Religion and public

Paragraph I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI The question of the relationship of religion to the public, of the religious sanctification of social relations, is the most “damned question” for our time, the one that most attracts the attention of literary forces. And although it cannot be said that different directions of religious and philosophical thought in solving this issue are smoothed out or that any one of them receives more or less noticeable predominance, so that, in general, any more or less definite, more or less generally accepted results emerge, nevertheless, a lot has been done for the proper formulation and method of solving the religious and social problem in our days. Never before has this problem appeared in such nakedness of the perspectives hidden in it, never before has this question been posed with such an exhaustive awareness of the antinomies included in it, never before have so many diverse literary forces been attracted to it, never have so many thinkers worked on it, never has it been debated with such passion, on the one hand, and with solid erudition, on the other hand, as in our time. In any case, whoever subsequently decides to reconsider this issue from any point of view, purely philosophical or religious-practical, he will not be able to ignore modern literature, which therefore deserves careful study. Now it is not premature, although it will never be too late, to look around and understand the variety of works on the religious and social issue, to evaluate some, more noticeable, directions in its resolution. In these types, I propose to draw the attention of readers to the scientific and journalistic articles of N. Berdyaev. This author deserves attention. It is difficult to deny him significant literary talent. Among the circle of writers to which he belongs due to his sympathies, he stands out favorably for his venerable philosophical erudition. What makes him especially interesting - in the respect in which we now want to consider him - is one feature of his literary character - extreme impressionability and responsiveness. While he does not appear to us as an original thinker, he listens sensitively to existing currents of thought and perceptively peers into existing systems. And he reflects different currents of religious and philosophical thought with rare responsiveness. He, as it were, transforms into the philosopher, publicist, artist whom he expounds. If he conveys Dostoevsky, then he himself speaks the language of Dostoevsky, assimilates his methods of thought, his manner of writing. He expounds V.S. Solovyov - he is all V.S. Soloviev - in his views, style, method of thought, philosophical ideals. It follows Merezhkovsky - he is a portrait of Merezhkovsky, his alter ego. His writings and articles do not constitute a disclosure of one system, one view, but they mark the path of his religious and philosophical evolution, different stages in the development of his thought. In general, this is the path from Marxism to Christianity. And on this path he explores different roads leading to Rome, establishes his attitude towards various directions, related or opposite, constantly moves from one stage to another, diligently collects honey from different flowers. Perhaps over time he will give us an original system of worldview, but for now he is storing up in his granaries all sorts of good things, “old and new,” his own and others’, and from his writings we can study various modern trends in religious and social thought. Let's look at two of his books: 1) Sub specie aeternitatis. Philosophical, social and literary experiments (1900–1906). 1907 2) New religious consciousness and public. 1907. However, his previous book “Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy. A critical study about N.K. Mikhailovsky" 1901 is a very interesting and instructive essay. It represents the first stage in his movement away from dogmatic socialism. Here he puts (as we know - he is far from alone) historical materialism in alliance with critical philosophy, and he contrasts this dual point of view with the subjectivism and individualism of Mikhailovsky. Based on the “transcendental consciousness” of Kant’s critical philosophy, he speaks both about objective universally binding truth, and about objective morality, universally binding good, and about the objective idea of ​​progress, a universally binding goal. For him, this point of view is completely reconciled with the “objectivism” of Marxism, so that for him there is complete harmony between the individual and society. “Individualistic worldview,” writes N. Berdyaev - rests on a radically incorrect assumption, on the fiction of an abstract personality, torn out of society, from the historical process, separated from the social forces that gave birth to it. The personality of the “individualistic” worldview is completely empty, so we, the opponents of “individualism,” are the true supporters of the individual, of progressive individuality. After all, all the aspirations of the individual, all of her ideals, all of her passionate urges for struggle and protest are taken from society, from interaction with other people, from the environment in which she developed. Society is not only not the enemy of the individual, but it is everything to him; everything that only elevates the individual above the zoological state and humanizes him, he owes to society, social development; Outside of society, there are not even logical and ethical norms for the individual, and only a purely biological residue, physiological impulses, remain. Personality and society can only be thought of as something united and indivisible, and therefore we cannot place either the principle of personality or the principle of society in an isolated vice as the basis of our worldview. “Individualism” does not understand not only what society is, but also what the individual is. In fact, what can an individual oppose to society, in what sense can he raise the banner of indignation against it? G. Mikhailovsky will say that the individual opposes society to the physiological division of labor, his own differentiation. This is all based on a major misunderstanding. We discard the term “physiological division of labor”, since its place is more likely in biology than in sociology, and as for the differentiation of the individual, the wealth and harmony of her life, this differentiation, this wealth and harmony of life, is created only by a progressive society. The most sacred ideals of the individual, all the greatest things in human life, for which it is worth living, all this is the result of adaptation to the universal, connection with the universal, which lies beyond the narrow horizons of the individual, beyond his petty individual interests. We had in mind mainly sociological individualism, but individualism can also be given a broad general philosophical meaning. Individualism, as a philosophical doctrine, is finally eliminated by modern philosophical thought, which gravitates towards universalism in all areas of knowledge. Philosophically, “individualism” sins with extreme nominalism, sometimes managing to combine it with extreme realism in other respects. Plato’s “idea” has more rights to reality than the “personality” of an individualistic worldview: the merging of the individual with the general and universal and the flourishing of individual life on the basis of this fusion is the philosophical and ethical result of progressive thought.” With the main thoughts expressed by Mr. Berdyaev in this book, one can argue 2; this we will not do in this place, since the religious point of view is not taken into account by the author of this book; but the page written out should be marked as one of the points indicating the direction in which Mr. Berdyaev’s thought is evolving. We now move on to the next phases of this evolution. From the book Sub specie aeternitatis we will consider three articles that reveal three points of view from which one can approach the question of the relationship of religion to the public and which Mr. Berdyaev consistently takes: “The Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism”, “Tragedy and Everyday Life”, and “On the New Religious Consciousness”. In the article “The Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism,” originally published in the famous collection “Problems of Idealism” (1902), Mr. Berdyaev solves the ethical problem on the basis of philosophical idealism. Following Kant, he recognizes, first of all from an epistemological point of view, the independence of the ethical category of the ought, the necessity of an ethical point of view on life and the world, sharply different from the scientific-cognitive point of view: the moral problem, the problem of the ought, cannot be derived from existence, from empirical being, and ethics, that is, the philosophical doctrine of the ought, is autonomous, it does not depend on science, on the knowledge of existence. All the arguments of positivist-evolutionists against the experience-independent, absolute idea of ​​what should be usually miss the mark, since they make the moral law inherent in the subject an object of scientific knowledge, that is, they place it in the world of experience, where everything is relative. The absolute moral law, as a matter of course, is opposed to the entire empirical world as an existing one. It is very easy to prove that in being, which is for us the object of experimental knowledge, there is no absolute ought, but only through a gross misunderstanding can this be considered an argument against Kant and those who follow him in moral philosophy. From the point of view of scientific knowledge, operating with experience, a positivist-evolutionist can only prove that the ought (moral law) does not exist, i.e., the ought is not a being, but positivists do not want to understand that human consciousness has two different, parallel sides: cognitive-theoretical, facing the natural law of experience, i.e., the existing, and moral-practical, facing the normative law of the good, i.e. due. In addition to that being that is known through experience by science, there is also a whole infinity, and in this infinity much can be discerned precisely not from the point of view of scientific knowledge; in order not to remain blind, here you need to move to the other side of consciousness, in a certain sense the most important. Kant's greatest and immortal merit is that he finally smashed limited dogmatism, which believes only in the sensory world and takes upon itself the courage to prove the emptiness and illusory nature of the ideas of God, freedom and immortality. The moral law is a direct revelation of the absolute - it is the voice of God inside man, it is given for “this world,” but it is “not of this world.” Kant gave not only a formal, epistemological justification for ethics, he gave much more. The entire content of ethics can only be built on the basis of Kant. Kant recognized the absolute Value of man; a person is an end in himself, from a moral point of view he cannot be considered as a means, and at the same time all people are morally equal. This is an eternal, absolute moral law, the main condition for any realization of moral good, and all the fluid content of morality can be deduced only from it and justified only by it. The main idea of ​​ethics is the idea of ​​personality, the only bearer of the moral law, and at this point the close connection of ethics with metaphysics, and ultimately with religion, becomes clear. Within the limits of experience with which positive science deals, the ethical idea of ​​personality eludes; we cannot recognize an absolute value for the empirical personality; in empirical reality, a person too often is not a person, that person whom we consider an end in itself and who should be holy. This cutting contradiction between the empirical personality and the ideal personality makes the moral problem a tragic problem. There is great, truly tragic, moral suffering in the impossibility for us, within the limits of empirical relations, to honor man in Judas the traitor, that is, absolute value, to see in him a brother, that is, an equal goal in ourselves in spirit. This leads to the very depths of the moral problem. The moral problem is, first of all, the problem of the relationship between the empirical “I” and the ideal, spiritual, “normal” I. Morality is, first of all, a person’s internal attitude towards himself, the search and realization of his spiritual “I”, the triumph of “normative” consciousness in “empirical” consciousness. In ordinary language this is called the development of personality in a person. Morality, as the attitude of man to man, is the unconditional recognition in every person of his spiritual self and unconditional respect for his rights. This is what in everyday language is called humanity: to be humane means to recognize and respect a brother in spirit in every person, to consider his spiritual nature as an end in itself as one’s own, and to promote its development on the basis of universal spiritual culture. From this formulation of the question it follows that the moral problem is, first of all, an individualistic problem and becomes a social problem only in its further conclusions. But ethical individualism will hang in the air without any support if we remain on the basis of experience. The empirical personality, as such, cannot lead to ethical individualism - it pushes us into the arms of hedonism and immoralism. In short, the idea of ​​personality and the moral problem of which the personality is the subject are understandable only on the basis of spiritualism. Kant postulated spiritualism quite consistently. Man has absolute value because he is an eternal spirit, and people are equal because they have the same spiritual nature. Spiritual individuality has absolute, inalienable rights that cannot be assessed; there is nothing higher than it except its highest development. What is morally valuable in a person is determined not by the approval or condemnation of other people, not by the benefit of society, not by the external world in general, but by agreement with one’s own internal moral nature, one’s relationship to one’s own God. This is how Mr. Berdyaev interprets Kant’s ethical idealism. It is easy to notice that he now takes a point of view significantly different from the one he defended in the book “Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Science.” If before he argued that society is everything for the individual, that everything that only elevates the individual above the zoological state and humanizes him, he owes to society, to social development, that outside of society there are not even logical and ethical norms for the individual, that the individual and society are one and inseparable; Now he looks at morality individualistically, notes the character of absoluteness in it, and reveals the religious principle in it. But this new point of view raises in a new light the question of the relationship of the moral-absolute, religious-self-valued individual to society, that is, the question of the relationship of religion to society. How does Mr. Berdyaev answer this? He puts forward two ideas: the idea of ​​ethical universalism and the idea of ​​historical progress. He reasons like this. Moral good is the affirmation of the “I”, self-realization, and this leads to the idea of ​​“normal” personality development. Not every affirmation and development of one’s personality is a moral good, but only that which leads to perfection, to an ideal spiritual state. From an ethical point of view, the realization of one’s own “I” and the achievement of ideal perfection are identical concepts. But the tragedy of the moral problem lies in the fact that the absolute ideal of moral perfection cannot be concretely expressed in terms of experience and can never be fully realized empirically. A person can only approach the absolute ideal and must approach it. The idea of ​​moral development is unthinkable without the idea of ​​a supreme goal, which must be achieved by this development. That absolutely valuable content, that highest good with which the life of a person recognized as an end in itself should be filled, cannot be indicated in empirical reality, it never exists, it is an eternal call for endless development, for the highest spiritual energy, lost beyond the boundaries of any given human horizon. Any attempt to more accurately define the absolute good that should be the content of human life—an end in itself—inevitably takes us beyond the world of experience. The idea of ​​realizing the “I” by achieving an ideal spiritual state rests on eternity and infinity, here limitless prospects open up for us. The human personality, unique and individual, in its striving for perfection always gravitates towards the same point, towards the Supreme Good, in which all values ​​are united. Infinite strength and power, infinite knowledge, eternal beauty and harmony - all this enters into the fulfillment and development of the self. We must think of the last stage on this long path, in which the empirical world is only a small piece, as the union of the individual “I” with the universal “I,” that is, of man with the Divine. Moreover, the Divine is conceived not as something alien and external to the human “I”, to which this “I” must submit, but as his own ideal of final perfection. Metaphysics, to which ethics inevitably leads, unites the individual spiritual self with the universal spiritual self in the concept of the Supreme Good. The initial point of view of ethics can only be individualistic, the moral problem is a problem of individualism, a problem of personality, but individualism must be metaphysically overcome and come to universalism, or rather, individualism and universalism must be harmoniously united in one worldview. Thus, Mr. Berdyaev considers it possible to simultaneously profess both consistent ethical individualism and no less consistent ethical universalism. Personality, individuality from an ethical point of view is everything, but precisely because in it we think of universal spiritual content. In the “individual,” in the human personality, we honor the “universal,” that is, the single