Post-secularism is the fundamental evidence of the end of modernity. Modernity, as sleeping reason in Francisco Goya's painting, realizes that, although it thought that it was awake, it was producing monsters. We try to analyze post-secular philosophy from the point of view of Russian religious thought. We believe that such philosophers as Vladimir Soloviev, Pavel Florensky, Sergey Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Georges Florovsky, and Semen Frank may be helpful for understanding and overcoming post-secular order. Their unique views on (...) the relations between religion and philosophy, science, and social life are apparently missing in the current Western debates. It seems to us that Russian religious philosophy becomes surprisingly up-to-date and attractive in the contemporary world. We hope that the present volume will be a significant step forward in the inclusion of the heritage of Russian religious philosophy in contemporary debates. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the problem of Western perceptions of one of the most original branches of the Russian Philosophical Renaissance that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century: namely, the so called Russian Religious Philosophy. This problem still possesses contemporary relevance, owing to the fact that Russian philosophy continues to be engaged in a search for self-identification in respect of Western philosophical contexts. The paper shows that “Russian Religious Philosophy” is (...) perceived by Western thinkers not only as “an exotic cultural phenomenon,” but also as an equal partner in a dialogue: it is considered a significant philosophical achievement, meeting all generally accepted criteria of philosophical creativity. The German Catholic philosopher Peter Ehlen’s monograph on the subject of the religious philosophy of Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank will furnish us, here, with an example of just such an approach. The author of the monograph approaches his subject as something which he himself stands in an essential connection to—something which he, as a researcher, is in a peculiar spiritual communion with. A common spiritual experience of the religious perception of reality determines both Ehlen’s interest in Frank and the specific character of the research undertaken by him. The position of researcher, expected to maintain a certain distance from his or her subject matter, is replaced by that of a co-thinker, engaged in co-experiencing and understanding in depth the ideas of the particular philosopher under examination. The result of this approach is a new synthesis created by Ehlen on the basis of Frank’s philosophy. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is Alexandre Kojève’s relationship to Russian Religious Philosophy, which is characterized by a paradoxical contrast between Kojève’s openly critical judgment of it, on the one hand, and the hidden, implicit influence of this philosophical tradition on his own atheistic philosophizing on the other. The hidden influence of Russian Religious Philosophy, Kojève’s engagement with the philosophical ideas of Vladimir Solovyov and Fyodor Dostoevsky, will be shown by two case studies. The (...) first case is about Kojève’s “reshaping” and reevaluation of Solovyov’s principle of evil. The second case is about Kojève’s defense of Dostoevsky’s Man-God ideologues against their creator by critically rethinking Man-Godhood. The connection between these two cases is the question, if Kojève, while opposing Solovyov’s difference of Man-God and God-Man with something third, has actually moved beyond the Man-God ideology, or did he develop his own Man-God ideology. The essay concludes, with the assertion that Kojève remains with a revised Man-Godhood. This defense-revision is an important philosophical contribution to the polemics with Russian Religious Philosophy, but it is, at the same time, intimately connected with Kojève’s ideological agenda. (shrink)

Volume 57, Issue 1, February 2019, Page 3-16.

Semen Frank is one of the most interesting and exciting pre-revolutionary Russian religious philosophers to be “rediscovered” after the fall of the Soviet Union. His involvement in Russian pre-revolutionary political and academic life brought Frank into contact with an imaginative, progressive and idealistic group of thinkers whose ranks he then joined. Like Nicholas Berdyaev and Fr. Sergei Bulgakov, Frank put forward his own philosophical views about their world, which was in upheaval, and about human nature. After emigration (...) from the then young Soviet Union, Frank continued to produce his impressive body of work. His ideas are remarkable for their considered, moderate and tolerant nature.This book is a contribution to the ever-growing body of scholarship, which strives to connect Russian thought to its contemporary Western context and continues to facilitate the revival of these fascinating thinkers. In addition to situating Frank’s thought in a Western context, this work seeks to provide an overview of his thought, and introduce his key arguments to those unfamiliar with Russian religious philosophy. (shrink)

