The eternal in Russian philosophy / B.P. Vysheslavtsev ; translated by Penelope V. Burt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vysheslavt︠s︡ev, B. P. (Boris Petrovich), 1877-1954.

Standardized Title:

Vechnoe v russkoĭ filosofii. English

Language:

English

Russian

Subjects (All):

Philosophy, Russian.

Philosophy.

Physical Description:

xviii, 202 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Grand Rapids, Mich. : W.B. Eerdmans Pub., [2002]

Summary:

Much of Russian philosophy has been unavailable to or unexplored by Western thinkers, which is unfortunate because the uniqueness of the Russian vision has much to contribute to Western inquiry. The Eternal in Russian Philosophy helps fill this intellectual lacuna by offering a genuinely philosophical introduction to the themes of Russian religious thought.

B. P. Vysheslavtsev was one of a constellation of Russian thinkers, including Solovyov, Berdyaev, and Florensky, whose voices were lost amid the din of Soviet censorship. It is only now that Vysheslavtsev's thought is becoming available to the West. This is the first of his works to be made available in English.

In The Eternal in Russian Philosophy Vysheslavtsev canvasses a range of perennial topics -- freedom, the nature and centrality of the person, the nature of grace and law, the role of the irrational in human nature and its sublimation, and conscious credos versus unconscious cultural assumptions. In the modern Western tradition, reason, the law, science, and the various brands of evolutionary and Freudian psychology have all reduced human beings to a single dimension: the person is "nothing but" a reasoning subject, a bundle of drives, a member of an economic class. Vysheslavtsev passionately contests each of these views, offering instead a vision of people as "images of God," drawn to the Absolute by their very likeness to it.

Offering entirely new insights into issues that have long occupied Western minds, this is both a book about Russian philosophy and an excellent exemplar of it.

Contents:

1. The Varieties of Freedom in Pushkin's Poetry 1

2. Pushkin's Liberty (Individual Freedom) 15

3. The Problem of Freedom and Necessity 20

4. The Metaphysics of Freedom 30

5. The Problem of Power 51

6. The Inherent Tragedy of the Sublime 64

7. Two Paths to Salvation 81

8. The Relationship of Subject and Object and Its Significance for the System of Philosophy 108

9. Self-Knowledge 114

10. The Meaning of the Heart in Philosophy and Religion 132

11. What Am I Myself? 142

12. Pascal 157

13. Descartes and Modern Philosophy 166

14. Immortality, Reincarnation, and Resurrection 177.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0802849520

OCLC:

48944545