Berdyaev man is a fundamental novelty in man. H
Nikolai Berdyaev was a Russian patriot. He wrote: “Despite the Western element in me, I feel like I belong to the Russian intelligentsia. I am a Russian thinker and writer.” He also died in 1948. He was called "the Russian Hegel of the 20th century."
The main idea of Nikolai Berdyaev is freedom. The philosopher says about it this way: “The peculiarity of my philosophical type, first of all, is that I put not being, but freedom, at the foundation of philosophy.” This means that he considers any problem through the prism of his ideas about freedom. Freedom is self-evident, its existence does not need to be proved. The fact that man exists, that he rises above the world, speaks of his freedom. Freedom cannot be explained causally, it cannot be explained where and why it comes from. Freedom is groundless, it is known only in mystical experience. But the main thing in Berdyaev's understanding of freedom is its uncreated nature.
According to Nikolai Berdyaev, there are three types of freedom:
1. Primary, irrational. It is rooted in "nothing", it is not emptiness, it is what God created the world from. This is what precedes God and the world. Therefore, God has no power over freedom. Therefore, God is not responsible for evil.
2. Rational freedom. It is that it leads to the obedience of the moral law. And submission is slavery, lack of freedom. What is the way out? The way out is that God turns from a creator into a Savior, a redeemer of sin.
3. Freedom imbued with love for God. This freedom is love. And the perfection of man is possible only by ascending to such freedom. But this path to freedom, according to N.A. Berdyaev, is difficult, and freedom itself is a heavy burden, it gives rise to suffering, while the rejection of freedom reduces suffering.
From the theme of freedom, we move on to the theme of man, personality, creativity. According to N.A. Berdyaev, this is the main theme of his life, and the very idea of man is God's greatest idea. In the implementation of N.A. Berdyaev sees the meaning of his doctrine of man. ON THE. Berdyaev elevates man, elevates him into an object of worship, turns him into the center of the world. With such a position, the task of a person is creativity, in the process of which salvation from evil and sin occurs.
From the experience of his life, Nikolai Berdyaev was well acquainted with the tendency to suppress the personality observed among the revolutionary intelligentsia. Therefore, N.A. Berdyaev condemns all manifestations of this trend, advocates the primacy of the individual over society.
In Self-Knowledge, Nikolai Berdyaev writes: “The experience of the Russian revolution confirmed my old idea that freedom is not democratic, but aristocratic. Freedom is not interesting and is not needed by the insurgent masses. Hence the conclusion: freedom is individual, personality is valuable in itself, it is above all.
N.A. value Berdyaev as an original Russian philosopher that "in our cruel age he glorified freedom" and called for mercy to man. Along with N.A. Berdyaev Russian religious philosophy developed in the work of L.I. Shestova, S.A. Bulgakov, P.A. Florensky.
Philosophical knowledge, its specificity, structure and functions.
The structure of philosophical knowledge:
1) By comprehending nature and the Universe, ontology arises (Greek ontos - being, logos - doctrine) as a doctrine of being. Here the problems of being and non-being, material and ideal being, the being of nature, society and man are considered. The philosophy of nature (natural philosophy) is a kind of ontology. The main focus is on what is natural being and nature in general. The theory of development - the doctrine of the universal lawful movement and development of nature, society and thinking.
2) Philosophical understanding of history and society as a whole forms the following disciplines: sociology, social philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of culture, axiology.
Sociology is the doctrine of the facts and forms of social life (social systems, forms of communities, institutions, processes).
Social philosophy studies society in the interaction of all its aspects, the laws of its emergence, formation and development. Various social processes and phenomena are considered at the macro level, the level of society as a whole as an independent self-developing system. The main problems that social philosophy touches upon are: the interaction between different societies; public relations in the process of people's practical activities; objective interests and needs of society and the individual; motives and goals of human activity in a particular society.
The subject of the philosophy of history is the determination of the laws of the historical process, the identification of the meaning and direction of the movement of human history.
The philosophy of culture explores the specifics of the emergence and development of cultural processes, the essence and significance of culture, the patterns and characteristics of cultural and historical progress.
Axiology is a philosophical doctrine of values and their nature (from the Greek axios - value and logos - teaching), their place in reality, their relationship with each other and various cultural and social factors, as well as the structure of personality.
3) Philosophical understanding of a person identifies the following elements of philosophical knowledge: philosophical anthropology and anthroposophy. Philosophical anthropology explores one of the most important problems of philosophy - the problem of man: revealing his essence, analysis historical forms his activity, the disclosure of the historical forms of his being. The main range of problems: natural, social and spiritual factors of human development; essence and existence, man in interconnection with the Universe, conscious and unconscious, individual and personality, etc. Specifically, anthroposophy is engaged in understanding the meaning of the emergence and life of a person.
4) Through the study of spiritual life, the following complex of philosophical sciences arises: epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of law, history of philosophy, philosophical problems of computer science.
Gnoseology (epistemology) is the doctrine of knowledge (gnosis - knowledge, logos - teaching). Main questions: the relationship of subject-object relations in cognition; sensual and rational in the process of cognition; problems of truth; empirical and theoretical levels of knowledge; method of cognition, means and regularities; criteria for the truth of knowledge.
Logic is the study of forms of thought.
The object of study of ethics is morality.
Aesthetics determines the patterns of artistic reflection of reality by man, the essence and forms of the transformation of life according to the laws of beauty, studies the nature of art and its significance in the development of society.
The philosophy of religion determines a special religious picture of the world, analyzes the causes of the origin of religion and various religious movements and trends.
