Berdyaev nikolai alexandrovich - biography. Nikolai Berdyaev - biography, information, personal life
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev. Born on March 6 (18), 1874 in Kiev - died on March 23, 1948 in Clamart near Paris. Russian religious and political philosopher, representative of existentialism.
His father, cavalry guard officer Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev, was the Kiev district leader of the nobility, later the chairman of the board of the Kiev Land Bank; mother, Alina Sergeevna, nee Princess Kudasheva, was a Frenchwoman by mother. His elder brother Sergey is a poet, publicist and publisher.
Wife - poetess Berdyaeva, Lidia Yudifovna (Rapp's first marriage, nee Trusheva).
Berdyaev was brought up at home, then in the Kiev Cadet Corps. In the sixth grade, he left the corps and began to prepare for exams for a matriculation certificate for university admission. “Then I had a desire to become a professor of philosophy,” he wrote later. He entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Kiev, a year later on the law. In 1897, he was arrested, expelled from the university and exiled to Vologda for participating in student unrest. In 1899, in the Marxist journal Neue Zeit, his first article, F. A. Lange and critical philosophy in their relation to socialism. "
In 1901, his article “The struggle for idealism” was published, which cemented the transition from positivism to metaphysical idealism. Along with S. N. Bulgakov, P. B. Struve, S. L. Frank Berdyaev became one of the leading figures in the movement, which criticized the worldview of the revolutionary intelligentsia. This direction first declared itself as a collection of articles entitled “Problems of Idealism” (1902), then collections of Milestones (1909) and From the Depths (1918), in which the role of radicals in the revolution of 1905 and 1917 was sharply negatively characterized.
In 1903-1904 he took part in the organization of the Liberation Union and its struggle.
In 1913, he wrote an anti-clerical article, “Suppressors of the Spirit,” in defense of the Athos monks.
For this, he was sentenced to deportation to Siberia, but the First World War and the revolution prevented the execution of the sentence, as a result of which he spent three years in exile in the Vologda province. Over the following years, before his expulsion from the USSR in 1922, Berdyaev wrote many articles and several books, of which later, in his words, he truly appreciated only two - “The Meaning of Creativity” and “The Meaning of History”.
During his exile for revolutionary activity, Berdyaev switched from Marxism (“I considered Marx to be a genius and I think now,” he later wrote in “Self-knowledge”) to a philosophy of personality and freedom in the spirit of religious existentialism and personalism.
In his works, Berdyaev embraces and compares world philosophical and religious teachings and directions: Greek, Buddhist and Indian philosophy, Kabbalah, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, mysticism, cosmism, anthroposophy, Theosophy, etc.
Berdyaev’s key role was played by freedom and creativity (“Philosophy of Freedom” and “The Meaning of Creativity”): freedom is the only source of creativity. Later Berdyaev introduced and developed important concepts for him:
kingdom of the spirit,
kingdom of nature,
objectification - the inability to overcome the slave chains of the kingdom of nature,
transcending - a creative breakthrough, overcoming the slavish fetters of a natural-historical being.
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 is pleasing to God, but at the same time it is not from God. There is a “primary”, “uncreated” freedom, over which God has no power. The same freedom, violating the "divine hierarchy of being", creates evil. The theme of freedom, according to Berdyaev, 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 is of absolute importance, the fate of freedom in history is not only human, but also divine tragedy. The fate of the “free man” in time and history is tragic.
He participated in many endeavors of the cultural life of the Silver Age, first turning in the literary circles of St. Petersburg, then taking part in the activities of the Religious and Philosophical Society in Moscow. After the 1917 revolution, Berdyaev founded the “Free Academy of Spiritual Culture”, which lasted three years (1919-1922).
Twice under Soviet rule, Berdyaev went to jail. “The first time I was arrested in 1920 in connection with the case of the so-called Tactical Center, to which I had no direct relationship. But many of my good friends were arrested. The result was a big process, but I was not involved in it. ” During this arrest, as Berdyaev says in his memoirs, he was personally interrogated by Vaclav Menzhinsky.
