Philosophical Bents of Dostoevsky, More,

¶ … philosophical bents of Dostoevsky, More, Marx/Engels, Rousseau and Nietzsche

The five thinkers examined here all premise their work on the major questions of political freedom for mankind balanced with man's happiness. They share much in common in that they all view man in a fallen state, but their solutions -- and in Rousseau's case, bare lamenting -- are all entirely different.

Of the five thinkers, Dostoevsky professes consistently the darkest view of humanity's happiness and freedoms. In "The Grand Inquisitor," Dostoevsky paints a picture of Jesus in the Inquisition, being questioned by the devil.

The devil poses three challenges -- or rather, makes three offers -- to Jesus, but each he declines. Oddly, Shakespeare's Caesar also declines the crown as offered to him by Marc Anthony thrice.

The devil -- or the Inquisitor -- first asks Jesus in a desert to turn stones into food and feed himself and his people. Jesus refuses, responding that "man does not live by earthly bread alone."

Jesus justifies this response by intimating that to accept earthly necessities makes one bound, and while bound, one cannot be free.

Dostoevsky argues here that Jesus denies his own people just as Judas denies him. In other words, Jesus is an upholder of freedoms, but not necessarily of a protector of mankind.

Then the devil asks Jesus to cast himself down from a high cliff to prove that he is the son of God. Again, Jesus resists the temptation, responding instead that the scriptures tell us, "Do not tempt the Lord, your God."

The devil uses these two refusals as ammunition in proving that God does not indeed exist.

Then the devil presents Jesus with his third and final temptation: Jesus may have all of the kingdoms of the earth if he will bow down and worship Satan. "Begone, Satan," replies Jesus, and cites the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods but me."

Dostoevsky's political values and thought are transparent here. Religion as a solace is useless to Dostoevsky as it plays no part in improving mankind's lot. Man would stand to gain so much from the food if Jesus were to turn the stones into a miracle, but he refuses to do so and later continues to deny his own existence, in Dostoevsky's interpretation.

More's Utopia on the other hand, is significantly more tolerant of religion. However, More's general thesis is that all religions should be tolerated, and this viewpoint gained support among Communists.

More's work has created an evergreen impact on political thought and literature to follow. The Greek word Utopia translates as "no place" or "nowhere," but in modern idiom, a Utopia is a good place, or an ideal place (eu-topia), and this is owing directly to More's "Utopia."

In fact, the very term "utopia" has picked up further ramifications than when More's original work was published. "Utopia" has indeed inspired a diverse group of political thinkers, and these followers of More shed intense light on his own political philosophy.

For instance, the utilitarian philosophy espoused in the late 18th century and early 19th century and derived directly from "Utopia" developed the idea of the ideal and perfect balance of happiness. Note immediately the contrast to Dostoevsky in More: Dostoevsky believed that God was not on mankind's side with regard to happiness, but More believed that happiness was an achievable yardstick.

Jeremy Bentham, a famous Utilitarian thinker and follower of More's "Utopia," explored the concepts of surveillance and the panopticon by which all can be viewed. These reform concepts -- created to measure happiness, calculate moral positiveness and result the optimal balance -- mirror the anti-privacy standpoints inflicted upon the citizens of More's "Utopia."

In the 19th century, the rise of urban industrialization resulted in the spread of Utopian projects (agricultural communes), all of which were doomed to failure, as a premonition of the failure of communism.

"Utopia" turned into the idea of creating an ideal world apart from the morally corrupting cities. These Utopian locations were primarily located in France, the United Kingdom and in America's New England.

As mentioned above, More's vindication of property held in common and mankind's reliance upon complicated state planning are the foundations for communism and socialism as presented in Marx and Engels' treatises.

In "Utopia," More criticizes the nobility's perversion of law to subjugate the poor and this interpretation translated directly to the suffering of industrial and factory workers.

In fact, More's followers believed that the bourgeoisie could only be stymied by the abolition of money, private property, and class structure. Socialists took this one step removed and argued that agricultural economies with property held in common would mitigate the evils of the industrial revolution.

Naturally, a discussion of Marx/Engels' ideas follows directly from More. They seized upon a great divide between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and built upon the ideas of "Utopia,"

'The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat."

