The Idea of ​​God-Humanity

Note 1

The idea of ​​God-manhood is entirely of Christian origin. From point of view philosophical understanding it received its development within the framework of Russian philosophy, in particular in the philosophy of “all-unity” by V.S. Solovyova.

Soloviev uses the concept of God-manhood in describing the processes occurring in history, as well as his political and social views. God-manhood is the goal of history.

The God-man is both a personified individual and a universal man. The image of the God-man is given in the image of Christ, possessing human and divine natures. Christ manifests the divine nature into our natural world, so man becomes involved in it.

The concept of God-manhood, its interpretation finds its expression in Solovyov’s work “Readings about God-manhood”. Here Soloviev says that neither religion, which affirms faith in God, nor secular society with its faith in man has holistic completeness. Religion and faith, which are opposite in semantic content, according to Solovyov, should be united in the figure of God-manhood.

Solovyov’s theory of God-manhood is based on a combination/comparison of classical philosophical problematics (questions about the essence of being, matter, spirit, etc.) with the tradition of Christian thought (the dogma of the Trinity, Hypostases, Christ as the God-Man, the Church, etc.).

On the other hand, Solovyov also understands God-manhood as the Church. He comprehends the traditional understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ.

However, Solovyov’s teaching about the God-Man is not entirely Christian. Many theologians and philosophers characterized his thought as philosophical speculation, while not being an object of faith. The reason for this is that in the foundation of the Church as God-mankind Solovyov does not place the idea of ​​the people of God, but society as a historical and sociological concept, colored in popular mid-19th century, an optimistic faith in the development of humanity along the paths of progress.

Theocratic utopia

Solovyov’s concept of God-manhood also has a practical orientation; he creates a theocratic utopia.

Note 2

The thinker begins to form his political concept under the influence of Slavophile ideas and from the comprehension of the medieval Russian idea “Moscow - the Third Rome”. Subsequently, he moves away from these ideas. Solovyov tried to convey his liberal ideology of a theocratic state not only to the Russian emperor, but also to the Pope.

The beginning of the emergence of a theocratic state is the unification of two Christian churches: Catholic and Orthodox. Center new church Rome emerges, but secular power passes to the Russian Tsar. The unification of churches, from Solovyov’s point of view, should occur on the initiative of Catholicism, because he considers her the only one independent of will secular state universal church.

In the process of forming a new state, a key role is assigned to Russia. The Russian people consider Solovyov to be a messianic people. The reason is that the Russian people are religious and the idea of ​​​​creating a universal monarchy headed by the Russian Tsar is strong in them. But the Russian people need to get rid of national egoism and become a truly Christian people, capable of uniting other national communities of Christians.

Thus a universal theocratic state emerges. According to the thinker, the ideals of Christianity can be fully realized only within the framework of such a state formation.

Theocracy has three elements:

• the church is the key structure of the new state, to which, in the person of the Pope, all others must obey;
• the state is a monarchy, headed by a single ruler, guided in his actions by religious and moral principles, the will of the church; the purpose of the existence of the state is the approach of the Kingdom of God, which is expressed in the preparation of humanity for the state of God-manhood;
• prophets

Soloviev is a supporter of the “symphony of powers”, i.e. spiritual and deliberative unity of secular and religious authorities.

At the heart of the story and spiritual development Christian Orthodoxy lay with the Russian people. Therefore, philosophy acquires a religious character, which is manifested in Russian philosophy in general and its religious-idealistic direction in particular. The most important philosophical and worldview problems regarding the understanding and interpretation of the spiritual and material, faith and reason, the meaning of life, freedom, man, death and immortality, and others were in the field of view of both philosophy and religion.

A peculiarity of Russian religious and philosophical thought is that its bearers were not church hierarchs, but free secular thinkers - A. Khomyakov, I. Kireevsky, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, N. Fedorov, V. Solovyov, N. Berdyaev, I. Ilyin and others. Secular thought shaped Christian philosophy, without regard to the authority of the hierarchs of the official church and official theology.