The second time Berdyaev was arrested in 1922. “I sat for about a week. I was invited to the investigator and stated that I was being expelled 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 about two months passed before they managed to go abroad. ”
After leaving on September 29, 1922 - on the so-called "philosophical ship" - Berdyaev first lived in Berlin, where he met several German philosophers: Max Scheler, Kaiserling and. The works of the German philosopher Franz von Baader - according to Berdyaev "the greatest and most remarkable of the Boehmeans" - led the Russian emigrant to the works of a religious mystic, the so-called "Teutonic philosopher", Jacob Boehme.
In 1924 he moved to Paris. There, and in recent years in Klamar near Paris, Berdyaev lived until his death. He took an active part in the work of the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSHD), was one of its main ideologists. He wrote and published a lot, from 1925 to 1940 he was the editor of the journal of the Russian religious thought “The Way”, actively participated in the European philosophical process, maintaining relations with philosophers such as E. Mounier, G. Marcel, C. Bart and others.
“In recent years, there has been a slight change in our financial situation, I received an inheritance, albeit modest, and became the owner of a pavilion with a garden in Klamara. For the first time in my life, already in exile, I had property and lived in my own house, although I continued to need it, it was always in short supply. ” In Klamar, once a week, "Sundays" were held with tea parties, at which friends and admirers of Berdyaev gathered, conversations and discussions of various issues took place and where "it was possible to talk about everything, express the very opposite opinions."
Among the books published by the emigration of N. A. Berdyaev, one should name “The New Middle Ages” (1924), “On the Appointment of Man. The experience of paradoxical ethics "(1931)," On slavery and human freedom. The experience of personalistic philosophy ”(1939),“ Russian Idea ”(1946),“ Experience of eschatological metaphysics. Creativity and Objectification ”(1947). The books “Self-knowledge. The Experience of Philosophical Autobiography ”(1949),“ The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar ”(1951), etc.
In 1942-1948 He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 7 times.
He wrote about his life:
“I had to live in a catastrophic era both for my Motherland and for the whole world. Entire eyes collapsed before my eyes and new ones arose. I could observe the extraordinary vicissitudes of human destinies. I saw the transformations, adaptations and betrayals of people, and this, perhaps, was the most difficult thing in life. From the trials that I had to endure, I took out the belief that the Higher Power had kept me and did not allow me to die. Epochs so full of events and changes are considered interesting and significant, but these are unhappy and suffering epochs for individuals, for entire generations. History does not spare the human person and does not even notice it. I survived three wars, two of which can be called world, two revolutions in Russia, small and large, survived the spiritual renaissance of the beginning of the 20th century, then Russian communism, the crisis of world culture, the coup in Germany, the collapse of France and the occupation of its winners, I survived my exile, and my exile is not over. I painfully experienced a terrible war against Russia. And I still don’t know how the world upheavals will end. For the philosopher there were too many events: I was imprisoned four times, twice in the old regime and twice in the new regime, was sent to the north for three years, had a process that threatened me with an eternal settlement in Siberia, was expelled from my homeland and, I’m probably ending my life in exile. ”
Berdyaev died in 1948 in his house in Klamar 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 had already ripened a plan for a new book, which he did not have time to write.
He was buried in Clamart, in the city cemetery of Bois-Tardieu.
70 years ago, on March 23, 1948, one of the greatest Russian philosophers and religious thinkers, the representative of the golden age of Russian philosophy, did not become Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev.
Turned to the metaphysical
Nikolai Aleksandrovich was born on March 18 (n.v.) in 1874 and came from the noble family of Berdyaev, known for the traditions of officer service. Maternal grandmother Berdyaeva belonged to the old French count family Choiseul-Guffier. As was customary among Russian noblemen of the 19th century, Nikolai Alexandrovich received a home education. He studied at the Kiev Cadet Corps, imbued with philosophy and entered the university. In 1897, during a wave of student unrest, Berdyaev, as a participant, was arrested and exiled to Vologda. Gradually, Berdyaev began to play one of the most important roles in the movement, which criticized the views of the revolutionary-minded intelligentsia. At the same time, he considered himself a socialist, close in views to the Social Democrats, but they did not accept his aspiration for transcendental, his appeal to metaphysical idealism.
