Nikolai Berdyaev: "The meaning of creativity" and the philosophy of freedom

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

"The Meaning of Creativity" by Berdyaev is one of his most significant philosophical works, which the author himself valued almost more than anyone else. This book was written by a great political and religious philosopher in 1912-1914. At the same time, it was first published only in 1916. It is worth noting that it was created when the author was actually alienated from the metropolitan Orthodox environment in response to the works of Marx, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and other thinkers of his time. The philosopher himself considered this work to be the most inspired, since in it he first managed to formulate his own original philosophical thought.

Biography of the philosopher

Before "The Meaning of Creativity" Berdyaev wrote more than one significant work. The philosopher was born in 1874 in the Kyiv province. He received his initial education at home, then studied at the cadetcase. He began to receive higher education at the natural faculty of Kyiv University, and then entered the law faculty.

In 1897 he was arrested for participating in student riots, exiled to Vologda. Since 1899 he began to publish in the Marxist press. In 1901, his article "The Struggle for Idealism" was published, after the publication of which he became one of the leading figures of the revolutionary intelligentsia. Participated in the creation of the Liberation Union and its activities.

In 1913 he was sentenced to exile in Siberia for the article "Extinguishers of the Spirit", in which he defended the monks of Athos. However, the sentence was never carried out due to the outbreak of the First World War, followed by the revolution. Instead of Siberia, he again exiled to the Vologda province.

Until 1922, when he was expelled from Soviet Russia, the philosopher wrote many articles and books, but N. A. Berdyaev valued "The Meaning of Creativity" and "The Meaning of History" among them. Was an iconic figure during the Silver Age, founded the "Free Academy of Spiritual Culture".

Life in exile

The Bolsheviks did not appreciate the work of Nikolai Berdyaev. He was arrested twice. In 1922, when the philosopher was under arrest, they said that he was being expelled from the country, and if he tried to return, he would be shot.

Having left on the "philosophical ship", Nikolai Aleksandrovich first settled in Berlin. In 1924 he moved to Paris, where he lived until his death.

At that time he was one of the ideologists of the Russianstudent Christian movement, edited the journal of Russian religious thought "The Way", participated in the philosophical process.

Among his most significant works, written in exile, it is worth noting "The New Middle Ages", "On Slavery and Freedom of Man", "The Russian Idea". From 1942 to 1948, he was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but never received the award.

In 1946, he was returned to Soviet citizenship, but he did not return to the USSR. In 1948, at the age of 74, he died in his office in the suburbs of Paris from a broken heart.

Freedom from the world

Freedom from the world is the main demand put forward by Berdyaev in "The Meaning of Creativity". In this book, the philosopher seeks to consider all aspects of creativity.

Mysticism, existence, beauty, love, faith, morality are under his close attention. It is worth noting that no matter how extensive his legacy, perhaps the main theme in it remains the theme of creativity. The full title of this book by N. A. Berdyaev is "The Meaning of Creativity. The Experience of Man's Justification." Researchers believe that this is the most intimate of his works. In it, he talks about the transition to a new religious era, which he calls the era of the Third Testament. In it, according to the philosopher, a person will finally reveal himself as a creator.

This theory, set forth in Berdyaev's "The Meaning of Creativity", was based on the Old and New Testaments, in which there is nothing about creativity. The philosopher considered it greatby default, the meaning of which he will have to reveal.

Property of Being

In Nikolai Berdyaev's book "The Meaning of Creativity" there is not a word about boredom, although it is certainly familiar to every creator. Of course, in this context, we are not talking about sad sighs over a mediocre book, but about the ability to hear and listen to boredom.

In philosophy, almost no one wrote about this feeling. In 1999, a small treatise "The Philosophy of Boredom" was published by the Norwegian Lars Svendsen. In it, he interprets boredom as an inalienable property of the being around us, as the most real form of time, and not just a state of mind or mood. Recognizing the lack of research in this area, the Norwegian philosopher admits that if boredom cannot be taken seriously in philosophy, then this is an occasion to think about its fate.

For Berdyaev, boredom has become the very default that he did not mention in his work. Interestingly, the thinker himself often did not consider himself an academic philosopher, being skeptical of people who called themselves that. For him it was a special art, the so-called art of knowledge.