spiritual nature, which manifests itself in various ways and individually in the empirical world. A person honors God in another person. The moral level of the human personality is measured by the degree of its penetration by universal life and universal interests. A person realizes his spiritual “I” only by leaving the narrow sphere of individual experiences in the proper sense of the word and entering the broad arena of world life. He gains his “individuality” by developing the “universal” in himself. Such a harmonious combination of individualism and universalism leads Mr. Berdyaev to the following solution to the ethical problem. The moral contradiction between what should be and what is, between the human “I” striving for ideal perfection and empirical reality is resolved in two ways that ultimately converge: the path of individual and the path of universal development. The individual thirst for perfection, the realization of the spiritual “I,” which is the essence of the moral problem, is quenched by limitless individual development, resting on spiritual immortality, and limitless universal development, i.e., cultural progress. By these two paths a person goes to the Supreme Good. The free spirit raises the banner of rebellion against the surrounding world, against the empirical reality that oppresses it; he seeks to put the stamp of his eternal freedom on the outside world and create his own culture, using the necessary material means for ideal purposes. Progress from a philosophical and ethical point of view is, first of all, the liberation of the human “I” from external fetters. Kant gives almost no guidance as to how the moral law can and should be implemented in human life. In this regard, the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel was a big step forward, since it raised the question of the implementation of the moral good in history. The posing of this question leads to a philosophy of progress that was only barely outlined in Kant. Thus, an individual moral problem turns into a social problem. Society, social development is a necessary instrument for the moral development of the human personality. The individual has ethical (not sociological) primacy over society, the assessment of society is always made by the individual due to his inherent autonomous moral law, taken not from society, every social form requires justification from the point of view of ethical individualism. But the moral law is embodied in the life of humanity through social progress, the human personality develops and develops its individuality through diverse interactions with the social environment, in the socio-psychic communication of people. First of all, in order for the spiritual culture, the bearer of which is the individual, to unfold in the empirical history of mankind, it needs a material social basis. Therefore, we demand economic development and welcome more advanced forms of production. Then, in order for the natural right of the individual to be guaranteed, the external relations of people must be regulated and formalized, that is, freedom and equality, which are required and sanctioned by the internal moral autonomy of each human person, must be realized in the state and legal structure. The struggle for “sociality,” i.e., for a form of social cooperation, is always ethically subordinated to the struggle for “humanity,” i.e. struggle for man, and is sanctioned by it, but one cannot strongly condemn those who, from the highest humanitarian considerations, come to preach socio-political indifference. This is nonsense. Philosophical and ethical idealism should spiritualize and ennoble the socio-political struggle, breathe a living soul into it, but it cannot in any way lead to a passive attitude towards the world around us, to patient contemplation of violence and abuse of man, of his spiritual nature... This is Mr. Berdyaev’s first answer to the question about the attitude of religion to the public. It must be emphatically stated that there is a lot of elementary truth in this answer. It is true that ethical idealism should not be interpreted in the sense of an indifferent attitude towards economic and political development. However, we do not see a clear and definite formulation of this truth in Mr. Berdyaev. To say this elementary truth only means getting closer to a serious formulation of the religious-social question. In fact, Mr. Berdyaev accepts this truth both from the point of view from which he wrote his book “Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Science”, and - in the article now under review - from the point of view of ethical idealism. But doesn’t such a decisive change in the basic point of view make any difference in the solution of this issue? G. Berdyaev adds a note in one place: “Sociology considers individuality as a result of the intersection of various social circles. This scientific truth does not in any way contradict the ethical-metaphysical theory of personality.” Perhaps this scientific truth and this theory are reconcilable in a holistic worldview, but is it possible to reconcile all the conclusions from the sociological explanation of individuality with all the conclusions of the ethical-metaphysical theory of personality? Is socialism exhausted “only by new methods for more consistent implementation of the eternal principles” of idealism? Isn’t it obvious that the sociological attitude towards the religious-social question and the idealistic attitude towards it coincide only in what constitutes the elementary side of these views, and diverge in their most characteristic aspects? To put it differently, it is possible, while remaining on the basis of one or another view, to strengthen this discrepancy much more than was done in the article under review by Mr. Berdyaev. In the same book, in the article “Tragedy and Everyday Life,” to which we will move on below, Mr. Berdyaev already confesses: “Rationalistic formalism oppressed me in the article “The Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism” ... Kant managed to completely logicize ethics and turn individualism, which was healthy in its essence, into scholastic formalism. Logical normativity was introduced into the moral problem, and in the search for formal “legality” its intimate essence was ruined. Philosophy must radically break with all attempts to rationalize a moral problem, to impose rational goodness, to establish ethical standards by analogy with logical or legal ones. The absoluteness of good does not prevent, but rather obliges, the denial of moral norms that are the same for everyone. There are as many ways to solve a moral problem as there are individuals in the world, although in these ways the same absolute good is realized - the fullness and freedom of transcendental being. Good is not the law of reason, but the will of a living being, always individual." Etc. 3 What is most curious is that the possibility of such a discrepancy is already assumed in the main part of the article we are reviewing. And in order to understand this, we need to turn to the preface of Mr. Struve to the book “Subjectivism and individualism in social science”. In this preface, which subjects Mr. Berdyaev’s book to a rather decisive criticism, lies the reason that in the article “The Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism” and in the following articles included in the collection Sub specie aeternitatis, Mr. Berdyaev comes to a different understanding of Kant than in the book named. One can say this: Mr. Struve in this preface formulated a problem that had not yet been presented to the mind of Mr. Berdyaev when he criticized Mikhailovsky, and which he tries to solve in his later books. In this preface, which deserves the most serious attention, Mr. Struve puts forward and wittily substantiates the thesis: between the area of ​​theoretical consciousness, or experience, in other words, the area of ​​being, to which the category of necessity corresponds, and the area of ​​practical, or effective consciousness, in other words, the area of ​​obligation, to which the category of freedom corresponds, epistemologically there is no reconciliation or transition between these areas of consciousness. From this point of view, he thoroughly criticizes teleological criticism, which merges the true and the proper into one concept of the generally binding and comes to the construction of a theory of knowledge that has a completely ethical overtones. For the theory of knowledge, according to Mr. Struve, there is no sharper opposition than being and ought, true and proper. From an epistemological point of view, intellectual conscience and ethical conscience are completely independent of each other. What should and what exists have their objective unity only in the third, inaccessible to experience. Subjectively, they are united only in the holistic experiences of man, which the theory of knowledge decomposes and the fundamental decomposition of which is a prerequisite for any scientific experience. From this opposition of being and ought, knowledge and ethics, a double conclusion follows. Firstly, knowledge must be purely positive. From here arises a purely analytical theory of knowledge, which is decisively different from the normative theory of knowledge of most German critics. Secondly, the normative character of generic consciousness, to which the objective world of logical laws and being corresponds, cannot be extended to ethical and aesthetic norms - as most German philosophers also do. G. Struve extremely successfully explains that behind moral dictates there must always be some kind of absolute value, the recognition of which does not depend on logic or experience, i.e. for my consciousness turned inward, it does not happen due to natural compulsion - that, therefore, the ethical problem, as a problem about what should be, is not solvable for positivism. No positive science has the power to establish moral values. Absolutism in ethics affirms something transcendent; absolute good has its source outside of experience, its character is not empirical, but transcendental (better to say, mystical). In agreement with this, Mr. Struve, contrary to Berdyaev, gives Mikhailovsky credit for the individualistic tendency of ethics. He “does not understand Berdyaev’s sharp protest against the idea of ​​individualism.” Metaphysically, ethical individualism comes down to the recognition of the multiplicity of self-active spiritual substances. All ethics in this sense rests on individualism. On this same side, Mr. Struve has a natural contact with the individualistic teachings of Nietzsche, the advantages and disadvantages of which are very easy for him to point out. Absolute goodness consists in the fact that man, as such, as a person, therefore, every man, freely contains and creates absolute truth and absolute beauty. Hence, the definition of the highest good includes the postulates of individuality and equality. Nietzsche helped ensure that equality was not understood in any way in the sense of leveling people from the point of view of the public good. Equality without individuality would mean the qualitative sameness of people, that is, something not only not moral, but even contrary to the very idea of ​​man. Morality requires equality of diversity - equality, which includes as equal moments the self-worth of man and the embodiment in each person of the highest good in the human form of individuality. The postulate of individuality requires, in a certain sense, absolute inequality, that is, the heterogeneity of people. The highest good, embodied in people, must create original personalities who, each in their own way, would express absolute goodness, i.e. would be original, and not just specimens of the genus Homo Sapiens. Nietzsche also rendered another service to moral philosophy. The formal conditions for the implementation of absolute good are the recognition of individuality, freedom and equality of people. From this definition of the highest good follow both the standard for the moral assessment of empirical reality and the need for a deep and painful struggle in the soul of every moral person. How to reconcile the desire for absolute truth and beauty in oneself with the absolute postulate of equality or equivalence of people? Every moral person will never cease to be tormented by this painful question in modern conditions. Are not the content of the highest good and the formal conditions for its implementation antagonistic, without which there is no morality, but which, deprived of their content, are so offensively, so terribly empty? In other words, is the highest good possible, such as moral good? This question is a philosophical expression of the vulgar opposition of egoism to altruism. Nietzsche’s great feat lies in his honest and bold presentation and in the same solution to this problem. But on the other hand, the moral teaching of Nietzsche himself contains the deepest philosophical contradiction. Having set the grandiose task of the ideal perfection of man, Nietzsche at the same time connected the ethical and spiritual ideal of the superman, an infinite ideal, with the finite, empirical and ambiguous ideal of biological perfection. Thus, Nietzsche’s ethical worldview carries within itself an irreconcilable and empirically irreconcilable discord between the infinite, ideal and the finite, material principle. Biological morality starts from the fact of survival of the fittest and returns to this fact. But greater adaptation to life, i.e., to the preservation of the race, should by no means inevitably, in theory, coincide with the ideal improvement of the individual. The infinite and spiritual, truly religious ideal of the superman cannot be thought of in the finite and material forms of a “predatory animal.” If we accept the biological ideal, then morality is objectively unnecessary. If morality builds an ideal, then, from the point of view of this ideal, we can fundamentally evaluate, condemn and deny any specific process of nature in which a person participates and in which a person can interfere. Building morality on the law of “nature” abolishes morality itself: independent morality can take into account the laws of nature not as its internal norm, but as its external boundaries, when establishing the rules of empirical behavior, when determining the ultimate tasks of finite individual existence. To complete the presentation of this essay by Mr. Struve, we must mention that he postulates a moral world order independent of subjective consciousness... It can be seen that Mr. Struve’s “preface” contains the main thoughts that Mr. Berdyaev develops in his article. However, it should be noted that the latter did not penetrate into the main essence of the theses of the “preface,” and this is all the more regrettable since Struve himself did not understand all the conclusions that follow from his main theses. Mr. Struve’s main thesis is a decisive gap between the objective realm of experience and the subjective realm of obligation, in other words, individualistic absolutism of ethics, extreme ethical subjectivism, not in the sense of positivistic relativism, but in the sense of the mystical-transcendental basis of the ethical consciousness of the individual. From the point of view of this thesis, let us evaluate the universalism that Mr. Berdyaev talks about in his article and which he himself puts in accordance with Mr. Struve’s “moral world order”. Of course, this is not the universalism that appeared in Berdyaev’s previous book, where we were talking about the adaptation of the individual to the universal, about the connection of the individual with the universal, which lies outside the narrow horizons of the individual. Now we are already hearing about the universal, as the content of individual consciousness, about the connection of the individual “I” with the universal “I,” i.e., man with the Divine, and the Divine is thought of not as something alien and external to the human “I”, to which this “I” must submit, but as his own ideal of final perfection. However, Mr. Berdyaev likens his universalism to a “moral world order” and moves from it to unlimited universal development, i.e., to the progress of culture. Such a concept does not maintain the religious meaning of the idea of ​​ethical anthropocentrism. To talk about the moral world order as an external order that meets the individual efforts of ethical consciousness means descending to vulgar ideas about retribution. The religious idea of ​​ethical anthropocentrism hides such a boldness of spirit that puts it above the need for vulgar ideas about retribution. A religious individual matter, not as a piece of work ordered, but as an essential expression of the religious significance of a person - a religious individual matter, no matter how insignificant a person may be to an external glance, has universal significance, so that the moral world order is inevitably created by the person himself, a religious person. Just as unity is brought into the world of experience by reason itself, before which the defeated chaos of external existence flees, so the moral world order is brought into life by the personality itself. The French philosopher Guyot expressed deep and vivid thoughts on this issue. “In the same way,” he writes, “as an individual becomes more and more aware of himself as a citizen of his country, he feels more and more himself a citizen of the universe, flesh and blood of everything that happens, the cause and effect of all phenomena. He cannot help but be interested in everything; he sees that everywhere around him he can cause movement, no matter how insignificant, to put the stamp of his self on things. He sees with amazement the power of his conscious will. As his mind establishes connections between phenomena, a person thereby connects them with himself and no longer feels alone in the vast universe. Since, according to one famous expression, the center of the world lies in every being, it follows that if this center had sufficient consciousness, if it felt how all the radii of boundless space converge in it and how all the chains of phenomena intersect in its chest, then it would also see how the field for its will is endlessly expanding, it would understand that in one way or another it can