The writings of Russian revolutionary and Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968) show him as a great theorist of love who realized the intimate connection between love and truth, beauty, and goodness. Sorokin’s life displays all the components emphasized in this philosophy, beginning with a realization of beauty in nature and the arts, truth in religion and the intellectual life, and goodness in political activity and service to a world struggling in a difficult transition.
Sorokin began his career as a revolutionary leader and organizer in opposition to the Czarist government, which three times imprisoned him. During one period in prison, he was told each day for several weeks that he would be executed the next day. Under this extreme and prolonged stress, he forged a loyalty to values that could not be shaken by threats of death. During the first months after the Russian revolution overthrew the Czar, Sorokin was chosen as secretary to Prime Minister Kerensky; but then the Bolsheviks plunged Russia into anarchy as they fought and took over the revolution.
After the Bolsheviks overturned Kerensky and took power, they expelled Sorokin from his post at the University of St. Petersburg. In the winter of 1921, his task for the government was to study the mass starvation that resulted from the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary disruption of agriculture. Sorokin writes, “My nervous system, accustomed to many horrors in the years of the Revolution, broke down completely before the spectacle of the actual starvation of millions in my ravaged country. If I came out less an investigator, I do not think I came out less a man, less an enemy of any group of men capable of inflicting such suffering on the human race. . . . The memory of what I saw and heard made me absolutely fearless in denouncing the Revolution and the monsters who were devouring Russia.” Until late in life, Sorokin’s response to what he found intolerable was fearless denunciation; eventually love dominated his character, enabling him to let certain things go and respond to other things constructively.
Sorokin’s positivistic, humanistic optimism was shaken by World War and Bolshevik barbarism. This second philosophical crisis led him to striving further for a coherent understanding of life’s contradictions. His struggle culminated in his third philosophy. It was the synthesis that served him to the end of his life—an integration of values into “the Supreme Trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.” “Integralism,” he wrote, “has given me a firm foundation for maintenance of my integrity and has wisely guided my conduct amidst the bloody debris of the crumbling [materialistic] civilization.” Character and conduct, guided by supreme values, enabled this leader to preserve his effectiveness in a crisis. Integralism would pervade his scientific work.
An integrated philosophy is no substitute for courage, but it does guide and reinforce courage. As a sociology professor during the revolution, Sorokin would teach the truths he had found without fear or favor. We learn courage in part by seeing others’ courage and being fortified by it. The Communists in 1921 decreed benefits for Pavlov since he was a famous scientist, but he refused to accept them. Others were equally heroic, refusing to accommodate to the regime. Sorokin testified, “Let anyone who seeks moral heroism turn his eyes to the thousands of people in Russia who, for years, from day to day, from night to night, despite persecution and temptation, have steadfastly replied to the Bosheviki: “Man does not live by bread alone,” and “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.” The moral and spiritual courage of “ordinary” people inspired and upheld this leader.
The conclusion of Sorokin’s 1924 Leaves from a Russian Diary expresses the attitude that would characterize the rest of his life.
Whatever may happen in the future, I know that I have learned three things which will forever remain convictions of my heart as well as of my mind. Life, even the hardest life, is the most beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous treasure in the world. Fulfillment of duty is another beautiful thing, making life happy and giving to the soul the unconquerable force to sustain ideals—this is my second conviction. And my third is that cruelty, hatred, and injustice never can and never will be able to create a mental, moral, or material millennium.
(On May 22, 2014, this blog introduced Sorokin as the prophetic sociologist whose philosophy of history supports hope for a planetary spiritual renaissance.)
In your experience, how do courage and love relate?
This photo of Pitirim Sorokin in 1917 comes from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/%D0%9F%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BC_%D0%A1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD.jpg
You can display courage without love, but you can not display love without courage. An example comes to mind from my personal experience. In the fall of 1970, I was taking a course in U.S. History. The professor asked the question: Why did President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Arkansas and nationalize the National Guard in 1957. This action by the president was in response to the failure of Governor Orval Faubus to protect the black students who were enrolling in Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in response to the consequence of the decision by the Supreme Court of Brown v. Board of Education.
