Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was born in the Kiev province. Studied at the Law Faculty of Kiev University. In 1898 he was arrested as a member of the socialist movement. In his youth - a Marxist, but soon became disillusioned with the teachings of Marx and became interested in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. In 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia together with other representatives of the Russian intelligentsiaabroad... Lived in Berlin, Paris. In 1926 he founded the journal "Put" and dabout 1939was its editor-in-chief.
The most significant philosophical works of Berdyaev: "Subjectivism and idealism in social philosophy. A critical study of N. K. Mikhailovsky" (1900), "From the point of view of eternity" (1907), "Philosophy of freedom" (1911), "The meaning of creativity. Experience justification of man "(1916)," Philosophy of inequality "(1923)," The meaning of history "(1923)," Philosophy of the free spirit, Christian problematics and apologetics "(1929)," The fate of man (experience of paradoxical ethics) "(1931), "Russian thought: the main problems of Russian thought in the 19th and first half of the 20th century" (1946), "Experience of eschatological metaphysics" (1947). His works have been translated into many languages of the world.
The main theme of Berdyaev's works is the spiritual being of a person. In his opinion, human spirituality is closely related to divine spirituality. His teachings are opposed to the concepts of theism and pantheism, which are the expression of naturalistic religious philosophy.
A certain worldview, according to Berdyaev, is based on the relationship between spirit and nature. Spirit is the name for such concepts as life, freedom, creative activity, nature is a thing, certainty, passive activity, immobility. Spirit is neither objective nor subjective reality, its cognition is carried out with the help of experience. Nature, on the other hand, is something objective, plural and divisible in space. Therefore, not only matter, but also the psyche belongs to nature.
God acts as a spiritual principle. The divine is irrational and over-rational; it does not need a rational proof of its existence. God is outside the natural world and is expressed symbolically. God created the world out of nothing. Nothing is not emptiness, but a certain primary principle that precedes God and the world and does not contain any differentiation, primary chaos (Ungrund). Berdyaev borrowed this concept from Jacob Boehme, identifying it with the divine nothing. The creation of the world in Berdyaev is closely connected with his solution of the problem of freedom.
APHORISMS AND STATEMENTS BY NIKOLAY BERDYAEV
Creativity is the transition of non-being into being through an act of freedom.**
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, but slavery is easy.
Utopias have proved to be much more workable than it seemed before. And now there is another painful question: how to avoid their final implementation.
A miracle should be from faith, not faith from a miracle.
An ancient tragedy is a tragedy of fate, a Christian tragedy is a tragedy of freedom.
Culture was born out of cult.
True conservatism is the struggle of eternity against time, resistance to incorruptibility to decay.
The most proud people are people who don't love themselves.
Revolution is the decay of the old regime. And there is no salvation either in that which began to rot, nor in that which completed the rotting.
Revolutionaries worship the future but live in the past.
There is no science, there is only science.
The veneration of saints overshadowed communion with God. A saint is more than a man, and a saint is less than a man. Where is the man?
Freedom is the right to inequality.
Psychoanalysis is a psychology without a soul.
There can be no class truth, but there can be a class lie.
God is denied either because the world is so bad or because the world is so good.
The basic thought of man is the thought of God, the basic thought of God is the thought of man.
The denial of Russia in the name of humanity is the robbery of humanity.
Christ was not the founder of religion, but religion.
The gospel is a teaching about Christ, not a teaching about Christ.
Dogmatism is the wholeness of the spirit; the creator is always dogmatic, always boldly choosing and creating the chosen one.
The New Testament does not cancel the Old Testament for the still old mankind.
Socialism is a sign that Christianity has not fulfilled its task in the world.
Militant atheism is a payback for slavish ideas about God.
Politeness is a symbolically conditional expression of respect for every person.
For Berdyaev, there are three types of freedom: primary irrational freedom (arbitrariness), rational freedom (fulfillment of a moral duty), freedom imbued with love for God. Irrational freedom is contained in the "nothing" from which God created the world. The Creator God arises from the divine nothing, and only then the Creator God creates the world. Therefore, freedom is not created by God, since it is already rooted in the divine nothing. God the creator is not responsible for the freedom that creates evil. "God the creator," writes Berdyaev, "is omnipotent over being, over the created world, but he has no power over non-being, over uncreated freedom." In the power of freedom to create both good and evil. Therefore, according to Berdyaev, human actions are absolutely free, since they are not subject to God, who cannot even foresee them. God does not have any influence on the will of human beings, therefore he does not have omnipotence and omniscience, but only helps a person so that his will becomes good. If this were not the case, then God would be responsible for the evil committed on earth, and then theodicy would not be possible.
The religious philosophy of Berdyaev is closely related to his social concepts, and the connecting link is the personality and its problems. Therefore, in his works, Berdyaev pays a lot of attention to examining the place of the individual in society and to the theoretical analysis of everything that is associated with the individual. For Berdyaev, a person is not a part of society, on the contrary, society is a part of a person. Personality is a creative act in which the whole precedes the parts. The basis of the human personality is the unconscious, ascending through the conscious to the superconscious.
