The (un)possibility of theodicy: the impact of the Lisbon earthquake on Enlightenment philosophical anthropology

Sergienko Aleksey Yurievich Postgraduate student; Stasis Center for Practical Philosophy; European University at St. Petersburg 6/1 Gagarinskaya str., A, Saint Petersburg, 191187 asergienko@eu.spb.ru

Introduction

The Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was not only a seismic disaster and a humanitarian crisis for Portugal, but also an event of paradigmatic significance that changed the philosophical and anthropological concepts of the Enlightenment. Philosophical reflection on the place of man in a world in which it is impossible to recognize the justice and expediency of the catastrophe in relation to many thousands of people, residents of Lisbon, found expression in a critical reflection on the concept of theodicy, according to which the existing world is "the best possible." The philosophical systems of the worldviews of "pessimism" and "optimism" develop from the criticism of the provisions of the theodicy.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the trajectories of understanding the events of the Lisbon earthquake in philosophical works of the Enlightenment era. Within the framework of the problems of philosophical anthropology, the catastrophe requires rethinking as: an ontological problem (human existence in an "indifferent" cosmos), an epistemological challenge (the limits of rationalistic knowledge of the world), a practical and ethical dilemma (the moral foundations of man in an unfair world order). From a historical and philosophical point of view, the Lisbon earthquake is considered as a theoretical "split" of the Enlightenment era: firstly, the deistic view of the nature of the divine will acquires a theoretical influence, which weakens the foundations of faith and strengthens the independent principles of the human mind; secondly, as a consequence of the first, the continuum of the world is reinterpreted from materialistic positions rooted in discoveries of natural sciences and humanities of the XVIII century. The object of the research is the "seismological" trace of the Lisbon earthquake in the philosophical and anthropological concepts of the Enlightenment era. The subject is a revision of "optimism" and "pessimism" as worldview categories accompanying the philosophical conceptualization of human existence in the works of Voltaire, J.-J. Rousseau, D. Diderot and I. Kant.

The research methodology combines a historical and philosophical reconstruction of the discussion of Leibniz, Voltaire and Rousseau about providentialism, a discourse analysis of philosophical works reflecting on the event of the Lisbon earthquake (Voltaire's Candide, or Optimism, D. Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master, I. Kant's subcritical works), interpretation of the concepts of "optimism"and "pessimism" in the optics of philosophical anthropology. The value of the dichotomy "optimism" and "pessimism" for research purposes is justified, firstly, by a cultural analysis based on the intellectual reception of the Lisbon earthquake (M. Moleski, R. Tavares), and secondly, by an analysis of the formation and development of these concepts in the history of Enlightenment ideas.

The research problem is determined by a number of contradictions between "optimistic" and "pessimistic" interpretations of the horizon of the future, relevant to the human mind in the final order of the world. The problem is emphasized on the material of a conceptual analysis of the philosophical positions of French materialism (D. Diderot, P.-A. Holbach, D. de Sade) as a reflection of the internal conflict of intellectual trends of the Enlightenment era: on the one hand, "optimistic" views on the progress of historical mankind, on the other, "pessimistic" views on the inevitability of human extinction as a biological species. Conceptualization of the worldview of the philosophy of French materialism is proposed in connection with the thematization of "existential risks" in the optics of critical research of the future (T. Moynihan). The author's reference to the works of I. Kant is connected with the attempt of the German philosopher to overcome these contradictions through a rethinking of theodicy as a relationship between reason and nature in his later writings.

The relevance of the work is related to three aspects: historical and philosophical - clarifying the perspective of philosophical and anthropological ideas of the Enlightenment in connection with intellectual assessments of the Lisbon earthquake; theoretical — thematization of "existential risks" in the materialistic philosophy of Enlightenment and the development of the category of "negative wisdom" (I. Kant) in the framework of a critical rethinking of the draft theodicy; modern - the possibility of using analysis of the Lisbon earthquake as a threat model for the autonomy of the human mind. The novelty of the research lies in considering the earthquake not only as a historical fact, but as a real basis for a catastrophic discourse that changed the philosophical assessment of ideological positions.

Enlightenment on the Ruins of Lisbon: Between Providentialism and Rationalism

On November 1, 1755, on the Catholic holiday of All Saints Day, Lisbon, one of the largest cities in Europe of the 18th century, turns into ruins in six minutes^[1]. The capital of Portugal is being shaken by the most powerful earthquake ever seen by mankind. As a result of the main shock, a crack formed in the center of the city, splitting off part of Lisbon from the land. A little later, as a result of the falling of church candles, fire spread throughout the city. The sky above the city was obscured by canvases of smoke. The fire could not be extinguished for five days. After the main shock, which lasted 3-6 minutes, the water moved away from the shore into the sea and returned in a series of tsunamis, raising 20-meter waves on Lisbon. According to existing estimates, several tens of thousands of people died, and people were injured all along the coast of Portugal, Spain and Morocco. The aftershocks spread across Europe, from France to Germany and England. The pious witnesses of the earthquake were particularly struck by the fact that the few remaining buildings in the city were brothels on Rua Formosa Street, while all the temple buildings were destroyed almost to the ground ^[1].

