Nikolai Berdyaev: Leben, Werke und belegte Zitate

Biografie

4 Min. Lesezeit

Unterstützte Übersetzung aus dem spanischen Original, Durchsicht durch einen muttersprachlichen Übersetzer ausstehend.

Ein Aristokrat unter Militärs

Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Berdjajew wurde am 18. März 1874 (nach julianischem Kalender am 6.) auf dem Familiengut Obuchowo im Gouvernement Kiew geboren. Sein Vater, Alexander Michailowitsch, ein ehemaliger Gardeoffizier, war Adelsmarschall des Kreises und Vorsitzender der Kiewer Agrarbank; seine Mutter, Alina Sergejewna, eine geborene Fürstin Kudaschewa, war zur Hälfte Französin – ihre Mutter war eine Gräfin de Choiseul –, schrieb nur auf Französisch und fühlte sich, obwohl orthodox getauft, eher katholisch. Er wurde zu Hause und im Kiewer Kadettenkorps erzogen, wo er sich, wie er schreiben sollte, von Kindheit an als „Fremder in der Welt“ fühlte. Er gab die militärische Laufbahn auf, um das Abitur nachzuholen und an die Universität zu gehen, mit dem erklärten Ziel, Professor der Philosophie zu werden.

Vom Marxismus zum Idealismus

An der Universität Kiew, zunächst in den Naturwissenschaften, dann in der Rechtswissenschaft, schloss er sich sozialdemokratischen Zirkeln an. Er wurde 1897 und erneut 1898 verhaftet, von der Universität verwiesen und 1900 nach Wologda verbannt, wo er fast zwei Jahre verbrachte, sowie weitere elf Monate nach Schitomir. Doch sein Marxismus war nie orthodox: Er wollte ihn mit der Ethik Kants versöhnen, und in seinem ersten Buch, „Subjektivismus und Individualismus in der Sozialphilosophie“ (1901), mit einem Vorwort von Pjotr Struve, zeigte sich bereits der Idealist. Mit Struve, Sergei Bulgakow und Semjon Frank bildete er die Gruppe, die in dem Sammelband „Probleme des Idealismus“ (1902) mit dem Positivismus der revolutionären Intelligenzija brach.

Die Petersburger und Moskauer Jahre

1904 verband er sein Leben mit dem der Dichterin Lidija Truschewa, geborene Rapp, die ihn bis zu ihrem Tod 1945 begleitete. In Petersburg gab er mit Bulgakow die Zeitschrift „Voprosy žizni“ („Fragen des Lebens“) heraus und verkehrte bei den Mereschkowskis und in den Religiös-Philosophischen Versammlungen; 1908 zog er nach Moskau, zur Religiös-Philosophischen Gesellschaft, die den Namen Solowjows trug. 1909 eröffnete er mit seinem Beitrag den Sammelband „Wechi“ („Wegzeichen“), der der russischen Intelligenzija vorwarf, die Wahrheit der egalitären Gerechtigkeit geopfert zu haben. 1913 veröffentlichte er „Die Auslöscher des Geistes“, einen Angriff auf den Heiligen Synod wegen der Unterdrückung der Athosmönche, die der „Namensverehrung“ anhingen, und wurde wegen Gotteslästerung angeklagt, ein Vergehen, auf das lebenslange Verbannung nach Sibirien stand; der Krieg schob den Prozess auf, und die Revolution ließ ihn gegenstandslos werden.

Der Sinn des Schaffens

In der „Philosophie der Freiheit“ (1911) und vor allem in „Der Sinn des Schaffens. Versuch einer Rechtfertigung des Menschen“ (1916) formulierte er die Intuition, die sein ganzes Werk bestimmen sollte: Der Mensch ist nicht nur ein gefallenes Geschöpf, das erlöst werden muss, sondern ein zum Schaffen berufenes Wesen, das Gottes Werk an einem „achten Schöpfungstag“ fortsetzen soll. Auf die Epoche des Gesetzes und die der Erlösung sollte eine dritte folgen, die des Geistes und des schöpferischen Tuns. Die Freiheit, die er von Jakob Böhme unter dem Namen „Ungrund“ übernahm, geht sogar dem Sein voraus.

Unter den Sowjets

Die Februarrevolution begrüßte er mit Begeisterung, die Oktoberrevolution mit hellsichtiger Feindschaft: In „Die Geister der russischen Revolution“ (1918) deutete er sie im Licht Gogols und Dostojewskis. 1919 gründete er die Freie Akademie für geistige Kultur, das letzte Forum freien Denkens in Moskau, und 1920 wurde er zum Professor der Universität gewählt. Im selben Jahr wurde er verhaftet und, wie er in „Selbsterkenntnis“ erzählt, zu später Stunde von Felix Dserschinski persönlich verhört, dem er eine Dreiviertelstunde lang darlegte, warum er ein Feind des Kommunismus sei; man ließ ihn frei. Im August 1922 wurde er erneut festgenommen; man teilte ihm mit, dass er ausgewiesen werde, und ließ ihn unterschreiben, dass er im Falle einer Rückkehr erschossen würde. Am 29. September verließ er Petrograd auf dem Dampfer „Oberbürgermeister Haken“, dem sogenannten Philosophenschiff.

Paris und die Zeitschrift „Putj“

Nach zwei Jahren in Berlin, wo er eine Religiös-Philosophische Akademie gründete und „Der Sinn der Geschichte“ sowie „Das neue Mittelalter“ veröffentlichte, ließ er sich 1924 in Paris nieder. Dort leitete er von 1925 bis 1940 die Zeitschrift „Putj“ („Der Weg“) und den Verlag YMCA-Press, wirkte in der Russischen Christlichen Studentenbewegung mit und stand in ständigem Austausch mit Maritain, Mounier, Gabriel Marcel und Karl Barth. „Das neue Mittelalter“ (1924), rasch übersetzt, machte ihn mit seiner Diagnose in ganz Europa bekannt: Der rationale Tag der Moderne gehe zur Neige, und die Menschheit trete in eine „Nacht“ ein, in der sie wieder das Heilige suchen werde. Es folgten „Von der Bestimmung des Menschen“ (1931), seine paradoxe Ethik, „Sinn und Schicksal des russischen Kommunismus“ (1937), das den Bolschewismus als säkularisierten russischen Messianismus erklärte, und „Von der Knechtschaft und Freiheit des Menschen“ (1939).

