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She's published numerous books and articles that her peers say, "Have had a
profound impact on the field," in that quote, listen to this, "No American
scholar of early imperial history has a higher reputation than Elise
Wirtchafter." She is widely considered to be the leading American historian of
18 century Russia. Last year she was invited by the French Academy to deliver a
series of lectures at the Sorbonne. She has received a Guggenheim and a grant
from the National Counsel for Soviet and European Research as well as 3 highly
competitive grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board for
archival study on Russia. She's regularly asked to major conferences and
workshops at prestigious universities in the Unites States, Europe, and Russia.
She has served on the editorial boards of distinguished historical journals and
is a sought after evaluator of manuscripts for a long list of prestigious
institutions. She has generously given of her time to mentor graduate students
from institutions with PhD programs and to younger colleagues seeking her
advice. I think it's best said, though, by a colleague of hers; this is a letter
from UCLA Historian Gail Lenhoff and this is what she writes about Doctor
Wirtchafter. I'm just going to read a little bit but listen to this it's
amazing. "Her work is widely recognized as important and first-rate scholarship.
Last year she was invited by the French Academy to deliver a series of lectures
at the Sorbonne. She's been awarded the highly prestigious Guggenheim Foundation
Award, a grant from the National Counsel for Soviet Research. She is regularly
asked to major conferences and her professionalism and innovative scholarship,
listen, cast a favorable light on Cal Poly Pomona. Showing its strengths as an
institution whose faculties credentials compare favorably with or in this case
exceed the credentials of Russian historians at schools such as Harvard, Yale,
Stanford, Berkley, and, my own institution, UCLA."
Additionally, her presence serves the teaching mission of Cal Poly. Truly
good teaching conveys a spirit of inquiry and discovery. We want our students
not merely to be entertained by media displays or to memorize a list of facts
but to learn to ask important questions and pursue the answers. In this respect,
too, Professor Wirtchafter's intellectual standards create a gifts and inquiries
into the building of a civil society, enhance the learning experience at Cal
Poly Pomona, and promote a culture of tolerance for diversity, intellectual
conversation, and constructive debate of topical themes." And this is the last
paragraph from this letter. "To sum it up there is no scholar of my acquaintance
here or abroad more deserving of an award from creative, innovative,
foundational scholarship than Professor Elise Wirtchafter. She does honor to her
profession, the California University System, and most especially to Cal Poly
Pomona where she serves. I give you Elise Wirtchafter.
Elise: Thank you, that was very nice, thanks. Thank you all and thank you for
coming. I'm giving you a very academic presentation, but this is a university
so. Let's see, is there a light. I think it's okay. As an historian I know that
change is inevitable; that what people believe or think necessary one day is
appropriately dispensed with another day. I also know that traditions, habits,
and cultures endure. My current research is devoted to traditions that have
endured. I am writing a book about the Russian religious enlightenment and the
reign of Catherine the Great. You are no doubt familiar with the Enlightenment
RIT Large either in the form of canonical enlightenment thinkers such as Humes,
Smith, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, or in the form of the American
Revolution and the founding of our republic. Documents that we live with
everyday, The Declaration of independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights
are quintessential products of enlightenment, principles, and practices.
Probably you also are surprised that the 18th century Russian Empire, a society
built upon serfdom and absolutist monarchy, can be associated with enlightenment
ideas. I will spare you the esoteric historiography debates and say only that
scholars today tend to avoid the notion of a single enlightenment, instead the
speak of multiple enlightenments including a moderate mainstream or religious
enlightenment, which helps to elucidate the Russian case. Modern historians are
inclined to emphasize the enlightenment's optimism and celebration of reason,
but in doing so they ignore the religious or at least providential sensibilities
of many 18th century thinkers. Enlightenment culture did, indeed, strike an
optimistic note and enlightenment intellectuals did assume that through the
proper cultivation and application of human reason moral and material progress
could be achieved, but enlightenment thinkers also understood the vulnerability
of human life in the face of uncontrollable passion and harsh physical reality.
They understood that while moral clarity and rational criticism might be
possible the realization of morality and reason in human affairs required
constant struggle. In other words, the enlightenment belief and the possibility
of progress, the idea that the human condition could and should be ameliorated
remained tentative and muted. Despite the expectation of human flourishing and
ongoing improvement enlightenment thinkers also recognized that truth and
reality sometimes exceed human understanding. Throughout the 18th century
important representatives of enlightenment thought continued to believe in the
existence of a God-given natural order the workings of which human beings could
never fully comprehend. Scholars today living in a post-holocaust,
post-Hiroshima, post-Gulags age may see in the enlightenment assumption about
progress an attitude of arrogance and utopianism, yet it is clear that 18th
century reformism did not come close to the hubris or presumptuousness of social
engineering in the 20th and 21st centuries. The Pan European Religious
Enlightenment, which provides the framework for my research, grew out of efforts
to find a reasonable faith neither excessively enthusiast nor rigidly
doctrinaire that would be capable of sustaining belief in an age of ongoing
scientific discoveries and new societal priorities. The Religious Enlightenment
sought to reconcile the new learning of the 17th and 18th centuries, the natural
philosophy, and mechanical arts derived from Cartesian, Baconian, and Newtonian
science with established authority and religious belief. Religious enlighteners
generally supported the absolutist politico religious order of 17th and 18th
century --.
