#shestov

Easter destroys the ultimate weapon of tyranny

“The resurrection challenges the power of death on which every system of oppression relies. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is accompanied by an earthquake. It’s a fitting detail, because across history, the resurrection has proved to be profoundly destabilizing. By overthrowing the reign of death, it transformed the world.

As British historian Tom Holland has argued, many of the values taken for granted in the West, including respect for the dignity of the individual, concern for the victim and reverence for human rights have come from Christianity — more specifically, from the Easter story. In the resurrection, a beaten, pierced and bloodied body rose from the dead. Weak and suffering flesh — once regarded with contempt — was shown to have an eternal destiny.

(…)

Tyrants have reason to tremble at the good news of the resurrection. By destroying the power of death, it shatters the fear on which they rely. Of course, as long as the rising of Jesus is explained away as a harmless myth or symbol, no oppressor need concern himself with it. But once people start believing that it really happened, despots begin to lose their grip.

The radical nature of the Easter story was evident in the early days of Christianity. When the witnesses to the resurrection declared that Jesus is Lord, they were not trading in blandly spiritual talk. On the contrary, they were challenging the common view that Caesar, backed up by his massive army, was Lord — which is precisely why so many of the first evangelists ended up in Roman prisons.

“LIV WHAT IS TRUTH?

“Sursum Corda

When Adam and Eve walked in the garden of Eden, could it have occurred to them to ask themselves what meaning life has? And if Adam asked Eve—before the sin, naturally—what the meaning of life is, would not his question have appeared absurd to her? And Hamlet's question, which men have raised so often before and after Shakespeare, would also obviously have been ridiculous in paradise. How can man entertain any doubt about whether to be or not to be? To experience "the best," it is at least necessary somehow to be. For "non-being" there can finally be no qualification, no definition even. But if the habit of reflecting, as Hamlet did, is so strong that these considerations appear insufficient, I shall present you still another. Can you imagine God Himself putting this question, to be or not to be, to Himself? I am prepared to formulate this question once more thus: Is it possible that God should suddenly prefer non-being to being and by His omnipotent word plunge the whole universe and Himself into non-being? If it were possible that non-being appeared to Him preferable to being, everything would have returned to non-being long ago. I should not be putting these questions to you, and you who are listening to me would not exist. God, then, does not once raise this question, but man does. Why? Does he wish to be wiser than God? No, it seems that it is not a question of that. Human reason is not at all as proud as the books say. We shall perhaps become convinced of this if we recall the circumstances under which Hamlet raised the question. As long as his father ruled in peace and his mother followed the path of virtue, it did not even occur to Hamlet to ask himself "to be or not to be." Notice the continuation of the monologue: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them."

Hamlet suddenly lowers his voice an octave. What concerns him is not the general question: "Which is better—to be or not to be?" Had the crime of his uncle and mother not taken place, that crime which shattered Hamlet quite as much as the appearance of his father's ghost, the fatal question would perhaps not even have arisen in his mind. I shall risk going even further. Today on earth, where death rules beside life and where it seems that death has even more rights than life, the question of Hamlet is perfectly possible. Certainly "to be" means for Hamlet to live, not to be to die. But imagine that this happens not on earth but on Olympus, among the gods who were, to be sure, pagan but nevertheless immortal. Could such a question have come to the mind of Jupiter, Apollo, or Mars? Even though they were omniscient, how could they have guessed that "being" has as its correlate "non-being"? Their being is by its very nature such that it does not at all presuppose non-being and cannot be transformed into non-being. Men also, whatever their intellectual capacities may be, could never have arrived by way of logic at the idea of non-being. But if Hamlet and all of us with him, philosophers or not, reflect on non-being, we do this only because empirical reality, which may perhaps be falsifying, shows us the possibility of non-being, which an und für sich may be impossible.

And our so presumptuous reason fell this time, as it had already done hundreds and thousands of times before, into a trap. It took an illusion of the senses that it always despises for its own ideas, and indeed the purest ideas. But do not think that I wish to present to you new proofs for the immortality of the soul. There is no need, I think, of new ones; the old ones suffice. They are even already too much. If it were in my power, I would perhaps forbid speaking of them for the reason, among others, that the habit we have of considering true only what is demonstrated is the most detestable and pernicious of habits. When one searches for proofs in the empirical sciences, this is still very well. In this domain everyone proceeds at least with a reservatio mentalis: since it is proven only empirically it is only a conditioned and relative truth which may be replaced by another relative truth.

Experience teaches us, for example, that the seeds of beets produce beets and that the seeds of cucumbers produce cucumbers. We know this because it has always happened so. One sows beet seeds and beets grow; one sows cucumber seeds and obtains cucumbers. But if everything changed so that from beet seeds suddenly came oranges, bananas, pineapples, calves, or even rhinoceroses, we should at first be very astonished, for this would be contrary to our expectations, but we would have nothing to say against it and would only find ourselves under obligation to note the new order of things, which we would formulate thus: the seeds of beets sometimes produce pineapples, sometimes calves, and sometimes also rhinoceroses. Our descendants in ten or twenty generations, having become accustomed to the new order of things and having adapted themselves to it, will understand it as well as we understand the present order and will even explain it through the influence of climate, soil, the presence of radium, etc. For the fact that a small grain produces an enormous beet is as incomprehensible, despite all the explanations of the botanists, as the birth of a rhinoceros from the same grain. Is it not so?

