Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov,
Solovyov also spelled Soloviev (b. Jan.
16 [Jan. 28, New Style], 1853, Moscow,
Russia—d. July 31 [Aug. 13], 1900,
Uzkoye, near Moscow), Russian
philosopher and mystic who, reacting to
European rationalist thought, attempted
a synthesis of religious philosophy,
science, and ethics in the context of a
universal Christianity uniting the
Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches
under papal leadership.
He was the son of the historian
Sergey M. Solovyov. After a basic
education in languages, history, and
philosophy at his Orthodox home, he took
his doctorate at Moscow University in
1874 with the dissertation “The Crisis
of Western Philosophy: Against the
Positivists.” After travels in the West,
he wrote a second thesis, a critique of
abstract principles, and accepted a
teaching post at the University of St.
Petersburg, where he delivered his
celebrated lectures on Godmanhood
(1880). This appointment was later
rescinded because of Solovyov’s clemency
appeal for the March 1881 assassins of
Tsar Alexander II. He also encountered
official opposition to his writings and
to his activity in promoting the union
of Eastern Orthodoxy with the Roman
Catholic church.
Solovyov criticized Western
empiricist and idealist philosophy for
attributing absolute significance to
partial insights and abstract
principles. Drawing on the writings of
Benedict de Spinoza and G.W.F. Hegel, he
regarded life as a dialectical process,
involving the interaction of knowledge
and reality through conflicting
tensions. Assuming the ultimate unity of
Absolute Being, termed God in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, Solovyov
proposed that the world’s multiplicity,
which had originated in a single
creative source, was undergoing a
process of reintegration with that
source. Solovyov asserted, by his
concept of Godmanhood, that the unique
intermediary between the world and God
could only be man, who alone is the
vital part of nature capable of knowing
and expressing the divine idea of
“absolute unitotality” in the chaotic
multiplicity of real experience.
Consequently, the perfect revelation of
God is Christ’s incarnation in human
nature.
For Solovyov, ethics became a
dialectical problem of basing the
morality of human acts and decisions on
the extent of their contribution to the
world’s integration with ultimate divine
unity, a theory expressed in his The
Meaning of Love (1894).
* * *
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov
(Russian: Влади́мир Серге́евич Соловьёв;
January 28 [O.S. January 16] 1853 –
August 13 [O.S. July 31] 1900) was a
Russian philosopher, poet, pamphleteer,
literary critic, who played a
significant role in the development of
Russian philosophy and poetry at the end
of the 19th century. Solovyov (the last
name derives from "соловей", "solovey",
Nightingale in Russian) played a
significant role in the Russian
spiritual renaissance in the beginning
of the 20th century. Solovyov is said to
have died a pauper, homeless.
Life and work
Vladimir Solovyov was born in Moscow
on 16 January 1853, in the family of
well-known Russian historian Sergey
Mikhaylovich Solovyov (1820–1879). His
mother, Polixena Vladimirovna, belonged
to a Ukrainian-Polish family, having
among her ancestors a remarkable thinker
the 18th century Hryhori Skovoroda
(1722–1794).
In his teens Solovyov renounced
Orthodox Christianity for nihilism
though later Solovyov changed his
earlier convictions and began expressing
views in line again with the Russian
Orthodox Church. What prompted this
radical change appears to be Solovyov's
disapproval of the Positivist movement.
In Solovyov's The Crisis of Western
Philosophy: Against the Positivists he
attempted to discredit the Positivists'
rejection of Aristotle's essentialism or
philosophical realism. In Against the
Postivists, Solovyov took the position
of intuitive noetic comprehension,
noesis or insight stating consciousness,
in being is integral (Russian term being
sobornost) and has to have both
phenomenon (validated by dianonia) and
noumenon validated intuitively.
Positivism according to Solovyov only
validates the phenomenon of an object
denying the intuitive reality people
experience as part of their
consciousness. Vladimir Solovyov was
also known to be a very close friend and
confidant of Fyodor Dostoevsky. In
opposition to Dostoevsky's apparent
views of the Roman Catholic church,
Solovyov has been rumored to have
converted to Roman Catholicism four
years before his death. It could be said
that he did this to engage in the
reconciliation (ecumenism, sobornost)
between Roman Catholicism and Eastern
Orthodoxy, a reconciliation that
Solovyov outspokenly favored, but
Solovyov himself always maintained that
he was still a Russian Orthodox believer
and that he had never left the Orthodox
faith. Solovyov believed that his
mission in life was to move people
toward reconciliation or absolute unity
or sobornost.
