"You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know"
About this Quote
Philosophy is not an optional hobby here; it is a necessity because surface appearances rarely tell the full story. Maxim Gorky wrote in an age of upheaval, when czarist Russia was cracking and new ideologies were rising. His fiction and plays keep insisting that beneath poverty, cruelty, and grand speeches lie structures of power, habits of thought, and deep human longings. To live without a framework for understanding those layers is to be ruled by them without knowing it.
Gorkys realism was never only about grime and hunger; it was about perception. In The Lower Depths, characters argue over consoling lies versus painful truths, over whether illusions sustain or degrade the human spirit. That debate is philosophical at its core. Do we prefer narratives that soothe, or explanations that expose causes? In Mother, political awakening is not merely a plot; it is the slow discovery of how personal misery is tied to economic relations and ideology. Meaning is not hidden because it is mystical; it is hidden because social life is complicated, and because interests and myths obscure what is going on.
For a writer close to revolutionary circles and influenced by dialectical materialism, philosophy meant disciplined thinking about history, class, and consciousness. It meant refusing to take slogans or traditions at face value, and learning to see patterns and contradictions. Without that inquiry, one misreads the moment and mistakes symptoms for causes. With it, the world becomes legible enough to change.
There is also an ethical demand: we must know. Gorkys art calls for responsibility in interpretation, because meaning is not a private bauble; it guides action. To ask what work, love, faith, or law really mean is to decide how to act within them. The line suggests a bridge between literature and life. Read the world as attentively as a novel. Look for motives behind gestures, systems behind events, and purposes behind pain. Philosophy, in that sense, is simply the courage to look deeper and the resolve to live by what one finds.
Gorkys realism was never only about grime and hunger; it was about perception. In The Lower Depths, characters argue over consoling lies versus painful truths, over whether illusions sustain or degrade the human spirit. That debate is philosophical at its core. Do we prefer narratives that soothe, or explanations that expose causes? In Mother, political awakening is not merely a plot; it is the slow discovery of how personal misery is tied to economic relations and ideology. Meaning is not hidden because it is mystical; it is hidden because social life is complicated, and because interests and myths obscure what is going on.
For a writer close to revolutionary circles and influenced by dialectical materialism, philosophy meant disciplined thinking about history, class, and consciousness. It meant refusing to take slogans or traditions at face value, and learning to see patterns and contradictions. Without that inquiry, one misreads the moment and mistakes symptoms for causes. With it, the world becomes legible enough to change.
There is also an ethical demand: we must know. Gorkys art calls for responsibility in interpretation, because meaning is not a private bauble; it guides action. To ask what work, love, faith, or law really mean is to decide how to act within them. The line suggests a bridge between literature and life. Read the world as attentively as a novel. Look for motives behind gestures, systems behind events, and purposes behind pain. Philosophy, in that sense, is simply the courage to look deeper and the resolve to live by what one finds.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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