Uram 2 2 109

4.
1
Nikolai Berdyaev and His Ideas on the
Fundamental Nature of All Entities
https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/uram.2.2.109 - Monday, September 06, 2021 1:06:27 PM - IP Address:45.165.19.187
James Wayne Dye, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Ill., U.S.A.
I. INTRODUCTION
Among those philosophers usually classified as religious existentialists, prob-

ably none has produced a more comprehensive and original philosophy than
Nikolai Alexandrovitch Berdyaev. This achievement was at least partially
grounded in the biographical circumstances whereby he developed attitudes
towards religion, philosophy, and their relationship, rather different from those
of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and most of their more recent followers. Born near
Kiev, 19 March 1874, his early life brought him into contact with the pious
Russian Orthodoxy of his nurse, the virtual Roman Catholicism of his half-
French, half-Polish mother, Alina Sergeevna Kidashev, and the Voltairian free
thinking of his father. Although none of these exerted an authoritative influence
upon Berdyaev, the presence of such a melange of beliefs was an important
feature in a generally unusual homelife which undoubtedly contributed much to
the formation of his major concerns. Although outwardly maintaining the aris-
tocratic bearing that their status in the nobility dictated, Berdyaev's family
abounded in physical and psychological disorders which gave him cause to
reflect upon the limits and imperfections of human existence. He characterized
his family as having 'affinities with the Tolstoyan world and yet ... something of
the intensity and complexity of Dostoevsky' (Berdyaev, 1950, p. I7). His brother
was abnormal even to the point of manifesting occult powers. Berdyaev was
himself the victim ofa tic dou/oureux, subject to intense sympathetic feelings and
fits of anger, and from an early age more involved with introspection than with
practical concerns. He felt himself called to be a philosopher from youth, largely
because only theory promised an escape from the anguish which reflection upon
the temporality, ugliness, and tragic incompleteness of ordinary life occasioned
in him. Contradicting Goethe, he found theory green and the 'tree oflife' grey,
because the creative freedom of theory seemed to furnish the best tool for
revolting against the cruel finitude ofour lives (Berdyaev, 1950, pp. 27-32, 42-46).
Since, as he perceived it, the basic problem of life was the overcoming of
finitude, neither religious orthodoxy nor philosophical authority gained his al-
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legiance, because they necessarily imposed restrictions upon one's own thought.
As a result, Berdyaev felt no need for a Kierkegaardian-type revolt against
philosophy or a revolt against religion similar to that of Nietzsche, and he was
largely removed from that warfare between philosophy and religion which has
characterized much of Western thought since the Seventeenth Century. Taking
the discovery and creation of meaning within our transitory lives to be the heart
of the religious problem, Berdyaev concluded that one's own philosophizing was
the only road to salvation.
He began to pursue that way quite early, reading the major works of
Schopenhauer, Kant, and Hegel at the age of fourteen, having discovered them
in his father's library. These early studies were crucial, inasmuch as Berdyaev
thought Kant to be his true master in philosophy. Given his great difference from
Kant's form of philosophical expression, this may seem to be a rather odd claim,
but probably no odder than Kant's own acknowledged indebtedness to Rous-
seau. Berdyaev saw Kant as the preeminent 'metaphysician of freedom,' who
disclosed the creativity of the subject even in the most apparently uncreative
modes of experience and who clearly demonstrated the contradictions inherent
in all rationalistic explanations ofmanandhisfaculties (Berdyaev, 1957a, pp. 8-11;
1950, p. 93; 1946, p. 8). His reading of Kant is doubtless somewhat one-sided,
and deliberately so, for Berdyaev believed the proper way to read philosophy
was not with the objectivity of an historian but with an eye to discovering how
better to grasp and express one's own thought. Throughout his life his intellec-
tual development continued to be guided by self-initiated searching after answers
to problems of personal interest and importance, rather than by the curricula of
the schools; and, accordingly, he confesses a profound antipathy towards
academic life and the scholastic mentality (Berdyaev, 1950, p. 37).
Berdyaev allied himself with Marxism during his university days, because of
its appreciation of the covert forces in history and its intention to use this
understanding to subvert an established order which he saw as condemning the
majority of persons to lives bereft of freedom and significance. The discovery of
his involvement in operating an illegal press led to his arrest, expulsion from the
university, and finally, in 1900, to three years of exile in Vologda. During this
period he began to move away from Marxism as he came to see that a Marxist
revolution would have other goals than the maximization of individual freedom
and the providing of opportunities for meaningful personal existence. After his
return from exile, he continued to work towards a philosophical view more
supportive of these intuitively adopted ideals, through several avenues: in con-
versations with his theologian friend, Serge Bulgakov; in studies at Heidelberg in
1903, where he attended Windelband's lectures; in the literary and intellectual
circles of St. Petersburg, where he moved shortly after his marriage to Lydia
Trushev in 1904; and through the study of the Greek church fathers, Nietzsche,
Jakob Bohme and other German mystics, and of Russian thinkers such as
Vladimir Solovyev, A.S. Khomyakov, and Dostoevsky, who were the idols of
the Solovyev Society, a religious-philosophical discussion group with which he
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allied himselfupon his move to Moscow in 1907. He came to consider himself a
Christian in the sense of being a disciple of the Christ of Dostoevsky's Legend
ofthe Grand Inquisitor, opposed to all authoritarianism and holding the person to
be superior to society (Berdyaev, 1946, p. 16). The Berdyaevs spent a year in
Italy, principally in Florence, during 1912-13. Here, inspired by the country
which had been the home of the greatest flowering of creative liberty (in the
Renaissance), he authored the first comprehensive statement of the philosophi-

cal position which he was to elaborate subsequently in numerous books and
articles. This work, The Meaning ofthe Creative Act, published in 1916, together
with his denouncement, in 1914, of the Holy Synod's suppression of some monks
espousing divergent religious beliefs, led to his alienation from more orthodox
religious thinkers. Only the outbreak of the Revolution prevented his being
brought to trial for blasphemy, which would have almost certainly resulted in
exile to Siberia (Berdyaev, 950, pp. 202-203).
Berdyaev first welcomed the Revolution as an historical mechanism for
liberating the people from the corrupt authoritarianism of the old order but
turned to denouncement of the Bolsheviks as soon as the totalitarian nature of
the new order became apparent. Despite his open criticism, in 1920 he was
appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Moscow and also was
permitted to operate his own Free Academy of Moral Science. Within the year he
was arrested and questioned by the head of the secret police, Dzerjinsky. He was
released, even though he vigorously attacked Bolshevism during his interroga-
tion. However, in 1922 he was permanently banished from the U.S.S.R. along
with some other ideological enemies of the state, including S.L. Frank (Reality
and Man) and N.O. Lossky (Histo1y of Russian Philosophy). He first went to
Berlin, where he met Spengler, Count Keyserling, and Max Scheler and founded
an Academy of Philosophy and Religion under the auspicies of the Y.M.C.A.
Keyserling secured the publication of his The Meaning of Histo1y (1923) in
German translation; and he published a new work, The New Middle Ages (1924),
whose favorable critical reception established him as an important interpreter of
modern history. In 1924 he moved to Paris, where he continued as head of his
Academy, as editor of a new Russian journal, Put 'The Way', and as editor of
the Y.M.C.A. Press, which published the many books he subsequently authored.
The most philosophically important of these works are Solitude and Society,
Slave1y and Freedom, The Destiny of Man, and The Beginning and the End. He
was also active in religious and philosophical conferences and in discussions
with philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel
Mounier, Leon Brunschwicg, and his old friend, Leo Shestov. Despite being
Russian and having criticized Nazism quite severely, he was not bothered by the
Gestapo during the occupation, although he did pursue his work in relative
seclusion. In June of 1947 Cambridge conferred upon him his only academic
degree, Doctor of Divinity, in a ceremony in which he was eulogized as 'the
second Socrates.' Although honored, Berdyaev thought it rather ironical that he
should have been awarded this degree, as he did not at all regard himself as a
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theologian (Berdyaev, 1950, p. 325). As was appropriate for one for whom
writing was the most significant part of life, he died suddenly, while at work in his
study, 23 March 1948. He has been the subject of several biographies (see Lowrie
I960; Porret 1951; Spinka 1950, Part I; Vallon, 1960, Part I).
2.
PHILOSOPHICAL STYLE
Berdyaev's works are not always easily read, not because of highly complex
arguments or an overly specialized vocabulary, but because of a dearth of
sustained argumentation, systematic analysis, and disciplined presentation.
Berdyaev confesses to being an unsystematic thinker, and his writing reflects
that fact. His writing is not so discontinuous as to be properly characterizable as
'aphoristic,' but it could justly be termed 'episodic.' His works have topical or
thematic unity, but are practically devoid of that sort of continuous attention to
individual problems, beginning with their statement and ending with their resolu-
tion, which English-speaking philosophers prize so highly. Most of his work has
been cast into the format of philosophical meditations, nowadays generally
eschewed, but nevertheless an ancient and honorable mode of expression in
Western thought. The meditation is more adapted to the thought processes of the
author than to the conventional standards of proper form. Moreover, Berdyaev
believes that writing, and even discursive thought itself, is only a means for
expressing one's concrete experience, including one's attitudes, values, and
intuitions. Since one's inner experience is normally a scene of doubt, conflict,
and contradiction, attempting to mold it into continuous and consistent dis-
course is less a true expression of one's mind than a distortion, a misrepresenta-
tion. If an exposition purports to represent the mind of the philosopher, a
complete and consistent system would imply an exhaustive and perfectly logical
work of thought, which is itself inconsistent with the partiality and inconsistency
of all intellectual activity. Therefore, to a certain extent, Berdyaev regards his
episodic style of composition as dictated by a fundamental honesty with respect
to presenting thought as it occurs rather than camouflaging it with contrived
order and spurious reasoning added only to impress the reader. 'True integrality
of thought,' he writes, 'is an existential unity, not a logical' (Berdyaev, 1944, p.
8). The philosopher's writings ought to aim at conveying those fundamental
principles of his thought and of his value system which form the most enduring
features of his unique personal response to the world, rather than emphasizing
answers to specific questions about which he may change his mind tomorrow.
Berdyaev is less concerned about convincing his reader of certain opinions than
getting him to share a way of seeing things; and in thus emphasizing method
rather than result, philosophizing rather than philosophical doctrine, he truly
manifests a certain Socratic orientation, but without Socrates' stress upon logic
and argument.
However, even a more honest style does not guarantee entirely successful
communication; and Berdyaev complains that not even the best of his works
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satisfactorily conveys his 'inmost idea.' Perhaps this belief is one reason why the
same motifs frequently recur in his writings. a concept is seldom completely
developed in one work, but is returned to again and again, to be analyzed from a
different perspective, used in a new application, or expressed in different terms
or in comparison to the doctrines of other philosophers. Berdyaev so often
expresses himself through reference to other philosophers as to give rise to the
appearance of eclecticism, although actually his debts to the philosophers he

