Christianity · Christian mysticism · Orthodox Christianity
Vladimir Solovyov
Владимир Сергеевич Соловьёв
1853 – 1900Historically documented person
Russian philosopher, lay theologian and poet (1853–1900), Russia's first systematic thinker. He formulated 'all-unity', 'Godmanhood' and a mysticism of divine Wisdom, Sophia, whom he said he had seen three times. A friend of Dostoevsky, in 1881 he asked for clemency for the Tsar's assassins and lost his university post; he dreamed of reuniting the Eastern and Western Churches and closed his life with the 'Tale of the Antichrist'. Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florensky and Symbolist poetry all start from him.
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Retrato de Vladímir Soloviov, por Nikolái Yaroshenko · Public domain
In their words
«The meaning and worth of love as a feeling lies in this: it really forces us, with all our being, to acknowledge in another the absolute central significance which, owing to egoism, we feel only in ourselves.»«Смысл любви» [El sentido del amor], artículo tercero, I (1892–1894).
Their central idea
All-unity (vseedinstvo): All-unity is the central category of Solovyov's philosophy: true reality is neither the abstract unity that absorbs the parts (as in pantheism or in Eastern mysticism as he understood it) nor the multiplicity of isolated individuals of atomism and Western individualism, but a unity that positively contains all things, each with its own place and value.
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Biography
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A historian's son
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was born in Moscow on 28 January 1853 (16 January Old Style), the son of Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov, the historian who wrote the monumental History of Russia from the Earliest Times and became rector of Moscow University. His mother, Poliksena Vladimirovna Romanova, came of a family of Polish and Cossack roots that counted the wandering philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda among its ancestors. He grew up in a house of methodical work and unostentatious Orthodox piety; his brother Vsevolod became a novelist and his sister Poliksena a poet.
As a teenager he went through the crisis of his whole generation: he read Büchner, Feuerbach and the materialists, declared himself an atheist and, after entering Moscow University in 1869, moved from History and Philology to natural sciences. By 1871–1872 positivism no longer satisfied him: Spinoza, Schopenhauer and above all the late Schelling restored the metaphysical question to him. He abandoned the sciences, passed the candidate's examinations in History and Philology as an external student in 1873 and spent the following year auditing courses at the Theological Academy of Sergiev Posad, something unheard of for a university man of his milieu.
The crisis of Western philosophy
On 24 November 1874, aged twenty-one, he defended in St Petersburg his master's thesis, The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists. He argued that European thought, having exhausted rationalism and empiricism, led by its own logic to the demand for a religious knowledge uniting science, philosophy and faith. The defence was a public event and earned him a lectureship in Moscow.
Three meetings
In June 1875 he travelled to London to study Indian philosophy, Gnosticism and medieval mysticism in the Reading Room of the British Museum; he read Kabbalah, Böhme and Swedenborg. There, he would later say, he had the second vision of a luminous female figure he had first seen at the age of nine, during a liturgy in the Moscow University church. An inner voice ordered him to Egypt; he set out in the autumn and, one night late in 1875, in the desert near Cairo, he saw her whole. Solovyov kept silent about these experiences for more than twenty years and told them only in 1898, in the poem Three Meetings, at once comic and solemn. That presence was for him divine Wisdom, Sophia, and he built his work around her.
Godmanhood
In 1877 he left Moscow University over a dispute in the faculty and settled in St Petersburg as a member of the Scholarly Committee of the Ministry of Public Education. There his friendship with Dostoevsky, thirty years his senior, whom he had known since 1873, grew close. In the spring of 1878 he gave his Lectures on Godmanhood in the hall of the Solyanoy Gorodok, attended by the cream of the capital: Dostoevsky, Pobedonostsev and, one March evening, Tolstoy too, who never met the author of Crime and Punishment although both were in the room. In June, after the death of little Alexei Dostoevsky, the philosopher accompanied the novelist to Optina monastery, where they spoke with the elder Ambrose.
On 6 April 1880 he took his doctorate with The Critique of Abstract Principles. His system was now drawn: the whole of reality is an 'all-unity' that proceeds from God and returns to Him; the human being is the place where the material world can be reunited with the divine, and Christ, God made man, is the key to that process, which humanity must carry on in history until it becomes a Godmanhood.
The speech of 28 March
On 1 March 1881 the terrorists of People's Will assassinated Alexander II. Four weeks later, on 28 March, Solovyov ended a public lecture by asking the new Tsar, in the name of Christian forgiveness, not to execute the regicides. The hall split between applause and protest, the matter reached the Emperor and he was barred from public lecturing for a time. The condemned were hanged on 3 April. The following year he gave up university teaching and never again held a stable post: he lived by his pen, in friends' houses and hotels, without property or family.
The dream of a universal Church
He devoted the 1880s to an idea that set him against almost everyone: the reunion of Orthodoxy and Catholicism under a 'free theocracy' in which the Pope would exercise spiritual authority, the Tsar temporal power and the prophets freedom. He befriended the Croatian bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, published The History and Future of Theocracy in Zagreb (1887) and, faced with Russian censorship, issued in French The Russian Idea (1888) and Russia and the Universal Church (Paris, 1889). At the same time he denounced nationalism, antisemitism and the persecution of the Old Believers. In February 1896, according to a disputed account, he received communion from a Greek Catholic priest, Nikolai Tolstoy; he went on regarding himself as a member of a single Church that the schism had not broken at the root.