influence all things, in a word, every being would feel itself to be a universal providence. Although people have not yet reached this moment of development, it is precisely this ideal that the victorious march of humanity strives for; The share of managing nature is already in our hands, and at the same time, a share of responsibility for the events taking place in the world falls on us. Far behind us are those times when man felt only his own dependence on everything - a feeling that found symbolized expression in ancient religions - while now he begins to realize that everything in turn depends on him due to a natural mutual connection... Man’s ever-growing independence from the outside world will have as its direct consequence an ever-increasing consciousness of his inner independence and an ever-increasing freedom of his thought and spirit” 4 . Struve does not draw all the conclusions that follow from ethical absolutism. He poses a “painful” question: how to reconcile the desire for absolute truth and beauty in oneself with the absolute postulate of equality or equivalence of people? He has two ideas to answer this question. Firstly, people are equivalent not as empirical and random “bundles of perceptions”, not as animal organisms, but as mental substances, as formal units of the genus “man”. We can “think about” the entire content of our “I,” but it is impossible to “think about it,” it is impossible even to mentally abolish it, and this mentally irreducible formal unity is equal in all people. From this “equal” follows the equal value of people. Secondly, the postulate of individuality requires, in a certain sense, absolute inequality, that is, the heterogeneity of people: the highest good, embodied in people, must create original personalities, which, each in its own way, would express absolute good. “These two ideas mechanically limit one another,” and this already reveals their shortcoming. And first of all, from the point of view of ethical absolutism, there can be no talk of essential equality of people. Such equality is one of the superstitions that supposedly originate from the gospel, while the idea of ​​equal sonship of all people is alien to the gospel. Ethical absolutism is inevitably also ethical anthropocentrism. The creative self immediately recognizes itself as the only agent for whom the whole world and all other people are objects of activity. This circumstance makes absolute or essential equality of people impossible, unthinkable. Also, a person feels like “the only one”, and all people and the whole world are his “property” - and in all other everyday relationships. The boundary between “I”, on the one hand, and “you”, “he”, on the other hand, is inviolable. The difference between any other relationship and the religious-ethical relationship, however, is quite significant. The religious-ethical relationship of “I” to “you” is a relationship of essentially religious-ethical absolutism, and not along the peripheries of any accessories. As a religious and ethical personality, a person imprints his intimate essence on other people. As receivers of my inner essence, as reflections of my self, other people are like me. That is why one can only love people religiously, and not animals or soulless things. And, accordingly, one should not speak too hastily about the originality of individuals who, each in their own way, would express absolute goodness. What is certain is only the deepest intimacy of absolute ethical consciousness, accessible only to “I”, even for each “I”, but always for “my I”, and not that one can talk about the objective religious and ethical heterogeneity of people, not that everyone expresses absolute good “in their own way.” Having focused his thoughts on the antagonism between the content of the highest good and the conditions for its implementation, on this “painful question” for every moral person, as well as on the ethical originality of individuals, Mr. Struve expressed, at least, a premonition of the conclusions to which the thesis of ethical absolutism leads. If there is a very sharp contrast between the world of experience and the world of creative ethical consciousness, so that there is no transition from one to the other, then this means that creative ethical consciousness cannot be expressed in forms accessible to observation and knowledge, in objective, natural-historical forms. This is what Berdyaev did not learn. Finding it possible to profess consistent ethical individualism along with consistent ethical universalism, that is, seeing in the “individual” a single spiritual nature, Mr. Berdyaev further sees a serene world between individual development and cultural progress. He equally accepts that the assessment of society is always made by the individual due to the inherent autonomous moral law, taken not from society, and that the human personality develops and develops its individuality depending on the social environment, from which he derives the connection of ethical individualism with public affairs. Of course, here the matter may be about such trifles that would not be worth talking about. Remaining within the scope of the article in question. Berdyaev, one can understand not the connection of personal ethical consciousness with the forms of social life (which he already asserts in subsequent articles), but only the empirical dependence of individual development on the social environment and hence the personal interest of everyone in social progress. Who will argue with this? And in order to reveal the uncertainty of thought hidden here, we will present the opinions of writers of two opposing camps. S. Bulgakov, a writer who belongs to the same camp as Mr. Berdyaev, writes: “The peculiarity of the progressive development of human societies and the human personality in them is that, as one of its necessary conditions, it presupposes the process of material well-being, in the language of political economy, the growth of national wealth. There is a mutual conditionality between material and spiritual civilization, but - in a strange way - at the same time there is also an undoubted antagonism. Material civilization is both wings and fetters for the spirit, for if thanks to it the strength of a spiritual person grows, the philistine element also receives extraordinary power. With the growth of wealth, the world increasingly becomes Martha, who is busy with many things, and the modest Mary with her “only need” is involuntarily forgotten. The antagonism between material and spiritual civilization is ineradicable, and the philistine will always keep the free flight of the human spirit” 5 ... Now let us ask: Mr. Berdyaev, when he says that spiritual culture, the bearer of which is the individual, needs a material social basis, does he, together with Mr. Bulgakov, mean dependence together with undoubted antagonism? If so, then he is talking about trifles, which could very conveniently be kept silent about - and in any case, what he says does not at all resolve the question of the relationship of a religious person to the public. If not, if Mr. Berdyaev understands a more decisive and irrevocable dependence of spiritual culture on the material social basis, then in this case is he clearly aware of all the consequences of radical universalism? Of the many supporters of the latter, let us dwell at least on I. Bergemann, the author of the book Ethik als Kulturphilosophie (1904). He declares himself a resolute opponent of individualism and a resolute supporter of universalism, and pursues his views with perfect consistency. What is the consistent theory of “universalism?” Bergemann not only recognizes the well-known empirical dependence of personality on heredity and environment, but also attaches significant significance to this dependence. The moral value of an individual is borrowed by him entirely from the treasure that is the common property of the social group to which he belongs. Personal morality is only a reflection of the morality of humanity. We know nothing absolutely valuable in personality. Man is, from all points of view, a relative being. Nothing absolute is given in itself in our experience. We cannot recognize ourselves as absolutely valuable in any respect. The absolute value of a person is a creation of our imagination or our faith, a fiction that dissipates upon closer examination. An individual, with his instinct of self-preservation and happiness, with his desire for self-improvement, stands on the path to moral goals only if he looks at himself not as an end in itself, but as a means - he subordinates himself to social and universal goals 6 ... Does Mr. Berdyaev agree to profess such consistent universalism? He could have done this when he wrote the book “Individualism and Subjectivism in Social Science,” when he preached that society is everything for man, but the author of the article “The Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism” can no longer do this. He, however, finds it possible to simultaneously profess both consistent ethical individualism and no less consistent ethical universalism. But this is a claim that he did not live up to. In the criticism of F. Nietzsche attached to his article, in conclusion, Mr. Berdyaev writes the following. “Kant interpreted too old the idea that human nature is sinful and corrupt, and came to a whole series of false ethical positions that fundamentally deny the Dionysian principle of life. He was right only in that he considered the moral law to be the law of the will, and not of feelings. But we would like to liberate the life of feeling, the immediate life. Sensual nature in itself; not evil, it is ethically neutral, it becomes evil only when it hinders the development of personality, when it obscures higher self-awareness and self-realization. I will say more: the purely spontaneous play of forces in a person has enormous aesthetic value and, taking place on the other side of ethics, this play of forces is not condemned by ethics. Instincts in themselves are neither moral nor immoral, but a person without instincts would not have flesh and blood, he would not live within the limits of experience. so that the author is clearly aware of the words that came out of him under the influence of Nietzsche. Sensual nature in itself is ethically neutral - this thought, clearly recognized, is fraught with broad conclusions that the author does not make. And this very idea would need to be expressed broadly: not only sensual nature, but also history in its regularity, in social forms, is ethically neutral. Mr. Berdyaev approaches the same topic - under the influence of Shestov - in the article “Tragedy and Everyday Life,” to which we will now turn. Tragedy - according to Mr. Berdyaev - begins where individual human fate is separated from the fate of the whole world. Objectively, every human life is tragic, but subjectively only those who consciously and acutely faced the question of their individual fate and who challenged all recognized universal values ​​feel tragedy. Failure in the place where the individual and the universal are intertwined is the essence of tragedy. “I,” an individual living human being, am perishing, dying, “I,” a being with boundless demands, claiming eternity, immeasurable power, final perfection for myself; and they console me with the fact that there is “good”, which we all must serve, that there is “progress”, which prepares a better, more joyful, more perfect existence for future generations, that there is “science”, which provides a generally binding knowledge of the laws of nature, the very nature that presses me so mercilessly. But “good,” “progress,” “science,” all the values ​​of the world, the distant world, are powerless to save me, to return to me even one of my lost hopes, powerless to prevent my death, to open eternity for me, to make me, every given “me,” strong. People who are unfamiliar with tragedy and want to cover it up with everyday life, transfer the boundlessness of the aspirations of the human spirit from the individual to the human race, and offer to attach themselves to the historical fate of humanity. But if each individual human being does not live forever, the highest joy, strength and perfection are not prepared for him, then cursed be the future joy, strength and perfection of the impersonal world - the future of humanity. This is the problem of individuality, the basic problem of human life, the root of all religions, the problem of theodicy. This is Shestov's main problem. The most evil enemy for him is the deification of the moral law, the Kantian categorical imperative, Tolstoy’s “good is God.” Shestov has his own philosophy, his own ethics, perhaps even his own religion. For him, the philosophy of tragedy is truth, truth is truth and truth is justice. The philosophy of everyday life is a lie, its truth is false, its “good” is immoral. Positivism and idealism are just different forms of everyday philosophy. Positivism speaks about this openly; it wants to organize humanity, create solid ground (both in theory and in practice), and banish everything problematic from life. But idealism, especially Kantian idealism, strives to consolidate everyday life, creates a system of ideas and norms with the help of which knowledge, morality, and human life in general are organized. G. Berdyaev recognizes Shestov’s great merit in sharp, deep psychological criticism of all kinds of positivism, all kinds of affirmation of everyday life, even under the guise of idealism. Along with this, Shestov gives a psychological justification for transcendental quests. Another merit of Shestov is in debunking the idea of ​​the sovereignty of “good”, in revealing the powerlessness of “good”. Shestov's psychology of tragedy marks the transition from powerless, ordinary “good” to transcendental power, i.e. God. Any philosophy that starts from tragedy and takes it into account is inevitably transcendental and metaphysical, while any philosophy that ignores tragedy and does not understand it is inevitably positive, even if it calls itself idealism. Transcendental metaphysics is the philosophy of tragedy; it must abandon school rationalism and turn to the experience of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky as the most important source of its highest knowledge. Positivism in all its types and forms is a philosophy of everyday life; it always tries to create strong foundations for human knowledge and human life, but is refuted by the very fact of the existence of tragedy, before which all its structures collapse. Rationalistic and Kantian idealism is also positivism, also a philosophy of everyday life. This kind of idealism creates a system of rational ideas and norms that are designed to strengthen order in life and establish everyday sublimity. All these rational and “critical” idealists do not understand tragedy, they are afraid of the underworld, their “ideas” are covered by distant horizons, they are fixed in a limited world, they hold back all immortal aspirations. All true rationalists, even if they call themselves metaphysicians and idealists, in their intimate essence are positivists. Mr. Berdyaev proposes to call positivism such a state of mind in which a limit is placed on human aspirations and experiences, and this limit creates strength and stability. Transcendental metaphysics - the philosophy of tragedy is the negation of any limit to human aspirations and experiences, any system of final calm and final stability. For such a philosophy, the problem of individuality should be the main, starting point. Our entire philosophical and moral worldview must be restructured so that at the center is the question of individual human destiny, so that our intimate tragedy is the main, driving interest. It is time to take the point of view of transcendental individualism, the only philosophy of tragedy, and not of everyday life, and to re-evaluate all moral values ​​according to this. It is possible to affirm the world and its values, to realize the fullness and perfection of universal existence only by affirming transcendental individuality, fulfilling one’s individual destiny in the world. It is very tempting for philosophers to rationalize goodness and thus establish a moral law, generally binding ethical norms. And individualistic ethics is guilty of rationalization. Thus, Kant managed to completely logicize ethics and turn healthy individualism into scholastic formalism. Logical normativity, an intimate essence, was introduced into the moral problem. All Kantians, critical positivists, rationalists and idealists are marking time, everyone wants to build morality from reason. But philosophy must radically break with all attempts to rationalize the moral problem, to impose rational good, to establish ethical standards by analogy with logical or legal ones. Behind all these rationalistic and moralistic attempts lies the deep philistinism of modern society, an obsessive and complacent routine. Kantian ethical norms, so inspiring German professorial idealism, are imbued with the spirit of philistinism, this specifically German philistinism. From the mind of philosophizing philistines one can create the morality of everyday life, but the true moral problem begins where tragedy begins, and only people of tragedy have the inner right to speak about good and evil. In contrast to Shestov, Berdyaev places “everyday life” “beyond good and evil”, considers its “norms” to be morally indifferent and necessary only for the creation of well-being, while “tragedy” is inextricably linked with the problem of good and evil, it is a painful moral split, a moral experience and therefore flows within the boundaries of “good and evil”. The experience of tragedy is the main, basic material for moral philosophy - only by reckoning with tragedy can one build ethics. Therefore, Nietzsche understood more about these issues than Kant, and had more right to speak about the problem itself, which is given only in new experience. Ethics is possible only as part of the philosophy of tragedy, and its source should not be reason, but experience. The area of ​​morality is extra-rational and has no pattern; the problem of good and evil is an irrational problem. Kant invented “practical reason” and wanted to disguise his rationalism, his deep ignorance