The Black Circle

by Jeff Love

  This ironical attitude is of course matched by the hesitations of the underground man himself; and one might be tempted to view the underground man as an authorial disguise created for prudential purposes. But this identity is not a sure one—irony or dissimulation cannot finally be ruled out. And this seems to be the central point we may make about the figure of the author, the one who presents the conflict between the active and the theoretical man: he is both part of that conflict and beyond it. Like irony itself, he seems to both participate in and reject the fiction he ostensibly creates. Here is the role of this peculiar third, at once assenting to and rejecting his creation as such.

  What is the significance of this position that denies that it is one? The most obvious and important significance is to suggest that there is in fact some position beyond all positions or, better, one that cannot be defined in terms of those positions other than as an X that is their very condition of possibility and, as such, cannot be qualitatively identical to them. The elusiveness of the fictional author mirrors the elusiveness of the author of the given, which, as author, cannot be qualitatively identical with what is given. In both these cases, a basic Christian proposition is at work, according to which creation is possible. I do not add here the usual complement, “ex nihilo,” because that is the heart of the issue. For, if creation means that something new emerges, then the source of that emergence must also be like the new; that is, it can have no relation to anything that already is, other than as a nonrelation (and even this is open to question). If creation, then, is creation of the new—and what other creation can there be?—then its basis must be in what is utterly different from what is, something akin to nothing, though this nothing cannot be a quality or attribute but rather the absence of both.

  Dostoevsky thus creates a peculiar version of a familiar structure in Notes from Underground. We find the opposition of theory to practice described ultimately from a point of view that subscribes fully to neither and which, moreover, cannot even give an account of itself.

  KOJÈVE’S CLOSED LOGIC OF SENSE

  This problem will return in Kojève’s development of Hegel’s dialectical logic. Kojève will attempt to refute what he appears to consider the most important issue in the dialectical logic: whether it is a closed or open logic. What this means, from our current standpoint, is that a closed logic is one in which the “observer,” the one developing the logical structure itself or the one telling the story, folds himself neatly into the story. An open logic is one in which the observer or storyteller cannot be folded up or otherwise absorbed into the logic itself but remains, in a necessarily obscure way, outside that logic. The closed logic is a circular one in which the end returns us to a beginning. The open logic may have an apparently circular form, but the difference is that the circle cannot close back on its beginning but repeats itself, without final resolution of any kind being available.

  Thus we find already, in Notes from Underground, the basic dialectical structure that will emerge in Kojève’s work and that informs other aspects of Dostoevsky’s fiction—which, to no one’s surprise, has a profoundly dialectical structure. The fictional practice we examine next sheds light on Dostoevsky’s pronounced focus on heroes of action, like Raskolnikov and Kirillov, and heroes of thought or negation, like the underground man and, in a much more complicated way, Nikolai Stavrogin. Dostoevsky creates a model of dialectical movement that opposes these heroes of action who seek perfection to those who negate that perfection. Dostoevsky calls into question, in the most candid way, both the striving for completion and the countervailing striving for incompletion in an attempt to find a proper end to this conflict, a reconciliation or equilibrium.

  It is not clear that Dostoevsky resolves this conflict. As we shall see at the end of chapter 2, he offers a brilliant attempt at resolution, though it may prove inconclusive. This problem of inconclusiveness proved vexing to Dostoevsky’s successors and is decisively challenged by Kojève, who transforms the intractable problem of completion and noncompletion, or finality and nonfinality, in his lectures on Hegel. At stake is the definition of the human itself. Is the human something to be overcome or should it continue in its flawed, seemingly nomadic, wandering? Is human imperfection to be preferred over human perfection, whatever form that might take? Or is equilibrium possible?

  2

  THE POSSESSED

  If death is so terrible and the laws of nature are so powerful, how can they be overcome?

  —Fyodor Dostoevsky

  As a self-proclaimed “paradoxalist,” the underground man creates a series of arguments that undermine the striving for perfection associated with divine madness in the Phaedrus. The underground man is a distant cousin to Socrates himself, who was wont to claim, with all due irony, that his distinctive wisdom consisted in his knowing that he did not know, did not possess wisdom as perfect knowledge. Similarly, the impossibility that emerges in the discourse of the underground man, his savage parody of self-knowledge, is also an affirmation of the unattainability of final knowledge, that vision of the forms which is the sting of the god. Yet the sting of the god retains its power. The hesitation of the underground man and of Socrates is unlovely—recall that both Socrates and the underground man are ugly, unattractive. One may say the same of the praise of nonsense, for in what sense can nonsense ever claim to beauty? The necessarily inchoate notion of divinity one may associate with nonsense is recondite and unlikely to attract.