Love, goodness and beauty
In the 1890s, disillusioned with theocracy, he returned to philosophy. He edited the philosophy section of the Brockhaus–Efron encyclopaedic dictionary, campaigned during the famine of 1891–1892 and scandalised Moscow with his lecture On the Decline of the Medieval Worldview, which claimed that unbelievers working for justice served Christ better than many Christians. He published The Meaning of Love (1892–1894), in which eros is the force that overcomes egoism and anticipates immortality, and The Justification of the Good (1897), his great ethics. He wrote poetry of a delicacy admired by Fet and the Symbolists, and with his brother Mikhail began to translate Plato.
The Antichrist
His last years were darkened by an apocalyptic foreboding. In 1899–1900 he wrote Three Conversations on War, Progress and the End of World History, which culminates in the Short Tale of the Antichrist: a philanthropic superman, benefactor of humanity, who unifies the world and asks Christians only to acknowledge him; the elder John, Pope Peter and Professor Pauli, witnesses of the three Churches, unmask him and are reunited at the end of time. In July 1900, already ill, he had himself taken to Uzkoye, the Trubetskoy estate; he confessed and received communion from an Orthodox priest, prayed in Hebrew for the Jewish people and died on the night of 13 August (31 July Old Style) 1900. He is buried in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, beside his father.
Legacy
No Russian thinker shaped the following half-century as much. Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky start from his sophiology and his idea of Godmanhood; Berdyaev, Frank and the Trubetskoy brothers argued with him all their lives; Blok, Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov made his Sophia the muse of Symbolism. In the twentieth century his critique of the philanthropic Antichrist was reread by Catholic and Orthodox theologians, and in 2020 Cristi Puiu brought Three Conversations to the screen in Malmkrog.
Sources: Mochulski, Konstantín. Владимир Соловьев: жизнь и учение [Vladímir Soloviov: vida y doctrina]. París: YMCA-Press, 1936 (2.ª ed., 1951). · Lósev, Alekséi F. Владимир Соловьев и его время [Vladímir Soloviov y su tiempo]. Moscú: Progress, 1990. · Soloviov, V. S. «Три свидания» [Tres encuentros] (1898), en Стихотворения и шуточные пьесы, ed. Z. G. Mints. Leningrado: Sovetski pisatel (Biblioteka poeta), 1974, pp. 125–132. Texto en Wikisource ruso. · Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch (ed. y trad.). Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009. · Dostoiévskaya, Anna Grigórievna. Воспоминания [Memorias]. Moscú: Judózhestvennaya literatura, 1971 (primera edición, 1925). Texto en Wikisource ruso.
Timeline
A life, year by year
Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.
January 28, 1853age 0Moscú
Birth
Born in Moscow (16 January Old Style), fourth child of the historian Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov and Poliksena Vladimirovna Romanova.
DocumentedWikidata, Q282280: Vladimir Solovyov, filósofo ruso (1853–1900). P31=Q5; 64 enlaces entre wikis.
After their death
- 1911The volume On Vladimir Solovyov
January 28, 1853 · age 0
Birth
Born in Moscow (16 January Old Style), fourth child of the historian Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov and Poliksena Vladimirovna Romanova.
Documented
1862 · age 9
First vision
During an Ascension Day liturgy in the Moscow University church he sees, by his own 1898 account, a luminous female figure: the first of his 'three meetings'.
Tradition
1869 · age 16
Moscow University
Finishes secondary school with a gold medal and enters Moscow University; after a spell in History and Philology he enrols in natural sciences.
Documented
September 1873 · age 20
Auditor at the Theological Academy
Having graduated in History and Philology, he spends a year auditing courses at the Moscow Theological Academy in Sergiev Posad.
Documented
November 24, 1874 · age 21
The Crisis of Western Philosophy
Defends his master's thesis against the positivists at St Petersburg University and obtains a lectureship in Moscow.
Documented
June 1875 · age 22
The British Museum
Travels to London to study Indian philosophy, Gnosticism and medieval mysticism; in the Reading Room he has the second vision of Sophia.
Tradition
c. 1875 · age 22
The third meeting
An inner voice sends him to Egypt; in the desert east of Cairo he sees Sophia 'whole' for the third time. He stays in Egypt until March 1876.
Tradition
March 1877 · age 24
Move to St Petersburg
Having resigned in Moscow over a faculty dispute, he joins the Scholarly Committee of the Ministry of Public Education and grows close to Dostoevsky.
Documented
March 10, 1878 · age 25
The Lectures on Godmanhood
Gives his series of public lectures at the Solyanoy Gorodok. Tolstoy, Strakhov and Dostoevsky attend the one on 10 March: the two novelists never meet.
Documented
June 1878 · age 25
Journey to Optina with Dostoevsky
Accompanies Dostoevsky, stricken by the death of his son Alexei, to Optina monastery, where they talk with the elder Ambrose.
Documented
April 6, 1880 · age 27
Doctorate
Defends his doctoral thesis, The Critique of Abstract Principles; he is not given a chair.
Documented
March 28, 1881 · age 28
Plea for clemency for the regicides
At the end of a public lecture he asks the new Tsar not to execute Alexander II's assassins. He is temporarily barred from lecturing; in 1882 he leaves the university.
Documented
c. 1886 · age 33
With Bishop Strossmayer
Visits Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer in Croatia, an ally in his project for the reunion of the Churches; The History and Future of Theocracy appears in Zagreb in 1887.
Probable
1889 · age 36
Russia and the Universal Church
Publishes in French, in Paris, his great ecumenical book, which ecclesiastical censorship made impossible to publish in Russia.
