Discovery of Chance: The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen

608 Pages·2016·9.122 MB·English

by  Aileen M. Kelly

The Discovery of Chance

The Discovery of Chance
The Life and Thought of
Alexander Herzen
Aileen M. Kelly
Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts • London, England
2016
Copyright © 2016 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-P ublication Data
Names: Kelly, Aileen, author.
Title: The discovery of chance : the life and thought of Alexander Herzen /
Aileen M. Kelly.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sac hus etts : Harvard University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2015038959 | ISBN 9780674737112 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Herzen, Aleksandr, 1812–1870. |
Intellectuals— Russia— Biography. | Russia— Intellectual life—1801–1917.
Classifi cation: LCC DK209.6.H4 K445 2016 | DDC 947/.07092— dc23 LC rec ord
available at http:// lccn. l oc . gov / 2015038959
To the memory of Isaiah Berlin
О сколько нам открытий чудных
готовят просвещенья дух
И опыт, сын ошибок трудных,
И гений, парадоксов друг
И случай, бог изобретатель.
O, how many and marvelous are the discoveries
prepared for us by the spirit of enlightenment,
by Experiment, the child of painful error,
by Genius, the friend of paradox,
and by the divine inventor, Chance.
Pushkin
Contents
Acknowle dgments ix
1. Who Was Herzen? 1
2. Rus sia and the Romantic Revolution 8
3. A Romantic Youth 24
4. A Revolution in Science 35
5. Science and History 54
6. An Education in Method 67
7. Science and Saint- Simonism 88
8. Prison and Exile 119
9. Awakening 138
10. The Discovery of Chance 160
11. From Bacon to Feuerbach: Nature and Time 187
12. Man in the Middle 228
13. A Conservative Revolution 261
14. A Glowing Footprint: Herzen and Proud hon 289
15. Toward Another Shore 322
16. View from the Other Shore 340
17. The Living Truth 363
18. In Defense of Inconsistency 382
19. What Is History? 412
20. The Polish Uprising 452
viii Contents
21. True Nihilism 474
22. The Last Years 500
Epilogue 524
Notes 535
Illustration Credits 583
Index 585
Acknowl edgments
I am greatly indebted to the Leverhulme Foundation for the award of a
Major Research Fellowship, which gave me the necessary freedom to
study fully the scientifi c background to Herzen’s thought while I was
reconsidering and reorganizing the contents and intellectual struc-
ture of the w hole proje ct. Without this support, the book could never
have taken its present form.
The initial inspiration for this book and its early evolution would
have been impossible without the example and infl uence of Isaiah
Berlin, whose unique empathy and generosity of spirit were always
extended with equal prodigality to past thinkers who resisted simple
labeling and to the students, even t hose like me with no claim on his
time, who w ere fortunate enough to cross his path.
My work has benefi ted hugely from Professor John Campbell’s cul-
tural horizons— seemingly boundless— which embrace equally the
sciences and the arts, and from his encyclopedic memory in all the
languages of the proj ect and o thers around its edges, together with his
permanent skepticism about the virtues of grand historical theories.
He has added unexpected insights in many places, and his ordered
mind has had restraining and generally constructive effects on any of
my tendencies toward disorder. His sometimes indelicate but never
inappropriate humor has also been invaluable. Fin ally, I believe the
book has gained from one repeated piece of his advice, which I have
always tried to follow: “However serious the work is, don’t forget to
have fun.”
Tracing my interest in Herzen back through a prior interest in
Rus sian to the origins of both interests, I should acknowledge the
earliest help I received: from the vari ous nuns in my convent boarding
school who never thought to inspect what the students brought with
them to the numerous serv ices they w ere required to attend. This
made it pos si ble for me to write lists of Russ ian vocabulary on sheets
of light airmail paper, insert them between the pages of my prayer
book, and then study the book intensively—o ne might almost say
religiously— during the ser vices. It would have been a new kind of
x Acknowl edgments
challenge to my undergraduate teachers a few years l ater, to handle
a student who had arrived with an excellent Rus sian vocabulary but
almost no grammar.
Although I was literally immersed in the Rus sian milieu during
my two years as a research student in Leningrad, my true immersion
in the best of Rus sian culture of all periods came from two individ-
uals who became fi rm friends with me there at that time: Valentina
Dmitrievna and Anatolii Lvovich Guterman. I owe more than I can
say to them both, and regret that this book came far too late for me to
show them the ultimate result of their educational effects and their
friendship.
The last months of my efforts in the production of the book have
been made much easier by the professional efficiency of my editor, Ian
Malcolm, and his enthusiasm for the proje ct. “Ser vice well beyond
the call of duty” comes to mind.
Some of the detailed arguments made in Chapters 16, 18, and 19 of
this book w ere fi rst presented in two books I had the privilege to
publish with Yale University Press. Toward Another Shore: Rus sian
Thinkers between Necessity and Chance was released in 1998 and
Views from the Other Shore: Essays on Herzen, Chekhov, and Bakhtin
appeared in 1999.
All translations in the present book are mine u nless otherw ise
indicated.