This paper was presented at the 2022 ASEEES conference in Chicago, IL by Jillian Pignataro.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel, What is to be Done? has principally been considered as an ideological and didactic work, and the exceptional Rakhmetov has been seen as Chernyshevsky’s vision of the ideal man.[1] Nonetheless, as scholar Andrew Drozd has shown, the extent to which Rakhmetov is the ideal “revolutionary” is at the very least ambiguous. A reevaluation of Rakhmetov’s role in Chernyshevsky’s ideological and philosophical estimation is overdue; however, opposed to being what Drozd calls an example of “what is not to be done,”[2] Rakhmetov should be considered as an expression of Chernyshevsky’s interest in the Feuerbachian man-God and secular asceticism.
The Marxist turned Orthodox theologian and philosopher, Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944), provides an insightful critique of the 19th century Russian intelligent precisely through the lens of man-Godhood. He contrasts the intelligentsia’s exaltation of the heroic intellectual to the Christian hero [podvizhnik] in his 1909 contribution to the collection Landmarks [Vekhi], an essay titled “Heroism and Spiritual Struggle” [Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo]. According to Bulgakov, the fundamental worldview of the intelligentsia, among whom he mentions Chernyshevsky, consisted of a new “religious creed,” a self-apotheosis of the “hero,” who assumes the role of Providence and is believed to be the salvation of mankind.
In a slightly later essay, Bulgakov writes the following, “The 19th century introduced the change in [the Enlightenment] worldview in that it replaced abstract and colorless deism with natural-scientific mechanical materialism…and in the religious field proclaimed the religion of man-God: homo homini Deus est (man is God to man) – the self-consciousness of the epoch speaks through Feuerbach.”[3] Though Feuerbach never used the German equivalent of chelovekobog [Menschgott], he did formulate a concept of anthropotheism which is both the humanization of God and the divinization of man.[4] Anthropotheism affirms the true, anthropological essence of religion. It is grounded on the belief that all theological “truths”—that is predicates that have been historically applied to God—truly apply only to man since all predicates begin and end in human-consciousness. In other words, man is the highest object of philosophy, and anthropology is the universal science.[5] Feuerbach argues that the “truth of Christianity” will be realized in “atheistic humanism that renounces the fantastical consolations of religion in order to embrace the historical tasks of human self-realization.”[6]
After 1850, Chernyshevsky was firmly indebted to Feuerbachian philosophy. He writes in his diary that he is “almost completely devoted to Feuerbach’s teaching from the bottom of [his] heart.”[7] This allegiance is also seen in both Chernyshevsky’s dissertation on aesthetics, “The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality” (1855), which hinges on the precise idea that art, and by extension religion, do not exist separately from man’s consciousness; and in his first major philosophically systematic work, “The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy” (1860), wherein he denies the spiritual/material split in human nature.
In What is to be Done?, Rakhmetov, nicknamed the “rigorist,” is a man-God character in so far as his onerous system of behavior is based on abstention from physical gratification and the transformation of man from the ordinary to a mechanistic, infinitely productive, supra-human. Though born in a notoriously rich and noble family that goes back to the 13th century, Rakhmetov renounces the majority of his wealth, subsisting on 400 of his 30,000-ruble salary. He sets himself the task of acquiring extreme physical strength—dramatically restricting his diet to chiefly raw steak in order to achieve this. He is also marked by incredible intellectual prowess—reading voraciously for months until he decides he is “done with reading and ready for life.”[8]
Moreover, Rakhmetov is steeped in Christian symbolism. Scholar Irina Paperno and Drozd, for instance, discuss at length the extent to which Rakhmetov is modeled after Aleksei in the zhitie Life of Aleksei, a Man of God.[9] Additionally, the chapter which chronicles Rakhmetov’s life, a sort of secular zhitie, ends with the following thought: “Rakhmetovs are rare. They are the best among the best, they are the movers of the movers, they are the salt of the salt of the earth,”[10] alluding to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
In this way, Chernyshevsky reuses common Christian concepts and applies them to the secular saint, Rakhmetov. According to Bulgakov, this is a common feature of the ex-seminarian turned radical who would maintain “spiritual conventions” such as “puritanism, ethical rigorism, a particular sort of asceticism, and a general severity of sobriety.”[11] Rakhmetov is then, in many ways, an “ideal,” a typification of a rigorous, effectual member of the “new generation” of rational egoists that Chernyshevsky depicts in his novel.