Documented
October 19, 1891 · age 38
On the Decline of the Medieval Worldview
His lecture at the Moscow Psychological Society, in the midst of the famine, causes a public scandal and attacks in the conservative press.
Probable
1892 – 1894 · age 39
The Meaning of Love
Begins publishing in Questions of Philosophy and Psychology the five articles of The Meaning of Love (1892–1894).
Documented
February 1896 · age 43
Communion with a Greek Catholic priest
According to a disputed account, he receives communion from the Greek Catholic priest Nikolai Tolstoy He left no written record of the episode himself, which we know from the priest.
Disputed
1897 · age 44
The Justification of the Good
His system of moral philosophy appears; revised and enlarged edition in 1899.
Documented
1898 · age 45
Three Meetings
Returns to Egypt and writes the autobiographical poem in which he tells for the first time his three visions of Sophia.
Documented
January 1900 · age 47
Honorary academician
He is elected honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the belles-lettres category. Publishes Three Conversations.
Probable
July 30, 1900 · age 47
Confession and last days
He arrives ill at Uzkoye on 27 July (15 July OS); on the 30th (18 July OS) he confesses and receives communion from the Orthodox priest Belyaev, of the Uzkoye parish.
Documented
August 13, 1900 · age 47
Death
Dies at half past nine in the evening (31 July Old Style) in Prince Pyotr Trubetskoy's study. He is buried on 16 August (3 August OS) in the Novodevichy Convent cemetery.
Documented
1911
The volume On Vladimir Solovyov
The Put publishing house issues the tribute volume 'First Collection: On Vladimir Solovyov' for the tenth anniversary of his death; the second edition of his collected works begins (1911–1914).
Probable
Works
Essential works
The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.
Written work · 1874
The Crisis of Western Philosophy (Against the Positivists)
Кризис западной философии (против позитивистов)
Master's thesis defended in St Petersburg on 24 November 1874. It surveys modern philosophy from Descartes to Hegel, Schopenhauer and Hartmann and argues that, rationalism and empiricism having been exhausted, Western thought leads to the need for an integral knowledge reconciling reason with faith and mystical experience. Positivism appears not as a way beyond but as a symptom of that crisis. It was the young Solovyov's public debut and the programme of all his later work.
2 editions
Published lectures · 1878
Lectures on Godmanhood
Чтения о Богочеловечестве
Twelve public lectures given in St Petersburg in 1878 before an audience that included Dostoevsky and, one evening, Tolstoy; published 1878–1881. Solovyov presents Christianity as the culmination of religious history: God is all-unity; Sophia, the divine idea of the world; man, the place where creation can freely unite with God; Christ, the God-man, inaugurates the process by which all humanity must become Godmanhood. It is the text that founded modern Russian religious philosophy.
5 editions
Written work · 1889
Russia and the Universal Church
La Russie et l'Église universelle
His great ecumenical book, written in French and published in Paris in 1889 because Russian censorship would have banned it. In three parts — the Russian ecclesiastical question, the ecclesiastical monarchy founded by Christ, and the Trinity and its manifestation in the world — it defends the primacy of the Bishop of Rome as centre of unity of a universal Church, recognises the full orthodoxy of the Russian people's faith and culminates in a sophiology. It was his most contested work in Russia.
7 editions
Written work · 1894
The Meaning of Love
Смысл любви
Five articles published in Questions of Philosophy and Psychology between 1892 and 1894. It denies that sexual love serves only the species: its meaning is to overcome egoism by recognising in another the absolute value each attributes to himself, and so restore the image of God in the human being. The union of man and woman foreshadows 'syzygy', the reunion of all creation with God, and the victory over death. It is his most read text outside Russia.
5 editions
Written work · 1897
The Justification of the Good: An Essay on Moral Philosophy
Оправдание добра. Нравственная философия
His great treatise on ethics, published in 1897 and reissued in enlarged form in 1899. It starts from three primary data of moral consciousness — shame, pity and reverence, which govern the relation to what is lower, to equals and to what is higher — and builds from them an ethics autonomous with respect to positive religion that nevertheless leads to the absolute good. The second part applies the principle to the person, the nation, law, economics, war and capital punishment.
8 editions
Written work · 1900
Three Conversations on War, Progress and the End of World History, Including a Short Tale of the Antichrist
Три разговора о войне, прогрессе и конце всемирной истории, со включением краткой повести об антихристе
His last work (1899–1900): three dialogues in a villa on the Riviera between a general, a politician, a lady, a Tolstoyan prince and Mr Z, on war, progress and evil. The book closes with the 'Short Tale of the Antichrist', attributed to a dead monk: in the twenty-first century a philanthropic superman unifies the world, offers each Church what it most desires and meets resistance only from the elder John, Pope Peter and Professor Pauli, who recognise that what is most precious in Christianity is Christ himself. It is Solovyov's most read work in the twentieth century.
