N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
CONCERNING EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY UTOPIANISM
(As Regards the Book of Prince Evgenii Trubetskoy
“The World-Concept of Vl. Solov’ev”)
(1913 - #170)
Russian text
Just like other
cultural nations, we also have begun to have our own great figures.
Vl. Solov’ev, not so long ago still a solitary and unknown,
has come to be at the centre of spiritual attention. Around his
enigmatic personality a sort of legend has formed. Around him
they have begun to write much from various aspects. Soon there
will be a whole literature concerning Vl. Solov’ev. And
it is impossible not to acknowledge, that his spiritual influence
has quite grown. The appearance of the two-volume work of Pr.
E. Trubetskoy, “The World-Concept of Vl. Solov’ev”
could not have been more timely. The work of Prince E. Trubetskoy
should assume a foremost place not only in the literature regarding
Solov’ev, but in general also a visible place in our religio-philosophic
literature. Pr. E. Trubetskoy posits very deep-rooted questions
of a religio-philosophic perspective, he sums up much and there
is much to think about. But the interest towards an exposition,
a criticism and estimation of the world-concept of Vl. Solov’ev
does not appear predominant in the work of Pr. E. Trubetskoy.
For him there is instead a yet greater interest in defining a
particular world-concept in relation to Vl. Solov’ev. This
is an essay of building an independent religio-philosophic world-concept
on the basis of criticism of Vl. Solov’ev. Regrettably,
Pr. E. Trubetskoy paints himself into somewhat too expansive an
exposition of Solov’ev, the works of whom are accessible
to all. In the book of Prince E. Trubetskoy there is first of
all a strikingly translucid Apollonian clarity of thought and
style. Nowadays they do not still thus write, in this old and
fine manner of thought and exposition. Contemporary man is too
complex and contradictory, and clarity has no effect on him. In
the style of contemporary writing there has occurred a sort of
fracturing of the soul, a sort of inconquerable and insurmountable
antimony. I fear, that the clarity of thought of Pr. Trubetskoy
obtains by a certain simplification of it, by the detouring of
the themes of its shortcomings. Pr. E. Trubetskoy wants to cleanse
Vl. Solov’ev of his contradictions, and by means of a clarity
of philosophic thought and religious feeling to do away with the
antinomy in Solov’ev’s world-concept. But is not all
the genius of Vl. Solov’ev and all his charm connected with
the insurmountable antinomy of his nature? Beyond the world-concept
of Vl. Solov’ev lies concealed the mystery of his extraordinary
and exceptional personality, exceeding everything written by him.
Solov’ev himself always loved to efface and to mask the
contradictions of his rationalist schemata by his dialectical
metaphysics. He not so much revealed himself in his books, as
that rather he concealed himself. But the deep religious antinomy
in Solov’ev’s nature is impossible to be hid. The
theoretical critique of Pr. E. Trubetskoy is brilliant and devastating
for the dialectical and utopian constructs of Vl. Solov’ev,
but his mistake is in this, that he is exclusively theoretical
in his approach to Solov’ev. He does not present the riddles
in his personality, though in these contradictions of the personality
of Solov’ev -- is the key to the understanding of the contradictions
of his world-concept. True, the first chapter of Pr. E. Trubetskoy’s
book is devoted to the characteristics of the person of Vl. Solov’ev
and in it is a fine tracing out of individual traits. But this
chapter, perchance for all the book, does not give answer to the
looming question, who was Solov’ev in his inward being.
Pr. E. Trubetskoy, finely aware of all the contradictions of Solov’ev’s
system, evidently almost does not sense the deep-rooted contradiction
in the person of Solov’ev: he sees only the by-day, the
lucid, the Solov’ev striving the world summits, and he does
not see the Solov’ev by night, by dark, knowing the abyss
and failure. The strange irony of Solov’ev, about which
Pr. E. Trubetskoy does not even once make mention, is that he
remained under the imprint of something anguished, of something
failed. The critique of Pr. E. Trubetskoy seems too rational,
too much predisposed to the everything by-day. With this alone
it is impossible to engage such figures as Vl. Solov’ev,
K. Leont’ev, Dostoevsky, Gogol. Pr. E. Trubetskoy does not
let remain any stone upon a stone with the Solov’ev theocracy.
