Russia's Own Philosophers
VALENTINOV, N.
Russia's Own Philosophers A History of Russian Philosophy. Columbia. 947 pp. (2 vols.) $15.00. Reviewed by N. Valentinov By V. V. Zenkovsky. Author 0f "The Philosophical Construction of...
...This bondage continued into the nineteenth century...
...Zenkovsky regards as giants of philosophical and theological thought...
...Bulgakov, who was exiled from Russia in 1922, died in Paris in 1948...
...V. V. Roz-anov (1856-1919) "lived by a sense of God throughout his life," and yet "developed a sharper critique of the Church than even secularism has provided...
...Zenkovsky still considers Bulgakov a giant of thought, one can only conclude that presumptuous scholasticism does not dismay him...
...Some people have decided that the totalitarian order, a truly new and unforeseen social form, is this "new word...
...But even Frank loses importance by comparison with Florenski and Bulgakov, whom Mr...
...Yet, in setting forth Bulgakov's theory of "Sophia," "eternal femininity," "the fourth hypostasis of the maternal womb of being," which lay "between being and super-being" and occupied "a place between God and the world," Mr...
...Any book reviewed in this Book Section (or any other current book) supplied by return mail...
...Now it turns out that we can draw comparisons with, that is, we can comprehend, the'prototypes" which God "contemplated in Himself" even before the world had been created...
...Khomyakov (1804-1860), the leader of the Slavophiles, "was a 'Christian philosopher' in the true sense," convinced "that cognition and possession of the truth is not a function of individual consciousness, but is entrusted to the Church...
...In his history, Mr...
...With all due respect for S. N. Bulgakov, whose excellent lectures on political economy I attended fifty years ago at Kiev Polytechnic Institute, his philosophical and theological cosmology should be dealt with more severely than does Mr...
...But this did not prevent his concept of "total-unity" from hypnotizing, "bewitching and subjugating" the minds of the philosophers just named, even though each of them introduced changes into Solovyov's metaphysical schemes...
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...Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) denied the Divinity of Christ, broke with the Church and with the spirit of contemporary culture, but he "thirsted for an unconditional rather than a conditional good, for a good that was not relative but absolute...
...Among these philosophers, all of them connected with Orthodoxy, the one best known abroad is N. A. Berdyaev, who died in Paris in 1948...
...THE B00NMAIIER, Box 101, New York 16...
...This has caused many to contend that Russian philosophy lacked originality and, in the final analysis, constituted either a synthesis of foreign thought or else a more or less successful imitation of it...
...We pay the postage, anywhere in the world...
...Gogol (1809-1852) was "a prophet of 'Orthodox culture'" who pointed out that "Russia's path was essentially different from that of the West, since the spirit of Orthodoxy was different from that of Western Christianity...
...To this philosophical school Mr...
...Zenkovsky devotes the most attention to Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900...
...Merezhkovski, the brothers E. and S. Trubetskoi, N. Berdyaev, S. Frank...
...It is, therefore, all the more distressing that, while affirming for Russia other solutions, different from the West's, of the problems of personalism and freedom and the social problem, he does not explain by the slightest hint how one is to conceive a non-Western European, but rather Orthodox Russian, solution of "the central problems...
...Zenkovsky, an Orthodox priest, naturally finds this tendency, with all its variations of materialism and positivism, completely alien...
...Zenkovsky admits, "a very tangled system of ideas...
...The author values S. L. Frank far more highly than he does Berdyaev, seeing in his system of "total-unity" and "Sophiological" metaphysics "the highest point of development of Russian philosophy...
...Zenkovsky cannot help noting Bulgakov's "enigmatic formulas," his "obscurity," and the "hopeless difficulties" in which he involves himself...
...It is interesting to read Mr...
...This answer is, needless to say, better than mystical-scholastic attempts to comprehend what is recognized as being incomprehensible...
...L. Karsavin, O. Florenski and S. Bulgakov--have been influenced by Solovyov, by his metaphysical theory of "Sophia," of the "world-soul," of the substance of the "Divine Triunity," and of the lack of any distinction "between God and the world," i.e., the concept of "total-unity...
...Florenski, who was extremely gifted in the field of mathematics and physics, abandoned them to turn to philosophy and theology, and took priestly orders...
...in these years abroad, he wrote a number of works which made him, in the opinion of the author, a giant of Russian thought...
...its own religious soil...
...Zenkovsky assigns Belin-ski, Bakunin, Herzen, Chernyshevski, Pisarev, the physiologist Sechenov, Lavrov, Mikhailovski, Kareyev, Mech-nikov, Vernadski, Plekhanov, Bog-danov, Lenin, Chelpanov and several others...
...K. Leontyev (1831-1891) combined, as he expressed it himself, a "childlike attachment to the outward forms of Orthodoxy" and a "hatred of the forms and the spirit of modern European life...
