CERTITUDE, SENTIMENT, JOIE, PAIX

This entry’s title is taken from Pascal’s inscription on a piece of paper, stitched into the lining of his coat, and found after his death. This is the opening entry of the Pascal (1623-1662) series in this section, but the reader is as always advised to look for other Pascal references throughout the other sections of this book.

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Pascal was one of the greatest creative geniuses who ever lived, a brilliant mathematician, physicist, and a prodigious inventor. He was also a great philosopher and a writer, whose impeccable literary style, elegant expression, wit, and depth, have enormously influenced the French language and European literature for all time. He had accomplished several lifetimes of work of genius, by the time he died at the age of thirty-nine, catching a deadly cold in the middle of Stockholm’s royal winter.

He is often called a religious philosopher, and there is some truth to that, for religion was indeed his biggest preoccupation, especially in his later years. But it would be wrong to see his specialized area of philosophy in theology-related matters only, as he was much more philosophically versatile. One of his lesser known, but exceptionally significant contributions was to the philosophy of mathematics. In his essay De l’Esprit Géométrique, published only over a century after his death, he looks at the issue of discovering truths, that is of particular interest to me, considering my basic premise that truth exists only within a specific creation, and that all creation starts with an unprovable hypothesis.

“Pascal argues that ideally such a method would lead to founding all propositions on already established truths. This is, however, impossible, because these truths require other truths to back them up; first principles therefore cannot be reached.” (Curiously, this is a variation on the cosmological argument for the existence of God. No wonder that, in Pascal’s view, the human mind is powerless in attaining any kind of absolute by human effort alone, hence his conclusion about the necessity of submission to God. The question remains of course whether such a submission makes the human knowledge of the absolute possible, and, to be sure, it hardly does, but, equally sure, it does open new horizons for human endeavor by reinforcing reason with intuition, underscoring the fact that a healthy dose of mysticism is a sine qua non of human progress.)

“Based on this, he argues that the procedure used in geometry is as perfect as possible,--- with certain principles assumed, and other propositions developed from them. But there is no way to know the assumed principles to be true.

He also uses this opportunity to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer, and definitions that are within the language, and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. He claims that only definitions of the first type are important to science and to mathematics, arguing that these fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism, formulated by Dèscartes. In De l'Art de Persuader, he looks deeper into geometry’s axiomatic method, specifically into the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. He agrees with Montaigne that it is impossible to achieve certainty in these axioms and conclusions with human methods.” (Indeed, very few people outside the professional mathematical community ever realize that geometry, and all mathematics, for that matter, is based on a set of unprovable assertions. Far from being an “exact” science, mathematics is swimming in high-grade mysticism.)

“Pascal asserts that these principles can only be grasped through intuition (!), and that this fact underscores the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.” (Or, to put it in other words, one has to become a profound mystic.)

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But there is much more general philosophy in his Pensées, the great book, which I had a chance to read at a very early age. It is true that the amount of “theologicality” in it occasionally seems overwhelming, but this is not through any fault of his. Published posthumously as a collection of most of his unpublished thoughts and sketches, it includes two distinctly disparate sets. One is his drafted preparation of a theological book, under the already established title Apologie de la Religion Chrétienne; and the other is everything else. It is for this reason that when the Pensées was published in 1670, its full title read Pensées de M. Pascal sur la Religion, et sur Quelques Autres Sujets.

This book, therefore, can be seen, in part, as a magnificent collection of philosophical aphorisms of a great subtlety and profundity. I have several favorites among them, such as this for instance:

Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre. (#139.) (It is true that many people are afraid of solitude, and hate to be by themselves even for a few hours. Such an attitude is certainly destructive, and one does not have to be a sociopath to realize that. There needs to be time for social activity, time for one-on-one communication with others, and, yes, time for being alone with yourself.)

Or this creepy mystical shudder: Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. (#206.) (Indeed, travelling into the outer reaches of human perception [like all great scientists do, and some of them never return], where eternal silence reigns, is a frightening and humbling experience. In fact, all silence is such. Remember Hamlet: “The rest is silence.”)

Curiously, there are several very familiar quotations here, which are often attributed to their later users, an ignominy, which needs to be rectified, as it is now in this entry: On mourra seul (#211), attributed to Schopenhauer, or this one: Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue, que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte (Lettres Provinciales, xvi), traditionally attributed to Lenin, but occasionally to a number of others as well.

As a fitting conclusion to this general entry, we shall look at Nietzsche’s peculiar attitude to Pascal, whose intense Catholic faith he rather harshly likens, in Jenseits 46, to a “continual suicide of reason,” and then, in Morgenröte, pronounces him a self-hater and, by the same token, a hater of mankind. In Der Antichrist, he laments about “the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!” (#5) And then, in Wille zur Macht, this comparison with Schopenhauer:

Without the Christian faith, Pascal thought, you, no less than nature and history, will become for yourselves un monstre et un chaos. This prophecy we have fulfilled, after the feeble optimistic eighteenth century had prettified and rationalized man. Schopenhauer and Pascal. In an important sense Schopenhauer is the first to take up again the movement of Pascal: un monstre et un chaos, consequently, something to be negated.--- History, nature, man himself. Our inability to know the truth is the consequence of our corruption, of our moral decay; thus Pascal. And thus, at bottom, Schopenhauer.--- The deeper the corruption of reason, the more necessary the doctrine of salvation--- or, in Schopenhauer’s terms, negation. (#83).

…There are many more references to Pascal in Nietzsche, all centering on Pascal’s lamentable intellectual martyrdom. Yet, Pascal is still one of the select eight in the already much-quoted Nietzschean passage that must be quoted yet again, to put Nietzsche’s opinion of Pascal in proper perspective: I too have been in the underworld to speak with a few of the dead. Four pairs did not deny themselves to my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. On these eight I fix my eyes, and see their eyes fixed on me. May the living forgive me that occasionally they appear to me as shades, while those men seem so alive to me. (Vermischte Meiningen und Sprüche: #408.)

This is not just Nietzsche’s personal opinion. This passage may well be regarded as an objective judgment of humanity on the great Frenchman’s historical legacy.

HUMANITARIAN INVASION

East or West, Liberal or Conservative, Communist or Capitalist, Red, White, Green or whatever, all sensible and compassionate people ought to salute the Russians these days for having successfully delivered essential humanitarian supplies to people who desperately need them, but do not get them otherwise. Those who are not compassionate and hate the Russians, but still have enough sense in their heads to adhere to the rules of sensible behavior, should be expected to give a grudging nod, or at the very worst to stay neutral. What kind of scum would say that delivering water, baby food, bandages, and such, to children, women and the elderly, who are being bombed by certifiable thugs on a daily basis, is not an unconditionally commendable endeavor?

