacing material needs everywhere with moral needs and arousing in the field of thought those great disputes that no time, no society, those terrible clashes of opinions, when the whole life of peoples turned into one great idea, one boundless feeling; you will see how everything becomes him, and only him, - private and public life, family and homeland, science and poetry, reason and imagination, memories and hopes, joys and sorrows. Happy are those who carry in their hearts a clear consciousness of the part they are creating in this great movement, which God himself communicated to the world. But not everyone is an active instrument, not everyone works consciously; the necessary masses move blindly, not knowing the forces that set them in motion, and not seeing the goal towards which they are drawn - soulless atoms, inert masses.

But it's time to return to you, madam. I confess that it is difficult for me to tear myself away from these broad perspectives. In the picture that opens to my eyes from this height is all my consolation, and the sweet faith in the future happiness of mankind alone serves as my refuge when, depressed by the pitiful reality that surrounds me, I feel the need to breathe cleaner air, look at a clearer sky . However, I don't think I misused your time. I needed to show you the point of view from which we should look at Christendom and our role in it. What I said about our country must have seemed full of bitterness to you; Meanwhile, I expressed only one truth, and not even the whole one. Moreover, the Christian consciousness does not tolerate any blindness, and national prejudice is the worst type of it, since it most of all divides people.

My letter has gotten long and I think we both need a rest. Starting it, I believed that I would be able to express in a few words what I wanted to tell you; but, thinking deeper, I see that a whole volume could be written about this. Is this after your heart? I will be waiting for your answer. But, in any case, you cannot avoid another letter from me, because we have barely begun to consider our topic. In the meantime, I would be extremely grateful to you if you would deign, by the length of this first letter, to excuse the fact that I have made you wait so long for it. I sat down to write to you the same day I received your letter; but sad and painful worries then completely consumed me, and I had to get rid of them before starting a conversation with you about such important subjects; then it was necessary to rewrite my scribbling, which was completely illegible. This time you won’t have to wait long: tomorrow I’ll take up my pen again.

Petr Chaadaev

Philosophical letters

Letter one

Thy kingdom come

Madam,

As regards external conditions, be content for the present with the knowledge that a doctrine based on the supreme principle unity and the direct transmission of the truth in an unbroken line of its ministers, of course, is most consistent with the true spirit of religion; for it comes down entirely to the idea of merging all the moral forces existing in the world into one thought, into one feeling and to the gradual establishment of such a social system or churches, which should establish the kingdom of truth among people. Any other teaching, by the very fact of its falling away from the original doctrine, rejects in advance the effect of the high covenant of the Savior: Holy Father, keep them so that they may be one, as we are and does not strive to establish the kingdom of God on earth. It does not follow from this, however, that you are obliged to confess this truth in the face of the world: this, of course, is not your calling. On the contrary, the very principle from which this truth proceeds obliges you, in view of your position in society, to recognize in it only the inner light of your faith, and nothing more. I am happy that I have contributed to turning your thoughts towards religion; but I would be very unhappy if at the same time I plunged your conscience into confusion, which over time would inevitably cool your faith.

I think I told you once that the best way to preserve religious feeling is to observe all the rituals prescribed by the church. This exercise of submission, which contains more than is usually thought, and which the greatest minds have imposed upon themselves consciously and deliberately, is the real service of God. Nothing strengthens the spirit in its beliefs so much as the strict fulfillment of all the duties related to them. Moreover, most of the rituals of the Christian religion, inspired by higher reason, have real life-giving power for anyone who knows how to penetrate the truths contained in them. There is only one exception to this rule, which is generally unconditional - namely, when a person feels in himself beliefs of a higher order compared to those professed by the masses - beliefs that elevate the spirit to the very source of all certainty and at the same time do not in the least contradict folk beliefs, but, on the contrary, reinforcing them; then, and only then, is it permissible to neglect external rituals in order to freely devote ourselves to more important labors. But woe to him who would mistake the illusions of his vanity or the delusions of his mind for the highest enlightenment, which supposedly frees him from the general law! But you, madam, what better thing can you do than to put on the robe of humility, which is so becoming to your sex? Believe me, this will most likely pacify your troubled spirit and shed quiet joy into your existence.