of those experiences in which the moral problem is revealed. And all these neo-Kantians, all the idealists who talk about ethical norms, about a universally binding moral law, do not know moral experience, since this experience is only in tragedy, in the experience of the problem of individuality. The moral problem is the problem of individuality; it is the same tragic question about the individual fate and individual destiny of a person. In moral torment, a person seeks himself, his transcendental “I,” and not ways to streamline life and mutual everyday relationships between people, as rational moralists claim. And therefore, a moral problem can only be solved individually, and for this decision a person is not responsible to anyone, the judge here can only be superhuman. Good is the intimate relationship of a human being to the superhuman principle living within him. Good is absolute, for everyone it lies in fulfilling one’s individual, unique destiny in the world, in establishing one’s transcendental individuality, in achieving the absolute fullness of eternal existence. And this absoluteness of good does not prevent, but rather obliges us to deny the moral norms that are the same for everyone. There are as many ways to solve a moral problem as there are individuals in the world, although in these ways the same absolute good is realized - the fullness and freedom of transcendental being... This is what Mr. Berdyaev writes in his article “Tragedy and Everyday Life.” It is striking how different the point of view of this article is from those on which he stood before. If earlier in the book “Individualism and Subjectivism in Social Science” he revealed the sociological principle that society is everything for man, if in the article “The Ethical Problem in the Light of Philosophical Idealism” he sought to combine individualism with universalism, now he decisively takes the point of view of ethical individualism, moving from a mixture of socialism and Kantianism to Nietzsche and Shestov. However, he sharply moralizes Nietzsche and Shestov and develops a system of strictly ethical individualism, with which one can readily agree, from a religious-Christian point of view, in general. But the question arises: what is the relationship of religious and ethical absoluteness to the public? How now, from the point of view of individualism, does Mr. Berdyaev solve the religious-social question? He understands well that the decision he gave earlier no longer suffices; he clearly poses the question, but finds it difficult to give a direct answer to it. At the conclusion of his article he writes the following. “How to strengthen and organize human society on such disorganizing and problematic moral foundations? I think that human relations can be regulated by law, behind which lies a transcendental sense of honor. You can deny ethical norms, but recognize legal norms that are designed to protect human individuality. Law is that side of morality that can be rationalized. Democratic ethics is disgusting nonsense and fundamentally contradicts individualism, but the democratic social system is a conclusion from the foundations of individualism. Let them calm down - law, also divine and transcendental in nature, will not allow chaos, will protect from violence. Raskolnikov will not kill the old woman, the police, not moral, but real, will prevent everything, and the man of tragedy does not need to commit ordinary criminal crimes. Raskolnikov’s horror is that he wanted to make a new experience, transcendental in its meaning, he wanted to accomplish a feat, but what came out was the most ordinary criminal story. The revolution of morality not only does not threaten the destruction of the “declaration of the rights of man and citizen,” but, on the contrary, will strengthen it even more. I do not know how to strengthen and organize the building for human well-being, but I deeply believe that the new morality will have a liberating meaning and will bring with it freedom that will bring us closer to the new world. Freedom is the value of the morality of tragedy, and not the morality of everyday life, it is undoubted. But I don’t know how to save myself from a radical split, from “double accounting”... Perhaps a new love coming from another world can save and sanctify creative freedom”... This page in Mr. Berdyaev’s book is very remarkable. Here he approaches the solution of the religious-social problem according to the principle of heterogeneity of the personal-religious and conditionally social spheres. Morality, and specifically religious morality, religious absoluteness, is the principle of personal life, and “human relations can be regulated by law.” “You can deny ethical norms, but recognize legal norms.” “Individualistic ethics and the democratic social system” These formulas would need to be compared with Mr. Struve’s formulas, which establish the opposition of being and ought, knowledge and ethics. A comparison would be very instructive. But just as Mr. Struve did not draw all the conclusions from his principles, so Mr. Berdyaev came to these formulas not from the deep principles recognized by Mr. Struve, but from random impressions from the systems of Nietzsche and Shestov, although he hastened to ethicize these systems. From here it is easy to understand his confusion at the radical split, at the imaginary “double-entry bookkeeping.” He didn’t even get to the fundamental split. With strange inconsistency, he declares that “law is also divine and transcendental in nature.” But if law is divine and transcendental, then it does not differ from religion-morality, and, therefore, religion-morality must provide norms for social life, must sanctify its forms. In this case, an individualistic moral-religion should lead to an individualistic solution to the social question, i.e., to anarchism, or, on the contrary, a democratic social system should postulate a sociological religion-morality in the spirit of Feuerbach, Comte, Guyot, Bergemann, Lévy-Bruhl, Baye, Dumont, etc. I do not hide the fact that for our time the idea of ​​the heterogeneity of the spheres of personal-religious and conditionally social is too new that representatives of the social sciences themselves consider moral philosophy their last refuge. Eg. E. Spektorsky, the author of “Essays on the Philosophy of Social Sciences”, stands from the point of view of the inextricable connection of social sciences with moral philosophy. In the preface he states that “the philosophy of the social sciences, their real philosophy, their real theory of knowledge, is precisely moral philosophy,” and he ends his book with the words: “The social sciences are moral sciences. And the real philosophy of the social sciences is moral philosophy. Accordingly, since they generally need philosophy, it is precisely this that should serve as their “theory of knowledge” 7 1). But it is the philosophy of religion and ethics that must overcome this point of view - must declare that they have no fulcrum for determining the forms of social life. Otherwise, the philosophy of religion and ethics will be forced to either transfer the individualistic principle to public life or build a sociological religion-morality. And in this regard, it is interesting for us to trace the further evolution of Mr. Berdyaev’s religious and ethical views. In the article “On the New Religious Consciousness,” Mr. Berdyaev is influenced by D. S. Merezhkovsky. In the soul of the new man, writes Mr. Berdyaev, the layers of different great eras intersect: paganism and Christianity, the ancient god Pan and the new God who died on the cross, Greek beauty and medieval romanticism, Dionysus, in which the image of the pagan god merges with the image of the Christian God, and rebirth - the birth of a man of new history and the thirst for a new coming revival. The new soul bifurcates, becomes more complex to the last limit, moves towards some kind of crisis, desired and terrible. The gods and God are resurrected in us. And we live not only in an era of decline and fragmentation of culture, in a godless era of small affairs on the plain, but also in an era, exciting in its global significance and interest, of the inception of a new religious revival, the ignition of a new religious consciousness. – A characteristic, essential feature of our new revival is that it is double, dual: the Christian God is reborn, resurrected, and the pagan gods are reborn, resurrected. We are experiencing not only a Christian renaissance, but also a pagan renaissance. We are enchanted not only by Golgotha, but also by Olympus; we are called and attracted not only by the suffering God who died on the cross, but also by the god Pan, the god of the earthly elements, the god of voluptuous life, and the ancient goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of plastic beauty and earthly love. In our golden dreams we dream not only of the sky populated by disembodied spirits, but also of a transformed earth, spiritualized flesh, we dream of nature animated by fauns and nymphs, and we reverently bow not only before the cross, but also before the divinely beautiful body of Venus. People usually dream of this golden age either in the past or in the future, in time, in empirical existence; but also in eternity, in timeless existence, one can wait for the resurrected earth, sacred flesh and see the sacred path to it not only above, but also below. This has not yet been comprehended, but we are already beginning to comprehend something. – A person of a new religious consciousness cannot renounce either paganism or Christianity, and here and here he sees divine revelation; two streams of blood flow in his veins and produce a storm, his thoughts are double. There is no return to paganism as a thesis, and to Christianity as an antithesis; the opposition itself is too old. The new religious consciousness longs for synthesis, for overcoming duality, for the highest completeness; it must accommodate something that was not contained before, connect two poles, two opposite abysses. In historical Christianity it is no longer possible to find an antidote against the new temptations of resurgent paganism, just as there are no antidotes against the sins of historical Christianity in old paganism. When we talk about a new religious consciousness, the last thing we want to say is that all previous religions were delusions and that a new religion needs to be invented. The entire world and historical process must be looked at as a divine revelation, as an intimate interaction between humanity and the Divine. The new religious consciousness is a continuing revelation, containing a greater completeness of religious truth, since at the previous stages of religious revelation only partial, incomplete truth was revealed. The historically fatal opposition between paganism and Christianity, their irreconcilable enmity, which has bifurcated our modern soul, is nothing more than the apparent result of the incompleteness of what was revealed to us; it is only our limitations, which turned historical relativity into an eternal strife between God the Father and God the Son. Will not the new religious synthesis accommodate such a completeness of revelation in which the opposition between the pagan thesis and the Christian antithesis will disappear like a mirage? Golgotha ​​- Mr. Berdyaev continues to develop his thought - lay a black shadow on human history, the death of Christ enchanted humanity, and His resurrection was not understood or was incompletely understood. Historical Christianity accommodated only the negative, ascetic half of the religion of Christ, understood heaven as the negation of earth, spirit as the negation of flesh, and the abyss at the opposite pole was rejected as a devilish temptation. The dualism of heaven and earth, spirit and flesh has poisoned life and turned the world into complete sinfulness. But the life of the world went on its usual way, justified by non-Christian holiness. The life of gender, social life, all the charm of world culture, art and science found themselves at the pole opposite to the religious consciousness of historical Christianity. And now a new religious consciousness lights up, which can no longer endure this gap, this dualism, thirsts for the religious sanctification of life, the sanctification of world culture, a new holy love, a holy community, a holy “flesh”, a transformed “earth”. The new religious consciousness returns to the deep roots of any religion, to overcoming death in the eternal, full, free existence of the individual and overcoming Golgotha ​​in the Resurrection. The Christian Renaissance will begin when (in the words of Merezhkovsky) “denial, dying, mortification ends, affirmation, revival, resurrection begins. From the first - the mournful, dark, secret Face of the Lord, Christianity will turn to the second - joyful, bright, glorious. This greatest cosmic revolution is now taking place almost intangibly, insensitively, just as such cosmic revolutions always take place.” To this view, which is common between Mr. Berdyaev and Mr. Merezhkovsky, the former makes two amendments that are essentially important. Merezhkovsky, as Berdyaev admits, posed the problem of the relationship between spirit and flesh with unusual acuteness, and solves it with a brilliant interpretation of the Gospel texts, artistic intuition and a mystical premonition of the future religious culture. The fate of the new religious movement is connected with a radical solution to the main, new theme about the relationship of religion to the “flesh”, to the “earth”, about the religious sanctification of culture, society, sexual love, the joy of life. But Merezhkovsky looks at the problem of the relationship of spirit to flesh exclusively from a psychological-historical point of view, and not from a philosophical-metaphysical one. He is a resolute opponent of spiritualistic metaphysics; the fight against the spiritualism of historical Christianity is his main motive. Here Merezhkovsky’s enormous merit, according to Berdyaev, can be intertwined with a huge misunderstanding if this problem is not subjected to philosophical consideration. The fact is that the religious problem of the relationship between “spirit” and “flesh” does not at all coincide with the philosophical problem of the relationship between spirit and matter, soul and body, physical and mental, although it comes into contact with it. The “flesh” that Merezhkovsky speaks of is a symbolic concept; it personifies the earth in general, and the entire culture and society (the “body” of humanity), and all sensuality, and sexual love. In this “flesh” there is too little of what we in philosophy call “matter”, a physical phenomenon as opposed to the mental, there is too much of what in philosophy is called “spirit”, a mental phenomenon as opposed to the physical. “Flesh” is not determined by physical properties and chemical composition, this “earth” does not consist of geological layers. The spatiality and temporality of the empirical world is not a necessary condition for the existence of this “flesh” and impenetrability is not the same fatal property of it as the “matter” that crushes us. “Flesh” is also not a phenomenon, an appearance in contrast to “spirit” - noumena, essence, there is something noumenal, metaphysically primordial in it. On the other hand, Mr. Berdyaev insists on the idea of ​​personality. It is not spirit or flesh, he says, that must be established, but personality in the fullness and originality of its being, transcendental individuality, which is “embodied spirit” and “spiritual flesh.” The idea of ​​personality should have a central place in the new religious consciousness; only in connection with this idea can much be decided. Merezhkovsky should have felt the enormous importance of the religious understanding of personality, but he almost does not reveal the religious idea of ​​​​the unconditional significance of the human face, he poorly understands personality, and does not sense it mystically enough. After all, God Himself incarnated in the form of a person and commanded to establish the person for eternity, recognized the immeasurable value of individuality... This is Mr. Berdyaev’s new thought, this is the third phase in the evolution of his religious philosophy, not counting the first non-religious stage of his sociological views. Despite these amendments, which are very important in some respects, from an essential point of view his new thought is the thought of the religious sanctification of the public. And we pose the question of how Mr. Berdyaev now imagines the specific relationship of personal-religious absoluteness to the conventional forms of society. The long-standing idea that society is everything for the individual now turns out to be even impossible, unthinkable. But also the initial thought about the natural coincidence of consistent individualism with consistent universalism, subsequently rejected on the grounds that in it the idea of ​​formal goodness suppressed the idea of ​​free individuality, while the idea of ​​personality is retained in the last phase of the religious-social outlook - and this thought is now unacceptable. Further, the theory of heterogeneity of the personal-religious and legal spheres, barely imagined by Mr. Berdyaev at the individualistic stage of his religious philosophy and then rejected by him under the name of the theory of “double bookkeeping”, is not renewed by him even now, although it, properly assessed, could have served him to the end of great service in solving the religious-social problem. But accepting, on the one hand, the final thought of the religious sanctification of the public and, on the other hand, rejecting just as decisively the theory of “double-entry bookkeeping,” Mr. Berdyaev, together with his like-minded people of all shades, faces the fatal and hopeless dilemma of two paths that do not lead to Rome alone - the path of religious-social absolutism or the path of religious anarchism. The first path leads to the recognition of religious sacredness behind given forms of public, to the recognition of religious absoluteness behind the very idea of ​​a historical form, in particular, the idea of ​​power. It is assumed that a conditionally social form achieves religious