  And, indeed, it is the great dark heroes of Dostoevsky’s fiction who prove to be most beguiling, the ones who seek to step over the frontiers set by man and God. These heroes are great criminals, and they are great precisely because they dare to disobey, to say a new word, as one of these heroes, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, notes at the beginning of Crime and Punishment.1

  RASKOLNIKOV AND THE NEW JERUSALEM

  Raskolnikov is a response to the underground man. We first encounter Raskolnikov in a situation closely resembling that of the underground man. Even the language is similar, because it is a language of indecision, hesitation. The opening paragraphs of Crime and Punishment are striking examples of the same technique of hesitation one finds in Notes from Underground. The intricate syntax of the opening sentence underlines this: “At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S—y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K—n Bridge.”2

  The subsequent paragraphs sustain the atmosphere of hesitation and indecision: Is Raskolnikov cowardly or brave? Is he downtrodden or bold? Is he crushed by poverty or not? None of these questions receives a clear answer. Raskolnikov is enigmatic until he acts decisively—to kill the pawnbroker. Raskolnikov’s new word, the decision that extricates him from his kinship with the underground man, is of course the decision to murder the pawnbroker. Raskolnikov’s new word issues in crime.

  Of course, there is nothing unusual about the identification of crime with novelty. Raskolnikov seems to allude to Niccolò Machiavelli when, much later in the novel, his article “On Crime” emerges, in which Raskolnikov praises the one who introduces “new modes and orders,” the legislator or lawgiver.3 To be a founder, a “prince” in the full sense of this word, is to advocate new laws that contravene the old. Raskolnikov’s justification for novelty—or, at the least, for ensuring that the new, while criminal, may be justified as such—is that the new laws are the creation of the exceptional man, such as Napoleon.

  The exceptional man, the genius, is, as I have already suggested, the modern, romantic equivalent of the one stung by the divine in the Phaedrus. The essence of the justification is that superior knowledge gives one authority to commit crime if, by doing so, that superior knowledge may be more effectively realized. In a way very reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche—and, as such, not overtly Christian—Raskolnikov’s article condones the death of hundreds, if not thousands, should that death help the new word to institute itself.4

/>   If one has something akin to that vision of the forms that Socrates describes in the ascent of the soul to the hyperouranian realm, one is entitled to bring it back to the world and to quell resistance—to kill—in order to disseminate it throughout the world. In this sense, Raskolnikov takes the universal claim for authority to its proper level as a measure for all of humanity. And, of course, the problem with this measure is quite obvious: How is one to know that it is the truth?

  This question returns us to Kojève’s characterization of madness. Implicit in Kojève’s characterization is a claim about what constitutes authority. For Kojève, the “vision” or deduction of the isolated thinker has utterly no validity as truth in and of itself, no matter how universal that claim is supposed to be. How can one extend one’s immediate certainty to all human beings? On what basis do all others have to accept this subjective certainty as a truth? It is in this sense no accident that the vision of the hyperouranian realm in the Phaedrus is presented in mythic form. There is no argument to defend the authority of the vision; rather, there is nothing more than bare assertion.

  The equivalent, in action, to bare assertion is aggression, physical coercion. The most extreme form of bare assertion is murder. Finished with discourse because it cannot lead to a durable assertion of authority, Raskolnikov moves to action, declaring himself, by his act alone, to be the authority he thinks he is. Lest one reject as fanciful this characterization of Raskolnikov, we ought to examine it within the context of others who transform their vision of the truth into action as a means of asserting an authority that discourse alone cannot seem to achieve.

  Raskolnikov gives us an easy and pertinent modern example: Napoleon.5 Of course, the myth of Napoleon stands by itself as one of the crucial myths of the nineteenth century. As a myth, it seeks to impose in discourse the very authority that Napoleon sought to wield through his military conquests. At the foundation of the myth is pure self-assertion founded on genius or innate superiority. There is no external authority, no truth outside of the simple fact of greater ability, that serves Napoleon as a justification—or at least this may seem to be the case initially. But Raskolnikov does not focus on this aspect of the Napoleon myth. One might infer that he does so only in response to the questioning of his nemesis, Porfiry Petrovich, who attempts to reduce the defense of Napoleon, or the extraordinary man, to the argument for authority based solely on superior ability. Raskolnikov, on the contrary, supplies a crucial element to the argument. He does so by making references to the discoveries of Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, scientific discoveries whose truth is confirmable by evidence that compels universal assent. Raskolnikov insists that the discovery of these universal truths is sufficiently important to merit the elimination of all those who might resist those truths, if only “out of spite” or a love of nonsense.

