Leontiev Konstantin Nikolaevich. Russian philosophers, public and statesmen

K.N. Leontiev, in his views, sought to combine strict religiosity with a peculiar philosophical concept, where the problems of life and death, admiration for the beauty of the world are intertwined with hopes for the creation of a new civilization by Russia. He called his theory "the method of real life" and believed that philosophical ideas should correspond religious beliefs about the world, ordinary common sense, the requirements of unbiased science, as well as the artistic vision of the world.

Leontiev Konstantin Nikolaevich(1831-1891), philosopher, writer, publicist. Born in the village of Kudinovo, Kaluga province. In 1850 he entered the Moscow University at the medical faculty, from which he graduated in 1854. From 1854 to 1856 he was a military doctor, participating in the Crimean War. Started practicing literary activity and wrote several stories and novels incl. "Podlipki", "In your own land". In 1863, Leontiev was appointed secretary of the consulate to the island of Crete, and he has been in the diplomatic service for about 10 years. During this period, his socio-philosophical views and political sympathies, a tendency to conservatism and aesthetic perception of the world, were formed. In 1871, Leontiev is experiencing a deep spiritual crisis, caused by contradictions in the literary claims to fame between him and L. Tolstoy, who published "War and Peace", literally pushing Leontiev's literary work. He leaves his diplomatic career and decides to take the veil as a monk, for this purpose he spends a long time on Athos, in the Optina Hermitage. He spent several months in the Nikolo-Ugreshsky Monastery as a novice, but could not stand the ridicule and mockery of the monks, who considered his arrival a lordly whim. He will become a monk only before his death. In 1891, Leontiev declared himself as an original thinker in the works written by him during this period: "Byzantism and Slavism", "Tribal Politics as instrument of world revolution", "Reclusion, monastery and peace. Their Essence and Relationship (Four Letters with Athos)","Father Clement Zederholm" and others.

Konstantin Nikolayevich died on November 13 (24), 1891 G. in Ser angry Posada, where he was buried.

The central idea of ​​Leontiev's philosophy is the desire to justify the expediency of reorientation human consciousness from an optimistic eudemonistic attitude to a pessimistic attitude. The first and most important thing we encounter when thinking about "eternal" problems, which are traditionally attributed to the competence of philosophy and religion, is the omnipotence of non-existence, death and the fragility of life, the moments of entry and triumph of which are inevitably replaced by destruction and oblivion. A person must remember that the Earth is only his temporary refuge, but even in his earthly life he does not have the right to hope for the best, because ethics with its ideals of endless improvement is far from the truths of being. The only this-worldly value is life as such and its highest manifestations - tension, intensity, brightness, individualization. They reach their maximum during the heyday of the form - the carrier of a life idea of ​​any level of complexity (from inorganic to social) and weaken after this peak is passed and the form begins to disintegrate with fatal inevitability. The moment of its highest expressiveness is perceived by a person as perfection in its own way, as beautiful. So the beauty should be recognized as a universal criterion for evaluating the phenomena of the surrounding world. More pledges of vitality and strength - closer to the beauty and truth of being. Another hypostasis of the beautiful is the variety of forms. And therefore, in the socio-cultural sphere, it is necessary to recognize the diversity of national cultures, their dissimilarity, which is achieved during their highest flowering, as a priority value. Thus, K. Leontiev makes a significant addition to the theory of cultural-historical types of N. Danilevsky, which has an eschatological coloring: humanity is alive as long as original national cultures; the unification of human existence, the appearance of similar features in the socio-political, aesthetic, moral, everyday and other spheres is a sign not only of a weakening of internal vitality various peoples, their movement to the stage of decomposition, but also the approach of all mankind to death. Not a single people is, according to Leontiev, a historical standard and cannot claim its superiority. But no nation can create a unique civilization twice: peoples who have passed through the period of cultural and historical flowering forever exhaust the potential of their development and close the possibility of movement in this direction for others.

