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The Meaning of the Creative Act is a seminal work for Nikolai
Berdyaev. It adumbrates a number of crucially important themes that
he develops in his later works, notably creative freedom as an
essential element of human life and human creativeness as
complementary to God's creativeness. Berdyaev's aim is to sketch
out an "anthropodicy," a justification of man (as opposed to a
theodicy, a justification of God); man is to be justified on the
basis of his creative acts, inasmuch as he is a creature who is
also a co-creator in God's work of creation. This is how Berdyaev
puts it: "God awaits from us a creative act."
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."
In this book, Berdyaev tells us that the creative development of
the spirit and the free exercise of man's powers can be conceived
only as the free cooperation of man with the work of God. Creative
spiritual development represents a new principle which signifies an
offering of human freedom to God, an offering which God expects
from us. The life of the spirit is a creative and dynamic process.
Spiritual development is possible only because there is freedom.
Spiritual development is not movement on the plane of the external
world, but the bringing to birth of forces which lie hidden in the
inner depths of existence. To quote Berdyaev, "the spiritual world
is like a torrent of fire in free creative dynamism." 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."
Nikolai Berdyaev describes this book as "a philosophical
autobiography or a history of spirit and self-knowledge." This book
is not only autobiographical; it is also a work of critical
self-inquiry: Berdyaev subjects his ideas and his life to
philosophical scrutiny, in order to discover his "own image and
ultimate destiny." In passing, he elucidates the most important
elements of his personalistic philosophy: freedom, creativeness,
and divine-humanity. By plumbing the depths of his soul, Berdyaev
felt that he could help formulate and resolve certain crucial
problems concerning human destiny and contribute to the
understanding of our era. 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."
In this work, Berdyaev tells us that man's "I," his consciousness,
is thrust up against a world of impersonal objects (the
"objectified" world) and thus finds itself in a condition of
alienation and isolation. In five ontological and epistemological
meditations Berdyaev clarifies this condition of "objectification"
and suggests ways it can be overcome, based on his "personalistic,"
"existential" philosophy. He shows how this philosophy can serve to
counteract objectification and human isolation. Emphasis throughout
is placed on modes of human communion and solitude in society. 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."
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."
In The Destiny of Man, Nikolai Berdyaev sketches the plan of a new
ethics. This new ethics will be knowledge not only of good and
evil, but also of the tragedy which is constantly present in moral
experience and complicates all of man's moral judgments. It will
emphasize the crucial importance of the personality and of human
freedom. The new ethics will interpret moral life as a creative
activity; it will be an ethics of free creativeness, an ethics that
combines freedom, compassion, and creativeness.
This book is about Divine Humanity, man's creative collaboration
with God in the world. Nikolai Berdyaev's reflections on Divine
Humanity lead him to outline a dramatic philosophy of destiny, a
philosophy of existence which unfolds in time and passes over into
eternity, into a state which is not death but transfiguration. He
describes his method as existentially anthropocentric and
spiritually religious; the dialectic of this book is a dialectic
not of logic but of life, a living existential dialectic. He
emphasizes that man must not only await a divine-human revelation,
but work creatively to achieve one.
This book is the philosophical fruit of Nikolai Berdyaev's
first-hand experience of, and reflections on, the crisis of
European civilization in the aftermath of the Great War and the
Russian Revolution. Berdyaev tells us that the modern age, with its
failed Humanism, is being replaced by a new epoch: "the new middle
ages," an epoch of darkness, an epoch of the universal night of
history. Berdyaev asserts that this night is a good thing: in this
darkness, which is a return to the mysterious life of the spirit,
the destruction inflicted by the previous period of "light" will be
healed: "Night is not less wonderful than day; it is equally the
work of God; it is lit by the splendor of the stars and it reveals
to us things that the day does not know. Night is closer than day
to the mystery of all beginning" (pp. 70-71, present volume).
In this book, Nikolai Berdyaev examines the fundamental problems of
the philosophy of history. For Berdyaev the philosophy of history
is a science of the spirit bringing us into communion with the
mysteries of spiritual life. The real philosophy of history is that
of the triumph of authentic life over death; it is the
participation of man in another reality which is much deeper and
richer than the external reality in which he is immersed. The
history of man and the world is rooted in "celestial history," in
the deepest interior spiritual life, which can be equated with
heavenly life, the life of eternity, the life of God. The source of
history lies in this experience of the human spirit which is in
direct communion with the divine spirit. 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."
"So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is
by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian
people in the world." This is Nikolai Berdyaev's assessment of
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), the great Russian novelist,
religious thinker, and prophet. Berdyaev's aim in this book is to
examine Dostoevsky's spiritual side, to explore in all its depth
the way in which Dostoevsky perceived the universe and to
reconstruct out of these elements his entire world-view. Dostoevsky
shows us new worlds, worlds in motion, by which alone human
destinies can be made intelligible; and these worlds and these
destinies can only be grasped by a spiritual analysis. Berdyaev
provides such an analysis.
In Spirit and Reality, Nikolai Berdyaev explores the nature of
spirit, describes how modernity has obscured the true meaning of
spirit by distorting objectifications and symbolizations, and tells
how human creative activity, in concert with divine activity, can
overcome these distortions and lead us into the kingdom of
authentic spiritual life. A great change is needed which will lead
us into the kingdom of the spirit; and in this kingdom we will live
in a form of ascending and descending spiritual realism; we will be
active rather than passive in spirit. God will descend down to us,
and we will ascend to him on the wings of our creative spirit. 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."
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