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Kant, Solovyov attempted to reconcile science and religion. He sought to unite the true, the good, the beautiful, the philosophical, and the theological. Recognizing that no philosopher could escape from examining his own premises, Solovyov attempted to achieve a synoptic grasp of reality. Lossky (1951) explained that Solovyov gave clear expression to the “characteristic features of Russian philosophical thought—the search for an exhaustive knowledge of reality as a whole and the concreteness of metaphysical conceptions” (95).

      Following in the footsteps of his Slavophile ancestors, Solovyov saw religion as providing this synoptic “total unity.” Each branch of philosophy echoes this unity. In metaphysics, the world is conceived as an organic whole. In ethics, Solovyov attacked both moral subjectivism and social realism. The subjectivist stresses the realization of individual good, and the social realist views the individual’s moral will as subordinate to society’s institutions. Solovyov integrated the essential moral will of the individual with the necessity of social life. As morality is both public and private, politics bridges the gap between individual and social good. In the perfect, ideal society, a Slavophile messianism will achieve a free theocracy that unites all people.

      That such a system might deteriorate into totalitarianism was one of the chief objections raised by the Russian Hegelian philosopher, B. N. Chicherin.¹² But Chicherin accepted Solovyov’s universalist aim to transcend both rationalism and empiricism. Deeply influenced by Hegel, Chicherin argued that dialectical logic is ontological; the laws of reason are then identical with the laws of being. Like Solovyov, Chicherin was highly critical of the dichotomy of reason and experience. He advocated their integrated unity.

      THE SILVER AGE

      In the post-Solovyovian period, Russian philosophy entered a Silver Age. But the Silver Age was much more than a philosophical renaissance. It was an era of cultural flourishing that had begun in the final decade of the nineteenth century and had culminated by 1924, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Silver Age was the historical context of Rand’s formative years. It was marked by a burst of creativity in the literary arts, coupled with a renewed interest in religion, mysticism, and the occult. Artists and philosophers reacted strongly against positivism and materialism, examining the nature of freedom, art, beauty, truth, and the dignity of the individual. They precipitated a revolution of the spirit, heralding the radical changes that were to consume Russian society.

      THE INFLUENCE OF NIETZSCHE IN RUSSIA

      The Russian Symbolists constituted one of the most important cultural movements of the age.¹³ Writers such as Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Andrey Bely, Aleksandr Blok, and Viacheslav Ivanov attempted to transcend the polarity in Russian culture between Westernizers and Slavophiles. Paradoxically, they embraced the Christian messianism of the Slavophiles and Solovyovian mysticism, while simultaneously absorbing the Dionysian aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy. They challenged both materialism and asceticism, positivism and rationalism, Marxists and czarist authoritarians. As nihilists, emotionalists, and subjectivists they were hostile toward reason and science. They rejected urbanization and industrialization, and envisioned a new anarchic culture of freedom, love, and sobornost’.¹⁴

      Central to the Symbolist movement was the absorption of key Nietzschean themes. The Symbolists answered Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity by cultivating a new religious morality of cultural creativity, Promethean individuality, and sexual pleasure.¹⁵ Symbolist artists aimed to embody the characteristics of Nietzschean supermen and to achieve a transformation of values by integrating Christian mysticism and Dionysian revelry.¹⁶

      Like Nietzsche, the Symbolists rejected dualistic interpretations of the world. In Nietzsche’s view, as in Hegel’s, one cannot isolate the elements of opposition, which are often “insidiously related, tied to, and involved” with one another ([1886] 1966, 10). For Nietzsche, as for Hegel, historical evolution develops through such opposition. But Nietzsche refused to embrace monistic idealism. Monism merely emphasizes one aspect of a dualist distinction at the expense of the other. Nietzsche aimed to transcend the very language of duality.

