Nikolay Danilevsky

Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky (Russian Николай Яковлевич Данилевский; scientific transliteration Nikolai Danilevsky Jakovlevic; * 28 Novemberjul / December 10 1822greg in Oberze, Orel province, .. .. † 7 Novemberjul / November 19 1885greg in Tbilisi ) was a Russian scientists, political writer and programmatic thinker of Potschwennitschestwo and Pan-Slavism.

Family

Danilevsky was born into a noble Cossack family who originally lived in Podolia. His parents were of Russian diplomat and officer, and afterwards became general of cavalry Yakov Ivanovich Danilevsky (* 1789, † 1855) and Daria Ivanovna Mishina (* 1800, † 1855). Both died of cholera.

Panslawistisches program

Danilevsky wrote in the years 1865 to 1867 in 1871 published in St. Petersburg book entitled Russia and Europe. In this programmatic work, he constructed a cultural identity of Russia and the Slavic world, which is opposed as an independent culture type Europe. A struggle between two "cultures" he keeps it " inevitable" for. He thereby develops a theory of " cultural-historical types " and the lawful development of civilizations. These cycles theory is based on an idealized view of history, as it had already been formulated by Giambattista Vico. After that story runs forever and ideal after a certain time pattern in which run through the stories of all peoples a phase of ascent, progress, stagnation and decay.

Danilevsky receives for his knowledge of history of biology. The human race will be divided into larger units, like he knew it from the Botany with their classification in different orders and families. The Karl Nötzel 1920 in parts of Russia and Europe with the title translated into German book is called the "bible" of Pan-Slavism.

Russia versus Europe

Nikolai Danilevsky makes three Animistic differences in " mentality and the character " between the " Germano-Roman culture type " and to be constructed Slavic civilization, which he juxtaposes each diametrically.

Violence versus tolerant orthodoxy

A common defining feature of all nations of the Germano-Roman culture type is the violence. The sense of personality and individuality is disproportionately pronounced in people of this cultural group by Danilevsky, so that people question their own beliefs and their own interests set so high that they try to impose these others.

Since the religious intolerance of the Roman Church had continued in Protestantism, he concludes, must cruelty in the Germano-Roman peoples be infallible essentially present. An important indication he sees that this type of culture have even managed to exploit the fundamentally non-violent Christianity for their own cause.

The basic character of the violence of European type faces in his theory of the tolerance of the Russian type. While Europe was brutally disfigured the Christian faith, the Russian guy was able to get his " orthodoxy ". The Russian was by nature a peaceful man.

Party dispute versus " folk soul "

Danilevsky sees in his theory between Russians and Europeans a difference in the course of historical development. In Europe, the development by the struggle of opposing parties and interest groups had been completed. The brutal parties have prevailed there and as always pursued peaceful. By contrast, in Russia had historical developments on purely internal basis, occurred in the depth of the " national soul " invisible and silent: "The people said inwardly of the matter, what the exchange or modification is subject to, the fight goes inside the folk consciousness, and if the time comes to replace the old with the new one, in fact, so this replacement takes place with astonishing rapidity, without visible struggle [ ... ] " parties are in Russia foreign bodies ". anything you can call us parties depends from the entry of foreign and of foreign influences in Russian life from; Therefore, if one speaks to us of an aristocratic or democratic party, from a conservative or progressive, as all know very well that these are nothing but empty words, behind which hides any content. "

True Orthodox Church versus mendacious Catholicism and Protestantism

A third distinction he makes with regard to the church membership. With the developed European philosophical tradition of truth - lie dichotomy he responds to the consideration of whether not could be a unifying element of both types of culture, the Christian background of the confessions, " that the difference between the truth from the lie is infinite, and that two lies always less different from each other than any of them from the truth [ ... ]. " Since the Orthodox Church is the truth that lies both Protestantism and Catholicism have in common with each other more than any of them Orthodox with the truth.

Effect

Danilevskii justified in his rejection of the West Eurasian system of values ​​, the Enlightenment, individualism, rationalism and secularization took place with Dmitri Merejkowski, Dostoevsky, and in Germany with Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and the young Thomas Mann famous imitators.

His theory of cycles influenced in the 20th century historians and cultural scholars such as Christopher Dawson, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rushton Coulborn, Pitirim Sorokin, Henri Pirenne, Othmar Anderle, Karl August Wittfogel, J. De Beus and last but not least: Samuel P. Huntington and Bassam Tibi. Surpassed they were in their rigor only by the cyclical ideas of Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee. Whether Spengler Dani Lewskis view of Russian culture has known before 1920 is unclear, after all, seems his concept of Russian culture " latecomer " to speak ( with " Johannine Christianity " ) for it.

The cultural pessimism thesis Dani Lewskis about the decline of a culture is closely linked to the idea of many not only conservative thinkers who believe even a cultural rebirth after a period of decadence to a restoration or. Central to this setting find in almost all thinkers of the conservative revolution, such as when mentioned Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.

Works

• Russia and Europe. A view of the cultural and political relations of the Slavic world to the Germanic- Romanic. Stuttgart 1920 ( reprint 1960) ( Original title: Rossiya i Evropa na Vzgljad kul'turnyja i političeskija otnošenija Slavjanskago mira k Germano - Romanskomu. ).