William James in Russian Culture Lexington Books Grossman, J. D., & Rischin, R. (2003). William James in Russian culture. Lanham Md.: Lexington Books. http://www.lexingtonbooks.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/ CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0739105264 WILLIAM JAMES IN RUSSIAN CULTURE LEXINGTON BOOKS Published in the Unitw Slates of Am erica by Lexington Books A Member of the Rowman & linlefi eld Publishing Group 4501 Forbes & ulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 PO Box 317 Oxford OXl 9UU, UK Copyright C 2003 by Lex.i nb"lon B ook.~ All rights reserve!/. No part of this publication may be reproduced , stored in a retrieval system, or lransmined in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording. or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Lib rary Cataloguing in Publication Information Available library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wtl liam James in Russian culture I edited by Joan Delancy Grossman and Ruth Risdiin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7391-0526-4 Calk. paper) ~ ISBN 0-7391-0527-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) I. Russia-lnteliect ual life-ISOI-1917. 2. Russia (Fcde ration ) ~ l n tellectuallife- 1991- 3. James, William, l S42-1910--Inlluence. J. Grossman, Joan Delaney. II. Rischin, Ruth, 1932- DK1S9.2.W547 2003 191 -<1(21 2002015280 Printed in the United States of Am erica §TM The paper used in this publication ml't:ts the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSIINISO Z39.48-1992. 3 What Men Live By: Belief and the Individual in Leo Tolstoy and William James Donna Tussing Orwin HEN WILLIAM JAMF.s READ WAR AND PfACE.a nd Anna Karen ina in the sum­ W mer of 1896, he declared them to be "perfection in the representation of human lifc" (Letters, 2: 48). Tolstoy subsequently became one of James's fa­ vorite authors (Myers, p. 42), both as a novelist and as a religious thinker cited extensively in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Tolstoy, by contrast, showed little overt interest in James. True, as L KU7.ina and K. Tiunkin (p. 82) plausi­ bly argue, the famous passage at the end of pa rt 1 of Resurrection comparing individuals to rivers may refer to James's idea (first expressed in TIle Principles of Psychology) of a stream of consciousness. Tolstoy, who closely foUowed de­ bates about psychology in the journal Questions of Philosophy and Psychology in the 1890s, could not have been unaware of James, while Psychology: Briefer Course (the one-volume abridgement of TI,e Principles ofPsycilOlogy) itself was published in Russian in 1896. Tolstoy's borrowing, however, if it is that, may be polemical (Kuzina, Tiunkin, pp. 73-88).1 In any case, the author of War and Peace and Anna Karen;na had little to learn from James about the way con­ sciousness Oows, changes. and affects our perceptions of reality. James's wildly appreciative 1896 reaction to these novels as perfectly representative of life­ that is, the dynamics of human psychology~s ugg ests that he saw in them a prescient imaging of his own ideas. And in fact, as I shall argue in this chapter, Ja mes's and Tolstoy's psychology have common roots in transcendental philos­ ophy as it affected both American and Russian culture. Age alone does not explain the enthusiasm of the younger man and the seeming indifference of the older one. Tolstoy viewed James as too intellectual, too "scientific." The only hVO references to James in Tolstoy's diary refer acidly -59- 60 Donna Tuss;IIS OrW;11 to James's depiction of Tolstoy in Tile Varieties of Religious Experience1 and then to Tolstoy's impression of the book: "A n inaccurate relation to the sub­ ject [i.e., religionJ-scientific [/laue/mot"]. Oh, is it ever scientific!" (December 14, 1909; PSS, 57: 188 ). James's father, Swedcnborgian and idealist Henry lames Sr., whom Tolstoy read in March 111 91, evoked a much more positive re­ sponse.) Tolstoy preferred the fa ther's religiolls disposition to the son's science. Iron­ ically, thCIl, it was pa rtly Tolstoy's rcliJ!.iosity that drew Will iam to him. In Tol­ stoy James found psychologizing as rigorous as his ow n, a yearni ng for belief as pcrfcrvid, and .1 capacity for mystical experience that he himself lacked. James confesses this failing at the begi nning of his lectures on "myst ical Slates" in The Varieties of Religiolls Experience "[M]y own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I ca n speak of them only at second hand" (p. 301). Yet James believes that religion is essential, and it is Tolstoy whom he quotes (from the title of a story written