N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
THE BEGINNING AND THE END
Copyright, 1952, by the YMCA-Press Printed in the United States of America
Translated from the Russian by R. M. French
OPYT ESCHATOLOGUICHESKOY METAPHIZIKI
(Tvorchestvo i Objektivizacia) Essay on Eschatological Metaphysics
(Creation and Objectivisation)
All rights in this book are reserved.
First HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1957
Library of Congress catalog card number: 37-7532
Vll
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PART ONE
THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE AND OBJECTIFICATION
CHAPTER I
1. A metaphysical interpretation and critique of
Kant. Two Worlds: appearance, and things-in-themselves, nature and freedom. Kant,
Plato, German mysticism, German idealist metaphysics after Kant J
2. The dialectic of German idealism from Kant through
Hegel to Nietzsche 17
3. The problem of freedom in French philosophy of
the nineteenth century. Themes of Russian philosophical and religious thought
29
4. The emotionally passionate character of cognition.
Existential metaphysics as the symbolism of spiritual experience. 37
5. Truth which is beneficial, truth which is ruinous,
and saving truth. Truths and the truth. The criterion of truth 42
CHAPTER II
1. Subject and Object. The subject as that which
exists. The mystery
of objectification. Genesis of the world of appearances
52
2. Existential experience. Primary intuition and
the social character of knowledge. The concept, as a limitation and protection.
Orientation in the environmental infinity 67
3. Illusions of consciousness. Transcendental illusion
(Schein) in Kant. Dualism and revolution of thought. Two worlds. 'The other world*
80
PART TWO
THE PROBLEM OF BEING AND EXISTENCE
CHAPTER III
1. Being as objectification. Being and the existent,
that which exists. Being and non-being. Being as concept. Being and value. Being
and spirit 91
2. The supremacy of freedom over being. The determinism
of being and freedom. Being and primary passion. Being as congealed freedom and
congealed passion. Being as nature and being as history 104
ix
CHAPTER IV
1. The reality of the individual and the reality
of the 'common*. The controversy about universals. The common and the universal.
The common as objectification 118
2. Collective realities and individual realities.
Genus, individual and personality 126
3. The mistakes of German idealism. Personalism
133
PART THREE
BEING AND CREATIVITY THE MYSTERY OF NEWNESS
CHAPTER V
1. Being is distorted and compressed by evil. The
inconsistency of monism and of the philosophy of all-in-one
2. Weakness of rational explanations of the origin
of evil. Criticism of the traditional doctrines of the Providence of God in the
world. Personality and world harmony
3. There is no objective world as one whole. The
mysterious nature of freedom 141
CHAPTER VI
1. The emergence of newness within being. Newness
and time. Newness and evolution. Progress 157
2. Newness and history. Necessity, fate and freedom
165
3. Newness and the causal link. Creative newness
overthrows objective being 167
CHAPTER VII
1. Being and continued creation of the world. Imagination,
inspiration, ecstasy. Depression and exultation. The victory over congealed being
171
2. Ascent and descent in creativeness. The creative
act and the product of creation. Objectification and embodiment 180
3. Subjective and objective creativity. The 'classical'
and the 'romantic' in creativity 188
PART FOUR
THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY AND ESCHATOLOGY
CHAPTER VIII
1. The world as history. Aeons. Messianism and history.
Cosmic time, historical time, and existential time. Prophecy and time
2. Society as nature and society as spirit. Spirit
overthrows the
197
apparently everlasting foundations of society. The
break-through of freedom and love. The communist and anarchist ideal 3. Spirit,
nature and technology. Culture and civilization. The power of base and evil ideas
CHAPTER IX
1. The end of the objective world. The discovery
of freedom and personal existence in concrete universality. The removal of the
opposition between subject and object. Epistemological and metaphysical account
of eschatology
2. Personal eschatology and universal-historical
eschatology. The pre-existence of souls and reincarnation on different levels.