He brilliantly dealt with the entire wreck of theocracy, he investigated
in it remnants of the ancient Old Testament theocracy, and of
the papal theocracy, and of the medieval, and he demonstrated
the contradiction within the very idea of a free theocracy. This
critique of theocratic illusions mustneeds be acknowledged as
a positive and indisputable service on the part of Pr. E. Trubetskoy.
There can be no turning round towards the Solov’ev theocracy,
just as there can be no turning round towards a Slavophil utopia.
The awareness of Pr. E. Trubetskoy in this regard is already post-revolutionary,
a surviving of great tribulations and tremours. But one question
always nags at me, when I read this intellectual and talented
critique of Solov’ev’s contradictions, and illusions
and utopias. Where and when did there not exist the contradictory,
the not crazy religious ideal of the transfiguration of life?
Can it be rational, and clear? Upon a thirsting for the Christian
transfiguration was always the imprint of the irrational antinomy
of God and the world, of heaven and earth, the transcendent and
the immanent, the non-antinomies of clear distinctions and the
antinomies of inexorable reapproachements.
Pr. E. Trubetskoy finds
the source of earthly utopias in a pantheistic reapproachement
of God and the world, the other side and the here and now. The
whole critique of Trubetskoy is directed at the eradicating of
all traces of a pantheistic consciousness, all the foundations
of the teaching about the Divinity of the present world. Pr. Trubetskoy
in nuances glimpses pantheistic elements in the religious and
philosophic consciousness of Solov’ev, and very carefully
he does away with them. For him the whole of pantheism is a remnant
of paganism and it engenders pagan imaginations about a Divine
life upon the earth. Vl. Solov’ev was a gnostic, and his
philosophy was close to that of Schelling in his final period.
Trubetskoy wants to cleanse the Christian consciousness of Solov’ev
from all gnostic mysticism and bring him nigh to an Orthodox theism.
And with his critical blows he sets upon the teaching of Solov’ev
about Sophia, in which he sees a complete triumphing of pantheistic
gnosticism. For Solov’ev the soul of the world is substantially
Divine, it is already Sophia. The world is a manifestation of
Divinity. The world process is perfected in God. For Trubetskoy
the world is external to the Divine, God is freed from the world
and the world is freed from God. The world is not a manifestation
of Divinity. The world process is completed outside of God. The
soul of the world is not Sophia. Sophia is not in the world, but
in God. For the world Sophia is only an ideal, an utmost norm,
an ought. Divine energy does not pour about in the world. Obviously,
every attempt to resolve the question about the relation of God
and the world, and tied in with this that question concerning
the issuance forth into the world of evil, has lying in wait for
it two pitfalls -- the pitfall of pantheism and the pitfall of
dualism. The pantheistic tendency conceives the world to be in
God and therefore sees evil in God. The dualistic tendency conceives
of another god, in which to see the source of evil. The eternal
contradictions of pantheism and dualism have never yet been rationally
conquered. The error of Trubetskoy is in this, that he believes
in the conquest of this contradiction by clear thought, in the
rational resolution of this problem. He does not want to recognise
the inconquerable antinomy of all religious thought. To wit simultaneously
that it is true, that the world is in God, and thus also, that
the world is outside of God, and that simultaneously it is true,
that in God cannot be the source of evil, and thus also, that
the whole world process, bound up with evil, is perfected in God.
All thought about God dwells upon these contradictions, which
arise from thought about the world and evil in the world and the
opposition of the world to God, it dwells in contradiction and
includes within itself both contradictory theses. Pantheism is
at the one side, and in its pure and extreme expression it is
a lie and a pitfall. And in suchlike pantheism there is no reconciling
and imperishable truth, without which is impossible any sort of
mysticism. A theism, which includes not within itself the truth
of pantheism, leads along an inclined plane to Deism, to a sundering
of the living connection between the world and God, to an affirmation
of God altogether separate from the world, to God, not active
in the world and not pouring through the world with energy. This
pitfall of the tendency towards Deism exists also for Trubetskoy.
Some sort of truth of pantheism is acknowledged by all the great
mystics, by all the religious gnostics. This inevitable pantheistic
moment, unsupported by some other principle, is not only in Vl.
Solov’ev, but also in Schelling, in Baader, in J. Boehme,
in Eckhardt, in Scotus Erigena, in Dionysios the Areopagite, Plotinos,
and furthermore in Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Theism, turned
off from the truth of pantheism, is not mystical.
