Introduction: the ideal, the meaning of life and progress
One cannot think without having thought,
One cannot understand without having concepts.
Hegel
Science begins at the stage where “common sense” is left to the masses, while the researcher switches to the language of concepts and categories, i.e. to the language of science. Otherwise we would never be able to penetrate phenomena which we encounter all the time, including such as family. Almost anyone would say, if asked, that family is a union between a man and a woman with a household in common – the commonplace definition from the dictionary of “common sense.” But if this family has no children, can it be called a family? Some would say yes, others – no. For example, the German philosopher Friedrich Kierchner wrote in his book that was popular in Russia once: “The principal pillar of all culture and morals… is the family, i.e. offspring issuing from marriage.”[1] In this connection another question may emerge: what about a divorced single mother with a child – can they be considered a family? Once again, some would say yes, it is a family, while others would say no. “Common sense” no longer works.
Here’s a more complex question: why is the family needed? Is it for continuation of the species? However, in the era of savagery there was no family, yet the species continued. I fear that this question, too, cannot be answered by “common sense.”
An even greater variety of quotes-answers would be produced by the question: what is the ideal family? What is the ideal, anyhow? Carriers of “common sense” wore down these words to dilapidated banality; yet, having failed to find a definitive answer – which they have no need of anyway – they would say that the ideal is a subjective thing. It suffices to look in any glossary on this topic to see that for some the ideal is embodied in looks, for others – in character or intelligence, for still others – in sexual potency, and so on. This all is reminiscent of the anecdote about the sultan who was given a choice of several dozen women. To the surprise of many, his choice was not the most beautiful one, or the most intelligent one, or the most good-natured one, but rather the one with the biggest bosom.
Consider now the above-listed qualities of the sultan’s brides: the evaluations of each of these, too, can vary very widely. What does it mean: beautiful – ugly, clever – dumb, etc.? Is it all subjective, too? Perhaps the term ideal has no objective criteria at all? However, if that is so, why then are the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Madonna recognized by all peoples (all literate ones, that is) as ideal works of art? Why is the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Shostakovich considered to be classic (which is an expression of the ideal)? The same can be said of certain poets, such as Shakespeare, Goethe or Pushkin. It follows that there is something universal in the ideal, something independent of concrete individuals’ subjective perceptions.
Already in the pre-Hegelian philosophy the term “ideal” started acquiring a conceptual content, reflected in certain words that are adequate to the sphere of their application. In aesthetics, the ideal was embodied in the beautiful, in beauty; in ethics – in goodness, virtue; in politics – in fairness (justness). All these concepts undoubtedly always bore and still bear the imprint of history and geography, since in each epoch, in each different culture the beautiful, the virtuous and the just was tied to the particular (according to Hegel), i.e. it reflects the specifics of space and time.
However, is there the universal present in the ideal? Hegel wrote in his “Aesthetics”: “For the Ideal requires an inherently substantive content which, it is true, by displaying itself in the form and shape of the outer as well, comes to particularity and therefore to restrictedness, though it so contains the restrictedness in itself that everything purely external in it is extinguished and annihilated.”[2] On the basis of his claim about the substantiveness, i.e. the being-ness, of the ideal, he analyses the forms of all arts, including poetry, in order to understand their substances. This all, however, belongs in the realm of aesthetics – on the conceptual, i.e. reflected, level. To Hegel, this was sufficient; but not to us. For we need to find out: does the ideal have the substance of being?
I maintain that it does, and its being-ness content is defined by the answer to the question: what is the meaning of life? A multitude of answers have been offered. Theologians will claim that the meaning of life is “in serving God”; revolutionaries – in struggle; philistines – in peace; bourgeois – in money. This kind of answers often confuses “the meaning of life” with “life’s goal.” In either case, we get a great variety of answers. Without getting involved in polemics, let me outline my position which I had justified on the philosophical level in my book Dialectics of Force: Ontóbia. Briefly, the philosophy boils down to this:
All concepts are a reflection of being which realizes itself through matter, motion, space/time and force. In all three realms: the inorganic, the organic and the social – being realizes itself in different ways, and these differences are captured in the corresponding laws, some of which are fundamental. The word “force” is not used in each and every law, but as it is an attribute of being, whether in hidden or evident form (in the latter case the word force is signified) force is present in all phenomena that take place in our Universe. In my aforementioned book I designated force as a philosophical category with the word ontóbia, in the micro- and macro-worlds – as force, in the organic world as orgabia, in the Universe as cosmobia. In the world of social relations this force merged with knowledge (force=knowledge) - mankind’s main weapon in the battle against the law of entropy growth for control of space and time in the Universe.