Clamart

Das Erbe einer Freundin englischer Herkunft, Florence West, erlaubte ihm, zum ersten Mal ein Haus zu besitzen: einen Pavillon mit Garten in Clamart vor den Toren von Paris, wo er jeden Sonntag Freunde und Schüler empfing. Dort überstand er die deutsche Besatzung und erlebte 1945 den Tod seiner Frau; es blieb ihm die Gesellschaft seiner Schwägerin Jewgenija Rapp. Nach dem Sieg nahm er die sowjetische Staatsbürgerschaft an, kehrte aber nie zurück. 1947 verlieh ihm die Universität Cambridge die Ehrendoktorwürde in Theologie, und zwischen 1942 und 1948 wurde er siebenmal für den Literaturnobelpreis vorgeschlagen. Er starb am 24. März 1948 an einem Herzinfarkt, an seinem Schreibtisch in Clamart sitzend; zwei Wochen zuvor hatte er „Das Reich des Geistes und das Reich Cäsars“ abgeschlossen. Er ist auf dem Friedhof von Clamart begraben.

Nachwirkung

Berdjajew verstand sich nie als Theologe oder Mann der Kirche, sondern als „Philosoph der Freiheit“, der das Christentum gewählt hatte, weil er nur in ihm die Würde der Person begründet fand. Sein Einfluss war außerhalb Russlands größer als im Land selbst: Der französische Personalismus Mouniers und der christliche Existenzialismus verdanken ihm Gedanken und Formeln, und in Russland, wo er in sowjetischer Zeit verboten war, wurde er seit Ende der Achtzigerjahre zu einem der meistaufgelegten Autoren. Seine philosophische Autobiographie „Selbsterkenntnis“, 1949 postum erschienen, ist eine der großen intellektuellen Konfessionen des 20. Jahrhunderts.

Quellen: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net). · Berdiáyev, N. A. Смысл творчества. Опыт оправдания человека [El sentido de la creación]. Moscú: G. A. Lemán y S. I. Sajárov, 1916. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí». · Lowrie, Donald A. Rebellious Prophet: A Life of Nicolai Berdyaev. Nueva York: Harper, 1960. · Berdiáyev, N. A. Истоки и смысл русского коммунизма [Las fuentes y el sentido del comunismo ruso]. París: YMCA-Press, 1955 (ed. alemana y ed. inglesa, 1937). Texto en Wikisource ruso. · Berdiáyev, N. A. Новое средневековье. Размышление о судьбе России и Европы [Una nueva Edad Media]. Berlín: Obelisk, 1924. Texto en Azbuka.

Zeitleiste

Das Leben, Jahr für Jahr

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18741893191119301948

18. März 18740 JahreObújovo (gobierno de Kiev)

Birth

Born on the family estate (6 March Old Style), son of Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev and Princess Alina Kudasheva.

BelegtWikidata, Q184656: Nikolai Berdyaev, filósofo ruso (1874–1948). P31=Q5; 74 enlaces entre wikis.

Nach dem Tod

1949Self-Knowledge

18. März 1874 · 0 Jahre
Birth
Born on the family estate (6 March Old Style), son of Alexander Mikhailovich Berdyaev and Princess Alina Kudasheva.
Belegt
1894 · 20 Jahre
Kiev University
Having left the Cadet Corps, he enrols in Natural Sciences and then moves to Law; he joins the Marxist circles.
Wahrscheinlich
1898 · 24 Jahre
Arrest and expulsion
Arrested for the second time, for distributing illegal literature, and expelled from the university.
Belegt
1900 – 1902 · 26 Jahre
Exile in Vologda
Almost two years of exile in Vologda and a further eleven months in Zhitomir.
Belegt
1901 · 27 Jahre
First book
Publishes Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy, with a preface by Pyotr Struve.
Belegt
1904 · 30 Jahre
Lydia Rapp
Begins his life with the poet Lydia Trusheva (Rapp); works with Bulgakov on the journals Novyi put' and Voprosy zhizni.
Belegt
1909 · 35 Jahre
Vekhi
His essay 'Philosophical Truth and the Truth of the Intelligentsia' opens the collective volume Vekhi (Landmarks).
Belegt
1913 · 39 Jahre
Blasphemy trial
For 'Quenchers of the Spirit', against the Synod and the repression of the Athonite monks, he is prosecuted for blasphemy; the case is postponed by the war and dropped in 1917.
Belegt
1916 · 42 Jahre
The Meaning of the Creative Act
Publishes his first major work, 'An Essay in the Justification of Man'.
Belegt
1919 – 1922 · 45 Jahre
Free Academy of Spiritual Culture
Founds and chairs the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture (1919–1922), which grew out of meetings at his home.
Belegt
1920 · 46 Jahre
Interrogated by Dzerzhinsky
Elected professor at Moscow University; arrested in connection with the 'Tactical Centre' case, he is interrogated in person by Felix Dzerzhinsky and released.
Belegt
29. September 1922 · 48 Jahre
The philosophers' ship
Expelled from Soviet Russia, he leaves Petrograd for Stettin on the steamer Oberbürgermeister Haken with some twenty-five intellectuals and their families.
Belegt
1923 · 49 Jahre
Berlin
Publishes The Meaning of History and The Philosophy of Inequality in Berlin, and Dostoevsky's Worldview in Prague; heads the Religious-Philosophical Academy.
Belegt
1924 · 50 Jahre
Paris and The End of Our Time
Settles in Paris; The End of Our Time (The New Middle Ages) brings him European fame.
Belegt
1925 – 1940 · 51 Jahre
The journal Put'
Founds and edits until 1940 Put', the organ of Russian religious thought in emigration.
Belegt
1931 · 57 Jahre
The Destiny of Man
Publishes On the Destiny of Man: An Essay in Paradoxical Ethics.
Belegt
1937 · 63 Jahre
The Origin of Russian Communism
The book appears first in German and English; the Russian version is not published until 1955.
Belegt
1939 · 65 Jahre
Slavery and Freedom
Publishes his 'essay in personalist philosophy'; he is already living in his house at Clamart.
Belegt
1942 – 1948 · 68 Jahre
Nobel nominee
The first of seven nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1942–1948).
Belegt
1945 · 71 Jahre
Death of Lydia
His wife, Lydia Yudifovna, dies; her sister Evgenia Rapp stays with him.
Wahrscheinlich
1946 · 72 Jahre
The Russian Idea and a Soviet passport
Publishes The Russian Idea and accepts Soviet citizenship, though he never returns.
Belegt
1947 · 73 Jahre
Honorary doctorate from Cambridge
Receives an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of Cambridge.
Belegt
24. März 1948 · 74 Jahre
Death
Dies of a heart attack at his desk in Clamart (some sources give 23 March). He is buried in the Clamart cemetery.
Belegt
1949
Self-Knowledge
YMCA Press posthumously publishes his philosophical autobiography.
Belegt