7 editions
Complete works (79)
Vladimir Solovyov
The Mythological Process in Ancient Paganism
The Conscious LibraryThe Mythological Process in Ancient Paganism
1873
Vladimir Solovyov
Auguste Comte's Theory of the Three Phases in the Intellectual Development of Mankind
The Conscious LibraryAuguste Comte's Theory of the Three Phases in the Intellectual Development of Mankind
1874
Vladimir Solovyov
On the Philosophical Works of P. D. Yurkevich
The Conscious LibraryOn the Philosophical Works of P. D. Yurkevich
1874
Vladimir Solovyov
A Strange Misunderstanding (Reply to Mr Lesevich)
The Conscious LibraryA Strange Misunderstanding (Reply to Mr Lesevich)
1874
Vladimir Solovyov
Metaphysics and Positive Science
The Conscious LibraryMetaphysics and Positive Science
1875
Vladimir Solovyov
On the Reality of the External World and the Foundation of Metaphysical Knowledge (Reply to Kavelin)
The Conscious LibraryOn the Reality of the External World and the Foundation of Metaphysical Knowledge (Reply to Kavelin)
1875
La Sophia
1876
Vladimir Solovyov
The Three Forces
The Conscious LibraryThe Three Forces
1877
Vladimir Solovyov
The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge
The Conscious LibraryThe Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge
1877
Vladimir Solovyov
Critique of Abstract Principles
The Conscious LibraryCritique of Abstract Principles
1880
Vladimir Solovyov
The Historical Deeds of Philosophy
The Conscious LibraryThe Historical Deeds of Philosophy
1880
Vladimir Solovyov
Three Speeches in Memory of Dostoevsky
The Conscious LibraryThree Speeches in Memory of Dostoevsky
1883
Vladimir Solovyov
A Note in Defence of Dostoevsky against the Charge of a 'New' Christianity
The Conscious LibraryA Note in Defence of Dostoevsky against the Charge of a 'New' Christianity
1883
Vladimir Solovyov
On Spiritual Authority in Russia
The Conscious LibraryOn Spiritual Authority in Russia
1881
Vladimir Solovyov
On the Schism in the Russian People and Society
The Conscious LibraryOn the Schism in the Russian People and Society
1882
The Spiritual Foundations of Life
1884
Vladimir Solovyov
The Great Controversy and Christian Politics
The Conscious LibraryThe Great Controversy and Christian Politics
1883
Jewry and the Christian Question
1884
Vladimir Solovyov
Love for the People and the Russian National Ideal (Open Letter to I. S. Aksakov)
The Conscious LibraryLove for the People and the Russian National Ideal (Open Letter to I. S. Aksakov)
1884
Vladimir Solovyov
Russia and Europe. Reply to N. Ya. Danilevsky
The Conscious LibraryRussia and Europe. Reply to N. Ya. Danilevsky
1888
Vladimir Solovyov
How to Awaken Our Church Forces? (Open Letter to S. A. Rachinsky)
The Conscious LibraryHow to Awaken Our Church Forces? (Open Letter to S. A. Rachinsky)
1885
Vladimir Solovyov
The Israel of the New Testament
The Conscious LibraryThe Israel of the New Testament
1885
Vladimir Solovyov
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Introduction to the Russian Edition of the Didache)
The Conscious LibraryThe Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Introduction to the Russian Edition of the Didache)
1886
The Dogmatic Development of the Church in Connection with the Question of Church Reunion
1886
Quotations
Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.
The meaning and worth of love as a feeling lies in this: it really forces us, with all our being, to acknowledge in another the absolute central significance which, owing to egoism, we feel only in ourselves.Смысл и достоинство любви как чувства состоит в том, что она заставляет нас действительно всем нашим существом признать за другим то безусловное центральное значение, которое, в силу эгоизма, мы ощущаем только в самих себе.
Verified«Смысл любви» [El sentido del amor], artículo tercero, I (1892–1894).
Last words
Later account by witnesses
«"Hard is the work of the Lord."»Трудна работа Господня.
Told by his friend Sergei Trubetskoy, in whose house at Uzkoye he died, in the article 'The Death of V. S. Solovyov' published weeks later in Vestnik Evropy (1900): "'Hard is the work of the Lord', he said on his deathbed." Trubetskoy also records other words from those days: after confessing and receiving communion, Solovyov asked his host's wife, "Keep me from falling asleep, make me pray for the Jewish people, I must pray for them", and began to recite a psalm aloud in Hebrew. Neither sentence is presented as the last he spoke: Trubetskoy says that in his last days he was at times delirious and died quietly at half past nine on the evening of 31 July (13 August) 1900. The account of the priest who confessed him, published in 1910, adds that on the day of his confession he lost consciousness and never regained it, which does not fully agree with Trubetskoy's, according to whom he recognised his mother and sisters on 24 July.
Source: Trubetskói, Serguéi Nikoláievich. «Смерть В. С. Соловьева» [La muerte de V. S. Soloviov]. Вестник Европы, 1900, n.º 9. Texto en Wikisource ruso (procedente de az.lib.ru).
Ask
What their work answers
Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.
What is the Absolute? Does God exist?
The Absolute is all-unity: a superessential ground and a Trinitarian God at once
Both personal and impersonalStated explicitly
Soloviev builds the first systematic Russian metaphysics around all-unity. In the Lectures on Godmanhood, the Absolute is at once what stands above every determination, free of all particular content, and what positively contains everything; hence it can be described both as nothing and as all. This Absolute is no cold principle: it is expressed in the Christian Trinity, and its content, the ideal world in its unity, is Sophia, which he calls the body of God. In the Critique of Abstract Principles and the Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge he argues that reason, experience and mysticism must be united to think it. His God is personal and Trinitarian, but the way in passes through an ontology of totality reminiscent of Plotinus, Schelling and the Kabbalah, sources he himself studied.
Compare this question with other teachersWho am I? Is there a true self?