Emigration
Tsarist authorities did not favor Berdyaev. In 1914, he barely escaped exile to Siberia for his article written in defense of the Athos monks a year earlier. The situation was "saved" by the outbreak of World War I, and then by the revolution. Relations with Berdyaev, always striving for freedom, as he understood it, with the Soviet regime also did not work out. He was arrested twice, and in 1922 he was sent on the first voyage of the Philosophical Steamboat. To watch the terrible war of 1941-1945 against the USSR, Berdyaev had to from France occupied by the Nazis. By 1948, the philosopher was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in literature. In 1946, he was given Soviet citizenship, but Nikolai Alexandrovich died in exile, at his desk in a house in the French city of Clamart, where he lived since 1924.
Philosophy
Berdyaev’s philosophy is based on freedom and creativity. This is due to the fact that he defined Christianity as a "religion of freedom." He was very homesick for the lack of knight in Russian culture, because of which, as Berdyaev believed, the male principle was weakened in Russia, and he saw this as the reason for many Russian troubles. Berdyaev called it "forever womanish in the Russian character", referring to passivity, the expectation that someone strong will come and arrange everything. As a religious thinker, Berdyaev once noted that coming to a hungry person and beginning to preach to him the Holy Spirit is an insult to the Holy Spirit. The person must first be fed, otherwise the words will not cost anything, the hungry will not hear them. This is the understanding of the chivalrous principle by Berdyaev. For Nikolai Alexandrovich, the inner world was always more important than the outer world - the "world of objectification," as he called it. Love and freedom, according to Berdyaev, are two of the most important things in life, but they sometimes enter into a terrible and insoluble conflict.
(1874-1948), Russian religious philosopher. Participated in the collections of "Milestones" (1909), "From the Depth" (1918). In 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia. Since 1925 - in France, published the religious and philosophical magazine "The Way" (Paris, 1925-40). He moved from Marxism to the philosophy of personality and freedom in the spirit of religious existentialism and personalism. Freedom, spirit, personality, creativity are opposed by Berdyaev to necessity, to 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 (translated into many languages): The Meaning of Creativity (1916), Dostoevsky's World View (1923), The Philosophy of Free Spirit (vols. 1-2, 1927-28), The Russian Idea (1948), "Self-knowledge" (1949).
BERDYAEV Nikolay Alexandrovich , Russian religious philosopher.
Early period
Berdyaev belonged to a noble military noble family. He studied at the Kiev Cadet Corps (1884-94) and the University of Kiev (1894-98) at the natural, then at the law faculties. From 1894 he joined the Marxist circles, in 1898 he was expelled from the university for participation in them, arrested and sent to Vologda for 3 years. In 1901-02, Berdyaev made an evolution characteristic of the ideological life of Russia in those years and called the movement from Marxism to idealism. Along with S. N. Bulgakov, P. B. Struve, S. L. Frank Berdyaev became one of the leading figures in this movement, which declared itself to be a collection of "Problems of Idealism" (1902) and laid the foundation for a religious and philosophical revival in Russia. Since 1904, Berdyaev lives in St. Petersburg, runs the magazine "New Way" and "Questions of Life." It draws close to the circle of D. S. Merezhkovsky, Z. N. Gippius, V. V. Rozanov, and others, where a current has arisen called the "new religious state." The articles of these years were collected by Berdyaev in the books "Sub specie aeternitatis: Experiences of Philosophical, Social and Literary 1900-1906" (1907) and "New Religious Consciousness and the Public" (1907); in them, in his self-esteem, "tendencies of religious Anarchism" were expressed. Since 1908 he lived in Moscow, was a member of the circle of book publishers "The Way" and the Religious and Philosophical Society in Memory of Vl. Soloviev; participated in the collection "Milestones" (1909). Berdyaev’s original philosophy began to take shape in 1911-12, when after staying in Italy and thinking about the Renaissance, Berdyaev’s original theme of freedom is supplemented by the theme of creativity and its inevitable tragedy (The Meaning of Creativity, 1916).
Years of revolution
The revolutionary years - the time of intensive creative and social activities of Berdyaev. He considered the tsarist regime of Russia decayed and the revolution justified; however, the reality of the triumphant revolution pushed him away, and at the beginning of 1919 he wrote the book "The Philosophy of Inequality" (published 1923), in which he rejected democracy and socialism as "forced virtue and forced fraternity." Later he returned to the recognition of the socialist idea, but he was always an opponent of Bolshevik totalitarianism and saw his duty in spiritual opposition to it. He holds weekly literary and philosophical meetings at home, organizes the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture (late 1918), gives public lectures and becomes the recognized leader of the Bolshevik public. Member of the collection "From the Depths" (1918). He was arrested twice and in the fall of 1922 sent to Germany as part of a large group of figures in Russian science and culture. In Berlin, Berdyaev organizes the Religious and Philosophical Academy, participates in the creation of the Russian Scientific Institute, and contributes to the formation of the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSHD).
