The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov

Translated by Ilya Merlin and Mikhail Pozdniakov The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov

“This early text on Solovyov sheds light on the origins of Kojève’s thinking and thus allows an English reader to better understand one of the key fgures of European intellectual history.” —Boris Groys, Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University, USA

“This short translation by Merlin and Pozdniakov is invaluable for our understanding of twentieth century philosophy and the role of Alexandre Kojève. This critical explication of Solovyov’s religious metaphysics shows Solovyov’s connections to Russian Orthodoxy as well as his profound emphasis on Sophia, or Wisdom, in philosophical and theological terms. We can see the roots of Kojève’s Russian background and certain seeds of the interpretations of Hegel that so profoundly shaped French philosophy.” —Clayton Crockett, Professor and Director of Religious Studies, University of Central Arkansas, USA

“Here is a text by a young Kojève on the works of Vladimir Solovyov. This early philosophical piece bares traces discernible throughout his later works. The scope of this text is far reaching: from the impossibility of thinking man and being without recourse to God, the rupture of Christianity, and the isolation of man, who in some regards is bound to divinity itself.” —Juan Pablo Lucchelli, Research Associate, Université Rennes 2, France

“In addition to making Kojève’s treatment of Solovyov’s metaphysical system available in English—of value in its own right—the translators offer a minutely observant account of Kojève’s method, offering insight into one of the twentieth century’s most infuential philosophers. This volume is all the more signifcant for its apprehension of the ‘rhetorical peculiarities’ of Kojève’s critical exposition. Philosophy of religion stands to be enriched by such attention to style.” —Jeremy Biles, Assistant Professor, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA “With this long-overdue, and exigent, translation of Kojève’s study, Merlin and Pozdniakov make a major contribution toward restoring an undeniable, if uneasy and conficted, balance, with regard to the place and role of what Kojève himself called ‘religious metaphysics’(and, more simply, the ‘philosophy of religion’) in the history of twentieth-century thought and one of his most signifcant fgures.” —Gil Anidjar, Professor and Chair, Department of Religion, Columbia University, USA Alexandre Kojève The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov Alexandre Kojève L’École des Hautes Études Paris, France

Translated by Ilya Merlin, Mikhail Pozdniakov University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-3-030-02338-6 ISBN 978-3-030-02339-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02339-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957695

Translation from the French language edition: La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev by Alexandre Kojevnikoff, © Revue d’Historie et de Philosophie Religieuses 1934. All Rights Reserved. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.

Cover illustration: © Harvey Loake

This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgements

We thank the following people for their help during this project: Roland Boer, Aleksey Rutkevich, Aleksey Kozyrev, Michael Gollner, and especially Nina Kousnetzoff, who granted us permission to translate and publish Kojève’s essay.

v Contents

1 Translators’ Introduction 1

2 The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov 15 2.1 The Doctrine of God 20 2.1.1 The Absolute and the Ideal Cosmos 20 2.1.2 The Divine Trinity 27 2.1.3 Théandrie and Σοϕία 30

3 The Doctrine of World 51

Index 79

vii CHAPTER 1

Translators’ Introduction

The frst word on the essay at hand concerns its style, its method of proceeding. This was the element that most infuenced the outcome of our work, involving in its way far more philosophy than one would think. Kojève comes to us from a great linguistic distance. The works of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov were the source material for the German-language dissertation he completed in Heidelberg under the supervision of Karl Jaspers in 1926.1 This dissertation he adapted into French and published in 1934 and 1935 as the two-part essay La méta- physique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev while conducting his famous sem- inars on Hegel. The present English-language translation is this series’ fourth term and shares its place with Aleksey Kozyrev’s contemporary Russian translation, published in the collection Атеизм и другие работы in 2007.2 Both do no more than simply continue the work that Kojève had already performed twice over. And if one bears in mind the linguistic form of the philosophical presentation in the main text ahead, the effect of this repeated labor is unmistakable: the translator, the writer-scribe, is drawn closer the philosopher, the mover of concepts, the arranger and inventor of order. Kojève’s essay is at some points supremely awkward. His phrasing is not so much halting or stumbling as abrupt. He guides unevenly. As would be expected of a scholar, he introduces a certain development, arranges its premises, and moves on with the analysis as necessary. However, his advancements seem to deplete rather than expand his range of reference. His premises, for example, though many and various, are

© The Author(s) 2018 1 A. Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02339-3_1 2 A. KOJÈVE distinctly mobile and rarely unique to their frst instance: they reappear time and again, modifed for whatever end is currently at play. The total impression is of an analytic reduction, an ascetic decrease describing a movement inwards. His method is therefore not unlike that of mysticism, and bears all the austere rigor of one who has prepared for an intermina ble progress through the labyrinth. Yet, more than once, his passage is interrupted by breaks and sudden expansions, flled with what may only be called images. That such images are composed with the classical language of analysis—a language which, despite everything we expect from it, is revelatory, concrete, and unfur- tive—is only partly surprising. It should be remembered that the details of this world, those captured so easily in observations made and dropped in passing, form the basic elements of this singularly abstract language, which few have recognized for its sensitivity, its intimacy of precision, or its emotional life. Without such features, the distinct expressiveness of this language would be lost, and yet… “More of a thinker than a writer”—this phrase sums Kojève, though it is unlikely he is considered a writer at all, at least not in the sense of a literary man of letters, someone for whom the pen came as promptly as the book. This changes what we can expect of his relationship to writing. Words and phrases, even conventional words and phrases, are chosen by him for their constructive powers. They are treated as thing- like, tangible, manipulable. And if such words, as signs, for him point elsewhere, then it is always to other words. Constantly inserted phrases such as “that is to say” [c’est à dire] or “in other words” [autrement dit] signal wherever they appear the identity of the preceding with adjacent statements and terminology. Other grammatical features of this work assume this rather direct relationship as well—a relationship so consistent that Kojève’s least philosophical moments in this essay are actually noteworthy for its lapse, his rhetoric in such passages being declarative and opaque, his tone conventional and his bearing disconnected. For us, this means that he did not, as other writers, employ this or that style to secure his end, but achieved it, though never to the point of mastery. At times, the essay stutters, the distance between one sentence and the next too large to cross with ease. Kojève expects his reader to be familiar with the leap. He is unlike writers whose work tends toward a bal- anced and straightforward prose, with expositions of a consistent length and rhythm. In such works, the milestones are set regularly and with assurance: one can time the movement of themes, reasonably predicting 1 TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION 3 the arrival of an important claim, its evidence, presentation, degree of emphasis, and end. Kojève’s essay in this respect is wild. There are page- long paragraphs, dense and highly technical, adjoined by others whose entirety spans a single sentence. Such is his manner throughout. This, again, is a work less written than pieced together under strain, and we are at least in part allowed to witness how. Cantilevered and suspended, varied in position and height, its passages are the weights and intermedi- ate fxtures setting the lean and aspect of the whole. Indeed, the repetitive and circular coincidence of certain terms and turns of phrase shows that another structure persists throughout the essay as a whole, one parallel to the prescriptive hierarchy he uses to order its major sections. In this sense, his compositional style is highly justifed, since it results from his attempts to track multiple parallel evolutions of his argument. His method is closely related to the highly repetitive, transforma- tional style of mathematicians and logicians. While there is some evidence of stylistic inability, as is shown in the occasional perfunctory aside or comment, the reasons for his use of language in general are, again, due to the necessities posed by his argument. Chief among these is the need to manage the appearance and distribution of distinctions as they arise. Because Kojève’s aim is the systematic organization of concepts, he writes with a number of constraints in mind: he cannot only introduce and refne the relevant concepts through insight or clarifcation; he cannot limit the scope of his proofs to accurate defnition, scholarly reference, or quotation; and the context of his arguments cannot simply be established initially or after the fact with a statement of general principles. Indeed, all of the above are meaningless without their explicit interconnection. This is why Kojève contorts the syntax of every individual sentence such that it contains not only its immediate subject, but also its most important systemic counterparts. Ideally, each sentence would contain all the references necessary for its comprehension. Kojève’s specifc labor was to force this interconnection into his statements even if it meant straining their coherence to the breaking point. Hence the parenthetical insertions and extended parataxis so characteristic of his writing, here and elsewhere.3 This explicit use of parallelisms shows him to range deep into the linguistic effects produced by philosophy and places him frmly among others in the dialectical tradition, particularly Kierkegaard and Hegel, whose works, with Solovyov’s, likely served as models. But Kojève’s use of parallelisms is not solely limited to their addi- tive, constructive capabilities: it also acts as a schematic for parsing. 4 A. KOJÈVE

A particularly powerful example is found in the essay’s opening paragraph, where Kojève introduces metaphysics as “the center of gravity and basis” for all of Solovyov’s work, and then refers to this claim with a substan- tive “this,” modifed and appearing in the next few lines as “with this,” “in this,” “through this.”4 Each variation is tied to a different insight and a distinct area of conceptual signifcance. Though this “this” is soon dropped and the passage ends, later in the essay two of its modifers are combined to form the synthetic “in and through,”5 which becomes one of his standard phrases. Other examples are more general. Whenever Kojève uses the term “real,” for example, he is not being facetious—he is indicating empiri- cally concrete rather than alethic, or metaphysical, existence. And since the term existence is appropriate to both, qualifed versions such as “real existence” and “ideal existence” become necessary for clarity. The same applies to terms such as perfect, whole, pure, free, and so on, and for terms split into capitalized and uncapitalized instances (Man/man, God/god, etc.), the uncapitalized, the lowercase, referring in each case to something unrealized and unable to partake, at least in its present state, in the divine. But here, the essay runs into certain orthographic diffculties: the capital letter, useful as it is for demarcating existential differences, loses its distinctiveness when regarding secondary or synthetic objects. Adam, for example, is the frst representative of humanity, the frst man; but he also represents Man in the sense of his divine origin, Man in the fullness of his relationship with God. Adam’s name, both profane and divine, is ambiguous, revealing if anything too much. In response to this diffculty, Kojève introduced a technique of apposi- tion which follows at its heart a term that Solovyov found in Christian tradition, likely in the philosophy of Origen: Бoгoчeлoвeк—the Divine Man, the God-Man.6 From it spring: Man-Jesus as opposed to Christ- Jesus, ideal atoms as opposed to physical atoms, the “becoming” Sophia as opposed to the eternal Sophia in her selfsame aspect, and the single unresolved instances of “Man-Adam” and “Man-Idea”, with no specifc pairings to serve as their opposites. What elsewhere, in other works, would only be proof of the author’s precision regarding language is in the Religious Metaphysics evidence of something subterranean and intra-systemic. This is because Kojève’s for- mulaic repetitions open and extend the sense of individual items beyond their specifc use here and there, in this or that section or sentence. See a small example in the string of infnitives which folds several motives 1 TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION 5 into a single action: Solovyov “appeared to have desired to provide… so as to prove or deduce a priori the Christian dogmas.”7 See another in this string of possessives: “the slowness of the evolution of the world corresponds in this way to the degree of imperfection of the free act of Sophia.”8 See a third in this short, compressive summation found at the end of the essay, wherein Kojève combines the insights of many preceding arguments into the following sequence: “We know that the ‘content’ to which God freely imparts freedom is an ideal cosmos, a universe of ideas. Inasmuch as it is free, this ‘content’ is a totality of ideas, themselves free and independent beings endowed with free will. The unity of this totality, or this totality as unity, is Sophia, ideal Humanity or—we can say, in anticipation of Solovyov—the Soul of the World.”9 Note the transformation of terms, their uptake of new forms, and their continuous philosophical equivocation: they are, in fact, established as a series of syn- onyms. Kojève’s characteristic repetitiveness is therefore a gesture of sim- plicity. What is established laboriously, through dense passages and many arguments, is eventually shortened and given place. The initial sense of remoteness, of separate and unrelated lines of thought, is entirely due to the dynamic quality of his reasoning and language. This partway- disclosed system of relationships, codifed in grammar and laboriously maintained by Kojève, is the key to the Religious Metaphysics. Ideally, if one were strong enough, a single unbroken text could be written that progressed continuously from point to point without once interrupting itself or backtracking. Or—even more diffcult and perfect—the same, but in a single sentence. There are places in this essay where Kojève decided to attempt just this and take it as far as it would go, as with the passage on the qualities of Sophia: “an individual, concrete, living, almost tangible and in any case visible being, a human-divine being, human in female form, an intimate and condescending being, accessible to intellectual communion, direct and personal, understanding and addressing words, a being which aides and guides in life, a being who is loved by a bright and ardent love, sublime, certain, purifed of all sensuality, but nevertheless aware of being addressed as a feminine being…”10 It continues for several more clauses before ending abruptly. Such a sentence implies through sheer length that philosophical contemplation is achievable even in the very mundane but very fne conventional thoughts which gather and relate things as grammatical objects. This is perhaps why Kojève sometimes insisted on the archaic convention of following a full stop with a dash (“.—”) at the end of certain paragraphs, 6 A. KOJÈVE a convention which in the modern philosophical tradition has prom- inently Nietzschean overtones,11 indicating a thought that is, as yet, unfnished, extending beyond the given passage to the next. But the fgurative, formal bent of this language also suggests another analytic project. The repeated, being previously established and demand- ing little extra attention for comprehension, recedes into the background and allows the surrounding content to assume the brunt of development. One could thus elect a single item and follow the entire course of its transformations, making as one goes a list, or perhaps a graph or matrix, of all its positions, contexts, and their interrelationships. If an expansive structure is insuffcient, then a recursive form may be employed instead, a table of equivalencies whose frst term is suggested by any and every following point, and which even at its end cannot be considered truly terminated. If one allows that an infnity of this kind can intersect with a fnite form like the essay, then we can say of Kojève himself that what he wrote in the main text ahead is a narrative that successfully grounded the cyclicity of the former and forced its stop. In other words, the essay’s many sequence-breaks in development should be considered the loca- tions where a recursion was inserted, by him, for the purpose of elucidat- ing this or that relationship and its details. How else and with what other model are we to understand the following comment, left by Kojève without ceremony or explanation at the end of the introduction? “Solovyov always developed his metaphysics continuously; the divisions of his books into chapters or lectures bear no systematic signifcance.”12 There is no doubt that Kojève’s rhetorical considerations regarding his own writing were mixed with the matter of this claim. Equally undoubtable is how seriously he took it. Because of the way that it is introduced to the reader, in the manner of an aside, the following statement is easy to pass: “The principle exposition, published by Solovyov when he was barely 27 years old, shows, if only in profle, a defnitive and perfectly elaborated form. Even when reading his very frst publications the sense is that we encounter there, too, the same metaphysical system, in the same state of perfection. Solovyov seems to have begun writing and perhaps even thinking with a fully formed metaphysics in hand.”13 Kojève relates this impression to us but does little to justify it outside of showing its general pertinence to the interpretive work guiding his later arguments, adding only a one-line quotation from one of Solovyov’s letters, unfortunately lost,14 as proof that Solovyov’s views on the matter coincided with his own. Beyond a 1 TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION 7 certain puzzling and even unreliable dismissal, Kojève does not attempt to explain the origins of this “fully formed” metaphysics and only glanc- ingly returns to this topic in the body of his essay. Furthermore, his treatment of this problem in the introduction stands particularly at odds with what he wrote in the conclusion: there, the metaphysical bearing which so clearly directed his survey of Solovyov’s writings disappears. It is entirely rare for a philosopher, even one gifted with extraordi- nary interpretive skill, to be so steadfast and consistent across his whole life. Adding to this fact the common refection that many reach their philosophical maturity only in middle age does nothing to diminish the strength of Kojève’s claims. It is incredible to think that such a great talent can be so quickly and so far developed and then so carefully preserved. Solovyov seems to have achieved what for most is only ever an ideal—permanent enlightenment—and achieved it to the degree that it became the defnition of the course of his life: think, for instance, of how far he went to pursue Sophia.15 Our contemporary indecisiveness seems to have little place in this man’s actions. For us, deliberating about what we can or should do often means questioning the potential rising from us like so much vapor, resolving in our greatest moments to do nothing more than gather our powers for the future, and then spending ourselves on that small act alone until exhaustion; the question of what powers these are, and how they enable us to do what we must, if asked, is one that we are in all likelihood incapable of answering without much fore- thought. This distinct weakness is clearly owed to our social existence and stands as one of its defning features. And yet, there is Solovyov. The biographical details of his life immediately spring to mind as being of the greatest interest and importance, but in his essay Kojève mentions only a few and only in passing. Likewise, Solovyov’s many writings could be scrutinized for the subtlety of their connections and details, but Kojève dismisses the majority as irrelevant and further narrows his selection to certain sections in specifc texts. Kojève does spend time comparing Solovyov’s views to those of the philosophers he was sure to have read, particularly Schelling. But it is precisely these moments which show him at his least interpretive. He presents the correspondences between Solovyov and other thinkers as self-evident, making do with highly cursory summaries and cita- tions. He then makes several allusions before fnally stating outright that Solovyov’s philosophy as a whole is entirely dependent on certain borrowed concepts, concepts which Solovyov failed to understand or 8 A. KOJÈVE properly resolve, and which he transformed into the uncritical formulas causing the “contradictions and antimonies” running like fault lines through the entirety of his “fully formed” metaphysics. Among Kojève’s last words on the matter is the confused remark that, given everything, Solovyov’s inadequacies can mean only that his thought was “deeply disfgured by his own statements”!16 With this change in outlook and style comes another rhetorical pecu- liarity: Kojève’s indulgence in paraphrasing and compressing Solovyov’s statements. In several instances, he not only modifed the language of the original but elected to make new statements by combining fragments of others.17 The degree to which his criticisms of Solovyov can be directed against himself in such instances is staggering. However, we note that Kojève was careful to stay close to Solovyov and further suggest that Kojève viewed this scholarly impropriety as kin to the interpretive work of systematizing Solovyov’s doctrines. Here, it is signifcant that Kojève continuously deferred authorship of this system to Solovyov, who appears constantly in the foreground and whose name is found on nearly every page, while allowing his own personality to recede and occupy the position of the narrator. This likely exhausting labor also highlights what place this project had for Kojève, given its serial and multilinguistic span, the fact that he began it as a young man and a student and could not complete it to his satisfac- tion even at the age of 33, when he published the second and more diffcult half of the Religious Metaphysics. That this essay is unknown today despite Kojève’s stature and its clear thematic links to his other writings suggests that he carried with him a certain undisclosed reticence regarding this work. He could not have been overly proud of it as it stands. He was even willing to be uncritical to go on with the task at hand and somehow overcome the contradictions he identifed. This particular weakness is supported by philosophical reasons. Kojève’s inability to develop his criticisms philosophically is intimately related to the problems of systemic concepts in general. Systemic concepts are characterized by ubiquity: select one, list its assumptions, premises and underlying principles, give examples, and soon its signs multiply, and are found everywhere. Only true interpretive skill can weave this aggregate into coherence. Even when the concept’s origin is dogma or infuence, that is, even when it is a borrowed concept, the obligations of systematic thinking hold that at minimum all such borrowed signs, principles, and premises relate to more than just themselves, their context 1 TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION 9 and their specifc history. A borrowed concept, despite its aptness, will remain alien to the system at large until it is demonstrated that it can be independently reconstructed from the variety of suggestions the system carries in its own right. This is because the central insight of systematic reasoning is that the causes of things are many, that there is more than a single element active in any relationship, that nothing may assume absolute primacy except in the sense of a differential signifcance—that, in the life of any one thing, more than its existence alone points to it. As an investigative method, systematic thought specifes its object not as the single artifact but the vital complex; this method is therefore profoundly useful in arraying a total feld of relation, since any datum it discovers may be potentially important and even crucial to later developments. Consider, for example, the central object of Kojève’s criticism: the coherence of the doctrine of World, describing the eventual reunion of man with God, and its incompatibility with the doctrine of God, describing the role and existence of divinity. Initial analysis is disappointing, since it seems to show that only very large, sweeping arguments beginning from the foundations of either doctrine are able to approach this union directly. Yet the characteristics of man’s union with God can be rigorously detailed, and its signifcance as a concept is undeniable. After offering a few possible interpretations and circulating perspectives, Kojève fnds however that none “explain how it could be possible to predict the character and end result of actual future developments.”18 He concludes that this problem resolves into an antimony, one that is “implied by the notion of the becoming of a being that is eternally what it is, the progressive union in time of what is already, for all eternity, united.”19 But this conclusion reveals nothing, and only restates, reca- pitulates without development, a commonplace modern problem: that of the consistency of things across time. It is therefore more of a description detailing a certain state of affairs, an ordinary and even banal condition, than the discovery of a crucial paradox. Antimony indicates a point of permanent contradiction, yet it is a fallacy to assume that a contradiction of this kind pertains only to the argument itself and the misalignment of certain premises. Antinomy is equally indicative of an inherent despondency, a certain unavoidable contextual factor. In the case of the doctrine of World, this is that all profane objects, all objects of the empirical world, are divided and inher- ently contradictory and do not exist otherwise. In such a world, paradox is a ubiquitous and constant feature, a regular encounter; eventually, 10 A. KOJÈVE one gets used to it. Kojève approaches this perspective many times, getting particularly close with the realization that even conscious, reasoned action holds no guarantee of progress. In a manner recalling Kafka, he asks, “Does the idea of a never-realized possibility, of a power that never comes to act, still make sense? Can we speak of possibility or of power here, where all is infnite, eternal, immutable, where all succession, becoming, and change is excluded by defnition?”20 The tacit background of these questions is a certain ordinary regularity, a certain inconsistency which the world assumes when it is viewed with the eyes of Christian tradition. Kojève, however, ventures no further down this path and restricts his commentary to what are clarifying but nonetheless strictly conventional remarks. Anything deemed sensu stricto permanent in the empirical world is not solid, whole, and unchanging—it is recurrent. Whatever antinomy one points to here will be defned by the recurrent contradictions of the objects it regards, things that are by defnition ephemeral and eva- nescent, unable to stay themselves, centered as they are in an expanding series of exchanges. This precise limitation marks the division between God and World in Solovyov. The reasoning one wields to make sense of this world and its maelstrom of tendencies is itself marked with a partial, though exact, character. The full expression of the entire course of one’s existence here is of course given only in divinity, for whom its whole breadth is immediate and transparent. Yet its specifcity, i.e., the very character of our reasoning, is, for us, experience itself. Religious thought as it was understood by Solovyov involves the insight that both alethic and empirical modes of thinking are limited to their moments and their duration in the hands of one who wields them. A person moves from one to the next in his perception of this world according to the direction of his thoughts. At once, everything appears whole and unbroken, continuous—and then unstable, dissipating, granular. It follows that the maxi- mum reach of these intermingling of durations may extend, for a single person, to include the whole of their lifetime. Kojève noted, for example, as a pejorative criticism, that Solovyov generally presents his “two doctrines in parallel, interweaving statements about the World within different stages of development of the doctrine of the Absolute,”21 and that Solovyov’s method is highly intuitive and generally deviates from formal deductive process.22 His main diffculty in interpreting Solovyov’s writings was due precisely to this complexity. Kojève’s inability to proceed cleanly through every determinate point of 1 TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION 11 signifcance through argumentative means alone doubtless caused incredible agony. He was obliged, despite the pressure of system, to divert his course and refect on the impossibility of continuing. For Kojève, the incompatibility of doctrines then translated, in fnal pages of the essay, into the jarring insuffciency of Solovyov’s synthetic statements regarding mankind’s fnal state (in Godmanhood or Divine Humanity, in the Theandric body of the Androgyne, organized as part of free Theocracy within the organic, living unity of free Theurgy).23 Previously, he treated every line of reason as if it followed a deterministic path, as if the action of reading the sentence itself would be suffcient to understand its concept. But the more he committed to analyzing of the doctrine of World, the more his innocuous and self-contained became his writing, his statements relying less and less on the intertext and compositional intricacy established in the essay’s beginnings. As his optimism regarding the systematic interpretation of Solovyov’s written works shifted to resignation, and after regaining a little of his prior momentum, he ends the piece in disappointment. It would be wrong to view the above as the inevitable result of stub- born attempts at continuous development. At most, Kojève’s malaise represents a theoretical extreme which he could not organize and allowed to appear haphazardly as one argument among others. In this sense, Kojève’s sudden, urgent changes in perspective show that his deprecatory views of Solovyov’s philosophy and his descriptions of Solovyov’s paradoxes are issues of a single type. Yet it must be said that, by this point, Kojève had already skillfully performed the required synthesis himself, more than once and in a far more wide-reaching manner than he was perhaps aware. What was too cumbersome to state outright he distributed through grammar and syntax, using their functional abstraction as but another vehicle to present his claims. He forcefully demonstrated that what we cannot yet name, nor speak shortly in a word—not the ἄρρητον, something unspeaka- ble by nature, but rather something for which we have no proper dis- course—can be made to take its home through linguistic means other than the declarative. In general, much of this essay’s deliberate opacity is given name later, and this naming is occasioned by a specifcally religious and theological language which Kojève used without hesitation and with talent. In such instances, he was fully aligned, as an atheist, with Solovyov’s faith. It is telling that the religious character of Kojève’s reasoning was much weaker where it concerned the “contradictions and 12 A. KOJÈVE antinomies” of the doctrine of World: thus the circulating nature of many of his arguments there, and the marked oppositional gaps within the concepts he presented. The strong rhetorical features of this work, their concern for what must be said and why, reveal that text is in and of itself something metaphysical, that it presents more than only a historical and contingent, i.e., temporally bound, character. Time, in a very literal sense, disappears in writing, for the written word itself eradicates the very passage of time as it was experienced by its creator in his labor. Kojève acknowledges this himself when he begins his essay with the statement that the whole of Solovyov’s work presents, in general, a unity of determinations, singular, and consciously purposeful, and represents more than Solovyov alone, and this to the extent that even Solovyov’s authorship becomes questionable. One fnal point: In a certain section on the doctrine of God, Kojève writes that, according to Solovyov, ideas in their divine aspect have a life of their own that they possess individuality and personhood.24 He describes an ideal cosmos, the alethic side of the mechanical cosmos which we recognize as our universe. This is an image of divine life which shows its forms to be as multiple and complex as that of organic life; moreover, it is an image of an existence that is completely populated with conscious, acting beings. This image suggests, given Solovyov’s relationship to Sophia, that the act of thinking is not in itself the action of refection, contemplation or memory, of wishing, expectation, insight or understanding—that it is no sense a personal or individual action; rather, thought is the name we have given to our encounters with the divine. What we call thinking is really a form of communication, and an idea none other than an emissary we have come to know. Every pensive gesture takes on an entirely different cast in this light, becoming very much like prayer. Even conversation, even reading, becomes in some way indicative of this relationship. So in addition to the need for religious thought,25 the goal of which would be the comprehension of mystical experience, there is a need for a religious action and a religious politics which would defne the method for interceding into the life of man. It was this point’s lack of clarity that so badly disappointed Kojève and so badly affected the outcome of his project, which lost its energy as the possibility of clarifcation receded. 1 TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION 13

