2 However, in his widely popular and often reprinted book, The Paths of History (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Diakonoff included some discussions of the ethical problems of world history.

3 Diakonoff, Igor M., Kniga vospominaniῐ (Book of Memoirs; St. Petersburg: European House, 1995) 680–86Google Scholar [Russian]. I thank Evgeniῐ Nikolaevich Kalshikov, director of European House publishers for granting me permission to translate and publish this fragment from the book. First the piece was published as an article in a popular magazine Znanie-sila (Knowledge is a Force) 6 (1989) 82–87. In this first publication Diakonoff cautiously mentions that it was written by a young Soviet officer, his namesake. This disguise, assumed while he lived still under Soviet power, was an act of self-censorship. His son, who was particularly interested in this composition, says that there was no namesake. Apparently, in 1989 Diakonoff revised his draft of 1944 at the request of his friend, French orientalist Jean Bottéro, who was interested in the atheistic approach to ethics. Not long before Diakonoff died, his son, film director Alexei Jankowski, produced a fifty-two-minute documentary in Russian about the life and memories of his father. In this film the major idea of Kirkenes ethics was expressed in the voice of the author.

4 See the more detailed biographical sketches of I. M. D. online: http://www.orientalstudies.ru/rus/index.php?option=com_personalities&Itemid=74&person=222;

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121669837/absrac?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.iranica.com/articles/diakonoff-igor-mikhailovich-1914-1999-russian-orientalist-of-international-standing-education-training/education-systems-institutions/173487-1.html

See also Geoffrey Hoskins, Foreword to I. M. D., Paths of History, 9–12, which is also online: http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/43481/frontmatter/9780521643481_frontmatter.pdf

In addition, his memoirs cited above in n. 2 are also available online:

http://uni-persona.srcc.msu.su/_site/_ind_cont.htm

http://www.srcc.msu.su/uni-persona/site/authors/_diakonov.htm

5 See Aleksandr Kuz'mich Kravtsov, “Towards 115^th Birthday of Iakov Mironovich Magaziner,” Pravovedenie, 3 (1997) 65–67 [Russian].

6 See Igor' Mikhaῐlovich Diakonoff and Iakov Mironovich Magaziner,“The Laws of Babylonia, Assyria and Hittite Kingdom, transl. and commentaries by eidem,” Vestnik Drevney Istorii 3 (1952) 197–303; 4 (1952) 205–320 [Russian].

7 ) [Hebrew]. Soon after publication this work was awarded the prize of S. Tchernikhovsky, the highest prize for literary translations in Israel.

8 Diakonoff, Igor M., Poetry and Prose of the Ancient Orient (Moscow: Belles Lettres, 1973)Google Scholar [Russian]. Later the Song of Songs in Diakonoff's translation was reprinted in Lyric Poetry of the Ancient East (Moscow, 1984) 81–117; commentaries, 181–215. His translations of other biblical books were published until 2000.

9 Ross, William D., The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon, 1930Google Scholar; repr., 2002); idem, Foundations of Ethics: the Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Aberdeen, 1935–1936. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939; repr., 2000).

10 In the New Testament the term “my neighbor” or “my brother” sometimes is used in the sense “other than myself.” See e.g., Matt 5:22, 43; Mark 12:28. This seems to be a parallel to biblical Hebrew use of the terms , , (brother, friend, associate).

11 See similar ideas in works of ancient Jewish ethics: e.g., Isa 61:1; Prov 29:23; m. Avot I:13; IV:4; VI:5; b. Shabb 30b; b. Sanh. 88b, etc.

12 These are some titles of biblical books from the Old Testament and of an Ugaritic poem, which was published in Jean Nougayrol, “Une version du ‘Juste Souffrant,’ ” RB 59 (1952) 239–50; idem, “(Juste) Souffrant (R. S. 25.460),” Ugaritica 5 (1968) 265–73; see also Mattingly, Gerald L., “The Pious Sufferer: Mesopotamia's Traditional Theodicy and Job's Counselors,” in The Bible in the Light of Cuneiform Literature (ed. Hallo, William W., Jones, Brian W., and Mattingly, Gerald L.; Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1990) 305–48Google Scholar.

