Berdyaev. life, teaching, biography of a philosopher. Biography of Berdyaev Nikolai Alexandrovich

  Read about the life of BERDYAEV, the biography of the philosopher, the doctrine of the thinker:

NIKOLAY BERDYAEV
(1874-1948)

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. " (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. Followers note the great influence of Berdyaev on the representatives of the left Catholic youth gathered around the personal philosopher E. Mounier. 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 years of the revolution in VADK he 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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  Copyright: life biography teaching

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev   (1874-1948) - one of the thinkers who is often remembered when discussing the characteristics of the Russian character and the Russian idea.

ON. Berdyaev, 1921
Artist K.F. Yuon

In Soviet Russia, Nikolai Berdyaev was scolded for "national-chauvinistic nonsense", called a reactionary philosopher and an enemy of Soviet power. Now for many Berdyaev - Russian Hegel of the XX century.

Berdyaev himself considered himself "a man who devoted himself to the search for truth and the disclosure of the meaning of life." In 1940, in the essay "Self-knowledge", he wrote: "... I became a philosopher, captivated by a" theory "in order to abandon the inexpressible longing of everyday life. Philosophical thought always freed me from the oppressive longing of" life ", from its ugliness. I opposed "being" - "creativity" ".

The verbal constructions of Berdyaev, which appeared from "longing", were far from being highly appreciated by everyone.

V.N. Ilyin about the book of N.A. Berdyaev, "The fate of man in the modern world" in 1934 wrote: "A new, small book by N. A. Berdyaev is marked by all the merits and, unfortunately, all the shortcomings of this thinker. A sense of the era, assertiveness, temperament, sharpness - we see all this in the new work of N. A. Berdyaev ... Unfortunately, the style, method, all approaches of Berdyaev are typically journalistic N. N. Berdyaev is, first and foremost, a publicist, but a philosophical publicist. The work of N. A. Berdyaev is a trial of himself himself and, moreover, an involuntary court, whom he, to of course he doesn’t want to. "

Ilyin also spoke about Berdyaev’s other works: “Some of his books are almost impossible to read (for example, both volumes of The Philosophy of the Free Spirit”). This, by the way, is also explained by the fact that N. Berdyaev does not organically reveal his thoughts but he cuts them into his head - he “makes fun of the count on the reader’s head.” True, some readers may have deserved such an appeal - but these are just those who never read anything, including the works of N. A. Berdyaeva. People with a philosophical and literary taste are positively repulsed by such a manner. " .

In 1947, A.V. Tyrkova wrote to N.A. Teffi: "I have long come to the sad conviction that he (Berdyaev) does not have enough intelligence for those responsible for those for which he undertakes."

N.P. Ilyin: "As for N.A. Berdyaev, the piercing pathos of the personality in his numerous works should not overshadow from us that sad denouement of his philosophical searches, where both the personality and her creative freedom were allowed into nothing - this long-suffering religious and philosophical chimera, so popular in the 20th century. "

Philosophical Steamboat

Arriving in Moscow in 1908, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev stayed in the Mikini house-ship, where he lived until 1911. He enthusiastically studied philosophical and political issues. He tried to change Russia in accordance with his ideas, taking part or trying to influence events in progress:

• participated in revolutionary activities as a student. In 1898, he was exiled to the Vologda province for three years on charges of "striving to overthrow the state, property of the church and family";
• welcomed the revolution of 1905;
• at the lecture “Soul of Russia”, held at the Polytechnical Museum on February 8, 1915, he spoke about the “idealistic femininity of the Russian people” and that “Russia still lacked masculinity. A war that awakened awakened her”;
• insisted on the justice and inevitability of the 1917 revolution

The “acquisition of masculinity” and the fulfillment of a “just revolution” led to the fact that in 1922, Berdyaev was “given a ticket” to the ship and sent to emigration. He was not alone. Together with him, they sent several dozen people known for their work in the field of social sciences, so the ship began to be called the "Philosophical Steamboat".

