8. German classical philosophy and its main problems. Philosophy of Kant: the concept of "things in themselves" and transcendental knowledge. Antinomies of pure reason German classical philosophy is considered as an independent stage in the development of philosophy, because on

15. Analytical philosophy of the twentieth century. Philosophical program of neopositivism and its crisis. "Post-positivism" and the philosophy of science Analytical philosophy (Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein) was formed in the XX century and saw the task of philosophy not in the synthesis of scientific knowledge, but in

GREEK CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY, HELINISTIC

PHILOSOPHY OF NEW TIME AND THE AGE OF EDUCATION, GERMAN CLASSICAL

Moscow Banking Economic College

ESSAY

on subject

FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

on the topic of:

"THE PHILOSOPHY OF N.A. BERDYAEV'S CREATIVITY"

scientific adviser

Ter-Gukasova T.A.

The work was performed by student 2-BD-1

Abakumova Margarita

Moscow, 2009

Introduction

The main stages of the life and work of N.A. Berdyaev

Philosophy of N.A. Berdyaeva

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

It is difficult to find in the history of philosophy a thinker who so intensely and with such acuteness would experience the last limiting questions of human existence, like N.A. Berdyaev. He was one of those about whom F.M. Dostoevsky wrote that they did not need a million, the main thing for them was to resolve the idea. And, engaging in a roll call with the great writer, Berdyaev admits: “I did not love“ life ”before and more than“ thought ”, I loved“ meaning ”more than life,“ spirit ”loved more than“ world ”...“ Man is a complex and confused creature ... My "I" experiences itself as the intersection of two worlds. At the same time, “this world” is experienced as not genuine, not primary and not final. There is another world, more real and genuine. The depth of "I" belongs to him "(Berdyaev N.A. Self-knowledge).

Berdyaev was not an academic philosopher. He was a principled opponent of universal worldview systems. As many researchers of Berdyaev's work note, his idea of ​​personal freedom is colored by directly opposite moods: tragedy and determination to make a “revolution of the spirit”, feelings of loneliness and an impulse to all-conquering conciliarity, a sense of the fallenness of life and history and faith in the transforming and saving power of human freedom. The philosophy of freedom was the subject of reflections of Kant and Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Sartre and Jaspers, Berdyaev and Soloviev. The range of understanding of this concept is extremely wide - from the complete denial of the very possibility of free choice (in the concepts of behaviorism) to the justification of “escape from freedom” (E. Fromm) in the conditions of a modern civilized society.

Today, in our modern society, we are trying to restore the value of individual freedom, which is formally perceived by us as one of the rights of a person and a citizen. The concept of "personal freedom" is increasingly used in the media, in the speeches of political leaders, and is declared by the Constitution of our state. However, the meaning put into this concept by different people is different, often the most opposite ways of solving the problem of the freedom of the human person are proposed. But at the same time, the category of freedom itself is not subjected to a sufficiently serious analysis.

The main stages of the life and work of N.A. Berdyaev

For a better understanding of the works of N.A. Berdyaev, acquaintance with his life path is of great interest.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev is a famous philosopher, writer, publicist, public figure.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was born on March 6/19, 1874 in Kiev. His paternal ancestors belonged to the highest military aristocracy. In 1894 he entered the Kiev cadet corps. However, the atmosphere of a military educational institution turned out to be completely alien to him, and Berdyaev entered the natural faculty of the Kiev University of St. Vladimir.

The student environment greatly influenced the character and life guidelines of Berdyaev. The imperfection of the world now engenders in it a desire to change the world, to eradicate evil and injustice. The answer to the question of how to achieve this, Berdyaev seeks in the theory of scientific socialism, which he began to study in 1894, in one of the Kiev social democratic circles. At the same time, he continues his studies in philosophy, attending lectures and seminars of Professor GI Chelpanov. At the same time, he became involved in social democratic work, becoming a propagandist of Marxism, for which, when the Kiev Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class was defeated in 1898, he was arrested, expelled from the university and sent into exile in Vologda (1901-1902). ... By this time, Berdyaev was already known as a "critical Marxist", the author of the article "AF Lange and Critical Philosophy in Their Relationship to Socialism."

Ideological differences with Marxism began pretty soon. Their essence was that, firstly, Marxism was oriented only towards the closed circle of the earthly world, while in the worldview of N. A. Berdyaev, the feeling of the otherworldly, transcendental was growing; secondly, in Marxism little attention was paid to the individual, his spiritual freedom and creativity, personal conscience and other existential problems that were at the center of the intellectual interests of the thinker; thirdly, the revolutionary vision, should be arranged not through a social revolution, but on the basis of Berdyaev himself was ethical, not social: the new world, from its point of freedom and the creative act of man. Disengagement from Marxism was inevitable. There was a turn "from Marxism to idealism", which coincided in time with the Russian cultural renaissance, the spiritual search for a "new religious consciousness" that began among the Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century. According to the testimony of the thinker himself, these spiritual searches combined the spirit of the Spirit (Christian tradition) with the spirit of Dionysus (pagan tradition). The interest of the intelligentsia (especially St. Petersburg) in religion, mysticism, occultism, eroticism, and aesthetics has intensified. At the St. Petersburg Religious and Philosophical Meetings, where the main figure was D. Merezhkovsky, the formulation of new problems for the orthodox Christian consciousness was discussed, among which the main one was the problem of flesh, blood and sex.

Having enthusiastically accepted the idea of ​​transforming Orthodoxy into a religion of blood, flesh and sex, N. Berdyaev towards the end of his life comes to the conclusion that this would mean a return to Judaism and paganism. "Sex" and "flesh", if they are not transformed by Christianity, are not spiritualized, make a person a slave to the generic element, in which a person cannot be born as a free spirit

By 1903, it was finally consolidated on the path followed by the former "legal" Marxists P.B. Struve, S.N.Bulgakov, S.L. Frank. This ultimately led him in 1904 to the magazine "New Way" - the tribune of religious and philosophical meetings organized in St. Petersburg by DS Merezhkovsky. But idealism for Berdyaev turned out to be only a transitional philosophical form. The final point is the still unclear image of a religious Christian philosophy, designed to express human experience in a holistic and universal way.