And in some ways, Rakhmetov does fulfill Bulgakov’s description of the intelligentsia’s ideal type. First off, what Bulgakov calls the “heroic intellectual” always strove for maximalism. This is the “very soul” of heroism. The heroic maximalist is not content as a “humble worker,” is not “reconciled to the small things,” but must perform the most extreme actions. In two striking episodes of the novel, we learn that Rakhmetov tests himself mentally and physically. First, he “read three days and three nights continuously… eighty-two hours in all.”[12] Second, he attempts to sleep on a bed of nails, horrifying his landlady who, when seeing him through a crack in his door covered in blood, assumes he has attempted suicide.
Nonetheless, the most crucial distinction between a podvizhnik, a Christian hero,[13] and the secular heroic intellectual is the relationship of the individual to society, what role they believe they play in the schema of the world. The heroic intellectual is defined by an overwhelming desire to become an agent of Providence and a savior of mankind. Bulgakov writes, “Every hero has his own mode of saving the human race and must work this out for his social program.”[14] By contrast, the podvizhnik “does not connect the destiny of humanity” to his own personal efforts.[15] In this sense, Rakhmetov does not fit squarely into the secular heroic intellectual category.
Although Rakhmetov claims at one point to have created the system of his austere living for “mankind in general,” and that all of his actions derive from “conviction, not personal desire,” there is no evidence in the text that he has an ideological agenda in mind or a concern for the salvation of mankind in the abstract. For example, he eats raw meat as a part of his austerity and his refusal to succumb to his “personal desires,” but he also has a very tangible and self-serving goal: to acquire physical strength. Also, the books that he reads are not even chosen by him but by Kirsanov, suggesting he is not interested in crafting any specific ideological model.
Rakhmetov’s “good deeds” do not contribute in any substantial way to a revolutionary agenda. Only two of these “astonishing” deeds are revealed in the text: that he finances students, and that he saves a young girl who lost control of her carriage after dropping the reins. These are admirable acts, but they do not have a revolutionary impact.
The “important” matters that Rakhmetov does devote his time to, outside of reading and gymnastics, are left unsaid. Chernyshevsky, rather clumsily, writes “the rest of [Rakhmetov’s] time was spent on someone else or in matters not relating especially to his own person, always holding to the rule by which he governed his reading,” doing so in order to not waste time on the minor and to attend only to major matters and men.[16] Either Chernyshevsky is being deliberately obtuse to evade the censors or Rakhmetov’s interests truly are not ideological.
At the moment in which the narrator meets Rakhmetov, presumably where Chernyshevsky would include a lot of detail if Rakhmetov were indeed his “ideal type,” we are given virtually no insight into this character. We are instead given nothing. The narrator writes that Rakhmetov enters the narrator’s home and with “directness” begins speaking about “the matter which prompted” his making the narrator’s acquaintance—what this matter consists of is of “little consequence.”[17] In general, Chernyshevsky’s narrator is very dubious of Rakhmetov—calling him absurd and ridiculous.[18]
By contrast, the podvizhnik accomplishes ascetic feats “not in the heroic spirit, but in the spirit of interior labor and struggle.”[19] Rakhmetov adopts a “complete” system. He tells himself that he will not drink a cup of wine nor touch a woman, he chooses to consume only black bread, for weeks at a time he denies himself sugar, etc. He sticks to these restrictions.
