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BERDYAEV'S PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY
AN EXISTENTIALIST THEORY
OF SOCIAL CREATIVITY AND ESCHATOLOGY
by
Preface by
CHARLES HARTSHORNE
II
MARTINUS NI]HOFF / THE HAG UE / 1968
ISBN 978-94-011-8210-2
ISBN 978-94-011-8870-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-8870-8
To Charles Hartshorne
One 01 the Great Twentieth Century Philosophers
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
by
CHARLES HARTSHORNE
IX
INTRODUCTION
XIV
A. Introduction
B. The "historical" and the philosophy of history
(I) The "Historical"
(2) The "Historical" and the Human Memory
(3) The "Historical" and Universal History
(4) Universal History: An Interaction Between Man and Nature
(5) The Ages of the World
C. Philosophy of history and metaphysics of history
(I) The Relationship of Philosophy of History to the Metaphysical
(2) Metaphysics
D. The philosophy of history and the end of history
E. Philosophy of history in respect to time
F. Philosophy of history and the doctrine of godmanhood
G. Summary
CHAPTER
II:
GODMANHOOD,
FREEDOM
AND
PHILOSOPHY
I
10
18
24
26
28
28
33
35
37
43
44
OF
HISTORY
A.
B.
C.
D.
Introduction
The doctrine of godmanhood
Godmanhood and the freedom of man
Some consequences of the doctrine of godmanhood
(I) Sobornost' - Unity of the World
(2) Cosmology and the Unity of the World
(3) Eschatology and the Age of the Spirit
E. Summary
CHAPTER
III:
HISTORY
A. Introduction
B. Personalism: the existent and the ego
90
90
92
VIII
TABLE OF CONTENTS
loB
II3
122
126
134
Introduction
The rejection of the subject-object relationship
Knowledge not anti-rational, but super-rational
Knowledge an identity
True knowing is communal in character
True knowing is loving and creative in character
Image, symbol and mystical experience: concrete and creative
knowing
(I) Image
(2) Symbol and myth
(3) The Whole Man Knows
(4) Mysticism
H. Summary
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
138
138
138
148
152
155
160
165
165
167
172
176
178
CONCLUSION
182
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES
185
INDEX
189
PREFACE
BERDYAEV AS A PHILOSOPHER
PREFACE
PREFACE
XI
XII
PREFACE
theories of motivation. (If Berdyaev escapes this unfortunate consequence, it is only, Whitehead might have argued, by taking Sobornost'
in so extreme a sense that it is dangerously close to the Hindu denial of
individuality). Here I go with Whitehead and the Buddhists. We are
indeed only relatively distinguished from our fellows, truly "members
one of another," but this is possible just because we are only relatively
self-identical with ourselves through time. Neither self-identity nor
nonidentity with others is absolute.
Berdyaev has affinities not only to Whitehead but also to a broader
tradition. Basically there have been two ideas of deity in the theistic
religions: (I) the divine nature is the eminent form of independence,
immutability, impassibility, infinity, simplicity or absence of parts or
composition - in short, the negative theology taken without qualification; (2) the divine nature is both the eminent form of independence,
changelessness, simplicity, etc. and the eminent form of dependence,
changeability, complexity, etc. God is both supreme creator and supreme creature, supreme cause and supreme effect. He has alike supreme permanence and supreme capacity for novelty. He is thus the
synthesis of eternity and time, absoluteness and relativity. The following thinkers, among others, more or less explicitly and clearly affirm
this view:
Socinus and his followers, Schelling (late period), Fechner (the
German psychologist), Heinrich Scholz (the German theologian and
logician), J. Lequier (the brilliant though tragic French philosopher),
Bergson, Varisco (the Italian metaphysician), James Ward (the English
psychologist and philosopher), W. P. Montague (the American moralist
and metaphysician), W. E. Hocking (my first and in a sense only teacher
in metaphysics), N. Berdyaev, A. N. Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne.
