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In this book, Nikolai Berdyaev examines the struggle against slavery in its diverse forms. When he speaks of slavery and freedom, although he also uses these terms in a political sense, the underlying meaning is metaphysical: for Berdyaev, political slavery and freedom are rooted in our metaphysical slavery and freedom. The philosophy of this book is deliberately personal; it is a philosophy of personalism. As a philosopher, Berdyaev not only wished to gain knowledge of the world, but also to change the world: he always denied that the things which the world presents to us are a stable and final reality; this also goes for the relation between slavery and freedom. For Berdyaev the spiritual liberation of man is tied to the realization of personality; it is the attainment of wholeness.The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) was one of the greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century. His philosophy goes beyond mere thinking, mere rational conceptualization, and tries to attain authentic life itself: the profound layers of existence that are in contact with God's world. Berdyaev directed all of his efforts, philosophical as well as in his personal and public life, at replacing the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God. According to him, we can all attempt to do this by tapping the divine creative powers which constitute our true nature. Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world. This is what Berdyaev said about himself: "Man, personality, freedom, creativeness, the eschatological-messianic resolution of the dualism of two worlds - these are my basic themes." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Reissue of a Religious Classic
I first became aware of Berdyaev's writings when I was a college philosophy major in the late 60s and early 70s.At that time, the philosophy of "existentialism" was something of a fad, and Berdyaev's work was - in my opinion - the best existentialist writing coming from a religious perspective, and Slavery and Freedom was the best and clearest summation of his thought.

Most of Berdyaev's works have been long out of print, and it is gratifying to see that many of his best writings are now being reissued.I hope they find a wide audience in a new generation.

Slavery and Freedem is essentially a critique of the various social and philosophical "idolatries" into which men fall, idolatries which Berdyaev describes as various forms of "slavery." Thus he speaks of the slavery of individualism, the slavery of socialism, the slavery of property and money ("the bourgeois spirit"), the slavery of aestheticism, the slavery of eroticism, the slavery of revolution, the slavery of nationalism, the slavery of communism, and so forth.Perhaps surprisingly coming from a theist, Berdyaev also speaks of "slavery to God."

This list of various forms of slavery should suggest to the reader that Berdyaev was not a party man, was not a comfortable member of any collective "groupthink."Once described as a "mystical anarchist," Berdyaev's form of Eastern Orthodoxy was always held in suspicion by the religious authorities, and - despite his socialist political leanings - his intellectual independence also brought him into conflict with idealogues and bullies of the Left.

For Berdyaev, the antidote to slavery is a commitment to freedom and creativity, both of which Berdyaev sees as grounded in the uncreated freedom and inner being of God.This mystical insight - threatening to religious dogmatists as well as secularists - governs Berdyaev's analysis of all social and philosophical problems, and is the key to his thought.

In our age of Left versus Right, "progressive" versus conservative,Berdyaev's courageous refusal to tow the line with any form of dogmatism remains refreshing and timely even when presented within the context of the intellectual and political conflicts of the first half of the 20th century.





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This book explores C.G. Jung's psychology through the perspective of the existential philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, drawing striking parallels between Jung's theory of individuation and Berdyaev's understanding of the person.

Placing Jung and Berdyaev firmly within the context of secular humanism, Nicolaus draws on their personal experiences of individuation to show how both writers seek to enable a renewal of our self-understanding as persons in a post-religious society.

Topics of discussion include:

• the foundations of Berdyaev's personalism
• Jung's psychological interpretation of the Christian God-image
• individuation and the ethics of creativity.

C.G. Jung and Nikolai Berdyaev: Individuation and the Person offers a fresh perspective on the ethical implications of Jung’s theory and serves also as an introduction to Berdyaev’s thought. As such this book will appeal to analytical psychologists, scholars engaged with Jungian thought and all those interested in the interface between spirituality and depth psychology.

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Berdyaev considered the philosophy of history as a field that laid the foundations of the Russian national consciousness. Its disputes were centered on distinctions between slavophiles and Westerners, East and West. The Meaning of History was an early effort, following World War I, that attempted to revive this perspective. With the removal of Communism as a ruling system in Russia, that nation returned to an elaboration of a religious philosophy of history as the specific mission of Russian thought. This volume thus has contemporary significance. Its sense of the apocalypse, which distinguishes Russian from Western thought, gives the book its specifically religious character. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The meaning of Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev was a Russian philosopher who was expelled by the Bolshevik regime in 1922. "The Meaning of History", his most well-known work, was published in Germany in 1923. Later, Berdyaev moved to Paris, where he died in 1948.

