Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club has posted the entire text of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Commencement speech, in which the then-exiled Russian warned the Western world that its time might be up soon if it didn't get religion.
That's a flip summary of Solzhenitzyn's message--his speech is actually much more than that. It's an indictment of many of the flaws of Western society, and when I read it just now I could only imagine how the students, faculty, and guests at that occasion almost thirty years ago received his stern and gloomy Jeremaid.
Solzhenitzyn is a strange figure, a man of a complexity that belies facile description. His speech must have been shockingly strange at the time. Today it is shocking in another way, because the first two-thirds of it--a critique of the flaws of Western society--seems shockingly familiar.
That makes him somewhat prescient; he's both a Jeremiah and a Cassandra, although I don't necessarily agree with his suggested solution to the problem because, paradoxically and ironically, Solzhenitzyn's remedy--a return to religion--gives at least the appearance of resembling the remedy of the Islamicist fundamentalist jihadis.
First, a few excerpts from his speech, to give you some of its flavor:
On courage:
The Western world has lost its civil courage...Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite...
The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about...So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country?
On politics:
A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless....
When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights.... Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually...
On the press:
The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything."...Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?....
On the consequences of the Vietnam War:
However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you.
So, what is Solzhenitzyn's remedy? A return to the overarching influence of religion--specifically, Christianity--in Western society. He believes that godless humanism, elevating the individual above all else, and eliminating the context of a greater and transcendent meaning to human life, has led inexorably to the societal flaws he described so well in his speech.
This is where Solzhenitzyn appears to circle round to a position that resembles that of our current enemies. Because isn't that exactly what they're saying? Counter the flaws of the Western Enlightenment with a return to the hegemony of religion in human life?
The issues are huge, and worthy of a book, or perhaps several books. But I'm only going to briefly touch on them; this is in the nature of a quick sketch.
Solzhenitzyn falls in the tradition of Russian thought known as "Slavophile" (a personal aside: back in the late 60s when I was in college, I learned of the movement in a course entitled "Russian Intellectual History," which I've written about here). His return to Russia in 1994, where he now resides, is no surprise in that context, nor is his devotion to religion.
I agree with Solzhenitzyn that some sort of higher meaning seems necessary to get us out of the trap into which we've fallen. But religion can be another trap, and the jihadis are perhaps the best example of where that can lead.
I have no way of knowing what Solzhenitzyn really thinks or feels. But it's my contention that the difference between what he is advocating and what the jihadists are advocating is profound, although there is a superficial resemblance in that they both rely on religion to save us. This difference goes back to a fundamental (pardon the pun) difference between Islam and Christianity, as I understand it.
People are fond of saying that religion is the problem; it's caused no end of trouble on earth. While that's true, it's also true that it's caused no end of good on earth. That paradox is resolved by understanding that religion is a malleable tool that can be used to many purposes.
One extremely important dimension on which religions--and divisions within religions--differ greatly is on how much personal freedom they advocate. Fundamentalists in all religions lean strongly to the side of unquestioning obedience, whereas those in other wings emphasize individual freedom of choice.
Another very important difference between religions is on the dimension of whether that particular religion should be spread, and, if so, how it should be spread. Islam (which means "submission") has historically been a religion that doesn't shy away from the idea of forceable and coercive conversion, whereas the forceably coercive strain in Christianity (never as much a part of its holy texts as in Islam) has now shrunk virtually to the vanishing point.
So there are differences between religions, and differences within each religion. Right now the fundamentalist, coercive, triumphalist, and violent strain of Islam is growing. Thus the special danger that this segment of Islam represents to the world, a danger that no other religion currently presents in anywhere near its numbers, strength, goals, weaponry, and aggressiveness. Fundamentalists in many religions may resemble each other in the rigidity of their obedience to the rules of their respective religions, but they don't necessarily resemble each other in how they view the rights of the rest of the world to practice a different one.
What does mainstream Christianity have to say about freedom? To cite another famous Slavophilic Russian writer, Dostoevsky, in his remarkable work "The Grand Inquisitor," although freedom is part of Christ's message to the world, it has at times been subverted and undermined by Inquisitors who don't trust humanity with freedom.
If you've never read "The Grand Inquisitor," which is actually a chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, you owe it to yourself to do so. Here's the text.
Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor doesn't just stand for the historical figures of the past who were the actual Inquisitors. He represents all attempts by religions and belief systems--including secular ones such as Communism--to perfect humanity by denying people their freedom in the hopes of creating a better world.
