Alexey Losev "Dialectic of Myth" (brief summary). Aleksey Losev "Dialectics of Myth" (brief summary) Losev and Timaeus mythological dialectics of the cosmos

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Alexey Fedorovich LOSEV.

DIALECTICS OF MYTH

Foreword

The dialectic of myth is impossible without sociology myth. Although this work does not specifically give a sociology of myth, it is introduction into sociology, which I have always thought philosophically-historically and dialectically. Having analyzed the logical and phenomenological structure of the myth, I turn at the end of the book to the establishment of the main social types mythology. I deal specifically with this sociology of myth in another work, but even here the all-encompassing role of mythical consciousness in different layers of the cultural process is clear. A theory of myth that does not capture cultures down to her social roots, there is a very bad myth theory. You need to be a very bad idealist to tear the myth from the very thick historical process and preach liberal dualism: real life- in itself, and the myth - in itself. I have never been a liberal or a dualist, and no one can reproach me for these heresies.

A.Losev

INTRODUCTION

The task of the proposed essay is a significant disclosure of the concept of myth, based only on the material provided by mythical consciousness itself. Any explanatory, for example, metaphysical, psychological and other points of view should be discarded. The myth must be taken as myth, without leading him to what he himself is not. Only having this pure definition and description of the myth, one can begin to explain it from one or another heterogeneous point of view. Not knowing what a myth is in itself, we cannot speak about its life in one or another alien environment. We must first take a stand most mythology, to become the most mythical subject. We must imagine that the world in which we live and all things exist is a world mythical that in general there are only myths in the world. Such a position will reveal the essence of myth as myth. And only then can one engage in heterogeneous tasks, for example, "refute" a myth, hate or love it, fight it or plant it. Without knowing what a myth is, how can one fight or refute it, how can one love it or hate it? One can, of course, not reveal the very concept of myth and still love or hate it. However, all the same, someone who puts himself in one or another external conscious relation to myth must have some kind of intuition of myth, so that logically the presence of myth itself in the mind of the one who operates with it (operating scientifically, religiously, artistically, socially, etc.) nevertheless precedes the actual operations with mythology. Therefore, it is necessary to give an essentially semantic, i.e., first of all, phenomenological, dissection of the myth, taken as such, independently taken in itself.

I. MYTH IS NOT MYTH OR FICTION, IT IS NOT FANTASTIC FICTION

Mythological scholars are almost always in the grip of this general prejudice; and if they do not speak directly about the subjectivism of mythology, then they give certain more subtle constructions that reduce mythology to the same subjectivism. So, the doctrine illusory apperception in the spirit of Herbart's psychology in Lazarus and Steinthal is also a complete distortion of the mythical consciousness and in no way can be connected with the essence of mythical constructions. At this point, we must pose a dilemma. Or we are not talking about the mythical consciousness itself, but about this or that attitude towards it, our own or someone else’s, and then we can say that the myth is an idle fiction, that the myth is a childish fantasy, that it is not real, but subjective, philosophically helpless, or, on the contrary, that it is an object of worship, that it is beautiful, divine, holy, etc. Or, secondly, we want to reveal nothing else but the myth itself, the very essence of the mythical consciousness, and - then the myth is always and necessarily a reality, concreteness, vitality and for thought - a complete and absolute necessity, non-fantastic, non-fictitious. Too often, mythologists have liked to talk about themselves, that is, about their own worldview, so that we also go the same way. We are interested in the myth, and not this or that era in the development of scientific consciousness. But from this side, it is not at all specific and even simply not typical for a myth that it is a fiction. It is not an invention, but contains the strictest and most definite structure and is logically, i.e., first of all, a dialectically necessary category of consciousness and being in general.

II. MYTH IS NOT AN IDEAL BEING

Thus, a house is a structure designed to protect a person from atmospheric phenomena; a lamp is a device that serves to illuminate, etc. It is clear that the meaning of a thing is not the thing itself; he is the abstract concept of a thing, the abstract idea of a thing, the mental significance of a thing. Is there a myth such an abstract-ideal being? Certainly, not in any sense. Myth is not a work or an object pure thought. Pure, abstract thought is the least involved in the creation of a myth. Wundt has already shown well that myth is based on an affective root, since it is always the expression of certain vital and vital needs and aspirations. The least intellectual effort is needed to create a myth. And again, we are not talking about the theory of myth, but about the myth itself as such. From the point of view of one theory or another, one can speak about the mental work of the subject creating a myth, about its relation to other mental factors of myth formation, even about its prevalence over other factors, etc. But, arguing immanently, mythical consciousness is least of all intellectual and thought-ideal consciousness. Homer (Od. XI, 145 ff.) depicts how Odysseus descends into Hades and revives the souls living there for a short time blood. There is a well-known custom of twinning through mixing blood from pricked fingers or the custom of sprinkling the blood of a newborn baby, as well as the use of the blood of a murdered leader, etc. Let us ask ourselves: is it really some kind of mentally ideal construction of the concept of blood that makes these representatives of the mythical consciousness treat blood in this way? And is the myth about the action of blood really just an abstract construction of one or the other? concepts? We must agree that there is just as much thought here as in relation to, for example, the color red, which, as you know, is capable of infuriating many animals. When some savages paint a dead man or smear their faces with red paint before a battle, it is clear that not an abstract thought about the color red is at work here, but some other, much more intense, almost affective consciousness, bordering on magical forms. It would be completely unscientific if we were to interpret the mythical image of the Gorgon, with bared teeth and wildly bulging eyes - this is the embodiment of the very horror and wild, dazzlingly cruel, cold-gloomy obsession - as the result of the abstract work of thinkers who decided to make a separation of the ideal and real, discard everything real and concentrate on the analysis of the logical details of the ideal being. Despite all the absurdity and complete fantasy of such a construction, it constantly takes place in various "scientific" presentations.

This dominance of abstract thought is especially noticeable in the assessment of the most ordinary, everyday psychological categories. Translating integral mythical images into the language of their abstract meaning, they understand integral mythical-psychological experiences as some kind of ideal essence, not paying attention to the infinite complexity and inconsistency of real experience, which, as we will see later, is always mythical. Thus, the feeling of resentment, which is revealed purely verbally in our psychology textbooks, is always interpreted as the opposite of a feeling of pleasure. How conventional and incorrect such a psychology, far from the mythism of living human consciousness, could be shown by a mass of examples. Many, for example, love take offense. In these cases, I always remember F. Karamazov: “Exactly, it is pleasant to be offended. You said it so well that I haven't heard it yet. Precisely, it was I who, all my life, was offended to the point of pleasantness, for the sake of aesthetics I was offended, for it is not only pleasant, but also beautiful to be offended sometimes; - that's what you forgot, great old man: beautiful! I will write this in a book! In the abstract-ideal sense, resentment is, of course, something unpleasant. But in life this is not always the case. Quite abstractly (I will give another example) our usual attitude to food. Rather, it is not the relation itself that is abstract (willy-nilly, it is always mythical and concrete), but our lifeless desire to relate to her, spoiled by the prejudices of false science and dull, gray, philistine everyday thought. They think that food is food and what about it chemical composition and physiological significance can be found in the relevant scientific manuals. But this is precisely the dominance of abstract thought, which sees bare ideal concepts instead of living food. This is the squalor of thought and the philistinism of life experience. I categorically affirm that the one who eats meat has a very special attitude and worldview, sharply different from those who do not eat it. And about this I could make very detailed and very precise judgments. And the point is not in the chemistry of meat, which, under certain conditions, can be the same as the chemistry of plant substances, but in mythe. Persons who do not distinguish one from the other here operate with ideal (and even then very limited) ideas, and not with living things. It also seems to me that putting on a pink tie or starting to dance for something else would mean changing the worldview, which, as we will see later, always contains mythological features. The costume is great. I was told once sad story about one hieromonk of the *** monastery. One woman came to him with the sincere intention of confessing. The confession was real, satisfying both sides. Subsequently, the confession was repeated. In the end, confessional conversations turned into love dates, because the confessor and spiritual daughter felt love for each other. After much hesitation and torment, both decided to marry. However, one circumstance turned out to be fatal. Hieromonk, having cut his hair, put on a secular costume and shaved off his beard, one day appeared to his future wife with a message about his final exit from the monastery. She suddenly met him for some reason very coldly and unhappily, despite a long passionate expectation. For a long time she could not answer the relevant questions, but later the answer came out in a form that was terrifying for her: “I don’t need you in a secular form.” No exhortations could help, and the unfortunate hieromonk hanged himself at the gates of his monastery. After that, only an abnormal person can consider that our costume is not mythical and that there is only some kind of abstract, ideal concept, which is indifferent to whether it is realized or not and how it is realized.

I will not multiply examples (a sufficient number of them will be encountered in the future), but it is already clear even now that where there is even a weak inclination of a mythological attitude to a thing, in no case can the matter be limited to ideal concepts alone. Myth is not an ideal concept, and neither is it an idea or a concept. It is life itself. For a mythical subject, this is real life, with all her hopes and fears, expectations and despair, with all her real everyday life and purely personal interest. Myth is not an ideal being, but - vitally felt and created, material reality and bodily, to animality bodily reality.

III. MYTH IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC AND, IN PARTICULAR, A PRIMITIVE SCIENTIFIC CONSTRUCTION

1. Certain mythology and certain science may overlap, but fundamentally they are never identical.

The previous doctrine of the ideality of myth is especially pronounced in the understanding of mythology. as primitive science. The majority of scholars, led by Kant, Spencer, even Taylor, think of myth in this way, and in this way fundamentally distort the whole true nature of mythology. The scientific attitude to myth, as one of the types of abstract relationship, suggests isolated intelligent function. You have to observe and memorize a lot, analyze and synthesize a lot, very carefully separate the essential from the non-essential, in order to finally get at least some elementary scientific generalization. Science in this sense is extremely troublesome and full of fuss. In the chaos and confusion of empirically confused, flowing things, one must catch an ideal-numerical, mathematical regularity, which, although it controls this chaos, is itself not chaos, but an ideal, logical structure and order (otherwise the first touch on empirical chaos would be is tantamount to the creation of the science of mathematical natural science). And so, despite all the abstract logic of science, almost everyone is naively convinced that mythology and primitive science are one and the same. How to deal with these old prejudices? Myth is always extremely practical, urgent, always emotional, affective, vital. And yet they think that this is the beginning of science. No one will argue that mythology (this or that, Indian, Egyptian, Greek) is a science in general, i.e. modern science(if we keep in mind the complexity of its calculations, tools and equipment). But if a developed mythology is not a developed science, then how can a developed or undeveloped mythology be an undeveloped science? If two organisms are completely dissimilar in their developed and finished form, then how can their embryos not be fundamentally different? From the fact that we take the scientific need here in a small form, it by no means follows that it is no longer a scientific need. Primitive science, no matter how primitive it may be, is still somehow the science, otherwise it will not enter the general context of the history of science at all and, consequently, it will not be possible to consider it and primeval science. Or is primitive science precisely science, in which case it is by no means mythology; or primitive science is mythology—then, not being a science at all, how can it be primeval science? In primitive science, despite all its primitiveness, there is a certain sum of quite definite aspirations of consciousness that actively do not want to be mythology, which essentially and fundamentally supplement mythology and do little to meet the real needs of the latter. The myth is saturated with emotions and real life experiences; for example, he personifies, idolizes, honors or hates, malices. Can there be such a science? Primitive science, of course, is also emotional, naively spontaneous, and in this sense quite mythological. But this just shows that if mythology belonged to its essence, then science would not have received any independent historical development and its history would have been the history of mythology. This means that in primitive science mythology is not a "substance", but an "accident"; and this mythology characterizes only its state at the moment, and not science in itself. Mythical consciousness is completely direct and naive, generally understandable; scientific consciousness necessarily has an inferential, logical character; it is not immediate, difficult to assimilate, requires long learning and abstract skills. A myth is always synthetically vital and consists of living personalities whose fate is illuminated emotionally and intimately perceptually; science always turns life into a formula, giving instead of living personalities their abstract schemes and formulas; and realism, the objectivism of science, does not consist in a colorful depiction of life, but in the correct correspondence of an abstract law and formula with the empirical fluidity of phenomena, beyond any picturesqueness, picturesqueness or emotionality. The latter properties would forever turn science into a miserable and uninteresting appendage of mythology. Therefore, it must be assumed that already at the primitive stage of its development, science has nothing in common with mythology, although, due to the historical situation, there is both mythologically colored science and scientifically conscious or at least primitively scientifically interpreted mythology. How does the presence of a “white man” prove nothing on the subject that “man” and “whiteness” are one and the same, and how, on the contrary, proves precisely that “man” (as such) has nothing to do with “whiteness” " (as such) - for otherwise " a white man” would be a tautology, just as between mythology and primitive science there is an “accidental”, but by no means a “substantial” identity.

