N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
CONCERNING THE CHARACTER
OF THE RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS
THOUGHT
OF THE XIX CENTURY
(1930 - #345)
I
The motifs of the Russian
Christian thought of the XIX Century have not been sufficiently
evaluated. In it there were unresolved problems, passed on to
succeeding ages. The XIX Century was for us an age polarised into
two, schismatic, disintegrated and restless, an age of the sprouting
forth of revolution. But then too it was a great age, an age of
the blossoming of Russian spiritual culture, an age of Russian
great literature, not merely the equal as regards the greatest
of world literature, but in some respects even surpassing it.
Only with the XIX Century did we have an age of thought and word.
Before it, the Russian nation was a people almost without thought
and mute. Our thought was merely in an unexpressed potential,
our word was merely inward. Before the time of Peter, ancient
Rus’ knew an highly formless plasticity of culture, architecture
and iconography, a cultural modus likewise exclusive to a national
literature. We had great saints and a cult of sanctity. But thoughts
religious, theological and philosophical, we had not, for Rus’
was not yet roused for thought. The Orthodox world for long centuries
lived asleep in thought. Orthodoxy lived only through the Patristic
age, but it had not its own age of Scholasticism, it did not live
through the Renaissance of thought, which in the West happened
from out of the depths of the Medieval period. Orthodox thought
in pre-Petrine Rus’ was connected exclusively with the religious
mission of the Russian realm, with the fundamental basis of the
idea of an Orthodox tsardom. Of such was the monk Philothei with
his idea of Moscow as Third Rome, Joseph the official Sanin (Volotsky),
and Ivan the Terrible. Of old already, while still amidst the
Russian Middle Ages, there had stirred the historiosophic motifs
of thought, which would be so characteristic of our XIX Century.
These historiosophic motifs are heard within our Church Schism
and comprise its chief content of idea. The Schism was a product
not only of ignorance and ritualism of theme, but also from the
struggle posited in the depth of the national consciousness for
a messianic idea of an Orthodox tsardom, invoked to preserve in
the world the true faith. But Russian thought of the present time
was born of upheaval, evoked by the greatest event of Russian
history -- the Reform of Peter. The revolution, wrought by Peter,
deepened the Church Schism and spread it wider. The national consciousness
responded to the deed of Peter by the creation of a legend, that
the Russian tsardom had gone over to the Anti-Christ. This prepared
the way within the subconscious life of the Russian nation, in
the dark night of its soul, for the anarchism of Russian thought
in the XIX Century. Within the Schism already had been included
strong nihilist motifs, which then emerged in the thought of our
Intelligentsia, likewise schismatic in its spirit. During the
XIX Century the Schism broke through upwards and seized hold of
our cultural intellectual stratum, again for us comprised of the
Intelligentsia. The Slavophils were our raskolniki-schismatics
in one sense, and the narodniki-populists and socialists in another.
The day by day
conscious soul of the Russian nation, in the face of a new Europeanised
stratum, lived during the XVIII Century a superficial manner of
life and did not result in original creative thought. The Russian
gentry of the XVIII Century was united in the externals with European
civilisation and but reflected the trends of Western thought.
The effect of the Western thought of the time produced upon the
Russian soil Voltaireanism and Masonism, free-thinker enlightenment
and spiritual mystical searchings. For us likewise was reflected
the duality of the European XVIII Century, the century of Voltaire,
Diderot, Helvetius, but also the century of Martinez de Pasqually,
Sainte-Martin, Swedenborg, Lavater, Jung-Stilling. But creative
Russian thought had not yet awakened in these tendencies of the
XVIII Century, nothing original was created by the Russian enlightenment-freethinkers
and Mason-mystics. Novikov and Radischev -- are typical representatives
of these two currents of the XVIII Century. The Masons attempted
to create free self-organised societies, pursuing values of spiritual
enlightenment. But they reflected the thought of second-rate theosophists
and mystics on the order of Jung-Stilling and Eckharthausen. In
the Russian freethinker enlightenment, the solely indeed original
and fruitful consequences were the words of Radischev: “My
soul has become lacerated with the sufferings of mankind”.
With these words began the history of the people-oriented Intelligentsia.
In the theological thought of the XVIII Century nothing original
was created. Russian Orthodox thought had not yet been born. The
tradition of Greek Patristics, basic to the Orthodox, was distorted
and eviscerated, and over the course of long centuries it had
ceased to generate dynamic thought. When the need arose for us
to theologise, there was then a resorting to Western thought,
to the Catholic and the Protestant. The Catholic influence infiltrated
through the Kiev Spiritual Academy, through Peter Moghila. Stefan
Yavorsky and Theophan Prokopovich were wont to reflect on a particular
point a Catholic theologising, and on some other point a Protestant
theologising. The teaching abilities of the Church had been weakened
and sundered by the Schism. During the remarkable epoch of Alexander
I the soul begotten of the soil crumbled apart, and there was
born the divided soul of the XIX Century. But the mystical developement
of that epoch, often bearing an inter-confessional hue, was in
its thought without originality.
Original and creative Russian
thought began only in the XIX Century. Only in this century did
Russian thought make bold to speak its word. Two facts from the
beginning of the century anticipate the emergence of Russian thought
and the Russian self-awareness -- the Fatherland War and the appearance
of Pushkin. The Fatherland War was a felicitous shaking up of
the Russian nation, in which in but an instant the Russian cultural
stratum of Peter’s epoch and a stratum of the people sensed
themselves belonging to an unity of nations. The Russian nation
as a whole sensed itself capable of action, as having a liberating
significance for all Europe. Russian guardsmen returned from Western
Europe with a great array of impressions and with new cultural
horizons. But of still greater significance was the appearance
of the first creative genius for us. The nation, in which had
appeared the all-encompassing and charming genius of Pushkin,
could now conceive itself capable of great culture, it answered
the call of Peter, and Russian culture took its place alongside
the greatest cultures of the West. In Pushkin was discerned the
Russian world-wide scope of sympathy, so esteemed by Dostoevsky.
The creativity of Pushkin brought us out of the condition of isolation.
The epoch of Alexander is in general characterised by an universalist
spirit. It was an epoch of integration, not of differentiation.
Russia emerged from its condition of seclusion and isolation,
it was incorporated into the life of the world. Without suchlike
an opening up and emergence onto the world scene, the consciousness
of its world vocation would have been impossible. In the epoch
of Alexander everything was still indeterminate, nothing was crystallised.
The soul became more alert, receptive and reflective. There became
possible a deeper pondering over the Russian destiny, over the
place of Russia in the world. Original Russian thought was born,
an historiosophic thought. It attempted to solve the enigma of
what the Creator intended for Russia. Of what sort is the path
of Russia and of the Russian nation, is it the same also as with
the nations of the West, or does it have its own altogether unique
path? Russia and Europe, East and West, -- here is the fundamental
theme of Russian reflection and Russian ponderings. The Russian
destiny presented itself as tragic and tortuous, and the agony
over it summoned forth a particularly tortuous reflection of thought.
It afflicted many of the Russian people of the XIX Century and
in particular there was the desire to think about the causes of
the ills and the methods of cure. Why from the Reforms of Peter
has there occurred such duality and schism, why is the Russian
cultural stratum so without roots, why is there no organic connection
between authority and society, between the church hierarchy and
the church people, between the Intelligentsia and the People?
Can it be that the Reform of Peter was an act of violence against
the national soul which has shoved Russia onto a false, non-organic
path? The messianic idea of old was deeply ingrained in the soul
of the Russian nation. But there was never a clearly manifest
ability capable to realise the messianic calling of Russia. Old
pre-Petrine Muscovite Rus’ was unable to realise this calling.
Without the Reforms of Peter, Russia would have been left backward,
cut off from world history, and the Russian nation would have
become a second-rate people. But even Petrine and Imperial Russia
did not go the path, the path necessary to realise the religious
vocation of the Russian people. The Russian empire bears very
little resemblance to the Third Rome Russia. There is no integral
wholeness to the Russian historical destiny. And the Slavophils
themselves, in contradiction to their organic understanding of
Russian history, and on basis of faith seemingly ignoring its
military conquests, were compelled to admit, that the deed of
Peter was a catastrophic and painful rupture. And the Church Schism,
and the Time of Troubles, and the Tatar-Mongol Yoke, and the transition
from Kievan Rus’ to Muscovite Rus’? All this testifies
the rather, that schisms and catastrophic ruptures are more characteristic
of Russian history. Far less anguished, and more organic, is the
history of the Western nations.
