Dostoevsky's brothers the slavophils Kireyevsky and Khomiakov

[underworld men]

The heart of Notes from the Underworld and the understanding of Russian people's perception of the West (after of course being liberated from the Mongols and Turks) has it's origin in the slavophils.

From N Lossky..
Slavophils, came about by the first two Russians to expound a nomenclature or systematic understanding of the Slavic and Russian perception of now/existence, Kireyevsky and Khomiakov.

Of course it is only fair to also include brother Radishchev into the mix.

Radishchev's Book On Man and His Mortality and Immortality was his expression that, to man, things where as much ideas/concepts (idealism) as they where material objects..

Here is Radishchev's famous passage that sparked the whole movement to the identity of slavophil or is at least a cornerstone to it. Slavophil's sought to articulate the world not as logic (contrast and comparison) not as abstraction (interpretation) but the world as an organic whole perceived through the soul....

"When I look at an object now with one and now with the other eye, I see it every time. If I look at it with both eyes, I have two impressions, but although the sensations in my eyes are two, the sensation in the soul is one, hence, the sensations of the eyes is not the same as that of the soul. Similarly, when I see a bell, hear it ringing and touch its hardness, I have three different sensations and nevertheless I form one single conception of the bell."
A. Radishchev's Collected works volume two page 253.

[underworld men]

Kireyevsky studied many philosophies and personally knew Hegel and studied with him.  Kireyevsky expressed that philosophy as dialectical process (Hegel's included) was "only a potential, not an actual truth".

Kireyevsky saw Western philosophy as a one sided reduction of truth to a rational thought process obsessed with it's processes.

"That man should not regard his abstract logical capacity as the one and only instrument for apprehension of truth: that the voice of ecstatic feeling unco-ordinated with the other powers of the spirit, should not be looked upon as an unerring indication of truth: that the promptings of aesthetic thought taken in isolation should not be considered independently of other concepts as a sure guide to the comprehension of the ultimate nature of the world [that even the inner judgment of a more or less purified conscience should not be accepted in defiance of the other intellectual faculties as the final judgment of the highest judgment]."

Kireyevsky and then Khomiakov, expressed that man is more then his rational faculties and that he is of different powers -rational, heart, ascetic, faith, energies of God (love, joy, hope). The addition of two or dichotomy/syzygy or duality to the hypostasis of man is the only fairytale. It is an overrated, overused tool toward our understanding. All must work as one. Duality is conflict and therefore as there is no conflict in God so to there is 3 and 1, but no duality in God.

No conflict. God is truth. This is sobornost.

 

[underworld men]

Now what is important to understand is that Dostoevsky took the concepts of the slavophil further.

Dostoevsky showed how reduction of truth to reason or rational means, one then applies this to ones intuition and or religious experience.

So that one begins to tear down and reduce in order to be "truthful".

To be Russian is to strive for the truth by means of the inner elevation of self-consciousness to a warm-hearted wholeness and concentration of the intellect.

Society must be organic not violence based.

Dostoevsky was engaging the sobornost in each human heart by his stories of death and kindness between peoples. To share to look out for one another, sobornost.

So the underground and or the cave awaits each one who engages the reasoning mechanism only. The underground is maintained by people in a dream like state. Where they are "poisoned" by the rational mind. Even if one engages irrationality they are doing nothing but reflecting and therefore still maintaining philosophy or thought process as the single harbinger of truth.

The mission of Russia?

"My mind is my enemy, who will free me from it's deterministic tyranny?" Internal and external.

One must complete themselves and the saints are examples to follow. Holy is wholly, complete.

Now how one transcends (rather then transgresses) the underground (sleep, Somnolence) is by silencing the thoughts and voice of the rational, thinking mind.

One does this not by death, but by Christ's example of meditation, fasting and prayer.

Just as Christ warned of false prophets, so too be warned that God is not a technic. We are owned by God, God is not owned.

What the slavophils where stating was the limits of man and his powers.

To reduce now to mere rational thought process is to deny the depth of the internal human experience. 2+2=4 is a nice thing but isn't it nice to also smash things to bits every now and again?

This was but one of Dostoevsky's points.

And of course there is the Dear Mr Ilyin.

[Radio Saturday]

Kireyevsky saw Western philosophy as a one sided reduction of truth to a rational thought process obsessed with it's processes.

This I can see. While it this method has merit in some fields, theology isn't one of them, to the extent this has been applied.

So that one begins to tear down and reduce in order to be "truthful".

This, in my opinion, is the problem with much of the modern world. We are so obsessed with knowing everything, with categorizing everything, that God can only ever be as large as any given person's mind. And that's not right.

