Berdyaev Nikolay. Berdyaev Nikolay - biography, facts from life, photos, background information

Opponent of election and supporter of personal freedom. Being a religious person, he believed that both communism and fascism presuppose renunciation of moral and religious conscience. His ideas expressed at the dawn of the 20th century are so relevant that the head of state used quotes from the works of the philosopher in a letter to the Russian parliament.

Childhood and youth

Nicholas was born in March 1874 near Kiev, in a family estate granted to his great-grandfather by the emperor. The family was aristocratic. Father Alexander Mikhailovich is a descendant of the Tatar princes Bakhmetiev. The ancestors of the mother of Alexandra Sergeevna, nee Kudasheva - representatives of the ancient clans Mnishek, Potocki and even the king of France Louis VI.

Nikolai Berdyaev in childhood with his mother

Nikolai and his elder brother Sergey received elementary home education, spoke several foreign languages. The grown-up Kolya studied in the Vladimir and Kiev cadet corps. Then, according to family tradition, he had to enter the Page Corps, but preferred to engage in self-education. In 1894, Berdyaev received a certificate of maturity of the Kiev Pechersk Gymnasium.

In the same year, Nikolai entered the University, at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, a year later transferred to the law. But Berdyaev did not have a chance to get a diploma: he was expelled from the university for participating in the student Marxist circle of self-development and the Kiev "Union for the Emancipation of the Working Class". Prior to this, the young man had already been arrested twice for participating in anti-government demonstrations.

In 1900, Nicholas was sent to the Vologda province under police supervision. There, the young philosopher wrote the book "Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy." The well-known publicist and economist Peter Struve prepared a foreword for his departure to Germany. Berdyaev joined the political movement "Union of Liberation" organized by Struve with his associates.

Berdyaev’s biography reflected the time in which he lived: the revolutionary movement, the search for new ideals, throwing from one extreme to another. Nikolai Alexandrovich became a witness and one of the creators of the process, which he called "the Russian renaissance of the beginning of the twentieth century."

Philosophy

The philosophical views of Nikolai Berdyaev were based on the denial or, in any case, criticism of teleology and rationalism. These concepts, from his point of view, have a devastating effect on individual freedom, namely, the meaning of existence lies in the liberation of the individual.

Person and individual are opposite concepts. The Thinker believed that the first is a spiritual, ethical category, the second is a natural, part of society. The personality is inherently not influenced and does not apply either to nature, or to the church, or to the state. Freedom for Berdyaev is a given, it is primary in relation to nature and man, independent of the divine. If it violates the "divine hierarchy of being", evil appears.

In the work “Man and Machine”, he considers technology as a way of liberating the human spirit, but he fears that a substitution of values \u200b\u200bmay occur and the person will lose spirituality and kindness. And then the question arises, and what will people deprived of these qualities give the future world. After all, spirituality is not only a connection with God, it is primarily a connection with the world and how a person reflects this world through himself.

There is a paradox. Technological progress advances culture, art, changes moral principles. And life is a forward movement. On the other hand, excessive worship of technological innovations deprives humanity of the incentive to achieve cultural progress. And here again the theme of freedom of spirit is raised

At the beginning of his philosophical research, Nikolai Alexandrovich admired ideas. However, later, reflecting on the development of communist ideas in Russia, in the book "The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism" he directly noted that Marxism alone is not enough in this case.

In the work “Russian Idea”, the philosopher tried to answer the question of what is this mysterious Russian soul. Berdyaev uses vivid images and allegories, historical parallels and aphorisms. Events of wide time frames are cited as examples - from the protopope to, from the baptism of Rus to the October Revolution.

According to Berdyaev, the Russian people are not inclined to blindly follow the dogma of the law, where much more meaning and weight is invested in content than in form. The idea of \u200b\u200b"Russianness" is "freedom of love in the deep and pure sense of the word."

Personal life

Berdyaev’s wife, Lydia Yudifovna Trusheva, came from a family of a noble lawyer, honorary citizen of Kharkov. The girl was educated in a guesthouse in Switzerland, and after spending a month in prison with her sister Eugenia on suspicion of political activity, her mother sent them to Paris, to the Russian Higher School of Social Sciences.

At the time of meeting with Berdyaev, Lida was married to a hereditary nobleman and supporter of social democratic ideas Viktor Rapp. Trusheva succumbed to this trend. After the next arrest, Lydia and her husband were sent from Kharkov to Kiev, where in February 1904 she met Nikolai.

In the autumn of that year, Berdyaev invited the woman to go with him to St. Petersburg, and since then the couple no longer parted. However, Lida and Nikolai did not live as husband and wife in the traditional sense, but, according to Trusheva’s sister, Eugenia, as “the first apostles”, like a brother and sister.

The Berdyaevs put much more meaning into spiritual marriage. Lidia Yudifovna wrote about this in her diaries, emphasizing that the value of their union was the absence of “anything sensual, bodily, to which we treat and have always been treated with the same contempt.”

