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Nikolai Berdyaev

Russian philosopher

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev[Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бердя́ев] (18 March1874{O.S.6 March} –24 March1948) was aRussianChristianuniversalistmysticandChristian anarchistpoliticalphilosopher.

Thereligioustruthofanarchismconsists in this, thatpowerover man is bound up withsinandevil,that a state ofperfectionis a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. TheKingdom of Godisfreedomand the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.

Quotes

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Orthodoxy gave away theearthinto the hands of thestatebecause of its own non-belief inmanandmankind,because of itsnihilisticattitudetowards theworld.
The newreligiousconsciousnessrises up against thenihilisticattitudetowards theworldandmankind.
For the newreligiousconsciousnessthe declaration of thewillofGodis together with this a declaration of therightsofman,a revealing of theDivinewithinmankind.
The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, fromClement of AlexandriatoMaximus the Confessor,were supporters ofApokatastasis,ofuniversal salvationandresurrection.
  • The newreligiousconsciousnessrises up against thenihilisticattitudetowards theworldandmankind.If a religious rebirth be possible, only then on this soil will there be the revealing of the religious meaning of secularcultureand earthly liberation, the revealing of thetruthabout mankind.For the new religious consciousness the declaration of the will of God is together with this a declaration of the rights of man, a revealing of theDivinewithin mankind.We believe in the objective, the cosmic might of the truth ofGod,in the possibility according to God to guide the earthly destiny of mankind. This will be thevictoryof thetrue theocracy,whether over a false democratism, — the apotheosis of the quantitative collectivity ofhumanwills, or so also over the false theocraticism, — all thatapotheosisof the human will withinCaesaropapismor Papocaesarism.Christcannot have human vicarage in the person of the tsar or high-priest.He — is Himself the Tsar and High-Priest, and He will reign in the world. “Thy Kingdomcome, Thy Will be done on earth, as it is inHeaven.”
    • "Nihilism On A Religious Soil" (6 May 1907); it should be noted here that Berdyaev is here defining "theocracy"not in the sense as it is often used, ofpeopleruling over other people, inclaimsof doing so by the commands of God, but rather defining it in terms ofChristian anarchism— as a vigorous assertion of the right ofno-oneto rule over humans,save God.
  • Ethicsoccupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations.And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought.
    • The Destiny of Man(1931), p. 15
  • It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very greatpoweroverhumanlifeand it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it.
    • Slavery and Freedom(1939), p. 145
  • There is absolutetruthinanarchismand it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of stateabsolutism.…The religioustruthof anarchism consists in this, thatpowerover man is bound up withsinandevil,that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy.TheKingdom of Godisfreedomand the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.
    • Slavery and Freedom(1939), p. 147
  • The Christian world doesn't know Orthodoxy too well. It only knows the external and for the most part, the negative features of the Orthodox Church and not the inner spiritual treasure.Orthodoxy was locked inside itself, it did not have the spirit of proselytism and did not reveal itself to the world. For the longest time, Orthodoxy did not have such world-wide significance as didCatholicismandProtestantism.It remained apart form passionate religious battles for hundreds of years, for centuries it lived under the protection of large empires (Byzantium and Russia), and preserved its eternal truth from the destructive processes of world history. It is characteristic of Orthodoxy's religious nature that it was not sufficiently actualized nor exposed externally, it was not militant, and precisely because of this the heavenly truth of Christian revelation was not distorted so much.Orthodoxy is that form of Christianity which suffered the least distortion in its substance as a result of human history.The Orthodox Church had its moments of historical sin, for the most part in connection with its external dependence on the State, but the Church's teaching, her inner spiritual path was not subject to distortion. The Orthodox Church is primarily the Church of tradition, in contrast to the Catholic Church, which is the Church of authority, and to the Protestant Churches which are essentially churches of individual faith. The Orthodox Church was never subject to a single externally authoritarian organization and it unshakenly was held together by the strength of internal tradition and not by any external authority. Out of all forms of Christianity it is the Orthodox Church which remained more closely tied to early Christianity.

