A Contemporary Soviet-Russian Philosopher On Scepticism and Truth

And the plan of the Norwegian government to put the exploitation of the work-force to an end

The Soviet-Russian philosopher Nina Stepanovna Julina ought to be of a particular interest to all Americans, and those of us under heavy influence of the Anglo-American culture. Born in Kirillov north of Moscow in 1927, she finished her philosophical basic education at the University of Moscow in 1950, to work for three years as a teacher of marxism-leninism at a Moscow institute. In 1957 she finished her master-degree at the University of Moscow with a dissertation on the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952), educated and working as a professor of Harvard University, before he in 1912 retired to live as an independent writer. Santayana obviously was of a particular interest to the Soviet marxist-leninist Julina and her supervisors because he found himself in opposition to the traditional sceptical doubt of western philosophy in all and everything and tried to transcend it by a radicalisation of the very scepticism, with obvious similarities to the marxist-leninist dialectical materialist approach. As a newly educated young successfull Soviet expert on contemporary Western philosophy, Julina took part in the delegation of 28 Soviet philosophers for the 12th International congress of philosophy taking place in Venice and Padova, Italy, 12.-18. September 1958, as the first time Soviet philosophers entered the world stage after world war II and the reign of Stalin, who passed away, to take direct part in discussion with the colleguas world wide, confronting the harsh working conditions of cold war and mutual ideological suspicion and competition.

When I visited Moscow in the autumns of 1998 and 1999 to carry out research for my master-degree dissertation, on the reception by Soviet philosophers of the post war western ciritical rationalism of Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, Nina Julina was a natural informant, as a leading Soviet expert on the contemporary western philosophical development. When I sat down the first time with the 71-year old lady at her office at the Institute of Philosophy of The Russian, former Soviet, Academy of Sciences, where she has been working since 1958, she opened by challenging me to describe in what paradigm I found my self. To be able to answer such a question you need to be aware of the scaring fact that the idea you have of the world is only one of several possible ones, and not to be confused with the whole and only truth. The question was therefore a perfect introduction to the theme I had came to study and discuss with her and others, how she and her Soviet colleguas actually perceived the American historian of science Thomas Kuhns revelation of paradigm-shifts and the discussion it arouse in post-war western philosophy. We immediately reached a common understanding and became confident with eachother, much more confident than I was and have become with my Norwegian professoral supervisors or their western colleguas.

Let me, after this brief introduction, give the word to Nina Stepanovna Julina herself, in my fresh interpretation from Russian, from her critical introduction of her book Ocherki po filosofii v SshA. XX vek, Outlines of Philosophy in the USA. 20th Century, published in Moscow in 1999:

”Quite a lot of the philosophical renewers of the 20th century have acted (and act) under the flag of a revolutionary crushing of the established stereotypes of philosophy, the destruction of ”standards” and ”canonical schools” of academic thought, its disciplinary gradiations. Today not only reconstruction is the trend, but the full deconstruction of philosophical knowledge with all its problems.

Taking this into account, the author of this ”Outlines” must warn the reader about her conservativism and confidence of the illusionary charachter of the idea of destructing the disciplinary structure of philosophy taking shape throughout the centuries. The work of the author on the history of metaphysics in 20th century (Julina N.S, Problema metafisiki v amerikanskoj filosofii XX veka, The Problem of Metaphysics in American Philosophy in the 20th Century, Moskva 1978) was marked by this conservativism. One of its conclusions was that all the renewing movements, acting with the pretension of a final break with metaphysics, happened to build new metaphysics. Every time metaphysics, as the bird of Phoenix, reappeared from the crushed material with a new look. However meticulously the sceptic is in controle of escaping the metaphysical sin, he, with the transition from the critical to the constructive part of the work, falls victim to it. The cut of the new clothes, however extravagant the new design appears, in the process of testing and fitting of details, in some way or another is adjusted to the contures of the human body. The same goes for the attempts to crush the disciplinary limits and mix it all in one category, as ”communication”, ” wisdom” and so on. Every time these attempts end with the reestablishement of the former disciplinary structures, as metaphycics, gnoseology, philosophy of conciousness, ethics, esthetics.

Then our last point to be made. In the romantical tradition of western thought the sceptical position in relation to philosophy as knowledge and the history of philosophy as a logical movement of thought has been reproduced several times. Santayana, for instance, regarded it a great illusion, provoked by Hegel, to see in philosophical systems a gradual movement towards truth. He suggested to perceive the creating process of human thought as a game of fantasy, with an estethic to be enjoyed, and nothing more to demand from it.