I cannot believe that Solzhenitzyn, with his experience in the Russian Gulag, meant to advocate a return to a religion that denies that individual freedom. At any rate, it's not Solzhenitzyn's particular views that are important, it's the questions he raises. The dilemma remains, and it's an ancient and exceedingly important one: how to foster and protect freedom without leading to anarchy and loss of meaning, including the loss of the courage to protect ourselves?
The answer is still unclear, but the hour is getting late--much later than it was in 1978.
Perhaps its not a return to religion that is needed so much as a willingness to recognize evil.
I think that Solzhenitsyn's broader point was, that humans need metaphysical beliefs to avoid nihilism. Most likely he meant religion in general and Christianity in particular, but at least in this speech he was careful to avoid expicitly mentioning that. His main beef was with Enlightment and Humanism, that elevated man as the ent to itself. In his view this inevitably leads to the culture of instant gratification and ultimately selfdestruction. This observation is valid. For me, as a supporter of the enlightment project the challenge is to provide the metaphysical meaning within the framework of Enlightment and Humanism.
I remember that speech vividly. I remember how many people at the time agreed with the description of the problem, but strenuously objected to his proposed cure. A lot of religious people welcomed his cure. But please don't sell America short: he got the attention he deserved.
I never stopped agreeing with his description of the problem. And I recall my feeling of horror in 1999 as I started researching some guy named Bin Laden to discover how much the Islamists agreed.
The major difference is that noble folks like Solzhenitsyn (and little guys like me) think of these problems as a terrible sickness, through which our beloved society (the West in Europe and in the Americas) must be helped in order to recover health. We only disagree on how to restore health.
Folks like the Islamists see the same problems as absolute evils, to be destroyed at all costs.
The fact Solzhenitsyn, the Islamists, and true patriots all agree on some important points should be mind-stretching for a lot of folks.
I forgot to add:
Solzhenitsyn should not be called a "Cassandra", as she was a female Greek priestess who foresaw the future, but was not believed. The male Greek priest who foresaw the future but was not believed was named .... Laocoon.
"What does mainstream Christianity have to say about freedom? To cite another famous Slavophilic Russian writer, Dostoevsky, in his remarkable work "The Grand Inquisitor," although freedom is part of Christ's message to the world, it has at times been subverted and undermined by Inquisitors who don't trust humanity with freedom."
This is perhaps why George Bush so easily understood that they hate us for our freedom.
Humanity isn't trustworthy with freedom. We will abuse it. But, trustworthy or not, we have been granted it by a higher power.
One of the typical excesses of religion when it impinges on the political is to oppose freedom because it is aware just how much abuse humanity puts it to. Islam is correct in recognizing humanities depraved condition, but utterly wrong in its proposed solution of taking away man's freedom and placing him in a highly regimented theocracy. The problem of course, as Locke could have told you, is not that man doesn't need God or His righteousness, but rather it is that man doesn't profit from a theocracy because its run be men and thus does nothing to promote real virtue.
And Humanism and any of the other godless '-ism's which we've been arguing over since the late 18th century, and which we've been killing each other in an attempt to impose them on everyone else, don't solve the problem either and for the exact same reason. The sad truth is that most of the Enlightenment thinks themselves could have given the exact same speech as Solzhenitzyn, because they recognized that though we must have freedom, we must also have a basis of responcibility and that that could only come from a source external to ourselves (whatever you choose to call it).
The problem is that Christian religion is often reduced to belief in unbelievable dogma, instead of as devotion to a righteous way to live. Those who seek to be the best person they can be, and seek a righteous way to live, live in a moral sphere we might call religious, whatever they belong to organized religion or not. The beleif that there is absolute moral truth, a God's eye view, while we humans can never claim surety, counteracts the godless view that truth is just anyone's opinion. Turning to religion that is just mindless obedience to tradition or dogma will not solve the problem, but religion that is earnest searching for truth is what is needed to counteract the lack of conviction and passion for the good that Solzhenitzyn so clearly recognized in modern America.
One interesting thing to look at in light of this speech is the difference between countries that have a constitution (US) vs countries that have a basic law (GB, Israel, Iraq).
A basic law system is in principle more open to influences outside of law whereas a constitutional system leans more in the direction of being self contained. not black and white but the tendencies are there.
In which of these is man more free? That's in interesting question by itself, but the question I really mean to be raising here is, which of these two systems more likely results in a well balanced and moral society?
I think Solzhenitsyn might prefer a basic law system becaues it's more flexible. At the same time, I'm guessing most of us prefer a constitutional system for the opposite reason.
Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn speak to a kind of natural spirituality that the Slavophiles have always believed resides in the Russian people. It's not just religion; it's a passion for truth, though more emotional than logical. It's artistic, not scientific.
