Berdyaev’s Philosophy of History: An Existentialist Theory of Social Creativity and Eschatology

212 Pages·1968·6.074 MB·English

by  David Bonner Richardson (auth.)

BERDYAEV'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
BERDYAEV'S PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY
AN EXISTENTIALIST THEORY
OF SOCIAL CREATIVITY AND ESCHATOLOGY
by
DAVID BONNER RICHARDSON
Utah State University
Preface by
CHARLES HARTSHORNE
I I
MARTINUS NI]HOFF / THE HAG UE / 1968
ISBN 978-94-011-8210-2 ISBN 978-94-011-8870-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-8870-8
C I968 by Marlinus Nijholl, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or paris thereof in any form
To Charles Hartshorne
One 01 the Great Twentieth Century Philosophers
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE by CHARLES HARTSHORNE IX
INTRODUCTION XIV
CHAPTER I: BERDYAEV'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY I
A. Introduction I
B. The "historical" and the philosophy of history I
(I) The "Historical" I
(2) The "Historical" and the Human Memory 10
(3) The "Historical" and Universal History 18
(4) Universal History: An Interaction Between Man and Nature 24
(5) The Ages of the World 26
C. Philosophy of history and metaphysics of history 28
(I) The Relationship of Philosophy of History to the Metaphysical 28
(2) Metaphysics 33
D. The philosophy of history and the end of history 35
E. Philosophy of history in respect to time 37
F. Philosophy of history and the doctrine of godmanhood 43
G. Summary 44
CHAPTER II: GODMANHOOD, FREEDOM AND PHILOSOPHY OF
HISTORY
A. Introduction
B. The doctrine of godmanhood
C. Godmanhood and the freedom of man
D. Some consequences of the doctrine of godmanhood
(I) Sobornost' - Unity of the World
(2) Cosmology and the Unity of the World
(3) Eschatology and the Age of the Spirit
E. Summary
CHAPTER III: EXISTENTIALISM: A PERSONALIST PHILOSOPHY OF
HISTORY 90
A. Introduction 90
B. Personalism: the existent and the ego 92
VIII TABLE OF CONTENTS
C. Personality is spirit: an existentialism of spirit loB
D. Personality: the concrete and universal existent II3
E. Personality and existence not isolated from the thou and the we 122
F. Personality: the microcosm 126
G. Summary 134
CHAPTER IV: EPISTEMOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
CONCLUSION 138
A. Introduction 138
B. The rejection of the subject-object relationship 138
C. Knowledge not anti-rational, but super-rational 148
D. Knowledge an identity 152
E. True knowing is communal in character 155
F. True knowing is loving and creative in character 160
G. Image, symbol and mystical experience: concrete and creative
knowing 165
(I) Image 165
(2) Symbol and myth 167
(3) The Whole Man Knows 172
(4) Mysticism 176
H. Summary 178
CONCLUSION 182
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES 185
INDEX 189
PREFACE
BERDYAEV AS A PHILOSOPHER
How shall a non-Russian, above all a North American, assimilate the
extraordinary assemblage of ideas which is Berdyaev's philosophy?
Dr. Richardson does not exaggerate the difficulties. And he introduces
us with great care (and what a formidable task it must have been)
precisely to what is most strange in this writer, his fusion of historical. .
eschatological-metaphysical-mystical-Christian conceptions. By some
standards Berdyaev is a theologian rather than a philosopher; for he
takes the truth of the Christian revelation for granted and his work can
readily be viewed as an elaborate apologetic for one religion against all
others and against irreligion. Yet I incline to sympathize with him in
his claim to be a philosopher. What an eccentric one, however! There
are indeed some partial analogies in the general European tradition.
Certainly this Russian is a disciple of Kant, and strong traces of
Kantianism survive in him. He also moved away from Kant somewhat
as did Fichte, Hegel, and, above all, Schelling in his last period. His
sympathetic response to Heracleitos and Boehme recalls Hegel. The
interest in Boehme and Schelling is found also in Tillich. Like the late
German-American, Berdyaev rejects conceptual in favor of symbolic
speech about God. Like Bergson, he stresses intuition and makes a
radical distinction between scientific logical analytic thought and the
mode of apprehension by which, he believes, metaphysical truth is to
be appropriated. Here one thinks also of Heidegger.
Since Berdyaev is an extremely bold imaginative thinker, almost
the opposite of the fashionable types of positivistic, agnostic, merely
linguistic, or commonsensical philosophers of today, it seems fair to
compare him with his counterpart in speCUlative boldness outside of
the Russian tradition, the Anglo-American mathematician and meta
physician, A. N. Whitehead. The following ideas or concerns are
common to the two.
I. A universal principle of "creative advance" (Whitehead) or
x PREFACE
creativity (that most positive idea of our century) by which reality
perpetually transcends all rational or causal necessities and enriches
itself, not merely, as in Platonism, by realizing eternal or preexistent
patterns or images, but by producing new patterns, "new images"
(Berdyaev). Berdyaev uses both "creativity" and "freedom" for this
idea; Whitehead uses chiefly the first of these terms. In both writers
there is a rejection or limitation of the deterministic conception of
causality. The difference is that for Whitehead this does not mean a
rejection of scientific causal explanation, or its limitation to a second
ary role, but rather a revision of the concept of causality itself, a re
vision readily related, though Whitehead was not in a position to relate
it, to what has happened in physics and biology in recent decades.
Whitehead's "eternal objects" might be too Platonic for Berdyaev; but
on the other hand it is Whitehead who most radically universalizes
freedom so that it applies even to atoms or particles.
2. The explanation of evils in the world, not by some mysterious
divine justice, but by the universal presence of creative freedom in re
ality. Creatures are not free to make decisions of their own because God
decided they should be so, but because freedom is an ultimate aspect
of reality as such, any reality, divine or otherwise. "God does not create
freedom" (Berdyaev); creativity is the "ultimate category," of which
all other universals are special aspects (Whitehead).
3. The most concrete or complete value is beauty, not moral
