Abstract
Continuing with the analysis of his Critique of Abstract Principles, Solov’ëv’s excursion into epistemology largely mirrors Hegel’s treatment of similar issues in the Phenomenology, albeit with a different, though superficially similar, intent. However, we see that Solov’ëv’s Critique presupposes his own standpoint, even though he endeavors to portray a dialectical movement from one epistemological position under investigation to another. In this chapter, I show how Solov’ëv conceived this movement. We look at Solov’ëv’s own critique of epistemology as first philosophy and his idea that all that can be said to exist in whatever fashion has a possessor leading ultimately to an absolute existent. However, anxious to avoid the charge of pantheism Solov’ëv denies that this existent is simply identical with the universe. In this chapter, we will see that his reasoning involves a move that relinquishes the logical in favor of a speculative and religious ontological claim. Finally, in this chapter we will deal with Solov’ëv’s belief that faith is responsible for our immediate certainty in the objectivity of the intentional object of cognition. The emphasis here will be on contrasting his position with those of Kant and Hegel.
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Notes
- 1.
PSS, vol. 3: 178. In a similar vein, Hegel wrote in his Phenomenology: “It is; this is the essential point for sense-knowledge, and this pure being, or this simple immediacy, constitutes its truth.” Hegel 1977: 58–59. Hegel, in his “Lesser Logic,” also wrote that: “The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and only God is the truth.” Hegel 1904: 3. Solov’ëv’s statement can be read as affirming this Hegelian view that that which is is the truth and the truth is God. Pronina explicitly rejects interpreting Solov’ëv’s statement as an affirmation of the correspondence theory of truth. Pronina 2001: 86. Curiously, while acknowledging that Solov’ëv “replicates” many of Hegel’s methods, Smith looks not to the Phenomenology but to the “Lesser Logic” only to find, not surprisingly, the absence of Hegel’s starting point with being and nothing. Had Smith looked to the former, he would have found much. See Smith 2011: 50–51.
- 2.
This is not to say that Solov’ëv is entirely faithful to Hegel or that he draws from the Hegelian arguments exactly the same points. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that Solov’ëv’s enormous debt to Hegel is potentially fraught with peril for his overall enterprise. Trubeckoj already observed this when he wrote: “Inserting the Hegelian critique of sense certainty into his own theory, Solov’ëv, apparently, does not notice that it is rationalistic through and through. This is why it rings with a sharp dissonance in a mystical system. It is not hard to convince oneself that panlogism forms the hidden presupposition of the entire argument of the Phenomenology of Spirit.” Trubeckoj 1995. vol. 1: 197. Hegel certainly would have believed he had early on in the Phenomenology demolished the very position that Solov’ëv later took as his own and tried to establish via the same dialectical method.
- 3.
PSS, vol. 3: 180.
- 4.
PSS, vol. 3: 181.
- 5.
Here lies a danger to Solov’ëv’s system. Hegel’s point is that non-conceptual knowledge through some sort of immediate intuition of anything, including of the Absolute or Deity, is impossible. To apprehend an object, we must comprehend it through universal concepts. Yet, as we have seen in previous chapters, this train of thought stands in stark contrast to Solov’ëv’s.
- 6.
PSS, vol. 3: 185. Solov’ëv is here essentially translating a passage from Hegel’s Phenomenology, §110. See Hegel 1977: 66. In the immediately subsequent pages of his Critique of Abstract Principles, Solov’ëv quotes frequently and extensively from the Phenomenology. However, there are also many long passages not marked as quotations but which are, nevertheless, just that.
- 7.
PSS, vol. 3: 190. Cf. Hegel 1977: 67: “Immediate certainty does not take over the truth, for its truth is the universal, whereas certainty wants to apprehend the This.”
- 8.
PSS, vol. 3: 192.
- 9.
PSS, vol. 3: 194.
- 10.
There can be no doubt that Solov’ëv believes he has Kant’s position in mind here. The former not only places the expression “thing in itself” in quotation marks but also parenthetically provides Kant’s own German expression Ding an sich. PSS, vol. 3: 201.
- 11.
Hegel 1977: 73. Although Solov’ëv’s discussion here is greatly influenced by Hegel’s account of perception, the focus lies elsewhere. Whereas Hegel is concerned with perceptual knowledge as a form of consciousness, Solov’ëv is interested in the object of perception purely as a metaphysical entity.