For the XIX Century Russia was
structured, such that our intellectual stratum had a sense of
complete groundlessness. It began also sharply to ponder and to
philosophise, conscious of its complete groundlessness and suspension
over the abyss. Russia ultimately was transformed into an immense
peasant tsardom, dependent upon serfdom, illiterate and totally
foreign to those paths upon which trod the culture of the Petrine
period, with the tsar at the head, the authority of which was
religiously sanctioned in the national consciousness, with a very
subtle stratification distributed between two powers -- the power
of the national elements and the power of the tsar’s might,
and with a very dense and powerful stratum of bureaucracy. For
us the classes and social hierarchies always were weakly developed
and lacked firm historical traditions. The paradox of Russian
spiritual culture of the XIX Century consists in this, that the
groundlessness of Russian thought, its aethereal quality, its
unconnectedness to a durable tradition, was not only its weakness
and defect, but also its strength and virtue. The groundlessness
of Russian thought in the XIX Century and of Russian religious
thought in particular was a source for its extraordinary freedom,
unknown to the nations of the West with their close connection
to their histories. The ungrounded and completely free thought
opened endless vistas. Our thought, once having roused itself,
became extraordinarily radical and audacious. And our suchlike
love for freedom and audacity rarely is repeated. Ungrounded thought
and the schismatic always become more free, than thought grounded
in and connected with organic traditions. Not only our revolutionary,
but also our religious thought, lacked firm ground, and did not
accept the existing actuality. All our pondering of the XIX Century
stands beneathe the standard of a non-acceptance of the present,
it oriented everything at one point towards the past, and at another
point towards the future. Our religious thought started up without
a tradition, after a five hundred year interruption within Orthodoxy,
it was not schoolish, and its bearers were not hierarchs of the
Church, but rather free thinkers. The greatest Orthodox theologian
of Russia is perhaps the cavalry officer and land-owner A. S.
Khomyakov -- unacknowledged in the West, where theological thought
is advanced by hierarchs of the Church and by professors of theological
schools. The first remarkable Russian historiosophist was an officer
of the hussar life-guard regiment, Chaadaev. Khomyakov did not
accept the Petrine Imperial Russia and turned to an idealised
ancient Rus’. Chaadaev did not accept the whole of Russian
history and turned to an idealised West, to the grandeur of world
history. It is noteworthy concerning the Russian destiny, that
when our thought had roused itself in Chaadaev, the Russian authority
responded by declaring him a madman. Russian religious thought
had its own great problems, beyond the bounds of tradition, beyond
the constraints of authority. The authority of the Church hierarchy
during the Petrine period was so very compromised, that it ceased
inwardly to be imposing by its spiritual power, teaching and guidance.
In his Orthodox theologising, Khomyakov sensed himself not at
all connected with the authority of the hierarchy and he did not
consider himself bound in guidance by their opinions. He openly
disdained the “dogmatic theology” of Metropolitan
Makarii, and denounced it as being insufficiently Orthodox in
thought. Secular thought took upon itself the task of the working-out
of an Orthodox theology and a Christian philosophy. And it sensed
itself infinitely free, and indeed it directly perceived freedom
as the very primal-basis of Orthodoxy. This was thought not only
free, but it was also thought about freedom as the foundation
of Christianity.
A singular hierarch of the Church,
extraordinarily gifted and capable of an original theologising,
was Metropolitan Philaret, a figure of stature in every respect,
about whom Pushkin wrote: “And doth hearken the harp of
Seraphim in sacred dread a poet”. But Metropolitan Philaret
was unable to develope as a theologian, for he was stifled by
the oppressive conditions, in which our official theology was
situated. 1 The thought of Metropolitan Philaret was not free,
it was too closely bound up with the empire and subject to its
pressure. He emerged from amidst the inter-confessional era of
Alexander I, he was active in the Bible Society and began to theologise
under a Protestant influence, while striving to surmount the Protestant
tendencies, inwardly reworking them into an Orthodox spirit. The
theology of Metropolitan Philaret, very tolerant towards heterodox
confessions of faith, was pre-eminently a Biblical theology, and
in this is his uniqueness. But for Metropolitan Philaret there
is a failure to create a Russian Orthodox type of theology, such
as transpired to be created by Khomyakov. Throughout the extent
of the XIX Century with our academic theology of the hierarchs
of the Church and of the Spiritual Academies, nothing remarkable
was created. 2 Into them penetrated elements of the Petrine enlightenment,
rationalism and nominalism. The ancient traditions of Orthodox
thought are almost completely absent. The tradition of Platonism
within Christian philosophy was restored for us by people of secular
thought, who proved themselves closer to the Greek Patristics,
than were the hierarchs and professors of the Spiritual Academies.
And against the Russian secular religious thought, our clergy
circles revolted not in the name of ancient tradition, but in
the name of the nominalism and rationalism of the Petrine Synodal
period. There was a time, when in our Spiritual Academies the
philosophy of Wolff was considered obligatory, as most in accord
with the spirit of Orthodoxy. But a fresh current of theological
and religious thought came about for us under the influence of
the German Idealism of the beginning XIX Century.
II
The raising of the historiosophic
theme, about the uniqueness of Russia and the Russian path, of
necessity led Russian thought towards religious philosophy. If
the Russian East is an unique world, distinct from the world of
the West, then at the basis of Russian history and the Russian
spiritual type stands Eastern Christianity, Orthodoxy. Not only
did the Slavophils acknowledge this, but also Chaadaev, who from
this drew other, pessimistic conclusions. The philosophy of history,
which discerns in Orthodoxy a basis for the uniqueness of the
Russian historical process, invariably passes over into religious
philosophy, in an attempt to perceive and to ponder the essence
of Orthodoxy in its distinction from the Western faith-confessions,
Catholicism and Protestantism. There is born the need to create
an Orthodox philosophy. The official school theology, created
under the influence of Catholic and Protestant thought, failed
to satisfy this need. Russian Orthodoxy up to this time did not
have its own theology and its own philosophy, creative thought
had not yet awakened within it. And here Iv. Kireevsky, the first
thinker of the Slavophil school, tries to formulate the tasks
of Russian philosophy, of Eastern Orthodox thought, which needed
to be untwisted from the governing interests of our national lifestyle.
And Kireevsky does lay down the foundation of a Russian religious
philosophy, rooted in the Orthodox spiritual type. Further developing
it would be A. Khomyakov, enriching it with theological intuitions
of genius. But then also, an original religious philosophy cannot
take its start in a vacuum. Thought cannot be developed without
a tradition, without a connection to the past history of thought.
It simply did not exist, it needed to be created, to put in place
the foundations of a tradition. Greek Orthodox thought ground
to an halt and became congealed during the Dark Ages, from it
we long ago had become sundered, and it cannot give answers to
the many questions, posed by the consciousness of the XIX Century.
Russian Orthodox thought awakened at a later hour of history,
after in effect living through centuries of the stormy history
of the West. The tumultuous collisions of Catholicism and Protestantism
had acutely refined thought and engendered manifold intellectual
tendencies. It had lived through the experiences of Humanism and
the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Revolution. Christian thought
needed to respond to the stirrings and questionings of the new
times. Patristics does not provide answer to quite many of these
questions. Russian religious philosophy emerges after the experience
of the modern history, when Russia was thrust into the whirlpool
of world history. Our thinking could not remain isolated. And
it did indeed display great responsiveness to the problems, raised
by the consciousness of the XIX Century. The religious problems
of this time became for us even more heatedly acute, than in Western
thought. But there obtained a very paradoxical position, occasioned
by reaction among Orthodox circles on the right, which expressed
misgivings on the Orthodox character of the Russian religious
thought of the XIX Century. These doubts were spoken regarding
A. Khomyakov, and still moreso about Vl. Solov’ev.
And what of this, regarding Orthodox
Russian thought, that it is based on Schelling and German idealist
philosophy? Here we meet with a fundamental fact in the history
of Russian philosophy and the theological thought of the XIX Century.
All our most original and creative thought was put together under
the influence of German Idealism and Romanticism, that of Schelling
and Hegel. Schelling was a philosopher beloved by us, and this
remained so throughout the XIX Century. The philosophy of Hegel
was however that ground, from which our thought took off and which
it attempted to surmount. Orthodox thought availed itself of categories,
worked out by German idealist philosophy. How is this fact to
be regarded? Is not the originality of our thought diminished
by this and is not its Orthodox subject in doubt? K. Leont’ev
in the XIX Century and P. Florensky in the XX Century often made
criticism against Khomyakov and the “Slavophil Orthodoxy”.
K. Leont’ev posited against the Orthodoxy of Khomyakov the
Orthodoxy of Athos, of Philaret, of Optina, as being the more
genuine. He saw in the Orthodoxy of Khomyakov a powerful admixture
of elements humanistic, Protestant, liberal-democratic. Father
P. Florensky frankly accuses Khomyakov of Protestantism, of immanentism,
of humanism. Khomyakov is denounced in that he took his teaching
about freedom not from Orthodoxy and Orthodox tradition, but from
German Idealism, which was embued with the pathos of freedom.
They disdained to find an Orthodox tradition, which would confirm
Khomyakov’s teaching about freedom as a basis of an Orthodox
understanding of the Church. The furor against Vl. Solov’ev
would be even stronger, and he would even moreso be accused of
borrowings from Schelling and German Idealism. 3 From the point of view of Orthodox extremism, the
reaction against Russian religious thought, that which is solely
original and creative for us, can produce an impression of proof.
