Смысл творчества

by Nikolai Berdyaev, Николай Бердяев

В этот сборник вошли произведения величайшего представителя религиозной философии и первого в нашей стране ученого школы религиозного экзистенциализма Николая Бердяева, посвященные философским, онтологическим аспектам литературного творчества. Писательство, по Бердяеву, воспринимается самим писателем как своеобразная жертва - но в жертвенности
этой нет "гибели и ужаса". Напротив, активность жертвенности творчества позволяет писателю увидеть в личной трагедии, личном кризисе, личной судьбе нечто, способное заставить нас переживать их как часть трагедии, кризиса всеобщей судьбы. Человек, Философия, Красота, Мистицизм, Любовь, Революция - таковы понятия, которыми оперирует Николай Бердяев в своих произведениях, которые сам причислял к "опытам оправдания человека" перед вечностью.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Religion, Nonfiction, Theology, Russia

672 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was born at Kyiv in 1874 of an aristocratic family. He commenced his education in a military school and subsequently entered the University of Kiev. There he accepted Marxism and took part in political agitation, for which he was expelled. At twenty-five he was exiled from Kiev to the north of Russia and narrowly escaped a second period of exile shortly before the Revolution. Before this, however, he had broken with Marxism in company with Sergius Bulgakov, and in 1909 he contributed to a symposium which reaffirmed the values of Orthodox Christianity. After the October Revolution he was appointed by the Bolshevists to a chair of philosophy in the University of Moscow, but soon fell into disfavour for his independent political opinions. He was twice imprisoned and in 1922 was expelled from the country. He settled first in Berlin, where he opened a Russian Academy of Philosophy and Religion. Thence he moved to Clamart near Paris, where he lectured in a similar institution. In 1939 he was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne. He lived through the German occupation unmolested. After the liberation, he announced his adhesion to the Soviet government, but later an article by him published in a Paris (Russian) newspaper, criticising the return to a policy of repression, was tantamount to a withdrawal of this. He died at Clamart March 24, 1948.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The human spirit is in prison. Prison is what I call this world, the given world of necessity." So begins Nicolas Berdyaev in the introduction to this spiritually-charged book of religious philosophy. For Berdyaev confesses to being close to Manichean dualism, that is, seeing the material world of necessity as evil, a world without God and not created by God. We must, Berdyaev insists, go out of the world and overcome the world completely, "Freedom from the world is the pathos of this book."

Where should we go when we leave this world of necessity and materialism? According to Berdyaev, to a state of being that is "freedom in the spirit, life in divine love, life in the Pleroma." If the world `Pleroma' sounds familiar, you probably have some acquaintance with the spirituality of the ancient Gnostic religions. However, Berdyaev also confesses to being close to a pantheistic monism, that is, seeing the world as divine and man as divine by nature. If this sounds like a paradox . . . well, confessing to both views is, in fact, a paradox, to which Berdyaev readily admits, "Religious consciousness experiences the world to the fullest extent, both as completely apart from God and as fully divine, experiences evil both as falling away from divine reason, and as having an immanent meaning in the process of the world's development."

Again, this is a spiritually-charged book of religious existentialist philosophy where Berdyaev addresses such topics as redemption, asceticism, sex, love, beauty, morals and mysticism through the lens of creativity. For example, the author writes: "Philosophy is creativeness, and not adaptation or obedience. The liberation of philosophy as a creative act is its liberation from all dependence upon science, i.e. heroic resistance to every sort of adaptation to necessity." Berdyaev sees any pulling back from the fresh, clean air of living a spiritually authentic life as a plunge into slavery and sickness. On the same subject, we read, "Philosophy is palsied by a frightful disease - the disease of reflection and dissociation. . . . Reflection and doubt deprive philosophy of its active-creative character, make it passive."

