Civil Society and Orthodox Christianity

Europe - Asia Studies

Volumn 50, Issue 6, 1998, Pages 949-968

  Kharkhordin, Oleg ^a  

^a EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY AT ST PETERSBURG   (Russian Federation)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0038265961     PISSN: 09668136     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09668139808412576     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Charles Taylor, 'Modes of Civil Society', Public Culture, 3,1, Fall 1990. Later this article was reprinted in his Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).
2. See the best short exposition of this argument in Jeff Weintraub, 'Democracy and the Market: A Marriage of Inconvenience', in M. Latus Nugent (ed.), From Leninism to Freedom. The Challenges of Democratization (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1992), pp. 57-61.
3. Jean Cohen & Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1992), p. 115.
4. See an interesting discussion of limitations on a Gramscian reinterpretation of the Polish experience in Z. A. Pelczynski, 'Solidarity and "The Rebirth of Civil Society" ', in John Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State (London, Verso, 1988).
5. Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York, Free Press, 1992), p. 10.
6. John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the 'Two Treatises of Government' (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 106.
7. Winthrop quoted in Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society, p. 72.
8. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, A Compendium of the First English Edition, David Wallace Carrithers (ed.) (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1977), book 2, chapter 4, p. 113.
9. See The Spirit of Laws, book 2, chapter 4, p. 115: 'hence it is that religion has generally so much influence in those [despotic] countries, because it forms a kind of permanent depositary; and if this cannot be said of religion, it may be of the customs that are respected instead of laws'; book 3, chapter 10, p. 125: 'there is one thing that may be opposed to the prince's will [in despotic Persia]; namely religion'.
10. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans. Stuart Gilbert (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1955), p. 111.
11. Ibid.
12. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York, Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 680-681.
13. Tocqueville, The Old Regime, p. 111: 'Within the Church the powers of the high ecclesiastical authority had well-recognized limits; even the lowest orders of the hierarchy had effective means of defending themselves against would-be tyrannical superiors. Thus they had not been tamed by all-powerful bishops to a habit of blind obedience, which as a result they might have practiced likewise toward the temporal power'.
14. Ibid., p. 513. Tocqueville mentions 'religious, moral, serious, futile, very general, and very limited, immensely large and very minute' associations right before the quoted passage, and cites associations that would like to 'proclaim some truth, or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of the great example' immediately after it. These words also support the claim for religious roots of associational life, since all examples come from spheres of some higher religious or moral concern. He also eliminates in this excerpt, first, political and, second, industrial and commercial associations from consideration; hence only religious and moral ones are left. However, claiming that Tocqueville viewed American associations solely on the model of the religious confraternity is unwarranted. Although the quoted excerpt gives some grounds for this radical claim, others may easily disprove it. For example, in another famous description (ibid., vol. 1, part 2, chapter 4, p. 189), he gives the following examples of civil associations: an assembly to eliminate the object blocking the road; an association 'to make festivities grander and more orderly', and finally, moral associations. Thus, it seems more appropriate to speak of the special role of moral and intellectual associations (closely linked to a religious model) in Tocqueville's vision of civil life, or about contradictory evidence. Whether commercial corporations and political associations (bodies of local self-government, such as townships and counties, or juries and political parties) should be included in Tocquevillean 'civil society' strictly defined is a subject for discussion. Of course, their role is very important since political associations, for instance, defend citizens 'against the encroachments of royal power' or 'despotic action of the majority' (ibid., p. 513). It would seem logical to suggest that those associations rather than 'intellectual and moral associations' are the closest candidates to replacing the corps secondaires in terms of defence of the individual. However, moral associations are the closest to replacing the 'powerful private persons' of the past as sources of public emulation and of the spread of moral ideas. Hence 'the latter are as necessary as the former to the American people; perhaps more so' (ibid., pp. 515-516). In any case, too much of Tocqueville's discussion of civil associations depends on examples of quasi-religious activities, a fact not to be ignored.
