Schema-Archimandrite Paisius (Velichkovsky)

The personality and creativity of Bulgakov in the assessment of Russian thinkers and researchers I.I. Evlampiev. Religious idealism of S. N. Bulgakov: “Pros” and “Cons” Bulgakov belonged to the first rank of those Russian thinkers who made the glory of Russian philosophy. Being older than others, he became one of the recognized leaders of the philosophical movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Bulgakov's works we find a reflection of all the most heated discussions of that era. Perhaps somewhat inferior to many of his colleagues in the power of philosophical thinking, Bulgakov had an extremely developed ability to express in a journalistically vivid manner the problems that concerned all his contemporaries. We find two of these problems at the center of his very first works. The first was inspired by studies in political economy, in the field of which Bulgakov managed to become a recognized authority in a short time - this is the problem of the laws of development of society and the goals that it achieves and can achieve in history. The second was directly related to the deep foundations of Bulgakov’s worldview and his entire personality - with his sincere, but for a time hidden religiosity, instilled in childhood. This was a human problem, posed and solved in the spirit of Christian anthropology, that is, on the basis of the idea of ​​​​the uniqueness and inimitability of each individual, which has absolute significance against the background of impersonal social progress. The reflection of these problems in each other, the desire to consider them in connection with each other is the main feature of all of Bulgakov’s early work, which is more of a journalistic than a strictly philosophical nature. The very first stage of Bulgakov’s creative activity was marked by a strong commitment to Marxism. There is nothing surprising or unusual in this. At the end of the 19th century, Marxism and positivism were the most fashionable philosophical movements both in the academic, university environment and among the general public, carried away by the promises of the ideologists of these movements to provide a “definitive” and “scientific” philosophical worldview. In the understanding of society, Marxism reigned almost unchallenged, since, in accordance with the spirit of the times, a new generation of thinkers believed in the possibility and necessity of solving social problems in a strictly scientific manner. Bulgakov was among those numerous young Russian intellectuals who were fascinated by the intention of Marxism to accurately explain the causes of the imperfection of society and man and to indicate salutary means for eradicating injustice and building a society of general prosperity. However, Bulgakov’s Marxist worldview itself contained elements that spoke of his original philosophical “character” and made him a completely unusual representative of the Marxist school. First of all, this was expressed in his dissatisfaction with the concept of man that dominated “classical” Marxism. Understanding an individual personality as a “set of social relations” deprived it of religious depth and made a person as “transparent” and scientifically comprehensible as society as a whole, the “mechanics” of which Marxism claimed to expose. For Bulgakov, on the contrary, the presence in a person of an insoluble mystery, the presence of endless irrational depth in each personality, not amenable to final, let alone “scientific” comprehension, was the initial postulate that makes meaningful all our worldview searches and philosophy as the result of these searches. It is important to note that Bulgakov’s desire to philosophically (that is, still rationally) comprehend the mystery of man was combined with a kind of intellectual passion, which to one degree or another was characteristic of almost all Russian thinkers, who do not recognize in the philosopher only an outside observer, a cold chronicler of human errors and audacity. Like other Russian thinkers, Bulgakov was “hurt” to the depths of his soul by the suffering of man on this imperfect earth; his thought was awakened and spurred not by curiosity or a thirst for pure knowledge, but by spiritual compassion, empathy for the misfortunes and sorrows that people around him experienced. In this sense, one of the most famous works of the young Bulgakov, dedicated to the interpretation of the image of Ivan Karamazov, is of extremely great importance. It is safe to say that this is a “spiritual self-portrait” of the philosopher, an attempt to realize his deepest spiritual aspirations and at the same time parting with false hobbies that turned out to be inconsistent with these aspirations. In the image of Ivan Karamazov - as he is depicted in Bulgakov's article - we can easily recognize him himself, rejecting Marxism and a non-religious worldview and seeking faith and God, through which man and his suffering could be justified. It is very characteristic how Bulgakov contrasts in this article the Western and Russian styles of philosophizing and approaches to solving the main problems of existence. Calling Goethe's Faust the pinnacle and most accurate expression of the characteristics of Western thought, he sees in this work the apotheosis of “cold” epistemology and the desire to resolve all the contradictions of life in the theory of progress. In contrast to this, the goal of Russian philosophizing, the symbol of which is the intense religious and ethical quest of Ivan Karamazov and his brothers, is a life-concrete (one might say existential) penetration into the mystery of the human personality, the experience of its tragic fate in the world. The article leaves the reader in some bewilderment: in more than thirty pages, analyzing the worldview of Ivan Karamazov and significantly emphasizing that it reflects the most important features of Russian thought, the author in conclusion speaks not about ideas or concepts, but only about a mood, about some mental inclination, tendency. But this is what ultimately turns out to be most important; There is no doubt that this “tendency” permeated the mentality of Bulgakov himself - it is manifested in absolutely all the articles of the most fruitful period of his work, which began after getting rid of the Marxist “temptation.” Only at the very end of this period, which ended with the catastrophic destruction of his entire past life and emigration, Bulgakov’s philosophizing becomes somewhat different: more systemic and subordinated to more “global” goals - the justification not of an existential-personal worldview, but of the conciliar, “universal” worldview of Orthodoxy. It was in these last years, still preserving the inertia of the former, pre-catastrophic existence, that Bulgakov would write the largest and most saturated with philosophical ideas works - the books “The Never-Evening Light” (1917), “The Tragedy of Philosophy” and “The Philosophy of the Name” (the last two works were created in 1918–1922, but published only after the death of the philosopher). Their result will be the renunciation of philosophy and the adoption of the final faith - no longer involving doubts and not associated with those endless questions about the meaning of human life and human history, which constituted the very essence of Bulgakov’s work in the previous twenty years. All known works of Bulgakov 1902–1912. (before the first major work “Philosophy of Economics”) are devoted, in fact, to the same topic: a critical analysis of existing trends in understanding man and in understanding his personal and historical destiny - in order to find the only correct worldview that can resolve all the tragic antinomies of our existence. Since Russian philosophy is characterized by an existential-life approach to all major problems, traditional Western forms of rational philosophizing are unacceptable for it. The most profound representatives of Russian philosophy, from Bulgakov’s point of view, are the great Russian writers, who force us to understand in a completely new way the eternal problems of good and evil, death and immortality, the meaning of life and the goals of history (note that this point of view on the main thing in Russian philosophy was shared by L. Shestov). In accordance with this, Bulgakov devoted his most important works during this period to the analysis of the works and worldview of famous Russian writers: Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Herzen, L. Tolstoy, Pushkin; he clearly expresses his preferences: “...in Dostoevsky’s novels, it must be said frankly, there is more genuine philosophy contained in it than in many volumes of its school representatives” 1 . All Russian writers, Bulgakov believes, are distinguished by incredible sensitivity to the tragedy of life, to human suffering, but at the same time, an insight into the divine essence of man and a premonition of the accomplishments of which he is capable. This primarily distinguishes Dostoevsky, who was especially dear to Bulgakov: “Dostoevsky was given a terrible, truly human and only human gift - the gift of suffering in the name of love for people, the gift of suffering and the cross of suffering” 2. However, the importance of Dostoevsky as the greatest Russian philosopher was appreciated immediately after his death, and here Bulgakov simply repeats a well-known point of view, most sharply expressed by Vl. Soloviev. The attempt to find deep philosophical content in Chekhov’s work looks much more original (a little later L. Shestov assessed Chekhov’s work in a very similar way in the book “Beginnings and Ends”). “The inspired gaze of an artist,” writes Bulgakov, “reveals such secrets of life that the precise, but clumsy and clumsy apparatus of science cannot grasp; an illuminated thinker-artist sometimes reveals eternal questions more clearly than a school philosopher suffocating in the book dust of his office; therefore, it is given the verb to burn the hearts of people in a way that a modest scientific specialist cannot and never dares” 3 . “Chekhov’s works clearly reflected this Russian search for faith, longing for the highest meaning of life, the restless anxiety of the Russian soul and its sick conscience” 4. But if other famous Russian writers pay more attention to “heroes”, people who claim to solve the most important problems of life, then Chekhov is attracted to the opposite types: powerless, “boring” and “gloomy” people, in whom at first glance it is impossible to find anything sublime and significant for all of humanity, nothing “instructive” for a thinker thinking about the meaning of existence. And it is even more unexpected that Bulgakov equates Chekhov with Byron. “Chekhov’s mood must be... defined as world sorrow in the full sense of the word, and along with Byron and others, Chekhov is a poet of world sorrow. Byron protests against the limitations of the human personality, against the power of world evil in the name of a free and God-fighting human personality, aware of its strength and not wanting to recognize a higher power over itself, striving to grow itself from man to superman. Like Byron, the main motive of Chekhov’s work is grief over man’s powerlessness to realize in his life a vaguely or clearly recognized ideal; The discord between what should be and what is, ideal and reality, poisoning the living human soul, made our writer sick more than anything else. But if Byron’s motive for disappointment is, so to speak, the objective impossibility of fulfilling superhuman claims, of becoming a man-god not only in desire, but in reality, if here a person felt the external boundaries beyond which his self-affirmation cannot go, then Chekhov mourns, on the contrary, the winglessness of man, his inability to rise even to that height that is completely accessible to him, about the weakness of the burning of his heart for good, which is powerless to burn the impending foam and rubbish of everyday life. Byron mourns the impossibility of flying into boundless distances, Chekhov – about the inability to rise above the earth” 5. At the same time, Bulgakov finds in Chekhov something that ordinary literary critics could not discern in him for a long time - his optimism in understanding man. You just need to take into account that this optimism is not straightforward and obvious, but that is why it is more vital and justified - it is associated with an awareness of the incredible difficulty of a person’s path to perfection and to acquiring his highest dignity. “If we really need a Latin term to define Chekhov’s worldview, then it would be most correct to call it optimism, which sees the triumph of evil, calls for a courageous and active struggle against it, but firmly believes in the future victory of good. Chekhov, undoubtedly, had the kind of faith that sees the coming blossoming in barely emerging shoots and triumphantly welcomes it; this is a yearning, torn and restless faith, but, however, in its own way strong and unshakable” 6. In a similar way, Bulgakov evaluates the ideological searches of other Russian writers. Even in relation to the work of the infinitely respected and beloved Solovyov, he once expressed an idea that was completely unexpected in the context of his other works, based on Solovyov’s most famous ideas. He admitted that the most important thing in the legacy of his great predecessor is not famous philosophical works, but poetry (!). As Bulgakov writes, “the idea arises more and more clearly that in Solovyov’s multi-story, artificial and complex work, only poetry belongs to unconditional authenticity, so that his philosophy can and even should be verified by poetry. Therefore, what is not in poetry must be considered artificial, scholastic or accidental in philosophy: thus, in poetry there is no equivalent for Solovyov’s deductions, schemes and categories, largely borrowed from the Germans, there is no biased and somewhat opportunistic polemic with the Slavophiles, there is no multi-story and rational “justification of the good.” But there is everything that so captivates and lives in Solovyov: deep penetration into the Old Testament and New Testament religion, fiery veneration of the Most Pure Virgin, worship of the “Mistress Earth,” the mysticism of love, a living connection with the departed” 7 . Vivid articles devoted to the analysis of the works of famous writers and artists had an extremely large resonance in the public consciousness of Russia; it was they who primarily made the fame of the philosopher-publicist Bulgakov. However, so far we have only talked about the general “mood” of these works. Let's now try to take a closer look at what their specific content is - what conclusions Bulgakov draws as a result of the analysis of his chosen works. First of all, it is striking that some of the mentioned works do not have a clearly expressed conclusion at all (such are, for example, the articles “Ivan Karamazov as a philosophical type”, “Russian tragedy”, “Chekhov as a thinker”, “Mozart and Salieri”, etc.); Having gone through the labyrinth of the author’s mental constructions, the reader discovers with surprise and some disappointment that at the end of the journey taken there is only a call for further movement, further searches. Often, even in those cases when the work ends with a clear conclusion, it does not look natural enough and is similar to medieval “morality books”, which were artificially added to the stories presented in all their concrete life for greater “edification”. This feeling remains, for example, from reading the article “Man-God and Man-Beast,” which contains a masterly analysis of the late stories of L. Tolstoy. It is not difficult to notice that Bulgakov, despite all his efforts, never managed to implement with sufficient completeness and fruitfulness that form of philosophizing, which he decisively proclaimed as the only possible one for Russian thinkers - based not on the traditional categories of rationalism, but on the artistic imagery