Materialism Destroys the
Eternal Spirit
Excerpted from the writings of Nicholas Berdyaev, The Bourgeois Mind, Freedom and Spirit
and The Meaning of History.
Civilization is by its nature "bourgeois" in the deepest
spiritual sense of the word. "Bourgeois" is synonymous precisely with
the civilized kingdom of this world and the civilized will to organized power
and enjoyment of life. The spirit of civilization is that of the middle
classes, it is attached and clings to corrupt and transitory things, and it
fears eternity. To be a bourgeois is therefore to be a slave of matter and an
enemy of eternity. The perfected European and American civilizations gave rise
to the industrial-capitalist system, which represents not only a mighty
economic development but the spiritual phenomenon of the annihilation of
spirituality. The industrial Capitalism of civilization proved to be the
destroyer of the eternal spirit and the sacred traditions. Modern capitalist
civilization is essentially atheistic and hostile to the idea of God. The crime
of killing God must be laid at its door rather than at that of revolutionary
Socialism, which merely adapted itself to the civilized "bourgeois"
spirit and accepted its negative heritage.
Industrial-capitalist civilization, it is true, did not altogether
repudiate religion: it was prepared to admit its pragmatical
utility and necessity. Thus religion, which had found a symbolic expression in
culture, became pragmatical in civilization. It
could, indeed, prove useful and practical in the organization and fostering of
life. Civilization is by its nature pragmatical. The
popularity of pragmatism in
The capitalist system is sowing the seeds of its own destruction by
sapping the spiritual foundation of man's economic life. Labour
loses all spiritual purpose and justification and, as a result, brings an
indictment against the whole system.
Civilization is powerless to realize its dream of everlasting
aggrandizement. The
The Technological Society
The triumphant advent of the machine opened a new era in which life
loses its organic character and natural rhythm; man is separated from nature by
an artificial environment of machines, by the very instruments of his intended
domination of nature. As a reaction against his mediaeval ascetic ideal, man
puts aside both resignation and contemplation, and attempts to dominate nature,
organize life and increase its productive forces. This, however, does not help
to bring him into closer communion with the inner life and soul of nature. On
the contrary, by mastering it technically and organizing its forces man becomes
further removed from it. Organization proves to be the death of the organism.
Life becomes increasingly a matter of technique. The machine sets its stamp
upon the human spirit and all its manifestations. Thus civilization has neither
a natural nor a spiritual, but a mechanical foundation. It represents par
excellence the triumph of technique over both the spirit and organism.
The machine and technique are the product of the mental development and
discoveries of culture; but they sap its organic foundations and kill its
spirit. Culture, having lost its soul, becomes civilization. Spiritual matters
are discounted; quantity displaces quality. The assertion of the will to
"life," power, organization and earthly happiness, brings about
mankind's spiritual decline; for the higher spiritual life is based upon
asceticism and resignation. Such are the tragedy and fate of historical
destinies.
Civilization as opposed to culture, which is given up to the
contemplation of eternity, tends to be futurist. Machinery and technique are
chiefly responsible for the speeding up of life and its exclusive aspiration
towards the future. Organic life is slower, less impetuous, and more concerned
with essentials, while civilized life is superficial and accidental; for it
puts the means and instruments of life before the ends whose significance is
lost. The consciousness of civilized men is concentrated exclusively upon the
means and technique of life considered as the only reality, while its aims are
regarded as illusory.
Technique, organization and the productive processes are a reality while
spiritual culture is unreal, a mere instrument of technique. The relation
between end and means is reversed and perverted.
This loss of any sense of purpose is the death of a culture. The only
real way to culture lies through religious transformation.
The Meaning of History
It is not an exaggeration to say that for many people the doctrine of
progress was a religion, that the religion of progress in the nineteenth
century was professed by many who had fallen away from Christianity. An
analysis of this idea of progress, with special reference to its religious
pretensions, will reveal the fundamental contradiction that it involved.