The philosophy of law explores the foundations of legal norms, the human need for lawmaking.
The history of philosophy studies the emergence and development philosophical thought, specific philosophical concepts, schools and currents, and also determines the prospects for the development of philosophy.
Philosophical problems of computer science - a special component in the system of philosophical knowledge, representing knowledge and research modern means and ways of knowing the world.
Specific features of philosophical knowledge:
The duality of philosophical knowledge - philosophy is not scientific knowledge as such, but has separate features scientific knowledge, such as the subject, methods, logical-conceptual apparatus;
Philosophy is a theoretical worldview, generalizes previously accumulated human knowledge;
The subject of philosophy has three directions of research: nature, man and society and activity as a system "man-world";
Philosophy generalizes and unites other sciences;
Philosophical knowledge has a complex structure, which we have considered above;
Includes basic ideas that are basic to other sciences;
To some extent subjective - depends on the worldview and personality of individual philosophers;
It is a set of values and ideals of a certain era;
Reflexively - the subject of knowledge of philosophy is both the surrounding world and philosophical knowledge itself;
Knowledge is dynamic - it develops, changes and is updated; - has a range of problems that are currently not resolved in a logical way.
Functions of Philosophy:
The main functions of philosophy are ideological, epistemological, methodological, axiological, critical, prognostic, humanistic.
worldview function- this is a function of comparative analysis and substantiation of various worldview ideals, the ability of philosophical knowledge to unite, integrate knowledge about the most diverse aspects of reality into a single system that allows you to delve into the essence of what is happening. Thus, this function fulfills the mission of forming a holistic picture of the world and the existence of a person in it.
Gnoseological (cognitive) function is that philosophy gives a person new knowledge about the world and at the same time acts as a theory and method of cognition of reality. Formulating its laws and categories, philosophy discovers such connections and relations of the objective world that no other science can give. The specificity of these connections is in their generality. In addition, scientific philosophy substantiates the possibility of knowing the world, its deep laws, affirms its epistemological optimism.
The active, effective nature of scientific philosophy is manifested not only in the fact that it teaches and educates, gives new knowledge and a general view of the world, but also in its methodological function, that is, in the fact that it concretely directs the conscious and practical activity of people, determines its sequence and the means used. Philosophy performs a methodological function in two forms: as a theory of method and as a general method. As the second, philosophy acts primarily as a tool (guide) for posing and solving the most complex general problems of philosophy itself, the theory and practice of science, politics, economics and other areas.
Axiological function philosophy contributes to the orientation of a person in the world around him, the directed use of knowledge about him through the development and transfer of a whole range of values.
predictive function philosophy is based on its ability, in conjunction with science, to predict the general course of the development of being.
Critical function is based on the fact that philosophy teaches not to accept or reject anything at once without deep and independent reflection and analysis.
Humanistic function helps the individual to find a positive and deep meaning of life, to navigate in crisis situations.
Integrating function contributes to the unification of the achievements of science into a single whole.
heuristic function involves the creation of prerequisites for scientific discoveries and the growth of scientific knowledge.
educational function consists in the recommendation to follow positive norms and ideals of morality.
caught my eyelaid outin the MP, by a certain Nestor Makhno, the words of Berdyaev snatched from somewhere without reference:“The whole course of human culture, the whole development of world philosophy leads to the realization that the universal truth is revealed only to the universal consciousness, i.e. conciliar church consciousness… Only the universal church consciousness reveals the secrets of life and being.”
Further, Father Makhno closed the quotes and broadcasts other people's thoughts in his own words: The fierce enemy Antichrist knows this! He knows and therefore attacks our Church, first of all, inside and out, crushing the consciousness of the Russian people with various fake imitations of worldview points of view. Russia has a mission to be a stronghold of Christian culture in a world that is falling into an anti-Christian abyss. Our difference of opinion should lead to Christ's Truth, to its conciliar discovery in the creative process of knowing God, while we skimp on trifles at the suggestion of our fierce Sodomite Western enemies. Without the Church's conciliar ecumenical self-consciousness, we Russians will perish under the rubble of Western anti-Christian civilization. Cm.
All this fierce hatred for the West, in the absence of an understanding of the danger from the East, forced me to write the following:
Berdyaev Nikolai Alexandrovich (1874, Kyiv - 1948, Paris), philosopher of the Russian diaspora, publicist, personalist, creator of "eschatological metaphysics". Born into a noble family, studied at Kiev University, was expelled for organizing riots and exiled to Vologda. Twice punished by the tsarist government for sympathy for Marxism, twice arrested by the Soviet government for antipathy towards him. Exiled from the USSR in 1922, he lived for the first time in Berlin, then in Paris.
Major works: The Philosophy of Freedom (1911), The Fate of Russia (1918), The Meaning of Creativity (1916), The Meaning of History (1923), The Philosophy of Inequality. Letters to Enemies... (1923), "The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism" (1937), "The Russian Idea" (1946), "Self-Knowledge" (1949).
Berdyaev and Solovyov are classified as irrationalists, since they put intuition, understood as “discerning the Truth with the heart”, above reason. Berdyaev is not interested in either the theory of knowledge or ontology. He writes: “I have read many books on logic. But I must confess that logic never mattered to me and taught me nothing. My paths of knowledge have always been different.” And further: “I do not have what is called deliberative discursive inference thinking, there is no systematic, logically connected thought, evidence ... I am a thinker of the exclusively intuitive-synthetic type. I undoubtedly have a divine gift to immediately understand the connection of everything separate, partial with the whole, with the meaning of the world. Berdyaev challenges the dominance of reason and material interest.