of art, using a free interpretation of great works of culture. The most successful example of such an approach to solving the most important philosophical problems (besides the absolute models given in Dostoevsky’s novels) in the era under consideration was provided by the work of Lev Shestov. In Bulgakov’s work, one of the characteristic features was the contradiction between the initial guidelines, “declarations of intentions” and the actual implementation of these guidelines and intentions. Among them, especially noticeable is the contradiction between the clearly proclaimed need to reflect the irrational-mystical aspects of our existence in philosophical constructions and the tendency towards straightforward rationalism, which is used as the simplest way to substantiate faith, to build “protective ditches and walls” against all the numerous enemies that threaten faith. N. Berdyaev wrote very precisely about this feature of Bulgakov’s philosophical manner: “According to his method, Bulgakov remains a rationalist in the philosophy of religion... Bulgakov is not at all free in the ways of his religious knowledge, he inevitably comes to transcendental authority, he places the center outside himself. He is not free already because he is completely devoid of the pathos of science, he never considers science to be his own, his business, but he is afraid of someone else’s science, “their” science, and constantly adapts to it. Science is also an authority for him. He adapts to it and at the same time takes a defensive, apologetic position. Bulgakov is clearly embarrassed by the work of “their” science in the field of religion and does not give him peace. The transcendental formulation of the problems of the philosophy of religion, the translation into epistemological language of prayer and sacraments, the consideration of Christianity as a myth, and every myth as a reality and as a synthetic religious judgment a priori - all this is not immanent gnosis in Bulgakov, not his free knowledge, but a protective device, a measure of protection from enemies, taking on some of the enemies’ techniques” 8 . It is no coincidence that Bulgakov’s most striking and “inspired” works are devoted exclusively to a critical analysis of well-known trends in Western thought that threaten traditional religious faith. Proof of the absolute importance of faith for all spheres of human life and culture is Bulgakov’s main theme during the period of his work under review. Faith itself is not a problem for Bulgakov; for him there is no question of “choosing” faith and “certifying” in it, the question of what the “correct” faith is - and this, undoubtedly, is the shortcoming of his thoughts. Here one can guess a kind of “religious arrogance” that constitutes a striking difference between Bulgakov and Dostoevsky, whom he clearly tried to imitate, but who was infinitely superior to him precisely in the ability to understand and express the deep dialectic of faith and unbelief hidden in every integral personality. Bulgakov was never able to fully comprehend this dialectic. From under the thin layer of Marxist political-economic scholarship, quite naturally, without any noticeable struggle, emerged an unshakable Orthodox religiosity that did not require any justification, instilled in the future philosopher in the family, three generations of which were directly connected with the Orthodox Church. Only later (in the large works mentioned above, created in 1915–1922) ) Bulgakov will try to reflect on his faith, but the result of this reflection will only be the final discredit of reason, the recognition of it as incapable of revealing the essence of divine Revelation, which fills faith with meaning. For now, we are talking mainly about showing what place faith should occupy in our lives and in our knowledge. Against the background of previous Marxist beliefs, this looks like a justification of faith before the court of reason and philosophy and proof of the falsity, even depravity, of knowledge that rejects faith. As a matter of fact, it was precisely the last feature of the modern scientific method that became the reason for Bulgakov’s renunciation of Marxism and the transition to “idealism.” He clearly formulates this reason in the article “The Main Problems of the Theory of Progress,” first published in the program collection “Problems of Idealism” (1902). Recognizing at the very beginning of the article that the endless development of science is the most important condition for the existence of society and its progress, Bulgakov decisively rejects the point of view that triumphed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, most clearly expressed by positivism (largely shared by Marxism), that the development of science is self-sufficient and only it leads man and society to absolute perfection. Science is always limited in its coverage of the world; it cannot satisfy man’s desire to have a holistic and comprehensive understanding of the world and the goals of his life. This idea can only be given to him by two other components of his worldview - metaphysics and religion. Bulgakov especially insists on the need for the presence of religion in the holistic worldview of the individual, and, in accordance with the ideas of the Slavophiles, he recognizes religion as the most important component, without which the other two - science and metaphysics - lose their meaning. “Religion is an active going beyond the limits of one’s self, a living feeling of the connection of this finite and limited self with the infinite and higher, the expansion of our feeling into infinity in the pursuit of unattainable perfection. Only religion therefore establishes a connection between the mind and heart of a person, between his opinions and his actions. A man who would live without any religion for personal fear and at the expense of his little self would be a disgusting monster. And on the contrary, for a truly religious person, his entire life, from large to small, is determined by his religion, and thus there is nothing that is religiously indifferent” 9 . Having expressed these fundamental provisions of his new, “idealistic” worldview, Bulgakov further critically examines positivism and Marxist sociology with regard to their fulfillment of their own initial requirement - to be based only on positive science and not allow elements of metaphysics and religion into their constructions. Turning to the ideological basis of positivism and Marxism, to their idea of ​​the endless historical progress of mankind, subject to clearly comprehensible laws, Bulgakov shows that it cannot exist as a purely scientific concept, entirely based on facts and strict generalizations. This is impossible, on the one hand, due to the extreme complexity of human society, which does not allow explanation on the basis of only one factor (economics, politics, morality, religion, etc.), and, on the other hand, due to the fact that society itself consists of free individuals, whose actions can only be forecasted and predicted to a very limited extent. At this point, Bulgakov’s criticism must be recognized as absolutely accurate; it is these arguments that are the most powerful against the simplified idea of ​​society that was developed by positivism and Marxism. A significant part of the attractiveness of positivism and Marxism, Bulgakov continues his reasoning, is connected precisely with the fact that in these teachings the onset of a “bright future”, that is, the steady progress of society towards an absolutely perfect state, is guaranteed with the same “compulsion” as the onset of any phenomenon governed by the “iron” laws of natural necessity. This belief must be maintained at all costs, but since it has virtually no real scientific basis, it is accepted without such a basis, just as a believer is accepted by the tenets of his religion. As Bulgakov writes, “humanity in its best representatives has never turned its back on the question of the final purpose and destinies of the human race and has always answered it in one way or another; Positivists also answer. And not only do they answer, but they founded on the idea of ​​the destinies of the future of humanity a religion that ignites the most sacred feelings in people, calling for heroism and struggle, inflaming modern hearts. Where did this conviction come from and this, as it were, firm knowledge of the future destinies of humanity, since positive science is not able to give it? It is from the same place where all religious truths generally come from, that is, what is religiously accepted as truth. Its source is religious faith, but a faith that crept in quietly, smuggled in, without its royal grandeur, but nevertheless asserted its dominance where only science is considered destined to reign” 10. This conclusion not only does not “humiliate” the theory of progress, but, on the contrary, allows it to become a truly important component of our lives, to actually determine people’s behavior, giving them guidelines for their volitional striving into the future. Only faith is capable of truly transforming and mobilizing a person, capable of truly justifying his actions; The fact that the theory of progress, especially in its Marxist version, has such a huge number of determined and sincere supporters who are ready to sacrifice themselves to achieve its goals, clearly proves the thesis formulated. Like any religion, the “theory” of progress has its devotees and saints who are ready to go to the stake for their faith. But if the majority of adherents of this new faith do not understand its true essence and prefer self-deception to science, Bulgakov rejects this self-deception and accepts his faith as it should be accepted - as a deep aspiration of the human spirit, which does not require a rational basis and comes from those depths in which each person is united with the Absolute, with the transcendental essence of being. This change in the value system was the meaning of the well-known movement “from Marxism to idealism”, and in essence - from Marxism to religious faith, which, in addition to Bulgakov, was carried out by many Russian thinkers of the early twentieth century. In this context, “idealism” Bulgakov calls that idealistic metaphysics that provides the necessary rational design for the accepted religious faith - of course, not the exhaustive content of this faith. The relationship between faith and metaphysics is understood here as it was outlined in his philosophy by Vl. Soloviev. It is Solovyov’s views that become for Bulgakov the indisputable basis of his own philosophizing for many years to come, until his break with philosophy in the early 20s. In the same article, Bulgakov, in addition to criticizing the Marxist and positivist theory of progress, formulates his own positive idea of ​​​​the essence of the historical process. It cannot be called sufficiently detailed; it is rather a laconic sketch, a diagram for further development. Later, Bulgakov would return to this problem more than once - to identifying a certain logic of history and the principles that govern it - but in later and more thorough works, the presentation of this topic will be subordinated to other, more important, in his opinion, problems and therefore will not be so clear. Where Bulgakov sees the unconditional correctness of Marxism (however, it is not its characteristic feature and belongs to the common features of many philosophical movements) is in positing for the individual and humanity as a whole some unconditional goal of all their aspirations, in the formation of an idea of ​​​​the ideal state of society and the person himself. The radical mistake and radical flaw of Marxist philosophy is that the specified ideal state is considered as empirically achievable in history and does not require anything beyond the existing empirical properties inherent in society and man for its understanding and expression. Here it is implied that the ideal arises in accordance with the internal laws of the historical process and, therefore, will necessarily be realized in a finite time. This eliminates the factor of freedom from history and generally neutralizes the significance of the individual; the individual turns out to be only a conductor for the action of historical necessity. Ultimately, this is due to Marxism’s belief in the “scientific” comprehensibility of history - a free person interferes with the operation of strict and precise laws, and, although it is impossible to completely eliminate him, it is necessary to deny him a significant influence on the course of history. In contrast, Bulgakov emphasizes the need to consider the ideal as transcendental to social development. This seemingly small change leads to a radically different view of history. The transcendence of the ideal that determines the activities of individuals and all of humanity means, on the one hand, that it is impossible to finally and fully express the essence of this ideal in the categories of science and rational philosophy, and, on the other hand, that real historical progress can never end with the realization of this ideal - it does not “fit” into empirical history. Conviction in the possibility of progress and real human activity that contributes to progress must be based precisely on the belief that faith is the only way to comprehend the transcendental ideal of human perfection. Some rational “explanation” of this ideal can only be given by metaphysics, which avoids excessive rationality of its constructions and consciously recognizes a higher authority above itself - religious faith. The greatest examples of such metaphysics, according to Bulgakov, were given by Kant and Vl. Soloviev. “The moral law tells us to want good, always and everywhere, for the sake of good itself. The absolute law of good must also be the law of our life. This law, when applied to historical development, tells us to want good in history and with our own efforts to contribute to the implementation of good, tells us, in other words, to want progress. Progress is, from this point of view, a moral task... not a being, but an absolute must; the finite and relative cannot contain the absolute; in this sense, progress is endless. To recognize the obligatory moral task of progress, is it necessary to be certain that this progress is carried out with mechanical necessity? Is it necessary, in other words, to lift the veil of the future and resort to scientific prophecies? No, no crutches are needed for the moral law. The absolute nature of his commands, to want good for the sake of good, does not stand in connection with any random conditions for the implementation of good in history” 11. Thus, Bulgakov’s reflections on the shortcomings of the most popular teachings that substantiate the idea of ​​progress lead him to the conviction that in fact this idea has two sources: faith in God, understood as the transcendental ideal of human perfection, and conviction in the absolute significance of the human personality, realizing itself in free historical action. “Consequently,” Bulgakov sums up, “the main problems of the theory of progress are at the same time problems of the philosophy of Christian theism and are solvable only on the basis of this philosophy, and the doctrine of progress is in fact a specifically Christian doctrine” 12. It should be noted that Bulgakov was not alone in trying to provide a model for understanding history based on the same principles that were characteristic of Solovyov’s system, but perhaps with even greater emphasis on the importance of human free activity (in Solovyov this point was not emphasized enough). We find a very similar system of ideas, and even more detailed, in Bulgakov’s famous contemporary P. Novgorodtsev. In his book “On the Social Ideal” (1917), Novgorodtsev, like Bulgakov, examines the shortcomings of Marxism and formulates an idea of ​​history that assumes the infinity of historical development and the paramount importance of the free