The desire to realize and comprehend the essence of Orthodoxy, the basis of which is freedom of spirit, gave rise to the need to create an Orthodox, Christian philosophy. Kireevsky lays its foundation by defining the tasks of Russian religious philosophy. Khomyakov and subsequent thinkers erect a “philosophical edifice” on this foundation.

Russian religious philosophy arises from experience new history. She couldn't isolate herself from the main paths philosophical knowledge, from the philosophical problems of his time, from the problems put forward in European philosophical thought of the 19th century. This problem was most fully developed in classical German idealistic philosophy. Hence the influence German idealism on the formation of philosophical and theological thought Russia XIX V. However, mechanical following in line with the idealism of Fichte and Hegel, Schelling and Kant was alien to Russian religious and philosophical thought and all its representatives. On the contrary, she took a critical approach to evaluating their ideas, creatively and independently solving complex philosophical problems.

Among the main problems of Russian religious philosophy of the late XIX - early XX centuries. the following can be distinguished.

Problem Christian freedom, the originality of the solution is that freedom is interpreted not as a struggle for the rights of the individual, but as freedom realized in conciliar life, as responsibility in the name of the highest dignity and Godlikeness of man.

The problem of conciliarity as spiritual collectivism, opposing authoritarianism and individualism and preserving personal freedom, collectivism, not knowing coercion and external authority. The problem of the meaning of life, death and resurrection, the relationship between body and soul, faith and reason of a person, his activity and vocation. The messianic destiny of Russia in the world, a call for the common cause of Christianizing the world, for human activity in preserving the continuity of generations and the structure of world life, social and cosmic. Humanism as Christian humanity, the dialectic of the human and the divine in man, God-manhood. The essence of Christianity and recognition of the possibility of religious renewal, the relationship of Christianity to the world, culture, and modernity. Religious cosmology, considering man as the pinnacle and center of cosmic life, as a microcosm.

The complexity of these problems and motives, organically arising from the Orthodox type of Christianity, determines the face of Russian religious and philosophical thought. The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century. stand out for the powerful rise of Russian religious philosophy, its spiritual renaissance. It is represented by such thinkers as V. Solovyov, N. Berdyaev, V. Rozanov, S.L. Frank, I. Ilyin, S. Bulgakov, P. Florensky, L. Tolstoy, K. Leontiev and others.

B.C. Soloviev, one of the most prominent representatives of religious philosophy of the late 19th century, stood out for his spiritual universalism. He was a philosopher, poet, historian, publicist, and critic. Probably because of this, Soloviev did not create a philosophical system like Hegel’s. But he put forward and deeply developed a series important ideas, the totality of which significantly developed the philosophical and religious worldview in Russia. These ideas are reflected in his works "Crisis Western philosophy", "Criticism of abstract principles", "Philosophical principles of integral knowledge", "Readings about God-manhood", " Theoretical philosophy", "Justification of Good", "Three Conversations", etc.

In Solovyov’s philosophy two main ideas can be distinguished: the concept unity(the doctrine of the Absolute) and the doctrine about God-manhood. Solovyov’s concept of all-unity is the most developed among the options for interpreting the idea of ​​all-unity in Russian philosophy. Its essence: the whole exists not at the expense of the parts or in spite of them, but for the benefit of all. False unity appears when the whole suppresses its constituent elements or absorbs them. Soloviev identifies three aspects of unity:

Epistemological - as the unity of 3 types of knowledge: empirical (science), rational (philosophy), mystical (religious contemplation), which is not achieved as a result cognitive activity, but by intuition, faith;

In the socio-practical aspect, unity is understood as the unity of the state, society, church based on the fusion of Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy;

And in the axiological aspect - as the unity of three absolute values ​​(good, truth and beauty), subject to the primacy of good.

The sought-after unity in Solovyov’s philosophy was transformed into the image of Sophia (“eternal femininity”).

As a result, the world, man and God must overcome their isolation and independence from each other, transform, and become one.

A special place in achieving unity is occupied by moral activity, where internal and external aspects are distinguished. The inner side of unity expresses the life task of each person - improvement, becoming like God, uniting with him, i.e. reaching the level of God-man. However, true excellence in everyone involves activities that extend to everyone else. You must strive to ensure that all your neighbors become morally perfect. This is the external side of moral activity, i.e. the path of creating God-humanity. “The truth of man is not to separate himself from everything, but to be together with everyone.”