13 See Matt 21:28–31; also m. Avot 1:3. The Jewish attitude toward this problem is exposed in Moore, George Foot. Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (3 vols.; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997) 2:90Google Scholar.

14 Matt 6:34. Diakonoff cites the passage from the Sermon on the Mount, first in Church Slavonic then in Russian translation.

15 Luke 17:21. Diakonoff deliberately substitutes “you” for “us.”

16 Diakonoff might have had in mind a popular Jewish notion about Lamed-Waw Tsadikim (thirty-six righteous people). The Jews maintain that there are always among them 36 righteous people, God, even when He is furious over the Children of Israel's sins, would not destroy the entire nation (b. Sanh 97b; b. Sukkah 45b).

17 Diakonoff includes the following note at this point: “It seems as if it is backed by some recent biological studies.” At the present time, the literature on biological and psychological mechanisms of emotions is vast. It is very difficult to determine which original research Diakonoff had in mind. Apparently, he was familiar with the development of psychoneurology and biopsychology since the 1940s in Russia and possibly in Western Europe. He might have seen this literature at the exhibits in the Library of the Academy of Sciences (), where I met him frequently. The exhibits included the new acquisitions received by the library on a weekly basis. Another possibility is that he had friends who worked in this field of research. From the older works see Bard, Philip and Mountcastle, Vernon B., “Some Forebrain Mechanisms Involved in Expression of Rage with Special Reference to Suppression of Angry Behavior,” Research publications – Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease 27 (1948) 362–404Google Scholar; Olds, James, Pleasure Centers in the Brain (San Francisco, Calif.: W. H. Freeman, 1956)Google Scholar. From the more recent works see Panksepp, Jaak, Affective Neuroscience: the Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Bradley, Margaret M. and Cutbert, Bruce N., “Emotions, Motivation, and Anxiety: Brain Mechanisms and Psychophysiology,” Biological Psychiatry 44 (1998) 1248–63Google Scholar; Davidson, Richard J., “Emotion and Affective Style: Hemispheric Substrates,” Psychological Science 3 (2006) 39–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 It is almost certain that Diakonoff referred to the Bolshevik leaders and Hitler as people without conscience. It is more difficult, however, to establish a list of “a few monarchs” with the same deficiency.

19 “An die Freude” (Ode to Joy, 1785) is one of Friedrich Schiller's best known poems, especially popular after Ludwig van Beethoven included it in his musical setting at the end of his 9th symphony (1824). Diakonoff quotes lines 9–10 in Russian translation.

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!

Diesen Kuβ der ganzen Welt!

(Be embraced, you millions!

This kiss for the entire world!)

Diakonoff doesn't mention, however, that the poem is a deeply pious work. At the end of the same stanza God appears as the loving father and in the final stanza as the final judge. Divinity permeates the entire poem.

20 Saint Francis of Assisi (1181–1226 C.E.) indeed called all creatures his “brothers” and “sisters.” See The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi (ed. Paschal Robinson; Philadelphia: Dolphin, 1906). See also Catholic Encyclopedia (ed. Robert C. Broderick, Nashville, Tenn.: T. Nelson, 1976), s. v. ”St. Francis of Assisi.”

21 Buddha's ethical principle was not to harm any living creature. Nikaya of the Buddha in the first of the Three Baskets (Tripitaka). see Saddhatissa, Hammalawa, Buddhist Ethics: Essence of Buddhism (New York: G. Braziller, 1971)Google Scholar.

22 Arseniev, Vladimir Klavdievich, Dersu the Trapper (trans. Burr, Malcolm; New York: Dutton, 1941Google Scholar; repr. Kingston, N.Y.: McPherson & Company, 1996); Through Ussurian Region (Dersu Uzala); A Voyage to the Mountainous Area Sikhote-Alin' (Vladivostock: Tip. “Ekho” 1921) [Russian]. Diakonoff was fascinated with the character of Dersu Uzala, the hero of the book of the famous Russian traveler V. K. Arseniev who described his travels (1906–1907) with the native [Nanay-gold] guide Dersu Uzala (real name, Derchu Ochala) through the Ussurian region, in the far East of Russia between the Ussuri and Amur rivers up to the Sikhote Alin' Range, north of China. He uses this book as an example, because it became extraordinarily popular among young people in Russia from the 1920s to the present time. The book was so popular that it was published in over two dozen editions and translated into many languages. The book was used as the basis for a movie on two occasions, the first a 1961 Soviet film by Agasi Babayan and the second one a 1975 Soviet-Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa.

