“Creativity does not need justification, it justifies a person, it is anthropodicy. This is a theme about man’s relationship to God, about man’s response to God. The topic of attitudes towards human culture, cultural values and products is already secondary and derivative. I was concerned about the relationship between creativity and sin, creativity and redemption.” (N.A. Berdyaev)
Berdyaev calls the most pressing problem of his era the problem of “... the relationship between the ways of human salvation and the ways of human creativity.” He talks about the split between the Church and the world, spiritual and worldly, about dualism in the life of a Christian believer: “a Christian of modern times lives in two interrupting rhythms - in the Church and in the world, in the paths of salvation and in the paths of creativity.” The problem of his time is revealed before us, when the theocratic-hierocratic culture of the Middle Ages was overthrown, in which “all the creativity of life was self-subordinated to the religious principle, but religious justification was conditionally symbolic... the culture in its concept was angelic, not human.” Berdyaev refutes such an understanding of Christianity, based on the fact that Christ himself is not only the Son of God, but He was born into this world as a man, becoming a Mediator between God and people: “And Christ the God-man was the founder of a new spiritual human race, the life of the God-man, and not God's angels. The Church of Christ is God-manhood.” Berdyaev opens the way to solve this problem as the justification of human creative life by the Church. It seems to me that it should be said here that a person’s entire life is in the power of God. It is impossible to separate the six days of the week from the seventh, they are interconnected. One cannot but agree with the author: “...all life can be understood as church life; the Church includes all aspects of life.”
The question is whether a person puts God first in his life, or for him there is a difference between what he does in the Church and what he does in his daily life. If God occupies a central place in a person’s life, then this difference cannot exist, because he entrusted every minute of his life to the Lord. It must be taken into account that man is sinful by nature and can only strive to change his heart so that God takes a central place in him.
What should a person do, what should he change in himself, what should he strive for? How can we overcome man’s sinful tendency to place himself, rather than God, at the center of his life? How to overcome your pride? The author points out to us, first of all, that the basis of all Christianity, the basis of the entire spiritual path of man, the path of salvation for eternal life, was based on humility. Berdyaev shares humility and external obedience, humility: “...the meaning of humility is in the real change and transformation of human nature, in the dominance of the spiritual man over the spiritual and carnal man.” But humility, according to the author, is only one of the ways of spiritual life; humility should not destroy the human will, but only subordinate it to the Truth: “..only free humility, the free subordination of the spiritual man to the spiritual man has religious significance and value.” In free humility, Berdyaev implies the path of love. He reminds us that “..our love, our knowledge, our creativity are distorted by sin, but the path of humility is also distorted by sin and bears the stamp of imperfection.” That is why there is a replacement of free humility in love with decadent, slavish humility, in which there is no place for love, because a person considers himself unworthy to love. Such an understanding of Christianity cannot give rise to human creative self-awareness.
In my understanding, it is not enough to talk only about free humility and love for God and neighbor; it is necessary to develop the idea that love must be achieved throughout one’s life. After all, a person wants to be loved, but in return he is not always ready to give the same. You can’t talk about humility before love, because... namely, “love is patient, it is merciful, love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, it is not proud...” (1 Corn. 13). Having achieved love, we achieve both meekness and humility, we overcome our selfishness and pride.
In his work, however, Berdyaev contrasts abstract spiritual love (indifference in the name of self-salvation) and spiritual-spiritual love, in which the soul is transformed in the spirit (deeds of love are included in the path of my salvation). Of course, if a person is afraid of God’s judgment and strives for justification, then what kind of love can we talk about? Man is called to perfect love, which conquers all fear. God is not a cruel Master and Master of obedient slaves! This is not the life God has prepared for us at all! For God, we are beloved children, for whose salvation He gave His Son to die on the cross. He wants us, His children, to grow in love, achieve the Kingdom of God, “to be creators and partners in the work of God’s creation,” as Berdyaev correctly noted.
What does the author mean by these words? He argues that human creativity is needed “not for personal salvation, but for the implementation of God’s plan for the world and humanity.” To be a creator and a participant means to develop and use the gifts that the Lord has endowed everyone with.
Berdyaev asserts that “humility is an internal spiritual activity in which a person is occupied with his soul, self-overcoming, and self-improvement.” And he calls creativity “a spiritual activity in which a person forgets about himself, renounces himself in the creative act.” Thus, he seems to contrast them with each other. According to the author, they should be combined so that there is a complete understanding of creativity, i.e. self-improvement is also creativity. To achieve perfect love, you must constantly work on yourself, overcome your selfishness: “Creativity is the discovery of love for God and the divine, and not for this world. And therefore the path of creativity is also the path of overcoming the “world.” Thus, salvation and creativity are inextricably linked with each other, interpenetrating. Creativity helps and does not hinder salvation.
Drawing a conclusion from the author’s reasoning, it is necessary to emphasize that in order to achieve the Kingdom of God, the human personality must be transformed in constant creative search. A person’s life is a constant movement forward, the realization of one’s talents, the search for new ways of self-improvement.
But a person is always offered different paths, including erroneous ones, which prevent a person from moving forward. Human creativity can also be evil, “in the name of the devil,” as Berdyaev claims. He points out that “Christian revival presupposes new spiritual and social creativity, the creation of a real Christian society, and not a conditionally symbolic Christian state.”
Reading these lines, we see that essentially nothing has changed, this problem is just as acute in Russia today, our state is just as in need of spiritual revival as it was then. A person is at a crossroads, not knowing the right path to salvation.
Berdyaev reveals to us the solution to this problem in Christian creativity: “in the world, in culture, a real-ontological division must be made, internally spiritual and ontologically ecclesiastical.” He writes about the need to overcome religious dualism with the help of a Christian revival that will be creative: “we believe that in Christianity lies inexhaustible creative forces, and the discovery of these forces will save the world from decline and decay.”
Those. a person’s creative quest, his spiritual experience must become churched and sanctified. A person should not have a division of life into the church and the world; for him there is one integral path of free love and creative participation in God’s plan.