The End of Our Time(1919)

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as translated by Donald Atwater (Sheed and Ward: 1933)
  • It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. ButHumanismdenied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth.
    • p. 34
  • The whole economic system ofCapitalismis an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christianasceticismand turned away from Heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications.... It is the result of a secularization of economic life, and by it the hierarchical subordination of the material to the spiritual is inverted. The autonomy of economics has ended in their dominating the whole life of human societies: the worship ofMammonhas become the determining force of the age. And the worst of it is that this undisguised “mammonism” is regarded as a very good thing, an attainment to the knowledge of truth and a release from illusions.Economic materialismformulates this to perfection when it brands the whole spiritual life of man as a deception and a dream.
    • p. 92
  • In order to be able to go on living it is possible that the bankrupt peoples will have to enter on a new path of self-denial, by curbing their covetousness and putting a check on the indefinite expansion of their wants, and by having smaller families.
    • p. 94
  • Morally, it is wrong to suppose the source of evil is outside oneself, that one is a vessel of holiness running over with virtue. Such a disposition is the best soil for a hateful and cruel fanaticism. It is as wrong to impute every wickedness toJews,Freemasons,"intellectuals,"as it is to blame all crimes on thebourgeoisie,the nobility, and the powers that were. No; the root of evil is in me as well, and I must take my share of the responsibility and the blame. That was true before therevolutionand it is true still.
    • p. 128
  • Nobody is bound to have an optimistic outlook on the future: that is not a precept of the Christian religion.... It is a matter of immense importance that illusions should be dispelled and man come face to face with positive realities.
    • p. 131
  • We used to pay too little attention to utopias, or even disregard them altogether, saying with regret they were impossible of realisation. Now indeed they seem to be able to be brought about far more easily than we supposed, and we are actually faced by an agonising problem of quite another kind: how can we prevent their final realisation?... Utopias are more realisable than those 'realist politics' that are only the carefully calculated policies of office-holders, and towards utopias we are moving. But it is possible that a new age is already beginning, in which cultured and intelligent people will dream of ways to avoid ideal states and to get back to a society that is less 'perfect' and more free.
  • It appears that liberty is bound up with imperfection, with a right to imperfection.Socialismleads to the same type of authoritarian state asTheocracy.... One must choose: either Socialism or liberty of spirit, the liberty of man's conscience.... Socialism uses a "sacred" authority and establishes a "sacred" society in which there is no place for the "lay," for the free, for choice, for the unrestrained activity of human forces.
    • pp. 188-189

Self-knowledge (Самопознание)(1940).

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  • Godis denied either because the world is so bad or because the world is so good.
    Original:Бога отрицают или потому, что мир так плох, или потому, что мир так хорош.[1]

Spirit and Reality(1946)

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Spiritis never an object; nor a spiritualrealityan objective one.
  • Spiritis never an object; nor a spiritual reality an objective one.In the so-called objectiveworldthere's no suchnature,thing, or objectiverealityas spirit. Hence it is easy to deny the reality of spirit.Godis spirit because he is not object, because he is subject.
    • p. 10
  • Spirit, likeflame,likefreedom,likecreativeness,is opposed to anysocialstagnation or any lifeless tradition.In terms ofKantianphilosophy — terms which I consider erroneous and confusing — spirit appears as athing in itselfand objectification as aphenomenon.Another and truer definition would be, spirit isfreedomand objectification isnature(not in the romantic sense). Objectification has two aspects: on the one hand it denotes the fallen, divided and servile world, in which the existential subjects, the personalities, are materialized. On the other it comprehends the agency of the personal subject, of spirit tending to reinforce ties and communications in this fallen world. Hence objectification is related to the problem of culture, and in this consists the whole complexity of the problem.
    In objectification there are no primal realities, but onlysymbols.The objective spirit is merely a symbolism of spirit. Spirit is realistic whileculturaland social life are symbolical.In the object there is never any reality, but only the symbol of reality.The subject alone always has reality.Therefore in objectification and in its product, the objective spirit, there can be no sacred reality, but only its symbolism. In the objective history of the world nothing transpires but a conventional symbolism; the idea of sacredness is peculiar to the existential world, to existential subjects. The real depths of spirit are apprehensible only existentially in the personal experience of destiny, in its suffering, nostalgia, love, creation, freedom and death.
    • p. 52

The Beginning and the End(1947)

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I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive attruthas that I take my start from it.
The Beginning and The End(written 1941; published 1947)
  • I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it.
    • Introduction
  • Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
    • p. 63
  • What one needs to do at everymomentof one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world.

