The beauty and the terror : Konstatin Leont’ev and the conservative syndrome

An essay concerns with the conservative ideas of Konstatin Leont’ev (1831-1891) - a Russian writer, thinker and publicist. There are two main concepts characteristic of his conservative syndrome: "unity in diversity" and "flourishing complexity" with anti-egalitarianism in the background. This syndrome has both aesthetical and political meaning. Beauty ("unity in diversity") is the most important value linked with religious, vital and political(a state in a phase of "flourishing complexity") concerns, whereas conservatism struggles for beauty faced against destructive activity of revolution and "liberal-egalitarian progress". In Leont’ev’s conservative worldview fear is believed to be a weapon of the state and the church against weak, irresponsible and criminal human nature. The essay presents the essential elements of Leont’ev’s conservative political vision: anthropological pessimism, scepticism, pluralism, realism, elitharism, aristocratism, aesthetism, eschatology, and the critics of utopian thought and ideology of progress. They are used both to the reconstruction of the worldview of Russians thinker as well as a description of conservatism as a complex of religious, political and philosophical ideas.