Agape, Philia and Eros Anca Simitopol Thesis Submi
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Ideas of Community in the Thought of Pierre Leroux and of Feodor Dostoevsky: Agape , Philia and Eros Anca Simitopol Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the PhD degree in Political Science Supervisor: Gilles Labelle Political Studies Social Sciences University of Ottawa ©Anca Simitopol, Ottawa, Canada, 2012 Contents ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………… iv INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………… 1 CHAPTER ONE Two Critics of “Possessive Individualism” ………………………………….. 11 1.1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………... 11 1.2. Leroux as a liberal …………………………………………………......... 27 1.3. Leroux’s anthropology: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité …………………... 37 1.4. Division of society, division of the self and eclecticism ………………... 42 1.5. Freedom according to Leroux …………………………………………... 47 1.6. Property according to Leroux …………………………………………… 58 1.7. Dostoevsky as political thinker ………………………………………….. 68 1.8. The poor and the ontological meaning of capitalism ………………….. 70 1.9. “Possessive Individualism” in Russia …………………………………… 82 1.10. From individualism to the revolutionary affirmation of the will-to-power 1.10.1. Raskolnikov ………………………………………………….. 93 1.10.2. The case of “The possessed” ………………………………... 98 1.11. Conclusion …………………………………………………………… 105 CHAPTER TWO Varieties of Socialism and of Utopia ………………………………………. 115 2.1. Introduction ...………………………………………………………… 115 2.2. Dostoevsky’s critique of socialism: “Shigalovism” …………………. 130 2.3. Leroux’s critique of Fourier’s socialism ……………………………. 144 2.4. Introduction to utopia ………………………………………………... 149 2.5. Transformation of utopia in the 19 th century ……………………….. 158 2.6. Saint-Simon: oscillation between transcendence and immanence .... 171 2.7. The Saint-Simonian School: utopia transformed into political program …………………………………………………….. 180 2.8. The Grand Inquisitor and the incompatibility between freedom and unity ……………………………………………………. 193 2.9. Dostoevsky: a dialogical utopia ……………………………………… 207 2.10. Leroux: utopia as a new continent called Humanity ……………...... 221 CHAPTER THREE A Tree of Life ………………………………………………………………….. 236 3.1. Introduction ……………………………………………………….. .... 236 3.2. A Portrait of Versilov …………………………………………………. 241 ii 3.3. Leroux’s humanism as compared to Versilov’s …………………....... 248 3.4. Leroux’s and Dostoevsky’s relations to Christianity ……………....... 257 3.4.1. The Fall in Dostoevsky’s and Leroux’s works ………………. 258 3.4.2. Revelation and communion in the understanding of Leroux ………………………………………... 262 3.4.3. Leroux: “les deux infinis” or God and Humanity …………… 266 3.4.4. The presence of Christ and the Christian life in Dostoevsky’s work …………………………………………………. 269 3.4.5. The Russian monk as the image of Christ …………………..... 278 3.5. Agape and Philia ……………………………………………………... 281 3.5.1. Guidelines for philia, agape and eros ………………………….. 282 3.5.2. Dostoevsky: philia as sub-division of agape …………………... 289 3.5.3. Leroux: philia overcomes agape ………………………………. 297 3.6. Community, solidarity and association in Leroux’s republican thought …………………………………………. 308 3.6.1. Leroux’s critique of eclecticism and his understanding of tradition ………………………………………… 308 3.6.2. Religion and philosophy united in a superior form: the democratic religion of Humanity …………………………………. 314 3.6.3. The role of primitive Christianity in Leroux’s republican thought ………………………………………….. 318 3.6.4. The life of relation and the sovereignty of the people …………. 326 3.7. Organic togetherness in Dostoevsky’s thought ……………………….. 329 3.7.1. Raskolnikov’s way back to the Russian soil? …………………... 330 3.7.2. Tselnost and sobornost : two concepts developed by the Slavophiles …………………………………………... 334 3.7.3. Dostoevsky: the incompatibility between freedom and unity in the West …………………………………………………………........ 339 3.7.4. Russian soil and universalism …………………………………… 344 3.7.5. The Church-idea or Dostoevsky’s Christian utopian socialism ……………………………………………. 348 CONCLUSION A Contest between Life and Death …………………………………………… 359 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………… 367 iii Abstract In this thesis I compare Pierre Leroux, a French utopian socialist (1797 – 1871), with Feodor Dostoevsky, the well-known Orthodox Russian novelist (1821 – 1881). I argue that both authors reacted against what they considered to be the dissolution of the social order, brought about by the increasing nineteenth-century bourgeois individualism. On the other hand, they reacted as well against the opposite phenomenon, the idea of a universal socialist state, which was, in fact, according to them, the outcome of bourgeois individualism. My purpose is to bring close and to compare Leroux’s republican socialism with Dostoevsky’s Christian