The person is absolute in form and is called to Godmanhood
A created, immortal soulStated explicitly
For Soloviev the human being occupies the hinge between God and nature. In the Lectures on Godmanhood he describes it as a being which, by its form, has unconditional value, since it can embrace in its consciousness the idea of the whole, although by its real content it is limited and dependent on the world. Its destiny is to fill that form with divine content, to unite freely with God without being lost in him: that is Godmanhood, fulfilled in Christ and promised to all humanity. In The Meaning of Love he adds that individuality is not saved by closing in on itself, but through the sacrifice of egoism, recognising in another the absolute value that egoism feels only in oneself. The true self is thus an immortal person realised in union.
Compare this question with other teachersWhy do we suffer?
Evil is the disintegration of a world that broke away from all-unity
Separation from GodStated explicitly
For Soloviev suffering has a cosmic root. In the Lectures on Godmanhood, the world soul, which was to keep creation united in God, sought to assert itself and fell from all-unity; hence the scattering of nature into mutually exclusive elements, strife, death and egoism, which in the human being is the assertion of oneself against all. History is the process by which that disintegrated world is reintegrated, culminating in Christ and to be extended to society. In The Justification of the Good he studies shame, pity and reverence as moral roots that resist this disintegration. In Three Conversations, his last book, he confronts evil as a reality and not a mere lack, and embodies it in the figure of the Antichrist.
Compare this question with other teachersWhat happens after death?
Christ's resurrection is the centre: true love aspires to conquer death
Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly
Soloviev understands death as the ultimate form of the disintegration egoism introduces into the world, and resurrection as its real, not merely symbolic, overcoming. In The Meaning of Love he argues that love between two persons, if taken seriously, cannot accept the death of the beloved: its meaning is immortality, the restoration of the complete image of the human being. In Three Conversations, his last book, Christ's resurrection is the criterion that separates true Christianity from its imitation, and the Antichrist of the tale is a benefactor of humanity who cannot bear it. His eschatology is not individualistic: victory over death reaches all of humanity and the cosmos, which are to be transfigured in the process of Godmanhood.
Compare this question with other teachersHow is liberation or salvation attained?
Salvation is Godmanhood: the free union of God and man, social as well
Through grace and loveStated explicitly
For Soloviev salvation is not the individual flight of a soul, but the reintegration of the world into God, which he calls the divine-human process. It began in Christ, in whom divine and human nature were united without confusion, and must be extended in humanity through man's free cooperation with grace. In The Spiritual Foundations of Life he describes the acts that open the individual to that cooperation: prayer, which unites him with God; fasting, which masters material nature; and almsgiving, which unites him with his neighbour. But he insists that salvation must also reach social and political life: hence his programme of a free theocracy and his defence, in The Justification of the Good, of a social order conforming to the moral good.
Compare this question with other teachersIs a teacher necessary?
Spiritual authority lives in the universal Church, which must be reunited
Community and traditionStated explicitly
Soloviev was no disciple of any guru, nor did he present himself as a master of initiates, although he recounted his visions of Sophia in the poem Three Meetings. For him spiritual authority resides in the Church as the body of Christ, bearer of tradition and sacraments, and his great concern was that Church's division. In Russia and the Universal Church, written in French in 1889, he argues for the reunion of East and West and grants the bishop of Rome a primacy of unity, which earned him censorship in Russia. The master-disciple relationship, in his work, shifts to the figure of the prophet, who speaks freely in the name of truth, alongside the priest and the king of his free theocracy. In Three Conversations the elder John, Pope Peter and Professor Pauli represent the three traditions reunited at the end of time.
Compare this question with other teachersIs the world real?
The world is the world soul on its way to God; beauty embodies the idea
Manifestation of the divineStated explicitly
For Soloviev the world is neither illusion nor a mere artefact external to God. In the Lectures on Godmanhood he conceives it as God's other: ideal all-unity, Sophia, eternal in God, exists in the world in a state of dispersion, because the world soul separated from divine unity. Natural and human history is the process by which that soul is reunited with God, first in nature, then in human consciousness and finally in Christ and in deified humanity. In Beauty in Nature he defines beauty as the incarnation of the idea in matter: every beautiful form already announces the transfiguration of the world. He also defended, against subjective idealism, the reality of the external world.
Compare this question with other teachersWhat is love?
Love overcomes egoism by recognising absolute value in another
Longing and unionStated explicitly
The Meaning of Love, published between 1892 and 1894, is one of the most original philosophical meditations on eros. Soloviev holds that the meaning and dignity of love lie in its compelling us to recognise truly, with our whole being, in another the central and unconditional value that egoism feels only in oneself. Love between man and woman does not have procreation as its end, which perpetuates the succession of mortal generations, but the creation of a complete human being, the union of two persons in a fullness that anticipates immortality and the reunion of the world with God. The meaning of human love is the justification and salvation of individuality through the sacrifice of egoism. Behind this vision lies his experience of Sophia, to whom he devoted the poem Three Meetings.
Compare this question with other teachersAre we free, or is everything determined?
Union with God must be free; moral freedom is self-determination by the good
Real free willStated explicitly
All of Soloviev's philosophy depends on the union between God and the world being free: in the Lectures on Godmanhood, the human being is not absorbed by the divine, but must unite with it by his own decision, which is why history is a drama and not a mechanism. His political programme of a free theocracy carries the same demand into the social sphere: no unity imposed by force has religious value. In The Justification of the Good he refines the philosophical question: he rejects free will understood as choice without motive and maintains that moral freedom consists in the will being determined by the good recognised by reason, not by the passions. The person is responsible precisely because he can know the good and adhere to it.
Compare this question with other teachersWhy meditate or pray?