Werke

Grundlegende Werke

Die Werke, ohne die sich das Vermächtnis nicht verstehen lässt.

Schriftliches Werk · 1916

The Meaning of the Creative Act

Смысл творчества. Опыт оправдания человека

His first major work, written in 1911–1914 and published in 1916. Against a Christianity centred only on law and redemption, it argues that man is the image of the Creator and is called to create: human creativity continues God's work and opens a third epoch, that of the Spirit. It examines the relation of creativity to redemption, knowledge, freedom, asceticism and holiness, sex and love, beauty, morality, society and mysticism.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

The End of Our Time (The New Middle Ages)

The Conscious Library

Schriftliches Werk · 1924

The End of Our Time (The New Middle Ages)

Новое средневековье. Размышление о судьбе России и Европы

An essay published in Berlin in 1924 that brought him European fame. History has a rhythm of daytime and night-time epochs: the rational day of modernity, of humanism, liberalism and formal democracy, is setting; humanity is entering a new Middle Ages in which the religious returns to the centre of life, for good or ill. Communism and fascism are already forms of that inverted sacredness. Translated into French in 1927 (Un nouveau Moyen Âge) and English in 1933.

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Schriftliches Werk · 1931

The Destiny of Man

О назначении человека. Опыт парадоксальной этики

His great work of ethics, published in Paris in 1931. It distinguishes three ethics — of law, of redemption and of creativity — and argues that the good itself, when it becomes an imposed norm, can turn into evil; true ethics is creative and personal, and culminates in an eschatological ethics facing death, hell and the Kingdom. In Self-Knowledge he calls it his 'most perfect' and 'most systematic' work; the plan of the book, he says, came to him all at once at a Diaghilev ballet.

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Schriftliches Werk · 1937

The Origin of Russian Communism

Истоки и смысл русского коммунизма

Published first in German and English (1937) and in Russian in 1955. It explains Bolshevism not merely as an import of Marxism but as a secularised transformation of Russian messianism — the Third Rome turned Third International — heir to the schism, to nihilism and to the populism of the intelligentsia. It is his most read book outside Russia.

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Nachgelassenes Werk · 1949

Self-Knowledge: An Essay in Autobiography (Dream and Reality)

Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии

Written in 1940 and completed with additions until 1947, published posthumously in 1949. It is not a chronological autobiography but a 'history of the spirit and of self-consciousness': the sense of estrangement from the world, loneliness, freedom, rebellion, eros, conversion, revolution, exile, encounters with Blok, Bely, Ivanov, Rozanov or Bulgakov, and his vision of the end of history.

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Das gesamte Werk (51)

Alle 51 Werke in der Bibliothek ansehen

Zitate

Zitate, die in einem bestimmten Werk nachgewiesen sind. Jedes trägt seine Herkunft und seinen Grad an Verlässlichkeit.

The human spirit is in captivity. This captivity I call 'the world', the world's givenness, necessity.

Дух человеческий – в плену. Плен этот я называю «миром», мировой данностью, необходимостью.

Geprüft«Смысл творчества» (1916), Introducción, primeras líneas.

1 / 8

Wesentliche Gedanken (redaktionelle Zusammenfassung)

Aus Achtung vor dem Urheberrecht werden diese Gedanken mit eigenen Worten zusammengefasst und nicht als wörtliche Zitate dargestellt.

Freedom was not created by God: it springs from an abyss prior to being, Böhme's Ungrund, and so God is not responsible for the evil man chooses; God suffers with man instead of ruling him as a master.
All culture is an objectification that cools and fixes the creative impulse; authentic creativity aspires to transfigure the world, not merely to produce works, and in that sense is eschatological.
Russian communism is the secularised transformation of Russian messianism: the Third Rome becomes the Third International, and militant atheism is a faith that keeps the religious structure of the Russian soul.

Letzte Worte

Es gibt keine überprüfbaren Aufzeichnungen der letzten Worte.

There is no record of any last words. He died of a heart attack on 24 March 1948 (some sources give the 23rd), seated at his desk in Clamart, while working; two weeks earlier he had finished The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar and already had the plan of a new book in mind.

Quelle: «Бердяев, Николай Александрович». Wikipedia en ruso (biografía y bibliografía detallada).

