Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T01:40:30.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Religious humanism in the Russian Silver Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

G. M. Hamburg
Affiliation:
Claremont McKenna College, California
Randall A. Poole
Affiliation:
College of St. Scholastica, Minnesota
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION: RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS HUMANISM

In European history, “humanism” originally denoted an intellectual and cultural movement, based on the study of Latin and Greek texts, that began in the Renaissance. The term came to mean any system of thought that asserts the value and worth of man (individually and/or collectively) and focuses on human needs, interests, and values. There are secular humanists and religious humanists.

The religious philosophers of the Russian Silver Age were humanists. They foregrounded man's spiritual and psychological needs, raised issues of meaning and values, and exalted human agency and creativity. They wanted to sanctify this world, including “the flesh” (sex). Their philosophy incorporated aspects of Orthodox Christianity, such as anti-rationalism, the apotheosis of beauty, transfiguration, deification, and a holistic ontology. The last aspiration underlay their desire for “integral knowledge” in epistemology, “total unity” (vsëedinstvo) in metaphysics, and their social ideal – sobornost′ (a free society united by love and common ideals whose members retain their individuality). By “individuality” they meant self-expression and personal development within a community, rather than apart from or against it. Several humanists exalted Sophia (divine wisdom or “the eternal feminine”).

The most prominent religious humanists were (in alphabetical order) Nikolai Berdiaev (1874–1948), Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1942), Pavel Florenskii (1882–1937), Semën Frank (1879–1950), Zinaida Gippius (1869–1945), Viacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), Dmitrii Merezhkovskii (1865–1941), Vasilii Rozanov (1856–1919), Sergei Trubetskoi (1862–1905), his brother Evgenii Trubetskoi (1863–1920), Lev Shestov (1866–1935), and the symbolist poets Andrei Belyi (1890–1934) and Aleksandr Blok (1880–1921).

Type
Chapter
Information
A History of Russian Philosophy 1830–1930
Faith, Reason, and the Defense of Human Dignity
, pp. 227 - 247
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×