In exile in France
In 1924 he moved to France, where, settling in Clamart near Paris, he became editor of the journal Put (1925–40), which he founded, the most important philosophical organ of Russian emigration. With a small book on the meaning of the modern era “The New Middle Ages” (1924), Berdyaev’s widespread European fame begins, and his special role as a mediator between Russian and Western cultures is gradually outlined. He gets acquainted with leading Western thinkers (M. Scheler, Keyserling, J. Maritain, G. O. Marcel, L. Lavelle and others), arranges inter-faith meetings of Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox (1926-28), regular interviews with Catholic philosophers (1st half of the 1930s), participates in the cultural philosophical "decades of Pontigny", philosophical meetings and congresses. The personalistic trend of French left Catholics, which took shape in the mid-1930s. around the Esprit magazine, led by E. Mounier, it arises and develops under the direct influence of Berdyaev’s ideas about the need to combine Christian faith, spiritual freedom and social justice. In the West, Berdyaev’s interpretation of Russian history and Russian national consciousness, Bolshevism and revolution, expressed mainly in the books “Sources and Meaning of Russian Communism” (1937) and “Russian Idea” (1946), is also becoming influential. Berdyaev believes that "Russian communism is the transformation and deformation of the old Russian messianic idea. Communism in Western Europe would be a completely different phenomenon." During the years of World War II, Berdyaev had hopes for the humanization of the Soviet regime, he even came into contact with his representatives (1944-46), however, news of repressions and new ideological campaigns interrupted his pro-Soviet sentiment. In the postwar years, Berdyaev gives the most mature exposition of his philosophy ("The Experience of Eschatological Metaphysics", 1947), writes a philosophical autobiography ("Self-knowledge", 1949). Berdyaev is gaining worldwide fame - he is the author of about 40 books, is elected an Honorary Doctor of Theology at Cambridge University (1947).
Philosophy
Having first expressed the main ideas in the book "The Meaning of Creativity", Berdyaev then varies and develops them. This is the idea of \u200b\u200bfreedom, the idea of \u200b\u200bcreativity and objectification, the idea of \u200b\u200bpersonality and, finally, the idea of \u200b\u200ba “metahistorical”, eschatological sense of history. In the dualistic picture created by Berdyaev, reality is opposed to each other, on the one hand, by spirit (God), freedom, noumenon, subject (personality, “I”), on the other - the empirical world, necessity, phenomenon, object. Both worlds do not exist divorced from each other (which, according to Berdyaev, corresponds to Platonism), but interact with each other: spirit and freedom break out from the noumenal to the phenomenal world and act in it.
Creativity and Objectification
The fruits of the action of the spirit in the world always take the form of objects, dead products, which are separated from the subject and subject to all the limitations of empiricism - the laws of space-time, causation, formal logic. This fall of freedom into necessity, called Berdyaev's objectification, is the existential root of suffering, slavery, and evil. But objectification is opposed in the world by another principle - creativity. When creating, the subject absorbs this world into himself, includes it in his inner life, open to freedom and spirit, and thereby transforms it, frees it from objectification. A creative act is a breakthrough of the spirit into the world of objects. Its fruits will again be in the sphere of objectification, but he himself does not belong to this sphere as such, he is free.
Creativity is the path to overcoming objectification, and this overcoming is the meaning and purpose of world history. But in the framework of empiry, spatio-temporal being, overcoming is impossible; time itself with its incompatibility of the past, present and future is a consequence of objectification. A world free from objectification lies outside history as a different “eon,” a world of free spirit identified by Berdyaev with the gospel Kingdom of God. This metahistorical aeon has existed forever in a certain “eschatological” plane of being, which can come into contact with the local world at any time and in any place. A creative act is such a touch in which in the world, in history as a flash, is their end and meaning. History, from the point of view of its meaning, is not continuous, but discrete, it is a "discontinuous, breakthrough creative process." Such a picture of history excludes all evolutionary and teleological models, the theory of progress, as well as the doctrine of Divine Providence, which Berdyaev directly calls “false teaching”: God reveals Himself to the world, but does not control it.
