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HISTORY, SOPHIA AND THE RUSSIAN NATION |
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Summary History, Sophia and the Russian Nation: A Reassessment of Vladimir Solov'ev's Views on History and his Social Commitment The work of Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900) has recently become the object of renewed interest on the part of both Western and Russian scholars. This study takes its departure in the question to what extent Solov'ev was actually concerned with history. A tension pervades his work between an involvement in burning issues in his time, viewing them through the prism of world history on the one hand, and indifference with respect to historical contingency on the other hand. It is the goal of this study to explore this tension in order to come to a deeper understanding of Solov'ev's relationship to history which respects its complexity and takes into account the various fields of his activity. For this purpose, I combine two perspectives which structure my thesis in two main parts. I first conduct a philosophical and theoretical investigation of Solov'ev's speculative views on history. Then I explore his personal interventions and attempts to change the course of affairs in Russia on the basis of his publicistika from a historical and empirical perspective. In Part One, I develop a heuristic model of three lines of discourse which allow to categorize Solov'ev's views on history, namely theology of history, philosophy of history, and sophiology of history. Chapter I deals with the notions of theology of history and philosophy of history. Basing myself on current theoretical discussions in the West, I define theology of history as an approach that relies on the ontological difference between God's eternity and transcendence and the transient nature and historicity of humans. In contrast with theology of history, philosophy of history emphasises the historical process in its immanence, its continuity, and its shaping by human agents and particularly by nations. Chapters II and III investigate the extent to which these two approaches can be found in Vladimir Solov'ev's work. In order to reinforce the ideas of faith, tradition and the Christian church in the context of modern society, Solov'ev developed a theology of history based on his concept of the humanity of God [Bogoceloveeestvo] [chap. II]. In this process of unification between man and God, the Christian Church, preferably with its Eastern and Western elements reconciled, played a major role. For his theology of history Solov'ev found inspiration in the Eastern Church fathers Origen of Alexandria and Maximus Confessor, and the Russian religious thinkers, Aleksej Khomjakov, Ivan Kireevskij, Fedor Tjutcev and Fedor Dostoevskij. However, Solov'ev also needed a notion of history, not only in relationship to God, but in its own right and immanent development. I reconstruct his philosophy of history, which was strongly dominated by a teleological and universalist perspective [chap. III]. Solov'ev's concept of all-unity [vseedinstvo] conveys the idea of a harmony of individual freedom with collectivity at a universal level as the goal of human progress. I critically analyse the decisive influence exerted by three main thinkers on his philosophy of history, namely his own father, the historian Sergej Solov'ev, G.W.F. Hegel, and Auguste Comte. The question arises as to the extent to which theology of history, with its emphasis on God's agency, and philosophy of history, with its focus on exclusively human achievements, are compatible with one another. Solov'ev sought to bridge the tension between them and overcome their limitations by developing concepts that I collect under a third model of history, namely sophiology of history [chap. IV]. In this approach, Solov'ev tried, in an original manner, to reconcile God's transcendence with the processual character of history's immanent developments. Although he did not work out his sophiology of history, his intuition of the world as a feminine and material entity engaged in a process of spiritualization (World Soul) and his mystical visions of divine Wisdom (Sophia) are central components of it. Sophiology of history also takes into account two aspects, which Solov'ev derived from his personal experience, but which are irrelevant to his theology and philosophy of history, namely the participation of nature and matter in the process of spiritualisation, and mystical and erotic love as a driving force. I discern four sources of inspiration in his sophiology of history, namely the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, J. Bohme, and F.W.J. Schelling. These three models rely each on a main actor, namely, in turn, the church, the state, and society of the people. These are also the three pillars of Solov'ev's ideal of a free theocracy, which posits a harmonious collaboration between church, state and society under the leadership of the priest (or pope), the king (or Russian tsar), and the prophet (notably Solov'ev). This triple agency corroborates my heuristic distinction between the three models of history in the philosopher's thought. At this point, the question arises to which extent his view of history is influenced by his own time and, conversely, is the driving force behind his personal engagement in Russia's affairs. It is the objective of Part Two to address this question on the basis of a fairly exhaustive analysis of Solov'ev's participation in Russian social debates. I demonstrate that he systematically, though often implicitly, interpreted these issues from the prism of remote ideals. In his eyes, Russia was destined to embed and express the eternal Sophia by working at bringing about free theocracy, church reunion, and a solidary society. Each of the five case studies presents another facet of Solov'ev's thought and commitment to what he conceived as Russia's mission. Case study I, on Solov'ev's lectures after the tsaricide of March 1st 1881, analyses the philosopher's unique public address to the tsar at that moment of deep crisis in Russia. By exhorting tsar Alexander III to act as a Christian ruler and not to