Duhem, Quine, and Underdetermination

The Duhem-Quine thesis is identical to neither the Duhem thesis nor the Quine thesis,[1] which in turn are not identical to one another. The Duhem-Quine thesis acquired its name in a footnote to W.V.O. Quine’s 1951 article “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” as it appeared in his 1953 collection From a Logical Point of View.[2] Specifically, Quine says, “This doctrine was well argued by Duhem,”[3] the doctrine being “that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but as a corporate body.”[4] This is the only statement, vague though it is, that can rightly be called the Duhem-Quine thesis. First, it is here and only here that Quine establishes a link between his underdetermination thesis and that of Pierre Duhem. Second, it is here that the idea of a Duhem-Quine thesis has emerged in the philosophical vocabulary. Thus, apart from what is explicit in the Duhem-Quine thesis so stated, we have an exegetical basis to insist upon a separate Duhem thesis and Quine thesis. Further, these theses are to be maintained as separate even where they might concur. This paper will attempt no addition to this historical and minimal Duhem-Quine thesis (even if the latter has often been equivocated with the Quine thesis). The Duhem-Quine thesis (hereafter DQT), the Duhem thesis (DT), and the Quine thesis (QT) are identical neither historically nor philosophically.

Before moving on, it behooves us to comment that DQT is introduced into “Two Dogmas” against the second dogma of reductionism.[5] Quine makes use of a distinction between “radical reduction” and an attenuated reductionism. The former “sets itself the task of specifying a sense-datum language and showing how to translate the rest of significant discourse, statement by statement, into it.”[6] The latter “survives in the supposition that each statement, taken in isolation from its fellows, can admit of confirmation or infirmation.”[7] It is against the latter, attenuated form that Quine offers DQT. Quine’s point in stating DQT, then, is to say confirmation or infirmation in isolation is impossible, that reduction is impossible, not only attenuated reduction but also radical reduction, since the impossibility of radical reduction is a consequence of the impossibility of attenuated reduction. Thus, DQT is at the heart of QT’s stand against the dogmas of empiricism; indeed, it has come into being as a central philosophical component of QT.

If DQT really constitutes a bond between DT and QT, then we shall find that DT also includes DQT among its philosophical components; however, DT and QT must include independent philosophical components, or else all three would just be DQT. Further, if the uniqueness of all three theses is to be maintained, then disparities must exist between DT and QT, or else DT and QT would be the same, and DQT could be properly redefined in stronger terms according to a reunified DT and QT. Let this hypothetical thesis be called strong DQT`. If this were the case, Quine would have observed DQT just as a component of DQT`, which includes is the identical DT and QT. It is also possible that there are components of either DT or QT (or both) that are neither included in nor contradicted by the other. If DT and QT are non-identical in this way, then it remains possible to assemble DQT` from all the points of explicit concurrence. It is also possible to assemble another thesis which includes all these compatible components of DT and QT, which we shall call strong DQT``. DQT`` is another strengthened form of DQT from analysis of DT and QT. Lastly, one could find the existence of not only concurrent components, but also compatible components as well as incompatible components. In principle, it is still possible to assemble a weak DQT` and a weak DQT``, but only by eliminating the incompatible components in the case of the latter and both the incompatible and the merely compatible components in the case of the former. Such weak theses as these will be ahistorical constructs among a plurality of theses that includes the historical trio of DQT, DT, and QT. They will not enjoy the historical foundation of the strong formulations of DQT` and DQT``.

In order to show that no ideal formulation of DQT` or DQT`` is possible, maintaining the uniqueness of the DQT, DT, and QT, it is necessary to describe the components of DT and QT, since the minimal components of DQT have already been stated. Let us turn now to Duhem, since it has already been shown that QT includes DQT. In The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Duhem makes a multitude of statements that sound very much like DQT. For example, “Physics is not a machine which lets itself be taken apart; we cannot try each piece in isolation…Physical science is a system that must be taken as a whole; it is an organism in which one part cannot be made to function except when the parts that are most remote from it are called into play.”[8] As long as “our statements about the external world” include representative physical theories, it seems that Quine was almost right to call Duhem a defender of DQT, but DT is a narrower thesis than DQT.

The main limitation on DT comes from the fact that Duhem was concerned primarily with physical theory. Even when he includes physiology and chemistry by saying, “for the physiologist and chemist as well as for the physicist, the statement of the result of an experiment implies, in general, an act of faith in a whole group of theories,”[9] he must be read in terms of what he said immediately before:

When [scientists] make use of physical instruments…[they] implicitly admit the accuracy of the theories justifying the use of these pieces of apparatus as well as of the theories giving meaning to the abstract ideas…by means of which the concrete indications of the instruments are translated. But the theories used, as well as the instruments employed, belongs to the domain of physics.[10]

So DT is unquestionably a thesis about physics. To further elaborate Duhem’s view, let us pursue the above account of apparatus. According to Duhem, the physicist conceives an apparatus in two ways: the concrete apparatus and the schematic or abstract apparatus. The former is useless to physical theory unless it is translated into the language of physical theory, since physical theory is an abstract structure of relations that attempts to represent an ontological order. The abstract instrument is as much part of the theoretical structure as a mathematical equation.