Dream and Reality(1949)

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I see myself immersed in the depths ofhumanexistence and standing in the face of the ineffablemysteryof theworldand ofallthat is.
Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography(1949)
  • I see myself immersed in the depths ofhumanexistence and standing in the face of the ineffablemysteryof theworldand ofallthat is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burninglyawarethat the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendentmeaning.This meaning is calledGod.Men have not been able to find a loftiername,although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable.God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.
    • As translated inIn Love with Eternity: Philosophical Essays and Fragments(2005) by Richard Schain, p. 47

The Divine and the Human (1949)

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  • This was once revealed to me in a dream.

Political Testament (1949)

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Welivein a nightmare offalsehoods,and there are few who are sufficientlyawakeandawareto see things as they are. Our firstdutyis to clear awayillusionsand recover a sense ofreality.
"Political Testament", as translated by E. Lampert, inWorld Review(March 1949)
  • Fateandfreedomalike play a part inhistory;and there are times, as inwarsandrevolutions,when fate is the stronger of the two.Freedom— the freedom of man and of nations — could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.
    • p. 32
  • A real reconciliation of East and West is impossible and inconceivable on the basis of amaterialisticCommunism,or of a materialisticCapitalism,or indeed of a materialisticSocialism.The third way will neither be "anti-Communist" nor "anti-Capitalist". It will recognize thetruthinliberaldemocracy,and it will equally recognize the truth in Communism. A critique of Communism andMarxismdoes not entail an enmity towardsSovietRussia,just as a critique of liberal democracy is not entail enmity towards the west.… But the final and most important justification of a "third way" is that there must be a place from which we may boldly testify to, and proclaim, truth,loveandjustice.No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.
    • p. 80
  • We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our firstdutyis to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder.
    • p. 80