2+2=4 is a nice thing but isn't it nice to also smash things to bits every now and again?

Yes, it is.

I understand where you're going with this. Thank you for putting so much work into these posts. I feel -- even just by knowing the names of the men whose works I should look into -- that I have gained a greater knowledge of Dostoevsky. I mean that in earnest.

[underworld men]

Thank You Radio.

[underworld men]

So while there is a philosophical movement of Russian thinkers. In the Dostoevsky lineage it is Orthodoxy or meta philosophy (not anti-philosophy). To transcend European culture without supplanting it, but ultimately should complete it in it's fullness, European society that is.. This is why there are not nearly as many Greek philosophers as one might guess coming out of Greece.

[Childe Harold]

Society must be organic not violence based.

Organic society is violence based. Heard of Hobbes and the state of war? Heard much of history? Sure was organic, but sure wasn't pretty.

There is no poisoning by the "rational" mind. The rational mind is the pure mind, unyoked from irrational fears, hopes and superstitions. Indeed these are the poisons.

Free and rational inquiry is the harbinger of truth. Philosophy is the staple of free and true inquiry.

The sleep of reason entails the indulgence of the fantastic, the imaginary, the superstitious, the incredible, the would-be revelatory.

One chooses between reason and unreason, philosophy and revelation, rationality and irrationality. To each his own, but choose one must. As with any alternatives, one cannot have both.

[underworld men]

If one defines now/reality as being in time, one can then see now/reality as choice or atleast the opportunity/potiental for choice.

This is OK, this can be agreed upon. The exceptions to this for the sack of efficiency we will leave to just two.
1. This definition is in contradiction to the determinist/behaviorist. As determinism/behaviorism states all is a logical outcome of what came before it.
2. The cosmic tyrant theory that engaging reality is cruel.
How could the acting out in freewill with no true understanding of now be anything but cruel? (French existientialism).

These questions are not really valid but are distractions. They are not strawdogs if you agree with them and or you see their significants.

For example the first one is a theory.
In order for this position to be valid one has to have a God like perspective of the situation in order to see all potential outcomes (how can someone truly sympathize with something they don't believe in ). No persons have such a position over reality least of all the science community. Degrees/sin are just that- not all but falling short of. Faith comes from potential? Is not the limit of now (via science) that if you fix one problem, do you not just differ the problem somewhere else (resolve one to create another).

Science has no position as such because as Karl Popper showed theory has NO PLACE in science- beyond development. Either something can be shown to work or not work- this is science. If it can not be tested because it is too small or too grand science has not the faculities to bring about it's validation or invalidation. Therefore it can not be science.

We must ask ourselves, can science correctly predict the future? The whole future not a degree. Has it failed to do so in the past? Well if it has, then determinism is not science, it is theory. There is no excuse even in deflection for this. If this makes science so too can it break science. I can say I love science and wish it not broken.

Philosophy is theory/fantasy and speculation/imagination on outcome. Science is the application of a theory onto reality (the car is not the journey and the journey is not the car). Science is not an explanation of all things let science be science. For science to do so otherwise is for it to diminish the truth of the internal experience of man, just as philosophy diminishes. Remember Diminish is another word for derogatory.


The second argument is an rhetorical attempt at justification for the concept of God or religion, as being one of a small minded shameful lashing out against reality in fear.

Why it is rhetorical is, because it calls for everything to be destroyed because existence is therefore tyranny. Of course this applies (rather the concept likes it or not) to reality with or WITHOUT a God.

Man is the only tyrant that can be validated, and his desire to control other men and now, is the ugliness we have witnessed through-out history. People seem to blame God for man's sin or misuse of freewill. But then if man could not misuse freewill, it would not be freewill. God's mercy is expressed by making now temporal. Of course nature also, can be exceptional cruel. And here it is interesting because as such so too must natural be conquered and ultimately replaced (or in truth nature as tyranny must be destroyed). Of course as Orthodox I do not agree.

Neither concept deals with intuition. At best they can once again try to show that man makes his choice by contrast and comparision in the realm of now, as for intuition it should not be wiped away by using one big generalized brush stroke called "instinct" as a distraction. And most importantly it does not explain man's desire to be free. For in the face of such things what is freedom but a faith, a phantom,  a fairytale- a unicorn..

Kireyevsky (via N Lossky) defines intuition, as not rating highly "Abstract logical thought for the possession of truth. Instead it is essential to gather together all of one's capacities into a single whole, logical thought, feeling("the heart"), aesthetic sense, the conscience, love. Truth is unfolded only to the whole man: the inner root of understandining, were all the separate faculities unite in one living whole vision".
Truth is through the soul.