At the center of Berdyaev's interests is the problem of human perfection and the problem of the meaning of life. He revised the relationship between morality and freedom in Christianity, believing that "freedom is eternal in the world." God created the world when there was already freedom, and therefore God does not bear any responsibility for the affairs of man. This removes the problem of theodicy and the responsibility for good and evil falls entirely on a person who himself creates the world of his culture and the hierarchy of values. Moral consciousness is a creative consciousness, but freedom places a huge responsibility on a person.
Berdyaev creates the image of God-manhood as a dream and a symbol of human possibilities. Truth is not the result of cognition, but a breakthrough of the spirit into the realm of essences, the revelation of spiritual meanings, which should lead God-manhood to the creation of the Kingdom of God. The main subject of philosophy is a person who solves the riddle of his own existence. Berdyaev criticizes materialistic philosophy, or rather its primitive appearance, which he painted for himself, descending from the heights of Platonism. He criticizes the "spiritual slavery" of man, who absolutizes the empirical world and freely (and without evidence) creates his own eschatological metaphysics.
A collection of journalistic essays by Berdyaev, The Fate of Russia, was published in 1918 and became his last book published in his homeland. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk revealed the collapse of his dreams that "prophetic Russia should move from expectation to creation" and "strive towards God's city, towards the end, towards the transfiguration of the world." Berdyaev opposes national messianism and writes: “Russia is not called to well-being, to bodily and spiritual well-being ... It does not have the gift of creating an average culture, and in this it is profoundly different from the countries of the West” / p. 25/. Berdyaev writes "about the eternal woman in the Russian soul", and even opposes the irrational principle in Russian statehood and church life. "This intoxicated decay" makes him uneasy.
In The Meaning of Creativity, Berdyaev writes: “Philosophy is an art, not a science ... because it is creativity ... Philosophy does not require and does not allow any scientific, logical justification and justification.” (The meaning of creativity. // Philosophy of creativity, culture and art. M., 1994. V.1. S. 53, 61.). It turns out that science is not creativity, but in philosophy, say whatever you want, as long as it is coherent? This thesis is not only wrong, it is harmful, especially for beginners in the study of philosophy. Berdyaev wrote about himself that he was not able to reason consistently and logically, he created each of his thoughts separately from others, he had many repetitions and contradictions.
In the book "The Meaning of History" he focuses on the philosophy of history as "a kind of mystery". It “because it exists only - that in its core there is Christ”, “To Him comes and from Him comes the Divine, passionate movement and the world human passionate movement. Without Christ it would not have been.” And so many times with a rearrangement of words. (A significant influence on Berdyaev during his youthful exile in Vologda in 1898-99 was exerted by the philosopher-theologian S.N. Bulgakov, who even deduced the economy from original sin. See Bulgakov S.N. Non-evening light. Contemplation and speculation. M, 1994. S. 304-305).
In The Russian Idea (1946), Berdyaev argues that the Slavic race has not yet occupied the position in the world that the Latin or German race has occupied. But this will change after the war, the spirit of Russia will take on a position of great power, it will cease to be provincial and become universal, not eastern, but not western either. However, this requires the creative efforts of the national mind and will. The Russian idea, in his opinion, is the universal messianism, the idea of the brotherhood of people.
Berdyaev identifies five periods in the history of Russia: Kievan Rus, Russia during the Tatar yoke, Moscow Russia, Petrine Russia, and Soviet Russia. But the Russia of the future is also possible. The worst, "the most Asian-Tatar" period, in his opinion, was the period of the Muscovite Kingdom, the Kyiv period and the period of the Tatar yoke were better, they, as he thought, had more freedom.
In "Origins ..." the author discusses the communist worldview, which is based on communal and patriarchal traditions, social disorder. Berdyaev writes that “the autocracy of the people is the most terrible autocracy, because in it a person depends on an unenlightened quantity, on the dark instincts of the masses”, but in the same place he sings of the Russian community as a special spiritual quality of the Russian people, believes that he is characterized by the religious messianic idea of the Kingdom of God, which passed into the idea of Russian communism, also a religion with scripture Marx-Engels, the messiah - the proletariat, the church organization - the Communist Party, the apostles - members of the Central Committee, the Inquisition - the Cheka ... Therefore, the militant atheism of the Bolsheviks is expression of intolerance others religions, representing a threat to communist monotheism. Thus, according to Berdyaev, "the perversion of the Russian search for the kingdom of truth by the will to power" took place.
Berdyaev is convinced that the main lie of communism is not social, but spiritual. The true Russian idea "is the idea of community and brotherhood of people and peoples." Naturally, Lenin, who needed a world revolution, did not like this, and he simply said about Berdyaev: “That’s who should be smashed not only in a special philosophical area” (PSS., vol. 46, p. 135).
… The problem of man is the main problem of philosophy. Even the Greeks realized that a person can begin to philosophize only from the knowledge of himself. The solution to being for a person is a very special reality, not standing among other realities.
Man is not a fractional part of the world, he contains an integral riddle and solution of the world. The fact that man, as an object of knowledge, is at the same time a cognizer, has not only epistemological, but also anthropological significance ... Man is a being dissatisfied with himself and capable of outgrowing himself. The very fact of human existence is a gap in the natural world and testifies that nature cannot be self-sufficient and rests on supernatural being. As a being belonging to two worlds and capable of overcoming himself, man is a contradictory and paradoxical being, combining polar opposites in himself ... Man is not only a product of the natural world and natural processes, and at the same time he lives in the natural world and participates in natural processes . It depends on the natural Environment, and at the same time it humanizes this environment, introduces a fundamentally new beginning into it. The creative act of man in nature has a cosmogonic meaning and signifies a new stage of cosmic life. Man is a fundamental novelty in nature...
