The Eternal in Russian Philosophy. By Boris P. Vysheslavtsev. Translated by Penelope V. Burt. William B. Eerdmans, 2002. 202 pages. $26.00.

There is a point of view, rather conventional, among modern Russian religious thinkers, according to which Boris Petrovich Vysheslavtsev (1877 – 1954) in some way closes a trend in Russian religious philosophy descending from the Word about the Law and Grace by Metropolitan Ilarion (XI century). Criticizing religious nationalism, the Kiev Metropolitan defended the universal value of grace as a spiritual gift accessible to anyone irrespectively of his or her national belonging. The grace for Ilarion assumes the spiritual freedom of the person freely accepting this gift and aspiring to truth. Under his historiosophy the central event of the global history is the change of the epoch of the Law by the era of the Grace (New Testament). But spiritual freedom and truth demand considerable efforts for their statement and protection – efforts of both moral and intellectual as well as of political nature. This work of metropolitan Ilarion expresses quite clearly the ideal of Sacred Russia having giant value for Russian religious consciousness. Two books by Vysheslavtsev – Etika preobrazhennogo Erosa (The Ethics of Transfigured Eros) (1931) and Vechnoe v russkoi filosofii (The Eternal in Russian philosophy) (1955) – sum up, though in a preliminary manner, the thousand-year development of Russian religio-philosophical thought. At least the latter book gives a distinct total of philosophical and theological ideas of Vysheslavtsev himself which are indeed representative for the specific culture that he belongs to and which brought him to the first range of Russian philosophers of the last century. Every essay in this book puts forward a particular topic and thus reflects a stage of the autor's protracted development.

The Vysheslavtsevs were known since the XIV century, mainly in relation to the service of the state. The son of a Moscow lawyer, Boris Vysheslavtsev matriculated in 1895 in the Law Faculty of the University of Moscow, where his mentor was the eminent legal philosopher Pavel Novgorodtsev. After graduating in 1889 he worked for some years as an attorney before beginning postgraduate studies at the university. His critics supposed later that it was the legal profession that moved him towards the investigation of the Absolute, having allowed him to realize and experience the relativity of legal formulations. Moreover, it could well take him to the idea that any human rationalization is in consanguinity with legal pettifogging. But one could endure the relativity and the conditional character of rational thought only having opened access to Absolute, having the intuition of Absolute already deep-rooted and ingrained in mind and soul. Only on the background of the Absolute the relative can be perceived as such, as relative. A friend and in many respects an adherent of Vysheslavtsev, S.L.Frank taught that any our knowledge has in its basis the self-detection of an absolute reality, because the Absolute is more primary and more obvious than the relative and the individual, which can be thought only on its basis.

Basically, Vysheslavtsev and his fellows inherited this way of thinking from Novgorodtsev who has realized the danger of the absolutization of the relative, danger of transformation of means in the ultimate goal, that is, the danger of utopian thinking. He has deeply analyzed two most influential utopias coming from the West, but already grasping the consciousness of Russian intelligentsia: the utopia of a perfect lawful state and the utopia of a perfect social building. Moving in this direction step by step, Vysheslavtsev came to the positions that reads as follows: if the danger of the latter of these utopias, which found the brightest expression in Marxism, is revealed today to a sufficient degree, the danger of the former one is still to be realized. For it is not the form of utopia that matters so much, but rather the utopianism as such, our utopian consciousness, our permanent readiness to bow to an idol, instead of the God, our readiness to believe in the self-sufficiency of means, in their declared ability to operate in an automatic mode in a direction of ensuring the safe and serene life. But it is extremely complicated to be exempt from a nightmare of utopianism in the century of domination of scientific attitude, for the science constantly generates and supports utopian disposition by turning our attention to the search of automatisms in our life, thus as though returning us to antiquated religion of the Law (Ch.5 – "The Problem of Power").

To be finally released from the temptation of utopianism, to realize more sharply the incompatibility of the religion of the Law and the religion of the Grace, Vysheslavtsev chose his way to the Absolute and elaborated his method to approach it.

In 1908 he was sent abroad for two years to prepare himself for a professorship; he worked principally at Marburg, under the Neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. Vysheslavtsev lectured in the University of Moscow until he was exiled in 1922 because of his anti-Marxism (which he later developed in an intricate philosophical critique, summarized in Ch. 6 – “The Inherent Tragedy of the Sublime”, where he calls Marxism a "speculation on debasement"). In Western Europe he became a leading figure in the Russian émigré philosophical community, lecturing and writing on questions of metaphysics, ethics, philosophical psychology, and social philosophy. His study was generally centered in the irrational as the sphere of human contact with the Absolute. He developed this theme through the application of concepts of depth psychology (such as sublimation opposed to debasement) to the interpretation of Christian doctrine, to ethics, and to social theory.