In his
extreme distinction between God and the world, between heaven
and earth, the transcendent and the immanent, Trubetskoy breaks
with the mystical traditions. Truly so because, the mystical consciousness
and the mystical feel for being always repose upon the endless
proximity of the world and God, of the soul and God. Mystical
experience has always been a removal of the opposition between
the transcendent and the immanent. In mysticism God becomes immanent
to the human soul and the soul of the world. Mysticism, in a certain
sense, is always immanent, it is not reconciled with the transcendence
of God for the human soul. Mysticism, in essence, abolishes the
very distinction between the transcendent and the immanent, for
it there is neither the transcendent, nor the immanent, and in
the depths of spiritual life it surmounts this rational opposition.
The defect in all immanentism is in this, that it affirms the
immanent bereft of the transcendent, at the same moment when the
surmounting of the transcendent is also a surmounting of the immanent,
i.e. the surmounting of this very opposition. And thus too for
all mysticism. Traditional theism affirms exclusively the transcendence
of the Divinity, i.e. its remoteness from the soul. But the essence
of mysticism is in this, to avow God as close and not remote,
and to open up the path of communion with Him. If mysticism were
an avowal of the transcendence of the Divinity and the inaccessibility
of God for man, then the mystic ought to avow Spenser with his
teaching about the Unknown. Christian mysticism is based entirely
on the living-through by the soul of the immanence of Christ,
on the revealing of Christ from within, as something very intimate
to the soul. The Orthodox world is in turmoil over the dispute
about the Name of Jesus. The Imyaslavtsi (“Name-praisers”)
believe, that in the Name of Jesus, when it is pronounced within
the Jesus Prayer, there is a real presence of Jesus Himself. In
the Name of God is a real presence of the energy of God, which
issues forth from God Himself. In this, Orthodox mysticism as
it were acknowledges a partial truth of pantheism, wherein the
energy of God pours forth about in the world, and in man the two
worlds are united, and separation vanishes. The infinite expanse
between the world and God, between man and God is the product
of a more immature consciousness. In the days of the religious
childhood of mankind the distance between God and the soul serves
the aims of the education of man. But indeed positivism also is
a product of this infinite distance between man and God. A more
mature degree of spiritual consciousness diminishes the distance
of God. There is a sensing and an awareness of God, as deeply
profound and very intimately close to oneself. God no longer gives
fright by His remoteness, His foreignness and externality. And
Trubetskoy, certainly, avows, that in Christ God has become immanent
to man and to the world. The Son of God enters into the soul of
the world, into the earth and into man, and the earth and the
world begin to be made Divine and conjoined to Divine life. In
this indeed is the essence of Christianity. Christianity is also
a lifting away of the opposition between the immanent and the
transcendent. In Christ ultimately is revealed, that the image
and likeness of God in man is his natural Divine-participatory
communion of the Divine nature. In Christ man is filiated as a
son to God and affirms his God-likeness. The revelation of the
Trinitisation of the Divinity is already a dynamic, a process
in the Divine nature. There exists a dynamic of relationship between
the Persons of the Holy Trinity. The very creation of the world
is already of a process within God, in an egress from the condition
of repose, a creative process within God. Only a theism, which
knows not the mystery of Trinitisation, would deny process within
God and view God as a non-dynamic repose. The mystery of the Trinity
is already the mystery of Divine Dynamic. The world process therein
secures its reality, in that it is accomplished in heaven and
in Divine life, and that in it is an absolute benefit and growth.
The whole earthly process is illusory only for that false Platonism,
which imagines the heavenly humanity as externally existent and
complete, with the earthly humanity only repetitively gaining
entrance to the perfective repose of the heavenly humanity. But
the world is not completed and it is not shut tight, it continues
in the creation of the Eighth Day, in it is the possibility of
increase. And this increase is not only earthly, but also heavenly.
Upon the earth, within mankind is continued for real the creativity
of the heavenly, the Divine process.
Trubetskoy wants to
save the free creativity of the new in the world and in mankind
from that pantheistic negation, which would be the inevitable
result of the substantial and natural divinity of man in the world.
