Slavery and Freedom

By Nikolai A. Berdyaev

Book Overview

The great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) believed that the dawn of the twentieth century would bring an end to the old atheistic and positivistic worldview and the beginning of a new era of the spirit. His philosophy goes beyond mere rational conceptualization and tries to attain authentic life itself: the profound layers of existence in contact with the divine world. He directed all his efforts-philosophical as well as in his personal and public life-at replacing the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God. According to him, we can all attempt this by tapping the divine creative powers that constitute our true nature. Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world.

In Slavery and Freedom, Nikolai Berdyaev examines the struggle against slavery in its diverse forms. When he speaks of slavery and freedom, although he also uses these terms in a political sense, the underlying meaning is metaphysical. He believes that the final truth about human slavery consists in the fact that man is a slave to himself. Man falls into slavery to the objective world: but this is slavery to his own exteriorizations; he is the slave to various kinds of idols: but these are idols he himself has created. The struggle between freedom and slavery is carried out in the outer, exteriorized world, but from the existential point of view this is an inward and spiritual struggle: "For the liberation of man, his spiritual nature must be restored to him; he must become aware of himself as a free and spiritual being." In other words, freedom presupposes a spiritual principle in man that offers resistance to enslaving necessity.

"Nikolai Berdyaev's writings are always insightful, penetrating, passionate, committed-expressions of the whole person. They are as intensely alive now as when they were first written."-Richard Pevear, translator of War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov

"Nikolai Berdyaev's writings retain their freshness as vehicles for thinking not just about the future of Russia, but about the spiritual challenges facing the modern world."-Paul Vallier, author of Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov

"Nikolai Berdyaev is one of the few who have found the Christian answer, and yet do not cease to question with those whose lives are still torn asunder by disbelief, doubt, and sufferings; one of the few who dare to be, as thinkers, Christians and, as Christians, thinkers."-Evgeny Lampert, author of The Apocalypse of History

Boris Jakim has translated and edited many books in the field of Russian religious thought. His translations include S. L. Frank's The Unknowable, Pavel Florensky's The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Vladimir Solovyov's Lectures on Divine Humanity, and Sergius Bulgakov's The Bride of the Lamb.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1597312665
• ISBN13: 9781597312660
• Release Date: June 2023
• Publisher: Semantron Press
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Reissue of a Religious Classic

I first became aware of Berdyaev's writings when I was a college philosophy major in the late 60s and early 70s. At that time, the philosophy of "existentialism" was something of a fad, and Berdyaev's work was - in my opinion - the best existentialist writing coming from a religious perspective, and Slavery and Freedom was the best and clearest summation of his thought. Most of Berdyaev's works have been long out of print, and it is gratifying to see that many of his best writings are now being reissued. I hope they find a wide audience in a new generation. Slavery and Freedem is essentially a critique of the various social and philosophical "idolatries" into which men fall, idolatries which Berdyaev describes as various forms of "slavery." Thus he speaks of the slavery of individualism, the slavery of socialism, the slavery of property and money ("the bourgeois spirit"), the slavery of aestheticism, the slavery of eroticism, the slavery of revolution, the slavery of nationalism, the slavery of communism, and so forth. Perhaps surprisingly coming from a theist, Berdyaev also speaks of "slavery to God." This list of various forms of slavery should suggest to the reader that Berdyaev was not a party man, was not a comfortable member of any collective "groupthink." Once described as a "mystical anarchist," Berdyaev's form of Eastern Orthodoxy was always held in suspicion by the religious authorities, and - despite his socialist political leanings - his intellectual independence also brought him into conflict with idealogues and bullies of the Left. For Berdyaev, the antidote to slavery is a commitment to freedom and creativity, both of which Berdyaev sees as grounded in the uncreated freedom and inner being of God. This mystical insight - threatening to religious dogmatists as well as secularists - governs Berdyaev's analysis of all social and philosophical problems, and is the key to his thought. In our age of Left versus Right, "progressive" versus conservative, Berdyaev's courageous refusal to tow the line with any form of dogmatism remains refreshing and timely even when presented within the context of the intellectual and political conflicts of the first half of the 20th century.