Jump to content

Vladimir Solovyov

From Catholicism Wiki
Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov
Born 28 January 1853, Moscow
Died 13 August 1900, Uzkoye
Roles Philosopher; poet; religious writer; ecumenical advocate
Tradition Russian religious philosophy; sophiology
Major works Lectures on Divine Humanity; Russia and the Universal Church; The Justification of the Good; Three Conversations
Ecclesial status Russian Orthodox layman who made a Catholic profession of faith; exact canonical identity remains debated

Vladimir Solovyov was a Russian Orthodox philosopher, poet, ecumenical thinker, and Catholic-adjacent Christian visionary whose work sought the unity of divine wisdom, humanity, and the divided Church.[1]

Overview

Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov[2] (Russian: Владимир Сергеевич Соловьёв; 28 January [O.S. 16 January] 1853 – 13 August [O.S. 31 July] 1900) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, poet, pamphleteer, and literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century and in the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century.

Life

Solovyov passed through youthful unbelief and academic philosophy into an intensely Christian vocation as lecturer, writer, and public moralist. He defended Jews against persecution, appealed for mercy after Alexander II's assassination, lost his university career, and devoted increasing attention to Christian unity and eschatology.

Thought

His divine-humanity presents creation and history as ordered toward free union with God in Christ. Sophia names divine wisdom and, in varying contexts, the ideal unity of creation; Solovyov's poetic and speculative uses must not be collapsed into a fourth divine person or treated as settled Catholic terminology.

He argued that the universal Church needs a visible center in the Bishop of Rome and in 1896 recited a Catholic profession and received Communion from a Russian Catholic priest. He did not simply repudiate his Eastern inheritance, and his ecclesial status cannot be reduced without qualification to a conventional modern conversion narrative.

Major works

The Lectures give the early synthesis; Russia and the Universal Church makes the Roman-unity argument; The Justification of the Good develops ethics; Three Conversations ends with the Short Tale of the Antichrist, warning against humanitarian unity severed from Christ.

Catholic reception

Fides et ratio names Solovyov as an exemplary Eastern thinker whose philosophy benefited from encounter with faith while expressly declining to endorse every aspect of the named authors. He is not a Catholic saint or Doctor, and his sophiology remains open to serious criticism.[3]

Life and work

Vladimir Solovyov was born in Moscow;[4] the second son of the historian Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov (1820–1879); his elder brother Vsevolod (1849-1903), became a historical novelist, and his younger sister, Polyxena (1867–1924), became a poet.[5] Vladimir Solovyov's mother Polyxena Vladimirovna (née Romanova, d. 1909) belonged to a family of Polish and Ukrainian origin and among her ancestors was the philosopher Gregory Skovoroda (1722–1794).[6]

In his teens, he renounced Eastern Orthodoxy for nihilism, but later his disapproval of positivism[7] saw him begin to express some views that were in line with those of the Orthodox Church.[7] From 1869 to 1873 Solovyov studied at the Imperial Moscow University, where his philosophy professor was Pamfil Yurkevich[8] (1826–1874).

In his 1874 work The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists (Russian: Кризис западной философии (против позитивистов), Solovyov discredited the positivists' rejection of Aristotle's essentialism, or philosophical realism. In Against the Positivists he took the position of intuitive noetic comprehension, or insight. He saw consciousness as integral (see the Russian term sobornost) and requiring both phenomenon (validated by dianoia) and noumenon validated intuitively.[7] Positivism, according to Solovyov, validates only the phenomenon of an object, denying the intuitive reality that people experience as part of their consciousness.[7] As Solovyov's basic philosophy rests on the idea that the essence of an object (see essentialism) can be validated only by intuition and that consciousness as a single organic whole is done in part by reason or logic but in completeness by (non-dualist) intuition. Solovyov was partially attempting to reconcile the dualism (subject-object) found in German idealism.