The empirical Orthodox Church, such as we find it in history,
does not resemble the Church of Khomyakov, the ideal Church, grounded
in love and freedom. The Sobornost’ of Khomyakov cannot
express itself in our Church. The Church was stifled by the state,
which did not permit of suchlike sobor-councils. Nor is it at
all easy to find in the empirical Orthodoxy Solov’ev’s
teaching about God-manhood as the essence of Christianity.
In actuality the meaning of this,
of what we have mentioned, is entirely otherwise. From a Germanising
basis, rather than that of Russian religious thought, it would
be possible to accuse Greek Patristics of being insufficiently
Orthodox and Christian in character. As is known, liberal Protestant
historians of dogmatics, for example Harnack, accuse the Greek
Teachers of the Church of reworking dogmatics into an Hellenisation
of Christianity, in making the Gospel and Christian revelation
subordinate to Hellenic philosophy. But actually, the Greek Fathers
of the Church, when necessitated in their defense of Christian
revelation to have a go upon avenues of thought and knowledge
to work out dogmatic formulae, did make much use of the utmost
philosophy of that time, the Hellenic pagan philosophy, and its
chief figure Plato and Neo-Platonism. Platonism was rendered the
source for Christian philosophy and Christian theology. St. Thomas
Aquinas did the same in the West in christening Aristotle, and
he so employed the categories of Aristotelian philosophy for the
developing of Catholic theology and metaphysics, that Catholic
dogma was rendered fused with Aristotelianism. Undoubtedly, Plato
and Aristotle were not moreso, but rather less Christian, than
Schelling and Hegel. And here I assert, that the Russian religious
philosophy of the XIX Century did analogously, what the Greek
Teachers of the Church did in their own time. Just as these latter
utilised the utmost philosophy of their time, Plato and Neo-Platonism,
for the defense and uncovering of Christian truth given within
revelation, so likewise did the Russian religious thinkers do
their work, utilising the utmost philosophy of their time, that
of Hegel and German Idealism. Thus always it will be at the awakening
of Christian thought and knowledge, at the awakening of Christian
theologising and philosophising. The truth of the Christian revelation
cannot be dependent upon Plato, nor upon Schelling, nor as may
be whatever the human philosophy. But a Christian, and in the
present instance an Orthodox philosophy, is always a philosophy
and in such a capacity it depends upon the path of philosophic
knowledge, on the philosophic problematics of its time. Only by
complete thoughtlessness and obscurantism can this be denied.
To construct a Christian philosophy with the help of Bergson,
as Catholic Modernists strive to do, can be just as justified,
as to construct it with the help of Aristotle. Thomism in its
time was modernism. And all the same, no sort of philosophy can
possess an obligatory connection to Christian revelation. The
truth of Christian revelation and the dogmas of the Church cannot
became antiquated, but the philosophical and theological doctrines
of the teachers of the Church, as with the Medieval Scholastics,
can become relatively antiquated and not answer the needs of the
contemporary consciousness and the contemporary problematics of
knowledge. That the Russian religious thinkers of the XIX Century
made use of Schelling and the philosophic thought of their time,
seems impermissible only to those of the Orthodox, who see in
a vacuity of thought the inner essence of Orthodoxy. But in this
instance even they would be unfaithful to the traditions of Greek
Patristics. It mustneeds be said, that the Russian religious thought
of the XIX Century, from Khomyakov to Vl. Solov’ev, did
not merely translate over into the Russian language the German
idealists, Schelling and Hegel, but rather it creatively transformed
and surmounted them, it went over from idealism to realism. It
may be that in Khomyakov’s teaching about freedom, forming
the basis of his conception of the Orthodox Church, the German
idealists had an influence. But from this nowise can it be concluded,
that this teaching itself about freedom is in any way un-Christian
or non-Orthodox. In this indeed can be viewed an altogether different
meaning. Christianity lives and is dynamic within history. And
afront the Christian consciousness life presents entirely new
questions. There exist various epochs of Christianity, and each
epoch has its own torment and its own difficulty for Christian
thought. An epoch has now ensued, when Christian freedom ought
the more to be revealed, than it was revealed in former epochs.
With the old teachers of the Church we shall not find suchlike
a teaching about Christian freedom, as there was with Khomyakov.
The Russian Orthodox thought of the XIX Century reveals within
Christianity that, which was insufficiently revealed. The problem
of freedom stands at the centre of Russian religious thought,
and upon this problem it assumes an opposite position from Catholic
thought. And then too it is necessary to speak about the humanism
of the Russian religious thinkers, Khomyakov and later on Vl.
Solov’ev. Yes, they were Christian humanists. But in this
was their strong side. It was necessary in a Christian way to
make sense of the humanistic experience of modern history, in
which there were put forth problems, unknown to the Patristic
and Scholastic consciousness. 4 The problem about man stands at the centre of the
new consciousness. And there mustneeds begin to be revealed the
Christian teaching about man, about his vocation in the world.
It should all the moreso be revealed, that Christianity is the
religion of God-manhood, and to derive this conclusion from the
Christological dogma. The human side of the life of the Church
was stifled in the past and human activity was insufficiently
disclosed. In Orthodoxy there has been a Monophysite tendency.
It mustneeds be overcome. In the humanistic processes of modern
history Christian powers also are active, but imperceptibly and
subconsciously. Russian religious thought discerns this, particularly
Vl. Solov’ev in his teaching about God manhood. If within
the traditional teaching of the Church there is no such teaching
about freedom and about man, then this evidences an incompleteness
and insufficient discernment of Christian truth. In this was the
creative task of Russian religious thought. This was a problematic
thought, with a strong prophetic element.
III
I am not prepared to write an
history of the Russian religious thought of the XIX Century, for
which a whole book would be needed. My purpose -- is to define
the character of Russian religious thought and to examine its
fundamental problematics. What were the fundamental motifs and
themes of the Russian religious thought of the XIX Century? The
Russian religious thinkers of the XIX Century created few complete
written works, which could be read by successive generations as
books considered classical. Many of them did not write a single
genuine book, but instead expressed their remarkable intuitions
only in written articles. This mustneeds be said about Chaadaev,
as well as about I. Kireevsky, A. Khomyakov, 5 about K. Leont’ev, N. Fedorov, and Bukharev
-- one of the most remarkable Russian theologians of the XIX Century,
extraordinarily interesting in his problematics, and he wrote
so ponderously, that it is possible to read him only with difficulty.
The Russian religious thought of the XIX Century is remarkable
not for the completeness of its written works, but for its religious
stimulation and investigation in its problematics. It posited
acutely the religious problems of our epoch, which still did not
have any sort of binding churchly solution and which for its creative
solution would appeal to generations yet to come. It did not provide
a systematic theological resolution of these problems, and in
this was not only its weakness, but also its strength. Foremost
in what Russian religious thought of the XIX Century affirmed,
is Christian freedom. And it did this in a form, as yet not present
in the history of the Christian consciousness. Khomyakov and Dostoevsky
were for us the chief heralds of Christian freedom. All the theological
activity of Khomyakov is an hymn to Christian freedom. For him
it is not only the Church hierarchy, it is not only the Church
that is not authority, but even God Himself is not authority.
The categories of authority are applicable only to a lower plane
of being. It negates the greatness of God. God is freedom, and
only but in freedom does He reveal Himself. Even more radical
in defense of freedom of the spirit is Dostoevsky, who was the
greatest of our religious thinkers. In the “Legend about
the Grand Inquisitor”, Christ is the freedom of the spirit,
whereas the Anti-Christ is the negation of freedom, is coercion
and compulsion. But the Russian idea of Christian freedom is very
distinct from the idea of Christian freedom, as it appears in
Protestant thought. Christian freedom on the soil of Orthodoxy
is not individualism. The problem of freedom presents itself quite
otherwise than in the opposition of churchly authority and individualism.
An authoritative understanding of the Church is the obverse side
of individualism. When the individual lives organically within
the Church, then the Church cannot be for him an external authority.
Christian freedom is realised within free life. Only then is the
freedom of the individual not a formal and empty freedom, it is
not freedom as a designated right, or as a protection. Dostoevsky,
who in his defense of freedom can give the impression of being
an anarchist, was not at all an individualist. Dostoevsky was
an unique mystical collectivist, and this collectivism he posits
in opposition to atheistic collectivism, which negates the person
and the freedom of the spirit. Within this is all the originality
of the Russian problematic of freedom. Christian freedom is altogether
otherwise than the struggle for the right of the individual, being
defended from and delimited from other individuals. The problem
of freedom presents itself within the utmost depths. Freedom is
not a right, but rather a responsibility of Christianity. It is
not man that demands freedom from God, but rather that God demands
freedom from man. Freedom is a burden and a weight, which mustneeds
be borne in the name of the utmost worthiness and God-likeness
of man. God accepts only the free in spirit, He does not accept
the worship of the would-be slave. Khomyakov speaks much about
this. For the orthodox minded among the Protestants there has
remained only the external authority of Scripture, the Word of
God. Russian religious thought has no desire to accept suchlike
an authority. The Word of God is the inner life of the Christian.