Fragen

Was das Werk beantwortet

Zwölf große Fragen der Menschheit und was sich aus den Texten darauf antworten lässt, mit Belegen. Wir legen niemandem Worte in den Mund.

Was ist das Absolute? Gibt es Gott?
Before God the creator lies an abyss of freedom; God is not a master
Persönlich und unpersönlich zugleichAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev rejects both the God of school theology, conceived as monarch and cause of the world, and the idea of an indifferent Absolute. Following Böhme and the Eckhart of the Gottheit, he distinguishes between the groundless Divinity, the Ungrund, which no category reaches, and the Trinitarian God who arises from that abyss and creates. From the same ground springs an uncreated freedom, which God did not make and for which he is not responsible; hence he is not the author of evil, and instead of ruling man like a master he suffers with him. He insists that God is not an object nor a being among beings: every objectification falsifies him. In The Destiny of Man and Spirit and Reality he describes him as Spirit and as personality, yet reachable only by the apophatic way and by the experience of freedom.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Wer bin ich? Gibt es ein wahres Selbst?
The person is free spirit, not a part of the world nor an object
Eine geschaffene, unsterbliche SeeleAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev opens Slavery and Freedom by stating that man is an enigma in the world, perhaps the greatest of all. He distinguishes carefully between the individual, a biological and social category forming part of the species and the State, and the person, a spiritual category which is part of nothing, but a whole containing the universal within itself. The person is not a fixed given but a task: it is realised in freedom and in the creative act, and may be lost in the slavery of objectification, when the human being treats himself or others as things. In The Destiny of Man he links it to the image of God and to immortality, which he conceives not as the soul's natural survival but as a personal victory over death. The true self is personal, unique and unrepeatable.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Warum leiden wir?
Evil springs from a freedom prior to God; God suffers with man
Die Trennung von GottAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev rejects both theodicies that justify suffering as a divine plan and the idea that God inflicts it as punishment. Following Böhme, he places the root of evil in an uncreated freedom, prior to being, of which God is not the author: man can choose non-being, and that choice introduces the rift. To it is added objectification, the process by which spirit cools into necessity, State, class and thing; the introduction to The Meaning of the Creative Act describes the human spirit as captive to the givenness of the world. In Dostoevsky's World-View he reads the tragedy of freedom as the key to the novels. God does not watch from outside: in Christ he suffers with man, and suffering can be transfigured into creation, though it is never fully explained.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Was geschieht nach dem Tod?
Immortality is the person's conquest, not a natural fact; against eternal hell
Ewiges Leben und AuferstehungAusdrücklich gesagt
In the third part of The Destiny of Man, devoted to eschatological ethics, Berdyaev holds that death is the deepest evil and, at the same time, the only thing that gives life its tragic meaning: endless life in time would be a nightmare. Immortality does not seem to him a natural property of the soul, but a spiritual conquest of the person in union with Christ, who overcomes death through resurrection. He is repelled by the idea of eternal hell as punishment, which he regards as a sadistic objectification of human justice; he prefers to think of hell as a subjective state of closure and hopes for the salvation of all, though without making it dogma. His vision is active: the human being must cooperate creatively in the transfiguration of the world, not wait passively for judgement.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Wie erlangt man Befreiung oder Erlösung?
Redemption is not enough: man answers God with the creative act
Durch Gnade und LiebeAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev accepts redemption in Christ, but considers that historical Christianity reduced it to an ethics of obedience and fear centred on the individual salvation of the soul. In The Meaning of the Creative Act he holds that creativity is not only a struggle against evil and sin, but creates another world and continues the work of creation: God expects from man a free and creative answer, not merely his repentance. In The Destiny of Man he distinguishes three ethics, of law, of redemption and of creativity, and asks that the third complete the other two. The goal is not to escape the world, but to cooperate in its eschatological transfiguration. Grace does not cancel freedom: God and man need each other, and a forced salvation would be a form of slavery.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Braucht es einen Lehrer?
Religious authority is objectification; spirit is passed on only in freedom
Keine spirituelle AutoritätAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev is one of the most tenacious critics of authority in religion. In Freedom and the Spirit he argues that faith imposed from outside, by an institution or a teacher, is a form of objectification that turns the truth of the spirit into external law and the believer into a subject. He was raised in Orthodoxy and defended it as a mystical tradition, but rejected its clerical and authoritarian version, which earned him a blasphemy trial in 1913 for defending the monks of Mount Athos against the Synod. In Self-Knowledge he confesses that he could never submit to any authority and that freedom was the theme of his whole life. He acknowledges masters, Böhme, Dostoevsky, Soloviev, but as interlocutors, not as guides to be obeyed: spiritual truth passes from freedom to freedom.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Ist die Welt wirklich?
The world of objects is objectified, fallen spirit; spirit is what is real
Erscheinung über der einen WirklichkeitAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev distinguishes between the world as it is given to us, the world of objects, necessity and causality, and primary reality, which is spirit, freedom and person. In Solitude and Society and Spirit and Reality he argues that the objective world is not ultimate reality, but the result of a process of objectification in which spirit is alienated, cools and becomes subject to necessity; the introduction to The Meaning of the Creative Act calls that state the captivity of spirit. He does not deny its existence, but considers it a fallen and provisional state of existence, which human creativity and God's action must transfigure at the end of time. True reality is deeper than the objectified world.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Was ist Liebe?
Love is directed to the person and affirms it for eternity
Liebe zu Gott und zum NächstenAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev thinks of love from his philosophy of the person. In The Destiny of Man he distinguishes love, which is directed to the image of God in the other and affirms it for eternity, from compassion, which is directed to the other's suffering; both are necessary and neither suffices alone. Authentic love is always personal and free: it cannot be imposed or turned into law, and love for an abstract idea, be it humanity or the State, can become cruel to concrete persons. In The Meaning of the Creative Act he devotes pages to erotic love, in Soloviev's wake, and considers it a form of creativity transcending family and procreation. Love, like creativity, is man's answer to God, and a force against the objectification that turns the other into a thing.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Sind wir frei, oder ist alles vorherbestimmt?
Freedom is uncreated, prior to being; it is the first truth of spirit
Echter freier WilleAusdrücklich gesagt
Few thinkers have given freedom so radical a place as Berdyaev. In The Philosophy of Freedom, Freedom and the Spirit and The Destiny of Man he holds that freedom was not created by God, but springs from an abyss prior to being, Böhme's Ungrund; hence it is not an attribute God grants and can withdraw, but the very ground of existence. Three theses follow: God is not responsible for evil, which arises from freedom; the human being is capable of creating something really new, not contained in what came before; and every form of determinism, natural, social or theological, is an objectification that enslaves. In Self-Knowledge he says freedom was the fundamental intuition of his life and that he preferred freedom with suffering to imposed happiness.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Wozu meditieren oder beten?
He left no doctrine of prayer; he prefers mysticism as experience of spirit
Nicht geäußert
Berdyaev did not write on prayer as a practice nor propose a method of meditation. In Freedom and the Spirit he devotes a chapter to mysticism and the spiritual path, where he distinguishes authentic mysticism, a free encounter of the human spirit with God, from forms that dissolve the person into the impersonal, and he warns against an asceticism reduced to technique or fear. In The Meaning of the Creative Act he holds that ascesis is necessary but not sufficient, and that the creative act is also a form of relation to God that monastic spirituality ignored. In Self-Knowledge he acknowledges that his religious life was more one of thought and inner struggle than of regular practice. No precise position on why to pray can therefore be attributed to him.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Kann die Vernunft das Letzte erkennen?
Objectifying knowledge cannot reach spirit; knowing is a creative act
Das Letzte liegt jenseits des VerstandesAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev is no irrationalist: he wrote demanding philosophical works and argued with Kant, Hegel and phenomenology. But he holds that rational knowledge, as science practises it, is a form of objectification: it turns what it knows into an object separated from the subject, subject to categories and necessity, and hence cannot reach spirit, freedom or the person, which are never objects. In Solitude and Society and Truth and Revelation he proposes an existential knowledge in which the subject participates in the known and which is a creative act of spirit, not a passive reflection. Revelation, too, is not a set of objective propositions: it is given in spiritual experience and is deformed when dogmatised. The ultimate is known from within.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen
Sich von der Welt zurückziehen oder sie verwandeln?
No kingdom of Caesar is sacred; the true revolution is of the spirit
Die Revolution ist innerlichAusdrücklich gesagt
Berdyaev lived political history at close range: he was a Marxist, exiled by the tsar, a witness of the revolution, which he said he lived as part of his own destiny, interrogated by the Cheka and expelled in 1922. He never preached withdrawal from the world, and from Paris he defended a personalist socialism and criticised both capitalism and communism. But his conclusion, in The Spiritual Foundations of the Russian Revolution, The Origin of Russian Communism and The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, is that no political order can be sacred, and that social revolution without a transformation of spirit reproduces slavery in another form: Russian communism is for him secularised Russian messianism. The task is a personalist and spiritual revolution, transfiguring the world through freedom and creativity.
Diese Frage mit anderen Meistern vergleichen