- 12.
PSS, vol. 3: 201.
- 13.
While we must proceed cautiously in assigning a consciously developed philosophy of nature to Solov’ëv on the basis of his meager statements here in the Critique, he appears to agree with Newton and Euler against Kant in viewing impenetrability and inertia as non-derivative concepts, or at least he does so for his purpose here in the Critique.
- 14.
PSS, vol. 3: 209. Smith calls this step in Solov’ëv’s argument the introduction of “a foreign element,” an element that was foreign to both Leibniz and Jurkevich. See Smith 2011: 41.
- 15.
PSS, vol. 3: 210. Cf. Kant 1970: 56–58. It is unclear at this point whether Solov’ëv holds, for example, that “objective” space is the result of a balance between attraction and repulsion or merely his view of what the philosophical atomist holds. Solov’ëv does not refer to Kant’s treatise, the Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science, here in any way. Nevertheless, he was familiar with it at least later in his life. See Solov’ëv 1997: 195 and 198. However, the train of thought here in the Critique is so similar to that of Kant’s that it is hard not to conclude Solov’ëv was not influenced by Kant.
- 16.
PSS, vol. 3: 211. The fault here lies clearly in Solov’ëv’s understanding of the physical sciences and their methodology, an understanding that fell far short of Kant’s, even though the latter lived a century earlier. Solov’ëv apparently had no inkling of the importance of the mathematical formalism introduced into science by the Scientific Revolution which Kant clearly recognized: “I maintain, however, that in every special doctrine of nature only so much science proper can be found as there is mathematics in it.” Kant 1970: 6. The boundary Solov’ëv draws between the physical and the metaphysical is based on a crude conception of the physical that even the science of his day had left far behind.
- 17.
PSS, vol. 3: 216. Despite the word “critical” here, Solov’ëv undoubtedly does not mean Kant’s position in his mature, “critical” period. Solov’ëv will address it later in the Critique. Being concerned in this work with what we could characterize as ideal types, he would have denied having any particular historically-manifested philosophy in mind. Solov’ëv’s depiction comes close to how he understood John Locke. Solov’ëv also uses the word “sensualism” as synonymous with “critical realism”: “Thus, critical (or phenomenal) realism, by virtue of the fundamental significance that sense experience has for it, is characterized above all as sensualism.” PSS, vol. 3: 219. Later in the same chapter, he writes that sensualism is the position that holds truth lies in the phenomena given in external sensations. PSS, vol. 3: 221.
- 18.
PSS, vol. 3: 220. Apparently unaware that his conception of “universality” is quite idiosyncratic, Solov’ëv provides no justification for it. This conception does prove convenient, as we shall see shortly, for his architectonic purposes.
- 19.
PSS, vol. 3: 221. Here, we finally have an explicit account of what positivism is. The reader will recall that even in The Crisis the term was used operationally, rather than receiving a clear account, let alone a definition. Nonetheless, Solov’ëv is by no means clear on this score. On the one hand, he writes as though positivism were the logical development of phenomenal realism and as such accepts only what is given to the senses as real. On the other hand, he writes that positivism holds truth to lie in the universal system of phenomena, a system that is cognized by the sciences. However, such a system, as a system, cannot be directly given in the senses.
- 20.
Husserl likewise remarks, “That not all experiences are intentional is proved by sensations and sensational complexes.” Husserl 1970b. vol. 2: 556.
- 21.
PSS, vol. 3: 224. We have seen that Solov’ëv was aware of objectivity as a philosophical issue already in his debate with Kavelin in 1875. In the “Philosophical Principles,” he held that we have a distinct sort of power to cognize the world in itself called “mysticism.” The terminology would again undergo a change here in the Critique. More importantly however, in the earlier work mysticism is a direct link with what is in itself, whereas the Critique is concerned, at least until the final chapters, with the sense of objectivity, possessed by objects of cognition, i.e., the sense that these objects are external and independent of us. By no means, though, is this sense subjective, as Solov’ëv would undoubtedly view Husserl as thinking.
- 22.
Hume 1968: 188. In the complete absence of direct references to Hume’s writings, it is difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty Solov’ëv’s familiarity with those works. He does demonstrate, however, a familiarity with John Stuart Mill’s writings.
- 23.