Leontiev formulates the law of the "triune" development process", with the help of which he hopes to determine at what historical stage this or that nation is located, since the signs accompanying the transition from the initial period of "simplicity" to the subsequent one - "blooming complexity" and the final one - "secondary mixing simplification" - are of the same type:

• - at the first stage, a certain national formation is amorphous. Power, religion, art, social hierarchy exist only in a rudimentary form. At this stage, all tribes are almost indistinguishable from each other;
• - at the second stage - the greatest differentiation of estates and provinces and the power of a strong monarchy and church, the folding of traditions and legends, the emergence of science and art. This is the pinnacle and the goal historical existence, which can be achieved by one or another people. It also does not relieve suffering and a sense of injustice, but at least it is a stage of "cultural productivity" and "state stability";
• - the third, final stage, is characterized by signs that accompany the regressive process - "mixing and greater equality of estates", "similarity of education", the change of the monarchical regime by constitutional democratic orders, the fall of the influence of religion, etc.

Through the prism of the law of the "triune process of development" Leontiev sees Europe as a hopelessly outdated, decaying organism. In the future, it will face a decline in all spheres of life, social unrest, inertia of miserable petty-bourgeois goods and virtues.

Initially, K. Leontiev shared the hopes of N. Danilevsky for the creation of a new East Slavic cultural and historical type with Russia at the head. Russia, according to Leontiev, became a state entity later than the European states were formed, and it reached its peak during the reign of Empress Catherine II, when the authority and strength of absolutism increased unprecedentedly, the nobility finally took shape as an estate and the flourishing of the arts began. Strengthening its historical "Byzantine" foundations: autocracy, Orthodoxy, moral ideal disappointments in everything earthly, isolation from the disastrous European processes of decomposition - these are the means to delay it for as long as possible. long time at the stage of cultural and historical creation.

Over time, Leontiev became increasingly disillusioned with the idea of ​​creating a new civilization by Russia in alliance with the Slavic world. Slavism appears to him as a conductor of European influence, the bearer of the principles of constitutionalism, equality, and democracy. In general, the 19th century becomes for him a period that has no analogue in history, since the influence of peoples on each other acquires a global character, the traditional process of changing cultural and historical types is ready to be interrupted, which is fraught with the "end of the world", disasters hitherto unknown to people. Dying Europe involves more and more nations and nationalities in the process of its "secondary mixing simplification", which indicates the emergence of universal deadly tendencies. People are clouded by "progress", outwardly alluring technological improvements and material benefits, in fact, striving to equalize, mix, merge everyone even faster in the image of a godless and impersonal "middle bourgeois", "ideal and instrument of universal destruction". Russia can prolong its existence as an original state for one or two centuries if it takes the position of "isolationism", that is, moving away from Europe and the Slavs, rapprochement with the East, preserving traditional socio-political institutions and communities, maintaining the religious and mystical mood of citizens. If, however, general tendencies of decay prevail in Russia, then it will even be able to hasten the death of all mankind and its historical mission of creating new culture will turn into an apocalypse of universal socialist delusion and collapse. The future humanity will then appear in the form of a fragmented existence of monotonous separate political formations based on the mechanical suppression and unification of people who are no longer capable of generating either art or bright personalities, no religions.

Leontiev, for all his inclination to strengthen "foundations," was not an orthodox theologian. Orthodoxy as a religion of "fear and salvation" was not in his mind the only force capable of saving and preserving. "Cultural" and socially organizing was for him any state religion- Islam, Catholicism and even paganism, returning the mystical spirit to the members of the society. Shortly before his death, he wrote to V. Rozanov that the worldwide preaching of the Gospel, in his opinion, could have consequences similar to the results of modern "progress": the erasure of the cultural and historical characteristics of peoples and the unification of personalities.

In the philosophical legacy of Leontiev, there are two equal centers of attraction:

• - First of all, culture growing in the bowels of a state-formed socio-historical community;
• - Secondly, a person with "infinite rights of the personal spirit", capable of subverting the establishment, customs and opposing historical fate.

Depending on which idea prevailed, his thought acquired the features of a totalitarian type of ideology or turned into a forerunner of the philosophy of existentialism, with the principles of absolute freedom. human spirit and its insubordination to the elements of the world. There were other ideas as well.

In general, the worldview of K.N. Leontiev, some of his views influenced the development of philosophy in Russia, the formation of B.C. Solovieva, H.A. Berdyaev, SN. Bulgakov, P.A. Florensky and other thinkers.

