The Time of Man in the Philosophy of N.A. Berdyaev: Image and Meaning

Abstract

The article examines the peculiarities of N.A. Berdyaev's philosophicaland anthropological concept. Its constructive and semantic element is the problemof human existence in history and eternity. Berdyaev presents his philosophy as an experience of insight into the reality of the free spirit, symbolized by the historicaland cultural process. In the Meaning of Creativity Berdyaev will interpret man in a religious and metaphysical way, in the Meaning of History he will formulate a thoughtful eschatological concept of the philosophy of history. The Russian thinkerwill develop the theme of human time and metahistory in the main books of the 1930s and 40s, which demonstrate the process of building an existentially coloredsystem of Berdyaev's eschatological metaphysics. All the problems that were significant during the period when he actively supported the socio-political and religious-philosophical disputes of the Russian intelligentsia, after the revolution, Berdyaev will solve from the point of view of the spiritual meaning of the historical process and cultural creativity of man. The article analyzes Berdyaev's characteristic rethinking of the individual and social mode of human existence in a metaphysical and eschatological perspective, in which the time of personalexistence is interpreted by the philosopher as a personal, historical andmetahistorical Apocalypse. The thesis is put forward that Berdyaev's statementabout the creative contribution of man to the metahistorical process has an ethicalmeaning and is a moral and volitional overcoming of the crisis of Christianityphilosophically comprehended by him. According to Berdyaev, the expression of this crisis was the Russian revolution, world wars, testifying to the rejection of modern society and man from following the path of God-manhood. According to the author, Berdyaev's discourse on the time of human existence provides an opportunity to discuss the metaphysical turn in the history of philosophicalanthropology and its ontological, ethical and philosophical-historical consequences.