Essays on Christianity, Freedom and

Marxism

Nicolai Berdyaev
 THE  PROBLEM  OF  MAN
(Towards  the  Construction  of  a  Christian  Anthropology)
(1936 - #408)
_____________________________
       i“In die Mitte der Welt habe ich Dich gestellt, damit Du frei nach allen Seiten
Umsehen zu halten vermoegest und erspoehest, wo es Dir behabe. Nicht himmlisch,
nicht irdisch, nicht Sterblich und auch nicht unsterblich habe ich Dich geschaffen.
Denn Du selbst nach Deinem Willen und Deiner Ehre dein eigener Werkmeister und
Bildner sein und Dich aus dem Stoffe, der Dir zusagt, formen, so steht es Dir frei, auf
die unterste Stufe der Tierwelt herabzusinken. Doch kannst Du dich auch erheben zu
den hoechsten Sphaeren der Gottheit”.
                                                                   Pico della Mirandola

     ii“Nulle autre religion que la chrйtienne n’a connu que l’homme est la plus
excellente crйature et en mкme temps la plus misйrable”.
                                                                  Pascal

     iii“Nun siehe, Mensch, wie Du bist irdisch und dann auch himmlisch in einer Person
vermischt, und traegest das irdische, und dann auch das himmlische Bild in einer
Person: und dann bist Du aus der girmmigen Quaal und traegest das hoellische Bild an
Dir, welches gruenet in Gottes Zorn aus dem Quell der Ewigkeit”.
                                                                Jacob Boehme

I.
The problem of man appears indisputably central for the consciousness of our epoch. 1 
It is aggravated by the terrible danger, which besets man from every side. Surviving
with agony, man wants to know, who he is, from whence he came, whither he goeth and
to what is he destined. In the second half of the XIX Century there were notable
thinkers, who in surviving the agony thus introduced the tragic principle into European
culture and who more than others set the stage for the posings of the problem of man, --
and these were first of all Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard. There are two ways of
viewing man -- from above and from below, from God and the spiritual world or from
the unconscious cosmic and tellurgic forces, lodged within man. Of those, who viewed
man from below, perhaps the most significant were Marx, Freud and Proust among the
writers of the last era. But an integral anthropology was not created, they looked at this
or that aspect of man, but not the whole man, in his complexity and unity. I propose to
examine the problem of man, as a philosopher, and not as a theologian. Contemporary
thought stands afront the task of creating a philosophic anthropology, as a basic
philosophic discipline. In this current M. Scheler was active and in this the so-called
existential philosophy provides assist. It is interesting to note, that up until now
theology has been quite more attentive to the integral problem of man, than has
philosophy. At any rate, theology has an anthropologic part to it. True, theology has
always brought into its own sphere a very strong philosophic element, but as it were
along a smuggler’s trail and not consciously so. The virtue of theology consisted in this,
that it posed the problem of man in general, in its wholeness, and did not investigate
man only in pieces, dismembering him, as does science. The German Idealism of the
beginning XIX Century, while it mustneeds be acknowledged as one of the most
significant manifestations in the history of human consciousness, did not posit distinctly
the problem of man. This is explainable by its monism. Anthropology coincided with
gnosseology and ontology, man was as it were a function of the world reason and spirit,
which also revealed itself in man. This was inpropitious for the constructing of a
teaching about man. For specific problems of man, Bl. Augustine or Pascal are more
interesting, than Fichte or Hegel. But the problem of man has become particularly
urgent and tortuous for us because that we sense and we feel, in the experience of life
and in the experience of thought, the insufficiency and lack of completeness of the
Patristic and Scholastic anthropology, and likewise of the Humanistic anthropology,
issuing forth from the epoch of the Renaissance. During the epoch of the Renaissance
perhaps closest to the truth were suchlike people as  Paracelsus and Pico della
Mirandola, who knew about the creative vocation of man.2   The Renaissance Christian
humanism surmounted the limitations of Patristic-Scholastic anthropology, but it was
still connected with religious bases. In any case, it was closer to the truth, than was the
anthropology of Luther and Calvin, negating man and denying the truth about the good
in mankind. At the basis of the self-consciousness of man there were always two
contrary senses -- the sense of suppression and oppression and that of the rising up of
man against this suppression, the sense of exaltation and power, the capacity to create.
And it mustneeds be said, that Christianity gives justification both to the one and to the
other of man’s sensations about self. On the one hand man is a being sinful and having
need for the redemption of his sin, a being basely fallen, from which they demand
humility, but on the other hand, man is a being created by God in accord with His image
and likeness, God became man and by this raised up human nature, and man was called
into a cooperation with God and to eternal life in God. To this corresponds the
twofoldness of human nature and the possibility to speak about man in terms that are
polar opposites. Christianity indisputably has liberated man from the power of the
cosmic forces, from the spirits and demons of nature, making him subject directly to
God. Even the opponents of Christianity are obliged to acknowledge, that it was a
spiritual power, affirming the worthiness and independence of man, in spite of the great
sins of the Christian within history.
         
When we stand afront the riddle of man, here then is what we ought first of all to
say: man projects himself forth as a rupturing asunder within the natural world and he is
inexplicable by the world of nature. 3  Man is a great marvel, the connection of earth and
heaven, says Pico della Mirandola. 4  Man belongs to the natural world, in him
everything is comprised of the natural world, to the extent of being physical-chemical
processes, and he is dependent upon the lower stages of nature. But in him there is an
element going beyond the natural world. Greek philosophy saw this element in the
reason. Aristotle proposed a definition of man, as a rational animal. Scholasticism
adopted the definition of Greek philosophy. Enlightenment philosophy drew from this
its own conclusions and vulgarised it. But every time, when man has made an act of
self-consciousness, he raises himself up over the natural world. The self-consciousness
of man was already a surmounting of naturalism within the understanding of man, it is
always a self-consciousness of spirit. Man is conscious of himself not only as a natural
being, but also as a spiritual being. There is in man a Promethean principle and it is a
sign of his God-likeness, for it is not demonic, as sometimes they tend to think. But the
self-consciousness of man is twofold, man is conscious of himself as both high and low,
as both free and as the slave of necessity, belonging both to eternity and situated within
the power of the death-bearing stream of time. Pascal with quite especial insight
expressed this twofold aspect of the self-consciousness and self-awareness of man, since
he was more dialectical, than is K. Barth.
       
