Thoughts on Eros

Author: (Russian) V. Solovyov et al. (authors), Zhao Yongmu et al. (translators)
Translator: Zhao Yongmu, Jiang Zhongjing
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Publication Date: 1998-12-01
Features: A very demanding, internal, and thorough kind of union, but it usually does not go beyond this subjective requirement and desire, and this union is also only temporary. What actually happens is not the eternal, inner union of that poetic realm, but rather the somewhat continuous, albeit still temporary, closeness of two limited individuals within the narrow confines of ordinary life; somewhat intimate, but still external and superficial. The object of love cannot retain the absolute significance given to him by the fantasy of love in reality. To the onlooker, this is unmistakable from the very beginning. However, the involuntary, faint mockery that arises with others' attitude toward a couple of lovers is a forewarning of their own disappointment. The passion of love fades quickly or slowly; if the energy of its altruistic emotions is not wasted but merely shifts from its original focus and peak to the repetition of this deception in the children born and raised for this purpose, that is still good. I say "deception" with the focus on the absolute value of individual life and human personality, but fully acknowledge that childbirth and generational succession are necessary and reasonable for the progress of human collective life. But this has nothing to do with love itself. The coincidence of passionate love with successful procreation is only a matter of chance, and a rather rare one at that. Historical and everyday experience undoubtedly proves that even if the parents never loved each other, children can still be born, receiving the parents' ardent love and excellent education. Therefore, the social and world interests associated with generational succession do not require the high passion of love at all. Moreover, in individual life, this outburst of love is often a sterile flower. When the object of love falls from the absolute center of eternal individuality to an accidental and replaceable tool for producing the next generation—perhaps slightly better or slightly worse than the older generation, but ultimately a relative and fleeting one—the original power of love loses all its meaning. True love is first and foremost based on faith. The fundamental meaning of love, as already mentioned, lies in recognizing that another person has absolute significance. However, in one's own experience, as part of the real sensory perception, this person does not have absolute significance because he is incomplete in character and transient in existence. Therefore, we can only affirm that he has absolute significance through faith as the information of what is expected and the revelation of the unseen. So, what exactly is this faith? What does it mean to believe that a particular individual has an absolute, and thus infinite, significance? To claim that this individual, as a separate, individual existence, inherently possesses absolute significance is as absurd as blasphemy. Of course, in the realm of love relationships, the phrase "worship as a god" is quite commonly used, but the word "madness" is equally widely used. Therefore, if we follow the logical principle that prohibits mixing contradictory concepts and the true religious prohibition against idolatry, we should understand the faith in the object of love as affirming that this object exists in God and thus has absolute significance. It goes without saying that this transcendent attitude toward the other self, the premise of placing him in the category of divinity in thought, requires adopting the same attitude toward oneself and placing oneself in the absolute category. To recognize that someone has absolute significance or to have faith in him (without this, true love is impossible), I must affirm that he exists in God, thereby having faith in God itself and in the center and source of my own existence in God. This trinitarian faith is an internal activity that lays the foundation for the true recombination of one person with his other self and for the restoration of the trinitarian image of God within him (or them). In the real conditions of time and place, the act of faith is prayer (in its basic sense, not technical sense). To unite oneself and the other person inseparably in this regard is the first step toward true union. This step itself is not very great, but without it, no greater steps can be taken. The greatness, mystery, and passion of love lie in the fact that for those who fall in love, life and death are equal—for their own lives and those of others. Love is powerful and terrible because of this. Before it, all voices fall silent, except for a voice that is capable of subjugating, this voice with its extraordinary brilliance blinding one to sight, changing the heart, changing people, changing things—valuable things become worthless, and worthless things become a boundless realm of abundance, people become divine, yet also beasts, entering a world beyond human, with souls surging. Enraptured, radiant, the passionate soul burns, cries, sees life for the first time, sees everything for the first time—loving the flesh as the angels once loved the daughters of the earth. The angels abandoned heaven for the earth, thereby uniting the verdant earth with the blue ether in which all things were born. They split the world in two, and thus we live between two mirrors. The multitude of reflections fills us with fear. We tremble, are at a loss, and sink into the depths of the mirror. But we have love, we are in love, and thus we perform deeds for love, we commit crimes for love, for a moment of love, we can create life, and we can trample life. This is love. Weininger believed that both men and women are mixtures of two elements (the masculine element and the feminine element), and in his view, these elements constitute the metaphysical essence. If so, then it is not