The article discusses how the meaning of the principle of “non-resistance to evil by violence” was changing in L.N. Tolstoy's religious and philosophical teachings and how this principle was evaluated in Russian religious philosophy of the late XIX - early XX century. In the first version of Tolstoy’s teachings, set forth in the book “What is my faith?”, the principle of non-resistance was understood in a moral sense, as the norm for all people; its execution should (...) lead to the perfection of earthly life. This idea of L. Tolstoy was sharply criticised by his contemporaries, who noted that there was no truly religious content in Tolstoy’s teachings, it was turning into a utilitarian doctrine of the earthly progress of mankind. Given this criticism, Tolstoy in his later works changed his understanding of the principle of non-resistance. Drawing a distinction between two levels of human life - “animal” and divine, Tolstoy recognised the principle of non-resistance to the law as the divine life of a man. As a result, the principle of non-resistance has acquired a religious rather than moral meaning, since the transition of a man to a divine life means a mystical transformation of his being. He is aware of his super-spatial and super-temporary unity with all people and with all being, and therefore can evaluate the consequences of his actions not only in the limited sphere of his life, but also in all infinite being. In this regard, a person realizes the absolute superiority of good deeds over evil, even if the latter are committed to confront evil. It is shown that some critics of Tolstoy came to a similar understanding of the religious meaning of the principle of non-resistance at the end of their lives. (shrink)

An analytical review of the current situation of Christian philosophyin Russia is presented, aiming to explain, why so much expectedrenaissance of this philosophy in the post-soviet period did nottake place. Russian philosophy is shown to be structurally a synthesis of the Western conceptual framework and Eastern Christian discourse,the latter being, in turn, the synthesis of patristic and asceticdiscourse, including two basic paradigms, deification (theosis)and sacralisation, and having energy as its dominant category.The key role of ascetic experience in (...) Eastern Christian discourseis stressed. Topical problems related to the study of thisexperience, as well as concepts of energy and theosis, are discussed. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The Silver Age as History The Russian Revolution of was a cataclysmic event that shattered the foundations of both the old autocratic regime ...

The article deals with Bulgakov’s critique of Hegel’s monistic system. For Bulgakov, Hegelian monism is an example of philosophical reductionism which aims at reducing the question of Being, the latter expressed by a proposition and constituted by the inseparable unity of three elements, to its second principle. Contrary to Hegel, Bulgakov claims that no philosophy can begin with and as itself—it has to be initiated with a datum. This is in fact where the tragedy of German philosophy, and (...) each monistic philosophy, starts. (shrink)

In this paper Russian Symbolist philosophy is represented primarily by Viacheslav Ivanov (1866--1949), but its conclusions are intended to be valid for other philosophers we classify as Symbolist, including Nikolai Berdiaev and S. L. Frank. It is posited that, by comparing Ivanov''s cosmology, aesthetics, and anthropology to those of Martin Heidegger, one can reconceive of Symbolist philosophy as an existential hermeneutic. This, it is claimed, can help to identify a common basis among the Symbolist philosophers, and also (...) to place Russian thought in the context of modern European philosophy and vice versa. (shrink)

Public interest in the legacy of Russian religious philosophy, and above all in the legacy of V. S. Solovyov, reached its peak at the turn of the 1990s, after which it declined. As indirect evidence of this, we can note the remaining unrealized idea of installing a monument to the philosopher, slowing down the pace of work on the release of a complete collection of his works, and reducing the number of works dedicated to him. The year (...) of the centenary since the death of Solovyov was symptomatic, when the authoritative representatives of the Russian philosophical community, S.S. Khoruzhiy and P.P. Gaidenko made an ambiguous assessment of Solovyov's ideological heritage and its significance for the subsequent development of Russian socio-philosophical and religious-theological thought. In the article the statement that the genealogy of the critical interpretation of Solovyov's legacy goes back to the works of the philosopher and theologian G.V. Florovsky is substantiated. Florovsky influence in Russian studies, as well as in post-Soviet Russia in general is difficult to overestimate. In this regard, the author draws attention to the ideological evolution of Florovsky, which gives the key to his interpretation of Solovyov's philosophy. The analysis showed that Florovsky's critical reinterpretation of Solovyov's legacy had both a theoretical, theological, and doctrinal character, and was caused by certain socio-psychological factors related to the generational conflict between representatives and heirs of the Russian religious and philosophical Renaissance of the early XX century. It is demonstrated that the reception of Solovyov by Florovsky was very significant, influential and archetypal for Russian religious and philosophical thought, both in Russia and abroad. (shrink)