Affinitäten und Spannungen

Frage für Frage aus den Positionen berechnet. Den Grund jeder Übereinstimmung und jedes Widerspruchs zeigt ein Klick.

Denkt ähnlich wie

Denkt anders als

Anekdoten und Erzählungen

Zeugnis1920

A lecture for Dzerzhinsky

In 1920 the Cheka arrested dozens of intellectuals in Moscow in connection with the so-called 'Tactical Centre'. Berdyaev, who had nothing to do with that organisation, was taken to the Lubyanka prison and one night, late, led through corridors and stairways to a large, brightly lit office with a polar-bear skin on the floor. By the desk stood a fair-haired man with a thin pointed beard and grey, melancholy eyes, who asked him to sit and said: 'My name is Dzerzhinsky.' Kamenev and the Cheka's deputy chairman, Menzhinsky, whom Berdyaev had known in Petersburg as a failed novelist, were present. Resolved not to defend himself but to attack, he warned that, as befitted his dignity as a thinker, he would say what he thought; Dzerzhinsky replied that this was what they expected. Berdyaev spoke for forty-five minutes on the religious, philosophical and moral grounds for his opposition to communism, and refused to name anyone. At the end Dzerzhinsky released him on condition that he not leave Moscow and, since it was late and bandits were rife, asked that he be taken home: there was no car, and a soldier brought him back on a motorcycle.

Herkunft der Erzählung: Berdyaev's own account in Self-Knowledge, ch. IX, written some twenty years later. There is no other published testimony of the interrogation.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net).

Zeugnisagosto–septiembre de 1922

The philosophers' ship

In the summer of 1922 the Berdyaevs had taken refuge in a dacha near Barvikha, in the woods where Trotsky walked. On the only night Berdyaev spent in Moscow, the GPU searched the flat and took him away. He spent a week in prison; then the investigator told him he would be expelled abroad and made him sign an undertaking that if he reappeared at the border he would be shot. He was one of a group of writers, scientists and professors whom the regime considered impossible to convert. At the end of September some twenty-five expellees and their families, seventy-five people in all, boarded the German steamer Oberbürgermeister Haken at Petrograd bound for Stettin. No one felt safe until they crossed the maritime frontier. Berdyaev would remember the Baltic crossing as poetic: splendid weather, moonlit nights, barely two hours of swell; 'we, exiles with an unknown future, felt ourselves free'. He did not think, he wrote, that his exile would last twenty-five years.