Trip in the winter of 1907-1908 to Paris and intensive communication with Merezhkovsky and his circle stimulates Berdyaev's conversion to Orthodoxy. Upon his return to Russia, he settled in Moscow, became close to the circle of philosophers united around the publishing house "Put" (G.A. Rachinsky, E.N. Trubetskoy, V.F. Ern, S.N.Bulgakov, P.A. ) and takes an active part in organizing a religious-philosophical society in memory of Vladimir Solovyov. The result of the creative searches of this period is the "Philosophy of Freedom" published in 1911.

In the "Philosophy of Freedom" Berdyaev acts as the successor of the main traditions of Russian philosophy of the XIX century. Berdyaev's striving for a universal conciliarity, called upon to overcome church confessionalism, is in the mainstream of the universalism of Vladimir Solovyov and his doctrine of "God-manhood".

In 1918, Berdyaev created the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture, at which several seminars began to work. He lectures on the philosophy of history, participates in a seminar on Dostoevsky, and also writes the book The Philosophy of Inequality (published in Berlin in 1923). In 1920, the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University elected him a professor. And in 1921 he was arrested in connection with the case of the so-called "tactical center". In the summer of 1922, another arrest followed, in the fall - expulsion from the country (see Vitaly Shentalinsky, "Philosophical Steamship").

From 1922 to 1924 Berdyaev lives in Berlin. Already in this era, he acquired the reputation of the leading philosopher of post-war Europe. He made acquaintances with O. Spengler, M. Scheler, G. von Kaiserling.

The outbreak of World War II and the war between Nazi Germany and the USSR exacerbated Berdyaev's patriotic feelings ... The first post-war book was "The Russian Idea" (Paris, 1946), dedicated to understanding the history of Russian philosophy.

While in forced emigration, Berdyaev continues to consider himself a Russian philosopher. He writes: “Despite the Western element in me, I feel like belonging to the Russian intelligentsia, who were looking for the truth. I inherit the traditions of Slavophiles and Westernizers, Chaadaev and Khomyakov, Herzen and Belinsky, even Bakunin and Chernyshevsky, despite the difference in worldviews, and most of all Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy, Vl. Soloviev and N. Fedorov. I am a Russian thinker and writer ”.

Philosophy of N.A. Berdyaeva

The philosophy of N.A. Berdyaev was a brilliant expression of the spiritual drama of a turning point, when the human spirit discovers that the old cultural forms have become cramped for its development and is looking for new forms and ways of embodiment. It is difficult to find a serious philosophical or culturological problem that, in one way or another, did not receive its interpretation in the writings of Berdyaev. They reveal the drama of cultural creativity, understood as the realization of the original and inherent human freedom.

The problem of personality and freedom has always been at the center of the religious outlook and religious thinking of Berdyaev, who very early defined his religious metaphysics as personalism. The personality, within the framework of Berdyaev's personalism, is not identical with the individual. If the individual is determined by nature, society, constituting a particle of the Cosmos, then the personality is a spiritual reality, to which no law, even a morally reasonable law, is applicable: personality is freedom itself.

The indifference of the representatives of the “new religious consciousness” to the problem of personality and freedom was one of the reasons for a new turn in the intellectual and spiritual biography of N. Berdyaev. Insisting on the religious sense of freedom, he tried to uncover it by joining the mystery Orthodox Church... N. Berdyaev is looking for ways of rapprochement with the Orthodox environment, reads patristic literature and at the same time carefully studies the idea of ​​Vl. Solovyov about God-manhood, the thought of the Slavophile Khomyakov about freedom as the basis of Christianity and the Church. But if the idea of ​​God-manhood became close to N. Berdyaev and he considered it to be the main idea of ​​Russian religious thought, then the content of the patristic works did not inspire him, although he valued the Greek Church Fathers much more than Western scholastics.

He disliked the clergy, did not like the Church Slavonic language, aesthetically preferring Latin and Catholic service. The religious drama of N. Berdyaev began, which he himself described as follows: "In my attitude to the Orthodox Church there has always been something painful, there has never been integrity." Indeed, on the one hand, he was on the side of the Orthodox Church in its struggle against the mysticism of the monistic type (Plotinus, Eckhardt), which destroyed the freedom of the individual, dissolving the unique human individuality in a faceless deity. On the other hand, in his religious life, the thinker proceeded from a personal experience of a feeling of freedom that had no points of contact with Orthodox dogmas. As a result, he declared himself a representative of "free religious philosophy" (free, in this case, from Orthodox dogma).

In the book "Philosophy of Freedom" (1911) N. Berdyaev tried to substantiate the divine nature of freedom, based on the interpretation of Christianity as the religion of God-manhood. Consistently pursuing the idea of ​​personalism in his religious metaphysics, he came to the conclusion that freedom is not created, it is outside of God, it is primary. God himself acts in the order of freedom, that is, spiritually. God is not the creator of the world, for otherwise he is present in all world evil and suffering, in wars and torture, etc. But then unbelief and rebellion against God are justified.

Denying the traditional teaching about Providence, the philosopher believed that Providence of God can only be understood spiritually. Man is a godlike spiritual being, and therefore he is humiliated by the Christian doctrine of humility. Having freed his religious consciousness from the dogmas of the Orthodox religion, N. Berdyaev created a religious anthropology focused on the teaching about man of German mystics. Therefore, a person for him is located in three planes of being: divine, natural and devilish. How these three planes of being are united in a person, N. Berdyaev examines in the book "On the Purpose of Man (An Experience of Paradoxical Ethics)" (1931). In this work, his religious-existential type of philosophizing was most vividly manifested.

Continuing to develop the theme of freedom, not determined by being, not deduced from it, Berdyaev simultaneously analyzes the problem of the crisis of European humanism. He saw the essence of this crisis in the fact that the assertion of man's self-sufficiency, his non-involvement in the mysterious historical ecclesiastical and historical succession, would lead to the replacement of God-manhood by God-beastliness. There is only one way to get out of the crisis, according to the thinker: to recognize that a person, despite the obvious baseness of his empirical existence, is a metaphysical being, feeling the "mystical origins of history", "the mystery of the forces acting in history for thousands of years."