The epistemological correlate of the concept of unity is the theory of integral knowledge, directed against the reduction of a person’s cognitive potential to his rational sphere. The Absolute is given to man in the form of sensation before any self-consciousness. Distinguishing three sources of knowledge - experience, reason, mysticism, V. S. Solovyov argued that truth is comprehended only through the third method of knowledge, based on faith

Understanding the trends in world development at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, V.S. Solovyov points out the existence of three fundamental forces in it: 1) centripetal (East), subordinating diversity to a single supreme principle; 2) centrifugal (West), initiates personal freedom; 3) an integrated force that would synthesize the first two and would open up positive opportunities for the development of humanity. Only the Slavs can be such a force. The historical mission of Russia, wrote V.S. Solovyov, is its participation in the development of Christian civilization - by moral, but not political means. Only the Russian people, according to V.S. Solovyov, could initiate processes of reunification of humanity under the auspices of global technocracy. The growing sense of the catastrophic nature of history as Solovyov understands it ultimately leads him to abandon the theocratic utopia.

It should be noted that the unity sought in the philosophy of V.S. Solovyov was romantically experienced by the philosopher in the image of Sophia - “eternal femininity”. The poems of the “Sophia cycle” and its aesthetic concept influenced Russian Symbolist poetry (A. Blok, A. Bely). His philosophical system influenced the development of Russian philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this regard, the names of S. N. Bulgakov, S. N. and E. N. Trubetskoy, P. A. Florensky, S. L. Frank, as well as N. A. Berdyaev should be mentioned.

God-Humanity- one of the main ideas in Russian religious-philosophical and theological thought, opposed to man-theism, i.e. the affirmation of the human principle outside of God, in isolation from the God-man. For the first time, the problem of the relationship between man-theology and God-manhood using these very terms was thoroughly considered in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky. In his opinion, godless freedom is empty and leads a person to self-deification, to man-divinity, resulting in inhumanity and cruelty. Human-divinity, i.e. what was an anti-ideal for Dostoevsky was passionately affirmed by F. Nietzsche. Humanity and compassion must be overcome and discarded; man is only a means for the appearance of a superman who breaks with Christian (“slave”) and humanistic morality. Vl. Solovyov in “Readings about God-Humanity” (1878–81) tried to introduce human-divinity as a step, or component, into the divine-human process. Even in secular progress he saw the secret breath of the Spirit of Christ. Non-religious humanism acquired a positive meaning for him: humanism is necessary, without it the goals of Christianity could not be realized (although at the end of his life, in “The Tale of the Antichrist,” he revised this approach). In the person of Jesus Christ, the divine and human natures were united, and the God-man appeared. The same, i.e. the conciliar incarnation of God must be realized, according to Solovyov, in Christian humanity. Only in the Church (the truth of God-manhood) can a person find justification and support for creativity or historical work. Following Solovyov, S.N. Bulgakov already insists on the universality of the idea of ​​God-manhood as a principle that permeates man-deity. He shows this by analyzing the views of L. Feuerbach. Being an opponent of Christianity, the latter preaches its fundamental truth, albeit in a paradoxical way, “affirming the unity, the solidarity of humanity, but unity without a unifying center, holiness without a sanctifying basis” ( Bulgakov S.N. Op. in 2 volumes, vol. 2. M., 1993, p. 212). Bulgakov creates the theological trilogy “On God-Humanity” (“Lamb of God”; “Comforter”; “Bride of the Lamb.” P., 1933–45). In it he is faithful to the main Russian. the idea of ​​God-manhood, believing that it is realized through the Holy Spirit, is the deification of creation. “Humanistic” progress, on the contrary, is sharply condemned by him, because its driving force is “not love, not pity, but a proud dream of an earthly paradise, of a human-divine kingdom from this world; this is the newest version of the old Jewish false messianism" ( Bulgakov S.N. Orthodoxy. Essays on the doctrine Orthodox Church. P., 1985, p. 348). N.A. Berdyaev in “The Russian Idea” formulates God-manhood as “the theme of Russian thought”: “Man retains his highest value, his freedom and independence... if there is God and God-manhood.” The path of the young Marx from humanism to communism, as well as the path of Russian socialism from Belinsky to communism, was, according to Berdyaev, the affirmation of man outside of God-manhood and led to the renunciation of humanity. A person must be deified, but he can only do this through the God-man. “God-manhood presupposes the creative activity of man. The movement also goes from man to God, and not only from God to man... This is a creative movement, ongoing peacemaking.” The idea of ​​God-manhood as the essence of Christianity has been “little revealed” by Western thought and is “the original creation of Russian Christian thought,” in which Christian philosophy is understood as “the philosophy of God-man” ( Berdyaev N.A. Origins and meaning of Russian communism. M., 1990, p. 146). S.L. Frank noted that many mystics, especially German ones, have the idea of ​​the birth of not only our self in God, but also God in us, which is what God-manhood consists of, and only in it is revealed “the true, concrete fullness as humanity and divinity" ( Frank S.L. Incomprehensible. Ontological introduction to the philosophy of religion. – It's him. Op. M., 1990, p. 508). And God “is the true God precisely as the God-man” (ibid., p. 509). The divine-human existence of man is revealed in the awareness of the inner unity of man with God, and since this is connected with the conciliar nature of our self, we have the revelation of the divine-human. The development of the idea of ​​God-Humanity was carried out mainly in Russian pre-revolutionary and emigrant philosophy.