Lida chose charity as an area of \u200b\u200bactivity for herself, helped Nicholas in her work, and made corrections to his works. Berdyaeva was no stranger to creativity - she wrote poetry and notes, but did not seek to be published.

In 1922, the Berdyaev family left the country. They sent Nikolai Alexandrovich, and Lydia, of course, could not leave him alone. In addition, in 1917, she changed her faith - converted to Catholicism, and persecution of Catholics began in Soviet Russia. Initially, the Berdyaevs, as well as Lida's mother and sister, lived in Berlin, then moved to France, where a family friend, Florence West, left a house as a legacy. There, Nicholas wrote an autobiography of "Self-knowledge", which was published after his death.

Death

The Russian philosopher died in a foreign land, in the suburbs of Paris - Clamart, in March 1948. Three years before, Lidia Yudifovna died of cancer. Housework was helped by her sister Eugene. She found Berdyaev in her office at her desk. Until the last minute, the thinker worked - preparing the manuscript of the book “The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar”.

The house Nikolai Alexandrovich bequeathed to the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. The funeral service according to the Orthodox custom was conducted by several priests. They personally knew Berdyaev and wanted to take him on his last journey. On the grave of the philosopher is set just an ordinary cross.

Bibliography

1909 - Milestones
1913 - The Suppressors of the Spirit
1915 - The Soul of Russia
1918 - From the Depth
1924 - The New Middle Ages
1931 - Christianity and the Class Struggle
1931 - "Russian religious psychology and communist atheism"
1934 - “I and the world of objects (The experience of the philosophy of loneliness and communication)”
1939 - “On slavery and human freedom. The experience of personalistic philosophy ”
1940 - "Self-knowledge"

The fruits of Peter's reforms in the humanities became especially noticeable in the second half of the 19th century. The Silver Age has spawned many talented poets, artists and philosophers. The European development model found a response in the minds and hearts of the brilliant sons of Russia, among which was the existentialist Nikolai Berdyaev. He is by no means a plagiarist or a copycat. His creative heritage is quite distinctive, albeit eclectic. The philosopher witnessed the collapse of empires, the ideals of freedom and traditional values. The formation of Nazism in Germany falls on his century. While other emigrants applaud a new idol, ready to crush the Soviet Union, Berdyaev is studying totalitarian systems under the microscope of his soul.

Life in pre-revolutionary Russia

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was born on March 6 (old style) in 1874 in the estate of his father, cavalry guard Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev. The Little Russian nobility could not boast of generosity, but active people who did not stagnate in their family pride came out of their ranks. Mother Nikolai Alexandrovich had French blood in her veins. The future philosopher was destined for a military career, following his father, however, in preparation for the exams for the matriculation certificate, Nikolai firmly decided not to take up arms. He seeks himself at the natural faculty of Kiev University, and a year later he migrates to the law. If in your youth you haven’t been ill with a revolution, then you don’t have a heart, said one sage. Berdyaev participated in student unrest, for which he was expelled and exiled to Vologda.

His first work was published in 1899 in a Marxist journal. This was an article entitled “F. A. Lange and critical philosophy in their relation to socialism. " Very soon, this representative of the “noble nobility” begins to realize that Marxism is driving people into a new stall. In addition, slavery, more refined than mass social experiments, is the philosophy of positivism, because it does not give a person any chance to break beyond his five senses. This does not mean that science, with its empiricism, is detrimental to man, but it gives nothing to the soul. It is unlikely that any physical law is able to explain the meaning of human life.

Berdyaev with his fresh ideas and a lively pen was in demand in the circles of a thinking public. He writes articles for the collections “Problems of Idealism”, “From the Depth” and “Milestones”. Around these publications a circle of like-minded people professing mystical idealism has gathered. In 1903-1904, fate brought him to Switzerland, where the philosopher participates in the work of the Liberation Union. Berdyaev devoted all his talent and strength to personal freedom, but these liberators of Russia from the tyranny of the autocracy do not inspire him. He is trying to explain to the future Cadets, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks his attitude to freedom, but all is in vain. The revolutionary pathos intoxicated the leaders of the Union, who were unaware of the terrible consequences of social transformations.

Being a religious person, Berdyaev, nevertheless, sarcastically criticizes the official church. Anathema to him was the sentence of deportation to Siberia in 1913. The war, and after it the revolution softened the anger of the authorities. Berdyaev escaped with three years in the Vologda province. He is infected by the enthusiasm of the intelligentsia caused by the fall of the autocracy. Nikolai Alexandrovich writes and argues a lot in literary and philosophical circles. Immersed in his work, the philosopher does not want to believe that the Russian titanic will inevitably drown. In 1917, he founded the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture, which he headed until his deportation in 1922. Over the years, the philosopher has written many articles and several books that are still being read with great interest.