Here, Marx and Engels tore apart capitalism. Capitalism depends on the idea that each man will act in his own best interests, and therefore people will work hardest and best when they are given incentives to do so. And what better incentives than personal -- and not communal -- property?

Marx and Engels decried capitalism in that it produced an overclass and an underclass, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Marx and Engels built upon More's thinking in that they believed in communal property; however, they departed with regard to More's concentration on religious freedom. Marx and Engels were much more concerned with economic freedom.

However, they defined economic freedom very differently than would a capitalist: For Marx and Engels, economic freedom meant not the freedom to choose for oneself and benefit from those choices, but the freedom from de facto serfdom and poverty instead.

Rousseau's beliefs are in line with Marx's and Engel's in that he felt also that man had come to lose his freedoms and innocence. He feels that modern life, with its capitalistic trappings, is entirely fake and artificial.

However, his main concern is not for the loss of economic sustenance and the institution of serfdom for the proletariat, but for the loss of mankind's soul in the process: "In a word, he will explain how the soul and the passions of men insensibly change their very nature, why our wants and pleasures in the end seek new objects; and why, the original man having vanished be degrees, society offers to us only an assembly of artificial men and factitious passions, which are the work of all these new relations, and without any real foundation in nature ... "

Here, Rousseau is thoroughly dissatisfied with society, but does not go the route of More's followers, and thus the route of More: He does not pose a utopian society that will cure the ills of mankind.

Rather, he simply bemoans the fact that "progress" and "wealth" and "sustenance" cannot come without sacrificing mankind's soul and passions, and replacing them only with emptiness.

Here, Rousseau's thinking is much more in line with Dostoevsky's: Both have a very bleak outlook on life -- in fact, Rousseau goes so far as the proactively set himself apart from the ultimate negative philosopher, Hobbes -- and neither poses a solution such as a utopia or communism.

Rather, they suggest that the successful man is the one who works within a very flawed system to give himself sustenance -- in Dostoevsky's case -- and soul and passion -- in Rousseau's case -- amidst the necessary evils of progress, wealth, capitalism, private property and the resulting dehumanization.

Nietzsche presents the most striking departure amongst these five political philosophers. Nietzsche was primarily concerned with morals, as evidenced in his "The Genealogy of Morals," published in 1887. He deals with the origins of morals and asks what basic terms such as "good," "bad" and "evil" actually mean, and how they relate to man's conscience.

Specifically, Nietzsche dealt with mankind's strange reliance on God but desire to absolve God of all responsibilities for his actions: "The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for ones actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and with more than Munchhausen's audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair; out of the swamps of nothingness."

Oddly enough, this passage paints a brighter picture of Nietzsche than popular thought attributes to him. Nietzsche here presents a direct path -- unlike Rousseau -- out of the swamps of nothingness: the path is not necessarily religion, nor is it secularism. Rather, it is a lack of contradiction.

Nietzsche urges each man to evaluate just what he believes and desires and understand for himself whether he wishes to credit God or himself. In other words, Nietzsche calls upon man to answer the age old question: fate or control?

If mankind avoids contradiction here, he is able to pick himself up by the bootstraps and re-instill into his life some of the soul and passion that Rousseau bleakly believes is missing.

In fact, Nietzsche had a great argument with Rousseau's thinking: this hostility derives from Nietzsche's conviction that the autonomous subject of Enlightened political discourse is hopelessly inadequate. Nietzsche did not feel that politics and freedom of religion and government are the keys to man's happiness.

Nietzsche's thinking also contradicts communist thought: Communism absolves both God and man and relies on community instead. Nietzsche asks mankind to choose between God and man and he truly means it: a choice of neither does not satisfy Nietzsche's model for picking oneself up from the swamps.

Similarly, Nietzsche's thought runs very contrary to More's "Utopia," simply because he did not at all believe in the concept of religions -- Catholicism in particular, as later years proved More's affinity -- and the freedom to choose a religion as being the savior for mankind's progression into unhappiness.

However, Nietzsche did share much with Dostoevsky. Both believed that Jesus presented no answers. However, Dostoevsky believed in Jesus' impotence from a very normative perspective; Nietzsche, on the other hand, only denied Jesus in a situation in which man was not given a choice to either choose to relegate responsibility for life to either God or man himself.