An unprecedented case, when not criminals and not the top of the previous regime, but thinkers, writers, public figures and even scientists were expelled from their native country. It was the tragedy of Russia and the tragedy of the exiles, about which in 1974 A. Galich wrote:

Some of them, unwillingly, raised a wave, which carried them into exile on the Philosophical Steamboat. The remaining "lucky" less: the trains "dragged" them in the other direction. Now the new "Berdyaevs" are again discussing the Russian idea.

Biography of Berdyaev

• 1874. March 6 (18) - in the city of Kiev, Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev and his wife Alexandra Sergeevna (nee Princess Kudasheva) had a son, Nikolai.
• 1887-1891. Studying in the Kiev cadet corps.
• 1894-1898. Studying at Kiev University.
• 1900-1902. Link to Vologda.
• 1901. The output of Berdyaev's first book, Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy.
• 1902-1903. Moving to Zhytomyr in connection with a change in the place of exile.
• 1904. Meeting with L.Yu. Trushevoy-Rapp in Kiev. Transfer to Petersburg. Work in the magazine "New Way".
• 1907. The publication of the book "New Religious Consciousness and the Public." The beginning of the work of the St. Petersburg religious and philosophical society, one of the initiators, the creation of which was N.A. Berdyaev.
• 1908. A trip with his wife to Paris. Moving to Moscow. The beginning of many years of friendship with Evgenia Kazimirovna Gertsyk.
• 1909. The publication of the collection "Milestones" with an article by N.A. Berdyaev.
• 1910-1911. Work N.A. Berdyaev in the publishing house "Way". The publication of the book "Philosophy of Freedom." Departure from the publishing house "Path".
• 1911, November - 1912, May - a trip to Italy with his wife and sister-in-law E.Yu. Rapp. In February 1912, E.K. joined them. Gertsyk.
• 1912. Alexandra Sergeevna Berdyaeva, mother of a philosopher, died.
• 1913. An article by N.A. was published in the "Russian Rumor" Berdyaeva "Suppressors of the Spirit." The trial of blasphemy.
• 1914. The death of his elder brother, Sergei Alexandrovich Berdyaev.
• 1915. Moving to Moscow, to an apartment in B. Vlasyevsky Lane, 4, apt. 3. Died Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev, the father of a philosopher.
• 1917. Conversion of Lydia Yudifovna Berdyaeva to Catholicism.
• 1918. The publication of the collection of articles "The fate of Russia. Experiments in the psychology of war and nationality." Writing the book "The Philosophy of Inequality." It was released in 1923 in Berlin.
• 1919. September - opening of the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture, which lasted until 1922.
• 1920. February - the first arrest of Berdyaev. He spent several days in the Cheka’s internal prison, and F.E. Dzerzhinsky. ON. Berdyaev was elected professor at Moscow University, where he lectured at the Faculty of History and Philology.
• 1922. August - second arrest. After being detained by the GPU prison for several days, N.A. Berdyaev announced the expulsion from the country. September - N.A. Berdyaev, L.Yu. Berdyaev, E.Yu. Rapp and their mother, I.V. Trusheva, on the "Philosophical Steamboat" left Petrograd and went to Stettin, Germany. November - the creation of the Religious and Philosophical Academy in Berlin.
• 1923. February - the organization of the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin. ON. Berdyaev was elected dean of the faculty of spiritual culture. October - the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSHD) arose. ON. Berdyaev became an honorary member of the RSHD council and participated in its work until 1936. The publication of the book "The Meaning of History".
• 1924. The publication in Berlin of the book "The New Middle Ages. Reflections on the fate of Russia and Europe." Relocation N.A. Berdyaev with his family in Klamar, a suburb of Paris.
• 1926. The publication in Paris of the book "Konstantin Leontyev. Essay on the History of Russian Religious Thought."
• 1927-1928. The publication of the two-volume book "Philosophy of the Free Spirit". The book was awarded the prize of the French Academy in 1939.
• 1931. The publication in Paris of the book "On the appointment of man. The experience of paradoxical ethics."
• 1934. The publication of the books "The fate of man in the modern world" and "I and the world of objects."
• 1937. The publication in Paris of the book "Spirit and Reality."
• 1938. The publication in German of the book "The Origins and the Meaning of Russian Communism". Receiving an inheritance from a family friend and buying a house in which the Berdyaevs lived until the end of days.
• 1939. The publication in Paris of the book "On Slavery and Human Freedom. The Experience of Personalistic Philosophy".
• 1944. Welcoming the liberation of Paris, the Berdyaevs hung a red flag on their house.
• 1945. September - the death of the wife of the philosopher, Lydia Yudifovna.
• 1946. The publication of the book "Russian Idea".
• 1947. The publication in Paris of the book "Experience of eschatological metaphysics. Creativity and objectification." Berdyaev received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.
• 1948. March 23 - Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev died in his house in Klamar.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (born March 6 (18), 1874, Kiev - died on March 23 or March 24, 1948, Clamart near Paris) is a religious Russian philosopher of the 20th century. In 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia, since 1925 he lived in France.

