Berdyayev, Nikolai Alexandrovitch
Berdyayev, Nikolai Alexandrovitch
(1874-1948) Is a contemporary Russian teacher and writer on the philosophy of religion. He was born in Kiev, exiled to Vologda when twenty-five; threatened with expulsion from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, he became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow. In 1922, he was expelled from the Soviet Union and he went to Berlin, where he established his Academy of Religious Philosophy. He moved his school to Paris and established a Russian review called Putj (The Way). His thought resembles that of the Christian Gnostics (see Gnosticism), and it owes a good deal to German idealism and mysticism (Boehme). He is a trenchant critic of systems as diverse as Communism and Thomistic Scholasticism. His most noted works areSmyisl Istorii (The Meaning of History), Berlin, 1923; Novoye Srednevyekovye (transl. as The End of Our Time, N.Y., 1933), Berlin, 1924; Freedom and the Spirit, N. Y., 1935. V. J. Bourke, “The Gnosticism of N. Berdyaev”, Thought, XI (1936), 409-22. — VJ.B.