Man can be perceived, as an object, as one of the objects in a world of objects.
And then he can be investigated by the anthropological sciences-- by biology,
sociology, psychology. Under suchlike an approach to man it is possible to investigate
only this or some other side of man, but the integrally whole man, in his depths and in
his inner existence, remains elusive. There is another approach to man. Man is
conscious of himself likewise as a subject and foremost of all, as a subject. The
mysteries about man are revealed within the subject, within the inner human existence.
In objectivisation, in the hurling of man out into the objective world the mystery of man
is obscured, and he realises about himself only this, that he is alienated from his inner
human existence. Man does not belong wholly to the objective world, he possesses his
own personal world, his own world outside the world, his own destiny incommensurate
with objective nature. Man, as an integral being, does not belong to the natural
hierarchy and cannot be constituted within it. Man, as subject, is act, he is a striving. In
the subject is revealed the inwardly transpiring creative activity of man. Both alike
mistaken is the anthropology that is optimistic, and the anthropology that is pessimistic.
Man is something base and yet high, he is as nothing and yet great. Human nature is
polarised. And if something be affirmed in man at the one pole, then this is
compensated for by the affirmation of the opposite at the other pole.
       
The enigma of man posits not only the problem of an anthropologic philosophy,
but also the problem of anthropologism or the anthropocentrism of every philosophy.
Philosophy is anthropocentric, but man himself is not anthropocentric. This is a basic
truth of existential philosophy in my estimation. I define existential philosophy as the
opposite to a philosophy of objectification. 5  Within the existential subject is revealed
the mystery of being. Only within human existence and through human existence is
there possible the cognition of being. The cognition of being is impossible through the
object, through the general concepts, ascribed to objects. This consciousness is the
greatest conquest of philosophy. It might be said paradoxically, that only the subjective
is objectively a matter, whereas the objective is subjectively a matter. God created only
subjects, objects however are created by the subject. Kant expresses this in regard to his
distinction between the thing-in-itself and the appearance, but he uses the poor
expression “thing-in-itself”, which renders itself obscure for experience and knowledge.
But authentically existential is Kant’s “realm of freedom” in contrast to the “realm of
nature”, i.e. objectivisation in my terminology.
         
Greek philosophy taught, that being is correlative to the laws of reason. The
reason can know being, in that being corresponds to it, reason has it hidden within itself.
But this is only a partial truth, easily sought out. But there is a truth more profound.
Being corresponds to an integral humanness, being -- is humanised, God -- is
humanised. 6 And only therein is possible the cognition of being, the cognition of God.
Without a correspondence to the human, the cognition of the very depths of being
would be impossible. This is the obverse side of that truth, that man is created in the
image and likeness of God. In the anthropomorphic representations about God this truth
is affirmed often in a crude and unrefined form. Existential philosophy is based upon
the humanistic theory of cognition, which ought to be deepened to the extent of being a
theory of cognition of the theandric, the God-manly. The human-formliness of being
and God is from below an evident truth, which from above reveals itself, as the creation
by God of man in His own image and likeness. Man -- is a microcosm and a microtheos.
God is a microanthropos. The humanness of God is a specific revelation of Christianity,
setting it apart from all other religions. Christianity -- is the religion of God-manhood.
L. Feuerbach has great significance for anthropology, and he was the greatest atheistic
philosopher of Europe. In Feuerbach’s passing over from abstract idealism to
anthropologism there was a great deal of truth. It was necessary to pass over from the
idealism of Hegel to the concrete actuality. Feuerbach was a dialectical moment within
the developement of a concrete existential philosophy. He posited the problem of man at
the centre of philosophy and affirmed the humanness of philosophy. He wanted a
turnaround to the concrete man. He was searching not for the object, but for the
“thou”. 7  He taught, that man created God in accord with his own image and likeness, in
accord with the image and likeness of his higher nature. This was the Christian truth
turned inside out. To the end there remained in him a Christian theology, almost
mystical. European thought had to pass through Feuerbach, in order to discover an
anthropological philosophy, which German Idealism was in no condition to reveal. But
it cannot be halted at Feuerbach. The humanness or human-formliness of God is the
obverse side of the Divineness or God-formliness of man. On either side of this is
however the God-manly truth. But it is denied by the Thomist anthropology and by the
Barthian anthropology, and also by the monistic humanist anthropology. Alien to
Western Christian thought is the idea of God-manhood (theoandrism), which was given
emphasis by the Russian Christian thought of the XIX and XX Centuries. The mystery
of God-manhood is simultaneously contrary to both monism and dualism, and in it only
can there be rooted the Christian anthropology. 8

II.

The problem of man can be integrally posited and resolved only in light of the idea of
God-manhood. Even within Christianity it is only with difficulty that the fullness of the
Divine-human truth is accommodated. Naturalistic pondering has readily tended either
towards monism, in which the one nature swallowed up the other, or towards dualism,
under which God and man were completely cut off and separated by an abyss. The
stifling of man, conscious of himself as a being fallen and sinful, can at the same time
assume the form of both monism and dualism. Calvin was able simultaneously to
interpret the limits dualistically and the limits monistically. Humanist anthropology, in
acknowledging man as a self-sufficient being, was a naturalist reaction against the
stifling of man in the traditional Christian consciousness. Man was debased, as a sinful
being. And this has often produced suchlike an impression, that man in general is a
degraded being. Not only from the sinfulness of man, but from the very fact of his
creatureliness they deduced that the self-consciousness of man should be suppressed
and debased. And from this, that man was created by God and does not possess in
himself his own foundation, they made the inference not about the greatness of the
creature, but about its nothingness. Not infrequently is it heard, and the conclusion
made, from both Christian theologians and simple pious people also, that God does not
love man and does not want, that the purely human should be affirmed, He wants
instead the abasement of man. And thus man abases himself, reflecting his own
fallenness, and periodically he rises up against this suppression and abasement in proud
self-exaltation. In both cases he loses the balance and does not attain to an authentic
self-consciousness. In the dominant forms of the Christian consciousness of man, there
was acknowledged exclusively a being to be saved, and not a creative being. But the
Christian anthropology always taught, that man is created in his image and likeness to
God. From the Eastern Teachers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nyssa did the most with
anthropology, and he understands man first of all as in the image and likeness of God.
This idea was quite less developed in the West. There was the anthropology of Bl.
Augustine, and from this anthropology primarily and simultaneously was defined both
the Catholic and the Protestant understanding of man, -- almost exclusively this was an
anthropology of sin and the saving by grace. From the teaching about the image of God
in man, essentially, there was never made the ultimate conclusions. There were attempts
to reveal within man features of the image and likeness of God: they discerned these
features in the reason and in this they followed upon Greek philosophy, they revealed
within the freedom that which moreover was connected with Christianity, they revealed
in general these features within the spirituality of man. But never did they reveal the
image of God within the creative nature of man, in the likeness of man to the Creator.
This signifies a crossover to a completely different self-consciousness, the surmounting
of the suppression and degradation. In the Scholastic anthropology, in Thomism, man
does not appear as a creator, he is of a second-rate intellect, insignificant. 9  It is curious,
that in the rebirth of Christian Protestant thought in the XX Century, in the dialectical
theology of K. Barth, man is rendered a nullity, transformed into nothing, between God
and man there opens up an abyss and in actual fact God-manhood becomes
incomprehensible. The God-manhood of Christ remains sundered and for naught. But
the God-manhood of Christ bears with it also the truth about the God-manness of the
human person.
      