To pray is to surrender to God; with fasting and alms it founds spiritual life
Friendship with GodStated explicitly
In The Spiritual Foundations of Life, written between 1882 and 1884, Soloviev describes three acts that ground the individual's religious life, corresponding to his three fundamental relations: prayer, which unites him with God above him; fasting, which gives him mastery over material nature below him; and almsgiving, which unites him with other human beings beside him. Prayer consists in setting aside one's own will in order to open oneself to the divine will, and its model is the Lord's Prayer, which he comments on petition by petition. It is not an exercise in concentration, but a personal relation to the Father, to be extended in the life of the Church and its sacraments. His mystical experience of Sophia, narrated in Three Meetings, shows that he also knew visionary contemplation.
Compare this question with other teachersCan reason know the ultimate?
An integral knowledge uniting experience, reason and mysticism
Faith and reason help each otherStated explicitly
Soloviev is the great Russian systematiser of the relation between faith and reason. In The Crisis of Western Philosophy, his thesis of 1874, he argues that both empiricism and rationalism have reached their limit, and that Western philosophy ends in the need for a synthesis with the religious wisdom of the East. In The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge and the Critique of Abstract Principles he develops that synthesis: sense experience, rational thought and mystical intuition are three sources of knowledge which, separated, become abstract and false, and only united in an integral knowledge reach the truth. Revelation does not cancel reason, but gives it its ultimate content, and reason allows faith to be understood and articulated.
Compare this question with other teachersWithdraw from the world or transform it?
Christianising society: a free theocracy and law in the service of the good
Order societyStated explicitly
Soloviev rejected a spirituality that abandons social life to its fate. His project of a free theocracy, set out in The History and Future of Theocracy and Russia and the Universal Church, proposes that Church, State and society cooperate, each in its own function, in transforming collective life according to the Gospel, without coercion in matters of faith. In Law and Morality he defines law as the minimum of morality society can demand, and in The Justification of the Good he defends every person's right to a dignified existence, the abolition of the death penalty and the critique of nationalism. He acted accordingly: in 1881 he publicly asked for clemency for the assassins of Alexander II, which cost him his chair. Holiness is measured also in social justice.
Compare this question with other teachers
Affinities & tensions
Affinities and tensions
Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.
Thinks most like
Julian of Norwich
They agree on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · Why do we suffer? · What happens after death?
Francis of Assisi
They agree on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · Why do we suffer? · What happens after death?
Teresa of Ávila
They agree on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · Why do we suffer? · What happens after death?
Rumi
They agree on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · Why do we suffer? · What happens after death?
Thinks most unlike
Patañjali
They clash on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · What happens after death?
Pema Chödrön
They clash on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · What happens after death?
Bodhidharma
They clash on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · What happens after death?
Tsongkhapa
They clash on: Who am I? Is there a true self? · What happens after death?
Anecdotes and stories
Anecdotes and stories
Testimony1862; 1875–1876
Three meetings with Sophia
Origin of the story: The only testimony is Solovyov's own, in the poem Three Meetings (1898), written in a deliberately humorous tone and with the author's footnotes; the general is Rostislav Fadeyev, whom he names. His letters of 1875–1876 from London and Cairo speak of the journey but not of the visions.
Documented10 de marzo de 1878
Two novelists in the same hall
Origin of the story: The presence of the three at the 10 March lecture is recorded in the Tolstoy–Strakhov correspondence and in Anna Dostoevskaya's memoirs; the reconstruction and the quotation from Tolstoy's letter of 5 February 1881 come from Pavel Basinsky's article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta (2011).
Documentedjunio de 1878
With Dostoevsky at Optina
Origin of the story: Told by Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevskaya in her Reminiscences (chapter on 1878). The identification of Solovyov with Alyosha or Ivan is a critical interpretation, not Dostoevsky's own statement.
Documented28 de marzo de 1881
'Let him not execute them'
Origin of the story: The episode is recorded in official documents (Solovyov's written explanations) and by biographers (Mochulsky, Losev). The full text of the lecture does not survive; the exact words addressed to the Tsar are known from summaries and witnesses, which do not agree in every detail.
Source: Mochulski, Konstantín. Владимир Соловьев: жизнь и учение [Vladímir Soloviov: vida y doctrina]. París: YMCA-Press, 1936 (2.ª ed., 1951).
Disputed1896; 1900
A disputed communion
Origin of the story: The 1896 communion is known from the testimony of the priest Nikolai Tolstoy, spread by Catholic authors after the philosopher's death; Solovyov mentions it in no writing, and its scope — conversion or ecumenical gesture? — is still debated (Besschetnova, 2021). The 1900 confession was related by the Uzkoye priest in Moskovskie Vedomosti (1910). E. Trubetskoy's interpretation comes from The Worldview of Vl. S. Solovyov (1913).
Testimonyjulio de 1900
Praying for the Jewish people
Origin of the story: Direct testimony of Sergei Trubetskoy, published in Vestnik Evropy in 1900, a few weeks after the death.
Teachings
Teachings
The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.
All-unity (vseedinstvo)unitotalidad
It takes up the Neoplatonic One-All, Schelling's philosophy of identity and the 'integral knowledge' of the Slavophiles Kireyevsky and Khomyakov; it became the axis of the Russian 'philosophy of all-unity' (Frank, Karsavin, Losev).
Source: Nemeth, Thomas. «Solovyov, Vladimir». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Godmanhood (bogochelovechestvo)divinohumanidad
Set out in the Lectures on Godmanhood (1878); it was the concept that named the Russian religious philosophy of the Silver Age and was developed by Bulgakov and Berdyaev.