efforts of man. Later, G. Florovsky 13 followed the same path, having been a close friend of Bulgakov in exile for a long time (alienation occurred only after the story of the official theological assessment of Bulgakov’s sophiology, in which Florovsky was forced to take part). However, Bulgakov himself, as we have already noted, did not delve into this problem; in his works we will not find a detailed development of the above scheme for understanding the historical process. For many years to come, his main task was to defend the faith acquired in the difficult struggle of life; he became a true “knight of faith,” defending it from numerous enemies who seduce humanity with false ideals and “idols.” It was in this capacity and in the implementation of this task that Bulgakov became a unique symbol of Russian philosophical journalism of the early twentieth century - in all its advantages and disadvantages, achievements and errors. As already mentioned, the leading tendency of Bulgakov’s philosophical development was especially clearly manifested in his works devoted to a scrupulous criticism of the views of the main philosophical “idols” of the late 19th - early 20th centuries - in addition to K. Marx, these are L. Feuerbach, M. Stirner and F. Nietzsche. Although Bulgakov does not have a work specifically devoted to Nietzsche’s philosophy, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Nietzsche turned out to be the second most important “negative” philosophical figure for Bulgakov after Marx, since only these two thinkers were able to captivate hitherto unprecedented masses of followers with their radical anti-religious ideas and create an effective threat to the undivided dominance of Christianity in the minds of Europeans. Bulgakov's attitude towards Nietzsche revealed with extreme clarity the weaknesses of his philosophical and religious worldview. He shows an amazing blindness in the perception of Nietzsche’s most important ideas, which literally upended traditional European philosophy and opened up horizons that European culture could not truly master even at the beginning of the 21st century. Bulgakov reproduces with complete seriousness the most banal, almost vulgar interpretations of “Nietzscheanism,” and this looks very strange in the works of a thinker who claims to reveal the “deepest secrets” of human existence. Bulgakov remembers Nietzsche in the article “Ivan Karamazov as a Religious Type”, and in the article “The Mental Drama of Herzen”, and in the article “The Religion of Man-God in L. Feuerbach”, and in many of his other works. Here, in particular, Bulgakov quite seriously asserts that Nietzsche is an extreme positivist! But he expresses the most radical judgment about the German philosopher in an article dedicated to Chekhov. Calling Nietzsche a kind of antipode of the Russian writer, Bulgakov formulates his opinion about the essence of their opposition as follows: “What ennobles a person, makes him a man in the real sense of the word, is not this strange deification of the natural, zoological superman, Nietzsche’s “blond beast,” but faith in the truly superhuman and omnipotent power of Good, capable of regenerating a damaged person and supporting a weak person” 14 . It is enough to compare this biting, but completely superficial statement with the arguments about Nietzsche by S. Frank (in the article “Fr. Nietzsche and the ethics of “love for the distant”” - published, by the way, in 1902). in the same well-known collection “Problems of Idealism”, where Bulgakov’s article “Main Problems of the Theory of Progress” appeared) and L. Shestov (in the book “Dostoevsky and Nietzsche (philosophy of tragedy)”), demonstrating a congenial understanding of the German philosopher’s system precisely as a sublime humanistic teaching, in order to assess how Bulgakov loses in the depth of philosophical thinking to his more talented colleagues 15. Bulgakov turns out to be “blind” and “deaf” not only in relation to the revolutionary ideas of Nietzsche, he ignores or incorrectly interprets most of those phenomena in philosophy at the turn of the two centuries that opened up new prospects - including prospects for the revival of religious feeling, the loss of which he rightly noted in the European culture of modern times. His desire to prove that European civilization does not need fundamentally new “creeds” and that it is simply necessary to return to traditional Christianity, only slightly amended in accordance with the spirit of humanism, was doomed to obvious failure - it was too divergent from the deep and inevitable logic of the historical development of Europe in the twentieth century. Despite all the shortcomings, misunderstandings and even mistakes of the new generation of thinkers - from Feuerbach to Nietzsche - who rejected the traditional value system associated with Christianity and looked for new paths, it was their search that was the only source of hope for the revival of a religious attitude towards the world and man, it was they who initiated the creation of a new worldview that helps European civilization move forward, not discarding old values, but including them in broader and more fruitful systems. In contrast, Bulgakov, in his brilliant journalistic articles, proposed only one thing - a return back to paths already passed and discredited by history, to forms of faith that have lost their vitality. In the famous work “On the Decline of the Medieval Worldview” Vl. Solovyov expressed an extremely correct and important idea: in order to maintain its significance for European humanity, Christianity must become different, must be renewed, although this renewal can also be considered as a return to the purity of the teachings of Jesus Christ himself, freeing it from medieval “layers” 16. He considered the most important of these “layers” to be the absolute separation and opposition of God and man. Solovyov proclaimed the idea of ​​God-manhood as the indissoluble unity of God and man as the most important component of true Christianity, capable of becoming vital and living for the new Europe. This idea became programmatic not only for Solovyov himself, but also for all his followers. But, as usually happens, Solovyov’s ideological “successors” understood it very differently. In our opinion, N. Berdyaev expressed the main tendency of Solovyov’s philosophy most adequately. The idea of ​​the inextricable unity of God and man, as Berdyaev argues, implies the equality of man and God, the individual and the absolute beginning of being. The irrational dialectic of the human and the divine means that the idea of ​​divine-humanity, as its natural and equal correlate, has the idea of ​​human-theism - the idea according to which divine content exists in every empirical person, although not everyone can realize and make this content significant in the world. It was precisely this unconventional understanding of the idea of ​​God-manhood that Berdyaev discovered (quite rightly, it seems to us) both in the philosophical quests of Dostoevsky and in the works of Nietzsche. In a very similar way, and perhaps even more deeply, Solovyov’s ideas were developed by his other two heirs - S. Frank and L. Karsavin. Only the pressure of tradition and a kind of spiritual self-censorship did not allow them to use the term “man-divinity” as equal to the term “divine-humanity” - as reflecting those new aspects of understanding of man that the Christian worldview must accept if it wants to remain a living and modern teaching. An openly opposite tendency was defended by P. Florensky; He, one of the few in Russian philosophy of the early twentieth century, sharply criticized Solovyov and directly asserted the need to return to the medieval idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe relationship between God and man, according to which a person must completely renounce his freedom for the sake of accepting the fullness of divine grace. The essence of this tendency was well expressed by N. Berdyaev, who called Florensky the “Grand Inquisitor” of Russian thought 17. Bulgakov's position in the confrontation with these extreme tendencies turns out to be hesitant and ambiguous. Just like Solovyov, he criticizes medieval Christianity for the fact that in it the idea of ​​man faded before the idea of ​​omnipotent God. In this sense, he considers the worldview of Renaissance and New European humanism to be absolutely justified; through it, the idea of ​​man was rehabilitated. However, at the same time, he argues that the result of the development of humanism turned out to be in conflict with its origins and true goals. Humanism had to recognize its secondary nature in relation to the Christian model of man and become part of Christian anthropology, which puts the idea of God-manhood as its basis; in fact, a complete break occurred: “In the historical revelation of the God-man unity, which is generally achieved dialectically through contradictions, both extremes were tried, both possibilities of a one-sided understanding of the universal idea of God-manhood: if in the Middle Ages the worldview of God-manhood without man, or, more precisely, in addition to man, prevailed, in the New time the idea of humanity without God or besides God prevails” 18. Bulgakov's conclusion is that it is necessary to radically overcome humanism by mastering its deep truth: while preserving the Christian religion, one must try to understand the idea of ​​God-manhood in such a way that it recognizes the importance of man and his freedom. In itself, this conclusion is fully consistent with Solovyov’s ideas and with the trend that was developed by many Russian philosophers, Bulgakov’s contemporaries. However, Bulgakov leaves it in too general and vague a form to be able to understand how he imagines a renewed (in the spirit of humanism) Christian worldview. Unfortunately, his subsequent works, primarily two books, “Non-Evening Light” and “The Tragedy of Philosophy,” force us to admit that he ultimately leaned unambiguously towards the “Florensky line” and went very far from the ideas of humanism, from the idea of ​​the absolute meaning of the human personality - returning to the “medieval worldview” with its idea of ​​the undivided dominion of God over man and the creative powerlessness of man. The trend indicated by 19 did not immediately appear in Bulgakov’s work. In his early works dedicated to Solovyov, Bulgakov acts as an enthusiastic admirer and promoter of Solovyov’s philosophical ideas. At the same time, in contrast to the later negative attitude towards Solovyov’s strict taxonomy (as already mentioned above), it is the holistic philosophical system that he considers as Solovyov’s most important achievement, as a model of philosophizing that subtly takes into account the religious needs of the individual. The most expressive in this sense is the great work (public speech) “Nature in the Philosophy of Vl. Solovyov”, published in 1910. Here Bulgakov very accurately formulates one of the most important advantages of Solovyov’s system. Being “idealistic” and “religious” in its essence, Solovyov’s philosophy overcomes the false dichotomy of the idealistic and materialistic understanding of existence and takes into account the independence and creative activity of the material principle of the world. “Two nightmares,” writes Bulgakov, “oppress modern consciousness in the philosophy of nature: mechanical materialism and idealistic subjectivism. The first turns the world into a soulless machine, into a dead mechanism, the second into an epistemological scheme, into a bare possibility of knowledge, devoid of its own life” 20. Calling Solovyov’s philosophy “religious materialism,” Bulgakov sees in it a fruitful attempt to understand spirit and matter, living and nonliving, nature and man as equal principles. It is clear that such a connection could not be accomplished “mechanically,” leaving the definitions of spirit and matter in the form that the rationalistic philosophy of the 17th–19th centuries gave them. Soloviev returns from this already discredited tradition to the less strict, but deeper philosophical views of antiquity and early Christianity, which were based on the idea of ​​​​the primacy and absoluteness of life. “Reality, as we know it, is not exhausted by rational categories, but only tolerates and allows them. It is deeper than is depicted in schematic projections and drawings of rationality. It contains a super-rational and in this sense a completely irrational remainder, or, more precisely, a basis that cannot be examined either under a microscope, or under an anatomical knife, or under the schemes of rationality” 21 . However, Bulgakov admits that not only Solovyov, but also some other outstanding philosophers of the 19th century came to the need for a new formulation of the main philosophical problems, among them he names Schelling, Schopenhauer and E. Hartmann. In their systems, he sees a fruitful approach to a new philosophy that recognizes the importance of irrational principles in being - first of all, the beginning of life. “Nature,” Bulgakov sets out the initial principle of Solovyov’s philosophy, “is a living being, nature is a being, nature is absolute. However, unlike pantheism, although it comprehends the life of nature, it identifies it with divinity, in Solovyov’s nature is another of God, His creation and image, the second absolute, becoming him in the process, in time. In Solovyov’s teaching, a clear line is drawn between the Creator and the creature, but at the same time a close connection is established” 22. What follows is a retelling of Solovyov’s system, in which the emphasis is placed precisely on the “mythological” and religious-irrational side, and not on the systematicity and rational coherence of Solovyov’s ideas. Thus, already in the work under consideration, aimed not at his own interpretation, but at a popular presentation of Solovyov’s ideas (which can be justified in a public lecture intended for a wide audience), Bulgakov’s inclination to select from the variety of Solovyov’s ideas those that most closely correspond to traditional, dogmatic Christian teaching is evident. Speech “Nature in the philosophy of Vl. Solovyov" is nothing more than a brief and popular designation of the topic that Bulgakov developed in more detail and thoroughly in his first great philosophical work - the book "Philosophy of Economics" (1912). The starting points of this work and the features of its “methodology” can be considered quite original. Here Bulgakov is trying to take into account the ideas of completely different, seemingly incompatible philosophical movements. These are elements of scientific economism (preserving some motives of Marxism), and the philosophy of pragmatism, and clearly pursued mysticism of an unorthodox kind (borrowed from the teachings of Solovyov, but having Gnostic roots), and key ideas of Orthodox, patristic ontology and anthropology. The last term is especially important for Bulgakov, in light of his increasingly obvious attraction to the dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church. Unfortunately, Bulgakov’s original plan for synthesizing all these heterogeneous worldview paradigms clearly failed; in many cases, the combination of heterogeneous ideas looks very formal and inorganic. Perhaps the most important thing in the concept of “Philosophy of Economics” is the development of the postulate that was expressed in the previous work dedicated to Solovyov. This refers to the principle of the primacy of life, the position of the irrational beginning of life as the primary source of all characteristics not only of the human personality, but of all existence. “In relation to life,” writes Bulgakov, “all aspects of existence turn out to be only private definitions: will, thinking, instinct, consciousness, subconscious spheres, even being itself, there is a connection, and the predicate of existence makes sense only in relation to existence - life, which posits