Both Khomyakov and Dostoevsky wanted to overcome the final remains
of religious slavery, as being not in conformity to the spirit
of Christ. They expressed a new consciousness within Christianity,
a maturing towards the utmost freedom of the spirit. Christian
mankind cannot yet permit itself a more easy and less responsible
life in necessity, in compulsion, it cannot indeed relegate to
authority the resolutions of the fundamental tasks of life. We
enter upon an epoch, when from man will be demanded the enormously
great, when upon himself he ought to shoulder the burden of freedom
and live out the tragedy, connected with freedom. In the conditions
of life, not having known the elementary freedom, which the Western
nations know, there opened up for us the immeasurable freedom
of the spirit. For us, hapless citizens, unable to defend their
rights, there were revealed horizons invisible still of freedom
of the spirit. And this was accepted by neither the official ecclesiality,
nor by the freedom-minded Intelligentsia.
The idea of
Sobornost’, of communality, was another idea affirmed in
Russian religious thought alongside the idea of freedom. It implied
an organic understanding of the nature of the Church. Sobornost’
is a word almost unrenderable into foreign languages, a concept
very difficult for customary forms of thought both Protestant
and Catholic, which tended always to be focused on the opposition
between authority and the individual. The spirit of Sobornost’,
poured forth out into the life of the Church, is also essentially
the sole inner authority, which according to the teaching of Khomyakov,
permits of an Orthodox consciousness. And even the Oecumenical
Councils themselves, according to Khomyakov, do not possess an
external obligatory authority. Higher than the Sobor (Council
or Assemblage) and indeed that which sanctions the Sobor, defining
which Sobor is genuinely oecumenical -- the spirit of Sobornost’,
living within the Church and within the churchly people. Sobornost’
is inexpressible in any sort of rationalistic or juridical concepts,
it is comprehendable only in the communality towards the inner
life of the Church. Sobornost’ also is a religious collectivism,
but distinct from the categories so familiar to the West, those
of authority and individualism. Into Sobornost’ there enters
in the freedom of spirit and of conscience, without which it would
not exist, and in it the person lives organically, and is not
negated but the rather affirmed by the principle of Sobornost’.
In suchlike a form, the teaching about Sobornost’ was first
expressed by Khomyakov and shows his genius of intuition. He discerned
Sobornost’ within a mentally grasped image of the Orthodox
Church, in the inner conjunction of unity and freedom, of freedom
and love. In the empirical image of the Orthodox Church, presented
by history, the disclosing of Sobornost’ in pure visage
is met with never, and often it seems, that it does not exist.
Khomyakov’s Sobornost’ frightens the official school
theology. Khomyakov sketched out an ideal image of the Church,
its as it were Platonic idea. And through this he set forth the
great problem of Christian society, the problem of person and
society within the churchly aspect, of the conjoining by grace
of freedom and love. In traditional Orthodox doctrine it is difficult
to find Khomyakov’s Sobornost’, it is replaced by
the authority of bishops, or the Church as an institution or as
a community of believers. Sobornost’ is the inward spiritual
community, standing beyond the external churchliness, a sacramental
community comprised of both the living and the dead, grace-imbued
by the Holy Spirit, co-united with Christ by love, perfectly free,
not knowing any sort of compulsion nor external authority. This
is not only a perception and pondering of the nature of the Orthodox
Church, but it is also an expectation and hope, that the genuine
community of Christ will be patterned out. Sobornost’ is
not only the ideal image of the Church, it is also an expectation
and seeking out of the onset of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom
of God also is the ultimate realisation of the fullness of Sobornost’
in the life of the spirit. With Khomyakov himself this was not
sufficiently revealed, but this theme was transferred on to succeeding
generations of Russian religious thinkers. This brings us to yet
another feature of the Russian religious thought of the XIX Century:
its innate prophetic spirit, oriented towards that to come, with
an intense seeking of the Kingdom of God, with the presentiment
of the onset of a new religious epoch and new accomplishments.
A perceptible propheticism is little
to be sensed in Khomyakov and the Slavophils, who were too set
in the way of life ingrained in the landed gentry. But the element
of propheticism was already in Chaadaev, it was already in Bukharev,
it was most perceptible in Vl. Solov’ev, and with genius
it was best expressed in Dostoevsky and characteristic of all
the Russian great literature, filled with religious unrest and
presentiment. In a pessimistic and unhopeful form it was present
in K. Leont’ev, and in new form it was disclosed at the
end of the century in the religion of resuscitation of N. Fedorov.
Russian religious thought prophesies, in anguish it aches for
the coming destiny of Christianity in the world, for a relationship
of Christianity to the world, both eternal and temporal. And those,
who are hostile to the prophetic spirit and deny its permissibility
within Christianity, mustneeds also be hostile to Russian religious
thought and fear its boldness. With propheticism is connected
the very disturbing problem of the possibility of new revelations,
of dogmatic developement within the Church, of the creative process
within Christianity. We find this in Bukharev, Dostoevsky, Vl.
Solov’ev, N. Fedorov, although not quite clearly and consciously
expressed by them. Bukharev, who wrote in so antiquated and non-literary
a mode, making it almost impossible to read him, was a man of
prophetic mindset. 6 With him there are already all the problems of the
new religious consciousness -- a new attitude of Christianity
towards the world, a transfiguration by Christianity of all the
fullness of life, the continuation of the God-incarnation process
within history, the understanding of Christianity as the religion
of God-manhood, the surmounting of that understanding of Orthodoxy,
wherein Christianity exhausts itself as an ascetic religion of
individual salvation, and the struggle with the spirit of legalism
and juridicism within the Church. The propheticism of Dostoevsky
and Vl. Solov’ev is known to everyone. And with them is
connected all the consequent problematics. With N. Fedorov, propheticism
is recast into activism, it ceases to be a passive expectation
of the end of the world and the Second Coming, and it is recast
as a call to action with the Christianisation of the world, a
call for the activity of man in the world. He boldly interprets
the apocalyptic prophecies as a conditional threat: the world
is to end, there will be the Dread Last Judgement and the eternal
perishing of many, if mankind does not unite itself for the common
task of the resuscitation of the dead and the ordering of world
life, both social and cosmic, in the image of the Holy Trinity.
N. Fedorov goes out beyond the historical bounds of Orthodoxy,
as also do many religious thinkers, but in no way does he separate
himself off from Orthodoxy nor place himself in opposition to
it. He considers the common task possible only on the soil of
Orthodoxy. From Khomyakov to Fedorov there was traversed a great
path. Propheticism is always oriented towards the Kingdom of God,
towards the completion of world history. But the seeking of the
Kingdom of God is a fundamentally dynamic motif of Russian religious
thought. It is essentially eschatological. In the second half
of the XIX Century eschatologism quite intensified within the
Russian religious consciousness, and together with this, it mysteriously
made contact with the eschatologism of the Russian people’s
religiosity. Russian religious thought acutely puts forth the
question, whether propheticism is possible within Christianity,
whether religious newness is possible. It denied, that “Orthodoxy
is completely a given”, that the Church is a finished edifice
and that there can be no new unresolved problems. Russian religious
thought whether to a greater or lesser degree has inherent to
it Pneumaticism, Paracletism, the expectation of a new revelation
of the Holy Spirit.
IV
With a
great semblance of truth they assert, that in the world-concept
of Khomyakov, Bukharev, Dostoevsky, Vl. Solov’ev, N. Fedorov
-- there are strong humanistic elements. I have already mentioned,
that the Russian religious thought of the XIX Century opened up
Orthodoxy, after the experience of Humanism. Russian thinkers
sensed within Humanism a definite problem, which demanded an answer.
And the most remarkable thing of all is that we did not know Humanism
as did Western Europe, and that we had not lived through the Renaissance.
And especially since we had not lived through a genuinely humanistic
culture, our soul was not so captivated by its temptations. Therefore
within the Russian consciousness it would be possible to put forth
more acutely the questions, connected with the crisis of Humanism,
and its ultimate limits would be more apparent. European Humanism
had become possible only upon a Christian soil. When the hour
ensued for the revealing of a greater humanness, then within this
became apparent the results of the Christian seed sown within
the depths of the human soul. But Humanism likewise was locked
within a purely human world, by the human self-affirmation, by
the apotheosis of man, by the denial of the Divine world. Humanistic
culture was a sort of middle of the human realm, in which the
beginning and end the human life was hidden from, with its ultimate
boundaries not apparent. Within this middle realm transpired all
the blossoming of European culture of modern times. Russia did
not experience a genuine humanistic Renaissance. Only in Pushkin
gleamed something renaissance-like. But this Renaissance spirit
was not victorious in Russian literature, in the Russian spiritual
culture of the XIX Century. The religious theme became fundamental
for us, and religious disquiet gripped hold all of Russian literature.
