considered a prolific but complicated character. His output aimed to
be a comprehensive philosophical system, yet he produced what is
considered contentious, theosophical and fundamentally inconclusive
results.
This article examines in detail Slovyov's five main works. It also
looks into the controversy he generated and his possible philosophical
legacy. In the course of five main works – three were completed, two
were left unfinished – Solovyov demonstrated a predilection for grand
topics of study and an ambitious aim to produce a comprehensive
philosophical system that rejected accepted notions of contemporary
European Philosophy. In his first major work, The Crisis of Western
Philosophy (written when he was twenty-one), he argues against
positivism and for moving away from a dichotomy of "speculative"
(rationalist) and "empirical" knowledge in favour of a
post-philosophical enquiry that would reconcile all notions of thought
in a new transcendental whole.
He carried on his attempted synthesis of rationalism, empiricism and
mysticism in Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge, and he
turned to a study of ethics leading to a solidifying of his
epistemology in Critique of Abstract Principles.
In the later period of his life, he recast his ethics in The
Justification of the Good and his epistemology in Theoretical
Philosophy.
Due to his conclusions repeatedly resting on a call upon an aspect of
the divine or the discovery of an "all-encompassing spirit," the
soundness of his arguments have often been called into question. For
the same reason, and compounded by a tendency to express himself in
theological and romantically nationalist language, he is also often
dismissed as a mystic or fanatic. Although, as the article below
argues, if read as a product of his time, they are more sensible and
less polemical.
1. Life
Solovyov was born in Moscow in 1853. His father, Sergej Mikhailovich,
a professor at Moscow University, is universally recognized as one of
Russia's greatest historians. After attending secondary school in
Moscow, Vladimir enrolled at the university and began his studies
there in the natural sciences in 1869, his particular interest at this
time being biology. Already at the age of 13 he had renounced his
Orthodox faith to his friends, accepting the banner of materialism
perhaps best illustrated by the fictional character of Bazarov in
Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons and the actual historical figure of
Pisarev. During the first two or three years of study at the
university Solovyov grew disenchanted with his ardent positivism and
did poorly in his examinations. An excellent student prior to this
time, there is no reason for us to doubt his intellectual gifts.
Nevertheless, although he himself as well as his interpreters have
attributed his poor performance to growing disinterest in his course
of study, this reasoning may sound to us at least somewhat
disingenuous. In any case, Solovyov subsequently enrolled as an
auditor in the Historical-Philosophical Faculty, then passing the
examination for a degree in June 1873.
At some point during 1872 Solovyov reconverted, so to speak, to
Orthodoxy. During the academic year 1873-74 he attended lectures at
the Moscow Ecclesiastic Academy–an unusual step for a lay person. At
this time Solovyov also began the writing of his magister's
dissertation, several chapters of which were published in a Russian
theological journal in advance of' his formal defense of it in early
December 1874.
The death of his Moscow University philosophy teacher Pamfil Jurkevich
created a vacancy that Solovyov surely harbored hopes of eventually
filling. Nevertheless, despite being passed over, owing, at least in
part, to his young age and lack of credentials, he was named a docent
(lecturer) in philosophy. In spite of taking up his teaching duties
with enthusiasm, within a few months Solovyov applied for a
scholarship to do research abroad, primarily in London's British
Museum.
His stay in the English capital was met with mixed emotions, but it
could not have been entirely unpleasant, for in mid-September 1875 he
was still informing his mother of plans to return to Russia only the
following summer. For whatever reason, though, Solovyov abruptly
changed his mind, writing again to his mother a mere month later that
his work required him to go to Egypt via Italy and Greece. Some have
attributed his change of plans to a mystical experience while sitting
in the reading room of the Museum!
Upon his return to Russia the following year, Solovyov taught
philosophy at Moscow University. He began work on a text that we know
as the Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge, but which he
never finished. In early 1877 Solovyov relinquished his university
position due to his aversion towards academic politics, took up
residence in St. Petersburg and accepted employment in the Ministry of
Public Education. While preparing his doctoral dissertation, Solovyov
gave a series of highly successful popular lectures at St. Petersburg
University that was later published as Lectures on Divine Humanity,
and in 1880 he defended a doctoral dissertation at St. Petersburg
University. Any lingering hope Solovyov may have entertained of
obtaining a professorship in Russia were dashed when in early 1881
during a public lecture he appealed to the Tsar to pardon the
regicides of the latter's father Alexander II.
For the remainder of the 1880s, despite his prolificacy, Solovyov
concerned himself with themes of little interest to contemporary
Western philosophy. He returned, however, to traditional philosophical
issues in the 1890s, working in particular on ethics and epistemology.
His studies on the latter, however, were left quite incomplete owing
to his premature death in 1900 at the age of 47. At the end Solovyov,
together with his younger brother, was also preparing a new Russian
translation of Plato's works.
