These are presentation notes for a paper given at the international symposium: Russian Literature, Philosophy, and Religious Thought in a Time of Catastrophe, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), Lisbon, Portugal, March 2023. Written by Gennadii Aliaiev, translated by Dr. Victor V. Chernyshov, and edited for style.
To begin, I would like to present the source for my present discussion. In 2021, the correspondence between Russian philosopher Simon Frank and Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Ludwig Binswanger was published. Of the first 130 letters in the original German that had been published (in full or in an abridged form), only six letters had been published in Russian, two by Binswanger and four by Frank. Now, 421 documents have been published, containing the correspondence between Frank and Binswanger between November 1934 and December 1950, of which Frank wrote 255 and Binswanger 166 letters. The context of the correspondence is contextualized by approximately 130 related documents. The correspondence is published bilingually – in the original German or in French, as well as in Russian translation.
The content of these letters varies, including topics of philosophy, psychology, politics, family and household matters. These documents are significant because, first, they witness the sincere and efficient friendship between two prominent thinkers; as the phenomenon of friendship itself – the “I-You relationships” – turns out to be not only a fact of personal fate, but also a subject-matter for philosophical and psychological examination. Second, these letters witness mutual creative influence. This is evident in the Russian philosopher’s reception of Western ideas, which is quite an ordinary thing, but also in the influence he had on the development of existential psychology – one of the significant trends in Western thought of the twentieth century.
The majority of this highly confidential correspondence covers the period of the Second World War. It can be assumed that here we will find answers to two questions (which, unfortunately, have not lost their relevance): first, how a philosopher perceives war; second, how philosophy changes under the conditions of war. It is clear enough that, if we find any answers to these questions, they will not be universally valid patterns or models for imitation, but rather stemming from personal experience. In fact, any authentic philosophy is born from the personal spiritual experience of a philosopher.
War as a Trial of Consciousness
In his memoires on Peter Struve, Simon Frank confessed that in October 1938 he considered the war highly improbable. Most likely, it was an attitude of optimistic consciousness, which Struve countered with a sober analysis of the situation, proving the inevitability of war (Frank, Vospominaniia, 529). This optimism, unfortunately, was not justified: on August 23, 1939, Frank wrote to Binswanger: “We may be facing such world events today that can throw all our plans and our whole lives overboard” (Perepiska, 370-371).
The first months of the war, however, turned out to be a “Phoney War,” when time passed only “in anticipation of the coming horrors” (Perepiska, 386-387). The meanness and senselessness of the war, however, were already quite obviously making intellectual tasks unsolvable even for a philosophical mind. Struck by the “rape” of Finland, Frank wrote to his friend in December 1939: “You can hardly find words and concepts to make your way around what is going on in the world now” (Perepiska, 379-380).
The capitulation of France was a great shock for him. At the end of June 1940, Frank wrote: “I must confess that, despite all the philosophy, my nervous system can hardly endure this terrible tension; besides, I have tasted enough of world history in my life, and I am fed up with it. One would think it could have gone a little more sensibly” (Perepiska, 391-392). Frank and his wife did not witness the fighting directly, but one can understand the feelings they had when reports came in of the bombing of London, where their children lived. When, in April 1941, Frank had learned about the invasion of Yugoslavia, where his friend Struve lived, he wrote to Binswanger: “It is only from such personal experience that one can have a real clue of the horrors of war…” (Perepiska, 456-457).
The war found Simon Frank in the south of France, where he and his wife found themselves isolated from their children and had to languish in poverty, leading rather a meagre, and sometimes half-starved existence. They had to reckon with the real threat of being arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Later, when the Nazis occupied the south of France, the Franks hid in small pre-Alpine villages. The philosopher more than once had to experience the bitterness of forced emigration: in 1922 he was expelled from Russia on the “Philosophical Steamboat”, and in 1937 he was forced to leave Germany, which had become almost a homeland for him. At that point, he wrote to Binswanger: “Once again in my life I am now in a situation when one should actually emigrate – but where and how? Yet I do not have the energy to do it anymore. I prefer – to die in old Europe – maybe at the same time as old Europe” (Perepiska, 412-413).
