What I am not

Some clarification on my personal state of political ideas.

I do not hold any universal notion of political justice to be valid. In this aspect I am a relativist. I believe justice to be a product of cultural circumstances, and only within a context of this nature any claim of justice is intelligible, and hence warranted. This is the reason why I do not hold the basic philosophical assumptions of human rights and their kindred ideologies. This is not to say that I reject many of the basic rights that this tradition (in its classical expression at least) holds, but that I reject that there is anything inherent to all of humanity in them. This procedure allows us to respect other cultures' notions as running parallel to ours.

From the previous assumption it follows that I do not hold any particular form of government to be better than others if taken out of context. More importantly to our contemporary condition, I do not think parliamentary democracy and federalism to be models to be successfully copied by all other cultures. Parliamentary democracy and federalism themselves are idiosyncratic aspects of a particular civilization, i.e. the Western civilization. Also within the context of the West's previous forms of political organization are not to be judged according to contemporary ideas, because the context is not only cultural, but also temporal. There is a time for every form of government adjusted to its respective notion of justice. Its deviance from the respective notion of justice set by the historical moment, determines the injustice and unfairness of particular forms of government. There is no other way to judge a particular regime if it is not by the current notions of justice available at the time of the existence of that regime.

It follows that I cannot hold any progressive vision of history without contradiction. I take the discourse of progress, in its Western form (the only form that I am aware of at least), to be one of the fantastic and mythological aspects of our civilization in its final stages. Instead, by virtue of my cultural relativism, I hold the "decline" discourse, that tragically accepts decline and collapse as the inevitable outcome of every civilization. I interpret contemporary history, and post-industrial capitalism in general, to be the final stage of the Western civilization before its disappearance. How it is going to happen no one can precisely tell, but it will happen. I can think of some future outcomes, but they are more of a fantastic character than reasonable statements. E.g. a nuclear holocaust. In this context almost all forms of arguments that stress the necessity of human action to shape history in a positive course toward some abstract normative goals seem to me tragically naive.

These might be the most important reasons why I cannot be labelled a "liberal" in the American context of that vocabulary.

Nietzsche's collapse

I think Nietzsche suffered a deep identification with the collective unconscious to the point of losing his persona completely by the end of his intellectual life. This can explain the richness of primordial images and symbols in all his writings, as well as his convoluted pathos. Also, such loss within the collective unconscious can explain the instinctive and irrational truths of his philosophy, so difficult to understand when we do not try to access it through our intuition but through our rational capacities, as well as the psychotic consequences that this implied to his own mind. In short, he is a magnificent case study of the Western collective unconscious as I understand it from Jung's system.

In his autobiography Ecce Homo (1888) Nietzsche portrays himself as an extremely elevated mind, wise as no other philosopher has ever been. Through Zarathustra, his alter ego, Nietzsche speaks of himself as a prophet and as a diciple of the Greek god Dionysus. Jung says that minds that collapse into the collective unconscious have the propensity to inflate themselves, as if some kind of superhuman enlightenment, or "godlikeness" in Adler's vocabulary, has set them above the rest of his peers, even humanity (Jung, 1975, p. 83-103). But one of the characteristics of the collective unconscious are its irrational contents, the reason of why Nietzsche's philosophy might seem so unphilosophical at times. No wonder why Nietzsche himself denies philosophy as a moralizing quest and denial of the world. He became the conscious rebirth of ancient and pagan symbols repressed by Christianity for centuries, and recently by rationalism.

Nietzsche is no doubt a very strange philosopher. Instead of a quest for truth and knowledge of the world and the mind, he explored the depths of the human instincts, and discovered in them a strength that put into question all the quests for "high ideals" on one side, and salvation on the other. His discovery of philosophy and religion as ideological elements of repression of the instincts made him reaffirm the human as it is given by nature. In this sense Nietzsche is an early psycologist. He saw in Christianity a war against nature, falsifying life and making it miserable, and in philosophy almost as mere fiction. (It is very important that, if we acknowledge that Nietzsche has a theory of ideology, it is far from the Marxist notion. For Nietzsche ideology is the will to power of base and weak minds, not of dominant social classes, consisting in a will to repress aspects of the human instincts that are falsely believed to be evil; hence, keeping under control strong and vigorous individuals with irrational and aristocratic tendencies. Marxism is included within these ideologies, and with good reason).