1. Introduction

We have come to a very strange and suspicious conclusion. Our formula, apparently, destroys any line between myth and the most ordinary history, more precisely, a biography, or a description of certain episodes from the life of a particular person. True, our formula is not so simple. It was obtained as a result of a long analysis of very complex concepts - a symbol, a person, a story, a word, and so on. Therefore, its simplicity lies only in the widespread and philistine popularity of the terms used here. However, these terms are not given in the confused and obscure sense in which the uncritical consciousness uses them, but all their main points are phenomenologically revealed and delimited from neighboring and confusing areas. With all that, however, an inexorable question arises. Let myth be history; let it be the word; let them fill our whole everyday life. All this cannot convince us that there is nothing special in a myth, that a myth is only history and biography, that same history and biography, as it is usually understood by everyone. Once (above, Chapter VII, part 4) we have already met with such a broad concept of myth; and it had, in essence, to be discarded, because the myth, understood simply as an intelligent symbol, is completely indistinguishable, for example, from poetry. Already there we indicated that there is still a narrower and more specific concept myth, precisely when Gogol's Khoma Brutus rides not on a horse, not even on a pig or a dog, but no more and no less than a witch or she on him. This led us to ascertain in the myth of some special detachment. But what we have said so far about this concept still continues to be insufficient. Detachment can be understood as detachment from abstractly isolated things. This, of course, is not a genuine mythical detachment, for absolutely all the things of living human experience are given in such a detachment. Detachment can be understood poetically as detachment from things in general. This, too, had to be rejected, because myth does not leave the sphere of things at all, and on the contrary, revolving in the personal element, it relies with special force on things, on any realization, although it understands it deeper than ordinary physical things. What happens now? As long as we have not fully formed the idea of personality, we could not finally raise the question of mythical detachment. In order to delimit the myth from the poetic image, it was enough just to point out the fact of the unusual and, as it were, supernatural nature of its content; and by this the realm of myth dissociated itself from poetry quite simply, not to mention the fact that myth is material, while poetry is "uninterested." While we are talking about the relation of myth to things in general, again this same indication was enough; and - it became clear that the mythical fact and the mythical thing are a kind of facts and things in general. This fully depicted its facticity and thingness, and nothing more was needed in the corresponding delimitations. But it turned out that myth is a personal being, that it is a historical being, that it is a word. It turned out that myth is self-consciousness. Since myth is self-consciousness, then it must necessarily contain in a conscious form that detachment that is specific to it. Myth is a word: this means that he must say what exactly is his detachment; detachment must be expressed and revealed, expressed. Delimiting the myth from the metaphysical construction, we pointed out that the "supernatural" moment, if contained in the myth, does not interfere with its corporeality and materiality. By equating myth with a symbol, we have shown that the relationship between the "natural" and the "supernatural" in myth must be thought of symbolically, i.e., numerically one, as one thing. But what kind of "supernatural" it is in its essence - we did not decide this, limiting ourselves to more or less indefinite characteristics, such as "unusual", "strange", etc. e. Now the myth has turned for us into a conscious-personal-verbal form, unfolding moreover historically. This means that we cannot now throw this "unusual" and "strange" aside, confining ourselves to simply stating it. Personality, history, the word - this series of concepts led us to the need to create a category that would immediately cover this series, and that very “supernatural”, “extraordinary”, etc., embraced at one indivisible point so that this last , all this non-material, non-metaphysical, non-poetic, but purely mythical detachment would be united into a single synthesis with the phenomenon, with the symbol, with the self-consciousness of the individual, with the historical event and with the word itself - this beginning and source of self-consciousness itself. This means that we come to the concept of a miracle. Myth is a miracle. Here is this long-awaited and already final formula, synthetically embracing all the antinomies and antitheses considered. Let's take a look at this complex concept.

2. What is not a miracle?:

Here, too, a lot of prejudice has accumulated, even more than in other areas associated with myth. For some reason, practical ethnographers and mythologists consider this concept quite clear and usually do not take the slightest trouble to clarify it. Philosophers consider themselves above this concept and treat it with contempt. Theologians say something, but they either say apologetically, which is useless for us in this case, because we want to clarify the concept itself, and not defend it or refute it, or they speak in the style of scientific positivism, tempted by “progress” in science and naively thinking, that religion can somehow be reconciled with this "progress". Neither ethnographers, nor philosophers, nor positivistic theologians will help us, and we will have to find our own ways in this matter.

a) a miracle is not just a manifestation higher powers;

a) The most common teaching says that a miracle is the intervention of a higher Power or higher powers, and, moreover, a special intervention. This view requires clarification and disclosure. Let us not forget that we have in mind all the time an exclusively mythical subject, and not ourselves or anyone else. It is necessary to resolve the question of what a miracle is from the point of view of the mythical consciousness itself. Of course, speaking in general, for myth a miracle is the intervention of higher powers. But, firstly, from the point of view of the myth, nothing at all exists without the intervention of certain higher powers. Since we have already started talking about the myth-miracle, then from this point of view, the miracle is happening continuously, and there is nothing non-miraculous at all. So, if we take Christian mythology, then the creation of the world is the greatest miracle, redemption is the greatest miracle, the birth, life and death of a person is a complete miracle, not to mention such mythology as the mythology of the Mother of God, the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, etc. The question is : what is then a miracle, if there is no non-miracle at all, if the entire world and human life, with all its little things and details, is there a real miracle? It is obvious that the view of a miracle as the intervention of higher powers, in fact, does not stand up to criticism.

Secondly, they say that this is a special intervention. But then what is it? Perhaps, if we have in mind the mythical subject himself, then, indeed, the miracle is experienced by him as a special intervention. But this is very little. Here the very principle by which this event is treated as special is not clear; and it is not clear what exactly is intervening. The miracle is experienced in a very specific way; and by simply pointing to "special" nothing can be done about it, just like our previous general qualifications "unusual", "weird", etc. The specificity of a miracle must be revealed as such.

b) a miracle is not a violation of the "laws of nature"

b) Another view says that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature and a breakthrough in the general flow of the mechanistic universe. If you like, this view can be combined with the first and treated as a refinement of the first. Then it turns out that a miracle is an act of intervention of higher forces, which violates the mechanistic flow of phenomena. This strongly contradicts the phenomenology of the miracle.

First, here again a point of view is introduced that is alien to mythical consciousness itself. Indeed, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, if we approach it and them from the point of view of mechanistic science of the 17th-19th centuries. Such convention, however, is not only not obligatory, but it radically cuts off the very possibility of an essential revealing of the concept of a miracle. You never know how anyone imagines a miracle! But what is a miracle in itself, for one who lives by this miracle, for one who cherishes it as such, for whom a miracle is a miracle, and not something else? And for such a subject, I undertake to assert this with full scientific credibility miracle is not a violation of the laws of nature. Not a violation of the laws of nature is a miracle, but, on the contrary, the establishment and justification, their understanding. From the point of view of mythical consciousness, a miracle is the establishment and manifestation of genuine, truly indestructible laws of nature.

Secondly, what is a violation of the laws of nature? The wildest and most primitive consciousness operates with the concept of a miracle, having either absolutely no ideas about the laws of nature, or having them in such a form that they do not have to be taken into account. Here again is the same curse of heterogeneous introductions, when people cannot but survey the whole world from their own belfry, and when farsightedness extends no further than their own nose.

Thirdly, even if we keep in mind the epochs of the developed conception of the laws of nature, then here too a number of difficulties arise if a miracle is understood as a violation of these laws. -

) These laws themselves do not have any absolute significance for science itself. It is possible to interpret and even use science for the purpose of promoting some deification and absolutization of abstract principles and hypotheses. But that itself would be a myth. Belief in the omnipotence of science, of course, is nothing more than one of the forms of mythical consciousness. This is not written in science itself. The derived law of the fall of bodies is for science only a hypothesis, and not an absolute truth; and tomorrow this law, perhaps, will become different, if only it exists at all, if tomorrow there will be a fall of bodies, and if, finally, there will be a “tomorrow” itself. For example, to tell the truth, I am not at all convinced that there will be “tomorrow” for sure. Well, what will happen, they ask. And how much do I know! Let's wait and see, if there is anyone and what to see. So, one cannot say that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, if it is not known what is the degree of reality of the laws themselves. With strictly scientific point one can only say that now the circumstances, experimental and logical, are such that one has to accept such and such a hypothesis. You can't be sure of anything else if you don't want to fall into dogma and deification of abstract concepts. And most importantly, nothing more than this is needed for science. Anything beyond that is already your own tastes.

) Further, suppose that the laws of nature exist, whether with the meaning of only hypotheses or with the meaning of some realities, absolute or relative. From the point of view of mythical consciousness, they are also the manifestation of higher powers. Why should the manifestation of higher forces necessarily introduce confusion and unexpected chaos into the phenomena, and not order, conformity to law and order? Why are the laws of nature not themselves the manifestation of higher powers? After all, science establishes only certain formulas and propositions, which in themselves are not yet at all either a thing or a force. They are carried out on things and in motion. But if there are no things, or movement, or forces outside these formulas, then these formulas themselves will not give rise to either one or the other, or the third. This means that the mechanism of science in itself does not say anything about nature in its reality: for example, no law of nature can say absolutely nothing either about the creation of nature and the world, or about their death or death, i.e. it proceeds from the fact that the world is already somehow there, and in this world he somehow finds an application for himself. But whether there was, whether there will be further, and, in fact, whether this world exists now for certain, science knows nothing about this. From this it is clear that the mythical consciousness has the full logical right, given the existence of the most precise laws of the absolute mechanism, to assert that actually implemented mechanical laws are manifestations of higher forces, that, since the laws themselves are only formulas, and not things, it is possible and necessary, in the question about the things themselves that obey these laws, talk about higher forces, or in general somewhere and somehow look for reasons for things that flow naturally. That the laws of nature are the laws of nature, there is nothing strange in this. It is possible in principle to deduce one from the other without any miracle. But when it turns out that this is not just a logical conclusion, but that the whole universe moves and exists according to these laws, then something strange already turns out. Someone made this piano, someone made these shelves for books: how, the mythical consciousness argues, the universe, which is infinitely more complicated and at the same time more accurate than both the piano and the bookshelves, suddenly no one made it and it turned out somehow like that, it is not known how? It is clear, therefore, that for the mythical consciousness a myth is not a violation of the laws of nature, for the mere fact that the laws of nature themselves, if they are taken as real material laws, are also a manifestation of the higher forces of the ego, and therefore something mythical.

