The Concept of Power in Russian Conservatism and Liberalism (Based on the Works of L.A. Tikhomirov and B.P. Vysheslavtsev)*

Abstract

The article provides comparative analysis of the two interpretations and methodological strategies of substantiating the idea of power, presented in the philosophical and political concepts of L.A. Tikhomirov and B.P. Vysheslavtsev. Both philosophers considered the concept of power in the general context of the Christian worldview and raised the question of the moral justification of power. In Tikhomirov’s concept power, where it is the primary fact of social life, it receives moral justification through service to God and the moral ideal of the nation. Power is justified to the extent that it is the power of the ideas, of ideocracy. In Vysheslavtsev’s political philosophy, on the contrary, the incompatibility of the ideocratic model of state power with the Christian doctrine of freedom is affirmed, and power receives relative justification insofar as it is sublimated and actually annihilated in law. Tikhomirov considered power as the primary and constitutive principle of social life which is not opposed to the idea of the independence of personal existence. Vysheslavtsev, on the other hand, saw the essence of power in heteronomous coercion, incompatible with the presumption of freedom and dignity of an individual. The incompatibility of the two interpretations of power is explained not only by the fact that Russian philosophers defined the scope of the concept of “power” in different ways, but also by the fact that they were guided by different philosophical and anthropological presumptions. Tikhomirov proceeded from the concept of man as a being striving not so much to rule over others but to submit to the supreme power of an idea, while Vysheslavtsev saw the primary and natural intention of the human self in the rebellion against heteronomous commanding order.