Maternal Love: On a Story by Dostoevsky

This short text is excerpted from the very beautiful book The Philosophy of Life by Christopher Hamilton, translated by Meysam Mohammad Amini (Chapter One).

In this short piece, Christopher Hamilton examines an interesting story by Dostoevsky, and in the course of it, addresses the quality and characteristic of maternal love (such as its irreplaceability), the value maternal love bestows upon an individual, the reason for this valuation, and how this affection is universalized in human relationships.

But the original text of Dostoevsky's story is as follows:

«He wore a helmet and had a sword at his belt... He walked towards the corpse, and with each step his pace grew slower and slower, and he looked with astonishment at the convicts who sat silently, sullenly staring at him from all sides. A step or two from the corpse, he stopped, as if suddenly startled by something. The sight of the completely naked, withered body, wearing nothing but a shackle, made a deep impression on him, and suddenly he unbuckled his sword and took off his helmet – without being obliged to do so by regulations – and made a large sign of the cross over his chest. He was a battle-hardened, grey-haired soldier who had spent many years in military service.

I remember that at that very moment Chekunov, another grey-haired man, was also standing beside him. Without saying a single word, he stared fixedly at the guard officer's face and followed his every movement with strange precision. But their eyes met, and for some reason Chekunov's lower lip suddenly began to tremble. He twisted his lip strangely, showing his teeth, as if involuntarily drawing the guard officer's attention to the corpse.

At the same time, he quickly said: "He too had a mother!" and then went out. I remember these words pierced me to the depths of my being. Why did he say such a thing, what had caused this sentence to come to his mind?»

Original text:

Somewhere in Notes from the House of the Dead, his account of his time in penal servitude in Siberia, Dostoevsky tells of a time when he was hospitalized in the prison infirmary. During his stay in the sick ward, one of the prisoners, Mikhailov – a man convicted of utterly heinous crimes – was dying of consumption. His death was very slow and painful, and Dostoevsky describes in detail his writhing, his gasping, and his feverish struggle to cling to life. After Mikhailov's death, Dostoevsky recounts how the guard officer enters.

He wore a helmet and had a sword at his belt... He walked towards the corpse, and with each step his pace grew slower and slower, and he looked with astonishment at the convicts who sat silently, sullenly staring at him from all sides. A step or two from the corpse, he stopped, as if suddenly startled by something. The sight of the completely naked, withered body, wearing nothing but a shackle, made a deep impression on him, and suddenly he unbuckled his sword and took off his helmet – without being obliged to do so by regulations – and made a large sign of the cross over his chest. He was a battle-hardened, grey-haired soldier who had spent many years in military service.

I remember that at that very moment Chekunov, another grey-haired man, was also standing beside him. Without saying a single word, he stared fixedly at the guard officer's face and followed his every movement with strange precision. But their eyes met, and for some reason Chekunov's lower lip suddenly began to tremble. He twisted his lip strangely, showing his teeth, as if involuntarily drawing the guard officer's attention to the corpse.

At the same time, he quickly said: "He too had a mother!" and then went out. I remember these words pierced me to the depths of my being. Why did he say such a thing, what had caused this sentence to come to his mind?

It is natural to think that the guard officer and Chekunov, upon seeing the dead man, essentially showed a common reaction: they were suddenly captivated by the realization of what the death of this particular human being meant. But what does this mean? What really caused those words to come to Chekunov's mind? And why did Chekunov's words have such an effect on Dostoevsky? What is the moral and spiritual meaning of these words?

Every day hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of human beings die. We are indifferent to the majority of these deaths. But sometimes someone dies who matters to us, someone whose death is a tremendous loss for us. Because there are some people – and their number is very small – who, in our eyes, have no replacement. If we reflect on the nature of this replaceability, we come closer to describing the character of the man or woman who has died. And of course, when I speak of irreplaceability, it is partly this difference in character that I have in mind. But in the story that was told, Dostoevsky makes it clear that no one really knew Mikhailov well. The blow that Mikhailov's death dealt to the guard officer, Chekunov, and Dostoevsky himself was not because they were suddenly stunned by the death of a man with such-and-such character traits – however interesting, original, and unusual those traits might have been. The words Chekunov speaks at Mikhailov's death show that something else was at stake. Something that is significant from an aspect other than the nature of an individual's character traits, and their reaction to the condemned man's death was connected to it.