In the recent time, not without the influence of Wittgenstein`s idea of ”language games” and the post modern attacks on logocentrism, some philosophers have made the claim that the confusion and historiographical controversies stems from the approach to ”philosophy” and ”history of philosophy” as natural categories, disciplines, of objectively existing matters and problems. On this basis the historian is recommended to enter the wise position of the ”ironic” and seek in the work of intellectuals ”pictures” and ”metaphors”, of no practical or epistemological sense. They are to be regarded in the same way as we regard works of literature, not in regard of their relation to truth, but from their seducing charachter, their language artistery and with no regard of the period of their construction – whether they are produced in ancient times or today. Given this approach, the author writing a work under the name ”Outlines of Philosophy in the USA. 20th century” appears committed to naive realism of the idea of the existence of some reality, labelled ”history of philosophy” and the possibility of reaching an understanding of and describing it.

We are not in favour of the game-oriented, antirealistic, relative approach to philosophy. What does it mean, that the problems of philosophy (and the history of philosophy) are not ”natural”? Strichtly speaking, all the problems with which man is struggling, be it the splitting of the atom or the cloning of the sheep Dolly, are to be regarded ”artificial” in the regard that they are not charachteristic to Nature as such, but are results of the cultural activity of man and socially determined. Even the birth of a baby, as shown by feminists, is in many aspects a social act.

That the ideas of philosophy as ”language game” has some founding is not to be rejected. These are rooted in the constructive charachter of philosophical work. Nelson Goodman was not fully mistaking when he wrote about the ”world constructing” of philosophers, but narrowed, however, the criterium for selecting the way of world construction when he limited them to ”intellectual conscience” and ”estethics”. Philosophy, from our point of view, is not only a game of language, but may possibly be conceived as a specific sort of language game, the regulative ideal of which is objectivity and truth. Firstly, philosophy is limited by rather free, but however rules, which in large coincide with the cognitive culture of the period and the scientific dominance of the epoch. Secondly, the game is not anarchic and chaotic and not only in accordance with the agreements of the participants, but also under influence by a lot of other ”games”. The critical discussion, the refutation, the flourishment of theories, as instruments for the selfcorrecting mechanism of philosophy, are putting limits to the arbitrariness.

Therefore, to see in the flourishing of philosophical theories the continous invention of newer and newer ”language games”, serving as satisfaction for those who are involved in them, would be to shadow their correcting and objectivizing role. Modern philosophy relates to recognition and to knowledge, to practice, but not in the way as earlier, when titans of thought like Kant, Hegel or Marx for long periods defined the cognitive culture of the epoch, the style of thinking and ways of relating to the world. Today, when there on the philosophical market (as, by the way, in science), are figuring not one-two, but lots of theories, the competition between them is carrying a sharper charachter. In this competion the less perspective are to be sorted out and only the more justified theories are to survive, those which today represent the greatest explanatory force, offering the most advanced cognitive instruments, capable of showing a way out of the conceptual traps, in which science and the humanitarian disciplines are stuck. In this intellectual competition, in the presentation of alternative positions (this may also be called a ”game”), lays, from our point of view, the contribution of philosophy to ”knowledge”, to the cognitive culture of the epoch, and, as a consequence, also in practice. Given such an approach to philosophy, history of philosophy appears not as a museum-like collection of intellectual toys, but as a participant of the discussion, the goal of which is objective knowledge. We constantly turn to history, to find in it problems, ideas and suggestions. This is one of the reasons, why it is necessary to study the history of philosophy.

***

S. Hook wrote in 1956 that America for Europe in a philosophical regard remained a yet not discovered land, that besides James no one was known. Hook was right in relation to Germany, France, England, the intellectuals of which regarded America a land of philosophical barbarism. In prerevolutionary Russia, however, that snobbism did not exist. The philosophical thought of America was well known and interest towards it was growing. The works of R. Emerson, G. Toro, W. James, G. Dewey were interpreted more operatively than in Europe. Already in the beginning of the 20th century there appeared annotated literature of philosophical Americanistics, which was remarkable both in terms of erudition and criticism. The raising awareness of Russian intellectuals towards the philosophical life of USA is easy to explain: In the philosophical development both countries where approximately on the same level, and there, and here the philosophical experience of Europe was critically adopted, there was no unquestionable authorities and existed a free room for experimenting. Unfortunately, the established traditions of philosophy in general, and Americanistics in special, was abrupted by the happenings, which followed the October revolution of 1917. In the works of the Soviet period an ideologizing, ”class-oriented”, vulgarly economic approach prevailed. The perestroika in Russia and the following renessance of the interest in western philosophical culture (and a feverish translation-activity) should, it seemed, give rebirth of the old Russian tradition of philosophical Americanistics. This, however, did not happen. The interest moved first and foremost towards European thought, avoiding the philosophical thought of the USA. The evidence of this is the rather poor number of translated works in this field, and the almost non-existing number of students works on this theme.