First philosophical writing Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev was published in 1829 in the Telescope magazine. Nowadays, texts with similar ideas a third of skeptical Facebook was clogged, but then such a look at one’s homeland had the effect of a bomb exploding. The government declared Chaadaev crazy and put him under arrest. House arrest. And society reacted with the emergence of two new trends in social thought - Westernism (based on the ideas of Chaadaev) and Slavophilism. The answer of A.S. is known. Pushkin to a letter in which he convincingly disagrees with Chaadaev’s opinion about Russia and its place in the world.

The most striking quotes from the first philosophical letter:

“One of the most deplorable features of our peculiar civilization is that we are still discovering truths that have become hackneyed in other countries and even among peoples much more backward than us. The fact is that we have never walked together with other peoples, we do not belong to any of the known families of the human race, neither to the West nor to the East, and we have no traditions of either one. We stand, as it were, outside of time; the universal education of the human race has not extended to us.”

II.

“We, on the contrary, had nothing like that. First wild barbarism, then crude superstition, then foreign dominion, cruel and humiliating, the spirit of which the national government subsequently inherited - this is the sad story of our youth. The times of overflowing activity, the seething play of the moral forces of the people - we had nothing like that. The era of our social life corresponding to this age was filled with a dull and gloomy existence without strength, without energy, animated only by atrocities and softened only by slavery. No enchanting memories, no captivating images in the memory, no effective instructions in the national tradition. Look around all the centuries we have lived, all the spaces we have occupied, and you will not find a single arresting memory, not a single venerable monument that would speak powerfully about the past and paint it vividly and picturesquely. We live only in the most limited present without a past and without a future, in the midst of flat stagnation.”

III.

“Our first years, which passed in motionless savagery, did not leave any trace in our minds and there is nothing personally inherent in us on which our thought could rely; isolated by the strange will of fate from the general movement of mankind, we did not accept the traditional ideas of the human race. And yet it is on them that the life of peoples is based; It is from these ideas that their future flows and their moral development occurs. If we want to have our own identity, like other civilized peoples, it is necessary to somehow repeat in ourselves the entire education of the human race. For this we have the history of peoples and before us the results of the movement of centuries.”

IV.

“We, having been born as illegitimate children, without an inheritance, without connection with people, our predecessors on earth, do not keep in our hearts any of the teachings left before our appearance. It is necessary that each of us himself tries to tie up the broken thread of kinship. What other nations have is simply a habit, an instinct, we have to hammer into our heads with a hammer blow. Our memories go no further than yesterday; We are, as it were, strangers to ourselves. We move through time so amazingly that, as we move forward, what we have experienced disappears for us irrevocably. This is a natural consequence of a culture that is entirely borrowed and imitative. We have no internal development, no natural progress at all; old ideas are swept away by new ones, because the latter do not come from the former, but appear to us from nowhere. We perceive only completely ready-made ideas, therefore those indelible traces that are deposited in the minds by the consistent development of thought and create mental strength do not furrow our consciousnesses. We grow, but do not mature, we move forward along a curve, i.e. along a line that does not lead to the goal. We are like those children who were not forced to reason for themselves, so that when they grow up, there is nothing special about them; all their knowledge is superficial, their whole soul is outside of them. So are we.”

“Peoples are moral beings, just like individuals. They are raised by centuries, just as people are raised by years. It can be said about us that we constitute, as it were, an exception among nations. We belong to those of them who, as it were, are not included integral part into the human race, but exist only to teach a great lesson to the world. Of course, the instruction that we are destined to be given will not pass without a trace, but who knows the day when we will again find ourselves among humanity and how many troubles we will experience before the completion of our destinies?

VI.