The concept of God-manhood necessarily arises in Russian philosophy to substantiate the reason for being and set goals human existence, since it turns a person to the sphere of the spiritual, transcendental. And here once again the influence of Orthodoxy on the development of Russian religious philosophy can be traced, since, undoubtedly, the prototype of the God-man for Russian philosophers is the person of Jesus Christ. The idea of ​​a god-man is based on the idea of ​​a moral principle, the content and main condition of which is love. Love
to God, becoming like him is the highest goal of the divine-human process of transformation. Such love gives strength to a person to break beyond boundaries
of your existing existence, limited by time and space, to feel the immortality of your spirit, participation in the eternal, divine world.

But in Russian idealism, along with the concept of God-manhood, the concept of unity was also developed. If the God-man is a way to show a person his purpose, his true nature, then unity is the path, the method of acquiring spiritual nature. The very idea of ​​unity is not an invention of Russian thought. This principle was developed long before the Russian religious philosophers by Plato, the Neoplatonists, Augustine, N. Cusanus, G. Hegel, and F. Schelling. The essence of the idea of ​​all-unity is the assumption that the world is not only one, despite the diversity and variety of things, processes, states, but also “all-one,” that is, it is subordinate to some higher principle.

In Russian philosophy, the idea of ​​the unity of the world is one of the main ontological problems. Moreover, it is expressed in the desire of thinkers to see some unconditional beginning in everything, everywhere and everywhere,
as a comprehensive principle of the internal form of a perfect set, according to which all elements of the set are identical with each other and with the whole. It's kind of like an orchestra or a polyphonic choir,
where each voice or instrument leads its own part, but together
therefore forms part of a single whole.

For the first time the problem of unity in Russian philosophy was raised
and developed by V. S. Solovyov. He became convinced of the need to build his own religious and philosophical system as a result of his awareness of dissatisfaction with existing philosophical and theological structures. N.A. Berdyaev revered Solovyov as the founder of the Russian national philosophical tradition, who for the first time understood philosophy “not as an “abstract principle,” but as an integral organic understanding of the world and life, in its inextricable connection with the question of the meaning and significance of life, with religion.”

According to V.S. Solovyov, the basis of the world is the divine principle (Absolute - God). God is not only the source, origin, fundamental principle of the world, but also the highest moral principle, the bearer of absolute Good, Truth and Beauty. The divine principle permeates the world, and the world in moral creative evolution ascends to God. Hence, in Solovyov’s philosophy, the following fundamental idea arises - the idea of ​​sophia as the highest idea (using Plato’s terminology), the beginning of harmony, order, beauty, expediency, enlightening the world, making it whole. Solovyov’s development of the idea of ​​sophia leads him to the following conclusion - total unity is revealed only in “ complete knowledge", which inherently represents the unity of philosophical, scientific and religious knowledge.

