Social Freedom and Dignity of the Human Person According to Nikolai Berdyaev

Romilo Aleksandar Knežević

doi:10.2298/FID2304670K

Authors

Romilo Aleksandar Knežević Innovation Center of the University of Niš, Department for Literary Theory, Philology Faculty, University of Belgrade

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2304670K

Keywords:

Freedom, humanism, liberalism, God’s omnipotence, imago Dei, human dignity, person, individual

Abstract

Contemporary European democracies, and liberalism in particular, are established upon the foundations of humanism. Humanism, as its name entails, denotes the elevation of the human being and setting up of the person to the centre of the universe. Humanism was a reaction against the mediaeval view of the omnipotent and omniscient God, and seeks an understanding of the human being that would fulfil his/her intuitive desire for genuine human dignity. What kind of freedom would be sufficient and adequate for true human dignity? Faced with this radical understanding of freedom, which originates from, and is dictated by, the deepest realms of the human being, most humanist thinkers chose to reject both God and the idea of the divine icon. Humanism denied man’s divine sonship and proclaimed that man is the son of nature. Hence, Humanism not only declared man’s self-confidence, but it also debased him, by defining him as a product of natural necessity. Liberalism, argues the Russian philosopher Berdyaev, has created a ‘single-plane’ being, it has separated the citizen from the integral personality, by refusing to admit the spiritual dimension of the human being. Berdyaev stresses that true freedom cannot be simply a formal self-defence, but that it must rather lead to creative activity. This is why the transition is inevitable from formal liberty, which protects us and defends us, to true freedom capable not only of creatively transforming the human society but also of creating a new world.

References

Abrams, M. H. (1973), Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Berdyaev, Nikolas (2009a), Slavery and Freedom, trans. R. M. French, San Rafael, CA: Semantron Press.

—. (2009b), The Fate of Man in the Modern World, trans. Donald A. Lowrie, San

Rafael, CA: Semantron Press.

—. (2009c), The Beginning and the End, trans. R. M. French, San Rafael, CA: Semantron Press.

—. (2009d), The Meaning of History, trans. George Reavey, San Rafael, CA: Semantron Press.

—. (2009e), The Meaning of the Creative Act, San Rafael, CA: Semantron Press.

—. (2009f), Freedom and the Spirit, trans. Oliver Fielding Clarke, San Rafael CA: Semantron Press.

Jung, Carl Gustav (1995), Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, London: Fontana Press.

Knežević, Romilo Aleksandar (2011), Time and Cognition: A Theological Reading of Marcel Proust (Serbian), Belgrade: Orthodox Theological Faculty.

—. (2020a), “Outside of God: A Theantropic Scrutiny of Nietzsche’s Concept of Chaos and Berdyaev’s Notion of the Ungrund”, Analogia 8: 77–87.

—. (2020b), Homo Theurgos: Freedom According to John Zizioulas and Nikolai Berdyaev, Paris: Les Editions du Cerf.

—. (2022), “Freedom: Created or Uncreated; Sergius Bulgakov and Nikolai Berdyaev on Creatio ex Nihilo and the Third Kind of Non-Being”, Philotheos 22 (1): 37–49.

Lampe, G. W. (ed.) (2004), A Greek Patristic Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 10, Migne, Patrologia Graeca 91.

—. , Questiones ad Thalassium 60, Brepols, Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca. Nikolaus, Georg (2011), C. G. Jung and Nikolai Berdyaev: Individuation and the Person, London: Routledge.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (2006), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro, ed. Adrian Del Caro and Robert Pippin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Palamas, Gregory (1983), The Triads 3.1.31, The Classics of Western Spirituality, tran. N. Gendle, New York: Paulist Press.

Whitehead, A. N. (1985), Process and Reality (Corrected Edition), New York: The Free Press.

Zizioulas, John (2006), Communion & Otherness, ed. Paul McPartlan, New York: T&T Clark.