Philosophical and Religious Works of L.N. Tolstoy as a Starting Point in the Culture of the Silver Age

Kovalenko Natalia ORCID: 0000-0002-5397-316X PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Culture of Speech, St. Petersburg State Agrarian University 196601, Russia, St. Petersburg, Pushkin, St. Petersburg Highway, 2A, office 2403 nataly6707@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

One of the most important features of the culture of the Silver Age was the emphasis on the importance of philosophical and moral-religious principles in its content. This was determined primarily by the peculiar interpretation of the phenomenon of culture by the great Russian writer, thinker and religious reformer Leo Tolstoy. The Soviet historian of philosophy, academician V. F. Asmus emphasized in his works that the key feature of Tolstoy's worldview, his views on life and way of thinking, was in-depth knowledge, comprehension and the most subtle perception, feeling of culture, as well as a critical approach to assessing and analyzing the culture that existed at that time in Western European countries and accepted in the Russian environment. From Tolstoy's point of view, there was a serious contradiction in both domestic and Western societies, which consisted in the discrepancy between the officially declared purpose and the actual status of culture, which should include art, scientific, technical and educational spheres. In his opinion, the main purpose of the existence and development of culture was to serve the majority, that is, ordinary people of non–noble origin - first of all, workers and peasants, aimed at meeting their urgent needs. However, in the realities of that time, ubiquitous in post-reform Russia, only people with education, capital or belonging to the upper class, that is, the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, could mainly use the fruits of culture [1. p. 41]. As a philosopher of the Soviet era, Asmus focuses on the sociological interpretation of culture, its meaning in the socio-class understanding. For Tolstoy, the leading one was the spiritual fullness of culture as a phenomenon of people's life. In this, he continues the classical tradition of Russian philosophy, which was inextricably linked with religion, spirituality, appropriate thinking and Christian views, and gradually developed – from the Slavophile concept of "whole mind" to the "concrete unity" that then replaced it, developed by B.C. Solovyov, and subsequently to "ideal realism", rooted with the onset of the twentieth century [2. p. 144], that is, within the framework of the national culture of the Silver Age.

Methodology

The purpose of this work, which is offered to the reader's attention, is to take a fresh look at the dynamics of the national culture of the turn of the XIX - XX centuries, which in the research literature is designated as the culture of the Silver Age. In the works of Leo Tolstoy, who became the founder of this cultural epoch, this dynamic was expressed in the Christian category of love and the philosophical concept of nonviolence. Methodologically, the article makes extensive use of the cultural-historical approach, the Cartesian paradigm and the ideas of modernity as Self-subjectivity. The author also relied on the philosophical heritage of historians of Russian philosophy. The novelty of the research lies in the consideration of culture, man and being in their dialogical integrity, where culture is associated with the special status of the subject as the creator and bearer of culture. Subjectivity has become a distinctive feature of the Russian culture of the Silver Age in the historical and cultural aspect, which still has a unique situation of permanent modernity.

The main part

In culture, according to Tolstoy, the fundamental moment should be the values of the spiritual order and, first of all, the values of a moral and religious nature. This was generated by the realities of historical and spiritual content that were formed in Russia during the post-reform period. Russia of that time was a country in the mainstream of modernization processes. They covered the economy, social life in general and, of course, spiritual culture. Interest in the religious component of culture is common to Russian thinkers of the turn of the century. It was characteristic, for example, for V.S. Solovyov, V.V. Rozanov and others. Professor A.Ya. Kozhurin writes about Rozanov that Christianity as a religion, and more specifically, the manifestation of divinity and the presence of God in everyday life, the surrounding world and ordinary life, was the main subject of interest of this brightest representative of Russian philosophical thought ^{[3, p. 408]}.