Such a blow to the capital of one of the largest and most influential colonial states, one of the centers of the Catholic world, where all the attributes of political and theological power were combined: the monarch's palace, temple complexes, navy, archives and libraries, temporarily paralyzed the central government. The news of the tragic destruction of the Portuguese capital was spread throughout Europe, and the disaster was discussed in personal correspondence and in the literature. In his work "This Gulf of Fire", historian Mark Moleski examines in detail the seismological nature of the earthquake's impact on cultural life, intellectual discussions and the political status of Portugal in a pan-European sense ^[2]. After the incident, Portuguese monarch Jose I was at a loss, refusing to return to the destroyed city, so the "management of the disaster" fell entirely on the minister, reformer Sebastian Jose de Carvalho y Mela or Marquis Jose de Pombala. The restoration and subsequent transformation of Portugal under the de facto dictatorship of enlightened pombalism was, according to Moleski, an aftershock (eng. fourth tremor) The Lisbon earthquake ^{[2, p. 12]}. The principle of pombalism: "Bury the dead and feed the living" ^{[2, p. 187]} can be understood as the motto of the rule of the mercantile and pragmatic Enlightenment mind, unshakeable before the horror of the natural elements^[2]. Along with the establishment of pombalism as the official ideology of power, public administration is being centralized, an active struggle is beginning against the influence of the aristocracy and clerics by secularizing social institutions, protectionist policies are being adopted in the economy, urban reforms are being carried out in the capital, and (formal) equality in the rights of residents of the Portuguese metropolis and the Brazilian colonies is being established. In addition, the pragmatics of the disaster required new, rational grounds for interpreting the disaster. Pombal created a special questionnaire for the public, where he offered to answer a number of questions about the nature of the tremors, the movements of water flows, the subsequent destruction, deaths and practical measures taken by the government and the Church. This questionnaire was, in fact, the first attempt at an empirical analysis of seismic activity and its socio-ecological consequences ^{[2, p. 335]}. Thus, the supernatural interest in the causes of the earthquake prompted the formation of a new field of knowledge — seismology (from the Greek σεισμός - earthquake).

It is likely that one of the first written evidence — but far from the only one — was a letter found not so long ago by researchers from the University of Exeter from a nun, Sister Catherine Whittam, who witnessed the earthquake while washing dishes. In a letter to his relative, Whittam says: "We spent the day in prayer, but with great fear and apprehension, as we were shaking and trembling all day and night."^[3] Whittam's letter not only notes the seismological aspects of an earthquake, such as foreshocks, but also places personal experiences of the event in an emotional and psychological context. As the philosopher and philologist Werner Hamacher notes in his work on the thematization of quaking and the problem of self-representation of thinking in the context of modern literature and poetry, after the Lisbon earthquake, "the metaphor of the earth and tremors completely lost their apparent innocence; they were no longer simple figures of speech" ^{[4, p. 263]}. A natural disaster transforms the previously widespread ideas about the harmonious synchrony of physical nature and human existence. Impotence in the face of the destructive elements penetrates deeply into the feeling of the modern subject's world. Once in the existential register, the earthquake becomes a seismological narrative, pushing philosophical reflection towards a critical understanding of the horizons of the human future.

The bright pages of the intellectual history of the Lisbon earthquake were written by the Portuguese scientist Rui Tavares in his work "A small book about the Great Earthquake" ^[5]. It shows how deeply the image of the Lisbon earthquake has entered into cultural representations of catastrophes of the future and even the past and has become an unforgettable form of collective memory that forever cemented this event in culture as a universal trauma. According to Tavares, from a theoretical point of view, the Lisbon earthquake became the epicenter of an epistemological conflict between fatalistic (determinism) and skeptical (indeterminism) approaches to history. "Is it possible to know the model of the past?" ^{[5, p. 17]} — this question problematizes the significance of singular events in a continuous sequence of historical connections. Are there "turning points" in history, or is every day special in its own way?

Marquis Pombal's use of the destruction of the capital to embody the rational ideals of Enlightenment was a way of instrumentalizing the disaster. The drive of modernization led to the cultural restructuring of the entire colonial and Catholic state, the deconstruction of the old order, which was defended by supporters of the influential priest of the Jesuit Order Gabriel Malagrida. In 1756, Malagrida published the work "Judgment on the true Cause of the Earthquake", where, in the spirit of a sermon on retribution, he called the sinful and unworthy behavior of Lisbonians the main cause of misfortune ^{[5, p. 151]}. Pombal saw this as a threat: if the matter is limited to spiritual matters, if everything is predetermined by the order of providence, who will bury the dead and feed the living? And who will appreciate the efforts made? After publication, the book was subjected to a new censorship system, according to the conclusions of which Malagrida's main dogmatic digression was that he "insisted on the supernatural origin of the Great Earthquake" ^{[5, p. 155]}. Thanks to the efforts of the odious prime Minister in 1761, Malagrida was accused of heresy and burned by the Inquisition. What happened in 1755 as a great shock did not happen by the direct will of God. Earthquakes are only a natural part of the world, which was created in accordance with the divine plan. Therefore, the practical consequences of the catastrophe are limited and determined only by the duty of man.

Considering philosophical and literary examples of "illuminism" (in the works of Voltaire, J.-J. Rousseau, D. Hume, I. Kant, D. Diderot) — the same enlightened thought that inspired Pombala — Tavares demonstrates that the Lisbon disaster became a call for updating the European worldview paradigm and (perhaps not always consistent) criticism of the philosophical axiom "Everything is for the best" (fr. Tout est bien) ^{[5, p. 173]}. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze how "optimistic" and "pessimistic" views on the fate of the human race are formed against the background of an earthquake.

He presents an extensive genealogy of pessimism and optimism in philosophy in his fundamental work "Pessimism. History and Criticism" (1877) by the English philosopher and psychologist James Selly. First, Selly suggests understanding pessimism and optimism as philosophical systems distinct from "instinctive" moods in human everyday behavior ^{[6, p. 2]}. As philosophical systems, optimism and pessimism are two images of determinism that place human-dimensional reality in an "overworld" cosmological order. Such systems are not purely speculative, but offer ways of knowing the actual facts of life. Secondly, the philosopher defines rationalistic versions of pessimism and optimism in Modern times as "rational", distinguishing them, for example, from "direct" ones, which rely on intuitive cognition. "Immediate" optimism and pessimism are characteristic, for example, of the Christian faith and images of the world in romantic poetry. Selli is also distinguished by a special kind of "metaphysical" pessimism in the philosophical systems of A. Schopenhauer and E. von Hartmann. The subject of the rational philosophical system is "the conditions of existence of all living things in the world" and humanity in particular ^{[6, p. 21]}. The dominant form of "optimism" in the first half of the 18th century was the synthetic doctrine of theodicy, proposed by Leibniz and developed by his rationalist followers. The theodicy affirmed the absolute importance of harmony for the world order. The Lisbon earthquake became, as Celli describes, a providential split in Modern metaphysics, most vividly reflected in the written discussion between Voltaire and J. J. Rousseau on the perception of the consequences of the disaster ^{[6, p. 41]}.

