Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia

The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon

Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781609090845
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Russische Geschichte

This valuable study explores the Russian Enlightenment with reference to the religious Enlightenment of the mid to late eighteenth century. Grounded in close reading of the sermons and devotional writings of Platon (Levshin), Court preacher and Metropolitan of Moscow, the book examines the blending of European ideas into the teachings of Russian Orthodoxy. Highlighting the interplay between Enlightenment thought and Orthodox enlightenment, Elise Wirtschafter addresses key questions of concern to religious Enlighteners across Europe: humanity's relationship to God and creation, the distinction between learning and enlightenment, the role of Christian love in authority relationships, the meaning of free will in a universe governed by Divine Providence, and the unity of church, monarchy, and civil society. Countering scholarship that depicts an Orthodox religious culture under assault from European modernity and Petrine absolutism, Wirtschafter emphasizes the ability of Russia's educated churchmen to assimilate and transform Enlightenment ideas. The intellectual and spiritual vitality of eighteenth-century Orthodoxy helps to explain how Russian policymakers and intellectuals met the challenge of European power while simultaneously coming to terms with the broad cultural appeal of the Enlightenment's universalistic human rights agenda.

Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia defines the Russian Enlightenment as a response to the allure of European modernity, as an instrument of social control, and as the moral voice of an emergent independent society. Because Russia's enlightened intellectuals focused on the moral perfectibility of the individual human being, rather than social and political change, the originality of the Russian Enlightenment has gone unrecognized. This study corrects images of a superficial Enlightenment and crisis-ridden religious culture, arguing that in order to understand the humanistic sensibility and emphasis on individual dignity that permeate Russian intellectual history, and the history of the educated classes more broadly, it is necessary to bring Orthodox teachings into the discussion of Enlightenment thought. The result is a book that explains the distinctive origins of modern Russian culture while also allowing scholars to situate the Russian Enlightenment in European and global history.

Chapter One

The Meaning of Enlightenment

The Russian Enlightenment rarely garners serious attention among historians of Europe. Scholars tend either to deny its meaningfulness or to hold it responsible for a linear process of development leading from Westernization to revolution. Starting with the assimilation of European cultural models and the origins of intellectual dissent in the eighteenth century; then moving to open political opposition, the birth of the intelligentsia, and the spread of radical ideologies in the nineteenth century; and finally ending with socialist revolution and communist utopianism in the twentieth century—all of these transformations are touted as products of the Enlightenment ideas that began to define elite culture and thought in the reign of Tsar Peter I. Historians of Soviet totalitarianism are likewise prone to read the Russian Enlightenment with reference to a modernist trajectory. In Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, Stephen Kotkin writes,

The main reason the USSR needs to be incorporated into European history is that Stalinism constituted a quintessential Enlightenment utopia, an attempt, via the instrumentality of the state, to impose a rational ordering on society, while at the same time overcoming the wrenching class divisions brought about by nineteenth-century industrialization. That attempt, in turn, was rooted in a tradition of urban-modeled, socially oriented utopias that helped make the Enlightenment possible. Magnitogorsk had very deep roots.1

Abbott Gleason invokes a similar connection in Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War:

Along with the pervasive loss of faith in the statist Left has come, in recent years, a more subtle loss of faith in revolutions to accomplish major and lasting social change in the world, especially through the application of state power. This kind of disillusion is connected to the loss of faith in “modernist” eschatologies more broadly, especially among intellectuals, and their loss of faith in the historical European Enlightenment. There is presumably a connection between the collapse of political, especially leftist utopias and the recrudescence, around the world, of fundamentalisms of all kinds. If there is no “political” utopia in the future, there must be a golden age in the past that can redeem individual lives or revitalize the world.2

The historiographic line drawn from Enlightenment ideas to communist revolution is defensible insofar as it goes.3 But such one-dimensional characterizations cannot do justice to “the Enlightenment” or its eighteenth-century practitioners. One obvious problem is that “modernist” readings remove the Enlightenment from its old-regime social and political context. Historians of modern Europe, who are inclined to emphasize the Enlightenment’s optimism and celebration of reason, almost always ignore the religious, or at least providential, sensibilities of many eighteenth-century thinkers. Enlightenment culture did indeed strike an optimistic note, and Enlightenment intellectuals did assume that through the proper cultivation and application of human reason moral and material progress could be achieved. But Enlightenment thinkers also understood the vulnerability of human life in the face of uncontrollable passions and harsh physical realities. Thus, while moral clarity and instrumental rationality might be intellectually attainable, the realization of morality and reason in human affairs required constant struggle. That the Enlightenment assumed the possibility of progress is undeniable; however, the belief in progress remained tentative and muted. Despite expectations of ongoing improvement, Enlightenment thinkers also recognized that truth and reality sometimes transcend human understanding. Scholars living in a post-gulag, post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima age may see in Enlightenment assumptions about progress an attitude of arrogance and utopianism, yet it is clear that eighteenth-century reformism did not come close to the hubris or presumptuousness of twentieth-century social engineering. Throughout the eighteenth century iconic representatives of Enlightenment thought continued to believe in the existence of a God-given natural order, the workings of which human beings could never fully comprehend. The modern reliance on human reason may in fact be traceable to Enlightenment ideas, but it in no way constituted an essentialist Enlightenment principle. Regardless of how historians interpret the Enlightenment, the instrumentalist trajectory is just one possibility in a multifaceted cultural phenomenon.

