Georges Florovsky: Letter to Davis McCaughey
Florovsky, Georges ; Obolevitch, Teresa
Studies in East European Thought, 2025-02, Vol.77 (1), p.225-229
Abstract
The letter from Georges Florovsky to Davis McCaughey is a reflection after reading the Report The Era of Atomic Power: Report of a Commission (1946). Florovsky gives his own arguments against the development of research concerning nuclear weapons and their use. These include: treating an attempt at a technical transformation of the world as a human claim to put oneself in God’s place, i.e., to be a God-man. Another group of indictments against the use of the atomic bomb concerned ethical issues and human responsibility for the war. Florovsky’s letter is his contribution to the discussion on the threat posed by the atomic bomb.
The letter from Georges Florovsky to Davis McCaughey is a reflection after reading the Report The Era of Atomic Power: Report of a Commission (1946). Florovsky gives his own arguments against the development of research concerning nuclear weapons and their use. These include: treating an attempt at a technical transformation of the world as a human claim to put oneself in God’s place, i.e., to be a God-man. Another group of indictments against the use of the atomic bomb concerned ethical issues and human responsibility for the war. Florovsky’s letter is his contribution to the discussion on the threat posed by the atomic bomb.
93, rue de Crimée, Paris 19.
3rd July 1946
Dear Mr. McCaughey,
I am most obliged for your kind message and for the moving Report of the “Atomic Commission”[1] you have forwarded to me. It would obviously have required much more space than I can afford in this letter, if I tried to cover the whole field of problems raised in the Report. Perhaps, I shall have some opportunity to do that later on. This time I have to confine myself to one point only which seems to be rather underemphasized in your deliberations. What is said in “The enlargement of Man’s freedom” (p. 20) and in the “Power-Mysticism” (pp. 25–26), and especially the whole chapter VII, Science and Society (pp. 59ff.), and again some paragraphs in the ch. VIII (i.e. Man as Explorer, p. 69f. and elsewhere), all that is relevant and up to the point. But one would like to have all that summed up and traced back to the crucial problem of Man, of Man’s ultimate orientation (“Einstellung”[2]) in the world (or better, in the Universe). It is hardly enough to ask “about a society in which the possession of atomic power is no longer a ground for fear” (p. 24), or rather no threat to the stability and freedom of life. For the Society is not the ultimate reality, but rather an embodiment of Man’s desires, a resultante[3] of the cross-play of men’s personal aims and purposes. The crucial problem is Man indeed, not a Society. This utterance must not be mistaken for an assertion of an “Individualism.” But after all, the ultimate issue depends completely upon the decision each Person makes for himself (I grasp the same idea behind the whole constructive chapter VIII, “Wholeness of living,” particularly p. 73ff.). The very temptation of the last years was that of titanism, a titan-complex or titan-obsession (Nietzsche’s Wille zur Macht[4] or Adler’s libido)—it lies at the root of the whole totalitarian system, brown or red, or whatever color else it may eventually assume. And Rosenberg’s famous book[5] can easily become a catechism of the “atomic man” as well. Man is claiming to be the supreme ruler and director of human multitudes and nations. He claims indeed to be the Sovereign or the Leader of Humanity and of the Universe as the whole—legibus solutus:[6] because he feels himself to be the ultimate legislator and authority—qui a nemine judicatur:[7] for there is nothing above, Heaven is empty or rather there is no Heaven at all, but only “Blut und Erde”;[8] the blood and the soil. This race or generation of “titanically-minded” people by no means can be regarded as a died out by now, nor was it confined only to the Nazi Germany. Rather it is coming to power just in our age and days. The release of the atomic energy gives to this type of men a new ground, a new support and justification for their claims. They recognize in this discovery a very vindication of their cause and claim. Man is now given an effective access to the very roots of the Universe, to the ontological kernel of the Being. He finds himself in the position to remould and reshape the creation, he feels himself to be given a quasi-divine might to preserve, to transform or to destroy the Universe, the Earth, the Oikoumene (γῆ οἰκουμένη) at least. He feels himself able and called upon to pass the final judgment, for it depends upon him to keep the life or to bring it to a premature death. He is the Master of the World, a new Prometheus. (At this point I would like to mention—in brackets—the great Russian composer and dreamer A. N. Skrjabine[9] (1871–1915) who contemplated a kind of musical composition (“Prometheus”) invested with a mystical power to break up the Universe from the inside, to destroy the “harmony of the spheres” and to bring about the sort of the Last Judgment—he was no lunatic at all, and his ideas made a rigorous appeal to such noble thinkers in Russia, as Boulgakov[10] and BerdyaevF[11] — it proves how widely has been spread and is still spread this titanical obsession). And thus the titan-complex discloses itself into a really antitheistic attitude, a godless or anti-God—“Einstellung”: eritis sicut Deus.