Vladimir Solov′ëv is widely regarded as Russia's greatest philosopher, certainly its greatest religious philosopher. The focus of this chapter is the essential humanism of his core philosophical concept, Godmanhood (bogochelovechestvo), which incorporates human dignity as a constituent and inviolable principle. Solov′ëv believed that personhood entails both consciousness of the absolute and the capacity to determine oneself according to that consciousness, i.e., according to absolute ideals. This conception of human nature, or philosophical anthropology, is deeply indebted to Kant. Solov′ëv develops it in his three most important philosophical works: Lectures on Godmanhood, Critique of Abstract Principles, and Justification of the Good.

LIFE, WORKS, CONCEPTS

Vladimir Sergeevich Solov′ëv was born in Moscow in 1853, the son of Sergei Solov′ëv, the leading Russian historian of his generation. In November 1874 he defended his master's thesis, The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists, his first book. He began lecturing at Moscow University, but in June 1875 went abroad for research on gnosticism and mysticism at the British Museum. There he had a mystical vision of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom, who directed him to travel to Egypt; in the desert he saw her again. Returning to Moscow in the summer of 1876, Solov′ëv resumed teaching and wrote his second book, Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge (1877). Within a year he moved to St. Petersburg to take a position in the Ministry of Public Education. In early 1878 he delivered his famous Lectures on Godmanhood to audiences of nearly a thousand that included Dostoevskii.