This discussion is analyzed in detail by the Brazilian philosopher Jose Marquez in an article where, based on the correspondence of the philosophers, he compares their views on the justice of the "ways of providence" ^[7]. According to Marquez, Rousseau, responding to Voltaire in a letter, seeks to defend the role of providence on the basis of rational knowledge, without resorting to ontological or metaphysical arguments to prove a higher will. A distinctive feature of Rousseau's position is anthropological argumentation. He holds civilizational institutions responsible for the catastrophe, the development of which led to the instrumentalization of the catastrophe. Rousseau believes that natural disasters are not "a whim of nature", but arise in connection with "social and behavioral patterns of people" ^{[7, p. 18]}. Thus, recognizing the immanence of the integrity of the world to the moral aspiration of man, Rousseau offers a new reception of optimism. Marquez emphasizes the practice-oriented positions of both Voltaire and Rousseau, despite their fundamental differences.: "pessimism" recognizes the importance of human emotions and affects, while optimism calls for the autonomy of moral leadership.

In Russian-language publications, the thematization of the phenomena of optimism and pessimism has been noted by a number of studies by the philosopher Vadim Kolmakov. According to Kolmakov, "optimism" is an abstract category that includes a way to positively evaluate various phenomena of reality. Optimism has religious origins in Christianity, becomes an element of the worldview in the secular world of Modern times and the engine of utopian narratives in the radical politics of modern history. Kolmakov emphasizes the anthropocentric one-sidedness of "optimism" in its orientation to the value of human physical existence ^{[8, p. 52]}. Pessimistic moods arise as an emotionally determined reaction to the turmoil of social situations, but after the Lisbon earthquake, thanks in particular to the works of Voltaire, they acquire the structure of a philosophical system, which is transformed into the core of existential negativity in the post-Romantic philosophy of the 19th century. The "pessimistic" thought challenged the claims of "optimism" to providential domination in the world and sought ways out of the crisis of the optimistic narratives of the 20th century (neoliberal commodification of everyday life, rapid climate change, militarization of global culture). In the article "The Dispute of the Three Philosophers," Kolmakov argues that the pessimistic mood embedded in Voltaire's poetic skepticism inevitably transforms into philosophical fatalism. Voltaire simultaneously recognizes the suffering of people and the meaninglessness of chance, which "deprives a person of the right to happiness" ^{[9, p. 24]}. Pessimistic logic, pushed to its limit, presupposes that a person is doomed to misery. Rousseau and Kant see this as a threat to freedom and, on its condition, seek to reconcile man with the world, recognizing the imperfection (or limitations of the possibility of cognition) of the latter.

The first urgent task for my research is to identify the ideological resonance between the pessimistic interpretation of the Lisbon earthquake and the materialistic intuitions of the radical French Enlightenment (Diderot, Holbach). Along with pessimism, a practical philosophy is born out of the spirit of Enlightenment, which requires the development of human abilities and reliance on reason rather than divine justice. Kant seeks to overcome this "optimo-pessimistic" ambivalence of Enlightenment ideals through a critique of metaphysics. As I will try to show in the following, Kant's critical motivation is "inspired", among other things, by the Lisbon earthquake and follows the narrative of the providential schism, starting with early natural philosophical works. We should try to go through the key points of this narrative in order to reactualize the philosophical implications of the Lisbon disaster in the anthropological guise of "pessimism" and "optimism."

Is everything for the best? Or the birth of a pessimistic philosophy

The modern phenomenon of "optimism" reflects the ethical implications of the idea of theodicy (from Latin. theodicea — "justification of God"), proposed by the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Obviously, the "optimistic" tone of philosophy was set long before Modern times in the eschatological teaching of Christianity, for example, in the teaching of Aurelius Augustine. According to a study by Voronezh philosopher Kolmakov, the term "optimism" was first used as a concept by the French Jesuits, who criticized the geometric method in the philosophy of Leibniz ^{[8, p. 40]}.

In his later work Theodicy (1710), Leibniz sought to explain how "human misfortune" is related to "Divine justice" and thus describe the origin of metaphysical, moral, and physical types of evil in the world. To do this, the philosopher undertakes to find a way through the "labyrinth" of contradictions between freedom and necessity, guided by the principle of pre-established harmony. What is this principle, and how does it solve this problem?

The order of harmony reflects the dynamic relationship between two sets of concepts: freedom and necessity, soul and body. The "lazy mind," yielding to momentary impulses, unreflectingly accepts the position of the world as doomed and thereby rejects the active participation of the highest order in improving the beauty of the world. Pre—established harmony is an active principle that consists in the metaphysical unity of soul and body, where the latter "by its original structure is adapted through external objects to fulfill everything that it does according to the will of the soul" ^{[10, p. 67]}. This aspect of harmony is called "prefiguration" by Leibniz. The expression, which originates from the active principle of the soul, determines inner freedom in the prefigurative variations of organized bodies, but also imposes restrictions on existence in the only necessary world. According to Leibniz, it follows from the principle that "there are necessarily simple and unstrung substances scattered throughout nature", they "remain independent of all others except God" and "are not always separated from any organized body" ^{[10, p. 82]}. The physical world consists of many such simple substances, expressing the relationship of freedom and necessity in the immaterial unity of soul and body.

This means that each monad, as a combination of a form of life — inorganic, animal or human — with a multitude of infinitely small elements of active potency, is a special and independent instance of existence, different in its content from any other. Monads contain a prefigurative principle (just as a seed contains a potential development into a tree), which allows it to act and express itself to the degree of perfection provided for by the creative plan. The pre-established harmony allows us to conclude that the activity of reason and the postulates of faith do not contradict each other and are equally necessary, since they explain the perfect structure of the world in their own way. Reason and faith act independently of each other in line with a single goal-setting provided by the divine will.