Berdyaev was a Russian Orthodox Christian, and I actually bought the Swedish translation of his book in the Orthodox bookstore in Stockholm. However, it's safe to say that Berdyaev's philosophy is very far removed from main-line Russian Orthodoxy. Even Bulgakov was more traditionally Orthodox. "The Meaning of History" acknowledges Böhme, Schelling and Baader as influences. Spengler might be another influence, and Berdyaev often sounds "Hegelian" as well. He also talks in terms of gnosis, esoteric knowledge and theosophy, presumably under the influence of some Hermetic current. Or is it just Böhme all over again? Finally, there is an existentialist streak in his philosophy.

"The Meaning of History" is thus a highly eclectic work, and a causal reader like myself often feels that there are numerous contradictions as the various elements don't always fit neatly together. Perhaps this is inevitable, since the book is based on a series of lectures, presumably delivered in Berlin. What's conspicuous by its absence are references to the Church Fathers and the Bible. Clearly, Berdyaev was an innovative philosopher, or theologian if you like.

Doing Berdyaev justice in a short review is impossible, so here only a few central themes can be pinpointed. To Berdyaev, human freedom is central, by which he seems to mean individual freedom from both ecclesiastical and governmental constrains. God created humans free, since he wants them to love him freely. Indeed, God somehow *needed* to create humanity, to satisfy a longing, an incompleteness within his own nature. Since humans are free, evil and failure are real possibilities. Human history is therefore a tragedy, a tragedy about humanity's attempt to find God, and God's attempt to find man, through a process that involves both evil and suffering.

When Berdyaev describes this process, it sounds like thesis-antithesis-synthesis á la Hegel, and even the present period of secularization is seen as necessary to teach humanity some lessons. In contrast to Hegel, Berdyaev doesn't believe that history can be consummated within earthly limits. Ultimately, humanity will always fail in it's endavours. History is cyclical, rather than progressive. The solution is a solution in "time", since time is part of God's nature, but heavenly time is very different from our negative, fragmented time, where the future cannibalizes the present and the past. Although Berdyaev talks about the Apocalypse, it's unclear how he believes the heavenly solution should come about. A literal second coming of Christ? Individual immortality? Or is the whole thing some kind of metaphor? At one point, Berdyaev says that everyone who waits for Christ, really waits for the Anti-Christ, which seems to rule out a millennium. But does it also rule out an amillenarian second coming? No idea.

Socialism is simply a secularized form of Jewish millennialism, and Berdyaev believes that socialism will never reach its stated goal, anymore than the French revolution did. He also criticizes industrialization and "the machine age". The high point of human endeavour seems to have been the "Christian humanist renaissance" of the 14th century (Giotto, Dante etc). However, Berdyaev also criticizes the Middle Ages for their authoritarian attempts to create the kingdom of God on Earth. His emphasis on freedom leaves him ambivalent towards the medieval period, just as his emphasis on Christianity leaves him ambivalent towards the High Renaissance, which he interprets as a large step towards secularization.

"The Meaning of History" also discusses the role of the Greek and Jewish cultures, Hindu monism, Anthroposophy, evolution, the relationship between myth and fact, the meaning of the incarnation, and the difference between "culture" and "civilization". Indeed, it discusses pretty much everything...except Russia and the Orthodox Church, which are mentioned mostly in passing.

Berdyaev is difficult to classify philosophically, but he seems to stand somewhere in-between traditional Christianity, emerging existentialism, and the German romantics.

A well-reasoned and superbly translated discussion of complex societal and religious issues of history
Now with a new introduction by Professor of Russian Maria Nemcova Banerjee, The Meaning Of History is a philosophical treatise by intellectual Nikolai Berdyaev, witness to two world wars, who survived arrest for political suspicion first by Czarist and then by Bolshevik police, who died in exile in France in 1948 doggedly pursuing his studies and analysis to the end. Observing the philosophy of history as a field that formed the foundations of Russian national consciousness, Berdyaev discusses celestial and metaphysical as well as mundane history, the role of Judaism and Jews in Russian history ("Semitism has been grafted on to the Christian spirit and is indispensable to its destiny. The theme of dualistic messianism, which first appears in Jewish history, has become that of universal history"), the Renaissance and Humanism, and much more. A well-reasoned and superbly translated discussion of complex societal and religious issues of history in general, and Russian history in particular.
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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of Philosophy, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 2204 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Explores major marketing and advertising campaigns from 1999-2006. Entries profile recent print, radio, television, billboard and Internet campaigns. Each essay discusses the historical context of the campaign, the target market, the competition, marketing strategy, and the outcome. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Modern Age, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2006. The length of the article is 3012 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Revisiting Nikolai Berdyaev.(Russian philosopher)(Critical essay)
Author: George A. Panichas
Publication: Modern Age (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 48Issue: 4Page: 375(6)