In Frank, this pessimism took on the form of a conscious stoicism. He had no illusions about the future – “hell on earth will last for years.” In February 1942, Frank wrote: “I take this prospect stoically – despite everything, I have had a happy life, both personal and creative-spiritual, and when it comes to that end one must be guided by a feeling of gratitude for good. If not, I would regard it as a new divine grace and marvellous mercy” (Perepiska, 515-516). In another letter, a few months later, having lost his last chance to escape the Nazi occupation and go to England, he added: “But you know I agree with Socrates that a man of good will has nothing to fear, neither in this world nor in the other. And I hope that this mind-set will be given to me in all circumstances. We even have a moral satisfaction, if we take part in the sufferings of the world, and we cannot refuse thinking that suffering voluntarily accepted has meaning in the spiritual economy of the world” (Perepiska, 631-632). Here it seems worth noting that Frank also referred to the same thought of Socrates that he mentions in his book The Light Shineth in Darkness (1949), opposing it to the position of “the contemporary German theoretician of tragic unfaith, Heidegger”, who proclaimed “‘fear’ to be the metaphysical essence of human life” (Frank, The The Light Shineth in Darkness, 39-40).
War and Creativity
The raging war was a severe psychological test, which could not but affect creativity. Shortly after the Nazis invaded France and captured Paris, Frank confessed to a friend: “My work also got stuck under these impressions; I know what I have to say, but I do not know unto whom I have to say it, and this vagueness bothers me; it seems that now only the words of the prophets are really appropriate, but I do not have such words” (Perepiska, 391-392). However, at the same time, the war, as a real borderline between life and death, made them value every day that could be devoted to the main business of the philosopher – creativity. In his philosophical diary Thoughts in the Dark Days, Frank stated the categorical imperative of his life: “[The need] to create always, ceaselessly, tirelessly, until the last breath (literally!). Ceasing creativity or forgetting about it is a mortal sin (also literally!)” (Frank, Thoughts in the Dark Days, 355).
Between 1939-1941, Frank wrote The Light Shineth in Darkness, striving to ensure that it “must not be a result of abstract theories, but experience in the area of spiritual life and its relationship to world reality,” and at the same time stated that it must be written “without pedantry and unnecessary philosophical theory, and yet thoroughly and convincingly” (Perepiska, 382-383). In the conditions of war, the nature of his philosophizing changed significantly, as it approached confessional form; as he confessed to Binswanger: “It is almost a spiritual testament. […] It is almost a confession of faith – in this book I sum up all the spiritual and historical experience of my life” (Perepiska, 405-408). An irresistible desire to express the innermost in a philosophical form that was accessible to him prompted Frank to take up his pen again shortly after the completion of this book – in less than six months he wrote a large book God with Us, in which the confessional nature of his philosophy was fully manifested. In the process of writing, he found the only available meaning of life, which allowed him to forget about “the madness and horrors of what is happening in the world, the separation from his children […] and all the difficulties of his own life” (Perepiska, 488-489). It should be noted that even the book titles reflected both the horror of the coming time and the hope for the victory of the forces of good and light, the hopes of Christian soteriology.
In the circumstances in which the Russian philosopher found himself, one could hardly count on the publication of his works. However, Frank attempted to do so a number of times. In the spring of 1941, he sent an article to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in which he had often published before the war. The article was titled “The Devil’s Ruse”. Unfortunately, its text has been lost, but Frank formulated its main idea elsewhere: “There is a saying that belongs to the deep German mystical philosopher Franz Baader: ʻThe greatest and most dangerous ruse of the devil is that he managed to persuade people that he does not exist’. This strikingly apt thought reveals the source of the delusion from which contemporary Europe suffers. It was namely the best European minds who simply could not believe the power of evil that dominated the world and spread throughout the world; they were taken by surprise by the victories of that force, which brought Europe to the very edge of the abyss” (Aliaiev, et al. “Svet vo t’me” i “S nami Bog”, 205-206). The article was not published, but here Frank did not see the evil will of the editor, but rather the good will of Providence, which made him (after several days spent in the filtration camp) remember the Epicurean commandment “λάθε βιώσας”: “At the present time it is best to be forgotten” (Perepiska, 480-482).