“The syllogism of the West is unfamiliar to us. In our best heads there is something even worse than lightness. The best ideas, devoid of connection and consistency, like fruitless delusions, become paralyzed in our brain. It is the nature of man to become lost when he does not find a way to connect with what came before him and what will come after him; he then loses all firmness, all confidence; not guided by a sense of continuous duration, he feels lost in the world. Such confused creatures are found in all countries; We have this common property. This is not at all the frivolity for which the French were once reproached and which, however, was nothing more than the easy way to comprehend things, which did not exclude either depth or breadth of mind, brought so much charm and charm to circulation; here is the carelessness of life without experience and foresight, which has nothing to do with anything other than the ghostly existence of an individual, cut off from his environment, not taking into account either honor, or the success of any set of ideas and interests, or even the ancestral heritage of a given family and with all the prescriptions and perspectives that determine both public and private life in a system based on the memory of the past and anxiety for the future. In our heads there is absolutely nothing in common, everything there is isolated and everything there is shaky and incomplete. I even find that in our view there is something strangely vague, cold, uncertain, reminiscent of the difference between peoples standing on the lowest rungs of the social ladder. In foreign lands, especially in the South, where people are so animated and expressive, I have so many times compared the faces of my fellow countrymen with the faces of local residents and been amazed at the muteness of our faces.”

VII.

“Foreigners credited us with a kind of careless courage, especially remarkable in the lower classes of the people; but having the opportunity to observe only individual features folk character, they could not judge him as a whole. They did not notice that the very beginning that sometimes makes us so courageous constantly deprives us of depth and persistence; They did not notice that the property that makes us so indifferent to the vicissitudes of life also causes in us indifference to good and evil, to all truth, to all lies, and that it is precisely this that deprives us of those strong impulses that guide us on the path to improvement; They did not notice that precisely because of such lazy courage, even the highest classes, sadly, are not free from vices that in others are characteristic only of the lowest classes; They, finally, did not notice that if we have some of the advantages of young peoples who are lagging behind civilization, then we do not have any that distinguishes mature and highly cultured peoples. I, of course, do not claim that among us there are only vices, and among the peoples of Europe there are only virtues, God forbid. But I say that in order to judge peoples it is necessary to examine the common spirit that constitutes their essence, for only this common spirit is capable of elevating them to a more perfect moral state and directing them to endless development, and not this or that trait of their character.”

VIII.

“Meanwhile, spread out between two great divisions of the world, between East and West, leaning with one elbow on China, the other on Germany, we should have combined two great principles of spiritual nature - imagination and reason, and united history in our civilization the entire globe. This is not the role that Providence has given us. On the contrary, it seemed that it was not at all concerned with our fate. Denying us its beneficial influence on the human mind, it left us entirely to ourselves, did not want to interfere in our affairs in any way, did not want to teach us anything. The experience of time does not exist for us. Centuries and generations have passed fruitlessly for us. Looking at us, we can say that in relation to us the universal law of humanity has been reduced to nothing. Alone in the world, we gave nothing to the world, took nothing from the world, we did not contribute a single thought to the mass of human ideas, we did not contribute in any way to the forward movement of the human mind, and we distorted everything that we got from this movement . From the very first moments of our social existence, nothing suitable for the common good of people has come from us, not a single useful thought has sprouted in the barren soil of our homeland, not a single great truth has been brought forward from our midst; We did not give ourselves the trouble to create anything in the realm of imagination, and from what was created by the imagination of others, we borrowed only deceptive appearances and useless luxury.”

IX.

“We have something in our blood that rejects all real progress. In a word, we lived and are still living in order to teach some great lesson to distant descendants who will understand it; for now, no matter what they say, we constitute a gap in the intellectual order.”

“At a time when, amidst the struggle between the powerful barbarism of the peoples of the North and the sublime thought of religion, the edifice of modern civilization was erected, what did we do? By the will of fate, we turned for moral teaching, which was supposed to educate us, to the corrupted Byzantium, to the object of deep contempt of these peoples. Just before that, this family was stolen from the universal brotherhood by one ambitious mind; and we perceived the idea in a form so distorted by human passion. In Europe at that time everything was animated by the life-giving principle of unity. Everything there came from him, everything converged to him. The entire mental movement of that time only sought to establish the unity of human thought, and any impulse came from the imperious need to find a world idea, this inspirer of new times. Alien to this miraculous principle, we became victims of conquest. And when, then, having freed ourselves from the foreign yoke, we could have taken advantage of the ideas that had blossomed during this time among our brothers in the West, we found ourselves torn away from the common family, we fell into slavery, even more severe, and, moreover, sanctified by the very fact of our liberation.”

