Почему мне близка философия «живого» Василия Розанова

Abstract

The author of the article analyzes the key directions of Russian philosophic thought starting with the end of the 19th century, as well as the course of Russian political history in the 19th century, and using his fist-hand experience gives his own interpretation of the phenomena of Russian nihilism, Russian socialism and Russian messianism. In particular the author discusses the ascetic Orthodoxy idea of “rich people being worse than poor”, that during long periods united the narratives of various, and very often oppositional to each other, directions of the Russian thought, as well as the purposes of intelligentsia on the whole. That attitude to “richness” according to the author was based on the long-standing tradition of the mobid attitude to asceticism, and he develops Rozanov’s idea that there is no proof of the postulate that a suffering proletarian is closer to spiritual perfection than a so-called “exploiter”. At the bottom of Russian nihilism was the total denial of life, that later led the attitude to any individual as just means in the revolutionary doctrine and in post-revolutionary political practices. On the contrary, the acknowledgement of the world intrinsic value can serve as philosophical prerequisite of the opposition to the interpreting of an individual as “just means”. V.V. Rozanov supported that idea of intrinsic value connecting the divine with the living in his “philosophy of the mundane”, thus defending the right of any Russian man to the joys of commonness. On the basis of that position the author of the article discredits the Russian messianism that was understood as socialist world mission by some thinkers at the beginning of the 20th century. According to the author the paradox lies in the fact that Russian messianism was generated in reality not by the love to Russia, but by the lack of national feelings, he also states that all these problems are still relevant in contemporary Russia.