III. Eros And Creativity: From Solovyov’s “Love” To Rozanov’s “Sex”

Abstract

This chapter examines the degree to which Vasily Rozanov's distortion of Vladimir Solovyov's formulas and the terms in which he speaks about these issues is Old Solovyovian wine in new bottles and how and to what degree it is doctrinally different. Solovyov sees sublimated sex as a rebinding energy, an active force towards all-Unity. Rozanov asserts the unity as achieved almost a priori, as plot'-dukh (=Being), but it is an active, dynamic unity, a unity-as-process, a spiritual principle in Rozanov that is present but must still be activated and affirmed. The two enormous volumes of The Family Question in Russia are where Rozanov first turns to issues of sexuality. The most significant difference from Freud in Solovyov's and Rozanov's concept of sublimation is that Freud, like Nietzsche, believed that this world and the material-psychic man was all that existed-that any otherworldly transcendence was unfounded idealism, an illusion.Keywords: Freudian sublimation; sexuality; Vasily Rozanov; Vladimir Solovyov