Cosmism was born at the end of the 19th century in Tsarist Russia, steeped in Orthodoxy. Far from the vulgar shorthand that makes this thought a Russian ‘New Age’ before its time, cosmism is exquisite as a narrative: a narrative on the edge of religion, a profound philosophy at the crossroads of the spiritual and the scientific.
A subterranean current that survived the Tsarist and then Leninist narratives, it infused the Bolshevik Revolution and left its mark on the whole of Russian culture, from pictorial works to novels of questionable literary quality.
Far from offering an exhaustive history of this movement, we propose an excursion to the heart of this concept, strictly speaking Russian.
Forged by a number of Russian scholars, physicists, poets, artists and theologians, the central idea of cosmism lies in the belief in the existence of an essential solidarity between human life on Earth and what happens in the rest of the universe. Cosmists believe that humanity has a role to play in space and that the spiritual must take precedence over materialism. The main rhetoric of this way of thinking is illustrated by the crossing of the last two frontiers of mankind: death and attachment to the Earth. In the cosmist narrative, these two walls appear to be intrinsically linked by the following logic: If we defeat death, there won’t be enough space left on Earth, hence the need to emancipate ourselves from it in order to conquer outer space. When we come to the ‘founding fathers’ of cosmism, an anachronistic term given the times [1], two men stand out.
The first was the Russian thinker Nikolai Fyodorov (1829-1903), who defended a profoundly moral and Christian conception of science. He proposed a new focus with which Christianity should go further. Fyodorov imagined that humanity could use technological progress to achieve universal salvation. Scientific advances could, and should, be used to resurrect ancestors, achieve immortality, transform human nature towards divinisation and, finally, conquer and regulate the cosmos.
Fyodorov’s cosmism occupies a special place in the history of Russian philosophy.Although it is naturally part of a philosophical-religious tradition associated with Orthodox Christianity, it develops not so much a conception of the world as a programme of action on a cosmic scale, which he himself describes as ‘projectivism’ and which is based on the notion of the project.He condemned purely theoretical thought as found in treatises on philosophy or theology, and proclaimed the need to put things into practice by taking useful action.Its goal is the deliverance of humanity.
Man must be able to overcome the forces of nature and rise above his mortal nature, to which he has been reduced by sin and discord.
As the founder of cosmism, Fyodorov himself illustrates this rejection of materialism. Fyodorov was opposed to the idea of intellectual property and never published under his own name during his lifetime, allowing his thought to spread in a fragmentary way, mainly through manuscripts or orally. Although intellectually isolated from the intelligentsia of his time, he nonetheless left his mark on the minds of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. We can find the broad outlines of proto-cosmist ideas in the character of Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880).
The body of Nikolai Fyodorov’s thought was published posthumously under the title Philosophy of the Common Work (or Philosophy of the Common Cause, in Russian). It was with these reflections that he took a further step in linking Christian eschatology and the sciences: man must accept the idea that he is co-creator of the destiny of the universe, that the Earth is not a particular place in the universe and that he is therefore under no obligation to remain confined to it, and that life will triumph over death to the point of abolishing it, following the example of the risen Christ [2].
The second key figure in this movement, who was Fyodorov’s philosophical heir, was Konstantin Tsiolkovski (1857-1937). Tsiolkovski spent three years with Fyodorov, at a time when he was beginning his scientific work on the construction of a spaceship. With Fyodorov, Tsiolkovsky took his first steps in philosophy. From his teacher, he mainly retained the idea of a scientism with a utopian aim, an astonishing synthesis of Western positivism and mysticism, united in the same struggle against chaos and darkness.
He was not simply a brilliant inventor who tried for the first time to give a serious answer to the question ‘how do we get into space? Tsiolkovsky was also, and above all, interested in the question ‘why go there? [3]. It was under Fyodorov’s inspiration that Tsiolkovsky became the father of Russian astronautics.
He was passionate about humanity’s programme to colonise the cosmos because he was convinced that the Earth would become too small to contain the mass of resurrected individuals [5].Tsiolkovsky was a thinker who believed that man was immortal in the sense that death was only a temporary sleep, of which we were unaware, and that man, like all creatures, was reborn in other forms to unfold an eternal life.
Tsiolkovsky obviously thought that this man who was destined to populate the entire cosmos was also destined to live forever.
In the Russian cultural imagination, we immediately think of Lenin, whom his successors, despite the reluctance of an atheist Trosky, mummified in preparation for, who knows, his… resurrection. Prolonging life seems to have preoccupied many of the ideologists of the young USSR.
A few weeks before his death, Tsiolkovsky expressed his final thoughts in the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda on 23 July 1935: ‘What do I myself think about cosmic travel? Do I believe in it? Will it ever be within man’s reach? [Until recently, I believed that it would take hundreds of years to reach astronomical speed. This was confirmed by the meagre results obtained at home and abroad.
But the uninterrupted work carried out recently has shaken my pessimism; processes have been found that in just a few years‘ time will give surprising results’.
The cosmists inherited the Slavophile movement, which, while lamenting the fact that Russia was lagging so far behind Western Europe in terms of development, denounced the diversion of science towards industrial production and everyday comfort, leading to a weakening of religious sentiment and economic competition that could lead to war.
In recent years, Russian cosmism and its fathers have been (re)discovered – thanks to their relative proximity to certain aspects of trans-humanism, promoted with varying degrees of success by artists, film-makers and billionaires in the ‘tech ecosystem’.