The world is external to the Divine and therefore by its free
effort it ought to become divinised. But here it remains incomprehensible,
what sort of path is it for the union with God? Trubetskoy takes
great pains over the separation of God and the world, about the
emphasising of the distance, but he does nothing by way of revealing
the paths of union. As regards the metaphysics of Trubetskoy,
there is not anything substantially-ontologic. There is only God
and the Divine-substantial Being, and the world is outside the
Divine. The world -- is nothing, since everything outside of God
is nothing. The human soul -- is thus not substantial. If man
were substantial, then essentially he would be divine. But man
already mustneeds be substantial and he can become substantial
only in God. Outside of God he is nothing. In a strange manner
Trubetskoy connects the freedom of man with this, that he is not
substantial. And particularly it is therefore, that since man
is external to the Divine and not substantial, that he is free
to become substantial and divine, and he is free also not to become
so. But from whence indeed is freedom to be gotten hold of from
nothing, from non-substantial being? How be it possible to avow
freedom for someone, who is not yet, who yet ought to be? Be it
possible to defend freedom and the self-sufficiency of the world
and man by this, to negate for them all substantial being, to
recognise them as being nothing? Can the gain be a religious profit
so non-substantial, so non-existent, so nothing a being? Freedom
is a substantial power, it is a self-determining of existents
from within. Trubetskoy conceives of substance not dynamically,
but statically, he does not want to see in substance an actual
energy, and therefore he sunders apart freedom and substance.
For him substance is perfect being, static, no longer active,
since it is absolutely completed. But such substance ought to
be altogether repudiated. Trubetskoy arrives at an affirmation
of positivism for the created world, for human life upon the earth.
Positivism also is externality to God, the non-substantiality
of the world. Evidently, the deep-rooted mistake of the religious
philosophy of Trubetskoy is in this, that for him only God is
mystic, whereas created nature and man -- is not mystic. But indeed
there is a mysticism of created nature, a mysticism of the soul
of the world and the soul of man, and within them are hidden great
Divine mysteries. Trubetskoy indeed confesses an idealism, for
which God is the norm, the ideal for the world. For him there
is no cosmic hierarchism, mediating betwixt God and man. If Solov’ev
can be accused of Schellingism, then Trubetskoy can be accused
of Fichte-ism. By what indeed pathway is the world to enter into
Divine life, to realise its norm?
Trubetskoy sees
in the erotic of Vl. Solov’ev the source for his earthly
utopias. Very consistently he lays waste all the erotic. He radically
rejects the mystical sense of love. But there is eros not only
for Vl. Solov’ev, but also for Plato, and for the majority
of philosopher-mystics it was the uniter of two worlds. The dualism
of Trubetskoy would destroy all the unification between the world
Divine and the world earthly. Dualistic knowledge is negated in
the creaturely, the earthly and the human, symbolic imaging-out
of Divine activity. In this world there is no mystical translucency.
But after his devastating of the mystical meaning of all the earthly
embodiments, Trubetskoy ought to arrive at a certain difficulty.
Rendered difficult for him is the question about the Church. In
the Church he believes in nothing, and besides the Church he acknowledges
nothing. But the Church ought also to seem one of the “earthly
utopias”, that this is the ultimate recourse of that utopianism,
which seeks the heavenly within the earthly, the Divine within
the human, the other-worldly in the this-sidely. Trubetskoy ultimately
to acknowledge, that upon earth, within earthly human history,
that the Church also is an impossibility and an utopia, that it
can appear only at the end of the world, only in the other-sidely.
And as regards the Church he ought to affirm his idealistic thesis,
i.e. to acknowledge it as being non-substantial, and as a norm,
an ideal. I reiterate, that the critique of theocracy by Trubetskoy
is excellent. But upon the path on which he stands, the critique
of theocracy mustneeds also be extended to the Church, as upon
an earthly utopian embodiment of the heavenly. He reduces the
Church to the sacraments. But the Church has always striven to
be more than the sacraments, it traverses the sphere of the earthly
embodiment of the heavenly. The Catholic Church conceives of itself
as a theocracy, the Kingdom of God upon earth. But the Orthodox
Church also is not free of theocratic pretensions to order the
world as regards itself. The separation of the Church from the
state, which Trubetskoy desires, is also a diminution within the
Church of earthly embodiments of the heavenly, a diluted churchly
utopianism. Mustneeds there not be upon this path a refusal of
embodiment of the heavenly into the earthly, until the very end
of the world? Trubetskoy subsequently defends the secularisation
of the whole of life and all of culture, and this mustneeds be
acknowledged as very powerful on his side. It is necessary to
renounce the lie and the sham of a Christian state, a Christian
science, a Christian culture, etc, etc. The process of secularisation
has an inner significance. But the whole of life and culture ought
anew to become religious. Trubetskoy does not uncover the path
to this, he does not point out the means for the spiritualisation
of life. The Church also is the path of the making Divine the
world. But in the metaphysics of Trubetskoy there is no place
for the existence of the Church upon the earth. The Church as
it were ought to remain in heaven. He demolishes all the earthly
utopias, but together with this he demolishes also the Church,
as resulting from an utopia. Trubetskoy points out the whole difficulty
of the existence of a Christian dominion. There is only one Christian
dominion -- this is the domain of the birds of the air and the
lilies of the fields. Freedom from care is the Gospel testament.