In man, the divine constantly exists, and in the Divine - the human. Man's creative activity is a complement to divine life. Man is a "dual being, living both in the world of phenomena and in the world of noumena" [Experience of eschatological metaphysics. P. 79]. Therefore, it is possible for noumena to penetrate into phenomena, "the invisible world - into the visible world, the world of freedom - into the world of necessity" [S. 67]. This means the victory of the spirit over nature; the liberation of man from nature is his victory over slavery and death. Man is primarily a spiritual substance that is not an object. A person is of greater value than society, state, nation. And if society and the state infringe upon the freedom of the individual, then his right to protect his freedom from these encroachments.
Berdyaev considers the ethics existing in society as legalized moral rules that govern the daily life of a person. But this legalized ethics, the "ethics of the law," the ethics of legalized Christianity is filled with conventions and hypocrisy. In ethics, he sees sadistic inclinations and impure subconscious motives of his demands. Therefore, without abolishing or discarding this everyday ethics, Berdyaev proposes a higher stage of moral life, which is based on redemption and love for God. This ethics is associated with the appearance of the God-man in the world and the manifestation of love for sinners. There is an irrational freedom in the world that is rooted in the Ungrund and not in God. God enters the world, into its tragedy and wants to help people with his love, seeks to achieve the unity of love and freedom, which should transform and deify the world. "God himself strives to suffer in peace."
According to Berdyaev, the historical process of the development of society is a struggle between good and irrational freedom, it is “a drama of love and freedom unfolding between God and His other Self, which he loves and for whom He longs for mutual love” [The meaning of history. P. 52]. "Three forces operate in world history: God, fate and human freedom. That is why history is so complex. Fate turns the human personality into the arena of the irrational forces of history ... Christianity recognizes that fate can only be overcome through Christ" [Experience of eschatological metaphysics ]. The victory of irrational freedom leads to the disintegration of reality and a return to the original chaos.
An expression of the triumph of irrational freedom - revolutions, which represent the extreme manifestation of chaos. Revolutions do not create anything new, they only destroy what has already been created. Only after the revolution, during the period of reaction, does the process of creative transformation of life take place, but any projects based on coercion fail. In the modern era, striving to liberate the creative forces of man, nature is seen as a dead mechanism that should be subdued. For this, all the achievements of science and technology are used.
Machine production is placed at the service of man in order to fight nature, but this machine technique also destroys man himself, because he loses his individual image. A person, guided by non-religious humanism, begins to lose his humanity. If a person rejects a higher moral ideal and does not strive to realize the image of God in himself, then he becomes a slave of everything base, turns into a slave of new forms of life based on the forced service of the individual to society to satisfy his material needs, which is achieved under socialism.
In principle, Berdyaev is not against socialism, but he is for a socialism in which "the highest values of the human person and its right to achieve the fullness of life will be recognized." But this is just a socialist ideal, which differs from real projects of building socialism, which, when implemented, generate new contradictions in social life. The real socialism that they seek to implement, according to Berdyaev, will never lead to the establishment of the equality he proclaimed; on the contrary, it will give rise to new enmity between people and new forms of oppression. Under socialism, even if it eliminates hunger and poverty, the spiritual problem will never be solved. A person will still be "face to face, as before, with the secret of death, eternity, love, knowledge and creativity. Indeed, we can say that a more rationally organized social life, a tragic element of life is a tragic conflict between the personality and death, time and eternity - will increase in its intensity. "
Berdyaev paid much attention to Russia in his works. He wrote that "God himself intended Russia to become a great integral unity of East and West, but in its actual empirical position it is an unfortunate mixture of East and West." For Berdyaev, Russia's troubles are rooted in the wrong balance of masculine and feminine principles in it. If among Western peoples the masculine principle prevailed in the main forces of the people, which was promoted by Catholicism, which brought up the discipline of the spirit, then “the Russian soul remained unreleased, it did not realize any limits and stretched infinitely. It requires everything or nothing, its mood is either apocalyptic , or nihilistic, and therefore it is incapable of erecting a half-hearted “kingdom of culture.” In the book “Russian Thought,” Berdyaev describes these features of Russian national thought, which are aimed at the “eschatological problem of the end,” at the apocalyptic feeling of impending catastrophe.
Berdyaev's philosophy is the most vivid expression of Russian philosophy, in which another attempt is made to express the Christian worldview in its original form.
Berdyaev Nikolay Alexandrovich(1874 - 1948) - philosopher and publicist, after Solovyov - the largest figure in Russian philosophy. He studied at the Kiev University at the Faculty of Law, but did not graduate from the university, because in 1889 he was arrested for participating in the Social Democratic movement. In his first literary works, he sought to combine Marxism with neo-Kantianism, but soon abandoned these theories, became interested in the philosophy of V. Solovyov and then began to independently develop the Christian worldview.
He taught philosophy at Moscow University. In 1922, the Soviet government arrested over a hundred writers on charges of diverging from Soviet ideology and deported them abroad. Among the philosophers in this group were Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Ilyin, Frank, Lossky and others. After a short stay in Berlin in 1924, Berdyaev moved to France, worked as a professor at the Russian Religious and Philosophical Academy in Paris, and edited the Put 'magazine. Berdyaev wrote a huge number of books and articles, most of which have been translated into many languages: “ Spiritual crisis of the intelligentsia”, “Philosophy of Freedom”, “The meaning of creativity”, “The meaning of the story”, “Philosophy of inequality”, “Russian idea" etc.