Berdyaev and Dzerzhinsky

For the time being, the Soviet regime endures an eccentric intellectual with a worldwide reputation who does not want to come to terms with the fact that new times have come. He was attracted to the case of the Tactical Center in 1920, but released. While the Bolsheviks are catching bandits and White Guards, they look through their fingers at the spiritual preaching of the "bourgeois sing-along". Berdyaev is a clear example of freedom of speech, which, allegedly, is preserved in Soviet Russia. But in 1922, the new government strengthened enough to deal with hostile, albeit unarmed intelligentsia.

Berdyaev was lucky not only to fly out of the cage of the Soviet paradise, but before that he had the opportunity to personally speak with Iron Felix. The chairman of the Cheka was an educated man, and knew something about the popular philosopher. Perhaps this saved the life of a man who always said what he thought. Dzerzhinsky listened attentively to Berdyaev, who dissected before him not only the present, but also the future of the future slavery of Russia. In his face, Dzerzhinsky found a consistent and deep critic of Marxism. Felix Edmundovich wrote down the conversation with Berdyaev in detail in a separate notebook, noting some phrases with exclamation and question marks. Not every enemy of socialism has received such an honor.

Revolution is not a creative beginning - such was the verdict of the philosopher. It means that it is meaningless and aimless. See your ideal in a piece of bread, envious of the rich? Is this the pathos and religion of the Bolsheviks? Forced equality in the name of material well-being? In the world of barracks delicate flowers of true creativity do not grow. And what could be higher than creativity? Of course, the new order is able to surround itself with pseudo-intelligentsia, working on the order, sweetly singing the Bolshevik paradise. But what will be the difference between the Soviet rhyme and the court henchman of some sultan or Roman emperor?

Dzerzhinsky listened attentively to Berdyaev, occasionally inserting comments of a philosophical plan. The chairman of the Cheka was not a sentimental person. His interest in Berdyaev was caused, first of all, by the desire to better study the arguments of the enemy. In addition, Iron Felix tried to find out specific names from Berdyaev, but he refused to call anyone. For the philosopher, it was a battle of worldviews, a battle between good and evil, which ended safely for him. Berdyaev was not only released, but also taken home on a motorcycle, as Moscow was teeming with bandits. By the way, Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky, the deputy of Dzerzhinsky, was a more delicate and more educated person than his boss, but it was Vyacha, the ladybug who was ready to devour Berdyaev with giblets.

The philosopher left his homeland on the very philosophical steamboat that took away from Russia the color of its intelligentsia. She took away her conscience, which the new owners were not yet ready to shoot. But soon they will overcome this complex and begin to devour the thinking public without any shame.

Life in a foreign land

Nikolai Alexandrovich was more fortunate than other Russian emigrants. He was known, printed and received in salons. Berdyaev did not have to work as a taxi driver or doorman. He continued to do what he liked, talked with colleagues and discovered the names of new thinkers. Until 1924, Berdyaev lives in Berlin, where he gets acquainted with the work of the German religious mystic Jacob Boehme. Among his acquaintances are the best representatives of philosophical thought from Weimar Germany: Oswald Spengler, German Alexander von Kaiserling and Max Scheler.

From 1924 until his death in 1948, Berdyaev lived in France, first in Paris, and then in the suburbs of Clamart. He takes an active part in the life of emigration, but is not interested in politics. Perhaps this saved his life. Neither the GPU nor the Gestapo considered it dangerous for the Christian thinker to arrange philosophical gatherings on his estate inherited from French relatives.

Far from his homeland, he did not lose the ability to create. The works written by him made him a Nobel laureate. He had no shortage of fans or philosopher friends. He was financially well provided. All the more surprising is his “cry,” which the philosopher poured on members of the Nobel Committee upon receipt of the award. “I survived three wars, of which two can be called world wars, two revolutions in Russia, small and large, I experienced a spiritual renaissance at the beginning of the 20th century, then Russian communism, a crisis of world culture, a coup in Germany, the collapse of France and its occupation by the victors, I survived the exile, and my exile is not over. " No one ever even touched this “sufferer” with a finger, either in Russia or in France.

Homecoming

Two years before his death, Berdyaev received Soviet citizenship. It is not clear why he needed it, because he never returned to Russia. He believed in a Higher Power that kept him throughout his life. Two weeks before his death, the philosopher completed his capital work, “The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar,” cherishing the concept of the new book. From the point of view of a creative person, he lived a successful life. Fate sent him the right people and timely events that provided food for thought. He was always in the right place, not experiencing the humiliation of poverty and horror before the powers that be. He always said what he considered necessary, had attentive listeners and never truly suffered for his directness.

Philosophy brought him pleasure, friends, food and the meaning of life. Until his last breath, he kept a bright mind, and left this world, gaining height for a new take-off. The Higher Power, which was keeping him, graciously grabbed him from the tenacious clutches of objectification, not allowing him to fall into senile senility. He is not forgotten to this day, remaining the most read and most relevant philosophical writer of Russia. His grave in Klamar is modest, but a true monument is the numerous editions of his works at home - not for the sake of a beautiful cover, but for thoughtful reading that carries us into the Kingdom of Freedom and the Spirit. The Kingdom of Berdyaev Freedom.