Enlightenment in a European Setting

Almost any educated person in today’s wider “European” world—Anglo-American, Latino, or European (including Russian European)—recognizes that he or she is a child of the Enlightenment.4 Broadly cherished features of European or “Western” modernity—civil liberties, equality before the law, economic opportunity, social mobility, respect for the dignity of the individual, and representative democracy—can in their current articulations be traced back to Enlightenment thought. Across the globe the Enlightenment legacy of human rights and liberal democratic agendas is undeniable.5 Still, as scholars long have recognized, the notion of a single Enlightenment with an identifiable outcome or trajectory of development is highly problematic. Historians therefore speak of multiple Enlightenments: an Early Enlightenment, a Late Enlightenment, a Radical Enlightenment, a moderate mainstream Enlightenment, a Counter-Enlightenment, a High Enlightenment, a popular Enlightenment, national Enlightenment(s), religious Enlightenment(s), and of course a form of monarchy referred to as enlightened absolutism.6 Although often equated with the “philosophical modernity” of eighteenth-century Europe, the Enlightenment defies any systematic or all-inclusive definition.7 To count the ways of scholarly understanding, not to mention actual historical realities, is indeed a daunting task.8 As J. G. A. Pocock puts the matter, the specificity of (the) Enlightenment lies in its plurality, not its unity.9

In the oft-quoted essay “What Is Enlightenment?” Immanuel Kant highlights the ambiguity of the concept:

If we were asked, “Do we now live in an enlightened age?” the answer is, “No,” but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things now stand, much is lacking which prevents men from being, or easily becoming, capable of correctly using their own reason in religious matters with assurance and free from outside direction. But, on the other hand, we have clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely deal with these things and that the obstacles to general enlightenment or the release from self-imposed tutelage are gradually being reduced. In this respect, this is the age of enlightenment.10

It is telling that Kant equates enlightenment not with any particular doctrine or set of principles but with “the escape of men from their self-incurred tutelage—chiefly in matters of religion because our rulers have no interest in playing the guardian with respect to the arts and sciences and also because religious immaturity is not only the most harmful but also the most degrading of all.”11 Kant’s understanding of enlightenment highlights the loss of authority experienced in fits and starts by religious institutions throughout eighteenth-century Europe.12 More importantly, it reveals the philosopher’s striving for intellectual autonomy and his ability, as a Christian believer, to come to terms with Copernican, Cartesian, Baconian, and Newtonian science. Across Europe, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and continuing throughout the eighteenth century, the discoveries of the “scientific revolution,” particularly the heliocentric universe and the plurality of worlds, raised questions about Judeo-Christian conceptions of God and his creation.13

The centrality of Kant’s emphasis on independent thought, at once empowering and humbling, is affirmed by recent Enlightenment scholarship. Building on Max Weber’s definition of modernity as the loss of “unquestioned legitimacy” for the “divinely instituted order,” Louis Dupré calls the Enlightenment “a breakthrough in critical consciousness,” a culture of reason and sentiment that represented “a project,” rather than “a full achievement.”14 Peter Hanns Reill repeats this characterization when he highlights the “complex aspirations” and “epistemological modesty” of the late Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, Reill argues, did not seek to provide absolute universal answers. To the contrary, the Enlightenment harmonized variance, recognized the “value of ambiguity and paradox,” and displayed “a healthy respect for differentness, free movement, and creation.”15 The German perspective of Reill contrasts with the French orientation of Dan Edelstein, who describes the Enlightenment’s intellectual contribution as “narratological,” rather than epistemological. Still echoing Kant, however, Edelstein defines the Enlightenment as “the period when people thought they were living in an age of Enlightenment.” Once again (the) Enlightenment is a matter of critical consciousness, in this instance consciousness of society as “the world of all human interaction.”16

Given the Enlightenment’s infinite richness as an object of both admiration and condemnation, it comes as no surprise, and generations of historians have shown, that Enlightenment thought encompassed a broad range of religious, philosophical, and scientific viewpoints. Equally representative are Newtonian science, which measured and predicted physical phenomena with reference to mechanistic laws of nature, and Kantian idealism, which exhorted human beings to use their reason, proclaiming the individual’s emancipation from the intellectual and moral tutelage of church and state. Based on the assumption that truth emanates from a transcendent cause, the rationalism of René Descartes, Benedictus (Baruch) de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Christian Wolff taught that the human mind is the sole source of discoverable truth, whereas the empiricism of John Locke and David Hume rejected the reality of a priori knowledge, assuming instead that the origin of ideas lies in direct sensual experience. Both physical science and empiricist philosophy raised challenges to Judeo-Christian traditions, yet many Enlightenment thinkers continued to believe in God, providence, and divine truth. Isaac Newton, who demonstrated that the universe functions mechanistically, in accordance with immutable laws of nature, and who recognized the applicability of scientific discoveries to human ends, nonetheless believed that God could at any moment intervene in the divinely ordained natural order. At once progressive and traditional, rebellious and conciliatory, the Enlightenment did not absolutely glorify human reason or any particular set of philosophical principles. Enlightenment thinkers did, however, insist that the individual develop his or her critical consciousness.17