Bulgakov brings up the important religious concept of obedience (poslushanie) which is applied to secular asceticism.[20] This religious concept is also valid in a secular mode because it is applicable to labor outside of that which is directed Godward, e.g., the work of the physician, engineer, professor, etc., and therefore it is not incompatible with the concept of podvizhnik. Though there is no reason to suggest that Rakhmetov’s ascetic acts are done in the name of God, they are compatible with the Christian struggle that Bulgakov describes as relentless self-control, unwavering self-discipline, patience, and endurance.[21] Rakhmetov is a fairly consistent and moderately behaved secular ascetic.
The young radical Dmitri Pisarev (1840-1868), in his assessment of Chernyshevsky’s novel, can help elucidate Rakhmetov’s type as one between the heroic intellectual and the podvizhnik. Pisarev writes that one key thought that dictates the new generation is the following, “The personal benefit of the new people coincides with the general benefit, and their egoism accommodates the widest love for humanity.”[22] As opposed to the heroic intellectual’s pursuit of salvation for all mankind through repeated maximalist deeds and the abdication of the self, Rakhmetov elevates his self by perfecting his mind and physical form, and helps those around him in “saintly ways.”
For instance, when Rakhmetov saves the woman on the carriage, and injures himself in the process, the woman nurses him back to health. While caring for him, the woman falls in love with Rakhmetov, and when she imagines him after that episode in her life, she always sees him with a halo on his head. Rakhmetov’s scarce “maximalist deeds,” and his overall rigorist lifestyle are done in the spirit of self-improvement (something Bulgakov claims the intelligentsia despise), but his outward day-to-day actions are for the betterment of those immediately around him.
Naturally, in order for Rakhmetov to come close to the role of a podvizhnik, all of his ascetic feats would need to be directed towards religious duty. Scholars have noted the Christian symbolism of Rakhmetov but rarely have claimed that Rakhmetov is anything but an atheistic materialist. This is partly due to Chernyshevsky’s perceived agenda: to portray a future, materialist, utopian society.
However, Chernyshevsky’s relationship to faith was not straightforward. Drozd for instance writes that Chernyshevsky avoided ever calling his philosophical worldview “materialist”, opting for the adjective “anthropological” instead. Drozd also details how, in What is to be Done?, the novel’s narrator castigates the characters’ interest in materialism, scientism and positivism.[23] Paperno even writes that it is impossible to know if Chernyshevsky ever did “lose his faith” based upon his personal writings and those of his closest companions. She references the Bible that Chernyshevsky kept in his library until the day he died.[24]
What references to religion we do have access to are in Chernyshevsky’s diary from his university years.[25] In January of 1850, Chernyshevsky writes, “Regarding religion, I do not know what to say – I do not know if I believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, etc. Theoretically, I am rather inclined not to believe, but practically I lack the firmness and determination to part with my previous thoughts about it.”[26] And even more poignantly, several months later he writes, “Skepticism in the matter of religion has developed in me to the point that I am almost completely devoted to Feuerbach’s teaching… but still, for example, I was ashamed before my mother not to go to church.”[27] In yet another diary entry, Chernyshevsky is direct about one religious conviction: the belief in the Divine dignity of Jesus Christ. In 1848 he writes, “I must say that I am, in fact, decidedly a Christian, if by this we mean a belief in the divine dignity of Jesus Christ…how the Orthodox believe that he was a god and suffered, and rose again, and worked miracles, in general, I believe it.”[28]Chernyshevsky’s sustained belief in Jesus Christ despite his intensifying skepticism in God, is consistent with Feuerbach’s assessment that the “modern era’s” pursuit of the “humanization of God” has led to Christology or religious anthropology.[29] In other words, the “practical form” of this humanization is Protestantism which is chiefly concerned not with God in himself but what God is for man.[30]
Rational philosophy takes this a step further in denying any transmutation of God, and dissolves God entirely. God’s essence as the ultimate preoccupation of rationality, is eclipsed by speculative thinking. God may be the object of theological study, but, for Feuerbach, God must be the subject of philosophy since God originates in man’s reason.
