As far as the conservative Russian philosopher, Konstantin Leontev, was concerned, a one-hundred year old tree is worth more than twenty faceless, scurrying, modern men. As for neoteric man’s Machine Age, more and faster movement does not mean more life: "The machine runs but the living tree stands firm." With the exception of the new machine gun, Leontev had a visceral aversion for the latest technology. Neither was he fond of the older, "passive technology" - the telegraph and railroads.
Leontev was widely read but hardly heeded during his lifetime. After his death nearly a century ago, he received scant attention until the fall of the Soviet Union. His writings presently enjoy a revival among intellectuals interested in the direction of Russia's post-Communist development during the globalization process and in the Conservative Christian response to material progress. Leontev was one of the first Russians to scorn the supposedly enlightened progress of European liberal democracy, and to propose that Russians have a duty to resist its poisonous spread instead of embracing it. Since the eruption of the French Revolution, Europe had been wasting away under cover of the suicidal rationalizations of Kant and the Utilitarians. Progressive thinkers were praising the mediocre man, who was going nowhere, instead of emulating outstanding heroes and prophets. Europeans were running themselves ragged and making themselves sick. Suffering from a pervasive malaise, they were burying the flowers of their dying civilization in museums along with artifacts they had imported from exotic lands.
Leontev, a devout Orthodox Christian, believed in a grand future for Russia - which he felt was in an earlier stage of development than the rest of the world - provided it could be "frozen" into a sort of state of suspended animation to protect it from the leveling effect of democracy and technological modernization. He thought the average Nineteenth-century European was an instrument of global destruction, and he was not sorry to say so in The Average European as the Ideal and Instrument of Universal Destruction (1884) While his Slavophile contemporaries extolled their alternative, extolling the native virtues of Slavdom, Leontev, who was not a racist, expounded his doctrine of byzantinism - the merger of Caesarism and Christiandom. Although the Byzantine Empire has never been a popular historical subject, Leontev held it in high regard because it combined Roman imperialism with the spiritualism of the Orthodox Christian Church - the East had become the province of the Orthodox Church following the great schism with Rome. Under this synthesis of church and state, the emperor was both political caesar and spiritual pope of Holy Russia, the "Third Roman Empire." The Orthodox Church is then Christianity without heresy and protests. It is a true Christianity, disillusioned of the utopian ideals of earthly happiness, purity, and universal well-being. It is the very antithesis of the heretical or atheistic humanist doctrines of equality, freedom, perfection and happiness for everyone. It is a Christianity that opens its door to all, but knows fully well that everybody will not come in; therefore it is a Christianity of exclusiveness, for those who do not enter in shall be damned not be saved. Furthermore, Leontev's byzantinism asserts the virtues of centralism in state and church, and affirms the primacy of state and church over individual rights. Thus Leontev's byzantinism fiercely opposes liberalism.
Indeed, our conservative Russian philosopher believed that liberalism was a leveling plague. Arising from German feudalism, the liberal plague is destined to reduce civilization to a corrupt corpse decaying into its constituent particles. Mankind's history follows the course of an individual human: from birth, through life, to death and rotting decadence; that is, the history of mankind is a triunal, biological development: from "primeval simplicity" to "complex flowering" to "resimplification."
Leontev was a romantic pessimist. He wrote with a flair, fondly portraying the diverse expressions of human nature that were, alas, being leveled to the flat mundane plane of banal, bourgeois mediocrity. Nothing disgusted him more than to walk down a street and be confronted by the drab architectural similarity of its buildings and the repulsively uniform attire of the town's inhabitants. He was an aesthete whose appreciation of the universe depended on sensibility and the love of beauty. His idea of beauty implied a diversity of sensation under the "despotism" of its unity, its organic "Idea." Furthermore, his artistic penchant for organic diversity favored ethnic diversity and multiculturalism. He embraced almost everything the decadent Nineteenth century opposed: He defended class strife, passion, prejudice, superstition, and fanaticism.
The struggle for beauty is not simply something an artist does. It is the objective process of evolution culminating with beauty, where the "highest degree of complexity (is) held together by a certain inner and despotic cohesiveness", Leontev declared. "The fundamental law of the Beautiful is...diversity in unity." When the "complex flowering" outgrows itself, the organism, including the organization of humanity, declines and dies. We are not surprised to hear that Leontev, trained in medicine at Moscow University, served as an army doctor in the Crimean War, where he acquired a somewhat morbid interest in the putrefaction of corpses.