In that prison, the prisoners were forced to endure every kind of indignity, punishment, and humiliation. In the eyes of the prison authorities, their existence as individuals meant nothing or was considered of very little importance. The same could be said of their relations with one another, for Dostoevsky recounts that the trait most common among the prisoners was their excessive desire to exert power over one another. Almost all of them were ridiculously arrogant and proud, concerned with keeping up appearances, boastful and conceited, and the like. This, as Dostoevsky points out, indicates their deep need to establish their place as an individual in the eyes of the other prisoners. In short, the prison was an environment in which the prisoners lacked any individuality, and they themselves knew it.

With his words, Chekunov points to this matter, as if for the first time he had suddenly encountered Mikhailov's individuality. For these words establish Mikhailov's relationship with someone – that is, his mother – for whom the dead man was not, and could not be, just one among the rest. For his mother, he was truly irreplaceable. When Chekunov speaks of him in this way, he indicates that he has suddenly realized Mikhailov can also be viewed from another angle, and from that angle he can be seen as a unique and irreplaceable individual. This kind of gaze is the very view a mother has of her child. And the most important matter here is the mother's love for her child; a mother's love for her child in itself expresses her perception of the child's unique and irreplaceable individuality.

Perhaps this statement seems strange. Chekunov knew nothing – for all we know, perhaps Mikhailov's mother detested her child and abandoned him. From this perspective, Chekunov's words can be seen as entirely unwarranted and pure speculation about a relationship he knew nothing about. But Chekunov is not speculating. He is not engaged in hypothesizing about the relationship between Mikhailov's mother and her son. Even if he had learned that Mikhailov's mother detested him and abandoned him in childhood, he still would not have had to retract his words. For Chekunov is speaking of motherhood as a moral ideal, precisely the moral ideal in whose light Mikhailov can be seen as an irreplaceable individual. If it had turned out that Mikhailov was a foundling and his mother had abandoned him, Chekunov would have judged that mother, according to the ideal of motherhood to which he implicitly appeals, as having failed in her duties.

اما اصلا چرا باید اینجا به عشق مادر استناد کرد؟ ممکن است بسیاری از انواع دیگر از عشق باشند که نشان دهند موضوع آن عشق فرد بی همتا و جایگزین ناپذیری باشند. چه نکته خاصی درباره مفهوم مادر بودن وجود دارد؟ پاسخ در این حقیقت نهفته است که عشق مادر به فرزندش دقیقا عشقی است که برهیچ آگاهی درمورد ویژگی های شخصیتی کودک – و اصلا آگاهی درمورد هرگونه جزییات – وابسته نیست.چنین وابستگی نمیتواند وجود داشته باشد چون اصلا کودک، مگر به معنایی ضعیف، شخصیت ندارد.البته گاهی پیش می آید که چون کودک کمی بزرگ تر شد پدر و مادر میگویند که همه ویژگی های شخصیتی اش از همان آغاز در او وجود داشت. اما این بیش تر نشانه ای از مهر مادر به فرزند است، نه اینکه توجیهی برای آن باشد.و به منزله انکار این موضوع هم نیست که همزمان با رشد کودک میتوان پدید آمدن الگوهای شخصیتی را در او مشاهده کرد.بلکه آنچه میگویم این است که ابراز علاقه به پدید آمدن این ویژگی ها و لذت بردن از آن، همان چیزی است که باید آن را بفهمیم و نیاز به توضیح دارد.