Read the biography of the philosopher thinker: facts of life, basic ideas and teachings
NIKOLAY ALEXANDROVICH BERDYAEV
(1874-1948)

Russian religious philosopher. He moved from Marxism to the philosophy of personality and freedom in the spirit of religious existentialism and personalism. Freedom, spirit, personality, creativity contrasted the need, the world of objects in which evil, suffering, slavery reign. The meaning of history, according to Berdyaev, is mystically comprehended in the world of a free spirit, beyond the limits of historical time.

The main works are "The Meaning of Creativity" (1916), "The World View of Dostoevsky" (1923), "Philosophy of the Free Spirit" (t 1-2, 1927-1928), "Russian Idea" (1948), "Self-Knowledge" (1949).

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev is one of the most brilliant representatives of the second generation of the philosophical renaissance. In the West, he turned out to be the most famous of Russian thinkers. He was called the “Russian Hegel of the 20th century”, “one of the greatest philosophers and prophets of our time”, “one of the universal people of our era”, “a great thinker whose work was the link between East and West, between Christians of different confessions, between nations , between past and future, between philosophy and theology and between visible and invisible. "

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was born on March 6 (18), 1874 in Kiev. His father came from a clan of Little Russian landowners. Almost all ancestors along this line were military, and his father was a cavalry guard officer, and later - chairman of the board of the Land Bank of the South-Western Territory. Mother - nee Princess Kudasheva - was related to the magnates Branitsky, on whose estate Berdyaev visited as a child. The maternal great-grandmother was a Frenchwoman, Countess de Choiselle. Berdyaev far departed from tribal traditions, but many of the features of his personality are perhaps easiest to explain, recalling the chivalrous blood and the noble honor. The father also wanted to see his son as a military man and gave him to the cadet corps. But the son did not stay there long. I got carried away by philosophy. At fourteen, he read Schopenhauer, Kant and Hegel. In the cousin’s album, in which he was in love, Berdyaev did not write poetry, as was customary in his circle, but quotes from the Philosophy of the Spirit.

For six years, Berdyaev was educated in the Kiev Cadet Corps, but hostility to this path took its toll, and in the end he entered the natural faculty of Kiev University in 1894, and in 1895 switched to the law. Quite quickly, he joined the youth revolutionary movement.

Berdyaev became a Marxist. “I considered Marx a genius and I think now,” he wrote in “Self-Knowledge”. Plekhanov was his mentor, Lunacharsky was a wrestling comrade. "A break with the environment, a way out of the aristocratic world into a revolutionary world is the main fact of my biography."

In 1898, he was arrested, expelled from the university and exiled to Vologda for participating in student social democracy. Over the years of exile, the future philosopher is formed as a polemicist and publicist.

Returning to Kiev from the Vologda exile (1898-1901), Berdyaev became close to Sergei Bulgakov, who then belonged to the so-called legal Marxists. Together they are experiencing a new spiritual crisis - a return to the fold of the church. In 1901, Berdyaev’s first book, Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy. A Critical Study of N. K. Mikhailovsky, was published.

In 1904, Berdyaev married Lydia Yudifovna Trusheva, who, like him, participated in the revolutionary movement, and then was imbued with the ideas of Orthodoxy. Lydia and her sister Eugene were selfless guardian angels of Berdyaev until the last years of his life.

In the same year he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the circle of Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who had set himself the task of bringing together the intelligentsia and the church. The famous religious and philosophical gatherings, with the debates of theologians and philosophers, did not last long and were banned, but they played a big role in the crystallization of a new spiritual direction, which made the transition "from Marxism to idealism." The most active participants in this process were Berdyaev and Bulgakov. Their work in the magazines "New Way" and "Questions of Life" laid the foundations of the so-called new religious consciousness, which was characterized by a synthesis of high humanitarian culture and the formulation of religious-existential problems, from which the positivist and socialist intelligentsia of the previous generation had denied themselves. The magazine collaborated D. Merezhkovsky, V. Rozanov, Vyach. Ivanov, F. Sologub, A Blok, B Bryusov, A. Bely, L. Shestov, S. Frank, P. Novgorodtsev, A. Remizov - the color of literature and philosophy of the Silver Age.

In 1908, Berdyaev moved to Moscow and, of course, he was in the center of ideological life. He actively collaborates with philosophers, united around the publishing house "The Way" (founded by E. Trubetskoy and M. Morozova) and the Religious and Philosophical Society in Memory of Vl. Solovyov. Trips to France and Italy broaden his horizons.

