Culture and Morality in the Nineteenth Century: The Origins of Modern European Tolerance

Semukhina Elena Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0000-0001-8560-0707 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication, Yuri Gagarin State Technical University of Saratov 410054, Russia, Saratov region, Saratov, Polytechnic str., 77 semuh@rambler.ru Other publications by this author

Shindel Svetlana Vladimirovna PhD in Cultural Studies Associate professor, Department of Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication, Yuri Gagarin State Technical University of Saratov 410008, Russia, Saratov region, Saratov, Politechnicheskaya str., 77 schindelswetlana@mail.ru Other publications by this author

*Previously published in Russian in the journal Philosophy and Culture.

The "era of revolutions," which covered more than two-thirds of the nineteenth century, is so named not by chance because, in addition to the actual political revolutions, an economic revolution (industrialization), a social revolution (urbanization), as well as a revolution of the means of communication took place during this period. At the same time, the most significant result of industrialization was the formation of the phenomenon of the mass and the mass man; urbanization also resulted in the formation of the mass man and the corresponding type of culture; the development of means of communication, including means of transportation, contributed both to the spatial movement of a large number of people and the strengthening of their information connectivity.

The rapid development of the main spheres of human activity in the second half of the nineteenth century, the gradual escalation of political tension, and the fight against pandemics (including through vaccination) make this period, to a certain extent, similar to the present. In this regard, it seems relevant to identify the origins of modern European tolerance in the nineteenth century by analyzing the intellectual and cultural "background" prevailing at that time.

Analyzing the formation process of the modern subject and knowledge about it, Michel Foucault believed that the teachings of theorists such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud had the greatest influence here ^[12]. For our research, the relevant provisions of Nietzscheanism and Marxism will be the most significant as the appearance of the main works of Freud refers rather to the first half of the twentieth century ^[4]. However, it should be recognized here that psychoanalytic research was started in the nineteenth century, resulting in the text Interpretation of Dreams being published in 1900 ^[16].

Considering the teachings of Nietzsche and Marx, it is impossible not to notice that, despite all the apparent differences, they also have many similar points concerning attitudes to morality and religion. In this aspect, both doctrines are revolutionary, but if Nietzsche asks about the theoretical foundations of moral and religious values as such, then Marx and Friedrich Engels seek to identify their socio-political foundations ^[15]. Thus, exploring the ideas of good and evil, Nietzsche, for the first time, asked questions about how these categories can be related to human life, whether they contributed to the prosperity of humankind or could be called a sign of poverty or deterioration of society ^[19]. It should be noted that before Nietzsche, no thinker dared raise the question in such a radical way, considering the moral and religious values prevailing in society sanctified by the existence of God. But for the German thinker, "God died," and with him, the ontological foundation of values was destroyed. It became possible to ask questions about their validity: are they useful for the life and survival of the human species?

For Nietzsche, the will to live (and power) is unconditional. Against this background, other values are either discarded or accepted to the extent that they help to affirm life: "I value life itself as an instinct for growth, stability, accumulation of strength, power: where there is a lack of will to power, there is decline. I affirm that all the highest values of humanity lack this will, that the values of decline, nihilistic values prevail under the most holy names" ^{[10, p. 215]}.

Exploring society's economic and social structure, Marx and Engels talked about man precisely as a social class being. Classes are formed due to the development of productive forces, while culture is only a "superstructure" that primarily reflects the ruling class's interests ^[18]. Johan Huizinga also wrote about this, emphasizing that labor had taken an important place in society; labor had become the measure of everything, including the "shameful" opinion that economic factors determined historical development ^{[13, p. 216]}. It is noteworthy that, giving a negative assessment of the doctrine we are considering, Huizinga assessed it completely Marxist: "Labor and production" generate the corresponding doctrine. The same opinion is characteristic of the classics of Marxism: "The production of ideas, thoughts, and consciousness is initially directly interwoven into material activity and the material communication of people [...]. The same can be said about spiritual production, as it is expressed in a particular people's language, politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc." ^{[9, p. 16]}.

The results of "spiritual production" reflect the interests of the respective classes, and the dominant system of values in society is subordinated to the interests of the owner class: "If each of the three classes of modern society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, has its own special morality, then we can only conclude from this that people consciously or unconsciously draw their own moral views in the last analysis from the practical conditions in which they carry out the production and exchange of economic goods" ^{[14, p. 96]}. This provision fully correlates with the ideas expressed by Nietzsche, according to whom no social value has an absolute character, but all of them either help human survival or weaken it.