XI.

“But aren’t we Christians, you say, and isn’t it possible to be civilized not according to the European model? Yes, we are without any doubt Christians, but aren’t the Abyssinians also Christians? And one can, of course, be civilized differently than in Europe; Isn’t Japan civilized, and even more so than Russia, according to one of our compatriots? But do you think that in the Christianity of the Abyssinians and in the civilization of the Japanese the order of things that I just spoke about and which constitutes the final destination of the human race has been realized? Do you really think that these absurd deviations from divine and human truths will bring heaven down to earth?”

XII.

“All the peoples of Europe, moving from century to century, walked hand in hand. Whatever they do now, each in their own way, they still constantly converge on the same path. To understand the family resemblance in the development of these peoples, you don’t even need to study history: just read Thassa and you will see all the peoples prostrate at the foot of the walls of Jerusalem. Remember that for fifteen centuries they had only one language when addressing God, only one moral authority, only one conviction; remember that for fifteen centuries in the same year, on the same day, at the same hour, in the same expressions, they raised their voices to the Supreme Being, glorifying him in the greatest of his benefits: a wondrous consonance, a thousand times more majestic than all the harmonies of the physical world. After this, it is clear that if the sphere in which Europeans live, and which alone can lead the human race to its final destination, is the result of the influence exerted on them by religion, and it is clear that if the weakness of our beliefs or the imperfection of our creed kept us out of this universal movement, in which the social idea of Christianity has developed and received definite expression, and we have been classed among the peoples who are destined to use the full influence of Christianity only indirectly and with great delay, then it is necessary to strive in every way to revive our beliefs and our truly Christian motivation, because Christianity accomplished everything there. So this is what I meant when I spoke about the need to begin the education of the human race again.”

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“Philosophical Letters” by P.Ya. Chaadaeva. Contents and conclusions of the first philosophical letter.

In the period 1828-1831. P.Ya. Chaadaev creates his most important work - “Philosophical Letters” in French. “It was previously assumed that the letters were written to a certain Mrs. Panova, but now it has been proven that she was not the addressee at all. Chaadaev simply chose the epistolary form to present his views, which was quite common then.”(Zenkovsky V.V. “History of Russian Philosophy”). Thanks to the choice of the epistolary genre, Chaadaev’s theory takes on the appearance of a fiery appeal to the interlocutor; his letters are direct and emotional.

« Philosophical Letters" is one of the first Russian original philosophical and historical treatises. The work was truly innovative. The “letters” analyze philosophical and historical problems, problems of the development of Russian society. A whole series of historical patterns are revealed, which are compared with Russian reality and are subjected to sharp criticism.

P.Ya. Chaadaev considers the place of Russia in relation to the general historical process. According to him, each nation has its own mission and is called upon to realize the divine plan. But in Russia, according to Chaadaev, there was no period of great achievements. The entire history of Russia is one of continuous stagnation. “When talking about Russia, people constantly imagine that they are talking about a state like others; in fact this is not the case at all. Russia is a whole special world, submissive to the will, arbitrariness, and fantasy of one person. Whether he is called Peter or Ivan is not the point: in all cases equally, he is the personification of arbitrariness.” Thus, we come to Chaadaev’s key characteristic of a special world called Russia - this is a world that is the personification of the arbitrariness of an individual person. It is not firm and objective rules, laws and norms of life, emanating from a source external and independent in relation to the life and consciousness of an individual person, that determine the existence of an entire state, but the arbitrariness or self-will of this individual person.

We can say that the Russian person’s consciousness skills have never been developed to the point of automatism by Christian education, and in this sense, he is each time in a state of “movement”, in which there are no rules and certainty of the sphere of activity,” but this also means the universality of the situation of arbitrariness and self-will. This is what Chaadaev means when he writes that Russia was not included in the scope of the worldwide process of educating the human race with Christianity, and that until now it has been left to its own devices: “ We belong neither to the West nor to the East, and we have no traditions of either. Standing as if outside of time, we were not affected by the worldwide education of the human race.”.