cites, especially those he read after his exile from the U.S.S.R., usually only
extend to certain felicitous formulations rather than to matters of opinion, or
even of method. There is a similar deceptiveness in Berdyaev's own frank
acknowledgement, and even insistence, that his works are replete with con-
tradictions and inconsistencies (Berdyaev, 1944, p. i; 1950, p. 285). Berdyaev is
so loath to have his philosophy, which he regards as dynamic and creative, taken
merely as a set of doctrines, that he unduly exaggerates his alleged contradictori-
ness (see Dye, 1961, pp. 118-138). He seems possessed by that same kind of
disquiet that Plato, who also wrote voluminously and from a variety of perspec-
tives, expresses about the suitability of the written word for the expression of
thought. Any writing inadequately conveys an author's meaning; but his only
recourse, if he wishes to make his notions clear to himselfand others, is still more
writing. In Berdyaev's case, his major purpose and overall philosophical posi-
tion remain unchanged in all significant respects throughout all the publications
of his philosophical maturity. Nevertheless, a sympathetic reading of many of
these publications is requisite for a reasonably complete reconstruction of his
Weltanschauung. This article provides such a reconstruction through an in-
terpretation of those of his doctrines which convey most clearly his metaphysical
and axiological convictions.
3. METAPHYSICAL FREEDOM
Freedom is the keynote ofBerdyaev's entire philosophy. He provides analyses,

and even passionate defences, of religious freedom, artistic freedom, and politi-
cal freedom. More fundamentally, he holds freedom to be a key metaphysical
notion whose elaboration is essential for an adequate understanding of the nature
of existence. Berdyaev thought his uniqueness as a philosopher lay in just this
use of the idea of freedom. He writes, 'I have put Freedom, rather than Being, at
the basis of my philosophy. I do not think any other philosopher has done this in
such a radical and thorough-going way' (Berdyaev, 1950, p. 46). Berdyaev's
fundamental insight is that, if freedom is real and if its essence lies in the absence
of external determination, it cannot be derivative from any more fundamental
kind of reality, as any such derivation would be a form of determination. It
cannot be subordinate even to being qua being, for the concept of being includes
the possession of objective, determinate character, whereas the idea of freedom
excludes all determination. Thus if there is any genuine freedom in the world at
all, freedom must be metaphysically ultimate; and if freedom is metaphysically
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ultimate, it must not be taken to be a mode of being; it is not ov, but µn ov. Using a
term borrowed from Jakob Bohme, he refers to this 'meontic' freedom as the
Ungrund (Berdyaev, 1957a, pp. 105-111). The Ungrund, the non-being prior to
being from which being arises, is the Absolute.
A traditional metaphysician might object that it is not possible to conceive
anything more ultimate than being, since anything must first be in order to have
any other attributes, attributes being 'substantive-hungry,' necessarily inhering