Philosophic Dialogue in the Background of War
Correspondence with Binswanger was almost the only opportunity for Frank to maintain a truly philosophical dialogue, although another very important correspondent in this regard was Frank’s half-brother, the painter Lev Zak, as evidenced by a recently found letter from Zak. Therefore, in the spring of 1941, Frank wrote in detail to his Swiss friend about John William Dunne’s book, which interested him, An Experiment with Time, characterizing it as “the work of a highly gifted, insightful and incredibly sharp-minded author” (Perepiska, 448-449). At the same time, he was well aware of the untimeliness – from the point of view of common sense – of such an abstract discussion: “A philosopher is still a peculiar being. At a time when thousands of people are drowning, burning or being torn to pieces every day, and my own children (like all people on the other side) are putting their lives in danger, Dunne’s theory interests me the most” (Perepiska, 452, 454). However, “the unsatisfied need of the philosophical διαλέγεσθαι” (Perepiska, 453, 455) demanded some kind of outlet and forced him to take up the pen.
Particularly important for both scholars was the dialogue concerning their own works and thoughts. Frank wrote a summary of his book The Light Shineth in Darkness in German specifically for Binswanger (Aliaiev, et al. “Svet vo t’me” i “S nami Bog,” 231-261). He was afraid that the Swiss psychologist would not adequately perceive the problems of Christian social ethics. Therefore, Frank added in the letter, as it were, a special “preface,” explaining the confessional nature of philosophizing in this book, and, at the same time, the “appearance of a theological thought.” Justifying himself for the fact that in the short Exposé “everything appears somewhat crude, not convincing enough,” he hoped for a “totality of [Binswanger’s] friendly indulgence” (Perepiska, 459-461).
Frank’s fears were related to the fact that he and Binswanger had a clearly different attitude towards the perception of Christianity and a different perception of religious experience. Later, in connection with Binswanger’s reaction to another of his books, God with Us, Frank described this difference in the sense that the Swiss psychologist was not inclined to Christian metaphysics, limiting himself to a humanitarian (according to Frank – superficial) perception of Christian morality; Frank himself, proceeding from the experience of the power of evil and chaos in the world, felt “the necessity of a stubborn cleaving to the metaphysical-ultimate, i.e. the experience of the Divine” (Perepiska, 798, 800).
Nevertheless, even the brief summary allowed Binswanger to see something very significant in Frank’s new book, which was at the same time characteristic of his entire work: “this is your realism based on your life experience and the consistency of your thinking” (Perepiska, 462-463). While Frank himself had focused on understanding the “new spiritual phase” of his work, Binswanger helped him to “come to a clear self-definition” with respect to the original intuition that connected the new book to all the previous ones. In his reply letter to Binswanger, Frank interpreted his “realism” not so much within the context of an orientation towards life experience, but rather as a metaphysical attitude:
My basic philosophico-metaphysical intuition consists (and always has consisted) in a pairing of the Platonic dualism between over here and beyond, inner spiritual reality and empirical-rational reality (which appears in Connaissance et l’Etre as a duality between intuitive and conceptual knowledge and now – as a duality between ʻGod’s Kingdomʼ and ʻthis worldʼ) with the panentheistic motif (in my youth I was even an enthusiastic Spinozist), according to which everything this world in its root-like essence is nothing other than revelation of the hereafter in its otherness; [or] to put it religiously: God is not only transcendent to creation, but also immanent in it – the basis in which everything concrete is rooted. Ethically, this results in having respect for any concrete reality and in a rejection of the utopian project to build a whole new and supposedly more perfect world through rational planning (Perepiska, 464-466).
During the same months, Binswanger was completing his life’s main work, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (Basic Forms and Knowledge of Human Existence). In previous years, Frank had been an important correspondent for him, helping to formulate or clarify some of the main ideas, which is reflected in their correspondence. Binswanger read a number of works by the Russian philosopher, including the French translation of The Object of Knowledge (La connaissance et l’être, 1937) and the manuscript of the German version of The Unknowable – Das Unergründliche. Impressed by these texts, Binswanger wrote to his friend as early as 1938: “You will understand better than anyone else when I say that Hegel, on the one hand, and Plotinus and Simon Frank, on the other, are my godfathers” (Perepiska, 344-345).