) Finally, supporters of the doctrine of a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature confuse miraculousness as such with a scientific explanation of a miracle. It turns out that a miracle is either a violation of the laws of nature, or it is nothing at all. A miracle is either not explainable by the laws of nature (then it is precisely a miracle), or explainable by them (then it is not a miracle, and there is no miracle at all). This is an outdated view of the old rationalist metaphysics. For now, let us note that the mechanistic worldview itself is the fruit of the metaphysical dualism of the Cartesian school, according to which the subject and the object are separated once and for all by an impassable abyss: the subject is in no sense an object, and the object is in no way a subject, whence - the subject is conceived as pure thinking, and the object as a pure extension, a mechanism. All this is a product of liberal-bourgeois, capitalist culture. For a philosophy that knows the unification and synthesis of subject and object, the object will never be a pure mechanism. It will always contain the features of the subject, consciousness, soul, purpose; and "mechanism" will be, although quite real, but at the same time only a completely subordinate category, not the only and not absolute. Thus, the absolutely mechanistic worldview is a harmful rationalistic and dualistic metaphysics, the sad fruit of political, philosophical and religious liberalism that has dominated for centuries now dead. But if so, what does it mean to “explain” a miracle by “laws of nature”? Of course, first of all, this means explaining it as a natural result of the mechanism of phenomena, as one of the wheels of the general world machine. However, it is clear that this is far from being a complete explanation of the miracle. Let us remember that a miracle is a social and historical phenomenon, while the laws of nature are installations and mechanical phenomena. The law of nature says absolutely nothing about the absolute reality of the occurring phenomenon. He seems to say: if there is a stone, if there is earth, if the stone is above the surface of the earth, and if, finally, this stone falls, then this is how it falls. Well, what if there is no stone, no earth, no fall? Then the law of falling remains an abstract formula, saying nothing about any being. Then, in order for the law to reflect a really real process, it is necessary not only the spatial certainty of this phenomenon, but the exact indication of the time when exactly the fall began. The laws of falling bodies do not say anything not only about the space or place of a given phenomenon; but also about the time when this fall actually took place, there is absolutely no judgment in it. Myth is the exact opposite of this. The myth speaks precisely of this phenomenon, of its spatial beginning and end, i.e., volume, and of its temporal beginning and end, i.e., of the time when it began, increased, decreased, and died. Therefore, the mechanistic explanation of the miracle does not explain anything essential in it at all. Here was a man walking down the street; and a huge stone fell from the building, which hit him right in the head and killed him. What, this stone fell according to the laws of mechanics? Undoubtedly. And the fact that he fell at that very moment, does it depend on certain laws of physics and mechanics? Undoubtedly. And what, a walking person - walked like an automaton and a mechanism and could not help but walk that way? Let's even assume this. And what? And yet it is not clear why this suddenly happened. Imagine that a person on this day would not have walked past the fatal building. Would the laws of nature be violated then? Not at all. And death would not have happened either. It is clear that from the point of view of the laws of nature it makes absolutely no difference whether this person is crushed by a stone or not, for, I repeat, the laws of nature are abstract-mechanistic attitudes, and they say absolutely nothing about any real history and, in particular, about the history of their own application to this or that fact or time. The laws of nature say nothing about the direction of their application and application. They are ahistorical. Take the methods of calculating the eclipses of the sun and moon in astronomy. They are completely accurate. But how are they achieved and what do these calculations necessarily imply? They necessarily assume that this is the picture of the sky at the moment. Knowing that the sky today, that is, such and such a year, month, date, hour, minute and second, has such and such a form, I can calculate with accuracy when the next eclipse of the sun and moon will occur. But how do I know the picture of the sky today? Not from science at all, but from the observation of what is given in itself, prior to any science, and established by no science at all. In scientific laws, as such, nothing is said about what the sky will be like on January 1, 1928 at 12 o'clock at night in Moscow. Consequently, the prediction of future natural phenomena includes not just one science, but also an element of absolute, pre-scientific and extra-scientific reality, scientifically inexplicable and mysterious. And it turns out that the onset or non-onset of a given phenomenon in all its reality depends precisely on this absolute position in the absolute system of the world, scientifically indeterminate. Therefore, it is clear to the infant that the explanation is mechanistic, that is, That is, the discovery of certain laws of nature in a given miraculous phenomenon gives absolutely nothing in the sense of explaining the miracle itself. Let the blind see, and it is considered a miracle. The wonder of this phenomenon is not at all that the laws of nature are violated here. Let at the moment it is not known from what reasons the blind received his sight. But in principle, there must be such reasons, and science will discover them sooner or later. Since this actually happened, with a real organ of vision, there could not have been any real bodily factor and cause that led a person to vision. And at the same time, the most accurate, clearest idea of the mechanism of a given phenomenon explains absolutely nothing in a miracle, or in any historical phenomenon at all. If the blind did not see, the laws of nature would not be violated. Whether tomorrow the earth hits some comet or not, whether it ignites or not, this says absolutely nothing about any laws of nature. Both will be necessary according to the laws of nature. So, the miracle is not at all that the laws of nature are violated or that it cannot be explained by the means of science. A phenomenon that absolutely accurately follows from the system of the world mechanism can sometimes be a much greater miracle than one about which it is not known what mechanism and what laws of nature it follows.

3. Other miracle theories

There are still a number of theories of the miracle, but almost all of them suffer from the disease of heterogeneous introductions, replacing the analysis of the concept itself with the presentation of one's own attitude towards this concept. Such is the old theory based on the interpretation of a miracle as a belief in the uniformity and harmony of the universe, a belief that has entered the wrong path. People want to explain unusual things by some more general phenomena, and for this they put forward the concept of a miracle. But whether this is correct or not, such reasoning is obviously the reasoning of a European scientist, and not of the mythical subject himself, who, before explaining, sees the miracle itself with his own eyes. Wundt's theory also suffers from the same basic shortcoming; he understands the miracle as a product of primitive animism and as the transfer of one's own volitional experiences to objects of nature and religion. Again, even if this is so, then - subject to an assessment of the miracle from the outside; the subject himself, seeing and experiencing a miracle, does not at all think that it is he who transfers something of himself onto the object. This subject is fully convinced of the opposite, that he himself is the object of miraculous influence, that the miracle does not come from him, but that he himself cannot but recognize the miracle as an objective phenomenon, that the miracle directly forcibly breaks into his spiritual world and imperatively demands of his confession. The theory of suggestion is also completely helpless, thinking to explain the miracle by certain states of the psyche of the one who is the object of miraculous influence, or by the forms of the relationship of these or other mental states. The “scientist”, who sees in a miracle only one “psychic suggestion”, does not say a word about the subject itself, and his statement has only the meaning of abuse and helpless, embittered interjection. Let the miracle be the result of hypnosis; even if it's just crazy. But what does this give in the sense of a scientific analysis of this concept? After all, a baby knows that mad people are different, that one madness is not like another. What is the specificity of that madness, which is called belief in a miracle? Still, you can't get away from this question. The interpretation of a miracle as fiction or hypnosis is simply impotent rage at the miracle and affective interjection in place of calm and free reasoning. This is how capricious and nervous women usually “argue”.

Let us now try to reveal the concept of a miracle, taking into account that this is neither simply the influence of higher forces on lower being, nor simply a violation of the laws of nature, nor simply the idea of the uniformity of the laws of nature, nor this or that subjective invention, voluntary self-projection or hypnosis, suggestion from the side.

4. The main dialectic of a miracle:

In order to be consistent and completely clear in the analysis of this difficult concept, usually despised in philosophy and science, we will arrange our exposition into separate points (from which each could easily grow into a whole chapter).

a) the meeting of two personality planes,

a) It is clear that in a miracle we are dealing, first of all, with the coincidence, or at least with the relationship and collision of two different planes of reality. This, apparently, forced many to talk about the intervention of higher powers and the violation of the laws of nature. However, in contrast to such theories, we want to reveal in a precise phenomenological-dialectical analysis both the nature of both planes and the mode of their relationship. And, first of all, it is clear to us from the previous presentation that a miracle is the relationship of two (or more) personal plans. A miracle is also a manifestation on the part of some or some personalities, and for, for the purposes of some or some personalities (understanding by personality what we have established above). This must have an axiomatic value, and it is hardly possible to argue about it. A miracle is always an assessment of the individual and for the individual.

b) which may be within the same person;

b) The next question arises: the relationship of which particular personal planes is a miracle? The easiest way is to think that this is the influence of one personality on another. Such a view, however, is not fruitful. There is absolutely nothing miraculous about the influence of one person on another, if taken as such. The smart one teaches the stupid, the scientist teaches the unlearned, the literate teaches the illiterate, the experienced in life teaches the inexperienced in life, and so on. There is nothing specifically miraculous here. Of course, this, like everything in the world, can be wonderful. But after all, the sunrise and sunset, the birth and death of a person, and even all sorts of small phenomena in nature and life can be miraculous and often turn out to be so. Therefore, it is not the very influence of one person on another that is miraculous, but some special moment that is not reduced simply to the very fact of this influence. The influence of a higher personality on a lower one will not help the cause, since there is nothing miraculous here either. And it can be said that the higher the influencing personality, the more difficult it is to talk about a miracle, and the highest Personality, if He exists, is generally thought of always and, moreover, invariably influencing and acting, so that there is no special place for a miracle. The truly miraculous interrelationship of personality planes must be sought not in the sphere of influence of one personality on another, but, first of all, in the sphere of one and the same personality, and already on this last basis one can speak of the interaction of two or more separate personalities. One universal example is able to immediately convince of this, it is werewolf and generally reincarnation in different bodies. That this is a miracle is beyond doubt. But that the same witch turns now into a rolling wheel, now into a bird, now into gray wolf, i.e., that here we are talking about the same person - this is also clear. Therefore, for a miracle to happen, one person is enough. But some two plans of this person are necessary. What?

c) these are external-historical and internal-conceived plans;

c) Undoubtedly, these are external historical plans and internally conceived ones, as it were, a plan of predestination, premeditation and purpose. Let's touch on them in more detail. – Personality, firstly, is a personality, i.e., it is, first of all, in itself, outside of its history and outside of any becoming. What it is? It is something that remains absolutely unchanged throughout its change and history. According to the basic rule of dialectics, becoming can take place only when there is something that becomes and what remains as such unchanged, with all its actually occurring changes. As soon as this “what” breaks down and changes in its essence, one can say that its formation was also interrupted, the formation of a completely different thing began. So, personality is, first of all, a kind of unchanging unity, as if hovering in the process of all change and in itself existing outside of any change and history. It is only because of this that history itself is possible. But, secondly, a real personality is a historical personality. It is constantly and continuously flowing, forever changing and becoming. To put it a little rougher, she is always in time. What is time? Time, or becoming, is possible only because it is the dialectical antithesis of meaning or idea, which is precisely thought of as not becoming. Any mathematical proposition is applicable (or wants to be applicable, applicable in its meaning) decisively to all times; it contains nothing temporary. Time is the antithesis of meaning. It is by nature illogical, irrational. It is fundamentally such that the past moment no longer exists, the future does not yet exist and nothing is known about it, and the present is an elusive moment. The essence of pure time lies in this illogical element of becoming, in illogical becoming, in the fact that absolutely nothing can be distinguished and contrasted here; everything here is merged into one indivisible stream of meaning. The essence of time is in the continuous growth of being, when it is completely, absolutely unknown what will happen in one second, and when the past is completely, absolutely irretrievable and lost, and in general, no forces can stop this irrepressible, inhuman flow of becoming. Therefore, whatever the laws of nature predict, one can never fully guarantee the fulfillment of these predictions. Time is a truly illogical element of being, in the true sense of destiny or, in another experimental system, the will of God. In vain did scientists and philosophers abandon this concept of fate and replace it with the concept of causality. It is the helpless wrapping of one's nose under one's own wings and the fear of looking life straight in the eye. Fate is a completely real, absolutely vital category. This is in no sense an invention, but the cruel face of life itself. We ourselves use this concept and term every day; daily and hourly we see the action of fate in life, personally and someone else's; we know and understand very well that we cannot guarantee for a single second of our life; we are painfully aware that the future is unknown, dark, like a haze of twilight stretching into an endless distance: and yet, with all this, for the sake of false theories and gross prejudices, we despise this concept as an invention, as a fiction, as an idea that does not correspond to any reality. Invented the concept of causality. But does causality prevent the fact that before an eclipse of the moon occurs, this moon would disappear in some kind of world fire or burst due to some reasons still unknown to us. An eclipse of the moon is predicted for such and such a date. Will there then be the moon itself, will it be the number itself? I have already honestly admitted that this is not obvious to me. Fate is the most real thing that I see in my own and in every other life. This is not fiction, but the cruelest pincers in which our life is squeezed. And only fate controls us, not anyone else. – So, two personal planes meet in a miracle: 1) personality in itself, outside of its change, outside of any of its history, personality as an idea, as a principle, as the meaning of all becoming, as an unchanging rule, according to which the real flow is equal; and - 2) the very history of this personality, its real flow and becoming, illogical becoming, a continuous and continuously fluid multitude - unity, absolute fluid indistinguishability and purely temporal duration and tension.