Almost all of the students gave answers to the effect that the president was sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movements including myself; others said he felt sorry for the black students who were being mobbed by the angry crowd. It required a lot of courage for him to take that kind of action in the south at that time for clearly he was acting against the public sentiment there.
But the professor who was the head of the History Department disallowed those comments. He said neither sympathy nor empathy had anything to do with the president’s decision. He said that because of the president’s long career as a military officer, that duty was enshrined in his very being, that the Supreme Court had ruled, and this ruling was now the law of the land. His decision to do his duty on this occasion was no different than the duty decisions that he made as Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. He simply had a deep abiding respect for the law, so deep that he enforced it against popular dissent.
On the other hand love being the supreme spiritual value, inclusive of all other spiritual values does not operate without courage. This force is of such an overwhelming nature that when truly embraced, it holds the moral feet fast to the fires of truth, regardless of consequence to the material self. By its very nature love is courageous. It scales moral heights that mere courage alone can not follow.
There have been many episodes in my life where moral courage alone was not adequate to overcome the moral adversary at supreme levels, but when this same moral adversary was faced with the power of love, love stripped of its selfish qualities, it fell before its onslaught. Love and courage are related, but the results of courage are most enduring and striking when this courage acts as an integral part of love, for God is love.
Dr. Perry
For many years I dreamed of using selected dialogues of Plato to teach a course on truth and courage. Your comment reveals more than I could have conceived on the topic. My closest approach to your insight in recent days is this: Sometimes the mortal tangle of imperfections obscures to our vision the presence of divine spirit; but that seemingly impenetrable tangle is whispy, transient, and porous from the divine perspective. It is like the wall which seems solid until you learn of the space between the atoms. You have the experiential insight: Love, divine love, dispels the facade of any barrier to divine living. Eternal thanks for your revelatory teaching.
You can display courage without love, but you can not display love without courage. An example comes to mind from my personal experience. In the fall of 1970, I was taking a course in U.S. History. The professor asked the question: Why did President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Arkansas and nationalize the National Guard in 1957. This action by the president was in response to the failure of Governor Orval Faubus to protect the black students who were enrolling in Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in response to the consequence of the decision by the Supreme Court of Brown v. Board of Education.
Almost all of the students gave answers to the effect that the president was sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movements including myself; others said he felt sorry for the black students who were being mobbed by the angry crowd. It required a lot of courage for him to take that kind of action in the south at that time for clearly he was acting against the public sentiment there.
But the professor who was the head of the History Department disallowed those comments. He said neither sympathy nor empathy had anything to do with the president’s decision. He said that because of the president’s long career as a military officer, that duty was enshrined in his very being, that the Supreme Court had ruled, and this ruling was now the law of the land. His decision to do his duty on this occasion was no different than the duty decisions that he made as Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. He simply had a deep abiding respect for the law, so deep that he enforced it against popular dissent.
On the other hand love being the supreme spiritual value, inclusive of all other spiritual values does not operate without courage. This force is of such an overwhelming nature that when truly embraced, it holds the moral feet fast to the fires of truth, regardless of consequence to the material self. By its very nature love is courageous. It scales moral heights that mere courage alone can not follow.
There have been many episodes in my life where moral courage alone was not adequate to overcome the moral adversary at supreme levels, but when this same moral adversary was faced with the power of love, love stripped of its selfish qualities, it fell before its onslaught. Love and courage are related, but the results of courage are most enduring and striking when this courage acts as an integral part of love, for God is love.
Dr. Perry
For many years I dreamed of using selected dialogues of Plato to teach a course on truth and courage. Your comment reveals more than I could have conceived on the topic. My closest approach to your insight in recent days is this: Sometimes the mortal tangle of imperfections obscures to our vision the presence of divine spirit; but that seemingly impenetrable tangle is whispy, transient, and porous from the divine perspective. It is like the wall which seems solid until you learn of the space between the atoms. You have the experiential insight: Love, divine love, dispels the facade of any barrier to divine living. Eternal thanks for your revelatory teaching.