In assessing contemporary Russian and Western European society, Tolstoy focused on the fact that the key drawback of the economic system based on the principles of capitalism is the alienation of the results of human labor and the lack of connection between the direct labor activity of the employee, his body and spiritual and moral principle. He also believed that the artificial disconnection of human society from the surrounding nature, the loss of unity with it, the departure "from the earth", as well as alienation from the fruits of their own labor, are immanently inherent in the modern way of life, largely generated by the bourgeoisie. In our country, new cultural trends and social transformations have largely affected Russian villages and villages, in which the old patriarchal way of life, nepotism was gradually destroyed, the usual ways of doing business were dying out, the customs of coexistence in the peasant community as a traditional rural "world" were abolished. The spiritual and moral bonds of the life of a Russian person were crumbling ^[4.].

The Russian writer had no doubt that the roots of moral decline and moral imperfection, the rejection of religiosity and the fundamental depravity of bourgeois society are based on the disappearance of the age-old natural connection that existed for many millennia between people and the earth. Tolstoy's attention is focused on the consideration and detailed analysis of a number of phenomena peculiar to any economy – money as a means of payment, the phenomenon of professional specialization, that is, the division of labor, as well as the perniciousness of the exploitation of workers inherent in capitalism. He comes to the conclusion that money, although it allows people to freely buy goods and exchange their labor in market conditions, simultaneously acts as a key instrument of financial and economic coercion. Moreover, such a state of affairs, according to the writer, automatically develops in any country with an existing developed monetary system. Thus, money is put at the service of the system of coercion, and, consequently, it loses its original purpose and is no longer able to fully act either as an instrument of market exchange or as a measure of value, since the fruits of personal creative labor activity can be arbitrarily, lawlessly and forcibly taken away from an individual [5. p. 267]. The phenomenon of violence becomes one of the main objects of understanding the contradictions of social life on the part of Tolstoy's philosophy.

The counterbalance to violence, according to Tolstoy, is the worldview and perception of nonviolence. If the worldview can be characterized as an emotional vision of the world, then the worldview is characterized by a stable rational component. The whole philosophical system is formulated by him as the doctrine of nonviolence. A modern St. Petersburg researcher S.V. Alyabyeva writes about this philosophy that the main beginning for the writer is God, who is incomprehensible to the human mind and without whom the world cannot exist. By it, Tolstoy means a special law of the existence of the Universe, which is reflected in ancient Greek culture as the Logos, and in the philosophy of ancient China, the analogue of this category is the Tao. We believe that the central argument within the framework of the philosophy of nonviolence shared by the writer can be called a fundamental agreement with the idea of the existence of the Lord as an obligatory element of the universe and life in it. However, the writer himself considers the Lord not from the point of view of the Christian religion, but rather from the standpoint of philosophy. For Tolstoy, He personifies spirituality and in some way opposes the corporeality, materiality, materiality of this world, but at the same time It is at the same time that He generates it, making its very existence possible. Thus, without an impersonal philosophical God, infinite in temporal and spatial dimensions, the Universe cannot exist, while he finds expression in everything that surrounds us. A characteristic distinguishing feature of the doctrine of nonviolence preached by the writer, which also acts as its fundamental justification and one of the bases, can be called Tolstoy's attitude to human nature, perception of the inner essence of the individual, knowledge and understanding of the specifics of his life, socialization in the surrounding society and behavioral characteristics, as well as awareness and feeling of his deep and comprehensive interconnectedness with the universe. The writer was convinced that the human "I" does not lead to separation, isolation from the world, everything that happens in it and the immediate environment, but on the contrary, is responsible for the unification of the individual with humanity as a whole [6. pp. 17-20]. The antagonism of the phenomenon of nonviolence in human life is the practice of violent acts, primarily on the part of the state. Therefore, Tolstoy, for spiritual and moral reasons, does not accept the modern civilizational structure.

According to Tolstoy, there were three main forms of violence in the historical process: soldiering, that is, state violence, expressed in the form of forced conscription of soldiers to serve in the army; land tax, and the military provided support for the process of collecting it from the population; universal direct and indirect taxation. Tolstoy believed that any violent actions used by armed soldiers against a peaceful, unarmed population are justified by the fact that it is allegedly required to protect the homeland from enemy foes, ensuring the security of the country, but the real essence of it is completely different and, ultimately, comes down to simple subjugation, conquest of people by aggressors and rapists. In particular, the state, forcibly taking land from the peasant class in favor of the nobility on the terms of family inheritance, was justified by the fact that it rewards the latter for preserving and maintaining a certain public good, but in reality it enslaved and enslaved the peasants in the interests of the ruling class with the support of the military. Tolstoy also stressed that taxation for his contemporaries is the most relevant form of violence, attacking their property rights and freedoms, endangering personal well-being and independence and justified by the same imaginary maintenance of the common good [5. p. 289].

