N.A. Berdyaev and M. Scheler: Philosophical and Anthropological Approaches to the Problem of Theodicy

Abstract

The article considers the approaches to theodicy’s problem of Russian and German philosophers with clear religious orientation: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev and Max Scheler. However, for more explicit insight into our topic we found, the article provides the general overview of theodicy tradition (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz). Standpoints of these thinkers living in different epochs are linked by the steady belief in a reasonability of the world created by God. The main obstacle to acceptance of this argumentation is the problem of evil’s existence. The way of thinking that has the goal to demonstrate the world’s perfectness presumes either necessity of evil as a mean (for good’s revealing) or the evil’s insignificance or even its illusiveness, which is the result of “too human” perspective. Such ways of thought have become impossible since the second half of 19th century, when the concrete person’s experience (not a separated from it thought) had been recognized as a main source of philosophy. In Russian culture, this attitude became widespread after F.M. Dostoevsky, in German culture – after F. Nietzsche. Berdyaev and Scheler inherit the impulse of their thought. Distinctive feature of religious philosophies of Berdyaev and Scheler (compared to early Christian and Western philosophical and theological traditions) is conceptualization of the assertion of God’s need in human being, for God is in the process of becoming, is in the inner move toward full self-realization. And human being, who is capable to adopt or to reject the God’s “call,” is the crucial stage of God’s formation. For this tradition of theodicy, exactly human creative act and the direction of this act have the main role in world history.