It is in such a structure as the following that the abstract instrument is given its meaning, whereby the readings of the concrete instrument acquire abstract meaning:

The materials with which [physical] theory is constructed are, on the one hand, the mathematical symbols serving to represent the various quantities and qualities of the physical world, and, on the other hand, the general postulates serving as principles. With these materials theory builds a logical structure; in drawing the plan of this structure it is hence bound to respect scrupulously the laws that logic imposes on all deductive reasoning and the rules that algebra prescribes for any mathematical operation.[11]

For Duhem a physical theory is an approximate, symbolic representation of the physical world, based on certain postulates from which the theory is developed to completion by deduction. The conclusions of such a theory, if the theory is fully developed, are subject to experimental inquiry, which itself requires translation into the abstract. It is for this very reason that when the interpretation of an experiment finds itself in contradiction with a theoretically established conclusion, it is impossible to tell where in the theoretical construct there is error: “The only thing that the experiment teaches us is that among the propositions used to predict the phenomenon and to establish whether it would be produced, there is at least one error; but where this error lies is just what it does not tell us.”[12] By advancing this thesis, Duhem wants to demonstrate the impossibility of a Baconian experimentum crucis, which decisively determines the truth of one hypothesis by showing the alternatives,[13] and it is this impossibility that leaves us vulnerable to the problem of underdetermination. All of this represents a significant departure from DQT, which has nothing explicit to say about locating error in a theoretical structure or even about possibility of determination at all, and in this way DT is a stronger thesis than DQT. To put it in perfectly Duhemian words, DT is a stronger (DQT does not preclude an experimentum crucis) but narrower (it is limited to physics) thesis than DQT.

Limitation of DT primarily to physical theory is to be contrasted with the vastly broader scope that Quine intends for QT. QT is intended to cover far more than just physical theory; after mentioning the underdetermination of the “over-all algebra of rational and irrational numbers” by the algebra of rational numbers, Quine says, “Total science, mathematical and natural and human, is similarly but more extremely underdetermined by experience. The edge of the system must be kept squared with experience; the rest, with all its elaborate myths or fictions, has as its objective the simplicity of laws.”[14] The inclusion even of mathematical systems[15] under QT goes far beyond that with which Duhem would have been comfortable, the latter having said of physical theory, “we see nothing analogous to the certainty that a mathematical definition draws from its very essence, that is, to the kind of certainty we have when it would be foolish to doubt that the various points on a circumference are all equidistant from the center.”[16] Mathematical truths are safe from DT but not QT. Quine would agree that such doubt is foolish, but not because of the analyticity to which Duhem appeals in order to establish this apparent mathematical truth. On the contrary, Quine says, “I espouse a more thorough pragmatism,” by which he explicitly means pragmatism that denies the “imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic.”[17] In this way, even the mathematics that Duhem would take to be plainly analytic are, for Quine, no different from such myths as the existence of physical objects and the existence of the Olympian pantheon. It is just that mathematics and the hypothesis that the physical world exists both have pragmatic value, where Zeus does not. This matter will rise again below.

The thrust of this contrast is that QT is a much stronger thesis than DT, the scope of the former being impressively vast, the scope of the latter being limited to physical theory. DT takes the cleavage of the analytic and the synthetic for granted, as evidenced by Duhem’s view of mathematics. Also revealing Duhem’s tacit endorsement of analyticity is his assertion, “Certain fundamental hypotheses of physical theory cannot be contradicted by any experiment, because they constitute in reality definitions, and because certain expressions in the physicist’s usage take their meaning only through them.”[18] Duhem provides an example of such a hypothesis. For a freely falling heavy body, acceleration is constant. This hypothesis is immune to experimental refutation because the definition of a freefall involves constant acceleration. “Falling freely” may mean different things between ordinary and scientific parlance, but in the structure of physical theory, such a definition is analytic.

Quine does allow for any such thing. In the course of his argument that any account of analyticity is viciously circular, Quine touches directly on the idea of a “definition.” By way of summary, the problem of analyticity is traced out from the difference between statements of the class, “(1) No unmarried man is married,” and those of the class, “(2) No bachelor is married.”[19] The former “is not merely true as it stands, but remains true under any and all reinterpretations of ‘man’ and ‘married.’”[20] It is a point about the logical relations of the terms in question, not of the meanings of the terms, and this is the Achilles’ heel of the second class. In order to get (1) from (2), thereby showing the analyticity of (2), Quine tries to appeal to “synonymy” in order to substitute “unmarried man” for “bachelor.” In order to account for synonymy, Quine makes an abortive attempt to appeal to definition. In short, he concludes that there is only one sort of definitional activity that does not appeal to some pre-existing synonymy, “the explicitly conventional introduction of novel notations for purposes of sheer abbreviation,”[21] and thus definition does not account for analyticity. Synonymy remains the problem. Quine concludes that no account of synonymy can be given without appeal to analyticity, and no account of analyticity can be given without synonymy, hence the vicious circle.[22]

