render possible the giving of itself up to the whole, and how is the sacrifice morally justified?
Bělinskii concedes to the subject the right and even the necessity of negating the object, for the individual human being must struggle with the object; but this negation of the object, of society, and of history, can be nothing more than a transient stage of development, and must not long endure. The contest with society is necessary, but this contest must not degenerate into revolt, into revolution; it must be a striving towards perfectionment, and must end in the recognition of society. "Woe to those who are disunited from society, never to be reconciled with it. Society is the higher reality, and reality insists that man shall live completely at peace with her, shall completely recognise her; failing this, reality crushes man beneath the leaden weight of her giant hand."
Ultimately the conflict between extreme subjectivism and objectivism is reduced to the following formula. The subjective side of man is likewise real, but extreme subjectivism, like any one-sided truth pushed to an extreme, leads to an absurdity; through extreme subjectivism the understanding is narrowed, concepts are rendered arbitrary, feeling is degraded to arid and immoral egoism, and the will in action manifests itself as evil-doing and crime.[1]
Bělinskii thus combats extreme, absolute subjectivism, solipsism; which for him degrades the world into illusion and in effect annihilates it; he clings to Hegel's reality, which in
- ↑ A more extended account of Bělinskii's reasoning concerning this important matter may be given in his own words. "Quâ personality man is individual and a chance product, but quâ spirit (that spirit of which his personality is the expression) he is universal and necessary. Hence the cleavage between his situation and his endeavour; hence the struggle between his ego and all that lies without the ego, all that comprises the non-ego. In relation to his personality, the non-ego, the objective world, is hostile; in relation to his spirit, the expression of the infinite and the universal, this objective world is to him essentially akin. That he may become more real, that he may cease to be the mere semblance of a man, his personality must become the individual expression of the universal, the restricted manifestation of the infinite. Man must therefore free himself from his subjective personality, recognising it to be an illusion and a falsehood; he must reconcile himself with the universal, with the world-all, by coming to understand that here alone are truth and reality to be found. And since this world-all or universal exists, not in the subject but in the object, he must become akin in essence thereto, must coalesce into a unity therewith. Thereafter he will again become a subjective personality, but this subjective personality will now be real, for it will no longer give expression to the chance-given individual, but to the universal, to the world-all—in a word there will be spirit in the flesh."