The definition of man as the creator of tools (homo faber) is most scientifically strongest. A tool that continues the human hand singled out man from nature. Idealism defines a person as a bearer of reason and logical, ethical and aesthetic values. But in this kind of teaching about man, it remains unclear how the natural man is connected with reason and ideal values. Reason and ideal values turn out to be superhuman principles in man. But how does the superhuman descend in man? Man is here defined by a principle which is not a human principle. And it remains unclear what is specifically human. Let man be a rational animal. But neither the mind in it nor the animal is specifically human. The problem of man is replaced by some (234) other problem. Even more insistent is naturalism, for which man is a product of the evolution of the animal world. If man is a product of cosmic evolution, then man does not exist as an excellent being, which cannot be derived from anything non-human and cannot be reduced to anything non-human. Man is a transient phenomenon of nature, a perfected animal. The evolutionary doctrine of man shares all the contradictions, all the weaknesses and the whole surface of the evolutionary doctrine in general. It remains true that human nature is not evolution at all. This dynamism is associated with freedom, not necessity. The sociological doctrine of man is no more valid, although man is indisputably a special animal. Sociology claims that man is an animal subjected to training, discipline and development by society. Everything valuable in a person is not inherent in him, but received by him from society, which he is forced to revere as a deity. Finally, modern psychopathology comes up with a new anthropological doctrine, according to which a person is, first of all, a sick creature, the instincts of his nature are weakened in him, the instinct of sexuality and the instinct of power are suppressed and forced out by civilization, which has created a painful conflict of consciousness with the unconscious.
In the anthropology of idealism, naturalistic evolutionism, sociologism and psychopathology, certain essential features are captured - a person is a being who carries reason and values in himself, is a developing being, is a social being and a being sick from the conflict of consciousness and the unconscious. But none of these directions captures the essence of human nature, its integrity. Only biblical-Christian anthropology is the doctrine of the integral man, of his origin and his destination. But biblical anthropology in itself is insufficient and incomplete, it is Old Testament and is built on Christology. And from it both the exaltation and humiliation of a person can be equally deduced ...
Berdyaev N. On the appointment of a person. - Paris, 1931. - S. 50 - 60.
We had to retrain. In everything we have become more modest. We no longer take man out of "spirit" out of "deity." We pushed him into the ranks of the animals. We consider him the strongest animal, because he is the most cunning of all - the consequence of this is his spirituality. On the other hand, we remove from ourselves the conceited feeling, which could also manifest itself here; that man is the great hidden goal of the development of the animal world. He is not at all the crown of creation, every being next to him stands on an equal level of perfection ... In affirming this, we affirm even more: man, (235) taken relatively, is the most unfortunate animal, the most sickly, deviating from his instincts in the most dangerous way for himself - but of course, he is all this and the most interesting! - With regard to animals, with respectable courage, Descartes for the first time ventured the idea that an animal can be understood as machina - our whole physiology is trying to prove this position. Developing this idea logically, we do not exclude man, as Descartes did: modern concepts of man develop precisely in a mechanical direction. Previously, they gave a person a quality of a higher order - “free will”, now we have taken away from him even will in the sense that by will it is no longer possible to mean force. The old word “will” serves only to designate a certain result, a certain kind of individual reaction, which necessarily follows a certain number of partly contradictory, partly concordant stimuli: the will no longer “acts”, no longer “moves” ... Previously, we saw in consciousness man, in the "spirit" proof of his higher origin, his public; he was advised, if he wanted to be perfect, to draw his feelings into himself, like a turtle, to stop communicating with the earthly, to throw off the earthly shell: then the main thing should have remained from him - “pure spirit”. On account of this, we now understand better: it is precisely consciousness, “spirit”, that we consider to be a symptom of the relative imperfection of the organism, as if by an attempt, probing, slipping, as if by an effort in which a lot of nervous force is wasted, we deny that anything anything could be perfect, since it is done consciously. Pure spirit is pure stupidity: if we discount the nervous system and feelings, the "mortal shell", then we will miscalculate - that's all.
Nietzsche F. Works: in 2 vols. T. 2. - S. 640, 641.
If you ask an educated European what he thinks about when he hears the word “man”, then almost always three incompatible circles of ideas will collide in his mind. Firstly, this is the circle of ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition about Adam and Eve, about creation, paradise and the fall. Secondly, this is the Greek-antique circle of ideas, in which the self-knowledge of a person for the first time in the world rose to the concept of his special position, as evidenced by the thesis that a person is a person due to the fact that he has a mind, logos, phronesis [reasonableness ( Greek)], mens, ratio [thinking, reason (lap.)], etc. (logos here means both speech and the ability to comprehend the “whatness” of all things). Closely connected with this view is the doctrine that at the basis of the entire universe there is a suprahuman mind, in which man also participates (236), and he alone is one of all beings. The third circle of ideas is also the circle of ideas of modern natural science and genetic psychology that has long become traditional, according to which a person is a rather late result of the development of the Earth, a creature that differs from the forms that preceded him in the animal world only in the degree of complexity of combining energies and abilities that themselves already found in nature inferior to human nature. There is no unity between these three circles of ideas. Thus, there are natural-scientific, philosophical and theological anthropology, which are not interested in each other, but we do not have a single idea of man. The special sciences that deal with man and are growing in number hide the essence of man rather than reveal it. And if we take into account that these three traditional circles of ideas are now undermined everywhere, especially the Darwinian solution to the problem of the origin of man, it can be said that never before in history has man become so problematic for himself as at the present time.
