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Title: Nihilism Author: Voline Date: 1925 — 1934 Language: en Topics: Anarchist Encyclopedia, nihilism Source: Retrieved on March 1, 2011 from http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-entries-from-anarchist-encyclopedia.html
NIHILISM n. m. (from Latin nihil, nothing)
A deeply rooted and widely spread misunderstanding is closely linked to
this word born, 75 years ago, in the Russian literature and passed
without being translated (thanks to its Latin origin), into other
languages.
In France, in Germany, in England and elsewhere, one usually understands
by “nihilism” a current of ideas — or even a system — revolutionary and
social politics, invented in Russia, having there (or having had)
numerous organized partisans. We routinely speak of a “nihilist party”
and of “the nihilists,” its members. All this is false. It is time to
correct that error, at least for the readers of the Anarchist
Encyclopedia.
The term nihilism has been introduced into the Russian literature — and
thus into the language — by the famous novelist Ivan Turgenev
(1818–1883), towards the middle of the last century. In one of his
novels, notably, Turgenev described in this way a current of ideas that
had arisen among Russian intellectuals in the late 1850s. The word was a
success and rapidly entered into circulation.
This current of ideas had above all a philosophical and moral character.
Its field of influence always remained very small, having never extended
beyond the intellectual stratum. Its style was always personal and
peaceful, but that did not prevent it, however, from being very lively,
imbued with a great breath of individual revolt and guided by a dream of
happiness for all mankind. The movement it had provoked, contented
itself with the literary domain and especially that of morals. But in
these two areas, the movement did not shrink before the last logical
conclusions, that it not only formulated, but sought to apply
individually, as a rule of conduct.
Within these limits, the movement opened the way to a very progressive
and independent moral and intellectual evolution: an evolution that, for
example, brought the entire Russian intellectual youth to extremely
advanced general concepts and resulted in, among others things, the
emancipation of cultured women, of which the Russia of the late
nineteenth century could rightly be proud. It is necessary to add that
this current of ideas, while being strictly moral and individual, was
nevertheless in itself, thanks to its largely human and emancipatory
spirit, the seed of future social ideas: conceptions that succeeded it
and later resulted in a vast political and social action, with which,
precisely, this school of thought is confused today outside of Russia.
Indirectly, “nihilism” prepared the terrain for the movements and
political organizations of a markedly social and revolutionary sort,
that appeared later under the influence of ideas prevalent in Europe and
of external and internal events. The misunderstanding is, precisely, in
that we confuse, under the name of “nihilism”, the revolutionary
movement later led and represented by organized groups or parties having
an agenda and a purpose, with a single stream of ideas which preceded
and to which alone the word “nihilism” should be attributed.
As a philosophical and moral conception, nihilism had for bases: on the
one hand, materialism, and, on the other hand, individualism, both
pushed to the extremes.
Force and Matter, the famous work of BĂĽchner (German materialist
philosopher, 1824–1899) appeared in that era, was translated into
Russian, lithographed clandestinely and distributed, despite the risks,
with a very great success, in thousands of copies. That book became the
veritable gospel of the young Russian intellectuals from then on. The
works of Moleschott, Ch. Darwin and several other foreign naturalists
and materialists, exercised and equally great influence. Materialism was
accepted as an incontestable, absolute truth.
As materialists, the “nihilists” waged a relentless war against religion
and against everything that was beyond pure, positive reason; against
everything found to be outside material and immediately useful reality;
against everything that belonged to the spiritual, sentimental, idealist
domain. They despised beauty, the aesthetic, sentimental love, the art
of dressing, of pleasing, etc ... In this vein, they went so far as to
completely disown art as an expression of idealism. Their great
ideologist, the brilliant publicist Pisarev (who died accidentally in
his youth), launched, in one of his articles, his famous example, saying
that a simple shoemaker was infinitely more to be esteemed and admired
than Raphael, because the first produced material and useful objects,
while the works of the second served no purpose. The same Pisarev tried
desperately, in his writings, to dethrone, from the materialist and
utilitarian point of view, the great poet Pushkin. “Nature is not a
temple, but a laboratory, and man is there to work,” said the nihilist
Bazarov in the novel of Turgenev. (In speaking of a “fierce war” waged
by the nihilists, we must understand by this a literary and verbal
“war,” and nothing more. For, as I already said, “nihilism” limited its
activity to the propaganda of its ideas in a few reviews and some
intellectual circles. This propaganda was already difficult enough, for
it had to reckon with the tsarist censorship and police that cracked
down on “foreign heresies” and every independent thought).
But the true basis of “nihilism” was a sort of characteristic
individualism. Risen, first, as a normal reaction against all that,
especially in Russia, crush free and individual thought, its bearer,
this individualism ended by renouncing, in the name of an absolute
individual liberty, all the constraints, all the shackles, obligations
and traditions imposed on individuals by the family, society, customs,
mores, beliefs, etc... Complete emancipation of the individual, man or
woman, from all that could attack its independence or the liberty of its
thought: such was the fundamental idea of “nihilism.” It defended the
sacred right of the individual to complete liberty, and the inviolable
privacy of existence
The reader will easily understand why this current of ideas has been
called “nihilism.” We mean by this that the partisans of that ideology
admit nothing (nihil) of that which was natural and sacred for others
(family, society, religion, art, traditions, etc ... ) To the question
that one posed to such a man: — what do you accept, what do you approve
of all that is around you and claims to have the right or even the
obligation to exert over you some influence? — The man responded:
nothing — “nihil.” He was thus a “nihilist.”
Despite its essentially individual, philosophical and moral character
(let us not forget that it defended individual liberty, equally, in an
abstract, philosophical and moral fashion, and not against concrete
political or social despotism), nihilism, as I have said, prepared the
terrain for the struggle against the real and immediate obstacle, the
struggle for political and social emancipation.
But it did not itself undertake that struggle. It did not even pose the
question: what is to be done to genuinely liberate the individual? It
remained, to the end, in the domain of purely ideological discussions
and purely moral accomplishments. That other question, — which is to
say, the problem of real action, of a practical struggle for
emancipation, — was posed by the following generation, in the years
1870–80. It was then that the first revolutionary and socialist parties
were formed in Russia. The real action commenced. But it no longer had
anything in common with the old “nihilism” of the past. And the word
itself remained, in the Russian language, as a purely historical terms,
the trace of a movement of ideas in the years 1860–70.
The fact that those in foreign countries have the habit of understanding
by “nihilism” the entire Russian revolutionary movement prior to
bolshevism, and speak of a “nihilist party,” is only a historical error
due to the ignorance of the true history of the revolutionary movements
in Russia.