Sophia, divine Wisdomsofia
First formulated in La Sophia (1875–1876); set out in the Lectures (lectures VII–VIII) and in book III of Russia and the Universal Church; poetic testimony in Three Meetings.
Free theocracy and the universal Churchteocracia-libre
In dialogue with the Catholic ecclesiology of Vatican I, with Bishop Strossmayer and with the Slavophile critique of Rome (Khomyakov).
Source: Nemeth, Thomas. «Solovyov, Vladimir». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The meaning of love and syzygysentido-del-amor
Set out in The Meaning of Love (1892–1894); it influenced Berdyaev, Russian Symbolism and twentieth-century theology of the body.
The philanthropic Antichristel-anticristo
The culmination of Three Conversations (1900); its reading by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi and other theologians gave it wide circulation in late twentieth-century Catholicism.
Videos
Videos
Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.
История Западной философии. Лекция №41. «Владимир Соловьев — отец русской христианской мысли»
Lecture· RU
Лекции А.Б. ЗубоваOfficial channel
Лекция Сидорина В. В. «Владимир Соловьев — поэт, философ, гражданин»
Lecture· RU· 2022
Институт философии РАНOfficial channel
Владимир Сергеевич Соловьев: поэт, философ, гражданин
Lecture· RU
РГБМ • Библиотека для молодёжиOfficial channel
«Неподвижно лишь солнце любви»: к 170-летию со дня рождения Владимира Соловьёва
Lecture· RU· 2023
Новосибирская областная научная библиотекаOfficial channel
О русском философе Владимире Соловьеве
Lecture· RU
Алексей Ильич ОсиповOfficial channel
Владимир Соловьёв — Смысл любви (лекция)
Lecture· RU
Мастерская Валерия Бондаренко
Владимир Соловьев. Смысл любви. Аудиокнига
Third-party recording· RU
Библиотека горсовета
Philosophy of Love in the Context of Russian Philosophy. V. Solovyov and P. Florensky
Lecture· EN
Studium Europy Wschodniej (Universidad de Varsovia)Official channel
Religion and the State in Russian Philosophy (Vladimir Soloviev and Nikolai Berdiaev)
Lecture· EN· 2021
REES Queens (Queen's University)Official channel
War, Progress, and the End of History — Vladimir Solovyov | Full Audiobook
Third-party recording· EN
Allellu
Breve relato del Anticristo, por Vladimir Soloviev
Third-party recording· ES
Roberto Langella
Análisis de «Breve relato del Anticristo», de V. Soloviev
Analysis· ES
Roberto Langella
Vladimir Solov'ëv: il ritratto dell'anticristo — Elena Bianchini Braglia
Analysis· IT
Cronache di Cielo e Terra
Gallery
Gallery
Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.
Connections
Connections
Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.
Met
Friends from 1873 despite a thirty-year age gap. In 1878 Dostoevsky followed his Lectures on Godmanhood and in June they travelled together to Optina monastery. Solovyov devoted Three Speeches in Memory of Dostoevsky (1881–1883) to him, and critics have seen traits of his in Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov.
Documented relation
Influenced by
In his Three Speeches Solovyov read Dostoevsky as a prophet of the universal Church and of Godmanhood; the theme of the 'man-god' against the God-man, central to both, grew out of their conversations.
Documented relation
Disagreed with
He shared Tolstoy's critique of capital punishment and nationalism but rejected his non-resistance to evil and his Christianity without resurrection. In Three Conversations (1900) he portrayed him in the Prince, a Tolstoyan whose morality without metaphysics cannot answer evil, and his Antichrist is a pacifist philanthropist. Tolstoy attended one of his 1878 lectures.
Documented relation
Influenced
Berdyaev, who never met him, considered him the founder of Russian religious philosophy and argued with him all his life: he devoted 'The Problem of East and West in the Religious Consciousness of Vl. Solovyov' (1911) to him and inherited from him the idea of Godmanhood, though he reproached him for an over-rational system and a theocratic optimism.
Documented relation
Influenced
Florensky's sophiology in The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914) starts from Solovyov's, which it corrects with patristic tradition and the Russian iconography of Holy Wisdom.
Documented relation
Disagreed with
Solovyov criticised Theosophy in a review of The Key to Theosophy (1890) and in 'A Note on H. P. Blavatsky' (1892), written amid the controversy over the revelations of his brother Vsevolod, who had known the founder in Paris and denounced her in A Modern Priestess of Isis.
Documented relation
Influenced by
In his formative years, and particularly in London in 1875, Solovyov read Böhme along with the Gnostics, the Kabbalah and Swedenborg; Böhme's Sophia, eternal virgin and mirror of the Godhead, is one of the acknowledged sources of his sophiology.
Documented relation
Influenced by
For Solovyov Plato was the first philosopher of all-unity and of eros as a path to the divine. In his last years he translated him with his brother Mikhail and devoted The Life Drama of Plato (1898) to him, presenting him as the idealist who discovered the world of ideas without managing to embody it.
Documented relation
Ideas akin to
No direct relation is recorded. Solovyov's idea of Godmanhood and of the transfiguration of matter shares with Seraphim's teaching on the acquisition of the Holy Spirit the Orthodox inheritance of deification (theosis); Seraphim was canonised in 1903, three years after Solovyov's death.
Similarity identified by analysis
Sources
Sources
Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.
- Wikidata, Q282280: Vladimir Solovyov, filósofo ruso (1853–1900). P31=Q5; 64 enlaces entre wikis.
