Περί της δουλείας και της ελευθερίας του ανθρώπου

by Nikolai Berdyaev

Η συζήτηση περί προσώπου σημάδεψε τη σκέψη του 20ού αιώνα. Φιλόσοφοι, θεολόγοι, κοινωνιολόγοι, καλλιτέχνες, λογοτέχνες, πολιτικοί ενεπλάκησαν στη συζήτηση περί προσώπου, ενώ στη Γαλλία εμφανίστηκε ο όρος περσοναλισμός. Ξεχωριστή θέση μέσα σε όλη αυτή την προσωπολογία καταλαμβάνει το έργο του φιλοσόφου Νικολάι Μπερντιάγιεφ και το ανά χείρας βιβλίο.
Στις σελίδες αυτού του δοκιμίου περσοναλιστικής φιλοσοφίας, όπως το αποκαλεί ο συγγραφέας, η σκέψη περί προσώπου αναπτύσσεται σε όλα τα δυνατά πεδία: θεολογία, ανθρωπολογία, φιλοσοφική οντολογία και γνωσιολογία, ηθική και κοινωνικοπολιτική σκέψη, φιλοσοφική ιστορία. Εντυπωσιάζεται κανείς αν αναλογιστεί το εύρος των γνώσεων και των ενδιαφερόντων αυτού του Ρώσου φιλοσόφου, ενός από τους πιο σημαντικούς, αν όχι του σημαντικότερου Ρώσου φιλοσόφου του 20ού αιώνα.
Συνεκτικός ιστός όλων αυτών των γνώσεων είναι η έννοια του προσώπου. Ό,τι είναι το πρόσωπο αποτελεί το γεγονός της ελευθερίας του ανθρώπου, ό,τι αντιδιαστέλλεται στο πρόσωπο υφίσταται ως πειρασμός που οδηγεί στη δουλεία, ενίοτε και εθελοδουλία του ανθρώπου. Συνεπώς, το δοκίμιο αυτό πραγματεύεται την ελευθερία του ανθρώπου ως το κατεξοχήν γνώρισμα της προσωπικής ανθρώπινης ύπαρξης και αντίστοιχα τη δουλεία του ανθρώπου ως τον κατεξοχήν πειρασμό της αποπροσωποποίησης της ανθρώπινης ύπαρξης.

Περιεχόμενα
Εισαγωγή
ΠΕΡΙ ΔΟΥΛΕΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑΣ ΤΟΥ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΥ
Αντί προλόγου. Περί των αντιφάσεων της σκέψης μου
Το πρόσωπο
Κύριος, δούλος και ελεύθερος
Είναι και ελευθερία. Η δουλεία του ανθρώπου στο είναι
Θεός και ελευθερία. Η δουλεία του ανθρώπου στον Θεό
Φύση και ελευθερία. Ο κοσμικός πειρασμός και η δουλεία του ανθρώπου στη φύση
Κοινωνία και ελευθερία. Ο κοινωνικός πειρασμός και η δουλεία του ανθρώπου στην κοινωνία
Πολιτισμός και ελευθερία. Η δουλεία του ανθρώπου στον πολιτισμό και ο πειρασμός των πολιτισμικών αξιών
Η δουλεία του ανθρώπου στον εαυτό του και ο πειρασμός του ατομισμού
Ο πειρασμός της βασιλείας. Οι δύο όψεις του κράτους
Ο πειρασμός του πολέμου και η δουλεία του ανθρώπου στον πόλεμο
Ο πειρασμός και η δουλεία του εθνικισμού. Λαός και έθνος
Ο πειρασμός και η δουλεία του αριστοκρατισμού. Οι δύο όψεις του αριστοκρατισμού
Ο πειρασμός της αστικότητας. Η δουλεία στην ιδιοκτησία και στο χρήμα
Ο πειρασμός και η δουλεία της επανάστασης. Οι δύο όψεις της επανάστασης
Ο πειρασμός και η δουλεία του κολεκτιβισμού. Ο πειρασμός των ουτοπιών. Οι δύο όψεις του σοσιαλισμού
Ο πειρασμός και η δουλεία του έρωτα. Σεξ, πρόσωπο και ελευθερία
Ο πειρασμός και η δουλεία του αισθητισμού. Κάλλος, τέχνη και φύση
Η πνευματική απελευθέρωση του ανθρώπου. Η νίκη επί του φόβου και του θανάτου
Ο πειρασμός και η δουλεία της ιστορίας. Οι δύο αντιλήψεις για το τέλος της ιστορίας. Ο ενεργητικός-δημιουργικός εσχατολογισμός
Λεξικό ονομάτων
Γλωσσάρι
Εργοβιογραφικό σημείωμα
Βιβλία του Μπερντιάγιεφ στα ελληνικά
Ευρετήριο ονομάτων
Ευρετήριο όρων