Another significant intellectual foundation of modern European tolerance should be the direction of Anglo-American pragmatism formed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Researchers rarely pay attention to this set of philosophical views, but for this study, it is of particular interest. The founder of pragmatism, Charles Pierce, believed that a person has two states of doubt and faith. At the same time, he assessed doubt negatively because, from the philosopher's point of view, it made it difficult for the sequence of human actions. For Pierce, it was important for a person to move from doubt to faith (subjective confidence), and it did not matter how true their worldview system was ^[20].

Consistently developing the views of the American philosopher, William James published his work Philosophical Concept and Practical Results in 1898, and already at the beginning of the twentieth century (1901–1902), his Diversity of Religious Experience was published in which not only the usefulness, but also the "pragmatic truth" of religious beliefs or, instead, individual faith: "I think that for religious experience and the practical needs of religion, it is quite enough to believe that behind the personality of each person, as its direct continuation, there is some higher power that favors him and his ideals. The only thing the evidence of facts obliges is that this force is different from our conscious self and wider than it" ^[7].

In this regard, it is impossible to agree with Huizinga's opinion that "the overestimation of the economic factor in society and the human spirit was, in a certain sense, the natural result of rationalism and utilitarianism, which killed the sacrament and proclaimed man free from guilt and sin" ^{[13, p. 216]}. It is only true that religion now ceased to be the absolute guide of all human life but occupied a pronounced official position in relation to it. If God is dead, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, then everything is allowed ^[8].

An example of the change in the significance of religion and its transformation into a kind of tool can be seen in Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), who sought in her system of theosophy to create a synthesis of various religious teachings and thereby opened the possibility for the creation of several "author's" synthetic religions throughout the twentieth century (starting with the teachings of her "Living Ethics"). (Roerich and N. Roerich) ^[2].

In addition, the religious views of the mass man, as well as his worldview as a whole, have always suffered from inconsistency and fragmentation. In the mass consciousness, everything, including religion, invariably turns into kitsch and is perceived exclusively in this form. In one of his works, Jean Baudrillard noted this: "As for the impossibility of spreading the meaning here, the best example of this is the example of God. The masses took into account only his image but not his Idea. [...] By flat ritualism and defiling imitation, to destroy the categorical imperative of morality and faith, the majestic imperative of the meaning they have always rejected, is in their manner" ^{[3, p. 11–12]}.

In our opinion, recognizing the relative nature of values has opened up the possibility of modern manipulation. If anyone in the Middle Ages had dared to question at least one of their religious precepts, they would have been burned at the stake without regret. In the nineteenth century, philosophers recognized moral and spiritual values as the results of human activity. They thereby made possible modern tolerance, which should more precisely be designated by the concept of "moral indifference."

Considering the economic and social changes that took place during this period, it is first necessary to designate the nineteenth century as the century of the formation (and victory) of the bourgeoisie. The ancestral aristocracy was losing its importance, although its role would finally be leveled after the First World War. However, the development of machine production also required the corresponding labor force, which resulted in the formation of the proletariat.

Emerging from yesterday's peasants, this new class turned out to be equally divorced from both traditional culture and the culture of urban philistinism. As a response to their requests, over time, mass culture formed, performing a compensatory and entertaining function. One of the earliest phenomena of this type of culture was kitsch, a set of visual images embellishing reality, ignoring its "dark" sides. We repeat, kitsch was not an alternative to the prevailing realism at that time, but it answered the simple aesthetic needs of the proletariat, allowing its representatives to relax after a hard-working week and partly brighten up the hard everyday life (see also ^[11]).

A person's involvement in the system of social production caused revolutionary changes in their appearance. As Huizinga wrote: "Long trousers, until then (the nineteenth century) in various countries were used as the clothes of peasants, fishermen, sailors and for the same reason favored by the characters of commedia dell'arte, suddenly become part of the gentlemen's toilet, along with exuberant hairstyles expressing the frenzy of the revolution" ^{[13, p. 217]}. According to Huizinga, the main dominant characteristics of women's clothes are beauty and sexual attractiveness, which again gave way to simplicity and naturalness at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This rationalization of the costume later led to the disappearance of any appearance rules and the understanding of clothing as one of the means of individual self-expression.

