I find this quotation from Solzhenitzsyn a bit dubious.
First of all, it is not a "Universal Law" that profound education breeds the virtue of humility. I have met many academics in University Common Rooms when I was teaching who had all received many years of rigorous, high-quality education. But they were by no means all humble. Some were the exact opposite, egocentric, loud-mouthed, arrogant, dickheads and most were socially dysfunctional to the extent that they would not be able to survive for 5 minutes in the real world outside of their cossetted faculty "cocoon" on campus.
It is worth noting as well, that the "education" today's American colleges dish out to their non - STEM students (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) is FAKE education, just like CNN and MSNBC are FAKE news. Students in the humanities, liberal arts, anthropology, social sciences, politics, etc are indoctrinated with worthless, leftist garbage taught by Postmodern/neo-Marxist Professors, who are basically socialists and who have - like all socialists - got "shit for brains."
Intolerance, even angry intolerance is often demonstrated by men how have received bone fide first- rate educations. Moreover, the fact that they have, in cases, been utterly intolerant of, and absolutely enraged by, particular social issues is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, sometimes, it is vital that well educated men in our society have the moral courage to speak out in "righteous anger" against the looming threat of great evil. The great, 19th - century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was one such man.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a great philosopher, a genius who totally smashed the foundations of "modern" Western philosophy. Most of his work was intensely published in the 1870's and 1880's and he is still widely read today, especially by young people, who see in Nietzsche a kindred rebel spirit - a cultural iconoclast who is cool. (Like John Lyndon and the "Sex Pistols" were for my generation in the mid-1970's in England; or the "Ramones" in the US at around the same time).
With respect to his education, I would say to Solzhenitsyn that Nietzsche had a brilliant school and university career (in an era where standards in education were staunchly upheld, unlike today, where in non-STEM colleges courses, there basically ARE no standards !). In May 1869, this culminated in Nietzsche's being called to a chair in classical philology at Basel, at just 24 years old, he was the youngest man ever appointed to that post. So, in short, Nietzsche was a "profoundly" well - educated man.
As a philosopher, Nietzsche was extremely intolerant of, and angered by, a number of issues. One, for example, was Christianity, and another was socialism. (The later, he believed, had its roots in the former) As this is a politics forum and socialism is a topical issue in 2020 in America, (i.e; with the dramatic lurch of the Democratic Party over recent years toward the hard left of the politic spectrum and the current Democratic Presidential nominee for this year's election ,Joe Biden, now running on a raft of socialist policies), I'll set down a quotation for you from Nietzsche's text: "The Will to Power", (1885), on socialism, that clearly demonstrates how intolerant and extremely angered he was by this doctrine and its apologists and advocates. It is an interesting passage because it accurately predicts the devastation and the mass extermination of human beings that socialism would bring to bear in the 20th century...
"Socialism - or, the tyranny of the meanest and the most brainless, -that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers, brought to its zenith, - is, as a matter of fact, the logical conclusion of "modern" ideas and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming resolutions or even coming to AN END at all, is paralysed. Men follow - but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present - day socialists - and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us ! - and the childish, lamb-like, happiness of their hopes and desires.
Nevertheless, in many places in Europe, there will be violent, hand-to-hand struggles and irruptions on their account: the coming century is like to be convulsed in more than one spot, and the Paris Commune, which finds apologists and advocates even in Germany, will seem to have been but a slight indigestion compared with what is to come.
Be this as it may, there will always be too many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more than an attack of illness: and those people of property are like men with one faith, "one must possess something in order to be someone". This, however, is the oldest and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add: "One must desire more than one has in order to BECOME more." For this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of Development. To have and to wish to have more, in a word, Growth - that is life itself.
In the teaching of socialism "a will to the denial of life" is but poorly concealed: botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. In fact, I even wish a few experiments might be made to show that in socialistic society life denies itself, and itself cuts away its own roots> The earth is big enough and man is still unexhausted enough for a practical lesson of this sort and "demonstratio ad absurdum" - even if it were accomplished only by a vast expenditure of lives - seem worthwhile to me.
(Note that these experiments DID take place in the 20th century , and there was indeed a vast - 120,000,000 fold - "expenditure of lives". Note as well, the 20th century was a "demonstration ad absurdum", a "demonstration of the deadly absurdity" of socialism).
Still, socialism, like a restless mole beneath the foundations of a society wallowing in its stupidity, will be able to achieve something useful and salutary: it delays "Peace on Earth" and the whole process of character-softening of the democratic herding animal; it forces the European to have an extra supply of intellect, - it also saves Europe awhile from the "marasmus femininus" that is threatening it."
* "marasmus femininus" means "feminine decay" or "feminine atrophy", the female-like weakening and softening of society in Europe that Nietzsche feared was resulting in the progressive loss of noble, manly, strong and warlike qualities in his late 19th- century, West European historical circumstance.
Nietzsche absolutely loathed socialism and and he vented his fury at the "flat-headed, stupidity and idiocy of socialists and socialism on many occasions. He was totally intolerant of the ideology, and when he wrote about it he lashed out in red-hot anger, excoriating its fundamental principles in the most uncompromising of terms He did this because he felt that socialism was a life-despising creed, and therefore inhuman, and therefore evil.
His intolerance of socialism was vindicated in the horrors of genocide in Russia, Red China, Cambodia, etc during the 20th century. He is not full of humility when he warns his readers of the lethal potentials of socialism, quite the opposite he is perfused with a RIGHTEOUS ANGER, he is standing tall and kicking socialist butt BIG TIME, because it IS a wicked and inhuman, life-negating creed, and he knew, in 1885, that it had the capacity to cause catastrophic harm in the next century, AND IT DID !
Solzhenitsyn's virtues of tolerance and humility do not help much when one is faced with evil, because the evil (whatever it is) will simply crush and destroy the humble and tolerant human being before it. The only way to fight a moral evil, like socialism, is to show ZERO tolerance and to fight it savagely with all your might ALL THE WAY DOWN. In other word, to :FLY THE BLACK FLAG" and utterly eviscerate: the enemy; his apologists; his advocates; his sympathisers and "fellow-travellers."
Dachshund