Notes 1. Koschewnikoff, Alexander (1926) Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews [The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov]. Dissertation (Universitat Heidelberg). See also the short essay Koschewnikoff, Alexander (1930) Die Geschichtsphilosophie Wladimir Solowjews [The Philosophy of History of Vladimir Solovyov] (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen). 2. Кожев, Александр (2007) Религиозная метафизика Владимира Соловьева [The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov]; Атеизм и другие работы [Atheism and Other Works], edited by А.М. Руткевич and translated by А.П. Козырев (Мoscow: Праксис), pp. 175–257. 3. For example, the parenthetical insertions Kojève uses to develop Chapter 4, Section A of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. See Kojève, Alexandre (1980 [1947]) “In Place of an Introduction,” Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, assembled by Raymond Queneau, edited by Allan Bloom and translated by James H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), pp. 3–30. 4. The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, p. 15. 5. Religious Metaphysics, p. 26. 6. Origen’s term for the incarnation of Jesus Christ is Deus homo (De Principiis, Book 2, chap. 6, pp. 3, 26). As this extant version is based on Tyrannius Rufnus’s fourth-century Latin translation of Origen’s Περὶ Aρχῶν [On First Principles] (ca. 231), note 18 of Crouzel’s and Simonetti’s edition states that “there is no reason to doubt that Origen used the word θεάνθρωπος here” (our translation). See Origène (1978]) Traité des Principes: Commentaire et Fragments [Treatise on Principles: Commentaries and Fragments], edited and translated by Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti (Paris: Éditions du Cerf), p. 175. Cf. Origène (1978) Traité des Principes: Introduction, Texte Critique de la Version de Rufn, Traduction [Treatise on Principles: Introduction, Critical Text of Rufnus’s Version, Translation], edited and translated by Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti (Paris: Éditions du Cerf), p. 315. While there is no direct link between Origen’s Deus homo (or θεάνθρωπος, as it may be) and Solovyov’s Богочеловек, Maria Carlson has remarked that Solovyov was sure to have read Origen while studying at the Moscow Spiritual (Theological) Academy and Moscow University. See Carlson, Maria (1996) “Gnostic Elements in the Cosmogony of Vladimir Soloviev,” Russian Religious Thought, edited by Judith Deutsch Kornblatt and Richard F. Gustafson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), pp. 51–52. Cf. Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch (2009) “Solovyov as Self-Conscious Heir,” Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), p. 86. Cf. also 14 A. KOJÈVE

Smith, Oliver (2011) “The Last Things,” Vladimir Soloviev and the Spiritualization of Matter (Boston: Academic Studies Press), p. 244, particularly footnote 14, which cites a work by the Russian historian of philosophy Aleksandr Nikolskii calling Solovyov the “Russian Origen.” See Никольский, Александр (2000 [1902]) Русский Ориген XIX века Вл. С. Соловьев [Russian Origen of the Nineteenth Century Vl. S. Solovyov] (St. Petersburg: Наука). 7. Religious Metaphysics, p. 19. 8. Religious Metaphysics, p. 61. 9. Religious Metaphysics, p. 58. 10. Religious Metaphysics, p. 39. 11. Nietzsche’s punctuation is very distinctive. Depending on context “.—” also appears alongside “?—” and “!—”. Midsentence, Nietzsche often prefers the dash over other pointers. See Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967 [1887]) On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House). 12. Religious Metaphysics, p. 20. 13. Religious Metaphysics, p. 16. 14. Religious Metaphysics, Chapter 2, note 2. 15. Religious Metaphysics, p. 39. 16. Religious Metaphysics, p. 73. 17. Religious Metaphysics, Chapter 2, notes 24, 36, 37, 39, 46 and 47, Chapter 3, notes 6, 7, 19 and 20. 18. Religious Metaphysics, p. 56. 19. Religious Metaphysics, p. 54. 20. Religious Metaphysics, p. 56. Cf. Kafka’s aphorism 6, “The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why the movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be irrelevant are correct—because nothing yet has happened.” Kafka, Franz (2006 [1931]) The Zürau Aphorisms, edited by Roberto Calasso, and translated by Michael Hoffman and Geoffrey Block (New York: Schocken Books), p. 6. Although the best example of “a power which never comes to act” is found in Kafka’s 1915 parable Before the Law. 21. Religious Metaphysics, p. 51. 22. Religious Metaphysics, pp. 19, 20–21, 33–36, 55–56, 73. 23. Religious Metaphysics, pp. 70–71. See also Chapter 3, note 21. 24. Religious Metaphysics, p. 26. 25. Religious Metaphysics, p. 18. CHAPTER 2

The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov

The role played by metaphysics in Solovyov’s work is very signifcant.1 It is the center of gravity and the basis for all his thought, and only by starting with this in mind can we hope to truly understand his thought in its entirety. It is in this that the fnal explanation for all of Solovyov’s doctrines may be found, and it is through this that the links binding his various doctrines may be grasped and understood as a complete, homog- enous and ordered whole to which may be applied the title “system of philosophy.” Moreover, it is only in relation to metaphysics—the starting point of Solovyov’s thought—that we may understand the meaning and scope of the changes that this thought underwent. The central position of metaphysics appears clearly when we consider the entirety of Solovyov’s writings in chronological order. These may be separated into three different groups, corresponding to three periods of literary activity on the part of the philosopher. During the frst period, Solovyov published a series of writings constituting a historical and critical introduction to his metaphysical system. By demonstrating the impossibility of skepticism, materialism, and positivism, studying the immanent dialectic of philosophical problems, analyzing the history of philosophy, and, fnally, examining the historical evolution of humanity, Solovyov believed he could demonstrate the necessary emergence of a new religious and mystical metaphysics—one which synthesizes and culminates all earlier philosophical efforts. He also believed he could demonstrate that this absolute and defnitive metaphysics would necessarily appear in the near future in Russia; this metaphysics was, of course,

© The Author(s) 2018 15 A. Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02339-3_2 16 A. KOJÈVE none other than his own. During the second period (the shortest of the three), Solovyov presented an outline of his metaphysics which from the outset had the character of a complete and fnished system. Finally, during the last period, the longest of the three, he seemed to lose interest in theoretical questions and in metaphysics proper; in several books and in a number of articles which he had published dispersedly here and there, he developed his moral and aesthetic doctrines, his philosophy of history, his theory of love, his theocratic ideal, his ecclesiastical and political ideas... But all these doctrines presuppose and are, in fact, applications of the general ideas of his metaphysics. Only by starting from his metaphysical ideas and confronting the same problems that Solovyov himself confronted can we hope to understand the true meaning and underlying reasons for the answers he gave. Inversely, by developing his particular ideas we necessarily arrive at the metaphysical system to which they belong. Metaphysics is thus not only the center of gravity of Solovyov’s work as a whole, but also the profound source and origin of each of his writings individually.— We are assisting neither the birth nor the formation of this metaphysics. The principal exposition, published by Solovyov when he was barely 27 years old, shows, if only in profle, a defnitive and perfectly elaborated form. Even when reading his very frst publications, the sense is that we encounter there, too, the same metaphysical system, in the same state of perfection. Solovyov seems to have begun writing and perhaps even thinking with a fully formed metaphysics in hand. This impression is confrmed elsewhere by Solovyov himself, who wrote, in a letter from 1890, at the age of 37 or ten years before his death, this telling sentence: “The period of skepticism and uncertainty belongs to my earliest youth, and I appeared before the public with fully formed metaphysical theories, to which I hold to this day.”2 This admission is important. If it is truthful—and we have no reason to doubt it—Solovyov’s fundamental metaphysical ideas would have already been formed when he was just 21 years old. Yet it is clear that at this age a “fully formed” metaphysics could not have been assembled from scratch, and so we may assume that it was borrowed, “fully formed,” from tradition.3 Studying Solovyov’s metaphysics confrms this assumption. However, it is equally clear that if metaphysics was at the base of Solovyov’s thought, then it was there from the start and by 1890 suffered no changes important enough for Solovyov to consider mentioning. In effect, the same system is always found throughout his 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 17 writings, and though certain modifcations are indeed discernible, they are not suffcient to warrant a discussion of its evolution. It is true that at the end of his life Solovyov came to certain ideas inconsistent with the basic principles of his metaphysical system. In relation to reality, his thought developed and grew increasingly pessimistic, and his fnal publications contain statements, specifcally those concerning the philosophy of history and the problem of evil, which fagrantly contradict the optimistic monism of his metaphysics. Such contradictions seem to have escaped the philosopher himself. Indeed, he returned to the problems of metaphysics during the last few years of his life, intending to publish a major theoretical treatise containing a new, comprehensive metaphysical statement. His premature death in 1900, however, prevented this, so we know nothing of this new metaphysics and whether or not it would have departed radically from his previous statements, perhaps as a dualistic, pessimistic metaphysics demonstrating the reality of evil. The available sources reveal only a single metaphysics, identical and consistent in each case with itself. This was the metaphysics Solovyov had in mind when he wrote the sentence cited above; and it is this system that all his writings, except for a few articles published during the last three years of his life, presuppose. * * * We turn to our study of this metaphysics. Given its importance in Solovyov’s work, one might assume that numerous and extensive metaphysical writings exist. In reality, this is not the case. The purely metaphysical writings constitute only a small portion of his publications. Only in four books does he handle metaphysical questions in a relatively extensive and systematic way: three in Russian—Critique of Abstract Principles (1877–1880), Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge (1877, unfnished), and Lectures on Divine Humanity (1887–1890); and one in French—Russia and the Universal Church (1889).4 In the Principles, however, strictly metaphysical issues are only touched on; and in the Critique, metaphysics is given but three chapters and developed only as far as is necessary to found ethics and gnosiology. These writings should be regarded as supplements to the Lectures. The same goes for the third part of Russia, for although it is devoted to metaphysics, it presents nothing other than several minor alterations and extensions of statements made in the Russian-language books. Ultimately, the Lectures should be 18 A. KOJÈVE regarded as the principal source. But even this relatively short essay is not devoted exclusively to the discussion of metaphysical problems. Our study will be based on these four books, which represent almost all the sources we have for understanding Solovyov’s metaphysics. Of course, anyone desiring to have a more or less complete idea of his metaphysics should keep all of his writings in mind.5 And not only because these may complement the statements of his principal writings, something that is in any case quite rare, but chiefy because the meaning and scope of his metaphysical doctrine can be understood only by attending to the developments and applications found throughout his thought as a whole. Proceeding in this way, we succeed, despite the relative lack of sources, in arriving at a complete and self-contained metaphysical system.— Solovyov’s metaphysics has a pronounced mystical and religious character. It is a fundamentally theological metaphysics, which strives above all to be Orthodox. Solovyov himself emphasized that his sole aim was to give Christian revelation a rational and systematic form. According to him, the content of this metaphysics is given through mystical experience or faith, and only the abstract elements of its presentation are the work of philosopher as such. God is the main object of this metaphysics. In the Lectures, Solovyov expressly states that “His existence can only be proven through a leap of faith.” “The content of divine principles, like the content of the external world, is given only in experience. That God is, we believe, but what He is, we experience [иcпытывaeм] and learn.” This, then, is the mystical experience and religious knowledge, both individual and traditional, that Solovyov envisions. Although his metaphysics necessarily presupposes the data of religion and adds to it no new truths, this does not, however, make it super- fuous. “The givens [дaнныe] of religious experience … are in and of themselves only isolated data [cвeдeния] regarding divine objects, not a complete knowledge of them. Such knowledge is achieved only through the organization of religious knowledge into a complete and logically coherent system. Therefore, in addition to religious faith and religious experience, there is also a need for a religious thought, the result of which is a philosophy of religion.”6 Solovyov’s metaphysics intends to be such a “philosophy of religion,” for it is only as such that metaphysics can, in his eyes, be justifed. 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 19

Solovyov did not change his views on this point. In the three years before his death (twenty years after penning the Lectures), he expressed and repeated such ideas often: “If certainty in the actual existence of the religious object rests on religious experience [oпытe], then the task of philosophy consists in the refashioning and expansion of this experience; that is, it must sharpen, clarify, and enrich our notions [пoнятия] of the data concerning the given facts of actual religion.”7 In truth, Solovyov seldom expressed himself so clearly. More than once, for example in certain passages of Russia, where he began a kind of ontological and cosmological proof of God’s existence8 and titled a chapter “The Divine Trinity, Rationally Deduced from the Idea of Being,”9 he appeared to have desired to provide an independent and rational foundation for his metaphysics so as to prove or deduce a priori the Christian dogmas. But it is better not to give in to appearances. His writings in fact contain no “proofs” or “deductions” of this kind. In spite of these exceptions, which are in any case purely verbal, we maintain that Solovyov’s metaphysics is not only a religious and mystical doctrine, but also Orthodox (or Catholic, as in Russia), being based on the theological tradition and having almost nothing in common with rational philosophy. It is more a description of mystical intuitions than a system of analysis and logical argumentation, and it is as such that it should be interpreted and judged. In particular, one should not fault Solovyov for the obscurities, contradictions, and inaccuracies which result from dogmas and are necessarily present in all Christian metaphysics. But neither should he be accused of delving into the theological tradition of the Church and embracing its professed truths wholeheartedly, without prior discussion and criticism. Later, we will see that the philosophical shortcomings of Solovyov’s metaphysics arise not only because it is, or at least purports to be, a strictly orthodox metaphysics. The philosopher himself is responsible for many of the obscurities, inaccuracies, contradictions, and lack of critical depth in his work. We will see that the sources he drew on are far from canonical Church texts. And we will fnd in him many other infuences. Above all, his doctrines evoke the German Idealists. One could even say that Schelling serves almost exclusively as his model, and that it is Schelling who resides at the root of nearly all his metaphysical ideas. Yet, remarkably, his name is absent in Solovyov’s writings; only in passing did Solovyov mention Schelling and his book on the history of philosophy. 20 A. KOJÈVE

* * * Solovyov always developed his metaphysics continuously; the divisions of his books into chapters or lectures bear no systematic signifcance. In general, his metaphysics is not a “system” in the technical sense of the word found in his writings. Nevertheless, when taken together, his metaphysical doctrines form a complete and self-contained whole with a clear internal structure. In it, we may distinguish two main sections: one dealing with God (Sect. 2.1), the other with World (Chapter 3). The doctrine of God is developed in three stages, each stage demonstrating a richer and more complete notion of Divinity. Solovyov addresses, frst, the Absolute in general (Sect. 2.1.1); following that, the Absolute is identifed with the personal God and the Trinity (Sect. 2.1.2); fnally, the Christian idea of the Divine Man (the God-Man) comes to supplement and complete the development of his doctrine of the Absolute (Sect. 2.1.3).