When talking about sexuality, we should also mention the teachings of Freud, on the one hand, which also desacialized religion and, on the other hand, opened up the possibility for modern "games" with gender. Accepting sexuality as the fundamental basis of the human psyche, the Austrian psychologist not only radically changed the idea of man, but his main merit, in our opinion, is the very introduction of the concept of sexuality into public (and scientific) discourse. This position is apparent and does not need proof. If representatives of science in the relevant publications initiate discussions about an object, this object is legitimized and gradually enters the space of public life.

Already at the beginning of the twentieth century (in 1903), another Austrian, Otto Weininger, published his famous book Gender and Character, in which he claims that, in reality, there is practically no "pure" male or female type. The theorist wrote: "The differentiation of the sexes, their separation is never completely complete. All the features of the male sex can be found, even in the weakest development and in the female sex. All the sexual characteristics of a woman are also present in a man, at least only in a rudimentary form" ^{[5, p. 7]}. Isn't it true that Weininger's opinion sounds extremely modern, especially when facing European realities? At the beginning of the twentieth century, the ideas expressed in this book so shocked the author himself that in the same year, he committed suicide.

Another of Freud's merits is that he saw some hidden existential meaning that presupposes interpretation both in the patient's speech and in the images generated by their dreams. Subsequently, on this and some other grounds (existential phenomenology), the direction of antipsychiatry arose, in which the patient was considered not a madman but a full-fledged Other ^{[17, p. 24–25]}. Thus, thanks to Freud, the attitude toward the patient in the future became more tolerant and humane.

To the intellectual factors in the formation of modern European tolerance, we should add the concept of "natural law," which was formed in ancient stoicism but acquired its adequate form thanks to the rationalism of René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. It can be formulated quite simply: if all people are born with the same mental abilities, and reason is a person's essence, then all reasonable people have equal rights from birth.

As Hobbes himself wrote about it in his famous Leviathan: "Nature created people equal in terms of physical and mental abilities, for although we sometimes observe that one person is physically stronger or smarter than another [...] the difference between them is not so great that one person, based on it, could to claim some benefit for oneself, which another could not claim with the same right" ^{[6, p. 149]}. In fact, the concept of natural rights first caused the transition of European countries from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy (if everyone is equal, the law is the same for everyone) and then to democracy.

Moreover, in our opinion, this concept has become one of the foundations of modern European tolerance because if everyone is equal, then there are no deviations; there are only various manifestations of individuality. For representatives of classical rationalism, there were "figures of exclusion," i.e., those whose thinking was not considered fully rational (women, children, "savages") or who excluded its very existence ("madmen"). For this reason, these groups did not have equal rights and opportunities. However, the gradual development of the idea of equality has led to the formation of a stable opinion, according to which to define any individual or group as an exception means subjecting them to an unacceptable repressive influence in a civilized society.

However, democracy would not be possible without the inclusion of women in the legal field. In the nineteenth century, women's labor began to be widely used due to the intensive development of machine production. In the twentieth century, women's emancipation intensified due to two World Wars, during which women were forced to master traditionally male professions ^{[1, p. 135]}.

This mixing of male and female roles, the expansion of the possibilities of plastic surgery and medicine in general, as well as the emergence of affordable female contraception occurred around the turn of the twentieth to twenty-first centuries. The "family revolution," which actually destroyed the traditional family, legalized same-sex marriages and children's rights, i.e., to a large extent, transformed the very foundations of social reality.

As a result of the cumulative interaction of the intellectual, economic, and social phenomena and processes described above, a world of total tolerance and freedom was formed, which was defined by Baudrillard as a world "after an orgy": "An orgy is every explosive moment in the modern world, it is a moment of liberation in any sphere. The liberation of political and sexual, the liberation of productive and destructive forces, the liberation of women and children, the liberation of unconscious impulses, the liberation of art" ^{[3, p. 8]}.

Summing up the results of the study, it is necessary to formulate the following conclusions: 1) The formation of modern European tolerance has a complex history that began in the nineteenth century, based on a number of grounds. 2) The most significant are the intellectual foundations, including the teachings of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, as well as the direction of Anglo-American pragmatism. 3) The destructive role of these thinkers was either to deny religion and its values or to give it a service character, i.e., to consider it in the aspect of usefulness; the constructive role was to form new ideas about man and culture. 4) Another intellectual foundation was the concept of "natural rights," which by the nineteenth century had already become an organic part of European culture. 5) When it comes to economic and social factors, it is necessary to highlight the development of mass production, the intensification of migration of the rural population to cities generated by it, and the formation of the proletariat with its corresponding culture.