Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (Russian: Влади́мир Серге́евич Соловьёв; also romanized as Soloviev; January 28 [O.S. January 16] 1853 – August 13 [O.S. July 31] 1900), 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.

Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov c. 1900
Born	Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853-01-28)January 28, 1853 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	August 13, 1900(1900-08-13) (aged 47) Uzkoye, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire
Alma mater	Imperial Moscow University
Era	19th-century philosophy
Region	Russian philosophy
School	Christian philosophy, sophiology, Christian mysticism, Russian symbolism, Russian Schellingianism[1]
Main interests	Philosophy of religion
Notable ideas	Reviving and expanded the idea of Sophia
Influences Plato, Aristotle, Sergey Bulgakov, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, Jakob Böhme, Emanuel Swedenborg, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, Shimon bar Yochai, Paracelsus,[2] Augustine of Hippo, Blavatsky, Plotinus, Dante, Søren Kierkegaard, Immanuel Kant, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Auguste Comte
Influenced Nicolas Berdyaev, Sergey Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky, Semyon Frank, Andrei Belyi, Alexander Blok, Dostoyevsky, Alexandre Kojève, Lev Karsavin

Life and work

Vladimir Solovyov was born in Moscow;[3] 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.[4] Vladimir Solovyov's mother Polyxena Vladimirovna belonged to a family of Polish origin and had, among her ancestors, philosopher Gregory Skovoroda (1722–1794).[5]

In his teens, he renounced Eastern Orthodoxy for nihilism, but later^[when?] his disapproval of positivism[6]^{[page needed]} saw him begin to express views that were in line with those of the Orthodox Church.[6]^{[page needed]} From 1869 to 1873 Solovyov studied at the Imperial Moscow University, where his philosophy professor was Pamfil Yurkevich[7] (1826-1874).

In his 1874 work The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists (Russian: 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.[6]^{[page needed]} Positivism, according to Solovyov, validates only the phenomenon of an object, denying the intuitive reality that people experience as part of their consciousness.[6]^{[page needed]} 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,[8][9][10] but there is not enough evidence, as of 2022^[update], 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.[11] 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".[12]

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.[13] 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.[14]

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.[14] 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.[15]

Solovyov never married or had children, but he pursued idealized relationships as immortalized in his spiritual love-poetry, including with two women named Sophia.[16] He rebuffed the advances of the Christian mystic Anna Nikolayevna Schmidt [ru], who claimed to be his divine partner.[17] 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.[18]

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.[19] In Janko Lavrin's opinion, Solovyov has not left a single work which can be considered an epoch-making contribution to philosophy as such.[20]^: 7 And yet his writings have proved one of the most stimulating influences to the religious-philosophic thought of his country.[20]^: 7 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 Meaning of Love ^[ru] 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'.[21]

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.[22] His religious philosophy was syncretic and fused philosophical elements of various religious traditions with Orthodox Christianity and his own experience of Sophia.^{[citation needed]}

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.[22] His teachings on Sophia, conceived as the merciful unifying feminine wisdom of God comparable to the Hebrew Shekinah or various goddess traditions,[23] have been deemed a heresy by Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and as unsound and unorthodox by the Patriarchate of Moscow.[24]

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[25] fusion of opposing ideas and/or peoples.[26]

Death

Intense mental work shattered Solovyov's health.[27] He died at the Moscow estate of Nikolai Petrovitch Troubetzkoy, where a relative of the latter, Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy, was living.[27][28]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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."[29]

Works

English translations

• The Burning Bush: Writings on Jews and Judaism, Compiled 2016 by Lindisfarne Books, ISBN 0-940262-73-8 ISBN 978-0-940262-73-7
• The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists, 1874. Reprinted 1996 by Lindisfarne Books, ISBN 0-940262-73-8 ISBN 978-0-940262-73-7
• 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, ISBN 1508510075 ISBN 978-1508510079
• A Story of Anti-Christ (novel), 1900. Reprinted 2012 by Kassock Bros. Publishing Co., ISBN 1475136838 ISBN 978-1475136838
• The Justification of the Good, 1918. Reprinted 2010 by Cosimo Classics, ISBN 1-61640-281-4 ISBN 978-1-61640-281-5
• The Meaning of Love. Reprinted 1985 by Lindisfarne Books, ISBN 0-89281-068-8 ISBN 978-0-89281-068-0
• War, Progress, and the End of History: Three Conversations, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ, 1915. Reprinted 1990 by Lindisfarne Books, ISBN 0-940262-35-5 ISBN 978-0-940262-35-5
• Russia and the Universal Church, [30]. Reprinted 1948 by G. Bles. (Abridged version: The Russian Church and the Papacy, 2002, Catholic Answers, ISBN 1-888992-29-8 ISBN 978-1-888992-29-8)
• Vladimir Solovyev; translated from the Russian by Richard Gill with an introduction by Janko Lavrin and a concluding chapter by Judith Kornblatt (2004). Transformations of Eros: An Odyssey from Platonic to Christian Eros (Жизненная драма Платона). Grailstone Press. ISBN 1-59650-001-8. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) 103 pages

See also

• Apophatic theology
• Mikhail Epstein
• Leo Mikhailovich Lopatin
• Vladimir Lossky
• Phronesis

References

Footnotes

Works cited

Further reading

External links

• Works by or about Vladimir Solovyov at Internet Archive
• Works by Vladimir Solovyov at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• 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
• Tale of the Anti-Christ at the Wayback Machine (archived January 12, 2006) – 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)^{[permanent dead link]} – research project at Centre for Russian Humanities Studies, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
• http://rumkatkilise.org/necplus.htm
• English translations of 5 poems, including 8 of 18 acrostics from the cycle "Sappho"
• 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

На других языках

[fr] Vladimir Soloviev

[ru] Соловьёв, Владимир Сергеевич