[underworld men]

What they can not do is make man behave. The objective of the slavophil was to give each person their own control.
And to give them an Orthodox understanding of how each could concretely and of practicality, master themselves, individually. While also mastering themselves collectively the underlining concept in this is sobornost.

Even with the power of the gun, not all men comply.

Some choose the bullet.

Can we be controlled, sure we can but what limites that control is our self control. To control oneself is to account for and master all of ones components (and yes I am speaking in modern nihilists terms).

I mean what addict can't talk a good talk? But what is the addict missing to give them the power enough to control themselves?

Not science (yet) not philosophy/rational (ever).

Also as Dostoevsky pointed out, by philosophy and science- once man has no struggle in this realm, he really has no purpose. Now what if science and rational became man's tyrant? For man to struggle against. Would man not be trading one tyranny for another? Synthetic for Analytical?
Would he be better off or just different but equally screwed?

Orthodoxy however validates freewill though one act.

The act of forgiveness. (Even Mr Kierkegaard/Cemetery understood this).

For it is higher justice and as Camus said is not justice also irrational? But if ones choice is reason are they not against their own "truth" for choosing un-reason?

Hence the fallacy of logic/reason/rational.

Let's now speak of idols..

How can one validate their sincerity?

Does it not take the whole of now or reality to do this?

[underworld men]

Accusing me of drug use Astolfo is derogatory. I am deleting your post.

Have a nice day.  

[Childe Harold]

Well I have idea where to begin from the above. So let me say something about determinism. Now this is something you've imputed to me before, and with me not really knowing quite why. Until...I read Rebecca Goldstein's book on Spinoza recently, where determinism isn't mentioned so mch as contingency. The way she presents him in her book, Spinoza conceived of reality as being composed of an infinite series of logical connections and entailments. Our existence is one of those logical entailments (according to him). Now is this determinist? Yes I suppose so. But there's something pleasant--and nothing very free-will-abnegating-- in the knowledge that one couldn't not but have existed, that one doesn't owe one's life, or rather one doesn't owe one's induction to existence, to chance, i.e contingency, the fact of being so without having to be so.

Now taking Spinoza's determinism/rationalism as an example, what does it say of free will? Well, nothing. I don't remember reading the words free will in the book. But is it subsumed in this grand theory of nature/God?--I don't think so. Nothing changes excepts the awareness attained, which as you point is an imperfect awareness, an approximation to the "Infinite Intellect of God"--but enlightenment nevertheless, a greater understanding in any case than whatever an unphilosophic approach could yield. And its enlightenment without the doubt; with the certainty in fact that the sum of two triangles is 180 degrees. I'm not saying I believe all this, but I just don't see how determinism and free will are mutually exclusive.

Oh and who can't make men behave?

[underworld men]

http://jbburnett.com/resources/lossky/lossky_myst1-trinity.pdf

Contingency does not work because God as in the realm of now, is the one true thing that is incomprehensible.
Contingency is about relationship God has no necessity of relationship.

Contingency argues that each fragment of now are inter-related. The essence of God is beyond relation.

So fragmentation aside, we may know God's energies.

Pantheism dictates that God is the sum of now and or all Gods.

But we can not know God's essence.

It/un-it, God unlike nothingness is- the one incomprehensible thing.

Apophatically it/un-it (God) is unknowable. Because it/un-it is wrong because God is beyond duality. There is no duality in God. There is 3 and there is 1. Trinity.

God does not adhere to the rules of now. God is more then all Gods. God is beyond the concept of Universe.

[underworld men]

Kireyevsky's list of the many senses of man.

Nous/Mind is experience. The nous in the East that is.

Nous' different types of experiences are diversity.

Such is the set of sensory experience all five senses,

nonsensory experience of the soul- sorrow, grief, love, joy.

Self-observation.

Observation of the psychic life of others.

There is spiritual experience, the savoring of freedom.

Contemplation of ideas (abstraction).

The experience of feeling or emotions, soul/heart the savoring of music,  color and balance- aesthetics.

There is the experience of Beauty.

There is the experience of morality.

There is religious or mystical experience.

To make rational abstract logic the absolute is to diminish the inner experience of man.

This is Kireyevsky and Khomiakov's slavophil that all must be alligned to see the truth.

[Childe Harold]

Oh give me a break underworld. Enough of telling me what God is. I don't believe in God, so what am I to make of these kinds of statements? Reeling off catechisms doesn't work either I'm afraid. Again, paragraphs are such wonderful things.

Disputation requires a level playing field. This seems something you won't give me. Too bad...

[underworld men]

Goodbye.