We created not from a surfeit of joy, but from anguish and torment
over the fate of man, of the people, of all mankind. Christian
humanness entered deeply into the soul of Russian thinkers, of
Russian writers, and this soul stood wounded with humanness and
compassion. Russian religious thought was not humanistic in the
European Renaissance sense of this word, and often it even denounced
European Humanism. But there is a deep humanness in Khomyakov
and all the Slavophils, in Bukharev, in Dostoevsky, in Vl. Solov’ev,
and in N. Fedorov. I shall not yet speak about L. Tolstoy, who
stood aside from the main current of Russian Christian thought.
Humanness is a basic tenet of our Christian thought, and not only
was it not confused with anthropology, but rather assisted in
uncovering a most profound dialectic of the Divine and the human.
In Dostoevsky and in Russian thought there was revealed the ultimate
limits of man-godhood, which had become obscured for the average
humanistic European and to which broke through only Nietzsche.
Only Russian religious thought, and therein most of all Vl. Solov’ev,
was given to express the essence of Christianity as the religion
of God-manhood. Into the religion of God-manhood enters all the
plenitude of humanness. And the denial or diminishing of humanness
can be perceived as a Monophysite tendency within Christianity.
The theme of God-manhood threads through all of our religious
thought prior to the XX Century, and it comprises one of its unique
points. If godless Humanism, based on the self-affirmation of
man without God and against God, leads to the denial of man, to
the denial of the human image as being the image of God, having
sundered the wholeness of truth about God-manhood, then on the
opposite side, it leads to the affirmation of God without man
and against man. With great pathos this was made apparent by Russian
Christian thought. By it was laid bare the verymost ultimate questions,
connected with the theme of Humanism. In man-godhood perishes
not only God, but also man. This posits sharply the problem of
religious anthropology, and posits it otherwise, than in the anthropology
of the Patristic Fathers and the Scholastics, and equally also
much otherwise than humanistic anthropology. The problem of the
relationship of Christianity to the world, to culture, to society,
to the present, which so tortured Russian Christian thought from
Bukharev to Vl. Solov’ev and N. Fedorov, is first of all
a problem of religious anthropology. This does not at all mean,
that Russian Christian thought has given in to the spirit of the
times, nor fallen into the folly of modernism. The Christian ought
not to sense himself a slave of the times, he ought to sense himself
rooted in eternity, but he ought also creatively and from the
depths of Christian truth to respond to the questioning of the
times, to its disquiet and anguish. The question of man in the
XX Century stands otherwise, than it stood in the Medieval and
Patristic eras. Dostoevsky knows an experiencing of man, which
the ancient teachers of the Church did not know, and about which
there is nothing in the school courses on theology. And there
is much that we have lived through more acutely than did the West.
We have lived through more acutely not Humanism itself, but the
crisis of Humanism. And we have perceived, that there is no exit
from this crisis through a simple return to that, which preceded
the Humanist experience. The Christianity of Vl. Solov’ev
is Christianity after the Humanist experience. In the XX Century
the anthropological problem has intensified even more.
Within the Russian religious
consciousness, the problem of religious anthropology is connected
also with the problem of religious cosmology. Man is the image
and likeness of God. And man is the apex and centre of cosmic
life. But also in the cosmos, in all the created world, there
is a Divine principle, and a Divine energy is active. Western
Christian thought, from St. Thomas Aquinas through Luther and
through the mechanistic world-concept of the XIX Century, became
too neutralised, it made the cosmos godless. On the soil of the
Orthodoxy of the XIX Century was posited the problem about the
mystery of the Creation by God, about the Divine in the world.
Awaiting the enlightenment and transfiguration of the world, Orthodoxy
became essentially more oriented towards the Resurrection, than
did Catholicism and Protestantism. Bukharev propounds a genuine
pan-Christism, the omni-presence of Christ, a continuing of the
Divine Incarnation and the God-man-ising within the world and
within the historical process. Vl. Solov’ev teaches not
only about God-manhood, but also about God-cosmos, about the Divinised
cosmos. For the Russian consciousness there was uncovered as it
were the soul of the word in its wisdom, Sophia-ness. From whence
has come the teaching about Sophia, as popularised in the XX Century.
Herein arises the problem of the third principle, which is neither
Creator nor creature, but is rather that of the Divine within
the created world. It is impossible to deny, that this teaching
was influenced by German metaphysics and German mysticism, as
in general also by Western Christian theosophy, in which particularly
had been raised the question of religious cosmology. Schelling
had influence on Vl. Solov’ev, as likewise also did J. Boehme,
Pordage, Fr. Baader. Also, it mustneeds be said, that the teaching
about Sophia by Vl. Solov’ev was very distinct from the
teaching of Sophia by J. Boehme, -- it was more anthropologic
and more refined. Vl. Solov’ev did great service to the
disposition of the problem, but his teaching about Sophia remained
ambiguous and insufficiently developed. This is particularly evident
in his Sophia versification. Upon this soil also is possible a
cosmic seduction, hostile to the freedom of the human spirit.
But it is very characteristic, that the Russian religious consciousness
is resistant to the transcendent dualistic theism, which the Western
religious consciousness accepts with such ease, both the Catholic
and the Protestant. And this quite actually is not a pantheistic
tendency, as certain fanatic Orthodox tend to believe.
In Russian Orthodoxy there are
three currents, which at times flow together and at other times
flow opposite. There is an ascetic-monastic current, grounded
in the ancient Eastern ascetic literature of the “Dobrotoliubie”
(“Philokalia”). A typical representative of this during
the second half of the XIX Century was the bishop Theophan Zatvornik
(“Hermit”), with his work, “The Way to Salvation”.
This is a very strong and very traditional Orthodox current, grounded
in monasticism, and which tends frequently towards world-denial
and towards Monophysitism, towards a particular ascetic metaphysics,
for which Christianity is exclusively a religion of individual
salvation beyond the grave. Clearly this is a conservative current
and in opposition to any of the new problematics, to any new setting
of relationship of Christianity to the world. For this current
there does not exist a problem of religious anthropology and religious
cosmology, outside of customary ascetic practise. But within this
current there is also for Orthodoxy the eternal element of an
ascetic purification and inward spiritual action. There is another
current also in Russian Christianity, which issues forth from
the depths of Orthodoxy. With this is connected the Orthodox sanctification
of life, the Theophany within the world, the catching sight of
the Wisdom of God within the created world, the transfiguration
of the creature, Resurrection. This is an Orthodox cosmism, alien
to Western Christianity. In the form of St. Seraphim was manifest
the new cosmic sanctity. The unique cosmism is peculiar to our
national religious type, and it can tend still towards a Russian
paganism. With this is connected the especial cult to the Mother
of God, imperceptibly transformed into a cult of the Russian earth
and mixed up with it. The land is not in the type of the ascetic-monastic
Orthodoxy, but it is of the Russian Orthodox earth, as a religious
category, and cannot be cast off. This is a motif of Dostoevsky.
It flows throughout all our religious atmosphere, and it is moreso
of the people, than is the monastic-hierarchic. And this motif
was perceived at the apex of our religious thought. The cosmism
of V. Rozanov, the revelation of the Russian soil, born of the
maternal loin, collides with the very essence of Christianity,
with the image of Christ, and becomes transformed into an hostility
towards Christianity. The spirit of the world is rendered stronger
than the Logos. The feminine, the maternal, the cosmic principle
of Rozanov is not of wisdom, not sophic. This does not prevent
the actual problematics of Rozanov, particularly the problem of
sexuality, from being both especially profound and important for
the fate of Christianity. But there is also a third current within
Orthodoxy, no less characteristic nor less important, and this
current is the anthropologic-eschatological, connected with the
problem of man, about his precedence within the world, about destiny
and about the justification of culture, about the Kingdom of God.
With this trend is connected the historiosophic motif of Russian
religious thought. And it likewise belongs to Russian Christianity,
to the Russian anguish about human destiny, about the end of things.
The problem, connected with this, became very acute in the consciousness
of the XX Century. And here at the centre stood Dostoevsky with
his intense anthropologism and eschatologism. But Vl. Solov’ev’s
teaching about God-manhood was also connected with this. And to
the theme of man, to the theme of religious anthropology was dedicated
the remarkable work of Nesmelov: “The Science of Man”
(“Nauka o cheloveka”). This theme in a new form appeared
in N. Fedorov in his teaching about the active vocation of man
in the deed of resuscitation with the possibility to bypass the
Dread Last Judgement and eternal perdition. In the evaluation
of Russian religious thought one mustneeds have in view the complexion
of motifs and themes of Russian Orthodoxy, and the colliding within
it of various elements and currents with equally concurrent roots
in the Russian type of Christianity.
V
The Russian religious thought of the
XIX Century contained within it not only purely religious problematics,
it was likewise a philosophic thought. Russian thought was more
religious a philosophy, than it was theological. With us there
formed an unique school of religious philosophy, though this religious
philosophy was not of the schools. Russian religious philosophy
flourished most of all in the XX Century, when we lived through
a philosophic renaissance. But the fundamental features of Russian
religious philosophy can already be noted in I. Kireevsky. Insofar
as it might be possible to characterise the fundamental features
of Russian philosophy, it was religiously directed and grounded.