N. Berdyaev revealed more clearly and fully the idea of ​​the non-existential nature of freedom in the book “The Meaning of Creativity. The Experience of Human Justification ”(1916). In understanding creativity, the philosopher proceeded from the conviction that it is not determined by external causes and needs of the world. Real creativity is, creativity from nothing, it is an emanation of freedom. Berdyaev did not deny that creative gifts were given to man by God, but he believed that in creative acts there is an element of freedom that is not even determined by God. Moreover, he ascribes to man the divine power to create "out of nothing."

Unlike patristic anthropology, N. Berdyaev denied the secrets of redemption. From the experience of his personal spiritual and religious life, he came to the conclusion that the experience of sinfulness leads to depression of consciousness, which can be overcome only in a creative impulse, ascent. A person must justify himself before God not through constant repentance for his sins, but through the creative transformation of the world. Creativity is the way of man's salvation, and in its religious-cosmic meaning, it is "tantamount to redemption." Having abandoned the distinction between a finite and an infinite creator, introduced in medieval Christian dogma, N. Berdyaev equalizes the ability for creativity of the human and divine spirit. This interpretation of creativity goes back to the mystics, and it is no coincidence that N. Berdyaev took as an epigraph to his book The Meaning of Creativity the statement of the German mystic Angelus Silesian: “I know that without me God cannot live a single moment, I turn into nothing, he, having lost me, will expire. "

Berdyaev did not associate creativity and freedom with the desires of man, his rights. Creativity is a person's duty to God, God's requirement for a person to continue the creation of the world. Creativity is a divine-human matter, and therefore, he believed, a new, final revelation would be the revelation of human creativity, the beginning of the era of the Spirit. Not finding the corresponding thoughts in the Holy Scriptures, the philosopher drew a conclusion; that God has hidden the religious meaning of creativity from man. And only in the spiritual experience of man, and not in theological speculation, can the mystery of God's need for man and his creativity, the mystery of God-manhood be discovered.

Berdyaev himself claimed that he personally experienced the revelation of creativity, which is the revelation of man, not God. The content of this revelation became the main theme of his book The Meaning of Creativity. Creativity for him is a phenomenon of spiritual experience, "the shock and rise of the entire human being, directed towards a different, higher life, towards a new being." In his personal creative experience, it was revealed to Berdyaev that "I", the subject of creativity, is higher, more primary than the object "not-I". But this primacy has nothing to do with egocentrism, because in the act of creativity, a person forgets about himself, striving to that which is higher than him. Although creativity is a "flight to infinity", transcending, it ultimately takes shape in a cultural product (poetry, music, painting, philosophical text, etc.), which is always finite, and therefore cannot contain all the wealth of creative ecstasy ...

The discrepancy between the creative intention and its implementation is, from the point of view of the Russian philosopher, the tragedy of creativity, a component of which is the loneliness of the creator. Creativity cannot be collectively universal, it is always individual. And only in personal spiritual experience the fact of the imperfection of the product of creativity is experienced. But Berdyaev did not identify the individuality of the creator with the egocentrism of modern European humanism, which presupposes the absorption of the individual by himself. The creator is lonely, but his work has a world, universal, social character, the philosopher argued.

Berdyaev's teaching on the religious meaning of freedom and creativity became the basis for assessing the 1917 revolution in Russia. Having survived the Russian revolution as a moment of his own destiny, he wrote a number of works in exile ("The meaning of history. The experience of the philosophy of human destiny" (1923); "The New Middle Ages. Reflection on the fate of Russia and Europe" (1924); "The origins and meaning of Russian communism "(1937), etc.), in which he interprets it as an inevitable stage in the historical fate of Russia. The thinker was convinced that the passage of Russia through the experience of Bolshevism was connected with the inner fate of the Russian people. He did not accept communism, but not for political, but for spiritual reasons: he accused communism of hostility to spirit, freedom, creativity, personality. At the same time, the Russian revolution confirmed him in the idea that freedom is not democratic, but aristocratic: the insurgent masses are not interested in freedom, and therefore they are not needed.

Berdyaev is another representative of Russian religious philosophy, who, however, lived in different historical conditions. Therefore, religious motives in his work were closely related to social ones, so that the latter often came to the fore. This social context consisted of three Russian revolutions (1905-1907, February and October 1917), the First World War, the coming to power of the Bolsheviks and forced immigration.

According to Berdyaev, the main opposition, with which the development of worldview problems begins, is between spirit and nature. Berdyaev attributed life, freedom, creative activity, God to the concept of spirit; to the concept of nature - a thing, psyche, necessity. Freedom is not created by God, but exists before him, therefore God is not responsible for the free will of man.

Personality is, according to Berdyaev, a spiritual category. Its realization begins the ascent from the subconscious through the conscious to the superconscious. Man's creative activity is a complement to the divine life, it is “divine-human”. Putting personality at the head of his philosophy and giving it divine attributes, Berdyaev called his philosophy personalistic (from “persona” - personality).

Man is a dual being living simultaneously in two worlds - phenomena and things in themselves. There can be interaction between them through love. Spiritual knowledge is a unity between subjects in a mystical experience, in which (here Berdyaev uses a line from Tyutchev's poem) "Everything is in me, and I am in everything."

The central theme of the philosophy of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev is a man, a free, creative person, and he is such only in the light of the divine, more precisely, the divine "nothing". God created the world out of nothing, therefore, God is preceded by a primary principle that does not imply any differentiation or any event. This is nothing. God is free. And man is free. God helps a person to become kind, but he is not able to control anything, the principle of freedom. In his true freedom, man is divine. God and man are spirit. Being free, man creates, justifying man in his freedom, his creativity, his revelation. For Berdyaev, the main thing is to justify a person, his philosophy is brightly personalistic, romantic, colored with thousands of colors of human existence. It is clear that a philosopher with such a worldview could not be an opponent of totalitarian regimes, lies, evil, violence and terror. The universal resurrection is achieved not in technology, not in revolutions, but in divine spiritual life. Berdyaev believed that in this respect much can be expected from the Russian soul and the Russian idea.