Quine would have to read Duhem’s account of constant acceleration being in the definition of freefall as resting on a synonymy between freefall and constant acceleration, but synonymy must appeal to analyticity between freefall and constant acceleration, which must appeal to synonymy, and so on. This is the allegedly vicious circle, and it represents an important difference between QT and DT. Quite simply, DT allows for the creation of experimentally independent, analytic truths within a physical theory. Far from the creation of novel notation for abbreviation (such as using “F” for “freefall”), this is a case of “the definiens…in the spirit of explication, improv[ing] upon the antecedent usage of the definendum.”[23] “Freefall” is a translation of certain more primitive components of a physical theory. QT in no way disallows a theory to contain such definitions, but it denies them their analyticity. Thus QT comes out again as a much stronger thesis than DT. When the theoretical structure is called into question by an experimental result, DT does not include these “analytic” definitions among possible errors. QT must include them all, excepting mere abbreviation.

At this point it should go without saying that DT and QT are distinct theses, QT being a much stronger thesis, first because Quine does not limit himself to the sort of physical theory that Duhem is explicating, and second because Quine denies the distinction between the analytic and the synthetic and reductionism, the “two (equivalent) dogmas of empiricism.” Further, QT includes DQT, but DQT exhausts neither the strength nor scope QT. For example, one would not suppose from DQT alone that QT would call mathematical “truths” into question, but DQT does not preclude that expansion. DT is also stronger than DQT, but it is narrower, so it cannot be said to include DQT. Thus, DQT is a part of QT, but it is not a part of DT, and DT and QT are distinct. Because of this, the only historical way to strengthen DQT is with QT, which is consistent to typical mention of the “Duhem-Quine Thesis” meanting, in reality, the “Quine Thesis.” Indeed, DT is quite distinct from both DQT and QT, and thus it is rather misleading to speak of DQT at all, not only in the minimal form above, but in any strengthened form that attempts to join together DT and QT. If this analysis is right, then to assemble any form of DQT is a highly unnatural and artificial thing to do, and it can do justice to the central components of neither DT nor QT, since those components have been shown to be incompatible in at least the ways noted above. There is, however, one interesting point on which DT and QT may come very close together, and that is in the response to their respective consequences.

It seems that the consequences of DT and QT led both Duhem and Quine to a very similar epistemological conclusion, one that can arguably be placed under the broad banner of virtue epistemology. Kyle Stanford says of Quine:

[Quine] argues (1955) that our actual revisions of the web of belief seek to maximize the theoretical ‘virtues’ of simplicity, familiarity, scope, and fecundity, along with conformity to experience, and elsewhere suggests that we typically seek to resolve conflicts between the web of our beliefs and sensory our experience in accordance with a principle of ‘conservatism,’ that is, by making the smallest number of changes to the least central beliefs that will suffice to reconcile the web with experience.[24]

Stanford goes on to say that Quine adopts these virtues on an explicitly pragmatic basis, since we are naturally disposed to adopt beliefs in accordance with them. D. J. Stump writes of Duhem, “It has not been generally noticed the extent to which Duhem’s ‘good sense’ is an ethical term and the extent to which Duhem thinks that the intellectual and moral virtues of the scientist determine scientific knowledge.”[25] This apparent agreement derives from a shared need of both DT and QT to make sense of the decision between underdetermined alternatives. Further, in the cases of both Quine’s “virtues” and Duhem’s “good sense,” we find that underdetermined decisions are not made on the basis of anything in the alternatives in question; rather, they are based on a quality of the decision-maker. The “virtues” that Quine names derive from natural tendencies, hence pragmatism, an explicit consequence of “Two Dogmas.” Duhem’s “good sense” is a developed quality in the physicist (or doctor, musician, etc.), which is much more properly called a virtue. Thus one can develop a physicist’s good sense, or a doctor’s good sense, or a musician’s good sense, thereby becoming a virtuoso in the relevant sphere.

Duhem finds his “good sense” in the Penseés of Pascal, and he develops the idea of intellectual virtue to a considerable degree in the middle of Physical Theory. It is here that he contrasts the typical English mind, which is ample but weak, with the typical French mind, which is strong but narrow. So Duhem specifies two intellectual virtues, strength and ampleness, and two intellectual “vices,” weakness and narrowness. Abstract minds, given the virtue of strength, “have no difficulty conceiving of an idea which abstraction has stripped of everything that would stimulate the sensuous memory…they are skillful in following…down to its final consequences, the reasoning which adopts judgments for its principles.”[26] Visualizing minds, given the virtue of ampleness, “have a wonderful aptitude for holding in their imaginations a complicated collection of disparate objects; they envisage it in a single view without needing to attend myopically first to one object, then to another; and yet this view is not vague and confused, but exact and minute.”[27] The latter lends itself to weakness, which is of course opposed to strength, and the former lends itself to narrowness, which is opposed to ampleness. It is ampleness that can guide judgment of that which is underdetermined by reason. It is this structure that Duhem invokes when he says:

Pure logic is not the only rule for our judgments; certain opinions which do not fall under the hammer of the principle of contradiction are in any case perfectly unreasonable. These motives which do not proceed from logic and yet direct our choices, these ‘reasons which reason does not know’ and which speak to the ample ‘mind of finesse’ but not to the ‘geometric mind,’ constitute what is appropriately called good sense.[28]

This statement, which would not be foreign to Quine, is Duhem’s solution to the problem of underdetermination. On the other hand, Quine says, “Conservatism figures in such choices, and so does the quest for simplicity,”[29] where conservatism and simplicity are pragmatic mental tendencies. It is by appeal to mental qualities that Quine’s response to QT overlaps Duhem’s response to DT. This common direction is suggests that it is a good means by which to approach DQT and various strengthenings of that thesis, as well.

Duhem and Quine both may think that intellectual character can justify the choice of one underdetermined alternative over another, but the means by which this character guides decision-making is different. We have already seen that each has his own account of intellectual “virtues,” but it is even more important to see that where Quine’s virtues are basically descriptive, Duhem’s are unmistakably normative. Quine’s idea of conservatism, for example, just describes our tendency to think conservatively, and his pragmatism does not say that we ought to think in this way. Duhem’s account is explicitly normative; indeed, the term “good sense” itself implies normativity by using the value term, “good.” Moreover, the aforementioned mental “virtue” of ampleness is unmistakably the trait by which we ought to think in order to make better judgments of the underdetermined, just as the “virtue” of strength makes it easier to trace out the structure of a complete physical theory to be subjected to experiment. It is because of DT that both mental “virtues” are needed among physicists, the strong to build the theories, and the ample to trace out their underdetermined problems.

Even if DT and QT are sufficiently distinct as to disallow the construction of a historically sensitive version of DQT, there is clearly a common thread among these underdetermination theses, in that their differences can in many ways be accounted for as differences of degree. Thus the language of strength, weakness, broadness, and narrowness has proved very useful in differentiating among the theses. It seems that this common thread has lead to a common solution in virtue epistemology, broadly conceived, but it is a solution that bears differences according to the different theses. The stronger thesis of Quine demands a weaker solution; thus he is left with his thorough pragmatism and non-normative “virtues.” As for Duhem, “good sense” is strong enough to allow even for scientific progress, in accordance with his evolutionary view of the history of science. Because of this, when Duhem believes that a theory generally reflects an ontological order, the belief is much stronger than Quine’s pragmatic assent to the utility of the theory. Quine pays a price for QT’s strength in his weaker, pragmatic solution while Duhem reaps the benefits allowed by his weaker DT.

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[1] The distinction between the Duhem thesis and the Quine thesis is nothing new; indeed, Donald Gillies has written on the subject under the very title, “The Duhem Thesis and the Quine Thesis” (1993). In Philosophy of Science: the Central Issues. Martin Curd and J.A. Cover, ed. Norton, New York, 1998. 302-319

[2] This observation comes from Ariew, Roger. “Pierre Duhem.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (13 July 2007). sec. 2.1

[3] Quine, W.V.O. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” From a Logical Point of View. Revised ed. Harvard, Cambridge, MA:1961. fn. 17

It should be noted that this is not the last edition of “Two Dogmas” that Quine produced; however, these later changes have been taken into account. Citing from the 1953 version presents no exegetical problem to this paper.

[4] Ibid. 41

[5] For Quine, though, “The two dogmas are, indeed, at root identical” (41), so DQT is of course opposed to both dogmas.

[6] Ibid. 39

[7] Ibid. 40

[8] Duhem, Pierre. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Philip Wiener, tr. Princeton University Press, Princeton: 1954 (1906). pg. 200

[9] Ibid. 183

[10] Ibid. 183

[11] Ibid. 205

[12] Ibid. 185

In sec. 2.1 of “Pierre Duhem,” Ariew calls this the “non-falsifiability thesis,” which he says is the “obvious corollary” to what he calls the “non-separability thesis,” which we have already seen. It says simply that hypotheses cannot be tested in isolation. Ariew’s division of DT is useful, as it amplifies DT’s departure from DQT. DQT endorses a broader non-separability thesis, but it says nothing about non-falsifiability.

[13] Duhem’s brilliant example on this point is Foucault’s demonstration that light travels faster in water than in air (189), which could be thought to displace emission theory and confirm the wave theory. These, however, are not the only two possible hypotheses; further, there could be assumptions at work that allow the theoretical structure to be modified such that the experiment does not even discount emission theory. At any rate, there is no decisive demonstration here, and thus no crucial experiment.

[14] Quine 45

[15] Quine directly states that “the abstract entities which are the substance of mathematics—ultimately classes and classes of classes and so on up—are another posit in the same spirit” (45).