The philosophy of history as a parallel, independent development of a number of closed civilizations was one of the first to develop Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky(1822–1885), creator of scientific Slavophilism. By education, he was a naturalist - and summed up the biological basis for his nationalism. The main work of Danilevsky is a book Russia and Europe(1869). He saw in Russia and in the Slavs the germs of a new civilization destined to replace the dying Western one. Unlike other Slavophiles, Danilevsky did not consider Russia to be superior to the West in any respect, he simply believed that it was different and that it was Russia's duty to remain itself, not because then it would be better and holier than Europe, but because that, imitating the West, but not being it, it will become only an imperfect ape, and not a true participant in European civilization.

There is no doubt that Danilevsky's book in German translation was a source of ideas Oswald Spengler whose book Sunset of Europe created a sensation in Germany. The ideas of N. Danilevsky had big influence and on Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev, a brilliant Russian conservative philosopher (see his brief biography on our website). Leontiev developed in detail the idea that world civilizations are like living beings and, subjected to the action of a common law of nature for all living things, go through three stages of development. The first is primordial or primitive simplicity. The second is explosive growth with the complexities of creative and beautiful inequality. Only this stage is of value. AT Western Europe, for example, it lasted from the 11th to the 18th century. The third stage is secondary simplification, decomposition and decay. These stages in the life of a nation correspond to the stages in the life of the individual: the embryo, life, and the dissolution after death, when the complexity of the living organism falls back into its constituent elements. Since the 18th century, Europe has been in the third stage, and there are reasons to think that Russia, which is civilizationally different from it, is infected with its decay.

Konstantin Leontiev in his youth

The writings of Konstantin Leontiev, besides his first novels and stories from Greek life, fall into three categories: exposition of his political and religious ideas; literary critical articles; memories. Political writings (including Byzantism and Slavism ) were published in two volumes under common name East, Russia and Slavdom(1885–1886). They are written furiously, nervously, hastily, abruptly, but energetically and sharply. Their nervous restlessness is reminiscent of Dostoyevsky. But unlike Dostoevsky, Leontiev is a logician, and the general course of his argument, through all the agitated nervousness of style, is almost as clear as Tolstoy. Leontiev's philosophy consists of three elements. Primarily - biological basis, the result of his medical education, which made him look for the laws of nature and believe in their effectiveness in the social and moral world. The influence of Danilevsky further strengthened this side, and it found expression in Leontief's "law of the trinity": maturation - life - decomposition of societies. Secondly, a temperamental aesthetic immoralism, thanks to which he passionately enjoyed the many-sided and varied beauty of life. And finally - unquestioning obedience to the leadership of monastic Orthodoxy, which dominated him in last years life; there was more a passionate desire to believe than just faith, but from this it was even more uncompromising and zealous.

Valentin Katasonov - Roots of liberal ideology and Konstantin Leontiev

All three of these elements resulted in his extremely conservative political doctrine and staunch Russian nationalism. He hated modern West both for atheism and for leveling tendencies that decompose complex and diverse beauty public life. The main thing for Russia is to stop the process of decomposition and decay coming from the West. This is expressed in the words attributed to Leontiev, although they are not found in his works: “ Russia must be frozen so that it does not rot". But in the depths of his soul as a biologist, he did not believe in the possibility of stopping the natural process. He was the deepest anti-optimist. He not only hated the democratic process, but had little faith in realizing his own ideals. He didn't want the world to be a better place. Pessimism here on earth, he considered the main part of religion.

His political platform is expressed by his characteristically uptight and uneven style in the following formulas:

1. The state must be multicolored, complex, strong, rigid to the point of cruelty, based on class privileges, and changed with care.

2. The church needs to be more independent than now, the episcopate must be bolder, more authoritative, more concentrated. The church should exert a mitigating influence on the state, and not vice versa.

3. Life should be poetic, diverse in its national form - opposed to the West (for example - either not dance at all and pray to God, or dance, but in our way; come up with or develop our national dances, improving them).

4. The law, the foundations of government should be stricter, but people should try to be kinder; one another and balance.