In the modern research literature on the history of Russian statehood, this has been called the formation of a "service–home civilization". Professor P.I. Smirnov mentions in his work that when Alexander I ascended the throne in the Russian Empire, the distinctive features peculiar to the service and home civilization began to appear more clearly and actively in the country. This was largely caused not only by the rule of the new emperor, but also by the law "On the Golden Liberty of the Nobility" adopted by his predecessor Peter III, which began to operate later, during the time of Empress Catherine II. This fact is explained by the liberation of the noble class from the obligation to serve the fatherland in the army with the parallel preservation of previously existing class privileges [7. p. 134]. What exactly do the generic features of this civilization look like? Firstly, the dominance of the values of "society" over the value of "personality". Secondly, the dominance of official activity over personality-oriented activity. Thirdly, the dominance of instrumental values – discipline and duty [8. pp. 420-421].

Tolstoy, as a philosopher, believes that culture is multifaceted and the role of science is significant in it, but it fulfills a specific order of the existing civilization – to deceive the population, to do everything so that it remains dark, uneducated and superstitious, unable to independently find the truth and achieve prosperity. The Russian thinker is rational in his theoretical constructions, but at the same time for him the main thing in science is ethical values. Revealing the meaning of the social order for scientific knowledge, he argues that science performs a function strictly opposite to the officially declared goals, and contributes to the concealment of the interrelations existing between various physical, chemical, natural and other phenomena and phenomena, as well as their real essence and meaning. At the same time, in the scientific literature, according to Tolstoy, it is impossible to find answers to both elementary and the most significant, burning questions, and scientists themselves and everyone who is directly connected with the academic sphere tend to avoid direct answers to the questions asked and, on the contrary, go into lengthy discussions about things that have little to do with the problems the topic under consideration [5. p. 282]. If according to Hegel philosophy or the aggregate scientific knowledge is the quintessence of culture ^[9], then, according to the Russian philosopher, the essence of culture is the religious and moral side of the community.

Hence, the role of the central cultural value, from the writer's point of view, is assigned to love, whose basic element is the principle of non-resistance. He was convinced that this most important feeling – love – is a kind of keystone of every existing belief and religion. The specificity of Christianity specifically is the fact that it explicitly and strictly stipulated the key distinguishing feature of love, in the absence of which it becomes fundamentally impossible. This characteristic feature is non-resistance to evil by violence [10. p. 264]. Love, coupled with non-resistance, act as a spiritual basis, the foundation on which the culture of humanity is based, and they also reveal and largely condition, predetermine the essence of morality. Tolstoy believed that a culture based on spiritual and moral principles is the opposite of modern civilization, whose fundamental principle is the idealization of violence and coercion, and thus is in opposition to it. According to Tolstoy, the main driving motives of the culture of violence is an unrestrained craving for possession and endless pleasures, and this inevitably leads to the emergence and rooting in people of extreme egoism, greed, excessive sensuality and materialism, makes them greedy, egocentric, depraved and mundane. In his work "What should we do?" the author complains that the life that his contemporaries lead comes into strict contradiction not only with spiritual and moral principles, but also with human physiology itself. At the same time, no one thinks about how to eliminate these ulcers of civilization – on the contrary, huge intellectual efforts are being made to convince society of the normality and correctness of the current state of affairs. According to Tolstoy, each of the components of what his contemporaries meant by culture, including scientific disciplines, various types of arts and progress in the social sphere, in fact, are only an effort to confuse and fool people, avoiding meeting their real demands due to innate human morality and spirituality. According to Tolstoy, even hygienic and medical rules and innovations are only a deception, unable to meet the real needs caused by human nature and physiology [5. p. 386].