15. Ibid., p. 513. Tocqueville mentions 'religious, moral, serious, futile, very general, and very limited, immensely large and very minute' associations right before the quoted passage, and cites associations that would like to 'proclaim some truth, or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of the great example' immediately after it. These words also support the claim for religious roots of associational life, since all examples come from spheres of some higher religious or moral concern. He also eliminates in this excerpt, first, political and, second, industrial and commercial associations from consideration; hence only religious and moral ones are left. However, claiming that Tocqueville viewed American associations solely on the model of the religious confraternity is unwarranted. Although the quoted excerpt gives some grounds for this radical claim, others may easily disprove it. For example, in another famous description (ibid., vol. 1, part 2, chapter 4, p. 189), he gives the following examples of civil associations: an assembly to eliminate the object blocking the road; an association 'to make festivities grander and more orderly', and finally, moral associations. Thus, it seems more appropriate to speak of the special role of moral and intellectual associations (closely linked to a religious model) in Tocqueville's vision of civil life, or about contradictory evidence. Whether commercial corporations and political associations (bodies of local self-government, such as townships and counties, or juries and political parties) should be included in Tocquevillean 'civil society' strictly defined is a subject for discussion. Of course, their role is very important since political associations, for instance, defend citizens 'against the encroachments of royal power' or 'despotic action of the majority' (ibid., p. 513). It would seem logical to suggest that those associations rather than 'intellectual and moral associations' are the closest candidates to replacing the corps secondaires in terms of defence of the individual. However, moral associations are the closest to replacing the 'powerful private persons' of the past as sources of public emulation and of the spread of moral ideas. Hence 'the latter are as necessary as the former to the American people; perhaps more so' (ibid., pp. 515-516). In any case, too much of Tocqueville's discussion of civil associations depends on examples of quasi-religious activities, a fact not to be ignored.
16. Ibid., p. 513. Tocqueville mentions 'religious, moral, serious, futile, very general, and very limited, immensely large and very minute' associations right before the quoted passage, and cites associations that would like to 'proclaim some truth, or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of the great example' immediately after it. These words also support the claim for religious roots of associational life, since all examples come from spheres of some higher religious or moral concern. He also eliminates in this excerpt, first, political and, second, industrial and commercial associations from consideration; hence only religious and moral ones are left. However, claiming that Tocqueville viewed American associations solely on the model of the religious confraternity is unwarranted. Although the quoted excerpt gives some grounds for this radical claim, others may easily disprove it. For example, in another famous description (ibid., vol. 1, part 2, chapter 4, p. 189), he gives the following examples of civil associations: an assembly to eliminate the object blocking the road; an association 'to make festivities grander and more orderly', and finally, moral associations. Thus, it seems more appropriate to speak of the special role of moral and intellectual associations (closely linked to a religious model) in Tocqueville's vision of civil life, or about contradictory evidence. Whether commercial corporations and political associations (bodies of local self-government, such as townships and counties, or juries and political parties) should be included in Tocquevillean 'civil society' strictly defined is a subject for discussion. Of course, their role is very important since political associations, for instance, defend citizens 'against the encroachments of royal power' or 'despotic action of the majority' (ibid., p. 513). It would seem logical to suggest that those associations rather than 'intellectual and moral associations' are the closest candidates to replacing the corps secondaires in terms of defence of the individual. However, moral associations are the closest to replacing the 'powerful private persons' of the past as sources of public emulation and of the spread of moral ideas. Hence 'the latter are as necessary as the former to the American people; perhaps more so' (ibid., pp. 515-516). In any case, too much of Tocqueville's discussion of civil associations depends on examples of quasi-religious activities, a fact not to be ignored.
17. Ibid., p. 513. Tocqueville mentions 'religious, moral, serious, futile, very general, and very limited, immensely large and very minute' associations right before the quoted passage, and cites associations that would like to 'proclaim some truth, or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of the great example' immediately after it. These words also support the claim for religious roots of associational life, since all examples come from spheres of some higher religious or moral concern. He also eliminates in this excerpt, first, political and, second, industrial and commercial associations from consideration; hence only religious and moral ones are left. However, claiming that Tocqueville viewed American associations solely on the model of the religious confraternity is unwarranted. Although the quoted excerpt gives some grounds for this radical claim, others may easily disprove it. For example, in another famous description (ibid., vol. 1, part 2, chapter 4, p. 189), he gives the following examples of civil associations: an assembly to eliminate the object blocking the road; an association 'to make festivities grander and more orderly', and finally, moral associations. Thus, it seems more appropriate to speak of the special role of moral and intellectual associations (closely linked to a religious model) in Tocqueville's vision of civil life, or about contradictory evidence. Whether commercial corporations and political associations (bodies of local self-government, such as townships and counties, or juries and political parties) should be included in Tocquevillean 'civil society' strictly defined is a subject for discussion. Of course, their role is very important since political associations, for instance, defend citizens 'against the encroachments of royal power' or 'despotic action of the majority' (ibid., p. 513). It would seem logical to suggest that those associations rather than 'intellectual and moral associations' are the closest candidates to replacing the corps secondaires in terms of defence of the individual. However, moral associations are the closest to replacing the 'powerful private persons' of the past as sources of public emulation and of the spread of moral ideas. Hence 'the latter are as necessary as the former to the American people; perhaps more so' (ibid., pp. 515-516). In any case, too much of Tocqueville's discussion of civil associations depends on examples of quasi-religious activities, a fact not to be ignored.
18. Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work. Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 127.