its individual occurrences or states as private definitions. There is no being in abstracto, but only concrete being for itself, self-positing life” 23. This starting point naturally leads Bulgakov to the denial of rationalism as a universal philosophical method. Defining philosophy “as the doctrine of life in its entirety or in its most general definitions” 24, Bulgakov strongly emphasizes the impossibility of embracing the irrational beginning of life through one single system of ideas; he postulates a fundamental pluralism of philosophical comprehension of the absolute principle. “The Absolute,” he writes, “of course, is one, [but] it reveals many faces for those who approach it in different ways” 25. Here we first encounter a train of thought that would later play an increasingly larger role in Bulgakov’s works. He considers the “pluralism” of philosophy as its obvious shortcoming, this means its inability to adequately and objectively reflect the essence of the absolute beginning of being - each philosopher sees this beginning from his own subjective angle and therefore does not have the fullness of truth. However, such a completeness of truth is still possible; it is provided by religious faith, more specifically by Christian Revelation, which through a system of dogmas provides a holistic grasp of the “superlogical” Absolute. Here is outlined that radical opposition between philosophy and religion, which will ultimately force Bulgakov to abandon philosophy in favor of dogmatics. “Pluralism,” considered by Bulgakov as the most important quality of philosophy, helps to understand the concept of “philosophy of economics.” It turns out to be one of the ways to comprehend the beginning of being - life, and precisely the one that captures the most important thing in it, and, therefore, the most natural and “direct” way (if such a thing is possible at all). This is due to the fact that Bulgakov takes the process of “economy” in the broadest sense - as the struggle of life with its negative counterpart - death, “dead” being. If we can talk about the ontology that underlies Bulgakov’s concept, then this ontology should be recognized as dualistic: he believes that all earthly existence is an interaction, a struggle between two principles - life and death. In a certain sense, these principles resemble the traditional principles of European metaphysics - being and nothingness, and Bulgakov considers life to be legal, essential, “existential”, and calls death, like Plato’s nothingness (matter), illegal, unnatural and logically contradictory - and yet in an incomprehensible way “entered” the world. The combination of life as an absolute and infinite principle with death led to the “degradation” of life, to the loss of its absoluteness, infinity and perfection; as a result, in the world we see only imperfect, mortal life, the whole meaning of which lies in the continuous overcoming of death, the fight against death. Bulgakov calls this struggle, in which life tries to expand the boundaries of its space, to conquer as many elements as possible from the sphere of “dead” existence, “economy” in the broad sense of the word. Like Solovyov, Bulgakov understands man as the highest manifestation of the absolute principle of being, life, therefore the human economy itself is the highest and most complete manifestation of the essence of the economic process in general; it subordinates to itself, as lower forms, all types of struggle between life and death in nature. Economy, Bulgakov asserts, “is the struggle of humanity with the elemental forces of nature in order to protect and expand life, to conquer and humanize nature, to transform it into a potential human organism. The content of the economic process can therefore also be expressed this way: it expresses the desire to transform dead matter, acting with mechanical necessity, into a living body, with its organic expediency, therefore, in the limit, this goal can be defined as the transformation of the entire cosmic mechanism into a potential or actual organism, into overcoming necessity with freedom, mechanism with the organism, causality with expediency, as the humanization of nature" 26 . The originality of these constructions in comparison with Solovyov’s concept, which is a model for Bulgakov, lies only in the fact that here greater emphasis is placed on describing the specific features of the process of transforming natural being to a more perfect state - a state of fullness of life, while in Solovyov the nature of the divine-human activity that man is called to realize in the world remained insufficiently clear. Nevertheless, Bulgakov does not reveal all the possibilities of his original approach to describing the development of the world and man. Here, special accuracy and scrupulousness was needed in elaborating the details of the concept of a global “economy”; he limited himself to unoriginal and too general provisions, directly borrowed from the works of other philosophers who tried to explain the world on the basis of the concept of life (from Schelling to Bergson). Just as is customary in political economy, Bulgakov distinguishes two main components in economic activity - consumption and production. Their definition in Bulgakov’s book has nothing to do with political economy and is based on the most general philosophical categories. Thus, consumption is justified as a process demonstrating the universal interconnection of the elements of being, the unity of being. Considering that in addition to the beginning of life in the world, there is always a “dead” being that has “fallen away” from life, Bulgakov receives the following definition of consumption: “Life itself in this sense is the ability to consume the world, to join it, and death is going beyond the boundaries of this world, the loss of the ability to communicate with it, and, finally, resurrection is a return to the world with the restoration of this ability, at least to an infinitely expanded degree” 27. Consumption turns out to be a process of reuniting the living with the dead in order to return dead elements to the sphere of life. The significance of this definition could be demonstrated through its more specific explication, but in Bulgakov it remains in the most general form and thereby loses all its originality (later a clear example of a detailed and very original development of the same approach was demonstrated by L. Karsavin in the book “On Personality” (1929)). The definition of production is equally general and non-specific. In production, Bulgakov first of all sees “the exit of the subject into the object and, moreover, not illusory, but real, part of the objective, universal “experience”” 28. Recognizing that the principle of the coincidence of subject and object was most fully realized in Schelling’s “philosophy of identity,” Bulgakov literally reproduces extensive fragments from his writings, “enriching” them only with the help of a completely artificial connection with the dogma of the Holy Trinity, which, as he claims, gives the most accurate expression (?) of the identity of subject and object in the Absolute. As a result, both the specifics of “production” and “consumption”, and the forms of their unity in the economic process remain unclear and inexplicable; It is impossible to find anything other than the most general and often semi-mythological definitions in Bulgakov’s book. Perhaps the most important part of the book are the chapters on the “transcendental subject of economics,” where we find the first brief summary of Bulgakov’s ideas about Sophia as an ideal prototype of all earthly existence and at the same time – a subject of the historical (economic) process. However, here too there is nothing fundamentally new in the interpretation of the idea of ​​Sophia - in comparison with the well-known “sophiological” teachings that existed in history, primarily among J. Boehme, Schelling and Vl. Solovyova. Some originality of Bulgakov's position lies only in the strengthening of individual accents and a peculiar combination of various components of the concept of Sophia. In accordance with the main trend of the book “Philosophy of Economics,” Bulgakov approaches the idea of ​​Sophia from his idea of ​​the global process of economic transformation of existence. The culmination of this process and its main form is human activity; like most Russian thinkers who wrote on this topic, Bulgakov refuses to recognize the activity and even the existence of an individual personality as self-sufficient; he believes that the empirical personality is secondary in relation to the universal human spiritual-material whole and all its goals and actions are explainable only through this whole. “Although economy (or science) directly exists at any given moment in those who actually develop this energy, it does not merge with them and is not exhausted by them. On the contrary, they enter and leave the economy, but it itself, as a function, as a single activity, existed before them, and will exist after them. This characterizes farming as a process that is not individual, but tribal and historical... The true and, moreover, the only transcendental subject of economics, the personification of pure economics, or the very function of economics, is not man, but humanity” 29. Not limiting himself to justifying universal human unity through an analysis of the economic process, Bulgakov further does the same in a more traditional way, based on an analysis of the process of cognition: “... there is a subject of knowledge that justifies its unity both from the formal side, epistemologically, and in content, scientifically. Knowledge is truly unified and truly integrated in this subject. In individual acts of cognition of individual subjects, it is only actualized, from potentiality it passes into reality, it is revealed, and, further, in the development of knowledge it is organized, its fragmentation is overcome by the desire for unity. One knows, many know. This one, this transcendental subject of knowledge, is no longer a human individual, but the totality of humanity, the Soul of the world, the Divine Sophia, the Pleroma, Natura Naturans - under different names and under different guises he appears in the history of thought" 30 . As we see, at the end of this phrase Bulgakov admits that his idea of ​​a universal human subject of economic activity and knowledge is not original and has been put forward more than once in the history of philosophy. It may be recalled that in Russian philosophy P. Chaadaev, A. Khomyakov, Vl. wrote on this topic. Soloviev, S. and E. Trubetskoy, S. Frank, etc. In this regard, of course, Bulgakov needed to more clearly emphasize the distinctive features of his concept. However, none of this is in the book; Apart from the unusualness of the very starting point for considering universal human unity - the process of economic activity, we do not find anything fundamentally new in Bulgakov’s reasoning. Moreover, Bulgakov’s definitions are so general and non-specific that his idea of ​​Sophia becomes indistinguishable not only from the teachings he mentions (Plato, Boehme, Schelling and Soloviev), but also, for example, from Hegel’s idea of ​​the spiritual unity of humanity. One can recall with what enthusiasm Bulgakov refuted Feuerbach’s point of view in the article “The Religion of Human God in L. Feuerbach.” Rejecting Feuerbach's concept of the relationship between the individual and humanity for its proximity to materialism, Bulgakov demanded a return to the religious-idealistic idea of ​​humanity and its unconditional value. However, when in “Philosophy of Economics” he moves from criticism of other people’s views to a positive presentation of his concept, it turns out that he returns to the most banal and common idea, no different from the corresponding ideas of Hegel. But the significance of Feuerbach in the history of philosophy lay in the fact that he provided an effective (albeit with its own shortcomings) alternative to the Hegelian idea of ​​man and humanity. Concluding the brief analysis of “Philosophy of Economics,” we note two more ideological points of this book, in one of which Bulgakov makes an important addition to the doctrine of Sophia, in the version as it was developed by Solovyov, and in the other, he clearly formulates a principle showing that he remained deaf to the most original ideas that entered European philosophy in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Identifying in the spirit of Gnostic mysticism a single humanity with the Soul of the world, Sophia, Bulgakov simultaneously fully accepts the biblical concept of Sophia as an ideal cosmos, an ideal prototype of all created being (this idea is contained in the Old Testament book of Proverbs of Solomon). By combining these two aspects, he eliminates the most obscure place in Solovyov’s teaching about Sophia and turns out to be a direct successor to the long-standing Gnostic and Kabbalistic mystical tradition. Let us recall that at the center of Kabbalah is the idea of ​​Adam Kadmon, the ideal Man, “folded up” containing all of nature. The original identity of the all-unified ideal humanity, Adam Kadmon, and the all-unified ideal cosmos, according to the teachings of Kabbalah, was violated due to the fall of Adam Kadmon. This act led to the loss of integrity by humanity and the cosmos and the introduction of death into existence. But the main thing is that in this process humanity lost its unity with the cosmos and its dominance over it. Only with the development of imperfect humanity, the progress of its knowledge and forms of activity, there is a gradual “reunification” of the disintegrated parts of the universe and the “restoration” of the dominant position of man in the world. In fact, by identifying the Kabbalistic idea of ​​Adam Kadmon with the Old Testament idea of ​​Sophia, Bulgakov is trying to give such a refraction of this entire concept that would not contradict Christian dogma. Faith in the possibility of such agreement inspired him throughout his life, right up to the era of the creation of his later theological works. However, church condemnation of his theological constructions (although not brought to the official form of a ban, but quite clearly expressed) ultimately showed the utopian nature of this plan. In its most dramatic form, the opposition between the pseudo-dogmatic and clearly heretical interpretations of the ideas of Sophia and Adam Kadmon is manifested in their completely different assessments of the degree of creative power of humanity being “restored” in the historical process. In heretical mysticism this creative power is equated with the creative power of God, which corresponds to the tendency to “equalize” God and man. Bulgakov understands this danger very well and therefore specifically dwells on this problem. Fearing heretical deviation, he resolutely emphasizes that the “sophia” of human knowledge and activity (their focus on restoring integral, “living” being in the world) does not at all mean that human creativity, even to the slightest degree, is similar to the creative ability of God; our creativity, he writes, does not contain “anything metaphysically new, it only reproduces and recreates from existing, already created elements and according to newly found, recreated, but also in a predetermined way” 31. As a result, it turns out that, despite his claim to create a new concept of man and human activity, Bulgakov adds little to the old Platonic-Augustinian version of Christian philosophy, which does not recognize any creative task in existence for man. The paucity of the real results of Bulgakov’s philosophical construction is especially noticeable against the backdrop of the thoughts of many outstanding Western philosophers (including Nietzsche), who considered their main duty to be precisely the criticism of the Platonic tradition, which dominates Christian philosophy and does not allow one to substantiate the creative freedom