I argue that one of the centralaspects characterizing the philosophicalhorizon at the threshhold of the twentieth andtwenty-first centuries is the erosion of thehumanist idea, i.e. `posthumanism''. Russianreligious philosophy is pervaded byconsiderations of humanism and posthumanism(antihumanism). The latter ascribes centralsignificance to the category of `Godmanhood''with which the leading Russian philosophersopposed the Nietzschean category of theOverman. But all of Germany philosophy can bereproached for having forsaken man. The`posthumanist'' narrative about man and God isan extreme, indeed pathological symptom ofphilosophy waiting (...) for Embodiment. (shrink)

At the core of Dostoevskij's philosophy and theology lies a concept according to which the Truth is antinomical: it contains both a thesis and its antithesis without expectation of synthesis. This concept can be traced to Eastern Patristics. After Dostoevskij, the theory of antinomies was elaborated by 20th century Russian religious thinkers such as Pavel Florenskij, Sergej Bulgakov, Nikolaj Berdjaev, Semën Frank, and Vladimir Losskij. Their ideas help us to understand that Dostoevskij's dialogism, made famous in its (...) secular guise by Bakhtin, has a theological underpinning. Dostoevskij's exposition of conflicting truths should therefore be seen not as a case of irresolvable contradiction or paradox but as an organic wholeness. (shrink)

This is a review of Teresa Obolevitch's Faith and Science in Russian Religious Thought, which provides an intellectual history of the collaboration between fides and ratio in the course of the development of Russian thought, from its Byzantine origins to the twenty-first century. Obolevitch examines various approaches to combining faith and science in such eighteenth-century thinkers as Mikhail Lomonosov and Gregory Skovoroda, the nineteenth-century thinkers Victor Kudryavtsev-Platonov, Dimitrii Golubinsky, Sergei Glagolev, the Schellingian Peter Chaadaev, the Slavophiles Alexei (...) Khomyakov and Ivan Kireevsky, the writers Fedor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Soloviev, the twentieth-century philosophers Nikolai Lossky, Pavel Florensky, Semen Frank, Nikolai Berdyaev, Lev Shestov, Sergius Bulgakov, Alexei Losev, the Russian Cosmists Nikolai Fedorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Vladimir Vernadsky, and the Orthodox priest Georges Florovsky. The book ends with considerations on the Neo-Patristic synthesis of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the present review, I situate the book in the context of the author's works, I summarize it, editorializing occasionally, and I discuss the thesis of the book in the wider context of world religions. (shrink)

In the second half of the nineteenth century utilitarianism and naturalism dominated Russian ethical thought. The Russian intelligentsia, nurtured on the works of N. G. Chernyshevskii, P. L. Lavrov, and D. I. Pisarev, regarded utilitarianism as an alternative to all the ideologies that harness man to the service of "ends higher than himself." It was thought that only man, as a concrete, living individual, could be regarded as the end and purpose of activity. Such concepts as individual interests, (...) utility, and calculus became the cornerstones of practical morality, while scientific studies of human nature became the foundation of theoretical ethics. Any mention of "a priori duty" or "categorical imperative" were regarded as manifestations of religious authoritarianism and political conservatism. (shrink)

Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (1883–1954) was a Russian philosopher whose writings have recently resurfaced among Russian political elites and in contemporary Russian Orthodox Church discourse. This article provides a reading of Ilyin’s main works on violence, The Basic Moral Contradiction of War (1914) and On Resistance to Evil by Force (1925), outlining how Ilyin’s texts have been utilised by both the Russian Orthodox Church and security service actors from 2005 to 2023. The case study demonstrates that Ilyin’s (...) writings have been instrumentalised by these groups to support arguments in favour of soldiering and for a deeper connection between the church and the military. This article contributes to our understanding of religious militancy in Russian Orthodox discourse by examining an inherent tension in both Ilyin’s work and its reception among Russian religious and military audiences. The article concludes that both Ilyin and references to his works made by individuals associated with the Russian Orthodox Church rely on a problematically subjective conception of morality and attribute virtue to soldiering. (shrink)

The purpose of the present article is not an excursion into the history of philosophy. It is not a story of the adventures of Immanuel Kant on Russian soil, and even less does it pretend to expound systematically the perception of Kantian philosophy by Russian metaphysics. The author's interest is strictly philosophical. Russian religious thought, insofar as it has an appetite for philosophizing, consciously enters into the life of classical European philosophy, into that (...) living communication of minds by which truth is sustained, moved, and nourished among people and nations.2 A clarification of its personal relations with the central figures of this philosophical drama will help us to understand the strictly philosophical significance of Russian metaphysics more accurately than even sometimes the most dedicated description of it in itself succeeds in doing. (shrink)

In light of discussions on Russian exceptionalism, this article considers the question of the independence of thought in the Russian Religious Renaissance. After the post-Revolutionary emigration of the intelligentsia, interaction with the scholars of the West – largely within the ecumenical movement – gave rise to an ecumenical theology that was distinct from the theology that preceded it. Consideration of the theology of the Russian diaspora reveals a development of thought and an interaction with the theology (...) of the West. This paper considers the development of the notion of sobornost and Sergius Bulgakov’s theological insight on the eucharistic dogma, hierarchy and the sacraments, and ecumenical theology. The interference of the “Sophia Affair” notwithstanding, and accounting for the heterogenous diaspora landscape, émigré Russian thought reveals an independence distinct from national sentiment. (shrink)

The trial of Galileo remains a representative example of the alleged incompatibility between science and religion as well as a suggestive case study of the relationship between them from the Western historical and methodological perspective. However, the Eastern Christian view has not been explored to a significant extent. In this article, the author considers relevant aspects of the reception of the teaching of Copernicus and Galileo in Russian culture, especially in the works of scientists. Whereas in prerevolutionary Russia Galileo (...) was considered a symbol of the unity of science and religion, in the Soviet period his name and especially his trial was largely used for atheistic propaganda purposes. The author discusses the most recent debate in the Russian Orthodox milieu. The second part is dedicated to the presence of Galileo in Russian religious philosophy, especially in the thought of Gregory Skovoroda, Ivan Kireyevsky, and Sergey Glagolev. Finally, the relation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the teaching of Galileo is considered. (shrink)

Volume 57, Issue 1, February 2019, Page 1-2.

Russian philosophy underwent many phases: Westernism, Slavophilism, nihilism, pre-revolutionary religious philosophy, and dialectical materialism or Soviet philosophy. At first sight, each one of these phases seems antithetical to the preceding one. Yet, they all appear to have in common a certain negative attitude towards the subjectivism of Kantianism and German Idealism. In contrast to the latter, Russian philosophy typically displays a tendency towards ontologism, which is generally defined as the view that there is (...) such a thing as being in itself, i.e., being independent of cognition, and that this being is to some extent knowable. We discern, in these otherwise diametrically opposed movements, an underlying ontologism that constitutes a common thread running in a straight line through the history of Russian philosophy. In this article, I provide an overview of Russian ontologism. (shrink)

In this article, the author analyzes the concept of religious foundations of culture and power as a problem of Russian political consciousness. The paper reveals the patterns of interaction between the religious and political traditions of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The author provides Bargradsky project case as a unique example of such influence, identifying its mean in the later Russian Empire’s political history. Philosophical-political case that is analyzed in the article makes (...) it possible to trace the inner links between religious attitudes and political imagination of Russian monarchical circles and to identify the peculiarities of religious and political self-awareness of Russian power, its mechanisms for the selecting the ideas, symbols, images of the national political, religious and artistic culture in the last period of the Russian Empire. From our point of view, it would be most effective to combine the cultural-historical and the philosophical and historical approaches both in the reconstruction of Bargradsky project and in studies of Russian political culture. The article examines both the political conditions of activities and spiritual-cultural goals of Bargradsky Committee on Bargradsky project in Italian Bari as well as in Saint Petersburg in the 1910s. The author discusses the religious concept of Russian political culture, applying philosophical-historical method for the analyses Bargradsky Committee activity and its attempt to slow down the degradation of the Russian autocracy. The major emphasis is placed on the political and philosophical way of analysis as well as on the possibility of introducing the results of philosophical-historical research into current debates on the issue of alternatives to Russian history. (shrink)

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has not only a political, economic, and military component, but also a religious one. These components co-exist and support each other, both in Ukraine and in Russia. Why? In this essay I try to give an answer by analysing the religious elements of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict from a historical and a phenomenological perspective. In doing this I hope to shed light on a situation that worsens day by day.