What is the "optimism" of Leibnizian philosophy? From the point of view of the concept of theodicy, any event in the world occurs in accordance with the order of rational providence as "in the best possible world." What a person experiences as evil is a real imperfection of the world, but there is no absolute need for it. Evil, says Leibniz, is "almost nothing" ^{[10, p. 143]}. Everything we encounter in the world does not bring it closer to a better state, because it is already perfect by the prior will of God (within the individual concept). According to Leibniz, the integrity of the only world given in the choice of the "best possible" is a perfect good. In this sense, the words of the philosopher should be understood: "God desires the good first, and then the best" ^{[10, p. 145]}. It also follows that evil, manifested as imperfection, suffering, or sin, is only a means for each individual monad to ascend to ever higher degrees of perfection.

In the last part of the treatise, which Leibniz devotes to physical evil and the destructive actions of the natural elements, he advises "not to be afraid of what is predestined for us, and not to complain about what happens to us" ^{[10, p. 304]}. If the epistemological aspect of optimism here will be responsible for comprehending the beauty and harmony in which the world finds itself by divine will, then the political aspect will be responsible for reassembling religious dogma with the help of rationalistic philosophy in order to offer grounds for combining Catholic and Protestant tenets of faith that fragmented the cultural space of modern Leibniz Europe. The philosopher and educator Christian von Wolf, a follower of Leibniz, sought to give rationalistic foundations to the concept of theodicy. His interpretation of theodicy influenced the philosophical views of Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Gottsched and, subsequently, Immanuel Kant. In the utilitarian key of moral philosophy, the idea of harmony was perceived by English scientists and artists: Lord Anthony Shaftesbury in his works "Studies on Virtue" and "Moralists" and the poet Alexander Pop in his poem "Experience about Man" ^{[6, p. 36; 8, p. 49; 11, p. 115]}. The doctrines of harmony — in their theological, natural philosophical, or rationalistic versions — all imply continuity in one way or another as an immanent feature of existence, supported in each case by the logic of the theodicy of the integrity of the world.

"Pessimism" reflects the skeptical view of the French philosopher Francois Marie Voltaire. Voltaire himself did not use the concept of "pessimism," but by the power of his criticism he popularized the concept of "optimism." In fact, the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal deserves to be called an extreme figure of pessimism in the philosophical discussions of Modern times for his theocentric views on human nature, so different from Voltaire's. If in the "pessimistic" version of Pascal's philosophical anthropology, the fundamental idea was the "insignificance" of human nature (man as a roseau pensant, "thinking reed"), then, according to the Soviet historian of philosophy Vitaly Kuznetsov, Voltaire's assessment of human existence is much more comforting. He praises the love and power of man as a perfect creation and a sophisticated creator ^{[11, p. 115]}. In this case, the skeptical and fatalistic sentiments of the era voiced by Voltaire, rooted in deistic ideas about the indifference and indifference of the supreme will to the human world, can be called pessimism.

Before the Lisbon earthquake, Voltaire, in the spirit of the times, believed in the spontaneous and involuntary, but comprehensive integrity of the world (which is noticeable, for example, in the story "Zadig, or Fate"). But after 1755, he sharply questioned life in the "best of all worlds", describing a new philosophical and anthropological type — a person whose individual will is now completely alienated from the highest concept of divine will. The questions that the Lisbon earthquake poses to the society of its time significantly change Voltaire's philosophical tone. He devoted such works as "A Poem about the Death of Lisbon or an examination of the axiom: Everything is Good" (1755) and the novel "Candide, or Optimism" (1758) to the consequences of the earthquake. In the poem, Voltaire, describing in vivid detail the tragedy of the inhabitants of Lisbon affected by a natural disaster, expresses doubt about the optimistic axiomatics, an example of which he sees in the aesthetic reception of Leibnizian harmony, expressed by the poet Alexander Pop in the "Experience of Man." Voltaire also responds in poetic form to the axiom of the integrity of the world proposed by the latter: "Everything is good," Voltaire also replies in poetic form: "Leibniz did not tell me that he knits a mixture, / In the world arranged by others, it is better here; / The collection of sorrows, the perpetual disorder; / And in life fun and anxiety are involved" ^{[12, c. 211]}.

Philosophical fatalism naturally develops in the intonations of the poem. Death is the only consequence of life, which also determines the outcome of the world. This is the natural order contained in nature: "We suffer, endure, and die: everything ends when we are born, and only nature has become a link to destruction" ^{[12, p. 211]}. Literary critic Ilya Serman notes in the notes to the Russian translation of The Poem that some particularly expressive passages had to be removed from the Russian translation of the Poem, made by Hippolytus Bogdanovich in a separate edition in 1802, for reasons of censorship, so there are only 240 lines out of the original 272 in the Russian version. For example, the following lines of Voltaire were not included in the Russian translation: "The present is terrible if it has no future, if the darkness of the grave destroys a thinking being" ^{[13, p. 241]}. This atheistic maxim, which dislodges theological foundations from under historical continuity, was difficult for an enlightened person of Modern times to accept, since the living conditions in society and the existence of monarchical states of that time implied a strong reliance on the dogmas of religion and religious ideas about moral norms.

Evil, Voltaire believes, is necessary because it inevitably happens to a person as a result of moral deviation from the highest principles of the whole, established not by divine providence, but by the natural order. By committing an act, a person differentiates things in the totality of being. A moral digression is the introduction of a minimal distinction between human—dimensional causality and the metaphysical integrity of the world. However, the all-encompassing law inevitably includes this difference in the natural order, restoring its power in multiplying possibilities. Voltaire thereby departs from the strict version of the principle of pre—established harmony, proposing a kind of "atonal" metaphysics of the whole, where "chaos" and "cosmos" are two synonyms of "world" from an objective and subjective point of view. Even if the world is not created in such a way as to conform to the ideas of justice, a person, guided by reason, is capable of self-improvement. The continuity of universal history is decomposed by Voltaire into a rhythmic pattern of interruptions and repetitive cycles.

