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.

1944-1945

Chapter I: Impious Meditation. The crisis of Christianity. Criticism of Revelation

There are two crises: the crisis of the non-Christian and anti-Christian world, and the crisis of the Christian world, the crisis within Christianity itself. The second crisis is deeper than the first. Everything that happens in the world and that gives us the impression of something external and even grossly material, has its source in the internal, in the spiritual. In a sense, it can be said that Christianity is coming to an end and a revival can be expected only from the religion of the Holy Spirit. Which will revive Christianity itself, being its fulfillment. The weakness of Christianity in a world embraced by movements full of dynamic forces and often demoniacal is the weakness of historical Christianity and signifies the transition to an eschatological Christianity, turned to the light of the future. Christianity is eschatological and will be the religion of the Spirit, the religion of the Trinity, fulfilling promises, hopes and expectations. We are, as it were, in an intermission, and this is the torment of our epoch.

The world passes through abandonment by God. It is difficult to understand the mystery of God's abandonment of the world and man, one should not rationalize this mystery, and this most mysterious fact clashes with the traditional teaching about God's Providence. The crisis of Christian consciousness is deep, it goes back to the very idea of God and to the understanding of revelation. Christians will have to learn a great deal from movements that appear to be anti-Christian, from atheism itself. For in these movements one must feel the breath of the Spirit. That which rebels in human suffering against God in the name of man is the rebellion of the true God himself. Rebellion against God can only be in the name of God, in the name of the higher idea of God. Most rebellions against God, especially moral ones, presuppose the existence of God. There are no truly atheists, only idolaters. Atheism, deepened and suffering, not frivolously cheerful or maliciously hateful, is the affirmation of God.

The God-forsaken nature of the world is its heaviness. Fr. Baader says: heaviness means that God is absent. And the world is now both very heavy and completely liquid. This heaviness of the world and this fluid are interconnected. There is nothing sadder than the fate of Christianity, the religion of redemption and resurrection. The very idea of God and God's Providence was distorted, the slavish idea of God triumphed, and instead of God, an idol was worshipped; the relationship between God and human freedom was misunderstood; the relations between Christianity and the kingdom of Caesar, between the church and the state, were badly realized; the judicial understanding of Christianity and redemption, humiliating for God and for man, triumphed, turning religious life into a judicial process.

The perception of revelation was determined by the human environment, which is changing, can improve, and worsen.

Up to now, no critique of revelation has been written that could be analogous to Kant's critique of pure and practical reason. [2] This critique of revelation is intended to reveal what man brings into revelation. Revelation is two-member, divine-human. There is one who opens, and there is one to whom it is revealed. To a piece of stone or a tree, God could not reveal Himself. But no, even a stone or a tree in an elementary form reacts to the action of higher forces. This is even more true of the animal. Revelation is colored in different colors, depending on the state of human consciousness and on the integral orientation of the human being. There is, as it were, a priori in relation to revelation. If there were no loftiness and loftiness of man, he would never have reached the idea of God and would not have had the power to receive the revelation of God. Not only man's thought about God, but also revelation is colored by anthropomorphism and sociomorphism.