The doctrine of progress is first and foremost an entirely illegitimate
deification of the future at the expense of past and present, in a way that has
not the slightest scientific, philosophical or moral justification. The
doctrine of progress is bound to be a religious faith, since there can be no
positive science of progress.
The nineteenth-century positivist doctrines of progress deliberately
stifled and suppressed the religious element in this belief and hope. The
theoreticians of progress opposed their faith and expectations to the religious
type of these dispositions. But what is left of the idea of progress, once it
has been emptied of its religious content? How can such a mutilated idea be
inwardly accepted?
In the light of the positivist doctrine of progress every human
generation, every individual, every epoch of history, are but the means and
instrument to an ultimate goal of perfection, this ultimate humanity perfect in
that power and happiness which are denied to the present generation. Both from
the religious and ethical points of view this positivist conception of progress
is inadmissible, because by its very nature it excludes a solution to the
tragic torments, conflicts and contradictions of life valid for all mankind,
for all those generations who have lived and suffered. For it deliberately
asserts that nothing but death and the grave awaits the vast majority of
mankind and the endless succession of human generations throughout the ages,
because they have lived in a tortured and imperfect state torn asunder by
contradictions. But somewhere on the peaks of historical destiny, on the ruins
of preceding generations, there shall appear the fortunate race of men reserved
for the bliss and perfection of integral life. All the generations that have
gone before are but the means to this blessed life, to this blissful generation
of the elect as yet unborn. Thus the religion of progress regards all the
generations and epochs that have been as devoid of intrinsic value, purpose or
significance, as the mere means and instruments to the ultimate goal.
It is this fundamental moral contradiction that invalidates the doctrine
of progress, turning it into a religion of death instead of resurrection and
eternal life. There is no valid ground for degrading those generations whose
lot has been cast among pain and imperfection beneath that whose
pre-eminence has been ordained in blessedness and joy. No future perfection can
expiate the sufferings of past generations. Such a sacrifice of all human
destinies to the messianic consummation of the favoured
race can only revolt man's moral and religious conscience. A religion of
progress based on this apotheosis of a future fortunate generation is without
compassion for either present or past; it addresses itself with infinite
optimism to the future, with infinite pessimism to the past. It is profoundly
hostile to the Christian expectation of resurrection for all mankind, for all
the dead, fathers and forefathers. This Christian idea rests on the hope of an
end to historical tragedy and contradiction valid for all human generations,
and of resurrection in eternal life for all who have ever lived.
One of the most obvious objections to the theory of progress is the
discovery of a great culture like that of Babylon, which flourished three
thousand years before Christ and attained a pitch of perfection in many
respects superior to anything of which the twentieth century is capable. Yet it
died and vanished almost without leaving a trace.
Our habit of breaking up time into the past, present and future does not
entitle us to endow the last with more reality than the first. From the
standpoint of the present, the future is no richer in reality than the past,
and our efforts should be with reference, not to the future, but to that
eternal present of which both future and past are one.
In a sense it may even be argued that the past is more real than the future, that those who have departed from us are more real
than those who have not yet been born.
History is in truth the path to another world. It is in this sense that
its content is religious. But the perfect state is impossible within history
itself; it can only be realized outside its framework. This is the fundamental
conclusion of the metaphysics of history and the secret of the historical
process itself. In its perpetual transition from one epoch to another, mankind
struggles in vain to resolve its destiny within history. Disappointed in its
expectations, feeling itself imprisoned within the circle of history, it
realizes that its problem cannot be solved within the process of history
itself, but only on a transcendental plane. The problem of history is
determined by the nature of time. To solve it requires an inversion of the
entire historical perspective, a transfer of attention of extra-historical
considerations, to the urge of history towards super-history. We must admit
within the hermitic circle of history the super-historical energy, the
irruption within the relations of terrestrial phenomena of the celestial noumenon--the future Coming of Christ.
