SOLOVʾEV, VLADIMIR

SOLOVʾEV, VLADIMIR (1853–1900), Russian mystical philosopher. Born in Moscow, Solovʾev was educated at the University of Moscow and the Moscow Theological Academy where, in 1873, his master's thesis, "The Crisis of Western Philosophy," earned him immediate repute. Solovʾev's lifelong concerns were to demonstrate rationally the truth of Christianity and to inspire an activist Christianity that would transform the world. His dedication to the philosophical goal of synthesizing religion, philosophy, science, and art in a comprehensive system that he called "total-unity" (vse-1edinstvo ) precluded his ever marrying. He is considered Russia's first systematic philosopher.

Solovʾev conceived of God as an all-inclusive being: that is, as absolute reality, which is progressively united with its creation through the interaction of the Logos and Sophia. The Logos is the word, reason, the active principle of creation. Sophia is the passive principle. More a symbol than a metaphysical concept, Sophia, whom Solovʾev experienced in three visions as a beautiful woman, also denotes, ambiguously, divine wisdom, the body of God, the universal church, the bride of Christ, and active love for the world and humanity. Although Solovʾev stated explicitly that his concept of Sophia was not intended to introduce a new god into the Trinity, he wrote poems to her that contain marked gnostic and erotic elements and in which she emerges almost as a female principle of divinity.

Solovʾev regarded the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus Christ as the central event in history and Jesus Christ as a "second Adam," a God-man, the prototype of the transfiguration of all humankind through love. His concept of God, not purely Christian, is somewhat pantheistic. His theology, moreover, was influenced by gnosticism; qabbalistic literature; writers such as Jakob Boehme, Paracelsus, and Franz Xaver von Baader; and by philosophical Idealism, as well as by the Slavophiles, Dostoevskii, and Nikolai Fedorov. Catholics regard him as a convert; Russian Orthodox writers argue that he remained in their faith.

Solovʾev's life and works are customarily divided into three periods. These periods are characterized by philosophical, theocratic, and ethical and apocalyptic concerns. In the first period, the 1870s, he opposed abstract philosophy, criticized Western empiricism and rationalism as inadequate for the discovery of truth, maintained the identity of being and knowing, and advocated mystical intuition and integral knowledge as the path to God.

In the second period, the 1880s, hoping to realize his ideal of a "free theocracy"—a Christian society united by internal and voluntary bonds—Solovʾev tried to reunite the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches. Believing that it was Russia's mission to incarnate the ideal of theocracy, in 1881 he appealed to Alexander III to spare the lives of the assassins of Alexander II, the tsar's father. The tsar's refusal convinced Solovʾev that Russia was not yet a Christian state. He resigned his teaching post, declared Russian Orthodoxy to be dead, and turned to the pope to realize his ecumenical goal—a new church that would incorporate the spirituality of the East with the activism of the West and that would encompass all aspects of life, action, and thought, as well as faith. The pope did not accept Solovʾev's ideas on Sophia, nor his program for a theocratic union administered by tsar and pope. Solovʾev, for his part, could not accept Roman Catholic emphasis on obedience.

With the collapse of his theocratic hopes, Solev'ev, in his third period, turned his attention to the practical problems of building a Christian society. In Justification of the Good (1895; English translation, 1918) he criticized the "abstract moralism" of Tolstoi, the amoralism of Nietzsche, and the "collective immoralism" implicit in nationalism and socialism. In The Meaning of Love (1892–1894; English translation, 1947) he argued that the purpose of sex was not procreation but the overcoming of egoism through love for the other.

In the last decade of his life, Solovʾev became preoccupied with the power of evil and had apocalyptic premonitions. His Three Conversations concerning War, Progress, and the End of History, also translated as War and Christianity from the Christian Point of View (1900; both English translations, 1915), is a discussion of the morality of militarism, power politics, and pacifism. Appended to it is "A Tale of Antichrist." The Antichrist, depicted by Solovʾev as a godless benefactor of humanity, is overcome by a revolt led by the Jews. Evil is, at last, vanquished and the churches reunited.

Solovʾev's influence was enormous. The saintliness of his personal life led Dostoevskii to model Aliosha in The Brothers Karamazov after him. His works were the fountainhead of the new spiritual, philosophical, and artistic currents of the Russian Silver Age (c. 1898–1917), and the Christian idealism and political liberalism of Sergei and Evgenii Trubetskoi, Pavel Novgorodtsev, and others stemmed in part from his thought and example. His sophiology helped shape the theology of Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florenskii, and it inspired the poetry and prose of the Russian Symbolists. Also important to Russian Symbolism was Solovʾev's view of art as a theurgy and of beauty as an incarnation of the divine. His apocalypticism and vision of pan-Mongolism (the rule of the "yellow" races over the "white") influenced Symbolist political thought, especially after 1904.

Bibliography

The collected works of Solovʾev are Sobranie sochinenii Vladimira Sergeevicha Solovʾeva, 10 vols., edited by S. M. Solovʾev and E. L. Radkov (Saint Petersburg, 1911–1914), reprinted with two supplementary volumes (Brussels, 1966–1969). Pis'ma Vladimira Sergeevicha Solovʾeva, 3 vols., a collection of letters, was edited by E. L. Radkov (Saint Petersburg, 1908–1911). His poems are published as Stikhotvoreniia S. Solovʾeva (Moscow, 1915). In addition to the several English translations of Solovʾev's works cited in this entry, others are available in A Soloʾvyov Anthology, compiled by S. L. Frank and translated by Nathalie A. Duddington (New York, 1950), and V. S. Soloviev: Politics, Law, and Morality, edited and translated by Vladimir Woznick (New Haven, Conn., 2000). Translations of "Lectures on Godmanhood" and "Foundations of Theoretical Philosophy" are included in Russian Philosophy, vol. 3, edited by James M. Edie and others (Chicago, 1965).

Secondary works on Solovʾev include Samuel D. Cioran's Vladimir Solovʾev and the Knighthood of the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, Ont., 1977); Helmut Dahm's Vladimir Solovyev and Max Scheler (Dordrecht and Boston, 1975), especially chapter 8, which contains translations of Soviet criticism and judgment of Solovʾev; Konstantin Mochul'skii's Vladimir Solovev (Paris, 1936); Egbert Munzer's Solovyev: Prophet of Russian-Western Unity (London, 1956); Dmitri Strémooukhoff's Vladimir Soloviev and His Messianic Work (Belmont, Mass., 1980); V. V. Zenkovsky's A History of Russian Philosophy, 2 vols. (New York, 1953), pp. 469–531; Vladimir Solovʾev: Reconciler and Polemicist, edited by Wil van den Bercken, Manon de Courten, and Evert van der Sweer (Paris, 2000); and Vladimir Solovʾev: pro et contra, 2 vols., edited by V. F. Boikov (Saint Petersburg, 2000, 2002).

Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (1987 and 2005)