Man is a being capable of rising up above himself, and this rising up above
himself, this transcending of himself, this going out beyond the encircling limitations of
his own self, -- is a creative act of man. In creativity especially man surmounts himself,
creativity is not a self-affirmation, but rather a self-overcoming, it is ecstatic. I have
already mentioned, that man as subject is act. M. Scheler likewise defines the human
person, as a concrete unity of acts. 10   But the mistake of M. Scheler was in this, that he
regarded spirit as passive, and life as active. Actually the reverse is true, spirit is active,
and life passive. But the active can only be termed creative act. The very least act of
man is creative and in it is created something not formerly existing in the world. Every
live and warm relationship of man to man is the creativity of new life. And it is
particularly in creativity, that man is in the greatest likeness to the Creator. Every act of
love is a creative act. Non-creative activity is however essentially passive. Man can
produce the impressions of great activity, he can make very active gestures, he can
spread round about him loud motions and together with this all the while be passive, he
can find himself in the grip of the powers and passions possessing him. The creative act
is always the dominion of spirit over nature and over soul and it presupposes freedom.
The creative act cannot be explained from nature, it is explicable but from freedom, it is
always accompanied by freedom, which is not determined by any sort of nature, it is not
determined by any sort of being. Freedom is prior to being, pre-being, it has its source
not in being, but in non-being. 11 Creativity is a creativity from out of freedom, i.e. it
includes in itself nothing of a determinising element, and it introduces also something
new. They sometimes object against the possibility for man to be a creator on this basis,
that man is a being that is sick and divided and impaired by sin. This argument does not
have any strength to it. First of all, it would be completely correct likewise to say, that
this sick, sinful, divided being is incapable not only of creativity, but also of salvation.
The possibility of salvation is grounded in the grace sent to man. But for creativity also
grace is also sent to man, it is given to him as gifts, genius and talent, and he hearkens
herein to the inner calling of God. It might moreover be said, that man creates,
especially so, because he is a being sick, divided, and of itself insufficient. Creativity is
similar to the Platonic Eros, it has its own source not only in wealth and abundance, but
also in dearth and insufficiency. Creativity is one of the ways of the healing of the sick
existence of man. In creativity is surmounted his dividedness. In the creative act man
goes out beyond himself, he ceases to be absorbed by himself and to rend at himself.
Man cannot define himself only in relation to the world and other people. From
suchlike, he would not be able to find in himself the strength to lift himself up over the
surrounding world and would be but its slave. Man ought to define himself first of all in
relation to the source of his excelling, in the relationship to God. Only in turning to God
does he find his own image, raising him up over the surrounding natural world. And
then only does he find in himself the power to be a creator within the world. They might
say, that man would be a creator even then, when he has denied God. This is a question
of the makeup of his consciousness, sometimes very superficial. The capacity of man to
raise himself up over the natural world, and over himself, to be a creator, depends upon
facts more deep, than the human faith in God, than the human acknowledgement of
God, -- it is dependent upon the existence of God. This always it is proper to keep in
mind. The fundamental problem of anthropology is the problem of person, to which also
I shall move on to.

III.
If man were only an individual, then he would not raise himself up over the natural
world. 12  The individuum is a naturalistic, and first of all a biological, category. The
individuum is indivisible, an atom. All the things of a relatively organised arrangement,
distinguishing them from the surrounding world, like a pencil, a chair, a clock, a
precious stone, etc, can be termed individuums. The individuum is part of a genera and
is subordinate to the genera. Biologically one proceeds from the loins of natural life.
The individuum is likewise a sociological category and in this capacity one is
subordinate to society, one is part of society, an atom of the social whole. From the
sociological point of view the human person, conceived of as an individuum, is
presented as part of society and is indeed a very small part. The individuum retains its
own relative autonomy, but all the same it dwells within the loins of the genus and
society, it is compelled to consider itself as a part, which though it can revolt against the
whole cannot set itself opposite to it, as an whole in itself. Person signifies something
completely other. Person is of the category of spirit, and not nature, it is not subordinate
either to nature or to society. Person is not at all part of nature or of society, and it
cannot be thought of, as a part in relation to some sort of the whole. From the point of
view of existential philosophy, from the point of view of man, as existential centre,
person is not at all part of society. On the contrary, society is part of the person, merely
its social side. Person is likewise not part of the world, of the cosmos; on the contrary,
cosmos is part of the person. The human person is an essence both social and cosmic,
i.e. it possesses a social and a cosmic side, a social and a cosmic makeup, but therein
particularly it is impossible to think of the human person, as a part in relationship to a
social or cosmic whole. Man is a microcosm. Person is an whole, it cannot be a part.
This is a basic definition of person, though it be impossible to give any one definition of
person, for it is possible to give an whole series of definitions of person from its various
sides. The person as whole is not subordinated to any other whole, it is outside the
relationships of genus and individual. Person ought to be thought of not as
subordination to the genus, but in a correlation and community with other persons, with
the world and with God. The person is not at all of nature and to it there can be ascribed
no sort of categories, relating to nature. Person cannot at all be defined as substance.
The understanding of person, as of a substance, is a naturalisation of person. Person is
rooted within the spiritual world, it does not belong to the natural hierarchy and cannot
be jumbled in together with it. It is impossible to think of the spiritual world, as part of
the hierarchical cosmic system. The teachings of Thomas Aquinas are a clear example
of the understanding of the human person, as a step within hierarchical cosmic system.
The human person occupies a middle rung betwixt animals and angels. But this is a
naturalistic understanding. It mustneeds moreover be said, that Thomism makes a
distinction between the person and the individuum. 13  For existential philosophy, the
human person has its own unique extra-natural existence, though in it there is a natural
makeup. Person is contrary to thing, 14  contrary to the world of objects, it is an active
subject, an existential centre. And this is only because the human person is non-
dependent on the realm of Caesar. It possesses an axiological, a valuative character. To
become person is the task of man. To define someone as a person, is a positive
evaluation of a man. The person is not begotten of one’s parents, as is the individuum, it
is created by God and creates itself and it is God’s idea about every person.
       