Analyzing the philosophical views of N. Berdyaev, V. Zenkovsky divides all his work into 4 periods, but these periods express not so much different stages in his philosophical development, as different aspects of his philosophy. First period highlights ethical subject, although Berdyaev was a moralist until the end of his life. The second period is marked religious and mythological a turning point in his work. The third period was defined by an emphasis on historical issue, including Berdyaev's characteristic taste for eschatology (a religious teaching about the ultimate destinies of the world and man), which is characteristic of Berdyaev's recent years. Finally, the fourth period is associated with his personalistic ideas.
Berdyaev's philosophical outlook is based on the difference between the ghostly world (these are empirical conditions of life, where disunity, disunity, enmity reign) and the genuine world (ideal being, where love and freedom reign). Man, his body and spirit are held captive by the “world” of ghostly existence - this is a consequence of the fall of man described in the Bible. The task of man is to free his spirit from this captivity, "to get out of slavery into freedom, from the enmity of the" world "into cosmic love." This is possible thanks to creativity, the ability for which a person is gifted, since human nature is the image and likeness of God the creator. Freedom and creativity are inextricably linked.
Berdyaev called man the “existential center” of the world, endowed with “terrible and final” freedom. However, freedom is not deducible from being - not only natural, but also divine; freedom exists before being, it is “built into nothing, into nothingness,” from which God created the world. This "nothing" is not emptiness; it is the primary principle prior to God and the world. Berdyaev borrowed this concept from Jacob Boehme, the German mystic philosopher, who designated this primary principle with the term Ungrund (devoid of foundation, primary chaos).
(Berdyaev believes that “it is difficult to reconcile the existence of a free and all-good God with the evil and suffering of the world.” Thus, he comes “to the inevitability of admitting the existence of uncreated freedom.”
The philosophy of freedom is the philosophy of God-manhood. The idea of God-manhood, characteristic of Russian philosophical thought, goes back to the Christian doctrine of the unity of the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ. In V. Solovyov's work, it was expressed in the idea of integrity, the all-unity of the world. In "Readings on God-manhood" he notes that Christianity is not only faith in God, but also faith in man, in the possibility of revealing the divine in man. For Berdyaev, this idea is inextricably linked with creativity, in which a person likens himself to God. God needs man, man's answer, man's creativity. With the manifestation of the God-man Christ “the autocracy of God ceases, for man who is sons of God is called to direct participation in divine life. The governance of the world becomes divine-human ”. Thus, for Berdyaev, the world process becomes not a return to the original completeness, but a creative increment to it, “the eighth day of creation”. Man is called to participate in Divine creativity and, therefore, history becomes a continuation of the creation of the world. Creativity creates a special world, it “continues the work of creation,” makes a person similar to the Creator God.
Freedom, rooted in irrational and transcendent groundlessness, is for Berdyaev the original and defining reality of human existence.
Creativity for Berdyaev was immersion in a special, different world, a world free from hardships, from the power of hated everyday life. By creativity, he understands "the shock and rise of the entire human being, directed towards a different, higher life, towards a new being." It is in the creative experience that it is “revealed” that the “I”, the subject, is more primary and higher than the “not-I”, the object.
Creativity is the highest manifestation of freedom, which creates genuine and valuable out of “nothing”. This is the revelation of “I” to God and the world, in it is the justification of man, as it were, a reciprocal step on his path to the transcendent.)
Berdyaev writes: “From the divine Nothing, or from the Ungrund, the Holy Trinity, the Creator God, is born”. The creation of the world by God the creator is a secondary act. Therefore, freedom is not created by God: it is rooted in nothing, in the Ungrund, from eternity. A creator god cannot be held responsible for freedom that breeds evil. Man, according to Berdyaev's teachings, is "a child of God and a child of Maeon - uncreated freedom." God the creator is omnipotent over being, but has no power over non-being, over uncreated freedom. This abyss of primary freedom, which originally precedes God, is the source of evil. Berdyaev could not, like V. Soloviev, blame God for the evil in the world, since in this case theodition (justification of God) would be impossible. But he equally did not accept the Christian scheme, which rooted evil in the person himself. He preferred to absolutize freedom, to separate it from God and man, in order thereby to ontologize evil, to plunge it into pre-production chaos. This opened the way to the harmonization of being, which was carried out with the help of creativity. But since creativity also flows from freedom, the confrontation between evil and creativity constitutes the stage of a new religious era - the era of the “third revelation”. Creativity creates a special world, it “continues the work of creation,” makes a person similar to the Creator God.