2.1 the Doctrine of God

2.1.1 The Absolute and the Ideal Cosmos The idea of God frst presents itself to the philosopher in the general and impersonal form of the idea of the Absolute. The necessity and reality of this idea is unquestionable for Solovyov, and he does not attempt to provide proofs for it. In general, the notion of the Absolute is not, for him, the result of philosophical reasoning; rather, it is the abstract and general expression of a mystical intuition, an immediate experience of the reality of divine Being. The existence of God, like all existence in general, may only be given through a “leap of faith,” an immanent vision, and this leap of faith must be the starting point for all philosophy. It is only religious experience, mystical intuition, which can justify the objective reality of the idea of the Absolute. But its role does not cease there. It is also this intuition, and it alone that reveals the positive content of this idea. “The general notion of the Absolute principle, as established by our disinterested reasoning, has a negative character; that is, reasoning only shows what this principle is not—not what it is. The actual positive content of this principle is given only in… intuition.”10 In other words, it is an intuition that is “deeper than any sensation, any representation, any determined will,” an intuition that, by “the action of the Absolute is perceived by us immediately,” and “within which we enter, as 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 21 it were, into direct contact with Being itself.” This mystical intuition is the foundation for all metaphysics, which attempts to express in rational concepts and to “organize in a complete and harmonious system” the intuitive givens of religious experience.11 Solovyov certainly seems to have personally undergone this “religious experience” himself. What we know of his personal life, from his letters, poems, and the impressions of his friends, suggests as much. One should not lose sight of this if one is to judge his metaphysics justly, and avoid seeing only vulgar plagiarisms and pure verbiage, for the words “plagia- rist” and “verbose” often come to mind when reading his metaphysical writings. Though he was a religious philosopher, Solovyov was much more religious than he was philosophical. Thus in his metaphysics, he begins without doubt, with deep and living intuitions, and with a thought that is always sincere: indeed, he truly believes what he says. But whenever he attempts to rationalize the content of his intuition so as to “organize a complete and harmonious system”—in other words, whenever he enters into the domain that he himself referred to as philosophy proper—he is obliged to borrow frequently from his predecessors. Worse still is that these borrowed doctrines are, in most cases, simplifed, disfgured, and impoverished. His thinking assumes in general an abstract and superf- cial character, with purely verbal deductions standing in for metaphysical analysis. These faults in Solovyov’s metaphysics appear throughout his work, beginning with his very frst statements about the Absolute. He begins by noting that it is incorrect to defne the Absolute as “being in general.” Being is only a predicate belonging to a subject it presupposes, not to the subject as such, whereas the Absolute is the subject and source of all being. It must therefore be distinguished from all being without reducing this being to nothingness. But “if the Absolute is neither being nor nothingness, then it is that which has or possesses being.” And since “the possessor is prior [пepвee] and greater than the possessed,” the Absolute “must be more accurately referred to as the super-being [cвepxcyщee].”12 Conceived thus, the Absolute is singular and one only in itself. All multiplicity presupposes a relationship, which is invariably a determinate mode of being, while the Absolute is by defnition superior to all being. Yet the Absolute possesses being. It must bear the entire multiplicity of being: it is the perfect unity that encompasses the multiplicity. Inversely, 22 A. KOJÈVE the Absolute is contained in everything because everything receives its being from it and so is only its manifestation. “But being in all, it is not identical with all; by itself [caмo пo ceбe], it is unlike anything,”13 Solovyov is not, or at least does not wish to be, pantheistic.14 By being one and possessing the totality of being, the Absolute is an existing unity which is simultaneously a totality: it is a “Unitotality.”15 As such, it is simultaneously a (positive) Nothingness and a Wholeness: a Nothingness because it is not some thing; a Wholeness because it cannot be deprived of anything. However, “if the Absolute is Nothingness, then being is, for it, Other; and if it is simultaneously the source [or principle: нaчaлo] of being… it is the source [or principle] of its Other.”16 This “Other” is not, however, separate from the Absolute itself. For if the Absolute had excluded the “Other” from itself, this other being would become its limitation and negation, and it, therefore, would no longer be the Absolute. It is thus a “logical necessity” that the Absolute, to be absolute, opposes itself and is the unity of itself and its opposite. It is only by opposing the totality of being as its “Other,” and being the unity of itself and of the “Other,” that the Absolute is Unitotality. Having defned the Absolute as Unitotality, which is to say as a unity of itself and its “Other,” Solovyov distinguishes two “poles” or “centers”: on the one hand, unity as such, free of all being; on the other hand, multiplicity (or totality), which is the principle of all being. The frst “center” is the Absolute as such; to the second, Solovyov gives the name materia prima. The substance of this “Matter” is neither independent of nor different from the Absolute. It is the Absolute itself, taken as multiplicity. Nevertheless, the distinction must be made. The Absolute, since it is neither nothingness nor being, is defned by Solovyov as the potentiality of being [posse esse, puissance de l’être], for “the third term between being and non-being may be only conceived as the potentiality of being.” But while the Absolute as such is above all being as “a positive potential,” Matter itself “is not yet manifest” but only “posed or sensed as an absence of being,” or “a negative potential.” This felt absence of being is “an aspiration towards being, a thirst for being,” in other words something “innate and psychological.”17 So the materia prima characterized by this “thirst” is not merely the material, negative power of being—it is also Soul. It is what Solovyov would later call, in his doctrine of World, the anima mundi, the last principle and transcendent unity of the material universe and of individual souls.18 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 23

We should not dwell unduly on this dialectic of the Other, the most obscure and most abstract part of Solovyov’s metaphysics. Indeed, everything he writes about the “Absolute” and its “Other” is no more than a very simplifed and impoverished paraphrase of certain speculations made by Schelling,19 who here follows and develops the thoughts of Jakob Böhme. We should therefore refer to these German thinkers if we want to understand the true signifcance and the deeper meaning of this dialectic, which under Solovyov’s pen is little more than a simple word game. To be sure, for Solovyov this dialectic points to something greater. Despite being wholly borrowed and highly abstract (not to say purely verbal), it nevertheless corresponds to a personal intuition, a living and concrete thought. First of all, Solovyov himself says with Schelling that the notion of Unitotality and the dialectic of the “Other” are but abstract translations of the words of the great Apostle: “God is Love.” Yet in Solovyov’s personal religious experience, God appears primarily as absolute Love. Furthermore, this abstract dialectic is employed to resolve a concrete and living problem, the same problem that preoccupied the thinkers who were his models. This was the problem of fnding a middle ground between dualism and pantheism (or acosmism), which are the Scylla and Charybdis of Christian thought in general and of Solovyov in particular. On the one hand, because he saw God everywhere and had a lived experience of the infnite richness of divine essence, he could not justify exclud- ing anything from the idea of God; he thus brought the latter closer to the pantheist conception. On the other hand, feeling no less forcefully the immanent value of the world, the beauty of which he so loved, and affrming the absolute freedom of mankind, a freedom he wanted to save even vis-à-vis God’s omnipotence, he saw himself driven to a dualism, which for him as for every Christian philosopher was just as unacceptable as the pantheism of the opposite tendency. To avoid these extremes and yet admit the two conficting intuitions that formed the source and foundation of all his thought, he adopted Schelling’s dialectic. This is how the dialectic of the “Other” should be interpreted and understood. The signifcance of the dialectic of the “Other” emerges clearly only much later, when Solovyov identifes the “Other” with the “Soul of the World,” “Sophia,” or “Ideal Humanity” (see Sect. 2.1.3). But if we are to understand the real sense of the doctrine of the Absolute, we must be aware that, from the outset, the “Other” is the principle of the world, the essence of Mankind or Humanity. 24 A. KOJÈVE

For now, if we say that the “Other” in Solovyov’s metaphysics serves as the absolute principle of the World or, rather, that it is representative of the World in the Absolute, it is important not to identify the “Other” with the empirical world. We are within the doctrine of God, and the very idea of an extra-divine world is still unknown to us.— We must not lose sight of this by considering Solovyov’s ideas doctri- nally. Otherwise, we risk misinterpretation, since his statements are not always very exact. He departs, sure enough, from the empirical world, but only as a methodological detour: it is the Absolute which remains the sole object of analysis. In his doctrine of ideas, Solovyov follows an “inductive method,” starting from the given data of empirical reality and reasoning as follows. Certainly, the empirical world is our representation. But it is also more than that, for some of our representations cannot be created or altered at will. This proves that they must have a cause that is objective and independent from us.20 These representations being multiple, objective reality, as the cause of these representations, must also be multiple. Behind these phenomena thus lies “a multiplicity of elementary entities or eternal and stable causes”; these are, in other words, the fnal immutable elements, irreducible and distinct from reality. These elements may thus be called atoms. Only these atoms have an objective reality, all else being phenomenon or representation. Solovyov’s thesis has, of course, nothing to do with materialism. Through a series of near-sophistic arguments over which we will pass in silence, he shows us that these “atoms” are not material; they have none of the properties attributable to matter (impenetrability, solidity, and so on). These atoms are dynamic, “acting or active forces, and all that exists does so by way of their reciprocal action.” And yet, “to act on others, a force must strive [cтpeмитьcя] outwards and away from itself. To receive the action of another force, it must, so to speak, make space for the other by drawing or presenting it to itself [cтaвить пepeд coбoю]. Thus every fundamental force is necessarily expressed through its tendency [cтpeмлeнии] and its representation [пpeдcтaвлeнии].”21 With this play on words, diffcult to render in French,22 Solovyov believed he had demonstrated the necessity of attributing a sort of will and consciousness to these “dynamic atoms.” Being so conceived, these atoms cannot be considered mere centers of force; they are “living elementary entities, or that which since Leibniz has been known as monad.”23 But in contrast to the Leibnizian monads, these Solovyovian 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 25 monads have “windows”: that is, they actually act upon each other. The interaction of monads presupposes their qualitative differences, for they can tend toward each other only if one may give the other something it lacks. These monads are therefore qualitatively determined, and this qualitative determination of each particular monad must be undoubtedly just as eternal and immutable as the monad itself. And yet, this absolute quality of being, determining its content and value for itself and for others and revealing its own character as eternal, is none other than what Plato called: idea. Thus, the real entity, the objective cause of phenomena, is not only a dynamic atom and a monad, but also an idea. This “idea” should not be confused with the general concept. The idea does not correspond to a class of objects; rather, each entity has or is its own idea. Just as every person has, alongside their changing empirical character, something inexpressible that remains selfsame and represents the essence of his or her personality, each object has an idea that both assigns it its individual character and determines the place this object occupies within the entire ensemble of being. The individual character of an entity, a character that belongs only to itself, is its “subjective idea.” The totality of its relations with all other entities constitutes its “objective idea,” which is none other than “the complete expression and the perfect realization” of “the subjective idea.” In addition to these (subjective and objective) individual ideas, there are also general ideas, corresponding to increasingly large groups of individual ideas and to the totality of ideas, the ideal cosmos, which has a structure analogous to that of the universe of general concepts. But even if general ideas are analogous to general concepts in this manner, they still differ from the latter in a radical way, for the understanding of a concept is inversely pro- portional to its extension, while the understanding of an idea becomes richer as it becomes more general. This difference stems from the fact that, in contrast to concepts, ideas are, like monads, active subjects. As such, general ideas nurture the real and active relationships with the particular ideas they assemble and unite, and are thereby inwardly determined and enriched. Ideas, thus, are not concepts: every idea, particular or general, is a subject, or, as Solovyov put it, has a subject for support (as its substrate). Yet for him these “subjects” are not only abstract subjects, endowed as monads are with a kind of will and consciousness of their own. These subjects are genuine people, self-aware, concrete, and living. 26 A. KOJÈVE

Solovyov demonstrates the personal character of ideas with rather strange, vaguely Hegelian reasoning, which may be reduced to the following. According to him, an idea differs from all others not only for others and within thought, but also for itself and in reality. Thus, “the support of an idea, or its subject (more accurately: the idea as subject) should be distinguished from others subjectively or existentially; in other words, it should have a proper, particular reality, be an independent center existing for itself, and possess, in consequence, a consciousness of itself, be a person.”24 If we now apply this reasoning to the most general idea, that is, to the Absolute or unitotal idea encompassing and including all other ideas within itself (the idea of God or Love), we fnd that, “in being determined in its objective essence as universal and unitotal, this idea is at the same time determined in its internal subjective existence as a unique and singular person [лицo], containing within itself everything selfsame, and yet being distinct from all that is selfsame.”25 These statements by Solovyov certainly seem abstract and inconclusive, but the motives and the real meaning of the doctrine are clear nonetheless. It suffces to recall that we are still within the doctrine of the Absolute. The absolute or unitotal idea contains or represents the totality of being. We know that for the doctrine of the Absolute, the “totality” of being is the totality of the Unitotality, the “content” of the Absolute. Solovyov said himself, if only indirectly,26 that the description of the ideal cosmos or absolute idea is none other than a new, richer and more complete defnition of the content of the Absolute, the “Other” or the materia prima. We also know that the Absolute as such is the “subject,” “source,” or “support” of being, which is to say, of its own “content” or that of its “Other.” To speak of the subject as the support of the idea of the absolute or alternatively (though it amounts to the same) of the absolute idea as subject is equivalent to speaking of the Absolute as such, and to speak of this subject as a person leads to the assertion that God is not just an abstract Absolute, but a real and concrete Person. The doctrine of Solovyov’s ideas therefore serves two ends. First, it supplements and completes the doctrine of the Absolute by showing that its contents are an ideal cosmos, a set of active and personal ideas which constitute in and through their interactions a unitotal organism analogous to the universe of general concepts. Second, the immanent dialectic of the doctrine of ideas demonstrates that, in parting from the abstract notion of the Absolute, we arrive necessarily at the idea of a personal God.27 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 27

2.1.2 The Divine Trinity For Solovyov, his metaphysics is solely a rational and systematic expression of the truths revealed in religion. This identity of metaphysics and religion is not only expressed by the identity of their objects or contents. There is also the fact that the stages of immanent dialectical development of the metaphysical doctrine of God correspond to the partial truths expressed by various historical religions. These, in turn, represent the successive stages of revelation received by humanity in the course of history. Thus, the abstract notion of the Absolute as different from being itself corresponds to the truth expressed in Indian religion; the doctrine of ideas reproduces the contents of truth revealed to the Greeks; and the notion of a personal God is the essential truth of Judaism. The “dialectic of the Other,” simultaneously identifying and distinguishing the ideal cosmos and the divine Person, therefore represents the synthesis of the truths revealed to the Greeks and the Hebrews. For Solovyov, this synthesis had already been carried out in the course of history by the Neoplatonic doctrine, which conceived the Absolute as a Trinity. The idea of the Divine Trinity, a specifc truth of Neoplatonism, must necessarily appear in Solovyov’s metaphysics as a new step of the “dialectic of the Other.” It thus completes the notion of the Absolute, already conceived as Idea and Person. Indeed, Solovyov believed he could deduce the doctrine of the Trinity (which in his view only reproduces the Neoplatonic doctrine and therefore is entirely independent from Christian revelation) from the dialectical analysis of the notion of Unitotality, which, as we know, is the unity of the Absolute as such and its “content” or Other. Analysis shows that this unity, or the actual relation between God and his content, is a dialectical unity or Trinity. God, by existing, possesses as his own content the totality of being. Yet, “to assert this content as his own, he must possess it substantially, and be the totality or the unity of all things in an eternal inner act.”28 In this frst mode of divine existence, everything is contained in God, and God alone exists in the act. But for the content of God to be a reality as well (and it must be, for without real content God will reduce himself to nothing), God must not only contain it within himself but also affrm himself, which is to say: he must present or oppose his content as an Other. In this second mode of existence, the content is no longer a potential hidden within God: it appears as a represented or ideal reality (as the realm of ideas or the ideal 28 A. KOJÈVE cosmos).29 However, by thus affrming or opposing his content, God is still asserting only himself; this affrmation of the Absolute through the position of the Other is the essence of the third mode of God’s existence. We must therefore distinguish three modes of existence of the Absolute once we understand this existence as a real relationship between the personal God and his content. But since this content, that of God himself, is always selfsame, it is clear that these three modes “are different, but express in equal measure the completeness of Divinity.” This means, in other words, that each of these modes is God himself. However, there is no doubt that as a single eternal subject, God cannot simultaneously conceal the content of his existence within himself, oppose it to himself, and then rediscover it anew, again within himself. And it is not a matter of spatially distinct parts or a succession of phases in time, since the categories of space and time do not apply to the Absolute. Therefore, to avoid a contradiction, we must admit that “within the absolute unity of the divine substance, there are three Subjects or Hypostases,” which are co-eternal and express each the whole of divinity in its entirety. This Divinity is a Person, as are each of its Hypostases. Distinguishing three divine persons does not alter the absolute unity of God. We need only recognize that this personal Unity should be determined more precisely as a Trinity.30— We stated previously that, for Solovyov, his doctrine of the Trinity draws solely on the Neoplatonic doctrine. But even the most superf- cial comparison of these two doctrines would show that this statement is untrue. There is, of course, a certain kinship between these doctrines, but it is extremely vague and can easily be explained by the fact that Neoplatonism strongly infuenced Christian philosophy. There is also no evidence that Solovyov drew directly from the writings of Plotinus and his followers. On the other hand, his dependence on Christian dogma is too obvious for us to dwell on it. But it was not only Christian dogma, properly speaking, that inspired Solovyov. Here and elsewhere, the speculations of German Idealists served as an immediate source for his metaphysics. Surprisingly, Solovyov here relies more on Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion than he does on the writings of Schelling, whose doctrine of the Trinity differs signifcantly from his own.31 Solovyov’s frst presentation of his doctrine, in the Principles, reproduces Hegel almost verbatim.32 And if Solovyov’s Lectures and Russia are less direct in this borrowing, it is only because the Hegelian origins of the dialectic, leading to the distinction of the 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 29 three “moments” of the Absolute, and the very terms by which these “moments” are characterized, are nonetheless evident. Solovyov carefully avoids any indication of the actual sources of his Trinitarian doctrine. He stresses in much the same way the so-called independence of this doctrine vis-à-vis Christian dogma. In other words, for Solovyov, the doctrine of the Trinity necessarily follows from the development of the doctrine of the Absolute and bears no debt to Christian tradition itself. This undoubtedly sincere illusion shows how far dogmatism penetrated his thinking from the outset. He thought that, through religious experience, he could fnd in his own mind all the dog- matic truths, including the truth of the dogma of the Trinity. He was even willing to claim that the names attributed by dogma to the divine Hypostases could be sourced independently of theological tradition. For him, the names father, son, and spirit are suitable for fnite beings only in a very imperfect way, because none fully realize the characteristics implied by the notions these words designate. Rather, these characteristics are completely and perfectly realized only by the three persons of the divine Trinity, and it is therefore natural to call them Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.33 A second, analogous argument leads just as naturally to another determination of the Hypostases. Introspection offers us three phenomena that we shall call, respectively, “will,” “thought or representation,” and “sentiment.” But analysis of the essence of these phenomena shows that this essence is realized only with strong imperfections in the fnite being revealed by introspection. Instead, the characteristics we necessarily attribute to the divine Hypostases correspond exactly to the characteristic traits of the essence of the phenomena in question. Therefore, in its frst mode of existence, the Absolute distinguishes itself from its Other as its principle and source. Yet, to be the source of the Other is characteristic of the will. The frst Hypostasis may therefore be called the divine Will. But by opposing the Other in and through its will, the Absolute distinguishes itself in its second mode: it presents the Other to itself or it represents itself.34 So the second Hypostasis is Representation or divine Thought. Finally, in being represented by God, the Other responds to him, and God, in and through this interaction, is found in the Other just as he fnds the Other in himself. “By acting on one another, they become sensitive [oщyтитeльными] to each other: this interaction is the third mode of existence, and is none other than Sentiment.”35 30 A. KOJÈVE

Determining the three Hypostases as Will, Thought, and Sentiment enriches our idea of God, for we can now use the data of introspection in our analysis (taking care, of course, to remove all that is fnite and imperfect in man). And the psychological interpretation of the Trinity permits, in turn, the completion of the doctrine of ideas. The three Hypostases are none other than the modes of God’s relationships with his Other or his “content.” We could say, by way of psychological interpretation, that in the frst Hypostasis, God wills his “content,” represents it in the second, and feels it in the third. Yet we also know that this divine “content” is the ideal cosmos or the absolute and unitotal Idea. Consequently, God eternally wills, thinks, and feels this idea within a single Trinitarian act. According to Solovyov, “this idea is, as the object of God’s will, the Supreme Good; as the object of his thought, it is the absolute Truth; and, as an object of his sentiment, perfect Beauty.”36 The absolute idea now reveals itself as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. But since the same divine essence is present in all three Hypostases, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful cannot be considered three distinct elements. They are but three different manifestations of one and the same entity, which, for Solovyov, is absolute Love. “The will of the Good is Love in its inner essence, or the original source of Love. The Good itself is the unity of everything or everyone, i.e., Love as the desired or beloved—consequently, Love is here treated in its proper and supreme sense, as the idea of ideas: this is essential unity [cyщecmвeннoe]. The True is that same Love, i.e., the unity of everything, but now objectively represented: this is ideal unity. Lastly, Beauty, too, is that same Love (i.e., the unity of everything), but only insofar as it is revealed or sensed [oщyтимaя]: this is the real unity.”37 And the mutual relationship of these three manifestations of the unitotal Idea or of absolute Love may be expressed as follows: “The Absolute realizes the Good by the True through the Beautiful.”38 We fnally arrive at the following: the unitotal Absolute is a personal and living God, one in three Persons, which realizes in itself for all eternity the supreme Good, the absolute Truth and the perfect Beauty, willing, thinking, and feeling its proper content, which is the ideal Cosmos or the totality of Being.