[12] The technical ability of man even at earlier stages has fed the anti-God-drive of man, since it was recognised and proclaimed centuries ago: scientia is potentia[13] (Baco[n] of Verulam). But up to now this ability was limited by a comparatively narrow field, was confined to the surface of the earth—what Man really was able to achieve was rather comparatively harmless and superficial, although, however, even in old days Man could transform a flourishing garden into a desert (granted, a desert into a field or garden as well) or to bring the civilized nations to a barbaric stage or degeneration (the opposite endeavor of Eugenics or artificial selection extended to the Human race is no less precarious and highly ambiguous—on a secularist scale at least). But now Man is able to break by compulsion into the very heart of the Cosmos, and not only to disclose or to explore the depths of the “Mysterious Universe,” but to redraft the “Mystery” itself. Here lies, in my opinion, the ultimate danger and challenge of the “Atomic age,” not in the field of immediate applications of the new resources. Not the Atomic energy as such is endangering the life and civilization not the “blind Nature” (which is after all a God’s creation), but the Man, the “blind Man” (or blinded, self-blinding Man), “die blinde Bestie!”[14] In no sense am I inclined to suggest that Science as such (or even Technical Science) has to drive Man inevitably away from God—the basic inspiration of a scientific research, or of any research, comes surely from God, our Lord and Maker—what I do dare to submit is that Science does in practice expose man to a temptation to take stand against God. The technical Man is tried constantly to feel himself sicut Deus,[15] as [if] he were God, his own Lord, Master and Maker, himself. And again, Man alone, sine Deo,[16] is inevitably against God, versus Deum.[17] Is not the intimate amalgamation of the militant Atheism (or Dialectical Materialism) and of the technical inspiration (and achievements) in the present U.S.S.R. but natural or one to be expected? (the passage on the U.S.S.R., pp. 45–46, is rather over-simplified and too optimistic, specially because just the anthropological aspect of the whole endeavor has been rather ignored). There is not merely a social or political problem, but indeed the religious problem of Man, of the isolated Man, Man left alone, Man settling himself on the earth as its very Lord and Master. I can but mention passingly that the over-development of technics (and industry) means also a certain violence to Nature which is to be changed—it is an important but highly complicated topic, but quite relevant to the basic problem under our discussion. In a rather dreamy way it was openly confessed by a Russian thinker, N. F. Fedorov[18] (1828–1903), who claimed to be a Christian philosopher—in old days he had a serious appeal to such people as Dostojevsky[19] and Soloviev,[20] and now there is a considerable group of his fervent followers both in the U.S.S.R. and in the Russian emigration, who however are going adrift from Christianity. He puts openly Man against Nature, blind and dumb, and establishes him as a true Maker and re-Maker of the Universe… What I am sure of is that the godless drift of the Technical Science is not a side-way, but an inherent danger or temptation. I do remember very well the long and hopeless disputes and arguments I had in my undergraduate days with my fellow—naturalists and tutors, being myself both a naturalist and a believing philosopher, just on the very subject we are forced to deal with in our days. And the final issue was ever clear: the whole argument was always centered around Man’s problem—is he a Master of life himself or a Servant or Steward of God sent to serve and to minister in the Almighty’s vineyard. Thus I am speaking not as an outsider or foreign observer, but as one who has gone through the experience of the scientific research and of a life amidst the scientists… All that was said above is not to be discarded as the considerations of a thinker or a contemplative, for these thoughts and contemplations have an immediate bearing and impact of a very practical character. There is a final challenge to the Churches, or rather to the Church, to the Christian (or so-called “post-Christian”) World. No international agreement or organization, no from-outside-control over the Atomic research or exploitation, nothing short of the ultimate conversion of the technical man himself back to God, can restore the security of living and the stability of the world. There is an enormous task before the Christians, those in authority and those on the bus alike, clergy and laity, contemplatives and men of action, courageous and upset, optimists and pessimists, but first of all before those who are prepared to assume or to share the responsibility for the God’s creation. It is to bring the technically-involved and technically-tried man back to the Christian obedience and to the Christian insight. The main problem and task is emphatically an anthropological one… I trust I don’t contradict what has been admirably suggested in the concluding chapter of the Report (Wholeness of living and the Call to the Church). I would like to hope that my sketch was not too clumsy and not too deficient.