Consideration of man as a creature endowed with tremendous creative power and at the same time forced to submit to material necessity determines the nature of Berdyaev's understanding of such deep questions of human existence as the issues of sex and love. Criticizing the sanctimonious attitude towards these issues of contemporary society and the church, Berdyaev emphasizes that "this is a painful question for every creature, for all people it is also immensely important, as the question of maintaining life and death." Berdyaev sees the deep foundation of sexual attraction in the fact that neither a man nor a woman in themselves is an image and likeness of God in the full sense of the word. Only by uniting in love, they form an integral personality, similar to the divine personality. This reunion in love is at the same time creativity, leading a person out of the world given, the realm of necessity, into space, into the realm of freedom. Love creates a different, eternal life for the face. “In the creative act of love, the creative mystery of the beloved's face is born. The lover knows about the face of the beloved that the whole world does not know, and the lover is always more right than the whole world. "
The religious understanding of man determined Berdyaev's approach to the problem of social progress. In his treatise The Russian Idea, published for the first time in Paris in 1946, Berdyaev proceeded from Solov'ev's historiosophy, which recognized that “the idea of science is not what it thinks about itself in time, but what God thinks about it in eternity ”. Berdyaev perceived history as pure creativity, free expression of the will of the mind. He created the historiosophy of Russia, not bothering himself with either logic or evidence. At the heart of his concept is not a reliable fact, but an intuitive thesis about the self-destruction, inconsistency of the Russian soul. The Russian people, according to Berdyaev, is a "combination of opposites" - both borrowed, introduced from outside, and local, generated directly by the element of national life. On one pole - primordial paganism, on the other - ascetic-monastic Orthodoxy, the church. Their constant struggle over the centuries has contributed to the development of a special “creative religious consciousness” that is the essence of the “Russian idea”. This religious consciousness embraces all areas of Russian philosophy - Masons and Decembrists, Slavophiles and Westernizers, anarchists and even Russian Marxists.
Perceiving the Marxist criticism of bourgeois society, Berdyaev at the same time acted as an ideological opponent of Marxism. He sharply criticized the ideology and practice of Bolshevism, but did not consider "Russian communism" to be an accidental phenomenon. He saw its streams and meaning in the depths of national history, in the elements and “freemen” of Russian life, ultimately in the messianic destiny of Russia, which seeks but has not yet acquired the “Kingdom of God,” called to great sacrifices in the name of the true unity of mankind.
Berdyaev did not recognize theories that consider a person primarily as a particle of society, who saw the historical meaning of its existence in the performance of social functions and, ultimately, in what was done by this person for subsequent generations. Berdyaev believed that a person belongs to a genus, group, society only in his empirical being, in the world given. The essence of a person, free and creative, is determined not by its belonging to society, but by its belonging to the cosmos. At the same time, freedom and creativity are not the privilege of selected individuals, any person initially possesses them.
The idea of freedom as a "conscious need" leads to the fact that a person is likened to physical objects that obey only the inexorable laws of nature. Only the understanding of freedom as the potential ability of a person to freely choose an alternative, as an opportunity to think and act in accordance with their ideas and desires, and not in the case of internal or external coercion, gives a person the opportunity to gain spiritual freedom, to find a person himself. N. Berdyaev writes: "The idea of freedom for me is more primary than the idea of perfection, because one cannot accept compulsory, violent perfection."
Berdyaev's worldview is characterized by the recognition of the absolute value of any person as belonging to genuine being, of any generation, of any culture. From these positions, he criticizes the doctrine of progress, accusing it of “knowingly and consciously asserting that for a huge mass of human generations and for an endless kind of times and epochs there is only death and the grave ... All generations are only a means for the implementation of this blessed life, this happy generation of the chosen ones, who must appear in some unknown and alien future for us ”(The meaning of history. - M., 1990. - P. 147).
In work " Philosophy of inequality“Berdyaev completely rejects the Marxist theory of social development. He blames Marxism for “the application of abstract principles to concrete historical reality”, referring to such, first of all, the ideas of earthly well-being and universal equality. For Berdyaev, the very striving for social equality was utopian, since this would mean the destruction of the “cosmic hierarchy,” which includes social life. The order of God is expressed in the hierarchy, while "every revolution bears the stamp of gracelessness, God-forsakenness and damnation." In the revolution, the spirit of creativity perishes, for "creativity is aristocratic, it is the work of the best, it does not tolerate the rule of the worst, the rule of the crowd." The aristocracy is in every way the opposite of democracy, it is incompatible with the "natural law" of the proletariat. In their struggle for power, the plebeian classes do not act "out of nobility of origin" or "spiritual recognition", but solely on the basis of the psychology of resentment, the psychology of pretension. In the proletariat, destructive force predominates, there is no spirituality, no culture. It is only in the aristocratic system that the personality is established and flourishes, acquiring in it the “thousand-year discipline” of hierarchical existence. This was the brief summary of Berdyaev's Philosophy of Inequality, which was accepted by all the ideologists of Russian anti-communism.
At the same time, Berdyaev is a champion of a specific kind of socialism, which he calls personalistic socialism, arguing that the socialization of economic life can be useful only if "the highest values of the human person and its right to achieve the fullness of life are recognized." However, efforts to bring about socialism transform it "into something completely different from the socialist ideal." Socialism will never achieve the emancipation of human labor, which Marx sought to achieve by compulsion to it; socialism will never give a person wealth and will never establish equality, but will only lead to new enmity between people, new disunity and new, unheard-of forms of oppression. Eliminating hunger and poverty “does not solve the spiritual problem”; man remains "face to face, as before, with the secret of death, eternity, love, knowledge and creativity."
Berdyaev wrote often and extensively about Russia. He says that “God himself intended Russia to become a great integral unity of East and West, but in its actual empirical position it is an unfortunate mixture of East and West. He sees the source of Russia's ulcers in the wrong balance of masculine and feminine principles in it. At a certain stage of the national development of Western peoples in France, England, Germany, "a masculine spirit appeared and organically imposed its stamp on the main forces of the people." There was no such process in Russia, and even the Orthodox religion was unable to provide the discipline of the spirit that Catholicism created in the West. The Russian soul remained unreleased; she was unaware of any limits and stretched infinitely. She demands all or nothing, her mood is either apocalyptic or nihilistic, and she is therefore incapable of erecting the half-kingdom of culture. In accordance with these national characteristics, Russian thought is directed mainly "at the eschatological problem of the end, is apocalyptic colored" and is imbued with a sense of impending catastrophe.