d) forms of their association;

d) The question arises by itself: what exactly is the relationship between these two personal planes? Here, for the first time, we begin to approach the dialectical solution of the miracle (to the dialectical one, for no other solution is required for philosophy). Namely, these two planes, being completely different, are necessarily identified in a certain indivisible image, according to the general dialectical law. Here the primary dialectic of "one" and "other" is repeated; and without a clear assimilation of it it is impossible to understand the dialectics of the miracle. "One" and "other" necessarily differ from each other and are mutually identified. But it is not this general dialectical law that is curious, but its specification, which exists precisely for the category of a miracle. As soon as we started talking about formation and history, about time, the question immediately arises of how exactly and to what extent this formation takes place. There can be no becoming without that which becomes. And so, as soon as a thing has passed into becoming, we immediately begin to compare what is actually becoming, and therefore what has become, with what should become, the thing that is becoming, with the idea of the thing. Without this, secret or explicit, comparison, it is absolutely impossible to talk about real becoming. However, peering into the real face of the thing that has become, we notice here many more layers than just two. Firstly, the abstract idea of a thing, or in our case, the idea of a personality, outside its history, remains in its place, as well as, secondly, the moment of a purely illogical becoming, the meonal-historical moment. But if it were only this, then we would fall into the net of a bad dualism; and no dialectics, no miracle would have happened. These two spheres are identified. And this means that there is, thirdly, something third, which is no longer an abstract idea, and not an abstract illogicality of becoming, but something completely irreducible to either one or the other, something in its essence that has nothing in common with either one or the other. This third must be as much an idea as it is a becoming. It is an idea, but it is given not by itself, but exclusively by illogical means; and this is illogical becoming and matter, but given exclusively as an idea and by means of an idea. This is what truly guides the entire formation, and not just its ideological comprehension, as an abstract idea. This is a true prototype, a pure paradigm, an ideal fulfillment of an abstract idea. After all, since there is an idea and its embodiment, it means that different degrees of its embodiment are possible. But if so, then an infinitely greater degree of completeness of incarnation is possible. This is the limit of any possible completeness and integrity of the embodiment of an idea in history; it is a smart figurativeness of meaning, which has absorbed the alogia of becoming and through that has become precisely something mental-bodily; it is, which has fully realized its abstract predestination and therefore is designed as a single intelligent corporality, i.e., as figurativeness. However, even this is not enough if we really want to dialectically synthesize both initial spheres, abstract meaning and abstract becoming. Namely, it is necessary that these two spheres be conceived not only in complete dissimilarity with the indicated third sphere, but also in such a way that they bear the traces and stamp of this third principle. After all, the third principle, we said, is completely irreducible to the first two and has absolutely nothing in common with them. How, then, can synthesis be carried out? It is clear that one cannot remain with such a confrontation between the three different areas. It is necessary that the first two be modified in the light of this third. This will not prevent them from being themselves. They are, first of all, they themselves and nothing else. But they must also have a layer on them that would indicate their identification with the third. Of course, each layer, according to its characteristics, will be synthesized in its own way with the third one. But only in this way will it be possible to speak of a complete dialectical synthesis of the idea and becoming. Therefore, it is necessary, fourthly, to modify the abstract idea to one that can be called an expressed idea or meaning (in contrast to abstract meaning), and, fifthly, to modify pure abstract becoming, taken in its complete indistinguishability and illogicality, into meaningful becoming, or a really material image of an object that has become. Such is the dialectic of the two basic personal planes, entering into a synthetic intercommunion and reunion in a miracle.

e) a miracle - a sign of the eternal idea of personality

e) Comparison, without which no becoming is possible, can therefore take place in different senses. One can compare the real-material image of the object that has become with its abstract idea and judge how much the coincidence takes place here. Such a comparison, of course, is of little interest, because we already know in advance that there can be no becoming without what exactly becomes, there is no history without what exactly is in history. But here we begin to compare the real-material image of a thing with its prototype, paradigm, “model”, with its ideal fulfillment and the ideal limit of the completeness of any possible implementation of it and approaching its own internal tasks. We have no right to expect a complete coincidence here. We always observe only a partial coincidence of the real-material image of a thing with its ideal assignment-fulfillment, with its prototype; and we have absolutely no reason to expect that in this case the real will fully embody its ideal predeterminedness. All the more so, it must be considered amazing, strange, unusual, miraculous when it turns out that a person in his historical development suddenly, even for a minute, expresses and fulfills his prototype in its entirety, reaches the limit of the coincidence of both plans, becomes what immediately turns out to be substance, and ideal prototype. This is the real place for a miracle. A miracle is a dialectical synthesis of the two planes of personality, when it completely and through and through fulfills the task of the prototype, which lies in the depths of its historical development. This is, as it were, the second incarnation of the idea, one in the original, ideal archetype and paradigm, the other is the embodiment of these latter in a real historical event. Of course, every personality somehow fulfills its task, which lies at the basis of its very primordial existence. But it is necessary that this connection be revealed as fully as possible. It is necessary that the connection of its real historical position with its ideal "copy" should be specially demonstrated and deliberately revealed. Let us take the healings that took place in the sanctuaries of Asclepius in Ancient Greece. Everyone knew that Asclepius is the god of health and helps the sick. Everyone knew that he helps even when no one prays for his recovery. Finally, everyone knew that the priests used all sorts of medical means to cure incoming patients, up to their operation. And yet such healing in the sanctuary of Asclepius is a miracle. Why? Because it became clear how Asclepius helps the sick. I had to come, I had to pray; it was necessary that this particular god should help, and in this particular sanctuary; etc. Everything here is explainable mechanically; and the pious Greek did not at all think that there was anything unnatural in it. Everything happened quite naturally. And yet the patient recovered. A thousand times everything went naturally, and even everything always goes naturally, the mechanical laws always and immutably operate. And for some reason, yesterday this patient, under the same mechanical laws, did not recover, but today, again, under the same mechanical laws, but only under the condition of new facts (he came to Asclepius, he prayed, etc.). d.), for some reason he recovered. It is clear that what is new, observed today, is not that Asclepius acted today, but not yesterday (the gods always act), and not that physiological laws were violated today, and yesterday no one violated them (laws are always the same, and they cannot be violated and there is no one to violate them). What is new is that today the usually poorly noticed connection between the real life of the patient and her ideal state has become clear, visible, when she, close to the deity, is in an eternally blissful and painless state. The very word "miracle" in all languages indicates precisely this moment of surprise at what appeared and happened - Greek.  lat. miraculum-miror, German. Wunder-bewundern, Slavic miracle. A miracle basically has the character of notification, manifestation, proclamation, testimony, amazing sign, manifestation, as it were, prophecy, disclosure, and not the existence of the facts themselves, not the occurrence of the events themselves. It is a modification of the meaning of facts and events, and not the facts and events themselves. It's a certain way of interpreting historical events, and not the search for some new events as such. One who believes in miracles cannot be refuted. Even the word "faith" does not fit here. He sees and knows the miracle. He who has used some miraculous thing (for example, some kind of amulet) to treat his illness has every logical right to object to the skeptic as follows: you say that I was cured by your medicine, and I claim that I was cured by anointing the sick place this sacred oil; both means were used: why do you think that medicine worked, and not a miracle, and medicine itself, which is by no means always effective, is not something natural here and dependent on ideal causes? It is impossible to dissuade such a person, because it is logically impossible to prove that the amulet did not work, since it is known that the medical device also does not always work in the same way. Here before us is a living person and her story, her life. At every single moment of this life, we see five moments at once, absolutely identified in its one instantaneous face and distinguished only in abstraction: 1) an abstract idea of this life (he, for example, is a man, Russian, of such and such a century or decade, a statesman, soldier, peasant, etc.); 2) a fluid stream of life that embodies this idea and, as it were, materially paints it into a new living reality; 3) his ideal state, when he expresses his abstract idea to the maximum; 4) the first moment - in the light of the third, or an addition to an abstract idea, obtained from the ideal, or, as it were, an enumeration of everything that is contained in the ideal, an abstract expression of the ideal; 5) the second moment - in the light of the third, or the addition to the empty illogical duration, obtained from the ideal, when it becomes the real-life face of the personality. When the fifth and third moments coincide entirely, we say: this is a miracle; and with the help of the fourth moment, in bewilderment, we review and list those amazing facts and the ideas in which the first moment of personality was expressed when it began to be fulfilled in the second.

5. Expediency in a miracle versus other types of expediency

The above analysis of the concept of a miracle shows that the nature of a miracle is symbolic, in the understanding of the symbol that I proposed above. However, in order for this symbolic nature of a miracle to be fully understood, it is necessary to sharply delineate the nature of the symbol itself - a miracle, or a truly mythical symbol.

a) Kant on logical and aesthetic expediency;

a) Kant has already perfectly shown how, along with the “determining” power of judgment, i.e., the ability to judge from the general about the particular, the ability of reason to give rules, there is a “reflective” power of judgment, going from the particular to the general and taking into account the empirically accidental the course of events. The category of reason, which was only a rule for subsuming empirical phenomena under it, becomes, from this point of view, already a goal. We begin to consider things not just as a sphere of application of abstract categories, but as a certain degree of coincidence of phenomena with their purpose. As long as we use categories as such, there is nothing surprising in the fact that they function in nature, because apart from them there is nothing that would give meaning to things. But when it turns out that an empirical phenomenon has proceeded exactly as its purpose requires, then we are surprised, and this coincidence, says Kant, causes a feeling of pleasure. Hence, there are two forms of representation of expediency in nature - logical and aesthetic. The first operates with the concept of purpose, finding a correspondence or inconsistency between the random course of a phenomenon and its formal expediency; thus, we are compelled to consider other objects of nature teleologically, and not mechanically. Another form includes that feeling of pleasure or displeasure that is present in the subject when he finds in empirical chance a coincidence or disagreement with his cognitive abilities, which require the concept of a goal. In other words, logical expediency is the coincidence of the random course of empirical phenomena with their prototype; aesthetic expediency is the coincidence of the random flow of empirical phenomena with their prototype as the intelligentsia ("subject"). Kant's general correct thought should not be accepted by us with all the conditions of Kant's subjectivism and formalism. Speaking of the coincidence of empirical contingency with "formal expediency", Kant, of course, has in mind what we also have in mind when we affirm the necessity of a prototype as an ideal and ultimate coincidence of a category with a thing, absolutely necessary with absolutely contingent, and when we demand that the empirical the flow of the thing was compared with this archetype (from which the aesthetic perception begins). The sensory image coincides with the semantic category into one inseparable image, which is no longer, of course, the thing itself, although it is inseparable from it. This is what Kant calls "formal expediency." Of course, eidos is not just a form; and the "legislation of the understanding", even with the participation of empirical contingency, is an invention of Kant's subjectivist metaphysics. But, understanding "category" and "reason" purely objectively (as meaning) and the coincidence of chance with them, understanding again as a purely objective structure of the image of a thing, we can safely rely on Kant and, together with him, speak of both logical and and aesthetic expediency. At the same time, "aesthetic" expediency in our system will obviously correspond to an intelligent modification of meaning. When an extra-intelligent sense is realized in empiricism and it turns out that this accidental realization completely coincides with the ideally conceived one, we get an expressive image of a thing, which can be called an extra-intelligent expression of a thing, its extra-intelligent symbol. Such is every organism, for example, vegetable or animal. Here - the complete expediency of the task with the implementation; and the more complete this purposiveness, the more complete the expression, the more definite the logical purposiveness. When an intelligent meaning, i.e., self-consciousness, is realized in empiricism, and we find that here, too, the realization coincided with the intention, we need not only a logical idea of this realization, but also such experiences that would correspond to the objectively realized self-consciousness. , i.e., it is necessary that in ourselves a certain satisfaction arises from the achieved self-consciousness at a given point, or a feeling of pleasure. And it is absolutely constitutive and dialectically necessary (although in fact there are a lot of subjects who are not destined to experience any feelings here) for the intelligent symbol, the realization of which is in question.

