Nikolay BerdyaevSub specie aeternitatis

Philosophical, social and literary experiments. Moscow: Kanon+; Rehabilitation, 2002. 655 p. (In Russian)

ru ExportToFB21, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 16.04.2012 OOoFBTools-2012-4-16-14-56-32-23 1.0

Dedicating to Lee[1]

ON REALISM (Instead of a Preface)

I have ventured to publish my experiments for the past six years, although I am keenly aware of their imperfection, fragmentary, and obscure inner connection. I publish articles in an almost unchanged form and in chronological order. I know that they will accuse me of contradictions, changeability, inconsistency... So I want to say a few words about these seeming contradictions and about the real inner unity and consistency of the searches expressed in my articles. First of all, I have in mind psychological unity, subjective consistency, i.e., the most real connection.

It seems to me that in the fragmentary, insufficiently processed articles of these articles, from the first to the last, there is one desire to unravel the meaning of life, personal and world life, one dream of a new culture and a new society. The bifurcation and crisis of the soul, reflected in this book, may be of interest not only to me. I have always seen the only real way out of this bifurcation and crisis to be religious, and all the problems of existence have been reduced to a religious problem, although I have tried to consider them philosophically. When one does not yet possess wisdom, then it remains to love wisdom, that is, to be a philosopher[2]. The latter wisdom and real power are given only in religious gnosis[3]. I apologize to the academicians[4] that philosophy was not an "abstract principle" for me[5], that it was really connected with the living attitude of the individual to culture and society, and among social activists, all social believers, that the public, sociality, was also not an "abstract principle" for me, that it was subordinated to the creative goals of the individual and the meaning of the world. Litigation with "abstract" philosophers and "abstract" publicists, with rationalists divorced from the living, real fullness of being, will be resolved not in the "abstract" departments of science, politics, etc., etc., but in a higher instance unknown to them, in the revelations of the Logos.

But there is also an objective, logical sequence of the inner movement of ideas in these experiments. It seems to me that I am not staggering in different directions in them, but am moving towards a certain rational goal that comprehends the world. In this book I see a gradual liberation from the powerful ideological currents of our epoch: Marxism, Kantianism, and Nietzscheanism. I have devoted a great deal of space to the criticism of Marxism and Kantianism, with which I am still connected in my first articles. Then, through an individualistic generalization and a decadent rupture, I pass on to an entirely different justification of the problems posed at the outset. The order of ideas to which I gravitate is best characterized in all its parts by the words mystical realism. "Idealism," which in my first article I recognized as a battle cry, and which was adopted by the current associated with Problems of Idealism, is a transitional state. "Idealism" was good for the initial criticism of Marxism and positivism, but there is nothing creative in it, it is impossible to dwell on it, it would not be real and not religious. And so a part of the "idealists" goes further to mysticism, unites with a trend that had other origins, passes from idealist abstractions to mystical realities. Once the sensation and consciousness of mystical realities have appeared, the reign of illusionism, positivistic, idealistic or romantic, ends, and a new era begins. I must know what the world consists of, what real things it consists of, determine my attitude to them, and settle accounts with realities. I can no longer be a nihilist, I cannot replace mysticism with mystification. Therefore, I need metaphysical and religious knowledge. Therefore, I must build my policy and my ideal of society on real-mystical, i.e., religious, foundations.

The loss of the sense of reality, the separation from the depth of being – this is the essence of our epoch, this is the crisis of modern consciousness. This loss is felt in philosophy, in politics, in art, and in all modern life, which takes place in the ghostly realm of phenomena. Positivism, which still dominates us, fundamentally denies reality, declares existence to be a metaphysical phantom, recognizes only phenomenality, processes, states of consciousness, and leads to hopeless illusionism. Idealism in all its neo-critical forms also does not take us out of the realm of illusionism, it even consolidates it, recognizing only norms, ideas, states of consciousness, and not being.

Positive social democracy strengthens the imaginary being, the illusion of the phenomenal world, and in its visible limit leads to non-existence, the religion of cheerful neo-Buddhism is already felt in it. Everything is torn, fragmented, "abstract", everything is illusory and flat. Only the longing for all-unity, for concrete, individual and absolute being, is real. We went through a romantic languor.

But "realism" begins with the recognition of oneself as a mystical reality, with real self-perception and self-consciousness. Individualism-solipsism[7] cannot even recognize the reality of the ego. But since I am a mystical-metaphysical reality, then from here the transition to the reality of other selves, the reality of God, the reality of the devil is inevitable; The world lives, the blood flows in its veins, everything really exists again.

We pass from positivistic, idealistic and other non-being, to metaphysical and mystical being. Then I understand cognition in reality, i.e., as my unity, and not as a separation from the world, from being. But metaphysical knowledge really unites us with being not in its abstract, rationalistic form, but as part of complete religious gnosis. Our mysticism gravitates towards religion, i.e. towards a certain relationship with the mystical realities of the world, mysticism wants to be seeing, to comprehend the meaning of the world. All threads converge in the central idea of the Logos. Our politics must see the mystical realities beneath historical phenomena, must link its aims with the religious meaning of the world. With self-perception and self-consciousness of the personality, as a mystical reality, real knowledge, real religious revelation and action, real creativity begins. Cultural and religious revival and true liberation depend on the victory of realism, on the overcoming of the imaginary, seeming, illusory reality of the positive world. Mystical realism leads not to static dogmatism, but to dynamic dogmatism, always moving, creative without boundaries, seeing and transforming. Living and real mysticism must always discover something, affirm something, must make experiments and tell about what has been experienced and seen, it is "dogmatic" in the name of movement, so that movement really exists, so that something really happens in motion. Adogmatism, which does not allow us to move, to discover and affirm, which rebels against any insight into the meaning of things, against any creative "yes," is always dogmatic, always stagnant. In fashionable "adogmatic" mysticism there is no progress, no realism, it wants to perpetuate the blindness and illusory nature of experience, and it is strangely similar to its antipode, the old dogmatism. They do not understand that religious revelation, revelation, must continue, and religious creativity has no boundaries only if something has been revealed in the past, if something will be revealed in the future. And you can't create out of nothing. Religion is seeing and real mysticism.

Real and sighted mysticism cannot remain an individual experience, hidden from the world, it must conquer the world, rule the world. Religion must be concrete, sensual, connected with living history, binding to living politics, or religion has never been and never will be as a reality. I do not need a religion that has nothing to do with the fullness of life, with the historical process, with the future of human society. And no one needs such a religion, since religion is not a separate corner of individual experiences, with which everyone consoles himself in his own way, but a real matter of saving mankind and the world, victory over death and non-existence, affirmation of personality in absolute being, affirmation of eternal and rich life. We come to the rejection of only human, rationalistic, abstract political and abstract moral ways of salvation, and affirm the humane path. The acute formulation of the problem of socialism and anarchism exposes the religious meaning of world history, helps us to reject the temptation of the Grand Inquisitor[8] — the forcible construction of an earthly kingdom, in which freedom and eternity will be sacrificed to well-being and tranquility.