Person can be characterised by an entire series of signs, which between them are
connected. Person is the unchanging amidst change. The subject of change remains one
and the same person. For the person it is destructive, if it chills down, becomes stunted
in its developement, does not grow nor become enriched, does not create new life. And
likewise disastrous for it is, if the change in it is a betrayal, if it ceases to be itself, if it
becomes impossible anymore to recognise the human person. This is a theme of Ibsen’s
“Peer Gynt”. Person is an unity of destiny. This is its basic definition. Together with
this, person is unity in multiplicity. It cannot be comprised of parts. It has a complexly
manifold makeup. But the whole in it comes before its parts. The entire spirit-soul-
bodily composition of man presents itself as an unique subject. It is essential for person,
that it presupposes the existence of the supra-personal, that which surpasses it and to
which it raises itself in its realisation. Person is not, if there be no being standing higher
than it. Then there is only the individuum, subordinate to the genus and to society, and
then nature would stand higher than man and he would be but part of it. Person can
contain within itself an universal content and only person possesses this capacity.
Nothing objective can contain universal content, for it is always partialised. There
mustneeds be made a deep-rooted distinction between the universal and the general. The
general is an abstraction and does not have an existence. The universal however is
concrete and does possess existence. Person accommodates within itself not the general,
but the universal, the supra-personal. The general, the abstracted idea, always denotes
an intellectual culture of the idol and idolatry, of making person its own tool-implement
and means. Such things as statism, nationalism, scientism, communism, etc, are always
a transforming of person into a means and a tool. But this is never done by God. For
God the human person is an end, and not a means. The general is an impoverishment,
whereas the universal is an enrichment of the life of the person. The definition of man,
as a rational being, makes of him an implement-tool of the impersonal reason, it is
disadvantageous for person and does not discern its existential centre. Person possesses
a propensity of feelings for suffering and for joy.
     
Person can be conceived of only as act, it is contrary to passivity, it always
signifies a creative resistance. Act always is creative act, for passivity is not, as has
already been said, a creative act. Act cannot be a mere repetition, it always bears within
it something new. In the act always there is an excelling of freedom, which also bears
forth this something new. Creative act is always connected with the depths of the
person. Person is creativity. And as was already said, on the surface man can produce
the impressions of great activity, he can make very active gestures, very loud motions
even within, but in his depths be passive, he can altogether lose his personness. We
often observe this in mass movements, both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, in
the pogroms, in the appearances of fanaticism and zealotry. Genuine activity, defining
the person, is activity of spirit. Without inner freedom, activity is rendered into
passiveness of spirit, an inner determinism. Obsession, serving as a medium can
produce the impression of activity, but in it there is no genuine act nor person. Person is
resistance, resistance to the determinism of society and nature, an heroic struggle for
self-definition from within. Person possesses a volitional core, in which every stirring is
defined from within, and not from without. Person is contrary to determinism. 15  Person
is pain. The heroic struggle for the realisation of person is painful. It is possible to flee
pain, in having forsaken to be a person. And man too often does this. To be a person, to
be free is not easy, but is difficult rather, a burden, which man ought to bear. From man
ever and again they demand a renouncing of person, a renouncing of freedom, and for
this they promise him an alleviating of his life. They demand from him, that he subject
himself to the determinism of society and nature. With this is connected the tragedy of
life. No man can consider himself a completed person. Person is not something
completed, it has to realise itself, this is the great task put to man, the task to realise the
image and likeness of God, to accommodate within oneself in the individual form the
universal, the plenitude. Person creates itself throughout the expanse of the whole of
human life.
      
Person is not self-sufficient, it cannot be satisfied with itself. It always
presupposes the existence of other persons, the emergence from oneself to the other.
Therein exists the opposition between person and egocentrism. Egocentrism, the
immersion in one’s own “I” and the beholding of everything exclusively from the point
of view of this “I”, the referring of everything to it, destroys the person. The realisation
of person presupposes the seeing of other persons. Egocentrism however shatters the
function of reality in man. Person presupposes diversity, the setting of a variety of
persons, i.e. seeing realities in their true light. Solipcism, the affirming that nothing
exists besides my “I” and that everything only is my “I”, is a denial of person. Person
presupposes sacrifice, but it is impossible to sacrifice the person. It is possible to
sacrifice one’s life and a man sometimes ought to sacrifice his life, but no one has the
right to renounce his own person, everyone ought to in-sacrifice and through-sacrifice
remain to the end a person. To renounce one’s own person is impossible, since this
would signify a renouncing of God’s idea about man, in effect the non-realising of
God’s intent. It is not necessary for person to be renounced, as an impersonalism might
imagine, in regarding the person as a limitation, 16  but rather there should be renounced
the hardened selfness in stirring the person to unfold itself. In the creative act of man,
which is the realisation of person, there ought to occur a sacrificial pouring off of
selfness, in defining a man from other people, from the world and from God. Man is a
being in himself insufficient, dissatisfied but surmounting himself by his life in the most
remarkable acts. Person is forged out in this creative self-definition. It always
presupposes the vocation, the singular and unrepeated calling of each one. It follows an
inner voice, calling it to realise its own task in life. Man only then is a person, when he
follows this inner voice, rather than external influences. Vocation always bears an
individual character. And no one other can decide the question about the vocation of a
given man. Person possesses a vocation, in that it is called to creativity. Creativity
however is always an individual matter. The realisation of person presupposes ascesis.
But it impossible to conceive of ascesis as an end, as something hostile to the world and
to life. Ascesis is but a means, a drilled work-out, a concentration of inner powers.
Person presupposes ascesis in that it is an intensifying and a resistance, a non-accord to
be defined by nature or society. The attainment of an inner self-definition demands
ascesis. But ascesis easily degenerates, it becomes transformed into an end-in-itself, so
as to embitter the heart of man, and make him ill-disposed towards life. And then it
becomes hostile towards man and the person. The needs for ascesis is not in denying the
creativity of man, but for this, to realise this creativity. Person is diverse yet unified,
unrepeatable, original, not the same as others. Person is the exception, and not the rule.
We stand afront a paradoxical combination of opposites: of the personal and the supra-
personal, of the finite and the infinite, of the unchanging and the changing, of freedom
and of fate. Ultimately, there is a fundamental antinomy, connected with the person.
Person ought the more to realise itself and no one can say of themself, that they are
already fully a person. But for person to be able creatively to realise itself, it ought
already to be, it mustneeds be this active subject, which realises itself. This creative act
moreover is connected with the creative act in general. The creative act realises the new,
something not formerly in the world. But it presupposes the creative subject, in which is
given the possibility of self-determination and self-uplifting within creativity of the
formerly non-extant. To be a person is difficult, to be free means to take upon oneself a
burden. The easiest thing of all would be to renounce the person and to renounce
freedom, to live under deteminism, under authority.

IV.