When in Russia in the 90s the works of Berdyaev began to appear one after another, and he wrote more than any other Russian philosopher, the Russians discovered a new, largely unknown world, they began to evaluate the purpose of a person, the meaning of history, fate in a different way. Russian socialism, the mission of Russia. Berdyaev's books show his compatriots a storehouse of wisdom. Is this not the purpose of a true philosopher?

The creativity of N.A. Berdyaev is just beginning to be assimilated in our country. In 1990, the full text of his manuscript "Self-knowledge (the experience of a philosophical autobiography)" was published in Russia. This manuscript was kept in Russia in accordance with the will of N. Berdyaev. It contains words that convey not only the tragedy of the life of a thinker, but also the tragedy of Russian culture. The philosopher writes that he is very famous in Europe, America, even in Asia and Australia. “There is only one country in which they hardly know me, this is my homeland. This is one of the indicators of a break in the tradition of Russian culture. "

Conclusion

A true thinker does not seek simplistic solutions and is always ready to clarify his views, discovering new sides of an endless problem. His creative spirit consistently and inquisitively opens this problem for us in all its complexity and depth, and this discovery will forever remain in the history of science and culture, inspiring us to a new understanding of the world and ourselves. This is the immortality of N.A. Berdyaev's thought.

Berdyaev is one of the most important representatives of Russian philosophy. The essence of Berdyaev's philosophy is “cognition of the meaning of being through the subject,” that is, person. The starting point of his philosophy is the superiority of freedom over being. On a par with it are such concepts as creativity, personality, spirit, God. Being is revealed in a person through a person.

The main problem of Berdyaev's philosophy is the meaning of human existence and, in connection with it, the meaning of life as a whole.

The concept of "personality" is understood by Berdyaev as a unique, unique subjectivity. Through its inherent freedom and the possibility of free creativity, it is aimed at creating a new world. The history of mankind appears in the form of a process of development of the personal principle of a person, and he himself achieves the highest bliss in union with God in his creative act aimed at achieving the highest divine values: truth, beauty and good, at achieving a new being, a new, genuine world, kingdom Spirit.

Bibliography

Berdyaev N.A. Self-knowledge (Russian idea. Self-knowledge). - Moscow; Folio, Kharkov: Eksmo-press. - 2000 - 621 S.

Berdyaev N.A. Philosophy of Freedom. The meaning of creativity. M .: "Pravda", 1989.

Russian philosophy. Dictionary. Ed. Maslina M.A. M .: "Respublika", 1995.

Modern philosophy: dictionary and reader. Ed. Kokhanovsky V.P. Rostov-on-Don: "Phoenix", 1996.

Creativity Philosophy Berdyaeva has an eschatological orientation (justifies "the end ...

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was born in March 1874 in Kiev into an aristocratic family. His paternal ancestors belonged to the highest military aristocracy, his mother was descended from the princes Kudashevs (on the father) and the Counts Choiseul-Guffier (on the mother).

In 1884, N.A. Berdyaev entered the Kiev cadet corps, but the atmosphere of the military educational institution turned out to be so alien to him that he abandoned the military career traditional for his family and entered first the natural faculty of Kiev University, and a year later transferred to the law faculty of the same university.

As a student, N. A. Berdyaev got acquainted with legal Marxism, which at that time was represented mainly by P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky. For his participation in the student movement and the propaganda of socialist ideas, in 1898 he was arrested, expelled from the university after a thirty-day prison sentence and sent to the Vologda province for three years on trial.

The years of exile significantly influenced the worldview and political convictions of N.A. Berdyaev. He finally abandoned the social democratic movement and began to collaborate with P. Struve's journal Osvobozhdenie, which was preparing the emergence of a political organization of the liberal bourgeoisie in Russia.

After his exile, N. A. Berdyaev studied philosophy in Heidelberg for several months, where he took part in the congresses of the Union of Liberation. After returning to his homeland, he became a member of the editorial board of the symbolic direction magazine - "New Way", and since 1905, together with S. N. Bulgakov, he runs the magazine "Voprosy Zhizni".

In 1922 N. A. Berdyaev was expelled from Russia together with a large group of writers, philosophers and scientists. He lived in Berlin for two years, and from 1924 until the end of his life - in France. During the years of emigration, he was actively involved in social, philosophical, religious and literary activities. Already in the Berlin period, Berdyaev's reputation began to take shape not only as an original Russian thinker, but also as one of the leading philosophers of post-war Europe. He made acquaintances with a number of famous Western philosophers - O. Spengler, M. Scheler and others.

In Paris, the Religious and Philosophical Academy, created by him in Berlin, begins to actively work. Since 1925, Berdyaev has been publishing the journal "Put", which has become an encyclopedia of religious and philosophical thought of the Russian "emigre". His main philosophical works of the 30s. - “On the Purpose of Man”, “I and the World of Objects”, “Spirit and Reality” are being translated into a number of European languages.

In emigration, N. A. Berdyaev not only does not lose interest in Russia, but, on the contrary, this interest acquires deeper significance. He writes "Russian Idea", in which he comprehends the peculiarities of Russian history, the originality of Russian thought and national character, seeks to analyze the historical role of the October Revolution. “Already abroad, I wrote a lot about communism and the Russian revolution. I tried to comprehend this event, which is of great importance not only for the fate of Russia, but also for the fate of the world. I made a spiritual effort to rise above the struggle of the parties, to cleanse myself of passions, to see not only the lies, but also the truth of communism. "

He always felt that he was a Russian person, heir to all the best cultural ones; including philosophical traditions. He was inherent in the universalism of both creativity and practical activity. At the same time, the main idea of ​​N.A. Berdyaev's work is idea of ​​freedom, being the life credo of the philosopher, it did not allow him to become a member of a certain party, a certain ideological and political movement.