2.1.3 Théandrie and Σοφία Up to this point, Solovyov’s metaphysics was as he described it, a “rationalization and systematization” of the religious truths given in pre-Christian revelation. As such, it could be developed independently 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 31 of Christian dogmas. But Christianity, an absolute and universal religion, already included the truths of earlier religions. The part of metaphysics that systematizes these truths, while not strictly speaking Christian, is however strictly orthodox. Everything said of God in that respect is absolutely true: it contains the truth and nothing but the truth. However, this part of the metaphysics does not contain the whole truth. Christianity is not only a synthesis of the truths previously revealed in other religions. It reveals a new truth of its own, owing to which it is the fnal and absolute religion, the culmination and complete and perfect realization of the progressive revelation given by the series of historical religions. This new truth was revealed in and through the person Jesus Christ, the God-Man, and only the idea of Divine Humanity [Théandrie] expresses the entire truth of divine being. Therefore, for the metaphysical doctrine of God to be considered complete, it must refect the revealed truth of Christianity. In other words, the idea of God as we have expressed it thus far must be complemented with the idea of Divine Humanity. From a systematic point of view, the doctrine of the God- Man follows the Trinitarian doctrine and completes the development of the doctrine of God by making it consistent with Christian dogma. The idea of Divine Humanity is, before all else, the culmination and crown of Solovyov’s metaphysical theology. Yet, as we shall see below, it is also the starting point and basis for his metaphysical doctrine of World. This idea is therefore the keystone of Solovyov’s metaphysical doctrine and, for this very reason, the center of gravity of his entire philosophical system in general: it is the guiding idea of all his thought. The doctrine of the God-Man is not only the most important part of his metaphysics; it is also the most interesting, the most original, and the most personal. At the same time, however, it is also the most diffcult. Despite, or perhaps because of, its central position, it is far from being clear and unequivocal. All the contradictions and antinomies of Solovyov’s thought are concentrated within it, contradictions which he did not generally attempt to reconcile, and of which he does not even seem aware. Even outside of these contradictions, the doctrine is con- fusing and diffcult to grasp. Too preoccupied to remain consistent with dogma, Solovyov would sometimes use obscure or pictorial formulas. This lack of clarity pervades his writings. In particular—and this is important—he does not always clearly distinguish between two different forms of his doctrine: between that which belongs to the doctrine of God, wherein the existence of the empirical world plays no role, and that which appears within or, more accurately, as the doctrine of World. 32 A. KOJÈVE

The interrelationship of the two forms of the doctrine of the God- Man is not easy to defne, and one fnds little that is precise in Solovyov’s work on this matter. Perhaps we should say that it simply amounts to two different descriptions of one and the same thing: one from a temporal perspective, the other sub specie aeterni. Nevertheless, the inadequate distinction between these points of view often makes it diffcult to understand Solovyov’s doctrine completely. To avoid any misunderstanding, let us stress now that the following pages will be concerned only with the doctrine of God: by interpreting the idea of Divine Humanity, we shall, of course, speak of the spatial and temporal empirical world, but the idea itself implies neither the notion of such a world nor the categories of space and time themselves.— The doctrine of the God-Man is the specifcally Christian part of the metaphysics. According to Solovyov, it may be developed independently while still conforming to Christian dogma. Thus, in the Critique of Abstract Principles, he credits himself with arriving at the idea of Divine Humanity by following the immanent dialectic of the idea of the Absolute, specifcally through the idea of the Other. Through an obscure and highly abstract line of reasoning not necessary to reproduce here, Solovyov arrives frst at the following con- clusions. The divine “content,” previously defned as materia prima and unitotal Idea, “is not only the Other of the Absolute, but another Absolute.”39 Clearly, because the existence of two absolute beings is impossible, “the second [Absolute] cannot be absolute in the same sense as the frst.”40 “Unlike the existing [cyщeгo] Unitotality [the frst Absolute], it is the becoming [cтaнoвящeecя] Unitotality.”41 If it belongs to God (the frst Absolute), who is the subject of an absolute content through one eternal and indivisible act, the other being (the second Absolute) can be of the same content only by means of a gradual process: if the frst is unitotal, the second becomes unitotal; if the frst possesses the Unitotality, the second gradually takes hold of it and thus, eventually, unites with the frst.42 What is important to remember in these passages is that the “second Absolute” is identifed with the “Other” or the divine “content.” The Absolute “becoming” is further identifed with ideal Humanity, or the Man of the eternal God-Man. This much is clear from the statements in the Critique, where Humanity, for Solovyov, is nothing but the “content” of the Absolute. However, without denying its signifcance in other writings, this identifcation of the second Absolute or Humanity 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 33 with the “content” of God carries a special importance for understanding Solovyov’s philosophy; nowhere is this more clearly asserted than in the passages of the Critique cited above. Hence their interest and importance. Incidentally, the deduction found in the Critique is not only devoid of any demonstrative value, but the very idea of such a deduction contradicts one of the central tenets of Solovyov’s metaphysics, a position supported as much in his other writings as in the Critique itself. According to Solovyov, Absolute “becoming” is none other than the empirical world, or the metaphysical substrate of this world. The deduction of Absolute “becoming” or, in other words, the future of the Other is therefore a priori dependent upon the existence and future of the world. But Solovyov always held that: (1) the existence of the world is the consequence of a free act of the divine “content” or ideal Humanity, separated from God in and through this act; and (2) that the future of the world, or its eventual reunion with the Absolute, is also a series of free acts taken by fallen Humanity, who return to God in and through these acts. Being free, all such acts are neither expected nor necessary. Consequently, they cannot be subject to an a priori deduction, taken either separately or in their entirety. Thus, the Critique, while deducing a priori the future of the second Absolute, repeatedly affrms the contingency and freedom of its “fall” (a fall that is the sole cause of the future) and yet makes no attempt at reconciliation. The contradiction is clear, but Solovyov seems not to have noticed it. We will therefore simply neglect the a priori deduction of the future of the second Absolute, retaining for our purposes only the identifcation of this Absolute with the divine “content” or the Other. It is nevertheless easy to explain what led Solovyov to undertake this deduction, despite its inconsistency with his metaphysics as a whole.43 As previously stated, it was important for him to arrive at the notion of the God-Man through the immanent development of the doctrine of the Absolute. To this end, he was obliged to identify the Other of the Absolute (distinguished from the Absolute itself, though nevertheless united with it for all eternity) with Humanity, the idea of the Other being introduced early in his doctrine for its subsequent identifcation with the latter. He therefore had to fnd a middle ground that would allow him to establish a relationship between the idea of the Other (an idea originating in a mystical vision of the Divine Being, whose characteristics are deduced a priori for the idea of the Absolute) and the 34 A. KOJÈVE notion of man (offered by a posteriori analysis of the data furnished by psychological experience and constituted within the empirical and fnite world). This middle ground can be located a priori by subtracting the second Absolute (previously identifed with the Other) and then demonstrating that the second Absolute, as “becoming,” is the very nature of the empirical world. This is precisely what Solovyov did in the Critique. Indeed, if the Other, as Absolute “becoming,” is the essence of the world, then we have a right to search among the notions suggested by this world for one corresponding to the a priori idea of its essence. Furthermore, we have a right to use this empirical notion of the essence of the world to determine more comprehensively the nature of the second Absolute, which is to say, the nature of the Other. By following the “inductive” method, the use of which is justifed by the deduction found in the Critique, Solovyov can determine the second Absolute or the Other as Ideal Humanity. Solovyov seeks frst of all to clarify the a priori notion of the second Absolute. This Absolute, considered as becoming—which is to say, as separate from God and constituting the essence of the empirical world— includes two distinct elements: (1) the absolute or divine element, which is in a state of perpetual growth; and (2) the diminishing natural or fnite element, due to which it is not, but only becomes, absolute. This dual being, independent of God, yet equal to God in essence, is therefore infnitely perfectible. It is only real in and through the Absolute: the Absolute, however, is not really in it, but only ideally, as an idea of this kind can be realized only by destroying the reality of fnitude, of nature.44 After determining these fundamental a priori characteristics of the second Absolute, considered as “becoming” or as the essence of the world, Solovyov attempts to demonstrate a posteriori that, among all empirical beings manifesting and realizing this essence, man alone embod- ies all such characteristics in himself. He concludes, therefore, that the essence of the world and the essence of mankind are identical; the second Absolute, the essence of the world, is, in other words, a human Absolute or an absolute Humanity. Solovyov, of course, does not want to identify the second Absolute, a unitotal being, with empirical humanity. He knows very well that this humanity is an agglomerate of corporeal beings isolated from each other in space, and who are born, live, and die in time. However, he believes he can demonstrate that behind each empirical man one can fnd an 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 35

“ideal man,” who, granted, is inaccessible to sense-experience, but is nonetheless real in the highest degree. “What is this ideal man?” “To be real, he must be both one and multiple; therefore, he is not only the universal and the general essence, which is abstracted from all individual humans (i.e., the general notion of “man”), but a universal and yet individual being, including in itself all such individuals in reality. Each of us, each human being, essentially and actually participates in the universal or absolute Man and is rooted in him.”45 Yet neither the human individual nor empirical humanity fully realizes the idea of the unitotal Man. As a biological being, man is individually fnite and isolated. But in each empirical man lies the unitotal element, represented by the consciousness he has of himself. “Beneath the human form each being is ideally all, since each being can encompass everything in its consciousness, and since everything for man has an actual and positive existence in his idea.”46 By encompassing the ideal totality of being in the unity of consciousness, Man is a unitotal Absolute, if not absolute in reality, in his being, then at least absolute ideally, in and through his consciousness. Of all empirical beings, man is the only one endowed with this unitotal character, for man is the only conscious being. Being unitotal in his ideal essence, man’s essence is identical with that of the divine; and possessing as he does an absolute essence, man is thus a being for whom reality is infnitely perfectible. His essence can be realized more and more perfectly in his existence, and the ideal totality of his consciousness could become a real totality of his being without ceasing to be what it is—without ceasing to be human. The infnitely perfectible man is thus infnite in his perfection. But even in his imperfect state he is an infnity of potentiality: he is an ideal Unitotality heading toward realization, or, in other words, an Absolute becoming. Finally, and most impor- tantly, man is independent in relation to God, because he is essentially free and realizes this absolute freedom in himself. He is master not only of his acts but of his very existence: he is free to decide for or against God. “In God or against God, he is the active subject and the real cause of his acts, whatever their reasons, for he himself is acting. And so he is absolutely free: free in God… and free against God; … he is free in freedom, and free in necessity; … for necessity is only one of his states, while he himself is more than all of his states.”47 So even empirical man has all the characteristics a priori analysis attributes to the second Absolute. Granted, he possesses them only ideally, only potentially, in other words, as essence (as a member of ideal 36 A. KOJÈVE

Humanity) and not as reality (as a concrete individual). For the empirical reality of man is not a perfect realization of his essence: it is only infnitely perfectible. But we have already seen that, for Solovyov, the essence of empirical man is neither an abstract notion nor a mere possibility. This essence is universal; yet, it is also a real and concrete individual, the ideal Man, unitotal, and absolute. This unitotal man (the real essence and infnite perfection of man and of empirical humanity, both of which are infnitely perfectible in their being) possesses all the characteristics that man and empirical humanity possess only as potentials. That is, he possesses in reality all the characteristics of the second Absolute. We know very well that Solovyov believed he could conclude, from the identity of characteristics, the identity of things marked by them. Accordingly, for him, the ideal Man is the second Absolute. But we also know that this second Absolute is the divine “content” or the Other. The Other of the Absolute, which is an another Absolute, is therefore unitotal ideal Humanity. The Absolute, the unity of itself and its Other, is thus the unity of divine and human Absolutes—that is, a divine-human Absolute. To put it yet another way, the Absolute is not only the Trinitarian personal God: it is the God-Man.— In developing his doctrine of Divine Humanity [Théandrie], Solovyov spoke of empirical man, man as he exists in our fnite world. However, yet again, this particular development was only a methodological detour allowing us to reach a new determination of the Absolute “content” and, consequently, a new determination of the Absolute itself. This determination, which in this case is both adequate and defnitive, applies regardless of the existence of a fnite world or empirical humanity. In determining the Absolute as God-Man, it does not exceed the sphere of the Absolute, and so we learn nothing about the existence of an empirical world. Of course, it is also very important to be able to state that the Man of the God-Man possesses the same essence as ourselves—indeed, this is one of the fundamental truths of Christian revelation. But this statement could serve as an affrmation only within the metaphysical doctrine of World. Within the doctrine of God it would be nonsensical, as the very idea of empirical man is unknown to it. The idea of the absolute unitotal Man, as it appears in the doctrine of God, has nothing in common with the notion of earthly humanity. This unitotal Man is none other than the “content” of the Absolute, the materia prima, or the ideal cosmos. Solovyov also endeavors to demonstrate that the notion of ideal Humanity, obtained by him through 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 37

“inductive” reasoning, corresponds exactly to the notion of the unitotal Idea as it was determined in the earlier parts of his doctrine of God. In general, the identifcation of the Other with ideal Humanity does not in any way change the previously acquired truths regarding the “content” of the Absolute and the Absolute itself. It is easy to see, for example, that God remains one in himself, as union with unitotal Man does not alter his unity; nor does he lose his individual character, since the universal being with whom God has united is an individual himself. Finally, there is still only one God and not two, for the Man of Divine Humanity is but the “content” of God himself. However, even within the doctrine of God, the identifcation of the “Other” with ideal Humanity is not only the assignment of a new name to something that had been completely and adequately defned previously. This new name corresponds to a new truth, a new determination of the divine “content,” and, therefore, a new determination of God himself. Enriched by this new determination, the metaphysical idea of the Absolute reaches its perfection and wholeness, fnally coinciding with the idea of the God of the Christian religion. This new truth is given by the idea of freedom. We have seen that, for Solovyov, absolute freedom is an essential property of man. To identify the divine “content” and the ideal Man (the essence of empirical man) amounts to saying that this “content” is not just a unitotal Idea, but is also, and above all, an independent and free being. Thus, the Absolute is not only the Unitotality, which is to say, the unity of itself and its Other; it is not only a Person, the particular Subject of the unitotal Idea, which is its “content”; it is not only Trinitarian, in its triple relation with this “content”—it is still frst and foremost the God-Man, which is to say, the free union of two independent beings. All these distinctions are only incidentally relevant for metaphysical refection. In itself the essence of God is simple: this is the idea of the God-Man, who is its full and proper expression. Of course, God does not become God-Man: He is God-Man for all eternity. For all eternity, through a free act of will, God imparts independence and freedom to his “content,” and for all eternity this free and independent “content” (the Man of the God-Man) is freely given to itself to form the free union of the eternal God-Man. Empirical man is “free in God and against God.” The ideal Man, the Man of the God-Man, is therefore free to give himself to God by uniting perfectly with him, or to declare himself against God by refusing this 38 A. KOJÈVE union. His union with God is a free union. But his freedom is contingent upon the independence bestowed by a free act of divine will. The free union of Man with God is thus also a free union of God with Man. The Divine-Human union [l’union théandrique] is therefore a free union of two free and independent beings. And yet, if Man is independent in relation to God and just as free as him, this does not make him a god in turn, for his independence is not absolute and his freedom is a dependent freedom. If God in himself is everything, and nothing lies outside him, Man is everything in God, and he is nothing in himself without God: being only the “content” of God, Man is reduced to nothing by separating himself from God. Man, though he possesses an independent essence, depends on God for his being. But this ontological dependence does not affect his freedom. He is free to be reduced to nothingness by declaring himself against God, and he is being and not nothingness only in and through his free decision to be with God. His being therefore depends on its freedom, and not only that: one could also say that his being is his freedom, that it is existent freedom. But we have just seen that the being of Man is a dependent being. His freedom, which is his being, must therefore also be dependent. And we have seen that this effectively depends on a free act of divine will. Man in himself is not God. He is not an absolute Being in the same sense as God, for his being is dependent on God; and his freedom is not absolute like divine freedom, for it depends on the freedom of God. But the act of divine freedom that imparts freedom to Man is an eternal act, coeternal with God himself. For if the being of Man is not his own, but that of God, and if the being of Man is freedom, then God is only inasmuch as Man is free. Likewise, God himself is free only inasmuch as Man is, and God is only as much as he is free. In a word: Man is not himself God, because in himself, without God or the God-Man, he is nothing; but God himself is God only as the God-Man. This last truth about the Absolute rejoins the frst, which is the source of the whole of the doctrine of God; and this last truth is the fundamental truth of the personal religious experience of Solovyov. For him, the idea of the God-Man is actually the perfect expression of the idea of God-Love. Likewise, the notion of Unitotality and the dialectic of the Other as we know them were also rational expressions of the mystical intuition concerning absolute Love. But these expressions were inadequate, since we only really become aware of love by understanding it as a free and perfect personal union of two free and independent beings. 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 39

So it is the idea of Divine Humanity which perfectly expresses the idea of divine Love; and we necessarily arrive at the idea of the God-Man by beginning with the idea of God-Love. God is Love inasmuch as he is God-Man, and since Love is the real and true essence of divine Being, God is really only God inasmuch as he is God-Man.48— Solovyov gives the Man of the God-Man (“unitotal Man,” “ideal Humanity” or “free and independent Content of the Absolute”) the mystical name of Sophia [Σοϕία], the “Wisdom of God.” For him, this name is neither a metaphor nor an abstract term, but the proper name of a concrete and living person. We know from Solovyov himself that his personal religion was, above all, a religion of Sophia. The Sophia of his lived mystical experience was an individual, concrete, living, almost tangible and in any case visible being, a human-divine being, human in female form, an intimate and condescending being, accessible to intellectual communion, direct and personal, understanding and addressing words, a being which aides and guides in life, a being who is loved by a bright and ardent love, sublime, certain, purifed of all sensuality, but nevertheless aware of being addressed as a feminine being, who accepts that address, who perhaps replies and rewards by revealing her beauty, this beauty never abstract and at times even feminine. In London, working in the library of the British Museum, Solovyov maintained a mystical correspondence with Sophia, and this is what guided his readings, indicating the works that spoke of her, preventing him from taking up those books that would not conjure her. Three times in his life Solovyov found himself in her immediate presence (the last time in Egypt, where he attended her call). Describing these three meetings in a poem of the same name,49 he took care to indicate in a note that “this little autobiography” reproduces “the most important of what has so far happened to me in my life.”50 This mystical experience of Sophia (an erotically tinged mysticism) was, in Solovyov’s view, the most important aspect of his life, and we might even say that it was the only side that mattered to him. However, since we are not concerned with his life, this mysticism does not require further study. It was mentioned only as a reminder that the Solovyov’s metaphysical doctrines, namely Divine Humanity and Sophia, are ultimately based on a mystical experience that is both lived and personal. Instead of examining mysticism proper, we will examine the metaphysical doctrine of Sophia. Indeed, this metaphysics is already partly familiar to us. For within the doctrine of God, Sophia is nothing other 40 A. KOJÈVE than the divine “content” or Other, already defned as materia prima, as the ideal cosmos, as the Good, the True and the Beautiful, and, fnally, as ideal Humanity or the Man of the God-Man. Thus on one hand “Sophia is perfect Humanity, ideal, forever contained in the complete Divine Being.”51 On the other, she is fallen humanity, which is to say the essence of the empirical world (anima mundi), though she only appears as such in the doctrine of World, where Solovyov describes the history of the fall of the unitotal Man (i.e., Sophia) and her gradual return to God. This other aspect of the doctrine of Sophia can therefore be studied in the following section, where we will discuss the metaphysical doctrine of World and see this doctrine as none other than a description of the spatiotemporal appearance of a fallen and repentant Sophia.52 The metaphysical doctrine of Sophia is, on the one hand, the entire doctrine of World, and describes the temporal appearance of fallen Wisdom. On the other hand, it also concerns itself with that part of the doctrine of God that addresses the Other or the “divine content”—this “content” being the eternal Sophia or the ideal Man in his perfect and eternal union with God. We might add that, within the doctrine of God, Sophia is no more than a new name for the divine “content,” conceived as personal Idea or unitotal Humanity. Hence wherever Solovyov refers to this “content” with this new designation,53 he adds little or nothing to what we already know. So when he insists on the concrete, personal and individual character of Sophia, he is only emphasizing what he has already said about the individuality of the ideal unitotal Man; when he refers to her beauty, it is only a reminder that the ideal cosmos is perfect Beauty; when he evokes her almost tangible, quasi-material nature, calling it “the body of God” or “the matter of Divinity,” he is simply returning to the determination of the divine “content” as materia prima, the notion of the atom-Idea; and, fnally, when he states that Sophia is the principle and essence of all true love, this again provides nothing new, for we already know that the unitotal Idea is the idea of love, that God is Love, that divine Love is the love of God for Man and of Man for God, that this free love, or this freedom in and through love, is the essence and actual being of the ideal Man. The only new determination of divine content brought by the name Sophia is given in the notion of the “feminine in God.” Solovyov insists repeatedly on the feminine character of Sophia. But, within his metaphysics, even the term feminine is only a new name for a property of the ideal Man that was already mentioned elsewhere. Indeed, whenever 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 41