2. Interpretations of Solovyov's Philosophical Writings
Despite the vast amount of secondary literature, particularly, of
course, in Russian, little, especially that in English, is of interest
to the professionally-trained philosopher. Nevertheless, even while
memory of him was still fresh, many of his friends differed sharply on
key issues involved in interpreting Solovyov's writings and legacy.
Among the topics debated over the years has been the number of phases
or periods through which his thought passed. Opinions have ranged from
four to just one, depending largely on the different criteria selected
for demarcating one period from another. Those who hold that
Solovyov's thought underwent no "fundamental change" [Shein] do not
deny that there were modifications but simply maintain that the
fundamental thrust of his philosophy remained unaltered over the
course of time. Others see different emphases in Solovyov's work from
decade to decade. Yet in one of the most philosophically-informed
interpretations, Solovyov moved from a philosophy of "integral
knowledge" to a later phenomenological phase that anticipated the
"essential methodology" of the German movement [Dahm].
Historically, another central concern among interpreters has been the
extent of Solovyov's indebtedness to various other figures. Whereas
several have stressed the influence of, if not an outright borrowing
from, the late Schelling [Mueller, Shein], at least one prominent
scholar has sought to accentuate Solovyov's independence and
creativity [Losev]. Still others have argued for Solovyov's
indebtedness to Hegel [Navickas], Kant [Vvedenskij], Boehme [David],
the Russian Slavophiles and the philosophically-minded theologians
Jurkevich and Kudryavtsev.
In Russia itself the thesis that Solovyov had no epistemology [Radlov]
evoked a spirited rebuttal [Ern] that has continued in North America
[Shein, Navickas]. None of these scholars, however, has demonstrated
the presence of more than a rudimentary epistemology, at least as that
term is currently employed in contemporary philosophy.
Additionally, the vast majority of secondary studies have dealt with
Solovyov's mysticism and views on religion, nationalism, social
issues, and the role of Russia in world history. Consequently, it is
not surprising that those not directly acquainted with his explicit
philosophical writings and their Russian context view Solovyov as
having nothing of interest to say in philosophy proper. We should also
mention one of the historically most influential views, one that
initially at least appears quite plausible. Berdyaev, seeing Solovyov
as a paradoxical figure, distinguished a day — from a night-Solovyov.
The "day-Solovyov" was a philosophical rationalist, in the broad
sense, an idealist, who sought to convey his highly metaphysical
religious and ontological conceptions through philosophical discourse
utilizing terms current at the time; the "night — Solovyov" was a
mystic who conveyed his personal revelations largely through poetry.
3. The Crisis of Western Philosophy
This, Solovyov's first major work, displays youthful enthusiasm,
vision, optimism and a large measure of audacity. Unfortunately, it is
also at times repetitious and replete with sweeping generalizations,
unsubstantiated conclusions, and non sequiturs. The bulk of the work
is an excursion in the history of modern philosophy that attempts to
substantiate and amplify Solovyov's justly famous claims, made in the
opening lines, that: (i) philosophy — qua a body of abstract, purely
theoretical knowledge — has finished its development; (ii) philosophy
in this sense is no longer nor will it ever again be maintained by
anyone; (iii) philosophy has bequeathed to its successor certain
accomplishments or results that this successor will utilize to resolve
the problems that philosophy has unsuccessfully attempted to resolve.
Solovyov tells us that his ambitious program differs from positivism
in that, unlike the latter, he understands the superseded artifact
called "philosophy" to include not merely its "speculative" but also
its "empirical" direction. Whether these two directions constitute the
entirety of modern philosophy, i.e., whether there has been any
historical manifestation of another sense of philosophy, one that is
not purely theoretical, during the modern era, is unclear. Also left
unclear is what precisely Solovyov means by "positivism." He mentions
as representatives of that doctrine Mill, Spencer and Comte, whose
views were by no means identical, and mentions as the fundamental
tenet of positivism that "independent reality cannot be given in
external experience." This I take to mean that experience yields
knowledge merely of things as they appear, not as they are "in
themselves." Solovyov has, it would seem, confused positivism with
phenomenalism.
Solovyov's reading of the development of modern philosophy proceeds
along the lines of Hegel's own interpretation. He sees Hegel's
"panlogism" as the necessary result of Western philosophy. The
"necessity" here is clearly conceptual, although Solovyov implicitly
accepts without further ado that this necessity has, as a matter of
fact, been historically manifested in the form of individual
philosophies. Moreover, in line with Hegel's apparent
self-interpretation Solovyov agrees that the former's system permits
no further development. For the latter, at least, this is because,
having rejected the law of (non)contradiction, Hegel's philosophy sees
internal contradiction, which otherwise would lead to further
development, as a "logical necessity," i.e., as something the
philosophy itself requires and is accommodated within the system
itself.
Similarly, Solovyov's analysis of the movement from Hegelianism to
mid-19th century German materialism is largely indebted to the
left-Hegelians. Solovyov, however, merely claims that one can exit
Hegelianism by acknowledging its fundamental one-sidedness. Yet in the
next breath, as it were, he holds that the emergence of empiricism,
qua materialism, was necessary. Out of the phenomenalism of empiricism
arises Schopenhauer's philosophy and thence Eduard von Hartmann's.