[16] Duhem 211

[17] Quine 46

[18] Duhem 209

[19] Quine 22-23

[20] Ibid. 22

[21] Ibid. 26

[22] Ibid. 32

[23] Ibid. 27

[24] Stanford, Kyle. “Underdetermination of Scientific Theory.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (12 August 2009) sec. 2.1

[25] Stump, David. “Pierre Duhem’s Virtue Epistemology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Vol. 38, No. 1(March 2007), pg. 149-159

[26] Duhem 56

[27] Ibid. 56

[28] Ibid. 217 It should be noted that the “geometric mind” corresponds to the “abstract mind” and the “mind of finesse” corresponds to the “visualizing mind.”

[29] Quine 46

Anna Karenina, Konstantin Levin, and the Narod in Late Imperial Russia

The peasantry, or narod, was a subject of considerable interest to many in late Imperial Russia, not least to Leo Tolstoy. This historical background is readily apparent in his Anna Karenina, especially through the character of Konstantin Levin. Answers to the so-called “peasant question” attempted to understand the narod from various perspectives and according to various motives. Fundamentally, though, it must be asked, as Tolstoy asks, whether the narod is properly a subject about which to theorize generally. Here a distinction between monism and pluralism is useful. The former represents the narod by constructing an idealized peasant to embody all that is supposed to be essential to the identity of the Russian peasantry. The latter asserts either that all peasants are quite different or at least that there are different types of peasant within the narod, none of which represents a monistic ideal form. Tolstoy embraces elements of both of these through Levin, which lends itself to a nuanced characterization of peasants in Anna Karenina.

Following the framework of monism and pluralism, we shall explore the “peasant question” through a set of specific matters that are brought out in Tolstoy’s novel, which shall in turn be treated historically. Above all is the narod as a source of truth, which has important implications both for Levin and for historical Russia. In order to properly address this question, we must first consider the morality of the narod, which must be treated both in general and in relation to the morality of other Russians. In this way we will see not only a landscape of answers to the peasant question, but also Levin’s own idiosyncratic answer not only to the peasant question but also to life itself.

Neither a merely monistic conception of narod morality nor a merely pluralistic conception of narod morality adequately captures the historical reality of the narod, but the former had its strong proponents for a while among various Slavophiles and Populists. According to the Slavophile Ivan Aksakov, “The narod is made up of separate entities, each of whom has his own rational life, activity and freedom; each of them, taken separately, is not the narod, but together they make up that integral phenomenon, that new character who is called the narod and in whom all separate individuals vanish.”[1] This very neatly advances the monist position. What the narod does is not what any particular peasant does, but what the peasantry as a whole does. Thus the peasants become assimilated into this strange theoretical construct, the narod, and are considered as a whole. This is the approach of Sergey Ivanovitch, Levin’s half-brother, of whom it is said, “he liked the peasantry in contradistinction to the class of men he did not like, and so too he knew the peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men generally,”[2] something to which Levin is explicitly opposed, as we shall see below.

According to Cathy Frierson, the efforts of later Populists to actually interact directly with those people who make up the narod would challenge such neat monism. The so-called narodniki would not settle for mere theorizing about their beloved narod; rather, they would come to know about it through experience. With regard to the radical character of these people, something that was on no account a necessary condition for Slavophilism, Frierson notes, “Morozov explained that for the Russian radical, socialism was his faith and the narod was his god.”[3] This god, however, did not reveal itself as the faithful anticipated. Rather, “the narod was not as cohesive a unit as expected…Not only did the peasants fail to display the predicted solidarity among the oppressed; they also did not share the Populists’ condemnation of serfdom and its remnants.”[4] Dissonance between theory and reality did not squelch the Populist project; instead, the Populists tried to inculcate such solidarity,[5] to inculcate a monism that would serve their revolutionary goals. At worst, this tacitly brings the whole idea of narod into question, and at best, transforms narod into an even vaguer concept than it was before. The Populists would not accept this, so they asserted the perfectibility of narod,[6] that is, they would make their god in their own image, so as to have it bear the moral qualities the Populists wanted it to posses.

While the Populists may have clung to the hope of monism, the reality of the narod remained pluralism, but pluralism of what sort? An answer waits if we are to look further into the moral nature of the narod. The idea of the peasant commune is very enlightening on the subject of moral conduct among the peasantry.[7] Peasant morality might be summarized as communal relativism. Boris Mironov says, “The communal conception of morality…recognized moral values, applied fully to interpersonal relations within the commune, extended to a lesser degree to peasants from other communes, and had only slight validity in dealings with the state, other classes, and other states.”[8] Mironov classifies this as a dualistic morality, since its duties are differently defined within and without the commune. This is interesting from the perspective of monism and pluralism, especially after Mironov says, “the peasant’s ‘I’ merged with the communal ‘we.’”[9] What could be more clearly monistic than that? Yet, there existed many communes that did not merge into anything that could be called a unified narod. This is the dualism once again on a more fundamental level of which moral dualism is merely a reflection. On the one hand, any commune is more or less monistic within, but on the other hand, these communes are themselves pluralistic.[10] This view can usefully be called semi-pluralism. Not only is the view not pluralistic on the level of individual, initially weakening the pluralism in question, but it also depends on considerable formal similarities among the plurality of communes, which do not form a monistic narod as individuals form a monistic commune.