But what remains remarkable is that his discovery of human instincts was of such a depth that Jung's notion of inflation is clearly seen in his writings. His method of speaking through parables and metaphors is more akin to prophets than philosophers, and he even saw himself in that way. The fact that Nietzsche decided to title his autobiography as "ecce homo", the words Pontius Pilate supposedly said to the Jewish crown when presenting Jesus in John 19:5, is the first and direct signal that he is styling himself after Christ (more precisely as the Antichrist).

But don't get me wrong. The obvious deliriums of his late writings are no reason to discard him as a mere psychotic of no consequence. The difference between him and vulgar madmen are his ginius and his capacity to write. In this sense by styding himself in this state of collapse into the collective unconscious he is saying things about all of us, especially Westerns. This is the reason why he is still considered one of the most important and enlightened philosophers of our era. Definitively not because if his analytical capacities, but because of his acuteness in unmasking our instincts. The symbolic contents of his writings are another reason to believe Jung's system of human psyche; that deep within our unconscious there are collective symbols or archetypes that regulate basic psychical functions. Instead of believing with Freud in a purely biologically determined psyche, the favorite generalization of some neuro scientists, Jung's system explains these shared psychic functions not on cells, neurons or libido, but on contents of purely psychic nature.
Nietzsche, by collapsing on the collective unconscious with the respective psychotic consequences, demonstrates why in the search for our selves we need to pay heed to those symbolic images in religion that he wished to destroy so much.

A most unholy time

[I suggest this be played if you want to proceed reading this entry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh31j6L95Ok]

The brighter our technology illuminates the skyline, the higher our skyscrapers point at Heaven, the gloomier we seem to sink, the darker our condition seems to turn. Reason has unlocked the secrets of the demiurge, with which we twist nature at our will. But it is the outer nature that we think we command, not our inner being. Reason thought back some centuries ago that we could control ourselves as much as we control other selves. All vanity. Pure and shallow vanity. The truth is that after so much effort trying to conceive of a model with which we could control our inner nature by reason, we had to yield to technology. It is the second prize, because not being able to determine ourselves, we decided to determine outer nature as our revenge. But we have been deluded by our pride. The nature we thought we were commanding is returning for pay back, even if it's just for the pleasure of ridiculing our aggrandized self-esteem.

But now that we are well ahead in this monstrous world of ours, this deformed Earth we have created, and that we seem to recreate every year more uglier, it is not spurious to turn back and think of what we have lost. I heard once the argument that nuclear weapons secured world peace, at least between nuclear powers, the most dangerous of actors. But if that is true, then that will be the last peace of our times, before the next war clean all our chronometers. What we have gained in peace for our bodies to enjoy a worldly life has cost us the incalculable loss of the peace of our spirits. It has cost our lives in the Spirit itself. Like Faust, we have sold our souls to the Devil. And for what? Some generations of awesome technology and that's all. All vanity.

I have received from colleges of mine the unfortunate contempt when I use the Pope as a reliable reference. What we have lost is so big, so incalculable, that the so called tolerance and liberal secularism clouds our vision in its entirety. The contempt felt for the Pope Benedict XVI, a most knowledgeable and illustrated man, not only in theology, but in philosophy and literature, science and history, making him one of the most potent intellectuals of our time, is regarded with the lowest and most shameful contempt by people of reputed education. Uttering his name, even before any argument is made, is enough for some to just simply drop out of the conversation. What is going on? Have we gone totally mad? I find myself with people that ignores completely the beautiful, enlightening, love-driven and tolerant teachings of Benedict XVI, and take him for absolutely the opposite of what he is and what he says! It is a startling, even depressing condition.