In October 1941, while preparing his book for publication, Binswanger informed Frank: “By the way, I mentioned yesterday in the foreword to my book (Binswanger. Grundformen, 17) that I owe you a great deal of confirmation and encouragement on the path I have taken. In the book itself then come the individual hints. One section, ‘On the Gnoseology of Psychological Knowledge,’ is entirely based on you” (Perepiska, 492). Indeed, Binswanger referred directly to Frank about ten times, and also noted that he was “very grateful to this author’s as yet unpublished work, entitled The Unknowable” (Binswanger. Grundformen, 482). Frank considered this as “an outward expression of our congeniality” and without any false modesty added, “in any case, spiritually I am indebted to you no less than you are to me” (Perepiska, 493). The Swiss psychologist, for his part, expressed sincere surprise at this recognition. Frank then explained: “Although I am ideologically closer to the Christian faith than you are, you have taught me both ideologically and existentially what love really is. And since love and God are known to be the same, you have become my teacher in theologies” (Perepiska, 499-500).
Considering the difference in the religious attitudes of the two thinkers, this confession really seems surprising. However, it is worth remembering that Frank dedicated the German version of Das Unergründliche to Binswanger. During personal meetings in 1935-1936, Frank read excerpts from Binswanger’s book, still in the making, on the basic forms of human existence, including the chapter on love. Having read the book in its entirety, Frank saw the truly philosophical meaning of this book in the following manner: “Love seems to be your basic intuition, and the venture into taking it as a basic phenomenon of being establishes the originality and significance of your work and secures your own place in the philosophers’ choir” (Perepiska, 560-561). The significance of this fact in the eyes of the Russian philosopher was especially important against the background of what was happening around: “It is also so touching and comforting to think that in times of mass murder and mass enslavement a veritable apotheosis of true humanity is appearing!” (Perepiska, 566-567).
At the beginning of 1942, Frank wrote another text, titled the Thoughts on Religion. He did not write for the press, but for the people closest to him – for his children and for his Swiss friend. Sending the German version of his Thoughts to Binswanger, the philosopher confessed: “In the midst of the horrors of the times, the extent of which – happily! – we are hardly aware enough, I felt the need to express the most intimate thing that gives me strength to live” (Perepiska, 519-520). Binswanger saw Frank’s willingness to share his innermost thoughts as a manifestation of the special, even “absolutely unique” nature of their friendship. Explaining to himself and to his friend the grounds for this uniqueness, he wrote: “You are the only man of all I have met in life whose teaching, essence and life form a complete unity” (Perepiska, 540). Frank, of course, could not agree with this characterization – not only because of his modesty, but also because of his philosophy, for which any absolutization of the relative was unacceptable. However, Binswanger’s words prompted him to think again about the psychology of friendship: “Even unjustified but sincere praise is the best educational tool, not only for children but also for old people: one is ashamed, wishes to deserve the praise, and is aware that perhaps one really has something that was cause for praise. All this is childish, but people are children once. And most importantly, – Frank added, quoting Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’, – whether justified or not, one rejoices and is encouraged ‘To be a friend’s friend’” (Perepiska, 544-545).
Philosophy as a Spiritual Empiricism
The war exposed the extreme vulnerability, the precariousness of human existence in the world. In his diary, Frank wrote about “an astonishing relative ease of destruction compared to construction and creation” and how “the chances of the destructive force that can easily succeed are immeasurably greater than those of the creative one” (Frank, Thoughts in the Dark Days, 366). These metaphysical conclusions and, at the same time, existential sensations, could not but be reflected in the nature of the philosopher’s work, in the understanding of the very essence of philosophy. It has been said above that Frank’s philosophy became confessional during the war, that the philosophical text acquires the features of a “spiritual testament” and a “confession of faith.” I have covered this topic in more detail in my article “Philosophy as a Confession, or Simon Frank’s Intuition of Being”, which should appear in the collection of articles following a 2021 conference on Frank’s philosophy.
