Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)

Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (russian: Влади́мир Серге́евич Соловьёв; also romanized as Soloviev; – ), a Russian philosopher, theologian, poet, pamphleteer, and literary critic, 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 son of the historian Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov (1820–1879); his elder brother Vsevolod (1849-1903), became a historical novelist, and his younger sister, Polyxena (1867-1924), became a poet. Vladimir Solovyov's mother Polyxena Vladimirovna belonged to a family of Polish origin and had, among her ancestors, philosopher Gregory Skovoroda (1722–1794).

In his teens, he renounced Eastern Orthodoxy for nihilism, but later his disapproval of positivism saw him begin to express 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 (1826-1874).

In his 1874 work ''The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists'' ( ru , Кризис западной философии (против позитивистов)), Solovyov discredited the positivists' rejection of Aristotle's essentialism, or philosophical realism. In ''Against the Positivists'' he took the position of intuitive noetic comprehension, or insight. He saw consciousness as integral (see the Russian term ''sobornost'') and requiring both phenomenon (validated by dianoia) 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 (see essentialism) 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 (non-dualist) intuition. Solovyov was partially attempting to reconcile the dualism (subject-object) found in German idealism.

In 1877, Solovyov moved to Saint Petersburg, where he became a friend and confidant of the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881). In opposition to his friend, Solovyov was sympathetic to the Roman Catholic Church. He favoured the healing of the schism ( ecumenism, ''sobornost'') between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. It is clear from Solovyov's work that he accepted papal primacy over the Universal Church, but there is not enough evidence, , to support the claim that he ever officially embraced Roman Catholicism.
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 ecumenicism 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" (published in the ''Nedelya'' newspaper on February 27, 1900), 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 , 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'' (1889). It was also the work in which he introduced the concept of 'syzygy', to denote 'close union'.

Sophiology

Solovyov compiled a philosophy based on Hellenistic philosophy (see Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus) and early Christian tradition with Buddhist and Hebrew Kabbalistic elements (Philo of Alexandria). 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 movements of his time. 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.

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'' (organic or spontaneous order through integration, which is related to the Russian word for 'catholic'). 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.Zouboff, Peter P. (1944). ''Vladimir Solovyev's Lectures on Godmanhood''. International University Press. p. 14. "The passionate intensity of his mental work shattered his health. On the thirty-first of July, in "Uzkoye", the country residence of Prince P. N. Troubetskoy, near Moscow, he passed away in the arms of his close friend, Prince S. N. Troubetskoy." 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.

Quotes

"But if the faith communicated by the Church to Christian humanity is a living faith, and if the grace of the sacraments is an effectual grace, the resultant union of the divine and the human cannot be limited to the special domain of religion, but must extend to all Man's common relationships and must regenerate and transform his social and political life."

Works

English translations
* ''The Burning Bush: Writings on Jews and Judaism'', Compiled 2016 by Lindisfarne Books,

''The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists''
1874. Reprinted 1996 by Lindisfarne Books,
* ''The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge'' (1877)
* ''The Critique of Abstract Principles'' (1877–80)
* ''Lectures on Divine Humanity'' (1877–91)
* ''The Russian Idea'', 1888. Translation published in 2015 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
*

' (novel), 1900. Reprinted 2012 by Kassock Bros. Publishing Co.,

''The Justification of the Good''
1918. Reprinted 2010 by Cosimo Classics,

''The Meaning of Love''. Reprinted 1985 by Lindisfarne Books


''War, Progress, and the End of History: Three Conversations, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ''
1915. Reprinted 1990 by Lindisfarne Books,

''Russia and the Universal Church''
. Reprinted 1948 by G. Bles. (Abridged version: ''The Russian Church and the Papacy'', 2002, Catholic Answers, )
* 103 pages

See also

* Apophatic theology
* Mikhail Epstein
* Leo Mikhailovich Lopatin
* Vladimir Lossky
* '' Phronesis''

References

Footnotes

Works cited

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Further reading

* du Quenoy, Paul. "Vladimir Solov’ev in Egypt: The Origins of the ‘Divine Sophia’ in Russian Religious Philosophy," ''Revolutionary Russia'', 23: 2, December 2010.
* Finlan, Stephen. "The Comedy of Divinization in Soloviev," ''Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology'' (Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, 2006), pp. 168–183.
* Gerrard, Thomas J
''"Vladimir Soloviev – The Russian Newman,"''
The Catholic World, Vol. CV, April/September, 1917.
* Groberg, Kristi. "Vladimir Sergeevich Solov'ev: a Bibliography," ''Modern Greek Studies Yearbook'', vol.14–15, 1998.
* Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch. ''"Vladimir Sergeevich Solov’ev,"'' Dictionary of Literary Bibliography, v295 (2004), pp. 377–386.
* Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. ''Between the Icon and the idol. The Human Person and the Modern State in Russian Literature and Thought - Chaadayev, Soloviev, Grossman'' (Cascade Books, /Theopolitical Visions/, Eugene, Or., 2013).
* Nemeth, Thomas. ''The Early Solov'ëv and His Quest for Metaphysics.'' Springer, 2014. rint Book* Stremooukhoff, Dimitrii N. ''Vladimir Soloviev and his Messianic Work'' (Paris, 1935; English translation: Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1980).
* Sutton, Jonathan. ''The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov: Towards a Reassessment'' (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1988).
* Zernov, Nicholas. ''Three Russian prophets'' (London: SCM Press, 1944).

External links

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Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900)
– entry on Solovyov at '' Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
* http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/readings/end/antichrist.shtml

ALEXANDER II AND HIS TIMES: A Narrative History of Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky
Several chapters on Solovyov
* http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solovyov.htm
* http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/soloviev/soloviev.html
* http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/soloviev/biffi.html (address by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi)

Vladimir-Sergeyevich-Solovyov
// Britannica
* http://www.valley.net/~transnat/solsoc.html
* – excerpt from ''Three Conversations'' by Solovyov

Civil Society and National Religion: Problems of Church, State, and Society in the Philosophy of Vladimir Solov'ëv (1853–1900)
– research project at Centre for Russian Humanities Studies, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
* http://rumkatkilise.org/necplus.htm


* ttps://archive.org/details/bub_gb_R2kMAAAAIAAJ English translations of 2 poems by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky, 1921
"The Positive Unity: How Solovyov's Ethics Can Contribute to Constructing a Working Model for Business Ethics in Modern Russia"
by Andrey V. Shirin

{{DEFAULTSORT:Solovyov, Vladimir
1853 births
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