in some being or substance (ovoice).In a sense, Berdyaev would agree. Strictly
speaking, the Ungrund is not anything, and our idea of it is not a concept.
Berdyaev refers to it, as well as to other ultimate ideas such as the idea of God, as
a 'myth' or 'symbol' whereby one expresses a fundamental truth about existence
incapable of being encapsulated in a concept's objective and precise definition
(Berdyaev, 1948, p. 73). The incapacity in question is not just a matter of the
knower's limitation, but of the way the world is. Contingency and creativity are
real features of existence, found to some degree in everything and preeminently
in human personality, yet they would be explained away by imposing upon them
an explanation which interprets them as conceptually and ontically subordinate
to being. The existence of all forms of uniqueness and novelty, especially
personality, is unexplainable unless freedom is prior to being. The 'ontological
totalitarianism' (Berdyaev, 1944, p. 51) of the traditional philosophy of being
consists in reifying an abstraction and then subordinating concrete experience to
this abstraction, often in such a manner as to impute to important aspects of
our spiritual life the status of appearance or illusion. Berdyaev insists that
philosophy must go in the direction of greater reliance upon phenomenology and
away from traditional abstract or 'naturalist' metaphysics if it aspires to a
relatively undistorted understanding of human experience (Berdyaev, 1948, p.
5-6). To fashion a general scheme of ideas which takes the immediately experi-
enced creative processes of personal existence not only as real, but as the
archetypal notions in terms of which all else is to be explained, requires replacing
traditional concepts of ultimate reality such as 'being' or 'pure act' with the idea
of meontic freedom.
The Ungrund is just this 'frontier line idea' (Berdyaev, 1953b, p. 61); and in
proposing it, Berdyaev effectively reverses the relative priority Aristotle as-
signed to actuality and potentiality. According to Bohme, the Ungrund is the
nothingness (das Nichts) which precedes both God and Nature, and from which
they arise. Berdyaev interprets this mythic characterization as an assertion of
the priority of indeterminate possibility over being (Berdyaev, 1957a, p. 111).
Such an Absolute can only be expressed mythically or apophatically (nega-
tively), for all literal characterizations are predicates of objects or beings,
whereas free possibility is just the absence of such determinations. Of course,
there are actualities; and if these have arisen from the Ungrund, it must not be
nothingness pure and simple but rather a dynamic nothingness. It may be
characterized, again apophatically, as will, or in Bohme's vivid metaphors, as
'ein Hunger zum Etwas' or as nothingness which 'will nicht ein Nichts sein, und
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kann nicht ein Nichts sein' (Berdyaev, 1957a, p. 106). That is to say, creation, the
genesis of entities from the merely potential, the emergence of novel form
beyond what is contained immanently in antecedent efficient causes, is the most
fundamental feature of reality. This dynamic aspect of existence is what Berd-
yaev wishes to capture in referring to the Ungrund as To µ,1} <Jv, 'that which is
not a being,' rather than 01Jx ov, 'non-being simpliciter' (Berdyaev, 1957a, p. 97;
1950, p. 127).
In addition to the need for a metaphysical first principle which is not inimical to
experiences of free creativity, there is another motive behind Berdyaev's
founding metaphysics on the idea of creative, but uncreated, freedom. He
believes that Kant, especially through the doctrine of the antinomies, 'makes an
end of metaphysics of the naturalistic rationalist type' (Berdyaev, 1957a, p. 9).
Kant shows that no rational account of the origin of cosmic order is free from
contradiction and that such accounts do not objectively present some truth about
that which exists but rather are themselves subjectively derived from the nature
of human reason. The very fact that human understanding has demonstrable
limits shows that reality cannot be adequately represented by a system of clearly
defined concepts. In particular, since there is no adequate rational account of
how the actual comes to be out of the possible, and yet creation is experientially
evident, creative freedom must be a metaphysically primitive notion- a 'frontier
line idea.' Other aspects of reality may be explained by reference to it but it
remains impervious to rationalistic causal (in the Aristotelian sense) analysis.
The truth about existence which it represents remains a mystery in the sense that
reason must acknowledge it but cannot explain it, save mythically.
4. DIVINE PERFECTION
Berdyaev is similarly at one with Kant in holding that all arguments designed to
prove that there is a transcendent first cause or ens realissimum are unsuccess-
ful. He goes further by agreeing with Feuerbach that even our concept of such a
being is merely a subjective projection onto an imaginary supernatural plane of
properties belonging to ourselves and to society (Berdyaev, 1957a, p. JO; I944, p.
82-83; 1953b, p. 55). Consequently, that such arguments have failed is not just an
historical fact; it is inconceivable that they could have achieved more than
merely verbal, sophistical, success. The concept of God as a being is itself a
confusion of an abstract mental object with a real existent, and most of the
predicates traditionally assigned to that being are crudely 'sociomorphic,' espe-
cially those attributes derivative from various forms of force - cause, omnipo-
tence,judge, and the like. Berdyaev denounces belief in such a being as 'slavery'
and his worship as 'idolatry.'
Yet Berdyaev is far from being an unqualified atheist. The idea of God plays a
central role in his thought but interpreted so that 'there is less power in God than
in a policeman, a soldier or a banker' (Berdyaev, 1953b, p. 57). Although the
Absolute in Berdyaevian metaphysics is the restless, infinitely fertile Ungrund, a
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directive principle is equally necessary if the active but structured cosmos of our
experience is to be explained; freedom must be 'linked with a cosmic aim'
(Berdyaev, 1953b, p. 69). God is the ultimate locus of creative action, of primor-
dial freedom informed by purposiveness. Mythically speaking, God is born out
of the Ungrund but then encompasses that freedom within his own purposive
aim. The mythical assertion that God is creator of the world means that the world
is a process within the life of God, a perpetual movement from mere potentiality
to realized values. Berdyaev modifies the creation myth to make God creator
only of creators, rather than the single-headed and direct 'constructor of the
world order.' Such order as is in the world is derivative, arising in the activities of
its free existences. Thus not only is creation a continuing process rather than an
event in the remote past, but the means of creation is through the agency of all
entities. The divine aim finds embodiment only through the cooperation of
creatures. From God's side, this continuing movement towards the generation of
ever-new values is a 'theogonic process;' from man's side, taking man both as
representative and as the highest form of finite existence, it is an 'anthropogonic
process;' the two are complementary aspects of the essential creativity of
reality.
Just these considerations form the keystone ofBerdyaev's professed Christi-
anity. The doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ capture most adequately, albeit
symbolically, the true nature of the world process (Berdyaev, 1949a, pp. 3-35).
They bespeak an idea of reality as purposive but not entirely determined. Even
for God there is tragedy and suffering, which means that these are not accidents,
consequences of some gratuitous evil, but rather inevitable consequences of the
creative character of reality. To create is to bring something which was not into
being by means of free action, and the element of freedom, of non-being, remains
throughout the process. The possible contains an infinity of mutually exclusive
ends, all involving some good and some evil. By virtue of the essential freedom in
all creativeness, intentions never completely determine effects. Moreover, all
acts transpire within the context of the interacting and not entirely predictable
acts of all the other free agents. Thus, even for God, and a fortiori for all others,
creative action conceals an element of ineradicable surprise and disappointment.
The intrinsic tragedy of the world process is portrayed in the doctrine of the
suffering Christ. At the same time, God's existence guarantees that the world
process as a whole is directed towards the maximum attainment of value, so that
meaningful action and the production of enduring value are possible. Nihilism
can only be avoided by taking that eschatological perspective, expressed religi-
ously in the doctrines of redemption, the kingdom of God, paradise, and the
second coming of Christ, which sees creative activity as capable of triumphing
over the tragedy inherent in freedom by using that very freedom to attain
supratemporal values such as truth, love, and beauty (Berdyaev, 1949a, pp.
284-297).
Clearly, Berdyaev's cosmology involves rejecting the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Century view of the world as a machine in favor of the more ancient
116
notion of it as vital and dynamic, as expressed in Heraclitus' metaphor of
never-ending fire, or in the cosmology of the Timaeus. Correspondingly, his idea
of God is not a perfect and ingenious celestial mechanic, but of an all-
encompassing personality striving, like all creatures, most fully to realize in
himself those values towards which he aspires. This attribution of personality to
God is admittedly a mythical, imaginative hypostatization, but it symbolizes
three important cosmological claims. ( I) Inasmuch as personality is distinct from

individuality in being a subjective category known only in inward experience, its
application to God means that God is not an object - a being - ofany sort. God is
not found in the objective order of nature but only in subjective experience. (2)
Inasmuch as personality consists in activity rather than in substance, making
God a person is a way of saying that divine, and all other, existence is of a
dynamic, process character. (3) Inasmuch as values are not objectively grounded
but are the products of imaginative personal life, depicting God as a person
identifies him with the final meaning and value of the world. God as absolute
value, like the Platonic idea of God, provides both the ground of the possibility
and the measure of the degree of success of man's aspirations towards significant
achievement. It also provides a basis upon which man can relate to reality as his
semb/able rather than as an indifferent and alien nature - for his feeling at home
in or communing with all existence (Berdyaev, 1944, pp. 35-52; 1953b, pp. 75-76).
The characteristic relational features of a universe so imagined are not the
determined reactions and invariant lawabidingness of a perfect mechanism, but
rather empathetic feelings and responses, sometimes injurious and sometimes
helpful, between animate beings.
Although the metaphysical use of the idea of God moves from God's existence
to the validation of non-utilitarian, transcendent values, the epistemological
justification of that idea moves in the reverse direction. Since the intellectual
arguments for God are not sound and science is silent on the question of God's
existence, so far as causal or formally logical reasoning is concerned, God is in
the world incognito. He is not in the objective world order at all. The only
knowledge of God is that provided by our intuitions of transcendent values in
those experiences of creative action whereby we literally participate in making
the world. Berdyaev terms this inference to God from the experience of the
divine in man the 'anthropological proof,' although it is not strictly a proof but an
analysis of presuppositions. Every creative endeavour to realize a value not
antecedently given in human life presupposes an absolute value as a standard
towards which the agent strives. God is just this standard taken as existent, and
hence may be identified with meaning, truth, or the Good. It is notable that on
this view the existence of evil is less an obstacle to belief in God than a
justification for it. The existence of evil clearly presupposes both creative
freedom (for that which simply must be is neither good nor bad) and a standard of
consummate worth with respect to which it is evil. Although Berdyaev does not
think he has strictly proven the existence of God, he believes he has uncovered
conceptual ties between immediate experience, with its values and disvalues,
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and God, such that the two are inseparably linked together as facets of the 'real
myth about man.' Thus he refers to personality as 'theandric,' just insofar as it
includes a capacity for the free creation of value (Berdyaev, 1957a, pp. 41,
148-157; 1957b, p. 87; 1949a, pp. 43, 297; 1948, pp. 159-160; 1953a, pp. 35-42;
1944, pp. 37, 45-46, 50-52; 1953b, pp. 64-66, 95, 112).
5. SPIRIT
The sort of entity designated by the idea of God, or known immediately in one's
own personal experience, Berdyaev calls 'spirit.' Only spirit exists; but because
of the mode of its existence, it remains an unknowable Ding-an-sich for all
objectifying, descriptive knowledge. In asserting that ultimate reality is not
directly an object of knowledge, Berdyaev is little more than a conscious disciple
of Kant. However, he goes beyond Kant in building a metaphysics on the fact
that the Ding-an-sich is not an object for knowledge. The reason it is not an
object is not merely that it is always hidden behind the forms and categories
imposed by the knowing subject, but that the existence intrinsically is not
objective. It does not exist in the mode of what the philosophers call 'being' or
'substance,' or what is more commonly called 'thing.' In their inmost essence, all
entities are free. They are not things but creative acts (Berdyaev, I946, p. 11;
1957a, p. 104). They are not determinate and determined objects, but active
agencies- subjects. This should not be taken to mean that they are beings which
act; rather they are just acts; activity is prior to being. Berdyaev refers approv-
ingly to Bergson's argument that real existence is dynamic and non-spatial and
himself characterizes it as 'synonymous with becoming' (Berdyaev, 1946, p.
39-40). In short, Berdyaev propounds a form of what has come to be called
'process philosophy.'
Since that which exists is spirit, Berdyaev suggests 'pneumatology' as a name
for the theory of spirit which occupies in his philosophy the position that
ontology occupies is more traditional systems of thought (Berdyaev, 1957a, p.
96). However, since ultimate reality is non-objective, pneumatological enquiry
contains no method for directly cognizing the entities of which it treats. The only
approach to a knowledge of existence is through analytically abstracting the
essential traits of the only existence with which the knower is acquainted - his
own - and extending them universally. The 'original phenomena of action and
creation' which provide us with some knowledge of the inner activity of all
entities are accessible only within subjective experience, 'the life of the spirit'
(Berdyaev, 1948, p. 124-125). His philosophy of existence is thus a speculative
endeavour founded upon a phenomenological investigation of personal experi-
ence. Since the speculative move is justifiable only on the presupposition that
human personality is an exemplary instance of the kind of reality constituting the
cosmos rather than a special and unique exception or an illusion, Berdyaev's
metaphysics is avowedly anthropological. However, he also sees this 'subjec-
tivity' as an unavoidable limitation of human knowing, so that those philos-
I 18
ophers who think that the truth about the world is demonstrable or objective
are precisely those who are most under the sway of their own subjective as-
sumptions. A frankly anthropological interpretation of reality is the truly
objective approach to metaphysics, and the only one which avoids both the
delusory 'epistemological optimism' of the ontological tradition and the insen-
sitivity of scepticism to cognition's creative nature and its emotional and voli-
tional necessity (Berdyaev. 1957a, p. I; I 946, pp. 19-24).