Idea of \u200b\u200bpersonality
The philosophy of Berdyaev is a philosophy of personality, personalism. A personality is not an empirical individuality, but a person taken as a creative and free being, not subject to objectification. According to Berdyaev, access to other people and unity with them are inherent in the personality as an unavoidable part of its inner world: “society is a part of the personality” (“On Slavery and Human Freedom”). Berdyaev calls the realization of this free internal sociality “collegiality” and contrasts it with the forced socialization that all the impersonal-universal structures of the collective, social institutions — classes, parties, nations, churches — carry. Hence Berdyaev’s social and legal position: “It is necessary to affirm the relative forms that give the maximum possible freedom and dignity of the individual, and the primacy of law over the state” (“Experience of eschatological metaphysics”).
Being a believer, Berdyaev at the same time was critical of all materialized forms of religious - dogma, church organization, historical Christianity as struck by objectification: its creative overcoming should reveal the spiritual essence of "eschatological Christianity" as an enduring revelation of God and man.
Berdyaev considers freedom as the primary principle of the world. From this freedom God creates man - a free being. Freedom, being irrational in nature, can therefore lead to both good and evil. According to Berdyaev, evil is freedom that turns against itself, it is the enslavement of man by the idols of art, science and religion. They give rise to the relations of slavery and submission, from which human history arose.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948)
Berdyaev rebelled against concepts rationalismdeterminism and teleologythat destroy the kingdom of freedom. The problem of human existence is its liberation. This idea of \u200b\u200bBerdyaev formed the basis of the "philosophy of personality", which influenced the course of personalism and, in particular, on Emmanuel Mounier, as well as on the Uruguayan Jesuit Juan Luis Segundo, the theologian of liberation.
Man is determined primarily by his personality. Berdyaev contrasts the concept personalities - ethical and spiritual category - individual, categories of sociological and natural. A person does not belong to the sphere of nature, but to the world of freedom. Unlike the individual (part of the cosmos and society), the person does not belong to any integrity at all. She opposes false integrity: the natural world, society, state, nation, church, etc. These false integrity are the main sources of objectification, which alienate the freedom of man in their creations - and he ends with their enrichment, submission to their tyranny.
A means for liberation from all forms of alienating objectification, Berdyaev considers a creative act. Its essence is the struggle against external restrictions, knowledge, love - liberation forces that revolt against ossification, cold and all inhumane.
Turning to Christian messianism (resembling the teachings of Joachim of Florsky), Berdyaev, who lived in the era of the establishment of totalitarian regimes, was one of the first to condemn the messianisms of the “chosen race” and “the chosen class”.
Against all forms of social, political and religious oppression, against depersonalization and dehumanization, Berdyaev’s works acted as a vaccine against all forms of bloody utopias of the past and future. Unlike the creators of these utopias, Berdyaev emphasized the real needs and real purpose of man. Man is the creation of supernatural freedom that has come out of a divine mystery and will end history with the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. A person must prepare this kingdom in freedom and love.
In general terms, Berdyaev’s thought lies in the tradition of Russian messianism - refined and clarified by radical criticism of the forces opposing it.