First of all, this was a philosophy which was essentially anti-rationalist
and anti-Scholastic. It was an original Russian philosophy conceived
with a mission to surmount the rationalism of European philosophy.
The rationalism of the European path of philosophy had begun already
with the Scholastics, with St. Thomas Aquinas. 7 It developed further with Descartes, Kant, Hegel.
Rationalism is always the result of cutting asunder the integral
life of the spirit, a detaching of reason and intellect into an
abstract principle, torn off from life. But abstract reason cannot
apprehend being, being is hidden for it. The rationalistic and
intellectualistic cannot be commensurate with being. Therefore
rationalistic philosophy is always an anti-ontological philosophy.
Being reveals itself only within the integral life of the spirit,
only to reason, organically in union with the will and the senses
-- to volitional reason and reasonable volition, as Khomyakov
said. The primal commensurability with the existing is possible
only through faith. Being is given on faith. And only after this
primary intuition of being, which is given on faith, is there
given the possibility of knowledge. Vl. Solov’ev, following
upon the fundamental intuitions of I. Kireevsky and Khomyakov,
expresses his critique of rationalism as a critique of abstract
principles. He likewise strives towards an integral knowing, although
the form of his philosophising remains too rationalistic, and
his critique of abstract principles too abstract. But for him
too the existing is given only on faith. The Russian school of
religious philosophy understands knowledge as knowledge which
is integrated with, not severed from, spirit. Faith and knowing
are organically in synthesis. Philosophic knowledge presupposes
not only reason, the rationalistic principle, and experience,
the empirical principle, but also revelation, the principle of
faith. Revelation is the source of knowledge, and through it the
intellect is enlightened and transfigured. This point of view
is in opposition to St. Thomas Aquinas, but closer to St. Bonaventure.
Russian philosophy mutinies against the Cartesian “cogito
ergo sum”. In its being, just as in being in general, it
is impossible to become convinced through abstract reasoning,
just also as it is impossible through individual reasoning, through
the isolating of my “I” and positing it opposite the
collective “we”. Rationalism and individualism --
are the firstborn sins of European philosophy. Russian religious
philosophy attempts to build an unique churchly gnosseology, it
brings the principle of Sobornost’ into philosophic knowledge
itself. Authentic knowledge of the existing is possible only through
a being-present in Sobornost’, in the churchly “we”,
in tradition. The “I”, having fallen away from Sobornost’,
from the churchly “we”, sundered from tradition as
the inner life of the churchly organism, ceases to be commensurate
with the existing or know it. Pr. S. Trubetskoy terms such a collective
gnosseology a metaphysical socialism. Descartes therefore was
twice over incorrect, he philosophised rationalistically and individualistically.
And St. Thomas Aquinas also was incorrect, allowing intellectualism
into the cognition of being and affirming the right of a natural
philosophy (in the spirit of Aristotle), torn asunder from faith
and revelation. This path led to Hegel, for whom being is ultimately
transformed into idea. Hegel attempted to derive being from idea.
With him the substrate, the existing, has disappeared. Thus philosophy
experienced a crisis, which led to a downfall into materialism
and crude empiricism.
Russian philosophy of the religious
tendency contends against not only rationalism and individualism,
but also against idealism, in the name of an ontologic realism.
Primacy belongs not to the idea, nor to the perceiving subject,
but to being. Being is given first of all, it is given in faith,
it is given to the experience of the integrally whole spirit,
and therein only is possible its cognition. Theologising itself
ought to be by experience, it ought to be by the non-rationalistic,
the non-Scholastic. Russian religious philosophy has subjected
to doubt the commensurability and fruitfulness of rationalism
in philosophy and theology, which had been affirmed and developed
by Western thought, beginning with the Medieval Scholastics. The
Russian consciousness is reconciled only with difficulty to the
contrived constructs of hierarchical stages and differentiations
of various areas, which St. Thomas Aquinas makes use of on the
one hand, and Kant -- on the other. We are inclined to think,
that the light, which pours itself forth upon the highest hierarchical
stages (faith, revelation, mysticism), ought to spread its rays
upon all the lower stages and illumine them. Philosophic apperception
therefore cannot be based exclusively upon reason and sense experience.
For us, in the XIX Century it was no elaborated systematic philosophy,
issuing from the principles put forth by I. Kireevsky. The most
systematic was Vl. Solov’ev, but in form he was the most
rationalistic of Russian thinkers -- in opposition to the content
of his philosophy. The merit of the Russian religious philosophy
of the XIX Century was in its sharp setting forth of the problem
of the relation of knowledge and faith, of apperception by the
integral spirit, of the problem of churchly gnosseology, i.e.
apperception, based on Sobornost’, and too the problem of
ontologism within philosophy, which in Western Europe had been
altogether shoved away and forgotten. Russian philosophy conceived
of itself as ontologic, soborno-collective, organically integral,
and religious in accord with its truths. Russian thinkers sometimes
happened to be unjust towards the Western thought, from which
they had received much. Not all Western thought was rationalistic,
individualistic, idealist. And in the West too there were representatives
of an ontologic-realist tendency, integrally synthesising faith
and knowledge. It suffices but to name Fr. Baader, to whom the
Slavophils and Vl. Solov’ev were close, and back in the
Middle Ages -- to St. Bonaventure. It is appropriate also to mention
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the influence of whom became apparent
within the XX Century. And Schelling also ultimately tried to
surmount rationalism and idealism to break through to revelation
and the world as sources of cognition. But all the same it mustneeeds
be acknowledged, that ours is an original tradition with Russian
religious philosophy, of interest also for Western thought. The
German philosophy of our day moves in the direction of the ontologism
and realism, which earlier had been affirmed by Russian philosophy.
Our thought received its graftings from German philosophy, but
the results realised were original. The idea of Sobornost’-communality
in philosophic apperception and ontologic realism remain uniquely
Russian ideas, in such a form as exists not in German philosophy.
The Russian religious thought of the XIX Century felt and was
acutely conscious of the crisis of European philosophy, and it
saw the impasse, to which it had come. In this impasse there vanished
the reality of being and freedom and person. Russian thought perceived,
that the only way out would be religious. The insufficiency of
empiricism, rationalism and critique-ism, was realised. But, with
a characteristic Russian radicalism and inclination towards extremes,
we not only overleaped the crisis of philosophy, and often instead
denied any autonomous philosophy and thus affirmed its complete
absorption by religion. Russian thought, bantering on its own
problematics, with difficulty set up hierarchic stages and made
the differentiation of various areas. It mustneeds too be remembered,
that religious philosophy is however all still philosophy, is
gnosis. This was not always remembered by us. Russian philosophic
problematics reach their utmost not in pure philosophy, but rather
in Russian great literature.
VI
The Russian literature of the
XIX Century is the greatest creation of the Russian national soul.
Russian creativity has never scaled higher nor undoubtedly will
it rise higher. Russian literature not only puts Russian culture
on the same level with the great culture of Western Europe, but
is amidst the greatest literature of the world. The significance
of Russian literature is not only national-Russian, but also for
the whole world. This mustneeds be considered as generally acknowledged.
But it is important for our themes, that in the Russian literature
of the Russian great writers the religious themes and religious
motifs were stronger, than in certain other figures of world literature.
One mustneeds turn to Aeschylos and Dante, to behold in the literature
such religious unrest, like to the unrest of the Russian writers.
All our literature of the XIX Century was pierced through by a
religious theme, it was all in search of salvation, it was all
in search of deliverance from evil, suffering, the terror of life
for the human person, the people, mankind, the world. In the most
remarkable of their works, everything is permeated by religious
thought. And the apex of Russian thought, the greatest Russian
metaphysician was, certainly, Dostoevsky. Russian literature shook
the world by its love for truth and its love for man. Russian
writers lived through a tragedy of creativity, in suchlike dimensions
and such depth as writers in the West did not know. Russian literature
compels one to ponder over the religious problem of creativity,
over the religious justification and meaning of culture. This
is a purely Russian theme -- a theme of Gogol, of Dostoevsky,
L. Tolstoy. Literature goes out beyond the bounds of art and seeks
religious activity. This literature is prophetic, instructive,
teaching the meaning of life. The greatest works of Russian literature
are prophetic and instructive. And Russian religious philosophy
essentially elaborates the themes, postulated by Russian literature.
In Pushkin the problem of
creativity and creative genius were set forth with an uncommon
alacrity and depth. And in him alone it receives a positive resolution.
