Translated by Michael Millerman. Founder of http://MillermanSchool.com - online philosophy and politics courses on Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dugin, Strauss, and more.

All-Unity as flight from philosophy

Another key point of Solovyov’s reflections is the thesis of “all-unity.” It also represents an echo of the deep archaic intuition about the “cohesiveness”5 of all oppositions and differences.

“All-unity” is not “monotheism” in the Christian sense. It is also not the materialistic monism of modern science. It is a form of self-perception of the intentional (in the sense of Brentano and Husserl), pre-philosophical, prelogical principle [nachalo], which calms the neurosis of rational distinctions and pacifies a person in the element of gentle motherly darkness. But Western European philosophy in its basic sources is founded precisely on a radical and irreversible break with such an “infantile,” “female” state and experience, on the adoption of the heroic and masculine position of an eternally discriminating and therefore deeply tragic reason as its only destiny. Solovyov’s all-unity is anything but philosophy, since it reflects not just non-philosophical, but counter-philosophical experience, expressing the circumstances under which philosophy as such cannot arise. The most that philosophy based on the principle of unity appeals to is the final reconciliation or transcendence of pure being that lies beyond the horizon of philosophy as its unattainable source, goal, hypothesis, premise. Non-all-unity is an absolute condition of philosophy. If Solovyov would have clearly realized this and would have been able to match the thesis of unity, as well as the thesis of Sophia, with the Russian Pole, then he would reach a highly important, perhaps decisive argument. - If we think “sophially,” if we think “all-unity” starting from “all-unity,” in a word, if we think in the Russian way [по-русски], then we find ourselves in a zone strictly contrary to the basic principles of Western European philosophy, and not only its separate branches (past or modern), but its own fundamental architecture, including Western religious philosophy (both Christian and pre-Christian). This would be insight into the possible philosophy of the Mother, organized completely differently than the philosophy of the Father. But Solovyov interprets this extremely important intuition in an unfavorable way, trying through the “stickiness” (“glichroidism” in psychiatry) of consciousness to artificially combine the West, which he understands poorly, with Russia, which he acutely feels but cannot adequately translate to the level of thinking. When Solovyov talks about the East, it turns out to be a caricature drawn from European philosophical feuilletons: Europe does not understand the East, does not know it and is not really interested in it, considering it by default the “not fully [nedo] West,” in the same spirit as the Greeks considered all non-Greeks to be “barbarians,” not only speaking other languages, but not speaking at all, releasing a set of meaningless sounds; that is, as some kind of “animals.”

At times, for instance in the article on “Three Forces,”6 Solovyov comes closer to understanding the peculiarity of the Russian idea, its difference from the Western (and Eastern); that is, he stands close to “Russian philosophy,” the contours of which he seems to already distinguish. But here he again slips at once into pseudo-Western universalism, conservative European projectionism, promiscuous and unreasonable liberalism. Speaking about the fact that the Russian people has a “universal mission,” he describes it as the mission of the “builder” of the Universal Church, meaning by this the unification of Christianity under the auspices of the Pope.7 And so it is everywhere.

In a word, Solovyov remains captive to the archeo-modern and as a whole leaves behind a simulacrum-heritage. Taken as it is, it only exacerbates the archeomodern and strengthens the hopelessness of the hermeneutic ellipse. Focus B (Westernism) in this ellipse blocks the development of Focus A (the possibility of the Russian hermeneutic circle, that is, Russian philosophy itself ), but Focus A (Figure 4), in turn, takes revenge on and sabotages rationality through the active and frequent intrusions of the uncensored unconscious, distorting the orderliness of logical structures, turning thinking into a farce and reforms into a disgrace. As such, Solovyov’s “philosophy” is a misconception. But if we manage to separate and isolate the actual Russian, archaic, deep, “numinous” moment from it, if we manage to unravel the snares of Westernism and rescue the element of Russian Sophia from them, then we can decipher the most important message that it contains. And in this case it will turn into a most valuable fragment of the new, only possible (or impossible: it remains to be determined) Russian hermeneutic circle (not ellipse) itself.

Nikolai Fyodorov and the “Dead Fathers”

Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov,8 Solovyov’s contemporary, is also an archeomodern philosopher. He does not so much think as rave, but in a slightly different mode than Vladimir Solovyov. It is significant that he lived his whole life as a secular virgin, not as a monk and not as a pious Christian, but rather as a shaman, squeezing out from his askesis flashes of numinous visions and intuitions. If Vladimir Solovyov contemplates the mystical Sophia, then Nikolai Fyodorov resurrects the dead. If we turn to our hermeneutic ellipse, here we are clearly dealing with focus A (Figure 3), with a vivid expression of the archaic principle.

That the dead are alive, that they haven’t gone anywhere and live next to us, is a deep, radical intuition of the archaic consciousness. In the form of theological hope for the events of the end times, it is present in the developed and highly differentiated Christian doctrine. But Fyodorov clearly does not have that in mind, but rather the haunting, archaic practice of ecstasy, during which the dead are not raised by God, nor by transcendental power, but by means of immanent, purely human, methods and procedures present here and now. He’s talking about a kind of necromantic theurgy, practiced in some Neoplatonic schools (e.g. Iamblichus and his followers from the Syrian and Pergamon schools of Neoplatonism). At the same time, Fyodorov intended to use the latest achievements of the exact sciences for the resurrection of the dead, research in the fields of chemistry, magnetism, physics, etc. Further, the development of science was necessary, according to Fyodorov, to explore the cosmos after the whole place on earth was filled with the resurrected dead. In addition, the importance of the development of spacecraft was dictated, in his opinion, by the fact that “particles of the dead” could fly into space, and humanity must find them and bring them back. At the same time, completely in the manner of the skoptsy, he advocated the rejection of the “Cult of Wives” (that is, of natural birth) and of food (since “food contains particles of dead ancestors”). People must learn to control natural and atmospheric phenomena and after that they will be able to fly wherever they want.

With such ideas, in the sober and rational Western world one could only claim to be in a psychiatric clinic and not to be a philosopher. In Russia, the “philosopher” is more than a philosopher, and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Platonov and Shaginyan, Tsiolkovsky and Vernadsky admired Fyodorov, as did the left (Parisian) Eurasians (Karsavin, Efron, Suvchinsky).

Fyodorov’s psychopathology could have become a pole of pure archaism if he had been able to find exact formulas for it in the direct experience of Russian life [being]. In this case, it would not be a pathology but a therapy individualizing the submerged energies that accumulate in the Russian collective unconscious and strive to break free. The fact that the dead are alive (and, accordingly, the living are dead) is an expression of the deep intuition of the “whole,” the numinous perception of the human as an eidos, as an archetype, scattered into many singularities, but retaining its identity in the special ontological and anthropological dimension. If the world of the act is the decay of totality and the dismemberment of the eidos, then the human soteriological task is to restore this lost unity, to recreate it, to put the fragments together, to revive what only seems to be dead. This impulse carries in itself convoluted versions of temporality, the idea of qualitative space, and an insight into “being-toward-death” and the pure element of “care” (if we use the existentials of Dasein identified by Heidegger).

In a word, Fyodorov, like Solovyov, comes close to the pole of the Russian arche, so that at a certain moment it seems that he is about to short-circuit the mechanisms of the archeomodern and set sail in the free ocean of pure Russian delirium, isolating the structures of the unconscious and thereby, in turn and for its part, to approach the constitution of Russian philosophy.... But...this does not happen, and Fyodorov, imperceptibly to himself, slips into the discourse of Westernized modernism, begins to talk about progress, the value of the museum and the development of technology, the ability to control the weather and build perfect machines. Unable to withstand the attacks of the elements of the unconscious in himself, under the influence of the censorship of the nobility side of his genetics, Fyodorov again and again breaks off into pseudo-rationalism, praises Western science and combines the impending resurrection of the dead with the achievement of the technical genius of “enlightened humanity.” And the combination of deeply irrational (purely Russian) intuitions with scattered fragments of Western European rationalism (even more peripheral and ridiculous than Solovyov’s philopapism) significantly devalues Fyodorov’s texts, giving his teachings the property of a painful and contradictory pathological stream of consciousness.

And again, as with Solovyov, taken as it is Fyodorov’s legacy represents a repulsive trash heap of judgments, remarks, and fragments, parodying the process of philosophizing (not only Western, but also Eastern – for example, Chinese or Hindu, where necessarily there is logic and order, albeit different from the Western European variant). Fyodorov’s thought fits completely into the hermeneutic ellipse. But if, having overcome our squeamishness, we try to understand it more deeply, like in the case of Solovyov, we will find there the clearly distinguishable presence of focus A (Figure 3), individual insights and points related to a possible “Russian philosophy” that did not become actual in this case.

The two most representative Russian thinkers of the 19th century - Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Fyodorov - are monuments to how Russian philosophy failed; how archeo-modernity managed to tame and render bloodless, pervert and ultimately destroy the awakening Russian thought.

And again, this can be treated in two ways: observe the failure or, on the contrary, see the flickering confirmation of this very possibility. If something gravitated toward taking place, but did not take place, maybe it will take place sometime later, in new conditions and at a new historical turn (wherever it leads - to the abyss or to heaven, and even if it would be a turning in one place, a spinning top, “driven by a demon.”

The Silver Age and Sophiology

The intuitions of Solovyov and Fyodorov formed the basis of the cultural paradigm of the Silver Age. Sophiology and the doctrine of “all-unity” were developed by the followers of Vladimir Solovyov: S.N. Trubetskoy, E.N. Trubetskoy, S.L. Frank, N.O. Lossky, P.A. Florensky and especially S.N. Bulgakov, who tried give it the most systematic expression.

Sophiology had a tremendous impact on the Russian symbolic poets and acmeists (V. Bryusov, A. Blok, A. White, N. Gumilev, A. Akhmatova, I. Annensky, Vs. Ivanov, F. Sologub, Z. Gippius, K. Balmont, S. Gorodetsky, N. Kuzmin, O. Mandelstam), as well as the artistic, theatric and literary circles close to them. All cycles of Blok’s poetry can be interpreted as the poetic unfolding of the intuition of Sophia, opening up either in the image of the Beautiful Lady, or in the form of Virgin Russia.

One way or another, V. Rozanov, N. Berdyaev, D. Merezhkovsky, M. Gershenzon and almost all Russian philosophers commented on the sophiological theme.

The Leaders of Russian Sophiology: Bulgakov and Florensky

Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky are a special case in this chain. Both are classical carriers of archeomodernity: their personal fate, ideas, and intellectual path fit perfectly into the hermeneutic ellipse. In both, we find fluctuations between extreme modernism (Bulgakov’s early Marxism, Florensky's rapprochement with the Bolsheviks) and extreme forms of the archaic (the sophiology and imyaslavie characteristic of both). In addition, Florensky created the “doctrine of imaginary geometry” in the early 1920s,9 on the basis of which he ingeniously proved the validity of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic geocentric cosmology of Dante and the error of Copernicus, and he did this on the basis of Einstein's theory of relativity, the experiments of Michelson and Morley, and the mathematics of G. Riemann and F. Klein.10 It is indicative that in his youth he was significantly influenced by the personality of Archimandrite Serapion (Mashkin), an extravagant, exalted, and contradictory, figure, suffering from alcoholism and insanity, who combined various extremes: love for the French Revolution and calls for tough theocracy, opposition to secular authorities and apologetics for secret political killings, etc. (a typical case of Russian archaeomodernity in its clinical form).

The figures of Bulagakov and Florensky are extremely demonstrative in the sense that the problem of the compatibility of Russian philosophizing with Orthodoxy is seriously raised for the first time in their creative searches. Therefore, an analysis of their theories leads right up to a very important topic: what place does the Orthodox tradition and Orthodox dogma occupy in the general structure of Russian archeo-modernity.

Figure 6. Russia’s Religious Forms and the Archeomodern Poles

From the very beginning, it should be emphasized that we are talking about New Believer Orthodoxy, that is, about that religious form that became official and dominant in the Russian Empire after the schism of the 17th century (see figure 6). It is precisely from this moment that the history of the Russian archeomodern and, accordingly, the establishment of a hermeneutic ellipse with two foci should be counted.

The Slavophiles made the first attempts at a philosophical comprehension of the Russian Orthodox tradition. But in their approach, Orthodoxy in general was perceived as something related to Russian identity, that is, to pole A of our ellipse (figure 3); they did not go into theological nuances. Vladimir Solovyov focused more concentratedly on understanding the religious and dogmatic principles of Christianity, but, as we saw, he did not find anything better than to turn to ecumenical Catholicism (the influence of pole B in figure 6). In the work of Bulgakov, who at a certain point accepted the priesthood, and in the case of Father Florensky, who became a priest even earlier, we see serious attempts to systematically comprehend the Orthodox theological problematic and raise the question of its relationship with both Christian dogma in general and modern philosophy and science.

One circumstance is extremely important in this initiative. Under the influence of sophiology and the image of Sophia, Bulgakov and Florensky already by virtue of this gravitated toward the archaic pole of the hermeneutic ellipse, and, therefore, in their theories, one can trace how this intuitively demarcated pole manifested itself in connection with church dogma. The seriousness of the intentions of both thinkers and their unquestionable theological competence are a reliable basis for using their example to trace the deep features of the archeomodern itself in its interaction with the Orthodox faith. And here the fate of Bulgakov’s and Florensky’s ideas and teachings is extremely revealing far beyond the boundaries of the individual fate of these philosophers.

If the theological declarations of Solovyov, and especially Fyodorov, are still difficult to consider as something coherent and systematized, then the views of the two representatives of the next generation are a much more serious phenomenon.

Bulgakov and Florensky: The Attempt to Think in Russian Way

Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky were deeply Russian people, both from the small county clergy. Bulgakov (1871-1944) was born in the Oryol region in Livny, and Florensky (1882-1937) in the Elizabethan province (in the territory of present-day Azerbaijan). Florensky's mother was an Armenian from a noble family (Saparovs / Saparyan). Both were people of outstanding intelligence and multifaceted abilities, having mastered many scientific disciplines, including mathematics, economics, etc. Throughout their lives, both were engaged in philosophy, especially related to the religious and dogmatic issues of Christianity.

We can assume that Bulgakov and Florensky set themselves the task, developing the ideas of Solovyov, whom they considered their teacher, to build something like Russian philosophy, based on the Russian pole itself (focus A (Figure 3)) that the Slavophiles and Solovyov had sensed, with conscious rejection of the Western pole, both modern and historical. Carried away at one time by Western philosophical theories and even Marxism (Bulgakov in his youth was one of the most prominent representatives of the radical Marxist intelligentsia and wrote a number of serious works on political economy in a socialist and even communist spirit), they gradually and consciously abandoned them, focusing on attempts to build something fundamentally new, related to the peculiarity of Russian culture and Russian society. In this, they went further than Solovyov and Fyodorov, continuing, to one degree or another, the tendencies of attempts by Russian people to independently think for themselves and comprehend their society and their history, outlining their new horizons.

Bulgakov and Florensky saw Russian Orthodoxy as the point that most fully represents Russian identity and the deep foundations of the Russian mission, and, therefore, they identified to some extent the archaic pole of Russianness - focus A (figure 6) - with Orthodox tradition and Orthodox theology. At one point, Bulgakov publicly announced that philosophy was not able to give real answers to the main questions and that truth should be sought exclusively in the bosom of church dogma. In accordance with this, he took a church rank. Figure 4 above will help understand how much that accords with the reality.

However, in this case, Bulgakov and Florensky were by no means content with simply reproducing church canons and dogmas: they tried to understand them, comprehend them, perceive them anew, freshly and passionately, as a fundamental life- and philosophical program. In fact, they recognized in Orthodoxy and Orthodox teaching the possibility of Russian philosophy that we are exploring in this work. They worked out this hypothesis about the identity of a possible Russian philosophy, the Russian hermeneutical circle, with Orthodox dogma, seriously and thoroughly. Therefore, the results of their labors are of enormous importance to us.

5. The structure of Solovyov's thinking exactly matches what Gilbert Durand called the functioning imagination in the mode of “mystical nocturne.” In psychiatry, this is described as “glishroid” (literally, “glue”) syndrome associated with epileptic disorders. See Dugin A.G. Sociology of the Imagination. Introduction to Structural Sociology. Moscow: Academic Project, 2010; Dugin, Logos and Mythos. Sociology of Depths. Moscow: Academic Project, 2010; and Durand G. Les Structures Anthropologiques de l'Imaginaire. Paris, 1960.

6. V.S. Soloviev Three Forces // Soloviev V.S. The Meaning of Love. Selected Works, Moscow, 1991 pp. 28-40.

7. Soloviev V. Works in 2 vols. Vol. 2, Moscow, 1988. p. 227

8. See the main work of Fyodorov: Fyodorov N. Philosophy of the Common Task: in 2 volumes. Moscow, 2003.

9. P. Florensky, Imaginaries in Geometry. Mimesis International, 2021.

10. You can get an idea of the style of this work based on the following excerpt from it. - “However, considering the interpretation of imaginary numbers that is suggested here, we can visualize how, having been reduced to zero, the body sinks through the surface that bears the corresponding coordinate, turns back on itself, and as a result acquires imaginary characteristics. Figuratively speaking, and if we have a concrete, and not figurative, understanding of the space, one can say that the space breaks at velocities that exceed the speed of light, just like air breaks when bodies move at speeds higher than the speed of sound; and this gives rise to qualitatively new conditions of the existence of the space, characterized by imaginary parameters. However, just like the collapse of the geometrical figure does not imply its elimination but only its transition to the other side of the surface, and consequently its accessibility to the beings located there, in the same way as the imaginary character of a body’s parameters must be understood not as a sign of its unreality but merely as the evidence of its transition to another reality. The imaginary realm is real, comprehensible, and in Dante’s language it is called the Empyrean. We can picture all space as double, made up of real and imaginary Gaussian coordinate surfaces that match the real ones, but the transition from the real surface to the imaginary one, however, is only possible by fracturing the space and turning the body inside itself. In the meantime, we can only picture this process through the increase in speeds - perhaps the speeds of certain particles of the body - beyond the threshold velocity c as the means to bring about such a process, although we have no proof that other means are possible.” Florensky, Imaginaries pp. 62-63.

The Philosophers of Archeomodernity. Part.1