In that same book I prove that life starts with man. Everything that is outside of man, outside of society belongs to the inorganic and the organic worlds, including animals and other creatures. Therefore, the concept of love, for example, is inherent to man alone, i.e. it is a social concept. It does not exist outside the boundaries of society, and neither do all other social concepts (enmity, happiness, pleasure, etc.). Therefore, when certain philosophers or writers/poets write of love between animals, plants, etc., those writings are either metaphors or fairy tales that are very good for children. However, when they write such things in full earnestness, that is evidence of their scientific illiteracy.
So, let us get back to life. What is its meaning? I repeat after Goethe that the meaning of life is life itself. Therefore, the longer the life, the more meaning it has. The entire history of mankind’s formation and development is the history of extending the life of man himself as a species and preserving mankind as a genus.
From this statement follows my definition of the concept of progress, which goes as follows: progress is the “increment” of life, i.e. the difference between the years allotted to man by nature (the laws of the inorganic and the organic worlds) and the years he really (actually) does live thanks to his knowledge. I call this difference the life delta, or progress. For obviousness’ sake, it can be expressed thus: LΔ = LA – LN, where L is lifespan; A is the actual, or real, average lifespan; N is the natural, or biological, lifespan allotted by nature. Hence the meaning of life is the effort to attain progress, i.e. to increase the life delta. Let me remind here just in case that the humanoid’s initial average lifespan for over 99% of the time of his existence on the planet was 18 years.[3] Today it has been pushed in advanced countries to nearly 80 years, and this leap has been achieved in the last two centuries. This means that man has “bypassed” nature thanks to his knowledge, having increased his life delta by a factor of four.[4]
What is the main enemy of life? The answer is obvious: death. It will be the death not just of man, but of the entire Universe, which will come inevitably in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. For those who are not very familiar with this law (also known as the law of entropy growth), I present one of the definitions: entropy is the degradation of matter and energy in the Universe all the way to the ultimate state of inert uniformity. In other words, this law postulates the death of the Universe. This law is fundamental; it applies to man, too. However, unlike the entire non-human world, man alone is capable of… no, not canceling, but rather “slowing down” the rate of effect of the second law of thermodynamics. I want to stress that although man does indeed on the strength of this law tumble to a state of perfect balance and death, he manages at the same time to extend his existence as a species. On the level of mankind as a whole, he already aspires to immortality. That is his ultimate goal as a representative and carrier of the noosphere. Even though this goal is unattainable in principle, according to that same law of entropy, the struggle for its achievement – precisely struggle, rather than passive belief in progress – is the essence of human existence. The progress of human development is essentially nothing other than the extension of the life of humankind and of man as its core. Man appeared in the universe by chance, but mankind must survive by regularity.
It follows from this reasoning that the substance of the ideal is rooted in the very life delta which is realized through man, by man himself. This means that the ideal does have objective criteria for all times and peoples, i.e. it is possessed of the universal. As for its particular, it manifests it in many phenomena, including family.
Let us now return to family. Why family, of all things? I believe that mankind’s ultimate fate is dependent on the family, or rather the ideal family. Of course, the progress of mankind as a rising trend is realized through many factors. Nonetheless, the family and subsequently the state always played, and still play, a special role. Prior to the forming of the family, the life delta – that very difference between the lifespan of the species and the factual lifespan – practically did not grow: average life expectancy[5] stayed at the mark between 18 and 20 years for several million years. The formation of family – the monogamous family above all – served to accelerate the rate of progress. However, even in monogamy there are different types of families. So where are the criteria of the family that is “ideal”, that is constructive? What is its specificity? The answer will be given below, but first it is necessary to specify the following:
In everyday life, the word “ideal” can have two meanings. One of them is “idea.” Then the expression “ideal family” can mean “family after an idea,” i.e. one that performs certain functions. In this meaning the ideal is equivalent to the normal, or natural, family. The definition of family given by the Russian philosopher V. Rozanov can be perceived in precisely this meaning. He wrote: “The family is an organism that emerges in the closest fashion around an individual, merged with him physiologically, yet remaining after his death as a number of individuals who form anew each around himself a similar organization.”[6]
I direct your attention to the expression “similar organization.” This is the normal family that realizes itself, to use a term from political economy, in simple reproduction from the perspective of its qualitation. (We’re not talking in this case about the number of children.) Such a family will find a place on those pages of statistics where the phenomenon is not working for the life delta. In this sense it is no different from the “family” of certain animal species that reproduce “a similar organization.”