There is no room to bring any further subject in, but I cannot close this letter without making a short comment on the problem of war. I am afraid it is quite futile and aimless to speak in our days of the war in general, since the only war we can visualize in the future is bound up to be a “total” war—and not only in the sense that it will involve automatically the use of such weapons which transform the struggle into an indiscriminate massacre, but in another wider sense too: under present circumstances even the pre-military preparation of the nation i.e. the young generation to be conscribed, means the through-going militarization of the whole national resistance, not to speak of the necessity so to organize the industrial production as to make it apt to serve the cause of the war when and if it breaks out. If you have to make your country able to defend itself manu militari,[21] you must bring your youth up in a pro-militant spirit, to be able and qualified to join the forces, and so on. Si vis pacem, para bellum[22] — but in our days this preparedness and this preparation means a “total” militarization of the national life even in the peace-time, quite apart from any “atomic” complications. Under these conditions are we not driven to generalize our doubts and to ask, whether the call of citizenship is not forced on Christians in general (cf. p. 56–57 of the Report, or again pp. 78, last sentence, and 80, in fine[23]). But it is a topic to[o] complicate[d] to be even put rightly in a few words.
I must apologize for having written such a huge and rather sketchy letter, but it was due to the strong appeal which the Report on “The Era of Atomic Power” has had to my heart and mind.
With all my best compliments,
Your sincerely
Georges Florovsky
Notes:
1. The Era of Atomic Power 1946. The original spelling was unified in the whole letter.
2. Einstellung (German)—an attitude.
3. A correct form: résultante (French)—a result.
4. Wille zur Macht (German)—The Will to Power.
5. Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (1892 (New Style 1893)–1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue, the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories during World War II. His most famous book was Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) which contained an outline of the ideology of National Socialism, racism, and antisemitism.
6. Legibus solutus (Latin)—“Released from the laws.”
7. Qui a nemine judicatur (Latin)—“Who is judged by no one.” Cf. 1 Cor. 2:15.
8. Blut und Erde (German)—“Blood and Earth”—a Nazi slogan according to which ethnicity is based on blood descent and the territory one maintains.
9. The more proper English spelling: Alexander Scriabin—a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist.
10. The conventional English spelling: Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944)—a Russian religious philosopher and theologian.
11. Nicholas Berdyaev or Berdiaev (1874–1948)—a Russian religious philosopher.
12. Eritis sicut Deus (Latin)—“You will be as God.” Cf. Gen 3:5.
13. Scientia is potential (Latin)—“Knowledge is power.” Cf. Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacrae (1597).
14. “Die blinde Bestie” (German)—“Blind Beast.”
15. Sicut Deus (Latin)—“As God.” Cf. Gen 3:5.
16. Sine Deo (Latin)—“Without God.”
17. Versus Deum (Latin)—“Against God.”
18. Nikolai Fedorov or Fyodorov—a Russian religious philosopher, an initiator of the movement of Russian cosmism, and a precursor of transhumanism.