This history of Russian thought was first published in Polish in 1973 and subsequently appeared 2005 in a revised and expanded publication. The current volume begins with Enlightenment thought and Westernization in Russia in the 17<SUP>th century and moves to the religious-philosophical renaissance of first decade of the 20<SUP>th century. This book provides readers with an exhaustive account of relationships between various Russian thinkers with an examination of how those thinkers relate to a number of figures and (...) trends in Western philosophy and in the broader history of ideas. (shrink)

Contemporary Russian philosophical traditions cannot be reduced to Marxist works and research in religious philosophy. Russian philosophers developed philosophy and methodology of social sciences and humanities as early as at the end of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, S.N. Bulgakov’s social philosophy of science is closely related to European thinkers’ works and ideas. Problems of social determinism in scientific cognition are among them. These problems are topical (...) now as seen in the well-known discussion about the nature and meaning of various forms of determinism in which different stands are taken by R. Thomas, E. Morin and I. Prigogine. A new level of research of social determinism is presented in Russia in the second-half of the twentieth century. The identification of determination with causality is overcome. Necessary and contingent, dynamic and statistical determination, self-determination, and so on, come under examination. In the 1970s mechanistic and objectivistic determination is overcome and human factors, such as the will and systems of values, are taken into account. S.L. Frank turns to the methodology of social sciences in 1922 and continues his studies in 1930 in Europe. Frank creates a holistic, fully secular doctrine of social philosophy, sociology, philosophy of law and history. The changing situation in Russia at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century allows us to re-evaluate ideas and works of Russian thinkers who studied mainly rationalist themes, including philosophy and methodology of science, its hermeneutic and semiotic aspects. Russian and European philosophies are used and essentially enriched. G.G. Shpet’s ideas are examined. Studying the sphere of language and meaning, recognizing the essential importance of hermeneutics for knowledge in the humanities, he brings forward a semiotic conception of ethnic psychology to precede, in particular, American anthropologist and ethnographer C. Geertz’s theory of culture. Russian philosophers are quite aware that any reconstruction of real cognition cannot limit itself to the transcendental epistemological agent or “consciousness in general”. It is necessary to change the level of abstraction of the subject matter of the non-classical—social, cultural and historical—epistemology to draw closer to the real manifestations of cognitive activity. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to Vladimir Solovyov (1853 - 1900), the greatest Russian religious philosopher of the 19th Century. The main thesis is that the central ideas of Solovyov can be interpreted as philosophical reflections on fundamental religious feelings and aspects of religious behavior. With respect to this a detailed discussion of Solovyov’s teachings of ‘positive all-encompassing unity’ (всеединство), sobornost (togetherness, соборность) and Godmanhood (Divine Humanity, Богочеловечество) are discussed. Special attention is paid to Solovyov’s theocratic project (...) of Christian Universal Church and the re-unification of the Christian world.Key words: All-encompassing unity; Godmanhood, Sobornost; Russian Orthodoxy; Universal Church (Ecumenical Church). (shrink)

This article presents the results of a preliminary multidisciplinary research of the specificities of youth’s response to various descriptors. Using the semiotic, in-depth psychological, theological and mathematical analysis of the collected associative chains, the author compares the responses of youth representatives to religious and ethical terms with colloquial lexemes, as well as determines sensitivity to these terms and proclivity for their logical and sensory-emotional perception. Particularly, method of semantic multiplication allows identifying strong and weak descriptors of semiosis under consideration. (...) The author determines the trends that outline a number of structural and psychodynamic characteristics of psychic reality of modern Russian youth. The following conclusions were made in the course of this research: 1. Sensitivity (and corresponding awareness) to religious descriptors was demonstrated by less than half of the respondents, and a fifth of the entire sample of terms appeared to be unfamiliar to the respondents; 2. The analysis of ethical associative chains at the level of interpretation, indicated the existence of such a phenomenon as “indeterminate religiosity”, which implies a certain spiritual pursuit, which at the moment does not comply with the familiar to a respondent religions traditions; 3. The acquired data, on the one hand, correspond to the classic “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs”, while on the other hand, spiritual pursuit of respondents and simultaneously scarce character of “existential” associations may testify in favor of the dominance of “ethical-spiritual” paradigm in psychic reality of respondents (which also complies with the Maslow’s research of later period in the area of “existential needs” and “peak experiences”; 4. All of the aforementioned means that the key to interaction with modern youth (including didactical and educational) is the paradigm of ethical values, which can also be connected with a latent spiritual pursuit. (shrink)