And yet…

I have seen a lot of stupidity in my experience with great power politics, but the latest one seems to take the cake. Some very authoritative politicians of some unquestionably great nations have rushed to declare this humanitarian relief an unlawful act, an invasion of a sovereign country. There are many other insane things said about it, but I trust my readers to read the news (even if it makes them sick), and to be able to separate the facts from irresponsible fiction. So, I shall forgo the sordid details and crazy insinuations, in order to stick to one point only. And this point is important enough to stick to, by itself.

A Russian invasion, my foot! What would they call a real Russian military invasion, or don’t they understand the difference? Too much name-calling desensitizes the public, which may become so cynical about the efforts to pass off chaff as wheat, that it will soon start throwing out their politicians’ wheat together with the chaff…

And when they start doing it, with other types of domestic and foreign backlash following, the end result may prove far more hurtful to the great power verbal fencers than any kind of actual fencing, any kind of what these days is casually labeled as terrorism.

CARTESIAN DIAMONDS

This is by no means an original entry by its content.---This is merely a mini-collection of Dèscartes’ quotes. Still, there are two good reasons to make this entry postable. One is that, as an integral part of the Cartesian whole, it is not to be neglected for the reason that it is “nothing but the quotes.” The other reason is that the criterion of originality is adequately met in the creation of this entry. My particular selection of quotes here is original enough. Some more familiar quotes are being used elsewhere in this series, and thus do not find themselves repeated in this entry. There are also other fairly popular Cartesian quotes which I am not overly excited about. As a result, my selection is unusual and distinctly personal, which, in all, constitutes this entry’s undeniable originality.

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“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

“The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.”

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”

“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”

“When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.”

“The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations”

“The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.” (Who says Dèscartes was a pure rationalist?!)

“In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.” (This is exactly what I used to be taught in my childhood: do not always be busy-busy; cherish your leisure as a time of contemplation.)

“Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.”

CARTESIAN BALANCE OF NATIONALISM VERSUS COSMOPOLITANISM

[I used the following important quotation in my entry Of Native And Foreign Wisdom in the Russian Section. “…It is useful to know something of the manners of different nations, that we may be able to form a more correct judgment regarding our own, and be prevented from thinking that everything that differs from our customs is ridiculous and irrational, -- a conclusion usually come to by those, whose experience has been limited to their own country. On the other hand, when too much time is occupied in traveling, we become strangers to our native country; and the over curious in the customs of the past are generally ignorant of those of the present.” (From Dèscartes’ Method, Book I.)]

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It is unthinkable to go all the way through the Dèscartes series without drawing our attention to this brilliant summation of the necessity to keep a balance between patriotic nationalism, on the one hand, and enlightened cosmopolitanism on the other. Peter the Great of Russia is of course a perfect witness for the correctness of the Dèscartes observation, and for a discerning Western mind this should also represent the essence of Russia’s mindset in her attitude toward the outside world. By the same token, here is a gold mine for the students of the modern American phenomenon. The opening portion of this quotation shames the ignoramuses who are convinced that reason, common sense, virtue, and all other goodies are the sole property of one nation, their own. The second part provides a necessary balance to this delicate skating across the thin ice of exaggerated and inflated sensibilities. Hats off to Dèscartes!

He was, of course, helped by the general spirit of gens una sumus, prevalent among the educated European community of his day. Born in France, he lived most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic benefiting from her liberal laws, and died in Sweden. His lingua franca was Latin, and most of his works were written in the original Latin, although some important works were first written in French and then translated into Latin. It was in this spirit of elitist internationalism (the Catholic Church was obviously internationalist too and these two types of Latin-based internationalism, although non-identical, were going hand-in-hand, until gradually undermined by the spread of the language-specific Protestantism) that Dèscartes made the comment in the above quoted passage and I think that his reference to ‘different nations’ is not limited to Christian Europe, but actually embraces every known and hypothetical nation of the world, Christian and non-Christian alike. (This should be a very rational thing to assume!)

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A Note. In the sequence of my Cartesian entries, this one is followed by the entry In Defense of Cartesian Rationalism. That entry, however, was posted on my blog out of order on March 2^nd, 2012. In order to maintain the proper continuity of my Cartesian series, I refer my readers to that posting, before my “next” Cartesian entry which will be posted tomorrow is read.

PLURALITY OF SUFFRAGES

The original title of this entry was Dèscartes And Jefferson, but, for better or for worse, I decided to make it more “Cartesian,” considering that we are in the middle of the Dèscartes series. “Plurality of suffrages” is a famous Cartesian phrase, and here is the passage it is taken from:

“…And finally, although such be the ground of our opinions, I remarked that a plurality of suffrages is no guarantee of truth where it is at all of difficult discovery as in such cases it is much more likely that it will be found by one than by many.” (From Dèscartes’ Method, Book II.)

Dèscartes the Jeffersonian democrat? Or, perhaps, more accurately, Jefferson the Cartesian (at least, partly) democrat? Let me explain.

To begin with, Jefferson was a peculiar kind of democrat; a “Jeffersonian democrat,” to be precise. He did not put much trust in “numbers,” being a natural elitist. The following quote from him illustrates this point:

“The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature... Every one, by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. Such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.” (From a Letter to John Adams, October 28, 1813.)

Returning now to the Cartesian passage in the opening of this entry, what exactly is the meaning there? The obvious conclusion is that, according to Dèscartes, truth is not something you arrive at, riding a democratic bus. It is more likely to be discovered not by consensus, but by the lonely contemplation of a philosopher. (A natural aristocrat, in Jefferson’s take.) This much is clear. And what is also clear here is that Dèscartes and Jefferson are seeing eye to eye on this subject.

But let us now properly generalize this argument. Why is the majority opinion not to be trusted? There are three basic reasons for it, in my view.

1.       One, that the public, in its natural pursuits, is always down-to-earth, whereas truth must be found in higher places. Remember the distinction between earth and heaven? When Jesus says “My Kingdom is not of this world,” He makes it clear that truth (and God is Truth!) does not have its abode among the multitudes.

2.       Two, that the public is not educated enough to comprehend even the most basic concept of truth, which can only be arrived at through philosophical contemplation, something that the public is totally unfamiliar with.

3.       Three, and probably the most important one, that public opinion is not even naturally formed, but usually manipulated by all sort of demagogues and by agenda-driven activists, also by the so-called interest groups, where we-the-people completely lose their individuality, becoming followers of men, and, in this capacity, the worst possible “candidates” for the quest of seeking the truth.

