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A portrait of the traditions and interior life of Russian Orthodox spirituality.
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 The Way of a Pilgrim, an unknown pilgrim describes his
wanderings through mid-nineteenth century Russia and Siberia, from
one holy place to another, in search of the way of prayer. R. M.
French's superb translation conveys the charm of the original text,
as well as brilliantly communicating the spiritual truths of the
gospel. In the much-loved sequel, The Pilgrim Continues His Way,
the narrator shares more of his story, as desire burns within him
to discover deeper experiences of prayer, and to draw closer to the
heart of God.
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."
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.
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