Regardless of whether this ever existed the way they imagined it, it certainly doesn't exist in the United States, or anywhere in the West.
Our creed is politics. It's killed more human beings in the last hundred years than bad religion has killed in the last ten thousand. It's loaded with the most absurd dogmas imaginable, has inquisitorial bastards galore, and will probably be the death of all of us. Yet it holds itself smugly superior to religion, culture, art, and life itself.
Can't blame Solzhenitsyn for feeling a little lost over here. Still, it wasn't all bad for him. I remember seeing a photo of him, very happy in some snow-choked forest in New England that must have seemed a little like home, saying "In America, you can breathe free."
Solzhenitsyn never understood the profound individualism that along with modernism shape the American character.
Think of: Huck Finn, Mark Twain, Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Dashiell Hammett, Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler, nearly any Paul Newman or James Garner or Humphrey Bogart movie made in their prime, or John Wayne or Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart or Don Johnson in Miami Vice ...
And a common pattern emerges.
An individual, not bound by dogma or community values, who acts on his own according to his own concience. That there are some things a man to be a man in the American sense cannot do; and others that he must do in order to remain a man. To be the individual he worked so hard to become.
Ironically this was grasped most thoroughly by Akira Kurosawa in Yojimbo, remade by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone and finally Bruce Willis and Walter Hill. Last Man Standing is the perfect expression of the modern American individuality. Red Harvest the perfect book expressing how profound that individuality can be.
There are things you do, and things you don't, based on the widely understood though never fully articulated values inherent in a profoundly individualistic society. One not just adapted to change but one that demands it in order to maintain individuality (when the game changes constantly even a pawn can get ahead).
[Think how many American movies have dealt with "ends of an era" ... the Colonial West of Last of the Mohicans or Drums Along the Mohawk, the Old West, the end of the Gangster Era, etc. etc.]
The true enemy is NOT IMHO a lack of spirituality (like most intellectuals particularly foreigners Solzhenitsyn gets it almost 100% wrong). It is post-modern irony that rejects the whole idea of individualism (maximized dual freedom-responsibility for action) in favor of narcisstic rejection of any belief, passivity, and the view that there is no action that can't be taken, or no refusal to act that can't be excused.
Contrast say "Less Than Zero" vs. High Noon; Squid and the Whale say versus Collateral.
What foreign intellectuals say about the US makes as much sense as the dog barking next door; what matters IMHO is the pop-culture where most people get their values. So if the celebrity hero is say, Wyatt Earp or the fictional hero one played by Bogart, Wayne, or Garner that's one thing. If it's Owen Wilson or Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp quite another.
Even spirituality in the US is profoundly individual. Look at films like "the Apostle" with Robert Duvall, or the extremely individualistic nature of religious revival in the US starting with the Great Awakening.
I want to add that perhaps I was not clear; American Modernism does not admit doubt. That's European. Rather, American individual modernism has no doubt whatsoever, because it's arrived through a long, personal struggle to construct a personal code. It might be as poorly articulated as "if a man's partner is killed, he's expected to do something," or simply "there's some things a man's gotta do, in order to stay a man."
But regardless this not doubt. Nothing could be more certain.
I think faith in God is precisely what sets America apart from Europe along with our non-Establishment of Religion.
America has been individualist since its beginning and joined by immigrants who sought to escape the yoke of European -isms and the lack of freedom that collectivism ensures.
It was non-individual-oriented religion that killed Christianity in Europe. The mixing of King and Pope/Priest, the idea of Christendom.. none of these things are what Jesus preached about it, so of course it was a failure.
So now that Europe is fading away, what’s their typical complaint about us Americans...it's our belief in God,.. our willing to stand up to evil around the world even though it comes with a cost. We still have values and virtues that we are willing to die defending. They are not willing to fight for anything except perhaps the perpetuation of their doomed EUtopian social welfare.
We're the last standard-bearer of faith in Jesus (the authentic kind.. not the kind that obeys a hierarchy).. we side by Israel I believe because of that faith. I don’t find it a coincidence that those who go to war against Israel are also usually our enemy as well.
Anti-Semitism is Satanic and Satan is the foe of the true God, so for the same reason that the Jews are irrationally hated , so now are Americans.
Well, the truth is, Christianity requires a kind of radical individuality. The difference is, instead of trusting in one's own strength exclusively, one searches for the command of God to direct one's walk.
To be certain, as different as each person is and unique so will be their path through life.