Spirit is free activity. What more can be said about it by extrapolation from our
experience? It has already been implied that there is a plurality of centers of
creative action; as we are indeed forced to conclude from the individual charac-
ter of our own inner experience of free action, together with the fact of our
constant interaction with other agencies. All actuality is individual; 'to exist is to
be an entity' (Berdyaev, 1946, p. 39). All generalities are abstractions, creations
of reason; and entities are in themselves always unique and independent rather
than parts ofany hierarchical whole. either mechanical or organic. Yet Berdyaev
also characterizes spirit, in Hegelian terminology, as concretely universal.
However, he rejects Hegel's doctrine of objective spirit, even to the point of
finding more personality, ergo reality, in a dog or cat than in nations, societies or
the whole world. He maintains that the universal is always within the individual
rather than vice versa. The way particular and universal are united in actuality
does not resemble the manner in which we unite them in thought. While in
thought particular beings are subsumed under the universal, in actuality the
universal is realized within the oneness of individual entities. Since spirit is
activity, this realization is not a settled fact but an inward development by which
the individual entity incorporates more of the universal into the unity of its
experience. This movement is the ground for experience of meaning and value.
In personal experience we aspire to, and partially realize, universality in cogni-
tion, love, and moral and artistic action. Taking this manner of being as the
archetypal structure ofreality yields a cosmos consisting of a plurality of sepa-
rate agencies each of which embodies supra-individual relations and values and
moves towards the self-realization of transcendent ideal ends. Because such
realization is free, some spirits are more concretely universal, 'spiritual,' or
personal than others. The degree of personality is proportional to the degree of
universality subjectively realized in experiences of meaning and value. All
values arise from spiritual existence and are measured in degrees of spirituality,
ranging from those of the least personal entity up to the ideal values of divine
personality. Thus God, as the meaning of the world, is both the most universal
and the most individual ofrealities, the epitome of personal existence (Berdyaev,
1957a, pp. 119, 120, 129-130; 1955, p. 59; 1944, pp. 41-42, 68, 74-75; 1946, pp.
14-16).
However, God is not to be thought ofas the unique unity of the cosmos, for the
unity of the cosmos, being universal, is internal to individual spirits. Each
person, by virtue of his capacity for containing the universal, is potentially a
microcosm; and whatever unity the world has is within such microcosmoi.
119
Berdyaev refers to this 'interior concrete universalism of personality' as the
most authentic form of sobornost, 'communality' or 'togetherness,' between
spirits. The ideal of sobornost is a sort of cosmic /aisser-faire, the central idea
being that the more realized the individual entity the more it incorporates of the
universal and the more suitable it is as part of the environment of other entities.
Sobornost involves the minimum of external determination of one entity by

another, and so freedom is ultimate ideal as well as primal ground in Berdyaev's
cosmology (Berdyaev, I 957a, pp. I 19-120, 129-130; 1955, p. 59; 1944, pp. 41-42,
68, 74-75; 1946, pp. 11-16).
This view has obvious affinities with ancient Greek panpsychism and Leib-
niz's monadology. These cosmologies agree in supposing the most perspicuous
metaphors from which to generate metaphysical explanations to be those drawn
from the inner life of the soul - varieties of feeling, desire, and volition. Like
Leibniz, Berdyaev is better able to universalize his personal model of existence
because he supposes the essential quality of spiritual activity is emotion rather
than conscious awareness. He characterizes the primal level of existence as
'noumenal passion' (Berdyaev, 1949a, p. 114; 1957a, p. 69). He does not suppose
that the realm of entities, those realities having an inner self-determining 'life,' is
restricted to conscious organisms. Although he nowhere provides criteria for
determining the individuation or extension of such processes within the phe-
nomenal order (perhaps he thought such precision impossible, since entities, as
subjects, are not directly objects of knowledge), he does claim that animals,
plants, minerals, stars, forests, and seas are like man in having existential status
and 'an inner existence' and that 'everything is an epiphenomenon of spirit'
(1957a, p. 44; 1944, p. 94). However, unlike Leibnizian monads, spirits are not
entirely windowless nor is their harmony pre-established. Berdyaev grants that
spirits are windowless in the sense that they are not determined by external
influences; but this very freedom requires that harmonious interaction with other
actualities be predicated upon some communion with them, since their creative
novelty forbids such order being pre-established. Of course, the greater the
degree of spirituality of the entities involved the greater the probability of
significant departure from the norm, so that, for example, human activity is less
uniform and predictable than the behaviour of so-called inanimate things.
6. OBJECTIFICATION
If things are not what they seem to be to the naively realistic consciousness, what
is the source of so prevalent a vision ofactuality? Berdyaev finds it to lie in a third
cosmological principle adjunct to divine providence and free spiritual activity.
This principle he calls 'fate' or 'nature' (Berdyaev, 1949a, pp. 31, 48), taking the
Kantian distinction between freedom and nature and applying it cosmologically.
In operation nature takes the form of objectification, and inevitable outward
manifestation of subjective activity as objective being-for-another. The actuali-
120
zation of spiritual potentialities requires their expression; but this expression is
at the same time an alienation, a congealing of the ontologically primal subjective
act into public fact. Objects result from the projection of the subject's activity
into the social sphere. The objective realm is an appearance arising in the
relational field between subjects, wherein their concretely universal or micro-
cosmic natures are camouflaged under the form of beings - typically separate,
externally related, causally determined, spatio-temporal substances, although
some of these properties may sometimes be modified or omitted, as in the
naturalistic concept of God. Because objects stand in a mediating relationship
between entities, the objective mode of being may be understood as a kind of
symbolization, 'indicative rather than real' (Berdyaev, 1946, p. 56). For exam-
ple, matter itself is indicative of certain states of being in the underlying spiritual
realities, namely that they fail to share each other's inner experience directly and
commune only representationally. Materiality is just this appearance of things
being external to one other, parts outside parts. As usually understood, causa-
tion is a form of objectification in which the intrinsic agency of processes is
externalized as a force between devitalized things. Whereas real causation is free
act, the essence of objectivized causation is determination by precedent external
conditions.
Another basic form of this metaphysical symbolization is temporality. On the
pneumatological level, existence is eternal or supratemporal, for entities them-
selves inhabit 'an incessantly created present.' However, time is made possible
by change, and spirits are dynamic, ever-changing processes. Perception sim-
plifies actuality so that the underlying processes are objectively apprehended as
relatively permanent things located in 'cosmic time,' an abstract, uniform,
divisible, and measurable flow from past to future. 'Historical time' is another
form of objectivization in which the selective emphasis of consciousness is upon
certain novel events arising out of the activities of certain societies of spiritual
entities, namely human beings. It is a form of apprehension in which the irrever-
sible movement from possibility to actuality, from past to future, figures more
strongly than does the uniform flow of identical, recurring abstract units
dominating cosmic time. Both of these forms of temporality are only abstract
schematizations of concrete duration, although historical time, with its emphasis
upon unique happenings, captures the free creativity of actualization somewhat
more adequately.
Objectification is not restricted to empirical knowledge but also pervades all
other types of experience, including logical, ethical, artistic, and religious. All
thinking is objectified which proceeds by means of dogmas, external causes and
forces, or any other deterministic concepts. For Berdyaev, even logical rules are
at bottom pragmatic, representing certain widespread social conventions having
more to do with accepted norms of communication than with discovering truth.
The conventionality of reasoning in terms of natural law, utilitarian conse-
quences, fixed standards of beauty, or God's will is still more obvious. These
121
conventions always hinder creative imagination and action, and sometimes they
have been deliberately designed to be instruments of social domination
(Berdyaev, 1957a, pp. 74-75; 1948, pp. I 14-115; 1946, p. 58).
In the light of the omnipresence of objectification and its effects, Berdyaev
refers to our normal existential situation, using the language of Christian theol-
ogy, as a 'divide' or 'fallen' state of the cosmos, or, using the language of
philosophy, as 'dualism.' That objectification as the ever-present fate of spiritual
activity infuses existence with a tragic character, apprehended in such human
experiences as nostalgia, suffering, sorrow, and loneliness. These phenomena
are grounded in the dielectical relationship between the infinitude of spirit's
potentiality and the finite product of each creative act. Tragedy is not just an
occasional occurrence in comunal and individual life; it is an universal existential
category (Berdyaev, 1944, pp. 93-102, 257-263).
7. ESCHATOLOGY
On the one hand, if subjects confuse symbol and reality by mistaking, even
unconsciously, the objectivized natural order for the true ontological structure of
the world, nature becomes an illusion which bars the path of authentic knowl-
edge and efficacious action. On the other hand, nature, properly understood as
an expression of spirit, is testimony to the power of spiritual agency. There are
revelatory occasions which provide the basis for such understanding by pene-
trating to the pneumatological reality underlying the natural order. Typically
these are moments of creativity or ecstasy, whether emotional, cognitive, artis-
tic, or mystical in kind. In such immediate and intuitive experience one partici-
pates directly in the world process in a non-abstract, non-objectivized manner.
The quality which characterizes these subjectively timeless experiences Berd-
yaev calls 'existential time.' Activity can take on the quality of existential time
because, ontologically, the past and the future are but materializations of present
entities' anxieties, memories, and aspirations. Existential time is pneumatologi-
cally realistic; and objective time is, in the epistemic sense, subjective. How-
ever, despite its symbolic nature, the objective order dominates awareness and is
transcended only in those brief instants of supra-temporal, or 'eternal,' aware-
ness wherein one breaks through the veneer of every-day utilitarian concerns.
Were the greatest possible creative transcension and compossible freedom
realized among existents, sobornost would be fully achieved. The state ethically
conceived as sobornost may also be aesthetically conceived as cosmic beauty, or
religiously as 'the Christianized cosmos,' 'the Kingdom of God,' or 'the end of
time' (Berdyaev, 1944, pp. 260-261; 1948, pp. 331-332). All of these terms signify
an overcoming of the objective order, so that spirits dwell perpetually in existen-
tial time, subjectively free from the illusory determinations of objectification.
This is clearly only an ideal, however much it may be a more realistic repre-
sentation of the inner nature of the pneumatological substructure. Berdyaev
refers to it as an eschatological goal, in contrast to evolutionary or teleological
122
goals. If evolutionary theories assert a causally necessary sequence of develop-
ment, they are entirely too conservative, by dint of ignoring freedom and the
resultant genuine novelty. Theories of universal teleology confuse what ought to
be with what is and are blind to events which, with respect to any general plan,
are only chance occurrences. On the other hand, eschatology recognizes a value
orientation implicit in the nature of things (the idea of God) without ignoring the
indeterminate creativity which is equally fundamental (the Ungrund). An es-

