N.F. Fedorov’s ethics of common cause and ethics of nonviolence

Abstract

The article considers the complex of religious and philosophical ideas of N.F. Fedorov, a Russian thinker, who affirmed the ideal of man’s cooperation with God in the transformation of the world, who put forward the idea of history as a “work of salvation”. It is shown that Fedorov’s philosophy of resurrection and regulation is based on the principle of matching goals and means and relies on a subject-subject approach to the world and man, puts Christ’s commandment about love as the basis of social interaction and in that sense is related to the ethics of nonviolence, appealing to the highest principle in man. In the context of comparing the ethics of the common cause and the ethics of nonviolence, as well as the dispute between N.F. Fedorov and L.N. Tolstoy is considered. It is revealed that the philosopher, arguing with the writer, seeks to put the principle of nonviolence in a strong position, combining it with an ideal of active Christianity, overcoming division and fratricide through the return of life to all victims of history. It is also revealed that the main divide between the ethics of the common cause and the ethics of nonviolence runs along the line of faith/disbelief in the possibility of overcoming evil and death altogether. Fedorov’s approach, which opens up the prospect for moving from non-resistance to evil by violence toward overcoming death and discord as inevitable causes and equally inevitable consequences of violence, frees the ideal of nonviolence from internal contradictions and inevitable compromise with distorted social reality. In the light of the ideal of the universal cause, nonviolence becomes the “minimum program” that should lead to the “maximum program”, where the commandment “Thou shalt not kill!” will expand into Christ’s “Raise the dead!”.