All representatives of Western philosophy, including to some extent
Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, see rational knowledge as the
decomposition of intuition into its sensuous and logical elements.
Such knowledge, however, in breaking up the concrete into abstractions
without re-synthesizing them, additionally is unable to recognize
these abstractions as such but must hypostatize them, that is, assign
real existence to them.. Nevertheless, even were we to grant
Solovyov's audacious thesis that all Western philosophers have done
this abstraction and hypostatizing, it by no means follows that
rational thought necessarily has had to follow this procedure.
According to Solovyov, von Hartmann, in particular, is aware of the
one-sidedness of both rationalism and empiricism, which respectively
single out the logical and the sense element in cognition to the
exclusion of the other. Nevertheless, he too hypostatizes will and
idea instead of realizing that the only way to avoid any and all
bifurcations is through a recognition of what Solovyov terms "the
fundamental metaphysical principle," namely that the all- encompassing
spirit is the truly existent. This hastily enunciated conclusion
receives here no further argument. Nor does Solovyov dwell on
establishing his ultimate claim that the results of Western
philosophical development, issuing in the discovery of the
all-encompassing spirit, agree with the religious beliefs of the
Eastern Church fathers.
4. Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge
This work originally appeared during 1877 as a series of articles in
an official journal published by the Ministry of Education (Zhurnal
Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshchenija). Of Solovyov's major writings
it is probably the most difficult for the philosopher today to
understand owing, to a large degree, to its forced trichotomization of
philosophical issues and options and its extensive use of terms drawn
from mystical sources even when employed in a quite different sense.
There are three fundamental aspects, or "subjective foundations," of
human life–in Solovyov's terminology, "forms of being." They are:
feeling, thinking and willing. Each of these has both a personal and a
social side, and each has its objective intentional object. These are,
respectively, objective beauty, objective truth and the objective
good. Three fundamental forms of the social union arise from human
striving for the good: economic society, political society
(government), and spiritual society. Likewise in the pursuit of truth
there arises positive science, abstract philosophy, and theology.
Lastly, in the sphere of feeling we have the technical arts, such as
architecture, the fine arts and a form of mysticism, which Solovyov
emphasizes is an immediate spiritual connection with the transcendent
world and as such is not to be confused with the term "mysticism" as
used to indicate a reflection on that connection.
Human cultural evolution has literally passed through these forms and
done so according to what Solovyov calls "an incontestable law of
development." Economic socialism, positivism and utilitarian realism
represent for him the highest point yet of Western civilization and,
in line with his earlier work, the final stage of its development. But
Western civilization with its social, economic, philosophic and
scientific atomization represents only a second, transitional phase in
human development. The next, final stage, characterized by freedom
from all one- sidedness and elevation over special interests is
presently a "tribal character" of the Slavic peoples and, in
particular, of the Russian nation.
Although undoubtedly of some historical interest as an expression of
and contribution to ideas circulating in Russia as to the country's
role in world affairs, Solovyov expounded all the above without
argument and as such is of little interest to contemporary philosophy.
Of somewhat greater value is his critique of traditional philosophical
directions.
Developing its essential principle to the end, empiricism holds that I
know only what the senses tell me. Consequently, I know even of myself
only through conscious impressions, which, in turn, means that I am
nothing but states of consciousness. Yet my consciousness presupposes
me. Thus, we have found that empiricism leads, by reductio ad
absurdum, to its self-refutation. The means to avoid such a
conclusion, however, lies in recognizing the absolute being of the
cognizing subject, which, in short, is idealism.
Likewise, the consistent development of the idealist principle leads
to a denial of the epistemic subject and pure thought. The dissolution
of these two directions means the collapse of all abstract philosophy.
We are left with two choices: either complete skepticism or the view
that what truly exists has an independent reality quite apart from our
material world, a view Solovyov terms "mysticism." With mysticism we
have, in Solovyov's view, exhausted all logical options. That is,
having seen that holding the truly existing to be either the cognized
object or the cognizing subject leads to absurdity, the sole remaining
logical possibility is that offered by mysticism, which, thus,
completes the "circle of possible philosophical views." Although
empiricism and rationalism (= idealism) rest on false principles,
their respective objective contents, external experience, qua the
foundation of natural science, and logical thought, qua the foundation
of pure philosophy, are to be synthesized or encompassed along with
mystical knowledge in "integral knowledge," what Solovyov terms
"theosophy."
For whatever reason, Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge
remained incomplete. Despite its expression of his own views, which
undoubtedly at this stage were greatly indebted to the Slavophiles,
Solovyov altered his original plan to submit this work as a doctoral
dissertation. Instead, in April 1880 he defended at St. Petersburg
University a large work that he had begun at approximately the same
time as the Philosophical Principles and which, like the latter,
appeared in serialized form starting in 1877 and as a separate book in
1880.
