School · 4 thinkers

Russian Religious Philosophy

4 thinkers of Russian Religious Philosophy on the Agora star map, from Pyotr Chaadaev to Pavel Florensky, in chronological order.

• 1794–1856Pyotr Chaadaev

  Russia has so far stood apart from the shared history of humanity, belonging neither to the West nor to the East; yet a country without a binding past may learn from Europe’s errors and find a task of its own.

• 1853–1900Vladimir Solovyov

  All things are meant to form one whole with God; history moves towards that unity in Godmanhood, and morality grows from shame, pity and reverence into the task of making society just.

• 1874–1948Nikolai Berdyaev

  Berdyaev held a contested thesis: freedom comes before being and is not created even by God; the human being is called to create, not merely to obey, and every attempt to force paradise on earth turns freedom into a new slavery.

• 1882–1937Pavel Florensky

  For Florensky, truth cannot be reached by the law of identity: it lives in antinomies that only love can hold together, and the icon is a boundary where the invisible world shows itself in the visible one.

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