In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema…(Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, Commencement Address At Harvard, June 8, 1978)

a) Solzhenitsyn has already spoken of “the persisting blindness of superiority” and here he recommends the antidote: “in-depth analysis”. But he has also valorized height in saying that “a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities.” Similarly, at the end of his address, he will prescribe that “we shall have to rise to a new height of vision”. At the same time, he has also castigated a false depth: “Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence…”; “a society based [only] on the letter of the law…”

b) The crux of the matter is that neither height alone (the gods) not the depths alone (the giants) “open a way to free spiritual development.” It is the central determination of both these antagonistic sides that no “way” exists at origin which could ground and therefore provide a way to peaceful co-existence there of the above and the below. It is this determination which generates a “split” in any encounter with the other – the other that is unreal and lacking in value, but at the same time is somehow there. Any acknowledgement of such an other must necessarily “split” itself from it in agression and in “interminable battle“.

(c) It begins to seem that Solzhenitsyn’s “free spiritual development” will have to do with the fragment of Haraclitus which Eliot uses as a motto for the 4 Quartets: “The way up and the way down is one and the same.’ (odoV anw katw mia kai wuth)

The World Split Apart segments continue here. Further consideration in A World Split Apart of the above and the below is to be found here.