The ideal family lengthens the life delta, which reflects the other meaning of the word ideal: certain perfection, the supreme ultimate goal of aspirations, or of activity. This kind of family is tied to the concept of progress. The “fantastically” daring way to making the life of man and, accordingly, mankind endless - at least within the framework of the existence of the Universe itself – is a challenge to crucifixion by slavery. However, the ultimate goal is never achieved in principle, since the finite owes its existence to the infinite. In this sense it resembles the word truth: the ultimate, or absolute, truth is the infinite, or relative, truth. These words exist as concepts in mutual definitions. For all that, both the absolute and the relative possess the property of objectivity, since their conceptual perception is reflected from their ontological, or being-ness, existence. Their objectivity is tested in practice through their adequacy to the laws of nature and society.
What this reasoning has to do with the ideal family is that it objectively serves progress as it increases the life delta. This is only possible when it produces offspring that is qualitatively superior to the parents (members of the family that gave birth to them). The quality itself of the subsequent offspring is determined by the volume and depth of knowledge that they are capable of using for increasing the duration of mankind’s existence.
It is pointless to mention here examples that appear to contradict the above reasoning, such as: a certain family produces a genius who discovers some laws but dies at the age of 25. That is, despite discovering laws, the genius in this instance did not even reach the statistical average life expectancy. Such examples are all from the domain of common sense, but we are talking here of the general trend that forces its way through a mass of particularities and details.
Thus, the ideal family is a social organism within society that ensures mankind’s progress toward immortality.
And now follow the questions: why? when? in which case can family possess such qualities? I claim that one of these universal properties is love. At this point the well-read reader will inquire maliciously: “Love? What is that? The question has no answer to this day.”
I want to make a correction: there was no answer until now. Read Chapter 1 and all the rest in the bargain. At the very least it won’t hurt you.
[1] Kierchner. Ethics. The Science of Morals, 199-200.
[2] Hegel’s Aesthetics, 160.
[3] Kaku, Michio. Visions, р. 204. For more detail see: Bobrov. Let us talk of demographics, 72.
[4] According to the Bible, though, Adam, Seth, E’nosh, Ke’nan and other patriarchs of mankind lived 930, 912, 905, 910 years respectively. The decrease of people’s lifespans by a factor of almost 12 was caused, apparently, by the fact that God Yahweh became very angry with mankind; even to Jesus, His own Son, he only allotted 33 years. Or take this other version: He relocated to another Universe (which is theoretically not impossible, in accordance with one of the theories of the Big Bang), leaving mankind unattended for a while. If this is so, then it makes sense for believers to beg Him in their prayers to come back. Then perhaps no medicine will be needed for increasing life expectancy.
[5] One should keep in mind the difference between average life expectancy and the average life span. The former indicator means the average life duration of the population accounting for untimely deaths due to disease, famine, adverse ecological conditions, etc. The latter indicator, which demographers in Russia call "the modal life duration" (or sometimes "the normal life duration"), shows the typical age of death in old age, i.e. unaffected by adverse external factors, and is factually defined by the internal resources of the organism. This is why, for example, in tsarist Russia ancient people could be found while the average length of life was 30 years at the start of the 20th century. The same is true of today’s Africa. Ideally, these two indicators should have the same value (they are closest in modern advanced countries), but in practice they do not. Even though in this work the outlined difference is not of much importance, nonetheless, whenever I use the term “life delta,” I mean length of life as life span.
[6] Quoted from: The Meaning of Life. An Anthology, 58.
On Love, Family, and the State
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)