23 “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man” (RSV)

24 If the author had in mind Jesus' relation to women in general, he might be right, because both in Judaism and in Christianity the role of woman was submissive first to the patriarch of the family, then to the husband. Women were excluded from church leadership, especially from positions requiring any form of ordination. Male leadership has been assumed in the church and within marriage, society, and government. See Evelyn, and Stagg, Frank, Woman in the World of Jesus (Westminster: John Knox, 1978)Google Scholar. See there all the references to Jesus' opinions. However, Jesus protected women by stressing the ties of marriage and denying the validity of divorce.

25 About the problem of three bodies, see Tisserand, Félix, Traité de méchanique celeste (4 vols.; Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1894–1898) 3:27–45Google Scholar, esp. 27; Sundman, Karl E., “Memoire sur le probleme de trois corps,” Acta Mathematica 36 (1912) 105–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. No general solution to this problem is possible.

26 “Buridan's ass” refers to a medieval paradox concerning the logic of rationality and freewill. When the ass is placed midway between two identical piles of hay, he starves to death, since there is no reason for moving one way rather than the other. The ass is not referred to in the Sophismata of Buridan but was probably an example used to refute Buridan's opinion, since he held that choice is always delayed until reason has decided in favor of one course of action against another. A similar example concerning a dog is found in Aristotle, Cael. 295b.32.

27 The Life of Alexius, Man of God () is a hagiographic work translated into Slavonic from Greek and known to Russians at least from the eleventh or twelfth century. This story tells about events which happened during the reign of the Roman emperors, brothers, and co-rulers Arcadius (377–408 C.E.) and Honorius (395–423 C.E.) at the time of pope Innocentius I (pope 401–417 C.E.). Alexius was the only son of rich and pious patricians Euphemian and Aglaïde, who obtained him by prayer. The parents prepared their well-raised and educated son for a brilliant future. Alexius married a virgin of the “royal house,” but the young man, striving for a Christian feat of asceticism and devotion, when he was left alone with his newlywed wife, gives her back his wedding ring with the following words: “Take it and keep it, and let God be between us for as long as He pleases.” Leaving Rome in secret, Alexius departed to Edessa of Mesopotamia to worship the image of Jesus Christ unmade by human hands and began his longtime exploit of voluntary poverty: after he gave away all that he could, wearing rags, residing together with beggars he lived by alms and prayed at the doors of the church of the Holy Virgin. His holiness was uncovered by the sexton seventeen years into his feat, revered by the locals, Alexius tried to escape from being worshiped by the masses but as the fates decreed again found himself in Rome, in the house of his parents. Unrecognized, he spent the last seventeen years of life living with other beggars from the charity of his parents. With Christian meekness he bore the mockery and insults of his own servants. Only after Alexius died was it revealed that the vanished and mourned-over son and husband had lived in the house unrecognized for seventeen years. Then he was honored and declared a saint. For thirty-four years the parents and faithful wife mourned him and considered him dead. See Monuments of the Literature of Lives of Saints (3 vols.; S.l.: s.n., 1838–1914) 2 [Russian]; Adrianova-Peretts, Varvara P., Life of Alexis Man of God in Old Russian Literature and Folklore (Petrograd: I. A. Bashmakov, 1917Google Scholar; repr., The Hague: Mouton, 1969 [Russian]); Uspensky, Vasiliῐ I. and Vorob'ev, Nikolaῐ, eds., Illuminated Life of Alexis Man of God (St. Petersburg: s.n., 1906Google Scholar [Russian]); new edition in the Library of Literature of Ancient Russia (ed. Dmitriῐ S. Likhachev et al.; 15 vols.; St. Peterburg: Nauka, 1997–2006) 2 (2004 [Russian]).

28 Diakonoff includes the following note at this point: “Didn't St. Alexis disobey the commandment ‘Honor your father and your mother…?’ ” He refers here to Exod 20:12 and Deut 5:16.

