The Beginning and the End

by Nikolai Berdyaev, Boris Jakim (Foreword)

The great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) believed that the dawn of the twentieth century would bring an end to the old atheistic and positivistic worldview and the beginning of a new era of the spirit. His philosophy goes beyond mere rational conceptualization and tries to attain authentic life the profound layers of existence in contact with the divine world. He directed all his efforts-philosophical as well as in his personal and public life-at replacing the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God. According to him, we can all attempt this by tapping the divine creative powers that constitute our true nature. Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world.
Written at the beginning of the world apocalypse that was World War II, The Beginning and the End is Nikolai Berdyaev's primary work on eschatology. He describes his book as an "essay in the epistemological and metaphysical interpretation of the end of the world, of the end of history." For Berdyaev, the end of the world is a divine-human man not only endures the end, he prepares the way for it. Man's creative activity is needed for the coming of the kingdom of God. Yes, God has need of this activity, and awaits it. Moreover, the eschatological outlook is not limited to the prospect of the end of the world, but embraces every instant of "What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world."
 "Nikolai Berdyaev's writings are always insightful, penetrating, passionate, committed-expressions of the whole person. They are as intensely alive now as when they were first written."-Richard Pevear, translator of War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov
"Nikolai Berdyaev's writings retain their freshness as vehicles for thinking not just about the future of Russia, but about the spiritual challenges facing the modern world."-Paul Vallier, author of Modern Russian Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov
"Nikolai Berdyaev is one of the few who have found the Christian answer, and yet do not cease to question with those whose lives are still torn asunder by disbelief, doubt, and sufferings; one of the few who dare to be, as thinkers, Christians and, as Christians, thinkers."-Evgeny Lampert, author of The Apocalypse of History
Boris Jakim has translated and edited many books in the field of Russian religious thought. His translations include S. L. Frank's The Unknowable , Pavel Florensky's The Pillar and Ground of the Truth , Vladimir Solovyov's Lectures on Divine Humanity , and Sergius Bulgakov's The Bride of the Lamb .

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

280 pages, Hardcover

Published June 6, 2023

About the author

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was born at Kyiv in 1874 of an aristocratic family. He commenced his education in a military school and subsequently entered the University of Kiev. There he accepted Marxism and took part in political agitation, for which he was expelled. At twenty-five he was exiled from Kiev to the north of Russia and narrowly escaped a second period of exile shortly before the Revolution. Before this, however, he had broken with Marxism in company with Sergius Bulgakov, and in 1909 he contributed to a symposium which reaffirmed the values of Orthodox Christianity. After the October Revolution he was appointed by the Bolshevists to a chair of philosophy in the University of Moscow, but soon fell into disfavour for his independent political opinions. He was twice imprisoned and in 1922 was expelled from the country. He settled first in Berlin, where he opened a Russian Academy of Philosophy and Religion. Thence he moved to Clamart near Paris, where he lectured in a similar institution. In 1939 he was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne. He lived through the German occupation unmolested. After the liberation, he announced his adhesion to the Soviet government, but later an article by him published in a Paris (Russian) newspaper, criticising the return to a policy of repression, was tantamount to a withdrawal of this. He died at Clamart March 24, 1948.

Reviews

[Donald Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berdyaev has a very unique system of metaphysics and epistemology. It's an existentialist personalist spiritual modification of Kant's system. It's a dualism of the phenomenal and noumenal realms, awaiting the overcoming of objectification and the phenomenal realm by the noumenal and spiritual in the apocatastasis and the end. He draws from all sorts of theological sources (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) and even more philosophical sources from throughout the history of philosophy.

If you like existentialism, personalism, Christianity, eschatology, or theology and philosophy in general, it's a great read.

Read well in conjunction or consecutively with The Destiny of Man also by him.

[Steven Fowler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book that well could be seen as Berdyaev's reaction to Martin Heidegger's Being & Time in which Berdyaev both praises and criticizes Heidegger's efforts.

[Mz · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://www.fractalart.gr/berdyaev-ma...