"Optimism," says the philosopher through the mouth of one of the characters in the story Candide, "is the passion to assert that everything is good when in reality everything is bad" ^{[14, p. 207]}. There is no longer any eschatological enthusiasm for waiting for the remaining time, which must end along with the worldly misfortunes in Revelation. "It's the end of the world!" shouts Candide from the seismological epicenter of the earthquake that destroyed three quarters of the Portuguese capital. The catastrophe opens up a philosophical reflection on the "end of the world" on the devastating scale of the previous human civilization of the history of the Earth. The result of this reflection is philosophical catastrophism as a consequence of the pessimistic worldview, which makes the end of meanings (as an interruption) an instrument of criticism of theocentrism and theodicy, in particular. If the Christian revelation unfolding in the story of the apocalypse testifies to the meaning of the end (which reveals the foundation of continuity, a "new beginning"), then an enlightened person finds himself face-to-face with the power of the elements of nature regardless. The only reasonable decision that a person is capable of is to accept the imperfection of the material world as the very condition of its reality in order to live out the time allotted to him, and, as Voltaire says, "cultivate your garden" in harmony with yourself. The ethical maxim of Candida is: "Let's work without reasoning — this is the only way to make life bearable" ^{[14, p. 243]}.

When Space is Indifferent: French Enlightenment Materialism between Progress and Human extinction

Philosophical and anthropological intuitions, represented by the thought of the French Enlightenment against the "optimism" of theodicy, include in the definition of human existence the immanence of ultimate states, that is, existential risks. Thomas Moynihan, a futurist researcher, defines existential risks as "threats of unique moral significance, since they endanger the very existence of morality in the world, either causing our complete extinction or irreversibly limiting our potential to achieve good goals" ^{[15, p. 9]}. Not all threats risk leading to extinction, but there are those "worse-then-death" ^{[15, p. 21]}. The Great earthquake in Lisbon, among other catastrophic events, is an existential risk of Modern times, through the prism of which the intellectual turmoil of the Enlightenment can be analyzed.

Johann Goethe, who was six years old when the earthquake "shook" the history of Europe^[3], wrote about his memories as follows: "In nature, we see first of all force, force absorbs... the beautiful and the ugly, good and evil — everything exists with equal right side by side" ^[16]. From Goethe's words, it is noticeable how deistic tendencies were rooted in the Enlightenment worldview: the non-interference and neutrality of God in relation to the phenomena of the created world. Contrary to the Augustinian and Leibnizian ideas that deprive evil of its ontological status in the perfection of the world order, the ideas about the natural origin of religion allow for the equal coexistence of good and evil in nature. Against this background, Enlightenment thought develops a characteristic anthropometric rhythm that depends not on the transcendent harmony of divine providence, but on the individual and collective dynamics of human actions included in the natural order of things.

The modern reflection of ultimate states reflects the adaptation by human culture of contradictory phenomena of progress: geographical discoveries (and colonialism), achievements of empirical sciences (and scientism), experiments in politics and art (and the era of enlightened absolutism in Europe). The idea of progress as a directed movement begins to dominate as a motif of world history, in which the universal mind of mankind rises. The idea of progress for a man of the Enlightenment was first voiced by the French mathematician and sociologist Nicolas de Condorcet in his work "Sketch of the historical picture of the progress of the human mind." The historian of philosophy Vitaly Kuznetsov emphasizes that Condorcet's enlightened theory of progress relies on Voltaire's criticism of the theological understanding of world history as the embodiment of divine will in the material world (providentialism and God's choice) ^{[11, p. 186]}. Therefore, a person, regardless of his origin, according to Condorcet, can be freed from the evil burden of nature.: "Nature has set no limits to our hopes" ^{[17, p. 223]}.

Along with the reflection on the horizon of the future for the human civilization of reason, there is a turn towards atheism and materialism. This reinforces the provisions of the "pessimistic" worldview, anticipating the earthly extinction in the finite nature of man. Pessimism introduces a relativity factor into the doctrine of morality, separating the goals of nature and culture. In this division, culture becomes a reliable and reliable support for a person's future life, while the natural science desacralization of nature changes the view of the world as a product of independent and involuntary elements (material forces). Voltaire himself sees such results of the Enlightenment era: "Instinct, reason, the need for consolation, and the welfare of society prevailed, and people always harbored hope for a future life, a hope, in truth, often accompanied by doubt" ^{[13, p. 243]}. Both in the rationalistic expectation of progress and in the positions of skepticism associated with the end of the world and extinction, the philosophical aspects of the appeal of the human mind to the radical horizons of the future become noticeable.

The novel by the French educator and philosopher Denis Diderot "Jacques the Fatalist and his Master" (written in 1773) is a satirical and absurdist work where the author ridicules one-sided fatalism, which posits fate as a series of inevitable accidents. Diderot depicts the conflict between Jacques' fatalistic position: "Everything that happens to us, good or bad, is ordained from above" ^{[18, p. 263]} — and the skepticism of the Host, who tries to rely on rational arguments of reason in disputes with Jacques. In the story, the brother of one of the main characters, the Carmelite priest Jean, aspires to Lisbon in order, according to his brother, "to keep up with the earthquake, which could not happen without them; to be crushed, swallowed up by the earth, burned, as it was ordained from above" ^{[18, p. 291]}. Diderot accepts the challenge of irrationality that the Lisbon earthquake poses to reason, using it, as Tavares points out, not as a theoretical problem, but as a "satirical device" in the context of popular culture ^{[5, p. 194]}. The world is as chaotic as satire — constant experimentation with form, signs moving between the space of a work and the experience of reading, and the use of paradox as a didactic method. Diderot believes that skepticism of reason and free will must be juxtaposed with each other. Also, Diderot does not contrast fatalism and determinism, but shows their interdependence. According to John Robert Lowe, a researcher of Enlightenment philosophy, Diderot's solution of practical reason should be described as the introduction of a difference into fatalistic ontology: within a single stream of fate (fatalism), which seems absurd due to unknowability, there are many causal relationships (determinism) that are accessible to knowledge provided it is free from dogmatism ^{[19, p. 130]}.