In 1877, Solovyov moved to Saint Petersburg, where he became a friend and confidant of the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881). In opposition to his friend, Solovyov was sympathetic to the Catholic Church. He favoured the healing of the schism (ecumenism, sobornost) between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. It is clear from Solovyov's work that he accepted papal primacy over the Universal Church.[9] There is evidence that he converted to Catholicism in a ceremony on February 18, 1896.[10] The testimony is signed by the Russian Greek Catholic priest Nikolay Tolstoy and two Catholic laypeople—Princess Olga Vasilievna Dolgorukova and Dmitry Sergeevich Novskiy. As an active member of Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia, he spoke Hebrew and struggled to reconcile Judaism and Christianity. Politically, he became renowned as the leading defender of Jewish civil rights in tsarist Russia in the 1880s. Solovyov also advocated for his cause internationally and published a letter in The London Times pleading for international support for his struggle.[11] The Jewish Encyclopedia describes him as "a friend of the Jews" and states that "Even on his death-bed he is said to have prayed for the Jewish people".[12]

Solovyov's attempts to chart a course of civilization's progress toward an East–West Christian ecumenism developed an increasing bias against Asian cultures—which he had initially studied with great interest. He dismissed the Buddhist concept of Nirvana as a pessimistic nihilistic "nothingness", antithetical to salvation and no better than Gnostic dualism.[13] Solovyov spent his final years obsessed with fear of the "Yellow Peril", warning that soon the Asian peoples, especially the Chinese, would invade and destroy Russia.[14]

Solovyov further elaborated this theme in his apocalyptic short-story "Tale of the Antichrist" (published in the Nedelya newspaper on 27 February 1900), in which China and Japan join forces to conquer Russia.[14] His 1894 poem Pan-Mongolism, whose opening lines serve as epigraph to the story, was widely seen as predicting the coming Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.[15]

Solovyov never married or had children, but he pursued idealized relationships as immortalized in his spiritual love-poetry, including with two women named Sophia.[16] He rebuffed the advances of the Christian mystic Anna Nikolayevna Schmidt, who claimed to be his divine partner.[17] In his later years, Solovyov became a vegetarian, but ate fish occasionally. He often lived alone for months without a servant and would work into the night.[18]

Influence

It is widely held that Solovyov was one of the sources for Dostoevsky's characters Alyosha Karamazov and Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov.[19] In Janko Lavrin's opinion, Solovyov has not left a single work which can be considered an epoch-making contribution to philosophy as such, and yet his writings have proved one of the most stimulating influences to the religious-philosophic thought of his country.[20]: 7 Solovyov's influence can also be seen in the writings of the Symbolist and Neo-Idealist writers of the later Russian Soviet era. His book The Meaning of Love (book) can be seen as one of the philosophical sources of Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata (1889). It was also the work in which he introduced the concept of 'syzygy', to denote 'close union'.[21]

Sophiology

Solovyov synthesized a philosophy based on Hellenistic philosophy (see Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus) and early Christian tradition with Buddhist and Hebrew Kabbalistic elements (Philo of Alexandria). He also studied Gnosticism and the works of the Gnostic Valentinus.[22] His religious philosophy was syncretic and fused philosophical elements of various religious traditions with Orthodox Christianity and his own experience of Sophia.

Solovyov described his encounters with the entity Sophia in his works, such as Three Encounters and Lectures on Godmanhood. His fusion was driven by the desire to reconcile and/or unite with Orthodox Christianity the various traditions by the Russian Slavophiles' concept of sobornost. His Russian religious philosophy had a very strong impact on the Russian Symbolist art and poetry movements of the Silver Age[22] and his written arguments in favor of the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Holy See played an instrumental role in the formation of the Russian Greek Catholic Church.[23] His teachings on Sophia, conceived as the merciful unifying feminine wisdom of God comparable to the Hebrew Shekinah or various goddess traditions,[24] have been deemed a heresy by Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and as unsound and unorthodox by the Patriarchate of Moscow.[25] This condemnation, however, was not agreed upon by other jurisdictions of the Orthodox church and was directed specifically against Sergius Bulgakov who continued to be defended by his own hierarch Metropolitan Evlogy until his death.[26]