goodness or mere truth.
4. Tragedy is not basically the conflict of good with evil but of good
with good. Indeed evil itself is (in a large part at least) this very conflict;
it is "good in the wrong place" (Whitehead) or out of proper relation to
other things or to God. There are incompatibles and not even God
can realize all possible good. There is in some real sense tragedy even
for God. See (6).
5. God has ideal power, but no power could simply suppress creative
freedom in the creatures or monopolize decision-making, leaving no
genuine option for other creatures. To be is to be in some degree free.
Hence the conventional notion of "omnipotence" is not an ideal that
God falls short of, but a pseudo conception, a rationalistic myth. God is
not and could not be "author of the play" (Whitehead), since the
players help to write it. We are co-creators with God.
6. God, though primordial and everlasting and in this sense eternal,
is not the unmoved mover, but is in some real sense in process of cre
ation, is both eternal and in some sense temporal, in some way creature
PREFACE XI
as well as creator, and we participate in the creation of God himself,
contribute real value to his life. Indeed we contribute ourselves, as cre
atively selfdetermined, to that life; for "pantheism though rational
istically false is mystically true" (Berdyaev), or as Whitehead puts it,
"all things are together in the consequent nature of God," though he
suggests we can hardly hope to have clear understanding of this to
getherness. The "self-created creature" (Whitehead) is thus in God,
hence in that way creates God. We "enrich the divine life itself"
(Berdyaev). God is not immune to suffering but is "the fellow sufferer
who understands" (Whitehead).
7. The ethical imperative is to create beauty, harmonious experience,
in oneself, in and for others, ultimately in and for God.
8. There is no eternal damnation; the doctrine of hell is a "piece of
sadism" (Berdyaev). The only immortality is God's imperishable pos
session of us "transmuted" (Whitehead), "transfigured" (Berdyaev)
into his own. For Whitehead this is meant in a fashion farther from
conventional views of personal immortality than for Berdyaev, who
says that all will achieve beatitude. Whitehead's "transmutation" is
meant in a more modest sense; God makes the best use in his own life of
a bad human life on earth. He does not turn it into a good one in an
other sphere. Berdyaev's "spiritual determinism," which he character
istically leaves in some apparent conflict with his rejection of causal
determinism, may represent a more complete or more anthropomorphic
optimism than Whitehead would accept.
These are some at least of the striking analogies between two thinkers
whose backgrounds are widely diverse and whose styles are no less
contrasting. Among the ideas which one finds in Berdyaev but not in
Whitehead are: the radical centrality of man in the cosmos (there is no
such anthropomorphism in Whitehead); the centrality of Jesus, the
Godman, in both man and the cosmos (for Whitehead Jesus is only a
supreme teacher and symbol of the basic place of love in reality) ; the
notion of a "Fall" affecting the entire cosmos; something like the tra
ditional idea of personal immortality; the notion of the substantial ego
as a preexistent or eternal entity (remarkably like ideas one finds in
some Hindu thinkers); the eventual radical community of all souls
(Sobornost') ; and finally and pervasively the radical distrust of rational
or univocal concepts and radical trust in mystic experience of the
Christian type.
Whitehead, like the Buddhists, is a sharp critic of soul-substance and,
like them, holds that this doctrine is an ally of egoism or self-interest
XII PREFACE
theories of motivation. (If Berdyaev escapes this unfortunate conse
quence, it is only, Whitehead might have argued, by taking Sobornost'
in so extreme a sense that it is dangerously close to the Hindu denial of
individuality). Here I go with Whitehead and the Buddhists. We are
indeed only relatively distinguished from our fellows, truly "members
one of another," but this is possible just because we are only relatively
self-identical with ourselves through time. Neither self-identity nor
nonidentity with others is absolute.
Berdyaev has affinities not only to Whitehead but also to a broader
tradition. Basically there have been two ideas of deity in the theistic
religions: (I) the divine nature is the eminent form of independence,
immutability, impassibility, infinity, simplicity or absence of parts or
composition - in short, the negative theology taken without qualifi
cation; (2) the divine nature is both the eminent form of independence,
changelessness, simplicity, etc. and the eminent form of dependence,
changeability, complexity, etc. God is both supreme creator and su
preme creature, supreme cause and supreme effect. He has alike su
preme permanence and supreme capacity for novelty. He is thus the
synthesis of eternity and time, absoluteness and relativity. The follow
ing thinkers, among others, more or less explicitly and clearly affirm
this view:
Socinus and his followers, Schelling (late period), Fechner (the
German psychologist), Heinrich Scholz (the German theologian and
logician), J. Lequier (the brilliant though tragic French philosopher),
Bergson, Varisco (the Italian metaphysician), James Ward (the English
psychologist and philosopher), W. P. Montague (the American moralist
and metaphysician), W. E. Hocking (my first and in a sense only teacher
in metaphysics), N. Berdyaev, A. N. Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne.
I list these people because this tradition is often omitted from the histo
ries of philosophy and other works of reference. They are a small but
increasing number. From their standpoint the identification of God
with "the absolute," or "the unconditioned," i.e., with the object of the
negative theology, is a blunder of the first magnitude and indeed a
typical piece of philosophical idolatry. Eternity, absoluteness, infinity,
by themselves are the merest abstractions; they cannot apply without
radical supplementation to the living God. Of those who have seen this,
Berdyaev is surely not the least. He is sharp and clear on the main
issues: God is not simply unmoved, eternal, or independent. He is not
immune to all suffering. He is not identical with being in contrast to
becoming.