Elise: Also promoted egalitarian enlightenment ideals that to this day
continue to generate social and political change. Through the incorporation of
modern knowledge into Christian teachings religious enlighteners responded to
the principles and concerns of philosophical modernity; they produced innovation
in the guise of tradition and in the process connected a world understood with
reference to God and the promise of salvation to when and which human beings
looked to science and their own cognitive powers for immediate solutions to
human problems, to earthly problems. In Russia the teachings of religious
enlighteners encourage the Russian Monarchy Church and educated classes to come
to terms with European modernity within the framework of Orthodox Christian
belief, and that's Orthodox with a capital O as in Eastern Orthodox
Christianity. The intellectual bridge provided by enlightened churchmen helps to
explain how educated Russians so readily assimilated and made their own the
European cultural models that poured into Russia during the 18th century. To
explore the relationship between innovation and tradition I've been studying the
devotional writings of the Metropolitan of Moscow Plauton Lovcian
[phonetic spelling], who was a prominent prelate in the reigns of Catherine the
Great, Paul the first, and Alexander the first. Plauton rose from the perished
clergy of Moscow Province to become a Monk, Bishop, and eventually,
Metropolitan. As a student at the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy he received a
Jesuit-style Latin education. He was born, by the way, in 1737. Plauton also was
self-taught in Greek and French and is Arch Bishop of Moscow and Archimandrite
of the Trinity Surgis Lovra [phonetic spelling], which is still today the most
important monastery in Russia. He supported the teaching of German, Hebrew,
geography, history, and mathematics in seminaries under his authority. Among
contemporaries Plauton achieved renowned for his religious moderation, literary
eloquence, and enlightened educational policies. In 1763 Empress Catherine the
Great brought him to court to serve as teacher of Catechism to her son and heir
Se Servavich [phonetic spelling] Paul. While at court Plauton regularly
delivered sermons in the presence of royals and other powerful members of the
civil elite. Thanks to a 20 volume collection of Plauton's sermons and
Catechisms published during his lifetime educated Russians outside the capitals
also had access to his teachings. Without dwelling on the Metropolitan's
homiletic sermons I'd like to share one example of how Plauton provided
traditional Christian answers to the enlightenment concerns of the 18th century.
This may sound surprising but if we study the history of Christianity we see
that in Christian thought and practice progress always has meant more than the
promise of salvation or the attainment of eternal happiness in the life to come.
Ideas about God's providence for the world and the oneness of His creation also
require the betterment of life on earth. In the 18th century context of an
educated public increasingly attuned to possibilities for self-improvement and
societal reform there developed a natural bridge between religious teachings and
the modern expectation of earthly solutions to human problems, a bridge that is
illustrated by the concept of equality. Equality is a key enlightenment
principle that resonates in our own day. Equality is also a principle that
church intellectuals such as Metropolitan Plauton blended into the teachings of
Orthodox Christianity. Legislative, literary, and religious sources from 18th
century Russia show that among church intellectuals and enlightenment thinkers
equality meant moral rather than legal or socioeconomic equality, thus while the
vast majority of educated Russians accepted social hierarchy, absolutist
monarchy, and gender inequality as natural or God-given; they also believed that
all human beings possess and equal capacity for moral development. Their
understanding of equality as the potential for moral goodness transcended social
distinctions echoing the Christian belief and free-will. the idea that every
human being possesses the freedom to choose between God and sin, what we would
call the freedom to choose between good and evil. In a sermon from 1795
celebrating the feast day of Saint Nikon Plauton delivered a stunning message of
what today would be called gender equality. Of course, the Metropolitan did not
think in modern, democratic, or feminist but his teaching illustrates the
ongoing transformative power of enlightenment ideas. For Plauton Saint Nikon
personified the feat of virtue and piety that the preacher equated with the
spiritual struggle and courage of Christians. According the Plauton the
Christian ascetic or zealot is a person male or female who seeks not human glory
but the glory that comes from God. Saint Nikon may have been a male model of
perfect zealotry but Plauton was quick to point out that there is no difference
between men and women and the Christian feat of virtue and piety. All ascetics
male or female are equally brave, equally armed with spiritual powers, and
equally crowned with heavenly glory. Nor did Plauton's spiritual egalitarianism
end with gender. In other sermons the Metropolitan highlighted the humble
origins of the apostles in order to show that social status and worldly success
do not guarantee spiritual enlightenment. In the sermon devoted to Saint Nikon
he likewise added that the physically deformed or disabled person also can carry
within himself a beautiful soul. Physical eyes may not see this beauty, the
preacher noted, but it is strikingly visible to God, the angels, and all
"enlightened spiritual eyes". Repeatedly in the sermons of Metropolitan Plauton
the path to salvation is equated with the feat of virtue that every believer is
called upon and possesses the capacity to seek precisely because as Orthodox