The philosophical legacy of NA Berdyaev is enormous. His creative thought worked incessantly, and in difficult periods of his life, as he himself emphasized, it was especially fruitful. Realizing his philosophical vocation as a boy, creating philosophical works that entered world culture, having received the well-deserved recognition of the world community during his lifetime (in 1947 he received the title of Doctor of Cambridge University), in 1948 N.A. Berdyaev died at his desk, working on the book "The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar." He also wrote such well-known works as "Self-knowledge", "On the Purpose of Man", etc.

Berdyaev, in his own words, has come a long philosophical path. On this path, his creative nature could not but change his attitude to a number of philosophical and socio-political problems. But through all the work of the thinker, having remained practically unchanged, the idea of ​​the essence and purpose of philosophy passed. This idea was first clearly formulated in the work of N. A. Berdyaev "The Meaning of Creativity." It is noteworthy that much later, summing up his philosophical work in "Self-knowledge", he, who is very critical of his heritage, calls this work the most adequately reflecting his philosophical outlook.

How does N.A. Berdyaev understand the essence and purpose of philosophy? First of all, it should be noted that it is unusual for us. Like many Russian philosophers, Berdyaev did not create a philosophical system. He did not, because he did not strive for this, because he did not consider the creation of an all-embracing system as the goal of philosophical creativity. Moreover, he did not recognize philosophy as objective, scientific, and generally valid.

The problem of the relationship between philosophy and science is one of the main themes of his "Sense of Creativity". Considering a number of common at the beginning of the XX century. philosophical currents - positivism, pragmatism, neo-Kantianism, etc., - N.A. Berdyaev comes to the conclusion that one of the main reasons for the crisis of philosophy lies precisely in the desire to make it scientific to the end, while subjective and unscientific philosophy can be much more true. Without denying the value and significance of science for man and society, the philosopher at the same time shows its incompatibility with philosophy. “Science is an indisputable fact that a person needs,” he writes. In order to live and develop, a person must cognitively orient himself in the world given, which is advancing on him from all sides. For this orientation protecting him, a person must bring himself in line with the world given, with the world necessity surrounding him. Science is an improved instrument of adaptation to the given world, to imposed necessity. Science is the cognition of necessity through adaptation to the world given and cognition from necessity.

Philosophy, according to N. A. Berdyaev, “is a cognitive way out of the world given, an insight that overcomes world necessity. Philosophy is a fundamentally different quality of reaction to the world than science, it is born from another and is directed to another. The subordination of philosophy to science is the subordination of freedom to necessity. Scientific philosophy is an enslaved philosophy that has given its original freedom to the power of necessity. "

In the methodological instructions for the study of the introductory topic "Philosophy, its subject matter, structure and functions," different definitions and understanding of philosophy are given. Read them again and compare with Berdyaev's understanding of philosophy. Which of the following definitions do you agree with?

Figuratively, vividly, aphoristically, Berdyaev reveals his understanding of philosophy as free creativity of a liberated spirit, striving to comprehend the meaning of the world, opposing the nonsense of world necessity. He never ceases to focus his attention on the fact that philosophy cannot and should not be a science, since having become a science, it does not achieve its cherished goal - a breakthrough from the world given, the insight of freedom behind necessity.

Considering philosophy, first of all, as creativity, N.A. Berdyaev comes to the recognition of it as a special kind of art, fundamentally different from poetry, music or painting, namely, the art of cognition. “Philosophy,” he emphasizes, “is art, because it is creativity. Philosophy is an art because it presupposes a special gift from above and a vocation, because the personality of the creator is imprinted on it no less than on poetry and painting. But philosophy creates existential ideas, not images. Philosophy is the art of knowledge in freedom through the creation of ideas that oppose the world given and necessity and penetrate into the transcendent essence of the world. Art cannot be made dependent on science, creativity - on adaptation, freedom - on necessity. "

While affirming the independence of philosophy from science, N.A. Berdyaev at the same time emphasizes its independence from religion and theology, which are always based on faith in authorities. Philosophy, in his deep conviction, should be free from all outside of its underlying authority and outside of its underlying ways of knowing. However, denying the existence of an external connection between philosophy, religion and theology, Berdyaev emphasizes the existence of an internal dependence, the conditioning of philosophy and, above all, of his own ideas by deep religiosity. “But philosophy,” he writes, “cannot be torn off and distracted from the deepest sources of being, from the vital and religious juices that a philosophizing person finds in his microcosm.

Philosophy requires free access to these living direct sources of existence and considers it a slavery for itself when it is not allowed to the primary sources. Religion is an integral life. The truth of religion is revealed to man by the Divine. Philosophy is knowledge. The truth of philosophy is revealed by man. The combination of the divine and the human, the religious and the philosophical in the final cognition of the one Truth is accomplished not by external authority and submission, but by an internally free creative act. "

The interrelation and internal unity of philosophy and religion is a consequence of the fact that both are the creative comprehension of truth. But at the same time, there is a deep difference between them: in philosophy, truth is shown and formulated, and not proved and substantiated. The task of philosophy is to find the most perfect formulation of the truth seen in intuition and to synthesize formulas. Thus, the truths of philosophy, although N.A. Berdyaev proclaims them universally valid in comparison with scientific truths, turn out to be for him only a means of expressing a truth of a higher order - the Truth that is comprehended through religious illumination. And this truth, first of all, has a meaning, and it cannot deny the meaning of everything that exists, because a person always resists the nonsense of world necessity, seeks to comprehend "meaning through nonsense." Berdyaev realized this goal of philosophy very early, in his youth; it was a revolution that changed his whole life, and the theme of the meaning of life became one of the leading problems of his work.

Berdyaev's understanding of philosophy as creativity, as a special kind of art - the art of comprehending the meaning of being - through religious insight and subjective creativity leads him to the idea that the philosophy of creativity presupposes the philosophy of freedom, this is the philosophy of the liberated. But creative philosophy cannot be an academic, state philosophy. The philosopher is a free person, not dependent on the "world", not adapting to anything. A philosopher cannot serve the state or political parties, academies or professional purposes.

A philosopher cannot even serve the good of people, cannot serve people and private human goals. Here the main idea of ​​Berdyaev's work - the idea of ​​freedom - freedom of the human spirit, his consciousness and self-awareness - takes on a socio-political expression.

