DOSTOEVSKY’S THEOLOGY AND THE PROBLEM OF THE MORAL INTERPRETATION OF DOGMA IN RUSSIAN THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT IN 19TH–20TH CENTURIES

The chapter analyses Fyodor Dostoevsky’s artistic theology within the context of the tradition of the moral interpretation of dogmas, which developed in Russia during the 19th and the first third of the 20th century. A typical feature of this tradition was the desire to bridge the gap between the temple and the outside of it, between dogmatics and ethics, making the truth of faith the rule of life. The Author shows the development of the idea of the unity of dogmas and commandments in the works of Aleksey Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevsky, Nikolay Fedorov, Vladimir Solov’ev, metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky), while simultaneously drawing parallels with Dostoevsky. The work takes into account Dostoevsky’s understanding of two main dogmas of Christianity: the dogma of Trinity and the two-natures dogma. The unconfused and inseparable unity of the Divine hypostases appears in Dostoevsky as an image of perfect interaction between personalities, a rule for social relations, a model of all-encompassing unity of humanity, where the right of personality is reconciled with the right of the whole. Two diary fragments dated 1864 — “Masha is lying on the table…” and “Socialism and Christianity” — are analyzed from the point of view of the Trinitarian question. Dostoevsky holds that when a personality moves towards another and enters in a relation “I” — “you”, considering the other as a face and not as a function, thus giving something to rather than taking something from the other, this personality realizes in his life the mystery of Trinity, professing it in deeds not only in words. Atomicity, antinomy, dualism are corruptions of the Trinitarian principle, while its realization is the idea of “an expanding family, a society-Church, a world that is temple. The Christology of Dostoevsky is analyzed. It is shown that Dostoevsky’s perception of Christ as “the ideal of man in flesh” should be understood not in the context of utopian thought, but as a manifestation of the idea of the deification of man, as expressed in the patristic aphorism: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God”. The essay shows how the assertion of the equality of Christ’s two natures, Divine and human, affects Dostoevsky’s anthropology and historiosophy. Views of the writer’s contemporaries, as well as of other 20th-Century philosophers and theologians who developed the idea of a moral interpretation of the dogma of Trinity and of the Divine-humanity of Christ (archimandrite Fedor (Bukharev), bishop Ioann (Sokolov), Nikolay Fedorov, Vladimir Solov’ev, archimandrite Antony (Khrapovitsky), Viktor Nesmelov, Sergey Bulgakov, Boris Vysheslavtsev, Nikolay Lossky, Aleksandr Gorsky, Mother Maria (Elizaveta Kuz’mina- Karavaeva)) are considered.

Early 20th Century Studio and Theatre Innovations of Vs. E. Meyerhold and S. E. Radlov

The experience of the pedagogical work of the Studio Vsevolod Meyerhold on Borodinskaya Street (1914–1917) to a large extent can be considered one of the important sources of the methodological and pedagogical model inherent in the modern Leningrad — Petersburg theatre school. The education principles of the synthetic actor and director, developed within the studio, combined innovations in the work of teachers and their students both at individual stages of the pedagogical process and on the path to creating a “new” theatre, in a broad understanding of this phenomenon of cultural life at the beginning of the XX century. The unique theatre school-studio became an autonomous art structure, independent of the staffing and financial demands of repertoire and private theatres that studios during this period experienced. For Meyerhold and other teachers of the Studio, particularly, Vladimir Solov’ev, a top priority was reviving the stage technique commedia dell’arte. The student plays of the studio fully reflected the undoubted successes and, naturally, the vulnerabilities inherent in such innovative searches. The article analyzes the detailed list of stylistic, mise-en-scenic and decoration production solutions proposed by Meyerhold and Yuri Bondi, the opportunity to improvise in a pre-prepared directorial plan. Sergei Radlov, a participant in the Studio at Borodinskaya, continued his creative search in the approach proposed by Meyerhold for the development of an improvisational synthetic theatre. Radlov’s directorial and pedagogical work in the studios of Kurmascep, “Popular comedy” (Narodnaya Comediya), etc., at the Institute (later Technical School) of stage arts deserves additional consideration in terms of the scientific analysis of the evolution of his innovative views at the beginning of the century and their interconnection with traditional approaches to theater education and stage practice of those years.