In conclusion, I want to say that the work of N.A. Berdyaev became for me the discovery of those thoughts and beliefs that have been worrying me for a very long time. The problems that Berdyaev raises in his essay are just as relevant for all of us today. It seems to me that this book is a prophecy for today's Russia. The solution to these problems proposed by Berdyaev seems to me the only true and correct one, but it is disproportionately difficult for a person of today's generation. We have lost faith in God and lost our ideals; the era of communism has erased the desire to achieve love from people's consciousness. We have become hardened in soul, we don’t hear and, worst of all, we don’t want to hear each other. It is difficult for us to accept each other as we are in order to open ourselves to free love in God. I think that, first of all, Russia needs a revival of Christianity as a whole as a religion, and only then as a personal creative path of salvation, a path of love for neighbors, for God.
It is impossible to express in words my gratitude to the author for his sincere faith in Russia, in the future of Christian creativity. I was deeply moved by this work, making me think again about what I believe in, what I strive for and what paths I choose.
Berdyaev Nikolay
The meaning of creativity (The experience of human justification)
Berdyaev N.A.
THE MEANING OF CREATIVITY
The experience of justifying a person
"Ich weiss, das ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben,
Werd ich zu nicht, er muss von Noth den Geistaufgeben."
Angelus Silesius1
INTRODUCTION
The human spirit is in captivity. I call this captivity “the world,” a world given, a necessity. “This world” is not cosmos, it is a non-cosmic state of disunity and enmity, atomization and disintegration of living monads of the cosmic hierarchy. And the true path is the path of spiritual liberation from the “world”, the liberation of the human spirit from captivity in necessity. The true path is not a movement to the right or left along the plane of the “world,” but a movement upward or inward along an extra-mundane line, a movement in the spirit, and not in the “world.” Freedom from reactions to the “world” and from opportunistic adaptations to the “world” is a great conquest of the spirit. This is the path of higher spiritual contemplation, spiritual composure and concentration. The cosmos is a truly existing, genuine being, but the “world” is illusory, the world’s reality and world’s necessity are illusory. This illusory “world” is the product of our sin. Church teachers identified “the world” with evil passions. The captivity of the human spirit by the “world” is his guilt, his sin, his fall. Liberation from the “world” is liberation from sin, atonement for guilt, and the ascent of the fallen spirit. We are not of the “world” and should not love the “world” and the things that are in the “world”. But the very doctrine of sin has degenerated into slavery to illusory necessity. They say: you are a sinful, fallen creature and therefore do not dare to embark on the path of liberation of the spirit from the “world”, on the path of the creative life of the spirit, bear the burden of obedience to the consequences of sin. And the human spirit remains chained in a hopeless circle. For the original sin is slavery, unfreedom of the spirit, submission to devilish necessity, powerlessness to define oneself as a free creator, losing oneself through affirming oneself in the necessity of the “world”, and not in the freedom of God. The path of liberation from the “world” for the creation of a new life is the path of liberation from sin, overcoming evil, gathering the strength of the spirit for divine life. Slavery to the “world”, to necessity and givenness, is not only unfreedom, but also the legitimation and consolidation of the unloving, torn, non-cosmic state of the world. Freedom is love. Slavery is enmity. The way out of slavery into freedom, from the enmity of the “world” into cosmic love is the path of victory over sin, over the lower nature. And one cannot avoid this path on the grounds that human nature is sinful and immersed in lower spheres. It is a great lie and a terrible error of religious and moral judgment to leave a person in the lowlands of this “world” in the name of obedience to the consequences of sin. On the basis of this consciousness, shameful indifference to good and evil, a refusal to courageously resist evil, grows. Suppressed immersion in one's own sinfulness gives rise to double thoughts - eternal fears of mixing God with the devil, Christ with the Antichrist. This decadence of the soul, shamefully indifferent to good and evil2, now reaches the mystical rapture of passivity and submission, to the game of double thoughts. The decadent soul loves to flirt with Lucifer, loves not to know which God it serves, loves to feel fear, to feel danger everywhere. This decadence, relaxation, duality of spirit is an indirect product of the Christian teaching about humility and obedience - the degeneration of this teaching. Decadent double thoughts and relaxed indifference to good and evil must be decisively opposed by courageous liberation of the spirit and creative initiative. But this requires a concentrated determination to free oneself from the false, illusory layers of culture and its scum - this subtle captivity to the “world”.
The creative act is always liberation and overcoming. There is an experience of power in it. Discovering one's creative act is not a cry of pain, passive suffering, nor is it a lyrical outpouring. Horror, pain, relaxation, death must be overcome by creativity. Creativity is essentially a way out, an outcome, a victory. The sacrifice of creativity is not death and horror. Sacrifice itself is active, not passive. Personal tragedy, crisis, fate is experienced as a tragedy, crisis, fate of the world. This is the way. Exclusive concern for personal salvation and fear of personal death are outrageously selfish. Exclusive immersion in a crisis of personal creativity and fear of one’s own powerlessness are hideously selfish. Selfish and selfish self-absorption means a painful separation between man and the world. Man was created by the Creator as a genius (not necessarily a genius) and genius must be revealed in himself through creative activity, to overcome everything that is personally egoistic and personally selfish, every fear of one’s own death, every glance at others. Human nature in its fundamental essence, through the Absolute Man - Christ, has already become the nature of the New Adam and has reunited with the Divine nature - it no longer dares to feel separated and secluded. Isolated depression in itself is already a sin against the Divine calling of man, against the call of God, God's need for man. Only one who experiences within himself everything in the world and everything in the world, only one who has conquered the egoistic desire for self-salvation and selfish reflection on one’s own strengths, only one who has freed himself from his separate and isolated self is able to be a creator and a person. Only the liberation of a person from himself brings a person to himself. The creative path is sacrificial and suffering, but it is always liberation from all oppression. For the sacrificial suffering of creativity is never depression. Any depression is a person’s isolation from the true world, a loss of microcosmicity, captivity to the “world,” slavery to the given and necessary. The nature of all pessimism and skepticism is selfish and selfish. Doubt about a person’s creative power is always a selfish reflection and a painful selfishness. Humility and doubting modesty, where daring confidence and determination are needed, are always disguised metaphysical pride, reflective consideration and selfish isolation, the product of fear and horror. There are times in the life of humanity when it must help itself, realizing that the absence of transcendental help is not helplessness, for a person will find endless immanent help within himself if he dares to reveal in himself through a creative act all the powers of God and the world, the true world in freedom from the ghostly “world”. Now, undignified and enervating self-spitting is all too common - the flip side of equally undignified and enervating self-aggrandizement. We are not real people, they like to say - in the old days we were real. Previous people dared to talk about religion. We don't dare talk. This is the ghostly self-awareness of people scattered by the “world”, who have lost the core of their personality. Their slavery to the “world” is self-absorption. Their self-absorption is a loss of self. Freedom from the “world” is a connection with the true world - the cosmos. Getting out of yourself is finding yourself, your core. And we can and should feel like real people, with a core of personality, with a significant, and not illusory, religious will.
