The Philosophy of New Spirituality: The Creative Manifesto of Nikolai Berdyaev

Abstract

The prominent Russian intellectual, Nikolai Berdyaev, is renowned for his metaphysics of creativity, which he founded on a unique concept of freedom. His unorthodox interpretation of human freedom and the reality of the Spirit became a kind of manifesto for religious existentialism. This article analyzes the social and metaphysical significance of Berdyaev's philosophy of creativity in the context of the European and Russian philosophical traditions.

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2014 “Filosofskie nauki.” “Filosofiia novoi dukhovnosti: tvorcheskii manifest Nikolaia Berdyaeva,” Filosofskie nauki, 2014, no. 4, pp. 37–51. Ol'ga Anatol'evna Zhukova, doctor of philosophical sciences, is a professor at National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE, Moscow). Email: [email protected] Translated by Peter Golub. Translation reprinted from Russian Studies in Philosophy, vol. 53, no. 4. doi: 10.1080/10611967.2015.1123053

^* The word lichnost' is used throughout Berdyaev's work and Berdyaev scholarship. Its closest translation is “person.” Lichnost' means a living human, with a unique composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality. In this article, lichnost' is translated as “personality.”—Trans. & Ed.

^1. A. Bely. Simvolizm kak miroponimanie (Moscow: Respublika, 1994), p. 33.

^2. Ibid., p. 38.

^* Ivanov uses the word stikhiinim, which refers to the important concept of stikhiinost’, which can be translated as “spontaneity,” “deviancy,” “elemental force,” and “chaos.” The indeterminacy of the term is in a way part of its definition. In Russian it is often opposed to consciousness (soznatel'nost’).—Trans.

^3. N.A. Berdyaev, Tsarstvo Dukha i Tsarstvo Kesaria (Moscow: Respublika, 1995), p. 299. [In English: The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar.]

^4. N.A. Berdyaev, Filosofiia svobodnogo dukha (Moscow: Respublika, 1994), p. 104 [In English: Philosophy of the Free Spirit.]

^5. N.A. Berdiaev, Tsarstvo Dukha i Tsarstvo Kesaria, p. 299.

^6. Berdiaev, Filosofiia svobodnogo dukha, p. 112.

^7. Ibid., p. 112.

^8. Ibid., p. 366.

^9. Ibid., p. 369.

^10. Ibid., p. 369–70.

^11. Ibid., p. 367.

^12. Ibid., p. 445.

^13. Ibid.

^14. Ibid.

^15. Ibid., p. 446.

^16. Ibid.

^17. N.A. Berdyaev, Filosofiia tvorchestva, kul'tury, i iskusstva (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1994), vol. 1, p. 40.

^18. Ibid., p. 41.

^19. F. Nietzsche, S.L. Frank (trans.). Chelovecheskoe slishkom chelovecheskoe Kniga dlya svobodnikh umov (Moscow: Mysl’, 1990) vol. 1, p. 368. [In English: Human All Too Human. R.J. Hollingdale (trans). Cambridge University Press, 2004.]

^20. Ibid., p. 371.

^21. N.A. Berdyaev, Filosofiia tvorchestva, kul'tury i iskusstva, p. 41.