For someone with a background and interest in the arts, Berdyaev's chapter on beauty and art could very well prove the most inspiring. Since, like Nietzsche, to begin to understand Berdyaev is to read his actual words, here are several quotes: "The artist is always a creator. Art is always a victory over the heaviness of "the world" - never adaptation to "the world". The act of art is directly opposed to every sort of added burden - in art there is liberation." ----- "In the strict sense of the word, creativity is neither Christian nor pagan: it rises above and beyond them. In the creative artistic act darkness is overcome and transfigured into beauty." ----- "The creative act of an artist is essentially the non-submission of this world and its distortions. The creative act is a daring upsurge past the limitations of this world into the world of beauty."

I love Nicolas Berdyaev. Perhaps because, like him, I experience all of life as spiritually-charged as well as feeling the Pleroma as my true home. Ah, paradox! I first read The Meaning of the Creative Act back in college and now that I have spent much of the last 40 years of my life devoted to creativity within music, literature and the arts, I appreciate his words and his intensity even more. To end, let me note that Bredyaev says how a truly beautiful culture will create great architecture and our culture is not beautiful; rather, in our epoch, the spirit of music has become a favorite relaxation and recreation for the general public. How true, Nicolas! How many times are we exposed to the insipid and obnoxious sound of muzak or pop or rock music in public places or working in an office? To aspire to a spiritual, creative, artistic life is to constantly do battle with omnipresent crude, drab, mediocre mass culture. Ah, Nicolas Berdyaev! We can learn so much from you brilliant vision. How much? To find out, please order this book - the sooner the better.

[Balša Vukčević · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kritika asketskog pozitivizma, morala poslušnosti, pritisnutosti grijehom (kojom se čovjek odvraća od svog stvaralačkog zadatka odvažne ljubavi, ljepote i slobode u duhu svetom), sukladan buržoaskim vrijednostima pod revnom prismotrom staraca i otšelnika, bez rizikovanja, dirljiva je u svojoj dosljednosti. Polnost, koja je u središtu metafizike čovjeka, kod Berđajeva je uvijek u vezi sa mističkim učenjem o androginiji. Naporednost epoha otkrovenja je ključ za razumijevanje svjetske istorije onako kako je on vidi. Nema, međutim, u ovoj filozofiji ničeg osobenog za šta bih mogao reći da predstavlja važnu, živu misao. Berđajevljev brikolaž znanja iz političke ekonomije, mehanicističkog evolucionizma, savremene nauke i filozofije uopšte dosta je tanak u odnosu na razumijevanje okultizma, mistike, magije i sotirioloških učenja. Berđajev je umio da ponudi bogatstvo i šteta je što nije razvijao osnovne postavke kojih se držao. Tada bi njegovo nasljeđe sasvim izvjesno bilo znatnije u savremenoj religijskoj filozofiji. Izbjegavaju ga naši pobožni konzervativci zakočeni baš tim buržoaskim vrijednostima koje klir često odigrava, jer je istina, ma šta o hrišćanskom moralu mislili, da su manifestacije vjere oko nas, u ponašanju i zvaničnog klira i njemu podložnih ljudi, naročito intelektualaca, suštinski nehrišćanske.

Obradovalo me iznenađenje da sam ovdje naišao na jedan fundamentalan pogled na divni neuspjeh Renesanse, pokazan preko Botičelijeve tuge, njegove čežnje dok mu Venere napuštaju zemlju a Madone nebo, iako samo kao eksurs govora o ljepoti i teurgiji.

[Moderated · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The philosophers have constantly returned to the idea that to solve the mystery of man would mean solving the mystery of being. Know thyself, and through this know the world.”

“Man is a microcosm; he is rightly a central and royal place in the world, because human nature mystically resembles the nature of the Absolute Man, Christ, and thus participates in the nature of the Holy Trinity. Man is not a simple creature, together with other created things, because the only-begotten Son of God, begotten before all worlds and of equal worth with His Father, is not only absolute God but Absolute Man. Christ, the Absolute Man, appeared on earth and in humanity and hence for ever confirmed a central significance in the universe for man and for the earth. Neither Copernicus’s astronomy nor Darwin’s biology can overthrow Christological anthropology, which surpasses this world, a truth which is fully before all worlds.”