After V.S. Solovyov, the problem of all-unity continued to be developed by the philosophers of the “Soloviev school”, who created the so-called “metaphysics of all-unity.” These are E. N. Trubetskoy, P. A. Florensky, S. N. Bulgakov, S. L. Frank, L. P. Karsavin. Despite all the differences in their approaches to solving the problem of unity, it is undoubtedly possible to identify commonality in their views. Reality is represented by two worlds: the world of God (the Absolute) and the earthly world. The material world, according to Russian religious philosophers, is the “other”, the “other” of God. This otherness is manifested in created earthly nature, in the temporality of everything that happens in this world. But at the same time, the material world is involved in the divine as its creation, while the world in the process of evolution ascends to God. And the crown of evolution is man, who, revealing the divine-human nature within himself, unites with God. In God, man finds justification for his existence, he - highest value in this world, above natural and social necessity. And this leads to an understanding of one of the main ideas of Russian religious philosophy, which opposes the dictates of political and social conditions of life: you cannot change the world by force, by order, from the outside. Only when the person himself changes will it be possible to change the world.

Relying on the ideal relationship between part and whole, in the concept of unity, Russian thinkers hoped to achieve an ideal solution to the problem of personality - society, to find a perfect balance
and harmony of individual and collective principles. It should be noted that these hopes were not justified. If the principle of unity could correspond to real society, then it would undoubtedly not leave much to be desired as a cornerstone principle government system. However, by its very definition, it is incompatible with the main predicate of human existence - finitude: if society is a unity, then what happens to the identity of the part and the whole when the part (say, any person) is devoured by death? This argument is trivial, and yet the idea of ​​society as a total unity continued to exist for generations
per generation, bypassing it. All-unity is fundamentally impossible to realize in this existence; it can only be partially reflected in it.

S. L. Frank does not just talk about unity, he divides it into two components: “absolute unity” and “empirical unity of being.” The first is the absolute reality of God, the second is the empirical reality. Frank's concept allows us to talk about the God-man
within the framework of “absolute unity”, as a result, about the highest spiritual goal, and within the framework of empiricism, and then the God-man appears as a certain potency of the personality, not yet actualized, as a process of becoming, acquiring by man his highest purpose. Just the movement of God towards man does not mean that man can be saved by such an action external to him. Man must take part in reconciliation with the Creator.

God cannot save a person without his consent. God wants to attract man to himself, wants to give him the opportunity to participate in existence outside of himself. However, there is a part of every person that does not want to go beyond its own limits. She does not want to die in love, she prefers to look at everything from the point of view of her own small benefit. Dying begins with this particle human soul. God cannot remove this particle by his own will, since he created man free. A person must fully desire union with God. It is our freedom that is most damaged in man as a result of sin. To save a person means to renew her, to give her the opportunity to strive for good.
But the fact of the matter is that it is impossible to give her healing if she is not directed towards the Creator. An obvious paradox. It turns out that the task of salvation seems insoluble.

Here we must again remember that Orthodox thought distinguishes two wills in a person. There is a natural will - this is what human nature strives for in itself, that is, bodily nature. The spirit has its own bread. The spirit strives for spiritual knowledge, but it depends on the personal decision which source she will come to to satisfy her thirst. If personal will sees good where there is none, it creates its own universe, its own world. Every object in it has exactly the meaning that was put into it by the true Creator. This is a world of “invented” meanings. The work of human consciousness to invent other, undivine “good” leads
to false actions “flowing” from the natural will.

Such arbitrariness distorts the semantic picture of the world and directs natural energy to achieve goodness where it does not exist (or where it does not exist in its entirety). If once personal will distorted the action of human nature, then what follows is perfectly described by the proverb: “If you sow an action, you will reap a character; if you sow a character, you will reap a destiny.” The natural will gets used to
that her aspirations are realized in precisely this way and precisely under such circumstances. AND natural energy as if fixed in the configuration that was originally given to it by personal will. This is how human nature begins to deform. The changed nature begins to influence personal will. And a person would like to get rid of sin at the moment of repentance, but he can no longer. Therefore, in already habitual sin, nature sharply limits the freedom of personal will. The will, becoming more and more powerless in the face of generated sin, is captivated by earthly things.

