Russia uchu shugi (Russian Cosmism)

From the late 19th to the first half of the 20th century, various Russian thinkers advocated human immortality and space exploration. This trend, combining elements of religious philosophy, communist ideology, natural sciences, literature, and art, would later be termed “Russian Cosmism.” The present book, edited by Boris Groys, one of the world’s leading art critics, is an anthology of the works of five Russian Cosmists.
 
The project of human immortality is intended to overcome the temporal limit of the human life span, while space exploration entails breaking through humanity’s spatial limitations. Christianity and other monotheistic religions considered God to be an infinite being, in contrast to the finite human being. Immortality and space exploration are attempts by finite human beings to approach God’s infinity. Russian Cosmism was contemporary with the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, who propounded the death of God and the Superman.
 
This pursuit of infinity may appear arrogant. Today’s entrepreneurs who invest heavily in longevity science and space exploration are often said to aspire to become supermen or gods themselves. The Russian Cosmists were different in this regard. Their goal was to become immortal and advance into space, not alone, but with all of humanity. To this end, they advocated cooperation among all human beings. The basic idea of Russian Cosmism, that the individual has value only as part of a human whole, makes us reflect on our modern individualism and, at the same time, risks leading to totalitarianism.
 
This book includes the works of such diverse figures as the religious thinker Nikolai Fedorov, who is regarded as the founder of Russian Cosmism; the anarchist Alexander Svyatogor; Valerian Muravyev, who attempted to adapt Fyodorov’s doctrine to the Soviet regime; Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, widely known as the “father of Russian rocketry”; and the Bolshevik revolutionary Alexander Bogdanov, once regarded as a rival to Lenin. Although Christianity and communism were fundamentally mutually hostile, they both idealized cooperation among all human beings. In the case of Russian Cosmism, this ideal was combined with faith in scientific progress to constitute an optimistic progressivism of continuous improvement through human cooperation.
 
Today, we no longer naively believe in cooperation among all human beings for the same purpose or that science will make the world better. Violence by great powers and climate change are casting a dark shadow over our collective future. The optimistic progressivism of the past has caused the current situation. Was this, however, the only possible form of progressivism? Can we not imagine a different kind of progressivism than that envisioned by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs? This book examines the possibilities of such alternative progressivisms.
 

(Written by NORIMATSU Kyohei, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2024)