chatological ideal is not determined by causal laws nor does it exclude chance
and novelty as vehicles through which it may ultimately be realized. In fact, fully
deterministic laws of nature are themselves modes of objectification and do not
exist at the pneumatological level. What exists is a 'direction in the action of
forces' ultimately stemming from spiritual activity, so that 'laws are only the
habits of the acting forces, and frequently bad habits' which may, in principle, be
altered by certain forces gaining or losing domination. Evolution and teleology
are theories of conformity to natural law; eschatology rests on the viability of
some degree of cosmic revolution (Berdyaev, 1949a, pp. 50-51).
8. PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Not only is the foregoing metaphysical position based upon the explicit forms
and implicit assumptions of personal existence, but its major application is to the
illumination and direction of human life in terms of its inherent capacity for
subjective enrichment. The practical import of there being absolutely nothing
more existentially fundamental than spirit or of a higher order of value than
personality, is that all forms of belief and action involving the subjugation of
persons to external standards or authorities are illusory and, at bottom, misan-
thropic. Making, accepting, and accommodating oneself to external pseudo-
realities is a species of objectification which Berdyaev calls 'slavery.' All
slavery is in a sense voluntary, in that the subject must utilize his innate freedom
in order to adopt epistemic and volitional stances which subordinate spirituality
to the objective order or which, in the extreme case, treat spirit itself as a mere
thing. Persons are spirits with a relatively high potentiality for free action and
self-determination. As has been observed previously, spirituality or personality
is realized in varying degrees according to the relative success ofany given entity
in attaining those values within the scope of its creative freedom. So some men
are more truly persons than others; and the degree of personality is inversely
proportional to their enslavement. Applied back to human experience, the ideas
of creative freedom and personality serve as criteria for assessing various modes
of individual action and social interaction as to their relative liberating or en-
slaving character. In this application, these primarily ontological notions are
used normatively, as criteria for determining those elements which make for
the most fully human life. The anthropological significance of Berdyaev's
metaphysics may be displayed by tracing its application through three major
modalities of human existence: knowledge, morality, and history.
123
9. KNOWLEDGE
'Knowledge' may designate either the activity of knowing or information which

results from that activity. It is the former which, as an event within existence,
Berdyaev sees as more important for an understanding of man. Knowing must
not be supposed to be extraneous to existence or a merely accidental occurrence