Theosis in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Religious Thought

The chapter argues that the Greek patristic doctrine of theosis (‘becoming god’ or ‘making god’) was a dominant theme of late imperial Russian religious thought, in which it served as a response to the acutely felt anticipation of the imminent collapse of the Russian political and social order. Theosis is defined as a metaphor for salvation that emphasizes the process, as much as the goal, of assimilation to God, and which can be viewed as a narrative encompassing the entire economy of salvation as well as a doctrine narrowly conceived. It is argued that lay Russian religious thinkers accessed the concept of theosis through diverse channels that included the patristic translation project and related scholarship of Russia’s Theological Academies, the still vital tradition of spiritual eldership and the pathway to personal transfiguration by the divine energies set out in the Dobrotoliubie, and the philosophy of divine humanity of the nineteenth-century religious philosopher Vladimir Solov’ev. Three seminal early twentieth-century treatments of theosis are analysed: Sergei Bulgakov’s Philosophy of Economy (1912), Nikolai Berdyaev’s Meaning of Creativity (1916), and Pavel Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914). These reveal the ‘modernist’ approach typical of the period, that is, engagement of theosis in dialogue with diverse intellectual contexts including German metaphysical idealism (Bulgakov), Symbolism and the theosophy of Jakob Böhme (Berdyaev), on the one hand, and, in the case of Florensky, engagement of the formal experimentalism of modernism in the service of a defence of Orthodox mystical asceticism.

Between Mysticism and Politics: The Continuity in and Basic Pattern of Vladimir Solov’ëv’s Thought

Vladimir Solov’ëv, informal “founder” of the current of Russian religious philosophy which gained some prominence in the early 20th C with thinkers like N. Berdyaev, S. Frank and S. Bulgakov, based his social and political philosophy as well as his program of “Christian politics” (an attempt to bring the world as close to the Kingdom of God as possible, while steering clear from any idea of “building” God’s Kingdom on Earth) on a series of personal mystical encounters with Sophia, understood by him as, simultaneously, Eternal Femininity, Divine Wisdom and World Soul. The paper argues that this vision remained the foundation of his entire world-view, despite the fact that he initially articulated a more “utopian” vision of a world-encompassing “free theocracy,” while later in his career he elaborated, in Opravdanie dobra [The Justification of the (Moral) Good], a more realistic, but still “ideal-theoretical” vision of a just Christian state. Highlighting the tension between Solov’ëv’s advocacy of a free and plural sphere of public debate and his own “prophetic” position based on privileged access to divine wisdom, the paper ends with a discussion of the intrinsic and unsolvable tension between religion and politics, and with the claim that there is a fundamental opposition between holistic mystical visions and a recognition of the political, understood as the ubiquitous possibility of both conflict and concord among humans.

Lopatin, Lev Mikailovich (1855–1920)

In 1911 the Moscow Psychological Society celebrated the accomplishments of Lev Lopatin, a major Russian idealist and personalist philosopher. Lopatin was lauded for his chairmanship of the Psychological Society, the oldest learned society ‘uniting the philosophical forces of Russia’, and for his contributions to Russian philosophy: to the critique of positivism, to the development of Russian philosophical language and the history of philosophy in Russia, to the defence of idealism through his theories of ‘creative causation’ and the soul’s substantiality, to philosophical psychology, and to the strength and independence of Russian philosophic culture. Twenty-five years earlier the appearance of the first volume of Lopatin’s main work, Polozhitel’nye zadachi filosofii (The Positive Tasks of Philosophy), was indeed a milestone in the philosophical revolt against positivism and the development of Russian neo-idealism. In this and subsequent works Lopatin advanced his ‘system of concrete spiritualism’. His idea of the person as an ontologically grounded spiritual entity relates him to Leibniz’s monadology, and he is regarded as one of the main representatives of ‘neo-Leibnizianism’ in Russia, following Aleksei Kozlov. Another source of his ideas was his long-time friend the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Solov’ëv, despite certain philosophical differences between them.