For reasons that should be self-evident, Bulgakov states unequivocally that despite any external similarities (notably in the engagement in ascetic acts), the heroic intelligent and the Christian podvizhnik are diametrically opposed.[31] A shallow change in political affiliation or allegiance to a social program would not be enough in order for the heroic intelligent to transition to the podvizhnik. Instead, he would need to be spiritually re-born, to repent and live in Divine unity with God by performing podvigi or acts of “going-out-to-meet-the-Lord.”[32]
Nevertheless, Bulgakov likens the intelligentsia’s use of man-Godhood to the adoption of a religious creed. Man-Godhood is not a mere denial of the Divine but the creation of a new faith, a dogmatic faith, one that “preserves all the features of naive religious commitment.”[33] In other words, the intelligentsia co-opted and warped religious concepts for the promotion of their materialist worldview; they also accepted atheism wholesale, not through a reasoned critique of religion but on an “act of faith.”[34]
But in Bulgakov’s 1906 essay on Feuerbach’s man-Godhood or человекобожество, he recognizes that Feuerbach’s reification of God is different from the intelligentsia’s atheism. Bulgakov writes that “despite all Feuerbach’s atheism, he should justly be called an atheistic theologian.”[35] In this same essay, Bulgakov quotes from Feuerbach’s 1841 work, The Essence of Christianity, which Chernyshevsky read in 1849, wherein Feuerbach states,
Despite the difference in the themes of my writings, they all have, strictly speaking, only one goal, one will and thought, one theme. Exactly, this topic is religion and theology, and everything related to them… In all my writings, I have never lost sight of the relationship to religion and theology and have always dealt with this main subject.[36]
Man-Godhood, as Chernyshevsky would have understood it, that is as Feuerbachian anthropotheism, is not analogous to materialist atheism. Consequently, Rakhmetov may be an expression of a man-God without being a heroic intellectual as Bulgakov defines it.
Furthermore, Bulgakov’s repudiation of the intelligentsia’s heroism and the infatuation with man-Godhood is not entirely harsh. The intelligentsia and proponents of man-Godhood preach Christianity’s most basic truth: the unity and solidarity of humankind. Pisarev writes in his review of What is to be Done? that the new generation depicted in the novel perpetuate the idea that there is “no disagreement between attraction and moral duty, between egoism and humanity; this is a very important feature; this is a trait that allows them to be humane and honest according to the directly strong attraction of nature.”[37] Pisarev sees self-deification as hopeful, a way for man to interact with man in a more harmonious fashion; but, Bulgakov sees the tragedy in aspiring for unity without the Divine which is ultimately man’s “unifying center”.
Moreover, Feuerbach recognizes that the essence of what has hitherto been applied to the Divine is located in the subjective spirit.[38] He does not advocate for a-theism, but for an anthropological theology—in contemplating and characterizing the Divine, man characterizes nature and by extension, himself. Feuerbach’s “new philosophy does not rest on the divinity of reason for itself alone, but for the whole of man.”[39] However, if for Feuerbach, “God in man is nothing other than the essence of man,” and when Rakhmetov engages in self-labor, he is working towards the perfection and divinization of man, then Bulgakov’s podvizhnik looks at the world as it exists in his self and recognizes the distance between man and the ideal.[40]
In this sense, Rakhmetov should be considered as an optimistic man-God. He is neither a clear expression of Chernyshevsky’s supposed “revolutionary” nor a rational egoist ideal, but he is also far from a warning of how not to behave in the future utopian world. Rakhmetov is a heroic intellectual only insofar as he performs some maximalist deeds. However, he at no point assumes the role of Providence, his personality (lichnost’) remains intact, and he is firmly situated in the spirit of self-improvement. This self-improvement does, however, take the self, the essence of man, as its end. Chernyshevsky’s “new generation” is, to Pisarev, a passionate hope in the pursuit of the essence of man’s inner nature. But Bulgakov recognizes that an “inner nature” that is not in communion with the Divine is really a confinement in the self—a pursuit of the self in the Feuerbachian sense is a pursuance of the “impenetrable envelope of nothing.”[41]
Jillian Pignataro is a PhD student in the department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in the spring of 2017 with a specialization in Russian literature. In the fall of 2021, Jillian defended her master’s thesis, which focused on A. Grigoriev’s aesthetic program of “organic criticism” and Dostoevsky’s philosophy of art. Besides aesthetics, her research interests include nineteenth century Russian realism and intellectual history, Russian religious thought, conservative philosophy, and Slavophilism.