in 1881 ) as saying that "faith .. is that by which men live" (VRE. p. 336). "Mystical states:' which James identifies ill Varieties as "twice-born ness and su pernaturality and pantheism," are "absolutely authoritative over the indi­ viduals to whom they come." Although others need not accept them uncriti­ call y, they cannot simply be d iscounted either. [Mystical states] break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness. They o~n out the possibility of Olher or­ de rs of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith. ( po 335) Both Tolstoy and James were psychologists and moralists, who, analyzing in­ dividual consciousness, concluded that hum,lIl beings rely fo r moral guidance o n beliefs that cannot be justified rationally. Today, when many scientists ques­ tion the authority of "rationalistic consciollsness," and the religion of progress through science has many fewer adherents than in the nineteenth century,4 the arguments of James and Tolstoy about the necessity of religious faith deserve a fresh look. So, too, do their agreements and disagreements. In what follows, I will discuss the role of belief in the writings of the two men, enlarge upon the significance of Tolstoy for James, and offer a comparison of the two. The Necessity of Belief in Tolstoy Tolstoy first explores the psychology of belief in Q(l'(xhestvo (Boyhood 1853). The philosophizing adolescent arrives at a "skepticism" so complete that "be- What Men Live By 61 sides myself I imagined no one and nothing existed in the whole world .... In a word, I concurred with Schelling in the conviction that not objects, but my relation to them exists" (PSS 2:57). Nikolenka doubts the objective ex istence not only of the physical, but of the moral world. He gives up old beliefs­ "which for the happiness of my life I ought never have dared to touch"- for new philosophic theories. If, as Tolstoy believed, philosophizing should always be directed toward good practices, then skepticism is unsustainable because it destroys the possibility of any practice. Extreme subjectivism is the intellectual expression of the self-centered world of adolescence. Tolstoy calls it "skepti­ cism" because in the process of analyzing the world the overactive logical mind of his adolescent dismantles it until nothing is left, not even reason it­ self: "mind left reason behind (um za razum zllkhodil]." The Russian proverb neatly captures Tolstoy's distinction between inadequate human reason-the "pitiful, meager spring of moral activity ... the mind of man"-and divine Reason as the organizing principle of an external reality the ex istence of wh ich he, like James, never seriously doubted. Boris Eikhenbaum distinguished the "moral instincts" by which Tolstoy lived from the "convictions" [ubezildcl1iia ] which he despised (Lev Tolstoy, p. 216). These instincts are moral ideas that are thought as well as felt . This passage from Youth is typical: Those virtuous ideas that I would work over in conversations with my adored friend Dmitrii ... were still pleasing only to my mind, but not to feeling. But the time came when these thoughts with such fresh power of moral discovery came into my mind that I would panic, thinking of how much time I had lost to no purpose~ and immediately, that very same second, I wanted to apply these tl!Oughts to life, with a firm resolve never 10 betray them ( PSS 2: 79). (Emphasis mine) The difference between moral ideas and the "convictions" that Tolstoy de­ spised lies in their origins. Convictions are products of individual minds, and as such are both subjective and superficial; while moral ideas guide our ac­ tions even though our minds may not wholly grasp them. "How did I dare to think that one could know the ways of Providence. It is the source of reason, and reason wants to comprehend it .. The mind loses itself in these abysses of wisdom.": thus did Tolstoy as a young soldier in the Caucasus in ISS I for­ mulate his relation to higher reason embodied in Providence (PSS 46: 61). In Youth moral ideas do not actually take hold in Niko!cnka's mind until they "come into" it with "fresh power of moral discovery": the grammatical con­ struction expresses the passivity of the individual in relation to these forma­ live ideas. They are both feelings and ideas at the same time. In Youth, Christ­ ian tradition remains a repository of moral belief, but nature is more 62 DoIllIll 11lssmg Orwin compelling. Chaptl'f 32 (" Youth") returns Nikolcnka to his boyhood home Pctrovskoe and especially to its garden, a metaphor for Eden. There Nikolenka communes with sources of belief not directly available to the mind.