میتوانیم مسئله را اینطور بیان کنیم.فلاسفه گاهی این پرسش را مطرح میکنند که آیا میتوان علاقه خاص ما به کودکان را بر پایه ویژگی های آن ها توجیه کرد. چون تصور بر این است آنچه واکنش ما در برابر چیزی – خواه آدمیزاد و خواه حیوان و خواه سنگ – و نحوه برخورد ما با آن را توجیه میکند، ویژگی های آن چیز است.و اغلب تصور میشود آنچه رفتار خاص ما با انسان های بالغ را توجیه میکند واقعیت هایی است نظیر اینکه آن ها موجوداتی هستند عاقل یا ناخودآگاه یا خودآیین و مانند این ها.

اما کودکان صاحب هیچ یک از این ویژگی ها نیستند و در نتیجه نمیتوانیم توجه و علاقه خاصمان به آن ها را اینگونه توجیه کنیم.ولی چیزی که در این خط استدلالی فراموش میشود این است که والدین واقعا در عمل چه رفتاری در برابر کودکانشان دارند.چون با رفتارشان به روشنی نشان میدهند که عقیده دارند اینکه کودکشان صاحب عقل و چه و چه نیستند در برانگیختن ها به کار هایی که واقعا انجام میدهند، اهمیت چندانی ندارد.این هم چندان مهم نیست که کودنشان در نهایت روزی صاحب عقل و خودآگاهی و غیره میشوند. مادری که به او گفته اند کودک نوزادش، مثلا به علت نوعی بیماری مادرزاد و کشنده، چند ماه بیش تر زنده نمی ماند به این موضوع فکر نمیکند که توجه و مراقبتش از کودک نابه جاست. کاملا برعکس، حتی ممکن است فکر کند که کودکش بیش از هر کودک دیگری مستحق محبت و دلسوزی است.حقیقت این است که اگر در اینجا واقعا به دنبال توجیه رفتارمان در برابر کودکان، از طریق بررسی ویژگی ها ی آن ها باشیم، به بیراهه رفته ایم.

یکی از دوستانم که به تازگی صاحب فرزند شده است، به من گفت وقتی که پسرش را با اتومبیل از بیمارستان به خانه برد، حین رانندگی در میان خیابان های آلوده و دود گرفته و پر سر و صدای لندن، ناگهان به شدت نسبت به فرزندش احساس مهر و دلسوزی کرد.واکنش او در برابر کودک برآمده از این احساس اوست که زندگی را چیزی خشن و دشوار و حتی دشمن خو میداند، چیزی که رویداد هایش ناگزیر سرشاز از منازعه و رنج و آشفتگی است.احساس این مادر ناشی از درک او از شکنندگی و ضعف کودکش نیز بود، ناشی از اینکه او روحی است نوشکفته در جسمی که از جهتی ناتوان و بی دست و پاست، اما درعین حال کامل و بی نقص هم هست.

اما واکنش دوست من به عامل دیگری هم بستگی داشت.احساس او نسبت به بی گناهی فرزندش در برابر جهان خشن و  بی احساس نیز در این میان دخیل بود.برخی فیلسوفان در مواجه با این مفهوم دچار سردرگمی شده اند.به نظر آن ها اصلا معقول نیست که بگوییم نوزاد انسان به معنایی خاص بی گناه  است که نوزاد موجودات دیگر گونه ها به آن معنا بی گناه نیستند.برای همین است که مثلا پیتر سینگر مدعی است نوزاد انسان دقیقا همانطور بی گناه است که موش های آزمایشگاهی.چیزی که در این خط استدلالی تلویحا فرض گرفته میشود این است که آنچه موجب بی گناهی هر موجود میشود این است که هیچ عمل اخلاقا نکوهیده ای مرتکب نشده باشد و چون آشکارا این موضوع هم در مورد نوزاد انسان و هم موش آزمایشگاهی صدق میکند، آن ها باید به یک معنا واحد بی گناه باشند.اما آنچه که در اینگونه تاملات مغفول میماند این است که بی گناهی نوزاد انسان با مفهوم تقصیر اخلاقی تقریبا هیچ ارتباطی ندارد.چون آن برداشتی که از مفهوم بی گناهی در واکنش دوست من نسبت به کودکش وجود داشت متناسب با این تصور است که کل زندگی انسان چیزی نیست جز وانهادن و از دست دادن و تلف شدن، به شیوه های مختلف و درجات گوناگون، و این که  سرنوشت کودک او تجربه کردن چنین چیز هایی است، هر چند تاکنون از آن در امان بوده است.