Cosmism serves as a source of inspiration for ideologues seeking a national idea for post-Soviet Russia. The legacy of cosmist thought is particularly claimed by a conservative think tank close to the government, the Izborsk Club, created in 2012. This group, which brings together academics, journalists, politicians, entrepreneurs, religious figures and ex-military personnel around an imperialist, anti-Western line, is supported by funding from the Kremlin. The Club’s central aim is to define an ideology for the Russian state. With this in mind, it sees science as an ideological battleground in which Russia must set its own ‘technocratic mythology’ against the Western development model.
The originality of our times is that Russian thought, which has often been neglected until now, is suddenly converging with totally modern trends, some of which are external to Russia – especially American transhumanism (Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk), which is also situated on the frontiers of science and dreams, and aims to push back the limits of the human being. A renewed interest in space flight, the prospect of conquering space and extending human life to the point of immortality – all these elements of an ancient and original strand of Russian thought are also reminiscent of the most recent research being conducted in Silicon Valley [4]. In contrast to this vulgar comparison, the November 2020 issue of the Izborsk Club magazine sets out to demonstrate the opposition between cosmism and transhumanism. Transhumanism is presented as an extension of evolutionary progressivism, aiming to emancipate the individual from the constraints of human nature through hybridisation with the machine. Cosmism, on the other hand, is described as an eschatological quest to spiritualise humanity, guided by a literal interpretation of the biblical promises of resurrection.
‘But when man no longer has anything to envy the gods, then it’s up to humanity to really know whether it’s ready to become one’ (Simon Puech, Être immortel, 19 Jan. 2017)
Man is directly confronted with a universe that is out of all proportion to him, and questions the spatial and temporal limits traditionally assigned to him. The most striking feature of Russian cosmism seems to be the desire to push back human limits in time and space to infinity.
‘The duty of mortals, and their possible greatness, lies in their capacity to produce things – works, deeds and words – that deserve to belong and, at least up to a certain point, belong to the endless duration, so that through them mortals can find a place in a cosmos where everything is immortal except them’.
Hannah Arendt, The Condition of Modern Man, pp 54-55, 1961
[1] The first use of the term ‘cosmism’ appears to be in Teilhard de Chardin’s Notebooks, written in 1918 (where the very complex ideas expressed are made even more difficult to penetrate by the elliptical wording of these simple notes taken in haste): ‘- Indication of contemporary “Cosmism”: repeated insistence on dealing with the question of resurrected bodies’.
[2] Biérent, Rudolph. 2021. ‘ V. Is Russian Cosmism a Transhumanism?’ P. 95-125 in Augmented Man in Europe. Hermann.
[3] Limonier, Kevin. n. d. ‘La pensée de Konstantin Tsiolkovski (1857-1935) Du cosmisme à la conquête spatiale, itinéraires d’une philosophie récupérée’.
[4] Lesourd, Françoise, et Mikhaïl Masline. 2014. « Constantin Tsiolkovski », in « Dictionnaire de La Philosophie Russe » (1995/2007), Lausanne, L’Âge d’Homme, 2010, p. 907-910.
[5] Lesourd, Françoise. s. d. « Le cosmisme russe : essai d’interprétation ».
Anon. 2022a. « « Courant de pensée ambitionnant de rendre les humains immortels, le cosmisme russe est aujourd’hui réinvesti par Poutine » ». février 13.
Anon. 2022b. « En Californie, le transhumanisme et en Russie, le cosmisme ! » France Inter. Consulté 18 décembre 2024 (https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/le-vif-de-l-histoire/13h54-le-vif-de-l-histoire-du-mercredi-26-janvier-2022-2608366).
Anon. 2022c. « Le “cosmisme”, l’autre grand récit russe ? » France Culture. Consulté 17 décembre 2024 (https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/la-grande-table-idees/la-grande-table-idees-du-jeudi-10-fevrier-2022-9742358).
Anon. 2022d. « Vladimir Poutine, Elon Musk et les Cosmistes – Le Temps ». mars 11.
Anon. 2023. « « Cosmisme » : l’espace comme refuge pour l’humanité, des penseurs russes à la Silicon Valley ». février 1.
Biérent, Rudolph. 2021. « V. Le cosmisme russe est-il un transhumanisme ? » P. 95‑125 in L’homme augmenté en Europe. Hermann.
Eltchaninoff, Michel. 2022. « POUTINE, CHEVALIER DE L’APOCALYPSE. LE COSMISME RUSSE ET SES AVATARS ».
Faure, Juliette. 2018. « Une version singulière du transhumanisme, le cosmisme ». Le Monde diplomatique.
Consulté 17 décembre 2024 (https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/12/FAURE/59320).
Faure, Juliette. 2021. « Le cosmisme : une mythologie nationale russe contre le transhumanisme ». The Conversation.
Consulté 18 décembre 2024 (http://theconversation.com/le-cosmisme-une-mythologie-nationale-russe-contre-le-transhumanisme-151941).
Hagemeister, Michael. 2023. « Le « cosmisme russe », « philosophie de l’avenir » ? » Slavica Occitania (46):49‑67.
Hagemeister, Michael. s. d. « Le « cosmisme russe », « philosophie de l’avenir » ? »
Jacques, Lucien. s. d. « «Космос», le cosmos russe, grandeur et décadence ». Libération. Consulté 18 décembre 2024 (https://www.liberation.fr/international/europe/le-cosmos-russe-grandeur-et-decadence-20210415_5VN3P5Y6HBARXKAQWJC75ET2HQ/).
Lesourd, Françoise. s. d. « Le cosmisme russe: essai d’interprétation ».
Lesourd, Françoise, et Mikhaïl Masline. 2014. « Dictionnaire de La Philosophie Russe ».
Limonier, Kevin. s. d. « La pensée de Konstantin Tsiolkovski (1857-1935) Du cosmisme à la conquête spatiale, itinéraires d’une philosophie récupérée ».