The book ”Outlines of Philosophy in USA. 20th century” is not a textbook, but is adressed to students of a lower and higher degree as the main readers. The hope of the author is that the ”Outlines” for a young person may serve as a form of ”invitation for dance”, for the commiting detective challenge, to pursue ”the adventures of ideas”, as A. White head said, or, with Santayanas words, to observe how the spirit is set on fire at one place, and then at another, to enlighten constantly new borders of the world. If the book awaken amongst the philosophical youth some interest towards independent research and in some way helps to orient in the complex and confused philosophical life of the USA, the author will be satisfied.”

The very existence of Russian publications like this one, of a similar open approach, as expressions of the specific post-Soviet ”cognitive culture” to use the term of Julinas and her post-Soviet colleguas, serves to me as a clear indication that we are dealing with a culture of actually higher moral and scientific standards than our own, the Anglo-American-European socalled ”democratic” one. The moral standing of the post-Soviet culture Nina Julina belongs to prohibits her to make this point as clearly as I can and should, as a representative of the Norwegian-western culture Julina and her colleguas find themself outside of, and are eager to connect to and be accepted by on equal terms. The frontpages of Julinas book from 1999 shows that it was financed by a grant from the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Fund. She complains in the foreword that the general economic shortcomnings of Russian libraries have made important and necessary western publications inaccessible to her. If the American embassy or George Soros` corresponding Open Society Foundation in Moscow in some way had supported Julinas work, I`m sure this would have been mentioned in the book with great gratitude, and that her problems of access to all the necessary western publications would not have been a theme. The book, which she gave me on my last visit in Moscow shortly after its publication, in this way illustrates indirectly a paradoxical situation in post-Soviet society where the former ideological limitations have been exchanged by new even harsher ones. I guess Julina and her colleguas approched the representatives of American-western authorities in Moscow for the necessary support the work of reestablishing the prerevolutionary traditions of philosophical Americanistics, as Julina is striving for. At last they considered the opportunity, and if they didn`t, they must have had their reasons for it, expecting the outcome. The American embassy in Moscow have both the human and financial resources to provide Julina with all the help she was in need of, in her work in the obvious interest of the peoples of America and Russia, in addition ot the economic support provided by the poor Russian state. The American-western attitude of ignorance and outright boicott of the access of the Russian and post-Soviet people to the contemporary western-American philosophical development, as for the access of westerners to the contemporary post-Soviet philosophical development, in this way is not an issue of economic shortcomings, but an delibarate expression of American-western conscious policy towards the former Soviet Union, according to some top secret hidden, but obvious notion that America and the West is better off leaving the post Soviets and their own peoples ignorant, without thorough knowledge of the real state of affairs, but with the idealistic non-realistic perceptions making them easy to manipulate and exploit as cheap labour force.

Not far from the place I stayed in Moscow during my visits, in the region Pechatniki, the first of tho apartment buildings was blown up only a few hundred meters away while I was drinking evening-tea with my host. We heard the ugly sound and felt the blast form the explosion killing a few hundreds poor Muscowites in late september 1999. The blame for the terrorist-act was put on the ”Chechen terrorists”, to make the war in Chechnja going again, after the peace-agreement of 1997, ensured by general Alexander Lebed, who died shortly after in a airplane crash. The image of Chechens as terrorists and the worst enemy of the Russian people, and the new war in Chechnja, became the foundation for the rise to power of Russias strong man president Vladimir Putin, ensuring inner integrity of the economically and socially crise-struck post-Soviet Russian society. Two years after, September 11. 2001, Putin could laconically hold that ”now you know what we are struggling with” to the Americans when hijacked airplanes crashed into the two towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington, with a last hijacked airplane brought down on its way to Washington to hit either the Congress or the White house, in the largest and worst terrorist-act of world history, killing more than 3000 Americans on their own soil, as ”colloteral damage”..