of man in its absolute meaning. A. Bergson 32 wrote about this most clearly, whose ideas were actively used in their work by the most original Russian thinkers - N. Berdyaev, S. Frank and L. Karsavin. To summarize, we can state that in the book “Philosophy of Economics” - the first more or less thorough presentation of Bulgakov’s philosophical views - his weaknesses were revealed to a greater extent than his advantages. The latter includes the indisputable conviction of the need to develop the ideas of Vl. Solovyov for the sake of a harmonious combination of faith and reason, intuition and accurate knowledge, religion and philosophy, as well as a rather original desire to substantiate the fashionable idea of ​​​​the paramount importance in the life of mankind of economic activity within the framework of a religious-idealistic worldview. However, the shortcomings of The Philosophy of Economics clearly outweigh the merits of this book. Comparing Bulgakov’s ideas with the original and clearly non-dogmatic system of Solovyov’s ideas, one can come to the conclusion that they do not contain any significant progress; rather, one can speak of a movement back - to the platonism and “medieval worldview” overcome by Solovyov. The same can be said about the attempt to develop a new form of combination of religion and philosophy, faith and reason. The very necessity of such a combination, which Bulgakov constantly spoke about in his journalistic articles, is beyond doubt. However, when it came to the concrete implementation of this call in the form of a consistent worldview and a corresponding religious-philosophical concept, it turned out that this was not so easy to do; no organic synthesis emerged in “Philosophy of Economics.” And it’s quite clear what this is connected with. After all, the divergence between rationalist philosophy and Christianity arose in the 17th century and became extremely aggravated by the end of the 19th century due to the fact that the dogmatism and conservatism of traditional religion and the official Church (both Catholic and Orthodox) increasingly came into conflict with the demands of a developing culture (especially science). Both religion and culture suffered from this discrepancy. On the one hand, religion and the Church increasingly lagged behind the demands of culture, becoming something completely out-of-date, archaic, unnecessary for modern man, on the other hand, culture increasingly lost its religious and mystical foundations, without which it degenerates into a mechanical “civilization.” New forms of unity could arise only by moving towards each other: philosophy (as the ideological basis of culture as a whole) had to realize the danger of excessive rationalization and overcome its dependence on science, and religion and the Church had to abandon dogmatism and adherence to an unchanging and proven outdated tradition. Let us note that this is exactly how the question of a new synthesis of “religion” and “public”, Church and culture, was posed at the Religious and Philosophical Meetings held in 1901–1903. in St. Petersburg and caused a wide resonance in Russian society. The failure of Bulgakov's plan is explained precisely by the fact that he did not recognize the need for reciprocity in this movement. Rightly criticizing modern philosophy for excessive rationalism and oblivion of its mystical, religious foundations, he did not want to admit that the viability of religion in modern society directly depends on the ability of its adherents and ministers to abandon dogmatism and take for granted the possibility of a modern and free interpretation of dogma and Revelation. In his subsequent works - “The Never-Evening Light”, “The Tragedy of Philosophy” and especially “The Philosophy of the Name” - Bulgakov nevertheless risked approaching such a freer interpretation of dogmas and thereby showed that it was not without reason that he was considered one of the leaders of the philosophical movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, then, fearing that the consistent development of the principles he had found would completely lead him away from the bosom of the Church, he completely abandoned philosophy - for the sake of a traditional and outdated form of faith. The book “The Never-Evening Light” is, without a doubt, Bulgakov’s main philosophical work. Here, with the greatest possible completeness, he tried to realize the previously mentioned plan - the combination of religion and philosophy, faith and reason into an organic whole; here, for the sake of this goal, in certain moments he allowed himself a fairly free attitude towards the dogmas of Christianity in order to make them accessible to modern people who do not want to believe only in the power of tradition and authority. As a result, a rather complex, although not entirely original, concept arose in Bulgakov’s book, which would certainly have caused heated discussions and would have stimulated the development of Russian philosophy if the publication of the book had not coincided with such historical cataclysms that made many previous intellectual disputes impossible and, perhaps, unnecessary. Without pretending to be a sufficiently exhaustive consideration of the philosophical concept that Bulgakov builds in “The Never-Evening Light,” we will note only the most fundamental points that are important for the modern assessment of both this book and Bulgakov’s work as a whole 33 . First of all, in the introduction to the main part of the book, the author once again criticizes in detail the false, in his opinion, attempts to “re-interpret” the essence of the Christian faith. At the same time, he shows a very subtle understanding of the individual details of the teachings being analyzed, but he turns out, as before, to be deaf and blind to their main tendency - to the desire to give Christianity a modern form that corresponds to the new position of man in history. “In “The Never-Evening Light” Bulgakov develops in detail the most important idea that he formulated earlier and is aimed at justifying the need for religion, religious feelings for humans and culture. Religion, Bulgakov argues, represents the experience and comprehension of transcendental spheres with which every person is connected and in which only he can draw the energy of his creative ideas. In philosophical terms, this is expressed as “the experience of the transcendent, which becomes immanent to that extent, but while maintaining its transcendence, the experience of the transcendent-immanent” 34. Knowledge, in contrast to faith, is comprehension of the sphere of existence that is entirely immanent to man. To prove this thesis, unusual for ordinary reason, Bulgakov recalls the above idea of ​​the fundamental unity (ideally, turning into identity) of personality and the world, which arose in mystical movements, but in the twentieth century became a natural part of many philosophical theories (in Western philosophy it was developed in particular detail by Bergson, in Russian, not without the influence of Bergson, by Karsavin and Frank). With this approach, a person’s knowledge of the reality around him is, in essence, “self-knowledge,” knowledge of himself through his “reflection,” through “his otherness.” Thus, knowledge and faith complement each other as comprehension, respectively, of the sphere immanent to man and the sphere transcendent to him, but which sets the meaning of his life. It is clear that within the framework of this relationship, faith turns out to be more important and significant for society, culture and the individual than science; When a person loses contact with the transcendental sphere, with God, science also loses its meaning, since then our life itself becomes meaningless. Since religion is not just a connection between a person and transcendental being, but a certain comprehension of it, it cannot remain “meaningless”, cannot remain at the level of feeling; for such a reduction of religion to feeling, Bulgakov, in particular, criticizes Schleiermacher (this criticism cannot be considered fully justified, since Schleiermacher’s position is not exhausted by the rather banal statement to which Bulgakov reduces it). Comprehension of the transcendental essence of God in religion occurs in the form of dogma, therefore dogma is an absolutely necessary stage in the formation of religion. “Faith is not abstract, but concrete: this means that faith will necessarily give birth to a dogma of one content or another, or, on the contrary, dogma is the formula of what is recognized by faith as transcendental being” 35. Since dogma expresses the highest transcendental truth, it is “by definition” objective and catholic, that is, universal, uniting all people and the same for everyone. From here, Bulgakov writes, one can directly derive the idea of ​​the Church as the bearer of a single Catholic truth and understand the significance of historical tradition for the cause of faith. “The dual nature of religious faith - on the one hand, its intimate and individual character, due to which it can be experienced only in the deepest depths of personal experience, and, on the other hand, its ardent desire for supra-personal catholicity - establishes a dual attitude towards religious empiricism, towards historically specific forms of religiosity. They can acquire vital significance only after an intimate, personal-religious experience reveals their living meaning, and the catholic nature of religion encourages us to especially honor historical tradition” 36. Although dogma expresses the essence of transcendental existence in the sphere immanent to man, it cannot be built according to the same laws as this sphere, it must bear the indelible stamp of divine, transcendental content, and cannot allow complete rationalization - the latter is precisely the quality of complete immanence to the earthly world. Therefore, dogma can only be expressed in the form of myth, understood as a special act of combining transcendental and immanent being, as a real event of their meeting. “Myth must be characterized by activity, a certain initiative on the part of the transcendental, which wants this meeting, and in the reality of this meeting lies the power of myth’s persuasiveness... it is not man who creates the myth, but the myth is expressed through man” 37. The vitality and reality of dogmas-myths is realized in their unity with the cult, with the sacraments of the Church. “To understand the meaning of a cult, one must take into account its symbolic realism, its myth-creating energy: for believers, a cult is not a set of arbitrarily chosen symbols, but a completely real act of God, an experienced myth or the mythologizing of reality. Therefore, worship, cult is living dogma, myths and dogmas in action, in life. At the same time, the cult is also a means of constant dogmatic teaching, the revival of dogmatic truths. One can say that only that which is in the cult is alive and vital in religion, and that which is not in the cult dies out or is not viable” 38 . All this gives a very original and convincing concept of myth and clearly demonstrates the urgent need for the presence in culture of a “mythological” component, through which the living, organic development of culture occurs, “feeding” it with the energy of transcendental spheres. Later, A. Losev followed the same path in interpreting the myth, undoubtedly under the direct influence of the ideas expressed by Bulgakov. He himself later also returned to this topic in the book “Philosophy of the Name” and showed the fruitfulness of this approach to the analysis of culture using the example of the interpretation of such a complex phenomenon as language. However, the main goal of Bulgakov’s constructions in “The Never-Evening Light” is not the opposition of faith, dogma and myth, on the one hand, and reason and philosophy, on the other, but to prove the possibility and necessity of their unity. Therefore, a kind of culmination of the introductory part of the book is Bulgakov’s reflections on the possibility of a philosophical interpretation of dogmas. The starting point here is still the postulate about the subordinate, secondary position of philosophy in relation to faith and religion. The mythological character of religious truth, expressed in dogmas, provides a kind of model for philosophical knowledge and denotes the only path along which philosophy, in turn, can approach the truth. “Returning to our initial problem,” writes Bulgakov, “is religious philosophy possible and how is it possible, we must insistently point out that if, indeed, the basis of philosophizing is some kind of “smart knowledge,” a direct, mystical-intuitive comprehension of the foundations of being, in other words, a kind of philosophical myth, although it does not have the brightness and colorfulness of the religious, then any genuine philosophy is mythical and to that extent religious, and therefore irreligious, “independent,” “pure” philosophy is impossible” 39. It is absolutely no coincidence that it was after writing the book “The Never-Evening Light” that in one of his articles Bulgakov sharply changed his attitude towards the philosophy of Vl. Solovyova. If earlier he highly appreciated Solovyov’s rational constructions in the spirit of classical German idealism, now the “mythological” component of the same system, most fully expressed in Solovyov’s poetry, becomes a model for him. All further presentation in “The Unevening Light” demonstrates an example of the designated “religious” and “mythological” philosophy, which has parted with the previous ideal of rational rigor and consistency. It is clear that such a philosophy is in danger of subjectivity and arbitrariness. Bulgakov believes that this danger is eliminated by a constant focus on the system of dogmas in which the “catholic” truth is expressed. However, in the actual practice of philosophizing, this belief is not so easy to realize. After all, philosophical thinking, no matter how Bulgakov tries to drive it into the Procrustean bed of dogmatism, has irreducible freedom - of course, if it really meets its purpose. And a thinker who has consciously accepted the system of initial premises outlined above has only two options left: either to engage in rather arbitrary “myth-making” based on dogmas (in the absence of a clearly defined criterion of rational truth, this becomes inevitable), or, having accepted the dogmas in their pristine purity, to engage in their secondary, purely verbal commentary. Bulgakov’s philosophical “passion” and enthusiasm were too strong for him to limit himself to the second, therefore his book contains a lot of bright and memorable mental constructions; however, there is no escape from stating the fact that they bear a clear stamp of arbitrariness and subjectivity (“charms,” in theological terminology), and this is precisely what, in Bulgakov’s own opinion, makes philosophical reasoning meaningless. The main part of the book includes three sections, setting out respectively the religious understanding of God, the world and man (together with society and history). A significant part of each section is a simple retelling and bringing together the views of famous theologians and philosophers on the corresponding subject. In this sense, Bulgakov’s work is somewhat reminiscent of the medieval “sums of theology” and looks quite old-fashioned in the modern era, although it corresponds to the traditions of Russian philosophical thought, which does not recognize a hard line between philosophy and theology. Among the more or less original fragments of the book, the part where we talk about Sophia and her role in the act of creation certainly stands out. As in his previous works, Bulgakov uses the concept of Sophia for religious justification and sanctification of nature. But if earlier he paid main attention to the fact that Sophia is a united and perfect humanity, that is, he described Sophia as if from the point of view of the created world, now