Image: Ilya Repin, Gathering (By Lamplight) 1883
[1] V. Serdiuchenko, “The Futurology of Dostoevsky and Chernyshevsky,” Russian Studies in Literature, 2002, 58.
[2] Andrew Michael Drozd, Chernyshevskii’s What Is to Be Done?: A Reevaluation (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 140.
[3] S.N. Bulgakov, “Chelovekobog i chelovekozver’ Po povodu poslednih proizvedenij L. N. Tolstogo: “D’javol” i “Otec Sergij,” 1912.
[4] Coates, Ruth, “Feuerbach, Kant, Dostoevskii in Bulgakov’s Work to 1909” in Landmarks Revisited: The Vekhi Symposium 100 Years On, ed. Robin Aizlewood and Ruth Coates (Academic Studies Press, 2013), 288.
[5] Ludwig Feuerbach, Manfred H. Vogel, and Thomas E. Wartenberg, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986), 70.
[6] Todd Gooch, “Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/.
[7] N.G. Chernyshevsky, diary entry, August 1850.
[8] N. G. Chernyshevsky, Chto delat’? (Moskva: «Kniga po Trebovaniju», 2012), 170.
[9] Andrew Michael Drozd, Chernyshevskii’s What Is to Be Done?: A Reevaluation, 119-120.
[10] Ibid., 241.
[11] S.N. Bulgakov, “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo,” 1908.
[12] N. G. Chernyshevsky, Chto delat’?, 169.
[13] Williams’ translation of подвижник in chapter V.
[14]S.N. Bulgakov, “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo,” 1909.
[15] Ibid.
[16] N. G. Chernyshevsky, Chto delat’?, 171.
[17] Ibid., 172.
[18] See Drozd for more on the relation between the narrator and Rakhmetov.
[19] S.N. Bulgakov, “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo,” 1909.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] D.I. Pisarev, “Mysljashhij proletariata,” 1865.
[23] Andrew Michael Drozd, Chernyshevskii’s What Is to Be Done?: A Reevaluation, 96-100.
[24] Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford (Calif.): Stanford University Press, 1988).
[25] Chernyshevsky graduated in 1850.
[26] N.G. Chernyshevsky, diary entry, January 1850.
[27] N.G. Chernyshevsky, diary entry, August 1850.
[28] N.G. Chernyshevsky, diary entry, September 1848.
[29] Ludwig Feuerbach, Manfred H. Vogel, and Thomas E. Wartenberg, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, 5.
[30] Ibid.
[31] S.N. Bulgakov, “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo,” 1909.
[32] Valliere, Paul. Modern Russian theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox theology in a new key. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000, 307.
[33] S.N. Bulgakov, “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo,” 1909.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] S.N. Bulgakov, “Religija chelovekobozhestva u L. Fejerbaha,” 1906.
[37] D.I. Pisarev, “Mysljashhij proletariata,” 1865.
[38] Todd Gooch, “Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/.
[39] Ludwig Feuerbach, Manfred H. Vogel, and Thomas E. Wartenberg, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986), 66.
[40] S.N. Bulgakov, “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo,” 1909.
[41] S.N. Bulgakov and T. Allan Smith, Unfading Light: Contemplations and Speculations (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2012), 270.
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