It is not in darkness that we climb the ladder of knowledge. Scientific knowledge climbs a dark staircase and gradually illuminates each step. It does not know what it will come to at the top of the ladder; it has no sunlight, no meaning, no Logos illuminating the path from above. But in genuine higher gnosis there is an original revelation of meaning, sunlight falling from above on the ladder of knowledge. Gnosis is primordial comprehension; it contains the courageous activity of the Logos. The modern soul still suffers from photophobia. The soul walked through dark corridors through lightless science and came to lightless mysticism. The soul has not yet arrived at the solar consciousness. The mystical rebirth feels like entering the nocturnal age. The night era is feminine, not masculine, there is no sunshine in it. But in a deeper sense, the entire new history with its rationalism, positivism, and scientificism was a night, not a daytime era - in it the sun of the world dimmed, the highest light went out, all the illumination was artificial and mediocre. And we stand before a new dawn, before the sunrise. The intrinsic value of thought (in the Logos) as a luminous human activity, as a creative act in being, must be recognized again. The reaction against rationalism took the form of hostility to thought and speech. But we must free ourselves from reaction and, in freedom of spirit, in the timeless affirmation of thought and word, see the meaning. Our consciousness is essentially transitional and borderline. But on the brink of a new world, light is born, and the passing world is comprehended. Only now are we able to fully comprehend what was in the light of what will be. And we know that the past will truly exist only in the future.
I know that I can be accused of a fundamental contradiction that is tearing apart my entire worldview and my entire world consciousness. I will be accused of contradictory combination of extreme religious dualism with extreme religious monism. I anticipate these attacks. I profess an almost Manichaean dualism. So be it. The “world” is evil, it is godless and not created by God. One must leave the “world”, overcome it to the end, the “world” must burn, it is of Ahrimanian nature3. Freedom from the “world” is the pathos of my book. There is an objective principle of evil against which a heroic war must be waged. World necessity, world givenness are Ahrimanian. Opposed to it is freedom in the spirit, life in divine love, life in the Pleroma4. And I profess an almost pantheistic monism. The world is divine in nature. Man is divine by nature. The world process is the self-revelation of the Divine; it takes place within the Divine. God is immanent to the world and man. The world and man are immanent to God. Everything that happens to man happens to God. There is no dualism of divine and extra-divine nature, no perfect transcendence of God to the world and man. This antinomy of dualism and monism is fully conscious to me, and I accept it as insurmountable in my consciousness and inevitable in religious life. Religious consciousness is essentially antinomic. In consciousness there is no way out of the eternal antinomy of the transcendental and the immanent, dualism and monism. Antinomy is removed not in consciousness, not in reason, but in religious life itself, in the depths of religious experience itself. Religious experience completely eliminates the world as completely extra-divine and as completely divine, eliminates evil as a falling away from divine meaning and as having an immanent meaning in the process of world development. Mystical gnosis has always provided antinomic solutions to the problem of evil; dualism has always been mysteriously combined with monism. For the greatest of the mystics, Jacob Boehme, evil was in God and evil was a falling away from God, there was a dark source in God and God was not responsible for evil. Almost all mystics stand on the consciousness of the immanent elimination of evil. The transcendental point of view is always the penultimate, not the last. And the experience of sin is peripheral and exoteric in religious life. A deeper, more esoteric experience of internal splitting in the divine life, abandonment of God and resistance to God as a sacrificial path of ascension. In religious experience, it is inevitable to pass through a transcendental relationship to God and a transcendental relationship to evil. But it is also inevitable in religious experience to arrive at immanent truth, at the immanent experience of God and the world. And every mystical experience, at its limit, removes all opposition between the transcendental and the immanent. In religious life there is no objective reality and objective objectivity. Any objectification, externality of God, Christ, sacraments is only a relative and conditional projection on a plane, a historical and cultural phenomenon. The paradox of religious life is striking: extreme transcendentism gives rise to opportunistic adaptation, deals with the evil of the “world”; mature immanentism gives rise to the will to radically enter the Divine life of the spirit, to radically overcome the “world”. Mature immanentism frees us from oppression by the evil of the “world.” “This world” is captivity to evil, a loss from divine life, “the world” must be defeated. But “this world” is only one of the moments of the internal divine process of creation of the cosmos, movement in the Trinity of the Divine, birth of Man in God. This antinomy is given in religious experience. And only the childishly immature, unwise, frightened consciousness is afraid of this antinomy; it keeps imagining the idealization and justification of evil in the immanent-monistic thesis of the antinomy. But there can be a merciless attitude towards evil, towards “this world”, towards slavery and decay. The absolute is affirmed in the depths of spiritual life, and not in the external relative world, to which nothing absolute is applicable. The heroic war against the evil of the world arises in that liberating consciousness of immanentism, for which God is immanent to the human spirit, and the “world” is transcendental to it. There may easily be a desire to interpret such a religious philosophy as acosmism. The “world” for my consciousness is illusory, inauthentic. But the “world” for my consciousness is not cosmic, it is a non-cosmic, acosmic state of mind. Cosmic, true peace is overcoming the “world,” freedom from the “world,” victory over the “world.” My consciousness accepts another antinomy - the antinomy of “one” and “multiple”. In contrast to any mysticism of the one (India, Plotinus, Eckhardt), I profess monopluralism, i.e. metaphysically and mystically I accept not only the One, but also substantial multiplicity, the revelation in the One God of an imperishable cosmic multiplicity, a multitude of eternal individuals. Cosmic multiplicity is the enriching revelation of God, the development of God. This consciousness leads to metaphysical and mystical personalism, to the revelation of the self.