Berdyaev is a champion of the traditions of Western European and Russian humanism, namely the absolute value of the individual and his inalienable rights to spiritual freedom and acceptable living conditions. He seeks to prove that these principles can only be consistently substantiated on the basis of a Christian worldview.
Berdyaev's ideas had a noticeable impact on the development of French existentialism and personalism, as well as on the socio-philosophical concepts of the “new left” trends in France in the 1960s-1970s. The whole world listened to Berdyaev's voice, writes V.V. Zenkovsky.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (Russian pre-professor Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev, March 6, 1874, Obukhovo estate, Kiev province, Russian Empire - March 23, 1948, Clamart near Paris, Fourth French Republic) is a Russian religious and political philosopher, a representative of Russian existentialism and personalism. The author of the original concept of the philosophy of freedom and (after the First World War and the Civil War) of the concept of a new Middle Ages.
During his exile for his revolutionary activities, Berdyaev switched from Marxism (“I considered Marx to be a genius and I think now,” he wrote later in Samopoznanie) to a philosophy of personality and freedom in the spirit of religious existentialism and personalism.
In his works, Berdyaev covers and compares world philosophical and religious teachings and trends: Greek, Buddhist and Indian philosophy, Kabbalah, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, mysticism, cosmism, anthroposophy, theosophy, etc.
For Berdyaev, the key role belonged to freedom and creativity ("The Philosophy of Freedom" and "The Meaning of Creativity"): the only source of creativity is freedom. Subsequently, Berdyaev introduced and developed important concepts for him:
- ... the kingdom of the spirit,
- ... the kingdom of nature,
- ... objectification - the inability to overcome the slave shackles of the kingdom of nature,
- ... transcending is a creative breakthrough, overcoming the slave shackles of natural and historical life.
But in any case, the inner basis of Berdyaev's philosophy is freedom and creativity. Freedom defines the kingdom of the spirit. Dualism in its metaphysics is God and freedom. Freedom is pleasing to God, but at the same time it is not from God. There is a “primary”, “uncreated” freedom over which God has no power. This same freedom, violating the "divine hierarchy of being", generates evil. The theme of freedom, according to Berdyaev, is the most important in Christianity - the "religion of freedom." Irrational, "dark" freedom is transformed by Divine love, by the sacrifice of Christ "from within", "without violence against it," "without rejecting the world of freedom." Divine-human relations are inextricably linked with the problem of freedom: human freedom has an absolute meaning, the fate of freedom in history is not only a human, but also a divine tragedy. The fate of a "free man" in time and history is tragic.
Philosophy ON. Berdyaeva is multidimensional in nature, however, it is dominated by existential and religious orientation. The following the main provisions of Berdyaev's philosophy:
- ... the highest value in the surrounding world is freedom;
- ... freedom, "conciliarity" (the unity of spirit and will) constitute the basis of human existence;
- ... human freedom is threatened from the outside;
- ... this threat is borne primarily by society and the state, which are, respectively, the objectification of the universal will and the mechanism of suppression; society and the state seek to subjugate a person, suppress his individuality; the task of a person is to preserve his originality, not to allow society and the state to assimilate himself;
- ... religion also plays a key role in human life;
- ... God should be a moral symbol, an example for man;
- ... the relationship between God and man should be "on an equal footing"; God should not act as the Lord (master), and man should not act as his slave;
- ... man should strive for God, but not try to replace God with himself.
In his socio-political views, Berdyaev assigns a significant role to the problem of the historical fate of Russia and the Russian people. According to Berdyaev, socialism (communism) under construction in the USSR has its origins in the Russian national character (community, mutual assistance, striving for equality, justice, collectivism). Russia should not side with either the East or the West. She must become a mediator between them and fulfill her historical mission. Historical mission of Russia - to build the "Kingdom of God" (that is, a society based on mutual love and mercy) on Earth.
Berdyaev's philosophy has an eschatological focus (substantiates the "end of the world" in the future).
She also had a great influence on the development of European existentialism - the doctrine of man and his life.
