ABSTRACT
Morality, moral judgments, and moral motifs occupy an absolutely preeminent place in the Russian intelligent’s soul. If one could sum up our intelligentsia’s frame of mind in a single word, it would have to be moralism. The Russian intelligent knows no absolute values, no criteria, no orientations in life, other than the moral delimitation of people, actions, and conditions as good and bad, benevolent and malicious. The Russian intelligentsia’s moralism is merely an expression and reflection of its nihilism. Indeed, if one reasons strictly logically within the sphere of morals, one can and must deduce from nihilism only nihilism, that is, amoralism; it cost Stimer no great labor to explain this logical deduction to Feuerbach and his pupils. Other features of the intelligentsia’s world-view follow from and are linked with this mentality. First among them is the concept of culture, in the precise and strict sense of that word, being alien and in part even hostile to the Russian intelligent.