In 1911, the famous "Philosophy of Freedom" was published - the first experience in building the original Berdyaev philosophy. Before World War I, Berdyaev completed his second large book, The Meaning of Creativity. The Experience of the Justification of Man (1916). By that time, Berdyaev was the author of a large number of journalistic works collected in a number of separate publications, "Sub specie aeternitatis. Experiences of philosophical, social and literary. 1900-1906" (1907), "The spiritual crisis of the intelligentsia. Articles on social and religious psychology. 1907 -1909 years. " (1910) and others, and was also published in the collections of "Problems of Idealism" (1902) and "Milestones" (1909). All this made him one of the most authoritative thinkers of the silver age.

"The meaning of creativity. The experience of justification of man" - a work that brought Berdyaev fame as a philosopher. "This book was written in a single, integral impulse, almost in a state of ecstasy. I consider this book not the most perfect, but the most inspirational of my work, for the first time my original philosophical thought found expression in it. My main theme is embedded in it." This theme is eschatology, "the end of the world." The meaning of any creative act is not in the accumulation of cultural potential in itself, but in the approximation of the "end", or, more precisely, the transformation of the world. "The creative act in its original purity is directed towards a new life, a new being, a new heaven and a new earth." The new heaven and new earth are discussed in the Apocalypse. Following N. Fedorov, to whom he treated with great reverence, Berdyaev interprets "The Revelation of St. John" as a warning to humanity: "the end of the world" should not turn into his death, but ascent to a new level, which humanity is called upon to achieve by its own efforts, but by the will of the Lord.

During the First World War, Berdyaev made a series of articles about the Russian national character, which he then collected in the book "The Fate of Russia" (1918). He spoke of the “antinomy” of Russia: it is the most anarchist, most stateless country and at the same time the most bureaucratic, deifying state and its bearers; Russians are the most “world-responsive," non-chauvinistic people, and at the same time Russians have wild manifestations of national narrow-mindedness. Finally, freedom of the spirit; Russians are freedom-loving and alien to philistine narrow-mindedness, and at the same time, Russia is "a country of unprecedented servility." There is only one way out of this circle: the revelation within Russia itself, in its spiritual depths of a courageous, personal, formative principle, the mastery of its own national element, the immanent awakening of a courageous luminiferous principle. There is no need to call on the “Varangians”, to look for leaders on your side, to wait for leading assistance from behind the cordon, only the awakening of national self-consciousness will save Russia.

And another misfortune of Russia is the striving for the extreme, the ultimate. "And the path of culture is the middle path. And for the fate of Russia, the most vital question is whether it will be able to discipline itself for culture, preserving all its originality, all the independence of its spirit." Berdyaev thinks in national categories: national unity, in his opinion, is deeper, stronger than the unity of parties, classes and all other transient historical entities. Nationality is mystical, mysterious, irrational, like any individual being. And individuality, personality is the main thing for Berdyaev. Therefore, he rejects cosmopolitanism.

"Cosmopolitanism is both philosophical and vitally inconsistent, it is only an abstraction or utopia, the application of abstract categories to the area where everything is concrete. Cosmopolitanism does not justify its name, there is nothing cosmic in it, for cosmos, the World are a specific individuality, one of The image of the cosmos is also absent in cosmopolitan consciousness, as is the image of the nation ... A person is attached to the cosmic, universal life through the life of all individual hierarchical levels, through the national life ... Who is He loves his people and who are not nice concrete image of it, that is not nice, and the specific image of humanity. "

Naturally, Berdyaev could not stay away from the great and tragic events of 1917. The February revolution initiated a new surge in his journalistic activities: Berdyaev’s articles in the newspaper “Russian Freedom” are an interesting document of the evolution of intellectual consciousness in this period from euphoria to acute disappointment. Once, when troops were thrown to pacify the people, the philosopher called on the soldiers not to shoot, they obeyed.

Berdyaev speaks a lot to the most motley audience, enjoys tremendous success, he is one of the organizers of the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture that arose in 1918, and in 1920 even became a professor at Moscow University. He responded to the October Revolution with the article “Spirits of the Russian Revolution” in the famous collection “From the Depth” (1918) and the book “Philosophy of Inequality. Letters to Foes on Social Philosophy”, written in 1918, but published only five in Berlin.

This book is the first in a series of deep and painful reflections on the collapse of the liberation movement in Russia, reflections that Berdyaev did not leave until his death, acquiring a different color. Berdyaev did not fight the Bolsheviks, but they fought with him. He conducted intensive spiritual work, they interfered with him. He wrote the book "The Meaning of History." He created the “Free Academy of Spiritual Culture” (registered in the Moscow Soviet), which initially sat in the philosopher’s apartment, and then anywhere. In 1920, he was elected professor at Moscow State University. In the same year he was arrested. At Lubyanka, Berdyaev was interrogated by Dzerzhinsky himself. Without waiting for questions, Berdyaev gave a whole lecture on his views. He spoke for about forty-five minutes. Dzerzhinsky listened carefully. Then he ordered his deputy to release Berdyaev and deliver him home by car. In 1922 he was again arrested. This time, the case turned into an expulsion from the country. In the fall, as part of a large group of scientists (not only philosophers), Berdyaev went abroad.

