Individual and "Supra-Individual" in Chaadaev's Philosophical Letters

The polarity between universal and particular, individual and collective, is widely considered as a peculiar carachter of Russian philosophical thought. In the classical scheme elaborated by the Slavophiles, the opposition between Western European and Russian cultures was seen exactly in a different attitude toward separation and integrity, individual and collective. On the opposite side, Westernizers generally maintained the rights of individual reason and the person's ethical autonomy. As it is well-known, though he harshly discussed with Khomjakov, and highly appreciated Western Europe, Chaadaev cannot be considered simply as a Westernizer ante litteram. Particularly his views on the relationship between individual and universal proved to be very original and especially interesting. In his Philosophical Letters Chaadaev traced a general hierarchy of being, at the basis of which lays the nature. The immediately superior level is the individual consciousness, over which one finds the social sphere, as a sort of collective consciousness (Letter VI). At the top there is God, accessible through the universalizing character of the social sphere. Individuals find their own meaning within the context of society, particular issues have to be connected with the universal in order to be properly understood, freedom and responsibility can be conceived only within the social sphere. In his Letter V, Chaadaev defines a sort of universal mind, a collective intelligence which is «the sum of all the ideas which live on in human memory», «the succession of intelligences» conceived «as a single and sole intelligence». Such a universal intelligence, which enables both knowledge and morality, develops over time, within history. Therefore, as the unfortunate example of Russia itself clearly shows, without history, no collective consciousness can develop (Letter I). According to Chaadaev, unlike the Slavophiles' views, Western Europe and Catholic Church represented the model of proper communality, rather than Russia. On this general background, Chaadaev's attitude toward Kant's thought is particularly interesting. On the one hand, he criticized Kant because of his «false theory of the autonomy of human reason» (Letter V). On the other, he did not deny the subject's active role within knowledge, neither a certain idea of freedom, so that he could even consider his own thought as a «logical consequence» of Kantian philosophy. My hypothesis is that Chaadaev's understanding of the tension between individual and collective can be effectively investigated through his readings of Kantian epistemology and ethics.