Russian philosopher and publicist. Born on March 6 (18), 1874 in Kiev. He studied at the Kiev Cadet Corps. In 1894 he entered the natural faculty of the University of St. Vladimir (Kiev), a year later transferred to the law faculty. Passion for Marxism, participation in the Social Democratic movement became the reason for the arrest of Berdyaev and expulsion from the university (1898). The Marxist period in his biography turned out to be relatively short. Subjectivism and individualism in social philosophy are already in the work. A critical sketch of NK Mikhailovsky (1901), the recognition of Marxist historicism is adjacent to a critical assessment of "materialism." Berdyaev’s participation in the collection Problems of Idealism (1902) marked the final transition of the thinker to the positions of metaphysics and religious philosophy. In 1904-1905 he edited the religious and philosophical magazines "The New Way" and "Questions of Life." His rapprochement with D.S. Merezhkovsky, however, turned out to be short-lived. In the ideas of the latter, he will ultimately see the manifestation of "decadence" and "religious sectarianism." In the autobiography of Self-Knowledge, written at the end of his life, he will say about the spiritual atmosphere that reigned among the ideologists of the "silver age" that it was "excitement", devoid of "real joy." Berdyaev’s completely consistent religious metaphysical orientation was reflected in his works Sub specie aeternitatis. The experiments are philosophical, social, literary and the New religious consciousness and the public (both - 1907), as well as in the famous article in the collection "Milestones".

In the years after the first Russian revolution, Berdyaev constantly criticized various variants of Russian radicalism, both “left” and “right”, (collection Spiritual Crisis of the Intelligentsia, articles Black Anarchy, Execution and Murder, etc.). For Berdyaev, his books: Philosophy of Freedom (1911) and The Meaning of Creativity (1916) became epoch-making, from the point of view of determining their own philosophical position. During World War I, Berdyaev, not sharing the views that seemed to him the "extremes" of patriotism (he argued about this, in particular, with V.V. Rozanov, S.N. Bulgakov, V.F. Ern), was far and from the mood of anti-state, and especially anti-Russian. The result of his reflections of these years was the book The Fate of Russia (1918, reprinted - M., 1990). From the very beginning, his attitude to the February Revolution was twofold: he considered the fall of the monarchy inevitable and necessary, but the “entry into the great unknown” of the post-revolutionary future was perceived as fraught with chaos, falling into the abyss of violence. Recent moods soon prevailed: the theme of the fatal danger of revolution leading to the destruction of the organic hierarchy of social life, the “overthrow of the race of the best,” and the destruction of cultural tradition (Democracy and hierarchy article, Philosophy of Inequality, etc.) came to the fore in the thoughts of Berdyaev. The consistent rejection of Bolshevism did not prevent Berdyaev from being extremely active in the post-revolutionary years: he gave public lectures, taught at the university, was one of the leaders of the All-Russian Writers Union, organized the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture, and conducted a seminar on the work of Dostoevsky. All this activity was interrupted in 1922, when Berdyaev was expelled abroad.