Art knows the theme of boredom very well, especially if we are talking about romanticism, which in many ways gave birth to it. Before that, readers and writers were more familiar with the usual apathy, longing or weariness from life. Berdyaev was an unconditional romantic, but at the same time he did not write about boredom.

It is known that he has always been proud of his aristocratic origin, but kept silent about boredom, even considering that ita very aristocratic feeling, not characteristic of the plebeians. Instead, Nikolai Berdyaev devotes his entire book "The Meaning of Creativity" to justifying everything that a person does by creativity, it is through him that he improves the world.

Change of views

It is worth noting that the work itself was of great importance in the work of the thinker. In the book "The Meaning of Creativity. The Experience of Justifying Man" Berdyaev sums up his previous searches, opening up the prospect of his own original and independent philosophy.

It is interesting that the whole book was created during the conflict with the Russian Orthodox Church, with which the thinker had a confrontation. At the same time, he enters into a real controversy with the propagandists of Orthodox modernism, primarily with the Merezhkovsky group, which was oriented towards the ideal of the religious community, as well as with the sophiologists Florensky and Bulgakov.

The book "The Meaning of Creativity. The Experience of Justifying Man" by Berdyaev turned out to be very extraordinary. It was received with interest in domestic philosophical and religious circles. Rozanov reacted very actively to it, who emphasized that, compared with all the previous works of the author, a certain result can be seen in this one, the philosopher brings his ideas and proposals to a certain common denominator.

Philosophical synthesis

Notable are the conditions in which Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev's "The Meaning of Creativity" was created. He spends the winter of 1912-1913 inItaly together with his wife - the poetess Lydia Yudifovna Trusheva. It is from there that he brings the first pages and the very idea of a new book, which was finally completed in February 1914.

Philosophy of Berdyaev in "The Meaning of Creativity" was appreciated by society immediately after the publication of the book in 1916. In it, the author noted that his usual religious philosophy was for the first time presented quite consciously. It is believed that he succeeded only because the very principle of building a philosophy by revealing the depths of personal experience was clearly recognized by him as the only possible path to cosmic universalism, which he also called universal.

In Berdyaev's work and philosophy, this work plays a big role, because in it the thinker decides on a bold and very original experiment. He connects to the classical traditions of Russian philosophy the medieval mysticism of Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme, as well as Nietzsche's nihilism, Baader's anthropology, modern occultism, in this case Schreiner's anthroposophy is given as an example.

At first it seemed that Berdyaev's philosophy of freedom in "The Meaning of Creativity" would expand the boundaries of philosophical synthesis to the maximum, creating additional, possibly insurmountable difficulties for the author. However, he did this quite deliberately. By that time, he already held the key to harmonizing significant historical, cultural, philosophical and religious material, which was the basis of "The Meaning of Creativity". The philosophy of freedom of Berdyaev, substantiated in this work, became the principle of the so-calledanthropodices. So the thinker himself calls the justification of man through creativity and in creativity itself.

For him it was a decisive rejection of traditionalism, as well as of theodicy, which at one time was considered the key task of the Christian consciousness, a refusal to recognize revelation and the completeness of creation. As a result, it was man who found himself at the center of being, defining the general outline of his fundamentally new metaphysics, presented as the concept of monopluralism. The problem of freedom in the work of Berdyaev is considered as detailed as possible. The central core of this work is the idea of creativity as a revelation of man, as a creation that continues together with God.

It was this concept that formed the basis of Berdyaev's The Meaning of Creativity. The analysis of this work should be based precisely on this thesis. As a result, the author manages to clarify the basis of his philosophical and religious concept as clearly and in detail as possible, to express it in the most adequate and understandable way.

Creative freedom

The problem of creativity in Berdyaev becomes the main one in this work. Speaking about it, the thinker largely repeats the ideas of Hegel and Kant about the interaction of creativity and freedom.

As the philosopher notes, creativity always exists inseparably from freedom. Only a free man could really create. If a person tries to create something out of necessity, this can only give rise to evolution, and creativity is born exclusively from complete freedom. When a person starts talking about it in hisimperfect language, understanding creativity out of nothing, then in reality what is meant is creativity born out of freedom. This is one of the main thoughts of Berdyaev, embedded in this work.