      One of the distinctions that Nietzsche attempted to transcend was the opposition of good and evil. These ethical constructs are problematic, in Nietzsche’s view, because their meaning is deeply dependent on the moral system in which they are expressed. The Christian “slave morality” views altruistic self-sacrifice as the good. According to Nietzsche, it achieves submission and conformity by appealing to resentment, guilt, jealousy, and envy. However, the achievement of human mediocrity is not the ethical goal of “master morality.” Instead of appealing to the herd mentality of the mob, master morality elevates self-responsibility and nobility as an ethical ideal, stamping out the weak and uncreative elements of humanity.

      Like his distinction between master morality and slave morality, Nietzsche’s conceptualization of the Apollonian and Dionysian duality also made a deep impact upon the Russian Symbolists. The Symbolists embraced the Dionysian principle as a corrective for the excessive rationalism of Western philosophy. Rosenthal argues that the Apollonian-Dionysian dualism gave the Symbolists “a conceptual framework for esthetic and psychological reflection and fueled their opposition to positivism and utilitarianism, sanctioning their demand that the needs of the inner man (the soul or the psyche) be heard. The Dionysian became a symbol of interrelated esthetic, psychological and religious impulses.”¹⁷

      For Nietzsche, Apollo and Dionysus embodied opposing metaphysical principles. In 1969, Rand would reiterate this Nietzschean symbolism in her assessment of New Left counterculture. In Rand’s view, Nietzsche had used the symbols of Greek tragedy to express a false dichotomy between reason and emotion. But Rand saw Nietzsche’s archetypes as appropriate symbols for what happens when reason and emotion are disconnected. Apollo embodies individuation and is “the symbol of beauty, order, wisdom, efficacy … —i.e., the symbol of reason.” By contrast, Dionysus’s drunkenness is characterized by a loss of self, “wild, primeval feelings, orgiastic joy, the dark, the savage, the unintelligible element in man—i.e., the symbol of emotion.”¹⁸ Though Nietzsche saw power in the integration of Apollo and Dionysus, he embraced the superiority of the uninhibited, unfettered Dionysian impulse.

      Rand argued that the New Left counterculture exhibited this Dionysian loss of self. Though Rand sympathized with the New Left’s rejection of the Establishment, she condemned its flagrant irrationalism, its drug-induced emotionalism, and its anti-industrialism. Perhaps Rand had recognized in the New Left the elements that she had observed in the Russian Symbolist movement of her youth. Rand may have appreciated some of the Nietzschean undertones of Symbolism; she cites Aleksandr Blok as one of her favorite poets.¹⁹ But Rand was quick to recognize the antirational, antiself, and anticapitalist components of the Dionysian principle. Ultimately, her rejection of Dionysian subjectivism would separate her from Nietzsche and his “counterfeit” individualism.

      As for Aleksandr Blok, he was the dominant literary figure in the St. Petersburg of Rand’s youth. Educated at St. Petersburg University in the Juridical and Philological colleges (fakul’tety), he emerged as the supreme Russian Symbolist poet of his generation.²⁰ He gave regular readings of his poetry at the university until his death in 1921. Like his fellow Symbolists Ivanov and Bely, Blok conjoined fierce Dionysian imagery with Solovyovian Christian mysticism, putting forth an image of “a Nietzscheanized Christ, a Christ-Dionysus archetype.”²¹ Blok envisioned an anarchistic sobornost’ unifying all believers in the mystical body of Christ.²² He aimed to resolve the tension between individualism and social cohesion, between culture and civilization.

      Blok argued that there was an inherent contradiction between culture and civilization. Culture, in his view, is Dionysian; it is spontaneous, creative, organic, and whole. Civilization is Apollonian; it is mechanical, abstract, rational, and materialistic. Blok opposed bourgeois society because it fragmented culture and civilization and gave one-dimensional emphasis to the Apollonian principle. Ultimately, Blok envisioned a society that integrated Apollonian structure and Dionysian process.

      Envisioning a similar transcendence was Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky. Merezhkovsky was a prolific Symbolist writer who argued that the highest unity would be achieved through

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