19. Peter Burke, Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy (New York, Scribner's, 1972), p. 215.
20. Ibid., p. 216. Historians also note the prominent role of the confraternities in financing the development of Renaissance art. They collected money for paintings and statues for the churches under their patronage, placing orders with such masters as Leonardo and Carpaccio. Brothers also ordered new hymns and compositions of Church music. For a recent description see Noel O'Regan, Institutional Patronage in Post-Tridentine Rome (London, 1995). Some confraternities were based on common membership in a guild rather than in a parish. Hence, confraternities may be considered an epiphenomenon of a growth of civic virtue rather than its driving force, in the manner in which Putnam usually describes them. I would like to stress what Putnam usually omits from consideration: the religious background of much associational activity in what is usually taken to be a secular republican tradition.
21. Ibid., p. 216. Historians also note the prominent role of the confraternities in financing the development of Renaissance art. They collected money for paintings and statues for the churches under their patronage, placing orders with such masters as Leonardo and Carpaccio. Brothers also ordered new hymns and compositions of Church music. For a recent description see Noel O'Regan, Institutional Patronage in Post-Tridentine Rome (London, 1995). Some confraternities were based on common membership in a guild rather than in a parish. Hence, confraternities may be considered an epiphenomenon of a growth of civic virtue rather than its driving force, in the manner in which Putnam usually describes them. I would like to stress what Putnam usually omits from consideration: the religious background of much associational activity in what is usually taken to be a secular republican tradition.
22. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, p. 142.
23. Cohen & Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, p. 144.
24. Norberto Bobbio, 'Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society', in Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State, p. 95. Looking ahead, one cannot fail to notice that Gramsci is a thinker in a Marxist tradition, and thus envisages the withering away of the state once the party captures counter-hegemony, which is closer to the Orthodox than to the Catholic vision. Perhaps in the face of a weak state - as was the case in Italy following the Risorgimento - even the Catholic tradition is tempted by the original, 'orthodox' project of the Church and tries to squeeze out the state from social life altogether, having converted all the social arena into - to use another Gramscian term - a 'well-ordered society' consisting of peaceful associations of citizen producers.
25. Jadwiga Staniszkis, Poland's Self-Limiting Revolution (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1984).
26. I equate here Protestantism and Calvinism to make the argument more succinct. Lutheranism, however, poses special problems: its radical religious individualism, on the one hand, and advocated obedience to secular authority, on the other, are perhaps best captured in Hegel's synthesis that depicts clashing individual interests subsumed in the universal state. For an argument that considers Lutheran roots of a Scandinavian understanding of civil society see Henrik Stenius, 'The Good Life is Life of Conformity: The Impact of Lutheran Tradition on Nordic Political Culture', paper presented at the Conference on Civil Society in Northern Europe, SSEES, University of London, September 1996.
27. This argument should not be understood as introducing some type of 'religious determinism'. I am just assembling some facts that would reveal a coherent background setting, following a lead proposed by Seligman. Two methodological points are in order here. First, those other sources of civil society in the West that are frequently invoked - such as independent cities and guilds, republicanism, civic rather than religious virtue, and the like - are paid little attention here in order to highlight a different common denominator for cross-cultural comparison. Second, showing what presuppositions (and/or practices) constituted the shared background against which different conceptions of civil society were formulated is not akin to causal analysis. Religious perceptions of ethical life constrain the limits of what is thinkable or sayable in the theories of civil society to be shaped in a given religious tradition, though they do not define or cause what will be said about civil society in this tradition.
28. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York, Modern Library, 1960), pp. 61, 63.
29. Ibid., p. 65.
30. Ibid., p. 66.
31. I use the term 'congregation' here in a broad Weberian sense of 'an association dedicated to exclusively religious purposes' (G. Roth & C. Wittich (eds), Economy and Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1978), vol. 1, p. 454.). Of course, this ignores his distinction between incompletely and fully congregational religions, and may also seem inappropriate to the Orthodox clergy who would claim that the term kongregatsiya pertains to Protestantism only.
32. See, e.g., Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, revised edition (London, Penguin, 1993), p. 231, on this category of Orthodox theology.
33. Semyon Frank, Dukhovnye osnovy obshchestva. Vvedenie v sotsial'nuyu filosofiyu, contemporary re-edition (Moscow, Respublika, 1992), p. 97.
34. N. I. Barsov, Sushchestvovala li v Rossii inkvizitsiya? (St Petersburg, 1892), p .6.
35. Nikolai Berdyaev, Istoki i Smysl Russkogo Kommunizma (Paris, YMCA, 1955).
36. See the detailed account of the history of the concept of 'the collective' in Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (forthcoming, University of California Press, 1999).
37. A thorough treatment of Makarenko's methods may be found in James Bowen, Soviet Education. Anton Makarenko and the Years of Experiment (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1962).