The so-called human creativity, born from "nothing", does not mean the absence of resisting material. It confirms only the absolute non-deterministic profit. But only evolution is determined, in this case, creativity does not follow from nothing previous. Speaking about the freedom of creativity, personality, N. Berdyaev noted that it is one of the main and inexplicable mysteries of mankind. The thinker identifies its secret with the secret of freedom. And in turn, the mystery of freedom is inexplicable and bottomless, it is a real abyss.

The mystery of creativity itself is just as inexplicable and bottomless. People who dare to deny the possibility of the existence of creativity from "nothing" are inevitably obliged to place it in a deterministic series. Thus they deny his freedom. Speaking of freedom in creativity, Berdyaev has in mind the mysterious and inexplicable power to create from "nothing", non-deterministically, adding the energy of the individual to the global energy cycle.

The act of creative freedom, according to Berdyaev, is transcendent in relation to the world given, to the vicious circle of world energy. It breaks through the deterministic chain of world energy. Berdyaev writes about this freedom in The Meaning of Creativity. The author's philosophy is considered from the point of view of the world reality. At the same time, the fearful denial of the existence of creativity from"nothing" is considered obedience to determinism, and obedience is considered a necessity. Creativity, according to the thinker, strives from within a person. It arises from its inexplicable and bottomless depth, and not from the world's necessity from somewhere outside.

In this case, the very desire to make the creative act understandable, as well as to find reasons for it, is his misunderstanding. It becomes possible to understand the creative act only by recognizing its groundlessness and inexplicability. Any attempt to rationalize creativity leads to an attempt to rationalize freedom itself. Those who recognize it are trying to do this, while denying determinism itself. At the same time, the rationalization of freedom, in fact, is already determinism, since in this case there is a denial of the bottomless mystery of freedom. Freedom, according to the philosopher, is limiting, it cannot be deduced from anything and reduced to nothing. Freedom is the baseless foundation of being, becoming deeper than being itself. It is impossible to reach the rationally perceptible bottom of freedom. She is a bottomless well, and at the bottom of it is the last secret.

At the same time, freedom cannot be considered a negative limiting concept, which only indicates a boundary that cannot be rationally crossed. Freedom itself is meaningful and positive. This is not a denial of determinism and necessity. Freedom Berdyaev is not considered the realm of chance and arbitrariness, as opposed to the realm of necessity and regularity. The philosopher was sure that those who see in it only a certain form of spiritual determinism, internal, not external, do not realize the secret of freedom. So freeeverything is considered that is generated by the causes underlying the human spirit, inside it. This is the most acceptable and rational explanation. While freedom remains unacceptable and irrational. Due to the fact that the human spirit enters into the natural order, everything in it is determined in exactly the same way as in all natural phenomena. As a result, the spiritual is no less determined than anything material. In particular, at this point Berdyaev cites as an example the Hindu doctrine of Karma, which he also compares with a form of spiritual determinism. Freedom is unfamiliar to the karmic incarnation. In the end, only the human spirit remains free, and to the extent that it remains supernatural.

As a result, Berdyaev understands determinism as a form of natural existence that becomes inevitable. At the same time, it is also a form of human existence as a natural being, when causality in a person becomes not physical, but spiritual. In the determined order of nature, creativity is not possible. Only evolution remains possible.

Supernatural being

Thinking about creativity and freedom, the philosopher comes to the conclusion that man is a supernatural being. This means that he is not only a physical and mental being in the natural sense of these concepts. Man, according to Berdyaev, is a supernatural spirit, a free microcosm.

As a result, materialism and spiritualism see in man only a natural being, although they do not deny his spirituality. In fact, he is subject to the spiritualdeterminism, like materialism, is subject to the material. Freedom becomes not only a product of spiritual manifestations from those that preceded in the same being. It is a creative positive power that is not conditioned or justified by anything, pouring from some bottomless source. The philosopher comes to the conclusion that freedom is based on the ability to create from nothing, from oneself, and not from the surrounding natural world.

Creative act

Great attention is paid to the creative act, which becomes overcoming and liberation for the creator. There is a sense of power in him. To discover one's own creative act does not mean to demonstrate lyrical outpouring or passive suffering. Pain, horror, death and relaxation must lose to creativity, be defeated by it. Creativity is the main outcome, the exit that leads to victory. The sacrifice of creativity cannot be considered horror or death. Sacrifice itself is not passive, but active. Crisis, lyrical tragedy, fate are experienced by a person as a tragedy, this is his path.

