Bücher von Nicholas Berdyaev

This is the 1st English translation from Russian: the Russian religious philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev's 1911 book, "The Philosophy of Freedom", which combines some several journal articles previously penned by him, together with chapters written uniquely for this book.. It is among the earliest of his books, immediated preceded by his 1911 book, "The Spiritual Crisis of the Intelligentsia", and followed by his 1912 tome, "Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov" -- all which serve as a significant "key" to primary elements in his thought in this early period. Berdyaev's fundamental motifs of freedom, the person, creativity, spirit -- are already quite evident, and further advanced by his rediscovery research into the thought of often for us significant yet very obscure thinkers, both Russian and foreign. In the present text, the closing appended article entitled, "A Refined Thebaid (The Religious Drama of Huysmans)" is significantly important in the schemata of Berdyaev's thought. The 1911 "Philosophy of Freedom" seems strongly to serve as a template model to Berdyaev's important work, "The Destiny of Man", written 20 years later in 1931 in exile. Both books consist primarily of 2 Parts: the first section critiquing the then dominant philosophic views of the time; the section section a triadic approach dealing with the Christian revelation and the correlative creative human ethical response to God in a schemata of threefold stages. The "Huysmans" chapter in our present text provides an especially significant "key" as to a source of Berdyaev's triadic approach, and to his intuitions on the philosophy of history and other areas of his religio-philosophic thought. Misperceptions arise from approaching isolated aspects of his thought when isolated from the integral entirety. Hence the importance of Berdyaev's early books and articles to better an understanding into his "matured" later works, which has been the crux of our efforts as an English translator of N. A. Berdyaev's works. The present book is part of a continuing series of works of Russian Religious Philosophy in 1st English translation under our imprint of "frsj Publications".

1st English Translation from Russian: "The Fate of Russia" is an insightful book by the eminent Russian religious philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948). There is an "irony of fate" regarding the book in its "untimely" timeliness -- a collection of WWI related articles from 1914-1916, it was published in 1918 only after the Russian Communist 1917 Revolution and Russia's subsequent dropping out of the war, but before the total closure of independent presses. Thus, "untimely" at the moment of its appearance, it is at present quite "timely" as regards an understanding of the enigmatic visage of post-Soviet Russia for the world. Berdyaev was banished from Russia by the Communists in 1922, a "forbidden author" during the Soviet period. "The Fate of Russia" is divided into five segments, the first exploring the psychology of the "Russian Soul", the vastness of the Russian Land, a great East-West historically conflicted between its European and Asiatic-Mongol inheritance, the choice, as expressed by Vl. Solov'ev, between Xerxes or Christ. In separate articles, Berdyaev writes also of the French, the Germans and the Polish. WWI proved to be the "graveyard of empires", spawning further historical nightmares into our own time. Like Spengler, Berdyaev had presentiments of the "End of Europe", which in modern a perspective has seemed a slow-motion spiritual and cultural collapse, like the slow fading away of the Roman Empire. In our own time, particularly acute has become the question whether the nation state has become obsolete, to be subsumed and replaced by ideological concerns. Berdyaev addresses various aspects of "nationalness", its various guises. We live increasingly in a world of mass society beset by a totalitarian stifling of and intrusion upon the person, by both technology and the state. Two of Berdyaev's articles in the final segment speak of "Spirit and the Machine", and "Democracy and the Person". Other articles address the contrast between words and reality in societal life, its political abstractive manifestations and the conventional lie. Throughout all his many writings over his lifetime, Berdyaev was a champion of authentic freedom of the person at spiritual and creative a depth, innate to the dignity of the person, the freedom of conscience, a responsible freedom not bestowed by some whatever social concordat. For both Russia and the modern world, it remains the choice between the barbaric totalitarianism of Xerxes, or the innate freedom preached by Christ. This is the first appearance of Berdyaev's current tome, "The Fate of Russia", in the English language. It represents yet another hitherto unavailable work within the continuing series of our efforts at translation of primary texts in Russian Religious Philosophy.

1st English Translation from Russian: "Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov" is an insightful book penned in 1912 by the eminent Russian religious philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948). Under the perspective of "Khomyakov and us", the book explores, at depth and with extensive quotes, details of Khomyakov's life and thought. The book presents a number of ironies. A. S. Khomyakov was a central intellectual figure within the current of classical Slavophilism, which is typically glossed over for students of Russian thought as a conservative defense of the backwardness of the old Russian lifestyle; Khomyakov's view of Europe, however, as "the land of holy wonders" explodes this calumny. Rather, it is an Europe which is to be deeply engaged in accord with the Russian national psyche, not merely parroting the West. Khomyakov thus reworked Hegel and Schelling into a philosophy of "concrete idealism" based upon "an integral wholeness of life". The Slavophils supported the Russian Autocracy, but Khomyakov was regarded as a "dangerous man" by the tsar's functionaries. Khomyakov grounded Autocracy upon historical an event, when the Russian people peacefully and in accord chose Mikhail Romanov and his descendants to "assume the burden of rule". In this was a "poison pill". Khomyakov was an avid supporter of the Orthodox Church, but his theological writings were not allowed to be published, and had to be printed abroad, in French. Freedom, authentic freedom was a core tenet of the Slavophil conservatism, rendering them incompatible for employ by the bureaucracy, which they detested. Khomyakov discerned within history two conflicting creative types: the one, in fetish magical a mind is oriented towards necessity and external materiality, massive works of lifeless mute stones; the other, reflecting inward freedom and the fluid plasticity of life grounded in the human word and consciousness of the uniqueness of "person". The Orthodox Church was central a motif in Slavophil thought. Khomyakov saw the inner essence of the Church as comprising "love and freedom". Against papal pretensions he coined the concept of Sobornost', a vision of true catholicity grounded in communality, based not upon force and blind obedience, but rather upon authentic love and freedom, as any true community must be. Berdyaev is critical of Khomyakov on various points: reliance upon a static and outmoded lifestyle, their apocalyptic deafness to the imperative "Thy Kingdom Come" of the "Our Father" prayer, an insensitivity to the mystical dynamics of the sacraments and mysticism in general, and a blind hostility to the religious heritage of Roman Catholicism and the Romance peoples, apart from the issue of the papacy. But there resonates strongly within Berdyaev his already existing core motifs of person, freedom, creativity, spirit, which are apparent there as well in Khomyakov's thought, in embryonic a form. All this renders Khomyakov as revolutionary in spirit under conservative a guise. A curious paradox quite ironic! This echoes in spirit also the famous saying by St Alexander Nevsky: "Not in power is God, but in truth". This is the first appearance of Berdyaev's 1912 book, "Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov", in English translation. It represents yet another hitherto unavailable work within our continuing series of efforts at translation of primary texts in Russian Religious Philosophy, under the imprint of "frsj Publications".

1st English translation: "The Philosophy of Inequality" is a significiant and passionately intense work by the eminent Russian religious philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948), written in the early months following the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. It was published only later in 1923 in Berlin, following his expulsion from Russia. With his perspective of a personalist existentialism and philosophy of freedom, Berdyaev voices a powerful critique of societal myths and mentalities that lead to a crushing totalitarian control over life, not only Russia then, but now also for our contemporary world. The present volume also includes the 1st English translation of Berdyaev's 1918 article, "Spirits of the Russian Revolution: Gogol/Dostoevsky/L. Tolstoy", which traces the prophetic literary motifs reflected in the Soviet Communist Russian Revolution. The present volume likewise includes the addition of an intensive chapter by the translator, addressing Berdyaev's Religio-Philosophic thought in its connection to aspects of Orthodox Christian theological insights, in an attempt to validate N. A. Berdyaev as indeed verymost an Orthodox Christian philosopher.