The paper compares two intellectual traditions, that is, psychoanalysis and Russian philosophy. As a result, it demonstrates the kinship of the main methodological principles of both of these two trends of thinking in twentieth century. First, a psychoanalytic image of the Russian type of cognition is set - this is an existentially loaded experience of asking the truth, carried out by a person from the people. In culture, this image is presented as an agent of truth, usually (...) in need. The following demonstrates the attitude to this image in the work and personal way of knowing N.A. Berdyaev. In this part of the article, a psychoanalytic study of the work of the Russian philosopher is done. In particular, the neurotic nature of N. Berdyaevs letter, which is expressed in the excessive emotionality of the text and the prophetic emphasis, which sets the tone throughout his work, is noted. The main part of the article is devoted to the analysis of the intuitive-symbolic method of working with consciousness in the psychoanalysis of Freud and the philosophy of Berdyaev. Here the author emphasizes the practical side of the psychoanalysis and to how an emotionally and bodily tinted meaning arises in that context. This phenomenological reconstruction allows us to draw a parallel with what constitutes a symbol in the tradition of Russian religious thought, which also notes the experienced nature of the work of obtaining the meaning of a symbolic utterance. In this perspective, the author conducts a hermeneutic reconstruction of the continuity of the method of these two traditions from mystical Christian theology, in which the knowledge of God is understood as a passionately lived experience of communication with the Other, which occupies the status of a lover. This article represents the initial stage of a more detailed study of the relationship between psychoanalysis and Russian philosophy. (shrink)

In the treatise “Suprematism. The World as Objectlessness or Eternal Peace” (1922), Kazimir Malevich positions himself as a “bookless philosopher” who did not consider theories of other philosophers. In fact, the treatise contains a large number of references to philosophers belonging to different traditions. A careful reading shows the extent to which Malevich’s theory is linked to the Russian religious philosophy of the early twentieth century. In my view, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky—philosophers of “Religious (...) Renaissance,” as well as some other intellectuals—acquaint avant-gardists with Neoplatonic conceptions of apophasis. Malevich had access to ideas of fourteenth-century theologian Meister Eckhart, and I will refer to two sources to demonstrate this, including Margarita Sabashnikova’s translation of Eckhart and works of Sergei Bulgakov. Without any reference, Malevich retells the concepts of Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, and Gregory Palamas. I will demonstrate parallels between the treatise on Suprematism and Meister Eckhart’s Sermons concerning the concepts of apophaticism, Platonism, and Nothingness. I will also touch on the theme of Divine Light in the theology of Palamas (fourteenth century) to show the diversity of the avant-garde’s sources of inspiration. (shrink)

The subject of the article is a mass psychology of B.P. Vysheslavtsev. This is a socio-philosophical conception, which created by Vysheslavtsev through the synthesizing of German classical philosophy, neo-Kantianism, Russian religious philosophy and analytical psychology. He developed the mass psychology in close collaboration with C.G. Jung by his direct order. The mass psychology, despite the heterogeneity of its foundations, became an organic continuation of analytical psychology. Moreover, there is reason to suppose that Vysheslavtsev's socio-philosophical and (...) class='Hi'>religious ideas influenced all of Jung’s later work. The main method used was a comparative analysis of the ideas of Vysheslavtsev and Jung, as well as a critical interpretation of the original sources, including unpublished archival materials — letters and manuscripts. The novelty lies in the fact that previously the mass psychology of Vysheslavtsev eluded the attention of researchers. This is primarily due to the inaccessibility of sources on this issue, since some of them are either not published and stored in archives, including the Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia University in the City of New York) and C.G. Jung Papers Collection (ETH Zurich University Archive), or was published in rare foreign journals and not translated into Russian. At the same time, without these sources it is difficult to understand not only the evolution of Vysheslavtsev’s views, but also the logic and reasons for the development of Jung’s ideas from the 1940s to his death. Thus, this article is intended to partially replenish these gaps in the history of Russian and European philosophy and psychology. Предметом исследования данной статьи является созданная на основе синтеза немецкой классической философии, неокантианства, русской религиозной философии и аналитической психологии социально-философская концепция Б.П. Вышеславцева, названная им "массовая психология". Данная концепция разрабатывалась в тесном взаимодействии с К.Г. Юнгом, в том числе, по его непосредственному заказу. Массовая психология Вышеславцева, несмотря на разнородность её основ, стала органичным продолжением аналитической психологии. Более того, есть основания полагать, что социально-философские и религиозные идеи Вышеславцева оказали влияние на всё позднее творчество Юнга. В качестве основного метода использовался компаративный анализ идей Вышеславцева и Юнга, а также критическая интерпретация первоисточников, включая неопубликованные архивные материалы - письма и рукописи. Новизна заключается в том, что ранее массовая психология Вышеславцева ускользала от внимания исследователей. Обусловлено это, в первую очередь, труднодоступностью источников по данной проблеме, так как часть из них либо не опубликована и хранится в архивах, в том числе в Бахметьевском архиве Колумбийского университета (Нью-Йорк) и Архиве Юнга (Цюрих), либо была опубликована в редких иностранных изданиях и не переведена на русский язык. Вместе с тем, без данных источников трудно понять не только эволюцию взглядов Вышеславцева, итогом которой стал труд "Кризис индустриальной культуры", но также логику и причины развития представлений Юнга начиная с 1940-х годов и заканчивая его смертью. Тем самым, данная статья призвана отчасти восполнить указанные лакуны в истории русской и европейской философии и психологии. (shrink)