19. The conventional English spelling: Fedor or Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)—a Russian writer.
20. Vladimir Soloviev or Solovyov (1853–1900)—a Russian religious philosopher.
21. Manu militari (Latin)—“By the hand of the military” or “by military force.”
22. Si vis pacem, para bellum (Latin)—“If you want peace, prepare for war.”
23. In fine (Latin)—“In conclusion, finally.”
References:
- British Council of Churches. 1946. The Era of Atomic Power: Report of a Commission Appointed by the British Council of Churches. London: S.C.M. Press Limited.
- Obolevitch, Teresa. 2024. "Georges Florovsky on nuclear restraint and responsibility: introduction to Florovsky’s letter". Studies in East European Thought. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09665-y.
3rd July 1946
Dear Mr. McCaughey,
I am most obliged for your kind message and for the moving Report of the “Atomic Commission”[1] you have forwarded to me. It would obviously have required much more space than I can afford in this letter, if I tried to cover the whole field of problems raised in the Report. Perhaps, I shall have some opportunity to do that later on. This time I have to confine myself to one point only which seems to be rather underemphasized in your deliberations. What is said in “The enlargement of Man’s freedom” (p. 20) and in the “Power-Mysticism” (pp. 25–26), and especially the whole chapter VII, Science and Society (pp. 59ff.), and again some paragraphs in the ch. VIII (i.e. Man as Explorer, p. 69f. and elsewhere), all that is relevant and up to the point. But one would like to have all that summed up and traced back to the crucial problem of Man, of Man’s ultimate orientation (“Einstellung”[2]) in the world (or better, in the Universe). It is hardly enough to ask “about a society in which the possession of atomic power is no longer a ground for fear” (p. 24), or rather no threat to the stability and freedom of life. For the Society is not the ultimate reality, but rather an embodiment of Man’s desires, a resultante[3] of the cross-play of men’s personal aims and purposes. The crucial problem is Man indeed, not a Society. This utterance must not be mistaken for an assertion of an “Individualism.” But after all, the ultimate issue depends completely upon the decision each Person makes for himself (I grasp the same idea behind the whole constructive chapter VIII, “Wholeness of living,” particularly p. 73ff.). The very temptation of the last years was that of titanism, a titan-complex or titan-obsession (Nietzsche’s Wille zur Macht[4] or Adler’s libido)—it lies at the root of the whole totalitarian system, brown or red, or whatever color else it may eventually assume. And Rosenberg’s famous book[5] can easily become a catechism of the “atomic man” as well. Man is claiming to be the supreme ruler and director of human multitudes and nations. He claims indeed to be the Sovereign or the Leader of Humanity and of the Universe as the whole—legibus solutus:[6] because he feels himself to be the ultimate legislator and authority—qui a nemine judicatur:[7] for there is nothing above, Heaven is empty or rather there is no Heaven at all, but only “Blut und Erde”;[8] the blood and the soil. This race or generation of “titanically-minded” people by no means can be regarded as a died out by now, nor was it confined only to the Nazi Germany. Rather it is coming to power just in our age and days. The release of the atomic energy gives to this type of men a new ground, a new support and justification for their claims. They recognize in this discovery a very vindication of their cause and claim. Man is now given an effective access to the very roots of the Universe, to the ontological kernel of the Being. He finds himself in the position to remould and reshape the creation, he feels himself to be given a quasi-divine might to preserve, to transform or to destroy the Universe, the Earth, the Oikoumene (γῆ οἰκουμένη) at least. He feels himself able and called upon to pass the final judgment, for it depends upon him to keep the life or to bring it to a premature death. He is the Master of the World, a new Prometheus. (At this point I would like to mention—in brackets—the great Russian composer and dreamer A. N. Skrjabine[9] (1871–1915) who contemplated a kind of musical composition (“Prometheus”) invested with a mystical power to break up the Universe from the inside, to destroy the “harmony of the spheres” and to bring about the sort of the Last Judgment—he was no lunatic at all, and his ideas made a rigorous appeal to such noble thinkers in Russia, as Boulgakov[10] and BerdyaevF[11] — it proves how widely has been spread and is still spread this titanical obsession). And thus the titan-complex discloses itself into a really antitheistic attitude, a godless or anti-God—“Einstellung”: eritis sicut Deus.