In his 2005 foreword to Solovyov's Justification of the Good, the Orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart wrote a defense of Sophiology including a specific defense of Solovyov's later thought:

in Solovyov's developed reflections upon this figure (and in those of his successor Sophiologists', Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov), she was most definitely not an occult, or pagan, or Gnostic goddess, nor was she a fugitive from some Chaldean mystery cult, nor was she a speculative perversion of the Christian doctrine of God. She was not a fourth hypostasis in the Godhead, nor a fallen fragment of God, nor a literal world-soul, nor an eternal hypostasis who became incarnate as the Mother of God, nor most certainly the 'feminine aspect of deity.' Solovyov possessed too refined a mind to fall prey to the lure of cultic mythologies or childish anthropomorphisms, despite his interest in Gnosticism (or at least in its special pathos); and all such characterizations of the figure of Sophia are the result of misreadings (though, one must grant, misreadings partly occasioned by the young Solovyov's penchant for poetic hyperbole). In truth, the divine Sophia is first and foremost a biblical figure, and 'Sophiology' was born of an honest attempt to interpret intelligibly the role ascribed to her in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, in such a way as to complement the Logos Christology of the Fourth Gospel, while still not neglecting the 'autonomy' of creation within its very dependency upon the Logos.[27]

Sobornost

Solovyov sought to create a philosophy that could through his system of logic or reason reconcile all bodies of knowledge or disciplines of thought, and fuse all conflicting concepts into a single system. The central component of this complete philosophic reconciliation was the Russian Slavophile concept of sobornost (organic or spontaneous order through integration, which is related to the Russian word for 'catholic'). Solovyov sought to find and validate common ground, or where conflicts found common ground, and, by focusing on this common ground, to establish absolute unity and/or integral[28] fusion of opposing ideas and/or peoples.[29]

Death

Intense mental work shattered Solovyov's health.[30] He died at the Moscow estate of Nikolai Petrovitch Troubetzkoy, where a relative of the latter, Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy, was living.[30][31]

By 1900, Solovyov was apparently a homeless pauper. He left his brother, Mikhail Sergeevich, and several colleagues to defend and promote his intellectual legacy. He is buried at Novodevichy Convent.

Quotes

But if the faith communicated by the Church to Christian humanity is a living faith, and if the grace of the sacraments is an effectual grace, the resultant union of the divine and the human cannot be limited to the special domain of religion, but must extend to all Man's common relationships and must regenerate and transform his social and political life.[32]