he pays more attention to her relation to the Creator and to the act of creation. The very possibility of comprehending God and Sophia associated with God is based on the fact that God is, as it were, “imprinted” in the world in the act of creation. “Divine energies flowing into the world, revelations of the Divine in creation, thereby introduce discernibility into the Divinity itself, which to that extent ceases to be pure NOT for the world, but, revealing the intra-divine life, makes known that which is unknown, brings into the immanent consciousness that which is transcendental to it, so to speak, fragments and multiplies the Divinity, just as a single ray of sunlight fragments and multiplies in its reflections and refractions. Based on the action of God in creation, it is known that there is God in Himself” 40 (“divine energies” are understood here in the same sense as was accepted in the hesychast tradition, in particular in G. Palamas). It is through such a “reflection” of God in creation that his most important dogmatic definition as the Holy Trinity becomes accessible to us, that is, we see in God the combination of his absolutely personal character with the absolutely super-personal character of his trinity. Here the definition of the individual persons of the Holy Trinity as Father, Son (Logos) and Holy Spirit is also clarified. In this reasoning, Bulgakov follows a long theological tradition, however, further “mythological” deduction of the characteristics of divine life already deviates from the usual dogmatic “logic”. Without any necessity, due only to the fullness of his love, God calls non-existence to life and makes it the object of his love. “But, placing next to Himself the extra-Divine world, the Divinity thereby posits a certain line between Himself and the world, and this line, which by its very concept is between God and the world, the Creator and the creature, is itself neither one nor the other, but something completely special, simultaneously connecting and separating both... The Angel of creation and the Beginning of the ways of God is St. Sofia. She is the love of Love" 41. At the same time, Sofia, as Bulgakov writes, is not only loved, but also loves in return, and therefore receives everything from God, is EVERYTHING. “And, like the love of Love and the love of Love, Sophia has a personality and a face, is a subject, a person, or, let’s say in theological terms, a hypostasis; Of course, it differs from the hypostases of the Holy Trinity; there is a special, different order, fourth hypostasis. She does not participate in intra-divine life, is not God, and therefore does not transform trinitarianism into quadruple hypostasis, trinity into quaternity. But it is the beginning of another, created multi-hypostasis, for it is followed by many hypostases (people and angels), which are in a sophian relation to the Divine” 42. Finally, Sophia, being outside the unity of the three divine hypostases, is only accepting in relation to them, but not giving, therefore she is the “Eternal Feminine”. Here Bulgakov formulates his famous thesis about Sophia as the “fourth hypostasis” of God, for which his philosophical and later theological concepts were sharply criticized by orthodox theologians and hierarchs of the Church. Later, Bulgakov would abandon the term “fourth hypostasis,” but this would change little in his sophiology; Sophia will continue to be understood as the most important link between God and the created world and at the same time as a perfect example of created existence. If we consider that Sophia, as before, is identified with the unified humanity and expresses the absolute creative essence of man, it is not difficult to guess in Bulgakov’s sophiological concept the tendency that constitutes the most valuable and promising thing in Russian philosophy of the early twentieth century - the desire to understand man in indissoluble unity with God. However, in Bulgakov, this tendency, with its specific development, time after time comes into conflict with the dogmatic principle of the insignificance of man in the face of God. This gives rise to obvious contradictions in the philosophical constructions of “Non-Evening Light” and, in essence, deprives this book of clear logic. This is especially evident in the last section of the book, dedicated to man and his historical purpose. Man, Bulgakov argues, was created by God free, and his freedom was given a choice - to incline to sin or to refrain from it. But since the very possibility of sin was inherent in human freedom, in the pre-worldly plan of creation, God also provided for deliverance from sin: the Calvary sacrifice, also as an opportunity, “was predetermined in the eternal council about the creation of man: the Father decided to give the Son, and the Son showed obedience to the will of the Father right up to death on the cross. And to send or not to send Him to Golgotha ​​was given to the freedom of man. Such was the basis of peacemaking, and such was the price of the re-creation of man, his rebirth" 43 . Here, in Bulgakov’s reasoning, the idea of ​​cooperation between God and man suddenly appears, and this concerns the most sublime and responsible creative act - the act of creation. However, the possibility of such cooperation remained unrealized, since, having sinned, man found himself below his destiny, and God was forced to carry out a new act of creation, helping to overcome the revealed insufficiency of man. “The world was completed in six days of creation in the sense that all the forces and seeds of life were invested in it, and it could develop further from itself, without new creative intervention. Therefore, on the seventh day God rested from the works of creation. But at the same time, the world was only pre-created in man, who, for his part, had to create himself with his own freedom and only then take possession of the world, realizing the general plan of creation. And when man’s inconsistency on this path was revealed, God required a new act of creation of the world in a perfect man through the incarnation” 44. As a result, it turns out that in Bulgakov’s concept, man and his activity in the world turn out to be less significant factors in the final transformation than other Russian philosophers believed, starting with Vl. Solovyova. Nevertheless, he is just as inclined to recognize the indissoluble unity of God and the world and even the enrichment of divine being with relative, created being. “In general, if we take into account at least only the events of the earthly life of the Savior, His resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven, the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, then it becomes impossible to evade the conclusion that temporality, a process, is introduced here into the life of the Holy Trinity, in which these events also take place in a sense, therefore, completeness, as it were, is also maturing, theogony is taking place. This indissoluble unity of time and eternity, theogony and theophany, absolute and relative, is precisely what is affirmed by the basic Christological dogma” 45. It must be admitted that here Bulgakov deals very freely with the dogma of the unity of two natures in Christ. However, this original and completely unorthodox approach does not receive proper development in his book; it ends with another “antinomy”, which, in the author’s opinion, proves the pointlessness of further reflection: “The Calvary sacrifice, brought to God on behalf of humanity, is the highest fruit of his repentance and rebirth, for it was brought by the most perfect Man. But at the same time, it does not belong to humanity, because its value absolutely exceeds the measure of what is available to it, having been brought by God himself, who, being a Non-Man, at the same time became a perfect Man” 46. On the one hand, man is destined for “cooperation” with God in all his “deeds,” right up to the act of creation, but, on the other hand, he turns out to be powerless to fulfill this destiny; moreover, this powerlessness has already been “taken into account” by God and replenished with the help of divine omnipotence, which pre-eternally, in the very plan of creation, “corrected” the consequences of sin. Hence, the same conclusion necessarily follows that Bulgakov made with much more straightforwardness in his early articles: the historical action of humanity is ultimately not the decisive factor in transformation and, therefore, can hardly be recognized in an ethical sense as absolutely obligatory for a person. And no matter how many times Bulgakov repeats Solovyov’s well-known thesis about the theurgic (divine) nature of art, which transforms the world as a whole and each individual fragment of it to the Sophian state, his interpretation of this thesis radically distorts Solovyov’s thought in the last pages of “The Uneven Light.” “Theurgic power,” writes Bulgakov, “is given to man by God, but in no way can it be taken by him of his own will, whether through theft or efforts of personal creativity, and therefore theurgy, as a task for human effort, is impossible and is a misunderstanding or fight against God” 47. Bulgakov, in essence, emasculates Solovyov’s idea, eliminating from it the most important thing - the idea of ​​the absolute creative principle in man, of his equality with God in creativity; and with the elimination of this moment in the concept of theurgy there remains no other content other than the idea of ​​​​the perception of divine (Sophian) ideas by the “creating” person and their embodiment (i.e. repetition) in matter, in the imperfect earthly world. After a long and difficult path, Bulgakov’s philosophical reasoning once again returns to straightforward and unoriginal Platonism, supplemented by the Christian (Augustinian) idea of ​​the final resurrection and transfiguration performed by God himself - beyond the will of man and without his significant “complicity.” The year of publication of the book “The Never-Evening Light” became a milestone that separated different eras of Russian history, just as it became a special life milestone for every citizen of the country. Bulgakov belonged to those same “conscientious” Russian intellectuals about whom he wrote in an article about Ivan Karamazov: the difficult trials experienced by his country and compatriots were perceived by him as his own trials and his own tragedy. To the best of his ability and his understanding of what was happening, he tried to help society overcome difficulties and avoid impending dangers. Back in 1905, in the article “The Urgent Task,” he put forward the idea of ​​a new type of political party, based on Christian ideals and pursuing “Christian politics,” which should not only pursue purely pragmatic goals, but also strive to radically change the very system of values ​​​​accepted in society. Although this idea was never really implemented, it was very important for Bulgakov and showed how far his life position was from that of an “armchair” scientist. The culmination of his efforts in the purely political sphere was his participation in the work of the State Duma in 1907. And although Bulgakov himself assessed this experience as unsuccessful and subsequently avoided political activity, throughout the 1900–1910s he remained in public opinion not only an outstanding ideologist, but also a “leader” capable of mobilizing people to solve important political problems. This area also includes Bulgakov’s efforts aimed at publishing various magazines and newspapers designed to influence society and its value system 48 . The revolutionary year of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship drew a line under the entire previous era in Bulgakov’s life. Like most of his contemporaries, he quickly realized in which direction events were developing; Legal and democratic forms of defending one's ideals, especially in the field of public policy, became a thing of the past within just a few months. For some of his colleagues and friends, the solution was to go “illegal” and start fighting the Bolsheviks using their own methods (this was done, in particular, by E. Trubetskoy, P. Struve and I. Ilyin, who openly supported the White movement). However, in this case it was necessary to “temporarily” abandon the moral ideal of Christianity: adhering to it, it was impossible to wage such a struggle (although I. Ilyin tried to prove the opposite in his book “On Resistance to Evil by Force”). Bulgakov was too consistent and morally firm a person to give up even an “iot” of his beliefs and ideals, so this path was impossible for him. But, of course, he could not completely step aside and “wash his hands of it”; this would also be a betrayal of his ideals, which required unity of thoughts and actions. And Bulgakov finds, perhaps, the only possible path for him - in 1918 he accepted the priesthood and became an active figure in the Russian Orthodox Church. Just as the book “The Never-Evening Light” was the result of his long ideological search, which ended with the final subordination of philosophy to dogmatic theology, so the adoption of the priesthood was the result of a life search, a search for a place in society from which one could most effectively influence it. Having started, like many Russian intellectuals, with the simplest path promised by Marxism, Bulgakov then well understood how difficult it is for an individual to influence the course of history, how roundabout the paths must be taken. The attempt to create the “Union of Christian Politics” and real participation in the political struggle brought only disappointment. Politics could not become the main concern for a thinker who always believed that the highest, “catholic” Truth about the world and man is preserved in the conciliar experience of the Church. This means that the Church is the most important sphere of society, from which, during critical periods of its existence, beneficial action should come, directing history in the right direction. Being an earthly institution, the Church did not always fully correspond to this function. Bulgakov, like many other Christian thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had repeatedly pointed out the shortcomings of the Russian Church, which was too subordinate to earthly, political interests, which became the main support of the autocracy and had largely forgotten about its spiritual and mystical purpose (in particular, in the summer of 1902, the newspaper “Osvobozhdenie” published a series of articles by Bulgakov “Letters from Russia”, containing sharp criticism of the official Church and autocracy). However, after the Bolshevik revolution and the final overthrow of the autocracy, the Church, in the opinion of many, remained the only instance of spiritual resistance to the new government and its ideology. During the years of persecution, the Church could no longer be the subject of criticism; now it had only one path: it had to become what it had always been called to be - a center of spiritual renewal. This idea sounds like a refrain in the writings of many Russian religious thinkers of that era; Bulgakov certainly shared it: practical efforts designed to change the course of events are now associated for him only with the Church, aimed at returning it to its true significance in society, turning it into a powerful source of spiritual influence, which sooner or later will change society and help it overcome negative trends in its development. It is no coincidence that even before taking office, Bulgakov, at the request of the newly elected Patriarch Tikhon, helped him in drafting speeches, and having become a minister of the Church, he actively participated in the All-Russian Church Council of 1917–1918. However, fate would have it that Bulgakov temporarily returned to purely philosophical creativity. Having left in the fall of 1918 for his family, who was in Crimea at that time, he was unable to return to Moscow and for three years was forced to live away from all the