PSS, vol. 3: 229. Solov’ëv does not mean that all of what is given to the senses is actually due to the imagination. Rather, the sense of objectivity, of objective reality, imparted to sense content is due to the imagination. We certainly cannot discount here the possibility of an influence from Kant, who wrote: “But since every appearance contains a manifold, thus different perceptions by themselves are encountered dispersed and separate in the mind, a combination of them, which they cannot have in sense itself, is therefore necessary. There is thus an active faculty of the synthesis of this manifold in us, which we call imagination.” Kant 1997: A120.
- 24.
PSS, vol. 3: 239. Trubeckoj correctly observes with regard to Solov’ëv’s critique of empiricism that it “presents comparatively little new. In general, it is a more or less talented rehash of what earlier critics of empiricism beginning with Kant had already expressed.” Trubeckoj 1995. vol. 1: 211.
- 25.
We must be careful here again with our terminology. In saying that certain laws, for example, mathematical laws, have only a “relative universality,” Solov’ëv does not mean to lapse into some philosophical relativism. He carelessly fails to distinguish the universality of a natural law, or law of appearance, from eidetic universality. As Husserl pointed out, a natural law – Solov’ëv’s “law of appearance” – has a sense of positing a factual existence, of spatiotemporal actuality, something Solov’ëv would not deny, whereas a mathematical law, properly speaking, is a purely eidetic proposition and as such any positing of factual existence is suspended. A purely eidetic proposition has what we could call “unconditional” universal validity. See Husserl 1982: 15.
- 26.
PSS, vol. 3: 245. There is little need for critical comments on Solov’ëv’s train of thought here. As mentioned earlier, he, like so many others in Russia at the time looked to biology, not physics, as the paradigmatic science, and it is hard for us today to see how he could have envisaged it to play such a role. Even more astonishing, however, is his evident failure to understand the thrust of the mathematization of natural science laying behind the Scientific Revolution.
- 27.
Obolevich faults Solov’ëv for his Kantian conceptualization of mathematics despite the overall Platonic character of his philosophy. Had he recognized, along with Cantor, the ontological possibilities of mathematics, rather than its purely formal character, he would have seen its applicability to appearances. Obolevich 2010: 38–39.
- 28.
In spite of Solov’ëv’s assertion to the contrary, it does not follow that this “function” or principle cannot be given by the sciences taken either separately or together as a whole.
- 29.
Solov’ëv’s caveat here is that such an assumption is necessary if there is to be a single scientific system.
- 30.
PSS, vol. 3: 250. In short, then, at this point in the Critique Solov’ëv identifies the concept of all-unity with reason, as that which unites everything that does and possibly could exist! Whereas the empiricist may doubt that reason can fulfill such a broad function, there is nothing mystical in either the claim itself or in what is being sought. Solov’ëv explicitly makes this identification of reason with all-unity later on the same page in writing: “The relation of a given to the whole can exist for us only insofar as in us ourselves there is the principle of all-unity, i.e., reason.”
- 31.
PSS, vol. 3: 250.
- 32.
The reader will surely notice here Solov’ëv’s own summary of Kant’s path to transcendental idealism entirely avoids the lengthy and seeming tortured contours found in Kant’s own presentation. In particular, there is no discussion of the ideality of space and time that recent commentators on Kant have considered pivotal to Kant’s own path. In this regard, Solov’ëv follows a trend begun already by the first generation of Kant’s disciples, particularly Karl Reinhold and Johann Fichte. Solov’ëv’s own example, arguably, proved highly influential in the development of later Russian attempts to find a “shorter way” to transcendental idealism than that offered by Kant. For recent commentators on this “shorter way” see Ameriks 2000: 163–164 and Guyer 1987: 345–350. The principal example of a later Russian “shorter way” is Wedenskij 1910: 191–216.
- 33.
PSS, vol. 3: 253.
- 34.
PSS, vol. 3: 252. The reader will note here Solov’ëv’s cautious attribution of this characterization of “critical rationalism” to Kant. Solov’ëv’s explicit attribution of “absolute rationalism” to Hegel is unusual.
- 35.
Kant 1997: A137/B176–A138/B177.
- 36.