  But what can Napoleon possibly have in common with Kepler and Newton? What is Napoleon’s great discovery or new thought? Napoleon’s greatness seems to reside in his attempt to realize a universal empire, a New Jerusalem; his great deed is to announce a new word (that will also be a final word). Napoleon will bring about the end of time. Raskolnikov indicates as much:

  “As for my dividing people into ordinary and extraordinary, I agree that it is somewhat arbitrary, but I don’t really insist on exact numbers. I only believe in my main idea. It consists precisely in people being divided generally, according to the law of nature, into two categories: a lower or, so to speak, material category (the ordinary), serving solely for the reproduction of their own kind; and people proper—that is, those who have a gift or talent of speaking a new word in their environment. The subdivisions here are naturally endless, but the distinctive features of both categories are quite marked: people of the first, or material, category are by nature conservative, staid, live in obedience, and like being obedient. In my opinion they even must be obedient, because that is their purpose, and for them there is decidedly nothing humiliating in it. Those of the second category all transgress the law, are destroyers or inclined to destroy, depending on their abilities. The crimes of these people, naturally, are relative and variegated; for the most part they call, in quite diverse declarations, for the destruction of the present in the name of the better. But, if such a one needs, for the sake of his idea, to step over a dead body, over blood, then within himself, in his conscience, he can, in my opinion, allow himself to step over blood—depending, however, on the idea and its scale—make note of that. It is only in this sense that I speak in my article of their right to crime. (You recall we begin with the legal question.) However, there’s not much cause for alarm: the masses hardly ever acknowledge this right in them; they punish them and hang them (more or less), thereby quite rightly fulfilling their conservative purpose; yet, for all that, in subsequent generations these same masses place the punished ones on a pedestal and worship them (more or less). The first category is always master of the present; the second—master of the future. The first preserves the world and increases it numerically; the second moves the world and leads it towards a goal. Both the one and the other have a perfectly equal right to exist. In short, for me all men’s rights are equivalent—and vive la guerre éternelle—until the New Jerusalem of course.”

  “So you still believe in the New Jerusalem?”

  “I believe,” Raskolnikov answered firmly.6

  Raskolnikov’s defensive irony notwithstanding, this is a bold assertion of the intrinsic value of the New Jerusalem, of the universal state in which history and the state itself will be dissolved. Not stated quite so openly is the implicit premise that all merely particular forms of resistance must be eliminated for the sake of the universal state. What exactly does this mean, if its meaning is not readily apparent on the surface? And is it?

  The commonsense view may be that Raskolnikov merely advances a variant of “typical” political expediency arguments, reduced nicely into the formula “The ends justify the means.” While Raskolnikov’s argument contains this thought, it also goes further by identifying the end as the creation of the New Jerusalem—not merely a particular political order that may itself yield to other political orders in an endless struggle for dominion of one kind or another, but a political order that brings a close to all politics in a final apocalyptic transformation, in the establishment of a final universal order, the heavenly city.7

  The distinction Raskolnikov makes between the ordinary, who adhere to repetition, conservation, and continuity, and the extraordinary, who are such precisely because they disrupt continuity, seems most intriguing in this context. It is difficult, if not impossible, to grasp what the final order may be if it is anything other than the final or definitive establishment of flawless repetition—the final state is akin to the kind of state we may associate with the triumph of the rule of flawless, self-regulating reason. What is new about the New Jerusalem?

  The most provocative response to this question is the most obvious: it is universal. How can a state be universal and still be a state? How can one square universality with repetition of anything that has had an origin? Put more simply, how can one square something that is by definition not in time or not temporal (as an end of time) with anything that has ever been or still is in time? How is it even possible for us to imagine something as a thing that is not in time?

  Perhaps it is the very definition of madness to think in this way. Let us recall the Phaedrus. The vision of the hyperouranian realm is just that: a vision of what is timeless. If the hyperouranian realm were in time, it could not be what it is. But as it is something that is by definition not in time, one has to wonder what it possibly can be. And here, of course, the wonderful story that Socrates tells, the myth, allows one to skate over these difficulties, provided one does not think too closely about them. But if we do, we come once again to a fateful question: May one give form to what has no form?8 Plato does not allow this question to be raised directly, since he populates the hyperouranian realm with the forms. Plato takes a different tack, al
lowing a different question—that of the forms’ possible relation to the things of which they are the “ideal” or “perfect” form—to be raised in other dialogues, most famously in the Parmenides.

  For Dostoevsky, this question is fundamental, and Dostoevsky makes explicit the connection between madness and crime that Plato is also much more reticent to make. Yet there is another connection to be made here as well, between madness, crime, and novelty, the “new” word. The new word is new precisely because it can never become routine, can never be made fully accessible to routine, because the grand, atemporal realm of the universal, the final state, is strictly speaking unimaginable; it is transcendent.

  Here we enter into the oldest of arguments, and they turn on what the transcendent, the universal, the infinite—that which is in some manner outside our experience or any possible experience—can possibly be for us. When imagination cannot be translated into any form of possible experience, this is madness in its clearest and most disturbing form. This is indeed the notion of madness that Kojève develops in a subtle way in his essay “Tyranny and Wisdom.”9 To madness, Kojève opposes visions of the way things are, which can be translated into experience and become models for political behavior. While this point may simply seem to develop the usual ironies about the difference between the theoretical and the practical man—which it indeed does, with ironic delight—there is a more biting subtext: that madness is precisely the fixation on a view that cannot be translated into experience, that rejects myth, that rejects intellectual probity, that holds itself out in pursuit of a vision that in the end simply cannot be a coherent vision.