Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The humanist tradition in Russian philosophy
- I The Nineteenth Century
- II Russian Metaphysical Idealism in Defense of Human Dignity
- III Humanity and Divinity in Russian Religious Philosophy after Solov′ëv
- IV Freedom and Human Perfectibility in the Silver Age
- 11 Religious humanism in the Russian Silver Age
- 12 Russian liberalism and the philosophy of law
- 13 Imagination and ideology in the new religious consciousness
- 14 Eschatology and hope in Silver Age thought
- V Russian Philosophy in Revolution and Exile
- Afterword: On persons as open-ended ends-in-themselves (the view from two novelists and two critics)
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Eschatology and hope in Silver Age thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The humanist tradition in Russian philosophy
- I The Nineteenth Century
- II Russian Metaphysical Idealism in Defense of Human Dignity
- III Humanity and Divinity in Russian Religious Philosophy after Solov′ëv
- IV Freedom and Human Perfectibility in the Silver Age
- 11 Religious humanism in the Russian Silver Age
- 12 Russian liberalism and the philosophy of law
- 13 Imagination and ideology in the new religious consciousness
- 14 Eschatology and hope in Silver Age thought
- V Russian Philosophy in Revolution and Exile
- Afterword: On persons as open-ended ends-in-themselves (the view from two novelists and two critics)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Panmongolism! Although the word is wild
It caresses my ear,
As though full of the portend
Of God's great fate.
Vladimir Solov′ëv, 1894It is only natural that this chapter should begin with an epigraph from a poem by Vladimir Solov′ëv (1853–1900), arguably the figure most influential for the modernist thinkers in Russia's pre-revolutionary period. That this particular poem, “Panmongolizm” (“Panmongolism,” 1894, published 1905), should have pride of place is also no accident. These four lines, the first of a nine-stanza paean to a mysterious Asiatic force bent on the destruction of holy Moscow, preface Solov′ëv's own “Kratkii povest′ ob Antikhriste” (“Short Tale of the Antichrist,” 1899), published the year before he died. Two of the lines also serve as epigraph to the poem “Skify” (“The Scythians,” 1918) by the symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok (1880–1921), thus in many ways bracketing the two-decade period known as the Silver Age of Russian culture. Between the two appeared a number of other poems, essays, and stories about an apocalyptic invasion from the East, most notably “Griadushchie gunny” (“The Coming Huns,” 1904–1905) by Valerii Briusov (1873–1924). The juxtaposition of these three poems serves as a door into the spiritual and philosophical preoccupations of an entire generation of intellectuals as they anticipated the demise of Russian autocracy.
The anxiety permeating the Silver Age centered in large part on a perceived tension between individual and whole, between the ethically autonomous lichnost′ and the amorphous masses, and thus concerned the very meaning of humanity.
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- A History of Russian Philosophy 1830–1930Faith, Reason, and the Defense of Human Dignity, pp. 285 - 302Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010