holiness, approaching its natural limit, to ultimate perfection: hence social power must be limitless, the family in this form is inseparable, property is absolutely inalienable, class boundaries are absolutely uncrossable, etc. The second path, on the contrary, leads to the rejection of any form, as such, to the sweeping away of power, all power, family, any family form, etc. And this is for the reason that religious-personal absoluteness is inexpressible in any form and, therefore, resists any form. Both of these paths equally do not provide the final solution to the religious-social question, the final synthesis of religion and social reality: conventional social forms remain unreconciled with religion, are not sanctified religiously, are not overcome religiously, because in one case they are paganly deified; so that religion itself occupies a position of service to them, and in another case they are simply swept aside and, consequently, isolated from religion, so that the ancient path of ascetic flight from the world is resumed. And that is why, on both paths, a pessimistic attitude towards reality is inevitable. G. Berdyaev judges the first path negatively and rather decisively takes the second path. Mr. Berdyaev expresses his judgments about the first path, in part, in relation to Merezhkovsky. According to him, Merezhkovsky did not harm himself and the great cause of the religious revival of Russia more than by false notes on the issue of the state and society. He clearly lost his way when at one time he began to restore the old Slavophil doctrine of the state, when he tried to talk about the mysticism of power, when he tried to revive a historical corpse. Merezhkovsky did not immediately realize what he now apparently begins to realize - that the state, the kingdom, is one of the temptations of the devil, that every earthly power, every prince of this world is not from God, but from the evil one, that the new society should be established not in a violent state union, but in a free religious union, that there is no place for violence where the kingdom of love is proclaimed. He failed to transfer the sense of personality, so important for the new religious consciousness, into politics. The same story repeated with him as with Dostoevsky, who in The Grand Inquisitor gave the deepest and most passionate justification for anarchism on religious grounds, the only one in world literature, and at the same time defended the oldest and most banal state ideas. And Vl. Solovyov never fully understood that the idea of ​​a universal theocracy, the kingdom of God not only in heaven but also on earth, is not compatible with the recognition of earthly power, with violent statehood. One must choose: to follow Christ, who rejected the temptations of the kingdoms of the earth in the name of immeasurable freedom and free love, or to follow the one who tempted Him in the desert. And Merezhkovsky was long tempted by imperium romanum, the idea of ​​a mystical monarchy and the greatness of Caesar, to whom he was ready to provide part of what is God. He worships Napoleon, the super-man-god, and in this it is revealed that the influence of Nietzsche has not yet disappeared from him. In Peter, the greatest of kings, he sees an example of a mystical monarch fulfilling a religious purpose, instead of seeing in him simply a genius, always called from above to direct the destinies of history. Mr. Berdyaev met and condemned an even sharper and incomparably more consistent expression of the idea of ​​religious-social absolutism in the person of “K. Leontyev, the philosopher of reactionary romanticism.” – Leontyev, we read from Mr. Berdyaev, was the most extreme statist, he had a real cult of despotic power, worship of state violence. “True Christianity (according to Leontyev) teaches that whatever the earthly hierarchy may be, due to personal weaknesses, it is a reflection of the heavenly one.” “If where poetry and Christian morality are completely at the same time, it is in cases of disinterested movements in favor of the highest and those in power.” Leontyev professed the mysticism of power and idolized the state. He was always attracted by the satanic shadow of Christianity and he used the religion of love only to legitimize torture. Leontyev was one of the most terrible cynics in the history of Christianity, but - Berdyaev admits - there is a temptation in this cynicism, which Christians of our day must reckon with who want to justify liberal-egalitarian progress. You can avoid Leontiev’s sophisms, but there is still no doubt that Christianity is far from a “rosy” religion, that there is a lot in it that is gloomy, almost cruel, that turns away from the world. Let us assume that the religion of Christ does not justify Leontyev’s reactionary fanaticism; he too blasphemously and blasphemously appropriated to his despotic state the mistress of judgment and God’s punishment. But how can we Christianly justify “liberal-egalitarian” progress, the joy of life and much that is dear to us? I would add on my own behalf that in Leontiev’s cynicism there is a great temptation for all those striving to religiously sanctify the public, for Leontiev’s gloomy reactionism is one of two possible ways of directly sanctifying the public, which has exactly the same right to exist as the opposite religious anarchism, in other words, this gloomy reactionism is as religiously powerless as anarchism. And Mr. Berdyaev, criticizing Leontyev, goes to the other extreme. He asks: is it possible to combine mysticism with the cult of positive statehood? How to reconcile a theocracy with any other, non-divine democracy, how to religiously justify the power and sovereignty of the state? This question, in its very formulation, is remarkable. Why doesn’t Berdyaev ask: how to combine mysticism with empirical statehood, but: with the cult of statehood? Of course, this is partly explained by the fact that in this case he is dealing not just with defenders of empirical statehood, but with defenders of the cult of positive statehood. However, he himself knows only the question of the religious justification of power - he himself looks at the social question from the same point of view as his opponents. And this is reflected in his negative answer to the question posed: in his opinion, state positivism in all its forms and varieties is fundamentally opposed to all mysticism, all idealism, all romanticism of mood. There is still some truth in this answer, since Berdyaev calls state positivism a theory that sees the source of individual rights, “the endless rights of the personal spirit,” in the state, in a certain sovereign power that grants and distributes these rights. With this understanding, the type of state positivism can include the most opposite teachings, the theories of the “despotic and monarchical state” and the polar opposite theories of the democratic and socialist state, and the common feature of state despotism is the subordination of the “endless rights of the personal spirit” to state power, which evaluates everything and distributes everything. But Mr. Berdyaev is not content with denying these theories: he contrasts state positivism with a doctrine that sees the source of sanctioning state power in individual rights, in the “infinite rights of the personal spirit,” while the source of rights that are inalienable and not subject to valuation is the internal nature of the personal spirit. If the theory of state positivism applies religious absoluteness to the social system, then, in essence, the theory defended by Mr. Berdyaev looks at the social system from the same angle. He does not say that personal-religious absoluteness and the social system are incommensurable values, but he preaches the replacement of the state with the church. The public, according to Mr. Berdyaev, can be established not on the basis of state, power relations, but on new and eternal mystical-free principles. The great, religious “state” idea that Merezhkovsky was looking for at one time can no longer exist, the times of such ghosts and temptations have already passed, but there is another great, religious idea of ​​anarchy, statelessness, a new theocratic, church union, free-love, subordinating the individual only to the will of God and on earth, in denial of any old, violent state union, subordinating the individual to the godless will of the earth. In a similar way, Mr. Berdyaev has a negative attitude towards the family union. What is needed, he says, is a rebellion not only against false Christian asceticism, but also against the family union, violent, always irreligious (?) and the opposite of the eternal goals of love. After all, a family is a union of earthly improvement, a tribal union, and not an individual one. Christ, according to Mr. Berdyaev, did not teach endless reproduction, which continues imperfection and death, but eternal life and the perfection of personality, individuality. Sexual, marital love should be a sacrament, but that is precisely why, Berdyaev says, war should be declared on any idea of ​​family marriage. New religious people, people of the future religion of freedom, must put an end to family moralism, challenge state-family unions of improvement and surrender to revolutionary-mystical moods in which the problem of sex and love is posed and solved religiously, and not positively, socially, morally. But what, according to Mr. Berdyaev, is the sin of the family? Why does he bring such persecution against her? Sex, he says, is transcendental, love has a metaphysical meaning. But gender is abnormal, as if spoiled, love is tragic. The horror is not that sexual passion is sinful, but that the fullness and eternity of individuality in the empirical world is not achieved by it, that individuality is fragmented, that the life of the sex leads to childbirth and my unachieved desire for perfection is passed on to posterity, doomed to suffer the same torment. So, is the evil of the family in childbirth? Isn't this too pessimistic? Are these not the last extremes of abstract metaphysics? I will not argue with this metaphysical pessimism on its essence, on its content - this is not my task now. Let us limit ourselves to the methodological side of the issue. The starting point of the family question is the old religious view of the family, the old religion of the family (and the people), now renewed by V.V. Rozanov. This intervention of religion in matters of family well-being, in the everyday and legal life of the family, is very important: it was beneficial in the first stages of historical evolution, but religious tradition leads to many hardships in later times, when life has become so complicated that it is no longer part of traditional norms. And what is opposed to this religion of the family? Let us not forget that we are talking about the relationship of religion to the public, that is, not about religion in itself, but about its relationship to public improvement: in the first place, or as a goal, is the public. It turns out that the religious affirmation and structure of the family is opposed by the religious denial of the family. The method of relating to the family remains the same. The family, as before, remains only an appendage to religion, a conclusion from religious thought. At the same time, the old religious-optimistic attitude towards the family, a positive attitude, was better, more blissful, and led to inconvenience only in the particulars of everyday life and legal matters, while with the new religious consciousness the whole family is thrown overboard. Consequently, the entire structure of the family is recognized as a low bourgeois matter, not worthy of attention. And to this we will answer that the issues of the religious community cannot be resolved in this way. To solve the issue of family, you need to love life before its meaning, you need to eliminate all metaphysical abstractions from the family, you need to give the right to legislate life itself, to listen to it, to revere it. This will not be a mechanical-religious sanctification of the public, but a truly religious attitude towards it. Childbirth, according to Mr. Berdyaev, is evil. And this, of course, is because life itself, earthly life, is evil? Yes, says Berdyaev, our flesh, the flesh of our world, is spoiled, defective, abnormal; not because the flesh is sinful in its essence, is an evil principle and must be killed, but because it dies, decays, gets sick and suffers, it is not eternal and not free and must be transformed, resurrected... So, this is where the source of the “neo-Christian” denial of “state-family unions for improvement” comes from: this is a grossly pessimistic, on abstract metaphysical grounds, view of life, on earthly life with its birth and death, joys and sufferings, conditional coexistence. And here, if you like, is the last weakness of this whole “religious philosophy”: such abstract pessimism is not even worth considering. It is true that the Church also teaches about original sin, which not only extends to all humanity, but also causes even the groaning of the creature. But the fact is that the church teaching about sin, from the metaphysical side, has its equivalent in the teaching about grace, about the grace-filled salvation of the world, but it in no way determines our conscious attitude towards forms of life, as such. Let us not forget that a Christian encounters original sin in the form of impure passion mixed with natural forms of life. He must fight it, cleanse natural forms of life from it. But to reject this admixture does not mean to reject the very forms of life. In other words, the Christian view of original sin has two ramifications: it posits, firstly, a hidden metaphysical corruption of life, which grace corrects in mysterious ways, and a moral corruption that floats to the surface of consciousness, which must be fought by a person’s conscious effort. But between these two branches, one deep metaphysical and the other superficial moral, natural life passes through with its legal, “original” forms, which is not affected, precisely in the essence of its relative forms, by either channel of sin. Attributing sin to natural life itself, considering childbirth itself as a sin, for example, and for the sake of this rejecting the family and, further, the state, will not be in the spirit of Christian church teaching, but in the spirit of the Gnostic sects condemned by the church. These are all elementary truths. Now we move on to Mr. Berdyaev’s last book, “New Religious Consciousness and Public.” In general, this book develops the point of view of the last of the articles we examined, included in the collection Sub specie aeternitatis - “On the New Religious Consciousness”, but, upon closer analysis, we will notice two leit-motives in it: in addition to this point of view, it makes its way to the “theory of double-entry bookkeeping,” as Mr. Berdyaev himself put it earlier, or the theory of heterogeneity of the personal-religious and conditionally social spheres, as we would prefer to put it. These two streams flow in the book without merging, without flowing into one channel of higher synthesis, and their comparison leads to the most interesting results, putting an irresistible weapon in the hands of criticism. Nevertheless, what we have said so far about the different phases in the religious and philosophical evolution of Mr. Berdyaev helps us understand his last book. Let us first analyze the preface to the book. The most root cause of the modern loss of meaning in life, this death of religion, must be sought, writes the author of the book under review, in the dualism of the old religious consciousness, in the gap between religion and the earthly fate of humanity. There is something strange and mysterious in the historical fate of Christianity. All human life, human society and culture, all the “flesh” of this world, all world history remained, as it were, outside of Christianity, remained anti-Christian, unsanctified by religion. The victory of Christianity in history was not so much a victory of Christianity over this world as an adaptation to this world, a victory of this world over Christianity. The pagan state, the pagan family, pagan science and art triumphed in history and the church unnaturally united with every worldly force when the fires of the bonfires on which world culture and freedom were burned went out. There was no Christian path of history, no Christian solution to the problems of society and culture. Christianity triumphed only as an individual religious mood, only as a path to individual salvation, and in its purified, uncompromising form it created the ideal of ascetic, monastic, secluded from the world, holiness. Historical Christianity does not know what holiness is, united with the world, affirming world history, world culture, creating society, and does not indicate any path here. Everything earthly was recognized as only weakness, only a concession to sinful human nature. The Gospel was recognized as an unrealizable utopia for the earth. Every turn of historical Christianity to the earth, to worldly culture, to the state, was a disgusting compromise, a fall, betrayal or cruelty. Christianity taught many good things about death and individual salvation, but it taught almost nothing good about life and the salvation of the world in earthly history. In essence, the old religious consciousness denies the meaning of world history, recognizes all culture as a misunderstanding, and does not understand the purpose of earthly flesh. For historical Christianity, the earth itself is a temptation, unnecessary for anything. And all our hope for a religious revival, for the return to us of the consciousness of the meaning of things, is based on the fact that religion will turn to the earthly fate of humanity, comprehend and sanctify the great culture, and turn us to the creative creation of a future righteous society. Religion must become secular in order for the world to become spiritual; It should not be a function of life, but life itself, the all-pervading spirit of life. The failure of historical Christianity was its inability to subjugate all aspects of life... At first glance, everything is clear in this page from Mr. Berdyaev’s book: the Christian religion needs to sanctify