Vysheslavtsev insisted that the quest for the Absolute is the core of the religious attitude, and his peculiar form of this quest was called “philosophy of the heart” (Ch.10) – a direction descending from P.J.Chaadaev, the Bishop Ignatiï Brianchaninov and P.D.Jurkevich (to mention only immediate precursors, i.e., of the XIX century). It was also discussed by Vysheslavtsev's contemporaries – I.A.Il'in has devoted to the theme of heart the chapter in his Axioms of religious experience [1], an essay About intimate contemplation [2] and many pages in various works; S.L.Franc wrote about heart as a place of contact of two worlds  and of intimate knowledge [3]; V.V.Zen'kovskiï paid especially much attention to questions of Christian anthropology and, in contrast to Vysheslavtsev, has seen in the identification of "heart" with "selfness" the direct contradiction with the Gospel [4].

Vysheslavtsev was persuaded that he found a strong support from Pascal (Ch.12), and, indeed, the kinship of Pascal's thought with Orthodox tradition was pointed out more than once [5]. His other Western forerunner was Max Scheler who "was actually the first philosopher to discover Pascal's idea about the 'logic of the heart.'" He constructed his own theory of values on the basis of this idea, a theory that was further developed by Hartmann and reflected in the psychology of Jung. Scheler showed that "values are arranged in a specific hierarchical order" (160).

The third source of inspiration for Vysheslavtsev came from the East (see especially Ch. 14 – "Immortality, Reincarnation, and Resurrection"). After Max Müller's works the question of relations between Christian and Indian doctrines of the person left the limits of only academic research and obtained a certain confessional acuteness at the end of XIX century, when representatives of theosophy used materials of comparative religious studies with the purpose "to include" Christianity in what they believed to be a deeper and universal spiritual tradition. In such works like [6] and [7] Christianity was interpreted as a branch of Hinduism. Without leaving Christian positions, their authors aspired to show that in the search of the Indian idea connected with the doctrine of bhakti there are a number of motives related to the Gospel of St. John, and they can serve in the future as a fertile field for development of Christian mysticism in India.

The earliest statement of the doctrine of bhakti is given already in Bhagavad Gita as some reaction to severity and impassivity of yoga; bhakti corresponds first of all to concept "love", but is quite often translated also by words such as "belief" and "fidelity". Bhakti expresses a special condition of God's connection with mind, heart or even "internal heart". Vysheslavtsev has put an opposite problem: to show through the doctrine about heart all depth of distinction between Indian and Christian representations about the person. The basic string of his reasonings is in a fair Orthodox way associated with understanding of heart as original I of the person, his Godlike selfness [8]. Opposing the Christian doctrine of God and person to the Indian representations about Atman and Brahman, Vysheslavtsev has made evident the impossibility of their identification or external connection in the spirit of theosophical doctrines.

Vysheslavtsev’s writing is unusually rich in ideas, and this is the reason why not all of the topics of this book can be covered in a brief review, but, besides, it is as well abundant in associations and reminiscences, and this is another reason to recommend it to readers desiring a better understanding of Russian spirtuality and its connections with world culture.

References

1. Il'in I.A. Aksiomy religioznogo opyta. Vol. I. Paris, 1953.

2. In: Il'in I.A. Put' k ochevidnosti. München, 1957, с. 133-142.

3. See, e.g.: Frank S.L. Svet vo t'me. Paris, 1949, p. 88; S nami Bog. Paris, 1964, p. 117; Real'nost' i chelovek. Paris, 1956, p. 205.

4. See: Archpriest V.V.Zen'kovskiï. Printsipy pravoslavnoï antropologii. // «Vesthik RSKhD», № 154, 1989, p. 91.

5. See, e.g. : Archimandrite Serge (Yazadjieff). Quelques traits orthodoxes chez Blaise Pascal. // «Vestnik Russkogo zapadnoevropeïskogo ekzarhata», № 38-39, 1961, p. 105-120.

6. Šri Parananda. An Eastern Exposition of St. John. L., 1902.

7. Appasamy A. Christianity as Bhakti Marga. L., 1927.

8. See: Šрidlik T. The Heart in Russian Spirituality. // The Heritage of the Early Church. Essays in honor of G. V. Florovsky (Orientalia Christiana analecta, 195). Roma, 1973, pp. 361-374.

Maxim Lebedev

Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences