N.F. Fedorov, Russian Come-Upist

by Ed Tandy, revised by R. Michael Perry (2003).

Originally published in Venturist Voice, Summer 1986.

Printed by permission of The Venturists.

1. Introduction

Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, although he was highly praised by such people as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy (literature), Afanasi Fet (poetry), Vladimir Solovyov (philosophy) and Konstantin Tsiolkowsky (astronautics) was little known in the western world for many years, though that is now changing. (The name is sometimes spelled "Fyodorov," particularly in non-Russian Europe and Asia.)

Fedorov, a 19th-century Russian, formulated an immortalist philosophy from a Christian perspective. Bastard born in 1829 of Prince Pavel Ivanovich Gagarin and Elisaveta Ivanova, a woman of lower-class nobility, Nikolai (with his mother and her other children) had to leave his father's home at age four, due to the prince's death. The family continued to be well-cared for, however. Fedorov studied law, though for only three years, then began fourteen years of wanderings in seven cities, teaching in elementary schools. In 1868 he began 25 years as a librarian with the Rumyantsev Museum. After retiring, and until his death in 1903, he worked in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Throughout much of his adult life he lived almost ascetically. He resided in a tiny room where he slept only four or five hours daily on a hump-backed trunk. He often went for months without eating any hot food. He did not want to possess any property and never owned even a winter overcoat. He considered fame immodest. He turned down proposed salary increases; nevertheless he often assisted needy scholars with his own very meager funds and other resources.

Fedorov wrote much but was not interested in publication nor in writing to be easily understood. He was largely unknown to his contemporaries. His works, published posthumously, were (in proper spirit) available only free of charge from the publishers, who renounced all rights.

2. Fedorov's Basic Idea

Due to his Christian perspective, Fedorov found the widespread lack of love among people appalling. He divided these non-loving relations into two kinds. One is alienation among people: "non-kindred relations of people among themselves." The other is isolation of the living from the dead: "nature's non-kindred relation to men." "Man must not live for him self alone (egoism) nor only for others (altruism) but with all men and for all men." Fedorov is referring to all people of all time (past, present, future). He is speaking of a project to unite humankind, the colonization ("spiritualisation") of the universe, the quest for the Kingdom of God, the creation of cosmos from chaos, the death of death, even the resurrection of the dead. Fedorov believed, and passionately felt, that resignation in the face of death and separation of knowledge from action was false Christianity. He cautioned against being fooled into worshipping the blind forces of Satan. Rather, one should actively participate in changing what is into what ought to be. Let us now look at Fedorov's views on various topics.

3. On History

"History is (in essence) a ravaging of nature and an annihilation of men by one another." Genuine loving relations or true human community would produce people interested in using science to overcome death and to populate, regulate, and transform "all of the worlds of the universe." "It was for this that man was created" "Our attitude toward history should not be ‘objective', i.e., nonparticipating, nor ‘subjective', i.e., inwardly sympathetic, but ‘projective', i.e., making knowledge ‘a project for a better world'''. "In man nature herself has become aware of the evil of death, aware of its own imperfection." In history "mankind is summoned to be God's instrument" in the salvation of the world.

4 On The Military-Industrial Complex

"At the present time everything serves war; there is no discovery which military men have not studied with a view to its military applications . ... Man has apparently done all the evil that he could, both to nature (attrition, devastation, depredation) and to other men. ... The very arteries of communication serve only for strategy or commerce, for war or profiteering."

5. The Two Classes

The division between the learned and the unlearned was, in Fedorov's view, worse than the separation of the rich and the poor. The unlearned are more concerned with work than thought. The learned (philosophers and scientists) are less concerned with work than thought. The learned seem unaware that ideas "are not subjective, nor are they objective; they are projective." Philosophers and scientists, because they have separated ideas from moral action, are simply slaves to the imperfect present order. It is a root dogma of the learned that paradise is not possible. The unlearned should demand that the learned (because only they have the necessary knowledge) become a temporary task force for the Kingdom of God. The learned, however, will attempt to persuade us that problems like crop failures, disease, and death are not general questions but matters for a narrow discipline, questions for only a very small (or nonexistent) minority of the learned. Separation of the learned from the masses turns them into a seemingly permanent class, producing non-lovers of humankind. The "transformation of the blind course of nature into one that is rational ... is bound to appear to the learned as a disruption of order, although this order of theirs brings only disorder among men, striking them down with famine, plague, and death."