There is only one thing that I can think of that makes contemporary and educated sons of Catholicism block their minds to his words and ideas. They just simply don't want to hear, it doesn't matter what he says. This denial, this absolute contempt from what he has to say is worrisome. Really worrisome. It shows intolerance, hatred, but worse of all, it shows fear. Fear of what? Of being remembered of what they want to forget: that we have been living unchristian lives; and we know, deep in our souls, that it's wrong. Modern minds are terribly afraid of what is sacred, because there is an intuitive knowledge that we are living the most unholy of existences. And this goes for all of us! Me included! But the petite bourgeoisie ethos of a life of private enjoyment depends on ignoring these facts. Certain people are so afraid of guilt, of remorse, that they rather live in denial, constructing the most sophisticated and comprehensive doctrines of society and liberty for the sole purpose of clouding the Spirit in us. God is no longer welcome. He is a nuisance to our modern ways. We want to banish Him. Maybe as a revenge against Him for banishing us from the Garden of Eden? What is the modern myth of the Revolution if not a kind of low revenge to the One that died for our salvation? We want to cast disbelief in the story of Christ, because his sacrifice makes us feel uneasy and ashamed. Ashamed of us not answering his love back. Modern individualism is the ideological device to deny, temporarily forget, the love that He deserved back from us. I think this is among the reasons why educated people today prefer to turn deaf ears when the name of the Pope is uttered, even though he is a publicly acknowledged man of wisdom and piety. His piety is painful; it's so demanding that we rather ignore, and move on. Fear and vanity.

To close, I just want to quote the words of the Pope himself, who is remembering us the vanity as well as the futility of a world of economic wealth when there is no love.

"What hinders this humane and loving gaze towards our brothers and sisters? Often it is the possession of material riches and a sense of sufficiency, but it can also be the tendency to put our own interests and problems above all else. We should never be incapable of “showing mercy” towards those who suffer. Our hearts should never be so wrapped up in our affairs and problems that they fail to hear the cry of the poor. Humbleness of heart and the personal experience of suffering can awaken within us a sense of compassion and empathy" Benedict XVI, 3 November 2011.

Who can deny the goodness of this? According to certain economic doctrines, charity is unprofitable. And it is true. It must be unprofitable to be real charity! There is no love in profit, but self-centered egoism. And that cannot be truly Christian. That is why the most unchristian force of our day is capitalism. The love for material wealth has taken our minds, hiding the Spirit of goodness, making us evil. For every spit of economic wealth created in our current world, it becomes a bit more evil, soulless, cruel, and ultimately inhuman. That some people celebrate it is a matter of concern. For some pleasant years of material wealth, we are all casting our souls down to Hell.

The source of Pope Benedict's words is: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/lent/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20111103_lent-2012_en.html

Today

One of the methods to understand decline is to focus on aesthetics. Aesthetics is contrary to technique. Every civilization uses technique to fulfill aesthetics. But aesthetics exists in the work, especially in the master work. But what is a master work? The full realization of the prime symbol of a civilization in a particular work of a particular mastermind.

Today we live in an era of technique, because the prime symbols of our civilization have already been fulfilled. The work is the technique itself. Nothing transcends the technique. There is no work after it. That is why our art today is consumed, but not felt. It is not even art at all, it is a commodity. Even Nobel prizes are consumed commodities. Art requires universal transcendence, in the same way that Euripides transcends till today, in a way that it also transcends commodification. However the Roman Coliseum was consumed, and there it lies in ruins. So our stadiums, our gigantic museums and government palaces will lie in ruins. Why? Because there is nothing else to do but to expand the technique. And the technique is self-destructive. Our technique has reached nuclear capacities after all. Just finish drawing the graph. Do the math.

The technique is banal. The banality of technique. We as individuals, by virtue of our individual rights, are mere products of modern technique. Technique ourselves! Professionals! Qualified labor! Human bodies turned into commodities! Vacations? Commodified festivities! What is it that you cannot see? Progress is the fancy name of decline. Development is the elegant but mediocre synonym of mass consumption. It's pathetic. Aren't you happy about it? We should be happy! That's what our individual rights are after all: commodified individual guarantees so that we become functional members of the capitalist form of production. Do you really think that there is an inherent care for our individuality? We function better in the system with that protected individuality of ours. If we are not functional we are thrown into unemployment. It's that simple; that banal. Homo economicus is the non plus ultra of the banality of our modern existence.

But there is nothing wrong with this. There is absolutely nothing wrong. What is inevitable cannot be wrong. Otherwise the world would be pure wrongness, and that only leads to suicide. No we don't have to commit suicide because of the mediocrity of our times. Rather we have to die tragically. Of course those that see die tragically; nostalgically. Those that don't see die banally. The world of fairness and justice and of individual rights has its virtues. Everything goes. God, the True God that died in the cross is dead. But dead where? In our hearts. He doesn't speak to us anymore as modern men. Our banality prevents it. God doesn't speak to banal beings like us, products of technique, commodified biological bodies. We have reached the point of even consuming the Holy Scriptures! Of producing and distributing them en masse!

