Nikolai Berdyaev
Encyclopedia
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev ( – March 24, 1948) was a Russia
n religious and political philosopher
.
into an aristocratic
military
family. He spent a solitary childhood at home, where his father's library allowed him to read widely. He read Hegel
, Schopenhauer
, and Kant
when only fourteen years old and excelled at languages.
in 1894. This was a time of revolutionary fervor among the students and the intelligentsia
. Berdyaev became a Marxist
and in 1898 was arrested in a student demonstration and expelled from the University. Later his involvement in illegal activities led to three years of internal exile
in central Russia—a mild sentence compared to that faced by many other revolutionaries.
In 1904 Berdyaev married Lydia Trusheff and the couple moved to Saint Petersburg
, the Russian capital and center of intellectual and revolutionary activity. Berdyaev participated fully in intellectual and spiritual debate, eventually departing from radical Marxism to focus his attention on philosophy and spirituality. Berdyaev and Trusheff remained deeply committed to each other until the latter's death in 1945.
Berdyaev was a believer in Orthodox Christianity
but was often critical of the institutional church. A fiery 1913 article criticising the Holy Synod
of the Russian Orthodox Church
caused him to be charged with the crime of blasphemy
, the punishment for which was exile to Siberia
for life. The World War
and the Bolshevik Revolution prevented the matter coming to trial.
He was a Christian universalist
. Berdyaev writes with approval that
regime, because of its authoritarianism
and the domination of the state over the freedom of the individual. Yet, he accepted the hardships of the revolutionary period, as he was permitted for the time being to continue to lecture and write.
His philosophy has been characterized as Christian existentialist. He was preoccupied with creativity
and in particular freedom from anything that inhibited said creativity, whence his opposition against a "collectivized and mechanized society".
In September 1922, Berdyaev was among a carefully selected group of some 160 prominent writers, scholars, and intellectuals whose ideas the Bolshevik government found objectionable, who were sent into exile on the so-called "philosophers' ship". Overall, they were supporters neither of the Czarist regime nor of the Bolsheviks, preferring less autocratic forms of government. They included those who argued for personal liberty, spiritual development, Christian ethics, and a pathway informed by reason and guided by faith.
, but economic and political conditions in Weimar Germany
caused him and his wife to move to Paris
in 1923. There he founded an Academy, taught, lectured, and wrote, working for an exchange of ideas with the French
intellectual community.
During the German occupation of France, Berdyaev continued to write books that were published after the war—some of them after his death. In the years that he spent in France, Berdyaev wrote fifteen books, including most of his most important works. He died at his writing desk in his home in Clamart
, near Paris, in March 1948.
Sources:
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n religious and political philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
.
Early life and education
Berdyaev was born in KievKiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
into an aristocratic
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
family. He spent a solitary childhood at home, where his father's library allowed him to read widely. He read Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
, and Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
when only fourteen years old and excelled at languages.
Revolutionary activities
Berdyaev decided on an intellectual career and entered the Kiev UniversityKiev University
Taras Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv , colloquially known in Ukrainian as KNU is located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It is the third oldest university in Ukraine after the University of Lviv and Kharkiv University. Currently, its structure...
in 1894. This was a time of revolutionary fervor among the students and the intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
. Berdyaev became a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and in 1898 was arrested in a student demonstration and expelled from the University. Later his involvement in illegal activities led to three years of internal exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
in central Russia—a mild sentence compared to that faced by many other revolutionaries.
In 1904 Berdyaev married Lydia Trusheff and the couple moved to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, the Russian capital and center of intellectual and revolutionary activity. Berdyaev participated fully in intellectual and spiritual debate, eventually departing from radical Marxism to focus his attention on philosophy and spirituality. Berdyaev and Trusheff remained deeply committed to each other until the latter's death in 1945.
Berdyaev was a believer in Orthodox Christianity
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
but was often critical of the institutional church. A fiery 1913 article criticising the Holy Synod
Holy Synod
In several of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches and Eastern Catholic Churches, the patriarch or head bishop is elected by a group of bishops called the Holy Synod...
of the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
caused him to be charged with the crime of blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
, the punishment for which was exile to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
for life. The World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and the Bolshevik Revolution prevented the matter coming to trial.
He was a Christian universalist
Universal reconciliation
In Christian theology, universal reconciliation is the doctrine that all sinful and alienated human souls—because of divine love and mercy—will ultimately be reconciled to God.Universal salvation may be related to the perception of a problem of Hell, standing opposed to ideas...
. Berdyaev writes with approval that
The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of AlexandriaClement of AlexandriaTitus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...
to Maximus the ConfessorMaximus the ConfessorMaximus the Confessor was a Christian monk, theologian, and scholar. In his early life, he was a civil servant, and an aide to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius...
, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrectionUniversal reconciliationIn Christian theology, universal reconciliation is the doctrine that all sinful and alienated human souls—because of divine love and mercy—will ultimately be reconciled to God.Universal salvation may be related to the perception of a problem of Hell, standing opposed to ideas...
. ... Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly — it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos.
Expulsion from Russia
Berdyaev could not accept the BolshevikBolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
regime, because of its authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
and the domination of the state over the freedom of the individual. Yet, he accepted the hardships of the revolutionary period, as he was permitted for the time being to continue to lecture and write.
His philosophy has been characterized as Christian existentialist. He was preoccupied with creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
and in particular freedom from anything that inhibited said creativity, whence his opposition against a "collectivized and mechanized society".
In September 1922, Berdyaev was among a carefully selected group of some 160 prominent writers, scholars, and intellectuals whose ideas the Bolshevik government found objectionable, who were sent into exile on the so-called "philosophers' ship". Overall, they were supporters neither of the Czarist regime nor of the Bolsheviks, preferring less autocratic forms of government. They included those who argued for personal liberty, spiritual development, Christian ethics, and a pathway informed by reason and guided by faith.
Exile in France
At first Berdyaev and other émigrés went to BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, but economic and political conditions in Weimar Germany
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
caused him and his wife to move to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1923. There he founded an Academy, taught, lectured, and wrote, working for an exchange of ideas with the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
intellectual community.
During the German occupation of France, Berdyaev continued to write books that were published after the war—some of them after his death. In the years that he spent in France, Berdyaev wrote fifteen books, including most of his most important works. He died at his writing desk in his home in Clamart
Clamart
Clamart is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.The town is divided into two parts, separated by a forest: bas Clamart, the historical centre, and petit Clamart with urbanization developed in the 1960s replacing pea fields. The canton of...
, near Paris, in March 1948.
Works
The first date is of the Russian edition, the second date is of the first English edition- The Meaning of the Creative Act (1916) 1955
- Dostoevsky (1923) 1934
- The Meaning of History (1923) 1936
- The End of Our Time [aka The New Middle Ages] (1924) 1933
- Leontiev (1926) 1940
- Freedom and the Spirit (1927-8) 1935
- The Russian Revolution (1931)(anthology)
- The Destiny of Man 1931 (1937)
- Christianity and Class War 1931 (1933)
- The Fate of Man in the Modern World (1934) 1938
- Solitude and Society (1934) 1938
- The Bourgeois Mind 1934 (anthology)
- The Origin of Russian Communism (1937) 1955
- Christianity and Anti-semitism (1938) 1952
- Slavery and Freedom (1939)
- The Russian Idea (1946) 1947
- Spirit and Reality (1946) 1957
- The Beginning and the End(1947) 1952
- Towards a New Epoch" (1949) (anthology)
- Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (1949) 1950
- The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar (1949) 1952
- The Divine and the Human (1949) 1952
- Truth and Revelation (n.p.) 1953
Sources:
- '"Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Nicolas Berdiaev" établie par Tamara Klépinine' published by the Institut d'études Slaves, Paris 1978
- Berdyaev Bibliography on www.cherbucto.net
See also
- VekhiVekhiVekhi , is a collection of seven essays published in Russia in 1909. It was distributed in five editions and elicited over two hundred published rejoinders in two years...
- Christian existentialismChristian existentialismChristian existentialism describes a group of writings that take a philosophically existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian considered the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard...
- Fyodor DostoevskyFyodor DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
- Nikolai LosskyNikolai LosskyNikolay Onufriyevich Lossky was a Russian philosopher, representative of Russian idealism, intuitionism, personalism, libertarianism, ethics, Axiology , and his philosophy he called intuitive-personalism. Born in Latvia, he spent his working life in St. Petersburg, New York and Paris...
- sobornostSobornostSobornost is a term coined by the early Slavophiles, Ivan Kireevsky and Aleksey Khomyakov, to underline the need for cooperation between people at the expense of individualism on the basis that the opposing groups focus on what is common between them. Khomyakov believed the West was progressively...
- Russian philosophyRussian philosophyRussian philosophy includes a variety of philosophical movements. Authors who developed them are listed below sorted by movement.While most authors listed below are primarily philosophers, also included here are some Russian fiction writers, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, who are also known as...
- Intermediate RegionIntermediate RegionAn established geopolitical model set forth in the 1970s by the Greek historian Dimitri Kitsikis, professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada. According to this model, the Eurasian continent is composed of not only two civilisational regions, that is, Western and Eastern , but also a third...
- Philosophers' ship
Works cited
- N. Berdyaev. Dream and reality: An essay in autobiography. Bles, London, 1950.
- M. A. Vallon. An apostle of freedom: Life and teachings of Nicolas Berdyaev. Philosophical Library, New York, 1960.
- Lesley Chamberlain. Lenin's Private War: The Voyage of the Philosophy Steamer and the Exile of the Intelligentsia. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2007.