Therefore, I undertook to give a new experience of philosophical anthropology on the broadest basis. Only a few points concerning the essence of man in comparison with animal and plant, and the special metaphysical position of man, are set forth below, and a small part of the results that I have arrived at is reported.
Even the word and the concept of "man" contains an insidious ambiguity, without understanding which it is even impossible to approach the question of the special position of man. This word should, firstly, indicate the special morphological features that a person possesses as a subgroup of the genus of vertebrates and mammals. It goes without saying that, no matter how the result of such a formation of a concept looks, creature, named by man, will not only remain subordinate to the concept of the animal, but also constitutes a comparatively small area of the animal kingdom. This state of affairs persists even when, together with Linnaeus, a person is called “the top of the series of vertebrates and mammals” - which, however, is very controversial from the point of view of reality, and from the point of view of the concept, - because this peak, like any peak of some that of the thing still refers to the thing itself, the apex of which it is. But completely independent of such a concept, which fixes upright posture as a unity of a person, transformation of the spine, balance of the skull, powerful development of the human brain and transformation of organs as a result of upright walking (for example, a hand with an opposing thumb, reduction of the jaw and teeth, etc.), the same word "man" means in the ordinary language of all cultured (237) peoples something so completely different that it is hardly possible to find another word human language, which has a similar ambiguity. Namely, the word “man” should mean a set of things that is extremely opposite to the concept of “an animal in general”, including all mammals and vertebrates, and opposite to them in the same sense as, for example, stentor ciliates, although one can hardly argue that the living being called man is morphologically, physiologically and psychologically incomparably more like a chimpanzee than man and chimpanzee are like ciliates.
It is clear that this question of the concept of man must have a completely different meaning, a completely different origin than the first concept, which means only a small area of the genus of vertebrate animals. I want to call this second concept the essential concept of man, in contrast to the first concept, which belongs to natural systematics.
... A question arises that is decisive for our whole problem: if intelligence is inherent in an animal, then does a person differ from an animal in general in more than just degree? Is there still an essential difference then? Or, besides the essential degrees that have been considered so far, is there something else in man that is completely different, specifically inherent in him, which is not at all affected and is not exhausted by choice and intellect?
I maintain that the essence of man, and what may be called his special position, rises above what is called intellect and the faculty of choice, and cannot be reached, even supposing that the intellect and the faculty of choice have arbitrarily increased to infinity. But it would also be wrong to think of that new thing that makes a man a man only as a new essential level of mental functions and abilities, added to the previous mental levels - a sensual impulse, instinct, associative memory, intellect and choice, so that the knowledge of these mental functions and faculties belonging to the vital sphere would still be within the competence of psychology. The new principle that makes man a man lies beyond all that in the broadest sense, from the inner-psychic or outer-vital side, we can call life. What makes a man a man is a principle opposed to all life in general, it, as such, is generally not reducible to the “natural evolution of life”, and if it can be raised to something, then only to the highest basis of things themselves - to that basis, of which “life” is also a particular manifestation. The Greeks already defended such a principle and called it “reason”. To designate this X, we would like to use a broader word, a word that includes the concept of reason, but along with thinking in ideas, also embraces a certain kind (238) of contemplation, the contemplation of primary phenomena or essential contents, then a certain class of emotional and volitional acts that have yet to be characterized, for example, kindness, love, repentance, reverence, etc. - the word spirit. The active center, in which the spirit is inside the finite spheres of being, we will call a personality, in contrast to all functional “life” centers, which, when viewed from inside, are also called "spiritual" centers.
But what is also this "spirit", this new and so decisive principle? Rarely has a word been treated so ugly, and only a few understand something definite by this word. If the main thing in the concept of spirit is to make a special cognitive function, a kind of knowledge that only it can give, then the main definition of the “spiritual” being will become its – or its existential center – existential independence from the organic, freedom, detachment from coercion and pressure, from "life" and everything that relates to "life", that is, including his own, connected with the intellect. Such a "spiritual" being is no longer attached to drives and the surrounding world, but is "free from the surrounding world" and, as we shall call it, "open to the world." Such a being has a "world". Initially given to him and the centers of “resistance” and reaction of the surrounding world, in which the animal ecstatically dissolves, it is able to elevate to “objects”, is capable in principle of comprehending the very so-being of these “objects”, without the restrictions that this objective world experiences or its givenness due to the vital drive system and its sensory functions and sense organs.
Therefore, spirit is objectivity, determinability by the so-being of things themselves. And the bearer of the spirit is such a being, in which the fundamental treatment of reality outside of him is downright inverted in comparison with the animal.