No, there is nothing wrong with decline. Decline is liberal; at least for now. Decline summed up with capitalism can become something more monstrous than the banality of the mediocrity of liberalism. It can become totalitarianism. It has already shown its face! But its not dead. It's far from dead. The only thing remaining is that Caesar's laurels crown the man commanding from the White House. That Nero signs the presidential orders and vetoes the congressional legislation. He will become the legislator! And this we can't avoid.

I wonder who will be the Christians of our age. Who will be those from which the new civilizations will be born, hundreds of years from now, after all our fancy technology and wonders of engineering lied wasted by our own nuclear bombs. We only have to crown the Caesar. That, then, will be all.

Worldly Knowledge, the Gift of Fools

Daily we are invaded by doubt. Some tell us, "go to mass," and it works for some people. Others say, "read the Bible," and it works for others. Both work for me; however the direct reading of the Bible creates a stronger bond with the Truth, especially if you care more about the Truth than about social conventions. This doesn't make me an Evangelic, or nothing close to it, but I'm among the group of Christians that is too curious to simply take the priestly sermon for granted.

Today I want to make a comment on the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. The reason consists in my perennial debate with faithless friends, that putting all their trust in the knowledge of this world, ignore the case of other-worldliness. Some are modern rationalists whose faith is deposited in science and its recent technological achievements, and the impression of so much innovation in so little time have left them dazzled and deceived, making them think that any other kind of truth is impossible. Others are pessimists that do not recognize what is human in our condition, and think that we are just body and nothing more, like animals reinforced with this strange epiphenomenon called mind, leveling the holiness of our spirit to basic instincts. What has St. Paul to say about this?

Quoting Isaiah, St. Paul says of God: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." For how long have we been debating, fighting, even making wars, for what we take to be the scientific truth, the true knowledge of the world, just to be proven wrong the next generation? We boast of a knowledge we don't know if we have, trusting our senses and our limited capacities to judge, as if they were faultless. "Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Corinthians 1:19, 20).

"Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification" (1 Cor. 2:6, 7). Who can deny that every single paradigm of knowledge that we have created has come and passed away? This doom of worldly knowledge, this recurrence of proving ourselves wrong, should be a lesson to humble ourselves and drop completely any attempt to know anything fully. Some contemporary philosophers of science claimed this, but, didn't St. Paul spoke of it two thousand years ago already? The wisdom imparted by Christianity, on the contrary, is a wisdom of faith; universal, unchallengeable by reasonable arguments, pure and simply human, spiritual, unpolluted by matter and body and logic. This cleanness from worldly knowledge, its support based strictly on faith, is what makes it perfect.

But where has this wisdom come from? St. Paul answers: "God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2:10, 11). What is the spirit? That which precisely makes us different from the rest of matter, and the animal kingdom. Worldly beings don't have self-conscience, because they have no spirit. The spirit is this metaphysical, otherworldly quality of humans to know themselves, and this self-conscience is what leads to know God. And from this knowledge beyond the wisdom of the world, humans have faith in contradistinction to any other living being.

To close this comment dedicated to worldly knowledge "Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly to God. For it is written, [in Job] 'He catches the wise in their craftiness,' and again [in Psalm 94] 'The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.' So let no one boast of men" (1 Cor. 3:18-21).

For those that like logic, picture for a moment a Creator of the world and all its rules, including logic. He who is before those rules cannot be dictated by those rules. He who created them is beyond them and above. If human minds can only be partially acquainted with those rules of the world, his acquaintance cannot reach the level of the Creator. But this is not so quite true. Our acquaintance through apprehension is limited to this world and its rules, but we are actually acquainted with the Creator through revelation and faith. That is, when He shows himself to us through the Spirit as St. Paul says, but it is folly and ridiculous to even pretend that we can decide to know him through science and reason at our initiative. The gift of the Truth of the Lord is bestowed by Him unto us, and to us only belongs faith in it. Anyone claiming truth through worldly knowledge is nothing but a fool, a clown in the eyes of God, like so many scientists, philosophers and intellectuals of our days. And sometimes, it must be granted, we fall into the temptation of belonging to this caste of universal fools.