world history, world culture, and the family-state community. But the matter does not seem so simple to those who are familiar with Mr. Berdyaev’s previous articles. In fact, if Mr. Berdyaev argued before that Christ saw a devilish temptation in the very idea of ​​statehood, that He did not justify the family union in any way, then was it only the fault and failure of historical Christianity that it was impossible for it to subjugate all aspects of life? Wasn’t this rather part of the very essence of Christianity? Is it possible to have an essentially Christian path of history, a Christian solution to the problems of society and culture? And then, it cannot be said that all “historical Christianity” fits into the norms of ascetic, monastic, secluded from the world, holiness, because it is quite obvious that “historical Christianity” sought to sanctify history and society, remember, for example, medieval Catholicism: what, in this case, does the neo-Christian desire to sanctify history and society mean and how does it relate to medieval church ideals? Mr. Berdyaev answers this question further. Christ, according to him, came to save the individual from death, to establish his existence in eternity, and therefore rejected the race, fragmentation in time with a constant change of birth and death. Christianity in history understood and accepted the truth about personal salvation in heaven, but did not draw any conclusions from this for the earth. The tribal, natural principle still triumphed on earth, and Christianity justified all this. The Christian state, the Christian family, the entire Christian way of life is impersonal and tribal, and only individual righteous people defeated the clan, but through asceticism, withdrawal from the world. In the monastic-ascetic denial of gender and birth, it is not personal life that is revealed, but impersonal death. For the world, for the earth, for life, historical Christianity provides a pagan way of life, a pagan society, the complete triumph of the natural race, and for the individual, instead of life, death is the way of salvation. The religion of the future, continues Mr. Berdyaev, will oppose the tribal state - the union of personalities in supernatural humanity, i.e. God-manhood, the family family - the union of individuals in supernatural love, which consists not in altruism, not in philanthropy, not in humble service of duty in relation to one’s neighbor, but in a mystical attraction that reveals the immeasurable religious significance of sex. The new rejection of the race will not be the old asceticism, abstinence from life, as was the case in historical Christianity, but the affirmation of supernatural flesh, supernatural love, supernatural union of people. The fate of religion depends on whether a personal affirmation of the flesh, free from natural necessity and natural death, is possible, whether new love is possible in the world... The author's entire speech is somewhat vague, and it ends with an impenetrable foggy spot - a suspicious word about some kind of love that does not give birth. So, the church’s sanctification of the natural state and natural love is rejected, the ascetic denial of gender and birth is rejected, altruistic, philanthropic love, the love of moral duty is rejected, and all hopes are placed on the supernatural love of those who do not give birth. If Mr. Berdyaev, after this preface in his book, had not forgotten throughout all the chapters, except one, about this mysterious love of his that does not give birth, then his book could have been safely closed from the first page. But, thanks to his forgetfulness, all chapters of his book, except one 8 1), are written in a universal human language and retain universal human interest. We will now turn to them. However, we will omit the first chapter “The Grand Inquisitor”, in which the author draws out and somehow especially sluggishly and extremely uninterestingly analyzes the well-known “legend” of Dostoevsky and move on to the second chapter “The State” On the question of the state in religious terms, there can be two points of view: either religious ideals are directly attached to the state system, religion is set as a criterion for judgments about the state form, or the state is considered neutral in religious terms and is classified in a category of a different order than religion. In the first case, a dilemma is inevitable - either to affirm the state religiously, or to deny it religiously. G. Berdyaev in the first half of his discussion about the state adheres to the first point of view on the state and precisely the religious-negative one, and in the second half - to a different point of view. The second point of view, which the reviewer defends, is the best criticism for the first, so the reviewer can limit himself to a simple presentation of both parts of Mr. Berdyaev’s argument. According to Mr. Berdyaev, Christ, in his famous words about God and Caesar’s, condemned everything “Caesarean”, since, of course, for Christ only “God’s” was good and everything should be only “God’s” 9 . In incomprehensible words, exploited for base purposes, Christ pronounced his renunciation of the Roman state, recognized it as godless, unnecessary to God, 10 but clothed this negative judgment in a form that did not give the Pharisees the opportunity to destroy Him, since His hour had not yet come. In the words of Christ, in His division into “God’s” and “Caesare’s”, the dualism of the new Christian consciousness and the old pagan state was reflected. Human limitations elevated this dualism into law, Christianity in history, instead of overcoming dualism, turning the “Caesar’s” public into “God’s” 11 , submitted to “Caesar”, renounced “God” on earth... Gospel sources for determining the attitude of Christ to the state must be sought not in the places where they were usually sought with biased goals, with a secret desire to justify evil. Christ forever defined his attitude towards the state, gave weapons for religious judgment over the state, rejecting the third temptation of the devil in the wilderness, the temptation of the kingdoms of this world 12. Dostoevsky, only Dostoevsky in The Grand Inquisitor understood, as no one has ever understood, that the state, the kingdom, the sword of Caesar is one of the temptations of the devil, rejected by Christ. He failed to apply this truth to Orthodoxy and autocracy, but still he remains the deepest, perhaps the first anarchist on religious grounds, who rejected the state in the name of theocracy, the herald of final freedom in Christ - the religious community. The idea of ​​the state, taken abstractly, as a self-sufficient principle, as sovereign power, is both historically and logically the kingdom of this world, a non-religious 13 structure of humanity, inevitably turning into the deification of the state, to which both the human personality and superhuman truth are sacrificed. The idea of ​​Caesar, taken in an abstract, self-sufficient form, is the worship of the “prince” of this world and his sword, the adoration of man instead of God. The temptation of the deified state and the deified Caesar was rejected and condemned by Christ forever 14... The purely pagan origin of the state is too well known. States were based on savage enslavement and savage violence of one tribe over another 15. King Assargadon or Nebuchadnezzar is the earthly limit of the deification of state power, the transformation of a limited human being into a god. The pagan Roman Empire in a cultural and worldwide form established the idea of ​​state absolutism and deified its Caesars 16... Catholicism was seduced by the temptation of universal unity in the state and the deification of the earthly kingdom, which took the sword of Caesar from Rome and created papocaesarism - a false theocracy. The Roman spirit, which seduced Catholicism, passes into the second Rome - into Byzantium, where the Idea of ​​an absolute state and absolute divine royal power finds shelter and fertile soil, giving rise to Caesar-papism, the reverse false theocracy. From the second Rome, this idea, the ancient pagan idea of ​​Assyrian state absolutism, passed to the third Rome - Russia, and here it unfolded with a force unprecedented in modern times, blasphemously uniting with. Orthodoxy... These are Mr. Berdyaev’s religiously negative judgments about the state. These judgments, no matter how weak and unstable they are stated, must be kept in mind by all supporters of the religious view of the public, even if they belong to the type of Leontyev and Katkov. At first glance, it seems to them that the whole problem is in the religiously neutral concept of social life. Meanwhile, upon a more or less careful consideration of the issue, it is not difficult to see that the religiously neutral concept of state-family life does not pose a danger either to religion or to state-family life: both are essentially heterogeneous and therefore are each subject to their own special laws. Of course, there cannot and should not be complete isolation, since every believer is at the same time a member of state-family unions, which, under the influence of Christianity, are inevitably moralized. There remains full scope for the church’s beneficial influence on these unions. With all this, these unions, in their essence, in the conditionality of their own tasks and in the pattern of their prosperity, are “original”, pre-Christian, cannot be determined by the transcendental instructions of the Christian, absolute religion, i.e., they are religiously neutral. On the contrary, the religious view of the public is fraught with a double danger. Here, as we have seen, two paths are inevitable: the path of religious-social absolutism or the path of religious anarchism. Now we want to point out that each of these extremes contains much that is instructive for the supporters of the other extreme. The fact is that each of them, no matter how poorly substantiated, turns out to be irrefutable for the defenders of the other extreme. Thus, supporters of mystical anarchism are powerless in the fight against religious and social absolutism, but on the other hand, representatives of the latter are helpless before the logic of religious anarchism. Whoever thinks enough about this circumstance will understand all the benefits of a religiously neutral concept of the public, not to mention the fact that this is a truly evangelical view of the public. Mr. Berdyaev himself takes this point of view in the second half of his discussion about the state - at first hesitantly, then more decisively, although until the end of his reasoning Mr. Berdyaev does not give himself a clear account of his words. I call - as Mr. Berdyaev writes in the second half of his treatise - evil and godless the state principle, which sees in the state will and its inherent power the highest embodiment of good on earth, the second God 17. What is evil and godless is not just any state in the sense of organizations of social order and a system of government, 18 but an absolute and abstract state, that is, a sovereign state, appropriating full power to itself, not wanting to limit itself to anything higher and subordinate itself to anything higher. Sovereign, unlimited and self-sufficient statehood in all its historical forms, past and future, is the result of the deification of the human will, one, many or all, the replacement of the absolute divine will with the relative human will, is the religion of the human, subjective-conditional, put in place of the religion of the divine, objective-unconditional. And the absolute autocratic state, and the liberal state, and the socialist state, since they recognize themselves as sovereign, see in unlimited state power the source of individual rights, in the state - the source of human culture and human well-being, they are all equally products of unlimited human power: the power of one in an autocratic state, the power of many in a liberal state, the power of all (democracy) in a socialist state 19 . The essence of sovereign statehood is that it is dominated by subjective human will, and not by the objective force of truth, not by absolute ideas that rise above all human subjectivity, all limited and changeable human will. For us, the center of gravity of the problem of the state is the limitation of any state power not by human will, the subjective will of a part of the people or the whole people, but by limitation by absolute ideas, the subordination of the state to objective reason. It is necessary to limit not only the human power of one or some, but also all, since the world should not be ruled by any human power. This limitation of all power cannot be a matter of the people's will, as a mechanical sum of human subjectivities; the limitation of any power, its subordination to the highest truth can only be a matter of the appearance into the world of superhuman power, the expression of absolute will to the world, a will identical with truth and truth that is absolute for us 20. A real understanding of the people's will must see in it a superhuman unity, that is, something higher than the human will and than the sum of individuals. The Spirit of God rested on the mystical folk organism. He is embodied in the people, and therefore the will of the people is the will of God. This will of the people - the will of God - does not find adequate expression in any form of statehood 21. The ultimate and final expression of the people's will, the will of a single mystical organism can be found only in theocracy 22 ... I would like nothing more than that - continues Mr. Berdyaev - so that my point of view is understood as a preaching of amorphism and anarchic chaos. I do not see any truth in anarchy, disorganization and naked denial; I see great evil in all this. Negative anarchism, not subordinate to anything higher, anarchism, as a goal, supports the internal disintegration of the world into atomized particles and does not liberate these particles, leaving them at the mercy of external necessity. Rejection of the state as evil and untruth is not a rejection of any system of government, any social organization and harmonization of life in the name of positive principles. Unconditional evil, the source of slavery and discord, is an abstract state, divorced from the highest center of life, self-sufficient, turned into a goal, a state that is not subordinate to any objective truth and subordinates everything to itself. Such a state is a special metaphysical principle that acquires power in a corrupt, sinful world, a special tendency to support through violence the slavish cohesion of the fragmented parts of the world 23 . We contrast this godless beginning with another beginning, the beginning of the internal connection of the torn parts of being with love and their liberation from necessity, from forced connection 24 . Humanity will not free itself from the need for compulsory statehood until it accepts Christ within itself 25 . Violent anarchism in Russia, which is distributing its body, must be resisted with all forces, but with good forces, not evil, chivalrously opposed. One must believe more in the role of personal creativity in social degeneration, in the mission of geniuses and great leaders, than in political mechanics and arithmetic averages. To harmonize life, we need not political templates, but public teachers whom we could follow out of a free impulse of spirit 26 . Humanity, which has fallen away from God, can develop only with the help of the state, moving through its various stages 27. But those who have realized the meaning of world life and felt the strength to create a new society must choose their own path, must defend the principles of divine truth in the world 28. State forms in themselves are religiously neutral and indifferent, since they belong to the category of temporary means, and not eternal goals 29. But too easily state forms turn into an anti-religious force, into the temptation of the Grand Inquisitor; too often they become an abstract, self-sufficient, deified principle. From a religious point of view, the difference between a constitutional monarchy and a republic matters very little; a constitutional monarchy may in certain cases be even better than a republic (the English monarchy is better than the French republic), but any tendency to deify the monarchical principle, to render God to Caesar, is just as anti-religious as the tendency to deify democracy in a republic. The religious ideal of the public 30 can only be theocracy 31 ... If Mr. Berdyaev had begun his discussion of the religious-social question with this religious-neutral concept of the state, then he would have had to significantly redo the first half of the treatise. However, even in the second half, he exposes the religiously neutral side of the state form as if forced, under the pressure of the inexorable logic of facts, without giving his thoughts the full breadth of an integral worldview. As a result, the second half of his discussion about the state is replete with such expressions that are not in harmony with the general train of thought: “The state, by its very essence, is rather immoral,” “Where did they get the idea that those actual forces that are organized into state power to maintain order, to fight chaos, are always less criminal, much better and more conscious, than the chaotic forces of crime and primitive atrocity?” – “The transition of the state to the church 32, the transition from social violence and coercion to public freedom and love is the absolute norm of social development” 33, etc. Applying a religiously neutral point of view to the critique of socialism produces the best pages in Mr. Berdyaev's book. Here the author reveals and almost consistently pursues the idea that socialism as a religion deserves absolute rejection, is an absolute untruth, but real socialism contains relative truth. For me, these pages are interesting from a methodological point of view, as an exemplary application of a religious-neutral point of view to the discussion of the phenomena of social life. For readers of the Theological Messenger, the very content of these pages of Mr. Berdyaev’s book should be of significant interest, as an outstanding criticism of socialism. There are two types of socialism, writes Mr. Berdyaev - two