اینجا دقیقا همان جایی است که با خود مفهوم تلف شدن روبه رو میشویم.هانا آرنت به این نکته اشاره میکند که همه چیز در طبیعت حرکتی دایره ای دارد.بنابراین مفهوم اتلاف به  معنای دقیق کلمه هیچ مصداقی در طبیعت ندارد، مگر آنکه طبیعت در پرتو ملاحظات انسانی نگاه کنیم.در زندگی انسان است که بر خلاف تمام چیز های دیگر در جهان اتلاف میتواند واقع شود؛انچه در جاهای دیگر تلف شدن به نظرمانی می آید تصویری است که از تلف شدنی که زندگی هر انسانی را تهدید میکند.دیلیل این امر آن است که مسیر زندگی انسان از لحظه زاده شدن، به تعبیر آرنت، دایره ای نیست بلکه مستقیم است.مسیری است از تولد به سوی مرگ.میتوانیم داستان زندگی هر انسانی را تعریف کنیم؛ روایت سفر او در طول زمان. اما این کار را برای زندگی یک حیوان نمیتوانیم انجام دهیم. اگر بخواهیم داستان زندگی یک حیوان را تعریف کنیم ،کاری جز این نمیتوان کرد که رویداد آن زندگی را شرح دهیم؛یعنی توصیف کنیم که چه پیشامدی و در چه زمانی رخ داد.اما درمورد زندگی انسان وضع کاملا متفاوت است.چون انسان میتواند زندگیش را کاملا بی معنا بداند؛ یا احساس کند سرتاپای زندگی اش عیب و ایراد دارد؛ یا به جایی برسد که بگوید لعنت به آن روزی که من به دنیا آمده ام ؛یا بفهمد به آنچه روزی بوده  یا میتوانسته باشد پشت پا زده است.داستان زندگی یک مرد یا زن، داستان چنین چیز هایی است.و برای نوزاد انسانی که پیش از بلوغ میمیرد و در نتیجه نمیتواند چنین درکی از زندگی داشته باشد، به حق میتوان دلسوزی کرد؛ زیرا چنین ماجراجویی فوق العاده ای را از دست داده است، درحالیکه اصلا معقول نیست در مورد یک حیوان، هر اندازه هم که – مانند واشو (Washoe) شامپانزه باهوش – تیزهوش باشد، یا هر اندازه هم که الفاظ و عبارات فراوانی به او آموزش داده شده باشد، چنین چیزی بگوییم.انسان در طول زندگی همواره در جهت مقابله با این حقیقت میکوشد که ما به شکلی خطی زندگی کنیم، درحالیکه از جهت زیست شناختی حیات ما نیز مانند حیات تمام موجودات طبیعی دوری است.این کوشش و شکست همراه آن، کم یا زیاد، نوعی احساس تلف شدن به ما میدهد و سایه خود را روی زندگی تک تک انسان ها می اندازد، اما چنین چیزی در مورد زندگی یک حیوان هرگز نمیتواند مصداق داشته باشد.اصلا همین مسئله یکی از تفاوت های بنیادین میان زندگی انسان و زندگی حیوان را به ما نشان میدهد؛ در حقیقت درک ما از اینکه انسان چیست و حیوان چیست اینگونه تعریف میشود.به همین دلیل است که فیلسوفان و دیگرانی که میخواهند از این ادعا دفاع کنند که حیوانات هم از علایقی شبیه علایق انسان برخوردارند و از همین رو باید نسبت به ترجیحات حیوانات و انسان ها توجه یکسانی داشته باشیم، یا برخی از حقوق قانونی انسان ها را به حیوانات عطا کنیم، از این نکته غافل می مانند که زندگی انسان چیزی است که با زندگی حیوان تفاوت نوعی دارد.