How can we break out of this spiral of unfreedom? In order to “heal humanity,” God the Son takes into his personality the nature disfigured by sin. This is how God frees man from the slavery of “passions.” Human nature has received the opportunity to act as is characteristic of itself, without the deceptions that the will of fallen man hangs before it. In this way, the freedom of human action was preserved and at the same time the openness of man to the action of God in him was achieved. So in the depths human existence healing was accomplished.

Therefore, according to Russian philosophers, Christ cannot replace a person’s personal choice. It depends on the personal will of each person whether he can make the universal victory that the Savior won his property. This new, divine-human nature begins to act in man and frees personal will from slavery. The person straightens up and is able to absorb the currents of immortality. According to the short formula of St. Athanasius the Great, “God became man so that man could become God.” A person must master the nature that belongs to him, and at the same time in such a way as to open this nature for the action in him of the only eternal nature - the divine.

So, the main, main idea of ​​the divine-human process is that a person cannot remain what he is in this moment, he must take part in some ontological movement that brings him closer to God. The movement of the individual in the wrong direction leads to destruction. This is inevitable, since that which has no life in itself sooner or later reveals its “deadness.”

The connection of man with God, divine humanity is a symbol human freedom. Freedom from the empirical world, empirical circumstances, real freedom, not false humanistic, understood
as freedom of arbitrariness, freedom of choice, etc. But at the same time, the divine-human nature determines the drama of human existence
in this world, since man, unfortunately, does not exist in an ideal world,
and in real world. The difference between the first and the second is due to the presence of evil manifested in material world in the form of injustice and death. Let us repeat once again that this is precisely why Russian religious philosophers call empirical reality “an improper state of being,” “objectification,” “distortion” of genuine, spiritual being, “cracked” being.

According to the Chalcedonian dogma, the essence of Christianity is the unity of perfect God and perfect man in Christ. In the philosophy of Vl. Solovyov, all humanity, the entire cosmos is in debt historical process are drawn into this unity created from above by the Incarnation of Christ. Soloviev emphasized the importance of the human side of God-manhood, its significance for the spiritual development of man and his culture: God-manhood gradually reveals in history all the positive possibilities of human nature with the aim of achieving its maturity and perfection; thanks to this, the forces of grace enter the world more and more fully and man realizes the Highest truth in his activities. God-manhood complements humanism. Less clear and convincing are other aspects of Vl. Solovyov’s concept: God-manhood is sophic in its mystical focus, and in its earthly forms it is expressed in Christian culture, prophetic service and universal theocracy; to affirm the divine-human ideal means to realize the Kingdom of God on earth. Soloviev saw this as the calling and highest life task of Christians, which was not accepted by his critics. But his words retain the meaning: “... Christianity, as a theanthropic religion, presupposes the action of God and at the same time requires human action. From this side, the implementation of the Kingdom of God depends not only on God, but also on us, for it is clear that the spiritual the rebirth of humanity cannot occur outside of humanity itself, it cannot only be an external fact; it is a matter entrusted to us, a task that we must solve.” Based on this, Soloviev criticized the West for godlessness, and the East for inhuman religiosity.

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God-Humanity

one of the main motives of Christian culture. Essentially, of all world religions, it is Christianity that assigns it a central role in the religious-mystical historiosophical concept. Although, undoubtedly, in any holistic system of religious worldview there are certain aspects of B. Thus, Buddhist doctrine is entirely built on the principle of man’s ascent to an actually divine state through special meditation, ritual and moral practices. At the same time, Buddhism (following traditional Hinduism) pays attention only to the achievement of divine status (bodhisattva) by an individual enlightened and perfect person, although in Mahayana Buddhism there is a dogmatic position “Buddha and an ordinary person are one essence.” However, this principle is relevant only for the “enlightened” one.