The name of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) - an outstanding Christian and political thinker, preacher of the philosophy of personality and freedom in the spirit of religious existentialism and personalism - is inscribed in the history of not only Russian but also world culture. “The Meaning of Creativity” is one of Berdyaev’s most famous early works, which presents the author’s reflections on freedom and individuality, genius and holiness, as well as the religious and philosophical concept of creativity. Written in simple but imaginative language, this book will be of interest to a wide range of readers. Format: Hard glossy, 428 pages. |
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Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyaev(6 () March, - or, Clamart under) - religious Russian. In from, with lived in France.
Biography
Family
N. A. Berdyaev was born into a noble family. His father, Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev, was a cavalry officer, then the Kyiv district leader of the nobility, later the chairman of the board of the Kyiv land bank; mother, Alina Sergeevna, nee Princess Kudasheva, was French on her mother’s side.
Education
Berdyaev was first raised at home, then entered the 2nd grade of the Kyiv cadet corps. In the 6th grade, he left the building “and began to prepare for the matriculation certificate for entering the university. Then I had the desire to become a professor of philosophy.” In 1894, Berdyaev entered Kiev University - first at the Faculty of Science, but a year later he switched to Law.
Life in Russia
Berdyaev, like many other Russian philosophers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, went from Marxism to idealism. In 1898, for his Social Democratic views, he was arrested (along with 150 other Social Democrats) and expelled from the university (before that, he had already been arrested for several days once as a participant in a student demonstration). Berdyaev spent a month in prison, after which he was released; his case dragged on for two years and ended with deportation to the Vologda province for three years, two of which he spent in Vologda, and one in Zhitomir.
In 1898, Berdyaev began to publish. Gradually, he began to move away from Marxism; in 1901, his article “The Struggle for Idealism” was published, which consolidated the transition from positivism to metaphysical idealism. Along with, Berdyaev became one of the leading figures of the movement, which first announced itself with the collection “Problems of Idealism” (), then the collection “”, in which the Russian Revolution of 1905 was sharply negatively characterized.
In the following years before his expulsion from the USSR in 1922, Berdyaev wrote many articles and several books, of which later, according to him, he truly appreciated only two - “The Meaning of Creativity” and “The Meaning of History”; he participated in many endeavors of the cultural life of the Silver Age, first moving in the literary circles of St. Petersburg, then taking part in the activities of the Religious and Philosophical Society in Moscow. After the revolution of 1917, Berdyaev founded the “Free Academy of Spiritual Culture,” which existed for three years (1919–1922).
Life in exile
Twice under Soviet rule Berdyaev was imprisoned. “The first time I was arrested was in 20 in connection with the case of the so-called Tactical Center, to which I had no direct connection. But many of my good friends were arrested. As a result, there was a big process, but I was not involved in it.” Berdyaev was arrested for the second time in 1922. “I sat there for about a week. I was invited to the investigator and told that I was being deported from Soviet Russia abroad. They took a subscription from me that if I appeared on the border of the USSR, I would be shot. After that I was released. But it took about two months before I was able to travel abroad.”
After leaving (on the so-called) Berdyaev first lived in Berlin, where he participated in the creation and work of the “Russian Scientific Institute”. In Berlin, Berdyaev met several German philosophers - with, Kaiserling,. In 1924 he moved to Paris. There, and in recent years in Clamart near Paris, Berdyaev lived until his death. He wrote and published a lot from 1925 to 1940. was the editor of the magazine “Path”, actively participated in the European philosophical process, maintaining relations with philosophers such as E. Mounier, and others.
“In recent years there has been a slight change in our financial situation; I received an inheritance, albeit a modest one, and became the owner of a pavilion with a garden in Clamart. For the first time in my life, already in exile, I had property and lived in my own house, although I continued to need, there was always not enough.” In Clamart, once a week “Sundays” were held with tea parties, where friends and admirers of Berdyaev gathered, conversations and discussions of various issues took place and where “one could talk about everything, express the most opposite opinions.”
Among the books published in exile by N. A. Berdyaev, one should name “The New Middle Ages” (1924), “On the Purpose of Man. The experience of paradoxical ethics" (1931), "On slavery and human freedom. Experience of personalistic philosophy" (1939), "Russian idea" (1946), "Experience of eschatological metaphysics. Creativity and objectification" (1947). The books “Self-Knowledge” were published posthumously. Experience of a philosophical autobiography" (1949), "The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar" (1951), etc.
“I had to live in a catastrophic era both for my homeland and for the whole world. Before my eyes, entire worlds collapsed and new ones emerged. I could observe the extraordinary vicissitudes of human destinies. I saw transformations, adaptations and betrayals of people, and this was perhaps the hardest thing in life. From the trials that I had to endure, I came away with the belief that a Higher Power protected me and did not allow me to perish. Epochs so filled with events and changes are considered interesting and significant, but these are also unhappy and suffering eras for individuals, for entire generations. History does not spare the human personality and does not even notice it. I survived three wars, two of which can be called world wars, two revolutions in Russia, small and large, I experienced the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century, then Russian communism, the crisis of world culture, the revolution in Germany, the collapse of France and the occupation by its victors, I survived exile, and my exile is not over. I suffered painfully through the terrible war against Russia. And I still don’t know how the world upheaval will end. There were too many events for a philosopher: I was imprisoned four times, twice in the old regime and twice in the new, was exiled to the north for three years, had a trial that threatened me with eternal settlement in Siberia, was expelled from my homeland and, I will probably end my life in exile.”
Berdyaev died in 1948 in his home in Clamart from a broken heart. Two weeks before his death, he completed the book “The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar,” and he already had a mature plan for a new book, which he did not have time to write.
Basic principles of philosophy
The book “The Experience of Eschatological Metaphysics” most expresses my metaphysics. My philosophy is a philosophy of spirit. Spirit for me is freedom, a creative act, personality, communication of love. I affirm the primacy of freedom over being. Being is secondary, there is already determination, necessity, there is already an object. Perhaps some of the thoughts of Duns Scotus, most of all and partly Maine de Biran and, of course, as a metaphysician, I consider to be prior to my thought, my philosophy of freedom. - Self-knowledge, ch. eleven.
