Russian

Widely acknowledged as the most important Russian thinker of the nineteenth century, Vladimir Soloviev's place in the landscape of world philosophy nevertheless remains uncertain. Approaching him through a single synoptic lens, this book foregrounds his unique envisioning of the interaction between humanity and the material world. By investigating the idea of the 'spiritualization of matter', which Soloviev described as the 'task' of humanity, Smith constructs a rounded picture of his overall importance to an understanding of nineteenth-century thought, as well as to modern theology and philosophy. The picture that emerges is of a writer whose contribution to a Christian philosophy of matter resonates with many of the religious debates of modernity.

The Russian philosopher, poet and mystic Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900), the father of the sophiological movement in Russian thought, remains a little known figure in the West. This article considers Solov'ev’s credentials as an environmentalist before his time and develops a number of strands of his biblical theology from an ecological perspective. It goes on to explore his envisioning of the ‘kingship’ of humanity in God’s creation, which he understood as the ideal relationship between humanity and the world, and to unravel the complexities of his thought on the ‘coming’ of the Kingdom of God. The article suggests that Solov'ev has much to offer theologians and religious people in the articulation, and application, of an ecological theology of creation.

Contemporary moves toward doing theology in a ecological key have been underway now for some decades. The various achievements of Russian thought, however, still await acceptance into our conceptual apparatus for tackling such problems. This chapter looks at the problematic of the interaction between humanity and the world, central to Russian thought, and seeks to understand its perspective by drawing on two distinct but interrelated movements: Russian sophiology, which grew out of the religious thought of Vladimir Solov’ev (1853-1900) and Russian cosmism which, in figures such as Vladimir Vernadskii (1863-1945) and his concept of the noosphere, transitions into a broadly scientific, if speculative, framework. Fundamental to an understanding of the Russian tradition from an environmental perspective, it will be argued, is the dynamic nature of its central postulates – humanity, Sophia, noosphere – and the thoroughgoing historicization of its ecological vision. In both sophiology and cosmism, history is conceived as a unitary process moving toward an ideal goal, which can be described as the actualized oneness of the world in whose realization humanity plays an active role. Parallels with uniformitarianist perspectives in the earth sciences are discussed, alongside the openness of current trends in these sciences to concepts from the Russian tradition. The chapter attempts to arrive at an articulation of what I have called ‘an ecology of history’ within the Russian context, an envisioning of the unity of the world, and the significance of human nature, within a dynamic and historical schema that moves in a direction generally favourable to life and the perpetuation of life.

The chapter looks at the common eschatological backdrop to the essays that make up the Vekhi collection. Interpreting Bulgakov's assertion that the Russian intelligentsia have forged a kind of 'inside-out' religious faith, it explores the relation between good and evil in the essays, and the peculiar role allocated to the character of inspiration.

The chapter explores the reception of Dostoevsky in the works of the Russian Personalists, concentrating particularly on the thought of Aleksei Kozlov. It attempts to locate the reception of Dostoevsky between apparently conflicting attempts to, on one hand, 'open up' human personality and, on the other, to guarantee its ineffability.

The article explores the enduring influence of Sophiology, as well as similarities with later sophiological thought, in Belyiʼs Istoriia stanovleniia samosoznaiushchei dushi (ISSD). It demonstrates continuity between Belyiʼs thinking, which adopts the otherwise very different conceptual apparatus of anthroposophy, and that of figures such as Jacob Boehme, Vladimir Solovʼev and Sergei Bulgakov on the question of Sophia as relational matrix and the sophianicity of culture. Concentrating particularly on the significance Belyi gives to the categories of “quality” and “style” in the dynamics of becoming, it uses the many parallels that exist between Belyi and Sophiology on the question of the vocation of the individual to explicate one of the central concerns of ISSD.

The article explores Sophia’s role in the thought of Vladimir Solov’ëv from the perspective of the task assigned to humanity within his system. Drawing on three metaphors used to describe Sophia in biblical, mystical and poetic literature – play, the mirror and light – it seeks to arrive at an understanding of the sophianic character of this task by challenging more conventional notions of human activity in and on the world. The article goes on to explore Solov’ëv’s gnoseology, arguing for the centrality of feeling and prophecy to its construction. The final section looks at Solov’ëv’s aesthetics and the idea of sophianic ‘balance’, as well as his attempt to integrate reason into the sophianic task.

This chapter explores the development of the anagogical method in biblical exegesis in the Russian spiritual academies of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries (particularly with reference to Metropolitan Platon and his school), and explores its significance to an understanding of later Russian ‘secular’ thought in the work of Vissarion Belinsky. In so doing, it identifies a common hermeneutic that argues for continuity in the Russian handling of the interaction between reader and text.

Viktor Shklovskii (1893-1984) is best known as an inventor of Russian Formalism, the literary theorist responsible for ostranenie, defamiliarisation. Just after the 1917 Revolution, Shklovskii claimed "Tristram Shandy" to be 'the most typical novel in world literature'; he then proceeded to theorise Sterne's formal experiments with plot; to chronicle his own wartime exploits in an autobiographical "Sentimental Journey"; and to promote "Tristram Shandy" as a prototype for the new "Soviet" novel. His reading of "Tristram Shandy" and his lifelong relationship with its author, Laurence Sterne (1713-1769), were of enormous importance to Shklovskii, whose theory of prose remains current in Western academia. As Finer shows, they can tell us much not only about Shklovskii but also the extended, tangled ways of literary reception, and translation.