Herkunft der Erzählung: Self-Knowledge, chs. IX and X. The departure date (29 September 1922) and the context of the expulsions of intellectuals, decided by the Bolshevik leadership, are documented by historians.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net).

Belegt1913–1917

Tried for blasphemy

In 1913 the Russian government and the Holy Synod settled the conflict over the Russian monks of Mount Athos who upheld the doctrine of the 'glorification of the Name' of God by sending a warship and deporting them to Russia. Berdyaev, who did not particularly share that doctrine, was outraged by the violence done to the spiritual life and wrote a newspaper article entitled 'Quenchers of the Spirit', directed against the Synod. The issue was confiscated and he was prosecuted under the article of the code that punished blasphemy with perpetual exile to Siberia. His lawyer considered the case lost. The hearing was postponed because of the war and the impossibility of summoning all the witnesses, and in 1917 the revolution ended the proceedings. 'Had there been no revolution,' he remarked years later, 'I would be not in Paris but in Siberia, in perpetual exile.'

Herkunft der Erzählung: Self-Knowledge, ch. VII; the trial and its dismissal in February 1917 are also recorded in the Russian Wikipedia biography and in studies of imyaslavie.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net).

Zeugnisdécada de 1940

Muri the cat

In the pages he added to Self-Knowledge in his last years, Berdyaev devoted some lines, unusual in a metaphysical treatise, to his cat Muri, who lived with him at Clamart. He loved him with a love he was not ashamed to confess: the cat always came, even if he was sleeping in another room, when they read aloud in the evenings, and jumped onto his lap. On the eve of his death, already dying, Muri dragged himself with effort to the room of Lydia, who was herself gravely ill, and climbed onto her bed to say goodbye. Berdyaev, who admits he wept very rarely and with difficulty, wept bitterly. They buried him under a tree in the garden, and passing by the grave he thought of immortality not abstractly but concretely: if there were no place in eternal life for Muri, he writes in substance, there would be none for him either. Through the animal's suffering he felt united with 'the whole creation awaiting deliverance'.

Herkunft der Erzählung: Self-Knowledge, 'Additions'. The sentence about Muri and eternal life is a summary, not a literal quotation.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net).

Belegt1947

Cambridge doctor and Nobel candidate

In 1947 the University of Cambridge awarded Berdyaev an honorary doctorate in Divinity. In the solemn ceremony, in red gown and medieval velvet cap, he walked in the front row, as a doctor of the highest of the sciences; behind him, at some distance, came the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, and Field Marshal Wavell, former Viceroy of India, who were receiving doctorates in Law. 'All this suited my nature and character very little,' he noted; he watched himself as if from outside, thinking of the strangeness of his destiny. That same spring he was told from Sweden that he was a candidate for the Nobel Prize. He did not believe he would get it: that would require steps he would not take, and being a Russian exile did not help. He was nominated seven times between 1942 and 1948 and never received it.

Herkunft der Erzählung: Self-Knowledge, 'Additions'; the seven Nobel nominations are recorded in the Russian Wikipedia biography, based on the Nobel Foundation's nomination archive.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net).

Lehren

Die Begriffe, die das Denken gliedern, in ihrem Zusammenhang erklärt.

Uncreated freedom (Ungrund)libertad-increada

Berdyaev's most characteristic and disputed thesis is that freedom was not created by God. Taking from Jakob Böhme the notion of Ungrund — the 'groundless', the abyss prior to all determination — but shifting it, he holds that primordial freedom is rooted in nothingness (the meon), outside God, and that from it arise both the possibility of good and that of evil. This resolves for him the problem of theodicy: God is not the author of evil nor a monarch disposing of his creatures, but a God who suffers with man and awaits his free response. Freedom is more original than being, which is already determination and objectification. Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant theologians reproached him for a Gnostic dualism that limits divine omnipotence; Berdyaev replied in Self-Knowledge that his idea did not imply an ontological dualism, which would already be a rationalisation of the mystery. The idea runs through all his work, from The Philosophy of Freedom (1911) to The Beginning and the End (1947).

Developed from Böhme, Schelling and Dostoevsky; Berdyaev himself points out in Self-Knowledge that in Böhme the Ungrund is in God, while in his own thought it is outside God.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net).

Creativity as the eighth daycreacion

In The Meaning of the Creative Act (1916) Berdyaev holds that the image of God in man is above all his creative capacity. Historical Christianity had centred on law, which combats sin, and on redemption, which overcomes it; but a third revelation is lacking, that of man as creator, who continues God's work on an 'eighth day' of creation. Creativity is not redistribution of what exists nor emanation, but the appearance of the new out of freedom. He thus distinguishes three epochs — of Law (the Father), of Redemption (the Son) and of Creativity (the Spirit) — in the line of Joachim of Fiore. Every cultural work, however, is already a fall: the creative act cools and is 'objectified' in products; true creativity aspires to theurgy, the transfiguration of the world. Hence his tension between genius and holiness, which he illustrates with Pushkin and Seraphim of Sarov, two incommensurable Russian greatnesses.

The core of The Meaning of the Creative Act and of the 'ethics of creativity' in The Destiny of Man.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Смысл творчества. Опыт оправдания человека [El sentido de la creación]. Moscú: G. A. Lemán y S. I. Sajárov, 1916. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí».

Objectificationobjetivacion

Objectification is the process by which spirit, which is freedom and personal life, is externalised and fixed in objects, concepts, institutions and norms, losing its living character. For Berdyaev scientific knowledge, the State, society, the Church as institution and even the morality of law are forms of objectification: necessary in the fallen world but enslaving when taken for ultimate reality. The subject becomes an object and is condemned to loneliness, because between objects there can be communication but not communion. The way out is not to deny the world but to live and know from the existential subject, in the relation of person to person, and to await an eschatological transfiguration in which the objectified world will end. The notion, developed above all in Solitude and Society (1934) and The Beginning and the End (1947), brings him close to the existentialism of Jaspers and Marcel, whom he knew in Paris.

