The Archbishop of Canterbury on Dostoevsky, “personalism” and how the story of Christ reminds him of Russian ideals

Prospect Magazine: The Archbishop of Canterbury on Dostoevsky, "personalism" and how the story of Christ reminds him of Russian ideals (HT Dana Ames) This is a fascinating interview of Rowan Williams by Lesley Chamberlain.

RW Exactly. Reality is a sense that life coheres. If, for instance, you establish economic relations that destroy trust, you threaten that sense of reality on which people depend for their sense of "what it means." Reality takes its revenge if you undermine those relationships.

LC Let’s talk solutions. You’re saying that if we all could take a more creative view of our social roles, then we might foster this sense of a coherent life at the same time as keeping up productivity and growth.

RW The extreme statement of the Russian ideal comes in Father Zosima’s sermon in The Brothers Karamazov: "You have to take responsibility for everything and everyone." It’s a radical demand to make. But it’s also a way of countering an overheated view of creativity that many of us tend to adopt, and of allowing creativity more scope in life generally. I mean, if you only hold a romantic view, then of course everyone wants to be a poet and no one wants to be a bus driver. But imagine a vision of creativity which gives equal weight to both. Both bus drivers and poets have unlimited scope for taking responsibility for everyone and everything.

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LC It seems to me that you’re saying we’re torn between a kind of voluntaristic chaos on the one hand, in which many of us might try to realise good ideas in our lives, as we see them, and on the other finding some binding principle of self-limitation and guidance we can accept.

RW Both of these forces, the anarchism and the limitation, are at work in Dostoevsky. That’s why he’s so interesting to read and why, like Hegel, he spawns radically different political interpretations. There are ultra-right Dostoevskians who are looking for the principle of order, and ultra-left Dostoevskians who see him as a prophet of creative anarchy. I admire Bulgakov when he says: "Yes, you can hold on to this radical tradition and make something civic out of it. It’s not impossible."

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LC Vladimir Solovyov, Dostoevsky’s friend and contemporary, once wrote that what was desirable was "a just social environment in which human freedom is limited for the sake of love."

RW It’s a wonderful statement, but who does the limiting?

LC That’s what we’ve been talking about: how to get some kind of unity and emotional coherence in our lives without infringing personal freedom.

RW We find the answer when we tell us ourselves the story of God, whose own freedom was restricted by love in creating the world. We find it in the way God chose to redeem the world on the cross, not in triumph and power. The Christian story in turn brings to mind certain Russian ideals. The Russian tradition has always attached great importance to the humiliated and the marginal, and to abandoning self-interest.

I especially liked the acknowledgment of the struggle between finding the optimum relationship of personal freedom with limitations for the social good. That is the core challenge.