Just as there can be a perceived monistic character of the narod, there are certainly such characterizations of the nobility. Levin appeals to such an idea, but in an importantly nuanced way. Levin’s draws a distinction between normative monism and descriptive monism. Normative monism says that a certain class, be it the narod or the nobility, ought to conform to some idealization. Descriptive monism simply claims that the category in question has a single character. It follows, of course, that there are also normative and descriptive forms of pluralism, which parallel their monistic variants. The normative form says that there ought not to be an ideal noble or peasant character. The descriptive form simply observes the existence of pluralism among nobles or the narod or what have you.

This further distinction is useful in categorizing some of the active views in Russia on the relationship between the nobility and the peasantry around which Levin’s own view would be formed. Levin at one point tries to rationalize it: “[Levin] always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would work now still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury” (pt. I, ch. 26, pg. 87). This is quite different from any ordinary response to a felt injustice on the part of a noble, and it is even less plausibly a solution that an average non-noble might conceive. Levin’s position stands unique among more historically representative categories, which will be considered before turning again to Levin.

One position is that which denies the injustice of the dualism (which is a form of pluralism) between the nobility and the narod, or whatever more complex stratification might better classify Russian society. These would be normative pluralists in their endorsement of the social stratification, which found adherents on all levels of society, for example, with both peasants and nobles with nostalgia for serfdom, which Frierson observes when she speaks of the Populists’ realization that the character of the narod is pluralistic, noted above. By and large, this can be taken to be at least the tacit position of the majority of both peasants and nobles, since it approximates the “official” position. Indeed, other positions are in effect different oppositions to or variations on this conception. As the progressive noble Svizhsky accuses Levin, “‘An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart, like all of them!’” (pt. III, ch. 28, pg. 313).

A noble or some such person might also conceive of some duty to help the peasantry, accepting the dualism between noble and narod, but at the same time assigning functional roles to each class in order to define a single functional order. This is another form of normative pluralism, or more precisely a normative dualism, which says that the functional divide is that which ought to be. Vronsky is the best example of this view, when he pours much money into renewing a park and building a very modern hospital (among other things) at Vozdvizhenskoe, all the while living with every possible luxury, making certain that in both spheres, everything is as new and Western as possible (pt VI, ch. 20, pg. 567). In this sense, Vronsky becomes the model Westernizer of Anna Karenina. This is to be contrasted with Levin’s own reforms at Pokrovskoe, which, according to Levin’s idea of himself “as a fellow-worker with him” (pt. III, ch. 1, pg. 224), not as a separate thing to be helped or analyzed, quite unlike his half-brother.

This is further exemplified in the perceived noble duty, which Levin does not understand, to participate in local governmental entities, committees, elections, and the like, which is witnessed when Levin visits the election in Moscow. Tolstoy does an excellent job of drawing his readers into Levin’s confusion, leaving the reader in just as much uncertainty about how Levin ought to vote as the character himself. When it did come time to vote, “Levin advanced, but utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much embarrassed, he turned to Sergey Ivanovitch with the question, ‘Where am I to put it?’” (pt. VI, ch. 28, pg. 601). This being overheard, Levin entered into a rather awkward position. The politics, it seemed to him, were going on for no purpose outside themselves—politics for politics sake, much to the chagrin of Levin.

To cite an important outworking of such a sense of moral duty, Adele Lindenmeyr describes an “Ethos of Charity” in Imperial Russia that exhibited itself in both by spontaneous almsgiving and through charitable organizations, which was not limited to the likes of the nobility but was largely directed toward the narod. This giving, says Lindenmeyr, was “motivated by deep-rooted religious and popular views on the purpose of charity,” as well as by rank-consciousness,[11] to cite two overarching purposes. In the most visible example of spontaneous charity in Anna Karenina, Kitty is carried away by the charitable Christianity of Varenka and Madame Stahl: “In Varenka [Kitty] realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble. And that was what Kitty longed to be” (pt. II, ch. 31, pg. 208). This moral compulsion to charity contains a conflict between Kitty’s not entirely selfless motives to be “calm, happy, and noble” and any genuine desire to help others and actually be a good person. Further, it contains a conflict between who she is and who she wants to be.[12] For one, this captures the attachment of charity to religious motivation, which invariably must come in varying degrees of sincerity and genuineness. While Varenka never appears to act from any impure motive, the uncertainties surrounding Madam Stahl and the complexities of Kitty’s motives show that the forces driving charity, even within the sphere of religiously motivated giving, are diverse.