A GREATER PERFECTION TO KNOW THAN TO DOUBT

Perhaps the greatest philosophical achievement of Dèscartes, and his most valuable philosophical legacy to humanity is his doubt. It is explicitly presented as his first methodological precept in the previous entry, and its full force can be felt in the following two excerpts from his Discours de la Méthode, Book I:

“From my childhood, I have been familiar with letters; and, as I was given to believe that with their help a clear and certain knowledge of all which is useful in life might be acquired, I ardently desired instruction. But as soon as I had finished the full course of study, at the close of which it is customary to be admitted into the order of the learned, I completely changed my opinion. For, I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance. Yet, I was studying in one of the most celebrated Schools in Europe, where I thought there must be learned men, if such were anywhere to be found. I had been taught all that others learned there; and not content with the sciences actually taught us, I had, in addition, read all the books that had fallen into my hands… I was thus led to take the liberty… of concluding that there was no science in existence that was of such a nature as I had previously been given to believe.”

“…Of Philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated, for many ages, by the most distinguished men, and that, yet, there is not a single matter within its sphere, which is not still in dispute, and nothing, therefore, that is above doubt, I did not presume to anticipate that my success would be greater in it than that of others; and furthermore, when I considered the number of conflicting opinions touching a single matter that may be upheld by learned men, while there can be only one true, I reckoned as well-nigh false all that was only probable.”

Meantime, he honestly confesses that perpetual doubt is hardly the greatest perfection for the philosopher:

“I clearly saw that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt. As I observed that this truth,-- Cogito ergo sum,-- was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt could be alleged, I concluded that I might accept it as the first principle of the Philosophy of which I was in search. And as I saw that in the words Cogito ergo sum there is nothing at all which gives me assurance of their truth beyond this, that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to exist, I concluded that I might take as a general rule the principle that all the things which we clearly and distinctly conceive are true, only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects that we distinctly conceive. But if we did not know that all which we possess of real and true proceeds from a Perfect and Infinite Being (God), however clear and distinct our ideas might be, we should have no ground on that account for the assurance that they possessed the perfection of being true. But after the knowledge of God and of the soul has rendered us certain of this rule, we can easily understand that the truth of the thoughts we experience when awake must not be called in question on account of the illusions of our dreams. For, if it happened that an individual, even when asleep, had some very distinct idea, as if a geometer should discover some new demonstration, the circumstances of his being asleep would not militate against its truth. But whether awake or asleep, we must never allow ourselves to be persuaded of the truth of anything, unless on the evidence of our Reason. And it must be noted that I say: of our Reason; and not of our imagination, or of our senses.”

Ironically, he is just as helpless here as in his painfully unfulfilled quest after the Creation Formula, except that there, he realized his failure, whereas here, in the false certainty of Cogito, ergo sum, he lulls himself into a sense of discovery, which, on close scrutiny, turns out to be nothing but an illusion.

The only suitable key to a conditional acceptance of his thinking here, however, is not to see him trying to prove anything at all, but in making the argument that his hypothesis must have a certain merit, and it can be sustained not as a proof of anything, but as a hypothesis only. This distinction is subtle, but critical! As to what Dèscartes must have had in mind as an absolute certainty and what must indeed hold as true against even the worst type of cynicism is what his words explicitly tell, and why his sentence ought to be accepted fully and unconditionally: Clearly, it is a greater perfection to know than to doubt! There can be no doubt about that!

 

LAWS THAT ARE FEW BUT RIGIDLY ENFORCED

Few old ideas sound as current to the modern ear as the idea that law enforcement can be more important than the writing of new laws. Plato played with this idea somewhat, but it was Dèscartes who actually laid it out in a succinct and concentrated exposition. Indeed, good law enforcement is the centerpiece of any good legal system, and, with this in mind, the duty of the legal system is to simplify itself to such an extent as to make effective law enforcement feasible. Hence, the title of this entry, utilizing a quotation from Dèscartes, and its subject proper.

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(This is perhaps a good place to remind the reader that, in addition to being one of the greatest philosophers in history (the first modern philosopher, also known as father of modern philosophy, etc.), Dèscartes was a rare mathematical genius, the inventor of the coordinate system, and the creator of analytical geometry, as well as a scientist. (His scientific ideas, sharing Galileo’s heresies, were clearly stated in his great book Le Monde, which was so controversial that he chose not to publish it. They were also laid out in other books, such as Principia Philosophiae and L’Homme et la Formation du Foetus.) Such versatility was, of course, not uncommon in those times, but the extremely high level of his scientific excellence must be kept in mind always, when considering his historical legacy in toto.)

Of several different Cartesian themes to pursue next in this sequence, I choose his methodological genius as represented by the principal rules, or laws, as Dèscartes calls them in the Second Book of his Discours de la Méthode:

“As a Multitude of laws only hampers justice, so that a state is best governed when, with few laws, these are rigidly administered; in like manner, instead of the great number of precepts which Logic is composed of, I believed that the four following would prove perfectly sufficient for me, provided that I took the firm and unwavering resolution never in a single instance to fail in observing them.---

The first was never to take anything as true that I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

The second, to divide each difficulty under examination into as many parts as possible, and as necessary for its adequate solution.

The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend step by step to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

And the last, in each case to make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that I can be assured that nothing was omitted.”

As a matter of fact, at the risk of appearing simplistic, I completely agree with Dèscartes that having fewer laws is better than more laws, and that a multitude of laws is much harder to enforce than when there are few. This is by no means a platitude, as we have the opposite situation with, say, American laws, where their multitude is considered a sign of a higher development of the legal system. Yet the appalling downside of this multiplicity in a justice system is the infamous difficulty of law enforcement, with the ability of a competent lawyer to extricate the guilty on the force of mere technicalities. (Instructively for us, there were only ten commandments that God gave to Moses, later reduced by Jesus to just two!)

Enumerating his four precepts, Dèscartes starts with the Cartesian Dubitandum, which we can rephrase as Thou shalt not be brainwashed, in the sense that the responsibility for brainwashing lies not so much with the brainwashers, as with the brainwashed. It can be even said that in any human communication the weak side allows itself to be brainwashed by its uncritical acceptance of everything it is being told, and, by such acceptance, turns even an innocent counterpart into an effective brainwasher. Dèscartes however offers us an easy recipe against brainwashing: never to take anything as true, unless we clearly know it to be such. I must say, though, that it takes a certain above-average level of brain development to withstand a competent brainwashing, and oftentimes, the task of telling apart what we “clearly know” from what we do not know at all, is virtually impossible, as in the case of my history unknown, ignored, and misunderstood, which I have ventured to illuminate in the Lady section of this book.