5. Critique of Abstract Principles
Originally planned to comprise three parts, ethics, epistemology and
aesthetics, (which alone already reveals a debt to Kant) the completed
work never turned to the last of these, on which, however, Solovyov
labored extensively. Nevertheless, owing largely to its traditional
philosophical style and its extended treatment of major historical
figures, the Critique remains the most accessible of Solovyov's major
early writings today.
(1) Subjective Ethics. Over the course of human development a number
of principles have been advanced in pursuit of various goals deemed to
be that for which human actions should strive—goals such as pleasure,
happiness, fulfilment of duties, adherence to God's will, etc.
Certainly seeking happiness, pleasure, or the fulfilment of duty is
not unequivocally wrong. Yet the pursuit of any one of these alone
without the others cannot provide a basis for a totally satisfactory
ethical system. A higher synthesis or, if you will, a more
encompassing unity is needed, one that will reveal how and when any of
these particular pursuits is ethically warranted. Such a unity will
show the truth, and thereby the error, of singling out any particular
moment of the unity as sufficient alone. Doing so, that is, showing
the proper place of each principle, showing them as necessary yet
inadequate stages on the way to a complete synthetic system is what
Solovyov means by "the critical method."
In the end all moral theories that rest on an empirical basis,
something factual in human nature, fail because they cannot provide
and account for obligation. The essential feature of moral law, as
Solovyov understands the concept, is its absolute necessity for all
rational beings. The Kantian influence here is unmistakable and
indubitable. Nevertheless, Solovyov parts company with Kant in
expressing that a natural inclination in support of an obligatory
action enhances the moral value of an action. Since duty is the
general form of the moral principle, whereas an inclination serves as
the psychological motive for a moral action, i.e., as the material
aspect of morality, the two cannot contradict one another.
The Kantian categorical imperative, which Solovyov, in general,
endorses, presupposes freedom. Of course, we all feel that our actions
are free, but what kind of freedom is this? Here Solovyov approaches
phenomenology in stating that the job of philosophy is to analyze this
feeling with an eye to determining what it is we are aware of.
Undoubtedly, for the most part we can do as we please, but such
freedom is freedom of action. The question, however, is whether I can
actually want something other than I do, i.e., whether the will is
free.
Again like Kant, Solovyov believes all our actions, even the will
itself, is, at least viewed empirically, subject to the law of
causality. From the moral perspective, however, there is a "causality
of freedom," a freedom to initiate a causal sequence on the part of
practical reason. In other words, empirically the will is determined,
whereas transcendentally it is free. Solovyov, though, goes on to
pose, at least rhetorically, the question whether this transcendental
freedom is genuine or could it be that the will is subject to
transcendental conditions. In doing so, he reveals that his conception
of "transcendental" differs from that of Kant. Nevertheless, waving
aside all difficulties associated with a resolution of the
metaphysical issue of freedom of the will, Solovyov tells us, ethics
has no need of such investigations; reason and empirical inquiry are
sufficient. The criteria of moral activity lie in its universality and
necessity, i.e., that the principle of one's action can be made a
universal law.
(2) Objective Ethics. In order that the good determine my will I must
be subjectively convinced that the consequent action can be realized.
This moral action presupposes a certain knowledge of and is
conditioned by society. Subjective ethics instructs us that we should
treat others not as means but as ends. Likewise, they should treat me
as an end. Solovyov terms a community of beings freely striving to
realize each other's good as if it were his or her own good "free
communality." Although some undoubtedly see material wealth as a goal,
it cannot serve as a moral goal. Rather, the goal of free communality
is the just distribution of wealth, which, in turn, requires an
organization to administer fair and equal treatment of and to all, in
other words, a political arrangement or government. To make the other
person's good my good, I must recognize such concern as obligatory.
That is, I must recognize the other as having rights, which my
material interests cannot infringe.
If all individuals acted for the benefit of all, there would be no
need for a coordination of interests, for interests would not be in
conflict. There is, however, no universal consensus on benefits and
often enough individually perceived benefits conflict. In this need
for adjudication lies a source of government and law. Laws express the
negative side of morality, i.e., they do not say what should be done,
but what is not permitted. Thus, the legal order is unable to provide
positive directives, precisely because what humans specifically should
do and concretely aspire to attain remains conditional and contingent.
The absolute, unconditional form of morality demands an absolute,
unconditional content, namely, an absolute goal.
As a finite being, the human individual cannot attain the absolute
except through positive interaction with all others. Whereas in the
legal order each individual is limited by the other, in the aspiration
or striving for the absolute the other aids or completes the self.
Such a union of beings is grounded psychologically in love. As a
contingent being the human individual cannot fully realize an absolute
object or goal. Only in the process of individuals working in concert,
forming a "total-unity," does love become a non-contingent state. Only
in an inner unity with all does man realize what Solovyov calls "the
divine principle."