In my view what we are talking about here are acts of self-defence carried out by desperate muslims and coordinated by Moscow against the most terrible and mighty monster the world has ever been confronted with, with hundreds of millions of innocent lifes to be held accountable for throughout the history of mankind, of which the most brutal and large scale killings took place in our near past, and continues today, thanks to the development modern weapon-technology. You can be pretty sure that the representatives of Anglo-American imperialist regimes have got plenty of invitations of the Soviet specialist in American-western thought Nina Julina`s kind, with no hidden agenda, but to raise awareness of the people of her own country of the values and ideas of western people, to enforce welfare, peace, development and contact of the former seemingly ideologically conflicting blocks. Likewise suggestions have been forwarded by many progressively minded and enlightened intellectuals like Julina in probably all the former Soviet republics, as in China and the Arab world, by honest people eager to build bridges and ease strain with the economically strong, but hopelessly ignorant western countries, with the financial resources to make quality perspectives of the one of Julinas take place, not only to have provided the literature and modest funding necessary, but also by organizing seminars and guest-lecture-ships to consolidate and make the work flourish. I have not been in contact with Nina Julina since last time we met in Moscow, because the imperialist structures paralyzing Norwegian society, as most western societies, effectively have shut all possibilities for me to pursue such a contact east-wards, leaving me today in a situation as unemployed, convicted and excluded for ”peacedistrubances” against the peace-movement by SMS and e-mail and generally despised and feared as a local Norwegian white terrorist, with internet, e-mail and SMS as my weapons, to be regarded just as dangerous and life-threatening, if not more dangerous, than the military weapons in use by the Roman-Anglo-American imperialist monster we have been subordinated to the last thousand years, not to talk about the suicide-bombs by muslim patriots.

The idea formulated by Nina Julina in the introduction to her book on contemporary American philosophy of a modern sharper competition of ideas and general concepts, represents in fact an imbearable challenge to the age old Roman-Anglo-American imperialism pronouncing itself the ”victorer of the Cold war with totalitarian communism” and the true inheritor of the whole world. Anglo-American imperialism has in fact has very little to to do with spreading of democracy and the free competition of market economy as it prefers to make the impression of, both by those who actively advocate it, and those who have been given the role of constituting a authorized opposition, the western leftist ”anti-liberalist” and ”anti-globalists”, including the western scarce elderly communists nostalgic about Soviet central power, and the socalled ”peace-movement”. The raw fact is that imperialism does not stand free competition and democratic flow of information through mass medias and education, the modern competition of ideas and concepts Julina describes and see philosophy as the generator of. The age old exploiting imperialism simply can not survive otherwise than by going fundamentalistically totalitarian, by denouncing all other ideas and concepts, but the only one authorized and held by the supreme power, as ”nonsense”, an ”enemy of our life form”, ”terrorism” to be eradicated by all means, as the Bush-regime is busy with in the Middle East, trapped by its own ignorance and limited understanding, in short, imperialist incompetence, if not simply ”non-existing” as it soon is meant to be. The real imminent danger of todays world is, however, not the scaring ignorance and incompetence of the Bush-administration, but the amazing capability of the western population, the ”normal” western man and woman, to fall victim and adjust to all the lies, to reject the possibility of reality and objective truth as such, which Nina Julina warns about, and accept the imperialist premise of the right of the mightiest, even adopt it as their personal higher moral guiding principle, the supreme wisdom of the essence of life, see the beauty of it as the gurarantee for their ”personal freedom” and monthly salary, the idea that all authorities are absolute and supreme because of their general acceptance as authorities and should be respected as such. Those who fail to ”play by the rules” and happen to cause the anger of the supreme western imperialist authority, as I have or the poor detainees in dog cages of American anti-terrorist concentration camps world wide, therefore must themselves bear the full personal responsibility for the mess they have created for themselves, because they could and should have acted otherwise, in such a way that they pleased the supreme and eternal authority, instead of challenging and frustrating it, causing its anger. In this way peace and stability, the respect of personal property, is granted, and everything seems nice on the surface, while the mass of loosers in and around the fortress, the bourgouis, the majority of human kind, hidden away by all means, as enslaved labour force with no human rights to appeal for, because they are deprived of the dignity of human beings, haven`t made themselves deserve it, as expected of them by the authorizing power, is rapidly growing.