The second precept, advising us to divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible, is a quite modern methodological principle, which, as we have seen, originates with Dèscartes, who merits Nietzsche’s praise of him as one of the four greatest methodologists in history. And so is the third precept, organically flowing from the second one: having divided the difficulty into parts, we proceed tackling the simplest components first, thus getting them out of the way, so that in the end, faced with the most complicated part, we are best prepared for the task, both in reducing our tasks to one and in gaining the maximum possible insight into the difficulty as a whole by having completed all tasks, except this one.

And now, the fourth precept is the most technical of the four, but also the easiest to comprehend: we need to make thorough enumerations in each particular case, allowing us to be aware of any possible omissions that might otherwise elude our attention.

Having gone through this treasure chest of methodology, the most incredible thing about its application to modern experience is that, although all these precepts are lucid and definitely advantageous to follow in all cases where rational thinking and sound methodology are required, they are not followed. Furthermore, as concerns the last precept about enumeration, I have a funny feeling that had it been honestly contemplated to be followed, most people would not know how to start their list, and where to end it.

DESCARTES AND NIETZSCHE

Dèscartes and Nietzsche? But what else could you expect from my second entry in the Cartesian series? It would have been a horrific crime to ignore or even merely downplay what Nietzsche says about Dèscartes, considering that what he does say is extremely interesting and incontrovertibly pertinent to our subject at hand.

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Another note on what I like to call after Nietzsche the Mystical Commonwealth Of Ideas. It is so gratifying that, considering how highly I value Dèscartes’ Discourse on Method, as one of the greatest triumphs of human thought, my good friend Nietzsche, despite a few occasional anti-Cartesian quibbles, has included a quotation from this book in his Preface to the 1878 edition of Menschliches. Indeed, Nietzsche’s odi-et-amo relationship with Dèscartes is an example of that blessed inconsistency, of which we were talking in the preceding chapter, and elsewhere.

Nietzsche has numerous references to Dèscartes throughout his works, and he obviously considers him among the very greats. In his fanciful description of the three centuries of history (seventeenth-eighteenth-nineteenth), in the posthumous collection of his thoughts and sketches Wille zur Macht,--- as aristocratic, feministic, and animalistic,--- three philosophers are chosen to represent each:

Dèscartes, and the rule of reason; Rousseau, and the rule of feeling; and finally, Schopenhauer, and the rule of craving.

In the same work, he counts him among the greatest methodologists of history (Aristotle, Bacon, Dèscartes, Auguste Comte). In Jenseits, he mentions him as a bachelor, but puts him in an illustrious company of foremost philosophers:

“The philosopher abhors marriage as a hindrance on his path to the optimum (not to happiness, but in most cases to unhappiness). Heraclitus, Plato, Dèscartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer,--- they were not married; one cannot even imagine them married. A married philosopher belongs in a comedy, and Socrates, it would seem, married ironically, just to demonstrate this proposition.”

In Ecce Homo, he praises his exceptional honesty:

“A La Rochefoucauld and a Dèscartes are a hundred times superior in honesty to the foremost Germans.”

Curiously, Dèscartes being the source of materialistic (besides idealistic) philosophy, mentioned in the last entry, is perfectly illustrated by Nietzsche in Der Antichrist, where he commends Dèscartes for being such a source, but criticizes him for not going far enough:

“As regards the lower animals, it was Dèscartes, who first had the really admirable daring to describe them as machina; our whole physiology is directed toward proving the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart, as Dèscartes did: what we know of man today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have regarded him, too, as a machine.”

In his earlier work Die Geburt der Tragödie, Nietzsche instructively compares Dèscartes and Euripides:

“For this reason (of credibility) Euripides introduced a prologue even before the exposition, and put it into the mouth of a speaker commanding absolute trust. Often it was a god, who had to guarantee to the public the course of the tragedy, and so remove any possible doubt as to the reality of the myth. At the end of his drama, Euripides required the same divine truthfulness to act as security for the future of his protagonists. This was the function of the ill-famed deus ex machina… Exactly as Dèscartes could only demonstrate the reality of the empirical world by appealing to God’s veracity, his inability to tell a lie.

Yet, despite his apparently very high opinion of Dèscartes’ philosophical caliber, Nietzsche will not include him among the “eight shadows” he wishes to enter the underworld to communicate with, which is, perhaps, quite easy to explain. Nietzsche, the great irrationalist, dislikes Cartesian rationalism (note that Aristotle is not included among the “eight” either, apparently, for a similar reason). In Jenseits, he famously criticizes Dèscartes the rationalist for “being superficial”:

“Plato, more noble and innocent in such matters, wanted to prove to himself that reason and instinct, of themselves, tend toward one goal,--- the good, God. And since Plato, all theologians and philosophers have been on the same track: in moral matters it has been instinct, or faith which has triumphed. Perhaps Dèscartes ought to be excepted as the Father of Rationalism who would conceded authority to reason alone; but reason is merely an instrument, and Dèscartes was superficial.”

(It must be clear now why Nietzsche prefers Plato to Aristotle [and Dèscartes]. After all, Nietzsche is as much an idealist as Plato is! …Which may be stretching the term idealism a little bit, but this is essentially only a matter of definition.)

In the following, every single instance of Nietzsche’s criticism of Dèscartes is exceedingly interesting; not that Dèscartes deserves any blame, of course, but because of a dazzling explosion of intellectual fireworks. This is like in a spectacular chess game, where the loser deserves no less credit (and sometimes even more) than the winner. Here is our first example, concerning the Cartesian definition of what is true, as raised in Nietzsche’s Wille Zur Macht (#533):

“Logical certainty and transparency as the criteria of truth (omni illud verum est quod clare et distincte percipitur, in Dèscartes): with that the mechanical hypothesis concerning the world is desired and credible… But this is a crude confusion: like simplex sigillum veri. How does one know that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect?; Could it not be otherwise? That it is the hypothesis which gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, that is most preferred, valued, and consequently characterized as true? The intellect posits its freest and strongest capability and capacity as the criterion of the most valuable, consequently of the true.”

This is not just philosophy, this is a case of brilliant psychology, which Nietzsche is famous for, and he obviously catches Dèscartes here in the act of basic self-flattery, which extends to the celebrated Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum, another such example of self-congratulatory conceit, where Dèscartes is at least perfectly consistent in his fallacy:

…There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are “immediate certainties”; for example,--- “I think,” or, as the superstition of Schopenhauer puts it, “I will”; as though knowledge here got hold of its object as the Ding-an-Sich, without any falsification on the part of either the subject or the object. But that “immediate certainty,” as well as “absolute knowledge” and the “Ding-an-Sich,” involve a contradictio in adjecto, we really must free ourselves from the seduction of words! In place of the immediate certainty, the philosopher finds a series of metaphysical questions: From where do I get the concept of thinking? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an ego as cause and finally of an ego as cause of thought? (Jenseits).