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Russia, Religion, Theology, Russian Literature, History

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was born at Kyiv in 1874 of an aristocratic family. He commenced his education in a military school and subsequently entered the University of Kiev. There he accepted Marxism and took part in political agitation, for which he was expelled. At twenty-five he was exiled from Kiev to the north of Russia and narrowly escaped a second period of exile shortly before the Revolution. Before this, however, he had broken with Marxism in company with Sergius Bulgakov, and in 1909 he contributed to a symposium which reaffirmed the values of Orthodox Christianity. After the October Revolution he was appointed by the Bolshevists to a chair of philosophy in the University of Moscow, but soon fell into disfavour for his independent political opinions. He was twice imprisoned and in 1922 was expelled from the country. He settled first in Berlin, where he opened a Russian Academy of Philosophy and Religion. Thence he moved to Clamart near Paris, where he lectured in a similar institution. In 1939 he was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne. He lived through the German occupation unmolested. After the liberation, he announced his adhesion to the Soviet government, but later an article by him published in a Paris (Russian) newspaper, criticising the return to a policy of repression, was tantamount to a withdrawal of this. He died at Clamart March 24, 1948.

Reviews

[Steve Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book by Nikolai Berdyaev I ever read. I had not heard of him when my then wife brought it home from a library book sale in 1992.

It hit me like a thunderclap. I was looking for something that would explain the universe to me in ways I could understand, and this turned out to be it. I wanted something that would let me understand the world in a material sense while insisting on the reality of spirit. This was it. Once I read Slavery and Freedom, I devoured whatever I could find of this amazing if sometimes off the planet thinker, and have finally publicly acknowledged my debt to him by writing a thriller focused around some of his thinking, The Russian Idea. Anyone interested can find this on www.smashwords.com.

That said, Berdyaev can be stiff cheese. He raves and can be very hard to follow. Readers who do not want a wild ride should stay at home.

It seems however, that he has struck a chord as about a decade ago only one book of his was still in print (The Russian Idea). Now it seems that virtally all his works are available, including many articles that can be found online. He is speaking to others beside me and that is a wonderful thing. It matters less, I think, that people agree with everything he says, than that they understand the necessary connection between the ongoing struggle for social justice and their private spiritual lives.

Thanks, Nikolai.

[Donald Linnemeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know where to start with Berdyaev. Reading Slavery and Freedom feels like sitting and listening to Berdyaev meander through subject after subject, never failing to offer interesting angles and insights. He's open and honest, not pushing a particular system, but at the same time he's very purposeful - "meander" isn't really the right word for it - and you can tell there's a deep system behind what he's saying. He just doesn't present it in a systematic way.

Specifically, in Slavery and Freedom, he deals with forms of slavery that show up in society in various forms: the government, sexuality, individualism, money, society itself, and a host of others. This is very nicely woven meditative writing, and though it's from the perspective of philosophy - he's not expositing scripture or working off explicit Christian foundationalism - his thinking is thoroughly inundated with scripture and trinitarianism. He also has the habit of finding his way into perspectives that sound almost word-for-word like Christ, and yet he arrives there from such unexpected angles, the process itself is just as valuable as the perspective itself.

And now I'm rambling. In the end, Berdyaev's a fabulous thinker. He's quotable on practically every page, and he'll leave you wanting to see things the way he does but realizing you don't quite have the wisdom to do so. At the same time, you don't come away empty-handed.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I too like character and dislike reification. But Berdyaev relies on high-sounding and often confused assertion more than reasoned argument.

[Eugene Pustoshkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Я из свободы исходил в своём пути.
— Николай Бердяев

Мне очень понравилось предисловие Николая Бердяева к своей книге «О рабстве и свободе человека» (озаглавленное «О противоречиях в моей мысли»), с которым я всецело срезонировал. Особенно со словами автора: «Я никогда не был философом академического типа и никогда не хотел, чтобы философия была отвлечённой и далёкой от жизни. Хотя я всегда много читал, но источник моей мысли не книжный. Я даже никогда не мог понять какой-либо книги иначе, как приведя её в связь с своим пережитым опытом».