In Berlin, Berdyaev writes a lot, speaks out, creates the Russian Scientific Institute with like-minded people and becomes the dean of his department. Participates in the creation of the Religious and Philosophical Academy. Gradually he moves away from white emigration. There is a factual gap with its main philosophical authority - P. B. Struve. Berdyaev, according to him, was repelled by the "stone unrepentance" of emigration, its inability to learn from the past. In turn, the emigrant intelligentsia could not forgive Berdyaev for trying to find a deeper meaning in socialist ideas, to bring Christian and communist ideals closer, cleansing the latter of false interpretations and perversions. The most important publications of this period: "The meaning of history. The experience of the philosophy of human destiny" (Berlin, 1923) and "The World View of F. M. Dostoevsky" (Prague, 1923).

An unexpectedly large, pan-European resonance was caused by a pamphlet to which the author himself did not attach too much importance: "The New Middle Ages. Reflection on the fate of Russia and Europe" (Berlin, 1924). She made Berdyaev the most famous representative of our philosophical emigration in the West (A curious episode during the Nazi occupation in Paris, Berdyaev was awaiting arrest after the first visit of the Germans, but everything was rumored to be due to the fact that an old admirer of this articles.). Among the acquaintances of this time, a meeting with Max Scheler, the largest representative of the German philosophical “avant-garde,” was especially important. The Berlin period (1922-1924) ended with a move to Paris. In Paris, activities continued at the Religious and Philosophical Academy, which was moved there.

Since 1926, Berdyaev was for 14 years the editor of the magazine "Way", which brought together emigrant philosophers. He was a loyal, dialogue-prone editor, and this allowed the magazine to survive, despite the atmosphere of fierce debate and disengagement. Berdyaev gathered around himself "leftist Christian elements" and fought with the reactionaries, attaching special importance to the battle for the minds of youth.

Berdyaev’s house in Clamart (a suburb of Paris) is becoming a kind of club for the French intelligentsia, where brilliant minds gather: Mounier, Maritain, Marcel, Gide and others. Berdyaev himself said that he brought to the West an eschatological sense of the fate of history, a consciousness of the crisis of historical Christianity, a conflict of personality and world harmony, Russian existential thinking and criticism of rationalism, religious anarchism and the ideal of the religion of God-manhood.

This is not to say that relations between Berdyaev and French culture were cloudless. The French were alarmed by the passionate categorization of his sermons, while Berdyaev did not like the French “clogging in their type of culture.” But at the same time, few of the Russian emigrant philosophers can even be compared with Berdyaev in terms of the depth of influence on pre-war European culture.

Berdyaev spent the war years in occupied France, he hated the invaders, but did not take an active part in the Resistance. Acutely worried about the fate of Russia, rejoiced at her victory over Hitler. At one time he intended to return to his homeland, but the revelry of Stalinism scared him away. The story with Akhmatova and Zoshchenko made a heavy impression on him.

In 1947, Cambridge University, rejecting the candidacy of K. Bart and L. Mariten, awarded Berdyaev an honorary doctorate. Before him, only I. Turgenev and P. Tchaikovsky were awarded such honor from the Russians. A year later, Berdyaev died. Shortly before his death, he wrote: "I am very famous in Europe and America, even in Asia and Australia, translated into many languages, they wrote a lot about me. There is only one country in which I almost do not know - this is my homeland. This is one from the indicators of a break in the traditions of Russian culture. After the revolution, they returned to Russian literature, and this is a fact of great importance. But they have not returned to Russian thought ... " Of the most important publications of the 1930s – 1940s, one should mention Berdyaev’s favorite book, On the Appointment of Man. The Experience of Paradoxical Ethics (Paris, 1931) and The Experience of Eschatological Metaphysics. Creativity and Objectification (Paris, 1947). The last numerous publications we have of Berdyaev’s works, publications of his colleagues in exile are evidence of the country's return to the interrupted philosophical tradition.

Berdyaev is one of the last independent thinkers. He wrote a lot (453 works, not counting translations into other languages). He called the introductory section in one of his later works, “On Contradictions in My Thought”. There are philosophers - the creators of systems to which they remain faithful as their chosen ones. "I have never been a philosopher of an academic type ... My thought has always belonged to an existential type of philosophy ... Existentiality is contradictory. Personality is immutability in change ... A philosopher commits treason if the main themes of his philosophizing, the basic motives of his thinking, the fundamental setting of values \u200b\u200bchange."

In one of his last works, Berdyaev wrote: "I define my philosophy as the philosophy of the subject, the philosophy of the spirit, the philosophy of freedom, the dualistic-pluralistic philosophy, the creatively dynamic philosophy, the personalistic philosophy, the eschatological philosophy."