b) the concept of personal expediency

b) But Kant did not go, and according to the conditions of his philosophizing, he could not go further. But I affirm that, besides logical and aesthetic expediency, there is also a mythical expediency, and that it is a miracle. Kant talked about subsuming under a "category" and about subsuming under " mental capacity". Following him, correcting him, I now spoke about logical symbolism, or about the realization of an abstract category and idea, meaning, about "subsuming" under a logical symbol. I also spoke about intelligent, or aesthetic symbolism, or about the realization of intelligentsia, self-consciousness, about "bringing" under an intelligent, or aesthetic symbol. Now I am talking about mythical symbolism, i.e., about the realization not of an abstract meaning and not of an intelligent meaning, but about the fulfillment of a person, about “subsuming” under a personal symbol. After logical and aesthetic expediency, I speak of personal expediency; and in this I find the very nature of both a miracle, and so - through this - and of the whole myth. It is clear that this is only a consistently carried out dialectic. Just as it is impossible to dwell on an abstract idea as such and, willy-nilly, one has to speak about the realization of this idea, about the thing in which this idea was embodied, in the same way one cannot simply talk about an intelligent sense, that is, about self-consciousness as such, in no way realized and, therefore, belongs to no one. Of course, this is an independent category, and it must be clarified in its complete independence and independence. But it dialectically demands the next category, namely the category of facts, existence, reality, and, of course, not facts in general, but the facts of this very intelligentsia, self-consciousness, intelligent meaning as a realized given, or, simply, personality. Personality, we say, is the realized intelligentsia as a myth, as meaning, the image of the personality itself. And the coincidence of the randomly flowing empirical history of the individual with its ideal task is a miracle.

6. Originality and specificity of mythical expediency:

a) difference from the sphere of partial functions of the personality;

a) It is easy to reduce this whole doctrine of a miracle to absurdity, forgetting that here we are talking about a person and his history. It can be said that a performing musician who masters the instrument perfectly will be a miracle for you, because here there is also a coincidence of an empirically random life (training) with an ideal task (mastery of technique). Such reasoning just shows that the authors do not understand that the miracle is about a person. After all, the mastery of technology, although it is a kind of manifestation of personality (drinking, eating, sleeping, too, is belonging and a manifestation of personality), but it is not the personality itself and its history. This is the story of one of its many isolated functions. And if you want to abuse an obscure term, you can also say here (and often it is said): inhuman technology, unprecedented skill, miracles of technical and artistic performance, etc. This isolated function also has its own random history, its own ideal task, and this or that a different degree of coincidence of one or the other, so that, if you like, one can speak here of a miracle or of its degrees. But usually, by a miracle in the proper sense, we understand the sphere of the whole personality and the historical manifestations of the whole personality, the energetic manifestation of the personality in its substance. And this means that here we have in mind life itself and coincidences or discrepancies with the ideal - life itself. Very often, many, especially psychologists, understand the psyche as a series of states or kinds of mental life. Thus, one speaks of sensation, perception, attention, memory, emotions, volitional acts, etc. as isolated functions. And at the same time they think that later on one can obtain psychic life from the union of these functions. Of course, such an understanding of mental life is completely unacceptable to me. In particular, this turns out to be erroneous when it comes to personality. Personality is by no means sensation, perception, attention, or knowledge in general; it is neither an affect, nor an emotion, nor a feeling, nor a striving, nor a desire, nor a will, nor deeds. It, of course, necessarily manifests itself in them. But personality manifests itself in everything in general - in a suit, in the physiological processes of respiration, blood circulation, digestion; and this does not mean at all that a person is a cloth or a cloth suit, that it is a stomach and digestion, etc. Personality as a category has nothing in common with individual isolated functions; and from them it will never be possible to obtain personality, unless the concept of it is obtained from another source.

b) personality is indivisible;

b) This is the doctrine of personality and must be kept in mind if we want to understand the true dialectic of the miracle. Aesthetic expediency refers to the isolated function of feeling. Of course, there is everything here - both knowledge, and will, and feeling. But we think of aesthetic expediency centered on pure feeling. Therefore, the coincidence here of "ideally-possible" and "real-random" implies (often, at least) a very long history of this particular isolated function. In the same way, observing the playing of a virtuoso pianist and calling it a "miracle", we see that there was a long empirical history of human volitional efforts, filled with an innumerable mass of the most diverse accidents. As a result, the mobility of the fingers coincides with the ideal intentions of both the composer and the performer. But it is clear that here a dialectic of two isolated spheres takes place - the volitional efforts of a person and a certain ideal performer - isolated from the general area of \u200b\u200bpersonality, empirically random and ideally conceivable. They are antithetical, and artistic performance is their synthesis. But what happens if we talk not about feeling and its development, not about the will and its efforts, not about cognition and its acts, but about a personality that does not consist of these three spheres and does not consist of any isolated functions at all? Then our synthesis can no longer be a feeling - as an identity of knowledge and striving. Nor can it be a synthesis of freedom and necessity, to say nothing of a synthesis of a category and a sensual image in some kind of artistic image. It will be a purely personal synthesis, in no way solved or even affected by any of these isolated functions and synthesises. This synthesis is a miracle, a mythical expediency.

c) A miracle is neither cognitive,

c) And this is why in a miracle there is neither a purely cognitive, logical, nor a purely volitional, nor a purely aesthetic synthesis. If a miracle were a purely cognitive synthesis and purely logical expediency, then any organism, plant and animal, would already be a miracle, because we always think of it with the help of the category of some goal. Every organism has, after all, its own history, lives an independent life; and we can and do always pose the question about it: how is the goal that is virtually laid down in the seed of the organism achieved? If you like, you can, of course, consider every organism a miracle, but it will be a miracle in the improper sense of the word, - rather, some primitive degree of a miracle. In our own miracle, we are by no means limited to this cognitive synthesis and purely logical expediency. Then the lame man, healed by the miraculous icon, would be considered by us exclusively from a purely cognitive point of view, that is, we would consider a miracle simply as a transition from one anatomical and physiological state to another. The doctrine of a miracle would then be tantamount to anatomy and physiology, at best, to medicine, and the miracle itself was through and through only one biological act. No one, however, ever experiences a miracle like that. The biological and, in general, bodily-organic and physical nature of a miracle is significant only as an arena of the form or mode of manifestation of what is called a genuine miracle. It has absolutely no independent significance in itself, although the miracle manifested itself precisely in it, and in this sense it is absolutely necessary. I'm not talking about the one who has experienced a miracle on himself or believes in it. I affirm that even those who do not believe in miracles think it this way. To believe or not to believe is one thing; and the subject in which one believes or does not believe is quite another. You do not believe in a miracle, but you have an idea of a miraculous object, for if you do not know what a miracle is, how can you reject what you do not know? Therefore, if you reject a miracle, then you know what exactly you reject, that is, you know what a miracle is. And if you know what a miracle is, then you distinguish it from what is not a miracle. If you do not distinguish a miracle from a non-miracle, then by rejecting a miracle, you also reject any non-miracle, i.e., you reject everything real and real. What kind of materialist are you after that? But you recognize everything real and real, that is, not a miracle; therefore, you know that a miracle is different from a non-miracle, and you must know what exactly this difference is. So, one can reject a miracle only when it is known exactly how it differs from a non-miracle. And, therefore, even more so, a miracle is not just a physical or bodily-organic act. What remains for "science" is a favorite method: a miracle, of course, is not, it will be said, a physical act, but it is this act plus fiction. However, this reduction to subjectivism is the typically helpless position of liberal metaphysics. After all, physical acts themselves were often reduced to subjective processes. There were a lot of such "bringers". And most importantly, with such a reduction, we already stop talking about the miracle as such and start talking about our attitude towards it, that is, about ourselves. Such a substitution is a logical error, not to mention the fact that a miracle is more interesting than “we ourselves” (and even with our own “science”), and that even this substitution is possible only when it is already known that there is a miracle in itself. yourself. So, the understanding of a miracle as a fiction (connected with one or another natural biological, or in general physical, transition from one state to another) is possible only thanks to two simultaneous logical errors - 1) quaternio terminorum, since something like this syllogism is thought here: “This healing - miracle. Miracle is fiction. Therefore, this healing is fiction ”(i.e., a syllogism like:“ All dogs bark. One constellation is Dog. Therefore, one constellation barks ”); and - 2) misconception (obversio), because they naively think that the proposition "every miracle is fiction" does not require a specific definition of the kind of fiction that is a miracle (which would be possible only if this judgment also implied that that "all inventions are miracles").

d) A miracle is neither volitional,

d) A miracle is not a cognitive synthesis and logical expediency. But a miracle is also not a synthesis of will, or a synthesis of freedom and necessity. This is extremely important point in all teaching. Since this is not a synthesis of the will, then in no case should a miracle be thought of as the result of certain volitional acts of a person, for example, prayer or achievement. They can reason this way, and often they reason this way: the healing took place because the given subject prayed for a very long time, or fasted, or in general lived an especially lofty, virtuous life. Anyone who thinks like this does not understand the nature of a miracle at all. Then it turns out that a miracle is really a volitional synthesis of freedom and necessity. I freely set a goal for myself and freely strive, through all empirical accidents, to achieve it. And there is some ideal and limit of all my aspirations. And then something happened where the result of my efforts coincided with the maximum embodiment of the ideal, which, although outside of me, is necessary for me. Freedom coincided with necessity, and the result was a synthesis. I affirm that the miracle has nothing to do with this volitional synthesis. A miracle does not necessarily happen to those who have used more willpower or who are higher and better than others. The miracle does not depend on this at all; and it's hard to say to whom it happens more at all. Arguing about a miracle as a synthesis of will is inevitably moralistic and is the introduction of morality into a field that has a very remote relation to morality. Such an understanding would have to see a miracle in every successful deed, action and realization. So, the fact that a child learned to walk well would already be a miracle. That a violinist had mastered the technique of his instrument to perfection would be a miracle. The device of a steam locomotive, which makes it possible to move efficiently over long distances, is a miracle. Any deeds and actions of a person in general, directed towards a certain goal (high or low, large or small) and well achieved this goal, would necessarily be a miracle. Such an expansion of the concept of a miracle, of course, contradicts the usual word usage, not to mention the moralistic narrowness that is introduced here into the immense breadth of mythical and religious consciousness.

e) A miracle is neither an aesthetic synthesis;

e) Finally, a miracle is not an aesthetic synthesis and does not presuppose a special state of feeling, although it is reflected in it, as well as in everything in general. Just as it is impossible to find a logical or practical synthesis here, it is also impossible to find an aesthetic synthesis. Representatives of "science" who refute a miracle from a "scientific" point of view are completely missing the mark, because a miracle in its meaning never lays claim to scientific and even logical expediency in general. Moralists also miss the target, for a miracle is beyond any morality, beyond duty, responsibility, imputation, etc. A miracle can be performed with a criminal, despite his whole life and personality. But it would also be blasphemous for a miracle to see in it only self-enjoyment in feeling and contemplation of the renounced artistic image. Logic and science saw a physical regularity at the basis of the miracle, declaring everything else fiction and non-existent; morality saw in a miracle the result of volitional efforts and a reward for virtue. Now feeling, aesthetics, sees beauty in a miracle and considers the object of its action as a detached and "disinterested" artistic or aesthetic being, as something "beautiful" or "beautiful". All this has nothing to do with miracles. All this is either skinny and feeble for a miracle, or downright blasphemous.