Up to this time, Solov’ëv has understood reason as a subjective human faculty. The casual reader of the Critique will, therefore, incorrectly conclude that Hegel is a subjective idealist, if not a solipsist. Solov’ëv writes, “All truth, the entire content of true cognition must be deduced from pure reason as forms of cognition. No external object is allowed here; all objects, all possible determinations of being must be created by cognition itself.” PSS, vol. 3: 254. To someone unfamiliar with Hegel’s actual position, these words can only sound like a ringing endorsement of solipsism.
- 37.
We have mentioned Solov’ëv’s term “all-unity” already a number of times but without defining it. Indeed, Solov’ëv himself seldom offers precise definitions for most of his philosophical terms. Fortunately, he did provide a definition of “all-unity,” albeit several years later in his Brockhaus-Efron encyclopedia entry. He writes that it is “the unity of all taken in its two chief senses: a negative or abstract sense and a positive or concrete sense. In the first, the unity of all is posited in what is common to all that exists. What is common is different in the various philosophical viewpoints. For materialism, it is matter, and for consistent idealism it is the self-revealing logical idea, etc. In the second, the positive sense of the relation of the single principle to all is understood in the relation of the all-encompassing spiritual-organic whole to its living parts and elements.” Solov’ëv 1997: 42–43.
- 38.
In one of his programmatic articles, Jurkevich wrote: “Certainly, we can engage in science without asking for the conditions of its possibility: In order to know, it is not necessary to have knowledge about knowledge itself.” Jurkevich 1859: 11. Significantly, Spinoza said much the same: “…it is not necessary to know that we know that we know.” Spinoza 1958: 13.
- 39.
PSS, vol. 3: 265.
- 40.
Hegel 1977: 11.
- 41.
PSS, vol. 3: 269.
- 42.
PSS, vol. 3: 269.
- 43.
Solov’ëv presupposes much here and quickly is fraught with difficulties. He has no way to account for “intentional inexistence,” for in fact his view on the face of it is that there is no such thing. In this respect, his position resembles Meinong.
- 44.
PSS, vol. 3: 273.
- 45.
PSS, vol. 3: 274.
- 46.
Frege 1918: 511.
- 47.
PSS, vol. 3: 274. Solov’ëv expressed this idea in the final installment of the Critique, which consisted of its final six chapters and was published along with a conclusion in the January 1880 issue of Russkij vestnik. The position of the “Philosophical Principles” is that of mid-1877.
- 48.
Although we have alluded on occasion to specific points in common between Solov’ëv and Husserl, any conceivable turn to either transcendental phenomenology or, for that matter, to linguistic analysis was precluded by Solov’ëv’s resolute conviction that ideas required a bearer, indeed ultimately a single, albeit metaphysical, bearer. Solov’ëv’s disciples, accepting this fundamental tenet, could find little sympathy with Husserl’s transcendental-phenomenological reduction or with an analysis of concepts and meanings as the means to resolve philosophical problems. Instead, professional philosophy in Russia turned with its very first steps in the direction of religion, i.e., a religious turn, whether it be the religion of Russian Orthodoxy or of the reductionist materialism of the Soviet era, in sharp contrast to the linguistic turn of analytic philosophy later in Great Britain and the United States.
- 49.
PSS, vol. 3: 275.
- 50.
The charge of pantheism has doggedly followed Solov’ëv just as it has Spinoza. The arguably most notable example of this is that given in Speranskij 1901: 103–132. A somewhat more nuanced portrait is that in Lopatin 1916: 448: “A convinced theist in the conception of the absolute principle of things taken in itself, he [Solov’ëv – TN] understands the world’s process pantheistically.” This article is an English translation of an address originally dating from 1901. Trubeckoj, in a similar vein, writes: “The fundamental inadequacy of Solov’ëv’s thought makes it impossible for him to overcome pantheism fully. Pantheism is the necessary consequence of a viewpoint that blends two worlds, two essentially different orders of being and understands the relation of the Divine to the earthly as a relation of essence to appearance.” Trubeckoj 1995. vol. 1: 295.
- 51.
PSS, vol. 3: 276.
- 52.
The controversial nature of this claim is recognized by Gajdenko, who writes: “The chief thesis consists in that the absolute cannot exist except as realized in its other. Such an understanding of the relation between God and the world is essentially different from the Christian conception of the world’s creation.” Gajdenko 2001: 50.
- 53.
PSS, vol. 3: 285.
- 54.
