Book Description

1st English Translation from Russian: "Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov" is an insightful book penned by the eminent Russian religious philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948) in 1912. Under the perspective of "Khomyakov and us", the book explores, at depth and with extensive quotes, details of Khomyakov's life and thought. The book presents a number of ironies. A. S. Khomyakov was a central figure in Slavophilism, typically glossed for students of Russian thought as a conservative defense of the backwardness of the old Russian lifestyle; Khomyakov's view of Europe as "the land of holy wonders" explodes this calumny, but it is an Europe to be deeply engaged in accord with the Russian national psyche, not merely parroting the West. Khomyakov thus reworked Hegel and Schelling into a philosophy of "concrete idealism" based upon an integral wholeness of life. The Slavophils supported the Russian Autocracy, but Khomyakov was regarded as a "dangerous man" by the tsar's functionaries. Khomyakov grounded Autocracy upon an historical event, when the Russian people peacefully and in accord chose Mikhail Romanov and gis descendants to "assume the burden of rule". In this was a "poison pill". Khomyakov was an avid supporter of the Orthodox Church, but his theological writings were not allowed to be published, and had to be printed abroad, in French. The Orthodox Church was central a motif in Slavophil thought. Khomyakov saw the inner essence of the Church as comprising "love and freedom". Against papal pretensions he coined the concept of Sobornost', a a vision true catholicity grounded in communality. This echoes the famous saying by St Aleksandr Nevsky: "Not in power is God, but in truth". Khomyakov discerned within history two distinct and conflicting creative types. The Kushite creates massive works in mute stone, in objectified and depersonalising materiality, and relates in fetish magical an attitude. The Iranian (Zoroastrian Persian), reflecting the inward freedom and fluid plasticity of life in the human word and consciousness of "person", is most manifest in Judaism and Christianity. Berdyaev's latent core motifs of person, freedom, creativity, spirit, are seen there already in Khomyakov's thought in embryonic form, to be developed further.