Vysheslavtsev, Boris P. The Eternal in Russian Philosophy.

Meconi, David Vincent

VYSHESLAVTSEV, Boris P. The Eternal in Russian Philosophy. Translated by Penelope V. Burt. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002. xvii + 202 pp. Paper, $26.00--Expelled from Moscow in 1922, Boris Vysheslavtsev (1877-1954) spent most of his life at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. This volume captures what was most dear to Vysheslavtsev during those fruitful years: the nature of freedom and the working out of an anthropology that is able to make sense of power, suffering, and what he calls the "tragically sublime," as well as the human longing for immortality. The issues Vysheslavtsev poses here are clearly marked by his response to Soviet ideology, opening with these words: "The main problem in the world today is the problem of freedom and slavery, of freedom and tyranny--anyway, this has always been the main theme of Russian philosophy" (p. 1). If the questions with which he opens are peculiarly Russian, the answers provided throughout are confidently Christian. For, Vysheslavtsev sees the human person's imago Dei and the role of sanctifying grace in the world as the most convincing arguments against all forms of unjust authority and despair.

The first five chapters revolve around the question of human freedom. As one would expect, Vysheslavtsev takes up Kant's antinomy between necessity and freedom (pp. 22-9), but he quickly turns to the insights of Alexander Pushkin. It is Pushkin's "poetry of freedom" that best addresses the modern dilemma: poetry is better equipped than philosophical problems to combat the mechanization of nature and humanity as well as the vehicle which best captures the innate Russian appreciation for all levels of created beauty. Thus the central message running throughout the works of Pushkin, as well as others like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, is that all rightful law and authority find their source and goal in the Uncreated. If temporal authority fails to mirror divine rule, it serves "no one and nothing except itself" (p. 61). As history has proven, autonomous power cannot help but attempt to create various utopias, and in so doing it either suppresses or ignores the more fearful aspects of the human condition.

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 thus introduce Vysheslavtsev's understanding of the tragic and show how only the Cross can simultaneously embrace the base and the beautiful, death and life. Only Easter's empty tomb can show us how "tragedy does not kill, but purifies and elevates, even delights.... But it is a special kind of dignity and a special kind of freedom: it belongs only to the one who is willing to endure the full brunt of tragedy, who has the absolute courage not to tremble for his life" (p. 76). Conversely, only in God is the antinomy between power and service, holiness and strength, resolved. This, claims Vysheslavtsev, is the essence of Christianity and religion's greatest gift to philosophy: only in Christianity's "dialectic of tragic victory" (p. 80) does reality ultimately make sense.

The importance of self-knowledge as well as the pivotal role played by one's understanding of death and resurrection are treated in the final six chapters. Vysheslavtsev dismisses Platonism and Hinduism for doing away with the individual and the immanent. Instead, he links the West's ontological realism with its traditional Christian spirituality and liturgical worship which always seeks to hold the infinite and the finite together: "only the philosophy that grew out of Christian mysticism ... holds firmly to the basic religious antinomy, to the experience of both immanence and transcendence" (p. 118). Included here are also insightful essays on Pascal (pp. 157-65) and Descartes (pp. 166-76). Vysheslavtsev very interestingly connects these two, in that both thinkers sought to recover intuition (Pascal's coeur and Descartes's dubito) and an intimate awareness of the transcendent.

Vysheslavtsev's writings are an important part of twentieth-century Russian thought. Only now are he and thinkers such as Vladimir Soloviev, Sergius Bulgakov, and Pavel Florensky becoming available to English readers. Penelope Burt's translation is straightforward and clear, providing helpful notes and a thorough index. This present work contains fourteen shorter essays. Each can be read as a short meditation on a particular theme or together as an ongoing dialogue between an outstanding Christian philosopher and the enduring questions of human life and freedom.--David Vincent Meconi, S.J., University of Innsbrack.