Progress and Pessimism in Tolstoy's words

After two years since their last meeting, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre, now Count Bezukhov, good friends from childhood, meet again in Andrey's estate. Both are very wealthy and noble. But a lot has changed since their casual encounter at Anna Pavlovna's soiree two years before, that takes place at the opening of War and Peace.

Prince Andrey's 1805 war experience, especially at Austerlitz, left a deep scar in his soul, not only by the realization of his self-delusions regarding his personal battle against Napoleon Bonaparte, and his quest for worldly glory, but by the lost of a loved one when he returned home; an event that touched him deeply. Whereas Pierre, after the inheriting his father's immense fortune, went through a living of excessive luxury that made his life boring and without meaning. Profoundly depressed he led a failed marriage that ended in a duel. In a crisis of faith and values he found in Freemasonry a new start, and the foundations for the moral quest he was seeking from the novel's very beginning. Both experiences are radically different, but both face the same challenge: Nihilism. The ambitions of the Great Revolution that began in France was already creating chaos and confusion in the souls of learned men as far a Russia. This is one of the main topics of Tolstoy's masterwork.

Two years have passed; many things occurred to both of them. The conversation between the two friends, cold and distant at first, eventually becomes warmer and confident. The contrast between their ideas and world outlooks is the main ideological struggle opened by the Revolution, and that the society of Europeans would have to face. It all begins by Andrey's claim "Nothing's for ever... Killing a vicious dog is a good thing," a claim that rather shocks Pierre who answers "Killing is wrong. It's bad... Anything that harms someone else is wrong." Maybe without being conscious of it (after all Pierre is not a philosopher), Pierre is defending first a Kantian reasoning in the form of a categorical imperative, and after being pushed harder by Andrey, he reaches Mill's harm principle. Andrey is unconvinced. His argument is that "what's right and what's wrong is something we can't decide. People keep making mistakes and they always will, especially when it comes to right and wrong... remorse and illness. There is never any good unless these two things are absent. Living for myself and avoiding these two evils - that's my philosophy now." Andrey, who sounds depressed, found in self-centered egoism the only warranted ethics, because of its simple minimalism. Relativism spreads beyond that main assumption and makes him skeptic of any other kind of normative claim. By assuming this posture, he renounced reason and progress.

Pierre stands on the opposite and fervently claims: "What about loving your neighbour, and sacrificing yourself? No I can't agree with you! Living your life with the sole object of avoiding evil just so you won't regret anything afterwards - it's not enough." Pierre is very demanding. He trusts man's rational capacities, and the commitment to improve man's conditions in a profoundly Christian way. We know this stance very well. It is the fundamental principle from which any kind of progressive thinking emerges. Later on, when talking with the old Prince Bolkonsky he would argue "that a time would come where there would be no more wars." Pierre is a Kantian, a son of the Enlightenment. On the contrary, Andrey is a pessimist. He challenges Pierre with one of the most uncomfortable arguments for any progressive: "You talk about schools, education and all that. In other words, you want to bring him' (he pointed to a passing peasant who was doffing his cap) 'out of his animal condition and give him spiritual needs. Well, as I see it, the only form of happiness is animal happiness, and you want to take that away from him. I envy him, while you're trying to turn him into me, but without giving him my mind, my feelings and my money."

Andrey's position is not to be discarded lightly. Pierre finds himself against the wall, and claiming categorically that his friend is simply wrong. One of the faults of rationalists is that once they face the irrationalist challenge, they have few arguments left. Andrey's claim is that happiness is relative to your consciousness; i.e. the more you have it, the more the requirements of happiness become unreachable. Money becomes a problem, and the self-conscious poor is even more miserable by virtue of his self-consciousness, out of which he develops envy. Rationalized envy creates highly comprehensive doctrines of society that call for revolution. Sound familiar? On the contrary, simple life, the life of the ignorant peasant, has the virtue of modest and reachable happiness. However pessimist, there is something truly Christian in Andrey's thought. And Pierre's ideas have something self-defeating; the pride of the ambition to change the world.

