Mikhail EPSTEIN

THE BASIC IDEAS OF FOUR RUSSIAN THINKERS.

BRIEF OUTLINES

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV

NIKOLAI FEDOROV

VASILY ROZANOV

NIKOLAI BERDIAEV

Sources:

1. Edie, James M. et al. Russian Philosophy. University of Tennessee Press. 1976, vv.1,3 (paper). ISBN 0-87049-200-4. $14.95 (each volume). The most representative collection of sources.

2. Schmemann, Alexander, ed. Ultimate Questions: An Anthology of Modern Russian Religious Thought. Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1977. ISBN 0-913836-46-X $9.95.

3. Berdiaev, Nicolas. The Russian Idea. Hudson (NY): Lindisfarne Press1992, ISBN 0-940262-49-5. $16.95.

4. Lossky, Nikolas O. History of Russian Philosophy.International University Press,1969. ISBN 0-8236-8074-6. $17.95.

5.Zenkovsky V. V. A History of Russian Philosophy, vv. 1-2, transl. by George L. Kline. London: Routledge&Kegan Paul Ltd, 1953.

5. Copleston, Frederick. Philosophy in Russia: from Herzen to Lenin & Berdiaev. University of Notre Dame, 1988. ISBN 0-268-01569-4. $15.95.

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV (1853-1900)

1. God is All in Everything.

2. God posits his Otherness - the World.

3. God posits his Oneness with the World - his son, Godman Jesus Christ, and his Oneness with his Son - Holy Spirit.

4. Godmanhood is not only the essence of Christ but also the historical process designed to unite God and world.

5. This union cannot be a single act imposed by God on humanity because humanity must unite itself with God freely.

II. FREEDOM AND EVIL

6. Freedom is the likeness of God in man, while perfection is the image of God in man.

7. The achievement of perfection through freedom is the task of humanity.

8. Freedom presupposes the free choice between good and evil and thus creates the possibility of evil.

9. Evil cannot be eradicated otherwise than through man's own free will for good.

10. Freedom leads a human being away of God, but only through freedom s/he can return to God.

11. Evil manifests itself in egoism and suffering.

12. In egoism, person opposes oneself to other entities; in suffering person experiences their externality as the obstacle for the attainment of one's own goals and desires.

13. Egoism and suffering are the two aspects of one process of alienation.

III. LOVE

14. To overcome suffering, one must overcome one's own egoism.

15. Sexual love is the the way to overcome egoism by recognizing the absolute significance of another personality; the salvation of individuality through the sacrifice of egoism.

16. No other kind of love - mystical, parental, patriotic love - can lead to a real unification of two personalities comprising one full personality, the image of God.

17. Sexual love is not a means for the larger quantity or better quality of the progeny, since its goal is not multiplicity, but the creation of ideal personality . The true human being cannot be merely a man or a woman but the higher union of the two. (Schmemann, 122)

18. Both exclusively physical and exclusively spiritual love are degradation of love and the triumph of death, since death disintegrates human wholeness and separates soul from the body.(Schmemann,124)

19. The goal of love is the transformation of divided mortal beings into integral immortal being, the reception of the temporal into eternity. (Schmemann, 124)

IY. SOPHIA (God's wisdom)

20. Sophia is the Eternal Feminine, the feminine soul of the world.

21. Sophia occupies a mediating position between the multiplicity of living entities and the absolute unity of Deity.

22. Sophia is the passive force, which unconsciously strives for unity, while God's Logos (Christ) is an active and formative energy and has the conscious idea of total-unity.

23. Sophia is the mysterious companion of God, His Feminine Other.

24. The relationship between God and Sophia are reproduced in human love. God loves the soul of the world, the ideal mankind, and aspires to its salvation and immortality.

25. Through love, man perceives the Eternal Feminine in the personality of his beloved, and attempts to liberate her from the multiplicity and discordance of the physical elements, to immortalize her.

26. Sophiology is a discipline within mystical Christian philosophy dealing with feminine aspects of highest spirituality, with the feminine hypostasis of Divinity.

Y. TOTAL-UNITY

27. In the state of externality, generated by the negative aspect of freedom (evil, egoism), each element is excluded or displaced by all others.

28. In the divine order, all of these elements positively supplement each other and form an integral and harmonious organism.

29. The gradual realization of ideal total-unity is the ultimate goal of the cosmic and historical processes.

30. Man is the mediator between God and material existence, his task is to introduce total-unification into the multiplicity of natural elements, to order and organize universe.

31. Total-unity does not diminish individuality but incorporates it fully and freely.

32. The perfection is the greatest freedom of parts in the greatest unity of the whole.

33. The universality of an entity stands in direct relation to its individuality: the more universal it is, the more individual it will be (Edie, v.3, 72).

34. The universal organism, the total-unity is a distinctive individual entity. The universality of God coincides with the individuality of Christ (Edie,72).