This is a review of Alexandre Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, translated by Ilya Merlin and Mikhail Pozdniakov, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. This slim book is a translation of Kojève’s essay “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev,” which was first published in two installments in the Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses in 1934. The French text was itself based on Kojève’s doctoral dissertation, Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews, defended in Heidelberg under the direction of Karl (...) Jaspers in 1926. The translation is accompanied by an introduction from the translators discussing translation issues. In this review, I summarize Kojève’s essay and editorialize on the issue of the principal influences on Solovyov’s metaphysics. Kojève claims that most of Solovyov’s metaphysics was in fact borrowed from Schelling and perhaps also to some extent from Jakob Böhme. If that is the case, then what is usually considered the prototypical Russian metaphysics is... not Russian. (shrink)

The article provides proof that the concept of time articulated in Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century was very close to the understanding of time in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. This explains the close attention of Russian culture to the philosophical system of the French thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also allows us to hypothesize about the possible influence of the ideas of Russian philosophers of the late nineteenth century on (...) Bergson. Bergson’s most original idea is the recognition of the metaphysical primacy of the subjective, inner time of the human in relation to physical time. In physical time, only the moment of the present has real existence; in internal time, designated by Bergson as duration, all moments of the past are preserved as real, and this is expressed by memory. Internal time turns out to be the spiritual Absolute from which the entire material world originates. A very similar metaphysical concept is presented in Pyotr Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters. According to Chaadaev, each person is directly involved in the spiritual Absolute, which has the characteristic of integral time. In this time, all moments are in unity, and there is no division into the past, present, and future; this division arises only in the time intrinsic to the material reality that originates from the spiritual Absolute. In the religious teaching of Leo Tolstoy, personality is defined as the appearance of God within the limits of material existence, so a person is simultaneously involved in the earthly physical time and absolute time, which manifests itself through memory. The article concludes that Bergson’s ideas determined the most important features of Russian avant-garde culture of the twentieth century; in particular, thanks to them, the opposite trends of Russian thought were brought to unity: metaphysics of pan-unity and personalism. (shrink)

Alexei Losev (10[22].09.1893, Novocherkassk – 24.05.1988, Moscow), Russian philosopher, philologist and writer, is the creator of a unique religious-philosophical system, which combines the reinterpreted tradition of ancient and medieval thought (Plato and Neoplatonism, Christian apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory Palamas, Nicholas of Cusa), the methodology of New European philosophy (German classical idealism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology of E.Husserl) and the problems of New European philosophy (German classical ideal-ism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology of E.Husserl) and the problems of (...) class='Hi'>Russian religious philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from V.S. Solovyov (the idea of universalism) to P.A. Florensky. In the constructive design of Losev’s system the central place is occupied by dialectics, in the multidimensional construction of which each category and all of them together are worked out in the light of each other. Losev’s personalistic ontology is the basis of his philosophy of language (naming as an interpretative - communicative self-discovery of personality), philosophy of myth as a distinctive form of personal worldview (myth as directly experienced and created reality, symboli-cally expressed), and aesthetics (artistic form is “personality as symbol and symbol aspersonality”). Losev was the founder of the philosophy of music in Russia. His multi-volume history of ancient aesthetics represents the history of the entire ancient culture revealed in its symbolic-expressive aspects. The works of Losev, are presentative of the last generation of the Silver Age of Russian culture, became a kind of completion of Ortho-dox religious philosophy in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (shrink)