But upon earth it is impossible to be free from care, it is impossible
to live, as do the lilies of the field and the birds of the air,
upon the earth it is necessary to be prudent of domain. How to
get out of this? It is indeed impossible to put off resolution
of the contradictions of life until the end of the world. Do they
not take too lightly the burden of the religious antinomy of life?
It is necessary to accept life to the end, sacrificially and tragically.
There is already therein no justification for the religiously
neutral, for an external to God sociability and an external to
God culture. Trubetskoy was more in the right than Bulgakov, when
he rejects dominion from a Christian point of view and does not
reckon it a task Divine. Bulgakov indeed has transferred over
upon heaven his own economics, his own sweat. But the truth of
Bulgakov is in this, that he sees the tormentiveness of the religious
problem of economics and he does not reckon it possible to remain
on the soil of religious neutrality. It mustneeds be recognised,
that religiously there is nothing that is neutral, there is nothing
that is outside religion.
Trubetskoy is sympathetic
to the world-concept of the Vl. Solov’ev of the final period,
when he confessed a philosophy of the end. Only the philosophy
of the end, according to Trubetskoy, is free of all the earthly
utopias, and he senses the evil, which separates from God, the
strange illusion. The disillusion, which Trubetskoy lived through
under the influence of the Russian [1905] Revolution and the subsequent
Russian reaction, strengthened in him a philosophy of the end.
Trubetskoy became deeply disillusioned in Russia, and this disillusion
made of him a pessimist, he lost faith in the earthly, in the
possibility of good upon earth. The feeling of life became catastrophic.
For a new life, for a transfiguration, for good it was possible
to be arrived at only through the Cross. And Russia had to go
through the Cross, in order to be reborn. Betwixt this life and
life heavenly there lies the Cross. Trubetskoy was right in his
objections against the Slavophil pagan vision, which declared
the Kingdom of Christ in Rus’ without the Cross. But with
Trubetskoy there is a deep contradiction. A philosophy especially
of the end does not allow for anything neutral, outside religion,
outside the Divine. The philosophy of the end itself signifies
a crisis in everything neutral and the showing forth in everything
of a religious depth, a separation into the spirit of Christ and
the spirit of Anti-Christ. The philosophy of the end ought to
become conscious of a world crisis of culture, its ultimate religious
exodus. The philosophy of the end ought to proclaim forth the
end of all the mode of existence outside the Divine, of all life
outside the religious. Amidst this is how Trubetskoy wants to
confess the philosophy of the end and together with this to affirm
in very religious form an outside the Divine sociability and culture,
an ordering of life outside the religious. He continues to believe
in this, that everything outside the Divine is only but a step
towards the other-worldly Kingdom of God. His philosophy of the
end is the product of deep disillusions, and not of the immanent
crisis of world life. He affirms the philosophy of the end not
to the end and not for the end, but for a means, as an expression
of the dualism of two worlds, as the distance between the world
and God. But for the end the distance ought to be lessened. The
anti-Christian results of world processes in the final end will
not be neutrally-external to the Divine. The critique of Trubetskoy
is powerful, but his particular attempt to justify the bold and
active attitude towards life -- is weak. It remains incomprehensible,
why he in the end time period keeps faith in a neutral, and an
external to God state, or economics, family, philosophy, science
etc. All this is worthwhile as a philosophic means, but not as
a philosophic end. For Trubetskoy there remains only one exit:
complete renunciation of the world and monastic asceticism. But
he does not wish this path, he holds out for a world external
to the Divine, it becomes dear, the neutral and the positative
become dear, philosophy and science become dear as distinct from
theosophy, economics and the state become dear as distinct from
theocracy. But philosophy and science, the state and economics
ought to proceed through the Cross, through renunciation and sacrifice,
so that the world might arrive at the new heaven and the new earth.