Solovyov himself views his position as diametrically opposed to that
of Kant, who from absolute moral obligation was led to postulating the
existence of God, immortality and human freedom. For Solovyov, the
realization of morality presupposes an affirmative metaphysics. Once
we progress from Kant's purely subjective ethics to an objective
understanding of ethics, we see the need for a conviction in the
theoretical validity of Kant's three postulates, their metaphysical
truth independent of their practical desirability.
Again differing from Kant, and Fichte too, Solovyov at this point in
his life rejects the priority of ethics over metaphysics. The genuine
force of the moral principle rests on the existence of the absolute
order. And the necessary conviction in this order can be had only if
we know it to be true, which demands an epistemological inquiry.
(3) Epistemology/Metaphysics. "To know what we should do we must know
what is," Solovyov tells us. To say "what is," however, is informative
only in contrast to saying, at least implicitly, "what is not" — this
we already know from the opening pages of Hegel's Logic. One answer is
that the true is that which objectively exists independent of any
knowing subject. Here Solovyov leads us down a path strikingly
similar, at least in outline, to that taken in the initial chapters of
Hegel's Phenomenology. If the objectively real is the true, then sense
certainty is our guarantee of having obtained it. But this certainty
cannot be that of an individual knowing subject alone, for truth is
objective and thus the same for everyone. Truth must not be in the
facts but the things that make up the facts. Moreover, truth cannot be
the individual things in isolation, for truths would then be
isomorphic with the number of things. Such a conception of truth is
vacuous; no, truth is one. With this Solovyov believes he has passed
to naturalism.
Of course, our immediate sense experience lacks universality and does
not in all its facets correspond to objective reality. Clearly, many
qualities of objects, for example, color and taste, are subjective.
Thus, reality must be what is general or present in all sense
experience. To the general foundation of sensation corresponds the
general foundation of things, namely, that conveyed through the sense
of touch, i.e., the experience of resistance. The general foundation
of objective being is its impenetrability.
Holding true being to be single and impenetrable, however, remains
untenable. Through a series of dialectical maneuvers, reminiscent of
Hegel, Solovyov arrives at the position that true being contains
multiplicity. That is, whereas it is singular owing to absolute
impenetrability, it consists of separate particles, each of which is
impenetrable. Having in this way passed to atomism, Solovyov provides
a depiction largely indebted to Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science. Solovyov recognizes that we have reached atomism, not
through some experimental technique but through philosophical, logical
reasoning. But every scientific explanation of the ultimate
constituents of reality transgresses the bounds of experience. We
return to the viewpoint that reality belongs to appearances alone,
i.e., what is given in experience. Now, however, our realism has been
dialectically transformed into a phenomenal or critical realism.
According to phenomenal realism, absolute reality is ultimately
inaccessible to cognition. Nevertheless, that which cognitively is
accessible constitutes a relative objectivity and is our sole standard
for determining truth and thus knowledge. In this sensualism — for
that is what it is — we refer particular sensations to definite
objects. These objects are taken as objectively real despite the
manifest subjectivity of sensation in general. Thus, objectification,
as the imparting of the sense of objectivity onto the content of
sensations, must be an independent activity of the cognizing subject.
Objectification, alone, cannot account for the definite object before
me to which all my sensations of that object refer as parts or
aspects. In addition to objectification there must be a unification or
synthesizing of sensations, and this process or act is again distinct
from sensing and certainly is not part of the sensation itself. Again
evoking an image of Kant in the reader, Solovyov calls the independent
cognitive act whereby sense data are formed into definite objective
representations the imagination.
The two factors we have discerned, one contributed by the epistemic
subject and the other by sensation, are absolutely independent of each
other. Cognition requires both, but what connects them remains
unanswered. According to Solovyov, any connection implies dependence,
but the a priori element certainly cannot be dependent on the
empirical. For, following Hume, from the factual we cannot deduce the
universality and the necessity of a law. The other alternative is to
have the content of true cognition dependent on the forms of reason;
such is the approach of Hegel's absolute rationalism. However, if all
the determinations of being are created by cognition, then at the
beginning we have only the pure form of cognition, pure thought, a
concept of being in general. Solovyov finds such a starting point to
be vacuous. For although Hegel correctly realizes the general form of
truth to be universality, it is a negative conception from which
nothing can be derived. The positive conception is a whole that
contains everything in itself, not, as in Hegel, one that everything
contains in itself.
For Solovyov, truth, in short, is the whole, and, consequently, each
particular fact in isolation from the whole is false. Again Solovyov's
position on rationality bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Hegel,
although in the former's eyes this resemblance is superficial. Reason
is the whole, and so the rationality of a particular fact lies in its
interrelation with the whole. A fact divorced from the whole is
irrational.
True knowledge implies the whole, the truly existent, the absolute.