Quotes about Berdyaev

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Berdyaev attempts to development ofChristiansymbolsthat is parallel toJung's in order to give a place tohumanfreedomandcreativityin this sphere of Christianspirituality.~ Georg Nicolaus
It is difficult to fit theworkof Nikolai Berdyaev into any neat category…an "existentialChristianphilosopher"…hisvoiceis equally relevant topsychologyandpsychoanalysisand it also constitutes a uniquely original commentary on the verynatureof the person in our postmodern world especially in relation tospirituality.~ Renos K. Papadopoulos
He was no ivory towerphilosopherbut was intimately affected by these events throughout hislifeand drew hisinspirationsfrom them regarding the nature of thehumancondition. ~ Richard Schain
He never avoided the label of "mystic"since he felt it was the mystics of theworldwho came closest tounderstandingthe role ofspirit.~ Richard Schain
  • Religion for [Berdyaev] is a social phenomenon and is adapted to the needs of the masses; as such, it is embodied in visible institutions and in authoritative formulas. The mystic, on the other hand, is aristocratic in temperament and never quite at home where the masses are catered for. He cannot remain in the world of form and convention and second-hand truths which is all about us and with which official religion has to come to terms; he aspires to a contact with spiritual reality as it is, a return to the ultimate sources of his being.
    • Edgar Leonard Allen (1893-1961),Freedom in God: A Guide to the Thought of Nicholas Berdyaev(1950)
  • Berdyaev attempts to development ofChristiansymbolsthat is parallel toJung's in order to give a place tohumanfreedomandcreativityin this sphere of Christian spirituality.Much of the creative self-expression, which ought to have been given a spiritual-religious meaning, had to emigrate out of the domain of ecclesiastic Christianity into the secular sphere, even though it had its origin within it. Both of these elements which Jung and Berdyaev address, that ofsouland that ofhuman freedom and creative self-expression,could not be fully accommodated within traditional Christianity and as a consequence found a home in the "pagan"rebellion since the Renaissance and its progressive push towards secularization. The spirituality that had initially been shaped by ecclesiastic Christianity has burst its container and has in turn given shape to the underlying meaning-structures of modern secular society.Jung and Berdyaev share an awareness of these underlying historical dynamics.
    We have learned and are stilllearningvery bitter lessons about the link between claims ofabsolutetruthandviolence.Forgoodreasonscontemporary thinkers are more or less unanimous in theirsuspiciontowards all "meta-narratives" which end up justifying the violation of individual freedoms.    Any return to a serious consideration of spirituality will have to remain mindful of this persistentdanger.Jung's psychology offers an abundant wealth of insights about theneedfor remaining consistently mindful of the ways in which theshadowoperates most forcefully where thelightshines most strongly. But a convincing argument could be made for claiming that at present we are paying the price for the repression of religion and spirituality that occurred as a reaction to their destructive sides.In the absence of a spiritual culture the return of repressed spirituality takes destructive forms.Spirituality, by being repressed, does not disappear but mutates into more atavistic forms. This shadow side of spirituality should not make us shy away from it but on the contrary motivate us to find a way to give it a new place in our contemporary culture, a way which does not jettison the liberating games of secular modernity.
    • Georg Nicolaus, inC.G. Jung and Nikolai Berdyaev: Individuation and the Person(2011), Introduction, p. 6
  • It is difficult to fit the work of Nikolai Berdyaev into any neat category.The label that was used most frequently to characterize him was that of an "existential Christian philosopher" but… his voice is equally relevant topsychologyandpsychoanalysisand it also constitutes a uniquely original commentary on the very nature of the person in our postmodern world especially in relation to spirituality.
    • Renos K. Papadopoulos, inC.G. Jung and Nikolai Berdyaev: Individuation and the Person(2011) by Georg Nicolaus, Foreword, p. xiii
  • The life of Berdyaev spans the momentous events of the first half of the twentieth century in Europe. He was no ivory tower philosopher but was intimately affected by these events throughout his life and drew his inspirations from them regarding the nature of the human condition.His writings bear the imprint of the catastrophic situations within which he was destined to live.
    • Richard Schain, inIn Love with Eternity: Philosophical Essays and Fragments(2005), Ch. 7: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev — A Champion of the Spirit, p. 43
  • Surprisingly, Berdyaev was able to write, lecture and publish for five years after theOctober Revolutionof 1917. He was once detained and interviewed by the fearsome head of theCheka,Felix Dzerzhinsky.Although he was released, theBolsheviksgradually realized that Berdyaev was unassimilable to their cause and gave him a choice, along with a group of other intellectuals, of exile or execution. Reluctantly, Berdyaev chose exile toBerlin.He was never again to return toRussia.
    • Richard Schain, inIn Love with Eternity: Philosophical Essays and Fragments(2005), Ch. 7: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev — A Champion of the Spirit, p. 44
  • Berdyaev has been categorized as a Christian existentialist and a mystical philosopher. He never avoided the label of "mystic" since he felt it was the mystics of the world who came closest to understanding the role of spirit.Many of the philosophers he quoted were mystics —Meister Eckhart,Angelus Silesiusand especiallyJacob Boehme.The influence ofDostoevskywas central to his thought. Nevertheless,Berdyaev is not a naively irrational thinker; he brings an enormous fund of philosophical knowledge combined with the profundity of his own thought to support his view of existence. There are no dogmas in his writings to offend one's intellectual conscience.
    • Richard Schain, inIn Love with Eternity: Philosophical Essays and Fragments(2005), Ch. 7: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev — A Champion of the Spirit, p. 47
  • He was arrested twice;he was taken in 1922 for a midnight interrogation withDzerjinsky;Kamenevwas 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; andnot 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"!
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