The Christian paradigm of culture and history puts forward the principle (and goal) of B. as the metahistorical meaning of individual existence and universal existence (initially on the scale of “humanity in Christ”). How philosophical concept B. is used primarily in religious and mystical philosophy. In accordance with Christian dogma, B. appears in three main aspects. Firstly, as the primary personal principle of the Trinity - the Eternal Christ, or the Logos as an expression of the essence of the absolute. Secondly, as the central point of cosmic and earthly history, the act of the incarnation of Christ in human form. Here B. is no longer only of an abstract, intelligible nature, but appears as the embodiment of the universal in the concrete, bodily and individual. And, thirdly, as the expected and inevitable formation of humanity (either collectively or within the “community of the righteous”) into a single mystical and real body of God in the creation of a perfect society or church.

Pre-Christian philosophical concepts, close in meaning to the idea of ​​B., received the most consistent development in the circle of ideas of ancient Neoplatonism. Here, logical-dialectical, categorical constructions of an abstract nature and, to a greater extent, symbolic sound receive primary importance. In addition, Neoplatonism (especially Plotinus) gave the mystical-ethical concept of the ascent of individual consciousness to the One the character of “escape” from the world, from materiality, from corporeality; withdrawal into a refined aestheticized and ecstatic contemplation, identified with real life and the fullness of comprehension. Let us note that if B.'s dogmatic motives are already present in the Gospels, then his philosophical development begins with the church fathers (especially Origen; also the concept of Augustine's "two cities"). Special meaning in the subsequent tradition of theological and philosophical thought, treatises of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who carried out a synthesis of the mystical-historiosophical intuition of B. in its Christian version with the logical-theoretical constructions of ancient Neoplatonism, acquired. It is here that B. takes on the form of a holistic concept, the focus of which is on anthropological, cultural, socio-philosophical, historiosophical, ethical and eschatological problems. This concept of B. contains both individual-existential and official motives. Thanks to this, the subsequent philosophical and mystical tradition forms specific constructs that make it possible to combine within the framework of religious and philosophical discourse different approaches to the problem of man and society, man and history.

On the one hand, the individual aspiration and spiritual practice of ascension or “deification” (the term was used by Plato) appears as a matrix, a standard public life(see: Thomas a Kempis, “On the Imitation of Christ”; St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “On the Three Orders of the Church,” etc.). On the other hand, B. itself is primary in relation to the individual, being the actual basis of human existence (tribal and individual) - due to the “primordial duality of natures in man” (S. N. Bulgakov). Moreover, as already noted, B. precedes (as a providential plan) the world, being an attribute of the Absolute itself in its personal hypostasis. Consistent disclosure of this side divine order space turns out to be the meaning of the historical formation of humanity in the unity and contradiction of the personal and socio-cultural. Symbolically, this meaning is actualized in special concepts of a hyper-individual and hyper-social being (Adam Kadmon, “cosmic man”, etc.), personifying the anthropocentricity of the universe and the unity of man with natural and supernatural principles. This kind of mythological and symbolic constructs are present not only in authentic mystical Christian tradition(Meister Eckhart, Boehme, Paracelsus, Baader), but also in philosophical and mystical teachings created on a non-confessional basis (the “supreme being” of O. Comte, some motifs of the symbolic image of the “cosmic man” in Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.).

B. acquires special significance in the Russian religious-mystical tradition of the 19th - 20th centuries, becoming a conceptual and conceptual construct that transforms specific socio-cultural and existential experience into traditional concepts and images of Christian mysticism and dogmatics, giving it the character of being rooted in the archetypal layers of Christian culture, in universal concepts that convey the meaning of the intuition of all-unity (see “All-Unity”). Thus, a cardinal project for Russian philosophy of religious and philosophical synthesis is being implemented, with the goal of “introducing the eternal truths of Christianity into a reasonable form corresponding to them” (Vl. Solovyov). B. in the general taxonomy of all-unity (as a special philosophical school) is one of the main aspects of Sophia’s vision of the world and man. In accordance with this, everything that exists is involved in the world order or the system of unity, rooted in the absolute and actualized through sophia, which embodies the universal in a corporeal, concrete organic form (see “Sophia”). B. itself appears here as “equal” to Sophia - that is, it is directly proclaimed as the unity of the providential and existential in the formation of humanity. Humanity itself, in its intelligible universality and integrity, is also sophia.