5. Science must develop in a spirit of deep contempt for its own benefit.

In everything Leontiev did and wrote, there was such a deep disregard for mere morality, such a passionate hatred of the democratic herd, such a fierce defense of the aristocratic ideal, that he was many times called the Russian Nietzsche. But with Nietzsche the very impulse was religious, while with Leontiev it was not. This is one of the rare cases in our time (and in the Middle Ages the most common) of a person who is essentially non-religious, consciously submitting and obediently fulfilling the strict rules of a dogmatic and self-contained religion. But he was not a God-seeker and did not seek the Absolute. Leontiev's world is finite, limited, it is a world whose very essence and beauty lies in its finiteness and imperfection. "Love for the Far" is completely unfamiliar to him. He accepted and fell in love with Orthodoxy not for the perfection that it promised in heaven and revealed in the person of God, but for emphasizing the imperfection of earthly life. Imperfection was what he loved above all, with all the variety of forms that created it - for if ever there was a real lover of variety in the world, then it was Leontiev. His worst enemies were those who believed in progress and wanted to drag their pitiful second-rate perfection into this brilliantly imperfect world. He treats them with brilliant contempt worthy of Nietzsche in a vividly written satire. The average European as an ideal and an instrument of world destruction.

Although Leontiev preferred life to literature, although he loved literature only to the extent that it reflected beauty, i. organic and varied life, he was probably the only true literary critic of his time. For only he was able to reach the essence, to the foundations of literary skill, in analysis, regardless of the author's tendency. His book on Tolstoy's novels ( Analysis, style and trend. About the novels of Count L. N. Tolstoy, 1890) in his insightful analysis of Tolstoy's modes of expression is a masterpiece of Russian literary criticism. In it he condemns (as Tolstoy himself a few years earlier in an article What is art?) overly detailed manner of realist writers and praises Tolstoy for abandoning it and not using it in newly published folk stories. This characterizes the justice of Leontiev the critic: he condemns the style War and Peace, although he agrees with the philosophy of the novel and praises the style folk stories, although he hates Tolstoy's New Christianity.

In the last years of his life, Leontiev published several fragments of his memoirs, which are the most interesting of his works. They are written in the same excited and nervous manner as his political essays. The nervousness of the style, the liveliness of the story and the boundless sincerity put these memoirs in a special place in Russian memoir literature. Best of all are those fragments that tell the story of his religious life and conversion (but linger on the first two chapters on childhood, where his mother is described; and on the history of his literary relationship with Turgenev); and a delightfully lively story about his participation in the Crimean War and about the landing of the allies in Kerch in 1855. Getting acquainted with them, the reader himself becomes a part of Leontief's excited, passionate, impulsive soul.

Konstantin Leontiev. Photo from 1880

During his lifetime, Leontiev was evaluated only from "party" points of view, and, since he was primarily a paradoxicalist, he received only ridicule from opponents and restrained praise from friends. The first to recognize the Leontief genius, not sympathizing with his ideas, was Vladimir Solovyov, shocked by the power and originality of this personality. And after the death of Leontiev, he greatly contributed to the preservation of the memory of him, writing a detailed and sympathetic article about Leontiev for encyclopedic dictionary Brockhaus-Efron. Since then, the revival of Leontiev began. Beginning in 1912, his collected works began to appear (in 9 volumes); in 1911 a collection of memoirs about him was published, preceded by an excellent book Leontiev's life written by his student Konoplyantsev. He began to be recognized as a classic (although sometimes not out loud). The originality of his thought, the individuality of style, the sharpness of his critical judgment are not disputed by anyone. Literary critics new school recognize him as the best, the only critic of the second half of XIX century; Eurasians, the only original and strong school of thought created after the revolution by the anti-Bolsheviks, consider him among their greatest teachers.

Born on January 13, 1831 in the village of Kudinovo, Meshchovsky district, Kaluga province, in the family of Nikolai Borisovich Leontiev - from the Leontiev nobles; mother - Feodosia Petrovna - came from noble family Karabanovs. He was the youngest, the seventh child.

His mother gave him his early education. In 1841 he entered the Smolensk Gymnasium, and in 1843 as a cadet in the Noble Regiment. Leontiev was dismissed from the regiment due to illness in October 1844 and in the same year was enrolled in the third grade of the Kaluga Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1849 with the right to enter the university without exams. Having entered the Yaroslavl Demidov Lyceum, in November of the same year he transferred to the medical faculty of Moscow University.

In 1868, his article "Literacy and Nationality" was published, which received the approval of the ambassador in Constantinople, N. P. Ignatiev, who was reputed to be a Slavophile. At the same time, he was working on an extensive series of novels "The River of Times", which covered Russian life from 1862 to 1862; most of the manuscripts were later destroyed by him.