And now, this magnificent tirade made possible by Dèscartes’ ‘calling of fire upon himself,’ as the military expression of the World War II era puts it, runs into the following note in the Wille zur Macht collection:

There is thinking, therefore, there is something that thinks: such is the upshot of Dèscartes’ argumentation. But that means positing as “true a priori” our belief in the concept of substance; that when there is thought there has to be something that thinks, is simply a formulation of our grammatical custom of adding a doer to every deed. In short, this is not merely the substantiation of a fact, but a logical metaphysical postulate! Along the lines followed by Dèscartes one does not come upon something absolutely certain, but only upon the fact of a very strong belief. If one should reduce the proposition to “There is thinking, therefore there are thoughts,” one has produced a mere tautology; and precisely that, which is in question, the “reality of thought,” is not touched upon; that is, in this form the “apparent reality” of thought cannot be denied. But what Dèscartes desired was that thought should have, not an apparent reality, but a reality in itself. (#484).

Such is Nietzsche’s basic rebuttal of the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum. But should we go beyond that to refute the whole metaphysical theory of Kant, or the whole theory of any other great philosopher, we shall find it a surprisingly easy job. The reason of these greats’ greatness, however, is not with their imperviousness to a critical rout, which is never the case, but with their daring to enter, and their graciousness in inviting us to follow them, into an enchanted philosophical country, to which only folly and error can forge the key. It is for this reason that while we are free, with Nietzsche, to criticize Dèscartes, or Kant, or Schopenhauer, or anybody else at that ultimate alpine level, we cannot help, at the same time, but to admire these targets of our criticism for being capable of reaching so high, where we ourselves would never be able to reach, both for the lack of oxygen up there, and for fear of being ridiculed by posterity.

THE FIRST MODERN PHILOSOPHER

(Please be reminded that, in addition to this section, there also several significant Cartesian entries scattered throughout my thematic sections of this book as well.)

***

Never mind Thomas Hobbes being interesting and taking up eight entries just in this section, it is not to him that the title of the first modern philosopher deservedly goes. It was bestowed by none other than Dr. Hegel on the first thinker of “modern history” (with regard to the term modern history, we must be paying tribute to Leonardo Bruni’s tripartite division of history, actually originating with… Petrarca?), whose comprehensive grasp of philosophical subject matter, and whose in-depth analysis thereof make him exceedingly worthy of this title. (After all, one has to admit that our good friend Hobbes was too limited in his subject matter, and, besides, his critical preoccupation with “Aristotelity” kept him volens-nolens in the old scholastic mold, whereas René Dèscartes, with his wholesale denunciation of the old school of learning and thinking, made a clean break from the past, creating a new philosophical system all of his own.)

As I have already done before with some others, I find it worthwhile to start with a philosophical summary of Dèscartes by Bertrand Russell, from the Dèscartes chapter of his History of Western Philosophy:

René Dèscartes (1596-1650) is usually considered the founder of modern philosophy, and, I think, rightly. He is the first man of high philosophic capacity, whose outlook is profoundly affected by the new physics and astronomy. While it is true that he retains much of scholasticism, (So does Spinoza, but so what? He is totally free from the spirit of scholasticism, and even in his quite original style shows a profound difference from his predecessors, which is what matters the most) he does not accept foundations laid by predecessors, but endeavors to construct a complete philosophic edifice de novo. This had not happened since Aristotle, and it is a sign of the new self-confidence, which resulted from the progress of science. There is a freshness about his work, which is not to be found in any eminent previous philosopher since Plato. All intermediate philosophers were teachers, with the professional superiority belonging to that avocation. Dèscartes writes not as a teacher, but as a discoverer and explorer, anxious to communicate what he has found. His style is easy and unpedantic, addressed to the intelligent men of the world, rather than to pupils. It is moreover an extraordinarily excellent style. It is fortunate for modern philosophy that the pioneer had such admirable literary sense. His successors, both on the Continent and in England, until Kant, retain his unprofessional character, and several of them retain something of his stylistic merit.

This introductory summary would be incomplete without the concluding paragraph of Russell’s Dèscartes chapter, which is quoted below. Remarkably, Russell promotes here one of my favorite leitmotifs, as well as Nietzsche’s, concerning the blessedness of irrational inconsistency, as opposed to the boring narrowness of logical consistency which, as I believe, happens to keep the mind in chains. I applaud Russell for joining the elite society for the appreciation of random brilliance, which is just a different way of saying irrational inconsistency.

There is in Dèscartes an unresolved dualism between what he learned from contemporary science and the scholasticism that he had been taught at La Flèche. (Reference to the Jesuit College at La Flèche, attended by Dèscartes until the age of twenty.) This led him into inconsistencies, but it also made him far more rich in fruitful ideas than any completely logical philosopher could have been. (Bravo, Russell, for noticing that remarkably in the man so readily labeled as a “rationalist”!) Consistency might have made him merely the founder of a new scholasticism, whereas inconsistency made him the source of two important but divergent schools of philosophy. (That is dualistic idealism represented by the Cartesian parallelism and mutual independence of mind and matter, on the one hand, and surprisingly, materialism as an unintended consequence of that parallelism, interpreted as similitude, on the other.)

At any rate, it has been my great pleasure to have read Dèscartes’ elegantly thought and elegantly written philosophical essays, ever since my early learning years, and to continue this discussion of his philosophy throughout the rest of the Cartesian series in this section.

HOBBES THE MALTUSIAN

Coming now into the concluding entry of the Hobbes series in this section, I ask the reader to keep in mind that this series by no means exhausts the Englishman’s presence in my book, as there are more Hobbesian entries and references to him scattered around in thematic sections, which is easy to ascertain by using the Find function. This arrangement is extremely imperfect, of course, and also very temporary, as it will be my task later on to make a better sense out of it.

***

Hobbes the Malthusian? Let us first check what Malthus says about overpopulation and war: "The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man that a premature death must, in some shape or other, visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, plague advance in terrific array, sweeping off thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."

(Let us not forget that this was written two centuries after Hobbes. And now back to Hobbes.)

Within the confines of a single sentence, maintaining an even keel in his matter-of-fact tone, Hobbes gives his answer to the problem of future overpopulation of the world in a determined colonialist expansion, and when the latter is achieved to its full capacity, in a war to “victory or death.” Here is that amazing sentence, once again, from the 30^th Chapter of Leviathan:

“The multitude of poor and yet strong people still increasing (observe his almost parenthetical solution to the problem of poverty; no doubt here that Hobbes’s ideas are influenced by the British colonial expansion into the American continent, but the resolute character of his insistence that such transplantation be made a mandatory long-term policy, “are to be transplanted,” makes the difference!), they are to be transplanted into lands not sufficiently inhabited; where, nevertheless, they are not to exterminate those they find there; but constrain them to inhabit closer together, and not to range a great deal of ground to snatch what they find, but to court each little plot with art and labor, to give them their sustenance in due season. (Almost utopian, but still good advice, and now here comes the clincher:) And when all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provides for every man, by victory or death.”