Solovyov sought to justify his use of the term and to clarify its sense, he would state that Sophia is either a purely passive (“nonexistent” [néant] or “purely potential”) being, one that is naturally receptive [вocпpинимaющeй]; or that, because she is “positioned between the fnite and the absolute, … she is by her nature the principle of duality (the ἥ ἀόριστος δυάς of the Pythagoreans)—the most general ontological determination of the feminine.”54 Yet we already know that the second Absolute has, inasmuch as it is “becoming,” a dual nature (fnite and infnite), that Man receives his freedom and his being from God, and that he is purely passive because he is only inasmuch as he gives himself to God. One can say in summary that when Solovyov speaks of the divine “content” as Sophia he says nothing essentially new; this stands in comparison with his discussion of this “content” as the ideal cosmos or as the Man of the God-Man. However, if one recalls that the metaphysical doctrine of Sophia has no specifcally separate or isolable content of its own, then one will also recall that, in a certain sense, all of Solovyov’s metaphysics is a metaphysics of Sophia, for, as he says, she is not only the “content” of the Absolute, without which God would not be God, but also the effcient cause (anima mundi) and material cause (materia prima), the real essence (the unitotal idea, or ideal Humanity) of the fnite universe. Yet, in saying so, we also affrm that the entirety of Solovyov’s metaphysics, and, consequently, all his philosophical thoughts in general, are based on personal mystical experience, representing the very foundation of his spiritual life. This much is indisputable. Yet the metaphysical doctrine of the philosopher cannot be considered an adequate expression of mystical experience. The distance between the Sophia of his metaphysical theory and the divine-female being of his mystical experience is enormous. Indeed, nothing of the mystical would be learned if the theory alone was studied, for everything we know of it sits quite badly with the theory. And though it is clear that many of the characteristic elements of Sophia’s mysticism have their equivalents in the metaphysical doctrine, it is equally clear that the Sophia of this metaphysics could not, for example, call Solovyov into the Egyptian desert. Moreover, considered in itself, the metaphysical doctrine of Sophia is far from a completely original work. It is true that Solovyov himself does not indicate the source for his doctrine in his published works: he is content to set out (in an article entitled Auguste Comte’s Idea of 42 A. KOJÈVE

Humanity, 1898) the doctrine of the “Great One,” noting in it the similarity between the doctrine of the French philosopher and his own, yet also stressing that the profound sense of this doctrine was only “vaguely felt” by its author. A passage from a letter of 1877 proves, however, that he did indeed study the early “Sophia specialists.” Before the publication of his frst metaphysical treatise, it appears he read the writings of Paracelsus, Jakob Böhme, Georg Gichtel, Gottfried Arnold, John Pordage, Svedenborg, and St. Martin.55 The writings of these mystics, particularly those of Böhme, contain many ideas on Sophia that may be found in the doctrine of the Russian philosopher.56 Moreover, in his youth Solovyov read much Schelling, and even though Schelling does not use the term Sophia itself, everything he has to say about the realm of ideas in God (particularly in the Bruno dialogue) is nearly identical to the corresponding statements by Solovyov. It would be too time-consuming to undertake a detailed comparison of Solovyov’s doctrine of Sophia and the doctrines of the thinkers named above. We therefore limit ourselves to stating that the kinship is signif- icant and that Solovyov himself was deeply infuenced by them. In his doctrine of Sophia, as elsewhere, Solovyov undoubtedly borrows much from his predecessors and, as always, schematizes, simplifes, and impov- erishes through this borrowing. He draws in particular on Böhme and Schelling, though his own thought lacks both the depth and vigor of theirs. However, Solovyov’s doctrines of Divine Humanity [Théandrie] and Sophia are not completely reducible to the corresponding doctrines of Schelling, Böhme, or their followers. What distinguishes them, above all, is the importance that Solovyov attributes to Man: the idea that Man is coeternal with God and absolutely free in relation to him; that Man is the content of the Absolute and thus represents the totality of being; that he is independent, which is to say “before” the appearance of the world; that he is eternally and yet freely united with God, and that God himself is God only in and through this union; that Man is, simply put, nearly equal to God, and yet he is also the same being that rebelled against God by appearing, in his fall, as the fnite universe and, within this universe, as historical humanity; that it was he and only he who, by freely giving back to God, could save this universe; and that, fnally, he is the being within each of us, the being with whom each of us is really and essentially involved—this idea is Solovyov’s own, and it is not found with such strength or breadth in Böhme, or even in Schelling. 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 43

If we seek other philosophers who assign a similar importance to man, a degree of importance that is tempting to call superhuman, then it is not Böhme nor Schelling we should look to, but rather Hegel, and Comte. In a sense, Solovyov was right to see the latter as a predecessor for his doctrine of Sophia. Yet, clearly, this connection is at most only an affnity and not an infuence. Moreover, for Comte, man is not equal to God: he replaces God. The result would be the same if one attempted a “theological” interpretation of Hegel’s anthropology. For Comte, as for Hegel, man can be absolute only by taking the place of God: for them, man is absolute, but only because no Absolute exists other than man. In contrast, Solovyov’s anthropology is and stays essentially theistic and Christian: for Solovyov, too, man is absolute, but he is a second Absolute, absolute only in and through the frst, the Absolute itself or God. In other words, for Solovyov, although Man is, so to speak, “more” absolute than Man for Böhme or Schelling, he is “less” absolute than Man for Hegel or Comte. Only here this “less” probably does not possess the signifcance we would be tempted to attribute it. There is perhaps less modesty in attributing man a so-called “secondary” role, as Solovyov does in his theistic thought, than in assigning him the primary role in an atheistic system. In any case, it is this idea of the absolute Man placed before God that marks the originality of the idea of Sophia, the doctrine of Divine Humanity [Théandrie] and, moreover, all of Solovyov’s metaphysics in general. Of course, Solovyov was not the frst to put forward this idea, and it is not only found in his thought. Being an ultimate “sublimation” of the fundamental idea of Christianity, it often appears in a more or less radical form in the history of Christian theology. For instance, the anthropology of Origen, the German mystics of the Middle Ages, and many other more or less heretical Christian thinkers are very close to the anthropology of Solovyov. But this anthropology, or rather this Sophialogy of Russian theosophy, still has a particular nuance that distinguishes it from similar occidental mystical doctrines: it is undoubtedly based on a living intuition, and it represents the most original, the most personal part of Solovyov’s work. It is unarguable that the doctrine of Sophia contains obscurities, antinomies, and unreconciled contradictions. However, one should remember that these are not so much the fault of Solovyov’s presentation as they are diffculties immanent to the very ideas he presents. 44 A. KOJÈVE

Notes 1. Kojevnikoff, A. (1934) “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev”, Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses, 14 (6), 534–554; Kojevnikoff, A. (1935) “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev (Suite et fn)”, Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses, 15 (1–2), 110–152. Kojève’s opening bibliographical note, attached to the 1934 publication cited above. Solovyov’s works, written by Solovyov in French and published in France: 1. Soloviev, Vladimir (Sept 1888) “Le Saint-Vladimir et L’État crétien” [“St. Vladimir and the Christian State”], L’Univers, 4, 11, 19, 22 2. Soloviev, Vladimir (1888) L’Idée russe [The Russian Idea] (Paris: Perrin et Cie) 3. Soloviev, Vladimir (1923 [1889]) La Russie et L’Eglise universelle [Russia and the Universal Church], 3rd ed. (Paris: Nouvelle Librarie parisienne, Albert Savine). French and German Translations: 1. Soloviev, Vladimir (1910) Vladimir Soloviev: Choix de texts [Vladimir Solovyov: Choice of Texts], translated by J.B. Séverac (Paris: L. Michaud) 2. Soloviev, Vladimir (1916) Trois entretiens sur la guerre, la morale et la religion [Three Conversations on War, Morality, and Religion], translated by Eugène Tavernier (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie) 3. Solowjeff, Wladimir (1914, 1916) Ausgewählte Werke 1–2 [Selected Works 1–2], translated by Harry Köhler (Jena: Diederichs); (1921, 1922) Ausgewählte Werke 3–4 [Selected Works 3–4], translated by Harry Köhler (Stuttgart: Der Kommende Tag). Vol. 1 (1914) contains: “Les fondements spirituels de la vie” [“The Spiritual Foundations of Life”], “Le mystère du progrès” [“The Mystery of Progress”], “Lettres du dimanche et de Pâques” [“Letters of Sunday and Easter”], “Trois entretiens” [“Three Conversations”]; Vol. 2 (1916) contains: “La justifcation du bien” [“The Justifcation of Good”]; Vol. 3 (1921) contains: “Douze conférences sur l’Homme-Dieu” [“Twelve Lectures on the God-Man”]; Vol. 4 (1922) contains: “La question nationale en Russia” [“The National Question in Russia”] (Part 1, Chapters I–II and IV–VI; Part 2, Chapters I–II), “L’idée russe” [“The Russian Idea”], “De la decadence de l’idée médiévale” [“Of the Decadence of the Medieval Idea”] 4. Solowjoff, Wladimir (1911) Judentum und Christentum [Judaism and Christianity], translated by Ernest Keuchel (Dresden: P. Tietz) 5. Solowjoff, Wladimir (1911) Das Befreiungswerk der Philosophie [The Work of Liberation Philosophy], translated by Ernest Keuchel (Berlin: Verlag des Sozialistischen Bundes) 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 45

6. Solowjeff, Wladimir (1917) Russland und Europa [Russia and Europe], translated by Harry Köhler (Jena: Diederichs) 7. Solowjew, Wladimir (1921) Drei Reden: Dem Andenken Dostojewskis gewidmet [Three Speeches: Dedicated to the Memory of Dostoevsky], translated by Therese Gräfn von Pestalozza (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag). 2. Translators’ note: Kozyrev’s Russian translation of this essay, our main source for many of Solovyov’s original passages, contains a footnote on p. 177 stating that this quotation was not found even after studying the four-volume collection (1908–1923) Письма Владимира Сергеевича Соловьева [Letters of Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov], edited by Е.Л. Радлов (St. Petersburg: Общественная Польза). See Кожев, Александр (2007) “Религиозная метафизика Владимира Соловьева” [“The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov”], Атеизм и другие работы [Atheism and Other Works], edited by А.М. Руткевич, translated by А.П. Козырев (Мoscow: Праксис), pp. 175–257. 3. Translators’ note: The original terms in this sentence, in order, are toute faite [fully formed or readymade] and de toute pièce [from scratch], which appears twice. We have chosen to replace the second instance of the latter with “fully formed” for ease of reading and comprehension. 4. Translators’ note: The original titles are, respectively: Критика отвлеченных начал (1877–1880), Философские начала цельного знания (1877, unfnished), Чтения о Богочеловечестве (1887–1890), and La Russie et L’Eglise universelle (1889). 5. Kojève’s note: We consulted only the printed works, the unpublished man- uscripts being for us inaccessible. 6. Kojève’s note: Cf. Соловьев, Владимир (1902) Собрание сочинений 3 [Collected Works 3], 1st ed, edited by В.С. Соловьев and Е.Л. Радлов (St. Petersburg: Просвещение), pp. 29–32. Translators’ note: Solovyov uses the term сведения, meaning simply “information.” However, its root also belongs to the word “witness” [свидетель], so the translation could also be appropriately rendered as “observations,” following the sense used in scholarly and scientifc inquiry. Incidentally, the etymology of witness in both English and Russian can be traced to the Greek μάρτυς [martyr]. 7. Соловьев, Владимир (1911 [1897]) “Идея бога” [“The Idea of God”], Собрание сочинений 9 [Collected Works 9], 2nd ed, edited by В.С. Соловьев and Е.Л. Радлов (St. Petersburg: Просвещение), p. 14. 8. Kojève’s note: See (1923) Russia, for example, p. 208. In Russia, primarily a book of propaganda aiming to unify the Church, written by a Catholic Solovyov for Catholic readers, all of this is no more than a concession to the tradition of Catholic theology. And this is not the only instance where 46 A. KOJÈVE

Solovyov’s thought appears somewhat disfgured by the Catholic tendencies of his French book. 9. Translators’ note: Emphasis added by Kojève. 10. Соловьев, Владимир (1990) Сочинения 2 [Works 2], 2nd ed. (Moscow: Мысль), pp. 232–233. Translators’ note: Kojève does not include the ellipses indicated above. 11. Kojève’s note: See (1902) Works 1, pp. 340, 347. 12. (1990) Works 2, p. 220. 13. (1990) Works 1, p. 702. 14. Kojève’s note: See (1902) Works 1, pp. 332–348, and (1911) Works 2, pp. 287–293. All of this certainly presents nothing original. But, as this line of reasoning is common to Christian philosophy, searching for Solovyov’s frst-hand sources would serve no purpose. 15. Translators’ note: In Solovyov’s Russian, the original term is всеединое, the “unity of all.” Aptly translated into French as unitotalité, the sim- plicity of this neologism may be demonstrated in the following way. Всеединое is directly parallel to the everyday Russian вселенная, just as unitotality parallels universe in English (вселенная meaning, of course, “universe”). Its origin is likely Schelling’s proposition 25, “All is One, or totality is unconditionally One,” from his 1804 essay “System of Philosophy in General and of the Philosophy of Nature in Particular.” See (1994) Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F.W.J. Schelling, edited and translated by Thomas Pfau (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 139–194. 16. (1990) Works 1, p. 704. Translators’ note: The material in square brackets was inserted by Kojève. 17. (1990) Works 1, p. 707. 18. Kojève’s note: See (1911) Works 1, pp. 348–354, and (1902) Works 2, pp. 293–298. 19. Kojève’s note: See, for example, Schelling, F.W.J. (1860) Sämmtliche Werke 7 [Complete Works 7], edited by K.F.A. Schelling (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta), pp. 358–359, 368, 373, 375, 390, 399. 20. Kojève’s note: Solovyov’s thought is clearly unrealistic here. In his 1875 essay “О действительности внешнего мира и основании метафизического познания” [“On the Reality of the Outer World and the Basis of Metaphysical Knowledge”], he tries to justify metaphysical realism. Such arguments, however, are devoid of interest, since they are rather simplistic and lack originality. Translators’ note: In the main text above, the term “representation” is used in the philosophical sense of notion or concept. 21. Соловьев, Владимир (1989) Сочинения 2 [Works 2], edited by Н.В. Котрелева and Е.Б. Рашков (Moscow: Правда), pp. 50–51. 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 47

22. Kojève’s note: In Russian, the word стремление [striving] has the double meaning of dynamic tendency and aspiration; the verb представлять [represent] could be interpreted as пред-ставлять, to “set before” or “re-present.” Cf. the German words Streben and vorstellen (vor-[sich]-stellen). 23. (1989) Works 2, p. 52. 24. (1989) Works 2, pp. 66–67. Translators’ note: Kojève modifes Solovyov’s original passage slightly, which reads: “the bearer of an idea, or its subject… should possess, therefore, consciousness and individuality [личностью].” Conceivably, личность could also be correctly translated as “personhood” to draw the parallel with Godmanhood or Богочеловечество. 25. (1989) Works 2, p. 67. 26. Kojève’s note: See (1902) Works 2, p. 298. 27. Kojève’s note: For the doctrine of ideas, see (1902) Works 3, pp. 44–64. In his doctrine of ideas, Solovyov ties his intellectual lineage to Plato and Leibniz; he could have, more justly, aligned himself with the Neoplatonic doctrine. There is however no need to search for his sources outside of the writings of Schelling (see Schelling’s 1802 dialogue Bruno). 28. (1989) Works 2, p. 81. 29. Kojève’s note: Play on words: to present—to present itself—to represent itself. 30. Kojève’s note: See (1911) Works 1, p. 357, (1902) Works 3, pp. 77–88, and (1923) Russia, pp. 205–215, 218–221. 31. Kojève’s note: The doctrine of the Trinity itself, which one also fnds in the “positive philosophy” of Schelling (see his (1859) Works 4, p. 65), differs essentially from Solovyov’s conception. The doctrine of the “powers” of “Negative Philosophy” was partially utilized by Solovyov, but he does not admit the fourth “power” that Schelling introduced, following Bohme (see Schelling (1856) Works 1, pp. 286, 399). 32. Kojève’s note: For example, compare Solovyov’s (1911) Works 1, p. 369, and Hegel, G.W.F. (1832) Werke 13 [Works 13], edited by Karl Rosenkranz et al. (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot), p. 184. For his side, Hegel keeps to the German mystical tradition. 33. Kojève’s note: See (1923) Russia, pp. 215–218. 34. Kojève’s note: We fnd again the pun that Solovyov uses so often (cf. notes 22 and 29 above). 35. (1989) Works 2, p. 98. 36. (1989) Works 2, pp. 100–101. Translators’ note: Kojève’s translation differs signifcantly from Solovyov’s original wording in Russian. The content of the original is paraphrased by Kojève in the opening sentences of this paragraph and then condensed into the given quotation. We therefore provide the citation for reference but retain Kojève’s version above. 48 A. KOJÈVE

37. (1989) Works 2, p. 104. Translators’ note: We have followed Solovyov’s original text, since Kojève altered only its punctuation (preferring a semi- colon over a full stop, and a colon over a dash) and omitted the emphasis on “desired.” 38. Kojève’s note: See (1902) Works 3, pp. 94–102. Then see (1911) Works 1, p. 360, where this part of the doctrine of ideas is developed in a slightly different form. 39. (1990) Works 2, p. 234. Translators’ note: The asterisked footnote to this quotation on p. 203 of Kozyrev’s Russian translation of this essay states that, here, Kojève “provides his own formulation, articulating Solovyov’s thought in compact form.” The text inserted into the quotations of this paragraph is Kojève’s. 40. (1990) Works 1, p. 711. 41. (1990) Works 1, p. 709. 42. Kojève’s note: See (1902) Works 2, p. 298. 43. Kojève’s note: We note here that this passage may be a sign of the direct infuence of Schelling; the deduction in question follows the reasoning of the latter as it is found in his 1804 lecture, Philosophie und Religion [Philosophy and Religion]. The antinomy found in this work is also found in Solovyov’s thought. Compare the passage in the main text above to, for example, Schelling (1859) Works 4, pp. 41, 63. 44. Translators’ note: The two italicized terms of this sentence appear in the original in German, not French, as realiter and idealiter, respectively. They recur several times in the paragraphs below, again italicized. 45. (1989) Works 2, p. 118. 46. (1990) Works 1, p. 713. Translators’ note: Kojève alters Solovyov’s wording slightly for clarity; the original reads: “…since everything has for man an actual and positive, if only ideal, being.” 47. (1990) Works 1, p. 715. Translators’ note: Kojève condensed this quotation, omitting several phrases from the original without making use of ellipses. 48. Kojève’s note: For the doctrine of Divine Humanity [Théandrie; Богочеловечество], see: (1911) Works 2, pp. 298–307, (1911) Works 3, pp. 110–118, (1911) Works 4, p. 302, (1902) Works 6, pp. 373, 404– 406, and (1923) Russia, pp. 222–228; cf. also (1902) Works 3, pp. 104– 107, 129–131, 149–156, and (1923) Russia pp. 229–239, 256–264. 49. Translators’ note: The poem is Три свидания [Three Meetings] from Соловьев, Владимир (1974) Стихотворения и шуточные пьесы [Poetry and Comic Pieces], edited by З.Г. Минц (Leningrad: Советский писатель), pp. 125–132. 50. (1974) Poetry and Comic Pieces, p. 132. 51. (1989) Works 2, pp. 113–114. 2 THE RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV 49