[12] The technical ability of man even at earlier stages has fed the anti-God-drive of man, since it was recognised and proclaimed centuries ago: scientia is potentia[13] (Baco[n] of Verulam). But up to now this ability was limited by a comparatively narrow field, was confined to the surface of the earth—what Man really was able to achieve was rather comparatively harmless and superficial, although, however, even in old days Man could transform a flourishing garden into a desert (granted, a desert into a field or garden as well) or to bring the civilized nations to a barbaric stage or degeneration (the opposite endeavor of Eugenics or artificial selection extended to the Human race is no less precarious and highly ambiguous—on a secularist scale at least). But now Man is able to break by compulsion into the very heart of the Cosmos, and not only to disclose or to explore the depths of the “Mysterious Universe,” but to redraft the “Mystery” itself. Here lies, in my opinion, the ultimate danger and challenge of the “Atomic age,” not in the field of immediate applications of the new resources. Not the Atomic energy as such is endangering the life and civilization not the “blind Nature” (which is after all a God’s creation), but the Man, the “blind Man” (or blinded, self-blinding Man), “die blinde Bestie!”[14] In no sense am I inclined to suggest that Science as such (or even Technical Science) has to drive Man inevitably away from God—the basic inspiration of a scientific research, or of any research, comes surely from God, our Lord and Maker—what I do dare to submit is that Science does in practice expose man to a temptation to take stand against God. The technical Man is tried constantly to feel himself sicut Deus,[15] as [if] he were God, his own Lord, Master and Maker, himself. And again, Man alone, sine Deo,[16] is inevitably against God, versus Deum.[17] Is not the intimate amalgamation of the militant Atheism (or Dialectical Materialism) and of the technical inspiration (and achievements) in the present U.S.S.R. but natural or one to be expected? (the passage on the U.S.S.R., pp. 45–46, is rather over-simplified and too optimistic, specially because just the anthropological aspect of the whole endeavor has been rather ignored). There is not merely a social or political problem, but indeed the religious problem of Man, of the isolated Man, Man left alone, Man settling himself on the earth as its very Lord and Master. I can but mention passingly that the over-development of technics (and industry) means also a certain violence to Nature which is to be changed—it is an important but highly complicated topic, but quite relevant to the basic problem under our discussion. In a rather dreamy way it was openly confessed by a Russian thinker, N. F. Fedorov[18] (1828–1903), who claimed to be a Christian philosopher—in old days he had a serious appeal to such people as Dostojevsky[19] and Soloviev,[20] and now there is a considerable group of his fervent followers both in the U.S.S.R. and in the Russian emigration, who however are going adrift from Christianity. He puts openly Man against Nature, blind and dumb, and establishes him as a true Maker and re-Maker of the Universe… What I am sure of is that the godless drift of the Technical Science is not a side-way, but an inherent danger or temptation. I do remember very well the long and hopeless disputes and arguments I had in my undergraduate days with my fellow—naturalists and tutors, being myself both a naturalist and a believing philosopher, just on the very subject we are forced to deal with in our days. And the final issue was ever clear: the whole argument was always centered around Man’s problem—is he a Master of life himself or a Servant or Steward of God sent to serve and to minister in the Almighty’s vineyard. Thus I am speaking not as an outsider or foreign observer, but as one who has gone through the experience of the scientific research and of a life amidst the scientists… All that was said above is not to be discarded as the considerations of a thinker or a contemplative, for these thoughts and contemplations have an immediate bearing and impact of a very practical character. There is a final challenge to the Churches, or rather to the Church, to the Christian (or so-called “post-Christian”) World. No international agreement or organization, no from-outside-control over the Atomic research or exploitation, nothing short of the ultimate conversion of the technical man himself back to God, can restore the security of living and the stability of the world. There is an enormous task before the Christians, those in authority and those on the bus alike, clergy and laity, contemplatives and men of action, courageous and upset, optimists and pessimists, but first of all before those who are prepared to assume or to share the responsibility for the God’s creation. It is to bring the technically-involved and technically-tried man back to the Christian obedience and to the Christian insight. The main problem and task is emphatically an anthropological one… I trust I don’t contradict what has been admirably suggested in the concluding chapter of the Report (Wholeness of living and the Call to the Church). I would like to hope that my sketch was not too clumsy and not too deficient.