To Pierre's invitation to join the Freemasonry organization Andrey answers: "You say, come into our brotherhood and we'll shows you the meaning of life and the destiny of man, and the laws that govern the universe. But who are we? Just people. How do you come to know it all? Why am I the only one who can't see what you see? You see the earth as a kingdom of goodness and truth. I don't." Andrey unmasks Pierre's unconscious and naive pride (the pride typical of self-righteous progressives). The type of pride that says we know better than you do, because we have thought it through and we have seen the truth while you remain in shadows. What Andrey sees that Pierre cannot is that such a vantage point, such self-righteousness, is already ideology and shadows disguised as light, wisdom and good. This is the ideological malady of all progressive thinking from Liberalism to Marxism.

But Pierre, who is as smart as his friend reaches a very interesting synthesis: "Here on earth, this earth here' (Pierre pointed to the open country) 'there is no righteousness - it's all false and wicked. But in the universe, the whole vast universe, there is a kingdom of truth, and we are two things - children of earth here and now, and children of the universe in eternity." Interestingly from being a Kantian, Pierre becomes a Hegelian. In order to defeat Andrey's challenge, he realizes that some type of denial of the world is required, and a truth beyond it must be acknowledged. The history of men becomes, then, a quest to fulfill this truth. Men as an animal, subject to the animal happiness Andrey speaks about, has the capacity to elevate his existence to a higher truth. He grants that the animal happiness is the here and now, but he denies it as false and wicked. This denial of the world and its conditions lies in the heart of all type of progressive thinking.

Pierre concludes in totally Hegelian terms: "If there is a God and an after-life, then there is truth and there is goodness; and man's greatest happiness lies in struggling to achieve them. We must live, love and believe, believe that our life is not only here and now on this little patch of earth, but we have lived before and shall live for ever out there in the wholeness of things." I agree with him so far as that from God's presence in the universe it follows absolute truth and goodness, and that man's happiness has something to do with it. I disagree with Pierre's optimist in our capacities to understand fully the wholeness of things, the reason of why I have rejected progressive thinking.

Andrey concludes in totally Nietzschean terms: "My point is - you might be persuaded there is an afterlife not by arguments, but by going through life hand-in-hand with somebody, and all at once that somebody vanishes there, into nowhere, and you are left standing over the abyss, staring down into it. And I have stared down into it..." The abyss presented by nihilism, which becomes so overwhelming when acknowledging death, becomes the urgent problem once we open the Pandora box of rationalism by casting doubt on the simple happiness of the ignorant peasant living by colorful traditions. On this I must agree with him.

(The texts were extracted from Tolstoy, War and Peace, volume II, part II, chapters 11 and 12)

A comment on the opening of War and Peace

This is going to be, probably, the first of various comments I will be writing about Tolstoy's masterwork War and Peace. Of the many things that can be said of the hardly first one hundred pages, I will focus on one of the elements that I found strikingly interesting; the social stratification within the Russian nobility. But before moving on, a note for those that have not read the novel is warranted: I will abstain from spoilers that might ruin the story.

The first paragraph already hints the historical background of the entire novel: Bonaparte's threat to the European society of absolute monarchies. The first events take place in a social gathering at one of the Empress' favorites, and we already feel the meaning of the novel's title; the frivolities of the nobility's daily life, with their gossiping and mundane chatter, mingled with the ever present long of some to fall in politics and war. We can tell that the Russian high society is between the denial of events, and stupefied by the terror coming from the West. But the two topics stand in parallel, isolated from each other. Mundane chatter becomes almost like a refuge from the discomfort caused by the threat of war. In this, almost superficial, shift from gossip to fear, the first pages of the novel fill us with both the lightness of good life, and the burdensome weight of serious matters. The environment of private relations, with their characteristic touch of pretense and socially enforced good manners, is where our main and second characters are introduced. All of them are noble by birth; but sooner than later we realize that they are not of the same status.

The novel begins as Prince Vasily Kuragin enters Anna Pavlovna's (the Empress favorite) soiree at her mansion. She greets him by chiding him for not taking actions against Bonaparte's France. Tolstoy makes the reader feel just like Prince Vasily when entering the house; surprised by an unexpected attack! (An amazing beginning by the way) The first paragraph hasn't finish and the reader (just as Prince Vasily) is already at war, not wit Napoleon, but with the warmongers. Peace is being threatened from the first sentence of the more than one thousand pages novel. Quickly, and almost like a slap, Anna Pavlovna changes the subject to mere gossiping. The main topic is, naturally, marriages and families, one of the main social institutions that work specifically for the purpose of asking and paying favors in high society. Both of these characters stand as the highest of nobility; i.e. both are extremely rich, and both have influence with the throne. Prince Vasily as a high officer to the Tzar, and Anna Pavlovna with the Tzarina, of whom she speaks with the greatest veneration (I will get back to this topic).