Length:
Berdyaev studied at the law faculty of Kiev University, but his passion for Marxism and ties with the Social Democrats led to his arrest, expulsion from the university and exile. The "Marxist" period in his spiritual biography was relatively short-lived and, more importantly, did not have a decisive influence on the formation of his worldview and personality. The point of view seems to be quite justified that he, in essence, was never a Marxist - neither in the general outlook and general philosophical plan, nor in the sense of adherence to specific principles and methodology of Marxism, nor, finally, in the sphere of ideology: Berdyaev's anti-bourgeoisism has only intensified over the years, his criticism of modern industrial civilization did not stop, but in all this, as well as in his assessments of socialism - in this case, it does not matter "positive" or "negative" (both took place), there was nothing specific Marxist. Even Berdyaev's participation in the collection Problems of Idealism (1902) showed that the Marxist stage was practically over for him. In his article "The Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism," he declared "the close connection of ethics with metaphysics and with religion." Further evolution of Berdyaev was associated primarily with the definition of his own original philosophical position, and in the field of metaphysics and religious philosophy. The theme of Russia is one of the central ones in Berdyaev's work, and it is with this theme that the most dramatic changes in his worldview are connected. From the very beginning, his attitude to the February Revolution was ambiguous: he considered the fall of the monarchy inevitable and necessary, but he also perceived the "entry into the great obscurity" of the post-revolutionary future as fraught with chaos, a fall into the "abyss of violence." Rejection of October and Bolshevism did not prevent Berdyaev from showing exceptional activity in the post-revolutionary years: the philosopher gave public lectures, taught at the university, was one of the leaders of the All-Russian Union of Writers, organized the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture, etc. All this activity was finally cut short in 1922, when Berdyaev, along with a large group of Russian cultural figures, was exiled abroad. He died in Clamart (near Paris). A year before his death, he was elected an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge.
Berdyaev's two books - "The Philosophy of Freedom" (1911) and "The Meaning of Creativity" (1916) - symbolically designated the philosopher's spiritual choice. His understanding of both freedom and creativity did not remain unchanged, and those who wish to understand the meaning of Berdyaev's philosophy of freedom and his apology for creativity must turn to the more mature works of the thinker, written in emigration. But the key role of these ideas - freedom and creativity - in Berdyaev's philosophical outlook was already determined in Russia, in the pre-revolutionary years. In the future, he will introduce and develop other concepts-symbols that are extremely important for him: spirit, whose "kingdom" isontologically opposed to the "kingdom of nature", objectification - Berdyaev's intuition of the drama of the fate of a person who, on the paths of history and culture, is not able to leave the boundaries of the "kingdom of nature. ", transcending is a creative breakthrough, overcoming, at least for a moment, the" slave "shackles of natural-historical being, existential time is the spiritual experience of personal and historical life, which has a metahistorical, absolute meaning and preserves it even in the final, eschatological perspective, and etc. But the inner basis and impulse of Berdyaev's metaphysics remains the themes of freedom and creativity. Freedom is what in a deep sense at the ontological level determines the content of the "kingdom of the spirit", the meaning of its opposition to the "kingdom of nature." Creativity, which always has freedom as its basis and goal, essentially exhausts the "positive" aspect of human existence in Berdyaev's metaphysics and in this respect knows no boundaries: it is possible not only in artistic and philosophical experience, but also in religious and moral experience. , in general, in the spiritual experience of the individual, in her historical and social activity.
Berdyaev called himself "the philosopher of freedom." And if we talk about the relationship between freedom and creativity in his metaphysics, then the priority here belongs to freedom. The intuition of freedom is Berdyaev's original intuition and, one might even say, his not only basic, but also the only metaphysical idea - the only one in the sense that literally all other concepts, symbols, ideas of Berdyaev's philosophical language are not only "subordinate" to it, but and reducible to it. "Peace" is evil ... One must leave the world, overcome it to the end ... Freedom from the "world" is the pathos of my book, "he argued. There is nothing specific Berdyaevsky about such a" negative "definition of freedom. the pathos of "renunciation of the world" is presented in the history of religious thought quite widely. V. V. Zenkovsky quite rightly wrote about the dualistic period in the spiritual biography of Berdyaev. Only this dualism, by no means disappearing over the years, acquired a kind of metaphysical outlines. -historical point of view) the thesis about the departure from the "evil" world, freedom from it turns into something much more original: from the negative definition of freedom (freedom from) the thinker moves to its positive justification. Freedom is recognized by him as the most fundamental ontological reality and not only, let's say, in a functional sense - the possibility of metaphysical "departure" or "return", but in itself as an absolute beginning, truly ontologists the physical world, where exactly one must strive to leave our world, the world of "imaginary", where there is no freedom and, therefore, there is no life. Dualism in Berdyaev's metaphysics is not a dualism of spirit and matter or God and the world. The metaphysical "crack" in being, according to Berdyaev, runs much deeper. God and freedom - these two principles form two ontological centers in his religious philosophy. The origin of freedom is declared a mystery, and its relationship with Divine Freedom, with the Logos, is also mysterious. "The Logos is from God, but freedom is from the abyss that precedes being."
The Russian philosopher ontologized freedom for the sake of a metaphysical justification of the freedom of the human person. His existential experience of the fundamental, decisive significance of human freedom was extremely profound. Following this basic intuition, he recognized the existence of not only an extra-natural, but also an extra-divine source of human freedom. His experience of justifying freedom was perhaps the most radical in the history of metaphysics. But such radicalism led to a rather paradoxical result: a person who seemed to have found a fulcrum outside of a totally determined natural being and was capable of creative self-determination even in relation to the Absolute Beginning, found himself alone with absolutely irrational, "baseless" freedom. Berdyaev argued that ultimately this "rooted in Nothing, in the Ungrund" (in the German language - an abyss, groundlessness, a symbolic concept of J. Boehme, whose work the Russian thinker has always appreciated extremely high) freedom is transformed by Divine Love "without violence against it" ... God, according to Berdyaev, loves freedom literally no matter what. But what role does human freedom play in the dialectic of this Berdyaev myth? (The Thinker considered myth-making as an integral element of his own creativity, stating the need to "operate with myths".)