elements in it, very different, and in social democracy, as a dual phenomenon, these two types are connected and must be dissected by philosophical analysis. There is neutral socialism, organizing the nutrition of humanity, expedient economic life, solving the problem of daily bread, and not claiming to replace heavenly bread with earthly bread. This type of socialism is of great importance in the life of modern humanity and will play a large role in future history, but in the final religious sense it is neutral, it only clears the soil on which a wide variety of flowers can grow. This socialism does not pretend to be a creed, does not replace religion, it operates in a social environment that will be an arena for the battle of opposing religious principles, but in itself is not yet one of these principles. The formation of a neutral social environment, the accumulation of wealth in it and the growth of social justice is an outcome from the natural, bestial state, is the humanization of humanity. What can be called neutral socialism is human truth, which has not yet turned into either superhuman good or superhuman evil. This human process, this overcoming of primitive brutality and the primitive power of nature contains within itself the divine truth, the original, original truth, and above it there is the blessing of God the Father. On the contrary, socialist religion is not the organization of economic life, the satisfaction of the economic needs of mankind, it is not the establishment of economic expediency, it is not a reduction in the working day or an increase in wages, it is a whole creed, a solution to the question of the meaning of life, the purpose of history, it is a preaching of socialist morality, socialist philosophy, socialist science, socialist art, it is the subordination of all aspects of life to daily bread, it is the replacement of heavenly bread with earthly bread, the temptation to turn stones into bread. In socialism, as a religion, the replacement of former religions takes place, all questions of religious consciousness are resolved in their own way, it is no longer human truth that appears, it is not about a neutral environment from which opposing religious principles grow that it speaks: something superhuman, the latter, religiously anxious, religiously not indifferent, appears in it. Socialist-religious pathos appears and in it one can already feel a super-historical beginning, an atheistic beginning, this pathos is associated with the deification of the future humanity, with human self-affirmation, and there is in it a terrible thirst to organize this world not only apart from God, but also against Him. Social democracy, justified by Marxism, is the most perfect and complete form of socialism, and specifically religious socialism. Marxist socialism especially insists that there is a socialist understanding of life and a sense of life, that the socialist world is a transformed world, that socialist society is the beginning of a supra-historical process, that a person who thinks and feels socialistically is a new person, a normal person, that the proletariat is true humanity. Social democracy envisions not only new economic forms, a new organization of production and distribution, but also a new socialist culture, which it completely derives from economic collectivism and subordinates to earthly bread. Social democracy craves earthly paradise and hates heavenly paradise. She preaches that religion is a private matter, that religion does not concern her, but this is a trick, this is only a purely formal assertion of freedom of conscience. In reality, Social Democracy cares very much about religion, since it itself wants to be a religion. For her, religion is not a private matter; for her, all religion is a lie and evil, preventing the creation of an earthly paradise, supporting the exploitation of the working classes through intoxication. Only for tactical, opportunistic reasons, Social Democracy, as a political party, does not touch upon religious issues, does not conduct anti-religious propaganda, and even allows religious people among its members. But social democracy is not only a political party, and even least of all it is a purely political party, it is a new culture, a new life, a new false religion, and with all its spirit social democracy preaches atheism, deifies socialist humanity, affirms the ghostly real life on earth in addition to and against the religious meaning of life. Religion is not a private matter, for no one it is a private matter, but the most objective, the most universal. The formal truth of the declaration of rights, freedom of conscience should not obscure from us the material truth that religion is the main matter of life, its very essence, that the fate of the universe depends on religion. And social democracy recognizes freedom of conscience only in words, the social democratic spirit has no taste for freedom of conscience and freedom in general; in fact, it will abolish freedom of speech if it is needed in the interests of the proletariat, socialism and revolution. Social democracy would like to rape human conscience in the name of people’s happiness, in the name of earthly paradise; it would like to force humanity to thoughts and feelings that relieve the torment associated with the question of the meaning and purpose of life, of eternity, of superhuman freedom, etc. Religion is a private matter - it is an exoteric part of social democratic teaching, but there is also an esoteric part, much more important, in which religion An irreconcilable war is declared, in which God must be eliminated in the name of the happiness of people, in the name of liberating the proletariat from all values, in order to make it itself the highest value. Russian Social Democrats expose all this; the radicalism of Russian nature removes the cultural veils of European opportunist Social Democracy and hits the very center. What is scary about social democracy is the lack of positive, creative content in its religion, the poverty and wretchedness of positive prospects. Its entire pathos is negative, directed towards the negation of the past; the strongest passions and social-democratic inspiration are associated with this turning back, but everything fades when we turn forward. Anger towards what is called “bourgeois” culture is the strongest social-democratic feeling; revolutionary socialism lives and breathes this anger; it is joined only by a negative feeling of envy of “bourgeois” wealth. All the dignity and honor of a revolutionary socialist rests on the existence of persecutors, exploiters and rapists, prison and the bayonet, in a word, some evil in life. The psychology of revolutionism is entirely negative, relative to the untruth against which the revolution is directed. There is no inspiration and flight in revolutionism, no creative ability to be transported to other worlds and look into the distance. Remove from the soul of a believing Social Democrat the negative feelings associated with the bourgeoisie, exploitation of the working class, state violence, etc., there will be almost nothing left in it. The revolutionary is a shadow of past evil, a slave to the hated past. The strength of the revolutionary mood is measured by malice and hatred of evil, and not by love and reverent respect for good. The socialization of the instruments of production cannot become the content of the soul; it is difficult to attach one’s pathos to social technology, to material objects. There remains a terrible desire to erect a Tower of Babel, to establish an earthly paradise, a passionate dream of future power remains, but what positive content can there be in the Tower of Babel, in this established earthly kingdom? People will be happy, that's all they tell us. Past and eternal values ​​are rejected, other worlds are removed as a harmful illusion, the superhuman object of will disappears. What remains is the will of man, directed toward himself, toward self-deification, that is, an empty, meaningless will. People will be happy, the evil of past violence and oppression will disappear, but there will be nothing, nothing to live for, millions of happy people will be seized by a new horror of non-existence. Social-democratic religion in its positive, forward-facing part is a religion of non-existence, and it is no wonder that in its justification it has to appeal to its negative merits, its deeds, which are turned back to eradicate the old evil. But in this negative part it largely coincides with neutral socialism. According to the deeply correct remark of Vl. Solovyov, the lie of socialism is not that it demands so much for the workers in material terms, but that it demands so little for them in spiritual terms. The lie of socialism, as a religion, is not in the elimination of economic exploitation and the creation of economic contentment for the entire human mass, this is the truth of socialism, the lie is in preparing non-existence for the human spirit, in the belittlement of eternal values. The social democratic religion combines asceticism and the cult of poverty and oppression with the ideal of final contentment and satiety. According to social democratic teaching, poverty and oppression raises a person to a privileged height, reveals to him the truth and makes him a bearer of justice; any improvement in the economic situation of the proletariat, any material well-being of the workers carries with it the danger of bourgeoisification. The goal is the greatest possible material satisfaction, the final bourgeois satiety. There is a double mistake here: poverty and too much material oppression do not ennoble, but embitter and brutalize, and therefore it is immediately necessary to improve the material situation of the oppressed classes so that they do not run wild and develop spiritually; and the ideal of final satiety and earthly contentment, taken in its utmost abstraction, is ugly. “I will not refute socialism. Usually he is refuted by those who are afraid of his truth. But we adhere to principles for which socialism is not terrible. So, we can speak freely about the truth of socialism." These words of Vl. are deeply true. Solovyova: we need to recognize the truth of socialism and then the lies of socialism are not so dangerous. The religion of socialism is false, but the process of socialization is a neutral human process of liberation from the power of things and can be combined with religion and subordinated to its tasks, and only bourgeois positivism and bourgeois untruth of the modern world strengthen the tendency in this process that turns neutral socialism into the religion of socialism, which brings new evil and continues the work of old bourgeois evil. There is not and cannot be any final and absolute truth in socialism, the goals of life cannot be found in it, there is not even any independent idea in it. Socialism is only a conditional and relative indication of the means and methods by which in a certain era it is possible to organize the nutrition of mankind, to solve the problem of daily bread in such a way that maximum freedom is achieved by each individual, so that enslavement and the power of man over man are reduced to a minimum. It is possible to organize production and extract the greatest wealth only collectively, but in this collectivism there is no fundamental idea; this socialism is a question of historically determined technology. The ancient curse invariably weighs on humanity: to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow. In the natural, corrupted world, man must defeat nature, wrest from it what is necessary for life; humanity is forced to fight for existence in an organized manner. What is true in economic materialism has already been said in this ancient curse. After death, caring for our daily bread is the most difficult consequence of world disintegration and enslavement. But just as it is impossible to defeat death through natural, only human means, it is also impossible to finally overcome need through the forces of natural human progress, to finally solve the problem of earthly bread. The religion of socialism is the belief that by natural means it is possible to finally and completely saturate humanity with earthly bread at the cost of worshiping this bread and refusing the bread of heaven, that it is possible by human means to remove the ancient curse, leaving the world disintegrated and enslaved, i.e. without reuniting with absolute existence. But the purely human process of struggle with natural necessity, the outcome from the state of the beast must be completed. In this religiously neutral environment, the process of humanization takes place, relative (not absolute) liberation from the power of material things and animal instincts, the release and identification of human forces for the final and superhuman struggle against death and the order of natural necessity. The social question that has so amazed and hypnotized the people of our historical era is the question of a new organization of human nutrition, the liberation of people through human means from the power of things, from the exorbitant oppression of natural and social matter. So, there is a religiously neutral social environment in which a purely human process of emerging from the original natural necessity takes place and the struggle against the enslavement of man by man takes place. This social process leads from the brutal state to the human state, creates the basis for the emergence of personality in history, and above it there is the blessing of the creative-divine power, God the Father. In this social environment and this human process, in what is usually called social progress, there are still no superhuman principles in either direction, there is still nothing final, there is neither Christ’s spirit of God-manhood, nor the satanic spirit of self-deifying humanity 34 . In a neutral social environment and neutral development, there is human truth blessed by God, and everyone must participate in the implementation of this truth. Human social truth cannot be treated either ascetically or indifferently, since such an attitude would be a denial of the meaning of world history and a washing of hands regarding the historical destinies of mankind. Passive non-participation in the implementation of the good of life is active participation in the maintenance of the evil of life. A certain contentment is necessary for spiritual growth; a person is obliged to protect himself financially. It would be unreasonable and crazy to say that this entire neutral and humanly just social process has no relation to our religious consciousness and no connection with our religious goals. But in order to make the purpose of socialism more ideal, to subordinate it to religious goals, it is necessary to make socialism more real, more neutral, less pretentious. Only socialism, which does not pretend to be a religion, does not deify matter, does not place its final pathos in such things as the socialization of the instruments of production and any social form, only such neutral socialism can be justified religiously, connected with religious consciousness 35. Religious consciousness can and should be united with the most complete social truth, with the elimination of classes and class exploitation, with the collectivization of production, with the destruction of bourgeois forms of property, with real economic improvements, with any improvement in the nutrition of mankind, but it is not at all united and reconciled with socialist eschatology, with the false religious belief in a world social catastrophe, after which heaven will come on earth. Religious passions do not correspond to such a subordinate and relative subject as socialism. In its only true form, socialism must be subordinated to the technical instructions of science, which is called upon to manage all kinds of technology, and to the imperatives of ethics, and not to interests and instincts. Socialism is a very innocent and elementary thing, it is social arithmetic, and the passionate hatred and passionate love of the opposite sides, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the fanatics of capitalism and the fanatics of socialism, is an evil rooted in religious discord, in the already religious element and religious consciousness. Socialism is a kitchen issue, and a bad cook is one who, instead of food, serves bad poetry devoid of poetry for dinner, as supporters of the religion of revolutionary socialism do. Socialism must finally be transformed into a simple means, into a method relative to a given era, changing over time, must finally become scientific-realistic and evolutionary-reformist, and only then will the religious sanctification of social matter be possible, then only this social technology, which does not think too much of itself, will submit to the goals of the Universal Logos. We should not forget that any technical method, determined by the specific nature of the era, quickly becomes obsolete. Socialism will also become obsolete, before it has time to be realized, historical creativity will invent more advanced methods... These pages from Mr. Berdyaev’s book, which we have summarized, give positive value to his book. If the same method used in his judgments about socialism were applied to the state and family, he would be on the right path to the truth. We will limit ourselves to brief remarks about the remaining sections of Mr. Berdyaev’s book “Anarchism”, “Metaphysics of Sex and Love” and “Theocracy”. In these final chapters, the shortcomings of the author’s philosophical and journalistic thought appear especially clearly: dogmatism and unfoundedness of judgments, fragmentary theses, as if grasped on the fly, always presuming one or another outside influence, the lack of clarity of his last desires. “We are approaching,” writes Mr. Berdyaev in the second of the named sections, “to something difficult to express in words, to the realm of the ineffable, understandable only in the mystical experience.” Well, if so, then, of course, we have to come to terms with the incomprehensibility of Mr. Berdyaev’s thoughts, which, however, according to the author’s plan, lie in the final basis of his worldview. Likewise, in the third section we read: “everything that I wrote... is