Nikolai Berdyaev in 1912
Berdyaev - Wallpaper
Freedom in its deepest sense is not a right, but a duty, not what a person requires, but what is required of a person so that he becomes completely human. Freedom does not mean an easy life, freedom is a difficult life, requiring heroic efforts. (Berdyaev. “On the ambiguity of freedom”)
The most unacceptable for me is the feeling of God as a force, as omnipotence and power. God has no power. He has less power than a policeman. (Berdyaev. "Self-knowledge")
The aristocratic idea requires the real rule of the best, democracy - the formal rule of all. The aristocracy, as the management and dominance of the best, as a requirement for quality selection, remains forever the highest principle of social life, the only worthy utopia of man. And all your democratic cries, with which you announce squares and bazaars, will not erase from the noble human heart the dreams of domination and management of the best, the elect, they will not drown it from the depths of the current appeal, so that the best and elect will appear, that the aristocracy enter into their eternal rights. (Berdyaev. "The philosophy of inequality")
Every life order is hierarchical and has its own aristocracy, only a bunch of garbage is not hierarchical, and only no aristocratic qualities are distinguished in it. If the true hierarchy is broken and the true aristocracy is destroyed, then false hierarchies are formed and a false aristocracy is formed. A bunch of fraudsters and murderers from the dregs of society can form a new false aristocracy and represent a hierarchical beginning in the structure of society. (Berdyaev. "The philosophy of inequality")
The aristocracy was created by God and from God received its qualities. The overthrow of the historical aristocracy leads to the establishment of another aristocracy. The aristocracy claims to be the bourgeoisie, representatives of capital, and the proletariat, representatives of labor. The aristocratic claims of the proletariat even surpass those of all other classes. (Berdyaev. "The philosophy of inequality")
You take everything that the worst is from the workers, from the peasants, from the intelligent bohemia, and from this worst you want to create a future life. You appeal to the vengeful instincts of human nature. From the evil your good is born, from the dark your light lights up. Your Marx taught that a new society should be born in evil and from evil, and considered the revolt of the darkest and ugliest human feelings the path to it. He opposed the spiritual type of the proletariat to the spiritual type of the aristocrat. The proletarian is the one who does not want to know his origin and does not honor his ancestors, for whom there is no kind and homeland. Proletarian consciousness elicits resentment, envy and revenge in the virtues of the new man to come. (Berdyaev. "The philosophy of inequality")
Democracy is indifferent to the direction and content of the people's will and does not have any criteria in itself to determine the truth or falsity of the direction in which the popular will expresses itself ... Democracy is pointless ... Democracy remains indifferent to good and evil. (Berdyaev. "The New Middle Ages")
Human dignity implies the existence of God. This is the essence of the whole life dialectic of humanism. A man is a person only if he is a free spirit, reflecting the Higher Being philosophically. This view should be called personalism. This personalism should in no case be confused with the individualism that destroys European man. (Berdyaev. "Ways of Humanism")
In order for a person to be a true reality, and not a random combination of elements of a lower nature, it is necessary that there be higher realities than a person (Berdyaev. “The lie of humanism”).
The natural world, "this world" and its massive environment, is not at all identical with what is called the cosmos and cosmic life, filled with creatures. "World" is the enslavement, the chainedness of creatures, not only people, but also animals, plants, even minerals, stars. This "world" must be destroyed by a person, freed from his enslaved and enslaving state. (Berdyaev. “On Slavery and Human Freedom”)
In eternal life, I would like to be with animals, especially with loved ones. (Berdyaev. "Self-knowledge")
Russian philosopher, publicist. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was born on March 18 (old style - March 6) in 1874 in Kiev. From an old noble family. In 1884-1894 he studied at the Kiev Cadet Corps. In 1894, Nikolai Berdyaev entered the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Kiev University of St. Vladimir, but in 1895 he transferred to the Faculty of Law. In 1898 (1897 is indicated in some sources), after being arrested for participating in the Social Democratic movement, he was expelled from the university. The first book of Nikolai Berdyaev ("Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy") was published in 1900. In 1900-1902, Berdyaev was exiled to Vologda, then to Zhytomyr; in the same period he moved away from Marxist views and gradually became an adherent of Christian "mystical realism."
Since 1904, Berdyaev lived in St. Petersburg. In 1904-1905 he took part in editing the religious and philosophical magazines "New Way" and "Questions of Life". In 1908 he settled in Moscow (he lived until he was expelled from Soviet Russia), where he became close to the circle of founders of the Religious and Philosophical Society in Memory of Vladimir Solovyov. In 1911-1912, after a stay in Italy, the original philosophy of Berdyaev began to take shape. In 1913, Berdyaev was brought to trial for criticizing the policies of the Holy Synod in relation to the Yaslavlites (article "Suppressors of the Spirit"). The case, postponed due to the outbreak of war, was dismissed in 1917.