There is within man a sub-conscious elemental basis, connected with cosmic life and
with the earth, a cosmic-tellurgic element. The very passions, connected with the
natural-elemental basis, would seem to be the material, from which also are created the
greatest virtues of the person. The intellectual-moral and rational denying of the natural-
elemental within man leads to the desiccation and stoppage of the wellsprings of life.
When consciousness chokes off and squeezes out the sub-conscious element, there then
occurs a dividing of the human nature and its petrifying and ossification. The path of the
realisation of the human person runs from the sub-conscious through the conscious to
the supra-conscious. Simultaneously impropitious for the person is both the force of the
lower sub-conscious, wherein man is wholly defined by nature, and also the petrifying
of the consciousness, the locking off of consciousness, the closing away for man of the
whole world, limiting his horizon. Consciousness mustneeds be thought of dynamically,
and not statically, it can shrink or it can expand, it can hide away whole worlds or it can
reveal them. There is no absolute nor impassable boundary, separating the conscious
from the sub-conscious and the supra-conscious. That which presents itself to this
median-norm consciousness, with which is connected the commonly-binding and the
measure of law, is but a certain degree of petrification of the consciousness, relative to
certain norms of social life and the sociality of mankind. But an egress from this
median-norm consciousness is possible and with it is connected all the utmost
attainments of man, with it is connected sanctity and genius, contemplation and
creativity. Only therein can man be termed as a being which surmounts itself. And in
this egress beyond the limits of the median-norm consciousness, of being drawn into the
social ordinary, in this egress there is formed and realised the person, before which
always there ought to be realised the perspectives of infinitude and eternity. The
importance and the interesting aspect in man is connected with this opening up in him
of the path towards the infinite and the eternal, with the possibility of breaking through.
It is very mistaken a thing to connect person primarily with the limited, with the finite,
with definition obscuring off the indefineable. The person is diversity, it does not permit
of getting dissolved and mixed away into the impersonal, but it likewise is a stirring
within the indefineable and infinitude. Wherefore only with person is there also a
paradoxical conjoining of the finite and the infinite. Person is a going out from itself,
beyond its limits, but not allowing of dissolution and being mixed away. It opens up, it
permits within itself whole worlds and goes out into them, whilst remaining itself.
Person is not a monad with closed-off doors and windows, as with Leibnitz. But the
opened doors and windows never signify a dissolving away of the person into the
surrounding world, never the destruction of the ontological core of the person. There is
therefore within the person a sub-conscious foundation, there is the conscious and there
is the egress to the supra-conscious.
      
Of tremendous significance for anthropology is the question about the
relationship within man of the spirit to the soul and the body. It is possible to speak
about the triadic makeup of Man. To present himself as man constituted of soul and
body, while bereft of spirit, -- this is a naturalisation of man. There undoubtedly has
been suchlike of the naturalistic in theological thought, and it is for example
characteristic to Thomism. The spiritual element was as it were alienated from human
nature and transferred exclusively to the transcendental sphere. Man, constituted
exclusively of soul and body, is a natural being. The basis for such a naturalisation of
Christian anthropology appears to be in this, that the spiritual element within man
cannot at all be posited alongside and compared with the soul and body element. Spirit
cannot at all be set opposite soul and body, it is a reality of another order, it is reality in
another sense. The soul and body of man belong to nature, they are realities of the
natural world. But spirit is not nature. The opposition of spirit and nature -- is the
fundamental opposition, which namely is of spirit and nature, and not of spirit and
matter, nor of spirit and body. The spiritual element within man signifies, that man is
not only a natural being, but that within him there is a supra-natural element. Man unites
himself with God through the spiritual element, through spiritual life. Spirit is not in
opposition to soul and body and the triumph of spirit does not at all signify the negation
or lessening of soul and body. The soul and body of man, i.e. his natural being, can be
in spirit, brought into the spiritual order, spiritualised. The attainment of the integrality
or wholeness of human existence also signifies, that spirit is possessed of by soul and
body. Quite especially it is, that through the victory of the spiritual element, through
spiritualisation is realised the person within man, there is realised his integral image. As
regards the archaic and very ancient meaning of the word spirit (pneuma, rouakh), it
signified breath and breathing, i.e. it had almost a physical meaning, and only later was
spirit spiritualised. 17  But the comprehension of spirit as a breathing also signifies, that
it is energy, coming into man as it were from an higher plane, and not from the natural
substance of man.
       
Completely false is that abstract spiritualism, which denies the genuine reality of
the human body and its belonging to the integral image of man. It is impossible to
defend this dualism of soul and body, or of spirit and body, as sometimes they express
it, and which derives from Descartes. This point of view has been abandoned by modern
psychology and is inconsistent with the currents of contemporary philosophy. Man
presents himself as an integrally whole organism, which includes soul and body. The
very body of man is not a mechanism and it cannot be conceived of materialistically. At
present there has occurred a partial return to the Aristotelian teaching about the
entelechies (“innate-ends”). The body belongs inalienably to the person, the image of
God in man. The spiritual principle vivifies both the soul and the body of man. The
body of man can become spiritualised, can become a spiritual body, whilst not ceasing
to be a body. The eternal principle within the body is not in its physical-chemical
constitution, but its form. Without this form there is no integrally whole image of the
person. Flesh and blood do not inherit life eternal, i.e. the materiality of our fallen world
does not inherit, but the spiritising bodily form does inherit. The body of man in this
sense is not only one of the objects of the natural world, it has also an existential
meaning, it belongs to an inner, non-objectivised existence, it belongs to the integrative
subject. The realisation of the form of the body leads to the realisation of person. This
means precisely the liberation from the a rule of body, having subordinated its spirit.
We live in an epoch, when man, and foremost of all his body, seem unsuited for the new
technical means, conceived of by man himself. 18  Man is fragmented. But person is an
integral spirit-soul-body being, in which the soul and the body are subordinated to spirit,
spiritised and by this conjoined with the higher, the supra-personal and supra-human
being. Suchlike is the inner hierarchy of the human being. The shattering or keeling-
over of this hierarchy is a shattering of the integrality of the person and is in this
ultimately its destruction. Spirit is not a nature within man, distinct from the nature of
soul and body, but rather an immanently acting within it gracious power (breath and
breathing), the utmost quality of man. Spirit manifests itself as the genuinely acting and
creative in man.
      