based on the assumption that such a religious (and cosmic) revolution is being prepared in the world that by simply renewing the old nothing or too little can be achieved. Perhaps a religious genius, full of religious charm, is needed to synthesize everything that has accumulated for religious evolution.” Only such a revolution, having already taken place, or such a genius could explain the thoughts of Mr. Berdyaev. And this is no joke on the part of the reviewer: we really are encountering impenetrable darkness. In particular, in the section on anarchism we come across some fair thoughts. “Practical anarchists resort to the most terrible violence in person, wanting to destroy all violence, they rape with the name of freedom on their lips; anarchist theorists cannot name anything other than matter and external necessity to justify the unlimited freedom of the individual in a free, stateless society... The weakness and helplessness of modern anarchism lies in the complete absence of creative forces, in the impossibility for it to create a new free world, and therefore it is not able to completely crush the evil of the old world, it does not have a strong enough antidote.” Along with this, strange and, most importantly, unexpected thoughts come across. After all, strictly speaking, the question of anarchism for the author is predetermined by his previous discussions about the state. If humanity, which has fallen away from God, can develop only with the help of the state, passing through its various stages, if state forms themselves are religiously neutral, indifferent, since they belong to the category of temporary means and not eternal goals, then, obviously, Mr. Berdyaev, in the case of consistency of thinking, could be an anarchist solely in the sense of ethical individualism and religious radicalism and could not be an anarchist in the sense of social theory. And indeed, in one place Mr. Berdyaev writes: “We must contrast political radicalism with ethical and religious radicalism, which consists in setting radical goals and in assimilating the means and methods of struggle to these goals. A radical attitude towards society will only be one that seeks to change the essence of things, the root of social existence, which seeks to transform human nature itself, to create a new man, bringing with him a new spirit.” Under the correspondence of means to goals. Berdyaev understands that freedom cannot be asserted by violence, but it does not occur to him that in general there can be no objective social means to achieve such, that the desire to change the essence of things, to transform human nature itself is too deep, or too high, in other words, too intimate for state means. However, not to be an anarchist, when anarchism is such a fashionable phenomenon and gives the philosophical system a brand of highest value in the market of popularity?! And Mr. Berdyaev declares himself an anarchist. "Christ was the divine herald of the truth of anarchism." Historically false, literary rude and religiously vulgar. “Bakunin is closer to us than Marx.” Well, of course: “ten two pages have already passed” since “Marx was close to us.” All fashionable names should become “close to us” in turn. To save himself from the “vulgarity” of anarchism, Mr. Berdyaev preaches “theocratic anarchism” and interprets “true anarchism” in the sense of “true hierarchism.” Mr. Berdyaev begins the department “Metaphysics of Gender and Love” with these words: “The question of sex and love is of central importance for our entire religious-philosophical and religious-social worldview.” And yet we cannot give the slightest idea about the content of this section: it is presented so vaguely. Most of all, the author here is influenced by V. S. Solovyov’s vague article “On the Meaning of Love.” But other more fashionable influences are also possible. The saying of Mr. Berdyaev: “Christ taught about the divine Eros, about the heavenly Aphrodite” also cannot but be called historically false, literary rude and religiously vulgar. The key to Mr. Berdyaev’s vague speech seems to be given by his phrase: “The so-called unnatural forms of love and sexual union, which infuriate narrow-minded moralists, from a higher point of view are no worse than the forms of the so-called natural union.” Thus, it was Kuzmin’s turn to “be close” to the “unlimited moralist” Mr. Berdyaev... The last chapter is equally vague, in which the author assures that “the church is Eros incarnate.” The clearer thoughts of the author are the following: about the universal. priesthood, the replacement of the state by the church and the “chiliastic thousand-year kingdom of God.” When these lines were already written, I picked up the newly published and much acclaimed collection “Vekhi,” which begins with Mr. Berdyaev’s article “Philosophical Truth and Intelligentsia Truth.” This article makes it clear that the evolution of Mr. Berdyaev’s religious and social views has not yet ended. In the collection "Vekhi" a group of writers pronounces a strict verdict on the Russian intelligentsia, and this verdict in the mouths of, if not all, then some of these writers turns out to be self-condemnation. This can be said with complete confidence about Mr. Berdyaev’s article. In this article, he reproaches our intelligentsia for never appreciating impartially and disinterestedly objective philosophical and scientific truth. Our intelligentsia “had a selfish attitude toward the truth, demanding that the truth become an instrument of a social revolution, national well-being, and human happiness. She was tempted by the Grand Inquisitor, who demanded the abandonment of truth in the name of people's happiness. The main moral judgment of the intelligentsia fits into the formula: let the truth perish, if its destruction will make life better for the people, if people will be happier, down with the truth, if it stands in the way of the cherished cry “down with autocracy”... Poor Russian thought! Whatever dishes are served to the hungry Russian intelligentsia, they accept everything, feed on everything, in the hope that the evil of the autocracy will be defeated and the people will be liberated. I am afraid that the most metaphysical and mystical teachings will also be adapted for home use. But the evil of Russian life, the evil of despotism and slavery will not be defeated by this, since it is not defeated by the distorted assimilation of various extreme teachings. The interests of theoretical thought were belittled in our country, but the most practical struggle against evil always took on the character of confessing abstract theoretical teachings. We called the true philosophy the one that helped fight the autocracy in the name of socialism, and the obligatory confession of such a “true” philosophy was recognized as a side of the struggle itself.” If we want to find an example of such a selfish attitude towards philosophical truth, such an adaptation of the most metaphysical and most mystical teachings for home use, then we can safely dwell on the philosophical and social evolution of Mr. Berdyaev, whose constant weakness was the inability to distinguish between objective truth and conventional cultural means, on the one hand, and intimate beliefs, on the other. Now Mr. Berdyaev firmly professes that “the spirit of scientific positivism in itself does not exclude any metaphysics and any faith.” At the same time, our author postulates “positive religion” and “national philosophy”. The notorious “New Way,” a journal of religious quests and metaphysical sentiments, according to Mr. Berdyaev, “suffered most of all from the lack of a clear philosophical consciousness and treated philosophy almost with contempt. Our most remarkable mystics are Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Vyach. Although Ivanov provides rich material for a new formulation of philosophical themes, they themselves are distinguished by an anti-philosophical spirit, an anarchic denial of philosophical reason. Meanwhile, Russian mysticism, which is essentially very valuable, needs philosophical objectification and normalization in the interests of Russian culture. I would say that the Dionysian principle of mysticism must be combined with the Apollonian principle of philosophy. Philosophy is one of the ways to objectify mysticism; the highest and complete form of such objectification can only be positive religion. The intellectual consciousness requires radical reform, and the purifying fire of philosophy is called upon to play no small role in this important matter. All historical and psychological data indicate that the Russian intelligentsia can move to a new consciousness only on the basis of knowledge and faith, a synthesis that satisfies the intelligentsia’s positively valuable need for an organic combination of theory and practice, “truth-truth” and “truth-justice.” But now we spiritually need to recognize the intrinsic value of truth. This would bring a refreshing stream to our cultural creativity. After all, philosophy is an organ of self-awareness of the human spirit and not an individual organ, but a supra-individual and collective one. But this super-individuality and conciliarity of philosophical consciousness is realized only on the basis of a universal and national tradition”... No matter how difficult it is to see such an all too frequent change of philosophical and social trends, we cannot but welcome this latest turn to rational philosophy, to positive religion and to national tradition. Sn. "The religious problem in modern light." Many deeply correct critical remarks were made by Mr. Struve in the preface to Mr. Berdyaev’s book. We read the same thing in the article “The Ethical Problem in the Light of Ethical Idealism” - at the end of it, in the attached criticism of Nietzsche. Being carried away, as usual, by the criticized view. d, Berdyaev writes: “The human “I”, which is based on the same spiritual essence for all people, in life takes on flesh and blood, it must be unique, have its own colors, in a word, be an individuality. Man is a “difference being” and he should not tolerate leveling, he must protest against the attempt to train him according to one template, to make a “choir boy” out of him, to turn him into a specimen useful for the herd. There is no one impersonal way of realizing moral good; these methods are diverse and individual” and so on. How far does Mr. Berdyaev depart here from the sociological treatment of the issue in the first book! But since this addition to the article under review shows the influence of Nietzsche, which does not extend to the main part of the article (cf. e.g. his speech about the Dionysian beginning of life, which completely does not fit into the framework of the main ideas of this article) - we allow ourselves to ignore this addition. Irreligiousness of the Future, pp. 311–312. From Marxism to Idealism, pp. 192–193. Wenn wir unser Bewusstsein ohne jedwede Voreingenommenheit, ohne religiöse, dogmatische oder kritische Voreingenommenheit befragen, dann gibt es uns die Antwort, dass wir in jeder Hinsicht beziehentliche Wesen sind; dass es an und in uns nichts gibt, das nicht irgendwelchen Beziehungspunkt hätte. Etwas Absolutes an und in uns selbst ist uns in unserer Erfahrung nicht gegeben; wir kommen uns im Bewusstsein nicht als absolutwertig vor, weder in der einen noch in der anderen Hinsicht. Und wenn uns dennoch ein solcher Gedanke entgegentritt; wenn wir dennoch vielleicht auf den Gedanken, als Persönlichkeit absoluten Wert zu haben, stossen, so erweist sich dieser Gedanke, sofern wir nur nicht vor elner gründlichen Nachforschung seines Ursprungs zurückscheuen, als eine Fiktion, als ein Geschöpf unserer Phantasie oder unseres Glaubens, unserer religiösen oder sonstigen Autoritätsgläubigkeit, das bei näherem Zusehen sich in Dunst auflöst... Das Individuum, das Selbsterhaltung, Selbstbeglückung, Selbstvervollkommung sich angelegen sein lässt. verfolgt sittliche Zwecke, sofern es dabei über sich hinausdenkt, sich als Mittel, nicht als Selbstzweck aufasst... P. Bergemann Ethik als Kulturphilosophie (Leipz. 1904, 436–437). E. Spektorsky “Essays on the Philosophy of Social Sciences” vol. I (Warsh. 1907), pp. viii and 245. This is nothing more than philosophical sophistry, which is based on exegetical naivety. If the author undertakes to talk about Christ, he must know the Gospel. And it is strange that Mr. Berdyaev found the fundamental support for his research in Dostoevsky’s “legend”: he would have done much better if he had turned to the gospel itself. And the gospel “looks at worldly life in two ways - from a natural point of view and in relation to eternal life. In a natural sense, physical and worldly life constitutes the domain of the will of God, as this latter manifests itself in the laws of nature. From this side, it is good, but this is an external, spiritual good, which enters the heart from the outside and has no moral properties, and is not subject to ethical assessment. There is nothing unclean here, but nothing is holy either. Natural life receives an ethical form only from the moment it enters into relation to eternal life, to spiritual good. In relation to the spiritual good, worldly life becomes not in itself, not in its external features, but through the medium of the human heart, which is the only arena of their collision... The God of the Gospel has two aspects, being both the God of natural gifts, natural providence, and the God of love, requiring self-denial, but the gospel does not know dualism. It is this line between the two aspects of the Christian God and dualism that marks the path along which the problem goes. evangelical asceticism... This evangelical principle appears most clearly in relation to the family, state and nation”... See prof. M. M. Tareeva Fundamentals of Christianity, vol. II, p. 258 next. But “Christ does not need barometers and steamships (the entire field of science and industry). He doesn't need all the flesh either. He needs only the pure spirituality of the divine life” (Fundamentals of Christianity, vol. IV, pp. 329, 407). Does this mean that from a Christian point of view we need to reject science, art, industrial progress?.. This would be one-sidedness (ascetic), but not the highest and final synthesis, which is possible only with the recognition of the heterogeneity of these spheres. This is not true. “The tempter’s proposal indicated power not in the sense of an imperial crown with courtly splendor, not in the sense of a state principle, as it is applied for its own purposes, but in the sense of a well-known principle that determines the attitude of the sinful world to the rule of truth and goodness: in temptation it was proposed to apply external power to the cause of religion, to the cause of human salvation”... Fundamentals of Christianity, vol. III, pp. 278–279. We may not be talking about flat positivism, which does not want to know religion, but rather about the religious affirmation of the kingdom, and the idea of ​​religious affirmation embraces both the Old Testament theocracy and the pagan cult of the Caesars. Neither from the Old Testament point of view - theocracy, nor from the pagan point of view - the cult of the Caesars were “godless” - and only from the Christian, absolute point of view, theocracy and the deification of the state are unacceptable. G. Berdyaev somehow everything goes wrong. Christ rejected not only the deified state, but also the use of state means to directly achieve religious goals - he rejected the religious view of state affairs in general (Fundamentals of Christianity, vol. II, pp. 273, 349; vol. III, pp. 279, 301). Berdyaev very much tilts everything towards the intended goal - the justification of religious anarchism. In ethics and sociology, genetic explanation is one thing, but evaluation is completely different. The deification of the state is actually a matter of paganism, and in Christianity it is even unthinkable. What is characteristic of Christianity is, first of all, the sin of Catholicism. One can quite agree with this, but who will be amazed by this? Only such fanatics as Gobess, Feuerbach, Leontyev... It is very conscientious and consistent on the part of Mr. Berdyaev if he classifies both a liberal state and a socialist one under the type of “self-sufficient statehood”. “The French Revolution proclaimed a declaration of the rights of man and citizen, but at every step these rights were trampled upon, and even a violent cult of the goddess of reason was established.” And “Marxist socialism directly states that it is possible to take away all rights from a person, rape his conscience, deprive him of freedom, if this is necessary for the interests of the revolutionary proletariat.” But can these absolute ideas, revealed only in the individual, be expressed in some kind of state form? After all, only this possibility would make the question of absolute reason a state issue. Otherwise, this is only a religious and ethical question, deeply personal, and has no direct relation to the forms of statehood. “In its own sphere, from the inside, spiritual life has no contact with the state structure: there is no place in it for domination, slavery, serfdom, it is determined by a different law, the law of love, service to the greater and the lesser. But, of course, this “other” order cannot be replaced by a state system” (Fundamentals of Christianity, vol. II. p. 273). Let us ask again: will the state be replaced by “theocracy”? Are we not talking here about something that lies on a completely different plane than the state with its real tasks? There is too much metaphysics for the question of the state. This is a religious and ethical task of the individual, which almost does not affect state life, and does not at all affect the state form. All this is true, but all this does not affect the state form, and at most, if it relates to the ethical reform of state life. “New public” – not in form, but in religious and ethical basis. The deepest truth, which should never be forgotten and with which it would be necessary to begin a discussion of the religious-state issue. The ideal of the individual's relationship to society, and not the ideal of the social system. Which cannot be a form of social order. The absolute norm of the conditional public?