In June 1917, Nikolai Berdyaev was one of the founders of the "League of Russian Culture" (together with MV Rodzianko, PB Struve and others). On August 9, 1917, at a private meeting of public figures in Moscow, Berdyaev made a report on the economic situation in Russia, and on August 10 he was elected to the Permanent Bureau for the Organization of Social Forces. In early October, he worked in the commission on national issues of the Interim Council of the Russian Republic (Pre-Parliament). The October Revolution was initially seen as an inconsequential episode. He was one of the founders of the All-Russian Writers Union; the union organized a library for young people, and then a Writers' Shop, where Berdyaev worked as a seller. In 1918, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was elected vice-president of the All-Russian Union of Writers. In the winter of 1918-1919 he organized the "Free Academy of Spiritual Culture", where he lectured on philosophy and theology; was its chairman until 1922. He was the leader of the Bolshevik public. He taught word ethics at the State Institute of Word. In late 1918 - early 1919 he worked in the repository of private archives of the Glavarchive. In February 1920 he was involved in forced labor. In 1920, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was arrested in the case of the Tactical Center; was interrogated personally by F.E. Dzerzhinsky; was released. Elected professor at Moscow University. In the summer of 1922 he lived in a summer house in Barvikha, on August 16 he came to Moscow for one day and was arrested by the GPU. A week later, he was released from prison in Lubyanka, forcing him to sign an obligation to leave Russia, and in September 1922, Berdyaev was sent to Germany.
In Berlin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev organized the Religious and Philosophical Academy, participated in the creation of the Russian Scientific Institute, and contributed to the formation of the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSHD). Until 1924 he lived in Berlin, then in Clamart near Paris. In 1925-1940 in Paris he was the editor of the religiously-philosophical journal "The Way" founded by him, the leading publication of Russian emigration; led the publishing house "YMCA - Press" ("Christian Youth Union"). In 1926-1928 arranged interfaith meetings of Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox. In 1947, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was elected an honorary doctor of theology at Cambridge University. In the West he gained fame as the main exponent of the tradition of Russian religious-idealistic philosophy and the ideologist of anti-communism. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev died on March 24 (some sources indicate March 23), 1948, in the town of Klamar near Paris.
The works of Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
"Subjectivism and individualism in social philosophy" (1900; first book)
"The struggle for idealism" (1901; article)
"Peace of God" (1901; article), a critical sketch of N.K. Mikhailovsky (1901)
"On the new Russian idealism" (article)
"Questions of Philosophy and Psychology" (1904; article)
"Sub specie aeternitatis: Philosophical, Social, and Literary Experiments 1900-1906" (1907; collection of articles previously published in journals)
"The New Religious Consciousness and the Public" (1907; collection of articles)
"The spiritual crisis of the intelligentsia" (collection of articles)
"Black Anarchy" (published in the "Word" on April 17, 1909; an article on the revolution 1905-1907 - on the "two anarchies": red and black)
"Philosophical truth and intellectual truth" (1909; article published in the collection "Milestones")
"Execution and Murder" (article)
"Philosophy of Freedom" (1911; journalistic book)
"Suppressors of the Spirit" (1913; critical article on the policy of the Holy Synod in relation to the Yaslavlites; published in the newspaper "Russian Rumor"; after the publication of the article, Berdyaev was brought to trial)
The End of Europe (1915)
"The Meaning of Creativity" (1916; journalistic book)
"Russian Liberty" (1917)
"Democracy" (1917)
"The Fate of Russia" (1918, journalistic book)
"The Philosophy of Inequality" (1918; printed in 1923 in Berlin; journalistic book)
"Spirits of the Russian Revolution" (the article was printed in the collection "From the Depth" in 1918; the publication was banned and published in the USSR only in 1990)
The Meaning of History (1923; printed in Berlin)
"The Worldview of Dostoevsky" (1923; printed in Prague)
"The New Middle Ages. Reflection on the fate of Russia and Europe" (1924; printed in Berlin)
"Philosophy of the free spirit" (2 volumes; 1927-1928)
"On the appointment of man. The experience of paradoxical ethics" (1931)
"The fate of man in the modern world" (1934)
"The Origins and the Meaning of Russian Communism" (1937)
"On slavery and human freedom. The experience of personalistic philosophy" (1939)
The Russian Idea (1946)
"The experience of eschatological metaphysics. Creativity and objectification" (1947)
"Self-knowledge. The experience of philosophical autobiography" (autobiographical book; published after the death of Berdyaev in 1949)
"Ethical issue in the light of philosophical idealism" (article)
"Democracy and hierarchy" (article)
List of references
"Russian Biographical Dictionary" rulex.ru
Encyclopedic resource rubricon.com (Political figures of Russia 1917, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia "Moscow", Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary)
The project "Russia congratulates!"