52. Kojève’s note: Identifcation of Sophia with the Other: (1902) Works 6, p. 404; with totality or the divine content: (1923) Russia, p. 223; with the material or principal of corporality (materia prima): (1902) Works 3, p. 106; with the unitotal Idea: (1911) Works 9, p. 186; with the Man of the God-Man: (1902) Works 3, p. 106; with the anima mundi: (1902) Works 3, p. 129; identifed as the cosmogenical and historical process and that of the history of fallen Sophia: (1902) Works 6, p. 405. 53. Kojève’s note: The main texts relating to Sophia as such are found in: (1902) Works 3, pp. 106, 110–118, 129–131, (1902) Works 6, pp. 404– 406, (191) Works 9, pp. 178–193, and in (1923) Russia, pp. 222–244, 256–264. These texts, which date from very different periods (1877, 1892, 1898 and 1889), are complementary without contradiction. 54. (1990) Works 2, p. 578. 55. Kojève’s note: See (1909) Letters 2, p. 200. 56. Kojève’s note: For the comparison between Bohme and Solovyov, see, for example: Bohme, Jakob (1831–1847) Sammtliche Werke 3 [Complete Works 3], edited by K.W. Schiebler (Leipzig: J.A. Barth), p. 153, Works 4: pp. 69, 468, Works 6, pp. 156, 171, 193, 202, 225, 246, 665, and Works 7, p. 99. Solovyov’s doctrine of Sophia is also very close to that of Franz von Baader’s. However, according to Solovyov’s intimate friend Lopatin, Solovyov knew of Baader only much later, after his own metaphysical ideas were already well-established. Cf. (1901) Вопросы философии и психологии 56 [Questions of Philosophy and Psychology 56], p. 59. CHAPTER 3

The Doctrine of World

In Solovyov’s writings, the study of the metaphysical doctrine of World cannot be neatly separated from that of the doctrine of God. Usually, Solovyov presents these two doctrines in parallel, interweaving statements about the World within different stages of development of the doctrine of the Absolute. The systematic distinction of these doctrines is however quite clear and easy to establish. The aspect that radically distinguishes the doctrine of World from the doctrine of God is the notion of Sophia’s “fall.” This notion does not exist for the doctrine of God. Here, the divine content, free and independent, means that unitotal Man or Sophia is for all eternity perfectly and wholly united with God. By contrast, in the doctrine of World, the notion of the “fall” is central. This is because, for Solovyov, the World is nothing other than a “fallen” Sophia, separated from God, which returns to God only through a long process, one that is “slow and painful.” Thus we can say that we remain within the doctrine of God whenever we consider Sophia to be in perfect and eternal union with God. But as soon as we introduce the idea of the “fall” of Sophia and consider the progressive reunion of this “fallen” Sophia with the Absolute, we move into the doctrine of World. But while it is relatively easy to establish a clear distinction between the doctrine of God and the doctrine of World, the mutual relationship of these doctrines becomes no clearer. On the contrary, one seems to contradict the other. According to the doctrine of God, the “fall” of Sophia is a potential never made actual, an ideal possibility of separation; the union is made free because of this potential, but the “fall” itself

© The Author(s) 2018 51 A. Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02339-3_3 52 A. KOJÈVE never comes to pass. Sophia thus perfectly realizes its absolute essence for all eternity. But according to the doctrine of World, the “fall” is a reality as it is the sole reason for the existence of the empirical universe studied by this doctrine. The “fallen” Sophia, who is this universe, can only realize its essence gradually, in and through temporal becoming. And yet this “becoming” Sophia is not a being different from the “eternal” Sophia of the doctrine of God: the two doctrines describe the same, single being. The same holds for the idea of Divine Humanity [Théandrie]. Under the doctrine of God, the Absolute does not become but is God-Man for all eternity. Because the category of time does not apply to the Absolute, there is no question of a temporal becoming, and Solovyov does not allow for the idea, dear to Böhme, and other German Idealists, of a timeless becoming in God. On the contrary, the entire doctrine of World could be seen as a description of the “becoming” God-Man. Even if Solovyov did not use this particular expression, he nevertheless stated that the world is the realization of the imperfect union of fallen Humanity (Sophia) with God, and that the process of the evolution of this world is a “divine-human process [бoгoчeлoвeчecкий пpoцecc]” through which this union becomes increasingly perfect. On the one hand, in the doctrine of God, God is God-Man independently of the existence of the world. To put it crudely, one could say that he was “before” the appearance of the world, that he is “during” its existence, and that he will be “after” the reabsorption of the fnite universe into the Absolute. On the other hand, in the doctrine of World, the union of man with God realizes itself in and through the processes of cosmogony and history. Yet there is only one God-Man, because the God-Man is God himself. So there is a contradiction between the doctrine of God and the doctrine of World: the two doctrines speak of a single selfsame entity, determining it differently, the one doctrine contradicting the other. Granted, one could argue (and we have already said as much), that this contradiction is only apparent because the difference of determination stems from the difference in viewpoints. The doctrine of God considers the Absolute sub specie aeterni; however, once we eliminate the notion of time, the notion of becoming is necessarily eliminated as well: by standing outside of time, which is to say, outside of the world, it is recognized that Sophia and the God-Man are eternally what they are. Yet the doctrine of World presupposes the idea of time and considers the Absolute from a temporal point of view. Time is the very essence of becoming, the expression 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 53 of the passage of the potential into the actual: considered within the temporal world, Sophia and the God-Man, eternal in themselves, necessarily appear as becomings. We then have something analogous to that which happens when body A is at rest relative to a second body, B, but in motion vis-à-vis a third body, C. This interpretation (which does not appear as such in the writings of the philosopher) is justifed in the sense that, for Solovyov, the becoming of the God-Man is the real temporal point of view, as time itself begins only in the separation of Sophia from God and ends, as it were, at the moment of their perfect union. And this interpretation remains justifed when we consider that, for Solovyov, the becoming of the God-Man is only as real as the temporal point of view, since to say that no temporal equivalent exists means, for Solovyov, affrming that Sophia is perfectly united with God. But this interpretation does not resolve the diffculty, since the appearance of two opposing points of view is now diffcult to explain. And if one says, as Solovyov himself did, that the emergence of temporality is due to the fall of Sophia, then the interpretation in question becomes meaningless, for it is precisely the notion of Sophia’s fall from an eternal union with God that it sought to explain. Supposing that one of the points of view is illusory does little more than modify the problem, for then one would be obliged to explain the how and why of the illusion. Moreover, the assumption itself is inadmissible, as Solovyov never considers his two opposing metaphysical doctrines to be based on an opposition of truth and error, as a true image opposed to a false one. Affrming the illusory character of the doctrine of World would deny the real existence of the fnite universe. But acosmism in all its form is foreign to Solovyov’s thought. Conversely, to suppose an error, or at the very least an insuffciency, of the doctrine of God, which affrms that God is and does not become the God-Man, would be to introduce a becoming into God, or what is, for Solovyov, time. God would thus be identifed with the World, or the world at least would be incorpo- rated into the Absolute. Solovyov, however, always protested when one attempted to attribute him with pantheistic tendencies. Therefore, we must admit that, taken by themselves, both metaphysical doctrines are true. One is an adequate description of the becoming God-Man; the other, an adequate description of the eternal God-Man. It is therefore as true to affrm the separation of the “becoming” Sophia from God and her gradual reunion with him as it is to affrm the Sophia who remains in perfect and eternal union with God in a single unifed 54 A. KOJÈVE act. But just as there is only one God who is the God-Man, there is only one Sophia, eternally united with God, who nevertheless separates herself from him, assuming the form of “becoming” Sophia or—to use the term Solovyov himself used to designate the fallen Sophia—the “Soul of the World” (anima mundi). We are thus compelled to accept both of Solovyov’s metaphysical doctrines as they appear. We may deny the existence of any formal contradiction between their claims, either because their viewpoints differ or because the fallen Sophia really differs, inasmuch as she is fallen, from the Sophia eternally united with God. But, even if there is no contradiction, there is undoubtedly an antinomy in the metaphysics that we are studying: the antinomy implied by the notion of the becoming of a being that is eternally what it is, the progressive union in time of what is already, for all eternity, united. But this antinomy seems to have escaped Solovyov. He neither mentions it nor seeks to clarify any issues related to it. He admits the fact of the fall of Sophia, but he does not explain how she can be separated from God while remaining united with him. He distinguishes between the fallen Sophia (anima mundi) and the eternal Sophia (Wisdom of God), all the while affrming the singularity of this being, and yet does not specify how the two identities are to be distinguished, stating nothing specifc about the relationship between the world or the anima mundi and the Wisdom that “remains” united with God.1 We will not occupy ourselves with these more than Solovyov. In presenting the doctrine of World, which only begins with the fall of Sophia and only describes the becoming of the fallen Sophia, we will overlook the fact that this same Sophia remains perfectly and completely united with God in the eternal God-Man. The following will be retained from the preceding discussion: the doctrine of World differs from the doctrine of God (1) by the character of its inquiry, occurring from the temporal point of view, and (2) by the object of its inquiry, the fallen or becoming Sophia. But between these two doctrines there is yet another difference: the method. The method of the doctrine of God is, or at least purports to be, a deductive method, a purely a priori method. All of the statements of this doctrine result from an analysis of the dialectical notion of the Absolute, which is an innate notion, immanent to the mind, or else the proper rational expression of the mystical intuition of God-Love: in it the very idea of an irrational empirical fact, undeducible and unpredictable, is unknown. Yet, on the contrary, the method of the doctrine of World is, 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 55 or rather should be, an inductive method, a purely empirical a posteriori method. Solovyov explicitly affrms the absolutely free nature of the fall of Sophia, the Soul of the World (a fall responsible for the appearance of the fnite universe), and of those acts by which the fallen Sophia partially returns herself to God (acts which are the many particular causes of the evolution of this universe). “Through a free act of the Soul of the World, the [ideal] universe fell away [oтпaл] from Divinity; a long series of free acts must eventually reconcile all this rebellious multiplicity with God.”2 Since all these acts are free and may well not have taken place, neither the existence of the world nor its evolution can be predicted or deduced a priori from the notion of the Absolute. Instead, it is the empirical knowledge of the existence of the world, its actual state and its previous evolution that is responsible for asserting the reality of the acts of the fall and the gradual reunion of Sophia with God, for it is only in and through the empirical world that these acts were ever carried out. The doctrine of World should thus be a solely a posteriori metaphysical interpretation of the evolution of the fnite universe, an interpretation that would seek to discover its causes and true essence and relate the notions found within to those resulting from the a priori deductions of the doctrine of God. However, this methodological distinction of Solovyov’s two metaphysical doctrines, despite being a necessary consequence of accepted principles, is not always rigorously maintained. Granted, it is true Solovyov insists on the absolute freedom of the Soul of the World and on the contingency and unpredictability of the evolution of the universe. Yet he also speaks of a “deduction of the empirical world,” and certain parts of his doctrine (especially in Russia) actually have the character of an a priori deduction; this is particularly evident in those places where he draws directly from Schelling. So there is a contradiction between Solovyov’s affrmation of the freedom of the Soul of the World and his attempt to deduce a priori the evolution of the universe. Again, it may perhaps be shown that the contradiction is only apparent. We may indeed attempt to deduce a priori the basis for evolution, which is to say, those structures which are necessarily realized if the Soul commits such or such an act, all while maintaining the a posteriori character of the event itself, or, in other words, the impossibility of knowing until after the fact (starting from the empirical knowledge of structures effectively realized in the world) which of these possible acts were actually committed. But this is not what Solovyov said, and nothing he wrote proves that he thought this 56 A. KOJÈVE way either. There is nothing even to prove that he noticed the contradiction. Moreover, this interpretation does not explain how it could be possible to predict the character and end result of actual future developments. Nonetheless Solovyov strongly believed in the likelihood of this prediction, for, at least at the time of his metaphysical writings, he stated categorically that the world would fnally arrive at its perfection, that the Soul of the World would become again Sophia through a perfect reunion with God. It is furthermore clear that the contradiction described above is directly related to the fundamental antinomy discussed earlier. Indeed, if Sophia is eternally united with God, and if the Soul of the World within her temporal becoming is only the “mirror image” or “transposition into the fnished” of the same Sophia, then it is clear that the Soul must ultimately reunite itself perfectly with God “at the end of time.” Given that the fnal term of the series of “free” acts of the Soul is a priori predict- able, one could say that the series itself is predetermined, at least as a whole, and therefore, to some extent, is also a priori deducible. In the fnal analysis, the contradiction of the doctrine of World, and the antinomy that exists between the statements of this doctrine and the doctrine of God, share a common and profound source in the idea of freedom as it is found in the doctrine of the Absolute. There Solovyov speaks of the free act by which God imparts independence to his “content”—the ideal Man, and of the equally free act by which this Man gives himself completely to God by uniting perfectly with him. But we know that God is God-Man for all eternity that he is God only insofar as he is God-Man. In other words, God transmits independence from eternity to Man, who is united eternally with him. The freedom of God and of ideal Man is thus the freedom of an infnite being, eternal, immutable, excluded from all becoming, a being that is eternally what it is, perfectly realizing its essence in and through a single and indivisible non-temporal act. One may then wonder if the idea of freedom still makes sense in this context, where all real possibility of choice appears to be excluded. Solovyov might object to this, for we can indeed speak of choice in a certain sense. According to Solovyov, the separation takes place within the Absolute only as an ideal possibility, as “pure potentiality.” But does the idea of a never-realized possibility, of a power that never comes to act, still make sense? Can we speak of possibility or of power here, where all is infnite, eternal, immutable, where all succession, becoming, and change is excluded by defnition? 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 57

One could perhaps argue that the evolving world is precisely this ideal possibility, this pure potentiality: it does not exist in the act, because in the act Man is perfectly united with God. The world is only one ideal possibility within the Absolute, and this possibility is only an actuality (perhaps even the sole actuality) for the fnite individual, who is himself nothing more than that potentiality. The “reality” of the world would thus only be the “reality” of a single possibility, the possibility for Man to decide against God. But we have seen that, without this possibility, freedom itself becomes illusory: the “reality” of the world is therefore the very reality of human freedom and, therefore, of the God-Man. Yet we also know that this freedom is real in the absolute sense of the word, since it is the very being of the Absolute: the “reality” of the world is also an absolute reality, and the world is thus real, not despite being only a potentiality, a possibility within the Absolute, but because it is so. But even if we accept this suffciently “dialectical” interpretation of the idea of freedom and the idea of the world, the diffculties posed thus far have not all been eliminated. More to the point, even if the above seems to be consistent with the general trend of Solovyov’s thought, it cannot lay claim to any of his texts. Solovyov generally does not seem to be aware of the diffculties implicit in his system. In any case, he makes no attempt to clarify or deepen his idea of freedom, which seems to him simple and consistent, but which for us emerges as the deepest source of antinomies and contradictions in his thought. Since Solovyov made no attempt to solve these problems, we will leave them be and retain from all of the above only this: Solovyov’s doctrine of World is the description of a series of free acts of Sophia (the anima mundi), who falls away from God only to gradually reunite with him. In other words, this doctrine describes the becoming of the God- Man as the spatiotemporal evolution of the fnite universe, beginning with the fall of Sophia and ending with her perfect reunion with God.3— The doctrine of World therefore begins with the description of the fall of Sophia. Since this fall was caused by a free act of the Soul, and since it is the sole cause of the existence of the fnite universe, Solovyov should not have spoken of it as an act of cosmogony by God. Yet he does so in Russia: “the effcient cause of creation [of the fnite world] is the act of the will by which God refrains from cancelling through his omnipotence the possible reality of chaos.”4 But it is clear (as is often the case in 58 A. KOJÈVE his French writings) that Solovyov uses ambiguous language to preserve the appearance of a perfect harmony between his doctrine and dogma. According to his true opinion, what God “refrains from cancelling” is not chaos, but the freedom of Sophia. Indeed, chaos itself is an immediate and necessary consequence of the act in and through which Sophia separates from God. But this act is autonomous and free and could very well not have occurred at all; and so it is not God, but Sophia that is the “effcient cause” of the chaotic universe, or, to put it another way, that is this universe in and through her separation from God.5 In a sense we can indeed call the “act of the creation of the world” the act by which God imparts freedom to his “content,” which then “becomes” capable of separating from him. But we should not forget that this act is coeternal with God himself and does not necessarily imply the existence of a fnite universe. In other words, this act is eternal because of the possibility, not the reality, of this world: it expresses the nature of the absolute Being which makes the fnite world possible. The notion of this act is then the point where the doctrine of God con- nects with the doctrine of World. And so, when, in the latter, Solovyov speaks of a free act of God “creating” the universe, he simply wants to emphasize that it is God who grants, through a free act, independence to his “content,” which is to say, to Sophia. But if the freedom of Sophia depends on the free will of God, then we may say that the world— and consequently, or, more precisely, the realization of the free fall of Sophia—has no proper being, but depends even in its autonomous existence on the will of God. It is in this sense, and in this sense only, that we can say that it was “created” by him. We know that the “content” to which God freely imparts freedom is an ideal cosmos, a universe of ideas. Inasmuch as it is free, this “content” is a totality of ideas, themselves free and independent beings endowed with free will. The unity of this totality, or this totality as unity, is Sophia, ideal Humanity or—we can say, in anticipation of Solovyov—the Soul of the World. We also know that this Soul is not an abstract unity, but an individual being, itself free and independent. But it is not, however, an entity distinct from particular ideas. It is their organic unity, and its will is the expression of their collective will: a unitotal will, containing and preserving every individual will. The Soul is free in and through the freedom of all ideas, and each idea is free in and through the freedom of the Soul. The Soul receives its unity, and even its being, from the divine principle, since it is nothing other than the unity of ideas tending toward 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 59