7. Real being is a different degree of mythicity and miraculousness:

a) memory of eternity and

a) What is mythical or personal expediency? For logical expediency, the goal is this or that state of the organism, for practical expediency, this or that norm, etc. For personal expediency, none of these isolated functions matter. It is necessary to take such a goal and such an ideal state, which would be such not for knowledge, will, etc., but for a person taken as an indivisible individuality. What does a person as a person want? She wants, of course, absolute self-affirmation. She wants not to depend on anything or to depend in such a way that it does not interfere with her inner freedom. She wants not to fall apart, not to rush about in contradictions, not to decompose in darkness and non-existence. She wants to exist in the same way as there are eternally blissful gods, tasting the infinite world and the intelligent silence of their independent, bright existence. And so, when the sensual and motley-random history of a personality, immersed in a relative, semi-dark, powerless and painful existence, suddenly comes to an event in which this primordial and primary, bright predestination of the personality is revealed, the lost blissful state is remembered, and thus the languid emptiness is overcome and the motley noise and uproar of empiricism - then this means that a miracle is happening. In a miracle there is a breath of the eternal past, desecrated and corrupted, and now emerging again with a pure and bright vision. Destroyed and disgraced, it lurks invisibly in the soul, and now it wakes up like an immaculate youth, like a pure morning of being. The past is not dead. It stands for an unforgettable eternity and homeland. In the depths of the memory of centuries, the roots of the present lie and feed on them. Eternal and dear, it, this past, stands somewhere in the chest and in the heart; and we are unable to remember it, as if some kind of melody or some kind of picture seen in childhood, which is about to be remembered, but is not remembered at all. In a miracle, this memory suddenly arises, the memory of centuries is revived and the eternity of the past, inescapable and everlasting, is exposed. Clever silence and peace of eternity emanates from a miracle. This is a return from distant wanderings and settling in your homeland. That by which the soul lived, this noise and clamor of being, this empty variegation of life, this depravity and vileness of the very principle of existence - all this flies off like a feather; and smile at the naivete of such being and life. And forgiveness is already given, and sin is forgotten. And a kind of blissful weariness of the flesh is formed, and the bright morning of an immaculately young spirit is approaching.

b) its individual manifestations in the great and in the small;

b) Of course, the primordial blissful state of the individual, having a limiting value, can be expressed by an infinite number of different approximate values. And this leads to two very significant conclusions.

First, we see that every trifle of the mythical-wonderful world receives its meaning and its dialectical place. Miraculous heroes, like Svyatogor, lying in the form of a certain mountain, with their supernatural physical powers and exploits, are the result of this consciousness of the primordial perfection of the personality, conceived here as physical power, because in the absolute self-affirmation of the personality there must be absolutely great physical power. All these flying carpets, self-assembled tablecloths, lumbago-grass, dream-grass, invisibility cap, etc. objects, faces and events of the mythical-wonderful world are always one or another manifestation of some kind of strength, ability, knowledge, etc. personality, conceivable in the aspect of its absolute self-affirmation. Depending on the nature of ideas about this primordial blissfully self-affirmed personality, miracles, or types of miracles, are also distinguished, as well as types of the entire mythological construction in general. Werewolf is a miracle because here the empirical life of the individual coincided (at least to some extent) with one of the sides of the ideal state of the individual, namely with its omnipresence and infinite diversity. This coincidence, or connection, is revealed here; and therefore it is a miracle. On the same basis, all the various representatives of evil spirits, all its many-faced incarnations - Satan, the Devil, Bes, the Devil, etc., etc. should be attributed to the mythical-miraculous world. sensual givenness and also everywhere an assessment from the point of view of the purity of primordial being. No matter how rabid the nihilistic and degenerate enlightenment, the demon is still a very real force; and only those who are themselves in his service and blinded by his hypnosis do not notice the demon with its infinite power of evil. One should not think that only those evil forces exist that are known to us from classical religions. The present-day devil has assumed philosophical, artistic, scientific forms, etc. However, more often than not, this devil has been shredding, like everything else in the world. If we take the demonism of India, then it is quite possible to say that "in comparison with the deep melancholy of the Bhagavad-Gita, Baudelaire's denial and pessimism seem to be the vagaries of a boarding house compared to the tears of a mature husband." Is it possible to understand a demon when -

The dark world is drowning in sins, In sins that have not been prayed for, The stinking souls have become dirty in sins, Do not hear the sinners of salvation, Do not know God's good pleasure ..?

Secondly, it is easy to see that the concept of a miracle is a relative concept. If a given thing is conceived independently, for example, isolated materially or historically, and we consider it from a logical, practical and aesthetic point of view, it is not a miracle. But, if the same thing is conceived from the point of view of its correspondence to its ideal-personal being, it is necessarily a miracle. Undoubtedly, things in a mystical-intelligent ascent are a miracle. In the “Life of the Monk Gregory of Sinai” we read: “He who ascends in the spirit to God contemplates, as it were, in a certain mirror, all the light-like creation, “if in the body, or besides the body, we cannot see,” as the great Apostle says (2 Cor. III, 2 ), until some obstacle that has arisen at this time will force you to come to your senses. Although there are a lot of such examples of seeing a creature as a miracle, I will not cite hagiographic literature here so as not to tease the geese. It suffices to cite similar examples from secular literature.

We read from Dostoevsky: “In my youth, a long time ago, almost forty years ago, Father Anfim and I went all over Russia, collecting alms for the monastery, and once spent the night on a large navigable river, on the shore with fishermen, and sat down with us one good-looking young man, a peasant, already eighteen years old in appearance, he hurried to his place tomorrow to pull a merchant's barge with a whip. And I see him looking in front of him tenderly and clearly. it rises, freshens us, a little fish splashes, the birds are silent, everything is quiet, magnificent, everything is praying to God. And only we both do not sleep, I and this young man, and we talked about the beauty of this God's world and about its great mystery. then grass, every insect, an ant, a golden bee, they all know their way to amazement, having no mind, they testify to the mystery of God, they constantly perform it themselves. And, I see, the heart of a dear young man flared. he loves the forest, the birds of the forest; he was a birder, he understood their every whistle, he knew how to lure every bird: better than that, as in a forest, I don’t know anything, and everything is fine. “Truly, I answer him, everything is good and excellent, because everything is true. Look, I tell him, at a horse, a great animal, standing near a man, or at an ox, feeding him and working for him, downcast and thoughtful, look at their faces: what meekness, what affection for a person who often beats him ruthlessly, what gentleness, what credulity and what beauty in his countenance. It is touching even to know that there is no sin on him, for everything is perfect, everything except man is sinless, and Christ is with them even before ours. “Is it really possible, the young man asks, that they also have Christ?” “How could it be otherwise, I say to him, for the Word is for all; all creation and all creation, every leaf aspires to the Word, sings glory to God, cries to Christ, unknown to himself, does this with the secret of his sinless life. All this is a perfect example of interpreting the most ordinary things as miraculous.

Undoubtedly, the whole world seems to be a miracle to that hermit Fevronia, who was so well portrayed, on the basis of folk sources, by V.I. Belsky and N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov in the famous “Tale of the City of Kitezh”, where the following words of Fevronia are in the context general "praise of the desert".

Ah, you, my forest, the beautiful desert, You are the green kingdom of the oak tree! What a kind dear mother, I was raised and nurtured from childhood. Didn't you amuse your child, Didn't you amuse the unreasonable, Effortlessly touching songs during the day, Whispering wonderful tales at night? She gave me birds and animals as comrades, And how much I will have fun with them, - Catching up on sleepy visions, Coaxing me with the noise of leaves. Ah, thank you, desert, for everything, about everything: For your everlasting beauty, For sometimes midday coolness Yes, for a steamy night, for a free night, For gray evening fogs, In the mornings for pearl dews. For silence, for long thoughts, Thoughts are long, quiet, joyful ...

Day and night we have a Sunday service, Day and night, thyme and incense; During the day the sun shines bright for us, At night the stars, like candles, glow. Day and night we have a touching song, That rejoicing in all voices, - Birds, animals, every breath Sing the beautiful light of the Lord. “Glory to you forever, the sky is bright, the throne is wonderful to the Lord God! The same glory to you, mother earth, you are a strong footstool for God!

The birth of a child, considered scientifically, is the necessary result of certain natural causes; considered from the point of view of the will, the child is, for example, the result of the desire of parents to have children; considered from the point of view of feeling, he can relate to himself as to a beautiful object. But if you look at the birth of a child as a manifestation of that side of the eternally blissful and absolutely self-affirmed state of the personality, which consists in its eternal birth and growth, as it were self-creation, self-generation, then the birth of a child will turn out to be a miracle, just as it seemed to Shatov in Dostoevsky's novel "Demons". “Have fun, Anna Petrovna… This is a great joy…” Shatov murmured with an idiotically blissful look… “The mystery of the appearance of a new creature, a great mystery and inexplicable.” Shatov muttered incoherently, sullenly and enthusiastically. It was as if something was shaking in his head and of itself, without his will, poured out of his soul. “There were two, and suddenly a third person, a new spirit, whole, complete, as it does not happen from human hands, a new thought and new love, even scary ... And there is nothing higher in the world!

And not only the birth of a child, but absolutely everything in the world can be interpreted as a real miracle, if only these things and events are considered from the point of view of the original blissfully personal self-affirmation. Indeed, in any event such a connection can easily be established. And we often, willy-nilly, establish it, suddenly starting to relate to the most ordinary things from some new point of view, interpreting them as mysterious, mysterious, etc. Everyone experienced this strange feeling when it suddenly becomes strange that people walk, eat, they sleep, are born, die, quarrel, love, etc., when suddenly all this is evaluated from the point of view of some other, forgotten and desecrated being, when all of life suddenly appears as an endless symbol, as a most complex myth, as an amazing miracle. The mechanism itself is wonderful, the very "laws of nature" are mythically wonderful. Nothing specially strange and terrible is needed, nothing especially unusual, especially strong, powerful, specially fabulous, in order for this mythical consciousness to be realized and the wonderful side of life to be appreciated. The most simple, ordinary and weak, ignorant, etc., is enough for the myth to come true and a miracle to work. So says the life of St. Benedict on his vision of the universe in one beam of light, in one speck of dust: “Having rested little from the evening, the Monk Benedict rises to prayer, anticipating the midnight hour, and standing at the window and praying, suddenly he sees the light of heaven is great, and the night is brighter than daylight. : and even more wonderful, as the father himself later told, as if he thought, he said, the whole universe, as if under a single sunbeam, gathered to see. Diligently, the monk gazed at her lordship, seeing the soul of blessed Herman, Bishop of Capuan, on a fiery circle I exalt with angels.

c) not the degree of miraculousness, but the same miraculousness and only the difference of its objects

c) So, mythical expediency, or miracle, applies decisively to any thing; and one can speak only about the degrees of miraculousness, or rather, not even about the degrees of miraculousness, but, in fact, about the degrees and forms of primordially blissful personal existence and about their application to empirically flowing events. It can be said frankly that there are not even degrees of miraculousness, that everything is equally miraculous. But only to this it must be added that each thing exists only as a mode of this or that side in the mentioned personal being, and it is great and small by virtue of what it is a mode. This leads, as it were, to a different miraculousness of empirical existence. In fact, it is quite clear that miraculousness as such is exactly the same everywhere and that only its object is different. The whole world and all its component moments, and everything living and everything inanimate, are equally a myth and equally a miracle.

