Anti-utopian Mood, Liminality, and Literature. Irma Ratiani
1986: 43). Human Life is a constant hesitation between “Will” and “Content”. “Will” is a torture, because it gives the feeling of imperfection, “Content” brings sadness, because it is full of emptiness. And everything is repetitive: “Content” ←33 | 34→is accompanied by torture, and the other way around. Therefore, human life is a constant hesitation between torture and boredom. For Schopenhauer, human is not an ordinal individual happy with the collective style of living, but is a lonely sufferer, a victim, who is seeking for happiness, and happiness means liberation from suffering. Schopenhauer sees suffering as the main sign of existence, punishment, that mankind has deserved. But how can man get rid of this torturing universe? Schopenhauer sees the only way of getting rid of this problem in the deep projection of the soul – “Ascetism” – man should turn his back to the world, space and existence – achieve “the denial of Will, true peace and the state of the absence of desire and will”, to transit to the highest condition of human existence – ascetics.
The individual phenomenon of the human being, his relation toward the universe and the pessimistic-melancholic perception of relation is more revealed and developed in an original way in the doctrines of Kierkegaard.
The philosophy of Kierkegaard is a debate with German idealism, namely formed as an antagonist relation toward the philosophy of Hegel. For Kierkegaard, as a new type of thinker, Hegel’s style of “Objective Thought” is totally inadmissible, who according to Daniel the Prophet created “Scientific Philosophy” and finally buried in oblivion the thinker as a subject. If “for Hegel an individual is accidental and human destination is viewed as overcoming the individual, the proper, the intimate and uniting with the universal” (Buachidze 1986: 91), for Kierkegaard a human is first of all an individual, whose main virtue is that he is unique. Unlike Marx, whose dialectics also developed by rejecting Hegel’s philosophy, Kierkegaard developed his theory toward the perception of human nature. “According to the Danish philosopher, the more a person is ‘himself’, the more perfect he is. An individual has a life of his own which history cannot touch – it is his personal sphere of choice and decision, – the ‘either…or sphere’ ” (Buachidze 1986: 91). Kierkegaard’s theory is a struggle to save human individuality, a struggle against totalitarian tendencies apparent in the European society of his time that neglected the individual and individuality. Kierkegaard’s aim is to re-discover the individual and to save him. He views approaching God, living in accord with God, faith and pious life as the only possible way to save mankind trapped in the tragic reality.
According to Kierkegaard, mankind, which is burdened with the first sin, must return to God. But Kierkegaard calls “paradoxical” such a liaison between eternal and historic Paradox, for him is “a passion to think” and serves the ultimate freedom of the individual. Paradoxical thinking is the relevant process of the decline of standards, the act of freedom, when a person transforms into a new quality. “His belief is his personality – individual, subjective” (Buachidze ←34 | 35→1986: 99). Kierkegaard seeks the scales of human faith and freedom in the depths of individualism. Noticeable Georgian philosopher and the historic of philosophy, Guram Tevzadze notes, that Kierkegaard believes:
The interrelation of many interior decisions creates a unity that has lost its internality and obeys inevitability. The actions of free men become a part of the unavoidable order of things. So the actor himself does not know what will follow this action. By this aspect a person is being equalized to a thing. This mass existence of a human, for Kierkegaard, means becoming anonymous and immoral. (Tevzadze 1970: 506)
Only self-realization breeds belief in humans, accordingly he frees himself from obedience and transfers to infinity. At this time, Kierkegaard believes, a human surrounded with the forces of existence, becomes imprisoned by trepidation, a great feeling, which underlines the alienation of the individual in real space, and indicates his high destination in the world of endless freedom: only “there”, in God’s Paradise is ideal achievable.
The developing tendencies of protest against collectivism and mass-psychology, full of radical aggression, can be seen in Nietzsche’s philosophy. The cardinal themes in his philosophy, the tragic subjects like “Nihilism” and “the Death of God”, depicted the crisis in European society with thorough precision. Buachidze writes:
Nietzsche’s philosophy is full of the pathos of destruction. He wants to destroy every idol of the European civilization, abolish the foundation of values, which throughout centuries were the highest and strongest measures of human actions. In traditional moral and Christian religion, he sees the symptoms of decline, in modern man – degradation. (Buachidze 1970: 25)
The philosophical aggression of Nietzsche is the background of the ugly reality. The society full of future illusions and scientific progress deserves only irony on behalf of the philosopher. Nietzsche actively opposes “Dionysian creator”, the man grown out of the mythological world, which in itself unites the pessimism and viability characteristic of Dionysian and Apollonian initial and “Theoretical human”, man full of scientific aspirations, a symbiosis of logic and rationality and powerfully invades the world. Nietzsche favors the “Dionysian creator” and categorically confronts the pressure of scientific pragmatism and absolutism, because he believes that, such absolute science means the end of intimate autonomy, the individuality of man, the methodical and ruthless integration of him. For Nietzsche, the Mass is an amorphous concept, a vague copy of humanity, the blind force of history and its tool. The aim of history and culture, according to him, is not the mass and mass-psychology, but human and the creation of the “highest example” of humanity. The tragic themes in Nietzsche’s ←35 | 36→philosophy are caused by the search of humans and the ways of human survival. “The ideal world has been demolished – believes the philosopher, - World is left without support. Human is left disoriented; he is left to his own. He does not know what he is living for, where is he going, or how to justify either his actions or his thoughts. He is alone, without any prospects, hopeless” (Buachidze 1970: 76). Ideal values decline, “God is dead, the values justified through God’s existence, and which were acceptable for mankind, decline in value. This is a sign that at our doorsteps ‘he most terrible guest – Nihilism’ has arrived. Nietzsche’s phrase – ‘God is Dead’ – expressed not an outline of an atheist, but the deep personal tragedy of the philosopher, which has grown out of “the inner logic of spiritual life of European humanity in the context of historical actions” (Buachidze 1986: 76). The distinct tendencies in European society, according to Nietzsche, destroy the personal origins in humans and calls for community life. Modern moral to Nietzsche is a community moral, anti-moral, which subdues personal dignity to collective happiness. Such moral diminishes a human, transforms him into a domestic animal, who is panicky afraid of strong temptations and feelings. Socialism and democracy of any type, according to the philosopher, clashes with the specifics of life, because equality is not the characteristic and function of life.
So where is the way out? Nietzsche casts a glance at the future and models the antipode of a modern man – super-human, who lives with new values and is an absolute personification of life’s motive power. Nietzsche’s super-human is neither “a camel”, bound with the principle “you must”, nor “a lion”, proud with the principle “I want”. He is a child, living by the principle of “playing” and he himself is the creator. The pathos of creation, permanent creation, life determined by values – this is Nietzschean way out from the dilemma.
The philosophy of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard faced antagonism from the socialist and democratic doctrines developed in the 19th century, the dominating scientific progress and the revolutionary atmosphere. Their thoughts clearly reflected not only the crisis of the epoch, but also the tragedy of a human fallen in this framework of the general crisis. “Philosophy of Will”, full of search of individualism as well as impregnated with subjectivist feelings, can be regarded as a philosophical-conceptual basis of literary anti-utopia.
Mankind was facing a danger that might come true. The doctrine of universal brotherhood, unity and equality, full of the ideas of industrialization and collectivism was on the verge of practical implementation. The mind was facing a radical choice: collective, national and scientific-technological system clearly opposed individual-private and creative system. The former was the flagship of the realized Utopia and the later