For Berdyaev, the key role belonged to freedom and creativity (“Philosophy of Freedom” and “The Meaning of Creativity”): the only mechanism of creativity is freedom. Subsequently, Berdyaev introduced and developed concepts that were important to him:
- kingdom of spirit,
- kingdom of nature,
- objectification - the inability to overcome the slave shackles of the kingdom of nature,
- transcending is a creative breakthrough, overcoming the slavish shackles of natural-historical existence.
But in any case, the internal basis of Berdyaev’s philosophy is freedom and creativity. Freedom defines the kingdom of the spirit. Dualism in his metaphysics is God and freedom. Freedom pleases 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 existence,” gives rise to 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, 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 absolute significance, 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.
Books
- "The Philosophy of Freedom" (1911) ISBN 5-17-021919-9
- “The Meaning of Creativity (The Experience of Human Justification)” (1916) ISBN 5-17-038156-5
- “The Fate of Russia (Experiments on the Psychology of War and Nationality)” (1918) ISBN 5-17-022084-7
- “Philosophy of Inequality. Letters to Enemies on Social Philosophy" (1923) ISBN 5-17-038078-X
- "Konstantin Leontyev. Essay on the history of Russian religious thought" (1926) ISBN 5-17-039060-2
- "The Philosophy of the Free Spirit" (1928) ISBN 5-17-038077-1
- “The Fate of Man in the Modern World (Towards an Understanding of Our Epoch)” (1934)
- “I and the world of objects (An experience in the philosophy of loneliness and communication)” (1934)
- "Spirit and Reality" (1937) ISBN 5-17-019075-1 ISBN 966-03-1447-7
- “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism” http://www.philosophy.ru/library/berd/comm.html (1938 in German; 1955 in Russian)
- “About slavery and human freedom. Experience of personalistic philosophy" (1939)
- “The Experience of Eschatological Metaphysics. Creativity and Objectification" (1947)
- “Truth and revelation. Prolegomena to the Criticism of Revelation" (1996 in Russian)
- "The Existential Dialectic of the Divine and the Human" (1952) ISBN 5-17-017990-1 ISBN 966-03-1710-7
Berdyaev's book “Philosophy of Freedom” (1911) is an early work, which the author himself was critical of, considering it immature in many respects. And yet this work is valuable because in it Berdyaev, in some of his philosophical intuitions, anticipates the processes that later occurred in the history of European philosophy. In other words, this is not just a historical work, but a largely innovative and visionary work.
Berdyaev, however, begins his book with statements that were no longer new at that time: philosophizing thought has reached a dead end, an era of epigonism and decline has begun for philosophy, philosophical creativity is drying up, etc. However, Berdyaev’s definition of the essence of the crisis was original for that time, true and profound in its own way. “All modern philosophy, the last result of all new philosophy, has clearly revealed its fatal powerlessness to cognize being, to unite the knowing subject with being. Even more, this philosophy came to the abolition of being... plunged the knower into the kingdom of ghosts. Critical epistemology began to test the competence of knowledge and came to the conclusion that knowledge is not competent to connect the knower with the object of knowledge, with being. A realistic sense of being and a realistic attitude towards being is a lost paradise. And there are, apparently, no philosophical ways to return to this paradise.” At the beginning of the 20th century. in Western philosophy, epistemological concepts indeed prevailed over ontological ones. Of course, this statement cannot be taken to the point of absurdity: even then ontological tendencies in philosophy made their way. However, the “ontological turn” in Western thought, as noted in Chapter 2, happened much later.
The Russian thinker associates the dominance of epistemology with the dominance of Kantian philosophy and Kantian trends. Berdyaev’s critical attitude towards them is not at all accidental. “Kant,” he wrote, “left the knower alone with himself, brilliantly formulated his isolation from being, from reality, from reality, and sought salvation in critical reason.” In Russia, Berdyaev was not the only one to evaluate Kant’s thought in this way. In principle, we can say that at the beginning of the 20th century. (along with professional Kantian studies and interest in Kantian philosophy, which was discussed in the second chapter of this section), a seemingly unexpected syndrome, characteristic of a part of Russian philosophy, is being formed of such a critical attitude towards Kant, which stands on the verge of dislike, almost hatred, of great German thinker. In Kantian philosophy, Berdyaev, like some of his Russian contemporaries, see the source of philosophy’s immersion in epistemology, one of the reasons for the isolation of the theory of knowledge not only from the philosophy of being, ontology, but also from being as such, and consequently, the alienation of man from real life, the separation man from a higher being, i.e. from the deity.
Hence the more general verdict: the crisis of philosophy lies in the break with being, in the fact that epistemology, and not the doctrine of being, was given the palm. The tragedy of philosophy is that it makes reality, freedom illusory, and even the personality itself turns into a kind of ghost. The results that follow from this are tragic not only for philosophy itself, but also for all human life. But the main misfortune of philosophy, according to Berdyaev, is that it has lost its religious roots. Humanity needs a new free philosophy and philosophy of freedom, Berdyaev argues. How are its tasks formulated? “Philosophy must be free, must seek truth, but it is free philosophy, the philosophy of freedom, that comes to the conclusion that only thought is religious, only the life of an integral spirit is given truth and being.”
Berdyaev analyzes in detail the problem of faith and knowledge. He comes to the conclusion that the opposition between faith and knowledge, which has certain grounds, should be replaced by evidence of their interaction. To unite faith and knowledge, one must abandon the pride of rationalism. “In our formulation of the question,” Berdyaev writes, “there is no such opposition between knowledge and faith as is usually assumed, and the task is not at all to mutually limit the areas of knowledge and faith, allowing them only in a certain proportion. We affirm the infinity of knowledge, the infinity of faith and the complete absence of their mutual limitations. Religious philosophy sees that the opposition of knowledge and faith is only an aberration of weak vision. Religious truth is supreme, faith is a feat of renunciation of prudent rationality, after which the whole meaning is comprehended. But the final truth of faith does not abolish the truth of knowledge and the duty to know. Scientific knowledge, like faith, is penetration into real reality, but private, limited: it contemplates from a place from which everything is visible and the horizons are closed. The statement of scientific knowledge is true, but its denials are false. Science teaches correctly about the laws of nature, but falsely teaches about the impossibility of the miraculous, falsely denies other worlds.”