God, which are only united in and through this tendency. But this being and unity are received freely, since it is the real unity of the free wills of these ideas. “The Soul of the World receives the divine principle and is determined by it not through an external necessity, but through its own momentum, for it … has the possibility to choose for itself the object of its aspiration.”6 Of course by possessing or, rather, by being itself the totality of being, the Soul cannot aspire to an “exterior” object (other than God). It may however wish to possess the totality, or else all that it would have while united with God, receiving it in and through him. The Soul “may wish to possess [the totality] by itself, in the manner of God… Owing to this desire, the Soul may detach the relative center of its life from the absolute center of divine life; it can in this way assert itself outside of God. But in doing so the Soul would necessarily lose its central position, and decay from the unitotal center [cpeдoтoчия] of divine being into the multiple peripheries of the created, losing its power and freedom over the created… When the Soul of the World ceases to unite everything in itself, all is lost of their common link, and the unity of the universe falls into a multitude of distinct elements; the universal organism transforms into a mechanical aggregate of atoms.”7 These obscure passages from the Lectures, of which even the terms testify to the considerable infuence of Böhme’s thought on Solovyov,8 may be interpreted in the following manner. Solovyov intends to specify the reasons and consequences for the fall of Sophia, which are to be established a priori. Admittedly, the reasons given above do not necessarily determine the free will of the Soul and cannot predict the fact of the fall itself. But the existence of a fnite universe (which, assuredly, is not the ideal cosmos that is the Soul is before its fall) proves that the Soul has effectively succumbed to temptation. This temptation could be nothing other than the desire of the Soul to transform its being, dependent on God, into a being of its own, one that is autonomous and proper to it. Freely yielding to this desire, the Soul transforms its passive will, a will to give itself entirely to God and receive itself entirely from him, into an active will, seeking to achieve autonomous being independent of God. In other words, the Soul—a unity of wills belonging to ideas tending toward a common “center,” God—desires to be the unitotal will of Ideas which possess their own, proper existence as a common purpose. Put differently, in and through the will of the Soul, these Ideas will themselves to constitute a unitotal cosmos around a “center” 60 A. KOJÈVE that would not be “the absolute center of the divine life.” Yet we know: (1) that the Soul (or the unity of the ideal cosmos) is nothing other than the unity of wills belonging to ideas tending toward God; (2) that the being of this cosmos and consequently of the Soul itself is nothing other than the divine “content,” which is to say, being in God. The complete separation of the ideal cosmos from God, the total detachment of the “relative center” from the “absolute center,” would not only entail the loss of its unity, which, properly speaking, is the Soul itself, but the annihilation of its very being. This annihilation of the ideal cosmos is a priori admissible: the Soul is free to reduce itself to nothingness. But the fact that the empirical world exists, that it is not pure nothingness, proves a posteriori that the separation of the Soul from God was not absolute and complete. The Soul—and the ideas in it—do not completely reject God: they have only refused to give themselves entirely to him. And so they preserve a part of their being. To the extent that the wills of ideas are not united by their common tendency toward God, cosmic unity disintegrates. The unitotal Soul, or cosmos, thus becomes a “multiple periphery,” a simple aggregate of isolated beings. But insofar as the ideas continue to tend toward God, they still constitute a unity, and the will they direct toward God is a unitotal will. The Soul itself, which is none other than this unitotal will, therefore continues to exist. Only there is this as well: because the tendency toward God does not completely exhaust the wills of the ideas refusing to give themselves entirely to him, the unitotal will of the Soul is no longer the will of the cosmos. It thus becomes a fallen Soul which has lost, at least in part, “its power over the created.” It is not only the imperfection of the unity of the cosmos which results from this imperfection of individual wills, but also the imperfection of its very being. In the imperfection of their wills, ideas are no longer personal monads: they exist only as material atoms, coarse images of the dynamic atoms they were in their union with God. Insofar as ideas do not completely give themselves to God, or, in other words, to the extent that the “Soul of the World ceases to gather everything within it,” the ideal cosmos is but an “aggregate of mechanical atoms.” Thus, the existence of this “aggregate” is the realization (and a posteriori provision) of the imperfect free will of ideas. We can even say, perhaps crudely, that such existence proves that at the very moment the free Soul separated from God—the frst moment of time, which began with the fall—these nearly annihilated ideas, in and through this separation, 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 61 resumed their aspiration toward God. It is in and through their nascent striving that they maintain a minimum of being as material atoms, and it is through this minimum that they have found a rudiment of unity. Thus the aggregate of atoms is not absolute chaos, but a material universe, single and unique within the real unity of time, space, and causal interaction. The causal unity and spatiotemporality of the world is certainly a very imperfect unity, a very poor residue of the absolute unity of the ideal cosmos. As such, it can be considered a consequence of the fall of the Soul. But it is a unity nonetheless, and as a real unity it is the frst consequence of the common tendency of atom-ideas toward God, or the frst realization of the Soul, which now exists as the material unity of the world (anima mundi). And so the very existence of the material universe already represents the frst step of the gradual reunion of the Soul with God. This gradual reunion is realized in and through the temporal evolution of the fnite universe. By becoming material atoms, ideas have lost their consciousness. These unconscious atoms do not however stop striving toward God but continue to aspire vaguely toward a more perfect union with him. By perfecting this tendency, by making this union more and more perfect, they further perfect their own unity and being. But this unity, achieved in and through union with God, is none other than the Soul of the World. One could say as well that it is the Soul that is perfected by giving itself more and more perfectly to God, and that it is the Soul which thus perfects the being and unity of the universe. Nevertheless, the evolution of the universe in time is nothing other than the temporal expression of the imperfection of the non-temporal act by which Sophia gives herself to God. This act being free, it follows that the temporal sequence of the Soul’s acts—the “collective” acts of fallen ideas—is a series of free acts as well: each could be omitted, their reality affrmed only afterward, by establishing their necessary consequences. The slowness of the evolution of the world corresponds in this way to the degree of imperfection of the free act of Sophia, and it is “in respecting the freedom of the Soul” that God refrains from immediately transforming the primordial chaos into a perfect cosmos by an act of his omnipotent will. But the freedom of Sophia, obtained from God, is passive, and it is in giving herself to him that she receives her being and unity. Therefore it is from God that the fallen Soul receives its relative perfection, through the act of giving itself to him freely, though imperfectly. Or, as Solovyov said in Russia, it is the “divine Word” that 62 A. KOJÈVE

“responds to chaos” by creating “more and more perfect forms for the conjunction of the celestial and the Earth”; but it does so only to meet the “calls of the Soul,” which are free and spontaneous.9 The evolution of the world, expressing or realizing the gradual reunion of the Soul—fallen Sophia (or Humanity)—with God, is therefore a “divine-human” process; it is the temporal becoming of the God-Man. But we have seen that in and through this fall the Soul lost its proper form, the human form. If the fnite universe is only that of the disinte- grated unitotal Man, it is not a human being that appears in this state of disintegration. Since the will of the fallen Soul is no longer a conscious human will, the perfection of its unconscious will is therefore expressed at the outset by another equally unconscious process. This is the “cosmogonic” process, during which the Soul is only the unconscious and impersonal unity of the material world, constituted by atoms tending unconsciously toward God: frst “mechanical” unity (“universal gravita- tion”), then “dynamic” unity (“realized by light and the other impon- derables”), and fnally “organic” unity (the light becoming “vital fre”).10 The “cosmogonic” process—described by Solovyov in a manner which closely follows analogous speculations of the German Idealists (particularly Schelling)—ends with the appearance of man. In other words, at the end of this period of the evolution of the universe, the perfection of the free wills of the atom-ideas is achieved to such a degree that their real unity—the Soul of the World—appears as a conscious and personal unity. The Soul thus recovers its proper form, which is the human form. The frst man—the Adam of the Bible—is therefore none other than the fallen Sophia—the Soul of the World—having recovered his conscious and personal unity, and the consciousness of his unity and of his personality. And it is only now that the Soul also recovers all the freedom it had lost in and through its fall. For only a perfectly conscious being could be absolutely free. However, in the person of Adam, Man is not yet the perfect and unitotal Sophia he was before his fall. The Soul perfectly united with God was effectively unitotal, an individual who really contained the totality of being, while its extra-divine existence subsisted only ideally, as a possibility in its consciousness. Indeed, this extra-divine unity is no more than ideal because it is only through the unity of his consciousness that Adam reunites totality in himself, and it is only in and through his consciousness that he is united with God. The Soul remains forever the unity of the fnite universe and materiality, and Adam—its immediate 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 63 manifestation—appears in reality as a corporeal being, separate from the other creatures. Adam being only the concrete and individual realization of the Soul of the World, and the Soul being only the unity of the wills of fallen ideas striving toward God, this limitation, this actual isolation of the frst Man, is but the expression of the imperfection of the will of these ideas. Though not absolutely perfect, their will attained a degree of perfection such that these ideas could give themselves perfectly to God through a free and conscious, single and indivisible act, which is to say, through the act of the unitotal will and freedom of Adam. This act would thus remove the limitation of the frst man and would transform the ideal unitotality of its consciousness into the real unitotality of the universe, which would become Sophia again in and through its perfect union with God. It is in this sense that Solovyov said that Adam could, through a free and conscious act of will, save himself and all other creatures with him. The frst man could have done so, but he did not. In the ideal unitotal person of Adam, the Soul of the World (or the ideas it contains) refused for a second time to give itself fully to God. This fall of Adam was the second fall of Sophia, just as free, and just as contingent as the frst, the reality of which one can no longer affrm a priori. But here we can again state the reasons and consequences for this fall. Since Adam was in a sit- uation analogous to that of Sophia before her frst fall, the reasons and consequences for the fall of the frst Man should be analogous to those of the frst separation of the Soul of the World from God. Instead of giving himself to God, Man desired to be God himself; not content with receiving his being and unity from God, he wanted to be a real unity without God; because of this desire, “he separates from God in his consciousness, just like the Soul of the World was originally separated from God in all its being.”11 But since the reality of his unitotality was only the realization of the unity of will directed toward God, he lost through this separation his unitotal character and was transformed into a chaotic multiplicity of individuals, isolated and separated from one another by the absence of a common will directed toward the Absolute. But like the frst fall of Sophia, the fall of the frst Man was neither absolute nor fnal. He too was not completely separated from God; he had only refused to join him completely. At the very moment of Adam’s revolt against God, the twice-fallen ideas began again to tend toward God. This tendency was much more perfect than the vague tendency of 64 A. KOJÈVE the atom-ideas; or, to put it otherwise, the fall of Adam was not nearly as deep as the frst fall of Sophia. Ideas were thus able to retain a freedom and consciousness of their own after the second fall, and they did this by retaining human form. Adam was only unitotal in and through his consciousness, and it is only in and through this consciousness that was he separated from God. In other words, the Soul could only lose the unity of its consciousness and the consciousness of its unity in the fall of the frst Man. It retained not only its physical perfection, acquired during the “cosmogonic” process, but also its free consciousness and conscious freedom, which was broken up and distributed among the isolated individuals of empirical humanity. The material universe thus remained as it was before the fall of Adam. And it will remain unchanged until the moment when humanity is reinstated, again becoming a unitotal being, transforming itself into the ideal cosmos by uniting perfectly with God. Accordingly, with the appearance of the frst Man, the evolution of the universe is—and only will be—the evolution of humanity. One must begin with the fact of the existence of empirical humanity in order to affrm the existence of Adam—in order, that is, to ascertain the relative state of perfection that the universe attained at the end of its “cosmogonic” evolution. Likewise, only the imperfect state of empirical humanity can bear witness to the fact that Adam succumbed to temptation. One could say that the existence and evolution of empirical humanity merely fulfll, in time and space, the imperfect unitotal act by which Adam gave himself to God. One could equally say that the historical evolution of humanity realizes the sequence of the free acts by which the twice-fallen Soul—the unconscious unity of individual human wills, conscious, and free—returns, little by little, to God. At every moment the state of humanity (and that of the entire universe) represents, or realizes, the relative perfection of the unitotal unconscious act by which the world gives itself to God, this unconscious act being the integration of free and conscious individual wills, of men tending toward the Absolute. After the fall of Adam, the state of humanity is analogous to the state of the material world after the frst fall of the Soul. In and through this fall, Man-Adam lost his unitotal character. The singular and unique being that he was is now transformed into an aggregate of individuals, limited in themselves and separated from each other in space and time. The Soul transformed into chaotic humanity in this way loses some of its freedom, for it loses the unitotal character of its consciousness. The resulting human individual is subject to “the fatality that submits human 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 65 beings to the force of things.” But the fact of the existence of this chaotic humanity proves, however, that the fall of Adam was neither complete nor defnitive and irreparable. In a certain sense, the limited individuals separated in space and time are also united among themselves in and through their spatiotemporal existence, “heteronomy” or “fate” being an imperfect form of union. Thus the coexistence of individuals in space, the succession of generations in time, and the dependence (also not absolute) of the human will vis-à-vis these external circumstances may be considered expressions of the beginning of a new return of Man to the Absolute. This gradual return—unconscious in its entirety and yet absolutely free—is realized in and through the “historical” process, which for humanity is equivalent to the “cosmogony” of the material world. During this process, the Soul perfects its being and, little by little, regains its unity. In space, this gradual process results in the formation of tribes, of peoples, and of states that are increasingly extended. In time, this unifcation is realized through historical tradition, linking the present to the past. Furthermore, each society represents unitotal temporality through the union of “three powers”: that of the “priest,” representing and preserving the past; that of the “warrior,” acting in the present; and that of the “prophet,” anticipating the future and marking its objective and purpose. Finally, the progress of civilization gradually frees man from his dependence on nature. To be sure, this “historical” process has certainly not reached its conclusion, but its progress continues and, for Solovyov, it will continue. In any case, humanity in its current condition is already far from its primitive and chaotic state. In addition to the “historical” process itself, there is another, which Solovyov calls “theogony” [processus théogonique].12 In his fall, man not only lost his perfect unity but also the perfection of his being and consciousness: he lost the perfect knowledge of God. Without this knowledge man cannot give himself freely to God through a free and conscious act. He must frst uncover the proper idea of the Absolute, and this idea is found in and through the “cosmogonic” process. “By responding to the free calls of the Soul,” or humanity, God gradually reveals himself to men, and this revelation is realized in the historical series of religions, which—as we know—reproduce within time the non-temporal movements of the immanent dialectic of the idea of the Absolute. This “theogonic” process comes to term and is perfected in the person of Jesus Christ. In him, the Soul has perfectly given itself to God, 66 A. KOJÈVE returning to the perfection of its consciousness and to a perfect knowledge of divinity. Through Jesus, perfect and complete knowledge of God is transmitted to humanity. The “theogonic” process therefore produces no true new religion: it consists henceforth only in the universal propa- gation of the absolute or Christian religion.13 But Jesus Christ is not only the prophet of the absolute religion. He is the individual God-Man, the appearance of the eternal God-Man in the fnite, spatiotemporal world. In the person of the man Jesus14—“the second Adam”—the Sophia-Soul recovers her conscious freedom and unity, such that she can, once more, as did Adam, consciously and freely decide whether or not to unite perfectly with God. And this time she does not yield to temptation (one of the three temptations of the Gospel): she gives herself completely and fully to God, renouncing her proper being and recovering her absolute perfection, which is imparted to her by God in response to her free call. In Jesus Christ, Sophia (Jesus as man) is thus again united perfectly with God, and she is made perfect in and through this union. In the person of Jesus Christ, the Soul has recovered the unitotal perfection of its omniscient consciousness; it has returned as the real unity of mankind, realizing and uniting it through the perfection of the “three powers,” as the perfect “priest,” “warrior,” and “prophet”; it has recovered the fullness of its freedom, taking back absolute power over the created; and, fnally, it has recovered its perfect “body,” con- verting material atoms (the corporeality of the man Jesus) into dynamic atom-ideas (the “spiritual body” of the risen Christ), in and through the total sacrifce of his earthly body (the suffering and bodily death of Jesus). Therefore, the appearance of Christ is not only the culmination of the “theogonic” process, but also the realization of the end goal of the fnite universe, which is, as we know, the perfect reunion of the fallen Sophia with God. The entirety of evolution, starting from the frst fall of the Soul, was but a “slow and painful” preparation for this appearance. The appearance of Jesus Christ is however not the fnal state but merely the absolute center of the evolution of the universe, for the world and empirical humanity do not cease to exist once he appears. Solovyov explains this incontestable fact by referencing the individual nature of the union of Sophia with God in the person of Christ. This absolutely perfect union was effectively—at least to the extent that it was historically realized in the fnite world—limited in time and space. And although the man-Jesus was the absolutely perfect man, he was nevertheless a real individual, separated from the rest of the human and material universe. 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 67

If pre-Christian evolution was a preparation for the advent of the individual God-Man, post-Christian evolution must prepare for the universal union of the Soul with God, a union which will encompass the entire universe and transform it into the ideal cosmos or perfect Sophia. Jesus Christ revealed the fnal goal of the evolution of the world, and he indicated the means for obtaining it. In a word, he made it possible. But only humanity as a whole, united by the Christian church, can realize this end in and through a free act of its unitotal will. We must therefore say, following Solovyov, that the fact of the fnite universe’s existence, after Jesus Christ, refects the individuality of the free act by which the man-Jesus gave himself to God. But we must admit that the individual nature of the God-Man is not explained by the fundamental principles of Solovyov’s doctrine of World. One could even say that the notion of an individual God-Man involves every fundamental contradiction in his metaphysics. To begin with, Solovyov gives no satisfactory response to the diffcult question concerning the relation between Jesus Christ, or the individual and historical Christ, and the eternal Christ (the God-Man), who is the union of unitotal Man with God. Indeed, he does not even ask the question. But this paradoxical relationship of the individual and universal in the God-Man is but one particular expression of the antinomy that exists between the notion of the eternal God-Man and the notion of the “becoming” God-Man, or else between the doctrine of God and the doctrine of World—an antinomy we have already suffciently discussed. What follows for Solovyov is the affrmation of the necessity of Jesus Christ’s appearance—“the [eternal] Christ must [дoлжeн] become the center of history”—and the belief that Jesus Christ has saved the world. Now, this seems to contradict the assertion that the evolution of the world takes place in absolute freedom. Solovyov, however, states that this contradiction only implies the notion of freedom, which reappears here, so to speak, in a condensed form. Finally—and this is a new diffculty—the affrmation of the individuality of Jesus seems to contradict the central idea of the doctrine of World itself, according to which the Soul’s perfection is realized, above all, in and through its very universality. According to this idea, the man-Jesus, who, like Adam, could be perfectly united with God, should have been, like Adam, a unitotal being and not an isolated individual. Solovyov himself says as much: “Just as the frst, original Adam, should not be understood as a person existing alongside other people, but as a unitotal personality containing in 68 A. KOJÈVE itself all of natural humanity, the second Adam [i.e., Jesus] is not only this individual being; he is also simultaneously universal, embracing all of spiritual humanity.”15 Of course, in affrming the unitotal character of Jesus, Solovyov explains the possibility of his perfect union with God: Jesus is not an individual and isolated man, but the Soul of the World itself. And this also explains how and why Jesus Christ could save all of mankind and the entire world without thereby altering the absolute freedom of his will. Since the Soul is none other than the unity of all free individual wills, one can say that all beings in turn freely give themselves to God in and through the unitotal act of the free will of Jesus, and that the evolution of the world saved by Jesus Christ could thus be considered a free evolution (which, of course, does not eliminate the fundamental contradiction implied by the idea of freedom from an evolution whose outcome is predetermined for all eternity). But what becomes absolutely inexplicable is the limited and isolated individuality of the Savior. If, in and through him, the entire universe was freely and perfectly united to God, then we cannot understand why the whole world was not transformed by him into the ideal cosmos, nor how the Christ- Jesus could have existed as a human individual. Solovyov’s writings do not solve these problems. True, whenever he invoked the necessity of the Incarnation he said that the appearance of the individual Christ is explained by the fall of Sophia. It is thus tempting to interpret this passage as follows: the individuality of Jesus Christ would only be the expression of the imperfection of the fallen Soul’s will to give itself to God in Jesus. But this interpretation is equivalent to stating that the union of man with God in Jesus Christ is not perfect, that Jesus the man is not the absolutely perfect Man. But Solovyov would certainly never have accepted a claim that is so clearly heretical. It is best to refrain from making any interpretation here, especially since Solovyov did not see the problems of his Christology and himself asserted in the Lectures that “the embodiment of divinity is nothing miraculous in the proper sense of the term, which is to say anything foreign [чyждoe] to the general order of being.”16 We therefore limit ourselves to noting that, for Solovyov, Jesus Christ is the perfect and individual God-Man, that he is the Savior of the world and of humanity, and that he retains, moreover, all his freedom to decide for or against God. On this point, post-Christian evolution is no different from the evolution that prepared for the advent of Jesus. 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 69