socialism, and to explore to what extent the two authors give similar answers to a common problem. In order to better explain their thought, I divide my thesis into three chapters. The first analyzes and compares Leroux’s and Dostoevsky’s critiques of individualism. If Leroux reaches the conclusion that the ultimate expression of individualism is Malthusianism, Dostoevsky argues that individualism ends in nihilism. The second chapter analyzes the type of socialism against which Leroux and Dostoevsky reacted, as well as the critiques of the two authors. I argue here that Saint-Simonian socialism – the main object of Leroux’s critique – and the socialism of the Grand Inquisitor – a Dostoevskyan character – are the expression of a certain utopian thought which considers the requirement for freedom incompatible with the requirement for unity. In the last chapter, I analyze the ideas of community of Leroux and of Dostoevsky, which are centered on philia , in the case of the former, and on agape , in the case of the latter. Philia and respectively agape are the expression of organic social relations, through which the two requirements, of freedom and unity, are made compatible, and which create unity in multiplicity. Their ideas of community appear as active utopias, grounded on the life of relation in a spontaneous, organic community. iv Introduction José Ortega y Gasset considers the statement that life would be essentially egotistic as an incommensurable error. Life, in his view, is essentially altruistic. It “represents the cosmic fact of altruism and exists as a perpetual movement of the Se1lf towards the Other”. 1 In the nineteenth century, on the ruins of the Old Regime, the liberal contractualist order seemed to grow always stronger, generating panic in its opponents who would respond by defining the social body in terms of a concrete organism. The liberal contractualist order, which has remained victorious until now in the West, has declared society an aggregate of individuals/atoms, with no essential connection between them. Pierre Leroux calls this philosophy of the individual a philosophy of the human being without humanity. He argues that, by accepting this premise, we have to be aware that we accept implicitly the relation between master and slave. The subject of this thesis is the comparison between Pierre Leroux, a French utopian socialist who wrote in the first half of the 19 th century (1797 – 1871), and Feodor Dostoevsky, the well-known Orthodox Russian novelist who wrote in the second half of the 19 th century (1821 – 1881). Both authors reacted against what they considered to be the dissolution of the social order, brought about by the increasing bourgeois individualism of the 19 th century. But their reaction was extended also against the opposite of this phenomenon – which was, in fact, according to them, its outcome – that is, the idea of a universal socialist state, championed by authors such as Saint-Simon, who represents a 1 José Ortega y Gasset, Tema vremii noastre (El tema de nuestro tiempo ), translated into Romanian by S. Marculescu, Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1997, p.124. branch of utopian socialism different from that of Leroux. The general interest of the thesis consists in comparing the ways in which Dostoevsky and Leroux analyze these phenomena and the ideas they propose instead. The specific interest lies in discovering the common aspects of their ideas of community which are centered on organic living together. 2 Leroux and Dostoevsky share with the reactionaries and the utopian socialists of their time the belief that social unity should replace the social order grounded on individualism. But, on the other hand, they are not at ease either with the belief of the reactionaries or with that of the utopian socialists, like Saint-Simon, concerning the form this unity should take. According to Leroux and Dostoevsky, social unity, for both camps, is grounded on formal institutions imposed from the outside. Leroux and Dostoevsky try to re-think the social body, which Leroux calls l’Humanité , and Dostoevsky calls “universal brotherhood in Christ”, a concept identical with the Slavophile concept of sobornost . The core principles of their ideas of social body are agape (generally translated as love), for Dostoevsky, and philia (generally translated as friendship), in which agape is a historical moment, for Leroux. According to them, only agape or philia , not institutionalized in a formal manner, could respond to the profound and natural human need of both freedom and unity. So that unity could manifest or be at work in the world, it needs the proper religious background which, in Dostoevsky’s case, is an authentic Orthodox Christianity, and, in Leroux’s case, is a certain form of a “religion of Humanity”. Leroux, who has been highly neglected, is