A year later he was appointed consul to the Albanian city of Ioannina, whose climate, however, adversely affected his health; was transferred to the post of consul in Thessaloniki. He was being groomed for the post of consul general in Bohemia. But in July 1871 he contracted an illness which he mistook for cholera. When death seemed imminent to him, he saw the icon of the Mother of God, which was given to him by the monks of Athos; he made a vow to the Mother of God that in case of recovery, he would take monasticism. After two hours, he felt relieved.

Immediately after the illness receded, he went on horseback through the mountains to Athos, where he remained until August 1872; intended to fulfill his promise and become a monk, but the elders of Athos dissuaded him from such a step.

In November 1874 he entered the Nikolo-Ugreshsky Monastery near Moscow as a novice, but already in May 1875 he again went to Kudinovo.

In 1879, he accepted the offer of Prince Nikolai Golitsyn and came to Warsaw, where he became an employee of the Warsaw Diary newspaper. He published a number of articles in the newspaper, mainly on socio-political topics. A year later, he was forced to leave his work in the publication, which could not get out of financial difficulties.

In November 1880, he entered the service of the Moscow Censorship Committee (the offer was received from his friend Tertiy Filippov back in 1879); served as censor for six years.

At that time, he wrote relatively little (the novel The Egyptian Dove, the articles On Universal Love, and The Fear of God and Love for Mankind). In 1885-1886, a collection of his articles "East, Russia and Slavdom" was published.

In 1883, Leontiev met Vladimir Solovyov.

In the autumn of 1887 he moved to Optina Hermitage, where he rented a two-story house near the monastery fence, where he moved antique furniture from his family estate and his library. At the beginning of 1890, L. N. Tolstoy was visiting him, who spent two and a half hours with him, which was spent arguing about faith. In Optina, he writes the following works: "Notes of a Hermit", "National Policy as an Instrument of the World Revolution", "Analysis, Style and Trend", etc.

On August 23, 1891, in the Forerunner Skete of Optina Hermitage, he took secret tonsure with the name Clement. On the advice of the elder Ambrose, he left Optina and moved to Sergiev Posad.

On November 12, 1891, he died of pneumonia and was buried in the Gethsemane Skete of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra near the Chernigov Church Mother of God(now Chernihiv Skete).

Philosophy of K. N. Leontiev

Anthropological views

According to the views of the thinker, for the most part, human thoughts are socially dangerous, and therefore human freedom must be balanced by various political and religious institutions. In this, Leontiev is in tune with the conservative human understanding, the so-called anthropological pessimism. However, Leontief guarding has a pronounced religious coloring as its feature.

The guardian spirit in the upper strata of society

in the West it was always stronger than in our country...;

Our spirit of protection is weak. Our Society

generally disposed to follow others;

who knows? … isn't it even faster than others?

God forbid I make a mistake.

Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831 - 1891) - philosopher, writer, publicist, ideologist of "Russian Byzantium". Studied at the medical faculty of Moscow University, participated in Crimean war as a doctor. For 10 years he was the secretary of the embassy on about. Crete. At the end of his life he took the veil as a monk. The main philosophical and journalistic works: "Byzantism and Slavism" (1876), "On Vladimir Solovyov and the Aesthetics of Life" (1912), "Reclusion, Monastery and Peace" (1913), "Father Clement Zederholm" (1882).

At the heart of the philosophical ideas of KN Leontiev, there is always an attitude towards the combination of deep religiosity of thought and the very reality of being, which he called "the method of real life." Leontiev believed it possible to unite religiosity, common sense, science and artistic representation of the world in its philosophical understanding. In the doctrine of man, his being and prospects, the decisive factor is the omnipotence of non-existence, the fragility of life, destruction, temporality and mortality.

Leontiev, in his views on the civilizational process, supports Danilevsky on the question of the reasons for the development and decline of "cultural-historical types" of society. Life is always characterized by tension, intensity, originality and uniqueness. The desire of the people for the uniformity of being in all spheres of life is a sign of the weakening of internal vitality. Leontiev formulates the law of the "triune process of development": 1) the period of "original simplicity"; 2) the period of "blooming complexity"; 3) the period of "secondary mixing simplification". All great nations go through these stages of development, but never twice. Civilization "closes" the possibilities of peoples who have exhausted all the potentialities of their development.