Following Solovyov's "dialectical" thinking, the absolute, qua
absolute, presupposes a non-absolute; one (or the whole) presupposes
the many. And, again conjuring up visions of Hegel, if the absolute is
the one, the non-absolute is becoming the one. The latter can become
the one only if it has the divine element potentially. In nature, the
one exists only potentially, whereas in humans it is actual, though
only ideally, i.e., in consciousness.
The object of knowledge has three forms: 1) as it appears to us
empirically, 2) as conceptually ideal, and 3) as existing absolutely
independent of our cognition of it. Our concepts and sensations would
be viewed merely as subjective states were it not for the third form.
The basis for this form is a third sort of cognition, without which
objective truth would elude us. A study of the history of philosophy
correctly shows that neither the senses nor the intellect, whether
separately or in combination, can satisfactorily account for the third
form. Sensations are relative, and concepts conditional. Indeed, the
referral of our thoughts and sensations to an object in knowledge,
thus, presupposes this third sort of cognition. Such cognition,
namely, faith or mystical knowledge, would itself be impossible if the
subject and the object of knowledge were completely divorced. In this
interaction we perceive the object's essence or "idea," its constancy.
The imagination (here, let us recall Kant), at a non-conscious level,
organizes the manifold given by sense experience into an object via a
referral of this manifold to the "idea" of the object.
Solovyov believes he has demonstrated that all knowledge arises
through the confluence of empirical, rational and "mystical" elements.
Only philosophical analysis can discover the role of the mystical.
Just as an isolation of the first two elements has historically led to
empiricism and rationalism respectively, so the mystical element has
been accentuated by traditional theology. And just as the former
directions have given rise to dogmatic manifestations, so too has
theology found its dogmatic exponents. The task before us lies in
freeing the three directions of their exclusiveness, intentionally
integrating and organizing true knowledge into a complete system,
which Solovyov called "free theosophy."
6. The Justification of the Good
After the completion of the works mentioned above, Solovyov largely
withdrew from philosophy, both as a profession and its concerns.
During the 1880s he devoted himself increasingly to theological and
topical social issues of little, if any, concern to the contemporary
philosopher. However, in 1894 Solovyov took to preparing a second
edition of the Critique of Abstract Principles. Owing, though, to an
evolution, and thereby significant changes, in his viewpoint, he soon
abandoned this venture and embarked on an entirely new statement of
his philosophical views. Just as in his earlier treatise, Solovyov
again intended to treat ethical issues before turning to an
epistemological inquiry.
The Justification of the Good appeared in book form in 1897. Many,
though not all, of its chapters had previously been published in
several well-known philosophical and literary journals over the course
of the previous three years. Largely in response to criticisms of the
book or its serialized chapters, Solovyov managed to complete a second
edition, which was published in 1899 and accompanied by a new preface.
Most notably, Solovyov now holds that ethics is an independent
discipline. In this he finds himself in solidarity with Kant, who made
this "great discovery," as Solovyov put it. Knowledge of good and evil
is accessible to all individuals possessing reason and a conscience
and needs neither divine revelation nor epistemological deduction.
Although philosophical analysis surely is unable to instill a
certainty that I, the analyst, alone exist, solipsism even if true
would eliminate only objective ethics. There is another, a subjective
side to ethics that concerns duties to oneself. Likewise, morality is
independent of the metaphysical question concerning freedom of the
will. From the independence of ethics Solovyov draws the conclusion
that life has meaning and, coupled with this, we can legitimately
speak of a moral order.
The natural bases of morality, from which ethics as an independent
discipline can be deduced and which form the basis of moral
consciousness, are shame, pity and reverence. Shame reveals to man his
higher human dignity. It sets the human apart from the animal world.
Pity forms the basis of all of man's social relations to others.
Reverence establishes the moral basis of man's relation to that which
is higher to himself and, as such, is the root of religion.
Each of the three bases, Solovyov tells us, may be considered from
three sides or points of view. Shame as a virtue reveals itself as
modesty, pity as compassion and reverence as piety. All other proposed
virtues are essentially expressions of one of these three. The other
two points of view, as a principle of action and as a condition of an
ensuing moral action, are interconnected with the first such that the
first logically contains the others.
Interestingly, truthfulness is not itself a formal virtue. Solovyov
opposes one sort of extreme ethical formalism, arguing that making a
factually false statement is not always a lie in the moral sense. The
nature of the will behind the action must be taken into account.
Likewise, despite his enormous respect for Kant's work in the field of
ethics, Solovyov rejects viewing God and the immortality of the soul
as postulates. God's existence, he tells us, is not a deduction from
religious feeling or experience but its immediate content, i.e., that
which is experienced. Furthermore, he adds that God and the soul are
"direct creative forces of moral reality." How we are to interpret
these claims in light of the supposed independence of ethics is
contentious unless, of course, we find Solovyov guilty of
simple-mindedness. Indeed one of his own friends [Trubeckoj] wrote:
"It is not difficult to convince ourselves that these arguments about
the independence of ethics are refuted on every later page in the
Justification of the Good." However we look upon Solovyov's
pronouncements, the Deity plays a significant role in his ethics.