PSS, vol. 3: 275.
- 55.
Solov’ëv’s talk of speculation as both a type and a mode of cognition again raises difficulties. Presumably, it runs parallel to Kant’s talk of space and time as being both forms of intuition as well as intuitions themselves. Unlike Kant with regard to intuition, however, Solov’ëv has not defined “cognition” or even given a clear account of it.
- 56.
PSS, vol. 3: 239. Solov’ëv’s facile expression here, unfortunately raises a veritable plethora of questions. Why does he find untenable all other alternatives to his proposed solution? How do we know that in speculation we have the relation as it truly is? One question looms above all others: Just what is “speculation”? Is Solov’ëv merely dismissing Hume’s doubt and Kant’s treatment of causality by saying there is no real problem, that “speculation” provides all the solutions to philosophical problems?
- 57.
PSS, vol. 3: 294. Oddly, Solov’ëv does not comment on the respective roles of speculation and faith in relation to each other here, and he refers to both as a third element in cognition, not a third and a fourth. He writes here, in other words, as if he has already forgotten all about speculation. Moreover, as with speculation Solov’ëv, referring to faith, again characterizes it as not just a third element of or in cognition, but as a third sort (rod) of cognition. See, for example, PSS, vol. 3: 291. He said much the same about speculation!
- 58.
PSS, vol. 3: 297.
- 59.
I have tried to provide here a neutral interpretation of Solov’ëv’s otherwise inconsistent wording. He states, on the one hand, that an absolute separation of the subject and the object can yield knowledge only of the object’s conditional being. See PSS, vol. 3: 294. On the other hand, Solov’ëv admits that: “All cognition is a certain unification of that which cognizes and the cognized object. However, when we unite with the object (cognize it) in its external qualities, there is an external and relative unification.” PSS, vol. 3: 295. Given his conception of the all-unity, Solov’ëv should have consistently rejected the very possibility of an absolute separation of the object from the subject.
- 60.
PSS, vol. 3: 292.
- 61.
PSS, vol. 3: 303.
- 62.
For Solov’ëv’s identification of the metaphysical role of “imagination” with intellectual intuition, see PSS, vol. 3: 304. We have here yet another turn in Solov’ëv’s understanding of the latter. Although not inconsistent with his exposition in the Lectures, in the Critique the role of intellectual intuition in cognition becomes somewhat clearer. Solov’ëv’s own way of putting it is that intellectual intuition informs us what the cognitive object is as opposed to that it is and how it is, which are the functions of faith and the senses respectively.
- 63.
PSS, vol. 3: 299–300.
- 64.
PSS, vol. 3: 300. To his credit, Solov’ëv recognizes that the imagination of which he writes is not the empirical imagination. However, he fails to concede that, therefore, the former is a transcendental and productive imagination, and that the imaginative process is a priori. Likewise, we can see that the “faith” of which he writes is also, to be charitable, a transcendental “faith,” and not the ordinary sense of faith, or belief, of which Kant wrote: “If taking something to be true is only subjectively sufficient and is at the same time held to be objectively insufficient, then it is called believing.” Kant 1997: A822/B850. In short, Solov’ëv uses common terms in a most uncommon manner, a practice that could lead the inattentive reader to draw highly misleading conclusions.
- 65.
PSS, vol. 3: 302–303.
- 66.
PSS, vol. 3: 301. Solov’ëv does not elucidate precisely what he has in mind here. Presumably, however, he has in mind such a phenomenon as placing one hand in hot water, another in cold water and after a period of time placing both hands in lukewarm water. This water will seem to one hand to be cold and to the other hot, but of course the same water cannot be both hot and cold at the same time.
- 67.
Husserl 1982: 44.
- 68.
PSS, vol. 3: 308. Statements such as these, which appear on occasion in the Critique, certainly can lead us to think that Solov’ëv identifies God with the all-unity, that he is a pantheist.
- 69.
PSS, vol. 3: 309.
- 70.
Solov’ëv in a sense returned to this general theme again in his later ethical treatise, The Justification of the Good, whose last chapter is entitled “The Moral Organization of Humanity as a Whole.”
- 71.
Bezobrazova 1908: 333.
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Nemeth, T. (2014). The Truth of a Critique . In: The Early Solov’ëv and His Quest for Metaphysics. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 212. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01348-0_6
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