The great age of Russian philosophy spans the century between 1830 and 1930 - from the famous Slavophile-Westernizer controversy of the 1830s and 1840s, through the 'Silver Age' of Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the formation of a Russian 'philosophical emigration' in the wake of the Russian Revolution. This volume is a major history and interpretation of Russian philosophy in this period. Eighteen chapters discuss Russian philosophy's (...) main figures, schools and controversies, while simultaneously pursuing a common central theme: the development of a distinctive Russian tradition of philosophical humanism focused on the defence of human dignity. As this volume shows, the century-long debate over the meaning and grounds of human dignity, freedom and the just society involved thinkers of all backgrounds and positions, transcending easy classification as 'religious' or 'secular'. The debate still resonates strongly today. (shrink)

The object of this paper is creativity as a cultural philosophical and historical-philosophical phenomenon. The subject of the research is the substantiation of the essence of creativity by Russian religious philosophy on the example of the doctrine of V.S. Solovyov and N.A. Berdyaev. The aim of this research is to identify and articulate the key semantic constructs of creativity from the positions of the above-mentioned thinkers. The article also explores ideas about the nature of creativity and the (...) specific features of a creative subject through the prism of relevant concepts of a socio-humanitarian orientation. A brief historical and philosophical excursion into the understanding of the ontological essence of creativity is carried out, modern ontological concepts of creativity are revealed and an existentially oriented concept of creativity is proposed. The theoretical basis of the research is the original works of V.S. Solovyov and N.A. Berdyaev, as well as various commenting scientific sources. The methodological foundation of the research is a comparative analysis and a method of contextual vision of creativity. The main result of the conducted research is the articulation of key aspects of the understanding of creativity by V.S. Solovyov and N.A. Berdyaev. It is shown that for the first philosopher, the central task of creativity is the spiritualization of the material world through the realization of the unity of Goodness, Truth and Beauty, while the second thinker considers the main mission of creativity to be the establishment of a fundamentally different spiritual being by the subject. The scientific novelty of the research also lies in the comparative characterization of the concepts of creativity of these thinkers in terms of essence, tasks, meaning, material, sources, functions, result and other structural aspects. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that (...) it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

There is its own philosophical tradition in Russia. The traditional Russian philosophy is idealistic and religious. The basic categories of traditional Russian philosophy: "Ideal", "Sofia", "Sobornost", « Beauty, True, Kind (the Blessing)». The basic problem of Russian philosophy is to find the way of rescue mankind. One of the cardinal problems is the problem of civilization choice: East – West - Russia. According to the method of Russian philosophy it is not (...) so analytic, but it is synthetic. Synthetic character of Russian philosophy was most full embodied in V.S.Solovjev's philosophical system (1853-1900). In Russian philosophy the person, its destiny in the world was considered as a rule, globally - in universal, space scale. Russian cosmizm has formulated antropocosmik a paradigmon principles coevolution the nature and a noosphere which demands special culture. (shrink)

1st English translation: "The Philosophy of Inequality" is a significiant and passionately intense work by the eminent Russian religious philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948), written in the early months following the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. It was published only later in 1923 in Berlin, following his expulsion from Russia. With his perspective of a personalist existentialism and philosophy of freedom, Berdyaev voices a powerful critique of societal myths and mentalities that lead to a crushing totalitarian control (...) over life, not only Russia then, but now also for our contemporary world. The present volume also includes the 1st English translation of Berdyaev's 1918 article, "Spirits of the Russian Revolution: Gogol/Dostoevsky/L. Tolstoy," which traces the prophetic literary motifs reflected in the Soviet Communist Russian Revolution. The present volume likewise includes the addition of an intensive chapter by the translator, addressing Berdyaev's Religio-Philosophic thought in its connection to aspects of Orthodox Christian theological insights, in an attempt to validate N. A. Berdyaev as indeed verymost an Orthodox Christian philosopher. (shrink)

In Russian culture, there was neither Scholasticism nor Renaissance, and the problem of faith and reason was formulated, most of all, on the ground of Patristic tradition. This collection of essays explores various dimensions of this alternative Russian account. The book shows the peculiarities of the Orthodox interpretation of faith. It traces the interrelations between Eastern and Western thinkers, and it investigates the heritage of Russian religious philosophy, with a special attention to Pavel Florensky, Sergius (...) Bulgakov, and Georges Florovsky. *** Librarians: ebook available on ProQuest and EBSCO [Subject: Philosophy, Religious Studies, Russian Studies]. (shrink)