Solovyov provides a facile answer to the perennial question of how a
morally perfect God can permit the existence of evil: Its elimination
would mean the annihilation of human freedom thereby rendering free
goodness (good without freedom is imperfect) impossible. Thus, God
permits evil, because its removal would be a greater evil.
Often, all too often, Solovyov is prone to express himself in
metaphysical, indeed theological, terms that do little to clarify his
position. The realization of the Kingdom of God, he tells us, is the
goal of life. What he means, however, is that the realization of a
perfect moral order, in which the relations between individuals and
the collective whole's relations to each individual are morally
correct, is all that can be rationally desired. Each of us understands
that the attainment of moral perfection is not a solipsistic
enterprise, i.e., that the Kingdom of God can only be achieved if we
each want it and collectively attain it. The individual can attain the
moral ideal only in and through society. Christianity alone offers the
idea of the perfect individual and the perfect society. Other ideas
have been presented (Solovyov mentions Buddhism and Platonism), of
course, and these have been historically necessary for the attainment
of the universal human consciousness that Christianity promises.
Man's correct relations to God, his fellow humans and his own material
nature, in accordance with the three foundations of morality – piety,
pity (compassion) and shame – are collectively organized in three
forms. The Church is collectively organized piety, whereas the state
is collectively organized pity or compassion. To view the state in
such terms already tells us a great deal concerning how Solovyov views
the state's mission and, consequently, his general stand toward
laissez-faire doctrines. Although owing to the connection between
legality and morality one can speak of a Christian state, this is not
to say that in pre-Christian times the state had no moral foundations.
Just as the pagan can know the moral law "written in his heart," (an
expression of St. Paul's that Solovyov was fond of invoking but also
reminiscent of Kant's "the moral law within") so too the pagan state
has two functions: 1) to preserve the foundation of social life
necessary for continued human existence, and 2) to improve the
condition of humanity.
At the end of The Justification of the Good Solovyov attempts in the
most cursory fashion to make a transition to epistemology. He claims
that the struggle between good and evil raises the question of the
latter's origin, which in turn ultimately requires an epistemological
inquiry. That ethics is an independent discipline does not mean that
it is not connected to metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. One
can study ethics in its entirety without first having answers to all
other philosophical problems much as one can be an excellent swimmer
without knowing the physics of buoyancy.
7. Theoretical Philosophy
During the last few years of his life Solovyov sought to recast his
thoughts on epistemology. Surely he intended to publish in serial
fashion the various chapters of a planned book on the topic, much as
he did The Justification of the Good. Unfortunately at the time of his
death in 1900 only three chapters were completed, and it is only on
the basis of these that we can judge his new standpoint. Nevertheless,
on the basis of these meager writings we can already see that
Solovyov's new epistemological reflections exhibit a greater
transformation of his thoughts on the subject than does his ethics.
Whereas a suggested affinity between these ideas and later German
phenomenology must be viewed with caution and, in light of his earlier
thoughts, a measure of skepticism, there can be little doubt that to
all appearances Solovyov spoke and thought in this late work in a
philosophical idiom close to that with which we have become familiar
in the 20th century.
For Solovyov epistemology concerns itself with the validity of
knowledge in itself, that is, not in terms of whether it is useful in
practice or provides a basis for an ethical system that has for
whatever reason been accepted. Perhaps not surprisingly then,
particularly in light of his firm religious views, Solovyov adheres to
a correspondence theory, saying that knowledge is the agreement of a
thought of an object with the actual object. The open questions are
how such an agreement is possible and how do we know that we know.
The Cartesian "I think, therefore I am" leads us virtually nowhere.
Admittedly the claim contains indubitable knowledge, but it is merely
that of a subjective reality. I might just as well be thinking of an
illusory book as of an actually existing one. How do we get beyond the
"I think"? How do we distinguish a dream from reality? The criteria
are not present in the immediacy of the consciously intended object.
To claim as did some Russian philosophers in his own day that the
reality of the external world is an immediately given fact appears to
Solovyov an arbitrary opinion hardly worthy of philosophy. Nor is it
possible to deduce from the Cartesian inference that the I is a
thinking substance. Here is the root of Descartes' error. The self
discovered in self-consciousness has the same status as the object of
consciousness, i.e., both have phenomenal existence. If we cannot say
what this object of my consciousness is like in itself, i.e., apart
from my conscious acts, so too we cannot say what the subject of
consciousness is apart from consciousness and for the same reason.
Likewise, just as we cannot speak about the I in itself, so too we
cannot answer to whom consciousness belongs.
In "The Reliability of Reason," the second article comprising the
Theoretical Philosophy, Solovyov concerns himself with affirming the
universality of logical thought. In doing so he stands in opposition
to the popular reductionisms, e.g., psychologism, that sought to deny
any extra-temporal significance to logic. Thought itself, Solovyov
tells us, requires recollection, language and intentionality. Since
any logical thought is, nevertheless, a thought and since thought can
be analyzed in terms of psychic functions, one could conceivably
charge Solovyov with lapsing back into a psychologism, in precisely
the same way as some critics have charged Husserl with doing so. And
much the same defenses of Husserl's position can also be used in reply
to the objection against Solovyov's stance.