In Russia, conditions have developed that are impossible for a person to live a normal life. Chaadaev derives a joyless existence devoid of human meaning in which there is no place for personality from the no less legal past of the Russian people, which has long been transformed into a morally numb organism. All societies have experienced turbulent eras of transition from youth to maturity, and only in Russia nothing changes: “We grow, but do not mature, we move forward, but along a crooked line; that is, one that does not lead to the goal". And in the past, Chaadaev does not deny such a movement, however, it occurred almost blindly and mainly in one dimension - in the growth of slavery. At first Russia was in a state of wild barbarism, then deep ignorance, then ferocious and humiliating foreign rule, the despotic spirit of which was inherited by later authorities. Having freed themselves from the Tatar yoke, the Russians fell into a new slavery - serfdom. Russian history “was filled with a dull and gloomy existence, devoid of strength and energy, which revived nothing except atrocities, nothing absorbed except slavery”.

For Chaadaev himself, Russia’s special position in the world is not a good thing, but a great tragedy. In the “First Philosophical Letter” he bitterly states: “We live alone in the present within its narrowest confines, without past and future... We also have not accepted anything from the successive ideas of the human race... We have absolutely no internal development, natural progress...” According to Chaadaev, Russia has given nothing to the world, world culture, and has contributed nothing to the historical experience of mankind. In other words, Russia fell away from the unified body of world history and even, as he writes, “got lost on earth.” Finally, Chaadaev argues that Russia constitutes "gap in the moral world order".

The author cannot understand the reasons for this situation. He sees in this a riddle, a mystery, the guilt of “inscrutable fate.” Moreover, Chaadaev suddenly claims that Divine Providence itself “ was not concerned about our fate": “Having excluded us from its beneficial effect on the human mind, it (Providence) left us entirely to ourselves, refused to interfere in any way in our affairs, and did not want to teach us anything.” .

But not only “rock”, the Russian people themselves are to blame for their own situation. And an attempt to determine the reasons for such an unenviable fate for Russia leads Chaadaev to a rather sharp conclusion - he sees this reason in the fact that Russia has adopted Orthodoxy: “Obeying our evil fate, we turned to... Byzantium for the moral code that was to form the basis of our education.”. However, it should be noted here that Chaadaev’s condemnation of Orthodoxy is of a theoretical nature; he himself remained a parishioner of the Orthodox Church all his life.
The thesis that Divine Providence “excluded” Russia from its “beneficent action” was flawed. Recognition of the truth of this thesis meant that the action of Providence is not universal in nature, therefore, it infringed on the concept of the Lord as an all-encompassing force. Therefore, already in the “First Philosophical Letter” Chaadaev seeks to continue his reasoning. Therefore he says: “We belong to those nations that, as it were, are not part of humanity, but exist only to give the world some important lesson... And in general, we lived and continue to live only in order to serve some-an important lesson for distant generations.” So, from denying at least some participation of Providence in the fate of Russia, Chaadaev gradually comes to the conclusion about the special plan of Providence for Russia, about the great fate of Russia, which is intended for it by God Himself.

In his first philosophical letter, Chaadaev constantly emphasizes the importance of the spiritual life of people. It is mental progress, progress in education, in mastering advanced ideas, and introducing them into life, that Chaadaev primarily cares about when considering the future of Russia. He notes: “We do not have the development of our own, original, logical improvement. Old ideas are destroyed by new ones, because the latter do not exclude the former, but fall to us from God knows where, our minds are not furrowed with indelible traces of the consistent movement of ideas that constitute their strength, because we borrow ideas that are already developed. We guess, and do not study, we appropriate someone else’s invention with extreme dexterity, we do not invent ourselves.”. Chaadaev was always inclined to the position of the Western path of development of Russia, but already in his first philosophical letter he decisively opposed blind, bad, superficial imitation of foreigners.

P.Ya. Chaadaev puts forward the idea that Russia could be pulled out of its current position and connected to the process of educating the human race through “the revival in all the ways of our beliefs of our truly Christian impulse”. Considering that he connects the process of educating the human race with the development "social idea of Christianity", then this thought can be interpreted as a call to Orthodox Church nevertheless, following the example of the Western church, it took upon itself the role of an organizing principle in the types of social development of society. Which should lead, finally, to the introduction into the life and way of life of Russian society of relevant ideas, traditions and institutions similar to European ones, and to the formalization of the thinking of Russian people, replacing his arbitrariness and self-will with those “skills of consciousness that give comfort to the mind and soul, ease, measured movement”.