Fear of personal death and concern for personal salvation are inherently selfish. Immersion in the crisis of personal creativity and fear of one's own impotence are proud. Selfish and selfish immersion means a painful fragmentation of the world and man.

The Creator created man as a genius, and he must reveal genius in himself by creative activity, defeating the proud and selfish. In its fundamental principle, human nature is understood through the Absolute Man Christ. However, she alreadybecame the nature of the New Adam, reunited with the Divine nature. After that, she no longer feels solitary and isolated. Depression is considered a sin against the Divine calling, against God's need for man, his call.

It is believed that, while speaking about freedom, Berdyaev saw in it a way out of slavery and enmity into cosmic love. According to the thinker, only the liberation of a person from himself brings him into himself. Freedom from the world becomes a union with the cosmos, that is, the true world. At the same time, the exit from oneself is due to the acquisition of one's own core. This makes it possible to feel like real people, individuals with a true, not a ghostly will.

In creativity, the philosopher sees an exclusively free person, for whom it becomes the highest form of development, penetrating into all spheres of life. It becomes the creation of a new power. Every act of creativity is creativity out of nothing, that is, the creation of a new force, and not a redistribution and change of the old one. In any creative act, we can observe growth and absolute profit.

The concept of "creatureness of being" appears. The ongoing increase speaks of creativity and the creator himself. Moreover, in a double sense, as about the Creator, the creator of created being, and the creativity itself in it. The philosopher claims that the world was created not only as a creature, but also as a creative one. How does he prove it? Without the creative act, the world would know nothing about creativity and would not be capable of it. Penetration into the createdness of being turns into an awareness of the opposition between emanation and creativity. If aSince the world was created by God, then the creative act itself and all creativity are considered justified. But if the world only emanates from God, then both creativity itself and the creative act can be considered unjustified.

According to Berdyaev, nothing decreases in true creativity, everything only increases, just as in God's creativity the divine power does not decrease due to its transition to the earthly world. On the contrary, a new power is coming. As a result, as the philosopher believed, creativity is not the transition of a certain force to another state, but it draws attention to the positions allocated by it, such as creativity and creatureliness. In this case, it is possible to assume that it is precisely these positions that Berdyaev considers as phenonyms. As a result, we can conclude that creatureliness is creativity. As a result, the world is also creative. In this case, it manifests itself everywhere, even in the culture of everyday life.

Currently, you can fully get acquainted with this problem in Berdyaev's two-volume work "Philosophy of Creativity, Culture and Art". The first volume included his essay "The Meaning of Creativity", and the second - works devoted to literature and art. These are "The New Thebaid", "Dostoevsky's Worldview", "On the "Eternal Woman" in the Russian Soul", "Tragedy and Ordinary", "Crisis of Art", "Overcoming Decadence", "Russian Temptation" and many others.

Meaningful works

Speaking about the works of the philosopher, it is necessary to highlight a few more of his significant works that will help to understandhis thoughts and ideas in full. In 1946, the "Russian Idea" appeared in the work of Berdyaev. This is a piece of software that represents a certain result of his numerous thoughts about the historical fate of his country, the Russian soul, the religious vocation of its people.

The main question that the thinker seeks to explore is what exactly the Creator intended when creating Russia. To characterize the Russian idea, he uses the concept of "community", considering it fundamental. In it, he covers the secular and religious content of the concepts of catholicity and community. All this is summed up in the idea of God-manhood.

Berdyaev notes that in the Russian idea individual salvation becomes impossible, since salvation must be communitarian, that is, everyone becomes responsible for everyone. The idea of the brotherhood of peoples and people seems to him the most realistic. The philosopher also notes that the Russian idea is religious, it reflects the features of the national spirit, which is permeated with atheism, theomachism, materialism, nihilism. Prone to paradoxical thinking, Berdyaev notes the conflict of the Russian idea with national history, a large number of contradictions that have appeared throughout the existence of his people. At the same time, he emphasizes that with all the striving for unity and integrity, he regularly comes to pluralism and further fragmentation.

In 1947, another landmark work for the understanding of the philosopher, "Experience of Eschalotic Metaphysics. Creativity and Objectification", was published. Berdyaev considers severalissues that he considers fundamental. Among them - the problem of being and existence, the problem of objectification and cognition, the problem of eschatology and history. He also writes about the so-called mystery of novelty, creativity and being.