Of Celestial History: God
and Man
Before developing our metaphysics of history any further, we must pause
to consider the primal drama and mystery taking place in the inmost depths of
being. What is the nature of this drama? It is that of the mutual relations
between God and man. But in what form are we to conceive it? I believe that
this primal drama and mystery of Christianity consist in the genesis of God in
man and of man in God. This mystery, is, indeed,
implicit in the foundations of Christianity. Historical destiny reveals more
particularly the genesis of God in man. This constitutes the central fact of
human and world destiny. But there exists a no less profound mystery,
that of the genesis of man in God, accomplished in the inmost depths of
the divine life. For if there is such a thing as a human longing for God and a
response to it, then there also must be a divine longing for man the genesis of
God in man; a longing for the love and the freely-loving and, in response to
it, the genesis of man in God. A divine movement which brings about the genesis
of God implies the reciprocal movement of man towards God, by which he is generated
and revealed. This constitutes the primal mystery both of the spirit and of
being, and at the same time of Christianity, which in its central fact, in the
Person of Christ, the Son of God, unites two mysteries. In the Image of Christ
is brought about the genesis of God in man and of man in God, and the
perfection of both is manifest. Thus, for the first time, in response to God's
movement and longing, a perfect man is revealed to Him. This mysterious process
occurs in the interior depths of the divine reality itself; it is a sort of
divine history which is reflected in the whole of the outer history of mankind.
History is, indeed, not only the revelation of God, but also the reciprocal
revelation of man in God.
The whole complexity of the historical process can be explained by the
inner interdependence of these two revelations. For history is not only the
plan of the Divine revelation, it is also the reciprocal revelation of man
himself; and that makes history such a terrible and complex tragedy. History
would not be tragic if it were only the revelation of God and its gradual
apprehension. Its drama and tragedy are not only determined in the divine life
itself, but also by the fact that they are based upon the mystery of freedom,
which is not only a divine, but also a human revelation--that longed for by God
in the depths of the divine life. The origin of the world springs from the
freedom willed by God in the beginning. Without His will or longing for freedom
no world process would be possible. In its place there would be a static and
pre-eminently perfect
This freedom, which is absolutely irrational and inapprehensible to
reason, offers a solution of the tragedy of world history. It fulfills not only
God's revelation in man, but also man's in God; for it is the source and origin
of movement, of process, of inner conflict and of inwardly experienced
contradictions. An indissoluble tie exists therefore between freedom and the
metaphysics of history. The concept of freedom elucidates both the divine life
as a tragic destiny and the life of mankind and the world as the history of a
tragic destiny. There would be no history without freedom. It is the
metaphysical basis of history. The revelation of history can be apprehended
only through Christ as perfect man and God, as their perfect union, as the
genesis of God in man and of man in God, and, finally, as God's revelation in
man and the reciprocal revelation of man in God. Christ, the Absolute Man, the
Son of both God and man, stands in the centre of both celestial and terrestrial
history. He is the inner spiritual tie between these two destinies. Without His
help the tie between the world and God, between the plural and the unique,
between the human and the absolute reality, could not exist. In fact, history
owes its existence entirely to the presence of Christ at its very heart. He
represents the deepest mystical and metaphysical foundation and source of
history and of its tragic destiny. Both the divine and the human energy flow
towards and away from Him.
All historical tendencies which have striven to create harmony, to
overcome the dark premise, to subdue the turbulence of freedom and supersede it
by compelled and necesary good,
are concerned only with the secondary signs of the unique and primal mystery of
divine freedom. These tendencies have a wide currency, but they should be
unmasked in the light of Christian consciousness as a temptation always
besetting human destiny. One of the greatest of Christian mysteries, that of
Grace, which lies at the foundation of the Church, symbolizes the transcendent
reconciliation and resolution of the fatal conflict between freedom and
necessity. It achieves a victory over the fatality of both freedom and
necessity, though the word "fatal" here is but an imperfect symbol. It
is the act of Grace which realizes the communion between God and man and offers
a solution of the problem posed by the divine drama. We must, therefore, note
that the principle of Divine Grace is active in the history and destiny of both
world and man together with that of natural necessity. And without it neither
this destiny nor mystery would be fulfilled.