Not only Europe, but also Russia is embarking on the path of disastrous development. Russia has lost the "spirit of protection" - the trend of national identity and Orthodox creativity. The life of Russia can be extended by the strict preservation of the foundations (autocracy, Orthodoxy, communal way of life), isolation from the influences of Europe and rapprochement with the East. Philosophical ideas Slavophiles received their expression in the ideology pochvennichestvo, the main representatives of which were the brothers M.M. and F.M. Dostoevsky, A.A. Grigoriev, N.N. Strakhov.

2. The philosophy of Westerners. P.Ya.Chaadaev, V.G.Belinsky, A.N.Gertsen

Westerners are called representatives of the current of philosophical and journalistic thought Russia XIX century, opposing the Slavophiles. Westerners are convinced that the European path of development of civilizations is common to all peoples, and Russia will develop the more intensively, the faster it takes this path. Westerners believed that Russia had much to learn from Europe. They generally did not consider religion as a significant factor for social development.

The ideas of the Slavophiles and Westernizers still disturb the philosophical spirit of Russian thinkers. Here, the dialectic of the individual and the general in the current trends of national development has not yet been realized. The most controversial in matters of following Western standards of national development is Chaadaev, whose ideas express this dialectic, although not always consistently.

Political philosophy of K.N.Leontiev

Plan

Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831 -1891) was born in 1831 into a poor family in a family estate in the Kaluga province. The philosopher's mother, an imperious, believing woman, had a great influence on the upbringing of her son; his childhood passed in a patriarchal-religious atmosphere. He barely remembered his father.

Of great importance for the formation of Leontiev as a writer was his acquaintance in 1851 with I.S. Turgenev, who became his mentor and friend for many years - until they broke up in the 70s. for political reasons. (Turgenev was a liberal with democratic sympathies, he was a supporter of slow reforms that brought Russia closer to the countries of the West).

In 1850-1854. was a student of the medical faculty of Moscow University.

From 1854 to 1856 he was a military doctor, participating in the Crimean War.

Leontiev's political views at this time represent an amorphous (indefinite, formless) liberalism. “In my youth I had the stupidity to be liberal too (quite sincerely, and this is stupid)!”

In 1860, he decides to go to St. Petersburg to tell people a new word, to open their eyes to the beauty of life, which they usually do not notice. He arrives in the capital, where he enthusiastically meets the manifesto of 1861, which, in his opinion, was supposed to open an era of new life in Russia, to strengthen its originality and originality.

1861 is the year of Leontiev's spiritual disappointment: his aesthetic views were not understood by those around him, there were difficulties with the publication of his works, and most importantly, his hopes for a special post-reformation development of Russia, which was rapidly losing its differences from the West, were deceived. Growing instability in society, dissatisfaction with the proposed democrats social ideal change his ideological and political position, causing in 1864 a break with liberalism. Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev becomes a staunch conservative.

In 1863, he entered the service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Asiatic Department). However, an incident soon occurred when Leontiev hit the French ambassador with a whip for insulting a review of Russia. Leontiev is removed from his post and appointed acting consul in Adrianople (1864).

He goes to the East, to the Balkan possessions of the then Ottoman Empire. The East makes an irresistible impression on Leontiev, where Leontiev takes the final form of a sharply negative attitude towards Europe.

Leontiev brings with him the manuscript "Byzantism and Slavism", and it is in this work that his socio-political ideas are reflected. The work was written in 1873.

After writing the work, Leontiev comes to a firm conviction of the need to carry out a "reaction" in Russia in order to save her from the "rotting West".

Reaction is a movement for the preservation and strengthening of the existing order and the suppression of any revolutionary forces. An extremely conservative trend, seeking to restore long-obsolete public institutions.

In the work, Leontiev also draws up the so-called recipe for the salvation of Russia.

If you look at Leontiev's belonging to any social movement, you can see that everywhere he was a "black sheep". (It was shared with the statesmen opposite positions on the Greek-Bulgarian ecclesiastical issue and attitude towards the Slavs, with the Slavophiles - a different attitude towards humanism and freedom.) Contacts were also interfered with by some traits of Leontiev's character, his claims to be the ideological leader of the conservative camp. He had a very difficult relationship with a number of conservatives.