Now our conservative philosopher’s ascetic religious inclination conflicted with his exalted aesthetics of flowering complexity. At first Leontev loved the beauty of the pomp and circumstance of the Church with its icons and elaborate services, but he eventually tended towards the complete renunciation of things. Shortly before his death in 1891, he took the ascetic vows, but his conversion actually took place twenty years prior, in 1871. He had entered a Greek Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos, following a "religious crisis". His wife was mentally and physically ill at the time, and his mother had died far away, calling his name. He came down with cholera, and as He was resting on his sofa, his eyes fell upon the icon of Virgin Mary. He suddenly believed in the "existence and the might of the Mother of God" as a genuine and real person. He begged Madonna for his life, saying he was not ready to die, for he had great works to do, then he confessed his sins. Thus Mary became his new mother, replacing the one who had died. Some time later he repeated the old French adage "Cherchez la femme!", saying one must seek the woman during every serious crisis in life.
Leontev used the phrase "transcendental egoism" to identify his religious doctrine, meaning that religion is not a collective enterprise but an intimate personal undertaking, a personal relation between the believer and God. Notwithstanding his opposition to political individualism, he held fast to egoism in art and religion. What mattered to him, first of all, was his personal salvation. First things first: he asked his servant, "How can one save anyone else not having been saved himself?" Of course his emphasis on personal salvation is traditional: the early Christians were not interested in fighting for Rome or for the public welfare - they cared not for this world, but for the next and the saved person in it. In fact, Leontev thought "pink" Christianity and its efforts to bring social peace and heaven to Earth were absurd. In his view, peace and heaven on Earth is an oxymoron, an impossible antinomy; if it could exist it would be the end of Christianity if not of all religions. "From the Christian standpoint it can be said, the reign of perpetual peace, prosperity, concord and general security, all that democratic progress has so unsuccessfully espoused, would be the greatest imaginable calamity in the Christian sense....", he said. In other words, in order to exist, God needs Satan; society is satanic; salvation Christianity is in this sense anti-social.
Leontev's faith in God was rooted in fear. He averred that fear is the very essence of faith. "One must reach the point of really fearing God with an almost animal fear....The holy father and teachers of the Church have emphasized that the beginning of wisdom... is the fear of God... Love without fear and humility is one of the manifestations... of that individualism and that adoration of the rights of dignity of man... which destroyed faith in anything transcendental...." A true believer is one who, being truly scared to death, surrenders his mind to God. First there must be that fear. Only then can true love exist. But such fear is unfortunately rejected by liberals and pink Christians. Life on earth is vain and the only thing certain is that all things will end. Only God is permanent. Truth is not found or realized in vainly hoping for happiness, or in rights and liberties. Hope and belief in worldly life contradicts Christ's teachings. Only by recognizing what a hell on Earth this life is can a person be reconciled with his or her life and the power of others over it. According Leontev’s version of Christianity, the further we "progress", the worse off we are.
Ironically, many people, particularly the so-called existentialists, have found a great deal of joy in realizing that life on Earth is meaningless, futile, hopeless. While some people are depressed with inklings of this truth, others find great comfort in acknowledging the futility of life, in wholeheartedly tossing their vain hopes for the future into the trash can. Still we might retain our animal faith, and, like Leontev, enjoy life's aesthetic detours along the highway of transcendental egoism.
Of course we may sympathize with Leontev's views while disagreeing with them. In fact, a person often disagrees secretly, in his heart, with his own philosophy. A man’s philosophy, the Wisdom he loves for its abstract consolation, might be a poor substitute for his sainted mother or wife or the Virgin Mary. Indeed, his actions, based on feelings, might give the lie to his thoughts. This leads us to ask, “What sort of man was Konstantin Leontev?”
We hear that he was a nice man. He loved his wife and he took care of her himself or made certain she was cared for when she fell ill. He had his good friends; he and his wife were the dearest of friends. He was kind to people. Although he did not believe in a great collective future for mankind, the records show that he was kind to the people he encountered during his life, and that he was well-liked in turn. Despite his poverty, he was a charitable man, and his charity was for the rich as well as the poor. According to his biographer, Stephen Lukashevich, Leontev's philosophy was the antithesis of his life. He advocated vigorous health - he was constantly ill. He preached virility - he was effeminate. He praised amorality and violence - he was meek, compassionate, and remorseful. He wanted to reform Russia with his writings - he was a failed writer. The eminent Russian philosopher of freedom, Nicolas Berdyaev, deemed Leontev important enough to write a book about him. Although Berdyaev takes Leontev to task for his weaknesses, the biography is written with obvious affection for the man and for his work. There is something likeable about the man, and his old-fashioned contradictions provide us with considerable insight into our own predicament.
Reference Quoted:
Stephan Lukashevich, KONSTANTIN LEONTEV (1831-1891): A Study in Russian Heroic Vitalism, New York: Pageant, 1967
Suggested Reading:
Nicolas Berdyaev, LEONTIEV, Maine: Academic International, 1968
AGAINST THE CURRENT (Selections from Leontev), New York: Weybright and Talley.
RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY, Vol. II, 'The Average European as an Ideal and Instrument of Universal Destruction' by Leontev, Trans. William Shafer and George L. Kline, Chicago: Quadrangle Books
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