”Mozart and Salieri” and the verses, “Til Apollo
demand the Poet to Sacred Sacrifice” (“Poka ne trebuet
poeta k svyaschennoi zhertve Apollon”), and “Poet,
esteem not...” (“Poet, ne dorozhi...”), set
forth the problem of creativity. It would torment all our great
writers, but they would survive it tragically. The insolubility
within Christianity, within Orthodoxy, of the problem of the creativity
of man strikes and pierces the consciousness of the Russian creative
figures of the XIX Century. This likewise is the problem of the
religious meaning of culture. It was not resolved in Orthodoxy
so felicitously as it was resolved in Catholicism and Protestantism,
and particularly since in the Russian consciousness it emerged
in all such depth. The greatest Russian writers were tormented
by the question about the transition over from creativity of perfective
works to the creativity of perfective life. This indeed was fundamentally
so for Gogol and Tolstoy, who were agreeable to the renouncing
of their creativity in the name of searching for perfective life.
The passionate denunciation of the injustice of life and the search
for truth, person, perfective life, for the Kingdom of God which
is not only in heaven but also upon the earth, -- this is a fundamental
motif of the Russian literature of the XIX Century. And this was
a motif not only social, though it had its social projection,
this was a motif likewise religious and metaphysical. Even with
the writers of the radically-populist current, with Nekrasov,
Schedrin, Gl. Uspensky, the search for the truth of life had meaning
not only social, but also religious. The Russian religious problematics
of the XIX Century in essence always were far more social, than
generally admitted in our thought. The search for the truth of
Christ and the Kingdom of God always has a social side. On the
other hand, Russian literature was often given too social an interpretation
and its religio-metaphysical profundity bypassed. They transformed
Gogol into a social satirist during this period, when it was that
the metaphysical problem of evil tormented him. He saw more profoundly
the falsehood and evil of the transient social forms. Russian
literature in general was realistic not in that external sense,
which our superficial critics have ascribed to it. It was realistic
in the sense of a religious, ontologic realism, a vision of the
deepest realities of being and life. And in this sense it was
among the most realistic in the world, for to it were revealed
the ultimate, the most profound realities of the spiritual world.
Gogol was not a realist in the sense of the artistic, aesthetic
principle of his creativity. But he saw the reality of evil in
the verymost depths of life. The search for true righteousness
is a quite indisputable and recognised quality in Russian literature.
The whole life of L. Tolstoy was more remarkable even than his
teaching, and it was a tormented search for the truth of life.
We see this extraordinary and to such a degree unparalleled love
of truth with all the genuine Russian writers. It also makes of
Chekhov a writer of religious earnestness, despite the desolation
of his perception and the vulgarity of deliberative outlooks.
Russian literature is the most free of all from the conventional
lies of civilisation.
Russian literature ponders
deeply and with torment over the fate of man, and it pondered
with a religious earnestness. The whole of Russian literature
is filled with the religious problematics concerning man, and
Dostoevsky attains to an extraordinary acuteness. The problem
of man, the problem of religious anthropology is transformed in
the Russian consciousness into the problem about the God-man and
the man-god, about Christ and the Anti-Christ. Russian literature,
the most humane, mankind-loving and sympathetic in the world,
sets forth the problem about the religious meaning of humanism
and it renders a judgement over humanism. 8 This too is a purely Russian theme. This also is
a theme about the end fate of man, an eschatological theme. The
eschatologicism of Russian literature is without misgivings, it
is oriented towards the end, the limit, the resolution of everything,
towards the ultimate destiny. With those writers, whose religious
consciousness is most obscured, as for example with Turgenev,
the theme concerning human destiny is transformed into a theme
about fate, about magical powers, and its peculiar anguish rending
the soul. Russian poetry is filled with religious and metaphysical
motifs. It was there also in Lermontov, who was perhaps one of
the most religious of our poets, creating images with a prayerful
poetry. But the most profoundly metaphysical in Russian poetry
was Tiutchev. His poetry is filled with metaphysical problematics.
He was a poet of the nocturnal element of the world, of the Ungrund.
The dark abyss of being, of Dionysian metaphysical powers, reveals
itself to him. The creativity of Tiutchev goes out beyond the
limits of Apollonism and it is filled with foreboding. For the
genuine propheticism, so characteristic to Russian literature,
it is necessary to seek not in the political verses of Tiutchev,
just as one would not seek it in the articles of Dostoevsky’s
“Diary of a Writer”, but rather in the metaphysical
verses. In them is not only the sensation of chaos beyond the
cosmos, but also the foreboding of a new historical epoch, in
which chaos unfolds. Tiutchev, a conservative in accord with his
high official position, sensed that possibly it was the onset
of an epoch of historical catastrophes. In Russian literature
particularly, there was a prophetic foreboding of revolution facing
Russia, and possibly the whole world. This was already there in
Pushkin and Lermontov. And this revolution was always perceived
not only as a political phenomenon, but also a phenomenon metaphysical
and religious. This was most clearly so in Dostoevsky. The problem
of revolution, as a religious problem, was first set forth in
such a depth within Russian literature. With Dostoevsky the revolution
is first of all a revolution of spirit, an heaping up of inward
dynamite. He presents images of an impending inward revolution,
he is an artist of the revolutionary dynamics of life. Tolstoy
by contrast is an artist of stabilised forms of life. But his
consciousness is destructive and demands the revolutionary restructuring
of life. The foreboding of impending revolution in Russian writers
takes on an eschatological character and reflects the eschatologicism
of our spiritual type. This was possible through the basic groundlessness
of our cultural current, through a catastrophic standing over
the abyss. Writers in the West poorly understand this. The social-revolutionary
frame of mind in its famed period is relatively very grounded
in comparison with the Russian eschatological search for truth,
with the Russian presentiment of the onset of the Kingdom of Christ
and the kingdom of Anti-Christ. The conservative element and the
revolutionary element are very strangely interwoven within Russian
literature, and it is impossible to apply to it the traditional
social categories of the right and of the left. In the most dynamic
and revolutionary aspects in Dostoevsky there are conservative
elements of the right in his “world-outlook”, and
with the most conservative artist Tolstoy there are elements of
the revolutionary-anarchistic in his “world-outlook”.
Many noted Russian thinkers were monarchists, but their monarchism
was something altogether peculiar, and frequently it was a mere
pseudonym, screening anarchistic tendencies and religious-revolutionary
searchings. The Russian literature of the XIX Century was more
“God-tormented” than any other sort of literature
in the world, and this torment over God was likewise a torment
over man. In this is its greatness and significance for Russian
religious thought. The conjoining of the torment concerning God
with the torment concerning man makes Russian literature Christian,
even then, when in their consciousness Russian writers abjured
the Christian faith.
VII
The Russian thought of the XIX Century was
very social. The question about social truth tormented it. And
it mustneeds be said, that religious motifs and themes were innate
to Russian social thought, in it there was a religious agitation
and unrest, even when consciously it was anti-religious and external
to religion. In the justly true words of Dostoevsky, Russian revolutionaries
were not politicians, they were tormented by the question about
God, about immortality, the ultimate fate of mankind and the world.
At the basis of Russian social visionary thought was lodged the
Christian idea. In Russian thought there obtained either the utopia
of an ideal autocratic monarchy, or the utopia of an ideal socialist
and anarchist current. This monarchy and this socialism had not
at all any resemblance to the prosaic monarchies of the West,
nor to the prosaic socialism of the West. The ideal monarchy of
the Slavophils, or of Bukharev, Dostoevsky, Vl. Solov’ev,
of N. Fedorov possessed no semblance to the prosaic monarchy of
the Petrine epoch, with the Russian imperialism. Social truth
as pravda on the land was to be realised for us the same whether
through monarchy or through anarchy, whether through a mystical
autocracy or through an atheistic socialism. And then too behind
our social utopias was hidden the search for the Kingdom of God.
The independent Russian thought of the XIX Century always rose
up against the philistine and bourgeois aspects of the West, whether
be it on the left with Hertsen, or be it on the right with Leont’ev.
Not at all did the Russian thinker uphold the bourgeois and philistine,
if he were genuinely Russian, and he always denounced as sinful
the bourgeois and philistine in Western civilisation. Russian
thinkers far earlier than Spengler made the distinction between
culture and civilisation and they recoiled with horror at the
image of a triumphant bourgeois civilisation in the Western Europe
of the XIX Century. This was an ingrained Russian theme, traditionally
rooted in our thought. Russian social thought always attempted
to find for Russia a path, which might avoid the developement
of capitalism with its inevitable triumph of the philistine and
bourgeois. And amidst this, philistinism was always considered
by us in its depth as a category spiritual and moral, rather than
socio-economic. Thus also it was for the irreligious Hertsen.
Philistinism is first of all the negation of the vivid, creatively
original person.
Bourgeois virtues never
attracted us. Our virtues were oriented to an other, a Divine
world or towards a new world to come. Not at all in the Russian
ethic were the innately economic-productive virtues. Maximalism
was innate to Russian social thought both in its religious, and
its anti-religious or pseudo-religious currents. It demanded not
a gradual historical toiling, but rather a radical restructuring
of the world. N. Fedorov, who defended autocratic monarchy and
extended it into the cosmic whole, strove thus towards this, as
did also Bakunin, who defended anarchism. Distorted searchings
for the Kingdom of God and the righteous-truth (pravda) of God
were undoubtedly there also within Russian atheistic socialism
and anarchism. The Russian populist movement was full of subconscious
religious motifs. Russian nihilism, which became the basis for
the world-concept of Russian socialism, was a religious phenomenon.