The third article, "The Form of Rationality and the Reason of Truth,"
published in 1898, concerns itself with the proper starting points of
epistemology. The first such point is the indubitable veracity of the
given in immediate consciousness. There can be no doubt that the pain
I experience upon stubbing my toe is genuine. The second starting
point of epistemology is the objective, universal validity of rational
thought. Along with Hume and Kant, Solovyov does not dispute that
factual experience can provide claims only to conditional generality.
Rationality alone provides universality. This universality, however,
is merely formal. To distinguish the rational form from the
conditional content of thought is the first essential task of
philosophy. Taking up this challenge is the philosophical self or
subject. Solovyov concludes, again as he always does, with a triadic
distinction between the empirical subject, the logical subject and the
philosophical subject. And although he labels the first the "soul,"
the second the "mind" and the third the "spirit," the trichotomy is
contrived and the labeling, at best, imaginative with no foundation
other than in Solovyov's a priori architectonic.
8. Concluding Remarks
Solovyov's relatively early death, brought on to some degree by his
erratic life-style, precluded the completion of his last philosophical
work. He also intended to turn his attention eventually towards
aesthetics, but whether he would ever have been able to complete such
a project remains doubtful. Solovyov was never at any stage of his
development able to complete a systematic treatise on the topic,
although he did publish a number of writings on the subject.
However beneficial our reading of Solovyov's works may be, there can
be little doubt that he was very much a 19th-century figure. We can
hardly take seriously his incessant predilection for triadic schemes,
far in excess to anything similar in the German Idealists. His choice
of terminology, drawn from an intellectual fashion of his day, also
poses a formidable obstacle to the contemporary reader.
Lastly, despite, for example, an often perspicacious study of his
philosophical predecessors, written during his middle years, Solovyov,
in clinging obstinately to his rigid architectonic, failed to
penetrate further than they. Indeed, he often fell far short of their
achievements. His discussion of imagination, for example, as we saw,
is much too superficial, adding nothing to that found in Kant. These
shortcomings, though, should not divert us from recognizing his
genuinely useful insights.
After his death, with interest surging in the mystical amid abundant
decadent trends, so characteristic of decaying cultures, Solovyov's
thought was seized upon by those far less interested in philosophical
analysis than he was towards the end. Those who invoked his name so
often in the years immediately subsequent to his death stressed the
religious strivings of his middle years to the complete neglect of his
final philosophical project, let alone its continuation and
completion. In terms of Solovyov-studies today the philosophical
project of discovering the "rational kernel within the mystical shell"
[Marx], of separating the "living from the dead" [Croce], remains not
simply unfulfilled but barely begun.
9. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
* Sobranie sochinenij, St. Petersburg: Prosveshchenie, 1911-14.
* Sobranie sochinenij, Brussels: Zhizn s Bogom, 1966-70.ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
* The Crisis of Western Philosophy (Against the Positivists),
trans. by Boris Jakim, Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1996.
* Lectures on Divine Humanity, ed. by Boris Jakim, Lindisfarne Press, 1995.
* The Justification of the Good, trans. by N. Duddington, New
York: Macmillan, 1918.
* "Foundations of Theoretical Philosophy," trans. by Vlada Tolley
and James P. Scanlan, in Russian Philosophy, ed. James
* M. Edie, et al., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965,
vol. III, pp. 99-134.
b. Secondary Sources (mentioned above)
* Helmut Dahm, Vladimir Solovyev and Max Scheler: Attempt at a
Comparative Interpretation, Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing
Company, 1975.
* Zdenek V. David, "The Influence of Jacob Boehme on Russian
Religious Thought," Slavic Review, 21(1962), 1, pp. 43-64.
* Aleksej Losev, Vladimir Solov'ev, Moscow: Mysl', 1983.
* Ludolf Mueller, Solovjev und der Protestantismus, Freiburg:
Verlag Herder, 1951.
* Joseph L. Navickas, "Hegel and the Doctrine of Historicity of
Vladimir Solovyov," in The Quest for the Absolute, ed.
* Frederick J. Adelmann, The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1966, pp. 135-154.
* Louis J. Shein, "V.S. Solov'ev's Epistemology: A
Re-examination," Canadian Slavic Studies, Spring 1970, vol. 4, no. 1,
pp. 1-16.
* E. N. Trubeckoj, Mirosozercanie V. S. Solov'eva, 2 vols.,
Moscow: Izdatel'stvo "Medium," 1995,
* Aleksandr I. Vvedenskij, "O misticizme i kriticizme v teorii
poznanija V. S. Solov'eva," Filosofskie ocherki, Prague: Plamja, 1924,
pp. 45-71.
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