The philosopher brought European fame to his book The New Middle Ages. Reflection on the fate of Russia and Europe (Berlin, 1924). Comprehending the tragic experience of the Russian revolutions and the tendencies of European development, Berdyaev proclaims in this work the completion of the "non-religious", "humanistic era" and the entry of mankind into the "sacred" era of the "new Middle Ages", characterized by religious revival and religious conflicts, the clash of Christian and anti-Christian ideas. In the ideological struggle of the 20th century, according to Berdyaev, non-religious positions no longer play a significant role. Any significant idea inevitably takes on a religious meaning. This also applies to communist ideology: "the communist international is already a phenomenon of the new Middle Ages." From 1925 to 1940 Berdyaev was the editor of the magazine "Way" - the leading publication of religious and philosophical thought of the Russian foreign countries. Prominent representatives of European religious philosophy (J. Maritain, P. Tillich and others) published their compositions in The Way. In emigration, Berdyaev was an active participant in the European philosophical process, constantly maintaining relations with many Western thinkers: E. Mounier, G. Marcel, C. Bart, and others. Among the most significant works of Berdyaev of the emigrant period - On the appointment of man. The experience of paradoxical ethics (1931), On slavery and human freedom. The experience of personalistic philosophy (1939), The experience of eschatological metaphysics. Creativity and Objectification (1947). After the death of the philosopher saw the light of his book: Self-knowledge. The experience of philosophical autobiography, the Kingdom of the Spirit and the kingdom of Caesar, the existential dialectic of the divine and human, etc. In 1947, Berdyaev was awarded a doctorate in theology at Cambridge University. Berdyaev died in Klamar near Paris on March 23, 1948.

The peculiarity of philosophy, according to Berdyaev, is that it does not come down to a system of concepts; it is not so much “knowledge-discourse” as “knowledge-contemplation”, which speaks the language of symbols and myths. In the world of symbols of his own philosophy, the key role was played by freedom and creativity, with which all other symbolic ideas are ultimately connected: the spirit whose “kingdom” is radically, ontologically opposed to the “kingdom of nature"; objectification - Berdyaev's intuition of the drama of the fate of a person who is incapable (culture is a “great failure”) to go beyond the limits of the “kingdom of nature”; transcending - a creative breakthrough, overcoming, at least for a moment, the "slave" fetters of natural-historical being; existential time is a spiritual and creative experience of personal and historical life, which has a metahistorical, absolute meaning and retains it even in an eschatological perspective. Moreover, it is freedom that determines the content of the "kingdom of the spirit", the meaning of its opposition to the "kingdom of nature". Creativity, which always has its foundation and purpose as freedom, in fact exhausts the positive aspect of human life in Berdyaev’s metaphysics and knows no boundaries in this respect: it is possible not only in artistic and philosophical experience, but also in religious and moral experience ("paradoxical ethics "), in the spiritual experience of the individual, in its historical and social activity.

Berdyaev gave freedom ontological status, recognizing its primacy in relation to natural and human being and independence from the divine being. 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, which is “rooted in Nothing from eternity”. 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.

In his inability to accept the deepest and most universal tragedy of Christianity, Berdyaev was inclined to perceive a fundamental flaw in traditional theological systems, constantly pointing to their excessive rationalism and optimism. He considered Eckhartt, Baader, late Schelling, and especially Boehme, the closest religious thinkers of the past. According to Berdyaev, the mainstream of European metaphysics, which goes back to Plato, is in line with ontological monism, affirms the fundamental primacy of being (in its various forms) and is therefore hostile to the idea of \u200b\u200bhuman freedom and, accordingly, to personalism. “One must choose between two philosophies - a philosophy that recognizes the primacy of being over freedom, and a philosophy that recognizes the primacy of freedom over being ... Personalism must recognize the primacy of freedom over being. The philosophy of the primacy of being is a philosophy of impersonality” (On Slavery and Human Freedom, 1939). Berdyaev’s critical attitude to modern philosophical “ontologism” and, in particular, to M. Heidegger's fundamental ontology was associated with this position.

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 was not able to get a diploma of the educational institution: for his participation in the student Marxist circle of self-development and the Kiev "Union for the Emancipation of the Working Class" he was expelled from the university. 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 amenable to influence 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 boarding house 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 are treated 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 — he prepared 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"