Hobbes the Malthusian? So it looks, and so it feels, but judge it for yourself!

FREEDOM ACCORDING TO HOBBES

This is a fairly light-hearted take on the concept of freedom. I am using the definition offered by Hobbes, to further highlight my recurring point that the meaning of this word has been twisted by certain ideological demagogues to the extent of becoming obnoxious. Needless to say, my intent is not to provide a rigid Urtext definition, which would be a nonsensical endeavor, but to appeal to Hobbes’ formula in a broader figurative sense, thus exploring some previously unexplored alcoves of the kind which one may encounter only off the beaten path of customary understanding, which helpful sideroad this Hobbesian definition provides.

Talking about freedom, here is a peculiar reality check, as some people like to call such things. In this case I am appealing to the unimpeachable authority of Thomas Hobbes citing his definition of Freedom/Liberty in his magnum opus Leviathan. Here it is, in blue, with my comments in red:

Liberty, or freedom, signifies the absence of opposition (!) (meaning external impediments of motion), and may be applied no less to irrational and inanimate creatures than to rational. The first thing that catches the eye in this “Newtonian” physical definition of freedom is that, except for the outer space, it cannot exist anywhere, as long as there may be other objects close by, or in relative proximity, that are bound to create opposition by counteracting our action or just by altering our free course through the basic laws of gravity. The sheer beauty of the Hobbesian definition is that no one can ‘spin’ it by, say, bending the definition of opposition, as it is rather hard, even for an old pro, to play political games with the barebones of physics.

For whatever is so tied, or environed… Here Hobbes makes a perceptive distinction between two types of restrictions to the freedom of movement, the latter can be interpreted as restricted freedom of travel... …as it cannot move but within a certain space, which space is determined by the opposition of some external body, we say it has not liberty to go further. And so, of all living creatures, whilst they are imprisoned, or restrained… we say they are not at liberty to move in such manner as without those external impediments they would. But when the impediment of motion is in the constitution of the thing itself (!), we don’t say it lacks liberty, but the power to move, as when a stone lies still, or a man is fastened to his bed by sickness. (What should happen if, obsessed with spreading freedom, we invade the man’s home, snatch him out of his bed and proceed to throw him out of the window, to let him enjoy the freedom of a freefall? This is not too far-fetched, by the way, perhaps, the man wasn’t even sick, but only resting, how would we know?)

And according to this proper and generally received meaning of the word, a freeman is he who, in things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to. (Once again, it is clear that in Hobbes’s definition of liberty, exporting freedom to others, imposing our will on the weaker nations, as well as on individuals, would qualify as the worst possible abuse of their own freedom, a crime against humanity. Let us not forget Kant’s monumental dictum about there being “no greater Evil than one man’s will controlled by another’s.” Who on earth is teaching philosophy to America’s political leaders?!) But when the words ‘free’ and ‘liberty’ are applied to anything but bodies, they are abused; for that, which is not subject to motion, is not subject to impediment, and therefore when we say: the way is free, no liberty of the way is signified, but of those that walk in it without stop. And when we say: a gift is free, we do not mean liberty of the gift, but of the giver, that was not bound by any law or covenant to give it. So, when we speak freely, it is not the liberty of voice, or of pronunciation, but of the man whom no law has obliged to speak, otherwise than he did. (I recommend this good passage to the politicians who are ‘obliged to speak’ according to political expedience, and therefore, do not have any ‘freedom of speech’ altogether! How can such hypocrites then turn around and start teaching other people the ‘meaning’ of Freedom? Physician, heal Thyself!) Lastly, from the use of the words “free will,” no liberty can be inferred of the will, inclination or desire, but the liberty of the man; which consists in that he finds no stop in doing what he has the will to do …” (The last sentence, consistently with everything said before it, emphasizes Hobbes’s clever point that free will does not mean the freedom of the will but only the freedom of the man. In my judgment, this is one of the most striking points ever made by any philosopher in the whole history of human thought, particularly because of its immense implications.)

A note to myself.

In the process of working on this passage further, I should diligently edit it, shorten it more than a bit, and comment on its other intricacies at length. By the same token I have to remember in this place Nietzsche’s instinct for freedom. We are talking in both instances about the law of nature, but only regarding freedom, whereas democracy, being a Commonwealth, is “an artificial animal,” to Hobbes!

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXXVI.

Cats Concludes.

“Habent sua fata libelli.”

 

Here, also in connection to A. S. Pushkin, we are interested in Sextus Empiricus, for the reason of his involvement with the questions of atheism. The point is that on May 6, 1820, at the age of not yet twenty-one, Pushkin left St. Petersburg into his southern exile in the so-called Southern Edge of the Russian Empire. He visited a number of Russian cities, such as Simferopol, Kishinev, Odessa, and, as we know [from the chapter Diaboliada], traveled in Kherson, Elizavetgrad, and Alexandrov provinces.

Incidentally, A. S. Pushkin’s granduncle of African heritage Ivan Abramovich Ganibal in 1779 founded the Russian fortress of Kherson. (For more about Pushkin’s African ancestry see my posted segment XII in the chapter The Dark-Violet Knight.)

While in Odessa, Pushkin took lessons of atheism there, for which, paradoxically, he was exiled from his Southern exile to his own estate of Mikhailovskoe, near the northwestern Russian city of Pskov, where he lived with his old nurse, the famous fairytale teller Arina Rodionovna (“Friend of my harsh days, My ancient dove…”), who had such a great influence on the development of the creative imagination of the little Sasha Pushkin.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin left his inimitable trace of that adventure in the magnificent essay An Imaginary Conversation with Alexander I, written with an exquisite sense of humor, in which he yet again splits himself in two. He imagines himself as the victorious Russian Emperor, entering Paris on a white horse in 1814, having utterly defeated Napoleon’s Grand Army, not without help from the ubiquitous Cossacks.

This conversation between Pushkin the Russian Emperor and Pushkin the great Russian poet is proceeding in a civilized manner until the “Emperor” asks the “poet”:

“But you are also an atheist? That’s not proper at all! At which point the poet loses his temper, responding in the following fashion: Your Majesty, how can a person be judged on the basis of a letter written to a comrade, how can a schoolboy’s prank be weighed as a crime, and two empty phrases judged as a public sermon?.. But here Pushkin would have been riled up and would have told me [the Emperor] a lot of things he should not have said; and I would be angry and would send him to Siberia…”

The letter Pushkin is writing about, which had been perlustrated by the censors, became the reason for exiling Pushkin from his Southern exile to his estate of Mikhailovskoe, where he lived with his nurse in complete seclusion.