Berdyaev wrote about M. Heidegger as "perhaps the most extreme pessimist in the history of philosophical thought in the West", seeing this pessimism in his "metaphysics of ultimate God-forsakenness", in the fact that "the rupture of human existence and the divine reaches its ultimate expression." According to Berdyaev, such pessimism is overcome precisely by a metaphysical choice in favor of freedom, and not impersonal existence. But his own subjectless and baseless freedom puts a person in a situation no less tragic. Ultimately, Berdyaev nevertheless turns out to be "more optimistic" than Heidegger, but exactly to the extent that his work is permeated with Christian pathos. Heidegger's "fundamental ontology" is monistic; it knows no other, extra-existential metaphysical center. Berdyaev, on the other hand, having taken the path of the dualistic "dialectic of the divine and the human," leaves a person with hope for outside help, for transcendental help. Naturally, one has to wait for it from a personal Christian God, and not from "baseless freedom." The fate of Berdyaev's "free" man in time and history is hopelessly and irreparably tragic. Associated with this is the thinker's general assessment of culture as a real historical result of human creativity: "Culture in its deepest essence and in its religious meaning is a great failure", because a person in culture does not achieve what his creative nature needs, not the transformation of being. This perception of history and culture largely determined the philosopher's outlook throughout his life. Over the years, it becomes more and more dramatic, which was undoubtedly facilitated by the events of Russian and world history of the 20th century, of which he happened to be a witness and participant.
Constantly appealing to Christian themes, ideas and images, Berdyaev never claimed the orthodoxy or “Orthodoxness” of his own understanding of Christianity and, acting as a free thinker, remained alien to theological tradition.
N.A. Berdyaev (1874-1948) was a native of a noble family. While studying at Kiev University, he began attending circles of the Social Democrats and was carried away by the ideas of Marxism. Already during this period he began to be interested in reading Hegel, Kant, Schelling, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, L. Tolstoy. Gradually, Berdyaev's own philosophy was formed, the center of which was a religious idealistic philosophy. He eventually became one of the most consistent critics of materialism and Marxism.
His worldview was formed while working on the magazines Voprosy Zhizn and Novyi Put. He became the founder of a religious-philosophical society called "In memory of V. Solovyov". His first work was published in 1911. Berdyaev's "Philosophy of Freedom" marked the end of his quest to substantiate the philosophy of "neo-Christianity" and define the "new." In 1916, his next work, The Meaning of Creativity, appeared, which consolidated his ideas.
The first World War significantly influenced the worldview of the philosopher, who perceived it as the end of a humanistic historical force that was capable of fulfilling the mission of the Christian reunification of mankind, he saw only in Russia. Therefore, he warmly welcomed and sharply negatively perceived Oktyabrskaya. Bolshevik socialism in his work "Philosophy of Inequality" he called "compulsory brotherhood".
Berdyaev created the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture. Rejection of the Bolshevik ideology aroused close attention of the authorities to him, he was arrested twice, in 1922 he was exiled abroad for
The main works, which expressed the individual philosophy of Berdyaev, were created during the period of emigration (first Berlin, then the French city of Clamart). His main works are "The Philosophy of the Free Spirit", "The Meaning of Creativity", "On Slavery and" Spirit and Reality "," The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar "," The Experience of Eschatological Metaphysics ".
The center of his philosophical reflections is the theme of man. Berdyaev's philosophy was based on the postulate of freedom of creativity and personality. His teachings are ranked among the currents of existentialism and personalism.
Berdyaev believed that loneliness, insecurity and abandonment are inherent in man, which are rooted in a social environment that enslaves a person and inspires a longing for everyday life. Only philosophy, which is a breakthrough from the meaningless world that rapes the personality (the work "I and the World of Objects", which Berdyaev soon wrote), can liberate a person from the oppressive fear of a person.
The philosophy of freedom in his work was revealed in many works, including "Self-knowledge". His teaching was aimed at helping a person to take an active life and creative position, thus overcoming the imperfection of being.
Its three main ideas are the idea of "universal Christianity", the idea of freedom and an apology for creativity. In general, a sense of the crisis of life and, at the same time, romantic confidence in the victory of the ideal is inherent in his views.
As a religious thinker, Berdyaev created an original cosmogonic picture of the world. Before being there was an abyss (an irrational state of freedom). That is, freedom preceded absolutely everything, and even God, who was born later and created the world and people. A spirit is poured out of God, which he breathes into a person. Therefore, the world has two foundations: spirit and freedom. These grounds are combined in a person and contradict each other. The spirit is primary in relation to the material world and is more significant for a person. People are associated with him.
Berdyaev's philosophy proposed the ideal of freedom of society, which he called "personalistic socialism," which meant the primacy of the individual over society. But people can achieve real community not in society, but only in God ("conciliarity"). Therefore, the meaning of the history of mankind is the dispensation of the Kingdom of God. Earthly history is finite, but this is not a catastrophe, but the overcoming of enmity, impersonality and objectification.
Berdyaev considers the fundamental principle of the world not being, but freedom. It is from this freedom that God creates man - a free being. Freedom, being irrational in nature, can therefore lead to both good and evil. According to Berdyaev, evil is freedom that turns against itself, it is the enslavement of man by the idols of art, science and religion. They give rise to the relationship of bondage and subjection from which human history arose.