38. St Joseph (Volotsky), 'Dukhovnaya Gramota prepodobnogo losifa', in Velikie Chetii Minei (St Petersburg), 1-13 September 1868, column 576. The Statute was not reprinted during Soviet days; see, however, the detailed discussion of its shorter and longer versions in Ya. S. Lur'e, 'Iosif Volotskii kak publitsist i obshchestvennyi deyatel' ', in Poslaniya losifa Volotskogo (Moscow- Leningrad, 1959), especially pp. 56-64.
39. St Joseph (Volotsky), 'Dukhovnaya Gramota prepodobnogo losifa', in Velikie Chetii Minei (St Petersburg), 1-13 September 1868, column 576. The Statute was not reprinted during Soviet days; see, however, the detailed discussion of its shorter and longer versions in Ya. S. Lur'e, 'Iosif Volotskii kak publitsist i obshchestvennyi deyatel' ', in Poslaniya losifa Volotskogo (Moscow-Leningrad, 1959), especially pp. 56-64.
40. Ibid., columns 588-607.
41. Ibid., column 574.
42. Alexander Zinoviev, The Reality of Communism, trans. Charles Janson (London, Gollancz, 1984), p. 200.
43. Ksenya Kasyanova, O russkom natsional'nom kharaktere (Moscow, 1994), p. 254.
44. Ibid. Here one may suspect a certain contradiction: how may one be oneself when the group forms your persona? Perhaps the answer lies in a very Russian mechanism of self-formation (partly captured, however, by Erving Goffman also): I know who I am only as a result of a relevant group judgment on myself; without this judgement 'being oneself' is impossible since one does not know who one is without appropriate peer review. On the mechanism of self-revelation in public review, and its religious roots, see Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia.
45. Ibid. Here one may suspect a certain contradiction: how may one be oneself when the group forms your persona? Perhaps the answer lies in a very Russian mechanism of self-formation (partly captured, however, by Erving Goffman also): I know who I am only as a result of a relevant group judgment on myself; without this judgement 'being oneself' is impossible since one does not know who one is without appropriate peer review. On the mechanism of self-revelation in public review, and its religious roots, see Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia.
46. On the managers' stated priority to help the collective survive see Oleg Kharkhordin & Theodore P. Gerber, 'Russian Directors' Business Ethic: A Study of Industrial Enterprises in St Petersburg, 1993', Europe-Asia Studies, 46, 7, November 1994, pp. 1075-1107.
47. Varese applied Diego Gambetta's analysis of the Sicilian Mafia to the emergence of protection businesses in the Russian case. See Federico Varese, 'The Transition to the Market and Corruption in Post-Socialist Russia', Political Studies, 45, 3, 1997, and 'Is Sicily the Future of Russia - Private Protection and the Rise of the Russian Mafia', Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 35, 2, 1994. Among Russian authors, see Vadim Volkov, 'The Diffusion and the Reconstruction of the Russian State, 1997-2001', paper for the Interdisciplinary seminar of the European University at St Petersburg, April 1997.
48. Varese applied Diego Gambetta's analysis of the Sicilian Mafia to the emergence of protection businesses in the Russian case. See Federico Varese, 'The Transition to the Market and Corruption in Post-Socialist Russia', Political Studies, 45, 3, 1997, and 'Is Sicily the Future of Russia - Private Protection and the Rise of the Russian Mafia', Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 35, 2, 1994. Among Russian authors, see Vadim Volkov, 'The Diffusion and the Reconstruction of the Russian State, 1997-2001', paper for the Interdisciplinary seminar of the European University at St Petersburg, April 1997.
49. Varese applied Diego Gambetta's analysis of the Sicilian Mafia to the emergence of protection businesses in the Russian case. See Federico Varese, 'The Transition to the Market and Corruption in Post-Socialist Russia', Political Studies, 45, 3, 1997, and 'Is Sicily the Future of Russia - Private Protection and the Rise of the Russian Mafia', Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 35, 2, 1994. Among Russian authors, see Vadim Volkov, 'The Diffusion and the Reconstruction of the Russian State, 1997-2001', paper for the Interdisciplinary seminar of the European University at St Petersburg, April 1997.
50. Consider networks associated with people around Chubais, and to a lesser extent, Nemtsov.
51. Kasyanova, O russkom natsional'nom kharaktere, pp. 264, 327.
52. Frank, Dukhovnye osnovy, pp. 97-98.
53. See e.g. Pierre Bourdieu, 'Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field', in C. Calhoun (ed.), Comparative Social Research, vol. 13 (Greenwich, CT, JAI Press, 1991), p. 15.
54. Compare Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1984), p. 178: 'As a first approximation, I define "belief" ... as a subject's investment in a proposition, the act of saying it and considering it as true - in other words, a "modality" of assertion and not its content'.