6. Energy and the Environment

Looking into the hoped-for future, Fedorov saw we would relatively soon regulate the weather, the physical environment in which we live, and later the motions of the planets and even other star systems. He advocated replacing the mining of coal with procurement of wind and sun power.

7. Birth, Death and Resurrection

Parents give their lives to the raising of their children. Children should devote their lives to raising the dead. "Death is a triumph of blind, nonmoral power"; "a man who would not return life to those from whom he received it is not worthy of life or freedom." Fedorov thought of "replacing childbirth by the raising of the dead." In redirecting the "unconscious process of birth into a universal resurrection", "mankind can make all worlds support life." No doubt (Woody Allen would be pleased to know) "the actualization of this project would demonstrate that life is not an accidental or useless gift." According to Fedorov, science will mean "control over all the molecules and atoms of the world, in order to collect what is dispersed, to unite what is disintegrated, i.e., to create our forefathers in bodily form."

A citizen, comrade, or team-member can be replaced by another. However a person loved, one's kin, is irreplaceable. Moreover, memory of one's dead kin is not the same as the real person. Pride in one's forefathers is a vice, a form of egoism. On the other hand, love of one's forefathers means sadness in their death, requiring the literal raising of the dead. Politics must be replaced by physics. The politics of egoism and altruism must be replaced by Christianity which "knows only all men." Pride is a Tower of Babel which separates us from one another. Love is a "fusion as opposed to a confusion."

The desire for cessation of activity in old age ... is not humility before the Divine" but Satan-worship . "Regardless of wars, our real enemy remains (for the time being) the blind, death-dealing power legalized by" social Darwinism (`only the fit ought to survive') "The true relation of a rational creature to the irrational power" of nature "is that of the regulation of a natural process." "No matter how deep the causes of mortality may be, mortality is not primordial; it is not an unconditional necessity. The blind power in whose dependence a rational creature finds himself can itself be controlled by reason."

8. Salvation

For Fedorov, "complete and universal salvation" is preferable to "incomplete or non-universal salvation in which some men the sinners are condemned to eternal torments and others the righteous to an eternal contemplation of these torments." That is to say, Fedorov's bold science project, "the common task", is not the only possible route to salvation. "Salvation may also occur without the participation of men ... if they do not unite in the common task"; "if we do not unite to accomplish our salvation, if we do not accept the Gospel message", then a "purely transcendent resurrection will save only the elect; for the rest it will be an expression of God's wrath," "eternal punishment." "I believe this literally." "Christianity has not fully saved the world, because it has not been fully assimilated." Christianity "is not simply a doctrine of redemption, but the very task of redemption."

9. An Epilogue

Many of the modest number of philosophers familiar with Fedorov admit his originality, his independence, his human concern, perhaps even his logic—up to a point. But at some point (there is disagreement as to where) these same philosophers state matter-of-factly that Fedorov has slipped into fantasy or magic. Too, Fedorov's thoughts have been variously described as bold, culminating, curious, easily-misunderstood, extreme, hazy, idealist, naive, valuable, scientifico-magical, special, unexpected, unique, and utopian. Per haps all would agree, however, on his single-mindedness. Looked at positively, this is simply another term for purity-of-heart, a quality of saintliness. Fedorov is not speaking of fantasy or magic. Rather, he is speaking from faith, from hope, from love. From such a perspective, Fedorov's pure heart and clear mind perceives nothing as impossible. (What better perspective than this ought one to choose?)