In a broader context, Frank reflected on the artificiality of rational philosophical systems and the relative value of their complex categorical apparatus. The reason for these reflections was, among other things, Binswanger’s book. Frank wrote to his friend: “Partly I admire the mastery with which you handle an incredibly complicated and fine conceptual apparatus in order to pierce through to the truth, partly I find it to be a bit overly scholarly – in any case, what is important to me is only what lies behind it, a Confession – the book as an expression of your personality, your heart, your intuition of being” (Perepiska, 567, 571). It should be emphasized that Frank did not at all call for a simplification of thought, for the deliberate “simplicity” of philosophy – that simplicity, which, according to a Russian proverb, is “worse than theft.” On the contrary, such tendencies aroused in him a melancholy mood, which he shared with Binswanger: “This thoroughness and breadth of education, this keenness of thought, in short, the wafting of the genuine philosophical spirit – is this not in our time the expression of a spiritual culture that is already passing away? How many 30-year-old people will there be in the world who would be able to understand your book?” (Perepiska, 560, 562).
Back in 1914, while giving a course entitled “Introduction to Philosophy,” Frank explained that “popularity,” being a condition of any true philosophizing, means not lightness, but clarity, which implies penetration into the depths of truth, and therefore requires a full tension of spiritual forces. In July 1945, as if summing up the results of the spiritual experience of the war, he shared with Binswanger his thoughts about philosophy as a kind of spiritual empiricism. Philosophers often take pleasure in “ordering” being, in “deducing” one from the other and making of it an interconnected, “intelligible” whole. However, “if you take a closer look, you get the sense that this is all a game after all, and that at best you only get stuck on the superficial and incidental.” True knowledge is “that [which] provides something like ‘wisdom’, i.e. essential orientation in being, remains nothing more than a series of statements of actual connections – only that it is about what I call ‘eternal facts’! The true method of cognition in the spiritual realm is a kind of higher empiricism.” Making an analogy with a clever businessperson, who “‘knows his way around’ the world,” Frank wrote that the true philosopher:
Must “know about” the intellectual realm, have a true (if necessarily incoherent) “picture” of it; in short, one must know certain essential eternal facts and connections purely “empirically.” In the realm of the spiritual, one must know how to “manage” wisely, acquire practical experience of value, otherwise one will go bankrupt and perish. This applies to individuals as well as to the community as a whole. It is delusional to want to cram life into a “system,” because being is transrational, consists of a complexio oppositorum. Well, such is the ethical knowledge in the first place (and consequently also the “political”); it is not science, but it is objective knowledge in the highest degree – in the manner of empirical medicine, hygiene, etc. Wrong opinions and illusions take terrible revenge (Perepiska, 761-764).
Probably, the only positive result of any war may be that it makes it possible to better navigate in the spiritual realm, to perceive those very “eternal facts” that are hidden in everyday and peaceful life by illusory, utopian or simply false systems of ideological or propagandistic “beliefs.” However, the price of such insights is too high and bloody. Moreover, there is no guarantee that everyone will experience these insights, and those who have them will remain alive. Therefore, today, as well as 80 years ago, the philosophy of peace and love, and not the philosophy of war and hate, is of vital importance.
Image: Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi, Evening, 1885-90
References
Aliaiev, Gennadii, et al. (Obolevitch, Teresa. Rezvych, Tatyana). “Svet vo t’me” i “S nami Bog”: neizvestnye knigi S. L. Franka. Moscow: Modest Kolerov, 2021.
Binswanger L. Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins. Zürich: Max Niehans Verlag, 1942.
Binswanger L. and Semyon Frank. Perepiska S. L. Franka i L. Binswangera (1934–1950), ed. by Konstantin Antonov, et al. Moscow: М.: Izdatel’stvo PSTGU, 2021.
Frank, Semyon. The Light Shineth in Darkness: an essay in Christian ethics and social philosophy, trans. by Boris Jakim. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989.
–––––––––––. “Vospominaniia o P. B. Struve”, in Frank, Simon. Neprochitannoe… Stat’i, pis’ma, vospominaniia. Moscow: Mosk. shkola polit. issledovanii, 2001, pp. 394-582.
–––––––––––. “Thoughts in the Dark Days”, in Frank, Simon. Neprochitannoe… Stat’i, pis’ma, vospominaniia. Moscow: Mosk. shkola polit. issledovanii, 2001, pp. 347-393.