Beginning and the End

by Nikolai Berdyaev

Written at the beginning of the world apocalypse which was World War II, The Beginning and the End is Nikolai Berdyaev's main book on eschatology. He describes his book as an "essay in the epistemological and metaphysical interpretation of the end of the world, of the end of history"; hence he calls it an "eschatological metaphysics." For Berdyaev the end of the world is a divine-human enterprise: man not only endures the end, but he also prepares the way for it. Man's creative activity is needed for the coming of the kingdom of God: God is in need of this activity and awaits it. Berdyaev tells us that the eschatological outlook is not limited to the prospect of the end of the world; it embraces every instant of life. This is how he puts it: "What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world."

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Religion

256 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1952

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

[Donald Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berdyaev has a very unique system of metaphysics and epistemology. It's an existentialist personalist spiritual modification of Kant's system. It's a dualism of the phenomenal and noumenal realms, awaiting the overcoming of objectification and the phenomenal realm by the noumenal and spiritual in the apocatastasis and the end. He draws from all sorts of theological sources (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) and even more philosophical sources from throughout the history of philosophy.

If you like existentialism, personalism, Christianity, eschatology, or theology and philosophy in general, it's a great read.

Read well in conjunction or consecutively with The Destiny of Man also by him.

[Steven Fowler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book that well could be seen as Berdyaev's reaction to Martin Heidegger's Being & Time in which Berdyaev both praises and criticizes Heidegger's efforts.

[Mz · Rating 3 out of 5]

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