After Christ, wrote Solovyov in Russia, “human freedom is always safe- guarded, and the Universal Church has a history.”17 Just like the “historical” and “theogonic” processes that preceded the appearance of the Savior, the subsequent evolution of Christ is the expression of the gradual return of the Soul of the World to God, which is to say, the realization of a series of free acts of the unitotal or collective will of humanity tending toward the Absolute. The purpose of this later evolution is shared with that of the entire evolution of the universe since the frst fall of Sophia. But it was only after Jesus Christ that this purpose was consciously pursued, for only in and through Jesus can the Soul achieve full awareness of the purpose and path that leads it there. This awareness was not lost after the death of Jesus. It is promulgated and preserved by the Christian Church, and it is only in the Church and through the Church that the fnal goal can be achieved. The history of humanity and of the whole world after Christ is thus for Solovyov reduced to the history of the Church. Solovyov makes no mention of a third fall of the Soul, one which should have followed its individual union with God in Jesus. Yet we could in a sense consider the beginning of post-Christian evolution as the expression of a further (partial) fall of Sophia and her new gradual return to God. As Solovyov said, the Church is at frst but an “insignif- icant germ” that “grows and develops gradually,” its progress not linear but rather interrupted by “partial falls.” Christian humanity as a whole must therefore realize the individual act of Jesus. To this end, it must frst overcome the three temptations of Christ; and while these temptations were only ideal possibilities in the consciousness of Jesus, who resisted them, they become real in history, for a part of humanity effectively succumbs to each of them. The full truth revealed by Jesus has been preserved only in the Orthodox Church, and so it is only through this Church that the ultimate purpose of the universe can and will be achieved. But the Orthodox Church itself is still a long way from perfection, and it belongs to the future to transform this national Church into a perfect Universal Church, uniting all of humanity.18 Solovyov, who always emphasized the contingency and freedom of the acts of the Soul realized in the evolution of the universe, should have refrained from prognosticating this development. But the notions of the eternal God-man and Christ-Savior of the world necessarily implied that the world, or the fallen Soul, would eventually reach perfection by once 70 A. KOJÈVE again becoming the perfect Sophia. This statement also corresponds to the metaphysical optimism which characterizes the whole of his thought during the period of his metaphysical writings. Solovyov certainly had a profound understanding of sin and of the imperfection of man and the world, and he found strong and beautiful words for its portrayal. But he also frmly believed that sin, evil, and suffering—in short, all of the imperfections of the created—were ephemeral, that man and the world were fundamentally good in their true essence, and that they would one day become so in reality. This frm belief, which was the very foundation of his religious sentiment, Solovyov expressed in his Lectures thus: “The aim of human-divine work is to save all men equally, to transform everything in the world into a society of God.”19 And this same belief is refected in a passage from Russia, where Solovyov states that the perfect Church will “reunite in the end of times all of humanity and nature into a single universal divine-human organism.”20 It is this religious and mystical optimism that fnds expression in the metaphysical affrmation of the fnal meeting of the Soul of the World with God, of the transformation of the fnite universe—fallen Sophia and the “becoming” God-Man—into perfect Sophia, perfectly united with God in the eternal God-Man. Naturally, Solovyov omits the details of how this transformation would take place “at the end of times,” ending the temporal evolution which began with the separation of Sophia from God. This is because all of Solovyov’s philosophy is but a response to this question: what must humanity do to prepare for this transformation? Solovyov’s belief was that mankind will follow the path of salvation that he indicated—the essentially Christian path—and will in this way arrive at absolute perfection. Humanity will rediscover the unitotality of its consciousness by bringing all knowledge together into a single, unique system—the system of “free Theosophy.” It will recover its real unity by organizing itself into a universal theocratic monarchy, led by the Church, which will abol- ish all imperfections stemming from political, social, and economic life (what he calls, “free Theocracy”). Through a “theurgical” act, humanity will fnally perfect nature, uniting with it in the organic and living unity of “free Theurgy.” Humanity will in this way realize the ideal of “full life” [вceцeлoй жизни], which is to say, life in Love. Through this perfect Love—the sublimation of sexual love—man will join with woman to form a single immortal being (the “Androgyne”). This Love, which will confer immortality, will also render childbearing impossible, and indeed 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 71 pointless, but it will also resurrect the dead, who will mix freely with the living. In Love, living humanity will therefore be total, but also one in itself, united with the rest of the transfgured universe. The entire world will become a “syzygic unity,” a single unitotal organism, conscious and free. This absolute Love, which will unite the universe, will also unite the world with God. Through a free act of its will, the Soul of the World, fnally realizing its unitotal essence, will give itself to God in a manner that is perfect and fnal. The fnite universe will cease to exist as such; it will be reabsorbed into the Absolute and will become what it was “before” the fall of the Soul—what it has never ceased to be for God— the divine “content,” the ideal Cosmos, perfect Sophia or the Man of the God-Man.21 Consequently, for Solovyov, the free evolution of the universe necessarily returns to its beginning: the unitotal being of perfect Sophia. The world evolving in time is therefore a circle closed in on itself. A circle, however, is only a point of no extension within the eternal Absolute.22— Solovyov was of course frmly convinced of the absolute truth of his metaphysical doctrine of World. The content of this doctrine certainly corresponds to the particular manner in which man and the universe were presented in his personal philosophical and religious experience. Like the doctrine of God, the doctrine of World ultimately rests on a living and concrete sense of intuition. And yet the manner in which it was formulated shows that Solovyov’s work was less than original. It is even less original than his doctrine of God. Indeed, even after reading the summary presented above, we realize immediately that this is a highly simplifed paraphrase of the doctrines— or rather one of the doctrines—of Schelling. All or nearly all the ideas found in Solovyov’s doctrine were borrowed from the writings published by Schelling from 1802 to 1809. To be convinced, one should simply compare Solovyov’s doctrine with that of Schelling, which, for example, may be found in Philosophie und Religion [Philosophy and Religion] (1804), supplemented by the new ideas of Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) [On the Essence of Human Freedom], where Schelling introduced the ideas of Jakob Böhme into his system.23 We will not make that comparison here. To do so it would be necessary to summarize the whole of Schelling’s doctrine, a summary which would not be very different from what we have just done for Solovyov’s doctrine above. Not only would the general ideas and structure be found similar, the same details of development would recur as well, especially 72 A. KOJÈVE those concerning the fall of the Soul and the processes of “cosmogony” and “theogony.” Certainly there are differences between Solovyov and Schelling, some more important than others (concerning, e.g., Christology and the doctrine of the Church), but they are generally of a theological origin and possess a rather narrow philosophical signifcance. However, through this almost complete identity of formulas, we believe we have noticed a general tendency in Solovyov’s thought that is distinct from that of Schelling. This is the tendency we have already recognized in the analysis of his doctrine of Divine Humanity, the tendency to attribute to man a freedom, independence, and importance far greater than that of any other thinker, Schelling included. And if Solovyov’s doctrine of World has some originality, it owes it solely to this tendency, which this doctrine covers and conceals more than it expresses. If exaggerated, the difference between the doctrines of Schelling and Solovyov could be formulated as follows. Both are in agreement concerning the gradual reunion of the fallen unitotal Idea with the Absolute within the evolution of the fnite universe, an Idea which, for both thinkers, is the divine “content,” the Soul of the World, and ideal Humanity. However, Schelling’s view is that this idea is enriched in and through the fall: it is only in and through its becoming that the empirical universe becomes a “really autonomous” or “truly independent” [wahrhaft selb- ständig] being. The evolution of the universe—a necessary consequence of the fall—enriches and perfects the being and the essence of the Man- Idea, which for this very reason enriches and perfects the divine “content,” the very essence of God. “The fall,” Schelling writes, “becomes, therefore, the means of the full revelation of God.”24 In the end, the changing world is a dialectical process taking place within the Absolute, a process that is both absolutely necessary and a priori deducible. Considered in itself, the evolution of the universe is nothing but human history; viewed, however, from the perspective of the Absolute, it is also and above all the history of God himself. Yet for Solovyov the fall and ensuing evolution of the universe enriches on the contrary neither the essence of God nor the being and essence of unitotal Man. One could say that, from the point of view of the Absolute, the fall does not even exist. In any case, it is a contingent fact which might not be realized, and therefore cannot be observed a posteriori. The evolution of the universe is therefore an absolutely free evolution; its only actor is man, and it is he alone who suffers. So it is human history, and not the history of God, that is realized in the future of the world. Fallen man is therefore not—as 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 73

Schelling would have it—a “means of revelation” for the Absolute, but an independent and autonomous being which lost its perfection by realizing its freedom, and which again becomes perfect through a series of free acts. Man fnds in this perfection that which was his before his fall, a perfection that never ceased to possess its essence, and that always remained identical to itself. Of course, with this presentation we overstate the difference between their doctrines. We have seen, on the one hand, (1) that the doctrine of Solovyov is often deductive in character, and (2) that he never affrmed the possibility of a complete and fnal separation between man and God. On the other hand, Schelling himself strongly emphasizes the freedom of man.25 One could say, of course, that the notion of freedom of being, which is at most a “means” of the necessary dialectic of the Absolute, is a paradoxical notion, diffcult to understand. But we have also seen that Solovyov’s notion of freedom implies diffculties which are no less seri- ous, and which have their like in Schelling. Only one has the impression that for Solovyov the problems do not necessarily follow, as they do for Schelling, from the very foundation of his thought, but merely from his effort to express his thought by means of borrowed formulae. In general, the paradoxical—if not outright contradictory—nature of Solovyov’s doctrine appears to testify to the fact that it is not the adequate expression of the living intuition it was meant to express. Borrowed in many ways from Schelling, this doctrine even seems to con- fict with the real thought of its author. The latter, deeply disfgured by his own statements, exists only as a vague, almost unconscious tendency; this tendency was what forced Solovyov to modify the borrowed doctrine, and thus render it contradictory. At frst glance, the changes made by Solovyov seem minor, even insignifcant. But even if the differences between Schelling’s and Solovyov’s doctrines are hardly discernible, they are nonetheless suffcient to suggest that they would have been much larger were Solovyov able to express his thought in an independent manner, and give to it a proper and adequate form.

Notes 1. Kojève’s note: In his Russian-language writings, Solovyov always affrms the identity of the Soul of the World and Sophia. See, for example, (1902) Works 3, p. 129: “The Soul of the World, which is to say, the ideal Humanity (Sophia).” In (1923) Russia, p. 242, on the contrary, he 74 A. KOJÈVE

seems to distinguish the two: “Sophia is not the Soul, but the guardian angel of the world”; again, on p. 242, “the Soul of the World is only the vehicle, the milieu, the substrate of its realization”; and on p. 235, “the Soul of the World is the opposite or the antitype of Wisdom.” But here the contradiction is only apparent. In his Russian writings, Solovyov identifes the Soul with fallen Sophia; in Russia, he opposes the eternal Sophia to the Soul. Yet even in the Russian texts there is a difference between the eternal Sophia and the fallen Sophia; one could even describe this difference using the same terms Solovyov uses in Russia to describe the difference between Wisdom and the Soul; however, Solovyov does not state in his French texts that this difference precludes identity. This omission is easily explained by his obvious desire to minimally offend the Catholic theologians. 2. Kojève’s note: See (1902) Works 3, p. 135. Translators’ note: “Ideal” was inserted by Kojève. The Russian word отпал (perfect form: отпасть) means fall away, secede, defect, or revolt. 3. Kojève’s note: Aside from the doctrine of the actual World, Solovyov’s writings (in Lectures and Russia) contain a description of the “spiritual” or “angelic” world (see the Lectures in (1902) Works 3, pp. 107–109, 124–130, and (1923) Russia, pp. 243–247). Solovyov undoubtedly believed in the reality of angels. But his statements concerning the “angelic” world ft poorly with the rest of his metaphysics and are clearly of a theological than a philosophical nature. The “Intelligences” and the “Minds” which constitute the “spiritual” world play no role in Solovyov’s philosophy; he merely posits their existence. We therefore omit their discussion from the text. 4. Soloviev, Vladimir (1922) Russie et L’Église Universelle [Russia and the Universal Church], 4th ed (Paris: Stock), p. 243. Translators’ note: The text in square brackets is Kojève’s. Solovyov’s original refers to Aristotle’s defnition of the effcient cause as ἂρχη τῆς γενήσεως [the origin of change] (Physics, Book 2, Chap. 3, 196a11). 5. Kojève’s note: The absolute freedom of the “fall” is neatly affrmed not only in the Lectures of 1877 but also within История и будущностъ теократии [History and Future of Theocracy], which appeared in 1887, just two years before Russia (see (1902) Works 4, pp. 302–304). Solovyov, in the cited passage from Russia, only speaks of the “possible reality of chaos,” but later he posits chaos as being necessarily realized whenever God ceases to erase it. This means that the “freedom” of Sophia is only the “freedom” of separation, being, in other words, basically, a purely illusory freedom. And yet this view contradicts not only everything that Solovyov says on this topic in his Russian writings, but also the interpretation of the evolution of the world that we fnd in Russia itself. 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 75

6. (1989) Works 2, p. 132. Translators’ note: Kojève’s version omits a section of text without indicating the ellipses inserted above and contains two other notable features. The frst concerns the word “receives”: in the preceding passage, it is reçoit, while in the quotation Kojève uses accueille to translate Solovyov’s воспринимает. These four terms are similar enough to be interchangeable in most cases, but only if the sense of the word “receives” is made manifold, being an action which perceives, apprehends, absorbs, welcomes, harbors, and accepts. It implies generosity, protection, and intimacy. These meanings are not foreign to the discursive histories of English, French, or Russian, but they are easy to forget given Kojève’s highly abstract discussion at this point in the essay. The second notable difference concerns a missing qualifer in the fnal phrase of the quotation, “object of its aspiration” [l’objet de son aspiration], in Solovyov’s text, “жизненного стремления,” or “vital aspiration” (less formally, a “life- long yearning”). Kojève’s omission is likely a matter of emphasis: if the reader chooses at this moment to consider the “vital” aspect of the Soul of the World in its relationship to earthly, material life, it would interrupt Kojève’s development of the Soul’s role within the universe of ideas. 7. (1989) Works 2, pp. 132–133. Translators’ note: Kojève again omits text without using ellipses. There is also an error in the French version of the frst passage, which ends with, “like a God,” including the indefnite article where the original Russian has only, “like God” (since there is only one god in the Abrahamic religions, either the indefnite article or the capital letter is inappropriate). Second, Kojève’s translation of средоточия as “center” may also be understood as “focus,” i.e., as something giving direction to desire or aspiration. 8. Kojève’s note: Bohme’s infuence could have been transmitted by way of Schelling: specifcally, by the writings of the latter in his 1809 Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit [On the Essence of Human Freedom], which Solovyov undoubtedly knew. 9. (1922) Russia, pp. 243, 248–249. 10. Kojève’s note: See (1911) Works 1, p. 59, (1902) Works 3, pp. 126–138, and (1923) Russia, pp. 229–238, 248–255. 11. (1989) Works 2, p. 141. Translators’ note: The original Russian passage begins with “he falls away or separates” [он отпадает или отделяется]. Cf. endnote 55. 12. Translators’ note: Just as cosmogony addresses the birth of the universe, “theogony” (from the Greek θεός and γόνἰα) may be interpreted as addressing the birth of God. Cf. Hesiod’s poem Θεογονία [Theogony], a work describing the genealogy and birth of the Greek gods. 13. Kojève’s note: See (1902) Works 3, pp. 138–150, (1902) Works 4, pp. 300– 314, (1902) Works 7, pp. 200, 234–259, and (1923) Russia, pp. 256– 258, 265–286. 76 A. KOJÈVE

14. Translators’ note: In French, Kojève’s l’homme-Jésus parallels Jésus-Christ, by convention hyphenated. This introduces a certain diffculty: while “Jesus Christ” is correct and conventional in English, the link that Kojève draws to “man-Jesus” compels us to render the former as “Christ-Jesus,” something we have decided against since Kojève himself emphasizes this parallel in this exact form on p. 68. Given the reverse attribution of French, the translation of l’homme-Jésus as “Jesus as man” also proves accurate. However, to sustain the homology with the key term l’Homme- Dieu, the “God-Man,” requires that it become the very awkward “Jesus man.” To be clear, l’homme-Jésus appears in the text fve times: thrice we have rendered it “the man-Jesus,” on p. 66 and p. 67; once, on p. 68, we chose the translation “Jesus the man” to draw the parallel with the adjacent unhyphenated phrases “the union of man with God in Jesus Christ” and “the absolutely perfect Man”; and once, on p. 68, we chose “Jesus as man” in reference to Sophia, for ease of reading. Adding to this confusion are two unhyphenated instances of l’homme Jésus on p. 66, which we have rendered simply as “the man Jesus.” 15. (1989) Works 2, p. 152. 16. (1989) Works 2, p. 154. Kojève’s note: Cf. (1911) Works 1, pp. 74–83, (1902) Works 3, pp. 151–158, (1902) Works 4, pp. 531–543, (1902) Works 7, pp. 201–210, and (1923) Russia, pp. 258–264. 17. (1922) Russia, p. 288. 18. Kojève’s note: This point of view accords with that of his orthodox period. In the writings of his Catholic period, Solovyov affrms that it is in and through the Roman Church that the fnal goal of humanity will be obtained. For the post-Christian evolution, see: (a) the Orthodox point of view: (1911) Works 1, pp. 227–239, 266, 290, and (1902) Works 3, pp. 159–168; (b) the Catholic point of view: (1911) Works 4, pp. 1–105, and the frst two books of Russia. 19. Translators’ note: Solovyov’s original passage could not be found in the Lectures. The same diffculty was encountered by Kozyrev, who noted it on p. 251 of his Russian translation of this essay. 20. Translators’ note: We were unable to locate the quoted passage in (1922) Russia; it may be a paraphrase or compression of several of Solovyov’s statements. Cf. pp. 82, 100–101, 135, 259–260, 291, 299. 21. Translators’ note: Solovyov’s terminology, in French and Russian, respectively, is: Théosophie libre [свободная теософия], Théocratie libre [свободная теократия], Théurgie libre [свободная теургия], unité syzy- gique [сизигическая единство], and l’Androgyne [андрогин]. 22. Kojève’s note: It is only by considering the entirety of Solovyov’s writings that one can grasp his idea of the recursive future evolution of the universe. Hence precise references are impossible to offer, though 3 THE DOCTRINE OF WORLD 77

the following passages may serve as examples: (1911) Works 1, p. 286, (1902) Works 2, p. 167, (1902) Works 4, p. 542, (1902) Works 6, p. 392, and (1923) Russia, p. 314. 23. Kojève’s note: See Schelling (1860) Works 6, pp. 13–70 (specifi- cally, pp. 34–35, 39–43, 53, 55–57, 60, 63), and (1860) Works 7, pp. 333–416. 24. Schelling (1860) Works 6, p. 63. 25. Kojève’s note: Most notably within Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, where evil, as the imperfection of the world, is reduced to an act of man’s free will. But here, too, Schelling’s thought differs from that of Solovyov, because for Schelling the possibility of evil is implicated within divine essence (Natur in Gott) itself, and the reality of evil (i.e., the existence of the fnite universe) is necessary for the realization of divine Love, the being and essence of God. Cf. Schelling (1861) Works 8, pp. 375, 381, 403–405. Index

A D Absolute, 9, 10, 15, 20–39, 41–43, Dialectic, 15, 23, 26–28, 32, 38, 65, 51–61, 63–74 73 Adam, 4, 62–68 Divinity, 9, 10, 20, 28, 40, 55, 66, 68 Atom, 25, 40, 61, 62, 64, 66 Doctrine, 9–12, 18–20, 22–24, 26–33, 36–43, 47–49, 51–58, 67, 71–74 B Dogma, 28, 29, 31, 32, 58 Böhme, Jakob, 23, 42, 43, 47, 49, 52, Duality, 41 71, 75

E C Evil, 17, 70, 77 Christ, 4, 13, 31, 65–69, 76 Existence, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 18–20, Christianity, 31, 43 26–29, 31–33, 35, 36, 52–55, Catholic, 19 57–62, 64, 65, 67, 74, 77 Orthodox, 31 Experience, 10, 18–21, 23, 29, 34, 35, Church, 19, 44, 45, 67, 69, 70, 72, 38, 71 74, 76 Cosmos, 5, 12, 20, 25–28, 30, 36, 40, 41, 58–61, 64, 67, 68, 71 F cosmogony, 13, 65 Faith, 11, 18 cosmology, 19

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), 79 under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 A. Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02339-3 80 Index

G mystical intuition, 54 German Idealists, the, 19, 28, 52, 62 Gnosiology, 17 Godman O Divine-Human, 36 Object, 9, 18, 19, 24, 25, 30, 54, 56, Divine Man, 4, 20 59, 75 God-Man, 4, 31, 76 Other, the, 23 Godmanhood, 11, 47

P H Pantheism, 23 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1, 3, Person, 10, 25–28, 31, 37, 39, 62, 63, 13, 28, 43, 47 65–67 Lectures of the Philosophy of Religion, Plotinus, 28 28 Neoplatonism, 28

I R Idea, 10, 12, 18–20, 23–27, 30–45, Reasoning 47, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56–58, 65, deductive, 10 67, 68, 72, 76 inductive, 24, 37 Russia, 15, 17, 19, 28, 44, 45, 47–49, 55, 57, 61, 69, 70, 73–77 J Jaspers, Karl, 1, 47 Judaism, 27, 44 S Hebrews, 27 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 7, 19, 23, 28, 42, 43, 46–48, 55, 62, 71–73, 75, 77 L Bruno, 42, 47 Leap of faith, 18, 20 On the Essence of Human Freedom, Love, 5, 16, 23, 30, 38–40, 54, 70, 71, 75 71, 77 Philosophy and Religion, 48, 71 Solovyov, Vladimi Critique of Abstract Principles; M Critique, 17 Metaphysics, 4–8, 13–21, 23, 24, 27, Lectures on Divine Humanity; 28, 30–33, 39–41, 43, 45, 54, Lectures, 17 67, 74 Philosophical Principles of Integral Monad, 24, 25 Knowledge; Principles, 17 Monism, 17 Russia and the Universal Church; Mysticism, 2, 39, 41 Russia, 17 mystical experience, 12, 18, 39, 41 Sophia Index 81

Anima mundi, 40, 41, 49, 54, 57, Theology, 31, 43, 45 61 Theurgy, 11, 70 body of God, 40 Trinity, 19, 20, 27–30 feminine in God, 40 Trinitarian, 29 materia prima, 40, 41, 49 Soul of the World, 23, 54–56, 58, 62, 63, 69–71, 73, 74 U Wisdom of God, 39, 54 Unitotal, 26, 30, 32, 34–37, 39–41, Subject, 3, 21, 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, 35, 49, 51, 58–60, 62–69, 71, 72 37, 47, 64 Unitotality, 26, 32, 35, 37, 46, 63 System, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 15–21, 31, 43, Universal, 26, 31, 35–37, 44, 59, 62, 46, 57, 70, 71 66–70, 74 universality, 67

T Theocracy, 11, 70, 74 Theogony, 65, 72, 75