Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a Russian political and Christian religious philosopher who emphasized the existential spiritual significance of human freedom and the human individual. He was born in Obukhovo(now in Ukraine). Berdyaev decided on an intellectual career and entered Kiev University in 1894. It was a time of revolutionary fervor and he became a Marxist and was arrested at a student demonstration and expelled from the university. His involvement in illegal activities led in 1897 to three years of internal exile to Vologda in northern Russia, a milder sentence than faced by many revolutionaries. He later disavowed Communism and the Bolsheviks, which culminated in 1919 with the establishment of "Free Academy of Spiritual Culture." In 1920, Berdiaev became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow. That year, he was accused of participating in a conspiracy against the government; he was arrested and jailed. A central theme of Berdyaev's later work was a philosophy of love. He was an Orthodox, but remained independent and somewhat "liberal." He wrote extensively on Russian nationalism, religion, and spiritual philosophy.
Nikolai Berdyaev
"Our attitude to all men would be Christian if we regarded them as though they were dying, and determined our relation to them in the light of death, both of their death and of our own. A person who is dying calls forth a special kind of feeling. Our attitude to him is at once softened and lifted on to a high plane. We then can feel compassion for people whom we did not love. But every man is dying, I too am dying and must never forget about death."
-Nikolai Berdyaev; The Destiny of Man
Nikolai Berdyaev
“The distinction between the things of Caesar and the things of God is constantly being erased in our fallen world, and this always indicates that the Kingdom of Caesar is attempting to swallow up the Kingdom of God.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man
Nikolai Berdyaev
“God desires that man should be. God does not wish to be alone. The meaning of existence is the conquest of loneliness, the acquisition of kinship and nearness.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
“Modern man, in pursuit of his aim to dominate the world, has become its slave”
― Nikolai Berdyaev, The Meaning of History
Nikolai Berdyaev
“In reality, freedom is aristocratic, not democratic. With sorrow we must recognize the fact that freedom is dear only to those men who think creatively. It is not very necessary to those who do not value thinking. In the so-called democracies, based on the principle of popular sovereignty, a considerable proportion of the people are those who have not yet become conscious of themselves as free beings, bearing within themselves the dignity of freedom. Education to freedom is something still ahead of us, and this will not be achieved in a hurry.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev
― Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
“An extreme optimism is a condition precedent of Democracy, and democratic scepticism itself is optimist. There is no despair on account of the loss of Truth. It is believed that a mechanical counting of votes must always lead to good results. Behind Democracy stands the optimistic dogma of the natural goodness and loving-kindness proper to human nature. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the spiritual father of Democracy and it was infected at its roots by his sentimental notions about humanity. It simply will not see that there is also a radical evil in human nature, and does not allow for the fact that the will of the people can follow iniquity, that the majority may be for error and untruth, leaving truth and rightness to a weak minority. There is no guarantee that the general will shall be turned towards the good, that it will seek freedom rather than the complete destruction of freedom. The Revolution in France was begun by the proclamation of the rights and liberty of man; under the Terror all liberty was completely done away with. When, in pure affirmation of itself, the unenlightened popular will refuses to submit itself to any superior being, and claims arbitrarily to direct the destinies of human societies, it easily enters on persecution of Truth, denial of the true, and quenching of all spiritual freedom.” ― Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
“In order to see the world in a true light and everything in its proper shape, in order to contemplate the wide horizon, we must climb out of the pit of self-centeredness and rise to a height. We must see the center of being not in ourselves but in God, where it truly is, and then everything will fall into the right place. Humility in its ontological meaning is the heroic conquest of selfhood and ascent to the heights of theocentrism.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
The Christian world doesn't know Orthodoxy too well. It only knows the external and for the most part, the negative features of the Orthodox Church and not the inner spiritual treasure. Orthodoxy was locked inside itself, it did not have the spirit of proselytism and did not reveal itself to the world. For the longest time, Orthodoxy did not have such world-wide significance as did Catholicism and Protestantism. It remained apart form passionate religious battles for hundreds of years, for centuries it lived under the protection of large empires (Byzantium and Russia), and preserved its eternal truth from the destructive processes of world history. It is characteristic of Orthodoxy's religious nature that it was not sufficiently actualized nor exposed externally, it was not militant, and precisely because of this the heavenly truth of Christian revelation was not distorted so much. Orthodoxy is that form of Christianity which suffered the least distortion in its substance as a result of human history. The Orthodox Church had its moments of historical sin, for the most part in connection with its external dependence on the State, but the Church's teaching, her inner spiritual path was not subject to distortion. The Orthodox Church is primarily the Church of tradition, in contrast to the Catholic Church, which is the Church of authority, and to the Protestant Churches which are essentially churches of individual faith. The Orthodox Church was never subject to a single externally authoritarian organization and it unshakenly was held together by the strength of internal tradition and not by any external authority. Out of all forms of Christianity it is the Orthodox Church which remained more closely tied to early Christianity.
--Nikolai Berdyaev; "The Truth of Orthodoxy" as translated in Vestnik of the Russian West European Patriarchal Exarchate (1952)
--Nikolai Berdyaev; "The Truth of Orthodoxy" as translated in Vestnik of the Russian West European Patriarchal Exarchate (1952)
Nikolai Berdyaev
“The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.” ― Nikolai Berdyaev
“Fear is never a good counselor and victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.
― Nikolai Berdyaev
God is denied either because the world is so bad or because the world is so good.
― Nikolai Berdyaev
“Fear is never a good counselor and victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.
― Nikolai Berdyaev
God is denied either because the world is so bad or because the world is so good.
― Nikolai Berdyaev