Here is another example—I am forever concerned with making myself clear. We know that light rays follow a straight line. Consequently, if we place between a source of light and a screen some object that intercepts the rays, a shadow must appear on the screen. But what if light rays become tired of following straight lines and begin to describe curves? We could do nothing but register our new experiences. Why, finally, must light rays always follow a straight line? Why not assume that they are afraid of certain objects and carefully curve around them. It may actually be that light cannot stand "witches" and that in the Middle Ages, when witches still existed, it was easy to recognize them by the sign that they did not cast any shadow.

In general, it must be admitted that the constancy of the phenomenon of nature is a fact that is enigmatic and mysterious to the highest degree. I am even prepared to say that it presents an almost anti-natural character. What great efforts we must expend before bringing any living being to even relative constancy. But light rays are constant, stones and metals are also, and they are so to such a degree and follow with such regularity the way on which they have once set out, that no mathematician could demand more. Whence comes this puzzling constancy? Why for millions of years has no light ray ever traced a curve, no stone floated on water, and no beet seed produced pineapples? Say what you will, I find this strange and monstrous, and only the inertia of our stupid and cocksure reason has found for this order of things the epithet "natural."

But this is still not all. You know, of course, what the theory of probability, the laws of great numbers, and statistics are. And you know also that in social phenomena a certain regularity and constancy of order has been established. Not only is the number of male births in each country always a little above the number of female births, but human absent-mindedness is even subject to a certain rule: the statisticians have established that the number of unaddressed letters deposited in post-boxes does not vary significantly from one year to another. Absent-mindedness, however, assumes many forms. One can forget one's cane or umbrella, take someone else's hat, forget to write an address on an envelope.

And if it be said that poor human beings must have a determinate index of absent-mindedness, one should at least allow us a certain liberty in the choice of the diverse manifestations of this absent-mindedness. But, no! Someone watches carefully that the number of envelopes without address, umbrellas lost and overcoats put on by mistake, etc., not pass the limits of the established norm. But there is yet more! Try to throw a coin into the air. As long as you repeat this act only a small number of times, complete freedom is given you. The coin will sometimes fall heads, sometimes tails, as usually happens; but reproduce this act on a large scale and then there is an end to your freedom. It is as if someone begins to push your arm and, whether you wish it or not, the number of falls on heads or tails become almost equal. "Proud" reason felt very offended that regimentation was pushed to such details and, following its habit, immediately found a "natural" explanation. This must be so because, if there are no special grounds for the coin's falling on one side rather than the other, the number of falls on heads and on tails must almost balance. But is this an explanation? There is no ground for the number of falls to be equal! The correct conclusion would be the following: since there is no reason that the number of falls, heads or tails, should be equal, nor that one should be larger or smaller than the other, the results can be different each time: in one case the coin will fall heads more often, in another case tails will predominate, and in a third they will perhaps be balanced. And that this deduction is correct, that is, that the law of large numbers does not at all dissipate the strangeness of the phenomena in question and does not explain anything, is indirectly proven by the fact that many logicians have tested the matter experimentally by throwing a coin into the air up to 10,000 times. And they became convinced experimentally that there was nothing to be done here: someone limits the freedom of the coin's fall and brings it about that a certain norm is realized. The experimental demonstration is obviously irrefutable, all the more so as it has been repeated many times under the most varied circumstances. But the explanation is worth nothing, or rather, it is not an explanation, just as there is no explanation for the fact that beet seeds never produce pineapples and that light rays never follow curved lines.

I insist that the customary explanations are unacceptable not through caprice and not even through conscientiousness, though, to tell the truth, these motives are not to be rejected as not answering the circumstances. On the contrary, in such cases we should encourage caprice and even—horribile dictu—conscientiousness, the most taboo virtue of our day. What matter that conscientiousness is not clothed in the latest fashion and does not know how to make much of itself. It also, despite its respectable age, wishes still to live.

But it is only in passing that I wished to take under my protection the caprice which would play at being a young man and that poor old grandmother, conscientiousness. In reality, I have completely other concerns. It is much more important to me at this moment to show in what nets modern thought struggles and how easily it accepts as indubitable truth the first absurdity that is offered to it—and this even though all the philosophers, following the example of Descartes, begin by trying to drive from their heads all the dust that thousand-year-old prejudices and superstition had deposited there. We are convinced that philosophy is a science and even an explanatory science. And we even imagine that "the metaphysical need" is the need to "understand" life. This prejudice is even older than the virtue of honesty and at least a thousand times more tenacious of life than all the virtues taken together.

I think that Thales, Anaximander and, in general, those Greek sages who first formulated this prejudice did not invent it themselves but found it already at hand. The monotonous centuries have passed and this prejudice is still living, and not only living but as young and fresh as if it were born yesterday, so that it appears incapable of growing old. Men willingly accept every explanation, even the most absurd, provided that the universe no longer have a mysterious aspect. They wish to "understand" life, to discover its meaning. But in reality if there is anything that needs to be explained it is "meaning" and not life. If we must explain something it is rather meaning in terms of life and not life in terms of meaning. They wish to explain nature "naturally," and with an obstinacy worthy of a better fate they have been training themselves to think for generations now that the "natural" is a principle to which everything that exists may be reduced. When it is impossible to do otherwise, they maim their logic, which is already sufficiently miserable, in order, by means of its feeble exorcisms, to drive out of life everything that is most charming and most attractive in it, devising the theory of large numbers, etc. Why all this? Why does mankind have such great confidence in what is limited? And to what will this lead us?