Сама же книга и вправду оставила противоречивое впечатление. Отдельные проблески резонанса у меня сменялись несогласием с автором.

Я увидел чересчур нарочитую ограниченность, излишнюю категоричность и произвольность некоторых его позиций, которые в большей мере походили на крайнее мнение, нежели целостное видение. Крайним позициям есть своё время и место, но во многих случаях я не был уверенности в обоснованности (например, когда автор категорично характеризует воззрение какого-нибудь из мыслителей или противопоставляет любовь-агапэ любви-эросу без малейшего намёка на их взаимодополнительность).

Мне близки ростки воззрения персонализма, развиваемого Бердяевым, но я очень далёк от некоторых его излишне категоричных высказываний; также мне не хватило в его позиции проявлений более мистического мировидения. Тем не менее, в этой книге Бердяев проявился для меня мыслителем, с которым хочешь спорить и от которого хочешь отталкиваться при формировании собственной, более цельной позиции.

Книга Бердяева, по сути, является яростной проповедью субъективности и священного примата личности над рабством у диссоциированной и отчуждённой (иллюзорной) объектности, я мог бы сказать — мира третьего лица, существующего во многом как неодухотворённая концепция. С точки зрения же интегральной парадигмы нашего современника, интегрального философа Кена Уилбера мир третьего лица, мир объектов не является иллюзией, это примордиальная, изначальная грань-перспектива Космоса, проблема же начинается, когда весь мир коллапсирует в объекты (в этом конкретном аспекте Уилбер солидарен с Бердяевым, критикуя плоский мир флатландии, лишённой качества, вкуса, сознания и личностного).

Мне самому интересна перспектива возникновения интегрального, или целостного (в смысле философии Уилбера), персонализма. В последнее десятилетие развитие получила замечательная идея уникального Я (дух всегда смотрит на мир через уникальную перспективу). Очевидно, что в личном и духовном развитии индивидуальная личность только углубляется, становится всё более многогранной и интересной. В этом смысле мне близок и подход смысловой архитектоники личности, отражённый В. В. Налимовым в его magnum opus’е «Спонтанность сознания».

[Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berdyaev's Christian anarchist manifesto.

This Christian radical (in the best sense of the word) was expelled from Stalin's Russia and lived through Nazi Germany's occupation of France. This book wrestles with the spiritual trials of Christians in secular governments - which are inherently tainted by man's sin. Christians lulled by America's siren song of religious tolerance will do well to heed the words of a man who experienced two of the 20th centuries most brutal regimes.

[Javier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very highly recommended.

[Moderated · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Man is a riddle in the world, and it may be, the greatest riddle. Man is a riddle not because he is an animal, not because he is a social being, not as a part of nature and society. It is as a person that he is a riddle - just that precisely; it is because he possesses personality. The entire world is nothing in comparison with human personality, with the unique person of a man, with his unique fate. Man lives in an agony, and he wants to know who he is, where he comes from and whither he is going."

"He is a being who is polarized in the highest degree, God-like and beast-like, exalted and base, free and enslaved, apt both for rising and for falling, capable of great love and sacrifice, capable also of great cruelty and unlimited egoism."

"Personality is like nothing else in the world, there is nothing with which it can be compared, nothing which can be placed on a level with it."

"Man, the only man known to biology and sociology, man as a natural being and a social being, is the offspring of the world and of the processes which take place in the world. But personality, man as a person, is not a child of the world, he is of another origin."

"Man is a personality not by nature but by spirit. By nature he is only an individual. Personality is not a monad entering into a hierarchy of monads and subordinate to it. Personality is a microcosm, a complete universe. It is personality alone that can bring together a universal content and be a potential universe in an individual form."

"One must not think of personality as a substance, that would be a naruralistic idea of personality. Personality cannot be recognized as an object, as one of the objects in a line with other objects in the world, like a part of the world. That is the way in which the anthropological sciences, biology, psychology, or sociology would regard man. In that way man is looked at partially: but there is in that case no mystery of man, as personality, as an existential centre of the world. Personality is recognized only as a subject, in infinite subjectivity, in which is hidden the secret of existence."