There are similarities between Fedorov's thoughts and the recent reflections of Jose Ortega Y Gasset in his The Origin of Philosophy, published posthumously. In the unfinished book we find the following: ‘Man is able to predict more and more of the future, and hence ‘eternalize' himself more in that dimension. Meanwhile, he has also attained greater possession of his past." "Man is thus now on the brink of increasing his measure of ‘eternity'." In the final paragraph of the book: "People glibly repeat that philosophy is a questioning of Being. As if questioning oneself about such an irregular persona were the most natural thing in the world . ... It does not seem likely that this is what men who had lost faith in the gods and were discontent with nature should set out initially to seek. Perhaps Being at that time did not instigate the primordial question. Perhaps Being was an answer."

Compare this with Fedorov's criticism of philosophers: "How unnatural it is to ask, ‘Why does that which exist, exist?' and yet how completely natural it is to ask, ‘Why do the living die?''' And perhaps Fedorov is anticipating R. Buckminster Fuller when he says: "The need for forced labour for the sake of universal comfort is an anomaly - even if this labour is equally distributed."

Fedorov anticipates Harvard philosophy professor John Rawls when he says: "By refusing to grant ourselves the right to set ourselves apart ... we are kept from setting any goal for ourselves that is not the common task of all."

Rawls, like Fedorov, opposes both utilitarianism and intuitionism. And Rawls, in his A Theory of Justice, [after the fact] anticipates Fedorov's broader theory of love when he ends this more recent work as follows: "Thus what we are doing is to combine into one conception the totality of conditions that we are ready upon due reflection to recognize as reasonable in our conduct with regard to one another . ... all persons ... even ... persons who are not contemporaries but who belong to many generations.

"[T]o see our place in society from [this] perspective [is] ... to regard the human situation not only from all social but also from all temporal points of view. The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place beyond the world, nor the point of view of a transcendent being; rather it is a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world . ... Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view."

Fedorov goes beyond Rawls however: "The question of the individual" - "a son of all his dead forefathers, and not a vagabond in a crowd" - "is resolved only in the doctrine of relatedness." Fedorov states that sonship does not have to be literally true for the doctrine of relatedness to be morally correct just as Rawls states that the social contract does not have to be literal history for his theory of justice to be philosophically compelling.

In Fedorov's final analysis, a Christian is necessarily an immortalist—an immortalist not merely in theory and imagination, but in fact and deed. Fedorov described the 19th century as "a direct consequence of the dividing of what is heavenly from what is earthly, of the complete distortion of Christianity, whose Covenant involves precisely the uniting of the heavenly and the earthly, the divine and the human. The universal immanent raising of the dead, a task pursued with all one's heart, with all one's mind, with all one's actions—a raising of the dead accomplished by means of all the powers and capabilities of all the sons of man, such is the fulfilment of this Covenant of Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man."

Have we made any real progress since Fedorov's time? Fedorov would have considered another question more important: What are the sons of man doing now in quest of the kingdom of God? In spite of this more important question, we nevertheless note that our first man in space orbited the earth in 1961 as if by magic. In fact, his name was Gagarin—the name of Fedorov's father.

Bibliography

1. Berdyaev, N. A. The Russian Idea. (1948).

2. Berdyaev, N. A. N. F. Fedorov. The Russian Review 9 (1950.

3. Edie, J. M., Scanlan, J. P., Zeldin, M., and Kline, G. L. (eds) Russian Philosophy (1965).

4. Lossky, N. O. History of Russian Philosophy (1951).

5. Zenkovsky, V. V. A History of Russian Philosophy (1953).

Mike Perry's further comments:

(Mike Perry [R. Michael Perry] was editor of Venturist Voice)

One important additional reference in English on Fedorov is N. F. Fyodorov's Philosophy of Physical Resurrection by Taras Zakgdalsky (Ph.D. thesis, Bryn Mawr, 1976, available from University NiProfilms, Ann Arbor, MI, USA). Another, more recent book that considers and defends Fedorov's views, with adaptations to the outlook offered by modern physics, is Forever for All by R. Michael Perry, Parkland, FL: Universal Publishers, 2000.