Man cannot define himself only afront life, he ought also to define himself
afront death, he ought to live, knowing, that he will die. Death is a most important fact
of human life, and man cannot worthily live, not having defined his relationship towards
death. Whosoever structures his life having closed his eyes to death, that one loses at
playing the deed of life, even if his life were to be a success. The attainment of the
fullness of life is connected with the victory over death. Modern people are inclined to
see a sign of bravery and strength in the forgetting about death, and to them it seems a
matter of indifference. In actuality the forgetting about death is not bravery and
indifference, but vileness and superficiality. Man ought to surmount the living fear of
death, for the dignity of man demands this. But a profound attitude towards life cannot
be connected with a transcendent terror afront the mystery of death, as having nothing
in common with a living fear. It is vileness to be forgetful about the death of other
people, not only about the death of those close to one, but about the death of every
living being. In this forgetting there is a betrayal, since all are responsible for all and all
have a common fated lot. “The fated lot of the sons of men and the fated lot of living
things -- this is the same fated lot: as these die, so also die those”, -- says Ecclesiates.
The obligation in regards to the dead was most acutely sensed by N. Fedorov, who saw
the very essence of Christianity to be in the “common task” of a struggle against
death. 19  Without a decision about the question about death, without the victory over
death, person cannot realise itself. And the attitude towards death cannot be twofold.
Death is the greatest extremity of evil, the source of all that is evil, the result of the Fall
into sin, in that every being had been created for eternal life. Christ came first of all to
conquer death, to remove the sting of death. But death in the fallen world has also a
positive sense, since as a negative pathway it serves to witness to the existence of an
higher meaning. Endless life in this world would be bereft of meaning. The positive
meaning of death is in this, that the fullness of life cannot be realised in time, in not
only a finite span of time, but neither in endless time. The fullness of life can be realised
only in eternity, only beyond the limits of time, because in time life remains without
meaning, if it has not received its meaning from eternity. But the egress from time to
eternity is a leap across the abyss. In the fallen world this leap across the abyss is termed
death. There is another egress from time into eternity -- through the depth of the
moment, comprising neither a fragmented part of time nor subject to numeric quantity.
But this egress is neither final nor integral, and constantly again one falls back into time.
The realisation of the fullness of the life of the person presupposes the existence of
death. Only a dialectical attitude is possible towards death. Christ by His death hath
trampled down death, and therefore death has come to have also a positive significance.
Death is not only the decomposition and annihilation of man, but also his ennobling, a
sundering from the dominion of the ordinary. The metaphysical teaching about the
natural immortality of the soul, based on the teaching about the substantiality of the
soul, does not resolve the question about death. This teaching detours past the tragedy of
death, the falling-apart and fragmentation of the integrally whole human being. Man is
not an immortal being in consequence of his natural constitution. Immortality is attained
by virtue of the spiritual principle in man and its connection with God. Immortality is an
end-task, the realisation of which presupposes a spiritual struggle. This is the realisation
of the fullness of the life of the person. The immortal is in regard particularly to the
person, and not to the soul as a natural substance. Christianity teaches not about the
immortality of the soul, but about the resurrection of the integrally whole human being,
of the person, of the resurrection of the body of man also, as belonging to the person.
Mere immortality is partialised, it leaves man fragmented, whereas resurrection is
integrally whole. Abstract spiritualism affirms only a partialised immortality, an
immortality of soul. Abstract idealism affirms only the immortal ideal principles in
man, only the ideal values, and not the person. Only the Christian teaching about
resurrection affirms immortality as the eternity of the integral wholeness of man, of the
person. In a certain sense it can be said, that immortality is a conquest of spiritual
creativity, the victory of the spiritual person, endowed with body and soul, over the
natural individuum. The Greeks considered man mortal, whereas the gods were
immortal. Immortality at first was affirmed for heroes, demi-gods, the supra-human. But
immortality always signified, that the Divine principle penetrated into man and was
possessed of by him. Immortality -- is Divine-human. It is impossible to objectify and
render immortality into something natural, it is existential. We ought to get completely
beyond the aspects of pessimism and optimism, and affirm the heroic efforts of man to
realise his person for eternity, irrespective of the successes and defeats in life. The
realisation of person for eternal life has moreover a connection with the problem of sex
and love. Sex is an halfness, a fragmentedness, a non-fullness of the human person, an
anguish of incompleteness. The integrally whole person is bi-sexualised, androgynic.
The metaphysical meaning of love is in the attainment of the integral wholeness of
person for life eternal. And in this is the spiritual victory over the impersonal and death-
bearing process of natural-begetting. 20

V.

The human person can realise itself only in community with other persons, in
communality (Communautй, Gemeinschaft). Person cannot realise the fullness of its life
while locked up within itself. Man is not only a social being and cannot belong entirely
to society, but he is also a social being. Person ought to stand up for its uniqueness, its
independence, its spiritual freedom, to realise its calling of a vocation within society in
particular. It is necessary to make a distinction between communiality (communautй)
and society. Community (communality) is always personalistic, it is always an
encounter of person with person, the “I” with the “thou” in a “we”. 21  In authentic
communality there are no objects, for the person another person is never an object, but
is always a “thou”. Society is an abstraction, it is an objectification, and in it the person
vanishes. Communality however is concrete and existential, it is outside of
objectification. In society there is a conforming oneself into the state, and man enters
into the sphere of objectification, he becomes abstracted from himself, he undergoes as
it were an alienation from his proper nature. About this there was many an interesting
thought from the young Marx. 22  Marx discerns this alienation of human nature in the
economics of the Capitalist order. But in essence this alienation of human nature occurs
in every society and state. Both existentially and humanly, the only community is the
“I” with the “thou” in the “we”. Society, I grant, is in its form the objectification into the
state, and it is an alienation, a falling-away from the existential sphere. Man is
transformed into an abstract being, into one of the objects, set amidst other objects. This
poses the question about the nature of the Church in the existential meaning of the word,
i.e. as an authentic community, of the communality or Sobornost’ of the “I” and the
“thou” in the “we”, in a Divine-human body, in the Body of Christ. The Church is
likewise a social institution, acting within history, and in this sense it is objectivised and
is a society. The Church was transformed into an idol, as is everything in the world. But
the Church, in an existential and non-objectivised sense, is communality (communautй),
is Sobornost’. Sobornost’ is the existential “we”. Sobornost’ rationally is not expressible
in concept, is not subject to objectivisation. The objectivisation of Sobornost’
transforms it into a society, likens it to a state. Thereupon the person is transformed into
an object, as found in the relation of the state towards its subjects, i.e. the very reverse
of the Gospel words: “you know, that the princes of the nations rule over them and as
mighty ones lord it over them, but amidst ye let it not be such”. Existential communality
is communion, a true communism, distinct from the material communism, which is
based upon an admixture of existential communality with an objectified society,
coercively organised into the state. The society at the foundation of which would be
posited personalism, the avowal of the supreme value of every person and of the
existential relationship of person to person, such a society would be transformed into
communality, into communautй, into true communism. But communality is unattainable
by way of the compulsive organisation of society, and by this way may be created a
more just order, but not the brotherhood of people. Communality, Sobornost’, is a
society that is spiritual, which is hidden away for an externalised and objectivised
society. In communality, the “I” with the “thou” in the “we” imperceptibly passes over
into the Kingdom of God. It is not identical with the Church in the historical and social
sense of the word. In the sphere, to which society belongs, there would most correspond
to a Christian anthropological avowal of a system, that which I would term a personalist
socialism. This system presupposes a just socialisation of the economic order, the
surmounting of economic atomism and individualism, set amidst the acknowledgement
of the supreme value of the human person and its right to the realisation of the fullness
of life. But a personalist socialism itself and of itself does not however create
communality, the brotherhood of people, for this remains a spiritual task. Christian
anthropology is embedded in the problem of a Christian sociology. But the problem of
man takes primacy over the problem of society. Man is not a creation of society in its
image and likeness, man is a creation of God in His image and likeness. Man possesses
within himself an element independent of society, he realises himself within society, but
he is not wholly dependent upon it. Sociology ought to be grounded upon anthropology,
and not the reverse.
 The final, the ultimate problem, upon which philosophic and religious
anthropology devolves is the problem of the relationship of man, of the human person to
history. This is an eschatological problem. History is the fated-destiny of man. It is a 
tragic fate. Man is not only a social being, but is also an historical being. The point of
the fate of history coincides together with my own human fate. And I cannot throw off
from myself the burden of history. History is a creation of man, he consents to go the
way of history. But together with this, history is indifferent towards man, it pursues as it
were not human aims, and it is interested not by the human, but by the state, by the
nation, by civilisation; it is inspired by power and expansion, and it makes common
cause first of all with the average man, with the masses. The human person is trampled
down by history. There exists a most profound conflict between history and the human
person, between the ways of history and human ways. Man is drawn into history, he
becomes subject to its fate and together with this he finds himself in conflict with it, he
opposes to history the value of person, its inner life and individual destiny. Within the
bounds of history this conflict is irresolvable. History in its religious meaning is
movement towards the Kingdom of God. And this religious meaning is realised only
when there is a breaching through of history by the meta-historical. But it is impossible
for there to be situated within history a continuous Divine-human process, as for
example Vl. Solov’ev sought to find, in his “Lectures on God-manhood”. History is not
sacralised, the sacralisation of history is a false symbolisation, the sacral within history
possesses a conditional-symbolic, and not a real sense. History in a certain sense is a
non-succeeding to the Kingdom of God, it is a prolonging wherein the Kingdom of God
is not realised, is not come. The Kingdom of God comes unperceived, outside the
bombast and glitter of history. The transgression of history in tormenting the concrete
man means also, that the Kingdom of God is not realised and so there is endured the
immanent punishment for this non-realisation. Christian history happened only because
that the eschatological expectations of the first Christians was not realised. The First and
the Second Coming of Christ sundered, between them was formed historical time,
which can be prolonged indefinitely. The task of history is immanently and inwardly
unresolved. History does not have a meaning in itself, it possesses meaning only beyond
its limits, in the supra-historical. And therefore inevitable is the end of history and a
judgement over history. But this end and this judgement occur within history itself. The
end is always nigh. There is an inner apocalypse to history. The apocalypse is not only
the revelation of the end of history, but likewise revelation of an end and judgement
within history. Revolutions are such an end and a judgement. Christian history has
never realised true Christian personalism, it has realised the opposite. Christians were
inspired not by sublime preaching, but by the power and glory of the state and nation,
by the military will towards expansion. Christians justified oppression and injustice,
they were inattentive towards the lot of the earthly concrete man, they did not consider
the person to be of utmost value. And therefore Christian history had to end and have
begun instead a non-Christian and anti-Christian history. And in this there was a great
truth from the Christian point of view. There has been many a revolution within history,
which was a judgement over the past, but all the revolutions were infected with the evil
of the past. There has never been a personalist revolution, a revolution in the name of
the human person, of every human person, in the name of the realisation of the fullness
of life for it. And therefore the end of history is inevitable, the ultimate revolution.
Anthropology is likewise the philosophy of history. The philosophy of history however
is inevitably eschatology. The philosophy of history is not so much a teaching about the
meaning of history through progress, as rather the teaching of the meaning of history
through the end. Hegel’s philosophy of history is completely unacceptable for us, it is
impersonal, and it ignores man. And therefore inevitable was the revolt against Hegel
by such people as Kierkegaard, and inevitable was the revolt against the world spirit for
having transformed the concrete man into but its own means. Christian anthropology
ought to be posited not only in the perspective of the past, i.e. oriented towards Christ
Crucified, as up to the present has been done, but also to the perspective of the future,
i.e. oriented towards Christ Coming Again, Risen in power and glory. But the
appearance of Christ Coming is dependent upon the creative deed of man, it is prepared
for by man.