In 1769, Denis Diderot, in a dialogue with his colleague D'Alembert, argues in the following way: "If the sun goes out, what happens? Plants and animals will die, and the earth will become lonely and mute. Light up this luminary again, and immediately you will restore the necessary reason for an infinite number of new generations, in relation to which I will not dare to assert that our present plants and animals will arise again or not when the centuries pass" ^{[20, p. 147]}. This hypothesis of the philosopher can be considered as a theoretical recognition of the inevitability of universal extinction in the conditions of earthly life. The possibility of intelligent life in space is actually identified with the activity of sunlight.

In his bold work "The System of Nature, or on the Laws of the Physical World and the Spiritual World" (1770), which advanced materialism and atheism to advanced intellectual positions, philosopher and encyclopedist Paul-Henri Holbach argued: "Matter is eternal and necessary, but its combinations and forms are transitory and accidental; and what is man how can it not be a combination of matter, the shape of which changes with every passing moment?" ^{[21, p. 124]} Although sometimes changes are unpredictable, and therefore threatening and frightening, the very property of nature is the movement of matter. As Holbach explains to his reader, what a person perceives as wrong, disorderly and random are just other types of order, and their penetration into everyday life is a consequence of the natural laws of matter as the only substance to create natural phenomena. According to Holbach, it turns out that the ontological constitution of man rests on the impermanence of the conditions that matter forms as real: "People can be considered works characteristic of the globe in its current position. <...> If, due to some catastrophe, the Earth had changed its location, these works would have to change" ^{[21, p. 125]}.

Another important tact in materialist theory, deducing thought from the theological concept of history: man is an immanent being in the history of the Earth, which arose as a product of nature. The physical conditions of the Earth and the mechanical laws of the cosmos are, in Holbach's understanding, the whole according to which the human race must either change or disappear. The way a person lives is a certain state of the Earth, guided by the movements and combinations of material units: atoms and molecules. Holbach refrains from making optimistic or pessimistic judgments, taking a sensationalist position: "everything is only what it can be, it is necessary to act as it is" ^{[21, p. 127]}. Like Voltaire, Holbach believes that happiness (and virtue for a citizen) consists in not letting the soul be lazy. But the soul, according to Holbach, is not a substance separate from matter, but "is this body itself" and can only be considered in relation to the ways of its physical existence. The thinker sums up his materialistic theory of the soul with the famous Latin aphorism: m ens sana in corpore sano ("in a healthy body — a healthy mind") ^{[21, p. 139]}. The time is coming for a new worldview in Europe, demanding new political freedoms for people, and Holbach, betting on the materialistic equality of all things, hopes that man will abandon the illusion of omnipotence over nature and learn to rationally (in civil terms) use the fruits of his own nature — actions.

The first to introduce an insurmountable difference between the human being and the cosmological metaphysics of excess, removing reason from the universal order of creative forces, is the French thinker, rebel and writer Marquis Donacien de Sade. Putting his contemporary doubts in the form of acute criticism, in his literary work Juliette (1797) de Sade attacks the highest ideas of reason: "No, no one forced God to create man, absolutely and definitely no one, and if he did it simply in order to expose his handiwork to such Unfortunately, the reproduction of the human race seems to me to be the gravest of all crimes, and the complete disappearance of humanity is the most noble deed" ^[22]. The sexual expression of human desire, as the fundamental narrative of de Sade's works, belongs to the intentions of the natural world in a cosmological identity. This allows de Sade to inscribe into the human being the natural mechanism of attraction of all things to cosmic death, which embodies the universal character of nature, immanent to human desire. If the end—of-the-world hypothesis undermines the value of moral attitudes, then extinction is the disappearance of any morality in the face of cosmic indifference.

Neither Diderot nor Holbach think of extinction as a final event (the end of meanings), but only as a temporary interruption that allows energy to be redistributed in the world of existence: the "optimism" of progress goes hand in hand with the "pessimism" of extinction. Intelligent life seems to thinkers not just the result of cosmic evolution, but also an inevitably recurring feature of it, which, in fact, restarts the Leibnizian metaphysics of harmony in a plurality of worlds, but now on materialistic and atheistic grounds. The ancient cosmos as a self-sufficient instance of ordering the world in accordance with the ideal image in the cosmological representations of man in the Modern era, according to Alexander Coire, is replaced by the idea of a multiple, material and chaotic Universe as "an open totality connected by the unity of the laws governing it" ^{[23, p. 202]}.

Contrary to the only necessary world of rationalist philosophers: Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza — French materialism offers an understanding of the Universe as a potential plurality of worlds consisting not of passively undergoing, but of actively acting matter. The empirical "openness" of the new understanding of the cosmos simultaneously establishes existential boundaries within which it is possible to perceive historical experience and self-improvement of man as an earthly being.

Immanuel Kant's Critical "Optimism": the Boundaries of Knowledge and Morality in the World of Catastrophes

The Lisbon earthquake was the catalyst for Kant's critical reflection. The philosopher's first scientific publications were devoted to the natural scientific understanding of a seismic event ^{[24, p. 15]}. Kant begins his article "On the causes of earthquakes on the occasion of the disaster that befell the Western countries of Europe at the end of last year" (1756) with the words: "We live peacefully on the earth's surface, the foundations of which fluctuate greatly from time to time" ^{[25, p. 334]}. He explains the disaster by natural causes — the movement of underground gases inside geological cavities. But unlike the French materialists, Kant does not reduce nature to mechanistic laws: his Universal Natural History (1755), written a year earlier, describes the cosmos as incessant cycles of destruction and rebirth of matter, where only reason is able to find order. The cosmos is like the mythological Phoenix creature, which "burns itself to be reborn young from its ashes" and remains "inexhaustible in new manifestations" ^{[26, p. 213]}. Here Kant still stands on the positions of rationalistic optimism: "Let us learn to look at these terrible destructions as ordinary ways of providence and let us look at them even with a certain sense of satisfaction" ^{[26, p. 210]}.

