Nikolai Berdyaev

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (/brdjjf, -jv/;[1]

Russian: ; March
18 [O.S. March 6] 1874 March 24, 1948) was a Russian
religious and political philosopher.

Nikolai Berdyaev

Contents
1 Biography
2 Philosophy
3 Works
4 See also
5 References
6 Works cited
7 Further reading
8 External links

Born

March 18, 1874

Kiev, Russian Empire

Biography

Died

March 24, 1948 (aged 74)

Clamart, France

Berdyaev was born near Kiev in 1874 into an aristocratic

Era
20th-century philosophy
[2]
military family. His father, Alexander Mikhailovich
Region
Russian philosophy
Berdyaev, came from a long line of Kiev and Kharkov
School
Christian existentialism
nobility. Almost all of Alexander Mikhailovich's
ancestors served as high-ranking military officers, but he
Main interests Creativity, morality, freedom
himself resigned from the army quite early and became
Influences
active in the social life of Kiev aristocracy. Nikolai's
Influenced
mother, Alina Sergeevna Berdyaeva, was half French,
coming from top levels of both French and Russian
nobility. Greatly influenced by Voltaire, Berdyaev's father was an educated man that considered himself a
free thinker and expressed great skepticism towards religion. Nikolai's mother, Orthodox by birth, was in her
views on religion more Catholic than Orthodox. Berdyaev, was a very religious man and a Christian
philosopher, but he despised the official Orthodox Church. 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.
Berdyaev decided on an intellectual career and entered the Kiev University 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 Vologda[3]:28 in northern Russiaa 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 Christian
spirituality. In Christianity and Social Reality he tells about his journey from Marx to Christ, and he tells his
disillusionment with both the revolutionaries and the Church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Berdyaev

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. After the October Revolution of 1917 Berdyaev fell
out with the Bolshevik rgime because of its totalitarianism and the
domination of the state over the freedom of the individual.
Nonetheless, he was permitted for the time being to continue to
lecture and write.
His disaffection culminated in 1919 with the foundation of his own
private academy, the "Free Academy of Spiritual Culture". This was
primarily a forum for him to lecture on the hot topics of the day,
trying to present them from a Christian point of view. Berdyaev also
presented his opinions in public lectures, and every Tuesday he
hosted a meeting at his home because official Soviet anti-religious
activity was intense at the time, and the official policy of the
Bolshevik government, with its Soviet anti-religious legislation,
strongly promoted State atheism.[3]

Nikolai Berdyaev.

In 1920, Berdiaev became professor of philosophy at the University

of Moscow, although he had no academic credentials. In the same
year, he was accused of participating in a conspiracy against the
government; he was arrested and jailed. It seems that the feared head
of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, came in person to interrogate him,
and that Berdyaev gave his interrogator a solid dressing-down on the
problems with Bolshevism. Berdyaev's prior record of revolutionary
activity seems to have saved him from prolonged detention, as his
friend Lev Kamenev was present at the interrogation.[3]:32
Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago
(published in 1973) recounts the incident as follows:
[Berdyaev] was arrested twice; he was taken in 1922 for a
midnight interrogation with Dzerjinsky; Kamenev was also
there. [...] But Berdyaev did not humiliate himself, he did not
beg, he firmly professed the moral and religious principles by
virtue of which he did not adhere to the party in power; and not
only did they judge that there was no point in putting him on
trial, but he was freed. Now there is a man who had a "point of
view"![4]

Berdyaev's grave, Clamart (France).

The Soviet authorities eventually expelled Berdyaev from the RSFSR in September 1922. He became one of
a carefully selected group of some 160 prominent writers, scholars, and intellectuals whose ideas the
Bolshevik government found objectionable, and who were sent into exile on the so-called "philosophers'
ship". Overall, these expellees supported neither the Czarist rgime nor 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.
At first Berdyaev and other migrs went to Berlin, where Berdyaev founded an academy of philosophy and
religion. But economic and political conditions in Weimar Germany caused him and his wife to move to
Paris in 1923. He transferred his academy there, and taught, lectured, and wrote, working for an exchange of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Berdyaev

ideas with the French intellectual community.

During the German occupation of France, Berdyaev continued to write books that were published after the
warsome 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.

