About slavery and human freedom. Berdyaev N.A.

Russian religious and political philosopher, representative of Russian existentialism and personalism Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874–1948) - one of the iconic figures in the history of Russian philosophy. An active figure of the Silver Age, then an inconvenient figure for Soviet power, he was expelled from Russia with a “philosophical ship” in 1922 and has since lived in Europe. At the end of his life, in 1942-1948, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature seven times in a row. His philosophy of freedom to this day remains for us a certain source of hope, and the concept of the new Middle Ages, which Berdyaev developed one of the first, was discussed by the largest thinkers throughout the 20th century and also did not lose relevance. Freedom in Nikolai Berdyaev is the original state of a person who has neither the basis nor the boundaries, not controlled by anyone, including God; Freedom is what is needed for a person to carry out his main calls - creativity and knowledge.

“The personality is essentially rebellious and naughty, it is resistance, a continuous creative act,” writes Berdyaev in the treatise “On the slavery and freedom of man” - “The most radical, most spiritually revolutionary of my books”, As he explained himself. In addition to this work, the article “Salvation and Creativity” was included in the real collection - the attempt by Berdyaev to correlate Christian humility with the natural, necessary and in need of a person’s impulse in unconditional freedom.