“In what sense are there two worlds: “this world” and “the other”? Ontologically, there is only one world, one divine being. But the fall of being shattered and divided it. The world came into a diseased state. “This world” is an illness of being, its captivity, its fallen state, a partial loss of its freedom and its subjection to external necessity. “The other world” is the health of being, its uplift, its liberation, its fullness. “This world” must be overcome and eliminated. But this does not mean hostility towards the world or the cosmos - it means hostility only towards its disease, its enslavement and its fall.”

“Only that philosophy is capable of glimpsing the cosmos in man which sees that man surpasses all the phenomena of the natural world and is himself the supreme centre of being.”

“Man’s consciousness of himself as the centre of the world, bearing within himself the secret of the world, and rising above all the things of the world, is a prerequisite of all philosophy: without it one could not dare to philosophize.”

"Nothing but man's liberation from himself will bring man to himself."

"...not only has man need of God, but God has need of man. In this lies the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the God-man."

"Philosophy has always striven to be the liberation of the human spirit from its bondage to necessity. Philosophy may investigate the logical apparatus, which is an adaptation of thinking to the world's necessity, but itself may never stand in slavish dependence upon the apparatus."

“Obedience to necessity (of nature or of categories) is understood as intellectual honesty and conscientiousness. Men believe that the criteria of truth are intellectual and that truth is accepted positively by the intellect, that knowledge of truth is honest and conscientous obedience… The obedience to “truth” of the passive intellect is slavery and palsy, not honesty and conscientiousness.”

“Truth presupposes the Sun, the Logos; and He who was the Sun and Logos of the world could say: “I am the Truth.”

“…creative philosophy cannot be scientific philosophy. There is a gnosis which goes beyond science and is independent of it. But creative gnostic philosophy is not a sentimental philosophy either, not a philosophy of the feeling, of the heart.”

“Psychologism and human relativism in philosophical knowledge may be overcome only by those philosophers who recognize the existence of a world Logos and Oecumenical Reason, and recognize man as participant in the Logos, as akin to Reason, capable of taking possession of this Reason. He who sees in man no trace of the world’s Logos is fated to remain in the grip of psychologism and relativity. Philosophy is not, like religion, a revelation of God - it is the revelation of man, but of man as participant in the Logos, part of the absolute man, the all-man, and not a closed individual being… In the small cosmos, man, there is the great cosmos, the universe.”

“When I say that philosophy is an art, I do not mean to say that it is “the poesy of concepts” as Lange does, obligatory for no one, individually arbitrary. The art of philosophy is firmer and more obligatory than science; it comes before science, but it presupposes the highest exertion of the spirit and the highest form of communion. The mystery of man is the initial problem of a philsophy of creativity.”

“The source of philosophy is not Aristotle or Kant, but being itself, the intuition of being. The only true philosopher is he who has an intuition of being, whose philosophy has its source in life. Genuine philosophy has immediate connection with being.”

“The question of man’s positive creative calling in the world was never even raised by the teachers and Fathers of the Church.”

“Either man is the image and likeness of Absolute Divine Being, and then he is a free spirit, the king and the centre of nature, or else he is the image and likeness of our given natural world, and in this case man does not exist - he is only one of the passing expressions of nature.”

“Is life’s final purpose only salvation from sin? Redemption from sin, salvation from evil, are in themselves negative, and the final aims of being lie far beyond, in a positive creative purpose.”

“A universally obligatory compliance with norms of logic, ethics or aesthetics, in the consciousness of differentiated culture, is obedience to the results of sin, adaptation to necessity, but not creativeness. This mark of sin and the resultant necessity is visible on the whole of culture; it does not express man’s creative spirit. Critical philosophy only reveals the law (norm) according to which sinful nature should live. Gnosseological categories are categories of sin, of sinful being.”

“…in God there is a passionate and anguished longing for man. In God there is a tragic deficiency which is satisfied by the great gain of man’s birth in Him.”

“The Old Testament consciousness, suppressed and frightened, knows God as a terrible commander, an autocratic master. Such a conception of God is incompatible with Christianity as a religion of divine-humanity. There can be no intimate relationship with a God who is a terrible commander, an autocratic master. Intimacy is possible only with God as man, that is, with Christ. Through Christ God ceases to be for us a master and commander and God’s providence ceases to be autocracy. There begins an inner, intimate life of man together with God, man’s conscious participation in the Divine nature.”