Works

Original Russian

English translations

See also

References

  1. Back to citation Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher) — Biographical overview, chronology, works, and bibliography.
  2. Back to citation The philosopher's family name has been spelt in various ways: Soloviev, Solov'ev Solovëv, Solowjew, Solov'jov, Solovieff, Solovioff and Solovyev. The most widely accepted transliterated form of his last name is Solovyov.
  3. Back to citation Fides et ratio, 74 — John Paul II's qualified commendation of Solovyov as an Eastern exemplar of philosophy in dialogue with faith.
  4. Back to citation Dahm 1975, p. 219.
  5. Back to citation Бондарюк (Bondaryuk), Елена (Elena) (16 March 2018). "Дочь своего века, или Изменчивая Allegro" [The Daughter of Her Age, or the Volatile Allegro]. Крымский ТелеграфЪ (in Russian). No. 471. Simferopol, Crimea. Archived from the original on 4 October 2018. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  6. Back to citation Kornblatt 2009, pp. 12, 22.
  7. Back to citation occurrence 7.0 Back to citation occurrence 7.1 Back to citation occurrence 7.2 Back to citation occurrence 7.3 Lossky 1951.
  8. Back to citation Valliere 2007, p. 35.
  9. Back to citation Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church, trans. William G. von Peters (Chattanooga, TN: Catholic Resources, 2013); Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov, The Russian Church and the Papacy: An Abridgment of Russia and the Universal Church, ed. Ray Ryland (San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2001); Ryland, Ray (2003). "Soloviev's Amen: A Russian Orthodox Argument for the Papacy". Crisis. Vol. 21, no. 10. pp. 35–38. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
  10. Back to citation Kmita, Robert Lazu; PhD (30 April 2025). "The Greatest Eastern Apologist for Pontifical Authority: Vladimir Solovyov". OnePeterFive. Retrieved 19 May 2025; Falk S. J., Heinrich (1949). "Wladimir Solowjows Stellung zur katholischen Kirche", Stimmen der Zeit, vol. 144 (in German). pp. 421–435; Grigorieff, Maxim (13 May 2024). "The Father of Russian Philosophy Died a Catholic". OnePeterFive. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
  11. Back to citation Solovyov, Vladimir (2016). The Burning Bush: Writings on Jews and Judaism. Translated by Gregory Yuri Glazov. University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 978-0-268-02989-0.
  12. Back to citation "SOLOVYEV, VLADIMIR SERGEYEVICH". The Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  13. Back to citation Kornblatt 2009, pp. 68, 174.
  14. Back to citation occurrence 14.0 Back to citation occurrence 14.1 Eskridge-Kosmach 2014, p. 662.
  15. Back to citation Kornblatt 2009, pp. 24.
  16. Back to citation Solovyov 2008.
  17. Back to citation Cioran 1977, p. 71.
  18. Back to citation Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue. (1919): The Spirit of Russia: Studies in History, Literature and Philosophy, Volume 2. Allen & Unwin. p. 228
  19. Back to citation Zouboff, Peter, Solovyov on Godmanhood: Solovyov's Lectures on Godmanhood Harmon Printing House: Poughkeepsie, New York, 1944; see Milosz 1990.
  20. Back to citation Lavrin, Janko (2004). "Introduction to the Work of Vladimir Solovyov". Transformations of Eros: An Odyssey from Platonic to Christian Eros. Grailstone Press. ISBN 1-59650-001-8.
  21. Back to citation Jacobs 2001, p. 44.
  22. Back to citation occurrence 22.0 Back to citation occurrence 22.1 Carlson 1996.
  23. Back to citation Fr. Paul Mailleux, S.J. (2017), Blessed Leonid Feodorov: First Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church; Bridgebuilder between Rome and Moscow, Loreto Publications. Pages 11–13.
  24. Back to citation Powell 2007, p. 70.
  25. Back to citation "SOPHIAN HERESY". ecumenizm.tripod.com. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  26. Back to citation Ladouceur, Paul (23 September 2021). "Georges Florovsky and Sergius Bulgakov: 'In Peace Let Us Love One Another'". In Chryssavgis, John; Gallaher, Brandon (eds.). The Living Christ: The Theological Legacy of Georges Florovsky. London, UK: T&T Clark. pp. 91–111. ISBN 9780567700469.
  27. Back to citation Solovyov, Vladimir; Hart, David Bentley (31 August 2005). "Forward". The Justification of the Good: An Essay on Moral Philosophy. Translated by Jakim, Boris; Duddington, Nathalie A. Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans. pp. xxxvii–li. ISBN 9780802828637.
  28. Back to citation Kostalevsky 1997.
  29. Back to citation Lossky 1951, pp. 81–134.
  30. Back to citation occurrence 30.0 Back to citation occurrence 30.1 Zouboff, Peter P. (1944). Vladimir Solovyev's Lectures on Godmanhood. International University Press. p. 14. "The passionate intensity of his mental work shattered his health. On the thirty-first of July, in "Uzkoye", the country residence of Prince P. N. Troubetskoy, near Moscow, he passed away in the arms of his close friend, Prince S. N. Troubetskoy."
  31. Back to citation Oberländer, Erwin; Katkov, George. (1971). Russia Enters the Twentieth Century, 1894–1917. Schocken Books. p. 248; ISBN 978-0805234046 "Vladimir Solovyev died in the arms of his friend Sergey Nikolayevich Trubetskoy (1862–1905), on the estate of Uzkoye."
  32. Back to citation Solovyov, Vladimir (1948). Russia and the Universal Church. Translated by Herbert Rees. Geoffrey Bles Ltd. p. 10.
  33. Back to citation Solovyov, Vladimir Sergeyevich (1948). "Russia and the Universal Church".