There is no room to bring any further subject in, but I cannot close this letter without making a short comment on the problem of war. I am afraid it is quite futile and aimless to speak in our days of the war in general, since the only war we can visualize in the future is bound up to be a “total” war—and not only in the sense that it will involve automatically the use of such weapons which transform the struggle into an indiscriminate massacre, but in another wider sense too: under present circumstances even the pre-military preparation of the nation i.e. the young generation to be conscribed, means the through-going militarization of the whole national resistance, not to speak of the necessity so to organize the industrial production as to make it apt to serve the cause of the war when and if it breaks out. If you have to make your country able to defend itself manu militari,[21] you must bring your youth up in a pro-militant spirit, to be able and qualified to join the forces, and so on. Si vis pacem, para bellum[22] — but in our days this preparedness and this preparation means a “total” militarization of the national life even in the peace-time, quite apart from any “atomic” complications. Under these conditions are we not driven to generalize our doubts and to ask, whether the call of citizenship is not forced on Christians in general (cf. p. 56–57 of the Report, or again pp. 78, last sentence, and 80, in fine[23]). But it is a topic to[o] complicate[d] to be even put rightly in a few words.
I must apologize for having written such a huge and rather sketchy letter, but it was due to the strong appeal which the Report on “The Era of Atomic Power” has had to my heart and mind.
With all my best compliments,
Your sincerely
Georges Florovsky
Notes:
1. The Era of Atomic Power 1946. The original spelling was unified in the whole letter.
2. Einstellung (German)—an attitude.
3. A correct form: résultante (French)—a result.
4. Wille zur Macht (German)—The Will to Power.
5. Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (1892 (New Style 1893)–1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue, the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories during World War II. His most famous book was Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) which contained an outline of the ideology of National Socialism, racism, and antisemitism.
6. Legibus solutus (Latin)—“Released from the laws.”
7. Qui a nemine judicatur (Latin)—“Who is judged by no one.” Cf. 1 Cor. 2:15.
8. Blut und Erde (German)—“Blood and Earth”—a Nazi slogan according to which ethnicity is based on blood descent and the territory one maintains.
9. The more proper English spelling: Alexander Scriabin—a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist.
10. The conventional English spelling: Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944)—a Russian religious philosopher and theologian.
11. Nicholas Berdyaev or Berdiaev (1874–1948)—a Russian religious philosopher.
12. Eritis sicut Deus (Latin)—“You will be as God.” Cf. Gen 3:5.
13. Scientia is potential (Latin)—“Knowledge is power.” Cf. Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacrae (1597).
14. “Die blinde Bestie” (German)—“Blind Beast.”
15. Sicut Deus (Latin)—“As God.” Cf. Gen 3:5.
16. Sine Deo (Latin)—“Without God.”
17. Versus Deum (Latin)—“Against God.”
18. Nikolai Fedorov or Fyodorov—a Russian religious philosopher, an initiator of the movement of Russian cosmism, and a precursor of transhumanism.
19. The conventional English spelling: Fedor or Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)—a Russian writer.
20. Vladimir Soloviev or Solovyov (1853–1900)—a Russian religious philosopher.
21. Manu militari (Latin)—“By the hand of the military” or “by military force.”
22. Si vis pacem, para bellum (Latin)—“If you want peace, prepare for war.”
23. In fine (Latin)—“In conclusion, finally.”
References:
- British Council of Churches. 1946. The Era of Atomic Power: Report of a Commission Appointed by the British Council of Churches. London: S.C.M. Press Limited.
- Obolevitch, Teresa. 2024. "Georges Florovsky on nuclear restraint and responsibility: introduction to Florovsky’s letter". Studies in East European Thought. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09665-y.