"Personality is not a biological or a psychological category, but an ethical and spiritual."

"Personality is a subject, and not an object among other objects, and it has its roots in the inward scheme of existence, that is in the spiritual world, the world of freedom."

"Personality is the absolute existential centre."

"Kant introduces an important change in the understanding of personality; he passes over from the intellectual to the ethical conception of it. Personality is connected with freedom from the determinism of nature, it is independent of the mechanism of nature. For this reason personality is not a phenomenon among phenomena. Personality is an end in itself, not a means to an end; it exists through itself, Nevertheless Kant's doctrine of personality is not true personalism because the value of personality is defined by its moral and rational nature, which comes into the category of the universal."

"Personality is not born of the family and cosmic process, not born of a father and
mother, it emanates from God, it makes its appearance from another world."

"Personality cannot ascend, cannot realize itself, and realize the fullness of its life, unless suprapersonal values exist, unless God exists, unless there is a divine level of life."

"God as personality does not desire a man over whom He can rule, and who ought to praise Him, but man as personality who answers His call and with whom communion of
love is possible."

"Every personality has its own world."

"Personalism transfers the centre of gravity of personality from the value of objective communities-society, nation, state, to the value of personality, But it understands personality in a sense which is profoundly antithetic to egoism. Egoism destroys personality. Egocentric self-containment and concentration upon the self, and the inability to issue forth from the self is original sin, which prevents the realization of the full life of personality and hinders its strength from becoming effective."

"Personality presupposes a going out from self to an other and to others, it lacks air and is suffocated when left shut up in itself. Personalism cannot but have some sort of community in view."

"There is something lacking in the humanity of the egocentric man. He loves abstractions which nourish his egoism. He does not love living concrete people."

“There is deeply inherent in man a yearning for the divine life, for purity, for paradise, and no happiest moment of this life answers to that yearning.”

"Everything mortal must in the nature of things die; but personality is immortal; it is the one and only thing that is immortal; it is created for eternity."

"There is a psychological force of the individual person, and there is a psychological force of the community, of society. Crystallized, hardened public opinion becomes violence upon man. Man can be a slave to public opinion, a slave to custom, to morals, to judgments and opinions which are imposed by society."

"Man lives not only in the cosmic time of the natural kaleidoscope of life and in the disrupted historical time which rushes towards the future; he lives also in existential time; he exists also outside the objectivity which he makes for himself."

"The mystics truly and profoundly taught that God is not being in the sense of substance, that the limiting concept of being is not applicable to God."

"Upon human ideas of God are reflected social relations with men, relations of the servile kind of which human history is full. The knowledge of God requires continual purifying, and purifying above all from servile sociomorphism. The relations between master and slave, taken from social life, have been transferred to the relations between God and man."

"The base human category of domination is not applicable to God. God is not a master and He does not dominate. No power is inherent in God. The will to power is not a property of His, He does not demand the slavish reverence of an unwilling man."

"It is necessary to free the idea of God from distorting degrading blasphemous sociomorphism."

"The history of religions teaches us that the offering of sacrifice to the gods was a social act and indicated that man was still a slave. It is Christ Who gives summons to set men free from this slavery, and in Christianity sacrifice has a different meaning. But in Christianity objectivized and socialized servile elements of worship have entered which are connected with the ancient terror."

"In society, in every society there is an enslaving element which ought always to be overcome."

"A lack of expressed personality, an absence of personal originality, a disposition to swim with the current of the quantitative force of any given moment, an extraordinary susceptibility to mental contagion, imitativeness, repeatability; these must be regarded as the principal traits which distinguish one who belongs to the masses."

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

After struggling through the first few chapters, it finally blossomed into something of beauty. Berdyaev says a lot of profound things in here, not all of which I necessarily agree with, but the sheer scope of topics he touches on made it worth the journey. I can see myself returning to this book, after exploring more of his other work, of course.

[Feanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still think, this one is underatted. I really recommend this one!

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Divine Wisdom

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

I doubt this book would be of general interest and it would be difficult to find anyhow. Berdyaev is one of the Russian intelligentsia expelled by Stalin on the "philosopher ships". His views expressed in this book fall somewhere between Dostoyevsky existentialism and Tolstoyan anarchism leaving him unliked, but not excommunicated, by the Russian orthodox church.

[Mz · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://ejournals.lib.auth.gr/critica...