The Russian philosophy prophecy about the collapse of Western liberal civilization and about the historic mission of Russia

In the current circumstances, it is necessary first of all to see the tectonic, historical shifts, the roots of which can be traced to the beginning of the 19th century. Russian philosophy has always been involved with the world historical issues and tried to comprehend the historic events. It was abreast of the times and predicted the future. Let us try to investigate if the prophecies of Russian thinkers were fulfilled.

As a historian of philosophy, I have to outline two issues. The first is the idea of the collapse of Western civilization. The second one is the view Russia's role is in this new world that is being created now. Russian thinkers have speculating about it since the beginning of the 19th century, starting with Pyotr Chaadayev.

The Collapse of Western Civilization

The collapse of Western civilization is a topic that has been touched upon by almost all Russian thinkers. Even Chaadayev, who seemed to admire the West and criticized Russia, actually admired the great European millenary culture and considered liberal Europe a strange historical entity that would not live long.

Today I decided to talk about a very unusual man, the founder of Russian liberalism. The paradox is that liberalism emerged in Russia as well, but it was our own version of it. But even the most famous theorist of Russian liberalism, Boris Chicherin, eagerly criticized Western liberalism in his books. He even wondered how such a ridiculous construction could emerge, not to mention that it would be translated into reality. From the point of view of a Russian liberal who offered his very well-thought version of liberalism, which I follow, Western liberalism is an absolutely blind alley of social development. However, it is necessary to be aware of what the Russian liberals of the 19th century proposed and continue this tradition.

Chicherin draws attention to the absolute falsity of the original premises of the liberal civilization of the West. This civilization arose not so long ago, in the Enlightenment era, and it immediately went against the traditional European culture.

It stated that human freedom is a purely external quality; there is nothing internal in human. In other words, it saw human as a social atom deprived of inner spiritual essence. Western liberalism offered society an order where the main thing is the maximum of external formal freedoms. Chicherin and other critics of Western civilization quite naturally understood that if a human is not supposed to have such a deep essence, then it is generally impossible to justify his difference from animals. Then this liberal civilization is some kind of an machine that exists according to mechanical laws. Individual elements of this mechanism believe that they have freedoms and speak about it with pride. In reality, they do not possess the most important thing. Human freedom only makes sense when it is aimed at creativity, at the creation of an artful nature and culture. If freedom is just a negative quality, such as the absence of restrictions ("I can go wherever I want"), then such freedom does not offer anything to a human. Any animal in the forest can think that it is free, because it goes where it wants, where nature allows it.

Civilization, which has reduced freedom to an external form, only to the absence of restrictions in behavior, in fact did not see a spiritual essence in a human. On the contrary, it gradually destroyed this essence in the course of history. Liberal civilization emerged in cultural Europe, where individuals remarkable by their spiritual culture. The traditions of European culture could not be abolished in the blink of an eye.

But the paradox is that for two centuries of the existence of the liberal civilization (19th – 20th centuries), this civilization managed to kill the spiritual essence. What we have now is a modern Europe that absolutely does not understand and does not know its own past, does not possess the most important thing that was previously considered the main thing for a European person, i.e., an excellent education, a superb inner culture, profound understanding of culture, spirituality, creativity, and history. All this has vanished because in the liberal model everything is reduced to the external factors. This is one aspect of what is going on.

In fact, we are dealing with a civilization that has gradually ended up with barbarism. This is very clearly and subtly interpreted by one Baltic German philosopher Hermann von Keyserling in his book 'Amerika. Aufgang einer neuen Welt' (1930). He lived in the USA in the 30s, observing American civilization, which would soon surpass everything that humanity has ever achieved in terms of material development. He concluded that this is the civilization of the new barbarism. But civilization means society, people, their spirit, after all. The spiritual principle is core for both human and society. It is not GDP that boosts human and social development. It is the degree of concentrated spirituality in each member of society that does. Keyserling is absolutely right when he says that with all the material development, America, in the most important spiritual essence of individuals and society as a whole, turns to a new barbarism. Such barbarian does not know that he is a spiritual, or creative being. He can do perfectly well without culture. His life is the one of a machine, or an animal that is driven by the simplest reflexes. This process of barbarization was not left unnoticed by Russian thinkers back in the 19th century, and many Western ones in the 20th century. It has reached such an extent that Western civilization is not able to solve the most elementary problems as well as understand other civilizations who have strong spiritual foundation. We witness a process where the whole of humanity splits into two civilizations. The first is where the spiritual principle is the leading principle for human and society, where the spirit and culture are truly valued and are exactly what separates man from beast. The second civilization is the one that due to the paradoxical logic of its development for the last two centuries has completely lost the understanding what it means to be human. People in this society are the new barbarians. They are not able to understand the other. They are not able to respond to another point of view. They are not able to develop normal relations, which is evident if we look at international relations. The clash of these two civilizations was inevitable.

If humanity has a future, then the civilization driven by a spiritual principle must win somehow.

The Russia's mission, or the "Russian idea"

The second point is how Russian thinkers viewed the mission of Russia in this context of an inevitable crisis and the collapse of the West. The collapse is inevitable because a civilization where a human degrades to the level of an animal is an anthropological catastrophe, the extinction of human in his true spiritual essence. Then how exactly can the "Russian idea" be defined?