Take, for example, his relationship with M.N. Katkov, who in those years was an unofficial spokesman for the views of government circles. Leontiev perceived him negatively, which was due not only to the impressions of their cooperation in the publication of their works, but also Leontiev had a low opinion of Katkov's human qualities.

“He knew how to hang his bell, in which there was not so much silver, high and beneficial for acoustics. You can learn dexterity and flair from him, not ideas. Neither in the press nor even in private conversations have I heard a word new from him. I said all this before him and more subtly.”

It would seem that K.P. Pobedonostsev was supposed to be interested in and support Leontiev (hater of liberals and nihilists). However, he was also frightened off by the excessively stormy expression of feelings, Leontiev's thought, which was too naked in its "reactionary" nature. As noted by D.S. Merezhkovsky, “a man of the last words, he said the unspeakable things about the Russian state and the Russian church. He betrayed their secret with such carelessness that it can sometimes seem like a traitor to the allies.

In the last years of his life, a small circle of students and admirers of his ideas and talent formed around him, however, people who were not very famous. Among them are the employees of Moskovskie Vedomosti L.A. Tikhomirova, Yu.N. Govoruh-Otrok and V.A. Gringmut, young priest I. Fudel, future editor of the Russian Review, poet and publicist A.A. Alexandrova and a number of other young pupils of the Katkov Lyceum.

Leontiev was never able to establish mutual understanding with wide circles of the intelligentsia, because he was critical of it because of its imitation of the West and "vulgar liberalism."

The rejection of Leontief's political views in society, the inattention of readers to his literary and journalistic work, chronic painful disorders of the body completely undermined his health. And in 1891 he died near the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

The place where the cemetery was located was used for household needs, and the thinker himself was forgotten for a long time ... Only at the end of 1991, on the anniversary of the memory of Leontiev, the grave was restored through the efforts of admirers of his talent.

Philosophical treatise "Byzantism and Slavism"- most famous work K.N. Leontiev. During the life of Konstantin Nikolaevich, it was published three times: in 1875, and then in 1876 and 1885. The thinker himself attached great importance to this work and expected that this treatise would glorify him. However, during the life of the philosopher, this dream did not come true. It was truly "noted" and appreciated only at the height of the Silver Age.

K.N. Leontiev was the first to use the term "Byzantism". An essential part of Byzantium is an original national culture. Byzantism is the basis of the future state structure of Russia. Orthodoxy will also contribute to the strengthening of Russian statehood.

The main ideas of the work:

- "Byzantism" as a specific type of culture (as a civilization) is opposed to "Slavism" as an amorphous, spontaneous abstraction.

- “Slavism can only be understood as a tribal ethnographic distraction, as the idea of ​​common blood (though not entirely pure) and similar languages. “Slavism” simply does not exist, and for the flourishing of Russia, Byzantism is necessary.

The fundamental features of Byzantism include autocracy (tsarism), Orthodoxy (Greek Christianity), collectivism (“rural land peace”) and conservatism. In addition to the historical Byzantium, Byzantism on Earth was embodied by the "Yugoslavs" and Russia.

The Romano-Germanic world (“Europeanism”) spun off from Byzantium under Charlemagne (8th century) and formed its own values: chivalry, romanticism and “Gothism”.

The beginnings of civilization are determined not by blood or language, but by a combination of "religious, legal, everyday and artistic features."

“From whichever side we look at Great Russian life and the state, we will see that Byzantism, i.e. the church and the tsar, directly or indirectly, penetrate deeply into the very depths of our social organism. Our strength, discipline, the history of enlightenment, poetry - in a word, all living things among us are organically connected with our tribal monarchy, sanctified by Orthodoxy, of which we are natural heirs and representatives in the universe.

Byzantism organized us, the system of Byzantine ideas created our greatness, mating with our patriarchal, simple beginnings, with our Slavic material, still old and crude at the beginning. By changing, even in our secret thoughts, this Byzantism, we will destroy Russia.

Considering the various Slavic peoples, the author finds their commonality rather with neighboring peoples than with each other. (Czechs are more similar to Germans, and Greeks to Bulgarians, than Czechs to Bulgarians). The Czechs have lost their Slavic.