Another aspect of the book “Philosophy of Freedom” was a subtle philosophical analysis of the problem of so-called epistemology. We have already established that for Berdyaev the categories of being are much more important than the categories of knowledge. The thinker proceeds from the fact that both subject and object relate to being, and “outside being there is no place for anyone or anything, except for the kingdom of the devil. Madness is to consider being as a result of objectification and rationalization of the knowing subject, to make being dependent on the categories of knowledge, on judgment.” Berdyaev, thus, not only asserts the primacy of the theory of being over the theory of knowledge, epistemology, not only highlights ontology, but he also asserts that being itself precedes the doctrine of knowledge. “Epistemologists want to take being itself out of epistemology, turn it into a judgment, and make it dependent on the category of the subject.”
The second part of The Philosophy of Freedom is called “The Origin of Evil and the Meaning of History.” Berdyaev writes: “The painful crisis of modern humanity is associated with the difficulty of emerging from the psychological era - the era of subjectivism, closed individualism, the era of moods and experiences not associated with any objective and absolute center. The oppression of positivism and the theory of the social environment, the oppressive nightmare of necessity, the senseless subordination of the individual to the goals of the race, violence and outrage against the eternal hopes of the individual in the name of the fiction of the good of future generations, the vain thirst for the organization of a common life in the face of death and decay of every person, all humanity and the whole world, faith in the possibility of a final social order for humanity and in the supreme power of science - all this was false: objectivism crushing the living human face, slavery to the natural order, false universalism. The human race mechanically subjugated man, enslaved him to its own goals, forced him to serve its own good, imposed on him its general and, as it were, objective consciousness.” Thus, Berdyaev sees the crisis of humanity as a crisis of history in the fact that false objectivism has suppressed man. The reaction to this was the “psychological, subjective” era.
A rebellion of subjectivism broke out, which denies everything objective, and elevates all illusoryness and all mysticism into law - this was the price for false objectivism, for the philosophy of naturalism and materialism. How to get out of a philosophical dead end? The answer to this question was the final part of Berdyaev’s “Philosophy of Freedom”, which, it must be said, is much less interesting than the first two, where a critical analysis of modern philosophy is easily, freely and even elegantly carried out. In the last part of “Philosophy of Freedom” Berdyaev tries to outline the contours of a theosophical, religious and philosophical way out of the current situation of the spirit. The way out is further Berdyaev, therefore it should not be an ideal for philosophy that science is not creativity, but obedience. Its element is not freedom, but necessity. “Science has never been and cannot be the liberation of the human spirit. Science has always been an expression of man’s bondage to necessity.”
Expressing all these assessments and judgments, Berdyaev at the same time clearly sees how contradictory the fate of philosophy of the 20th century is and will be. just in relation to science and scientific character. “Our era,” writes the philosopher, “is characterized by an aggravation of consciousness and a crisis of consciousness in all spheres. One cannot help but see a serious crisis in scientific, universally binding, objectified philosophy. Never before has there been such a desire to make philosophy completely scientific. Nowadays, idealism, which was previously metaphysical, has become scientific and imagines itself as such. And never before has there been such disappointment in science, such a thirst for the irrational.” This is a very well noted contradiction. It truly characterizes philosophy, and not only the first two decades, but the entire 20th century.
Analyzing classical European philosophy, Berdyaev tries to answer the question to what extent it is suitable for awakening creatively active human cognition. It would seem that the philosophy of creativity should first of all be discussed in connection with German classical idealism, say, the philosophy of Kant. But we already know that Kant’s philosophy for Berdyaev is “perhaps the most modern and sophisticated philosophy of obedience, the philosophy of sin.” “Critical philosophy is an obedient consciousness of necessity, not of nature, but of consciousness itself, not of matter, but of mind, it is obedience to necessity through obedience to categories. The creative, active nature of human knowledge was felt in the flight of genius, but was suppressed by the general obedience of necessity, bound by the deepest religious reasons. Philosophical knowledge cannot be only a passive, obedient reflection of existence, the world, reality,” states Berdyaev. Philosophy seems to him to be stricken with a terrible disease, a disease of reflection and division. European philosophers tried to elevate this reflection, this Hamletism into a methodological principle, in which Berdyaev sees the inferiority of Descartes’ rationalism, Hume’s empiricism, Kant’s criticism: reflection and doubt are elevated “to the rank of virtues of philosophical knowledge.” And reflection and doubt deprive philosophy of its creative active character and make it passive. According to Berdyaev, creative philosophy cannot be a critical philosophy, a philosophy of skepticism. It must become a dogmatic philosophy. But at the same time, the philosopher emphasizes, there is no return to “old, childish dogmatism.” It must create a new, mature dogmatism. Truly creative philosophers are like Plato. These are philosophers who place not knowledge, not categories, but love at the center of their philosophizing. Berdyaev says about such thinkers that they are “erotic” philosophers (of course, not in the everyday sense of the word). Thus, if philosophy concentrates on man, then it concentrates on love. This means that philosophy is anthropological.
Let us not forget that in the history of thought - when determining the very nature, meaning, essence of philosophy - many philosophers, assigning a central place in the system of philosophical knowledge to the problem of man, still tried to overcome anthropomorphism, i.e. dissemination of human properties, abilities and capabilities throughout the world, projection of humanity into the world. Berdyaev analyzes this problem interestingly and deeply. “In determining the nature of philosophy and its tasks, the central place belongs to the question of anthropologism in philosophy. Philosophy is unable to escape from that original consciousness that man philosophizes and that philosophizes for man. There is no strength to renounce the fact that philosophical knowledge takes place in an anthropological environment; No matter how much Cohen and Husserl try to give knowledge a character transcendental to man and free knowledge from all anthropologism, these attempts will always give the impression of lifting themselves up by the hair. Man precedes philosophy, man is the prerequisite for all philosophical knowledge.” This is the main point: Berdyaev conceived his book as an anthropodicy, i.e. as a justification for a person. Throughout his life, he saw his task precisely in turning philosophy to the problem of man, in order to make it open in the full sense, “a deep philosophical anthropology, a philosophy of man.