the woman who determines womanhood, but rather the woman herself is determined by womanhood. Moreover, the feminine (woman) in Weininger's writing is a postulate, and nothing more than a postulate. This puts him in a precarious position. If his postulate is derived from the attributes of real women, then Weininger must submit to the anatomy and physiology of women; and Weininger's knowledge of anatomy and physiology is highly questionable, therefore his conclusions about women are equally suspect. If "femininity" is a metaphysical essence, then its must be revealed. This metaphysical revelation we see in Schelling ("Cosmic Soul"), Solovyov, the Neoplatonists, the Gnostics, and many others; they revealed the mystical premises of metaphysics itself. In this way, Weininger's conclusions, based on the properties of the "feminine" element, which he himself did not fully understand, are fundamentally not conclusions at all. However, Weininger is neither a thorough physiologist nor a thorough mystic. He has only one path: to forget his claim that the feminine element cannot be associated with real women; he can only replace the feminine element revealed in women with a physiological woman. But according to his own words, such a woman is not merely a woman. Therefore, his conclusions that merely concern women do not concern such women alone, more accurately, these conclusions do not concern women at all. Thus, these conclusions lose their value, and consequently, his negative view of women also loses its value, which, from the perspective of a short story, seems reasonable—nothing more. In any conversation, we can defend any idea, and the sophist is well aware of this when he talks to an ordinary person. Wilde could not prove the complete opposite of anything! The brilliance of such proofs lies in telling them in a unique way, not in their objective value. Weininger is clever, and very clever—we do not doubt this; therefore, we should oppose the abuse of cleverness. Weininger is obsessed with the art of his evidence, yet many people take this art for granted as truth. Weininger appeals to biological data, yet his attitude toward women cannot be proven correct through biology. Weininger claims to uphold neo-Kantianism, but his method of presenting the topic has a bad taste of pre-Kantian metaphysics. Weininger explains the problem of sexuality in a metaphysical way, yet he has not found a metaphysical basis for his denial of women; the examples he cites need to be verified. One can only imagine that he harbors a completely irrational hatred for women. But while Weininger accepts mystical views, he directly contradicts the views of some outstanding mystics who, from the very beginning, infused the divine with feminine elements. However, even if we hold Weininger's own views, we can raise many objections against him. This is not the place to elaborate on these objections. I only want to point out that the view of women as uncreative beings is not subject to criticism. Women have created men not only through physiological reproduction; they have also created men by nurturing their spirits. Women have made the creativity of geniuses highly active; let us recall the immense role women played in the development of the genius of Goethe, Byron, and Dante. Vronsky cannot understand how such a resolute and upright person can tolerate deception without wanting to escape; but he did not expect that the main reason is that she does not say the word "son." The moment she thinks of her son, of the relationship he will have with his mother, who abandoned him, she is filled with terror at everything she has done and at her inability to judge right and wrong. As a woman, she can only comfort herself with fallacies and lies, in order to maintain everything as it is and forget the terrible question of what will happen to her son. "I beg you, I implore you, never talk to me about this!" "But Anna," "Never mention it. Let me handle it myself. I know how wretched and terrible my situation is. But it is not as easy to solve as you think!" Indeed, it is not as easy to solve as people think. To leave her husband? To forget the past and start a new life? Yet—Seryozha's eyes are exactly like his father's; she dares not look at them, nor does she dare to think of them. No matter where she goes, she cannot escape these eyes; she will be destroyed by them. She cannot but remain her husband's wife forever, because she cannot but remain her son's mother. This is a bond of flesh and blood, a "union of soul and flesh," and to sever it means to sever the very lifeline. Indeed, by severing this bond, she also destroys herself. There is another path: to sacrifice her mad desire for flesh for her motherhood, to sacrifice her body for her soul, because the soul is noble, and the body is guilty, because the spiritual Anna is sincere, and the physical Anna is hypocritical, not "true." Herself, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and all the readers of the novel, as well as the daylight Christian culture of two thousand years, from the desert saved by the Virgin Mary to the desert where the hermits of Yasnaia Polyana call people forward—hold this view. Anna abandoned this only path and was destroyed, punished by the law of God: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." This is the daytime, public thought that is understood and accepted by everyone in the work. But is it really the case? Is it the only and deepest thought of the author of this book? No, in Anna Karenina and in all of Tolstoy's works, as Zarathustra would say, "The night is profound, and deeper than the daytime thinks." Besides this daytime, public thought, there is another mysterious, unconscious, nighttime thought in the writer himself. To measure its full depth, one must examine the other, "untrue," seemingly "non-Christian" self in Anna. What kind of self is this? Where does it come from, and where is it going? The main point is, how does this second self regard the true, seemingly Christian self?