There is another moment of great interest in this, which I wrote about in Backenbarter, namely, that the nude fatso in a top hat is none other than A. S. Pushkin. [See my Segment XXX, where I am writing about A. S. Pushkin’s exile.]

Both the letter and the essay An Imaginary Conversation with Alexander I, were written in 1824, that is, just one year before the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, following which five Russian officers were hanged, and many were sent to hard labor in Siberia. Naturally, Bulgakov’s depiction of the Backenbarter drunk, having visited the Siberian river Yenisei, points to a wake having been held there. Still, the idea itself of sending the Backenbarter to the Yenisei comes to Bulgakov from Pushkin himself, as suggested by Pushkin’s humorous essay An Imaginary Conversation with Alexander I, which supports my point that Bulgakov did very good research of his own and certainly read A. S. Pushkin’s Reminiscences.

It is only natural to suppose that Pushkin took the above-mentioned lessons in atheism out of curiosity, by the same token as, being a “writer in his scientific study” [Pushkin’s own words], he visited the prison in Kishinev during his Southern exile, where he talked to the inmates. Here is something that Pushkin had in common with I. V. Stalin, who also, as a political prisoner, never shunned common criminals.

Here is also a very interesting thing. One of the Kishinev prison inmates, Taras Kirilov, happened to confess to Pushkin his intention to make a break out, and indeed, the very next day Kirilov made his successful escape.

Criminals, both in Pushkin’s and in Stalin’s times appreciated the attention of the political exiles. In his play Batum about Stalin Bulgakov writes about a well-known fact that having been sent into exile in Siberia by the Tsarist Government, it took Stalin just one month to make a successful escape to the Caucasus, naturally with the help of the local criminal element.

***

In so far as our novel Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita is concerned, I have always been struck by the following words there:

“Bad business, dear Begemot, softly said Koroviev in a poisonous tone of voice.”

A very strange choice of words indeed, considering that Kot Begemot and Koroviev are good friends.

However, this poisonousness can be very simply explained by A. S. Pushkin himself, on the basis of his Reminiscences, where he confesses that he can’t play chess even fairly decently. In the year 1826 Pushkin became friends “with a certain student of Derpt [Tartu] University… He knew a lot… He was interested in such subjects that I had never even dreamed of… Once, playing chess with me and with his knight checkmating my king and queen…” (Any person who can play chess will understand that checkmating both the king and the queen is rather nonsensical. The ultimate purpose of the game is checkmating the king, and only the king can be checkmated. The queen, on the other hand, like any other piece or pawn, can be captured, but not checkmated.)

The point here is that Begemot was not merely explaining the puzzles of Chapter I, posed by Woland. Begemot was making fun of Woland, who failed to understand, that is, to appreciate according to their merit “the chain of tightly packed syllogisms” presented by Begemot.

However, Koroviev was practically a walking encyclopedia. It was specifically to Koroviev, rather than to anyone else, that Woland addressed himself for information. Not only did Koroviev understand Begemot’s “syllogisms,” but he understood only too well that Begemot was making fun of him.

Apart from the lunge regarding the lessons of atheism taken by A. S. Pushkin, there is yet another detail which our intelligent cat Bulgakov knew from reading Pushkin’s Reminiscences, as he was doing his research for the play Alexander Pushkin. It is the very fact that playing chess with the devil becomes the function of Lermontov, and not Pushkin, although it was Pushkin and not Lermontov who was planning to write Russian history. By using the word poisonous, Bulgakov shows Koroviev’s jealousy that it is not he who is playing the game of chess with Woland. This game is so interestingly described by Bulgakov that I am giving its text extensively in the chapter Kot Begemot (Segment XVI).

The idea of using a chess game in describing allegorically an event from Russian history has also come to Bulgakov from A. S. Pushkin. In his Reminiscences Pushkin writes that “Mikhail Orlov in a letter to Vyazemsky faulted Karamzin for failing on the opening pages of his History [of the Russian State] to present some brilliant hypothesis on the origin of the Slavic people, that is, he demanded a novel in history--- new and bold.”

And what does Bulgakov do in Master and Margarita? He studs his fantastic novel with Russian history, so inconspicuously, so stealthily, like, say, the year 1571, or the manner of dress of both Woland and Azazello, reminding one of the monastic attire, as well as of the way Ivan Grozny’s Oprichniks dressed, once again pointing to the sixteenth century; and even Master’s cap, resembling the ones worn by the Oprichniks, on account of which they had problems with the Ecclesiastical authorities; and also the specific historical area chosen by Bulgakov as the locale for Master and Margarita, of Arbat, Prechistenka and Nikitskiye Gates, adjacent to the Kremlin, and originally allotted to the Oprichniks.

Bulgakov’s apogee is reached in that amazing chess game with live and moving figures in Master and Margarita. Here Bulgakov joins his very first chess game depicted in his incomparable novel White Guard with the theater in a box, imagined by Maksudov on the pages of Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel, originally titled Notes of a Dead Man. And a masterpiece is born, not only on its external description (the best chess game in literary fiction that I have ever read), but also in its historical significance (the chess game being an allegory of real historical events, namely, the abdication of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, entailing cataclysmic consequences for Russia).

As for the connection of the chess game between Woland and Begemot with what Pushkin writes in his Reminiscences, Bulgakov naturally inserts “a novel into history,” and he does it, as always, his own way: “new and bold,” just as A. S. Pushkin puts it, showing the tragedy of Russian society, the tragedy of the Russian Army, by the flight with an exchanging of clothes of the Russian Emperor, abandoning his country and his people to chaos and breakdown of law and order…

M. A. Bulgakov is a writer of works of fiction that reach a large circle of readership. That’s why it is so important that the readers may truly appreciate and fathom the depth of this profoundly great mind.

 

THE END OF CHAPTER CATS.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXXV.

Cats Continued.

 

“Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.”

 

…Having figured out the first part of Woland’s “mumbling,” we move on to the proofs themselves. Everything is clear with regard to the seventh proof. Woland surely brought it home in front of our eyes. And what are we going to do about the proof of Kant? Here we shall need the first name mentioned by Kot Begemot, Sextus Empiricus… Bulgakov chose this name for a reason. Sextus means number six. Empiricus means deriving knowledge from experience.