The dialectic of myth is impossible without sociology myth. Although this work does not specifically give a sociology of myth, it is introduction into sociology, which I have always thought philosophically-historically and dialectically. Having analyzed the logical and phenomenological structure of the myth, I turn at the end of the book to the establishment of the main social types mythology. I deal specifically with this sociology of myth in another work, but even here the all-encompassing role of mythical consciousness in different layers of the cultural process is clear. A theory of myth that does not capture cultures down to her social roots, there is a very bad myth theory. You have to be a very bad idealist to tear the myth away from the very thick of the historical process and preach liberal dualism: real life is in itself, and myth is in itself. I have never been a liberal or a dualist, and no one can reproach me for these heresies.

A.Losev

INTRODUCTION

I. MYTH IS NOT MYTH OR FICTION, IT IS NOT FANTASTIC FICTION

Foreword

INTRODUCTION

I. MYTH IS NOT MYTH OR FICTION, IT IS NOT FANTASTIC FICTION

II. MYTH IS NOT AN IDEAL BEING

III. MYTH IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC AND, IN PARTICULAR, A PRIMITIVE SCIENTIFIC CONSTRUCTION

1. Certain mythology and certain science may overlap, but fundamentally they are never identical.

2. Science is not born from myth, but science is always mythological

3. Science can never destroy a myth

4. The myth is not based on scientific experience

5. Pure science, in contrast to mythology, does not need either the absolute givenness of the object,

nor the absolute given of the subject,

nor complete truth

6. There is a special mythological truth

IV. MYTH IS NOT A METAPHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION

1. Metaphysicality is hindered by the this-worldliness and sensuality of myth

2. Metaphysics is scientific or scientific, mythology is the subject of direct perception

3. This feature of mythology is universal (including Christianity)

4. Mythical detachment and hierarchy

V. MYTH IS NEITHER SCHEME NOR ALLEGORY

1. The concept of expressive form

2. Dialectics of scheme, allegory and symbol

3. Different layers of the symbol

4. Examples of symbolic mythology:

VI. MYTH IS NOT A POETIC WORK

1. The similarity of mythology with poetry in the field of expressive forms

2. Similarity in the field of intelligence

3. Similarity in terms of immediacy

4. Similarity in detachment

5. The deepest divergence in the nature of detachment

6. Poetry and mythology

7. Essence of Mythic Renunciation

8. The principle of mythical detachment:

VII. MYTH IS A PERSONAL FORM

1. Summary of the previous

2. Basic dialectics of the concept of personality

3. Every living person is one way or another a myth

4. Mythological and personal symbolism

5. Essay on the dialectics of mythical time

6. Dreaming

7. Access to a new deepening of the concept of myth

VIII. MYTH IS NOT A SPECIALLY RELIGIOUS CREATION

1. The most common similarities and differences between mythology and religion

2. Energy and substance of religion

3. Face and personality in mythology; examples from types of pictorial space

4. Religion cannot but give rise to a myth

IX. MYTH IS NOT DOGMA

1. Myth is historical, dogma is absolute

2. Mythic historicism

3. Fixing the concepts of religion, mythology and dogmatic theology

4. Mythology and dogmatics of faith and knowledge

5. To the mythology of materialism:

6. Bourgeois mythology of materialism

7. Types of materialism

8. Mythology and dogmatics in the doctrines of

9. Conclusion

X. A MYTH IS NOT A HISTORICAL EVENT AS SUCH

1. Natural-material layer of history

2. Layer of consciousness and understanding

3. Layer of self-consciousness, or words

XI. MYTH IS A MIRACLE

1. Introduction

2. What is not a miracle?:

3. Other miracle theories

4. The main dialectic of a miracle:

5. Expediency in a miracle versus other types of expediency

6. Originality and specificity of mythical expediency:

7. Real being is a different degree of mythicity and miraculousness:

XII. REVIEW OF ALL DIALECTIC MOMENTS OF MYTH FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE CONCEPT OF MIRACLE

1. Dialectical necessity

2. Non-ideality

3. Extra-scientific and specific truth

4. Non-metaphysical

5. Symbolism

6. Detachment

7. Myth and religion

8. Essence of mythical historicism

XIII. FINAL DIALECTIC FORMULA

1. What did we have before the introduction of the concept of a miracle?

2. Dialectical formula of myth

XIV. TRANSITION TO REAL MYTHOLOGY AND THE IDEA OF ABSOLUTE MYTHOLOGY

Introduction

1. Dialectics is mythology, and mythology is dialectics

2. Overview of Syntheses of Absolute Mythology

3. Continued

4. Summary

5. A few examples of solid myths from absolute mythology

Foreword

This little study has as its subject one of the darkest areas of human consciousness, which was formerly occupied mainly by theologians or ethnographers. Both of them have become disgraced enough that now we can talk about revealing the essence of the myth by theological or ethnographic methods. And the trouble is not that mystical theologians and empiricist ethnographers (mostly theologians are very bad mystics, trying to flirt with science and dreaming of becoming complete positivists, and ethnographers - alas! - often very bad empiricists, being in the chains of one or another arbitrary and unconscious metaphysical theory). The trouble is that mythological science has not yet become not only dialectical, but even simply descriptive-phenomenological. All the same, one cannot get rid of mysticism, since myth claims to speak of mystical reality, and, on the other hand, no dialectic is possible without facts. But if it is supposed that the facts of the mystical and mythical consciousness which I cite as an example are confessed by myself facts, or that the doctrine of myth consists only of the observation of facts alone, it is better for them not to delve into my analysis of myth. It is necessary to wrest the doctrine of myth both from the domain of theologians and from the domain of ethnographers; and one must first force one to take the point of view of dialectics and the phenomenological-dialectical purification of concepts, and then let them do whatever they want with the myth. In my positive analysis of myth, I did not follow many who now see the positivism of the study of religion and myth in the forcible expulsion of everything mysterious and miraculous from both. They want to reveal the essence of the myth, but to do this, they first dissect it so that it contains nothing either fabulous or even miraculous. This is either dishonest or stupid. As for me, I do not at all think that my research will be better if I say that a myth is not a myth and religion is not a religion. I take myth as it is, i.e., I want to reveal and positively fix what a myth is in itself and how it thinks of its own wonderful and fabulous nature. But I ask you not to impose on me points of view unusual for me and I ask you to take from me only what I give, that is, only one dialectics myth.
The dialectic of myth is impossible without sociology myth. Although this work does not specifically give a sociology of myth, it is introduction into sociology, which I have always thought philosophically-historically and dialectically. Having analyzed the logical and phenomenological structure of the myth, I turn at the end of the book to the establishment of the main social types mythology. I deal specifically with this sociology of myth in another work, but even here the all-encompassing role of mythical consciousness in different layers of the cultural process is clear. A theory of myth that does not capture cultures down to her social roots, there is a very bad myth theory. You have to be a very bad idealist to tear the myth away from the very thick of the historical process and preach liberal dualism: real life is in itself, and myth is in itself. I have never been a liberal or a dualist, and no one can reproach me for these heresies.
A.Losev
Moscow. January 28, 1930

INTRODUCTION

I. MYTH IS NOT MYTH OR FICTION, IT IS NOT FANTASTIC FICTION

This fallacy of almost all "scientific" methods of investigation of mythology must be rejected in the first place. Of course, mythology is fiction, if we apply to it the point of view of science, and even then not any, but only one that is characteristic of a narrow circle of scientists of modern European history of the last two or three centuries. From some arbitrarily taken, completely conditional point of view, a myth is indeed fiction. However, we agreed to consider the myth not from the point of view of some scientific, religious, artistic, social, etc. worldview, but exclusively from the point of view of the same myth, through the eyes of myth itself, through mythical eyes. It is this mythical view of myth that interests us here. And from the point of view of the mythical consciousness itself, in no case can it be said that myth is a fiction and a play of fantasy.. When the Greek, not in the era of skepticism and the decline of religion, but in the era of the heyday of religion and myth, spoke of his numerous Zeus or Apollo; when some tribes have a custom to put on a necklace of crocodile teeth to avoid the danger of drowning when crossing large rivers; when religious fanaticism reaches the point of self-torture and even self-immolation; – then it would be quite ignorant to assert that the mythical stimuli operating here are nothing more than an invention, pure fiction for these mythical subjects. One has to be short-sighted to the last degree in science, even simply blind, in order not to notice that myth is (for the mythical consciousness, of course) the highest in its concreteness, the most intense and most intense reality. It's not a fantasy, but... the brightest and most authentic reality. This - absolutely necessary category of thought and life, far from any chance and arbitrariness. Let us note that for the science of the 17th-19th centuries its own categories are by no means as real as its own categories are real for the mythical consciousness. For example, Kant connected the objectivity of science with the subjectivity of space, time and all categories. And even more than that. It is precisely on this subjectivism that he tries to substantiate the "realism" of science. Of course, this attempt is absurd. But the example of Kant perfectly shows how little European science valued the reality and objectivity of its categories. Some representatives of science even loved and love to flaunt such reasoning: I give you the doctrine of liquids, but whether these latter exist or not is none of my business; or: I proved this theorem, but whether something real corresponds to it, or whether it is a product of my subject or brain - this does not concern me. The point of view of the mythical consciousness is completely opposite to this. Myth - the most necessary - it must be said directly, transcendentally necessary - a category of thought and life; and there is absolutely nothing accidental, unnecessary, arbitrary, invented or fantastic in it. This is the true and most concrete reality.
Mythological scholars are almost always in the grip of this general prejudice; and if they do not speak directly about the subjectivism of mythology, then they give certain more subtle constructions that reduce mythology to the same subjectivism. So, the doctrine illusory apperception in the spirit of Herbart's psychology in Lazarus and Steinthal is also a complete distortion of the mythical consciousness and in no way can be connected with the essence of mythical constructions. At this point, we must pose a dilemma. Or we are not talking about the mythical consciousness itself, but about this or that attitude towards it, our own or someone else’s, and then we can say that the myth is an idle fiction, that the myth is a childish fantasy, that it is not real, but subjective, philosophically helpless, or, on the contrary, that it is an object of worship, that it is beautiful, divine, holy, etc. Or, secondly, we want to reveal nothing else but the myth itself, the very essence of the mythical consciousness, and - then the myth is always and necessarily a reality, concreteness, vitality and for thought - a complete and absolute necessity, non-fantastic, non-fictitious. Too often, mythologists have liked to talk about themselves, that is, about their own worldview, so that we also go the same way. We are interested in the myth, and not this or that era in the development of scientific consciousness. But from this side, it is not at all specific and even simply not typical for a myth that it is a fiction. It is not an invention, but contains the strictest and most definite structure and is logically, i.e., first of all, a dialectically necessary category of consciousness and being in general.