events that took place. During this period, Bulgakov created his last two philosophical works, which are completely different from everything that he had created before, and therefore require special attention. Although both works are significantly inferior in volume to “The Unevening Light,” they contain much more original ideas that retain their significance for modern philosophy. Formally, the first of these works, “The Tragedy of Philosophy (Philosophy and Dogma)” is devoted to a topic that worried Bulgakov throughout all previous years - the relationship between philosophy and dogma. The book directly expresses the final opinion on this problem, and an opinion unfavorable for philosophy. However, we would venture to say that it is not this thematic layer clearly brought to the fore by Bulgakov that is actually the main and most interesting in the new work. Here, rather, the inertia of the results that have not been fully summed up and the disputes that have not been completed in a natural way is reflected; perhaps the crisis experienced by Bulgakov was reflected in the new appeal to an already “passed” issue: it was at this time that he began to have doubts about the correctness of his path. (A clear evidence of this crisis was another large work, “At the Walls of Chersonis,” in which the idea of ​​​​the superiority of the Catholic Church over the Orthodox Church suddenly arises.) Bulgakov needed to put an end to this issue - at least for himself (let us remember that the book “The Tragedy of Philosophy” remained unpublished to this day) - and he does so, declaring the entire history of philosophy to be a continuous chain of heretical delusions and errors. However, if the matter were limited to only this, the new book would be more a milestone in the personal biography of the philosopher than a monument to Russian philosophical thought. After an extensive critical part that pronounces the final verdict on philosophy, Bulgakov moves on to positive philosophical reasoning, and here we are faced with a surprise: instead of starting with an exposition of the highest dogmatic truths relating to the essence of God, as was customary in theology and theological philosophy, he describes in detail the essence of man. Formally, this can be justified by the fact that only through “reflection” in creation does God become understandable to us. However, in this case this idea can hardly serve as a sufficient explanation. After all, Bulgakov reproduced it in the book “The Never-Evening Light”, however, the chapter dedicated to man was at the very end of the book and was the least interesting and original: in its main part it was simply a set of completely traditional theological views. It is worth paying attention to the fact that, unlike other Russian philosophers of that era, Bulgakov generally paid little attention to the actual philosophical concept of man, and this despite the fact that in well-known journalistic articles he proclaimed the need for philosophy to deal primarily with the “mystery” of the human personality. And in his last work, summing up his philosophical works, he decides to fill this gap. The small central part of “The Tragedy of Philosophy,” which sets out an original approach to defining the essence of the human personality, turns out to be a completely new word from Bulgakov the philosopher, showing that, despite the negative attitude towards all of his contemporary philosophy, he still took into account its achievements. In his concept of personality and its role in existence, he comes very close to the ideas that were developed by other thinkers, his contemporaries. Oddly enough, Bulgakov’s reasoning about the essence of the human personality is based on an analysis of the structure of the elementary judgment “A is B.” Perhaps here Bulgakov was influenced by S. Frank, who in the famous book “The Subject of Knowledge” in exactly the same way, trying to understand the essence of the transcendental Absolute, begins with a detailed analysis of the structure of judgment and inference (note that Bulgakov wrote a detailed review of this book by Frank 49). “Each judgment,” writes Bulgakov, “is ontologically brought to the general relationship of subject and object, which are nothing more than “I”, hypostasis, and its nature, revealing its content, its predicate, it is also brought into connection with the subject by the bundle of being. In the form of judgment, the mystery and nature of thought, the key to understanding philosophical constructs. The “I,” self-enclosed, located on an inaccessible island, to which no thinking or being can reach, finds in itself a certain image of being, expresses itself in the “predicate,” and recognizes this image as its own generation, self-revelation, which is the copula. In this sense, our whole life, and therefore all our thinking, is a continuously ongoing sentence, a sentence consisting of a subject, a predicate and a connective” 50. The most important thing is that in addition to the formal-logical and epistemological meaning, Bulgakov finds a deep metaphysical meaning in the structure of the judgment; he sees in it the fundamental form through which the “definition” of the finite created world by the Absolute occurs, i.e., the creation of the world. Previously, when describing creation, Bulgakov always strictly adhered to dogmatic formulas, which led to a naive-realistic idea of ​​​​the origin of the world, but now he completely unexpectedly takes a position on this issue that can hardly be reconciled with dogmatics. The entire created world appears as a form of existential self-determination of the Absolute, carried out through individual hypostases - human personalities. Explanation of the meaning of the “hypostasis” of the individual is the most important theme of both the book “The Tragedy of Philosophy” and the book “Philosophy of the Name”, and here Bulgakov uses Solovyov’s well-known idea about the relationship between “existence” and “being”. In Solovyov, these concepts were used to describe the radical metaphysical difference between the Absolute (existent) and the world (definite, finite being), and only as the hidden basis of this relationship could one discover its connection with the fundamental intuition of the individual, the “I” 51; Bulgakov sharply exposes the “anthropological” source of this idea and identifies the relationship of existence to being with the relationship of the individual to the world that appears “before” it. ““I” is not in itself, does not exist, but has existence, receives being through another, which is its predicate and which is different from “I.” Therefore, “I” cannot be defined, but can only be determined, and all life is nothing but determination. One can also say that “I” is not, but is super-eating, for there is a being” 52. This understanding of personality means that it is a “concrete”, “second” Absolute (as Soloviev said), on which all particular phenomena in the sphere of “being” directly depend and from which “come”. The way Bulgakov describes the metaphysical essence of personality clearly confirms this assumption. He considers the comprehension by each of us of our personality to be completely analogous to the apophatic comprehension of God: “In the end, we have to define “I” antinomically, according to the type of “negative theology”: on the one hand, “I” is a complete and final NOT in relation to any definition, for it is not at all and, however, that is why it does not turn into zero, into emptiness, simply into non-existence, for it is inherent in super-existence; on the other hand, “I” is everything that constitutes a predicate for him, from the most intimate subjectivity to the most frozen objectivity” 53 . At the same time, in relation to one’s own “I” it would be absurd to assume the same degree of “unknowability” as in relation to the Divine Nothing, therefore Bulgakov introduces the idea of ​​direct intuitive-mystical comprehension of the entire infinite fullness of the “I”, and with it - all that exists. “If we ourselves were not “I”, did not know “I” experimentally or in life, then no efforts of thought and words would be able to express, show “I”, prove or describe it, for “I” is transcendental and absolute. But since we ourselves have an “I,” no deliberate introjection is required for its cognition, for it is given by a direct mystical intuitive act” 54 . The meaning of the super-existential existence of the hypostatic “I” is to be the “base” (hypostasis - “stand”) for all of its definitions - to define itself in the form of a specific being (“reveal” itself). This is, according to Bulgakov, a metaphysical “judgment” or “sentence”, its structure (“I am something, a certain A”) determines the threefold nature of the “full”, “expanded” existence of the “I” - it includes first of all the hypostasis itself, then the totality of ideas or meanings through which the personality “reveals” itself, and, finally, the concrete being that realizes these ideas and meanings. In a linguistic judgment, these three moments correspond, firstly, to the pronoun, subject, secondly, to the predicate, definition and, thirdly, to the connective “is”, which specifies the expression “I” through the idea in being. “This connection,” Bulgakov writes about the existential connection, “is inextricable: “I” without the predicate “is worthless”, does not refer to anything; a predicate without “I” is blind and “nobody”, does not apply to anyone. Predicability, the ability to be predicable, is nothing more than the revelation in the spirit of its own nature and depth, an act of self-determination and self-generation" 55 . An absolutely new point of view on man and his relationship with the world captivates Bulgakov so much that in “The Tragedy of Philosophy” he almost forgets about the most important idea of ​​his previous works, the idea of ​​Sophia. Nevertheless, he, of course, does not renounce his religious worldview and therefore is forced to pay attention to coordinating the new position with the main provisions of this worldview; the result of his efforts in this direction, apparently, was a clear awareness of the impossibility of such agreement. This mainly relates to the interpretation of the “concrete” Absolute in a new concept (personality in its hypostasis) and the need to reconcile this interpretation with the dogmatic definition of God and the dogmatic idea of ​​creation. It is quite obvious that the new version of understanding personality excludes the possibility of using the category of substance in relation to it; personality must be considered here as an act of transcendence (existence), the “result” of which is “being-in-the-world” - the “appearance” of a hypostatic personality (personality-absolute) in the form of a psychological, thinking, willing and bodily being that finds and defines itself in the world and with the world. Bulgakov formulates this conclusion quite clearly 56. And yet, contrary to all logic, he stubbornly tries to combine this conclusion with a naive realistic approach to man, to the world and to the act of creation. He still considers it necessary to apply the concept of substance to man and the world, only “enriching” it with the ternary structure of judgment. A radical discrepancy also arises when trying to reconcile the new concept of personality with the concept of Sophia. Bulgakov repeats more than once that those ideas-images with the help of which a person “reveals” himself into existence, he takes from his own unexplored depths (essentially - from his unity - identity with the transcendental Absolute, Divine Nothing). However, the totality of these ideas, as we remember, is Sophia. It turns out that Sophia now needs to be understood as an entity secondary to the individual, subordinate to the individual. After all, the universal form of “hypostasis” in Bulgakov’s new concept is the personality of an individual person; the hypostatic character of Sophia as a united Humanity can only be substantiated through the hypostatic character of an individual personality - and not vice versa, as was previously the case. If we carry out this logic quite consistently, then the idea of ​​Sophia will lose the paramount importance given to it in Bulgakov’s previous great works. Bulgakov is saved from an obvious dead end in this direction only by the fact that, as we have already said, in his passion for new ideas, he practically does not remember Sophia and ignores the question of whether the new understanding of personality is consistent with the basic postulates of “sophiology.” It is clear that within the framework of the proclaimed attitude towards philosophy, Bulgakov could not limit himself in the “positive” part of the book to presenting ideas about man. The book ends with a section devoted to the description of the trinitarian essence of God, and Bulgakov claims that it is he who is the main one. But this is undoubtedly not the case. Here the author, with even greater attention than before, follows the dogmatic correctness of his views, and this leads to the fact that the presentation does not contain anything interesting; it is significantly inferior even to the corresponding section of “The Never-Evening Light”, where the essence of God is described in much more detail and originality. The concept of personality, which Bulgakov came to during these years, apparently fascinated him so much that, despite the strongly expressed condemnation of purely philosophical constructions, he returned to it and dedicated a new philosophical (!) work to it. Although the formal purpose of the book “The Philosophy of Names” is to evaluate the theological teaching about the Name of God, in fact most of it is devoted to the development of the concept of personality found earlier (in fact, the Names of God are discussed only at the very end of the book). In “The Philosophy of the Name” Bulgakov, even more decisively than in the previous book, recognizes the indissoluble unity of man and all world existence. The postulate of this unity becomes the basis for the interpretation of the metaphysical essence of the word, speech. The human personality is the ontological center of the universe, in its bottomless depth it is “merged” with all of existence, and every thing, every fragment of existence has the opportunity through the personality to “unfold” itself, to receive a “voice”, to “sound” in the universe, to become itself. Bulgakov decisively rejects the doctrine of the purely psychological origin of language, in which the word is understood as a conditional and subjective designation of independently existing things and phenomena. The word in its essence is absolutely objective and is created not so much by man as by being itself in man and through man, and things do not exist independently of words, the “sounding” of a word is in the metaphysical sense the act of creating a thing, or more precisely, its self-appearance from the dark, pre-verbal depth of being into the light of conceivability, clear certainty. “The word is the world, for it is he who thinks and speaks, but the world is not the word; more precisely, it is not only a word, for it also has a metalogical, wordless existence. The word is cosmic in its nature, for it belongs not only to consciousness, where it flares up, but to being, and man is the world arena, a microcosm, for the world sounds in him and through him, therefore the word is anthropocosmic, or, more precisely, anthropological. And this anthropological power of the word is the real basis of language and languages. The adverbs are different and multiple, but the language is one, the word is one, and it is spoken by the world, but not by man, the world-man speaks” 57 . It is this meaning that Bulgakov finds in the biblical story of how God brought all the animals he created to Adam so that he could name them and give them names. “No mistake could happen here, because there was no subjectivity: the names of creatures sounded in man as their inner words about