Work · Russian Religious Philosophy
Philosophical Letters
Eight letters written in French in 1829–31; the first, published in Russian in 1836, describes Russia as a country without a past or a place in history and set off the debate about Russia and Europe.
Introduction
Chaadaev wrote the eight letters in French between 1829 and 1831, addressed to a Moscow lady, Ekaterina Panova, who had asked him for spiritual advice; they circulated in manuscript among his friends. The first letter appeared in Russian translation in the Moscow journal Teleskop in 1836 and became one of the most discussed texts of the century: Russia, it says, lives without a past and without a place in the history of humanity, because it took its faith from Byzantium and stayed outside the unity of Western Christendom. The later letters develop a philosophy of history in which Providence leads humanity through Christianity towards the Kingdom of God on earth. Two further letters were printed in Paris in 1862; the others were found and published only in the twentieth century.
Connections
Taken up in
- Apology of a Madman1837 · Pyotr Chaadaev
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