... An animal, unlike a plant, has, perhaps, consciousness, but, as Leibniz already noted, it does not have self-consciousness. It does not control itself, and therefore is not conscious of itself. Concentration, self-consciousness, and the ability and possibility of objectifying the primordial resistance to attraction thus form a single, inseparable structure, which, as such, is unique to man. Together with this self-consciousness, this new deflection and centering of human existence, made possible by the spirit, there is immediately given the second essential sign of man: man is able not only to spread the surrounding world into the dimension of “worldly” being and to make resistances objective, but also, and this most remarkable, to re-objectify one's own physiological and mental state and even each individual mental experience. Only therefore can he also freely reject life. (239)
The animal both hears and sees - not knowing what it hears and sees, in order to partially immerse itself in the normal state of the animal, one must remember the very rare ecstatic states of a person - we meet with them during subsiding hypnosis, when taking certain drugs, then with known technology activation of the spirit, for example, in all kinds of orgiastic cults. The animal experiences the impulses of its drives not as its own drives, but as dynamic attraction and repulsion emanating from the very things of the surrounding world. Even primitive man, who in a number of traits is still close to an animal, does not say: “I” am disgusted by this thing, but says: this thing is “taboo”. The animal does not have a will that would exist independently of the impulses of changing drives, preserving continuity with changes in psychophysical states. The animal, so to speak, always ends up in some other place than it originally “wanted”. Nietzsche says profoundly and correctly: “Man is an animal capable of promising”…
Only a person, since he is a person, can rise above himself as a living being and, proceeding from one center, as it were, on the other side of the spatio-temporal world, make everything, including himself, the subject of his knowledge.
But this center of human acts of objectification of the world, of one’s own become and one’s Psyche [soul, life (Greek)]] cannot itself be a “part” of precisely this world, that is, it cannot have any definite “where” or “when” - it can only be found in the highest ground of being itself. Thus, man is a being that transcends himself and the world. As such, it is capable of irony and humor, which always involve rising above own existence. In his profound teaching on transcendental apperception, I. Kant already clarified in essential terms this new unity of cogitare [thinking (lat…)] – “the condition of all possible experience and therefore also of all objects of experience” – not only external, but also that internal experience, through which our own inner life becomes available to us...
... The ability to separate existence and essence compares, the main feature human spirit, which alone substantiates all other features. What is essential for man is not that he possesses knowledge, as Leibniz already said, but that he possesses essence a priori or is capable of mastering it. At the same time, there is no “permanent” organization of the mind, as Kant supposed; on the contrary, it is fundamentally subject to historical change. Only the mind itself is constant as the ability to form and form - through the functionalization of such essential insights - all new forms of thinking and contemplation, love and evaluation. (240)
If we want to penetrate deeper into the essence of man from here, then we need to imagine the structure of the acts leading to the act of idealization. Consciously and unconsciously, a person uses a technique that can be called a trial elimination of the nature of reality. The animal lives entirely in the concrete and in reality. Every time reality is associated with a place in space and a position in time, “now” and “here”, and secondly, an accidental so-be (So-sein), given in some aspect by sensory perception. Being human means throwing a powerful "no" to this kind of reality. The Buddha knew this, saying: it is beautiful to contemplate any thing, but it is terrible to be it. Plato knew this, linking the knowledge of ideas with "phenomenological reduction", i.e. "crossing out" or "bracketing" the (random) coefficient of the existence of things in the world in order to achieve their "essentia". True, in particular I cannot agree with Husserl's theory of this reduction, but I must admit that it refers to the very act that, in fact, determines the human spirit ...
Thus, a person is that living being who can (by suppressing and displacing the impulses of his own inclinations, refusing to feed them with images of perception and ideas) treat his life fundamentally ascetically, instilling horror in him. Compared to the animal, which always says “yes” to real being, even if it gets scared and runs away, a person is “one who can say no”, an “ascetic of life”, an eternal protestant against all reality alone. At the same time, in comparison with the animal, whose existence is embodied philistinism, man is the eternal “Faust”, bestia cupidissima rerum novarum [a beast hungry for the new (lat.)], never calming down on the surrounding reality, always striving to break through the limits of his own here- and-now-so-being and “the surrounding world, including the actual reality of one’s own self. In this sense, Freud in the book “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” sees in a person a “repressor of instincts”. And just because he is such, a person can build an ideal realm of thoughts over the world of his perception, and on the other hand, precisely because of this, to an ever greater extent deliver to the spirit living in him the energy dormant in the repressed inclinations, i.e., can sublimate the energy of his attraction to spiritual activity.
1. “To gain true freedom means to enter into spiritual world. Freedom is the freedom of the spirit... To enter the spiritual world, a person must accomplish the feat of freedom.”
What is the essence of this feat of freedom?
2. What is the basis of the world according to the views of Berdyaev: a) God; b) the desire for freedom;
c) an irrational principle that existed before God; d) Sofia.
Justify your answer.
3. “Man is the point of intersection of two worlds. This is evidenced by the duality of human self-consciousness, which runs through its entire history. Man recognizes himself as belonging to two worlds, his nature is divided into two,
and in his consciousness one nature, then another, wins. And man with equal force substantiates opposite self-consciousnesses, equally justifies them by the facts of his nature. Man is aware of his greatness and power, and his insignificance and weakness, his royal freedom and his slavish dependence, he recognizes himself as the image and likeness of God and a drop in the ocean of natural necessity. Almost with equal right, one can speak of the divine origin of man and his origin from the lower forms of the organic life of nature. With almost equal force of argument, philosophers defend the original freedom of man and perfect determinism, which introduces natural necessity into the fatal chain.
Do Berdyaev's reflections deepen your ideas about a person? How do you assess his position?
Topic 11
1. Answer the following questions:
a) what are the fundamental differences between existentialism and the rationalist philosophy that preceded it?
b) what, according to Heidegger, is the “inauthentic existence” of a person and how to pass from it to a genuine existence?