29 The author possibly refers to the Life of Antonius the Great (). See Dimitriῐ, St., Metropolitan of Rostov, Lives of Saints (12 vols.; Moscow: Izd. Sinodal'noi tip., 1902–1911Google Scholar; repr., Moscow: Izd. Sinodal'noi tip., 1968–1969) However there is no mention there that the sister was fifteen year old and that he left her without protectors; on the contrary, he handed her to relatives. Considering references of Diakonoff to the lives of St. Alexis and St. Antonius the Great, we should mention that abandoning children is contrary to Christian doctrine. In addition, joining the monastery is always connected with renouncing a former sinful life and rejecting one's family. Worldly ethics is not applicable to such deeds. (Here I would like to thank Father Mark of Philadelphia for the elucidation of some problems of Christian ethics.) Incidentally the English translation of the life of St. Antony is included in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace; New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1892) 4:188–221.

30 The Christian church considers as saints persons who die for the sake of their religion (martyrs), who perform miracles either during their life time, or whose relics, tombs, and icons generate miracles after their death. Some theologians say saints are also those persons who emulate the way of the life of Jesus Christ.

31 The notion of the categorical imperative is one of the distinctive concepts of Kantian ethics. see Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (ed. Mary Gregor; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

32 The second parable most probably was inspired by a personal experience of the author and therefore is not a part of the original work. It was added by the author when he was editing the manuscript for publication.

33 Diakonoff includes the following note at this point: “All of this has been written before Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.” He has in mind the ferocious bombardment of the German city of Dresden which was devastated on 13–14 February 1945 by phosphorus and high-explosive bombs dropped by the British and American air forces. On 6 August 1945 the Japanese seaport Hiroshima was the first city to be struck by an atomic bomb, the second city in Japan was Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Both cities were bombed by the United States Air Force. The casualties of the civilian population in all these cities greatly outnumbered military casualties. It is worth noticing that Diakonoff was an eyewitness to numerous violations of ethics during his military service, especially when he served as Soviet military link officer to Norwegian civilians, since he dealt with their complaints.

34 The present topic arises frequently and is officially reviewed in every war. Most recently this occupied both the public opinion and the legal minds in the United States concerning the practice of using torture by American authorities to extract information from the individuals captured in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. Apparently Diakonoff's meditations on the topic written in 1944 are still relevant.

35 Diakonoff includes the following note at this point: “It is possible to argue that the suffering of individuals may be biologically necessary for the species. This is true. However, in the relation between A (“me”) and B (“my neighbor”) individuality is represented only by A, while B represents an entire species. “My neighbor” as a neighbor is not an individual but a representative of a species. The sufferings of an individual may be for the benefit of a species; the suffering of the species though amounts to unconditional evil. Therefore the suffering is part of A, not B.” This opinion is based on the notion of preservation of the species in the Darwinist theories. The present translator does not accept this principle as the right one, because with this it would be possible to justify evil done to an individual “for the sake of a species.” The opposite attitude is presented in Jewish sources, where much more sympathy is expressed for the suffering of individuals; see the views of two orthodox rabbis, where also old Rabbinic sources are discussed. See Rabbi Dr. George N. Schlesinger's talk given to the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists in 1963. A summary of this talk appears in INTERCOM 6 (1963); see also Aryeh L. Carmell, “The Problem of Evil: the Jewish Synthesis: Some New Insights from a Kabbalistic Source,” Proceedings of the Associations of Orthodox Jewish Scientists 1 (1966) 92–100.

36 It seems to be a generalized formulation of the words by the Jewish sage Hillel the Elder (ca. 110 B.C.E.–ca. 10. C.E.) who said: (“Do not do to your fellow what you hate to have done to you!”) (b. Shabb 31a.) This declaration is a derivative from “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev 19:18). This notion was quite proverbial in the time of Hillel and even more so in the time of Jesus. It is frequently reflected in Jewish folklore. One of the later manifestations of it is an aphoristic saying of Cilibi Moise, a Romanian Jew, which reads as follows: “The first step of virtue is to do no evil.” See, e.g., Leon Kupperman, “Cilibi Moise (1812–1870): His Sayings and Proverbs,” Journal of Jewish Bibliography 2 (1940) 62. About the general attitude to the other in Judaism see Chaim Reines, “The Self and the Other In Rabbinic Ethics,” Judaism 2 (1953) 123–32.