within it. Being has a self-revelatory character, grounded in the reflexivity of
concrete universality. 'I am not because I think, but I think because I am'
(Berdyaev, 1946, p. 65). Were man not immersed in being, and himself of the
same nature as other entities, knowledge would be impossible. Knowledge
pre-supposes ontological similarity. At the higher levels of conscious awareness,
this similarity is the foundation for preferring an anthropocentric and subjective
methodology in philosophy to all purportedly objective or deductively necessary
'knowledge,' which is patently constructed by the subject. 'If it is not to be
naively and unconsciously anthropocentric, philosophy must be consciously and
critically anthropocentric' (Berdyaev, 1957a, p. 40).
Only a portion ofawareness is conscious. Prehensiveness qualifies the activity
of the subject as an existent, not just as a conscious being. Knowledge extends
from sub-conscious to supra-conscious awareness. An example of the former is
the unconscious organization of forgotten perceptions into dream imagery; an
example of the latter is the use of imagination, as in artistic creation, to constitute
as objects for knowledge that which theretofore had no empirical reality.
Knowing not only is inherent in man's being but also involves his entire existence
rather than just his intellect. As perhaps the chief expression of spirit's impetus
towards meaning and self-realization, knowing inevitably shares in the passion-
ate, even erotic, nature of that quest and presupposes the meontic freedom
which underlies all creative attainment. Even perception, which may appear to
be purely sensuous receptivity, involves a creative transformation of external
reality in accordance with the feelings, interests, and previous judgments of the
knowing subject. The subject's creative role is also presupposed in one of the
more obvious features of human knowledge - propensity to error, for the exis-
tence of error is intelligible only if the subject is sufficiently free from external
determination by the object to permit its occurrence. According to Berdyaev's
doctrine of objectification, the supposition that truth is an object's duplication of
itself in a passive knower is itself an erroneous result of subjective creativity,
since the objective realm is really a product of the activities of subjects, including
the selective attention of the knower.
Although the belief that knowledge derives solely from the object and is
passively received by the subject is an error, knowledge of the objectified world
is nevertheless genuinely knowledge. To be sure, it is a very restricted form of
knowledge, as it ignores the subject, makes little use of non-conscious or emo-
tional experience, and would be utterly false if generalized into a metaphysics.
Yet the commonsensical 'normal reality' to which the consciousness of the
average man is almost constantly subject is itself a creative construction of the
124
mind, determined by certain concerns. There is no such thing as 'disinterested'
knowledge. In this instance the relevant concerns are primarily utilitarian inter-
ests. Since practical concerns dominate the socialized forms of knowledge,
especially in the sciences, among those concerns which keep men almost totally
absorbed with the objectivized order is a certain disdain of the esoteric and a fear
of the unknown and novel. Natural science, which develops normal awareness to
the greatest degree, has greater value than other kinds of knowledge when one's
end is to satisfy the social demand for useful information. It is of relatively little
worth for understanding the nature of reality or for attaining that self-knowledge
and enrichment of the personal life traditionally called 'wisdom.' Here
philosophical and religious knowledge are of greater value, for in them the
subject's activity is more explicit, a wider range of experiences is entertained,
and a true vision of reality is held to be of greater importance than practically
efficacious belief(Berdyaev, 1957a, pp. 68-69, 175-180; 1948, p. 101).
Philosophically adequate understanding has not been achieved when one has
accumulated sufficient information for a certain usefulness, but only when one
has penetrated into the thing emotionally as well as in thought. For philosophy,
the exclusion of emotional apprehension in favor of purely intellectual enquiry
seems to be an artificial, subjective restriction which ignores the greater part of
our awareness. It requires a kind of empathy whereby one adopts an internal
perspective on the thing being known. This demands imaginative, creative effort
on the part of the knowing subject, a 'spiritual struggle' rather than the cultivated
passivity of objectified knowledge. Accordingly, in philosophical knowledge the
involvement of the whole person in knowing is explicitly developed and even
reaches passionate intensity - philosophy is 'an erotic art' practiced by persons
who have 'fallen in love with wisdom.' The philosopher's objective is to discover
meaning and truth in the world, 'to give an intelligible sense to reality.' Since
philosophy is concerned with discovery, it is only secondarily concerned with
concepts and logical structure, for these have to do more with elaboration than
with discovery. The attainment of philosophical knowledge relies more upon
images or 'myths' than concepts, for it involves a transcension of those tempo-
rary limits of consciousness which determine the nature and range of conceptual
expression presently available in ordinary language. To be most illuminating,
such images must be founded upon enlightened and far-reaching communal
participation in both the human and the environing non-human world, although
their formation and delineation remains an intensely personal achievement. The
philosophical spirit is decidedly antagonistic to dogmatism and to closed systems
of thought, for it consists precisely in refusing to accept truth as something
ready-made and in insisting upon finding out the truth for oneself. This search
remains a perpetual possibility for every man, both because the world process
gives rise to new modes of existence and because from the limited human
perspective reality is an inexhaustible mystery (Berdyaev, 1957a, p. 39; 1948, p.
102; 1955, p. 41; 1953b, p. vi).
If the images which break through present conceptual boundaries cannot be
125
generated by discursive thought, which is specifically adapted to communicating
rather than discovering knowledge, what is the form of knowing consciousness?
Berdyaev portrays it as a kind of intuition, not of the passive Husserlian sort, but
involving a 'creative reaction' by the knowing subject. It is said to be a 'sym-
pathetic living-into the world' which grasps the universal communal (soborny)
structures of existence, which are more ontologically significant than the rela-
tively trivial universal truths of objective science. Although Berdyaev's discus-
sions of intuition are sometimes so highly metaphorical as to be obscure ('the
impregnation of the femine element by virile meaning'), he seems to have in mind
a sort of imaginative reconstruction. 'Knowledge is essentially cosmogonic.'
Because it is based upon emotional and volitional as well as intellectual needs,
the outcome of this reconstructive vision must be a Weltanschauung which
weights aspects of experience in proportion to their felt worth rather than their
scientific generalizability and verifiability. Apparently the justification of such
intuition is to be found within experience, but in integral personal experience
rather than that experience limited by the artificial laboratory conditions of
science or the socially useful criteria of common sense (Berdyaev, 1955, pp.
34-36).
On such a view, truth is obviously not be be thought ofas correspondence to an
object. All supposedly objective facts are so constituted on the basis of some
theory, and their alleged freedom from subjective conditions is illusory. Again,
one must be explicitly anthropocentric rather than unconsciously so. Truth is a
human product, a quality realized only in subjective, individual lives, although
its purport is universal. The pragmatic theory of truth correctly assumes that
truth is of this nature, although its emphasis upon utility restricts the valid
application of pragmatism to science and technology. Truth is the humanly
realized significance of reality, but it need not be, and is not primarily, utilitarian
significance. At a more profound ontological level it is the consciously ap-
prehended value of communal, aesthetic, mystical, and similarly non-utilitarian
feelings and activities. Berdyaev recognizes that it is conceivable that the world
ultimately is not of such a nature as to be truly represented in our apprehensions
of value. We have no final assurance of the world's meaningfulness; and devo-
tion to the search for truth, even scientific truth, or to any other form of
meaningful activity, involves an element of commitment which is rightly called
'faith.' Here is the ground of the religious aspect of experience, for since God is
the ultimate meaning and value of the world, in the final analysis such faith is faith
in God. There is no sharp dividing line between philosophical knowledge and
religious revelation, but only a difference of degree. Religious awareness is more
subjective, emotional, and immediately communal than philosophical aware-
ness, which demands more rigorous intellectual expression. The ultimate
criterion for the adequacy of both is God, rightly understood not as a super-
natural being but as the ultimate value, or Truth, of all existence (Berdyaev,
1953b, 38-45).
126
10. MORALITY
An authoritarian attitude, and the fixed norms or standards to which it appeals,

are as unacceptable in morality as in the search for truth. The creative nature of
human existence has found expression in the development of morality fully as
much as in the growth of knowledge. For example, Berdyaev finds that a thirst
for freedom, an emphasis upon compassion, and a widespread desire for creative
expression are significant and relatively new forces in the moral life of Western
man. In The Destiny of Man he distinguishes stages of moral consciousness,
which, although they are especially exemplified in successive historical epochs,
continue to coexist and to interact with each other.
The ethics oflaw is the pre-Christian morality, in which moral value resides in
conformity to principles external to the individual personality, whether in the
form of rules, taboos, utopian ideals, or the ends of human nature. These
standards embody the interests of the species or society and impose them as
demands upon the individual, who is thought to have worth only in proportion to
his conformity to those demands. Human freedom is restricted to 'freedom of the
will,' i.e., the option to obey or disobey; and the virtue most emphasized is
justice, i.e., reward for the obedient and punishment for the disobedient. Ulti-
mately, the ethics of law rests upon the primitive religious fear of defilement,
although this may be hidden under more sophisticated dress, such as the Kantian
ideal of moral worthiness. The value of this form of ethics consists in preserving
persons from violence and oppression by others, so that minimal human rights
are guaranteed. Because the ethics of law may be enforced, it is normally the
concept of right incorporated into social organizations, such as the state. Yet
there is nothing positively worthwhile in obedience to law, nor is it capable of
bringing about any elevation of moral ideals; so Berdyaev holds that it, and the
institutions which enforce it, should be kept to the minimum necessary to
safeguard human freedom from injustice. That same ideal of freedom requires
that one take anarchy as the political ideal, to be departed from only because the
prevalence of evil behaviour necessitates some degree of authoritarianism.
Pursued as an end in itself, moral ism makes for an insufferably uniform and dull
existence which stifles individuality, thereby actually making immorality attrac-
tive by comparison (Berdyaev, 1949a, p. II, i).
The ethics of redemption is coextensive with man coming consciously to
apprehend himself as a person, separate from the objective natural order. This
new consciousness leads to the replacement of the idea ofacting so as to fulfill the
natural human good, the law, or some similar abstract moral standard with the
idea of right personal relationships, determined by the individual characteristics
of the persons involved and so incapable of generalization. The characteristic
virtue of this form of consciousness is love, which must be directed upon a
person and which cannot be commanded. It is based upon coming to see person-
ality as being of absolute value, in effect as the God-likeness of man. Recognition
127
of the personality of one's neighbor makes it impossible to judge him entirely in
terms of his success or failure in meeting certain abstract norms, for a free person
is always capable of radical conversion from evil to good or vice versa. Each
individual is an end in himself. Accordingly, the ethics ofredemption renounces
the rule of force, which presupposes the right to use others as means to the
realization of conformity to law, and counsels forgiveness, compassion, and
mercy. Berdyaev believes that although these counsels constitute man's noblest
moral ideals, given some individuals' propensity to destructiveness, they 'are
utterly unrealizable and impossible as rules ofaction.' Moreover, consciousness
of the unique value of the person makes possible a novel degenerate form of
behaviour- 'transcendental egoism,' the exclusive concern for one's own per-
son, even at the expense of others. This rift between communal and individual
awareness, between the unconscious and the conscious, is the tragic fate of this
form of morality and of Christianity, its chief vehicle in Western culture
(Berdyaev, 1949a, p. II, ii).
The ethics of creativeness incorporates the positive elements of the preceding
stages without their limitations. Unlike the ethics oflaw, it requires that duty be
understood to require an infinite realization of value rather than mere conformity
to a finite set of standards. Unlike the ethics of redemption, the goal is not the
well-being of the person but rather the maximum creation of value through the
use of personal freedom. Yet the creative ethic includes these moral ideologies
insofar as the attainment ofjustice, love, righteousness and other moral values is
one form of creative accomplishment. However, it is not the only form; and for
the ethics of creativeness, making music or poetry, or discovering new knowl-
edge, are equally significant. Indeed, the idea of beauty expresses the final end of
existence far more adequately than does the idea of goodness. Beauty is an idea
capable of accommodating all the many varieties of imaginatively or actually
making a better world from given conditions, whereas goodness suggests a
narrower range of experience and retains an element of normative constraint.
Creativeness, like redemption, is expressed in love, but in a form of love in which
purely personal interests are subordinated to the erotic pursuit of transcendent
values. In creative activity energy-laden passions, such as hatred, anger, and
sexual lust, may be sublimated into productive expression, rather than merely
being repressed as in legalistic morality. Only the ethics of creativeness is
capable of liberating man from slavery, for in creative action one is inwardly free
from constraint and from all anxiety about the future; one lives in 'eternity' or
'existential time.' Berdyaev sees the greatest task of morality as making life
subjectively free from external constraint and temporal anxiety. Of course,
creative activity, like every form of life, has its own tragic consequences, notably
the perpetual failure of all expression and development to be adequate to 'the
first flight of inspiration.' The only way this most mature of all forms of moral
consciousness can deal with that fate is to cultivate an ever-active imagination
and intuition so that one never ceases to find new sources of meaningful activity.
128
'Moral life must be eternal creativeness, free and fiery, i.e., perpetual youth and
virginity of spirit' (Berdyaev, 1949a, p. II, iii).
It is at this point that creative ethics finds application to the most important
problem of human existence, to which other moral orientations have no satis-
factory response - the problem of death - and becomes what Berdyaev calls
'eschatological ethics.' Here one passes 'beyond good and evil,' for death is a
condition of meaningfulness in life; the significance oflife stands out against the
background of the senselessness of death. Creative ethics, alone among moral
orientations, conquers death by continually appropriating, by means of the
subjective realization of value, an eternity within 'the depths of an instant of
time.' The nemesis of the creative life is not death, but 'hell,' the experience of
hopelessness, of uselessness, of having allowed time to go by without having
used one's freedom to achieve anything worthwhile. Incidentally, there is very
little that is worthwhile in moral virtue narrowly construed, as Berdyaev reminds
us with a quote from Gogol: 'It is sad not to see any good in goodness.' The
'paradise' experienced in the 'eternal present' of creative contemplation and
action is a form of deification, ontologically grounded in our spiritual nature,
self-justifying, and needing no specifically moral sanction (Berdyaev, 1949a, p.
III; see Dye, 1965, 459-460, 464).
ll. HISTORY
In the Berdyaevian scheme of things, history has a rather ambivalent status. On

