Nikolai Berdyaev is one of the most prominent representatives of Russian religious philosophy of the twentieth century, but above all he is the first representative of the school of religious existentialism in our country, who invariably opposes the freedom of the spirit to the Procrustean bed of objective necessity...

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Existential Dialectics of the Divine and the Human

I dedicate to the memory of my dear friend - Lydia Berdyaeva

Preface

Max Stirner said: "Ich habe meine Sache auf Nichts gestellt" – I based my business on nothing. I will say: I founded my business on freedom. Freedom is nothing in the sense of the realities of the natural world, it is not something. That is why I ironically called my first chapter "impious meditation." Traditionally-pious reflection does not begin with freedom. As a son of freedom, I recognize a free critique of historical Christianity and a free critique of revelation, which should be like a critique of pure reason. [1] This book is not dogmatic, not at all theological, although I should like to have the right to say that it is a believer. Philosophy should be oriented not only on scientific knowledge, but also on religious experience. Sientism is a false and limited philosophy. In this book, I wanted to express the inner spiritual struggle of recent years, the torments and sufferings experienced and their overcoming, the hopes experienced. My thought, directed towards the initial and the final, admits of the only possible metaphysics – metahistory. Everything existential is history, dynamics, fate – man is history, the world is history. God is history, a drama that is taking place. The philosophy I would like to express is the dramatic philosophy of fate, of existence in time passing into eternity, of time striving towards the end, which is not death but transfiguration. Therefore, everything must be considered from the point of view of the philosophy of history. The philosophy of history itself can only be prophetic, unraveling the mysteries of the future.

I do not believe in the phenomenological method, which can be fruitful in psychology, which can help metaphysical and meta-historical knowledge; I believe only in the existential-anthropocentric and spiritual-religious methods, if, however, this can be called a method. Husserl wants to investigate the phenomenological method of essence. Heidegger wants to investigate the phenomenological method of existentialism. But at the same time, existentials disappear, and objectification occurs, which closes the mystery of the life of man, the world and God. Expressionism in philosophy is the only true path. The only possible metaphysics is prophetic metaphysics, to use Jaspers' expression, and the metaphysics of the grand style has always been so. Existential philosophy is the expression (expressionism) of my personal fate, but my fate must also express the fate of the world and man. This is not a transition from the individual to the general, but an intuitive revelation of the universal in the individual. Philosophy, metaphysics, is not a reflection of objective realities, but a change within human existence, the discovery of the meaning of existence. Metaphysics is the expression of being. The world is different, depending on whether a person is engaged in economic labor, political struggle, intellectual or artistic creativity, or religious contemplation. And man understands something only when thought is imbued with feeling and the whole being of man is set in motion. What is called being is determined not by thought, not by cognition, not by an idea, but by an integral subject, i.e., by feeling, by will, and by the whole direction. This creates different worlds. Truth is created in the subject, it is not given objectively from the outside. The world seems different, depending on whether we are young or old, healthy or sick, joyful or sad, learned or ignorant, believers or skeptics, etc. Existence cannot be approached, one can only depart from it. Truth is an act of freedom, it is created. Kierkegaard says that truth is identical with subjectivity. God reveals himself to the one. God is present only in subjectivity. Objective truth is the death of existence. There is a great truth in Kierkegaard's words, although incomplete and sometimes distorted. Jaspers says that the transcendent is perceptible only through immersion in the depths of the immanent. This is the same as I am saying, but expressed differently. The same Jaspers asserts that the marginal position of man rests on transcendence. For him, everything is relative, but existential in the absolute. Unlike existential philosophers such as Heidegger and many others, I am convinced that religious experience, the existence of which cannot be doubted, enriches knowledge and enlightens philosophy. But this presupposes a different relationship between philosophy and religion than it is usually understood. True philosophy is hostile to the abstract, it strives for the concrete. Hegel also strove for this, although he did not fully achieve it. The dialectics of this book will not be logical, but real, existential dialectics. My thought is characterized by an eschatological orientation. From this book it will be clear what this will mean. This book was written in an extremely difficult period of my life, both externally and internally. This refers to the existentiality of the creative subject. Great spiritual concentration was needed so that the conditions of life would not be crushed.

Paris – Clamart.