2. Carefully read the following fragment of the work. J-P. Sartre "Existentialism is humanism":
“But when we say that a person is responsible, this does not mean that he is responsible only for his individuality. He is responsible for all people. The word "subjectivism" has two meanings, and our opponents use this ambiguity. Subjectivism means, on the one hand, that the individual subject chooses himself, and on the other hand, that a person cannot go beyond human subjectivity. It is the second meaning that is the deep meaning of existentialism. When we say that a person chooses himself, we mean that each of us chooses himself, but by that we also want to say that by choosing ourselves, we choose all people. Indeed, there is not a single action of ours that, while creating out of us the person we would like to be, would not at the same time create the image of a person, which, according to our ideas, should be. To choose oneself in one way or another means at the same time to assert the value of what we choose, since we can by no means choose evil. What we choose is always good. But nothing can be good for us without being good for everyone. If, on the other hand, existence precedes essence, and if we want to exist while simultaneously creating our image, then this image is significant for our entire epoch as a whole. Thus, our responsibility is much greater than we might imagine, as it extends to all of humanity. If, for example, I am a worker and decide to join a Christian trade union and not a communist party, if by this introduction I want to say that resignation to fate is the most suitable decision for a person, that the kingdom of a person is not on earth, then this is not only my personal deed: I want to be obedient for the sake of everyone and, therefore, my deed affects all of humanity. Let's take a more individual case. I want, for example, to get married and have children. Even if this marriage depends solely on my position, or my passion, or my desire, then by doing so I draw not only myself, but all of humanity into the path of monogamy. I am responsible, therefore, for myself and for everyone, and I create a certain image of the person I choose; choosing myself, I choose a person in general<…>.
Indeed, if existence precedes essence, then nothing can be explained by referring to human nature given once and for all. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom.
<…>man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself; and yet free, because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
In what? In your opinion, what is the specificity of Sartre's understanding of the relationship between freedom and responsibility of the individual?
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev was born in the Kyiv province. He studied at the Faculty of Law of Kyiv University. In 1898 he was arrested as a member of the socialist movement. In his youth he was a Marxist, but he soon became disillusioned with the teachings of Marx and became interested in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. In 1922 he was expelled from Soviet Russia along with other representatives of the Russian intelligentsia.abroad. Lived in Berlin, Paris. In 1926 he founded the journal Put' andabout 1939was its chief editor.
The most significant philosophical works Berdyaev: "Subjectivism and idealism in social philosophy. A critical study of N.K. Mikhailovsky" (1900), "From the point of view of eternity" (1907), "Philosophy of freedom" (1911), "The meaning of creativity. The experience of justifying a person" ( 1916), "Philosophy of Inequality" (1923), "The Meaning of History" (1923), "Philosophy of the Free Spirit, Christian Problematics and Apologetics" (1929), "The Fate of Man (An Experience of Paradoxical Ethics)" (1931), "Russian Thought: the main problems of Russian thought in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century" (1946), "The Experience of Eschatological Metaphysics" (1947). His works have been translated into many languages of the world.
The main theme of Berdyaev's works is spiritual being person. In his opinion, human spirituality is closely related to divine spirituality. His teachings are opposed to the concepts of theism and pantheism, which are an expression of naturalistic religious philosophy.
At the heart of a certain worldview, according to Berdyaev, is the relationship between spirit and nature. Spirit is the name for such concepts as life, freedom, creative activity, nature is a thing, certainty, passive activity, immobility. The spirit is neither an objective nor a subjective reality, its knowledge is carried out with the help of experience. Nature is something objective, multiple and divisible in space. Therefore, not only matter, but also the psyche belongs to nature.
God acts as a spiritual principle. The divine is irrational and super-rational, it does not need rational proof of its existence. God is outside the natural world and is expressed symbolically. God created the world out of nothing. Nothing is not emptiness, but some primary principle that precedes God and the world and does not contain any differentiation, primary chaos (Ungrund). Berdyaev borrowed this concept from Jacob Boehme, identifying it with the divine nothingness. The creation of the world by Berdyaev is closely connected with his solution of the problem of freedom.
APHORISMS AND STATEMENTS OF NIKOLAY BERDYAEV
Creativity is the transition of non-being into being through an act of freedom.**
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, but slavery is easy.
Utopias turned out to be much more feasible than previously thought. And now there is another painful question: how to avoid their final implementation.
A miracle must come from faith, not faith from a miracle.
Ancient tragedy is the tragedy of fate, Christian tragedy is the tragedy of freedom.
Culture was born from cult.
True conservatism is the struggle of eternity with time, the resistance of incorruptibility to decay.
The most proud people are the people who don't love themselves.
The revolution is the decay of the old regime. And there is no salvation either in that which began to rot, or in that which completed corruption.
Revolutionaries worship the future but live in the past.
There is no science, there is only science.
The veneration of saints obscured communion with God. A saint is more than a man, while the worshiper of a saint is less than a man. Where is the man?
Freedom is the right to inequality.
Psychoanalysis is psychology without a soul.
There can be no class truth, but there can be a class lie.
God is denied either because the world is so bad or because the world is so good.
The basic thought of man is the thought of God, the basic thought of God is the thought of man.
The denial of Russia in the name of humanity is a robbery of humanity.
Christ was not the founder of religion, but religion.
The gospel is the doctrine of Christ, not the doctrine of Christ.
Dogmatism is the integrity of the spirit; the one who creates is always dogmatic, always boldly choosing and creating the chosen.
The New Testament does not cancel Old Testament for the ancient humanity.
Socialism is a sign that Christianity has not fulfilled its task in the world.
Militant atheism is a retribution for servile ideas about God.
Politeness is a symbolically conditional expression of respect for every person.