I list these people because this tradition is often omitted from the histories of philosophy and other works of reference. They are a small but
increasing number. From their standpoint the identification of God
with "the absolute," or "the unconditioned," i.e., with the object of the
negative theology, is a blunder of the first magnitude and indeed a
typical piece of philosophical idolatry. Eternity, absoluteness, infinity,
by themselves are the merest abstractions; they cannot apply without
radical supplementation to the living God. Of those who have seen this,
Berdyaev is surely not the least. He is sharp and clear on the main
issues: God is not simply unmoved, eternal, or independent. He is not
immune to all suffering. He is not identical with being in contrast to
becoming.
PREFACE
XIII
If, as these authors hold, God is the eminent being-becoming, causeeffect, creator-creature, then ordinary individuals are simply noneminent forms of the same duality. They, too, in their humble way both
create and are created. But then it is no longer cogent to refute belief in
God by taking the evils of the world to be divinely chosen. Certain
outlines of reality are divinely chosen ("spiritually determined"); but
the details result from partly self-determined creaturely choices. And
what an individual creatively decides no one else, not even God, can
have decided. Thus at long last the old problem of Job has a reasonable
solution. Odd that Berdyaev, the professed irrationalist, should give
the most rational of all theories concerning perhaps the nost perplexing
of human puzzles. How far other matters are reasonably dealt with by
the Berdyaev method I leave to the reader.
CHARLES HARTSHORNE
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
xv
6
5
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Index.
Chapters VI and VII.
180.
162.
Chapter X.
Chapter X.
258.
XVI
INTRODUCTION
there are one or two exceptions). And we cannot but be struck by his
predominent interest in the meaning of history and by the clarity of
his insights into the course of world history.
Why, then, should one attempt to penetrate Berdyaev's philosophy
of history when he sets it forth so brilliantly himself? Why re-examine
lucid texts when Berdyaev repeatedly returns to the various themes of
his philosophy of history in his numerous books? Further, why attempt
to simplify what seems already simple? A reader unfamiliar with
Berdyaev may take away the first impression of an always brilliant and
sometimes profound author, but a superficial philosopher who seems
unable to follow out a line of thought in close argumentation.
Berdyaev's style is deceptive. Despite appearance, he is a very deep
philosopher. In his own way he has elaborated a philosophy which
constitutes a very full and complete doctrine. At the very time he is
moving so nimbly from one subject to another in his books - for that is
his method - he has a great and complex philosophy in mind.
When one reads his books he sees the outlines of this doctrine only
sporadically and vaguely. At one and the same time that one finds
Berdyaev's comments on the course of world history so clear, brilliant
and meaningful, his complete philosophy lies obscurely at a deeper
level. I may almost say that there are two levels in Berdyaev's writings,
and one could, in fact, understand Berdyaev's comments on world
history without understanding the philosophic principles which inspire
them. The various historical and political traditions and cultures to
which Berdyaev so often refers, serve not only to exempl:fy his deepest
principles but also exist in their own right as the materials of his philosophy of history.
Yet, because the historical materials are presented by Berdyaev in
the light of his first principles, one cannot rest content to understand
him superficially. What those first principles are and how they function
in the whole structure of Berdyaev's philosophy need still to be determined. For only when one understands his first principles can it be
decided how far one may assent to his comments on the course of world
history.
Berdyaev's first philosophy is so deep, complex and strange, and so
closely related to his philosophy of history, that it takes considerable
efforts to understand it. That is why this book is an analysis, not a criticism. We must understand the philosopher before we can truthfully say
anything about him. It was not possible to understand his definitive
position until recently because his most important books - several of
INTRODUCTION
XVII
them - were published in the fifties. Truth and Revelation and The
Realm 01 Spirit and the Realm 01 Caesar, his last writings, were first
published in 1952 and 1953, and The Meaning 01 the Creative Act
(originally published in 1916) became available to English speaking
readers in 1955.
Further, his outlook itself is unfamiliar to the Western mind because
he is a Russian philosopher. The Russian mind has received a peculiar
world-outlook from the Orthodox Church. There are striking differences between the outlooks of Western and Eastern Christianity and
between the civilizations which they have formed. What is more, there
exists no tradition of scholarship about his doctrine and writings. There
is no tradition of learning about the "school" to which Berdyaev belongs, as for example we find for the German Idealists or the Greeks.