The spirituality of man is a testament to the existence of God. Berdyaev calls his proof of the existence of God anthropological. Like the German mystics, he does not see God outside of man. God is not an absolute monarch, not the root cause of the world; the concept of determinism, like other concepts, is not applicable to God; God exists "incognito." Only the presence of the spirit in a person indicates that God exists, for he is the meaning and truth of life.

God is not the creator of the world, before God there was a certain “bottomlessness”, primary freedom. Freedom, according to Berdyaev, is primary and ... tragic. Freedom is the basic condition of moral life, not only the freedom of good, but also the freedom of evil. Without freedom of evil, there is no moral life. This makes moral life tragic. The meaning of evil is the test of freedom.

Given the various concepts of freedom, Berdyaev speaks of its three types. In addition to primary, formal freedom "on the other side of good and evil," there are two options for substantive freedom, one to do evil ("devilish freedom"), and the other to do good ("supreme", divine freedom). Love is the content of such freedom. When Berdyaev was called a "prisoner of freedom", it was precisely about her second option. The direction of the feat is overcoming death. The philosophical idea of \u200b\u200bnatural immortality, derived from the substantiality of the soul, is barren. For she passes by the tragedy of death. Immortality must be conquered. The fight against death in the name of eternal life is the main task of man.

The basic principle of ethics can be formulated as follows: act so that everywhere in everything and in relation to everything affirm eternal and immortal life, conquer death. Thus, paraphrasing the categorical imperative of Kant, Berdyaev formulates the central idea of \u200b\u200bRussian philosophy - the idea of \u200b\u200bthe meaning of life. Berdyaev is an opponent of revolution. Every revolution is trouble, trouble, failure. Successful revolutions do not happen. Responsibility for the revolution lies with both those who committed it and those who committed it. The success of the revolution and its suppression are the same in consequences: the decline of the economy and the runaway of morals. In the elements of the revolution there is no place for the individual; impersonal beginnings dominate in it; this is a natural disaster, like an epidemic and fire.

How does he see the future of Russia? There is no and cannot be a return to the old. Impossible for Russia and the "western" option. "The Russian man cannot want the European bourgeois to take the place of communism." Meanwhile, it is the Communists who push the country towards a bourgeois way of life. The terrible thing is that in the communist revolution Russia was first made a bourgeois, philistine country. Agile, shameless and energetic businessmen of this world advanced and declared their rights to be gentlemen. A new anthropological type has appeared in Russia. The children of these young people will be quite respectable bourgeois. These people will overthrow communist domination, and the case could "turn into Russian fascism."

Berdyaev was very negative about socialism and democracy. Socialism is a bourgeois idea. For socialists, as well as for the bourgeois, the cult of property is characteristic. Socialism completes the work begun by democracy, the work of the final rationalization of human life. It is a coercive, impersonal fraternity, perjury, satanocracy. Socialism is not liberation of labor, but liberation from labor. Meanwhile, it is necessary to increase production, and not deal with the redistribution of wealth produced, - Berdyaev defended this idea in his article, published in the collection "Milestones".

Criticizing socialism, Berdyaev does not advocate capitalism. The term “economic universalism” appears on the pages of the “Philosophy of Inequality”. The latter should equally be the opposite of "both capitalism and socialism." The economy should develop only as a hierarchical system; soulful attitude to the earth, love for it and tools are possible only with individual ownership. It is necessary to strive for the synthesis of the aristocratic principle of personality and the socialist principle of justice, fraternal cooperation of people.

In 1939 (“On Slavery and Human Freedom”) Berdyaev recalled his early beliefs: “The circle of my thoughts in social philosophy closed. I returned to the truth of socialism, which I professed in my youth, but on the basis of ideas and beliefs that had been endured during of my whole life. I call it personalistic socialism, which is radically different from the prevailing metaphysics of socialism, based on the primacy of society over the individual. "

Berdyaev from a young age was fond of Dostoevsky. He published articles about his "spiritual father", during the revolution in VADK conducted a seminar on Dostoevsky, and in 1923 in Prague he published the final work, "The World View of Dostoevsky." For Berdyaev, Dostoevsky is "not only a great artist, but a great philosopher." He is a brilliant dialectician, "the greatest Russian metaphysician." Everything in it is fiery and dynamic, everything in motion, in contradictions and struggle.

A significant place in the philosophical legacy of Berdyaev is occupied by the problems of national culture set forth in the book "The Russian Idea", as well as in a number of monographs devoted to outstanding Russian minds (Khomyakov, Leontiev, Dostoevsky). Flesh from the flesh of Russian fate, he could not help but be interested in his spiritual lineage. The history of the Russian idea, a champion of which he saw himself, Berdyaev begins with antiquity.