He himself regarded it as his 'central philosophical idea' (Self-Knowledge, Additions).

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии [Autoconocimiento. Ensayo de autobiografía filosófica]. París: YMCA-Press, 1949. Texto en la Biblioteca «Vejí» (vehi.net).

Person and personalismpersona

Berdyaev distinguishes between the individual, a biological and sociological category that forms part of the species and society, and the person, a spiritual and religious category, the image of God, which is part of no whole. 'The whole world is nothing compared with the human person,' he writes in Slavery and Freedom. The person is not given: it is a task, forged by overcoming slavery to being, nature, society, the nation, the State, revolution, eros and one's own self. His personalism is both anti-individualist and anti-collectivist: it rejects bourgeois liberalism, which leaves the person alone, as much as communism and fascism, which dissolve it in the collective. He proposed a 'personalist socialism' founded on communion. His influence on Emmanuel Mounier and the journal Esprit was direct and acknowledged.

Set out systematically in Slavery and Freedom (1939), which he regarded as his most radical book.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. О рабстве и свободе человека. Опыт персоналистической философии [Esclavitud y libertad del hombre]. París: YMCA-Press, 1939. Texto en Azbuka.

The new Middle Agesnueva-edad-media

In The End of Our Time (The New Middle Ages, 1924) Berdyaev proposes a rhythmic philosophy of history: there are daytime epochs, rational, critical and secular, and night-time epochs, organic and sacred. The modern age begun in the Renaissance was a long day in which man, emancipated from God, asserted his autonomy; but humanism has exhausted its forces and turns against man, and liberalism, formal democracy, parliamentarism and individualism lose their meaning. We are entering a new Middle Ages, a 'night' in which the religious returns to the centre of collective life. That night is no worse than the day: in it the stars shine and there are revelations the day does not know. But it may take Christian or anti-Christian form: communism and fascism are already inverted sacralities. The book was read throughout Europe as a diagnosis of the interwar crisis.

It extends the theses of The Meaning of History (1923) and of the article 'The End of the Renaissance'.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Новое средневековье. Размышление о судьбе России и Европы [Una nueva Edad Media]. Berlín: Obelisk, 1924. Texto en Azbuka.

The Russian idea and secularised messianismmesianismo-ruso

Berdyaev devoted much of his work to interpreting Russia's destiny. The Russian soul, polarised between extremes — anarchy and statism, humility and pride, nationalism and universalism — has an eschatological and communal vocation: it seeks the Kingdom of God, total truth, more than culture and order. That vocation was expressed in the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome, broke with the seventeenth-century schism and Peter's reform, and reappeared transformed in the revolutionary intelligentsia, which sought salvation in history with a faith of religious type. In The Origin of Russian Communism (1937) he concludes that Bolshevism is the deformation of that idea: the Third Rome turned Third International, an inverted orthodoxy with its dogma, its Church and its heretics. In The Russian Idea (1946) he traces the history of that vocation from Chaadaev to Solovyov and his own generation.

In dialogue with the Slavophiles, Dostoevsky and Solovyov, and with the historiography of the schism.

Quelle: Berdiáyev, N. A. Истоки и смысл русского коммунизма [Las fuentes y el sentido del comunismo ruso]. París: YMCA-Press, 1955 (ed. alemana y ed. inglesa, 1937). Texto en Wikisource ruso.

Videos

Aufnahmen, Gespräche und Dokumentarfilme. Die Videos werden von YouTube wiedergegeben; sie werden nicht hier gespeichert.

Николай Бердяев. «Я лишь бунтарь, искатель истины и правды…»
Dokumentarfilm· RU· 2008
Мудрый Философ
История Западной философии. Лекция №43. «Николай Бердяев и философия духа»
Vortrag· RU
Лекции А.Б. ЗубоваOffizieller Kanal
Философия свободы и творчества Бердяева — Алексей Козырев
Vortrag· RU
ПостНаукаOffizieller Kanal
Лекция Бердниковой А. Ю. «„Новое Средневековье“ Н. Бердяева: кризис ренессансной культуры»
Vortrag· RU· 2022
Институт философии РАНOffizieller Kanal
Николай Александрович Бердяев: Философия эротической революции
Vortrag· RU· 2024
ИНИОН РАНOffizieller Kanal
Лекция Л. Люкса «Николай Бердяев о „духах“ Русской революции и о духовном кризисе Европы»
Vortrag· RU· 2020
МЛРИД HSEOffizieller Kanal
Бердяевские среды 08. А. И. Резниченко «Николай Бердяев о себе и о мире объектов»
Vortrag· RU· 2024
Библиотека-Музей Дом ЛосеваOffizieller Kanal
Бердяевские среды 09. В. В. Кравченко «Н. А. Бердяев как мистический философ»
Vortrag· RU· 2024
Библиотека-Музей Дом ЛосеваOffizieller Kanal
Философский пароход: Николай Бердяев / Священник Георгий Кочетков
Vortrag· RU· 2022
Свято-Филаретовский институтOffizieller Kanal
Nikolai Berdyaev: On Freedom and Responsibility
Vortrag· EN· 2021
Wirth Institute (University of Alberta)Offizieller Kanal
The Harry Murray Sessions: Nikolai Berdyaev (segment)
Vortrag· EN
The Maurin Academy
Religion and the State in Russian Philosophy (Vladimir Soloviev and Nikolai Berdiaev)
Vortrag· EN· 2021
REES Queens (Queen's University)Offizieller Kanal
Marie Denieuil-Hovanessian : Digressions autour du concept d'amour chez Nicolas Berdiaev
Vortrag· FR
Philosophie russe

Galerie

Bilder mit geprüfter Lizenz. Jedes bewahrt seine Urheberschaft und seinen Herkunftsnachweis.