“The power of Russia is necessary for the existence of the Slavs. Byzantism is necessary for the strength of Russia. Anyone who shakes the authority of Byzantium undermines himself, perhaps without realizing it, under the foundations of the Russian state.

Leontiev estimates the life span of states at 1000-1200 years. Based on this conclusion, Leontiev predicts Europe's imminent decline, the features of which appear in the images of the "average man" and "pseudo-humane vulgarity." However, "civilizations usually long outlive the states that produced them."

Recipe for saving Russia: it is based on the concept of a three-stage evolution of society by analogy with the development of an organism, gradually passing through the stages of youth, maturity and old age, ending in death.

Leontiev formulated the law of the emergence, existence and death of an organism or phenomenon that is in time and space. He was firmly convinced that all world processes are homogeneous and of the same type, all go through three mandatory stages of development:

the stage of initial simplicity (epic and patriarchal);

the stage of flourishing complexity, which is characterized by richness, diversity and inequality of elements;

the stage of secondary mixing simplification (homogeneity, equality and dying freedom).

The triune development process acquires a universal character, since the “great and universal facts of world evolution” are subordinate to it: all the phenomena of social, political, artistic life - this list includes the peoples of the Earth, entire states and civilizations, systems of the universe ...

Passing through the secondary mixing simplification, any system perishes.

However, from his scheme, Leontiev excluded the spiritual sphere, to which he refers not only philosophy, but also religion: these unconditional values ​​are not subject to forced death, eternity is their main property.

As for the Russian state organism, for the maximum possible extension of its life, a creative return to the traditional Russian sources, expressed by the formula "Byzantism", is necessary.

Political ideas:

Leontiev defines his position as "philosophical hatred for the forms and spirit of modern European life."

In strengthening the state system, one should expect real help from religion - Christian Orthodoxy, the Christian religion should become one of the essential means of "social discipline".

In his critique of modern Europe, he identifies two main theses: on the one hand, democratization, and on the other, a manifestation of "secondary simplification", that is, clear signs of decay and decay in Europe.

In perishing, degrading societies, the psychology of people is changing, the energy of life is extinguished, as his follower Lev Gumilyov said a century later, passionarity is falling. Empires perish under externally favorable conditions, with internal relaxation of the authorities and people.

The philosopher felt the approach of a thunderstorm over Russia, although he knew that she was still far from the exhaustion of her life. He is the age of Russia, as L.N. Gumilyov calculated from the Battle of Kulikovo, from the year of the unifying mission of St. Sergius of Radonezh.

One of the ways to save Russia is the resolution of the Eastern Question and the occupation of Constantinople. The capture of Constantinople was supposed to be a key moment for the implementation of the Leontiev project. Its essence consisted not only in the expulsion of the Turks from Europe, not so much in emancipation, but in "the development of one's own original Slavic-Asiatic civilization." The foundation of the new cultural and state building was to be the formation of an Eastern Orthodox political, religious, cultural confederation of Slavic countries. It was this confederation that was supposed to provide a bulwark against Western Europeanism.

Russia has not yet reached the period of cultural dawn. Therefore, the influence of Western ideas can be a deadly poison for Russia, which will destroy it before it can find itself.

Defends the harsh measures of the state, the "sacred right of violence" on the part of the state.

9. Conclusions

There is no thinker in the history of Russian political thought, except for K.N. Leontiev, who would have so frankly outlined his reactionary position.

K.N. Leontiev tried to modernize the seemingly already forgotten Byzantine imperial idea, to give it the character of a guide for Russia's foreign and domestic policy.

He put in his political theory quite specific goals(for example, the liberation of Tsargrad and the restoration of the great Orthodox empire). As V.V. wrote about him Rozanov, "if Leontiev had a hundred thousand troops, he would have covered the whole of Europe with blood." Such an expression should be understood in the sense that K.N. Leontiev longed to be the subject and creator of political history.

At the same time, K.N. Leontiev can be called one of the founders of the "new religious consciousness" in Russia. He was among the first to formulate his own ideal of a political and social structure, based on the historical and religious traditions of Russia.

At the same time, he was completely devoid of that deep “provincialism” that infected both Western liberals, who saw in Russia only a student of “enlightened Europe,” and some conservatives in the worst sense of the word, who saw the salvation of our country in stagnation. K.N. Leontiev is a true ideologist and prophet of the "conservative revolution".