the one hand, it is the vehicle through which the state and all other manifestations
of what Hegel called 'objective spirit' come to have an apparent, and enslaving,
priority over the individual. Indeed, the major evils oflife are not directly due to
individuals, but to vague beliefs and prejudices which dominate the minds of men
because they have gained historical currency. On the other hand, history is
equally the vehicle through which a more liberated, communal society based
upon the priority of personality might more and more come into being. The root
of this ambivalence lies in the paradoxicality of the very idea of history. History,
as a sequence of events in time, is objectification. However, historical events are
not just objective facts; they are the temporally persisting residue of free acts.
Yet by virtue of the fact that objectification always falls short of intention, the
historical exemplification of any act is always unfinished and defective. The
social consequences of the embodiment of every ideal are unforseeable, and
hence surprising and usually disappointing. Even if the ideal is relatively suc-
cessfully expressed, it eventually becomes commonplace, trivialized, and
perhaps forgotten. In short, considering both sides of history's paradoxical
nature, it is a tragic failure. Historical optimism is not only historically unsound,
although it is that. More fundamentally, it is ontologically unsound, for it expects
to realize in objectivized time that perfection reserved to eternity.
However, being a failure is one way to be meaningful, so history does have
129
meaning. Since there is no significance in the mere passage of events, finding
meaning in history is contingent upon seeing it in personal and eschatological
terms- as the imperfect realization by free agents of ideal, historically transcen-
dent values. Like Hegel, Berdyaev indentifies human freedom as the com-
prehensive ideal being realized in history. Unlike Hegel, he does not see this
realization as happening in supra-individual organisms, such as states or cul-
tures, but only in individuals. Value does not arise in history because persons are
historical, but rather because, and to the extent that, history is personal. Histori-
cal value can be actualized only as each person accepts history, including that of
the remote ages from which his cultural heritage derives, as his history, as
material for his creative work. Historical tragedy comes to be only as individuals
accept their historicity slavishly, as a destiny to which they must submit rather
than as material for creative transformation. Insofar as an individual does
something worthwhile with his history, he redeems his own existence and
simultaneously that of the whole of history. To discern the idea of freedom being
realized in history is to see mankind growing in recognition of the primacy of the
subjective life over the whole social and historical order, and to act accordingly.
Hence the complete and universal realization of freedom would mean that the
relationship between men would be sobornost, the ideal limit of an external
social anarchy coupled with an inner involvement with others - living, dead, and
yet to be born- as essential elements in one's own life.
Of course, since sobornost is an ideal, history can only approximate to it.
What is realistically possible is a form of cultural life in which this ideal would be
dominant. Parallel to the three main types of ethics, Berdyaev sees three great
historical epochs: the era of law and culture, the era of the Church, and, yet to
come, an era of creativity. He refers to this latter, in which freedom and
sobornost would predominate, as a 'Christian Renaissance' or 'New Middle
Ages.' These terms do not prophesy any rebirth of institutional Christianity,
which has failed and is dying out. What Berdyaev has in mind is a rebirth, and
more adequate realization, of the Christ ideal -godmanhood. This would require
an era like the Middle Ages in respect to the cultivation of human personality
having precedence over the exploitation of the objective order. The bourgeois
aspiration to possess material things would yield to an aspiration for spiritual
wealth gained by developing one's creative abilities. Socially, it would take the
form of 'personalist socialism,' in which social relationships would be based
upon love rather than force. Social units would be based upon concrete and
qualitative, rather than abstract and quantitative, relationships, e.g., ethnic
unities or 'peoples' would replace nations. The state would not wither entirely,
but would be reduced to the minimum requisite for preventing injustice and
implementing humanitarian goals. Social interaction would be based upon per-
sonal respect, shared interests, and mutual helpfulness rather than upon class
consciousness and ressentiment. The more men pursue that aristocracy of the
spirit attainable in successful self-realization, the less attention they will give to
invidious comparison and to the enslaving desires it evokes. Berdyaev does not
130
suppose that an era in which such conditions prevail is historically inevitable,
only that it would be the most meaningful next step in human history. Yet each
man must take that step for himself (Berdyaev, 1955, pp. 335-337; 1949b, pas-
sion; 1944, pp. 139-202; 1953b, pp. 78-89).
12. ASSESSMENT
A fair appraisal ofBerdyaev's accomplishment must take due account of exactly