It often happens that a mother, even before her child has grown up and become a man or a grown woman, still harbors that same feeling of innocence toward them. This does not necessarily mean that the mother mistakenly thinks her child's life has not been caught up in ruin and waste. In fact, perhaps when she has a particular feeling about the wasting of her child's life, they appear even more innocent in her eyes. Because the feeling of the child's innocence is a form of the mother's compassion manifesting precisely for this reason, just as the feeling of a newborn's innocence in the mother's view is partly born of the knowledge that the infant's life will not be safe from the bumps of a cruel world. It is for this reason that a mother's feeling of her child's innocence becomes stronger than ever from the moment she not only knows that the child's life entails waste, abandonment, and loss, but also knows that this has been realized in the form of wrongdoing or wickedness. If the mother still insists on the child's innocence, she has not made an error about them and their deeds. Nor is it that she thinks her feeling of the child's innocence is something that might, for instance, be taken into account in a court of law. I repeat that this feeling is the manifestation of the mother's sense of compassion for her child; pity for them as a person who has erred; for the fact that their life has come to this.

Thus, the compassionate love a mother has for her child, according to the moral ideal we hold of motherhood, is a form of understanding her child's irreplaceable individuality and their sense of innocence. But the conception of individuality at stake here is not dependent on any kind of awareness of the child's personality traits, and likewise, the concept of innocence is not dependent on the notion that the child has done nothing wrong.

As I said, Chekhov's remark about Mikhailov was not made with the intention of hypothesizing about how his mother treated him. Rather, this sentence reminds us that any human being can be viewed from this angle and in the light of this form of love and compassion, which is seen as a moral ideal in maternal love, and whose nature I have tried to indicate. From this angle, one can well understand the indifference of the world and the fragility of humanity within it. In this sense, the function of Chekhov's words was to draw Mikhailov out of his anonymity and bestow upon him a dignity and status he lacked as one of several hundred prisoners in the forced labor camp. But as we noted earlier, Chekhov's instantaneous grasp of Mikhailov's dignity and individuality did not stem from the fact that he or anyone else had suddenly realized what kind of person Mikhailov was; that is, had understood something about his character. He did not suddenly realize that Mikhailov possessed good or interesting personality traits. Rather, the dignity and individuality in question came from the fact that Chekhov looked at him the way a mother looks at her child; that is, in the light of the same love and compassion I mentioned. And this kind of gaze is not contingent upon knowledge of the individual's personality traits. But there is another related issue. It is clear that Chekhov knew Mikhailov was a wicked man; had it been otherwise, he would not have been in prison. Yet when he said of him, "He too had a mother!", he was pointing to the possibility that Mikhailov could also be seen as an innocent being. The meaning of innocence here expresses compassion for the human fate, compassion for the fact that such things can happen in any person's life, compassion for the fact that a human being may come to the end of the road in this way.

We said earlier that Chekhov suddenly realized what the death of a particular human being could mean. But what does it mean to grasp this? When someone who matters to us dies, the common reaction is disbelief. This disbelief is not a refusal to accept the truth of a proposition like “x is dead.” When someone says they cannot believe their friend has passed away, that is not at all what they mean. They are not mistaken. Rather, this disbelief is an expression of astonishment and bewilderment in the face of the fact that there is no longer a world for their friend, and that the viewpoint which was their friend’s perspective on the world has now vanished. This matter is connected to the concept of the friend’s spiritual life. But what is meant here by spiritual life is not the sense in which philosophers call it the subject of experiences, that is, possessing beliefs, desires, and the like. For this can also be said of an animal. But when one says they cannot believe their friend is dead, the meaning of spiritual life they have in mind is the narrative of that individual’s striving to make sense of their life. This is why Heidegger says that an animal cannot die; it merely perishes (verendet). But the extinguishing of a man or woman’s spiritual life is, from the friend’s perspective, a kind of mystery. That is why the usual reaction in these circumstances is disbelief. This sense of mystery is the very sense of that friend’s individuality.

