MODERN EVIDENCE
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the Russian reality, and came to praise Zagoskinl and similar a:bom–
inations, and to hate Schiller.... All of Hegel's reasonings about
morality are sheer nonsense, for in the objectified realm of thought
there can be no moral values, just as there are none in objectified
religion (in Hindoo pantheism, for example, Brahma and Shiva are
equal gods, that is to say, good and evil are equally autonomous).
I know you will laugh at me, you baldpate, but I will stick
to my idea. The fate of the subject, the individual, the person is
of more importance to me than the fate of the whole world and
the well-being of the Chinese Emperor (namely, the Hegelian
Allgemeinheit) .
I am told: develop the treasures of your spirit for
the sake of its free self-delectation, cry to console yourself, grieve
in order to rejoice anew, strive to attain perfection, climb to the
top-rung of the evolutionary ladder and if you stumble down
you go--to the devil, you son of a bitch! I thank you humbly,
Yegor Fedorovitch
2
,
and I bow down to your philosophical night–
cap; but I have the honor to inform you, with all due respect to
your philosophical philistinism, that even if I succeeded in climb–
ing to the top of the ladder I would still demand of you an account
of all the victims of the conditions of life and history, of chance,
superstition, the Inquisition, Philip II, etc., etc. Otherwise there
would be nothing left for me but to throw myself down headlong
from the very top of the ladder. Even if I were to receive it gratis
I do not want happiness, so long as I am not reassured as to the
fate of my blood-brothers, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
It is said that dishonesty is the pre-condition of harmony; perhaps
so; lovers of music may find the prospect agreeable and advantage–
ous, but it is not a bit agreeable for those doomed to express the
"idea" of disharmony... . The extract from Echtermeyer delighted
me because it administers an energetic rap on Hegel's philosophical
cap, thus demonstrating that for Germans too it is possible to cease
being Germans and become human beings. . . .
I belong to those men who see the devil's tail in everything–
that, it appears, is my very latest world-outlook, the one I will die
with. Even though it makes me suffer, I am not ashamed of it.
Man knows nothing about himself-everything depends on the
spectacles provided by his disposition and the caprice of his nature.
A year ago my thought was diametrically the opposite of what it