In the "Experience of some reflections on Optimism" (1759) Kant seeks to concretize his views: "The world located at that step of the ladder of beings, where the abyss begins, which contains immeasurable degrees of perfection, elevating the eternal above every created being, is, I say, the most perfect of all that is finite" ^{[27, p. 11]}. According to Kant, the faculty of cognition connects the finite subject with the infinitely creative space of the world. Later, in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the philosopher gives a critical reception to his own views, suggesting a "Copernican turn." Cognition, according to Kant, does not passively reflect the world, but actively structures it within epistemological limits: "Objects must conform to our knowledge" ^{[28, p. 35]}. Kant seeks to overcome the "optimo-pessimal" dichotomy, relying on the ability of reason to find meaning even in natural chaos by exploring a priori forms of cognition.

Due to the fact that nature in Modern times is understood as an external condition for the unity of phenomena in experience, the question of the cosmic impermanence of the material states of nature is a burning one for historical reflection on the fate of man, especially in the context of the time of enlightened absolutism, the reign of Frederick II of Prussia. In the article "The answer to the question: what is Enlightenment?" (1784), which Immanuel Kant dedicates to the Prussian monarch, the philosopher proclaims the motto of the age of Enlightenment formula: "have the courage to use your mind" ^{[29, p. 29]}. "Courage" comes from the secular autonomy of reason from faith, which makes it "adult." This autonomy can only be guaranteed by nature, which "inclines and calls for freedom of thought" ^{[28, p. 39]}.

Following the projects of political institutions of nature by Jean Bodin, Charles de Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the project of universal history, Immanuel Kant turns to analogy to propose a synthesis of human history and the physical history of the Earth not only as a philosophical, but also as a political project of "eternal peace." Natural limitations are objective to humans, but nevertheless serve as the basis for a cosmopolitan consciousness that recognizes universal principles of citizenship for humans. In the ninth position of his "Ideas of Universal History in World-civil Terms" (1784), Kant writes: "The attempt of philosophers to develop world history according to the plan of nature, aimed at the perfect civil unification of the human race, should be considered as <...> nature contributing to this goal" ^{[30, p. 26]}. All natural things are characterized by "discord", which generates an unpredictable and freedom-loving spirit of rivalry, productive, as Kant believed, for cultural education, scientific knowledge of the world and moral improvement of man. Natural science should be the first example of experimental knowledge so that human existence and the necessity of nature can find a single vector of goal-setting. Culture and nature develop in a teleological interaction: human goal-setting continues the goals of nature beyond the limits of physiological "instincts". In a state of eternal civil peace, an enlightened subject of reason will be able to challenge difficulties and overcome the "natural state" of disunity.

According to Thomas Moynihan, a modern researcher of the future, the philosophical catastrophism of the second half of the 18th century "symbolizes a departure from the perception of our cosmic environment as an infinitely accepting cradle of quality value and security." <...> to perceive it as an enveloping topography of dangers, which must always be guided by quantitative indicators and continuously adjust the course" ^{[31, p. 104]}. In his work Spinal Catastrophism, Moynihan notes that intellectual assessments of the Lisbon earthquake became an important fact of Kant's biography and were reflected not only in early, "subcritical" works, but also in mature writings of the philosopher ^{[32, p. 44]}. For example, in the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment (1790), in the chapter "The Analysis of the Sublime," Kant explores the forms of cognition of aesthetic ideas in connection with the concept of "shocks." Moynihan presents Kant's philosophy as a product of a traumatic encounter with the action of natural elements, where the Lisbon event becomes an archetype for understanding Kant's "sublime feeling" and criticism of the omnipotence of reason, which nature itself addresses to man. Through geological and biological metaphors, Moynihan shows that Kant's ideas are not abstract constructions of reason, but an attempt to formulate a response to the "shocks" of the real world, exposing the fragility of human existence and the limitations of knowledge.

The scale of mass destruction, which can create natural disasters, instills fear in the human soul. The source of this fear, according to Kant, is rooted in the disproportionality of the finite (man) and the infinite (nature). The object of sublime feeling, according to the "Analytics of the Sublime", is the aesthetic experience of extraordinary natural phenomena. As an experience, the "sublime" is presented by the affect of "awe" or "shock", which the German philosopher, using a familiar "seismological" narrative, describes as "rapidly alternating repulsion and attraction of the same object" ^{[33, p. 96]}. The basic material forces underlying the cosmos — attraction and repulsion — act as aesthetic elements in the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment: "the scarier their appearance, the more it attracts us" ^{[33, p. 100]}. However, according to the German thinker, when a sublime feeling "accommodates" the experience of the infinite, a person gets an inner opportunity to establish distance from the object of the sublime and at the same time to aesthetically overcome the power of natural elements and "criticism of nature" in the moral autonomy of reason.: "Sublimity is not contained in any thing of nature, but only in our soul to the extent that we can realize our superiority over nature in us, and thereby over nature outside of us" ^{[33, p. 103]}.

Kant suggests looking for ways to contract reason with nature, because if reason has legislative prerogatives in thinking, then nature allows these laws to be regulated within the framework of a just "constitution" of the general civil plan. In his article "On the failures of all philosophical positions of theodicy" (1791), Kant finds the idea of theodicy untenable precisely because its metaphysics does not provide for an even distribution of excess, which is generated by physical phenomena of evil. This is reflected in the imperfection of the structure of the moral economy of the theodicy: crimes and destruction are not always adequately compensated by retribution and restoration ^{[34, p. 140]}. According to Kant, it is not the principle of pre-established harmony that allows a person to accept his fragile position in the world, but negative wisdom. If wisdom in general is "the property of the will to be consistent with the highest good as the ultimate goal of all things," then, according to the German philosopher, negative wisdom is "the consciousness of the inevitable limitations of our dares" to that which transcends the essence of man ^{[34, p. 148]}. "Every theodicy must be, in fact, an interpretation of nature, since through Nature God reveals the intention of his will" ^{[34, p. 149]}, is an important addition of Kant to his rationalistic idea of "universal history". Kant assumes expedient foundations in the activity of natural principles that correspond to the teleology of the human mind, and expresses a more restrained, critical "optimism", presenting man as an immanent but irreducible being to the physical conditions of the Earth. Thus, Kant abandons the formal principle of pre-established harmony between man and nature in favor of their mutually conditioned coexistence. The human species is capable and open to global progress, but the life of the mind itself is not limited to a finite anthropological dimension.