When a worker is crushed by a train upon arriving at the station, Vronsky engages in spontaneous charity in order to make himself appear charitable before Anna, who directly suggests that someone do this; that is, Vronsky engaged in charity for reasons that are not basically charitable. With outward nonchalance, he accepts adulation “shrugging his shoulders” (pt. I, ch. 18, pg. 62). This charity is for the benefit of but a few; it is done apart from the scientific sort of giving on which some insisted. This sort of giving Lindermeyr attributes to the inception of Humanitarianism in Russia, which “combines compassion for the unfortunate with an Enlightenment-inspired view of man as inherently good and human society as perfectible.”[13] The consequence is the advent of a scientific giving that at once satisfies this compassion and works rationally to ensure progress toward the perfection of man. In Anna Karenina, besides the above mentioned attitude of Sergey Ivanovitch, the practices of Vronsky and Svizhsky come closest to exemplifying this, insofar as they work to improve conditions for the peasants on their estates for progressive ends, Svizhsky explicitly taking a loss on his investment.

Returning to Levin, recall that he voices his concerns about justice after speaking to his Populist and Marxist brother Nikolay, who is Tolstoy’s main representative of a radical with respect to the narod. Further, Nikolay is a noble radical, who decries his status as a noble, idealizing the people as the hope of salvation, as it were. Nikolay is quite consistent with the picture of the Populist presented above, in that he is most definitely a descriptive monist about the narod and about capitalists, summarizing the surplus value theory of Marx, “The laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however much they work they can’t escape from their position of beasts of burden…all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists…that state of things must be changed” (pt. I, ch. 25, pg. 82-83). Nikolay’s normative ideal is found in a monistic idealization of the narod, but not of the narod as it is. This is why he emphasizes the importance of helping the narod in terms of education and the like, so as to make it to become what it ought to be. This is how the basic descriptive dualism, which Nikolay’s Marxism leads him to see in society, informs his Populism. A new monism ought to be formed according to the utopian ideal that his Populism attempts to bring about through the narod. [14] This is precisely what is seen not only in the picture of Populism above, but also to a greater extent in the observation, “The common theme was the exploitation of the peasants as a class; the hope was that making peasants aware of peasant rebellions…would contribute to a sense of belonging to a broad oppressed group, to a consciousness that would break the pattern of passivity.”[15] Passivity is the reason the Populists must help the narod, as Nikolay identifies, just as he emphasizes that the peasantry ought to become unified, so as to bring about universal monism.

If it is acceptable to draw a parallel between Levin and Tolstoy himself, then there is an insight to be gained from Janko Lavrin’s analysis of Tolstoy’s character. He says, “Tolstoy values human personality only in so far as it sacrifices itself to the compactness of the whole, and why he proclaims any act of individual self-affirmation as the original sin and as the very spring of all evil on earth.”[16] So, there is a plurality of individuals within the nobility and the narod, but there ought to be monism. This, however, would seem to imply that there ought not to be any distinction between noble and narod, at least as far as moral idealization is concerned. Further, this would seem to give rise to a tension in the thought of Tolstoy and Levin. Levin never abandons his nobility or his wealth any more than Tolstoy himself did; that is, they seem to tacitly endorse their social stratification.

The distinctions between monism and pluralism and between normativity and description can shed light on the tension. Tolstoy and Levin are very close here, in that they are both normative monists and descriptive pluralists. The normative monism is a fundamentally moral position, insofar as morality defines the idealization of humanity, which is shared by nobles, the narod, or whatever other category one might construct for mankind in general. Levin, at least, goes so far as to endorse a form of religious pluralism, finding a monism in a mere moral ideal for human beings in general. At the end of Anna Karenina, Levin discusses his then singular view when he says, “I am questioning the relation to Divinity of all the different religions of mankind. I am questioning the universal manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words," and later, "The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no possibility of deciding" (pt. VIII, ch. 9, pg. 752-753). This is representative of his ultimate views of humankind in general, and of course of the narod as included in that universal category. Levin’s views are beautifully summarized thus:

To Konstantin Levin the peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost that of kinship, he had for the peasant…still as a fellow-worker with him while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked whether he liked or didn’t like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather than he disliked them and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike ‘the people’ as something apart he could not, not only because he lived with ‘the people,’ and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of ‘the people,’ did not see any special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and ‘the people,’ and he could not contrast himself with the peasants, as farmer and arbiter. (pt. III, ch. 1, pg. 224)

Levin’s analysis of the peasants is not an analysis at all.[17] He and the peasants are part of humanity.[18] They are analogous to Levin himself and men in general, unified, as has been seen, in the moral condition of mankind.