In N. A. Berdyaev's definition of the nature of philosophy and its tasks, the central place belongs to the question of anthropologism in philosophy. And this is quite natural, because everything that was said above about his understanding of the essence and purpose of philosophy would lose its meaning if the thinker did not declare that the central problem of philosophy is man, moreover, man precedes philosophy, is a prerequisite for all philosophical knowledge. Having placed the problem of man at the center of philosophical creativity, N. A. Berdyaev in his works constantly addresses the issues of human existence, his freedom, creativity, destiny. And although the thinker proclaims independence, isolation from any parties and philosophical movements, he is forced to recognize his philosophy as a "philosophy of the existential type" and emphasize the closeness of his views to the views of a number of thinkers of the past (Heraclitus, Origen, Jacob Boehme) and contemporary philosophers (A . Bergson, D. Gentile, Max Scheler).

Anthropocentrism- the main feature of the philosophy of N. A. Berdyaev. Whatever side of the world the thinker touches, he considers it through the prism of human existence, human freedom, human creativity; he was deeply convinced that to unravel the mystery about man means to unravel the mystery of being. The main prerequisite for understanding the essence of man for him is the conviction that man is a "small universe", a "microcosm", moreover, not a fractional part of the universe, but a whole small universe. But man is not only "Microcosm", but also "microtheos", for he was created in the image and likeness of God. At the same time, man is a natural, limited being. It is, as it were, the point of intersection of two worlds, it reflects in itself the higher and lower worlds.

Think about whether there is a similarity in the solution of this question by Berdyaev to the theory of Soloviev. This is evidenced by the following quote: “Man recognizes himself as belonging to two worlds, his nature is twofold, and in his consciousness, one nature, then the other wins. And a person with equal strength justifies the most opposite self-consciousnesses, equally justifies them with the facts of his nature. Man realizes his greatness and power and his insignificance and weakness, his royal freedom and his slavish dependence, realizes himself in the image and likeness of God and as a drop in the sea of ​​natural necessity. With almost equal right we can talk about the divine origin of man and about his origin from the lower forms of the organic life of nature ”?

The problem of personality was of particular interest to N.A. Berdyaev. Man, in his opinion, is a person as the image and likeness of God. The person must be distinguished from the individual. Personality is a spiritual-religious category, while the individual is a naturalistic-biological category. The individual is part of nature and society; a personality, however, cannot be part of any whole, it is not a part of society, on the contrary, society is only a part or aspect of a personality. Personality is not part of the cosmos, on the contrary, the cosmos is part of the human personality.

Personality is not a substance, it is a creative act, it is unchanging in the process of change. In personality, the whole precedes the parts. Being a spirit, personality is not something self-sufficient, it is not egocentric, it passes into something other than itself, into some “you” and realizes the universal content, which is something concrete and differs from abstract universals. The realization of personality means an ascent from the subconscious through the conscious to the superconscious. The human body as an eternal aspect of personality is a "form", and not just a physicochemical entity and must be subordinated to the spirit.

Thus, according to N.A. Berdyaev, man is both a spiritual being and a physical (carnal) being. As a fleshly being, he is connected with the whole cycle of world life, as a spiritual being, he is connected with the spiritual world and with God. However, the essence of man is distorted, because he has renounced God, while beings who have fallen away from God and from each other have no direct experience of spiritual life, they suffer from the illness of isolation. Asking the question why man wanted to "fall away from God" and thereby commit a sin, Berdyaev responds with his understanding of freedom, which for him is "more primary than being."

He distinguishes between three types of freedom: primary irrational freedom, that is, arbitrariness; rational freedom, that is, the fulfillment of a moral duty, and, finally, freedom imbued with the love of God.

Human irrational freedom is rooted in the "nothing" out of which God created the world. This "nothing" is not emptiness, it is a kind of primary principle that precedes God and the world and does not contain any differentiation, that is, division into any number of certain elements.

The work of F. M. Dostoevsky was of great importance for the Russian thinker to understand the essence of Christianity and Christ as its embodiment. The philosopher considered the Legend of the Great Inquisitor to be its peak. One of the most brilliant works of N.A. Berdyaev - "Dostoevsky's Worldview" is devoted to its analysis, as well as to the consideration of the work of the classic of Russian literature as a whole, in which the philosopher most clearly expresses his attitude to Christianity and to the question of the possibility of combining freedom and worship of Christ ... In his opinion, in the "Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" polar concepts collide; faith in the meaning of life and disbelief in it, divine love and godless attitude towards people, Christ and Antichrist. Grand Inquisitor denies the idea God-manhood, closeness and unity of the divine and human principles in freedom. Man does not withstand the great test of his spiritual strength, spiritual freedom and calling to a higher life. When the dilemma arises: freedom or happiness, prosperity and order of life, freedom with suffering or happiness without freedom, most people choose the latter. The freedom of the human spirit is incompatible with the happiness of people; she is aristocratic and exists for a few chosen ones. The Grand Inquisitor accuses Christ that, having endowed people with unbearable freedom, he acted as if not loving them. Out of love for people, it was necessary to deprive them of their freedom, since peace and even death are dearer to a person than a free choice in the knowledge of good and evil.

Berdyaev initially accepts such a Christ as he is depicted in the Legend - personifying the infinite freedom of the spirit, who wished free love for himself, rejected the temptation of the Antichrist. This understanding of Christ and Christianity is for him not only the basis philosophical teaching about man, but also a well-known justification that religion can not satisfy either spiritual or material needs of a person, for true Christianity does not recognize violence against the freedom of the human spirit, freedom of conscience, being turned to human freedom and waiting for the fulfillment of the covenants of Christ. And therefore, Christianity is not to blame for the fact that humanity did not want to fulfill it and betrayed it. Here, the duality of not only man is clearly manifested (on the one hand, he is a fallen and sinful being, unable to rise by his own strength, and on the other, he is the image and likeness of God, the summit of creation, called to reign), but also religion itself, or rather it contradictory elements (on the one hand, the doctrine of Christ as a perfect ideal, on the other, religious organizations that allow actions in their activities that are far from this ideal).