At the same time, this call for a change in the role of the Orthodox Church in the life of Russian society now coexists in the Philosophical Letters with another consideration - that, apparently, the current state of Russia - "not to be part of humanity"- still has some definite and reasonable meaning, which is only incomprehensible for now, but will become clear to “distant descendants.” But in this case, the future of Russia should not be connected with its withdrawal from this state, but rather with the preservation and consideration of its current state.

This letter was published in 1836 in the journal Telescope. As Chernyshevsky points out, the letter got into print almost by accident. Stankevich read the “Letters” and managed to interest Belinsky, then the editor-in-chief of Telescope, in them. Society was shocked by the letter. “It was a shot that rang out in the dark night; whether something was sinking and announcing its death, whether it was a signal, a call for help, news of the morning or that it would not come - it didn’t matter, you had to wake up.”(A.I. Herzen “The Past and Thoughts”). There was incredible excitement and loud discussions among all thinking circles of society. The letter caused sharp discontent among the authorities, due to the indignation expressed in it about the spiritual stagnation that impedes the fulfillment of the historical mission destined from above. The Telescope magazine, for this publication, was closed, the censor was fired, and Chaadaev, by order of the tsar, was declared crazy.

To summarize, it must be said that the appearance of the “First Philosophical Letter” and the controversy surrounding it had great importance for the development of Russian social thought. It contributed to the beginning of the ideological and organizational formation of Slavophilism and Westernism, two trends that determined the development of Russian philosophical thought in the first half of the 19th century.

Subsequent letters were devoted to general philosophical problems. The second is the need to arrange life in accordance with spiritual aspirations. Third, it affirms the idea that complete deprivation of freedom is the highest level of human perfection. Fourth, it proves that numbers and measures are finite, therefore the Creator cannot be understood by the human mind. In the fifth philosophical letter, the author seems to sum up the consideration of the unity of the spiritual and material order of being. The sixth and seventh philosophical letters deal with the movement and direction of the historical process. In the eighth and last philosophical letter, partly of a methodological nature, the author concludes: “The truth is one: the kingdom of God, heaven on earth, all the promises of the Gospel - all this is nothing more than the insight and implementation of the connections of all the thoughts of humanity in a single thought; and this single thought is the thought of God himself, in other words, the realized moral law.” But these letters were not published.

The first “Philosophical Letter” remained the only work of P.Ya. published during his lifetime. Chaadaeva. The rest of the philosopher's works became available to a wide range of readers only many years after the author's death.

Description of work

“Philosophical Letters” is one of the first Russian original philosophical and historical treatises. The work was truly innovative. The “letters” analyze philosophical and historical problems, problems of the development of Russian society. A whole series of historical patterns are revealed, which are compared with Russian reality and are subjected to sharp criticism.

I met a determined opponent. At the height of the general intoxication with feelings of patriotism and national pride, he acted in the thankless role of an irreconcilable skeptic. Chaadaev, a friend of the young Pushkin, was a very educated man for his time, with a philosophical mindset. In his youth he was a hussar, took part in the War of 1812, visited abroad and returned from there with a stock of ideas and interests. In the era of Alexander I, he was a liberal theorist who raised his beliefs in the quiet of his office on books. Chaadaev was interested in philosophy, history and religion. He remained alien to practical activities. Locked into one's own inner world a utopian politician, he remained aloof from the mood of Nicholas Russia and unexpectedly appeared before the Russian public with those ideals of political “cosmopolitanism” that were so characteristic of the previous, Alexander era. That is why now Chaadaev turned out to be a completely lonely figure. Apparently, not understanding the mood of modern society and not understood by anyone, far from all social groups, he did not find support from anyone.

Chaadaev’s first “Philosophical Letter” appeared in the Telescope magazine in 1836. There were supposed to be 5-6 of all letters, but not all of them could be printed, and most of them remained in manuscript. In the first letter, he talks about the need for religion as the main cultural factor.

P. Chaadaev and his Philosophical Letter

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