Nikolay Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948)
Berdyaev rebelled against concepts rationalism, determinism and teleology that destroy the kingdom of freedom. Problem human existence consists in his release. This idea of Berdyaev formed the basis of the "philosophy of personality", which influenced the current personalism and, in particular, on Emmanuel Mounier, as well as on the Uruguayan Jesuit Juan Luis Segundo, the theologian of liberation.
A person is determined primarily by his personality. Berdyaev contrasts the concept personality- the category of ethical and spiritual - individual, categories of sociological and natural. Personality does not belong to the sphere of nature, but to the world of freedom. Unlike the individual (part of the cosmos and society), the personality does not belong at all to any integrity. She opposes false wholes: the natural world, society, state, nation, church, etc. These false wholes are the main sources of objectification, which alienate the freedom of man in his creations - and he ends up deifying them, submitting to their tyranny.
Berdyaev considers the creative act to be a means for liberation from all forms of alienating objectification. Its essence is the struggle against external restrictions, knowledge, love - liberating forces that rise up against ossification, cold and everything inhuman.
Turning to Christian messianism (reminiscent of the teachings of Joachim Floorsky), who lived in the era of the establishment of totalitarian regimes, Berdyaev was one of the first to condemn the messianism of the "chosen race" and "chosen class".
Raging against all forms of social, political and religious oppression, against depersonalization and dehumanization, Berdyaev's writings acted as a vaccine against all forms of bloody utopias of the past and future. Unlike the creators of these utopias, Berdyaev emphasized the real needs and real purpose of man. Man is a creature of supernatural freedom that has emerged from the divine mystery and will end history with the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. The individual must prepare this Kingdom in freedom and love.
In general terms, Berdyaev's thought lies in the tradition of Russian messianism - purified and clarified by radical criticism of the forces opposing him.
Nikolai Berdyaev in 1912
Berdyaev - quotes
Freedom in its deepest sense is not a right, but a duty, not what a person requires, but what is required of a person in order for him to become fully human. Freedom does not at all mean an easy life; freedom is a difficult life that requires heroic efforts. (Berdyaev. "On the ambiguity of freedom")
The most unacceptable for me is the feeling of God as power, as omnipotence and power. God has no authority. He has less power than a policeman. (Berdyaev. "Self-knowledge")
The aristocratic idea requires the real rule of the best, democracy - the formal rule of all. Aristocracy, as management and domination of the best, as a requirement for high-quality selection, remains forever the highest principle of social life, the only utopia worthy of man. And all your democratic cries, with which you announce the squares and bazaars, will not erase from the noble human heart the dreams of the domination and government of the best, the elect, they will not stifle this from the depths of the deep appeal that the best and the elect should appear, so that the aristocracy will enter into its eternal rights. (Berdyaev. "Philosophy of Inequality")
Every system of life is hierarchical and has its own aristocracy, only a heap of rubbish is not hierarchical, and only in it no aristocratic qualities stand out. If the true hierarchy is violated and the true aristocracy is destroyed, then false hierarchies appear and a false aristocracy is formed. A bunch of swindlers and murderers from the scum of society can form a new pseudo-aristocracy and represent a hierarchical principle in the structure of society. (Berdyaev. "Philosophy of Inequality")
The aristocracy was created by God and received its qualities from God. The overthrow of the historical aristocracy leads to the establishment of another aristocracy. The aristocracy claims to be the bourgeoisie, the representatives of capital, and the proletariat, the representatives of labor. The aristocratic claims of the proletariat even exceed those of all other classes. (Berdyaev. "Philosophy of Inequality")
You take everything that is the worst from the workers, the peasants, from the intelligent bohemia, and from this worst you want to create the future life. You appeal to the vengeful instincts of human nature. From the evil your good is born, from the dark your light shines. Your Marx taught that in evil and from evil a new society should be born, and he considered the uprising of the darkest and ugliest human feelings as the way to it. He contrasted the mental type of the proletarian with the mental type of the aristocrat. The proletarian is the one who does not want to know his origin and does not honor his ancestors, for whom there is no clan and homeland. The proletarian consciousness raises resentment, envy and revenge in the virtue of the new man to come. (Berdyaev. "Philosophy of Inequality")
Democracy is indifferent to the direction and content of the people's will and does not have any criteria for determining the truth or falsity of the direction in which the people's will is expressed ... Democracy is pointless ... Democracy remains indifferent to good and evil. (Berdyaev. "New Middle Ages")
Human dignity presupposes the existence of God. This is the essence of the whole dialectic of humanism in life. A person is a person only if he is a free spirit, reflecting the Higher Being philosophically. This point of view should be called personalism. This personalism should by no means be confused with individualism, which is destroying the European man. (Berdyaev. "Ways of Humanism")
For a person to be a true reality, and not a random combination of elements of a lower nature, it is necessary that there are realities higher than a person (Berdyaev. "The Lie of Humanism").
The natural world, "this world" and its massive environment, is not at all identical with what is called the cosmos and cosmic life filled with creatures. "Peace" is the enslavement, bondage of beings, not only people, but also animals, plants, even minerals, stars. This "world" must be destroyed by the individual, freed from his enslaved and enslaving state. (Berdyaev. "On slavery and human freedom")
I would like to eternal life be with animals, especially loved ones. (Berdyaev. "Self-knowledge")