Sextus Empiricus [160-210 AD] represents Graeco-Roman skepticism. “Nothing is knowable!” The skeptics raised concerns against all types of knowledge, including knowledge of God. What is remarkable here is that by naming Sextus Empiricus first, whose name, I repeat, refers to number six, Kot Begemot, in Chapter 22, echoes, kind of mockingly, the words of his Messire, who in chapter 1 asks Berlioz:

“…So, what are we going to do about all those proofs of God’s existence, which, as we know, are precisely five in number?” To which attack Berlioz offers a resistance: “Well, humanity has long relegated them to the archives… In the field of reason there can be no proof of God’s existence!”

Berlioz stands with Sextus Empiricus in this, who in his time tackled the questions of atheism.

But Woland would have none of Berlioz’s grandstanding, and he catches him here with the help of Kant:

“…You have just repeated the thought of the old man Kant on this subject. But, oops!—how curious--- he did indeed destroy all the five proofs, but then, as if in mockery of himself, he constructed his own sixth proof!”

Now, Woland speaks here of the five proofs of God’s existence. They are: ontological, teleological, cosmological, logical, and moral. We can talk of various Christian proponents of these arguments, such as St. Anselm and many others, but in their basic philosophical (rather than theological) form they can all be traced to Aristotle, who is the third name mentioned by Kot Begemot.

On a lighter note, I would like to note that in the With the Candles chapter of Master and Margarita we are dealing not with just one learned cat, as represented by M. Yu. Lermontov, but with two learned cats (the other one is Pushkin) and one very intelligent cat, namely, M. A. Bulgakov, because it is thanks to Bulgakov that Begemot, playing the most interesting chess game ever described in world literature with the devil, is openly mocking Woland, while at the same time making fun of his pen comrade A. S. Pushkin.

And so, it will be with these three really delightful cats that we are going to conclude this exceptional chapter about Cats.

Bulgakov brilliantly introduces Kot Begemot in a dialogue with Woland, solving all his puzzles, as Martianus Capella wrote much of his work in the form of a dialogue, which had to go very agreeably with both teachers and students, as it made studying fun for all who studied by his book De Nuptiis.

And so, from the “learned cat” V. I. Persikov, the discoverer of the “beam of life,” we proceed to the “learned cat” Begemot, reasoning about philosophy and religion in the romantic chapter With the Candles. In the course of our first meeting with him, Begemot instructs Messire on the rules of feline etiquette, not only tremendously amusing Woland, but also leaving a clue for the curious reader.

Preparing himself for the Ball of the Spring Full Moon, Begemot “transforms” himself, if we can say so.---

“Now on the cat’s neck there was a white tuxedo bowtie, and on his chest, mother-of-pearl ladies’ binoculars on a strap. Besides that, the cat’s whiskers were gilded. [Woland is amused:] Why did you gild your whiskers? And what the devil for do you need the bowtie, if you do not wear pants? [To which Kot Begemot quite reasonably replies that:] Each one adorns themselves the way they can… Pants are not part of a cat’s attire… A cat in boots can be found only in fairytales… A shaven cat is really an abomination… [He] powdered his whiskers with golden powder because white powder, which people use, is in no way better than gold powder.”

In this dialogue Bulgakov himself sends his reader into a world of fairytale of Perrault’s Puss in Boots, and finding oneself in this fairytale world, who can fail to remember the gorgeous portrait of Puss himself by Gustave Dore, where the cat wears a magnificent plumed hat, boots up to the knees, and most importantly, the black gauntlet gloves reaching up to the elbows?

In his ability to sprinkle clues around in his works, Bulgakov is second to none. One must simply be able to recognize and discern them.

And what about the verbal portrait of Kot Begemot? Bulgakov’s is not inferior to Dore’s drawn masterpiece. Having played this tragicomic prelude and relaxed the reader by the seemingly trifle details and also by throwing at Begemot the accusation that he is just palavering, knowing that his game position is hopeless, Bulgakov delivers his blow with a ‘chain of tightly packed syllogisms.’ Not only does the reader fail to appreciate them and treats them like “verbal soiling,” but he also fails to see that out of a sudden he is dealing with not just one, but two learned cats at once.

Bulgakov takes the idea of “names” from A. S. Pushkin’s satirical so-called “Children’s Book.”

…A. S. Pushkin was not only Bulgakov’s idol, but he was also his consoler in his moments of despair. [See my comment on Notes on the Cuffs, Segment XX.] Not to mention the fact that, having written, in 1934, the play Alexander Pushkin, Bulgakov had to do an extensive research on Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, thoroughly rereading his Reminiscences, Diaries, Letters, Articles etc., in other words everything that this great man had ever written. In my chapter The Bard I will be giving numerous examples of Pushkin’s influence on Bulgakov.

In his first story of the Children’s Book, titled Lightheaded Boy, which parodies the well-known personality of Pushkin’s time, namely, Nikolai Polevoy, editor of the contemporary journal Moscow Telegraph, A. S. Pushkin makes fun of N. Polevoy, a learned vir who not only has no knowledge of foreign languages, but even neglects basic Russian grammar. Pushkin depicts Polevoy as a little boy named Alyosha, saying that “…when the teacher scolded him for the vocabuls, Alyosha [the light-headed boy] responded to him with the names of Schelling, Fichte, Cousin, Heeren, Niebuhr and Schlegel… Well, so what? With all his intelligence and abilities, Alyosha knew only the first four rules of arithmetic, and he could read fairly fluently in Russian; he became known as an ignoramus, and all his friends were laughing at Alyosha.”

Our “clever Bulgakov” obviously observes how Pushkin mockingly “drops” the names of six well-known philosophers here, et voilà, Bulgakov does not hesitate to “drop” the name of Sextus [Empiricus], which, as we know, indicates the number Six. This name/number, in Bulgakov, can mean two things:

1.      The six proofs of God’s existence, from Aristotle to Kant;

2.      The question of atheism, which, as we shall later see, is pertinent to the subject of A. S. Pushkin. Sextus Empiricus was a skeptic; having in his possession not a single valid proof of God’s existence, he was toying with the atheist alternative, for which, to be logical, he had no valid proof, either.

As I said before already, instead of six names, Bulgakov offers three, who cover both the five proofs of God’s existence (traced to Aristotle), and the sixth proof, offered by Kant, having demolished the five proofs stated before him. The three names are that of Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, and Martianus Capella. Introducing this third name, Bulgakov continues, following Pushkin’s lead, to make fun of “Alyosha” and others, such as, for instance, Berlioz, who, like Nikolai Polevoy, is also editor of a thick literary journal, suggesting what kind of textbook they ought to have started their education with, which had once been available to Christian children in Medieval Europe, showing a certain breadth of the Christian point of view, which was not afraid of using certain original pre-Christian ideas without compromising their religion and maintaining a certain freedom of thought.

 

To be continued tomorrow.