Influence
It is widely held that Solovyov was
Dostoevsky's inspiration for the
characters Alyosha Karamazov and Ivan
Karamazov from The Brothers Karamazov.
Solovyov's influence can also be seen in
the writings of the Symbolist and
Neo-Idealist of the later Russian Soviet
era. His book The Meaning of Love can be
seen as one of the philosophical sources
of Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata
(1889).
He influenced the religious
philosophy of Nicolas Berdyaev, Sergey
Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky, Nikolai
Lossky, Semen L. Frank, the ideas of
Rudolf Steiner and also on the poetry
and theory of Russian symbolism, viz.
Andrei Belyi, Alexander Blok Solovyov's
nephew, and others. Hans Urs von
Balthasar explores his work as one
example of seven lay styles that reveal
the glory of God's revelation, in volume
III of the The Glory of the Lord (pp.
279–352).
Sophiology
Solovyov compiled a philosophy based
partly on Hellenistic pagan philosophy
(see Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus) and
also early church Patristic tradition
along with Buddhism and Hebrew
Kabblahistic elements (i.e. Philo of
Alexandra). Solovyov also studied
Gnosticism and seemed to be heavily
influenced by the gnostic works of
Valentinus. Solovyov's religious
philosophy was syncretic and fused many
of the philosophical elements of various
religious traditions with that of the
Eastern Orthodox church and also
Solovyov's own personal experience of
the Sophia. Solovyov described his
encounters with the entity Sophia in his
works the Three Encounters and Lectures
on Godmanhood among others. Solovyov's
fusion was driven by the desire to
reconcile and or unite with Eastern
Orthodoxy these various traditions via
the Russian Slavophiles' concept of
sobornost. His Russian religious
philosophy had a very strong impact on
the Russian Symbolist art movements of
his time. Solovyev's teaching on Sophia
have been deemed a heresy by ROCOR and
condemned as unsound and unorthodox by
the Patriarchate of Moscow.
Sobornost
Solovyov sought through his works to
create a form of philosophy, that could
through his system of logic or reason,
reconcile all various bodies of
knowledge or disciplines of thought. It
was Solovyov's goal to fuse all
conflicting concepts into a single
systematic form of reason. It was this
complete form of philosophy that
Solovyov presented as being Russian
philosophy. That based on the central
components of the slavophile movement,
all forms of reason could be reconciled
into one single form of logic. The heart
of this reconciliation as logic or
reason was the concept sobornost
(organic or Spontaneous order through
integration) which is also the Russian
word for catholic. Solovyov sought to
find and validate the common ground and
or where various conflicts found common
ground and by focusing on this common
ground to establish absolute unity and
or integral[9] fusion of opposing ideas
and or peoples.
Criticism
Solovyov is extensively criticized
by Dmitry Galkovsky in the 1988
philosophical novel The Infinite
Deadlock. Galkovsky cites Solovyov's
early adoption of nihilist views, and
later renunciation of them, as evidence
of Solovyov's opportunism. He also
characterizes Solovyov's writings on
theocracy as a "parodic hybrid of
slavophilic nationalism with Western
nihilism." In Galkovsky's radical
interpretation, Solovyov emerges as an
impostor whose primary goal was to
create a caricatured form of religious
conservatism that would draw audiences
away from more "authentic" nationalists
such as Yuri Samarin.
Quotes
"As long as the dark foundation of
our nature, grim in its all-encompassing
egoism, mad in its drive to make that
egoism into reality, to devour
everything and to define everything by
itself, as long as that foundation is
visible, as long as this truly original
sin exists within us, we have no
business here and there is no logical
answer to our existence. Imagine a group
of people who are all blind, deaf and
slightly demented and suddenly someone
in the crowd asks, "What are we to
do?"... The only possible answer is,
"Look for a cure". Until you are cured,
there is nothing you can do. And since
you don't believe you are sick, there
can be no cure."
