Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian philosopher, theologian, poet, pamphleteer, and literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century and in the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century.
Life and work
Vladimir Solovyov was born in Moscow; the second son of the historian Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov ; his elder brother Vsevolod, became a historical novelist, and his younger sister, Polyxena, became a poet. Vladimir Solovyov's mother Polyxena Vladimirovna belonged to a family of Polish and Ukrainian origin and among her ancestors was the philosopher Gregory Skovoroda.In his teens, he renounced [Eastern Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox Church|Eastern Orthodoxy] for nihilism, but later his disapproval of positivism saw him begin to express some views that were in line with those of the Orthodox Church. From 1869 to 1873 Solovyov studied at the Imperial Moscow University, where his philosophy professor was Pamfil Yurkevich.
In his 1874 work The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists and requiring both phenomenon and noumenon validated intuitively. Positivism, according to Solovyov, validates only the phenomenon of an object, denying the intuitive reality that people experience as part of their consciousness. As Solovyov's basic philosophy rests on the idea that the essence of an object can be validated only by intuition and that consciousness as a single organic whole is done in part by reason or logic but in completeness by intuition. Solovyov was partially attempting to reconcile the dualism found in German idealism.
In 1877, Solovyov moved to Saint Petersburg, where he became a friend and confidant of the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In opposition to his friend, Solovyov was sympathetic to the Catholic Church. He favoured the healing of the schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. It is clear from Solovyov's work that he accepted papal primacy over the Universal Church. There is evidence that he converted to Catholicism in a ceremony on February 18, 1896. The testimony is signed by the Russian Greek Catholic priest Nikolay Tolstoy and two Catholic laypeople—Princess Olga Vasilievna Dolgorukova and Dmitry Sergeevich Novskiy.
As an active member of Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia, he spoke Hebrew and struggled to reconcile Judaism and Christianity. Politically, he became renowned as the leading defender of Jewish civil rights in tsarist Russia in the 1880s. Solovyov also advocated for his cause internationally and published a letter in The London Times pleading for international support for his struggle. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes him as "a friend of the Jews" and states that "Even on his death-bed he is said to have prayed for the Jewish people".
Solovyov's attempts to chart a course of civilization's progress toward an East–West Christian ecumenism developed an increasing bias against Asian cultures—which he had initially studied with great interest. He dismissed the Buddhist concept of Nirvana as a pessimistic nihilistic "nothingness", antithetical to salvation and no better than Gnostic dualism. Solovyov spent his final years obsessed with fear of the "Yellow Peril", warning that soon the Asian peoples, especially the Chinese, would invade and destroy Russia.
Solovyov further elaborated this theme in his apocalyptic short-story "Tale of the Antichrist", in which China and Japan join forces to conquer Russia. His 1894 poem Pan-Mongolism, whose opening lines serve as epigraph to the story, was widely seen as predicting the coming Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.
Solovyov never married or had children, but he pursued idealized relationships as immortalized in his spiritual love-poetry, including with two women named Sophia. He rebuffed the advances of the Christian mystic Anna Nikolayevna Schmidt, who claimed to be his divine partner. In his later years, Solovyov became a vegetarian, but ate fish occasionally. He often lived alone for months without a servant and would work into the night.
Influence
It is widely held that Solovyov was one of the sources for Dostoevsky's characters Alyosha Karamazov and Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov. In Janko Lavrin's opinion, Solovyov has not left a single work which can be considered an epoch-making contribution to philosophy as such, and yet his writings have proved one of the most stimulating influences to the religious-philosophic thought of his country. Solovyov's influence can also be seen in the writings of the Symbolist and Neo-Idealist writers of the later Russian Soviet era. His book The can be seen as one of the philosophical sources of Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. It was also the work in which he introduced the concept of 'syzygy', to denote 'close union'.Sophiology
Solovyov synthesized a philosophy based on Hellenistic philosophy and early Christian tradition with Buddhist and Hebrew Kabbalistic elements. He also studied Gnosticism and the works of the Gnostic Valentinus. His religious philosophy was syncretic and fused philosophical elements of various religious traditions with Orthodox Christianity and his own experience of Sophia.Solovyov described his encounters with the entity Sophia in his works, such as Three Encounters and Lectures on Godmanhood. His fusion was driven by the desire to reconcile and/or unite with Orthodox Christianity the various traditions by the Russian Slavophiles' concept of sobornost. His Russian religious philosophy had a very strong impact on the Russian Symbolist art and poetry movements of the Silver Age and his written arguments in favor of the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Holy See played an instrumental role in the formation of the Russian Greek Catholic Church. His teachings on Sophia, conceived as the merciful unifying feminine wisdom of God comparable to the Hebrew Shekinah or various goddess traditions, have been deemed a heresy by Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and as unsound and unorthodox by the Patriarchate of Moscow. This condemnation, however, was not agreed upon by other jurisdictions of the Orthodox church and was directed specifically against Sergius Bulgakov who continued to be defended by his own hierarch Metropolitan Evlogy until his death.
In his 2005 foreword to Solovyov’s Justification of the Good, the Orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart wrote a defense of Sophiology including a specific defense of Solovyov's later thought:
Sobornost
Solovyov sought to create a philosophy that could through his system of logic or reason reconcile all bodies of knowledge or disciplines of thought, and fuse all conflicting concepts into a single system. The central component of this complete philosophic reconciliation was the Russian Slavophile concept of sobornost. Solovyov sought to find and validate common ground, or where conflicts found common ground, and, by focusing on this common ground, to establish absolute unity and/or integral fusion of opposing ideas and/or peoples.Death
Intense mental work shattered Solovyov's health. He died at the Moscow estate of Nikolai Petrovitch Troubetzkoy, where a relative of the latter, Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy, was living.By 1900, Solovyov was apparently a homeless pauper. He left his brother, Mikhail Sergeevich, and several colleagues to defend and promote his intellectual legacy. He is buried at Novodevichy Convent.
Works
Original Russian- — Moscow: Ed. Orthodox Review, 1874.
- Философские начала цельного знания
- Чтения о богочеловечестве
- 1884
- 1885
- . — Moscow, 1911.
- Красота в природе
- Общий смысл искусства
- 1890
- Об упадке средневекового миросозерцания
- Смысл любви
- . — tip. of the "Public Benefit" company, 1896. – 80 с. –
- — СПб., 1897.
- Оправдание добра
- Тайна прогресса
- Три разговора о войне, прогрессе и конце всемирной истории
- — St. Petersburg: Printing house of M. Alisov and A. Grigoriev, .
- , 1874. Reprinted 1996 by Lindisfarne Books, The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge The Critique of Abstract Principles Lectures on Divine Humanity The Russian Idea, 1888. Translation published in 2015 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, , 1900. Reprinted 2012 by Kassock Bros. Publishing Co.,
- , 1918. Reprinted 2010 by Cosimo Classics,
- ,
- , 1915. Reprinted 1990 by Lindisfarne Books,
- . Reprinted 1948 by G. Bles.
- 103 pages