It can now be stated directly that Levin is a normative monist with respect the moral condition of humanity in general, but he is a descriptive pluralist besides that. As a normative monist about the human moral condition Levin clearly discerns a moral contrast between some people and others, noble or peasant. It is a certain mental condition, of which the peasants are representative, from which Levin draws his final epiphany. In Kitty and the peasants both, Levin perceives an admirable simplicity, through which he sees truly how to live apart from any rational consideration. It is Kitty’s life in the face of Nikolay’s death that stands as an example to the non-rational affirmation of life in the face of inevitable death. It is a Kierkegaardian faith that Levin admires in this, and it is this that he also finds in the peasant Fyodor’s revelatory statement, “‘Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not forget God’” (pt. VIII, ch. 11, pg. 734). Neither of these, thinks Levin, are modes of living that are the conclusions of rational argument. They are natural ways of living of those who have not even considered rational argument, and in this Levin sees the way to live. His conclusion is fundamentally a form of Christian existentialism, and so Anna Karenina ends when Levin says of his life, “‘every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it’” (pt. VIII, ch. 19, pg. 754). Levin faithfully infuses his life with meaning through goodness, which he perceives through his moral consideration of the peasants, the truest representatives of humanity.

Full Bibliography

Black, Cyril. “The Nature of Imperial Russian Society.” Slavic Review, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Dec. 1961) pp. 565-582

Burbank, Jane. “Revisioning Imperial Russia.” Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Autumn 1993), pp. 555-567)

Frierson, Cathy. Peasant Icons. Representations of Rural People in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia. Oxford, New York: 1993.

Lavrin, Janko. “Tolstoy and Nietzsche.” The Slavonic Review, Vol. 4, No. 10 (Jun. 1925), pp. 67-82

Lindenmeyr, Adele. “The Ethos of Charity in Imperial Russia.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Summer, 1990), pp. 679-694

Mironov, Boris. &c. (I lack the proper information to complete the cit

Struve, Peter. “Russia.” The Slavonic Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jun. 1922), pp. 24-39

Sunderland, Willard. “Peasant Pioneering: Russian Peasant Settlers Describe Colonization and the Eastern Frontier, 1880s-1910s.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2001), pp. 895-922.

Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Constance Garnett, tr. Barnes and Noble, New York: 2003.

Trice, Tom. “Rites of Protest: Populist Funerals in Imperial St. Petersburg, 1876-1878.” Slavic Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 50-74

Wachtel, Andrew. “Resurrection a la Russe: Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse as Cultural Paradigm.” PMLA, Vol.107, No. 2 (Mar. 1992), pp. 261-273

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[1] Qtd. in Frierson, Cathy. Peasant Icons. Representations of Rural People in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia. Oxford, New York: 1993, pg. 35.

[2] Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Constance Garnett, tr. Barnes and Noble: New York: 2003. pt. III, ch. 1, pg. 224

[3] Frierson 40

[4] Ibid. 44

[5] Ibid. 45

[6] The Enlightenment theme of perfectibility shall appear again below, in reference to humanitarian charity.

[7] Collectivism of this sort has of course been called into question, for example, by Hoch, as noted in: Burbank, Jane. “Revisioning Imperial Russia.” Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Autumn 1993), pp. 555-567, pg. 564.

[8] Mironov, Boris. pg. 12

[9]Ibid. 18

[10] Willard Sunderland observes of the colonization of the Eastern frontier during the late Empire, “What is likely is that [Slavic neighbors] were seen in much the same way that peasants perceived peasant neighbors back home. That is to say, Slavic neighbors in the borderlands were probably seen as outsiders (any one outside the village commune was perforce an outsider) but as outsiders who were “essentially similar” in terms of religion and general way of life and therefore readily understandable” in “Peasant Pioneering: Russian Peasant Settlers Describe Colonization and the Eastern Frontier, 1880s-1910s.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2001), pp. 895-922, pg. 907-908. This captures both the locally centered mindset of the Russian peasant and the continual bond with the commune.

[11] Lindenmeyr, Adele. “The Ethos of Charity in Imperial Russia.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Summer, 1990), pp. 679-694

[12] It is also worthy of mention that Kitty does not notice this, emphasizing the non-rationality that Levin so admires in her. It is equally important that Kitty abandons this way of thinking as non-genuine, ultimately reverting back to being herself. The desire to be someone else, even what would presumably be a better person, is disingenuous, it seems. This is why Levin, in the end, resolves that his behavior will not be different, despite his epiphany. He must be himself, and he must be good. This is a staple of any existentialism, which is surely the ultimate conclusion that Levin reaches, deriving meaning not from reason but by a leap.

[13] ibid. 682

[14] Marx, it is well known, was not a utopian socialist, but rather a “dialectical materialist” or “scientific socialist,” but many socialists who were influenced by him were utopian.

[15] Frierson 45

[16] Lavrin, Janko. “Tolsoty and Nietzsche.” The Slavonic Review, Vol. 4, No. 10 (Jun. 1925), pp. 67-82, pg. 79

[17] This is amplified by the direct contrast of this passage with the analytical approach of Sergey Ivanovitch, who does view the peasantry as a theoretical other, quite different from himself.

[18] This is a fundamental lesson to be taken from the famous mowing episode, wherein Levin departs rational consciousness while working among the peasants. It is almost a unity of consciousness—a Monism of the truly metaphysical sort, between himself and the other human beings working with him.