Karsavin, Lev Platonovich (1882–1952)

Karsavin belongs to the Russian philosophical school of all-oneness (vseedinstvo) and God’s humanity (bogochelovechestvo) originating with Vladimir Solov’ëv in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Karsavin’s thought embraced the traditions of Neoplatonism, Western participational metaphysics and love-mysticism (with Proclus, Eriugena, the Victorines and Nicholas of Cusa), and applied them to philosophical anthropology.

Russian Idea, the

‘The Russian Idea’ is a term used by Russian thinkers to define specific features of Russian culture, the spiritual make-up of the Russian nation, the meaning of Russian history and, as a rule (although not always), Russia’s unique mission in the universal history of humanity. The term was introduced for the first time in 1861 by Dostoevskii, for whom the essence of the Russian Idea was the ‘universal humanity’ (or ‘all-humanity’) of the Russian spirit. At the same time however, Dostoevskii linked the Russian Idea with Russian imperial messianism. Thus, the notion of the Russian Idea included from its beginning a characteristic tension between striving for universalism and nationalist self-assertion.. The first philosopher to devote a special separate work to the Russian Idea (l’Idée russe, Paris, 1888) was Vladimir Solov’ëv, for whom the national idea was ‘not what a given nation thinks about itself in time, but what God thinks about it in eternity’. He was influenced by Dostoevskii but, challenging Russian nationalists, put much greater emphasis on universalism, stressing that the peculiar greatness of the Russians consisted in their capacity for ‘self-renunciation’. The first case of this self-renunciation was the so-called ‘calling of the Varangians’, that is, the voluntary acceptance of foreign rule; the second was the reforms of Peter the Great: rejection of native traditions for the sake of universal progress. Now the Russian nation should commit itself to the third, most important act of self-renunciation: to submit itself to the authority of the pope, restoring thereby the unity of the Universal Church and bringing about the reconciliation between East and West. But this act of humility was seen by Solov’ëv as a precondition from the fulfilment of Russia’s great mission of creating the universal, freely theocratic Christian Empire. Solov’ëv invoked in this connection the monk Philotheus’ idea of ‘Moscow as the Third Rome’ but reversed its meaning by putting emphasis on symbolic Rome, that is, not on national isolationism and keeping intact the purity of the Orthodox faith, but on ecumenical universalism and the messianic task of the Christian transformation of the world. Owing to Solov’ëv, the term ‘Russian Idea’ came to be applied retrospectively, as a designation of a set of problems characteristic for Russian philosophical discussions about the essence of ‘Russianness’. Most historians agree that these problems were formulated under the reign of Nicholas I and that the first thinker who posed them forcefully was Pëtr Chaadaev.

Trubetskoi, Sergei Nikolaevich (1862–1905)

Prince Sergei N. Trubetskoi came from one of the most enlightened and distinguished noble families in Russia. By 1890 he had emerged as one of the country’s major idealist philosophers. He was close, both personally and intellectually, to the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Solov’ëv, whose ideas he developed in a liberal direction, in contrast to Russian thinkers such as the symbolists who engaged Solov’ëv’s utopian dimension. In broadest terms, he aspired towards a universalistic philosophical theism. ‘Like Solov’ëv, Trubetskoi combined Christianity with Platonism in his philosophy and considered the Logos to be the central idea of Christianity. And like Solov’ëv, Trubetskoi was a convinced Westernizer and liberal’ – so wrote Solov’ëv’s nephew. Inspired by a firm conviction in the absolute value and dignity of the human person, which he believed was created in the ‘image and likeness’ of God, Trubetskoi took an active part in the Russian constitutional reform movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. His conception of an ontological ‘concrete idealism’ had great influence in the development of Russian neo-idealism during this period.