These, then, are SOme of my reasons for undertaking this study.
I have not investigated the Russian aspects of this doctrine by means
of a philological study of the language. English texts of Berdyaev have
been exclusively used, and a half dozen important words in his vocabulary have been investigated. I rely partly on Berdyaev's own stated
interpretation of the Russian quality of his philosophy and partly on
my own. These philological limitations are not so serious as they might
seem. Most of the key philosophical terms have Western origins and are
used in the light of Western thought as well as that of the Russians.
However, the technical terms of Berdyaev must be defined, in the last
analysis, through a study of his own peculiar doctrine. The terms, will
and existence, for example, have to be defined finally in the light of no
other theory except that of Berdyaev. It is a commonplace in the history of philosophy that the primary principles of a philosopher are expressed by terms common to a multitude of differing systems of thought,
but defined finally by reference to his own doctrine.
II
XVIII
INT.kODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
XIX
xx
INTRODUCTION
A contemporary of Berdyaev, Whitehead, synthesized the philosophy of an almost human-like divine intelligence, together with a theory
of almost human-like psyches in all material particles, in a new "social"
description of the cosmos,l and more recently Hartshorne wrote:
"Electrons and protons are, for all that anyone knows, simply the
lowest actual levels of social existence." 2 Contemporary Judaism contains a trend which intensifies a keen Jewish sense of humanity, which
this religion has always had. "(Buber's) rejection of mysticism for responsibility to his fellowman strikes a very Jewish note . .. a mysticism operating within the law ... " 3 Berdyaev's own Boehmian theory
is admittedly indebted to a "Semitic ingrafting of the Kabbala, with
the exclusive position it accords to man, with its concrete spirit. In the
nineteenth century Franz Baader and Vladimir Soloviev were permeated with the anthropological and concrete spirit of the Kabbala and
of Jakob Boehme ... " 4
Berdyaev is aware, moreover, of a profound East Asian influence
which is affecting the religious and metaphysical thought of the West:
" . .. Christianity is becoming more foreign and less acceptable to the
modern mind than Buddhism," 5 and he finds that the "German spirit
is ... somehow akin to the spirit of India: there is the same idealism,
the same spirituality, the same vast distance from the concrete flesh of
being ... " 6
The massive religious and metaphysical revolution (and I include
Marxism), which seems to be going on in the present century, recalls to
mind one that occurred over two thousand years ago. E. V. Arnold, in
his monumental work on Roman Stoicism, discerned a vast cultural
revolution in the Mediterranean world in the time-interval extending
from the Graeco-Persian Wars to the early Christian centuries. "The
1 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology (Macmillan, New York,
1927; Harper Torchbook, New York, 1960), 331, f.
a C. Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception ot God. The Terry Lectures,
1947 (Yale Univ., New Haven, 1948), 28.
8 (Rabbi) E. B. Borowitz, A Layman's Introduction to Religious Existentialism (Dell, New
York, 1966), 165.
&
INTRODUCTION
XXI
1 E. V. Arnold, Roman Stoicism. Being Lectures on the History of the Stoic Philosophy With
SPecial Reference to its Development within the Roman Empire (Cambridge Univ., Cambridge,
19II; reissued 1958 by The Humanities Press, New York), 7.
2 Ibid., 8-9.
3 D. A. Lowrie, Rebellious Prophet. A Life of Nicolai Berdyaev (Harper, New York, 1960),
.248.
XXII
INTRODUCTION
III
I would like to express my gratitude to the many whom I consulted
for their friendly suggestions, to those who have underwritten the
expense of writing the book, particularly in freeing me from other
duties during two summers in order to study Berdyaev and interpret
him and to those who prepared the final typescript. My particular
thanks to G.E.A., M.S.A., C.S.B., C.S.C., E.F., L.E.L., A.M., B.M.,.
A.P. and H.A.R. I am grateful, too, to Professor Charles Hartshorne
who kindly consented to write a Preface in the light of his own valuable
interpretation of Berdyaev's philosophy.
DAVID BONNER RICHARDSON