The writer believed that his modern civilization focuses on the sphere of the material and man-made. Because of this, it is pragmatic and utilitarian, therefore, he considers the transition to moral utilitarianism motivated, natural and logical, that is, in essence, to moral pragmatism, which in the cultural and philosophical context, from the author's point of view, is directly related to rationalism and the concept of moral forgiveness. Although, in general, utilitarian philosophy in its Western understanding is focused on the moral values of behavior and action associated with the idea of utility, utility is interpreted, however, as an integral pleasure of a social group and social happiness, and not only in an individualistic sense. The ethics of utilitarianism in social (group) aspects was developed by Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. However, Tolstoy interpreted this concept in his own way, placing the main emphasis on the fact that culture should be reoriented to the primary satisfaction of the moral needs of each individual, thus bringing it into line with human values and moral guidelines and to some extent transferring it to the rails of individualism. According to I.A. Ilyin, the brightest representative of Russian literature, philosophy and journalism, such views of Tolstoy were due to the crisis state observed in professing Christian societies and their cultural sphere. Thus, the roots of Tolstoyism originate in the degradation and destruction of a culture largely nurtured on Christianity, but undergoing gradual de-Christianization and largely lost its original connection with this religion ^[11].

Tolstoy believed that relying on morality and religiosity, as well as orientation to spiritual ideals, would help culture gain authenticity and genuine character. This attitude to the semantic content and the true purpose of culture was adopted by all prominent figures of the Silver Age. Within the framework of Tolstoyism, culture is endowed with a number of essential features listed below:

1. The basic foundation is the individual's involvement in the Divine principle, living in harmony with the natural environment and the surrounding society. From this point of view, Tolstoy considers the human personality as a unique combination of external and internal qualities.

2. Culture finds expression not only directly in art, but also in the scientific, educational and religious spheres. Moreover, each of the above spheres of life is obliged to implement some ideology that has contributed to the unification of different individuals, nations and ethnic groups, and only the ethics of love and non-resistance can fully fulfill such a function. That is why the main purpose of culture is the promotion of higher ideals and the comprehensive promotion of spiritual growth and self-improvement not only of individual people, but also of humanity as a whole.

3. Taking into account the above-mentioned obligatory signs of true culture for Tolstoy, he naturally sharply criticized both contemporary culture in all its manifestations and science with an official religion. Although his views on these aspects of life can be called nihilistic, however, they are full of optimism and hope for development and improvement.

Comprehensively and argumentatively criticizing the bourgeois culture that existed at that time, the writer fiercely opposes those values of ubiquitous materialism that were imposed by the rapidly developing scientific and technological progress. At the beginning of the XX century, this was especially reflected in the works of O. Spengler, who passed through the trenches of the First World War and was forced, under the yoke of his experience, seriously changed his own worldview and beliefs, reflected in his philosophy through the concept of the development of cultures and civilizations developed by him. Also, due to the military hardships he endured, he subjected to a complete revision and rethinking and significantly edited, making many amendments to the already written volume II of the key work of his whole life – the book "The Decline of Europe" ^[12]. Analyzing the introductory part of the 2nd edition - the author's prologue containing an abridged retelling of the essence of his two–volume work, one can see how much the war and the postwar years had a strong impact on Spengler's philosophical and historical views. Since the war was global, international in nature and affected all countries and continents to one degree or another, it also made adjustments to the thinker's worldview, defining the specifics of his approach to the history of civilization, expressed in the reconstruction of the history of the "Faustian spirit" (O. Spengler). As the modern historian of philosophy A.B. Usachev writes, Russian historiosophy has its own specifics, it clearly traces the path from the unique to the universal, while the fact is understood as part of the universal. On the contrary, in the German tradition of the philosophy of history there is an opposite distinctive feature – the path from the universal to the unique, accompanied by an analysis of what is the effectiveness of concretization of various terms, ideas, theories and concepts when considering different historical events [13. p. 191].