“The Meaning of Creativity” is one of the first books of the 20th century, which clearly and strongly stated the departure from abstract epistemology, abstract ontologism to a personalistic philosophy of man, centered around life, death, love of a human being. This work, unfortunately, was little known in the West. But Berdyaev’s book undoubtedly precedes the corresponding Western “existential” models, and in some respects surpasses them.
About the philosophy of the early 20th century. Berdyaev says that she unconsciously already professes anthropologism. But this anthropologism is bashful, hiding: after all, at the same time an attempt is being made to deprive philosophy of all traces of anthropologism, anthropocentrism. And Berdyaev is not shy about using rather harsh terms, calling such a philosophy “homicidal.” He finds a “homicidal” desire in Husserl and Cohen. This desire is expressed in the fact that “they want to create a philosophy in which philosophy itself, and not man, will philosophize.” And yet, despite all the anthropological activism, Berdyaev is forced, along with other philosophers, to admit that man is the intersection point of two worlds: he belongs to the world of nature, the world of the passive, finite, dying, on the one hand, and on the other, to the world of eternity . “The duality of human nature,” Berdyaev writes, “is so striking that naturalists and positivists teach about man with force, and supranaturalists and mystics teach about him with no less force... Man, in essence, is already a gap in the natural world, he does not fit in it "
The duality of human nature is a fairly old truth of philosophy. But the conclusions that Berdyaev draws from previous and recent disputes are very important and original. First of all, he sharply criticizes such anthropocentrism, which naively “attaches” human knowledge to the natural world, making the human being a simple instrument of the world. Naturally, Berdyaev ends with criticism of Marx and Marxism: it is the Marxist tradition that he portrays as the result of naturalistic anthropocentrism. “Marx finally denies the intrinsic value of human life,” he writes, “he sees in man only a function of the material social process and subordinates, sacrifices every person and every human generation to the idol of the coming, future state and the proletariat prospering in it. Here humanistic anthropology comes to a crisis - deified man is exterminated in the name of something ghostly-superhuman, in the name of the idea of socialism and the proletariat. The proletariat is higher than man and it is not just the sum of people - it is the new God. Thus the superhuman inevitably rises from the ruins of humanism. Marxism is one of the ultimate products of the anthropological consciousness of humanism, exterminating humanism, finally killing man...” Berdyaev's assessment of Marxism significantly diverges from the understanding of Marxism as humanism and even as humanism of the highest order, which were widespread in Marxist philosophy itself.
Berdyaev considers the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to be a transitional phenomenon from the crisis of humanistic anthropology to a new understanding. He generally evaluates it as the greatest phenomenon of modern history. “Nietzsche,” he writes, “is an atoning sacrifice for the sins of modern times, a victim of humanistic consciousness.” “Nietzsche is the forerunner of a new religious anthropology,” he says, quite paradoxically. “In Nietzsche, humanism triumphs not from above through grace, but from below - through man’s own strength. This is Nietzsche’s great feat.” Berdyaev assigns an equally high role in establishing a new type of humanism to Dostoevsky. In his rapprochement between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, Berdyaev is not original. He draws this idea from Russian culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For Berdyaev, the true and final meaning of all these philosophical discussions is to lead to the problem of the problems of the book “The Meaning of Creativity,” namely, to the question of how the problems of human creativity, the problem of anthropocentrism of philosophy, are consistent with the gospel truth, with that in general the obvious circumstance that in the Gospel, as he himself admits, there is not a single word about creativity. Creative calls and imperatives cannot be derived from the Gospel by any sophisms. The difficulty that Berdyaev is struggling with here is quite understandable: in strict accordance with the truth of the Gospel teaching, with the theology of Christianity, man cannot be placed at the center of the universe. And to give a central and creative character to the human principle meant to violate the indisputable prerogative of creativity that the Gospel and all the classical books of Christianity assigned to God. What does Berdyaev do in the face of this undoubted fact, which he not only does not think of denying, but emphasizes again and again? He declares that the silence about the creative character of man in the Gospel is not at all accidental, it is providential. It is in this silence that lies the riddle, the solution of which modern man must think about. It is no accident that God does not communicate anthropological revelation to man. God does this in the name of God-like freedom, the creative path of man, in the name of justification of creativity by man himself. Berdyaev further states: “The creator’s idea of man is dizzyingly high and beautiful.”
All this sophisticated balancing act in interpreting the problem of creativity on a Christian basis, but not at all on the basis of a dogmatic, evangelical idea, distinguishes Berdyaev’s anthropodicy primarily from traditional theodicies, where anthropodicy has always occupied a subordinate place. But Berdyaev makes this rearrangement deliberately.
