Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev.Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
(Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бердя́ев)
(March 18 [O.S. March 6] 1874 – March 24, 1948)
was a Russian religious and political
philosopher.
Early life and education
Berdyaev was born in Kiev into an
aristocratic military family. He spent a
solitary childhood at home, where his father's
library allowed him to read widely. He read
Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Kant when only fourteen
years old and excelled at languages.
Revolutionary activities
Berdyaev decided on an intellectual career
and entered the Kiev University in 1894. This
was a time of revolutionary fervor among the
students and the intelligentsia. Berdyaev became
a Marxist and in 1898 was arrested in a student
demonstration and expelled from the University.
Later his involvement in illegal activities led
to three years of internal exile in central
Russia—a mild sentence compared to that faced by
many other revolutionaries.
In 1904 Berdyaev married Lydia Trusheff and
the couple moved to Saint Petersburg, the
Russian capital and center of intellectual and
revolutionary activity. Berdyaev participated
fully in intellectual and spiritual debate,
eventually departing from radical Marxism to
focus his attention on philosophy and
spirituality. Berdyaev and Trusheff remained
deeply committed to each other until the
latter's death in 1945.
Berdyaev was a believer in orthodox
Christianity, but was often critical of the
institutional church. A fiery 1913 article
criticising the Holy Synod of the Russian
Orthodox Church caused him to be charged with
the crime of blasphemy, the punishment for which
was exile to Siberia for life. The World War and
the Bolshevik Revolution prevented the matter
coming to trial.
He was a Christian universalist. Berdyaev
writes with approval that
The greater part of Eastern teachers of the
Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus
the Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis,
of universal salvation and resurrection. ...
Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by
the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot
the idea of Divine love. Chiefly — it did not
define man from the point of view of Divine
justice but from the idea of transfiguration and
Deification of man and cosmos.
Expulsion from Russia
Berdyaev could not accept the Bolshevik
regime, because of its authoritarianism and the
domination of the state over the freedom of the
individual. Yet, he accepted the hardships of
the revolutionary period, as he was permitted
for the time being to continue to lecture and
write.
His philosophy has been characterized as
Christian existentialist. He was preoccupied
with creativity and in particular freedom from
anything that inhibited said creativity, whence
his opposition against a "collectivized and
mechanized society".
In September 1922, Berdyaev was among a
carefully selected group of some 160 prominent
writers, scholars, and intellectuals whose ideas
the Bolshevik government found objectionable,
who were sent into exile on the so-called
"philosophers' ship". Overall, they were
supporters neither of the Czarist regime nor of
the Bolsheviks, preferring less autocratic forms
of government. They included those who argued
for personal liberty, spiritual development,
Christian ethics, and a pathway informed by
reason and guided by faith.
Exile in France
At first Berdyaev and other émigrés went to
Berlin, but economic and political conditions in
Weimar Germany caused him and his wife to move
to Paris in 1923. There he founded an Academy,
taught, lectured, and wrote, working for an
exchange of ideas with the French intellectual
community.
During the German occupation of France,
Berdyaev continued to write books that were
published after the war—some of them after his
death. In the years that he spent in France,
Berdyaev wrote fifteen books, including most of
his most important works. He died at his writing
desk in his home in Clamart, near Paris, in
March 1948.
Legacy
Berdyaev influenced many thinkers, but his
work was also very often the subject of
controversial discussions. His work has been
read mostly in the circles of existential
philosophy and orthodox theology. Out of
Berdyaev's understanding of freedom and
creativity, Davor Dzalto has developed his
understanding of contemporary art production and
its importance for the human being. He is
credited with developing an influential school
of thought, sometimes called Mystical realism,
with influence inside and outside of Russia, but
especially reflecting aspects of Russian
philosophic thought not usually seen in the
West.