The twentieth-century German philosopher Jacob Taubes, in his work Western Eschatology, calls the Lisbon earthquake "an open depth that the system of reason is unable to comprehend" ^{[35, p. 86]}. In this depth lies the problem of the origins of physical evil, which will accompany the dialectical thinking of the philosophers of German Romanticism as a challenge. Kant was the first to attempt to answer this challenge. Against the background of changes in the philosophical and anthropological views of Modern times, the eschatological concept of the end of the world as the reason for its qualitative transformation into a new, more perfect one still remains significant in the philosophical imagination of the Enlightenment, although it becomes a "human destiny." The global position of reason is thus linked not to providence, but to the imperative of moral duty: it is necessary to act and educate oneself in such a way as to have the possibility of the best of the worlds not as an objective state of affairs, but as a subjective potency.

Conclusion

Analyzing philosophical works and works of Enlightenment figures, the author of the study comes to the conclusion that the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was a factor in the radical transformation of the intellectual paradigms of his time. The conducted research made it possible to trace the trajectories of understanding this event in the context of the arguments of criticism of theodicy, the formation of materialistic ideas and the formation of critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant in connection with the interests of his early works. An important theoretical aspect related to reflection on the causes and consequences of the Lisbon earthquake was the articulation of ideological conflict in terms of "optimism" and "pessimism." The study presents an attempt to present a brief genealogy of this conflict in stages.

The first intellectual receptions of the Lisbon catastrophe by her contemporaries explicated the criticism of the metaphysical teachings of Gottfried W. Leibniz and provoked the "providential schism" of the Enlightenment. If Leibniz, according to his principle of pre-established harmony, assumed that evil as such was devoid of an ontological status, then the earthquake event confirmed its validity as a component of the world that defied theological interpretation. From a deistic standpoint, Voltaire, through the satirical techniques of Candide and poetic reflection, questioned the "optimistic" axiom of theodicy: "everything is for the best," replacing it with a fatalistic recognition of the chaotic world. His "pessimism", however, did not become a denial of reason, but stimulated the search for ethical grounds in conditions of nature indifferent to human morality.

Critically developing Voltaire's intuitions, the French materialists — D. Diderot, P.-A. Holbach, D. de Sade — interpreted the physical instability of the world not as an imperfection of the divine plan, but as an immanent property of material nature. In materialistic optics, man is the final and transitory product of historical forces, facing the dilemma of historical progress and cosmic extinction as prospects. According to the French enlightenment thinkers, he is able to overcome it only with the help of reason. Diderot, ridiculing one-sided fatalism in Jacques the Fatalist, emphasized the relationship between human freedom and rational determinism: even in the vicissitudes of fate, reason is able to detect cause-and-effect patterns. Golbach, denying the transcendent dimension of human existence, defined it through the dynamics of the "states of the Earth", where a single catastrophe is just a natural stage of the material transformations of the world. Marquis de Sade, taking the logic of materialism to ethical extremes, saw in cosmic indifference the basis for criticism of moral dogmas. Thus, the materialism of the XVIII century, which arose as an indirect reaction to the catastrophe, formulated the provisions of philosophical anthropology, according to which the finiteness and vulnerability of humanity become conditions for the development of its potential for a comprehensive knowledge of the world.

Immanuel Kant, who began his academic career with a natural science analysis of the Lisbon earthquake, proposed in his later works a synthesis of rationalistic "optimism", which asserts the independence of reason, and epistemological "pessimism", which sets the boundaries of human cognition. Recognizing the inexpediency of the transcendental provisions of theodicy, Kant introduced the concept of "negative wisdom" as a person's awareness of the limits of reason, which, however, do not negate the intrinsic value of his autonomy. In the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, natural disasters are interpreted through the category of the sublime: "shock" becomes a category of aesthetic cognition, revealing the interrelation of man's finite abilities with the infinitely productive forces of nature. This approach allowed Kant to rethink theodicy in terms of the mutual goal-setting of nature and reason.

An analysis of the intellectual perceptions of the Lisbon earthquake revealed its role as a catalyst for catastrophic discourse that influenced the formation of modern human concepts. The conducted research has confirmed that the earthquake has become a factor in rethinking a person in terms of the historical and physical facts of his existence. Each stage of the analysis proposed in the study — from Voltaire's "pessimistic" criticism of theodicy to the formation of Kant's critical "optimism" — revealed aspects of the transformation of philosophical and anthropological ideas of the Enlightenment, which I propose to summarize as follows.

Firstly, the phenomena of physical nature are not consistent with the metaphysical principle of harmony, but correspond to the goal-setting of the mind. Secondly, the existence of man and the existence of reason are not identical, but are inherently interdependent. Thirdly, the foundations of ethics are provided not by a higher providence, but by the subjective responsibility and moral guidance of a person. These conclusions open up prospects for further research, in particular, the transformations of catastrophic discourse in recent history and the comparative analysis of intellectual disaster receptions in connection with the philosophical interpretation of the horizons of human existence. In this context, the Lisbon earthquake remains not only a historical fact, but — in the context of philosophical understanding — a metaphor for the universal challenge that nature is able to present to the historical existence of mankind.

^[1] This is clearly shown by paintings reflecting the Great Lisbon Earthquake in the eyes of contemporaries, for example, the work "Lisbon before and during the earthquake of 1755" by the Italian artist Giovanni Piranesi, comparing the city before and after the disaster, as well as the engraving "Earthquake of 1755 in Lisbon" by Mateus Souter. The architectural consequences of the destruction were depicted in his graphics by the French illustrator Jacques-Phillip Le Bas.

^[2] Mark Moleski questions the authorship of this phrase as a historical myth. The phrase that became famous belonged to another figure in Portuguese history, the Marquis of Alorno, the governor of the Indian colonies. Nevertheless, Moleski notes, it is symptomatic that the phrase is attributed specifically to Pombal, as this explains the rapid nature of his political ascent.

^[3] It was in these terms that Goethe described this event in a letter to his friend, the German philologist Wilhelm Humboldt in 1830, emphasizing the emotional association with the historical phenomenon of the French Revolution.