The cultivation of critical consciousness produced multiple outcomes, among them the reformist impulses and movements for social and political change most readily identified with Enlightenment ideas. Less resonant today, though perhaps more broadly transformative, was the moral dimension of critical consciousness. Attention to the moralistic quality of Enlightenment thought makes it possible for historians to bring countries such as Russia, which did not embrace radical reform or even philosophical modernity, into the larger European story.18 Highlighting the impact of moral deliberation, German historian Thomas Saine notes that while Copernican study of the heavens exposed humanity’s position as little more than “a speck in the universe . . . , the Enlightenment’s concern for morality alleviated the sense of smallness and underscored the significance of human life.”19 In eighteenth-century Russia the emphasis on moral deliberation allowed committed monarchists and educated monks to become earnest participants in Enlightenment culture. The derogation of humanity to “a speck in the universe” had little effect: both Enlightenment intellectuals and Christian enlighteners continued to believe that on earth human beings remained “the apex of creation.” The depiction of the Enlightenment as an age of critical consciousness and moral reflection thus helps to explain why Russian intellectuals did not feel compelled to abandon cherished beliefs and institutions when they set out to become enlightened.20

Religious Enlightenment and Enlightenment in Russia

Like all national Enlightenments, the Russian Enlightenment was distinctive. One reason for this distinctiveness was the strength of the Orthodox religious tradition. During the late tenth century Christianity had arrived in Russia from the Byzantine Empire, where despite the influence of classical Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, theology and philosophy remained inseparable.21 The lack of separation persisted in the eighteenth century, contributing to the intellectual and cultural openness of Russia’s educated elites. Even among church intellectuals there seems to have been little resistance to the absorption of European ideas, little awareness that these ideas might somehow be harmful or foreign to Russian religious beliefs. This did not mean that churchmen accepted philosophy or non-Orthodox theology as such. Nor did it mean that accusations of heresy disappeared from religious life or that preachers did not feel compelled to defend Christian dogma against the claims of “freethinkers (vol’nodumtsy)” and “schismatics.”22 Church intellectuals stood their ground, however, even when faced with the possibility of political persecution. Instead of retreating into spiritual or monastic seclusion, they remained recognizable figures in the public sphere. Mindful of the cultural changes occurring in educated society and eager “to distinguish true from untrue Christians,” they took European ideas and gave them an Orthodox meaning.23 What jumps out at the student of Russian intellectual life of the eighteenth century is the ease with which the educated classes, ecclesiastical and lay, absorbed and incorporated European cultural models into their thinking and everyday activities. Despite long-standing hostility to Catholic “papism,” the alienation from “Western” or Latinist culture found among Slavophiles, nationalists, and church intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not become significant before the 1790s.24

Throughout the eighteenth century enlightened churchmen effectively contributed to the moral deliberations of the Russian Enlightenment. As recognized teachers of morality, they addressed Enlightenment questions within the framework of Orthodox Christian belief. Their ability to communicate in meaningful ways with Russia’s educated public is attested in numerous sources and scholarly studies. Of course, like other eighteenth-century educated Russians, church intellectuals had little impact on the general population or even on the average parish priest. They did, however, become visible contributors to the bourgeoning print culture associated with “the rise of the public” and the origins of modern Russian letters, arts, and sciences.25 It is no surprise that images of a crisis-ridden, spiritually sterile Russian Orthodox Church, socially and intellectually isolated from lay elites, are at last disappearing from academic discourse.26 Even a scholar such as Father Georgii Florovskii, who berates eighteenth-century churchmen for so-called Protestant leanings, acknowledges their intellectual depth and religious devotion. More telling perhaps, Florovskii documents the influence of churchmen and religious teachings across two centuries of Russian intellectual history.27

Without accepting Florovskii’s judgments tout court, recent scholarship builds on his account of the role played by church intellectuals in the emergence of modern Russian culture. Based on linguistic analysis, scholars such as Viktor Zhivov, Ekaterina Kislova, and Iurii Kagarlitskii document the intellectual closeness of religious and secular writers in the mid- to late eighteenth century. Among historians of Russian Freemasonry, Raffaella Faggionato highlights the substantial involvement of educated clergy in the translation and publishing activities of Nikolai I. Novikov and the Moscow Rosicrucians.28 Much work remains to be done, but scholars already have established that church intellectuals actively participated in the transmission of European ideas to Russia and even made an original contribution to the pan-European “republic of ...