- Trubetskói, Serguéi Nikoláievich. «Смерть В. С. Соловьева» [La muerte de V. S. Soloviov]. Вестник Европы, 1900, n.º 9. Texto en Wikisource ruso (procedente de az.lib.ru).
- Mochulski, Konstantín. Владимир Соловьев: жизнь и учение [Vladímir Soloviov: vida y doctrina]. París: YMCA-Press, 1936 (2.ª ed., 1951).
- Lósev, Alekséi F. Владимир Соловьев и его время [Vladímir Soloviov y su tiempo]. Moscú: Progress, 1990.
- Nemeth, Thomas. «Solovyov, Vladimir». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Soloviov, V. S. «Три свидания» [Tres encuentros] (1898), en Стихотворения и шуточные пьесы, ed. Z. G. Mints. Leningrado: Sovetski pisatel (Biblioteka poeta), 1974, pp. 125–132. Texto en Wikisource ruso.
- Wikisource ruso: «Автор:Владимир Сергеевич Соловьёв» (índice de obras y poemas con fechas).
- Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch (ed. y trad.). Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.
- Dostoiévskaya, Anna Grigórievna. Воспоминания [Memorias]. Moscú: Judózhestvennaya literatura, 1971 (primera edición, 1925). Texto en Wikisource ruso.
- Open Library, autor OL83077A: Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853–1900), obras y ediciones.
- Soloviov, Serguéi Mijáilovich (sobrino). Владимир Соловьев: жизнь и творческая эволюция [Vladímir Soloviov: vida y evolución creadora]. Moscú: Respublika, 1997 (escrito en 1923; primera ed., Bruselas: Zhizn s Bogom, 1977).
- Kólosov, N. (sacerdote), con el testimonio del sacerdote Beliáiev, que lo confesó. «Об исповедании В. С. Соловьева» [Sobre la confesión de V. S. Soloviov], carta al editor. Московские ведомости, n.º 253, 3 (16) de noviembre de 1910; reimpr. en Письма Владимира Сергеевича Соловьева, t. 3, San Petersburgo, 1911, pp. 214–217.
- Soloviov, V. S. Собрание сочинений [Obras reunidas], 2.ª ed., ed. S. M. Soloviov y E. L. Rádlov, 10 vols. San Petersburgo: Prosveshchenie, 1911–1914.
- «Соловьёв, Владимир Сергеевич». Wikipedia en ruso (biografía, relación de obras con enlaces a las ediciones digitales).
- Basinski, Pável. «130 лет назад ушел из жизни Федор Михайлович Достоевский». Российская газета, 9 de febrero de 2011 (la conferencia de Soloviov del 10 de marzo de 1878 y la carta de Tolstói a Strájov de febrero de 1881).
- Soloviov, V. S. «Смысл любви» [El sentido del amor]. Вопросы философии и психологии, 1892–1894. Texto en Wikisource ruso (procedente de az.lib.ru).
- Soloviev, Vladimir. L'Idée russe. París: Perrin et Cie, 1888. Texto validado en Wikisource francés.
- Soloviov, V. S. «Три разговора о войне, прогрессе и конце всемирной истории, со включением краткой повести об антихристе» [Tres conversaciones…]. San Petersburgo, 1900. Texto en Wikisource ruso (según la ed. «Смысл любви. Избранные произведения», Moscú: Sovremennik, 1991).
- Soloviov, V. S. «Чтения о Богочеловечестве» [Lecciones sobre la divinohumanidad]. 1878–1881. Texto en Wikisource ruso (procedente de az.lib.ru).
- Besschétnova, E. V. «Стал ли Вл. С. Соловьев католиком (историко-философский анализ)» [¿Se hizo católico Vl. S. Soloviov?]. История философии, 2021, vol. 26, n.º 1, pp. 76–86.
- Rights holder
- Dominio público (Soloviov murió en 1900). Las traducciones modernas pertenecen a sus traductores y editoriales.
Pending confirmation
What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.
- Ediciones españolas con ISBN de «La crisis de la filosofía occidental», «Crítica de los principios abstractos», «Tres discursos en memoria de Dostoievski» (salvo ediciones independientes) y «El sentido del amor» fuera de Monte Carmelo: no localizadas en los catálogos consultados (Google Books sin cuota durante la investigación).
- Confirmar qué textos contiene «Introducción a los principios del conocimiento y otros escritos» (Sígueme, ISBN 9788430122073) y el traductor de «Teohumanidad» (Sígueme, 2006) y de «Los tres diálogos y el relato del Anticristo» (El Buey Mudo).
- Registrar uno por uno los cerca de doscientos poemas (índice completo en Wikisource ruso) y las piezas humorísticas; hoy figuran la colección «Poesías» y ocho poemas principales.
- Registrar individualmente los artículos menores de 1890–1900 y los artículos del diccionario Brokgauz-Efrón (sólo agrupados).
- Confirmar la primera publicación (revista y año) de «La teoría de Auguste Comte…», «Teoría filosófica» y la traducción de «El puchero de oro» de Hoffmann.
- Fecha exacta (día) y testigos de la comunión de febrero de 1896 con Nikolái Tolstói: no cotejados con el relato original del sacerdote.
- Traducciones inglesas de dominio público en Internet Archive (Bakshy, 1915) no incluidas en la sala de lectura: falta verificar la fecha de muerte de Alexander Bakshy.
- Duración y año de publicación de los vídeos: oEmbed no los proporciona; se han dejado null salvo los fechados en su título o descripción.
Researched on 2026-10-25