Berdyaev's understanding of the essence of man, his role and place in the world is ambiguous, ambiguous and contradictory, like many of his other ideas. His presentation of the problem of a person is aphoristic, figurative, his faith in a person is limitless, and sometimes the presentation of theoretical and philosophical problems acquires a poetic sound. His concept contains a number of undoubtedly rational ideas, in particular the provision that a person, being a natural being with a naturalistic and biological basis, is at the same time connected by all threads with society, which affects him, forming certain personal qualities.

For Berdyaev, man is inconceivable without God, he is incapable of finding his essence outside of religious and mystical activity. And therefore, it is obvious that his philosophy belongs to the existentialism of a special, Christian type, that it is an idealistic philosophy, for the idea of ​​the primacy of spirit over being runs through all the work of the thinker. But what this kind of idealism is - is it objective idealism or subjective, or we are dealing with an exclusively peculiar doctrine that cannot be brought under any of the traditional definitions - can be clarified by considering the epistemological views of the thinker.

It should be noted that N.A. Berdyaev has repeatedly emphasized that he has not sufficiently developed the epistemological side of his philosophy. In all his works, he strove to cover an extremely wide range of problems, without concentrating on particulars. However, a number of his works: "The Sense of Creativity", "I" and the World of Objects "," The Philosophy of Free Spirit ", etc., contains interesting and deep reflections on the possibilities and limits of human cognition of the world, on the specifics of cognitive activity. The philosophical basis for the formation of the gnoseological ideas of the thinker was the theoretical and cognitive doctrine of I. Kant. Especially important for Berdyaev was the division of the world into "phenomena" and "things in themselves." Recognizing it as necessary, the Russian philosopher went a little further and declared the very fact of the existence of objective reality outside the consciousness of the cognizing subject doubtful. He wrote: “The deepening of my philosophical knowledge led me to the idea of ​​objectification, which I consider to be the main one for myself and which is usually poorly understood. I do not believe in the firmness and strength of the so-called objective world, the world of nature and history. Objective reality does not exist, it is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectification of reality generated by a certain orientation of the spirit. The objectified world is not the true real world, it is only a state of the true real world that can be changed. The object is a product of the subject. Only the subject is existential, only in the subject is reality cognized. " Expressing a position that fully coincides with the initial principle of subjective idealism, Berdyaev at the same time seeks to dissociate himself from it, calling his doctrine the philosophy of freedom, expressing his negative attitude to any "stereotyped" classifications.

What is objectification, which the author himself considers very important for understanding his philosophy?

Berdyaev reveals this concept based on the distinction between primary and secondary consciousness. Secondary consciousness, in his opinion, is associated with the disintegration into a subject and an object, it objectifies what is known. Primordial consciousness is immersed in the subject as primary reality, that is, the identity of the subject and the object is given in it. The objective world is a product of objectification, it is a fallen, disintegrated and constrained world, in which the subject does not join the knowable. These thoughts Berdyaev expressed in a paradox: "The subjective is objective, the objective is subjective, for the subject is the creation of God, the object is the creation of the subject." But what is especially important is that objectification occurs not only in the sphere of knowledge, first it occurs in reality itself. It is performed by the subject not only as a knower, but also as a living being. Entry into the objective world takes place in the very primary life. But as a result, we consider real only that which is secondary, rationalized, objectified, and we question the reality of the primary, not objectified, not rationalized.

Nature, as a system of relations between objects, according to N.A. Berdyaev, is characterized by the following features: 1) the object is alien to the subject, 2) the personal, specific and special is absorbed by the general, impersonal-universal, 3) necessity prevails, certainty from the outside, freedom is suppressed and does not manifest, 4) life adapts to mass movements in the world and in history and to the average person: a person and his views acquire a social character, but this destroys originality. In this world of objects, life proceeds in time, which is subdivided into past and future, and this leads to death. Instead of "existence" as the only, individual, creative activity of the spirit, we find in nature a simple "being" determined by laws. The use of general ideas about this peculiarly recurring existence serves as a means of communication between isolated individuals who create social institutions; but in this society, subject to conventional rules, the subject remains alone. Objectification, as Berdyaev repeatedly emphasizes, is an epistemological interpretation of the “fallenness” of the world, the state of enslavement, necessity and disunity in which the world is. The objective world is subject to rational cognition in concepts, but objectification itself has an irrational source.

The rebirth of a fallen man means his liberation from nature created by the objectifying process, it means victory over slavery and death, understanding the person as a spirit, as an existence that cannot be an object and cannot be expressed by general ideas.

For Berdyaev, the concepts of "reality" and "being" are far from identical, either to each other or to the concept of objectivity. The only real world for N. A. Berdyaev is the subjective and personalistic world. This must be taken into account when characterizing the gnoseological concept of the thinker, if we bear in mind that in epistemology it is important not only who and how cognizes the world (being, reality, subject), but also what this cognized reality is.

It would seem that the recognition as the only true reality of the subjective world should inevitably lead the philosopher to the denial of its knowability (as was the case, in particular, in Hume). However, the philosopher firmly adheres to the position of recognizing the knowability of this subjective and personalistic world. He derives this conviction from his teaching about man. Cognition and understanding, from his point of view, are possible because man is a microcosm, that the universe is revealed in him and that the fate of the human "I" is at the same time the fate of the universe.

“Man is a small universe, a microcosm — this is the basic truth of human cognition and the basic truth assumed by the very possibility of cognition. The universe can enter into a person, assimilate by him, he can be cognized and comprehended only because a person has the entire composition of the universe ... the Universe enters into a person, succumbs to his creative effort as a small universe, as a microcosm ... that he is not only in the world as one of the parts of the world, but also outside the world, and above the world, surpassing all the things of the world as being, equal in quality to the world. "

Thus, the condition for cognition, according to N.A. Berdyaev, is that man is cosmic by nature, that he is the center of being, for he who philosophically cognizes the world must exceed all the things of the world, he cannot be one of the things of the world among others, but must himself be the world. In his opinion, the daring task of comprehending the universe could not have faced the fractional part of the universe, the problem of knowledge would not have arisen. The very formulation of this problem is possible only for someone who is the universe himself, who is able to resist the universe, as an equal, as capable of including it in himself - this is the conviction of the philosopher, this is the starting point of his epistemology.