Soon we get introduced to more obscure members of the high society. Princess Anna Drubetskoy attends Anna Pavlovna's soiree uninvited (already a sign of social disgrace), for the specific purpose of talking with Prince Vasily into pulling the strings for her son Boris into getting a higher post in the armed forces. The princess is poor (interesting, isn't it?) and after the death of her husband, she lost most of his connections in St. Petersburg. Prince Vasily acknowledges in order to get rid of her (the reader realizes that this princess is irrelevant). But, contrary to modern plebeian civil servants whose words must be bought with money or influence, Prince Vasily is a noble; and honor is one of the nobility's central virtues. He gave his word, and even though he can lie to her, he would never do so. This nobility's honor is one of the many things at stake in the war against Napoleon's progressive ideas. As a matter of fact, this honor was lost with the revolution. In its place, the substituting bourgeoisie's ethics that rests on hard work and money, looks more like a caricature.

The first thing to note in this conversation at Anna Pavlovna's soiree is that, Prince Vasily and Princess Drubetskoy, belonging to the same superior caste, stand at different levels. The prince, powerful and rich, treats the poor and unknown princess with contempt; however not without courtesy, something that a nobleman can never avoid from doing! Courtesy for the sake of it doesn't seem to be widely practice by the plebeian castes in the courts of the bourgeoisie and the working class. But Princess Drubetskoy doesn't lack friends either. At Moscow, the Rostovs are a prosperous and happy family of counts. The countess is the princess best friend, and helps her out with some money. But the Rostovs are nothing else but rich; they don't seem to be particularly influential in the high politics of St. Petersburg (after all, they live in Moscow).

Another character that plays an important role in the first chapters without actually participating in any action is the old and dying Count Kirill Bezukhov, who is immensely rich. He has no immediate inheritors except his favorite bastard son, the young and impetuous Pierre (the character with which I feel identified so far). The inheritance is in dispute, and all the gossip and chatting gathers around this fact. Prince Vasily has also rights to claim the inheritance, and Princess Drubetskoy is trying to get a peace of the action by the fact that her son Boris is the Count's godson (one of many, one presumes). But the most interesting aspect of the dying Count is the heroic aura that surrounds him; he was among the most powerful men during Catherine the Great's reign. To his wealth, this heroic aura accompanies him. Tolstoy divides Russian nobility into the following:

a) Count Bezukhov with his immense wealth, accompanied with the tales of his life during the reign of Catherine the Great, which makes him highest among the highest.
b) Prince Vasily, who is rich and very influential in the court.
c) The Rostovs, who are rich but have no important influence in the court.
d) Princess Drubetzkoy who is not even rich, and has no influence in court, and who depends on the sense of honor of those above her.

I cannot finish this brief survey of Tolstoy's picture without addressing the crowning figures of this entire society. The Tzars do not show their faces in the first chapters, but are addressed by the different characters as the source of all nobility. Theirs is an omnipresence in the minds of the main characters. The veneration to these figures of such a high birth, imagined almost like demigods or saints, owners of the highest virtues, is almost alien to the Western mind, who always took the monarchs' absolute power with a touch of skepticism. This aura of supreme sanctity that surrounds the Tzars is one that must be taken to heart when understanding the Russian spirit, that Tolstoy so masterly portrays.

As a conclusion it is not spurious to talk about the mujiks; i.e. the Russian peasants, who have such a minor, if not negligible role in the early pages. However, we see them in their anonymous roles as waiters, maids, messengers, carriage drivers, etc. The nobility's power rests on these men and women that obediently carry on their orders. But their presence goes almost unnoticed. Maybe the biggest and most important difference between noble and low birth lies in this noticing-ness of the nobility and the anonymity of the private life of the peasant, the workers and the bourgeois. One hundred years ahead of our story, they become the tragedy's main characters during revolutionary times.

The Russian nobility, at the down of the 19th century, stood between invisible forces. From above, the sainthood of the Tzars, the source of all their glory. From below, the anonymity of the populace, the base of all their real power and dominance. From outside, the threatening West with its ideas and technologies. This, almost neurotic, historical and social place, is the background of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace.