Soloviev is Kant of Russian philosophy. No understanding of any trend in Russian modern thought may be complete without at least a cursory  acquaintance with Soloviev. This is as true for Russian Marxism as it is  for Russian religious philosophy, which Soloviev so brilliantly  represents.A cursory reading, however, is impossible, once you start  browsing the book. Soloviev is not just a philosopher, nor even the  greatest Russian philosopher to day (which he is); he is so much more than  that. Soloviev is a sage and a prophet, who was sadly not heard in Russia  of his times. He is still less than properly understood in the West. There  are people who frame him as Russian nationalist; others see just an  Orthodox mystic or  just a constitutionalist, Christian Democrat and so  on.With a similar success, you could try to stick some sort of a mundane  label on, for example, Lao Tzu. Was he a conservative - or a reformist?  Chinese traditionalist or a mystical revolutionary?What impresses me  most in this collection of essays is Soloviev's rational post-rationalism,  a brand of thought which is postmodernist and post-traditionalist at once.  Soloviev did not believe that human happiness can be constructed by  rational design, be it a Marxist or a capitalist/consumerist design that  sways today's world. At the same time, he was not preaching passivity and  resignation, but rather revival of human spirit and conscience in a  community of free individuals. For him, Christianity was the answer. Yet,  his view was truly ecumenical in a sense that no races were excluded from  the project of universal love based on universal compassion and modesty,  something that only humble service to the God's idea of humanity can  accomplish.It is impossible to read Soloviev without thinking of painful  moral dilemmas of today. He has offered answers to many of those; answers  that deserve to be heard in our present debates. Still more importantly, he  had shown the way to approach  the dilemmas that are yet to come; this way  is called Christian humanism and it goes beyond  not only grand schemes of  modernism, but also grand disorientation of the postmodern  "alternatives" to them. This sort of reading enlightens soul, and  not just satisfies your intellectual curiosity. Are there many books out  there that go that far?A sincere gratitide must go to the translator for  doing the job. We can only wish it was a two-or three-volume collection,  which could do more justice to Soloviev the thinker.

Politics, Law, and Morality: Essays by V. S. Soloviev PDF

The list of books you might like