“Man is infinitely poor and empty if is there is nothing higher than himself, if there is no God; and man is infinitely rich and meaningful if there is something higher, if God does exist.”

“The inner relationship between the subject of knowing and the object of knowing is a necessary condition of true knowing. Only the free man knows freedom; only the creating man knows creativity. Only the spirit knows the spiritual. Only the microcosm knows the macrocosm. To know anything in the world is to have this in oneself.”

“None of to-day’s staretsi (outstanting and specially revered monks) can give a reply to Nietzsche’s torment: he answers him only with a condemnation of his sins. By the same token the starets has no answer for the heroes of Dostoevsky. The new man is born in torment, he passes through abysses which the saints of old never knew.”

“If Alexander Pushkin had been a saint like Seraphim he would not have been a creator… It was only because of his religious frailty, his sinfulness and imperfection, that Pushkin was a poet-genius and not a saint like Seraphim.”

“The way of genius is another type of religious way, equal in value and equal in dignity with the way of the saint. The creativity of the genius is not “worldly” but truly “spiritual” activity.”

“What a loss it would have been had the genius of Pushkin not been given us from above - a whole group of saints could not make up for such a loss.”

“Men who are imperfect and are not saints sometimes possess more knowledge and more beauty than the saints and the perfect ones.”

“It is astounding, almost frightening, this silence of orthodoxy and of the whole of Christianity on the subject of love - the denial of marital love!”

“Love of love, instead of love of a person - this is the psychology of debauch.”

“…holy is the ecstasy of love which melts the lovers into one.”

“…in truth every personality is androgynous.”

"The spirit of the Church Fathers is primarily the spirit of obedience or submission rather than the spirit of love."

"As Carlyle truly says, only victory over fear makes man a man."

"...whatever Nietzsche says about Christianity we must take and turn inside out. The motives of Nietzsche's criticism of Christian morality are profound and valid but the criticism itself is altogether untrue."

"Traditional Christian morals have been too exclusively constructed on fear and care for the soul's salvation. Creative morals should be built on courage and concern for creative uplift. Panic fear of perishing demeans man and in the last analysis becomes unmoral and unreligious by its very motives. This kind of fear is neither noble nor beautiful… This is a special and very unattractive form of religious egoism.”

“Christianity is aristocratic, hierarchic; it is oriented towards value, quality, individuality. At the same time Christianity is oecumenical and universal; it is the salvation of the whole world: of each and all, down to the last grain of dust; it summons all men to the messianic banquet.”

“Creativity was born out of imperfection and insufficiency. The too-perfect cease to create.”

“Christianity has blasphemed against the Spirit whenever it has recognized the Church as finished, Christianity as complete, creativeness as something forbidden and sinful… The life of the Church has ossified, has cooled, almost to the point of death, and it can be reborn only in man’s religious creativeness, only in the new world-epoch. Christianity has grown old and wrinkled. Christianity is a gaffer, two thousand years old. But the eternal cannot grow old. And neither can the eternal religion of Christ grow old.”

“…for modern man there can be no return to childish or infantile religiosity, he cannot return to religious tutelage.”

“The “elders” are teaching us not love but submission and constant worry about salvation from destruction. Even in the lives of the saints, how rarely do we find the flowers of mystical love, and how extraordinarily powerful is the pathos of obedience and the acquisition of personal salvation! In the whole life of Church, there is no love: there is no love in the typical Christian hierarch; no love in clerical care or in lay obedience; there is no love in the normal structure of the Christian spirit. Constantine Leontieff was right when he saw in Orthodox Christianity not so much a religion of love as a religion of fear.”

[შოთა ხუციშვილი · Rating 5 out of 5]

Что такое христианство? Неужели это просто рядовой невроз больного человеческого подсознательного вместе с другими религиями? Или Христианство это то, что говорит нам и как толкует его официальная православная или католическая церковь? Или учения Христа есть переход в другие измерения, в настоящее бытье? У этого гениального человека есть свои ответы на такие вопросы.