Article Type: Critical essay

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (Николай Александрович Бердяев) (March 18 [O.S. March 6] 1874 - March 24, 1948) was a Russian religious and political philosopher. Berdyaev was born in Kiev into an aristocratic military family. He spent a solitary childhood at home, where his father's library allowed him to read widely. He read Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Kant when only fourteen years old and excelled at languages. ... Read more

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This digital document, covering the life and work of Nikolai (Aleksandrovich) Berdyaev, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1993 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Nikolai (Aleksandrovich) Berdyaev, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1993 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

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Originally written in 1914, this is Berdyaev's treatise on human creativity as the power that can overcome evil in the world. Berdyaev argued for "man as creator, man as the centre of the universe, man as shaper of a new world." Human history, he believed, was moving toward a stage of "creativeness, where man realises his true likeness to God by himself becoming creator, as an expression of his loving response to the love of God for him." (Quotations from DJ blurb) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A must read
This is a book of the author almost unknown in the West. And this is so sad. Sad that so many people are still unaware of the treasures Berdyaev left for humanity half a century ago. What is art? What is creativity? What is the purpose of living? Berdyaev's answers to these eternal questions bring us to the new level of understanding of ourselves and of the world. A must read for artists and all creative and thinking people!

you're creative
This book presents an intellectual look at creativity.It's different from most creative approaches and perspectives that I've encountered in life.Even those who wouldn't consider themselves creative will walk away with a very analytical and intelligent understanding of creativity. ... Read more

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Written at the beginning of the world apocalypse which was World War II, The Beginning and the End is Nikolai Berdyaev's main book on eschatology. He describes his book as an "essay in the epistemological and metaphysical interpretation of the end of the world, of the end of history"; hence he calls it an "eschatological metaphysics." For Berdyaev the end of the world is a divine-human enterprise: man not only endures the end, but he also prepares the way for it. Man's creative activity is needed for the coming of the kingdom of God: God is in need of this activity and awaits it. Berdyaev tells us that the eschatological outlook is not limited to the prospect of the end of the world; it embraces every instant of life. This is how he puts it: "What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Russia's Mystical Idea; influencing Russian political and social thought

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;"R. Kipling



East, and West:
Russians are accustomed to referring to Russia as the East, although, as one thinker said, "our spiritual, political, and cultural centers are not in the East. Furthermore, even if we belong to the East, it is the East of Europe that we belong to. And if the real East and the real Far West can meet, the meeting of two parts of the unified European culture is all the more natural."

Russia & West Europe:
After the reforms of Peter the Great, when Russia returned to Europe, the relationship between Western Europe and Russia became so tight that the European WWI, led to the 'Russia catastrophe'. Russia was already part of Europe, and its collapse resulted in degeneration of many European countries. As early as the 19th century, when Russia acquired its cultural and artistic self-consciousness, her thinkers were persuaded into the Western idea of Russia's extra-European path and has chosen to adopt it. This very idea of the special path, which was to be used for leaving Europe behind and turning Russia, as Peter Chaadaev put it, into Europe's "joint court,' supported by the majority of Russian thinkers, Westerners as much as Slavophiles (Chaadaev, Danilevsky, Herzen, and others). They didn't admit that they had picked up this concept from the West. European Russians, as Pushkin, Turgenev, Chekhov and Bunin believed themselves a part of Europe; a curious concept, no one recalls.

Russian religious thought:
As Russia entered the modern age in the nineteenth century, many Russian intellectuals combined the study of Western philosophy with a return to their own traditions, culminating in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and the religious philosophy of their famous contemporary, Vladimir Soloviev.
Exploration of the central issues of modern Russian religious thought by studying the work of Soloviev and other religious philosophers who developed his ideas in the early twentieth century as Florensky, and S. Bulgakov, generally placed in the contexts of both Western philosophy and Eastern Orthodoxy, presents a substantially new perspective on Russian religious thought. The work of these philosophers, influenced virtually all aspects of modern Russian tradition, and many aspects of twentieth-century Soviet culture, and enhanced a rich philosophical tendency devoted to issues of community, humanity and even divinity, that transcend Russian boundaries and national soviet historical eras.