____________________

The insufficiency and defect of humanist anthropology was not at all in that it
emphasised man too much, but rather in that it insufficiently affirmed his finality of
end. Humanism had Christian sources and at the beginning of the modern period there
existed a Christian humanism. But in its ultimate developement, humanism assumed the
forms of affirming the self-sufficiency of man. At the very moment when they proclaim,
that there is nothing higher than man, that for him there is nowhere up to go and that he
is sufficient unto himself, man then begins to take on and be subject to the lower nature.
In its furthest developement, during the XVIII and XIX Centuries, humanism was
forced to acknowledge man as a product of the natural and social mediums. As a being
exclusively natural and social, as a creation of society, man is deprived of inner freedom
and independence, he is defined exclusively from without, and in him there would be no
spiritual principle, which should serve as the source of creativity. The acknowledgement
of the self-emphasis and self-sufficiency of man is a source of the negation of man and
leads invariably to the inner passivity of man. Man can be raised up only by the
awareness, that man is in the image and likeness of God, i.e. is a spiritual being, exalted
over the natural and social world and summoned to transfigure it and be master over it.
The self-affirmation of man leads to the self-destruction of man. Suchlike is the fatal
dialectic of humanism. But we ought not to deny every truth of humanism, as is done by
many a reactionary theological tendency, but the rather to affirm a creative Christian
humanism, an humanism that is theandric, connected with the revelation about God-
manhood.
      
In what is the meaning of human creativity? This meaning is quite more
profound than the usual justification of cultural and social creativity. The creative act of
man essentially does not demand a justification, and this is an external positing of the
question, for it justifies, and is not justified. 23  The creative act of man, presupposing a
freedom external to being, is in answer to God’s call to man and it is needful for the
Divine life itself, wherein man possesses not only an anthropogonic, but also a
theogonic significance. The ultimate mystery about man, and which he is able to
comprehend only with difficulty, is connected with this, that man and his creative deed
have significance for the Divine life itself, they represent a fulfillment for Divine life.
The mystery of human creativity remains hidden and unrevealed in the Holy Scripture.
In the name of human freedom, God provides man himself the opportunity to uncover
the meaning of his creativity. The idea of self-sufficiency, of the self-unperturbedness
(Aseitas) of the Divine life is exoteric and ultimately it is a false idea, and it is
substantially contrary to the idea of the God-Man and God-manhood. Through the God-
Man Christ human nature is a communicant in the Holy Trinity and in the depths of
Divine life. There exists a from-all-eternity humanness within the Trinity and it signifies
also the Divine within man. The creative act of man therefore is a self-discovery within
the fullness of Divine life. But not every creative act of man is such, for there can also
be an evil and diabolic creativity, but it is always a pseudo-creativity, always oriented
towards non-being. The authentic creativity of man is Christological, though this be not
evidently perceived. Humanism does not comprehend this depth of the problem of
creativity, it remains at the secondary. The Christian consciousness however, bound up
with the social everyday ordinary in life, has remained closed off from the creative
mystery of man, it was oriented exclusively towards the struggle with sin. And thus it
has been up to the present. But the appearance of a new human self-consciousness
within Christianity is possible. Anthropologic investigations ought to prepare for it from
various sides. The traditional Christian anthropology, as also the traditional philosophic
anthropology, both the idealistic and the naturalistic, ought to be surmounted. The
teaching about man, as a creator, is a creative task for modern thought.