It is worth emphasizing that, as Zakydalsky points out, the central feature of Fedorov's philosophy is the immanent, physical and universal resurrection of the dead. This resurrection is to be accomplished through purely scientific rather than supernatural means. Though the existence of supernatural powers (such as the Christian Trinity) is not denied their role, at best, is seen as inspirational and not participatory. For Fedorov it was essential that the resurrection be immanent rather than transcendent. Otherwise man's intelligence and power to act are superfluous, and if, on the other hand, the resurrection is not to occur in the present world but in some mystical heaven, then the world as we know it is a mistake. Fedorov imagined that the resurrection would be a great moral project uniting all of mankind in a common brotherhood. Even the most evil men would eventually be restored and cured of their harmful nature. Evil is caused by blindness and can be cured by enlightenment, through human effort.

The physical resurrection is to be brought about by restoring the body to a condition that existed prior to death. A person is made up of atoms, and when a person dies these (finitely many) particles are scattered. Resurrection of the person occurs as a consequence of restoring the atoms to their previous arrangement. To carry out the resurrection it is necessary to determine what this arrangement was and then to reposition the particles. This is a problem to be solved by science rather than by appeals to an outside power.

Fedorov envisioned at least two possible mechanisms for carrying out the physical resurrection. The first involved tracking atoms backward in time to determine the arrangements they occupied in the past. If measurements of position, velocity, etc., could be made accurately enough (and this was not known to be impossible to 19th century physics), it should be possible to determine the necessary configurations, much as the dates of ancient solar eclipses can be deduced from modern astronomical measurements. The second mechanism involved the assumption that atoms, like pebbles, contained distinguishing marks or features so that no two were exactly alike. Each person, then, would contain a distinctive mix of atoms, and the task of determining which atoms were the correct ones would be made easier.

The question arises of to what extent Fedorov's project could be carried out. If the dead are well-enough preserved it should be possible to restore them to life someday, when the necessary technology is at hand. This is the central tenet of cryonics, in which it appears that, for the preservation to be adequate, low-temperature freezing is necessary. For the dead who are not frozen and whose remains are allowed to disintegrate the problems are much more serious. We now have good reason to think that the past is not simply deducible from present observations in the manner that might have seemed plausible to a 19th-century physicist. Atoms do not appear to contain distinctive markings like pebbles but are interchangeable. Information can be lost as well as created. At the very least this would enormously complicate the task of reconstructing a person whose body had disintegrated. It might appear to require some exhaustive enumeration of possible bodies so that the correct structure would only be obtained eventually, by accident. It would not be knowable to the outsider at what point a specific resurrection had occurred, or whether a given, living body was in fact a given person, resurrected. (And, since the same matter must have occurred in more than one person it would be necessary, after a living body is created, to replace its matter with matter that could not have been part of another human body, for example, extraterrestrial matter. The old matter could then be reused in other resurrections.)

The problem could be simplified if we only required recovery of the pattern of information that characterized the person, rather than the identical particles in their identical arrangement. (Actually this lesser requirement would be far more reasonable in my view. A case can be made that a particle has no "identity" in an absolute sense. Moreover there is reason to believe that particles would not be stable enough to persist in their original form for the amount of time that would be needed for a bodily resurrection.) It would then be sufficient to assemble similar particles in an identical arrangement, and probably a considerable deviation from the original could be allowed, so long as psychological features (memories, personality traits, etc.) remained essentially the same. This again, however, would involve an exhaustive enumeration, with time an exponential in the (considerable) quantity of information needed to describe the person. Still another simplification is possible, however, if we accept the existence of parallel worlds (that is to say, different universes or widely separated, nearly identical large regions of one very large universe), as certain prominent physicists have done. One consequence of this view is that any activities in one world are nearly matched in other worlds. A future resurrectionist thus would have many similar resurrectionists working in parallel, though with small variations. The process of guessing any specific pattern could thus be done much more swiftly than by working alone, and possibly overcome the exponential time barrier. Still it would not be a project for our time nor any near-term future.