But that everything should remain as before, and nothing change,
the onset of the end would be to no effect and for nothing. The
philosophy of the end remains a personal pessimism and disillusion,
and not a new world epoch. The great service of Trubetskoy is
that he leads to a clear positing of these themes.
But where indeed
is God-manhood for Trubetskoy, where is the Divine-human organism
and the Divine-human process? In the idea of God-manhood Trubetskoy
sees a great truth of Solov’ev. But the idea of God-manhood
-- is not a separating of the world and God, a this-side and a
that-side, but rather an unifying. The idea of God-manhood in
particular excludes the neutrally-external to God. The union of
the human and the Divine ought to be free and perfective. But
in what does Trubetskoy see the religious significance of God-manhood?
In this is the whole question. The idea of God-manhood demands
acknowledgement of this, that from man there ought to be a positive
gain in the Kingdom of God, that man ought to say his say in world
life. The idea of God-manhood presupposes the freedom of man and
his creative power. Man is not only properly such, but also actually,
in him the divineness is inherent. Man’s externality to
the Divine is but his falling-away from God, his sin, but in him
there is not only the falling-way and sin.
How then to
understand that catastrophic world-feeling, at which Trubetskoy
arrives in following after the Vl. Solov’ev of the final
period? Catastrophism is an end to the old Slavophil felicity
and well-being, of which even Vl. Solov’ev was not free
of, it is an end to all the utopian illusions, the illusions theocratic
and social. But catastrophism is something immeasurably more;
this -- is a new world period, a religious revolution within the
world, a shattering of the whole being and manner of religiousness,
a shattering of the racial. In every catastrophic world-feeling
there is not only the passing away of the old, but also the new
that is born. What new is to be born in the world-feeling of Trubetskoy?
He evidently does not expect anything religiously new. He restricts
himself to the cleansing of the old Christian consciousness and
the liberating of the sphere external to the Divine, into which
recedes that racial-kindred manner of life of human society, which
historically was interwoven with Christianity. But therein the
catastrophism would seem not so much a religious manifestation,
as rather social an one.
In sum total, the critique
is of the religio-philosophical construct of Pr. Trubetskoy. Trubetskoy
intended to build a world-outlook, completely free of any earthly
utopias or illusions. Does he succeed in this? I think, that his
negative critique is far stronger than his positive constructs.
He actually shatters the utopia of the Solov’ev theocracy,
and he gives final blows to the Slavophil nationalist illusions.
But with Pr. Trubetskoy there remains yet one illusion, from which
he cannot free himself. For the dualistic consciousness of
Trubetskoy, the Kingdom of God, the Divine life is rendered an
heavenly utopia -- an unattainable utopia, since there are no
sort of pathways to this other-worldly kingdom. The liberation
from earthly utopias begets heavenly utopianism. Wherefore, truly,
this is utopian, in that it is absolutely transcendent and other-worldly
for human ability and creativity, and for it there are no here
and now pathways. For utopianism it is characteristic, that religious
life should be structured outside the realisable ideal. And for
Trubetskoy the religious life is structured outside the Divine,
outside the utopia of an other-worldly Kingdom of God. The Church
itself becomes an utopia for Trubetskoy, it is not for him personal,
but rather for him it is a religio-philosophic construct. The
idealistic construct of Trubetskoy recognises the Church of God
itself as an unattainable ideal, an other-worldly utopia. Not
utopian, and free of heavenly utopianism is only that consciousness,
which permits of active Divine energies in the world and allows
for a path of the realisation of the Divine life here, just also
as there, down below just like up above, wherein it removes the
dualistic opposition between the here and the there, between that
below and that above. Not utopian is the thought, which stands
on the soil of rebirth into a new spiritual man, into a new creature
both here and there, on the earth and in heaven. It is necessary
to believe in the attainment of Divine life and the realisation
of the Kingdom of God, in the immanent and the transcendent simultaneously,
so as not to be doomed to an heavenly utopianism. The service
of the interesting work of Trubetskoy is in this, that he has
sharply set forth the problem of heavenly utopianism. But in the
religious philosophy of Trubetskoy there is very weak a sense
of the Russian searchings for the City to Come.
Nikolai Berdyaev
1913
© 2000 by translator Fr. S. Janos
(1913 - 170 -en)
O ZEMNOM I NEBESNOM UTOPIZME. (Po povodu knigi Kn. E. Trubetskoy
“Mirosozertsanie Vl. Solov’ev”). -- Journal
“Russkaya Mysl’”, sept. 1913, p. 46-54.
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