For Berdyaev, there are three types of freedom: primary irrational freedom (arbitrariness), rational freedom (fulfillment of a moral duty), freedom permeated with love for God. Irrational freedom is contained in the "nothing" out of which God created the world. God the creator arises from the divine nothingness, and only then God the creator creates the world. Therefore, freedom is not created by God, since it is already rooted in divine nothingness. God the creator is not responsible for the freedom that breeds evil. “God the Creator,” writes Berdyaev, “is omnipotent over being, over the created world, but he has no power over non-existence, over uncreated freedom.” In the power of freedom to create both good and evil. Therefore, according to Berdyaev, human actions are absolutely free, since they are not subject to God, who cannot even foresee them. God has no influence on the will human beings, therefore, does not possess omnipotence and omniscience, but only helps a person so that his will becomes good. If this were not the case, then God would be responsible for the evil done on earth, and then theodicy would not be possible.
The religious philosophy of Berdyaev is closely connected with his social concepts, and the personality and its problems are the connecting link. Therefore, in his works, Berdyaev pays much attention to the consideration of the place of the individual in society and the theoretical analysis of everything that is connected with the individual. For Berdyaev, the individual is not part of society; on the contrary, society is part of the individual. Personality is such a creative act in which the whole precedes the parts. The basis of the human personality is the unconscious, ascending through the conscious to the superconscious.
The Divine always exists in man, and the human in the Divine. Creative activity man is an addition to the divine life. Man is a "dual being living both in the world of phenomena and in the world of noumenons" [Experience of eschatological metaphysics. S. 79]. Therefore, the penetration of noumena into phenomena is possible, "the invisible world - into the visible world, the world of freedom - into the world of necessity" [S. 67]. This means the victory of the spirit over nature; Man's liberation from nature is his victory over slavery and death. Man is primarily a spiritual substance, which is not an object. A person has a greater value than society, state, nation. And if society and the state infringe on the freedom of the individual, then his right to protect his freedom from these encroachments.
Berdyaev considers the ethics existing in society as legalized moral rules to which the everyday life person. But this legalized ethics, the "ethics of the law," the ethics of legalized Christianity, is filled with conventions and hypocrisy. In ethics, he sees sadistic inclinations and impure subconscious motives for his demands. Therefore, without canceling or discarding this everyday ethics, Berdyaev proposes a higher stage of moral life, which is based on redemption and love for God. This ethics is connected with the appearance of the God-man in the world and the manifestation of love for sinners. There is an irrational freedom in the world which is rooted in the Ungrund and not in God. God enters into the world, into its tragedy and wants to help people with his love, seeks to achieve the unity of love and freedom, which should transform and deify the world. "God himself seeks to suffer in peace."
According to Berdyaev, the historical process of the development of society is a struggle between goodness and irrational freedom, it is "a drama of love and freedom unfolding between God and His other Self, which he loves and for which He longs for mutual love" [The meaning of history. S. 52]. "Three forces operate in world history: God, fate and human freedom. That is why history is so complex. Fate turns the human person into an arena of the irrational forces of history ... Christianity recognizes that fate can only be overcome through Christ" [Experience of eschatological metaphysics ]. The victory of irrational freedom leads to the disintegration of reality and a return to the original chaos.
An expression of the victory of irrational freedom - revolutions, which represent the extreme degree of manifestation of chaos. Revolutions do not create anything new, they only destroy what has already been created. Only after the revolution, during the period of reaction, does the process of creative transformation of life take place, but any projects based on coercion fail. In the modern era, striving for the liberation of the creative forces of man, nature is seen as a dead mechanism that should be subjugated. For this, all the achievements of science and technology are used.
Machine production is put at the service of man in order to fight nature, but this machine technique also destroys man himself, because he loses his individual image. Man, guided by non-religious humanism, begins to lose his humanity. If a person rejects a higher moral ideal and does not strive to realize the image of God in himself, then he becomes a slave to everything vile, turns into a slave of new forms of life based on the forced service of the individual to society to satisfy his material needs, which is achieved under socialism.
In principle, Berdyaev is not against socialism, but he is for such socialism, under which "the highest values of the human personality and its right to achieve the fullness of life will be recognized." But this is just a socialist ideal, which differs from the real projects for building socialism, which, when implemented, give rise to new contradictions in public life. The real socialism that they are trying to put into practice, according to Berdyaev, will never lead to the establishment of the equality he proclaims, on the contrary, it will give rise to new enmity between people and new forms of oppression. Under socialism, even if it eliminates hunger and poverty, the spiritual problem will never be solved. A person will still be "face to face, as before, with the secret of death, eternity, love, knowledge and creativity. Indeed, one can say that a more rationally arranged social life, the tragic element of life is a tragic conflict between personality and death, time and eternity - will increase in its intensity.
Berdyaev paid much attention to Russia in his works. He wrote that "God himself is destined for Russia to become a great integral unity of East and West, but in its actual empirical position it is an unfortunate mixture of East and West." For Berdyaev, the troubles of Russia are rooted in the wrong balance of male and female principles in it. If among Western peoples the masculine principle prevailed in the main forces of the people, which was facilitated by Catholicism, which brought up the discipline of the spirit, then "the Russian soul remained unliberated, it did not realize any limits and stretched limitlessly. It demands everything or nothing, its mood is either apocalyptic , or nihilistic, and therefore it is incapable of erecting a half-hearted “kingdom of culture.” In the book Russian Thought, Berdyaev describes these features of national Russian thought, which are aimed at the “eschatological problem of the end,” at the apocalyptic sense of impending catastrophe.
The philosophy of Berdyaev is the most vivid expression of Russian philosophy, in which another attempt is made to express the Christian worldview in its original form.