apply the death penalty to the murderers of his father, the philosopher expressed his faith in the monarchic principle and strove to elevate the debate to a religious level. Case studies II, III, and IV, deal with Solov'ev's ambiguous attitude with respect to three religious minorities which were being repressed by the Russian government, namely the Old Believers [II], the Jews [III], and the Catholic Poles [IV]. On the one hand, he fiercely defended their rights to exert their religion freely. On the other hand, he hoped that sooner or later they would integrate into a united church, which meant conversion to official Orthodoxy in the case of the Old Believers, and to Christianity in the case of the Jews. I demonstrate for each case how Solov'ev instrumentalised much debated issues for his own priorities. This is most obvious in his treatment of the Polish question. He interpreted the presence of a large Polish population within the Russian Empire as a chance for Russia to realise a reunification between Eastern and Western Christianity through the reconciliation between Russian Orthodoxy and Polish Catholics. Solov'ev's instrumental approach of these issues, however, also involved an astonishing ability to raise fundamental questions and to offer challenging solutions and refreshing perspectives. With the Old Believers, he engaged in a debate about their theological views and addressed the issue of the kind of bond which should exist between the church and the people. In his treatment of the Jewish question, he was a pioneering expert on Judaism and a provocative publicist, organising a manifesto against anti-semitism, claiming that the Jewish question was rather a Christian than a Jewish problem, and that the Jews were the cement of modern Russian society by forming an urban middleclass. As a solution to the Polish question he envisaged the common veneration of a certain icon. Case study V, dealing with the famine of 1891-1892, differs from the other cases by Solov'ev's factual approach as well as by the militant character of his intervention. He strove to reinforce the bond between urban educated society and the peasants, even by clandestine activities meant to provoke a popular uprising. One of the underlying motions of this engagement, which was rooted in his sophiology of history, was to make his contemporaries aware of the necessity of dealing with the earth in a respectful way and of contributing to its spiritualisation. Solov'ev's interventions are analysed against the background of the various historical developments that have just been named and also of contemporary debates shaping Russian public opinion, which allows me to reach some general conclusions regarding his social commitment [synthesis]. I claim that though Solov'ev was acquainted with current issues, he was most of the time very selective with respect to the factors he took into consideration, reducing his focus to a moral and religious interpretation which neglected political, institutional, juridic and socio-economic aspects of the issue. More preoccupied with relating these issues to his ideals than with offering practical solutions, Solov'ev drew elements for his interpretation from his conception of history. I demonstrate how, in this respect, the three typologies of history reconstructed in my thesis were central to his interventions: Theology of history provided him with instruments to translate eternal Christian values into the Russian context and to establish a diagnosis of the latter, while his philosophy of history gave him a theoretical framework within which to evaluate positively nations, cultures, and social progress. His sophiology of history, finally, legitimated his addressing the tsar and the church authorities on an equal footing, and his exhorting educated society; it also provided his motivation for the fight for more unity between the educated levels of society and the common people. Furthermore, he consistently addressed the institutions and leaders that he had in mind for free theocracy, namely the church or the pope (Polish question, Old Believers), the state or the king (tsaricide, Polish question, Jewish question, Old Believers), and the educated class, preferably in unity with the people or the prophet (in all of these cases). Solov'ev's original interpretation of the debated issues from the perspective of his ideals explain the unique place that he occupied in Russian public opinion. His ideas did not get a wide echo, and his fellowmen perceived him rather as a troublemaker, a false patriot or, at best, an utopian. He shared some principles with the liberals, while casting these views in a religious mould close to that of the Slavophile conservatives. This did not prevent him from consciously or unconsciously sharing views with people and camps he was explicitly opposed to, such as the populists, Lev Tolstoj, or Konstantin Pobedonoscev. In my conclusion I recapitulate the main results of my two-fold analysis. I have unravelled the inner structure and the sources of influence of Solov'ev's views on history, as well as the way he translated these into social engagement. The role of Sophia-World Soul has been highlighted as the both fundamental and hidden source of his views on history and of his interventions as the prophet of Russian society. Despite his commitment, however, his transitions from speculation to concrete historical situations remained always underdeveloped, displaying a certain detachment on his part from the hic et nunc. Characteristic for Solov'ev's attitude toward history as a whole, therefore, is a remaining tension between eternal truth and historical emergency. In his work, this tension remains unresolved in so far as the eternity of the revealed truth excludes all historical emergency. Exploring both the philosophical implications and the historical background of Vladimir Solov'ev's views has proved fruitful for a critical appreciation of his thought. I hope to have shown convincingly the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach to Solov'ev, and perhaps, more broadly, to other challenging thinkers, whether Western or Russian.
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