what he is attempting to do. He gives little attention to some activities which
have in recent times been held to be the principal or entire business of
philosophy, such as identifying the methods and presuppositions of science,
analyzing bothersome expressions in ordinary speech, or providing neutral
descriptions of certain phenomena. His thought has most affinity with the grand
metaphysical systems in the history of modern philosophy, its method being
synthetic and its scope comprehensive. Consequently, it should be appraised in
terms of whether it attains that integration of human experience into an overall
purview of reality which is the ultimate goal of general metaphysical theories.
All metaphysical theories present their all-inclusive depiction ofreality from a
certain definite perspective. Ultimately that perspective is just that which is
unique to the author of the metaphysical scheme. Berdyaev clearly recognizes
this in his doctrine that truth is a creative attainment of the individual person. In
large part, the history of philosophy seems to sustain his claim, for historically
one finds a variety of metaphysical systems, each as individual as works of art,
rather than only one or two systems being meticulously retouched by successive
generations of philosophers. If the experience of each philosopher were unique
in kind, no one but he could judge the adequacy of his metaphysical art as an
interpretation of experience. Fortunately for historians and critics, human ex-
perience is largely composed of common elements. What seems to differ from
one individual to another is the way in which the elements are combined and
which are emphasized. Most ordinary differences of opinion involve divergent
orderings of a quite limited set of experiences, so that agreement as to which is
true can_ be procured by seeing which best fits into the common background of
shared convictions. In contrast, metaphysical systems disagree about how the
most general kinds of things are to be ordered with respect to each other; they are
quite literally disagreements about everything. As what is at issue is the proper
arrangement of the most pervasive features of common experience, there is no
way to test for the true one among competing systems. Preferences between
them must be decided by comparing their alternative arrangements and em-
phases to determine which provides greatest overall satisfaction. Again, such
judgment is similar to that we pass in deciding preferences amongst works of art,
which tends to confirm Berdyaev's claim that philosophy is an art.
The comparison to art suggests another feature of philosophical adequacy. Art
from past ages, which expresses an emotional orientation quite foreign to most
contemporary persons (medieval religious art, for example), remains beautiful.
131
Bygone philosophies similarly retain a certain value, because they present
arrangements of the primary common features of experience that we can imag-
inatively reconstruct and appreciate. What they both have lost is relevance;
the art does not portray the emotions that we would like to express nor does the
philosophy order the elements of experience in a way which conforms to our
present practice and felt preferences. Consider the case ofa contemporary artist,
an artist of the avant-garde, attempting to perfect a new mode of expression.
Whether his mode of expression is a relevant communication of feelings shared
by many persons, or only an idiosyncratic aberration, may not be immediately
evident. He may have created a way of seeing whose pertinency will gradually
emerge only with the passage of time. The creative metaphysician is in a similar
situation. He proposes a 'myth' about the way the world is which may or may not
attain widespread adoption. Should it replace the currently dominant myth, it
would undoubtedly involve changes in normal attitudes and practices. For
example, one's attitude towards living organisms would not be the same if one
thinks of them as centers of sentience rather than as sophisticated mechanisms.
Berdyaev is one of several who, over the past century, have mounted challenges
to the dominant mechanicalistic-materialistic myth. Bergson and Whitehead are
among the more notable recent philosophers who have done likewise. They
share an insistence that events or processes are more fundamental than things
and that the model for what a process is like is our own inner experience.
Whether this will become the ordinary way of thinking about the world is not yet
apparent. Some contemporary developments, ranging from the scientific recog-
nition that life is much more pervasive in the universe than had formerly been
believed to the current popularity of so-called ecological awareness, suggest that
it may be gaining in popular appreciation. Our myopic perspective on cultural
change does not permit a confident declaration that these represent a long-term
trend.
Among these revisionist metaphysicians, Berdyaev is exceptionally, perhaps
uniquely, aware of the nature of his enterprise. He sees that the world view he
proposes, although intended to fit the facts, incorporates value judgments about
the relative importance of various orders of facts which preclude its being
confirmed by disinterested means. He clearly grasps the prophetic aspect of
philosophizing manifest whenever philosophers propose cosmologies which
clash with presently dominant presuppositions. Their vindication rests upon an
eschatological hope that the world is as they say and that man's future progress
will eventuate in more general recognition of the truth they now proclaim as a
personal vision.
If one classifies Berdyaev as a process metaphysician, he is also notable for
having given much attention to the moral and social consequences of the adop-
tion of that point of view. Looking at the same achievement from another
perspective, if one classifies him as an existentialist, he is notable for proposing
that one come to terms with one's existential predicament, not by rebelling
absurdly against a world one accepts as indubitably alien and indifferent, but by
132
transforming that world in terms of one's values. He sees that the adoption of a
metaphysics is not just an intellectual exercise but a matter of practical applica-
tion; and he spells out new conceptions of morality and politics compatible with
his cosmology. He correctly sees that knowing is a human activity whose value
(truth) cannot be ascertained in isolation from other kinds of human action and
their underlying emotions. His anthropocentrism seems to be based upon the
justifiable assumption that no philosophy can be adequate if its thoroughgoing

application would be incompatible with emotions and attitudes we cannot relin-
quish (see Dye, 1974, pp. 24, 26).
Of course, one's philosophy is not determined exclusively by one's emotions;
and the prophetic nature of philosophy presupposes that emotions can to some
extent be trained to fit the philosophy one has thought out. Intellectual and
emotional factors interact, and one should be aware of one's valuational com-
mitments whilst doing metaphysics. These are especially apparent in the choice
of the primitive ideas from which criteria of reality and standards of value are
educed. Berdyaev signals his choice in identifying himself as a 'metaphysician of
freedom.' This choice, elaborated into the ideas of uncreated freedom, spirit,
God, and fate, ineluctably determines the ultimate significance of his met-
aphysics in comparison to alternative theories. Whereas some metaphysical
theories represent the world as a play of mindless forces or as the pastime of an
omnipotent deity, Berdyaev portrays it as a community of spirits freely striving
to achieve whatever value qualities are within the scope of their imaginative and
volitional capabilities. Taking Kant's separation of the cognitive and moral
realms of experience as a point of departure, Berdyaev tips the balance in favor
of the moral by building a metaphysics upon the moral postulates (God, freedom,
and immortality), showing how these represent factors immediately present in
experience rather than merely hypothetical abstract conditions. He is then able
to derive the objects of cognition as special effects of the activity of free subjects.
This is undoubtedly a most humane vision of reality, but it is not necessarily a
very comforting one, as it places all responsibility upon the individual person. An
enduring lesson of Dostoevsky's Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, which Berd-
yaev so much admired, is that men may prefer the security of externally
determined, authoritarian order to 'the great anxiety and terrible agony' of
freedom. Berdyaev bases his choice upon his conviction, again quoting Dos-
toevsky, 'that man's whole business is to prove to himself that he is a man and
not a cog-wheel' (Berdyaev, 1957b, pp. 53, 188-212).
REFERENCES
Berdyaev. N. 1944. Slavery and Freedom, trans. R. M. French. London: Geoffrey Bies.
- 1946. Spirit and Reality, trans. G. Reavey. London: Geoffrey Bies.
- 1948. Freedom and the Spirit, trans. 0. F. Clarke. 4th edition. London: Geoffrey Bies.
- 1949a. The Divine and the Human, trans. R. M. French. London: Geoffrey Bies.
133
1949b. The Meaning of History, trans. G. Reavey. London: Geoffrey Bies.
1950. Dream and Reality, trans. Katharine Lampert. London: Geoffrey Bies.
1953a. The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, trans. D. A. Lowrie. New York: Harper &
Row.
1953b. Truth and Revelation, trans. R. M. French. London: Geoffrey Bies.
1954. The Destiny of Man, trans. Natalie Duddington. 4th edition. London: Geoffrey Bies.
1955. The Meaning of the Creative Act, trans. D. A. Lowrie. New York: Harper & Row.
1957a. The Beginning and the End, trans. R. M. French. New York: Harper & Row.
1957b. Dostoevsky. trans. D. Attwater. New York: Meridian Books.
Dye, J. 1961. Unity in Duality. An examination of the metaphysics of Nicholas Berdyaev. Ann Arbor:
University Microfilms.
- 1965. 'Berdyaev on "Creativity".' The Persona/isl. 46: 459-467.
- 1974. 'Heraclitus and the Future of Process Philosophy.' Tulane Studies in Philosophy. 23: 13-31.
Lowrie, D. 1960. Rebellious Prophet. A life of Nicolai Berdyaev. New York: Harper & Row.
Porret, E. 1951. Berdiaeff Prophete des temps nouveaux. Paris: Delachaux & Niestle.
Spinka, M. 1950. Nicolas Berdyaev: Captive of Freedom. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
Vallon, M.A. 1960. An Apostle of Freedom. Life and Teachings of Nicolas Berdyaev. London:
Vision.
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4.

James Wayne Dye, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Ill., U.S.A.

Among those philosophers usually classified as religious existentialists, prob-

Renaissance), he authored the first comprehensive statement of the philosophi-

appearance of eclecticism, although actually his debts to the philosophers he

Freedom is the keynote ofBerdyaev's entire philosophy. He provides analyses,

any other attributes, attributes being 'substantive-hungry,' necessarily inhering

three important cosmological claims. ( I) Inasmuch as personality is distinct from

tional necessity (Berdyaev. 1957a, p. I; I 946, pp. 19-24).

Sobornost involves the minimum of external determination of one entity by

indeterminate creativity which is equally fundamental (the Ungrund). An es-

'Knowledge' may designate either the activity of knowing or information which

not be supposed to be extraneous to existence or a merely accidental occurrence

An authoritarian attitude, and the fixed norms or standards to which it appeals,

In the Berdyaevian scheme of things, history has a rather ambivalent status. On

A fair appraisal ofBerdyaev's accomplishment must take due account of exactly

justifiable assumption that no philosophy can be adequate if its thoroughgoing

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