B. in its third aspect (see above) expresses the eschatological motive of the historiosophy of the Russian tradition of all-unity. At the moment when humanity reaches the state of B. as a special level of being (or restores the previously broken connection between the “creature” and the Creator in the historical-evolutionary process (Vl. Solovyov) or as a result of the “graceful” intervention of God in history, see Bulgakov), The outcome of the “earthly” history of mankind is taking place. At the same time, history appears as an interval between the meta-historical moments of the “Fall” and “final redemption,” the deep meaning of which is the formation of all-human unity in the world “process of redemption.” Thus, the socio-cultural process is interpreted in a different way. “progress”, but from the position of increasing its spiritual and moral motives. The principle of progress is rejected in favor of the principle of the development of “material” parameters of history into “ideal” (culture as opposed to civilization) and “personal” (the principle of the substantiality of freedom by N. A. Berdyaev). Thus, the religious and philosophical tradition puts forward a kind of prototype of the “end of history,” contrasting it with the idea of ​​​​the infinity of socio-historical progress.

The dialectic of trinity in the disclosure of B. assumes the “spiral-cyclic” nature of the realization of metahistorical meaning. At the same time, the opportunity arises to “question” the self-sufficiency and axiomaticity of the “generic human essence”, one way or another manifested in the social and anthropological concepts of traditional European rationalism. On the one hand, the essence of man (humanity) is B. as the removal of the “too human”, since it is transcendental to the “naturally human” and “the individual as a given” (Vl. Solovyov). On the other hand, the Sophian meaning of B. is revealed as a “transrational unity” of the immanent and transcendent: man is the pinnacle and focus of unity. Specific forms of sociality, reproducing and transmitting the structure, the mechanism of unity, are already B. in its unconditional, undisclosed hypostasis (see “Sobornost”). The problem of sociocultural transformation of the “primary” B. is resolved in the consistent “elimination” of cultural and social life the antinomy of the Sophian principles of human existence (“the kingdom of Caesar and the kingdom of the Spirit”) in the creative creation of a single church organism-organization as the highest mystical unity of the social, material-physical and spiritual. Providential and, at the same time, realized on the principles of freedom, love and creativity, the organism of the Church is the embodiment of the divine (the Church as the “body of God”), the sophia (the Church is sophia), the “enlightened social” (the Church is a type of perfect communication of perfect individuals, reaching only internal unity of communication, but also realizing the direct connection of this “collective-individual” with God) and completely personal (for the structure of the Church is not only an organization of isolated individuals, but also a living organism that functions like a real human organism, and even more fully) .

Finally, in B.’s concept an attempt is made to take a special approach to the problem of the social and humanitarian, central to the socio-philosophical theory of the 20th century. B., inscribed in the taxonomy of all-unity, demonstrates general logical principles this philosophical tradition, aimed at expressing the mechanism of embodiment of the universal in the concrete thing. The main characteristic of B. within the Russian tradition of all-unity is the synthesis of the mystical intuition of “positive all-unity” and the evolutionary-historical, rationally comprehended path of its formation and revelation. In this context, the concept of B. turns out to be a kind of metaphor for the ambiguous and multi-level nature of the interdependence of the social and the individual, which is fundamentally irreducible to the opposition “primary - secondary.” B., considered as a form of subordination of the universal social and the specific individual, turns out to be potentially inexhaustible and does not allow one to unambiguously explicate some unchanging essence of a person or society. However, being figurative and mythological in nature, philosophy, as a special type of approach to the problem of the social and individual, is implemented in the general schemes of historical formation, that is, it sets a unique understanding of history as a teleological process in which the transcendental immanent universal meaning is revealed . Accordingly, the meaning of individual existence becomes dependent on the postulates defining the beginning, end and overall strategy socio-cultural formation of humanity. This schematic history, having a certain logical generality (traditionally expressed by the unity and processuality of the faces of the Christian Trinity), appears in various myth-like variants. In the most general terms, B. can be presented as a unity of historical and eschatological (that is, setting the limit of history) perception of the world and man.

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Characteristics of men