Russia's mystical mission:
Demanding all or nothing, alternatively apocalyptic and nihilistic, Russians strove to justify culture and discover Russia's mystical mission. Impatient with the slow processes of history, distrusting authority while haunted by a vision of unity, great thinkers, as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Federov, and Solovyov created an original and vital religious philosophy that culminated in the Russian Renaissance of the twentieth century. The fruit of these heroic figures, of whom Berdyaev was one, included Florensky, Bulgakov, Rozanov, etc., was cut short by the 1917 Revolution. In recent years, however, their works have been available in self-published editions. Underground, a great philosophical and spiritual rebirth (renaissance) was occurring.

Russia's mystical idea:
Berdyaev's 'Russian idea' is thus a mystical one, he suggests that theology, not political economics determine Russian history and society. He takes up the story, starting with the nineteenth century, tracing the powerful chain of artists and thinkers as Bakunin, Chaadev, Khomyakov, Leontyev, among others, who struggled to dissolve the East and West polarities in the Russian soul. This immense, boundless soul, is so mystically vague that it is incapable of settling for "the halfway kingdom of culture."
Vladimir Kantor, eminent Russian scholar, masterfully summarizes the case, "thinkers appeared who turned the idea of Russia's European involvement into a determining one. I'll mention here the ranks of philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. ... irrational myth of the socialist world. It would be unfair to underestimate the role of the Russian diaspora. The names and texts of Nikolai Berdyaev, Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov and others were reaching Soviet Russia."

Nikolai A. Berdyaev:
Berdyaev (1874-1948) was born in Kiev into an aristocratic family. He was educated in a military school and later entered the University of Kiev, from which he was expelled for embracing Marxism and taking part in political agitation. At twenty-five he was exiled from Kiev to the north of Russiabefore the Revolution. He had broken with Marxism, previously, together with Bulgakov, contributing to a symposium that reaffirmed Orthodox Christianity. After the Revolution, he was appointed by the Bolshevists to teach philosophy in the University of Moscow, but soon fell into disfavor for his independent political opinions. He settled first in Berlin, where he opened a Russian Academy of Philosophy and Religion, then moved to Paris, where he lectured in a similar institution. He was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne in 1939, and survived the German occupation with no harm.

Christopher Bamford
A Fellow of the Lindisfarne Association, is the editor in chief of Steiner Books and has lectured, taught, and written widely on spiritual and esoteric traditions.

Book Reviews:
Now that this book is available again, and the next installment of the Russian idea is being prepared, it is no doubt, an essential reading for an understanding of the new Russia, by Americans and Europeans, lay and experts.
"Imperative reading for persons interested in Russian culture." Alexander Vucinic
"No one wishing to understand Russian thought should overloook it." --Donald A. Lowrie, The Rebellious prophet: A life of Nicolai Berdyaev

A Good idea to read the Russian idea
The Russian Idea by Nicolas Berdyaev

A very nice feature of this edition is the introduction by Alesander Vucinich. The in depth description of Berdyaev's philosophical development in association with historical developments not only prepares the way for a better reading of this book but also prepares the way towards and understanding of all of Berdyaev's work. It is the sort of summary that I suppose would have found real enthusiasm in Berdyaev himself had he the chance to read it.

A Great Introduction to Russian Intellectual Culture
This book is an interesting, fast-paced tour through the and ideas thatshaped Russian thought in the 19th and 20th Century. The style is at timesexpository, at times anecdotal, but never overly difficult.It's a greattool for students of Russian history, politics and culture.

For mepersonally the most interesting discussion in this book is the place ofreligious symbolism in Russian social and political thought.Berdyaevdraws some interesting parallels between the Slavophile and Liberal visionsfor Russia that help to shed light on the Revolutionary vision that definedthe nation in the 20th Century. The book remains relevant to post-SovietRussia as a guide to the intellectual heritage of current Russian politicaland social thought. It is also an excellent companion to the study ofRussian literature.

Also valuable is Berdyaev's discussion of theinfluence of 19th Century German philosophy on the Russian intellectualtradition and his analysis of the mystical ("religious", if youwill) aspects of Russian atheism.

Use this book as a starting point foryour study of modern Russia, but don't make it your only stop in thejourney. Treat it rather as a "bibliography in expository prose"for further investigation. ... Read more