I am happy today to already have become an internal looser, generally despised and neglected even by my closest relatives still desperately striving to play by the rules, and financed minimally by the welfare state for my unemployment in a period of two years to run out in a few months, after being sacked from my job as the information-officer of the incredibly rich Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association (NFF) in May 2004 for my support of the oppressed Ukrainian population and their authors, sharing the same post-Soviet ”cognitive culture” as Nina Stepanovna Julina, and therefore not to be granted attention from the power-structures I was working within. By following my own conscience and challenging the delicate hints of the power I made the mistake one is meant not make in western imperialist societies, and suddently found my self deprived of my human dignity and the related human rights, with no one to appeal for without challenging the whole rotten imperialist structure we are not allowed to envision any alternative to, as the only product on the market. The professional union which I thought would show me solidarity and defend my interests, showed up to be nothing, according to themselves, but an ”insurance-company” in relation to which I had no rights, and they no obligations in relation to me, because I hadn`t paid the insurance fee as a member before I ran into trouble. No one, least the professional unions, did however, encourage me to become a member during my four years in my former position, while I was busy at work to be accepted by my boss and colleguas, and did simply not imagine that they suddently could turn against me like they did, did my best to pay notice to their positive qualities, to make them feel confident in me and I in them. I simply had no thought of my need of the ensurance provided by a membership in a professional union against the coming open conflict with my colleguas, but was sensitive to all the caprices of the colleaguas, to gradually enlarge and consolidate my position, while trying not not challenge the current limits and dogmas. I didn`t even know that membership was required to secure my professional rights, but felt confident that my rights as a worker under the Norwegian welfare state, the best society to live in of the world, according to international surveys, was taken care of, until I was suddently given the choice of signing my own resignation for three and a half months of salary for ”disobeyance”, or having to go to court on my own and risk it all against the financially secure employer to claim my rights. Everyone in Norwegian society, from the Communists on the far left to the Racists on the far right, in fact surprise me with their blunt acceptance of this scandalously unjust situation, absolutely no indignation, not to talk about steps, to contribute to the defence of the interests of me and others in the same situation, as if everyone but me are familiar with and calm about the fact that there is no effective defence of workers rights in Norwegian society. If everyone knew it but me, why the hell didn`t anyone tell me about it, to help me secure my elementary rights, leaving me behind as some idiot? On whose side are they? Have I no real friends? What is wrong with me?

No, what we are facing in the confused western societies of today is not the widespread wisdom, insight and controle which most westerners, with president Bush in the lead, prefer to make the impression of to appear as confident as required to make success, but in fact the opposite, a widespread fear and anxiety, followed by an incredible ignorance and neglectance of our own elementary rights, our care for ourselves and those close to us. It is rather paradoxical and illustrating, isn`t it, that it is obligatory in todays Norwegian society to have an insurance on your car, making it a criminal offense to drive a car without the necessary insurance, while you may perfectly work for years like I did without a likewise insurance of your own body and mind, without anyone taking notice? This is probably the best kept secret of western imperialist capitalism, that while YOU are allowed to own your car, you simply do not own the most basic and valuable posessions of every human being, you do not own yourself, your own body and mind, as you may think you do, these treasures are simply not to be regarded YOUR property and responsibility, but belongs to the power you subordinate to throughout life, with the proper authorization of the western imperialist power it needs to exist, not subject to harsh persecution and elimination. Throughout life you are owned first by your authorized father, then the school, then university, and then your employer, if you do not become an employer yourself, with a more direct subordination to the central power with the right of the king to do as you like with your workers, especially those without membership in a professional union, to exploit them, opress them, and find some reason to sack them when you are tired of them. To become a father means to enlarge your material possesions with your own son. The question to be made in todays western societies is, however: What do you need a car or all other material posessing for, if you are not in controle of your own body and mind, not in controle of your self? What is actually left of our notion of personal responsibility and property, if the very persons we constitute happen not to be free and in controle of ourself, secure, but actually only ”leased out” from the central power, with the right to break the deal if the posession is being used in unauthorized ways? This western imperialist power allows absolutely no competition, it is monopolistic all the way through, and strangles all independent thought in the very beginning in each and one of us, by confusing and socializing our thoughts into something which does not represent the same challenge, which perfectly well may make the impression of representing a challenge, but in fact doesn`t, to make the youngsters who are fooled to pay confidence in them to discover the rotten and scaring truth by themselves, to be scared into the most resignated and trustworthy advocates of the power, the only possible we are trained to think, which may provide us the necessary personal security.

What then when the Norwegian prime minister of the Labour party Jens Stoltenberg in his speech of the international workers-day of May 1. pronounced that the the Norwegian red-green government is to propose a plan to finally put the ”exploitation of the work force” to an end, having in mind in special the working-conditions of the guest workers from Eastern Europe, a category I belong to, non-regarding my Norwegian citizenship, after having been exploited as a worker in a typical underdog position in the Norwegian literary industry after having finished a pathbreaking master-dissertation at the University of Oslo on the alternative and superious cognitive culture of Nina Julina, Putin and the rest of the post-Soviet population, to be bluntly sacrifized when I started talking out loud about it in support of the exploited Ukrainians, and left with no rights, finally on my own with my body and my mind and with the Norwegian imperialist capitalist central power dressed naked? Did I hear anyone mention Matrix?

Are we finally on the verge of revolution here in Norway? I really hope so. To be continued..

Sigurd