So he is right-- but the solution is in the hands of the people, not the government. If we want our religion and faith back we can't make the government do it for us. Even biblically it is something that the government does and can not do. We have to take it back with our own two hands.
Thus the core of America - individuality and faith. We're driven by individuality and guided by faith. If one falls away, the other one wilts. Faith without individuality looks like Europe and Islam. Individuality without faith looks like modern America. But you don't have to choose between- anyone can choose the middle path if they want.
But if people don't start doing so, then our culture is committing suicide.
I think we may have started having an issue in the US when individualism got stronger than faith in the late 1800's. It is when a whole clustering of strange variations on Christianity (that are decidedly not Christian) started to appear. I think what happened then (the late 1800's) might hold to solution to why we have so much trouble today.
RiverCocytus: I strongly agree with your comments , in fact I'd say they do a good job at putting into words what I was trying to express (to what degree of success I had , I dont know :))
F.A. Hayek wrote that the classical liberal ideal of individualism and freedom reached its high-water mark in the 1870s, after which it was pushed back by another Western ideal: German-inspired collectivism, which gave us Welfare Oligarchy, Marxism, Nazism, and (yes) much of today's so-called "liberalism".
#6
I think you are right. You should write more. Do you think you could explain operationally how people can take good idea's and apply them so completely differently than they are meant? Why is it that organizationaly religion so often turns evil?
Thanks, Vince!
Interestingly, I first stumbled apon the collectivist thread when I read "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto. Agree with the guy about solutions or not, he does really rip open the past (esp. the late 1800's) in regards to education and take a frank look at it. In fact, a lot of the industrial magnates -- partly out of ignorance -- took part in the collectivizing charade.
But I wonder how it relates to the further fragmentation of Christianity? In some ways, I think that we as Christians were unable, for whatever reason, to craft a coherent message reliably since the middle ages. We were seriously, like a few centuries behind. We had (and still often have) a false dichotomy: we think that Christianity nowadays is a battle between traditionalism and modernism(progressivism). I know I like to talk about false dichotomies...
The reality is that neither side-- the progressive, feel good, everyone is welcome, non-judgemental side or the strict, pious, methodical, stiff and stilted side...
The truth I think that we lost somewhere between 100 AD and the late 1800's is, Christianity has always strove to meet people where they are-- we're not here to build big churches and have big choirs and sit in our little social societies and talk about what sinners those people are.
Nor are we supposed to deny the truth of the Word in order to fit with our politics.
So maybe we finally lost our grip on individualism, too-- and our presence as a cultural force was limited to occaisional revivals, current membership, and lukewarm sentiments.
I mean, we don't get off the hook here. If Christianity in particular (or morality and/or spirituality in general) has stopped being a force in public policy decisions, its a fault of the Church.
Institutionalizing or 'establishing' Christianity in the State would not help, in fact, it would be the death knell of our faith.
When prayer in public schools became illegal (I'm pretty sure that's correct) we were screwed. How did we ever let that happen? Or right, not a force in the culture.
Just sounds like me whining and ranting, I guess. But my point is not so much about prayer in schools specifically; if we are such a moral, Christian nation, then no-one should object to an optional school prayer. If the teacher doesn't want to do a prayer, that's cool. If we really believe in religious plurality, then it should be public religious plurality. What we have now amounts to public non-christian relgious plurality.
We took it for granted until it vanished in a puff of smoke. And the signs of it are present in other places.
If I'm totally out of line here, let me know. :P
Without reading the speech that is defintely the agenda the Republican party has been exporting for political gain. Both phony in its false piety and its willingness to overlook the evil within religion; hated of homosexuals-to the detriment of our armed service, a willingness to intrude into the private agony of a deathbed situtation; no stunning silence of the predatory sexual practises of pedophile priests and the bureaucratic hiding of them among the unknowing dioceses. Bush will not even speak about the guy going to military funerals condemning homosexuals.
Religion doesn't work because for the most part we always tried to make it a private matter. We do not want to be the Taliban or OBL or Saudi Arabia. Let's keep it that way.
I was in the audience during this speech, listening to it in simultaneous translation. Then I read the newspaper accounts the next day. They seemed to be describing a different speech. I heard him to say that he liked America, but as a friend, he had some suggestions. The papers, and it was headline news across the country, reported it as, "ungrateful wretch slams the country kind enough to take him in".
Hmm, the issue is, that religions are fundamentally different.
You miss my key point: public reigious plurality. It doesn't exist anymore. Religion used to be public (specifically Christianity) and those who understood it best did not force it down anyone's throat. They perhaps learned a good lesson from the English king known as "The Wisest Fool in Christendom". And a bit from Wm. Jennings Bryant, who tried to abuse Christian rhetoric to win a presidential election. Not cool ever.