An eschatological element has always been visible in Russian religiosity, and this is Berdyaev’s native element. Russian antinomy manifested itself in the confrontation between two thinkers - Neil Sorsky and Joseph Volotsky. "Neil Sorsky is the forerunner of the freedom-loving trend of the Russian intelligentsia. Joseph Volotsky is a fatal figure not only in the history of Orthodoxy, but also in the history of the Russian kingdom ... Together with Ivan the Terrible, he should be considered the main founder of the Russian autocracy."

The split only revealed those trends that existed long before that. The split was based on the doubt that the Russian kingdom is truly Orthodox. The schismatics sensed treason in the church and the state, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe God-given kingdom was the main motive for the split. Already in Alexei Mikhailovich they saw the servant of the Antichrist. As for Peter the Great, this "Bolshevik on the throne" was perceived among the people as the Antichrist in person.

Berdyaev subtly noted the characteristic feature of the Russian Enlightenment "In Russia, the moral element always prevailed over the intellectual. This applies to the subsequent period. Moral searches marked the activities of Masons (Novikov), mystics from the circle of Alexander I, the freedom-loving Russian officers who brought out from Europe the idea of \u200b\u200buniversal brotherhood and so unsuccessfully tried to implement it in December 1825. The great Russian writers of the 19th century will create not from joyful creative excess, but from the thirst for saving the people, humanity and the whole world. "

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... Century XIX - the century of philosophers of revolutionaries. In the same century, European irrationalists appeared - Arthur Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bergson ... Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are representatives of nihilism (philosophy of denial) ... In the 20th century, among the philosophical teachings - existentialism - Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre. .. The starting point of existentialism is Kierkegaard's philosophy ...
Russian philosophy (according to Berdyaev) begins with the philosophical letters of Chaadayev. The first Russian philosopher known in the West is Vladimir Soloviev. Lev Shestov was close to existentialism. The most widely read in the West of Russian philosophers is Nikolai Berdyaev.
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The value of BERDYAEV NIKOLAY ALEXANDROVICH in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia

BERDYAEV NIKOLAY ALEKSANDROVICH

Berdyaev, Nikolai Alexandrovich, - writer. Born in 1874; studied at Kiev University, but did not finish the course, having been arrested in 1898. In 1900 his first book was published: "Subjectivism and individualism in social philosophy." Then Berdyaev printed a number of articles in magazines, which in 1907 came out as a book under the general title: "Sub specie aeternitatis". Another collection of articles by Berdyaev was published in the same 1907 under the title: "The New Religious Consciousness and the Public." In 1911 he published the Philosophy of Freedom. Of the articles that were not included in these publications, an interesting article by Berdyaev in the collection "Milestones". Berdyaev participated in editing the magazines "New Way" and "Questions of Life" (1904 - 05); often performed in a religious and philosophical society in St. Petersburg. In a short time, Berdyaev went through the evolution characteristic of a whole group of writers of our time. Being a philosophically educated person, he seeks to resolve pressing social issues on the basis of critical philosophy, subject to his volatile views. He began by criticizing the views of Mikhailovsky from the point of view of “historical materialism” and philosophical criticism, which he found possible to reconcile. In subsequent articles, Berdyaev assigns to Marxism an increasingly narrow place. First, he recognizes the significance of a purely historical theory for historical materialism, which has recognized its borders; for sociology, according to Berdyaev, he gives important materials, although there can be no talk of materialistic sociology, but he cannot be a philosophy of history at all (“The Struggle for Idealism”, “Peace of God”, 1901). Then Berdyaev more and more succumbs to the influence of philosophical and social idealism, understanding the last word in the broad sense in which it is opposed to materialism and in which Kant, Nietzsche, and Tolstoy, and Vladimir Solovyov are suitable, the influence of which we find in Berdyaev's articles . Recently, the preaching of a religious understanding of life takes Berdyaev's first place. Throughout this evolution, Berdyaev does not leave the soil of Kantian philosophy, sometimes at odds with it, however, in some basic issues. So, for example, in the article “Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism”, Berdyaev reproaches Kant that he does not stand on the basis of a metaphysical denial of evil. Berdyaev’s philosophical articles are neither scientific studies with which the philosopher should have reckoned, nor lively journalism, interesting to contemporaries. For the latter, they are too heavy and require serious philosophical preparation, for the former they admit too many arbitrary and unproven propositions, such as: individuality is a timeless substance, "which even Schopenhauer did not dare to admit," or that "freedom is substantial power" ( "On the New Russian Idealism", "Questions of Philosophy and Psychology", 1904). In recent years, in the worldview of Berdyaev, the influence of Vlad. Solovyov. Marxism, as deified statehood, is completely rejected; theocracy is preached, which should replace the "evil principle" of statehood, but should not be an "abstract" anti-statehood, that is, it should replace coercive statehood with a union of love. All more or less outstanding currents of modern religious, philosophical and social thought were found in Berdyaev response and sympathy, but he does not accept any of them with all his logical conclusions, as a result of which the way of their embodiment in life remains unclear, but all their abstract moral purity is preserved.

Brief biographical encyclopedia. 2012