II. MYTH IS NOT AN IDEAL BEING

By ideal being, let us now agree to understand not being better, more perfect and sublime than ordinary being, but simply semantic being. Every thing has its meaning, not from the point of view of purpose, but from the point of view of essential significance.
Thus, a house is a structure designed to protect a person from atmospheric phenomena; a lamp is a device that serves to illuminate, etc. It is clear that the meaning of a thing is not the thing itself; he is the abstract concept of a thing, the abstract idea of a thing, the mental significance of a thing. Is there a myth such an abstract-ideal being? Certainly, not in any sense. Myth is not a work or an object pure thought. Pure, abstract thought is the least involved in the creation of a myth. Wundt has already shown well that myth is based on an affective root, since it is always the expression of certain vital and vital needs and aspirations. The least intellectual effort is needed to create a myth. And again, we are not talking about the theory of myth, but about the myth itself as such. From the point of view of one theory or another, one can speak about the mental work of the subject creating a myth, about its relation to other mental factors of myth formation, even about its prevalence over other factors, etc. But, arguing immanently, mythical consciousness is least of all intellectual and thought-ideal consciousness. Homer (Od. XI, 145 ff.) depicts how Odysseus descends into Hades and revives the souls living there for a short time blood. There is a well-known custom of twinning through mixing blood from pricked fingers or the custom of sprinkling the blood of a newborn baby, as well as the use of the blood of a murdered leader, etc. Let us ask ourselves: is it really some kind of mentally ideal construction of the concept of blood that makes these representatives of the mythical consciousness treat blood in this way? And is the myth about the action of blood really just an abstract construction of one or the other? concepts? We must agree that there is just as much thought here as in relation to, for example, the color red, which, as you know, is capable of infuriating many animals. When some savages paint a dead man or smear their faces with red paint before a battle, it is clear that not an abstract thought about the color red is at work here, but some other, much more intense, almost affective consciousness, bordering on magical forms. It would be completely unscientific if we were to interpret the mythical image of the Gorgon, with bared teeth and wildly bulging eyes - this is the embodiment of the very horror and wild, dazzlingly cruel, cold-gloomy obsession - as the result of the abstract work of thinkers who decided to make a separation of the ideal and real, discard everything real and concentrate on the analysis of the logical details of the ideal being. Despite all the absurdity and complete fantasy of such a construction, it constantly takes place in various "scientific" presentations.
This dominance of abstract thought is especially noticeable in the assessment of the most ordinary, everyday psychological categories. Translating integral mythical images into the language of their abstract meaning, they understand integral mythical-psychological experiences as some kind of ideal essence, not paying attention to the infinite complexity and inconsistency of real experience, which, as we will see later, is always mythical. Thus, the feeling of resentment, which is revealed purely verbally in our psychology textbooks, is always interpreted as the opposite of a feeling of pleasure. How conventional and incorrect such a psychology, far from the mythism of living human consciousness, could be shown by a mass of examples. Many, for example, love take offense. In these cases, I always remember F. Karamazov: “Exactly, it is pleasant to be offended. You said it so well that I haven't heard it yet. Precisely, it was I who, all my life, was offended to the point of pleasantness, for the sake of aesthetics I was offended, for it is not only pleasant, but also beautiful to be offended sometimes; - that's what you forgot, great old man: beautiful! I will write this in a book! In the abstract-ideal sense, resentment is, of course, something unpleasant. But in life this is not always the case. Quite abstractly (I will give another example) our usual attitude to food. Rather, it is not the relation itself that is abstract (willy-nilly, it is always mythical and concrete), but our lifeless desire to relate to her, spoiled by the prejudices of false science and dull, gray, philistine everyday thought. They think that food is food and that its chemical composition and physiological significance can be found in the relevant scientific manuals. But this is precisely the dominance of abstract thought, which sees bare ideal concepts instead of living food. This is the squalor of thought and the philistinism of life experience. I categorically affirm that the one who eats meat has a very special attitude and worldview, sharply different from those who do not eat it. And about this I could make very detailed and very precise judgments. And the point is not in the chemistry of meat, which, under certain conditions, can be the same as the chemistry of plant substances, but in mythe. Persons who do not distinguish one from the other here operate with ideal (and even then very limited) ideas, and not with living things. It also seems to me that putting on a pink tie or starting to dance for something else would mean changing the worldview, which, as we will see later, always contains mythological features. The costume is great. I was once told a sad story about a hieromonk of a *** monastery. One woman came to him with the sincere intention of confessing. The confession was real, satisfying both sides. Subsequently, the confession was repeated. In the end, confessional conversations turned into love dates, because the confessor and spiritual daughter felt love for each other. After much hesitation and torment, both decided to marry. However, one circumstance turned out to be fatal. Hieromonk, having cut his hair, put on a secular costume and shaved off his beard, one day appeared to his future wife with a message about his final exit from the monastery. She suddenly met him for some reason very coldly and unhappily, despite a long passionate expectation. For a long time she could not answer the relevant questions, but later the answer came out in a form that was terrifying for her: “I don’t need you in a secular form.” No exhortations could help, and the unfortunate hieromonk hanged himself at the gates of his monastery. After that, only an abnormal person can consider that our costume is not mythical and that there is only some kind of abstract, ideal concept, which is indifferent to whether it is realized or not and how it is realized.
I will not multiply examples (a sufficient number of them will be encountered in the future), but it is already clear even now that where there is even a weak inclination of a mythological attitude to a thing, in no case can the matter be limited to ideal concepts alone. Myth is not an ideal concept, and neither is it an idea or a concept. It is life itself. For the mythical subject, this is real life, with all its hopes and fears, expectations and despair, with all its real everyday life and purely personal interest. Myth is not an ideal being, but - vitally felt and created, material reality and bodily, to animality bodily reality.

III. MYTH IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC AND, IN PARTICULAR, A PRIMITIVE SCIENTIFIC CONSTRUCTION

1. Certain mythology and certain science may overlap, but fundamentally they are never identical.

The previous doctrine of the ideality of myth is especially pronounced in the understanding of mythology. as primitive science. The majority of scholars, led by Kant, Spencer, even Taylor, think of myth in this way, and in this way fundamentally distort the whole true nature of mythology. The scientific attitude to myth, as one of the types of abstract relationship, suggests isolated intelligent function. You have to observe and memorize a lot, analyze and synthesize a lot, very carefully separate the essential from the non-essential, in order to finally get at least some elementary scientific generalization. Science in this sense is extremely troublesome and full of fuss. In the chaos and confusion of empirically confused, flowing things, one must catch an ideal-numerical, mathematical regularity, which, although it controls this chaos, is itself not chaos, but an ideal, logical structure and order (otherwise the first touch on empirical chaos would be is tantamount to the creation of the science of mathematical natural science). And so, despite all the abstract logic of science, almost everyone is naively convinced that mythology and primitive science are one and the same. How to deal with these old prejudices? Myth is always extremely practical, urgent, always emotional, affective, vital. And yet they think that this is the beginning of science. No one will argue that mythology (this or that, Indian, Egyptian, Greek) is a science in general, that is, modern science (if we keep in mind all the complexity of its calculations, tools and equipment). But if a developed mythology is not a developed science, then how can a developed or undeveloped mythology be an undeveloped science? If two organisms are completely dissimilar in their developed and finished form, then how can their embryos not be fundamentally different? From the fact that we take the scientific need here in a small form, it by no means follows that it is no longer a scientific need. Primitive science, no matter how primitive it may be, is still somehow the science, otherwise it will not enter the general context of the history of science at all and, consequently, it will not be possible to consider it and primeval science. Or is primitive science precisely science, in which case it is by no means mythology; or primitive science is mythology—then, not being a science at all, how can it be primeval science? In primitive science, despite all its primitiveness, there is a certain sum of quite definite aspirations of consciousness that actively do not want to be mythology, which essentially and fundamentally supplement mythology and do little to meet the real needs of the latter. The myth is saturated with emotions and real life experiences; for example, he personifies, idolizes, honors or hates, malices. Can there be such a science? Primitive science, of course, is also emotional, naively spontaneous, and in this sense quite mythological. But this just shows that if mythology belonged to its essence, then science would not have received any independent historical development and its history would have been the history of mythology. This means that in primitive science mythology is not a "substance", but an "accident"; and this mythology characterizes only its state at the moment, and not science in itself. Mythical consciousness is completely direct and naive, generally understandable; scientific consciousness necessarily has an inferential, logical character; it is not immediate, difficult to assimilate, requires long learning and abstract skills. A myth is always synthetically vital and consists of living personalities whose fate is illuminated emotionally and intimately perceptually; science always turns life into a formula, giving instead of living personalities their abstract schemes and formulas; and realism, the objectivism of science, does not consist in a colorful depiction of life, but in the correct correspondence of an abstract law and formula with the empirical fluidity of phenomena, beyond any picturesqueness, picturesqueness or emotionality. The latter properties would forever turn science into a miserable and uninteresting appendage of mythology. Therefore, it must be assumed that already at the primitive stage of its development, science has nothing in common with mythology, although, due to the historical situation, there is both mythologically colored science and scientifically conscious or at least primitively scientifically interpreted mythology. How does the presence of a “white man” prove nothing on the subject that “man” and “whiteness” are one and the same, and how, on the contrary, proves precisely that “man” (as such) has nothing to do with “whiteness” (as such) - for otherwise the "white man" would be a tautology - so between mythology and primitive science there is an "accidental", but by no means "substantial" identity.

2. Science is not born from myth, but science is always mythological

In this regard, I categorically protest against the second pseudoscientific prejudice, which leads to the assertion that mythology precedes science, What science comes from myth that some historical epochs, especially those of our time, are completely uncharacteristic of a mythical consciousness, that science defeats myth.
First of all, what does it mean that mythology precedes science? If this means that myth is easier to perceive, that it is more naive and direct than science, then there is absolutely no need to argue about this. It is also difficult to argue that mythology provides science with the initial material on which it will subsequently produce its abstractions and from which it must derive its laws. But if this statement has the meaning that at first there is a mythology Then science, it requires complete rejection and criticism.
Namely, secondly, if we take real science, i.e., science actually created by living people in a certain historical epoch, then such a science is definitely not only accompanied by mythology, but actually feeds on it, drawing from it its initial intuitions..
Descartes is the founder of new European rationalism and mechanism, and therefore, positivism. Not the pitiful salon chatter of the materialists of the eighteenth century, but, of course, Descartes is the true founder of philosophical positivism. And it turns out that under this positivism lies its own specific mythology. Descartes begins his philosophy with universal doubt. Even with regard to God, he doubts whether He is also a deceiver. And where does he find support for his philosophy, his already undoubted base? He finds it in "I", in the subject, in thinking, in consciousness, in "ego", in "cogito". Why is it so? Why are things less real? Why is God less real, about whom Descartes himself says that this is the clearest and most obvious, the simplest idea? Why not something else? Just because such is his own unconscious creed, such is his own mythology, is generally individualistic and subjectivistic mythology underlying the new European culture and philosophy. Descartes is a mythologist, despite all his rationalism, mechanism and positivism. Moreover, these last features of him can only be explained by his mythology; they only feed on it.
Another example. Kant quite correctly teaches that in order to cognize spatial things, one must approach them already in possession of representations of space. Indeed, in a thing we find different layers of its concretization: we have its real body, volume, weight, etc., we have its form, idea, meaning. Logically idea, of course, before matter, because at first you have an idea and Then do it on one material or another. Meaning precedes appearance. From this completely primitive and completely correct attitude, Plato and Hegel concluded that the meaning, the concept - objective, what in objective world order are woven into an inseparable real connection logically different moments of ideas and things. What does Kant now deduce from this? Kant derives from this his doctrine of

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