The role of the leading cultural factor, from the writer's point of view, should be given to the conscious and laborious work of the human intellect, focused on personal growth and spiritual and moral self-improvement, as well as directly related to the implementation of creative activities of an economic nature. Hence, it naturally followed that as a cultural standard for the organization of society, the way of life of the peasant community should be used, based on patriarchy, nepotism and collective farming, which does not have a class-class structure, but at the same time is sufficiently independent, stable and self-governing, and therefore does not need a systemic apparatus of violence, that is, the state. And here we see a certain continuity of Tolstoy's ideas of N.Y. Danilevsky about the peculiarities of the Slavic (Russian) way of life associated with the rural community, where the leading party is the moral and economic activity ^[14]. And on the other hand, Tolstoy's commitment to the concept of moral anarchism, which was developed in detail by M.A. Bakunin and P.A. Kropotkin ^[15].

The writer also focuses on the fact that in different epochs, in different countries and societies, ideas about the meaning of human existence and ideals can differ significantly and to a large extent depend on the religious consciousness that existed at that time, most vividly reflected by the most educated, intellectual, talented and progressive members of the public, but to varying degrees felt and shared by all who belong to it. According to Tolstoy, any society is permeated with such a consciousness of a religious nature [15. p. 152], from which it follows that the value of art and its significance for people are inextricably linked with religiosity, in other words, the existence of generally accepted higher ideals that artists can focus on, and which they openly and sincerely reflect in their own works.

Tolstoy had no doubt that religious consciousness is a universal phenomenon inherent in any society, regardless of the historical epoch, geographical location and other aspects, and it was it, in his opinion, that directly conditioned the perception and was responsible for evaluating the emotions contained in works of art. It also contributed to the isolation, isolation and promotion of the limitless variety of artistic works from the total mass of only those that maximally corresponded to the spirit, emotional mood and moral guidelines of a particular era [15. p. 152].

Although Tolstoy comprehensively criticized art, his utilitarianism and did not accept its connection with modern materialistic civilization, the writer's claims to this sphere of life were due to the inability of art to fully play its true role in culture. Therefore, it would be wrong to assume that Tolstoy denied art, rather, he complained that it does not contribute to spiritual growth, moral development and self-improvement of a person. The thinker had the same attitude to the science of that time, which, from his point of view, lost its true essence and purpose, following the wrong path, and no longer helps social transformation, universal human progress and mental development of individuals, but on the contrary, rapidly inculcates savagery [5. p. 364]. Thus, Tolstoy directly assigned to the creators – artists – responsibility for the spiritual and moral development of people who consume their works.

Conclusions

As conclusions , we indicate:

1. Critically analyzing the society and civilization of that time, Tolstoy names and examines their main distinctive features from two points of view: socio-cultural (market-driven division of labor, professional specialization, exploitation of the working people by capital, scientific and technological progress) and moral and religious (loss of faith in God, spirituality and higher ideals, dishonesty, violence, orientation to material consumption, reducing the meaning of life to obtaining a variety of pleasures). The writer considered excessive pragmatism and a focus on utilitarianism to be the key characteristics of the then socio-economic sphere.

2. The foundation of Tolstoy's doctrine of nonviolence is a critical approach to assessing various forms of coercion by the state and its apparatuses, which ideologically related the writer to the anarchists Bakunin and Kropotkin. Tolstoy comprehensively analyzes the shortcomings and flaws of the then state system, which, from his point of view, were largely generated by utilitarianism, orientation to pragmatism, loss of higher ideals and generally accepted life values.

3. Tolstoy criticized the art of that time from several positions: the writer was not satisfied with its conditional, mainly utilitarian and standardized character, lack of sincerity and spirituality, rejection of highly artistic and highly moral ideals, consumer orientation, inability to cause the transformation of the human personality and promote its development. In a word, Tolstoy described the key distinctive features inherent in the phenomenon of mass culture back in those days.

4. Tolstoy was sure that religious consciousness is an integral part of every society and in any era it directly affects people's assessment and perception of the emotional content transmitted by works of art. The main foundation of culture, from Tolstoy's point of view, is the love that people feel for each other, and the principle of non-resistance to evil by violence associated with it. The writer believed that spirituality determines the essence and determines the purpose of cultural activity, acting as a keystone that consolidates the whole universal culture.