But now, the 13th amendment is abused with impunity to attack Christianity. Why? Because the only Christians left to defend it are too dull to recognize why it's being attacked.
Why is precisely and completely related to Sol's speech.
Jim Rockford,
You're absolutely right. But take it from someone who's studied American history and literature for more than twenty years; from the beginning, there has been a countervailing tendency to the individualism you cite. A more communitarian, traditional, and religious tendency. Think of: John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Allen Tate, TS Eliot. That's why Solzhenitsyn's speech resonates with so many Americans. As a Southerner (always a more traditional and communitarian society than the North, West, or Midwest) I find the speech particularly compelling.
Celebrim: The sad truth is that most of the Enlightenment thinks themselves could have given the exact same speech as Solzhenitzyn, because they recognized that though we must have freedom, we must also have a basis of responsibility and that that could only come from a source external to ourselves (whatever you choose to call it).
I think that point needs to be emphasized with a slight distinction. The liberal enlightenment of people like Hobbes, Locke and Smith reasoned that public morality (or religion) was necessary to avoid dissolution into selfishness. The later skeptical enlightenment of Rousseau was as anti-Christian as Robert M, but wanted to create a new state religion that would serve the needs of the state. It would appear that Solzhenitzyn experienced the fruits of the skeptical enlightenment.
"I think that point needs to be emphasized with a slight distinction. The liberal enlightenment of people like Hobbes, Locke and Smith reasoned that public morality (or religion) was necessary to avoid dissolution into selfishness. The later skeptical enlightenment of Rousseau was as anti-Christian as Robert M, but wanted to create a new state religion that would serve the needs of the state. It would appear that Solzhenitzyn experienced the fruits of the skeptical enlightenment."
Indeed, he certainly had.
I was aware of the distinction but simplified the history abit for the benefit of those who are victims of the American public school system. (I am too actually, but I'm one of the lucky ones that out of rebellion studied what I was interested in. It made me a poor student, but a better scholar.)
Rousseau is not all a bad guy. I would recommend reading him as part of any well rounded education. There are aspects of his works I agree with, and his bitterness is perfectly understandable in the light of the fact that he was French. (That's only minor snark, considering the state of France social conditions in the 18th century.) But, for all the fact that he was right about more things than he was wrong about, and for all the fact that he seems at first glance to not be all that different from Locke or Smith in philosophy, Rousseau is perhaps more to blame for all the blood that has been shed since his time than any other single person.
Let's tally it up. From Rousseau, we directly get the French Revolution and 'The Terror'. From the French Revolution, we indirectly get the Napleonic Wars. We also must blame Rousseau for 'statist' socialism in all its forms, not only directly as the philosopical ancestor of say the EU's current nanny state, but indirectly of both Stalinism and Fascism. Because, from Rousseau's subjectivism it is a direct line to Hegel, which is a direct philosophical line to Marx and the other Young Hegelian philosophers which unleashed so many bad but persistant and bloody memes on the world. And if that isn't bad enough, he's at least in part to blame for Romanticism.
From Locke, Hobbes, and Smith, - 'Life, Liberty, and the aquisition of Property', we get America, modern democracy, capitalism, natural rights, and Anglo-American progressivism. That's one outgrowth of the Enlightenment. From Rousseau - 'Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood' - we get the the French Revolution, socialism, communism, atheism, and existentialism. That's the other. The reaction of the Lockeian Liberals to the Rousseau Liberals of the French Revolution which created the roots of the now highly misnamed 'Conservative' movement.
In the West, we are still in the same fight over what it means to be modern and Liberal. On one side are the philosophical decendents of writers like Burke, Hayek, Popper and Friedman who think that they are the true 'Liberals'. On the other side are those that identify with writers like Freud, Marx, Derrida, Heidegger, Said, and Nietzsche and they think they are the true 'Liberals'.
Rousseau is not all a bad guy.
I probably should have said the radical fruits of the skeptical enlightenment. Jeffersonian democracy is a child of Rousseau. I suspect that Jeffersonian democracy did not follow the path of the French Revolution because radical reform was not necessary in a new world with plenty of land for everyone to farm -- the government just needed to step out of the way. There's probably also the oddity that Jefferson's hostility to public laws concerning religion was attractive to evangelicals and radicals in a way that kept Jeffersonian democracy from being atheistic in sympathies.
I liked Rousseau the best of the political philosophers I studdied in college and Hobbes the least. Now I suppose their positions have reversed.