Berdyaev is deeply alien to the understanding of the process of cognition as a reflection of the world in human consciousness. “Knowledge is not,” he writes, “a reflection of being and is not the construction of being, but is the self-disclosure of being, its dismemberment and shaping. In the act of cognition, something happens with being itself, with real reality itself, due to which being is creatively improved, develops, realizes value. And this does not happen in the individual psychological consciousness, but in the depths of universal being. "

Knowledge is the path from chaos to space, from darkness to light, and not because the cognizing subject with his transcendental consciousness forms being and spreads rational light on it, but because being itself is enlightened and formed in the act of self-knowledge.

From the point of view of Berdyaev, who understands cognition as a creative act, it is impossible to oppose the cognizing subject to the object, for in this case there is, as it were, the destruction of the being of both the subject and the object. Critically referring to the epistemological concepts that exist within the framework of pragmatism, positivism, rejecting both rationalism and empiricism, the philosopher believes that the only correct approach to philosophical knowledge (he opposes this type of knowledge to the knowledge carried out by specific sciences) is the approach that is offered to him , and calls his point of view creative and mystical realism. He draws attention to the fact that it was mystical and occult philosophy that revealed the true doctrine of man as a microcosm, that through it a person was initiated into the secret about himself, that only mystics understood well that everything that happens in a person has world significance and is imprinted on space; they knew that the spiritual elements of man are cosmic, that in man it is possible to discover all the layers of the world, the entire composition of the world.

The philosopher utters a kind of hymn to mysticism and the religion that he played and can still play in the knowledge of man: “And that only philosophy is able to see the cosmos in man, which sees that man surpasses all the phenomena of the natural world and is the supreme center of being. That secret, occult cosmic forces are hidden in a person, unknown to official science and to the everyday, daytime consciousness of a person, it is almost impossible to doubt this. This consciousness is growing, not decreasing, it crowds out the consciousness of the official scientific and official-sane. The eternal truth of mysticism should soon become the truth open and obligatory, from which it will be possible to hide only in nothingness. "

Berdyaev practically denies the need for rational, logical knowledge, constantly emphasizes in his works that if logic is possible and even necessary in the knowledge of the particular, which is carried out by specific sciences, then it is completely meaningless and useless in philosophical knowledge, where it must give way to intuition, emotional and religious insight. He argues that such an approach took shape in him not only as a result of mastering mystical-kabbalistic literature, but also in the process of his own philosophical creativity, for he always realized that he knows not only with intellect, not with reason, subject to his own law, but with the totality of spiritual forces, intense emotionality, as well as the will to triumph of meaning.

The philosophical attitude to the world, according to N.A. Berdyaev, lies outside the sphere in which the logical apparatus of the scientific attitude to reality is created. The perception of the world as a value or as a meaning (and this is what characterizes philosophical knowledge) is not, from his point of view, scientific perception: it is a creative act, not an adaptation to necessity. And where there is creativity, there is no place for rationalism, rationalism and logic must give way to intuition.

The intuition of philosophical knowledge, according to Berdyaev, is a special, higher type of intuition associated with truly existing, with the meaning of being. Its creative nature does not mean that existence is created only in knowledge. In creative cognition, existence only develops to higher forms, only grows. Philosophical intuition cannot be justified and should not be justified by discursive thinking, it is not subject to scientific judgment, it can only transform discursive scientific thinking into its instrument, into an apparatus adapted to interact with world necessity. The philosopher's intuition must remain at its best and thus justify itself, no matter how the philosopher himself suffers from disunity and spiritual loneliness.

NA Berdyaev's intuition turns out to be the only and all-encompassing method and method of philosophical cognition. It is necessary to dwell on one more very important position of the epistemological teaching of the thinker. From his point of view, the intuitive concept of cognition allows not only to clearly define the specifics of philosophical knowledge, but also to illuminate in a different way the problem of the relationship between knowledge and faith, which is the subject of a centuries-old dispute. Should the philosophy of the future not discover that the basis of knowledge and the basis of faith is the same intuition, direct perception of things, exposure of things invisible? Not all knowledge is, at the same time, faith, and is not all faith, at the same time, knowledge? Asking these questions, the philosopher at the same time answers them: “Faith only expands the sphere of knowledge and speaks of the perception of things of a higher order, but as real as things of a lower order. Perhaps faith is knowledge of a higher order, knowledge is complete, and proud knowledge is faith of a lower order, faith is incomplete. Then the dispute between knowledge and faith will turn out to be a dispute between the lower and private forms of knowledge with the highest and complete forms of knowledge: the lower and private forms of faith with the highest and one form of faith. "

In addition to the problems discussed, Berdyaev, in his writings, touches on and solves in his own way questions of the philosophy of history, sets out his understanding of socio-political problems. For a detailed study of these problems, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the indicated works of N.A. Berdyaev.

• See: N.A. Berdyaev. Self-knowledge. M., 1990.S. 226.
• On this occasion, Berdyaev himself wrote: “I was constantly in opposition and conflict. I rebelled against the noble society, against the revolutionary intelligentsia, against the literary world, against the Orthodox environment, against communism, against emigration, against French society ... a person, was only his own person, a person of his idea, his vocation, his search for truth ... I am completely unaware of merging with the collective. It is not being that brings me to ecstasy, but freedom. This defines the whole type of my philosophical outlook. "
• In Dostoevsky, he personifies the essence of the Catholic doctrine, which, in his opinion, distorted Christianity.
• In this regard, it can be added that in Kabbalistic philosophy, among the greatest of the mystics J. Boehme, among his successor Fr. Baader, we find the doctrine of man as a microcosm in the work of the modern, remarkable popularizer of occult teachings, R. Steiner. " This recognition of the paramount importance for the knowledge of occult, cabalistic philosophy already contains not only the religious, but also the religious-mystical nature of Berdyaev's views.