Philosophy
Berdyaev's philosophy has been characterized as Christian existentialist. He was preoccupied with creativity
and in particular with freedom from anything that inhibited creativity, whence his opposition to a
"collectivized and mechanized society".
According to Marko Markovic, "He was an ardent man, rebellious to all authority, an independent and
"negative" spirit. He could assert himself only in negation and could not hear any assertion without
immediately negating it, to such an extent that he would even be able to contradict himself and to attack
people who shared his own prior opinions."[3]
He also published works about Russian history and the Russian national character. In particular, he wrote
about Russian nationalism that:[5]
The Russian people did not achieve their ancient dream of Moscow, the Third Rome. The
ecclesiastical schism of the seventeenth century revealed that the muscovite tsardom is not
the third Rome. The messianic idea of the Russian people assumed either an apocalyptic
form or a revolutionary; and then there occurred an amazing event in the destiny of the
Russian people. Instead of the Third Rome in Russia, the Third International was achieved,
and many of the features of the Third Rome pass over to the Third International. The Third
International is also a Holy Empire, and it also is founded on an Orthodox faith. The Third
International is not international, but a Russian national idea.
He was a practising member of the Russian Orthodox Church, but was often critical of the institutional
policies and un-Christian behavior within it. He was a Christian universalist,[6][7] and he believed that
Orthodox Christianity was the true vehicle for that teaching.
The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the
Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. ...
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.[8]
Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed his regional governors to read, among other philosophers,
Berdyaev's The Philosophy of Inequality.[9][10]

Works
The first date is of the Russian edition, the second date is of the first English edition
The New Religious Consciousness and Society (1907) (Russian:
, Novoe religioznoe coznanie i obschestvennost, includes chapter VI "The

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Berdyaev

Metaphysics of Sex and Love")[11]

Landmarks (1909)[12]
The Spiritual Crisis of the Intelligentsia (1910; 2014)[13]
The Meaning of the Creative Act (1916; 1955)
Dostoevsky (1923; 1934)
The Meaning of History (1923; 1936)
The End of Our Time [a.k.a. The New Middle Ages] (1924; 1933)
Leontiev (1926; 1940)
Freedom and the Spirit (19278; 1935)
The Russian Revolution (1931; anthology)
The Destiny of Man (1931; 1937)
Lev Shestov and Kierkegaard (http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1936_419.html) N. A.
Beryaev 1936
Christianity and Class War (1931; 1933)
The Fate of Man in the Modern World (1934; 1935)
Solitude and Society (1934; 1938)
The Bourgeois Mind (1934; anthology)
The Origin of Russian Communism (1937; 1955)
Christianity and Anti-semitism (https://archive.org/details/christianityanda027552mbp) (1938; 1952)
Slavery and Freedom (1939)
The Russian Idea (https://archive.org/details/russianidea017842mbp) (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)
Divine and the Human (https://archive.org/details/divinehuman00berd) (1949; 1952)
Truth and Revelation (n.p.; 1953)
Sources
'"Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Nicolas Berdiaev" tablie par Tamara Klpinine' published by the
Institut d'tudes Slaves, Paris 1978
Berdyaev Bibliography on www.cherbucto.net (http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Sui-Generis
/Berdyaev/biblio.htm)

See also
Vekhi
Christian existentialism
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nikolai Lossky
sobornost
Russian philosophy
Intermediate Region
Philosophers' ship

References
1. "Berdyaev" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Berdyaev

/berdyaev). Random House Webster's Unabridged

Dictionary.
2. Nicolaus, Georg (2011). "Chapter 2 Berdyaevs
life" (http://media.routledgeweb.com/pp/common
/sample-chapters/9780415493161.pdf) (PDF). C.G.
Jung and Nikolai Berdyaev : individuation and the
person : a critical comparison
(http://books.google.com
/books?id=i07qx0svAf0C&printsec=frontcover&
hl=ru#v=onepage&q&f=false). Routledge.
ISBN 9780415493154.
3. Marko Markovi, La Philosophie de l'ingalit et
les ides politiques de Nicolas Berdiaev (Paris:
Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1978).
4. Cited by Markovic, op. cit., p.33, footnote 36.
5. Quoted from book by Benedikt Sarnov,Our Soviet
Newspeak: A Short Encyclopedia of Real
Socialism., pages 446-447. Moscow: 2002, ISBN
5-85646-059-6 ( .

.)
6. Apokatastasis (http://www.theandros.com
/glossary.html) at Theandros, The Online Journal of
Orthodox Christian Theology and Philosophy.
Accessed Aug. 12, 2007
7. Sergeev, Mikhail."Post-Modern themes in the
philosophy of Nicolas Berdyaev
(http://www.georgefox.edu/ree/Sergeev_PostModern_articles_previous.pdf)". Religion in
Eastern Europe. Accessed Aug. 12, 2007
8. Berdyaev, Nikolai. "The Truth of Orthodoxy
(http://www.kosovo.net/ortruth.html)". Accessed
Aug. 12, 2007.