It became possible on the soil of Orthodoxy, it was the result
of a lack of disclosure within Orthodoxy of a positive attitude
towards culture, of an Orthodox eschatologism. Russian nihilism
is the negative side of Russian apocalypsis. The Russian nihilist,
just like the Russian apocalyptic, demands a sweeping and all-resolving
end. Russian nihilism in the people’s midst had already
previously the appearance of extreme forms in the Russian Schism
and sectarianism. In the nihilism was a peculiar living-through
of an ascetic world-denial, a non-acceptance of the world, as
of something based on falsehood and injustice. But nihilism denies
the world not in the name of God, but rather in the name of nothing.
Belinsky had already set down the basis for Russian nihilism and
atheistic socialism; in the name of ecstatic love for man and
mankind he was imbued with vile sentiments and prepared to annihilate
one part of mankind, in order to make happy its other part. The
pure, the austere, ascetically minded and devout youth Dobroliubov
becomes a nihilist out of his love for just-truth, out of enmity
for falsehood. There was in the psychology of Russian nihilism
a strong ascetic element, and only further on did nihilism result
in dissolution and debauchery. The “What is to be Done”
of Chernyshevsky -- is an untalented, but ascetically moral didactic
book, which desires to replace the “Domostroi” with
a loftier and more humane morality. Pisarev revolted against beauty,
against Pushkin, against art for ascetic motifs, born of those
selfsame motives, which compel the Orthodox ascetic to regard
these values suspiciously and with contemnation. There is always
one sole need, the salvation of the soul for eternal life, or
the salvation of people from evil and suffering in earthly life,
and this becomes higher than creativity and the values of culture.
The utilitarian denial of morality is accomplished in accord with
moral motives. The good is adduced to be immoral. The attitude
towards the people, towards its sufferings and welfare takes on
a religious character. Revolutionaries want to be saviours and
they avow themselves saviours. Philosophy, art, contemplative
thought are repudiated by them as a self-deception hostile to
real deeds, as a luxury impermissible afront the sufferings of
the world and the people. Heaven is presented as hostile to earthly
just-truth and it is denied out of asceticism, out of abstinence,
out of humility. This is a remarkable phenomenon, needing more
study. We have here a matter with a graceless, godless asceticism,
evidencing to a perversion of religious nature. A boundless social
visionary dream took hold in the soul of the Russian Intelligentsia
of the second half of the XIX Century, and this was regarded the
sole permissible and allowable visionary-dream. Every other visionary-dream
was declared sinful. Into this social visionary-dream was invested
all the energy of a pent-up and constrained religious feeling.
This was religion without a religious object, with an object,
unworthy of religious worship, and this religion had fateful consequences,
as predicted by Dostoevsky, and we have reaped its fruit in Russian
Communism. But to condemn this godless religion of the Intelligentsia
those among the Christians dare not, who did nothing for the realisation
of Christian just-truth (pravda) in life and who were not capable
of suchlike sacrifices. The dream about a perfect social order
is a false and tyrannical dream, hostile to the freedom of the
human spirit. And the experience of the realising of this dream
ought to lead up to a paradox -- to a new dream about an imperfect
social order, in which would be allowed a certain freedom of evil,
as a condition of the freedom of the good. Russian socialism was
a peculiar offspring of our national spirit, in which there were
mixed together features positive and lofty with features negative
and fateful. This was a distorted form of Russian itinerancy,
of Russian wandering on the paths to the New Jerusalem. Russian
Communism also is the negative side of the positive Russian searching
for just-truth. But also in our social thought was disclosed Russian
religious problematics.
_____________________________
Russian religious thought reached its heights
in Dostoevsky and in Vl. Solov’ev, and at the very end of
the century there appeared the strange figures of V. Rozanov and
N. Fedorov, whose main influence was moreso in the XX Century.
Our religious thought led up to the positing of the problem of
a new religious consciousness and towards the expectation of a
new creative epoch within Christianity. The catastrophic outbreak
of the Russian Revolution cut short the tradition and it evoked
a reaction against the thinkers of the preceding century. This
was customary to history. Russian religious thought was not socially
influential, though the social problem was never foreign to it.
The original current of our national religious thought was overrun
by other currents, reactionary and revolutionary. The ideology
of the Russian Revolution was not defined by this current, and
it was powerless to spiritually halt the growth of the atheistic
revolution. The Russian great writers and thinkers foresaw and
had forebodings of the Russian Revolution, and its catastrophic
potential is anticipated in their thought. But this was a passive
propheticism. In opposition to action there was set not action,
but thought. The problematics of Russian religious thought in
the minds of contemporary generations and generations closest
became altered for generations more remote, and for those to come.
They merely catch the drift of the problematics of Russian religious
thought and sense its vital significance. We meanwhile are going
through a period of reaction, a reaction reduced to hostility
towards all thought. The Russian religious thought of the XIX
Century was not systematic nor perfected in form, it was fragmented
and piecemeal. It did not realise itself in full and it remains
much in a condition of potentiality. The intuitive visionary-dreams
neither unfolded nor transpired. But the significance of this
thought is in another area. In it was manifest an extraordinary
freedom of spirit, which could be discovered only outside the
schools, outside the ingrained tradition. In it was the unrest
and agitation, characteristic to pre-revolutionary periods. In
it were set forth problems very profound, but they were not always
resolved, and sometimes they were resolved erroneously. And chief
of all were the problems posited of religious cosmology and religious
anthropology, problems concerning man and the world. Within Russian
thought transpired the experience of a Christian consideration
of the processes of modern history. In it the thought of the Christian
East gives response to the thought of the Christian West. Against
the Russian religious thought of the XIX Century simultaneously
arose both reactionary churchly tendencies and revolutionary atheistic
tendencies. But within it for the first time there was formed
a tradition of religious philosophy, a tradition begotten within
an epoch of groundlessness and the spiritual freedom connected
with this groundlessness. Russian thought, both the religious
and social thought, was inwardly most free during the epoch of
autocratic monarchy, but together with this frequently it was
utopian. A paradox in the history of thought consists in this,
that thought frequently is inwardly maximally free when on the
outside there is maximal constraint. Freedom is as it were needed
in the resistance. And God grant, that when there ensues for us
a time of greater external freedom, there be also preserved for
us the former inner freedom of thought. The Russian nation, now
living through a bloody delirium and unprecedented tyranny, can
in time settle it out, can discover the solid ground to receive
external rights and freedom, it can restore its powers for the
arrangement and organisation of civilised life countered to the
philistine and bourgeois. But can it preserve in that case those
spiritual features, which were disclosed in the Russian literature
of the XIX Century and in the creative thought of this century
of disorder and woe? Is it possible to affirm, that the Russian
nation expressed itself most profoundly in Dostoevsky? This is
a very tortuous question for our times. It is always put alongside
the question about our external affairs and fortunes. Many features
of the XIX Century ought to be surmounted as begotten of the legacy
of serfdom. And there ought to be revealed new features -- a discipline
of character, the capacity for action, for organisation, a sense
of responsibility, and together with this a real understanding
of actuality. But always the question remains about the eternal
features of the Russian spirit. For the French, the eternal features
of the national spirit are connected with the XVII Century; this
remains eternally through the present, unaltered by the XVIII
Century and revolutions. What will happen with us?
NIKOLAI BERDYAEV
1930
© 2000 by translator Fr. S. Janos
(1930 - 345 - en)
O KHARAKTERE RUSSKOI RELIGIOZNOI MYSLI
XIX-GO BEKA. In journal Sovremennye zapiski,
1930, No. 42, p. 309-343.
1
Of the hierarchs of the Church can also be mentioned Archbishop
Innokentii, intellectual, refined and comparatively free.
2
In the Spiritual Academies [upper level seminaries] there was
almost no creative theology, but there was much of value in a
scientific sense.
3
Another accusation against Solov’ev contradicts this point
-- that of the purely catholic (i.e. universalist) character of
his thought.
4
It otherwise mustneeds be mentioned, that the philosophy of St.
Thomas Aquinas was uniquely a Christian humanism.
5
Kohmyakov expressed his genius-inspired theological intuitions
in polemical articles. His “Notes on World History”,
gathered in three volumes, -- is comprised of rough drafts.
6
The life of Bukharev was very tragic: he was an archimandrite,
but left monasticism and married, though he remained fervently
Orthodox. He was subjected to harassment and for a long time he
went totally unacknowledged.
7
St. Thomas Aquinas, as in general also the Scholastics, were poorly
known and incorrectly understood by us. The intellectualism of
Thomas Aquinas is not rationalism, in the same sense, as this
word was used during the XIX Century.
8
Gogol was perhaps the sole Russian great writer, for whom there
was a lack of love for man, and whose humanness was impaired by
the consciousness of evil and falsehood. He is a most enigmatic
and dismal of Russian writers.
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