Further reading

  • du Quenoy, Paul. "Vladimir Solov’ev in Egypt: The Origins of the ‘Divine Sophia’ in Russian Religious Philosophy," Revolutionary Russia, 23: 2, December 2010.
  • Finlan, Stephen. "The Comedy of Divinization in Soloviev," Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology (Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, 2006), pp. 168–183.
  • Gerrard, Thomas J. "Vladimir Soloviev – The Russian Newman," The Catholic World, Vol. CV, April/September, 1917.
  • Glouberman, Emanuel (1974). Feodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Soloviev, Vasilii Rozanov and Lev Shestov on Jewish and Old Testament themes (PhD thesis). University of Michigan.
  • Groberg, Kristi. "Vladimir Sergeevich Solov'ev: a Bibliography," Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, vol.14–15, 1998.
  • Helmut, Dahm (1975). Vladimir Solovyev and Max Scheler: attempt at a comparative interpretation: a contribution to the history of phenomenology. Boston: Reidel. ISBN 9027705070.
  • Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch. "Vladimir Sergeevich Solov’ev," Dictionary of Literary Bibliography, v295 (2004), pp. 377–386.
  • Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Artur. Between the Icon and the idol. The Human Person and the Modern State in Russian Literature and Thought – Chaadayev, Soloviev, Grossman (Cascade Books, /Theopolitical Visions/, Eugene, Or., 2013).
  • Nemeth, Thomas. The Early Solov'ëv and His Quest for Metaphysics. Springer, 2014. ISBN 978-3-319-01347-3 [Print]; ISBN 978-3-319-01348-0 [eBook]
  • Stremooukhoff, Dimitrii N. Vladimir Soloviev and his Messianic Work (Paris, 1935; English translation: Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1980).
  • Sutton, Jonathan. The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov: Towards a Reassessment (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1988).
  • Zernov, Nicholas. Three Russian prophets (London: SCM Press, 1944).

Bibliography

Works cited

  • Carlson, Maria (1996). "Gnostic Elements in the Cosmogony of Vladimir Soloviev". In Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch; Gustafson, Richard F. (eds.). Russian Religious Thought. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 49–67. ISBN 978-0-299-15134-8.
  • Cioran, Samuel (1977). Vladimir Solov'ev and the Knighthood of the Divine Sophia. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
  • Dahm, Helmut [in German] (1975). Vladimir Solovyev and Max Scheler: Attempt at a Comparative Interpretation. Sovietica. Vol. 34. Translated by Wright, Kathleen. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. ISBN 978-90-277-0507-5.
  • Eskridge-Kosmach, Alena [in Belarusian] (2014). "Russian Press and the Ideas of Russia's 'Special Mission in the East' and 'Yellow Peril'". Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 27 (4): 661–675. doi:10.1080/13518046.2014.963440. ISSN 1556-3006. S2CID 144102416.
  • Jacobs, Alan (2001). "Bakhtin and the Hermeneutics of Love". In Felch, Susan M; Contino, Paul J. (eds.). Bakhtin and Religion. Rethinking Theory. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. pp. 25–46. ISBN 978-0-8101-1825-6.
  • Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch (2009). Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-7479-8.
  • Kostalevsky, Marina (1997). Dostoevsky and Soloviev: The Art of Integral Vision. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06096-6.
  • Lossky, N. O. (1951). History of Russian Philosophy. New York: International Universities Press (published 1970). ISBN 978-0-8236-8074-0.
  • Milosz, Czeslaw (1990). Introduction. War, Progress and the End of History: Three Conversations, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ. By Solovyov, Vladimir. Hudson, New York: Lindisfarne Press. ISBN 978-1-58420-212-7.
  • Powell, Robert (2007) [2001]. The Sophia Teachings: The Emergence of the Divine Feminine in Our Time. Great Barrington, Massachusetts: Lindisfarne Books. ISBN 978-1-58420-048-2.
  • Solovyov, Vladimir (2008). Jakim, Boris (ed.). The Religious Poetry of Vladimir Solovyov. Translated by Jakim, Boris; Magnus, Laury. San Rafael, California: Semantron Press. ISBN 978-1-59731-279-0.
  • Valliere, Paul (2007). "Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900)". In Witte, John Jr.; Alexander, Frank S. (eds.). The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14264-9. <https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/62435007.pdf>
Retrieved from "https://catholicism.wiki/index.php?title=Vladimir_Solovyov&oldid=174343"