9. From Philosophy Now, issue 101, article at the

bottom of the page, here (link)
(http://philosophynow.org/issues
/101/News_March_April_2014), accessed March
2014.
10. http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf
/purchase?openform&fp=philnow&
id=philnow_2014_0101_0005_0005
11. The book is not available in English. For secondary
literature in English, see:
Crone, Anna Lisa (2010). Eros and
Creativity in Russian Religious Renewal:
The Philosophers and the Freudians
(http://books.google.com
/books?id=xSbsHKNq6o8C&
printsec=frontcover&hl=ru#v=onepage&
q&f=false). Russian History and Culture 3.
Netherlands: Brill Publishers.
Naiman, Eric (1997). Sex in Public: The
Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology
(http://books.google.com
/books?id=dcITpLnONz8C&
printsec=frontcover&hl=ru#v=onepage&
q&f=false). Princeton University Press.
ISBN 9780691026268.
12. WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/article
/SB10001424127887324474004578444701108977
318.html)
13. Vilnius Press (http://www.berdyaev.com
/krizis_cover.html)

Works cited
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. Martins Press, New York, 2007.
Marko Markovi, La Philosophie de l'ingalit et les ides politiques de Nicolas Berdiaev (Paris:
Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1978).

Further reading
Lossky, N.O. (1951). ".. " [N. Berdyaev] (http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy
/Sui-Generis/Berdyaev/essays/lossky.htm). [History of Russian
Philosophy]. New York: International Universities Press Inc. ISBN 978-0-8236-8074-0.
Atterbury, Lyn (October 1978). "Nicholas Berdyaev, Orthodox nonconformist"
(http://books.google.com/books?id=AnlaRksW1sQC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&
dq=nicholas+berdyaev+orthodox+nonconformist&source=bl&ots=SXGTzMAuG4&
sig=8AsO2SDqjpY3SeBnQXv2Ik6Z3Ig&hl=ru&sa=X&ei=Ry0JUbrCItD64QSJ3oCQAw&
ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=nicholas%20berdyaev%20orthodox%20nonconformist&
f=false). Third Way. Toward a Biblical World View (London: CIO Publishing): 1315. Retrieved
2013-01-30.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Berdyaev

Griffith, Jeremy (2013). Freedom Book 1 (http://www.worldtransformation.com/freedom-book1those-who-tried-to-explain-the-human-condition/). Part 4:7: Nikolai Berdyaevs admission of the
involvement of our moral instincts and corrupting intellect in producing the upset state of the human
condition and attempt to explain how those elements produced that upset psychosis. WTM Publishing
& Communications. ISBN 978-1-74129-011-0. Retrieved 2013-03-28.

External links
Works by or about Nikolai Berdyaev (https://archive.org
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%2E%20A%2E%20Berdyaev%22%20OR%20description
%3A%22Nikolai%20Alexandrovich%20Berdyaev%22%20OR%20description
%3A%22Nikolai%20A%2E%20Berdyaev%22%20OR%20description%3A%22N%2E%20A
%2E%20Berdyaev%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Berdyaev
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%2C%20Nikolai%20A%2E%22%29%20OR%20%28%221874-1948
%22%20AND%20Berdyaev%29) at Internet Archive
Works by Nikolai Berdyaev (http://www.unz.org/Author/BerdyaevNicholas), at Unz.org
Berdyaev Online Library and Index (http://www.berdyaev.com/)
Philosopher of Freedom (http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/~dima/mytexts/suff.html)
ISFP Gallery of Russian Thinkers: Nikolay Berdyaev (http://www.isfp.co.uk/russian_thinkers
/nikolay_berdyaev.html)
Nikolai Berdiaev and Spiritual Freedom (http://anamnesisjournal.com/2014/04/nikolai-berdiaevspiritual-freedom/?utm_content=bufferb16ff&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&
utm_campaign=buffer)
Nicolas Berdyaev And Modern Anti-Modernism (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4768)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nikolai_Berdyaev&oldid=665759780"
Categories: 1874 births 1948 deaths People from Kiev People from Kiev Governorate
Russian Orthodox Christians from Russia Russian nobility Existentialist theologians
Christian existentialists 20th-century philosophers Christian philosophers Russian philosophers
Ukrainian philosophers Russian political writers Russian memoirists Russian expatriates in France
Soviet expellees Anarcho-pacifists Russian anarchists Christian anarchists Christian mystics
Christian radicals 19th-century Christian Universalists 20th-century Christian Universalists
Christian Universalist theologians Russian liberals

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