But to confront this mystery, we do not need to know much about the deceased’s personality. Even if we know nothing about their character, we may still be affected by this mystery. The only thing we need to know is that they possessed the kind of spiritual life we discussed; that is, the story of the individual’s effort to find meaning in their life, regardless of what those efforts were like.

The sense of mystery in question can be clearly seen in the reaction of those who were around Samuel Johnson at the time of his death.

Everyone who knew him shared in this feeling of disbelief... As Boswell said of himself... “My feeling was a vast expanse of stupefaction... I could not believe it. My imagination was not convinced.” William Gerard Hamilton expressed it best of all: “He has created a deep chasm, which not only nothing can fill, but nothing has a tendency to fill. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best: there is nobody; no one can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.”

When Chekhov said that about Mikhailov, he wanted to express his sudden feeling regarding the mystery of his death. And along with this sense of mystery was the realization that Mikhailov had a spiritual life and could probably have thought his life was wasted. There is here a kind of awareness of the terrifying truth that human life is so short, everything in it can go wrong, and the man or woman who lives this life can understand that such a situation has come to pass.

The importance of the concept of human spiritual life is well illustrated in the fact that we consider a dead human body something that can be respected or desecrated. This is why Antigone insists so much on her brother’s burial, and why Achilles drags Hector’s corpse around behind his chariot. But the concept of respect for or insult to a human body cannot mean doing good or harm to a subject of experience, because once the person is dead, such a subject no longer exists. Respect for or insult to a human body must relate to the good or evil that can befall someone even when that person is no longer such a subject. This matter must be connected to the concept of the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of a life.

A person's life may be meaningless, even if they themselves think otherwise, and vice versa; the meaning of someone's life may be shrouded in ambiguity for them. And it is for this reason that our treatment of a dead human body is connected to the concept of the meaning of a person's life, even in a state where there is no longer any conscious experience. When someone's body is desecrated, an attempt has been made to reduce that person's life to something meaningless and purposeless. An effort has been made to reduce their body to a mere mass of matter, whose existence or non-existence is of no importance. Similarly, respect or reverence for someone's body expresses a serious determination to find a purpose or aim in their life. And of course, in either of these two states, no one thinks that the person in question is aware of the (effort to ensure the) meaninglessness or purposefulness of their life, just as a living man or woman may also be unaware of the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of their own life. Chekhov's ability to look at Mikhailov from that perspective arose from his recognition of a mother's love for her child and his sudden capacity to look at a grown human being from an angle attentive to this kind of love. A necessary condition for this recognition is a culture that gives its members the opportunity to understand this kind of love. Every culture can function in this way in various manners: through its writings, through the persons considered sacred or otherwise admired in that culture, through its music, or similar instances. And indeed, it seems that this very way of looking at the human infant that we were discussing is deeply woven into the fabric of the way all members of the human species look at their children. For we see this same kind of love for children and this same feeling of compassion for them and their innocence throughout world literature. But this kind of look at grown human beings that Chekhov expressed regarding Mikhailov is not something common among all cultures and is far beyond what most of us can attain. Undoubtedly, there are many reasons for this, but certainly the main reason is that grown men and women manifestly have personality, and this very personality somehow prevents the formation and growth of the moral perspective in question. It is not at all unlikely that we might dislike someone because they may have harmed us, or we might hate them, and so on.

This issue, for some, like Dostoevsky, created the most important moral task before them: how can one cultivate within oneself that kind of love, compassion, and forgiveness for human beings that was implicit in Chekhov's words? Despite the fact that there are many things about human beings that seemingly make them not particularly deserving of such attention and affection.

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Excerpts from the Book Philosophy of Life (2)

Maternal Love: On a Story by Dostoevsky

Compilation and Introduction: Atefeh Tabatabai

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Excerpts from the Book Philosophy of Life (1)

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