...it encompassed his entire being, but was "within the limits of immanentism...
...The first, which he calls "secular," includes philosophical thought that has divorced itself from religious consciousness, that is outside the Church and even hostile to it, that seeks to base itself exclusively on science and scientific experience, and, for that reason, is scarcely distinguishable from similar philosophy in other countries...
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...Zenkovsky's characterizations of those whom he regards as the spokesmen of Russian philosophical thought...
...In his Diary, Leo Tolstoy once posed the question: "Why did God divide Himself in Himself...
...and he says of Chernyshevski (not very convincingly, in my opinion) that he "was crowded and uncomfortable within the narrow framework of positivism and materialism...
...The author distinguishes two tendencies in Russian philosophy...
...Under the Soviet regime, Florenski was thrown in jail and deported to Siberia, where he died, probably in a forced-labor camp...
...A phrase like that cannot but astound and perplex any "secular" person...
...Zenkovsky unfortunately includes among philosophers some people who do not deserve that rank...
...He very properly hastens to add, however, that Solovyov's philosophical system is little known outside of Russia and its importance "has not yet been admitted by philosophers generally...
...From the latter's analysis, it is clear to a "secular" person like myself that it is a murky, confused, meaningless piece of scholasticism, pretentiously created by a man who has fallen into mysticism and become presumptuous...
...One notices that the great majority of these individuals are to be found in histories of Russian social thought, but they appear there as writers, sociologists, political figures and scientists, rather than as philosophers...
...His religiosity was not merely of the head...
...by their inner nature and temper Russians are concerned with other perspectives than those which were revealed to Russia through the prism of Western secular philosophy...
...In the author's words, Solovyov "lifted Russian thought to universally-human horizons...
...Solovyov's thought, which was forged by Spinoza and Schelling, by the Cabala and other mystical doctrines, constructed, as even Mr...
...To him, it is a blind philosophy and, as he shows, its exponents have, consciously or unconsciously, moved away from it...
...One cannot help noting that, talented though they were, these five writers cannot be called philosophers...
...If the abovementioned exponents of "secular" philosophy are to be excluded from the ranks of uniquely Russian philosophers, the other--and predominant--group is overtly linked with religion, though not always with the Church...
...It starts out with an excellent, lively exposition of the state of Russian thought up to the eighteenth century, when, "breaking away from the ecclesiastical mode of life," this thought "fell into absolute bondage to the West...
...If, in view of all this, Mr...
...He points out, for example, that the anarchist Bakunin, in spite of his "secularism" and extreme anti-clericalism, was fundamentally a religious man...
...He mentions some hundred Russian philosophers, starting with Skovoroda, in the eighteenth century, and ending with N. 0. Lossky, now living in the United States, whom the author describes as "the dean of contemporary Russian philosophers...
...More than one hundred years ago, Gogol, the Slavophile Khomyakov, and, before then, Chaadayev proclaimed that Russia would one day utter a "new word" to the world that would lead to the solution of all social problems...
...Zenkovsky asserts rather acidly that Berdyaev's philosophy was essentially merely "social and political writing," that he was "excessively concerned with himself," and that, although his philosophical gifts were incontestable, they were "not free," since they were in constant thraldom to "passions" and "irrational impulses...
...The author also regards Mikhailovski, the leader of the Narodniki, as a religious man...
...For example, finding in Florenski's philosophy the concept of "the noumenal nuclei of things," he raises the question whether these "nuclei of things" are not identical with "the 'prototypes' which, according to Gregory of Nazianzus, God contemplated in Himself before the creation of the world...
...Author 0f "The Philosophical Construction of Marxism" and other books Even those who do not share the author's views must recognize this as a valuable and interesting work of major importance...
...Hitherto, we had been taught that God's inseparable hypostasis is his incomprehensibility...
...Almost all the Russian philosophers of the last decades--D...
...Bulgakov, a talented Marxist of the 1890s, underwent a fundamental spiritual evolution and also (in 1917) became a priest...
...indeed, it was really only with him that "Russian philosophy" began...
...Without denying the foreign influence on Russian philosophy, V. V. Zenkovsky energetically demonstrates that an independent philosophical thought nevertheless emerged in Russia whose unique quality was that it was "connected with...
...With Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), "the prophetic expectation of an 'Orthodox culture,' which was first conceived by Gogol, . . . became...
...and he answered simply and humbly: "I do not know...
...Russia had no Spinoza, Descartes, Leibnitz, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kant, Holbach or Helvetius...
...Zenkovsky is, of course, not one of them...
...a central theme of . . . searchings and constructions...
...Concluding his work with the completely unexpected observation that philosophy deals with three central themes--the problem of personalism, the problem of freedom and the social problem, which is "bequeathed by the gospel of the Kingdom of God"--Zenkovsky writes: "Russians who have matured spiritually in the Orthodox faith find different approaches [i.e., different from the West] open to the central problems...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 14