37 Leo Tolstoy's story “Forged Coupon” (1904) traces the cancerous growth of evil and demonstrates with dramatic force the cumulative misery resulting from one apparently trivial act of wrongdoing. see Tolstoy, Leo, The Forged Coupon: And Other Stories and Dramas (ed. Charles T. Hagberg Wright; London: Nelson and Sons, 1911)Google Scholar.

38 Diakonoff has in mind the Second World War against the aggression of Nazi Germany (1941–1945) and the Russian Civil War—the war of “reds” and “whites” that followed the Russian Revolution (1917–1921).

39 Diakonoff includes the following note at this point: “Original sin, as depicted in the Christian tradition, is something very trivial. It is difficult to understand what evil (in the sense of the definition given above) was committed by Adam and Eve. Perhaps we might consider this story a parable about the future and remote consequences of our deeds. But this story contradicts the conception of omniscient deity. It might foresee the commission of original sin because a decision of human free will would be known to a deity before the sin was committed. So why the punishment in this case? And is it not too cruel a punishment by the father of his children (it lasts for thousands of years!)? Also, the sacrifice of Jesus by the Father deity creates a strange impression: it turns out that Jesus knew that his sufferings would last only six hours—i.e., less than the death-agony of the majority of the people who die from natural causes after which he knew exactly that he would wake up in paradise, while the average dying person cannot be sure of that and suffers more from this ignorance! Eternal punishment is unjust and immoral. Generally speaking, why is so much pain necessary for securing eternal bliss for the chosen ones, if their fare is already predetermined by an omniscient deity, who might make their dying brief? Original sin may be explained only as an innate imperfection of the human conscience and, therefore, of human actions. The sacrifice of a deity may mean a voluntary participation in this imperfection and promised reward—that is, an unmerited gift, grace. It would have better meaning, if it were to tear mankind away from its too narrow circle of “neighbors” and demonstrate that the rule should be used universally. I do not believe that after this discussion it is possible to construct an omniscient deity. In general, the sacrifice of Jesus for all mankind seems to me much more convincing if one believes that he was a man.” Many ideas expressed in this note are contrary to Christian beliefs and sometimes offensive to them. Either they testify to Diakonoff's theological naïvité or to the influence of atheistic doctrines current in official Soviet ideology. The notion of original sin preceded the development of Christian tradition, since it already appears in the story of Adam and Eve's fall in Genesis 2:15-3:24. Following Diakonoff's ideas, the best understanding of this passage would be that the ancient authors meant, on a mythic level, to explain the mortality of humans as a result of God's punishment for Adam and Eve's fall. However, in the period of so-called formative Judaism, the rabbis stressed the idea that the punishment was imposed for disobeying the commandment of God. See George Foot Moore, Judaism In the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim, (3 vols.; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997) 1:474–76. The rabbinic sources are quoted there. Moore answers the issue raised in the first part of Diakonoff's question: “Death is thus the damage that all men suffer from Adam's sin. To ancient conceptions of the solidarity of the family, clan, nation, race, and the liability of all for one, death raised no question of divine injustice; that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children was the doctrine of experience as well as of Scripture,” (475–76). As to the second paragraph in this note, it should be said that some early Eastern Churches (fifth to seventh cent.) taught that either Jesus had a double nature (God and man) or he was “a perfect man who did not sin.” See Robinson, James M. and Koester, Helmut, Trajectories through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979)Google Scholar. Later such doctrines were declared heretical.

40 According to quantum mechanics, the more precisely the position (momentum) of a particle is given, the less precisely one can say what its momentum (position) is. This is a simplistic and preliminary formulation of the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle for position and momentum. The uncertainty principle played an important role in many discussions on the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, in particular in discussions on the consistency of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation, the interpretation endorsed by the founding fathers Werner Heisenberg and Nils Bohr. See Heisenberg, Werner, “Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen,” Zeitschrift für Physik 33 (1925) 879–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bohr, Niels H. D., “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” Nature 121 (1928) 580–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cassidy, David C., Uncertainty, the Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (New York: Freeman, 1992)Google Scholar.