Abstract
Vladimir Solovyov was a philosopher of culture who sought to understand the essence of the most central and deep cultural crisis, as he spoke of Russia in the twentieth century. He has often been interpreted as a close follower of Schelling, someone who just took the basic methodology and concepts from Schelling without any deep contemplation of his own. The goal of this article is to reconsider one of the most widespread misconceptions, according to which Solovyov is a Russian Schellingian. Despite a certain resemblance in style and occasionally similarly sounding arguments, Solovyov was not just a rewriter of Schelling or his ardent follower. The second aim of the paper is to reconstruct the concepts of culture in Solovyov and Schelling. The two aims are strongly connected. In this respect, this paper is less an attempt to summarize Solovyov and Schelling and compare their ideas, than a speculative attempt to speak about the philosophy of culture and to represent the philosophy of Solovyov and Schelling. On my reading, despite many terminological and argumentative parallels, Solovyov and Schelling were pursuing fundamentally different tasks. Their systems cannot be viewed as identical, as it is often the case; rather, Solovyov’s philosophy begins where Schelling’s ends. The fundamental difference between the two systems will be demonstrated based on the analysis of two writings: Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Solovyov’s Lectures on Divine Humanity.
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Notes
There is a slight difference between “principle” and “ground” when talking about Schelling’s ontology; however, for this paper the difference is not so crucial, so I will use the two terms as synonyms.
Strictly speaking, there is no evil in Schelling’s ontology, he calls it a basis. According to Schelling, the ideal principle always needs a “basis” (Schelling 2006, p. 26). If the ideal principle does not find a basis, does not become real, then it “generates a bleak and wild enthusiasm that breaks out into self-mutilation or [...] self-castration which is achieved in philosophy through the renunciation of reason and science” (Schelling 2006, p. 26).
Compare this to the Timaeus’ World-Soul, for which it is extremely difficult to uphold the connection of the principles.
Schelling means God before the creation, i.e., before nature.
The terminological distinction between Eigenwille and Partikularwille is very important for Schelling. The first is self-will, while the second is a particular will. The first is evil and the second is neutral, simply pointing to a human being having a certain independent existence.
See also Lambier: “For Schelling and Hegel, the liberal privileging of self-interested individualism is analogous to the experience of organic disease, where an individual organ stands apart from the whole, unsettling the life and structure of the entire organism” (Lambier 2008, p. 132).
Schelling uses many terms to encompass all levels of being on which this evil can manifest itself.
Moreover, if we follow the argument of the Lectures, we will see many astonishing parallels. For instance, Solovyov claims that the active unity is Logos (skipping the “natural” step) and writes about Sophia (a topic that appears only in Schelling’s late philosophy) as an actualized idea. The same could be said about biblical scenes – they serve as arguments, not illustrations (Schelling 2006, p. 51).
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This study was funded by the Russian Science Foundation (grant number 19-18-00100).
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Vinkelman, A. Solovyov and Schelling: two voices of culture. Stud East Eur Thought 75, 143–160 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-022-09477-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-022-09477-y