Beziehungen

Einflüsse, Schülerschaften und Verwandtschaften. Die belegte Beziehung wird von der durch Analyse ermittelten Ähnlichkeit unterschieden.

Beeinflusst von
Vladimir Solovyov
He never met him but regarded him as the founder of Russian religious philosophy. He devoted 'The Problem of East and West in the Religious Consciousness of Vl. Solovyov' (1911) and 'Vladimir Solovyov and Us' (1937) to him; he took from him the idea of Godmanhood, though he reproached him for an over-rational system, a naive theocracy and a sophiology that in Self-Knowledge he judges to contradict The Meaning of Love, 'perhaps the best thing ever written about love'.
Belegte Beziehung
Beeinflusst von
Fyodor Dostoevsky
He acknowledged him as his spiritual master and devoted Dostoevsky's Worldview (1923) to him, as well as essays on the Grand Inquisitor (1907) and Stavrogin (1914). From Dostoevsky he took irrational freedom, capable of evil, and the critique of all imposed happiness.
Belegte Beziehung
Beeinflusst von
Leo Tolstoy
In Self-Knowledge he acknowledges that Tolstoy was of great importance in his first revolt against society: he was never a Tolstoyan, but the 'Tolstoyan inoculation' lasted all his life, in his contempt for the false greatness of history; he links War and Peace to his only feeling for the homeland.
Belegte Beziehung
Widersprach
Leo Tolstoy
In 'The Old and New Testaments in the Religious Consciousness of L. Tolstoy' (1912) and 'The Spirits of the Russian Revolution' (1918) he reproaches him for a rationalist moralism that ignores grace and redemption, and makes him partly responsible for the levelling spirit of the revolution.
Belegte Beziehung
Widersprach
Pavel Florensky
They shared in the Moscow religious renaissance, but Berdyaev reviewed The Pillar and Ground of the Truth harshly in 'Stylised Orthodoxy' (1914), reproaching it for aestheticism, magic, fear of freedom and an Orthodoxy of style. In Self-Knowledge he calls Florensky 'alien and hostile' to him, though he acknowledges they shared the hope of a new outpouring of the Spirit.
Belegte Beziehung
Beeinflusst von
Jakob Böhme
Böhme was, with Kant, the thinker to whom he said he owed most. From him he took the notion of the Ungrund, which he reinterpreted as uncreated freedom, and that of the androgyne; he devoted two studies in Put' (1930) to him and the introduction to the French translation of Mysterium magnum (1945).
Belegte Beziehung
Verwandte Gedanken mit
Seraphim of Sarov
In The Meaning of the Creative Act (ch. VII, 'Creativity and Asceticism. Genius and Holiness') he contrasts Seraphim of Sarov, 'the greatest Russian saint', with Pushkin, 'the greatest Russian genius', contemporaries who never met: two incommensurable greatnesses of which the Russian soul may be equally proud. The comparison sums up his thesis that holiness does not exhaust the Christian vocation, which includes creativity.
Belegte Beziehung
Widersprach
Helena Blavatsky
He criticised the modern Theosophy founded by Blavatsky — and Steiner's Anthroposophy — as a naturalistic evolutionism that dissolves the person and freedom: in The Meaning of the Creative Act (ch. XIII) he judges it far inferior to Böhme's 'theosophy', and in 'Theosophy and Anthroposophy in Russia' he examined its spread in Russian circles.
Belegte Beziehung
Widersprach
Plato
In Self-Knowledge he presents his philosophy of freedom as a break with the ontological tradition of Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, which places being above freedom; and in The Meaning of the Creative Act he rejects the Platonic doctrine of a world perfected in the ideas, which would turn the world process into a comedy.
Belegte Beziehung

Von anderen Einträgen aus verknüpft

Quellen

Für diesen Eintrag herangezogene Bibliografie und Kataloge.

Rechteinhaber: Berdiáyev murió en 1948: su obra es de dominio público en la Unión Europea desde 2019 (70 años), pero en España no lo será hasta el 1 de enero de 2029 (80 años para autores fallecidos antes de 1987), y en EE. UU. las obras publicadas a partir de 1930 pueden seguir protegidas. Las traducciones pertenecen a sus traductores y editoriales.

Bestätigung ausstehend

Was dieser Eintrag noch nicht klären konnte. Wir sagen es lieber, als es aufzufüllen.

Ediciones españolas modernas con ISBN de «El sentido de la creación», «Una nueva Edad Media», «El destino del hombre», «Autoconocimiento», «Esclavitud y libertad del hombre» y «La idea rusa»: no localizadas (Open Library sin datos; Google Books sin cuota; catálogo de la BNE inaccesible). Sólo constan ediciones antiguas sin ISBN (Losada 1938, Janés 1947, Emecé 1955) y las de Encuentro, Sígueme y Nuevo Inicio.
Identificar la obra original de «El cristianismo y el problema del comunismo» (Espasa-Calpe Argentina, 1937) y registrarla.
Registrar uno por uno los varios cientos de artículos de Berdiáyev (Put, Sovremennye zapiski, Rússkaia mysl, Vopros zhizni, Novi Grad…); hoy figuran sólo los de mayor entidad. La bibliografía de referencia es la de T. Klépinine (1978).
Confirmar fecha y revista de «Teosofía y antroposofía en Rusia» (hacia 1916) y de «Verdad y mentira del comunismo» (1931).
Fecha exacta de la muerte: 24 de marzo de 1948 según Wikidata y la mayoría de las fuentes; 23 de marzo según otras (Open Library, parte de la bibliografía rusa).
Año de la edición de Encuentro de «El sentido de la historia» (ISBN 9788474900170).
Duración de los vídeos y año de los no fechados: oEmbed no los proporciona.
No se ha encontrado en YouTube ninguna grabación de la voz ni imágenes filmadas de Berdiáyev.

Recherchiert am 2026-10-25