themselves, as self-revelations of the things themselves. However, this naming was not passive on the part of man, he was not only the mirror of things into which they looked in order to recognize themselves in the idea, in their name, but also the action of man, for only man has speech” 58 . This whole theory helps Bulgakov to concretize the new metaphysical concept that he outlined in The Tragedy of Philosophy. The somewhat artificial designation of personality as an endlessly carried out judgment, a proposition, now receives a natural justification due to the fact that in the act of “phenomenon” of the content of personality in the form of a specific being, the word, the act of “naming” (in its metaphysical essence), is recognized as the main one. The trinitarian structure of judgment now correlates with three main ontological elements, or “layers,” of reality: illogical, “unmanifest” being; the world of general ideas-definitions and, finally, a certain (objective) existence, the cosmos. The most important, although most often hidden, turns out to be the first member of the judgment, since it is it that determines the “presence” of illogical, “dark” being as the transcendental “ground” of a thing; This is a pronoun, which by its very essence cannot be an ordinary word (for a word is an idea, a definition), but is a “mystical pointing gesture” and is denoted by the conventional symbol “I”. ““I” is the point from which the speaker looks and expresses the whole world in words, but he does not see himself, and therefore cannot express himself otherwise than by the general symbolic evidence of existence” 59. For example, the act of naming a noticed living being a “snake” in an expanded form should look like this: ““I” (“here”) is serpentineness” (“seeing a snake and calling it a snake, a person essentially carries out the function of investing meaning in a meaningless, dumb existence and says: this is serpentine, a snake” 60). In this context, it is impossible to understand “I”, personality as “substance”, and in the book “Philosophy of the Name” Bulgakov finally abandons this category of traditional metaphysics. ““I”, the linguistic pronoun “I”, turns out to be an ontological frame in which all being can be contained, and in particular the being of this very “I”, as far as it enters the cosmos, is named, named. “I” itself is the naming of the absolutely unnameable, it is ousia itself, revealed in phenomena as primordial energy” 61. In this definition of “I” one can find similarities with the most original concepts of personality in Russian and Western philosophy of the twentieth century, for example, with Heidegger’s definition of man as Dasein (here-being, presence), as an act of existence, an act that results in the “phenomenon” of illogical being (being as such) in the form of the world, objective being. As a matter of fact, Bulgakov’s interpretation of language as a whole can be considered as an anticipation of the later concept of M. Heidegger, with its central thesis “language is the house of being.” A rather difficult problem, common to Bulgakov’s last two philosophical books, is the problem of the ontological status of Sophia. In “The Philosophy of the Name,” Bulgakov only once reproduces the main thesis of his previous Sophia concept, repeating that Sophia is an organism of ideas, those very ideas-definitions that “create” things in the act of naming, helping “dark” being to become the world. At the same time, as already noted, the existence of Sophia and the ideas contained in it is understood by him as different from both the “dark” existence and the definite existence of the world. The meaning of this special existence remains unclear. However, it is quite obvious that in Bulgakov’s new concept, Sofia can no longer retain the significance that she played previously. If earlier it was Sophia who was the direct source and basis of all existence, now this is certainly not the case. The “dark” being, from which the being of the world and the cosmos “grows,” is in no way connected with Sophia; the cosmos, although “enlightened” by ideas (Sophia), arises as a result of the action of the Word, the proto-language, which carries within itself the “energy” of creation. This sacred proto-language, which lies at the basis of all real languages, is directly related to ideas and uses them, but it is not reducible to them, is not exhausted by the totality of ideas; every idea must become a name, become part of the act of naming, in order to act as an effective factor in creation. But if not ideas themselves, but only ideas realized in names, act as forces creating the cosmos in the bosom of “dark” existence, then it is not difficult to understand that in Bulgakov’s new concept the idea of ​​creation deviates very far from its dogmatic prototype. After all, it is not Sophia who creates the cosmos, but the Word, using Sophia and her ideas, and this creative Word itself, as Bulgakov emphasizes more than once, resounds in man (in his “I” - a funnel going into the depths of being 62), but comes from the created things themselves, i.e. from the “dark” being - from its unexplored abyss, where the “seeds”, “entelechy” of all things are hidden and phenomena. Thus, the creation of the world occurs by the forces of the “darkest” existence; “Dark” being is that transcendental Absolute, which reveals itself through man and thereby “appears” in man in the form of the world, the cosmos. When Bulgakov finally begins to consider the problem of the Name of God, which gave impetus to his work, he naturally pretends that his ideas do not have the slightest discrepancy with dogmatics. However, in this case (unlike the book “The Tragedy of Philosophy”) the logic of the concept being developed captivates him too much for him to reject it. As a result, even the numerous biblical quotations given in the last chapter of the book do not help to obscure the completely unorthodox and non-dogmatic understanding of God that he uses to complete his philosophical theory of language. The fundamental point here is the rapprochement of the creative, sacred Word and ordinary human languages. Arguing, in accordance with dogmatic formulas, that the Divine Word, the hypostatic Divine Logos must be distinguished from the “anthropocosmic” logos “sounding” in the world 63, Bulgakov, in a specific analysis of language, brings them together to the point of complete indistinguishability, and this is most clearly revealed precisely in the understanding of the Name of God. This is most obvious in the fact that he is forced to understand by the Name of God not only the names actually mentioned in the Bible that refer to God (Jehovah, Hosts, Lord, Creator, Provider, Father and, finally, Christ), but various other forms of expression of the divine in human speech and in human creativity. The absence of clear boundaries between the actual divine names and the names of created being is clearly evident in Bulgakov’s statement that the names of pagan gods possess to a certain extent the same mystical power as the Names of the Christian God: “...we cannot say that Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Isis, etc. were simple illusions and fantastic creatures, and even more so we cannot say this about the sublime the worship of Hindus - Vedanta, about Islam (although in relation to Christianity it already has anti-Christian and anti-Christ elements), in general about any specific religion. The names of the gods are here the real powers of the revelation of these gods: in each particular case, this reality and this revelation can differ in quality, from real demonism to elemental naturalism, from orgiastic ecstasy to the high divine inspiration of Socrates” 64. But if so, then it would be all the more strange to deny the mystical, divine power in the sublime creations of human genius. As a result, we have to admit that the proper, biblical Names of God mentioned by Bulgakov are only relatively different from the names of pagan gods and from other possible forms of expression of religious feelings in culture. As a result, the book “Philosophy of the Name,” written after the author’s radical condemnation of philosophy, turned out to be his most original and free work - free, first of all, from those artificial forms of subordinating the mind to dogma that left an indelible stamp on his previous great works. It is this work that most testifies to the depth of Bulgakov’s philosophical thought and its true significance in Russian philosophy of the twentieth century. Taken together, Bulgakov's last two philosophical books appear as an expressive symbol of the contradictions that tore apart his personality and his thought. On the one hand, there is obviously a creative search, a free and responsible study of the main problems of existence, which tends to overcome any pre-established boundaries, but, on the other hand, humility and submission in the face of tradition and authority, a voluntary refusal to move beyond the boundaries of an eternally established dogmatic truth, are just as obvious here. It would seem that having finally overcome his philosophical “pride” in the book “The Tragedy of Philosophy”, having once and for all resolved for himself the indicated contradiction in favor of submission to authority, Bulgakov in “The Philosophy of the Name” for the last time allowed his thoughts to give in to free flight, and the work he created became his “swan song”, the most heartfelt and deepest creation. Everything that was created later was no longer related to philosophy, i.e. to the field of free thinking, and therefore can hardly be considered as some kind of contribution to the matter that Bulgakov designated as the most important for himself and his thinking contemporaries - to unraveling the mystery of the human personality. Evaluating not individual works of Bulgakov, but his philosophical work as a whole, one must admit that it does not form a clear picture: it is impossible to talk about Bulgakov’s philosophical system, and even quite difficult - about a single concept. Ultimately, the most important thing here is the very mood and the very tendency that he wrote so expressively about in his early article. But in pursuing this “tendency” Bulgakov was not as consistent and persistent as his colleagues (for example, Lev Shestov). At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian philosophical thought, together with the entire Russian society, painfully searched for the only true path to the future, to a new historical era. Unfortunately, at that time the right path was never found. At the beginning of the 21st century, we are somewhat repeating these searches. That is why it is very important for us to correctly assess the achievements and failures of that era. Bulgakov’s philosophical work as a whole should be attributed, rather, to failures; his personal creative tragedy of the 20s provides expressive evidence of the falsity of the path along which he walked and which he called on his contemporaries to take. And therefore, we cannot escape the need for a biased assessment of the work of a talented Russian thinker - biased in the sense of the truth that we are looking for and before which there are no “small” and “great”, and everyone is a worker of the same cause. By maintaining the position of enthusiastic neophytes in relation to Russian philosophy of the early twentieth century, we risk reaching the same dead ends in which many of its brightest representatives found themselves. Our duty to them is not to be immoderate and uncritical, but to decisively separate the “wheat” from the “chaff” in their work - for the sake of a new harvest that can grow from these grains. Bulgakov S. N. Crown of thorns. In memory of F. M. Dostoevsky // Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 volumes. M., 1993. T. 2. P. 255. Bulgakov S. N. Chekhov as a thinker // Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 vols. Bulgakov S. N. Chekhov as a thinker. pp. 145–146. Bulgakov S. N. Poems by Vladimir Solovyov // Bulgakov S. N. Quiet Thoughts. M., 1996. P. 52 Berdyaev N. A. Types of religious thought in Russia. Revival of Orthodoxy // Present. ed. pp. 761–762. Bulgakov S. N. Main problems of the theory of progress // Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 volumes. T. 2. P. 50. See his articles “Metaphysical prerequisites of utopianism”, “The meaning of history and the meaning of life”, “Eternal and transitory in the teaching of Russian Slavophiles”, etc. Bulgakov S. N. Chekhov as a thinker. P. 148. For a modern point of view on the significance of Nietzsche’s ideas for the formation of new ideas about man, see the article: Evlampiev I. I. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: on the way to a new metaphysics of man // Questions of Philosophy. 2002. No. 3. Let us note that this thought is close to the thoughts expressed in Nietzsche’s most “shocking” and “nihilistic” work – in “Antichrist”. Christ lived and died, says Nietzsche, “not to “save people,” but to show how one should live” (Nietzsche F. Antichrist // Nietzsche F. Works: In 2 vols. M., 1990. T. 2. P. 660). “It is absurdly false to see the mark of a Christian in “faith,” even if it were faith in salvation through Christ; Only Christian practice can be Christian, that is, the kind of life that was lived by the one who died on the cross... Even now such a life is possible, for famous people it is even necessary: ​​true, original Christianity is possible at all times. Not to believe, but to do, and above all not to do much, is a different being...” (Ibid. P. 663). Carefully reading Nietzsche’s reasoning, we are surprised to discover that, rejecting the medieval “stratification” - the Church, as “sick barbarism”, alien and hostile to the meaning that the life of Jesus carried, Nietzsche evaluates the experience of this life as the highest example, significant for all people; As a result, one gets the impression that it is this experience that sets the true spiritual meaning of the term “superman”, and not at all the “deification” of the “natural and zoological” in man, as the straightforward critics of the German thinker believed. See: Berdyaev N.A. Khomyakov and priest. Florensky // P. A. Florensky: pro et contra. St. Petersburg, 1996. P. 389. Bulgakov S. N. Religion of man-goddess in L. Feuerbach // Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 vols. T. 2. P. 217. This and subsequent sections use the results of work carried out by the author within the framework of the program “Henri Bergson and Russian Philosophy of the 20th Century”, supported by the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, project No. 01–03–00357a. Bulgakov S.N. Nature in the philosophy of Vl. Solovyova // Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 volumes. T. 1. P. 18. Bulgakov S. N. Philosophy of Economics // Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 volumes. T. 1. P. 60. See: Bergson A. Creative evolution. M., 1998. pp. 239–246. For more details, see the book: Evlampiev I.I. History of Russian metaphysics in the 19th–20th centuries. Russian philosophy in search of the Absolute. St. Petersburg, 2000. Part II. pp. 344–372. Bulgakov S. N. Non-Evening Light. M., 1994. P. 12. Bulgakov S. N. Non-Evening Light. P. 50. Bulgakov S. N. Non-Evening Light. P. 77. Bulgakov S. N. Non-Evening Light. P. 186 Bulgakov's activities in this area are analyzed in detail in the book: Kolerov M.A. Not peace, but a sword. M., 1996. See: Bulgakov S.N. New experience in overcoming epistemology // Theological Bulletin. 1916. T. 1. Bulgakov S. N. The tragedy of philosophy (philosophy and dogma) // Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 volumes. T. 1. P. 318. For more details, see the book: Evlampiev I.I. History of Russian metaphysics in the 19th–20th centuries. Russian philosophy in search of the Absolute. Part I. pp. 209–229. Bulgakov S. N. Philosophy of the name. St. Petersburg, 1998. P. 35. See: Bulgakov S. N. Philosophy of the name. P. 79.