35. The principle of total-unity presupposes criticism of one-sided "abstract principles" such as "spiritual" and "physical" love, or "empiricism," "rationalism," and "mysticism." The experience, reason and belief are insufficient by themselves and must be incorporated into the "integral knowledge"; by the same token, physical, legal and spiritual aspects of love must be integrated into "full personality".

YI. ECUMENISM AND THEOCRACY (religious unity and Church-State)

36. The Divine principle of total-unity must be implemented in the relationships between various Christian churches (ecumenism) and between State and Church (theocracy).

37. Western and Eastern parts of Christian world, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, must restore their primordial unity through the acceptance of full truth of Christianity.

38. In the Christian West, the unity is implemented by the Catholic Church and personified in the Pope.

39. In the Christian East, unity is implemented by the Russian State and personified in the Tsar.

40. Historically, the movement toward total-unity must result in the universal Church-State, where spiritual power will belong to the Pope, while political power will belong to the Tsar.

41. Russia, since it is located between Christian West and non-Christian East, has a special historical mission in the world: to be the carrier of religious unification.

42. In the East, the worship of God is accompanied by the neglect of a human individuality. In the West, the process of secularization has led to the exaltation of individuality and oblivion of God.

43. Russia, as a mediator between East and West, must overcome the abstract and one- sided principles of "inhuman God" (East) and "godless Man" (West). Russia is called to unite the religion of God with the religion of Man and thus to manifest Godmanhood as the full truth of Christianity: God became Man in order that Man could become God. Russia must introduce the fullness of Godmanhood in the religiously divided world.

YII. ESCHATOLOGY (the end of the world)

44. Before the second coming of Christ, Antichrist will arrive.

45. Antichrist will be the most perfect of all human beings, the universal genius, combining all possible artistic, political, moral, and religious gifts.

46. All these gifts will serve to the self-assertion of Antichrist, his ascension to the height of spiritual and political power.

47. Antichrist will not struggle against Christianity but will claim to be the benefactor and unifier of all Christian Churches, the leader of ecumenical movement.

48. Antichrist will attempt to build the Kingdom of God on the Earth and to accomplish everything that Christ failed to accomplish in his first coming: to grant peace and material well-being to all peoples.

49. Christians must prepare themselves to identify Antichrist as the false image of God rather than an overt enemy of God. Theocracy may appear as an instrument of Satanocracy.

50. The Kingdom of God cannot be attained by human efforts, and all human claims to absolute perfection and universality are dangerous since they prepare the kingdom of Antichrist.

NIKOLAI FEDOROV (1828-1903)

1. The contemporary humanity is divided into the learned and unlearned, the rich and poor. The common task is to restore the kinship and unity of the human kind.

2. People are brothers because they have one heavenly Father. Religion is the way to unification.

3. True religion is not an abstract faith in God the Father but the worship of all our fathers and forefathers since they gave life to us.

4. The common task of humanity is the resurrection of all previous generations. Brotherhood cannot be limited to the living but must include all generations.

5. The so-called progress is immoral because it consists in the swallowing up of the old by the new, in the displacing of the fathers by the sons.

6. The progress increases the force of death, the superiority of the living over the dead and of the young people over the old ones.

7. Death as an inevitability of nature is an insult to humanity. The project, called the Common Task, is directed toward overcoming death through technological advancement.

8. All natural laws, death being only one, must be reversed in order that humanity can manifest God's omniscience and omnipotence. Everything granted must be transformed into something crafted.

9. Contemporary civilization has procreative obsession, which has given rise to a feminized industry of conspicuous consumption oriented toward seduction.

10. History as a succession of generations, whereby the new supplants the old, must give way to a retrospective tendency that emphasizes immortality and the resurrection of ancestors.

11. "Supramorality" demands that sons return their debt of love to their fathers by resurrecting them. All technological resources must be dedicated to this task of preserving and revitalizing the remains of deceased fathers.

12. Christianity is primarily the religion of resurrection, which echoes the Orthodox privileging of Easter over all other holidays, icluding Christmas.

13. Man is called to worship God by literalizing through practice everything in Scripture that is usually interprete only in a spiritual sense, as symbols of another world.

14. The moral task of humanity is not to wait for the Last Judgement, but to follow the example set by Christ and endeavor to make bodily resurrection possible on the earth, to transform the entirety of human existence into a man-made and continuous Easter.

15. The museum, as a collection of the ancestors' remains, is the central cultural institution of humanity, which works also as a laboratory of resurrection science.

16. With the conquest of death and attainment of immortality, procreation becomes obsolete, and the focus of human history shifts to cosmic expansion, which is necessary to accomodate the innumerable resurrected generations of ancestors.

VASILY ROZANOV (1856-1919)

NIKOLAI BERDYAEV (1874-1948)

Short overview of Russian philosophy

Ukazatel' russkikh stranits (Index of Russian pages)

Mikhail Epstein Home Page