To answer this question, we must turn to the concept that scares everyone, i.e., the concept of "empire." We are constantly accused that Russia wants to restore the USSR or the Russian Empire. Strange enough because the USSR was founded on the ruins of the Russian Empire. There is a logical contradiction. However, this is a typical example of psychoanalytic substitution of concepts. In fact, the empire is absolutely legitimate. Moreover, it may be one of the most important concepts of all the political history of the world of the last two centuries. I have no doubt that the West is following the same path. Liberal civilization, which has made the concept of "empire" a scarecrow, is itself an empire.

We all live in an American empire, manifesting itself as a global public entity that claims to show the right way to all mankind. The USA are trying to impose a certain way of development on the whole world. They are an empire because empires come in different types.

The American Empire is a canonical one, where the economy is in the foreground. The European Union has followed the same imperial path, too. This is an attempt at global unification, guiding all mankind to a bright future, where the main thing is material well-being. The paradox is that no empire has ever lived solely on the economy. In fact, all empires become truly integral only thanks to some ideology, or religion, or any idea that goes beyond the economy.

Russian philosophy constantly returned to this idea. The way of humanity is the imperial way. Russian thinkers had no doubts in it. Vladimir Solovyov is the most famous philosopher who agreed with that. He spent his whole life designing a worldwide empire, where, against all odds, the Russian tsar is the Emperor, and the Pope is the main priest. It looks a little funny, but it seems that Solovyov did not fully believe that such a thing was possible. A strange contrast to his geographical utopia is his work ‘World Monarchy’. He states there that humanity inevitably strives for unity, and we should call this unity an empire. It is very important to understand how it is arranged, on what grounds. He refers to the ancient Rome as an example of an ancient empire, as a model for all empires of the world. In accordance with this, he is trying to chart a path to the future, where Russia has its role. Contrary to all his other works, where he leans towards theocracy, Solovyov puts the religious idea to the fore. But a religious idea is unlikely to unite all of humanity. People profess too different religions to be united on this principle, especially by imposing Christianity all over the world. Even our country is not purely Christian. In this article, Solovyov puts forward another idea – culture as the foundation of the empire. And this is the key idea of the entire philosophy of the 19th century that the basis of Russia's future leadership in the world is its high spiritual culture. The West is heading for a crisis and death, because the idea of spirit, spiritual culture has disappeared. People do not understand what they live for. Russia, on the contrary, has preserved this understanding.

Different thinkers, seemingly incompatible, agree on this idea. Take a Russian poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev and a Russian writer and thinker Alexander Herzen. In 1850, Tyutchev published an article ‘Russia and Revolution’ in Germany. He took it to Germany anonymously. He argued that Europe is on the verge of collapse because the revolution is spreading, and it will destroy great Europe. Russia, on the other hand, is a rock that would not surrender. Europe's only chance to survive is to become part of the Russian Empire. The famous Tyutchev's utopia has a beautiful ending. The ark floats into the arena of the history of the Russian Empire. It is unshakable and only it will become the bulwark of the coming world order. It is clear that the European nations will not enter the Russian Orthodox Empire. This is ridiculous. They hate us. We know how big the difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is, although both are Christianity. Tyutchev was a European himself. He lived in Germany for 40 years. His two wifes were Germans. He valued European culture. But how is it possible that an intelligent European who knows Europe perfectly well writes that it is the Russian Empire that will save all mankind?

A year after Tyutchev's article was published, in 1851, Herzen published his book 'On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia'. It says that Russia is the locomotive of revolution, i.e. exactly the opposite. Herzen argues that petty-bourgeois Europe is collapsing because its culture has died, while in autocratic Russia culture has not yet flourished.

Thanks to revolution, Russia will become a spiritual country and will open up this culture to the whole world.

Tyutchev speaks of an Orthodox empire, which everyone must become part of in order to survive the revolution; Herzen claims that revolution must save everyone. How is it possible to marry these ideas? Herzen views Peter the Great to be the leading revolutionary of the Russian revolution. Alexander Pushkin and Russian literature have continued the revolutionary trend. And here we understand that he is talking about a spiritual and cultural revolution, and not a political one at all. He had a negative attitude towards political revolutionaries, calling them "topsy-turvy autocracy." As a result, it turns out that Tyutchev and Herzen are talking about the same thing. Just as Tyutchev, who sees the empire of the coming spiritual culture in the image of the Orthodox empire, so does Herzen understand revolution as organizing all of humanity in a certain system where the main value is spiritual culture. This idea should permeate the whole society up to the government. This is why both of them use the concept of empire in their arguments. Solovyov says the same thing, too.

The modern West has degraded to barbarism, which is unworthy of Europe's own history. We must confidently state that we are the only Europeans now who continue the traditions of the great European culture. This is what the whole Russian philosophy says.

Thus, our mission is to create a certain space, including a political one, reviving the traditions of both Russian, European and world culture. Then all peoples in this space will be able to develop this culture further in their own way. This will be a new spiritual empire, a new form of spiritual culture, and a political and social association of people. And whether the current West will find a place in this new formation depends on them. If they have healthy forces that understand what kind of future they want, to revive the traditions of the great European spiritual culture, then Europe may be able to enter this future spiritual world empire. But there is no doubt that Russia will be its leader.