Liberation from hell
3. Freedom and Grace. Chiliasm, true and false
APPENDIX
Principal works by Nicolas Berdyaev
PREFACE
I have for a long while wanted to write a book in which I should describe
my metaphysical position as a whole. I use the word 'metaphysics', but my readers
must not give it here its traditional and academic meaning. I am concerned rather
with the kind of metaphysics which is disclosed in the spirit of, for instance,
Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Pascal, Boehme, St Augustine and similar
writers, that is to say, as they put it nowadays, with existential metaphysics.
But I prefer another word, and that is eschatological metaphysics. I want to survey
all problems in the light of eschatology, in the light which streams from the
End. And I speak of my metaphysical position as a whole in spite of the fact that
my way of thinking is fragmentary and aphoristic and moves by fits and starts.
But inwardly there is an integral character which belongs to my thought, and that
integral character is present in every part of it. My thought moves largely round
one centre, I have always been badly understood, and many misunderstandings have
constantly arisen, not only among people who were hostile to me, but even among
those who were sympathetically disposed. It is of course I myself who am to blame
for this. I have done but little to make my general outlook understood. I have
announced it, but I have not developed it systematically.
My philosophical thinking does not take a scientific form: it is not ratiocinative,
it belongs intuitively to life. Spiritual experience lies at the very foundation
of it, and its driving power is a passion for freedom. I do not think discursively.
It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it. Among
the philosophers whose thought does take a scientific form, I owe most to Kant,
and it is with Kant that I begin in this book. But it is not
altogether in the usual way that I expound Kant's metaphysics. As I deal with
the problems of metaphysics I find myself in many respects indebted to Boehme
amd Dostoyevsky. Of all the writers of the ancient world it is Heraclitus with
whom I have the greatest affinity. I should describe my book as an essay in the
epistemo-logical and metaphysical interpretation of the end of the world, of the
end of history, that is to say it is a book on eschatological epistemology and
metaphysics. So far as I am aware no interpretation of that kind has been made
hitherto. Eschatology has been left as a part of dogmatic theology, and not the
most important part at that. It is not, however, by any means to be inferred from
this that I am committed to a proclamation of the end of the world in the near
future.
I might call my book 'an untimely meditation'. It is very closely associated
with the spiritual experience which has been evoked by the catastrophic events
of our time. But the ideas expressed in it are opposed to the prevailing ideas
of our day, and turn rather towards other centuries. I have very little sympathy
with an age which is characterized by the prevailing influence of masses, quantities,
and technological science, and by the dominance of politics over the life of the
spirit. I have written the book at a terrible time. It is shorter than I could
have wished. There is a great deal in it which is not adequately developed and
clearly set forth. I was afraid that catastrophic events might prevent my finishing
it. I have not addressed myself to the average normal, socially organized and
organizing mind. From my point of view that would have been objectification. I
recognize the fact that as a thinker I belong to the aristocratically radical
type. The description which has been given of Nietzsche, as an 'aristocratic radical"
might be applied to me. It has been my wish to think, to apprehend and to form
my judgments of value simply and naturally, taking things in their essential nature,
and without having to square accounts with anything, and without accommodating
my opinions to anything. But to the pride and isolation of the cultural elite
I
VI
have always felt a negative reaction. It has not come within my purview to
indicate ways of organizing the human masses. There are many who are eager to
do tliis without my adding to the number. There are fewer by far who are eager
to grasp the meaning of what is happening to the world and to man. I should like
to belong to their number. My thought is not by any means abstract, it is concerned
above all with a revolution in the mind, in other words, with the liberation of
the mind from the power of objectification. Nothing but a radical change in the
set up of the mind can lead to vital changes; a wrong attitude of the conscious
mind is the source of the slavery of man.
At the root of the metaphysical considerations of this book there lies an
acute sense of the evil which reigns in this world, and of the bitter lot of man
as he lives in it. My thought reflects a revolt of human personality against an
illusory and crushing objective 'world harmony', and the objective social order,
against any form of investing the objective world order with a sacrosanct character.
It is the fight of the spirit against necessity. But it would be a mistake to
number me among the pessimists and those who do nothing but deny. I belong to
the believing philosophers but my faith is of my own sort. For the rest, I hold
that the most complex and the most problematic must at the deepest level coincide
with what is simplest and clearest. Paris - Clamart,
December, 1941.
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