Christianity teaches every person possesses, "The freedom to choose between good
and evil, which is one aspect of humanity created in the image of God." Because
of this teaching there is an essential equality in the God-given nature of human
beings; this equality is then linked to the promise of salvation understood as,
"A process of growth whereby the center is changed into the image and likeness
of God," The basic ideas that the human being decides whether or not to open his
or her heart to the Holy Spirit, which then makes possible the living of a
virtuous life. What could be more powerfully egalitarian than the idea that
every human being male or female, well-born, or lowly, rich or poor, beautiful
or deformed is, "Called to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into the image and
likeness of God." The Egalitarian implications of Christian freewill are
striking. Understood as moral choice Christian freewill gives to equality a deep
fundamental and all encompassing significance that the merely social
understanding of equality surely lacks. God gives the possibility of salvation
to all human beings on an equal basis and it is the freely acting person, the
human being as autonomous moral subject who decides whether or not to answer the
divine call. Given that Russian enlightenment thought tended to bolster old
regime institutions it might seem to belong to the counter-enlightenment, which
historians of Europe's radical enlightenment see as an obstacle to the progress
of egalitarian, democratic, and secular principles. According to these
historians the spread of enlightenment ideas produced a long and bitter struggle
that in some parts of the world continues to this day. The emphasis on the
incompatibility of the liberal democratic enlightenment and the conservative or
moderate mainstream enlightenment is not unfounded, but it overlooks what is
arguably the most outstanding quality of enlightenment culture. The quality
moreover that made the democratic ideals of the radical enlightenment not only
imaginable but also eventually attainable. This was and remains the capacity of
enlightenment ideas to generate reform and change without appearing to destroy
established beliefs practices and customs. It is the capacity to strive for
progress for the improvement of society and the amelioration of the human
condition in a non-dogmatic, non-doctrinaire, and non-ideological manner, and a
manner that is capable of reconciling tradition and innovation, establish
beliefs and new knowledge, ideals and realities. The Russian Enlightenment
embodied this non-dogmatic cosmopolitan quality; this is precisely the approach
that we should take as we try to rethink education in the 21st century. Russia's
religious enlighteners were serious if not gifted thinkers who reconciled
Christian teachings about enlightenment, reason, freedom, and equality with the
idea of progress as humans flourishing. In the process they provided a cultural
bridge to European modernity that for a time allowed modernity to be understood
in indigenous Russian terms. Through the filter of Orthodox religious teachings
enlightenment ideas served to strengthen Russia's established social and
political order. The result was a cultural openness uniquely characteristic of
the 18th century, an openness that would be lost in the 19th century as romantic
nationalism took hold, but that allowed educated Russians to experience the joy
of becoming self-consciously enlightened, civilized, and European. To conclude I
would like to suggest that the joy of becoming self-consciously enlightened and
civilized the joy of discovering that one has a mind that deserves to be
developed is the primary goal of education. It is a goal moreover that flows
naturally from traditional Socratic methods of teaching. In a university setting
intellectual development results from the give and take of enlightened
conversation with a teacher who's mind is more mature or better informed than
that of the student. In my own life I benefited personally and professionally
from strong relationships with wise mentors and teachers, people who knew more
than I did about life and history. I have also been teaching for close to 3
years and I have raised 3 children of my own. The core lesson I have learned is
that at all levels of intelligence and schooling the path to creativity begins
with intellectual engagement with the experience of living the life of the mind.
The life of the mind can be lived in any occupation or social condition, but
before a person can do anything innovative or creative he must learn that his
mind is worth developing. The enduring message of the enlightenment in all its
various forms is that every human being has intellectual and moral
potentialities that he or she can choose to develop; this is an old message yet
it remains critical to the reform of education. As in the past education needs
to be not just about getting a job or acquiring technical skills but also about
nurturing the internal intellectual resources that bring happiness in times of
hardship and preserve dignity in times of oppression. In the words of Immanuel
Kant, enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Have the
courage to use your reason. The information technology being discussed today
offers exciting opportunities for enlightened knowledge-based communication
across the globe but in utilizing this technology we cannot lose sight of the
importance of face to face human contact in the learning process. Imagine
educating a child without the physical presence of other human beings. Imagine,
also, trying to master a foreign language without living in a society where that
language is spoken on the streets. Human beings cannot progress enlightenment
philosophers taught without developing their moral sense the sense of empathy
that is stimulated by direct human interaction.