コンスタンチン・レオンチエフとロシア文化の独自性論 : 19世紀後半ロシアにおける耽美主義と政治的反動思想の結合の一形態

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The wave of Leontev renaissance in Russia since Perestroika is a very interesting phenomena. Some scholars look up to Leontev as a prophet and foreseer who showed with keen insight the "Russian way" for his descendants lost in the whirlpool of epochal system change. This article rejects such an estimation of Leontev, but tries to analyze his view on cultural pluralism and the idea of cultural uniqueness of Russia. Leontev's thought of cultural pluralism was closely related with his characteristic aesthetricism He defined beauty as "diversity in unity." What matters for beauty is not the inner idea but the outer diversity and variety. In order to be beautiful, any being should contain different and unequal components. Leontev disliked most of all an aggregate of standardized and equal things. A culture should include different and unequal things; and the world should consist of different shapes of culture. In his discourse on the cycle of cultural development which foreruns Spengler's thought on stages (birth, growth, illness and death) of culture. Leontev insisted that a culture passes through three stages of development: In the first stage things are not differentiated and all the same; in the second and developed stage things become differentiated and unequal; the third stage is that of second simplification when all things show the same and standardized shapes again as when things are decaying and dying. Leontev identified equality with sameness and standardization. Thus a society where the principles of equality and democracy rule was in his view in the state of degeneration and decay. Traditional societies with non-egalitarian estate system were much healthier and more beautiful than an egalitarian democratic society. With its equalized mediocre petit-bourgeois style of life and gray industrial cities Western Europe was just in such a state, whereas Russia was keeping the traditional estate system including serfdom and presented a more beautiful type of society with colorful and various shapes of human life. In order to keep the beauty of Russian culture Leontev rejected democratization and reforms of Russian society and wanted to "freeze the society" so that his country could maintain autocracy and the estate system. Leontev thus insisted most stubbornly the necessity to preserve the cultural originality and uniqueness of a society. He contrasted the Russian culture to that of Western Europe in behalf of the former. In this sense he stood near to Muscovite Slavophiles of the 1840s and Pan-Slavists like Danilevsky. For Leontev however the blood tie of the Slavic peoples was not important. What mattered was a cultural tie. According to him the Russian culture was built on Byzantinism characterized by 1) autocracy, 2) Orthodoxy and 3) renunciation of secular utopianism. Thus Leontev had a special feeling of solidarity for the Orthodox Christians and emphasized the importance of the unity of all Orthodox. Hence his negative reaction to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church which strived for and gained independence from the Constantinople Patriarchate ( Greek Church). He saw in it the religious disunity of Orthodox Christians. In this context he wished that Russia would seize and own Constantinople (Istanbul). According to Leontev it would mean "the unity of political Russia and ecclesiastical Greece." This would enable the church unity of all Orthodox and the victory of the Eastern Church over the Western. This was for him the historical mission of Russia. Though he disliked political nationalism on the ground that it was a form of egalitarianism and liberalism, his wish for seize of Constantinople made no difference from the political nationalism of Pan-Slavism type. Thus a champion of the cultural independence of Russia became-though only in a limited sense-an advocate of aggressive expansionism. It was nonetheless beyond doubt that Leontev had no intention to convert believers of other religions to Orthodoxy by force. His cultural pluralism was also applied to religion. Every religion had its own merit and its own raison-d'etre. Leontev was in every sense diametrically opposed to modernism. Modernist uniformity was the core of the Western culture he feared. In a sense his thoughts remind of postmodernism. Both are opposed to dominance of all-controlling reason and standardization, make much of "difference" instead of uniformity, and have much to do with aesthetics. Is Leontev a forerunner of postmodernism? Postmodernism is not a unitary single system of idea. There are many streams of postmodernist thought and on some points (especially in sociopolitical matters) a stream is strongly opposed to another. But postmodernism is anyway a phenomenon which appeared after modernism. It does not deny all the elements or experiences of modern world and modernism. One cannot imagine that a postmodernist thinker could advocate a strict political hierarchy of social groups and insist on preservation of inequality for preservation of differences. In postmodernism differences between individuals weigh much, whereas differences in Leontev's thought had meaning when they are differences of a group from other groups. For him inner side of individuals had no meaning. What mattered was the outer scenery which was made out of mosaics of varieties. There could be no place for a democratic solidarity of different individuals within a society to say nothing of international solidarity. As a system of thought which wanted to transcend the narrow boundary of bourgeois routine, Leontev's aestheticism and anti-egalitarianism maybe could find (if any) some common elements with postmodernism of most conservative type. In general Leontev's thought ran to be vindication of cultural originality for originality's sake. When Leontev should be rediscovered and re-estimated, it could have meaning only in the field of aesthetics. In political and social level Leontev's reactionary thought should be treated more carefully and with reservation.
ロシア史研究会の論文
2004-11-10

コンスタンチン・レオンチエフとロシア文化の独自性論 : 19世紀後半ロシアにおける耽美主義と政治的反動思想の結合の一形態

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