And if in his early works Berdyaev seemed to deliberately aggravate the contradictions and confrontations between his philosophical teaching and many doctrines of traditional and contemporary philosophy, if he boldly attempted to revise a number of fundamental foundations of religious philosophy dear to his heart, then in his later works this original thinker I had to clarify, clarify and rethink a lot in my views
The human spirit is in captivity. I call this captivity “the world,” a world given, a necessity. “This world” is not cosmos, it is a non-cosmic state of disunity and enmity, atomization and disintegration of living monads of the cosmic hierarchy. And the true path is the path of spiritual liberation from the “world”, the liberation of the human spirit from captivity in necessity. The true path is not a movement to the right or left along the plane of the “world,” but a movement upward or inward along an extra-mundane line, a movement in the spirit, and not in the “world.” Freedom from reactions to the “world” and from opportunistic adaptations to the “world” is a great conquest of the spirit. This is the path of higher spiritual contemplation, spiritual composure and concentration. The cosmos is a truly existing, authentic being, but the “world” is illusory, the world’s reality and world’s necessity are illusory. This illusory “world” is the product of our sin. Church teachers identified “the world” with evil passions. The captivity of the human spirit by the “world” is his guilt, his sin, his fall. Liberation from the “world” is liberation from sin, atonement for guilt, and the ascent of the fallen spirit. We are not of the “world” and should not love the “world” and the things that are in the “world”. But the very doctrine of sin has degenerated into slavery to illusory necessity. They say: you are a sinful, fallen creature and therefore do not dare to embark on the path of liberation of the spirit from the “world”, on the path of the creative life of the spirit, bear the burden of obedience to the consequences of sin. And the human spirit remains chained in a hopeless circle. For the original sin is slavery, unfreedom of the spirit, submission to the devil’s necessity, powerlessness to define oneself as a free creator, losing oneself through affirming oneself in the necessity of the “world”, and not in the freedom of God. The path of liberation from the “world” for the creation of a new life is the path of liberation from sin, overcoming evil, gathering the strength of the spirit for divine life. Slavery to the “world”, to necessity and givenness, is not only unfreedom, but also the legitimation and consolidation of the unloving, torn, non-cosmic state of the world. Freedom is love. Slavery is enmity. The way out of slavery into freedom, from the enmity of the “world” into cosmic love is the path to victory over sin, over the lower nature. And one cannot avoid this path on the grounds that human nature is sinful and immersed in lower spheres. It is a great lie and a terrible error of religious and moral judgment to leave a person in the lowlands of this “world” in the name of obedience to the consequences of sin. On the basis of this consciousness, shameful indifference to good and evil, a refusal to courageously resist evil, grows. Suppressed immersion in one's own sinfulness gives rise to double thoughts - eternal fears of mixing God with the devil, Christ with the Antichrist. This decadence of the soul, shamefully indifferent to good and evil, now reaches the mystical rapture of passivity and submission, to the game of double thoughts. The decadent soul loves to flirt with Lucifer, loves not to know which God it serves, loves to feel fear, to feel danger everywhere. This decadence, relaxation, duality of spirit is an indirect product of the Christian teaching about humility and obedience - the degeneration of this teaching. Decadent double thoughts and relaxed indifference to good and evil must be decisively opposed by courageous liberation of the spirit and creative initiative. But this requires a concentrated determination to free oneself from the false, illusory layers of culture and its scum - this subtle captivity to the “world”.
The creative act is always liberation and overcoming. There is an experience of power in it. Discovering one's creative act is not a cry of pain, passive suffering, nor is it a lyrical outpouring. Horror, pain, relaxation, death must be overcome by creativity. Creativity is essentially a way out, an outcome, a victory. The sacrifice of creativity is not death and horror. Sacrifice itself is active, not passive. Personal tragedy, crisis, fate is experienced as a tragedy, crisis, fate of the world. This is the way. Exclusive concern for personal salvation and fear of personal death are outrageously selfish. Exclusive immersion in a crisis of personal creativity and fear of one’s own powerlessness are hideously selfish. Selfish and selfish self-absorption means a painful separation between man and the world. Man was created by the Creator as a genius (not necessarily a genius) and genius must be revealed in himself through creative activity, to overcome everything that is personally egoistic and personally selfish, every fear of one’s own death, every glance at others. Human nature in its fundamental essence, through the Absolute Man - Christ, has already become the nature of the New Adam and has reunited with the Divine nature - it no longer dares to feel separated and secluded. Isolated depression in itself is already a sin against the Divine calling of man, against the call of God, God's need for man. Only one who experiences within himself everything in the world and everything in the world, only one who has conquered the egoistic desire for self-salvation and selfish reflection on one’s own strengths, only one who has freed himself from his separate and isolated self is able to be a creator and a person. Only the liberation of a person from himself brings a person to himself. The creative path is sacrificial and suffering, but it is always liberation from all suppression. For the sacrificial suffering of creativity is never depression. Any depression is a person’s isolation from the true world, a loss of microcosmicity, captivity in the “world,” slavery in the given and necessary. The nature of all pessimism and skepticism is selfish and selfish. Doubt about a person’s creative power is always a selfish reflection and a painful selfishness. Humility and doubting modesty, where daring confidence and determination are needed, are always disguised metaphysical pride, reflective consideration and selfish isolation, the product of fear and horror. There are times in the life of humanity when it must help itself, realizing that the absence of transcendental help is not helplessness, for a person will find endless immanent help within himself if he dares to reveal in himself through a creative act all the powers of God and the world, the true world in freedom from the ghostly “world”. Now all too common is undignified and enervating self-spitting, the flip side of equally undignified and enervating self-aggrandizement. We are not real people, they like to say - in the old days we were real. Previous people dared to talk about religion. We don't dare talk. This is the ghostly self-awareness of people scattered by the “world”, who have lost the core of their personality. Their slavery to the “world” is self-absorption. Their self-absorption is a loss of self. Freedom from the “world” is a connection with the true world – the cosmos. Getting out of yourself is finding yourself, your core. And we can and should feel like real people, with a core of personality, with a significant, and not illusory, religious will.
It is not in darkness that we climb the ladder of knowledge. Scientific knowledge climbs a dark staircase and gradually illuminates each step. It does not know what it will come to at the top of the ladder; it has no sunlight, no meaning, no Logos illuminating the path from above. But in genuine higher gnosis there is an original revelation of meaning, sunlight falling from above on the ladder of knowledge. Gnosis is primordial comprehension; it contains the courageous activity of the Logos. The modern soul still suffers from photophobia. The soul walked through dark corridors through lightless science and came to lightless mysticism. The soul has not yet arrived at the solar consciousness. The mystical rebirth feels like entering the nocturnal age. The night era is feminine, not masculine, there is no sunshine in it. But in a deeper sense, the entire new history with its rationalism, positivism, and scientificism was a night, not a daytime era - in it the sun of the world dimmed, the highest light went out, all the illumination was artificial and mediocre. And we stand before a new dawn, before the sunrise. The intrinsic value of thought (in the Logos) as a luminous human activity, as a creative act in being, must be recognized again. The reaction against rationalism took the form of hostility to thought and speech. But we must free ourselves from reaction and, in freedom of spirit, in the timeless affirmation of thought and word, see the meaning. Our consciousness is essentially transitional and borderline. But on the brink of a new world, light is born, and the passing world is comprehended. Only now are we able to fully comprehend what was in the light of what will be. And we know that the past will truly exist only in the future.