Philosophy of Berdyaev

NA Berdyaev (1874-1948) was a descendant of a noble family. While studying at the University of Kiev, he began to visit the social democrats and was carried away by the ideas of Marxism. Already in this period he began to be interested in questions of philosophy, read Hegel, Kant, Schelling, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and L. Tolstoy. Gradually formed his own philosophy of Berdyaev, whose center was religious idealistic philosophy. He eventually became one of the most consistent critics of materialism and Marxism.

His worldview evolved during the work on the magazines "Questions of life" and "New way". He became the founder of a religious and philosophical society called "The Memory of V. Soloviev." In 1911 his first work was published. "The philosophy of freedom" Berdyaev marked the completion of his quest to substantiate the philosophy of "neo-Christianity" and the definition of "a new religious consciousness." In 1916 his next work, "The Meaning of Creativity", which consolidated his ideas, appeared.

The First World War significantly influenced the worldview of the philosopher, who took it as the end of humanistic history of mankind. The historical force that was able to fulfill the mission of the Christian reunification of mankind, he saw only in Russia. Therefore, he warmly welcomed the February revolution and sharply negatively took Oktyabrskaya. Bolshevik socialism in his work "The Philosophy of Inequality" he called "compulsory brotherhood."

Berdyaev created the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture. The rejection of the Bolshevik ideology aroused the authorities' close attention to him, he was arrested twice, in 1922 he was deported abroad on a "philosophical steamer."

The main works in which Berdyayev's individual philosophy was expressed were created during the period of emigration (first Berlin, then the French city Clamart). His main works are "The Philosophy of the Free Spirit", "The Meaning of Creativity", "About Slavery and Freedom of Man", "Spirit and Reality", "The Kingdom of Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar", "The Experience of Eschatological Metaphysics."

The center of his philosophical reflections is the theme of man. The philosophy of Berdyaev was based on the postulate of freedom of creativity and personality. His teaching is considered to be a trend of existentialism and personalism.

Berdyaev believed that a person is characterized by loneliness, insecurity and abandonment, which are rooted in a social environment that enslaves the person and inspires the longing of everyday life. From the oppressive fear of man is able to release only philosophy, which is a breakthrough from the senseless, ravishing personality of the world (work "I and the world of objects", which soon wrote Berdyaev).

The philosophy of freedom in his work was revealed in many works, among which is "Self-knowledge." His teaching was aimed at helping people to take an active vital and creative position, thus breaking the imperfection of being.

His three main ideas are the idea of "universal Christianity", the idea of freedom and the apology of creativity. In general, his views are paradoxically inherent in the sense of a crisis of life and at the same time a romantic confidence in the victory of the ideal.

As a religious thinker Berdyaev created an original cosmogonic picture of the world. Before existence there was an abyss (an irrational state of freedom). That is, freedom preceded absolutely everything, and even God, who was born later and created the world and people. Out of God, a spirit is poured out, inhaled by it into man. Therefore, the world has two bases: the spirit and freedom. These grounds are combined in man and contradict each other. The spirit is primary in relation to the material world and is more significant for man. Consciousness and self-consciousness of people are connected with it.

Berdyaev's philosophy offered the ideal of the freedom of society, which he called "personalistic socialism", which meant the primacy of the individual over society. But real community can be achieved not in society, but only in God ("sobornost"). Therefore, the meaning of the history of mankind is the dispensation of the Kingdom of God. Earth history is finite, but this is not a catastrophe, but the overcoming of enmity, impersonality and objectification.