 
Nikolai Berdyaev
1936
©  2000  by translator Fr. S. Janos
 
(1936 - 408 - en)
 
PROBLEMA  CHELOVEKA.  (K postroeniiu khristianskoi antropologii). Journal Put’,
Mar./Apr. 1936, No. 50, p. 3-26.
 
 i  “In the midst of the world hath I put thee, so that thou might freely look about all
sides of the world, to keep hold of as thou art able and might use, as doth please thee.
Neither heavenly, nor earthly, not mortal and also not immortal hath I created thee. For
thou thyself in accord with thine will and thine honour wilt be thine own creator and
fashioner and from the stuff that thou choose to form be thee free, from the lowest stuff
of the brute-work to sink. But thou canst also lift thyself up to the highest spheres of the
Godhead”.
                                                    Pico della Mirandola
  ii “From no religion but the Christian is it known, that man is the most excellent
creature and at the same time the most miserable”.
                                                    Pascal
iii “Man, see now, how thou be earthly and yet also heavenly in one person put together,
and thou bearest the earthly, and also yet the heavenly image in the selfsame person:
and then art thou from the grimmest agony and bearest an hellish image on thee, which
greeneth in God’s wrath from the agony of Eternity”.
                                                    Jacob Boehme

1
  Max Scheler in particular emphasised this.
2
  Vide the brilliantly written, though also very incomplete history of anthropologic
teachings: Bernhard Groethuysen: “Philosophische Antropologie”.
3
  Vide the remarkable essay of Christian anthropology by Nesmelov: “Nauka o
cheloveke” (The Science of Man”).
4
  Vide  Pico della Mirandola: “Ausgewaehlte Schriften”. 1905.
5
  Vide my book: “I and the World of Objects” (trans. note: published in English under
title “Solitude and Society”).
6
  I. Kireevsky and A. Khomyakov had a presentiment of this truth, when they based
knowledge upon the integrality and totality of the spiritual powers of man. There is an
affinity to this in the existential philosophy of Heidegger and Jaspers, for whom being is
known within human existence.
  7 Vide L. Feuerbach: “Philosophie der Zukunft”.
  8 Vide Fr. S. Bulgakov: “Agnets Bozhii” (“The Lamb of God”).
  9 This hostility towards the understanding of man as a creator can be met with in the
newest of Catholic books, in Theodore Haecker’s “Was ist der Mensch?”
  10 Vide his book: “Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik”.
  11 Vide my books, “Philosophy of the Free Spirit” (published in English under title
“Freedom and the Spirit”, and “The Destiny of Man”).
  12 Much of my thought about the person and the individual was expressed in my
article, “Personalism and Marxism”, and likewise in my books, “I and the World of
Objects” (published in English under title “Solitude and Society”), and “The Destiny of
Man”.
  13 Upon this in particular, J. Maritain insists upon.
  14 This is a basic thought of Stern, who created a philosophical system of personalism,
which however is not free from naturalism.
  15 Le-Senne in his remarkable book, “Obstacle et Valeur”, opposes existence to
determinism.
  16 Thus thinks L. Tolstoy, thus thinks the Indian religious philosophy, E. Hartmann and
many another.
  17 Vide Hans Leisegang: “Der Heilige Geist”, 1919.
  18 Vide my article “Chelovek i mistika” (“Man and the Mystic”) and the book of Carrel
“L’Homme cet inconnu”. [trans note: this seems to be a misprint in original text for
Berdyaev’s widely circulated 1933 Put’ article “Chelovek i mashina” (“Man and
Machine”) -- included in book “The Bourgeios Mind”, Ch. 2).  Enigmatic also is
Berdyaev’s citation of the French title of Alexis Carrel’s book, first published in 1935 in
English under title “Man, the Unknown”; it was not published in French until 1937, the
year after the present Berdyaev article.] .
  19 Vide the book of N. Fedorov, “The Philosophy of the Common Task” (“Philosophia
obschego dela”).
  20 Vide my books, “The Destiny of Man” and “The Meaning of Creativity” (published
in English under title “The Meaning of the Creative Act”), and also the article by Vl.
Solov’ev, “The Meaning of Love”.
  21 Vide my book, “I and the World of Objects” (published in English under title
“Solitude and Society”), and also the book of Martin Buber, “I and Thou” (“Ich und
Du”). [trans. note: “I” and “thou” and “we” are all non-object subject forms, in contrast
to the object-forms of the “me” and “thee” and “ye/you” and “us”. It is an aspect of
what in Hegelian Idealism is termed “bad faith”].
  22 Vide K. Marx: “Der historische Materialismus”. Die Fruehschriften.
2 Volumes. See also A. Carnu, “Karl Marx”, and Lukas, “Geschichte und Klassen
Bewustsein”. [In English, vide “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,
by Karl Marx”].
  23 Vide my book, “The Meaning of Creativity. Attempt at a Justification of Man”
(published in English under title “The Meaning of the Creative Act”).
 THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION
OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD  1)
(1932 - #377)

Everything in the contemporary world is situated under the sign of crisis, not only the
social and the economic, but likewise also a cultural, but likewise also a spiritual,
everything has become problematic. This is moreso acutely obvious in Germany, and
about this much gets written. How ought a Christian to relate to the agony of the world,
how ought one to regard it? Is this only a crisis of a world external for the Christian and
anti-Christian, having betrayed the Christian faith, or is this likewise a crisis of
Christianity? Christians also share in the fate of the world. They cannot purport the
view, that within Christianity, within the Christian world everything is just dandy and
that nothing in the world irritates it. And upon the Christian world, upon the Christian
movement there falls heavy a responsibility. Upon the world is being wrought a
judgement, and it is likewise a judgement upon historical Christianity. The ills of the
modern world are connected not only with the falling away from Christianity, with a
chilling down of faith, but also with the age-old ills of Christianity on its human side.
Christianity is universal in its significance, and everything is situated within its orbit,
nothing for it can be fully on the outside. Christians ought rather to perceive the
spiritual condition of the contemporary world from within Christianity itself, to define,
what the crisis of the world signifies as an event within Christianity, within the
Christian universality. The world has come into a frightful condition, no longer within it
are there firm institutions, it is living through a revolutionary epoch both outward and
inward, an epoch of spiritual anarchy. Man lives in anguish (Angst) more than ever
before, under an eternal threat, he hangs suspended over an abyss (the Grenzsituation of
Tillich). Modern European man has lost the faith, which he tried in the last century to
substitute for the Christian faith. He believes no longer in progress, in humanism, in the
saving power of science, in the saving power of democracy, he is conscious of the
injustice of the capitalist order and he has lost confidence in the utopia of the
contemporary socialist order. Modern France is afflicted by cultural scepticism, and in
modern Germany the crisis dispels all values. The whole of Europe is shaken by the
unbelievable events happening in Soviet Russia, under the grip of a new faith, a new
religion, hostile to the Christian religion. Characteristic to contemporary Europe is the
rise of new forms of pessimistic a philosophy, in comparison with which the pessimism
of Schopenhauer comes off as comforting and innocent. And thus there is the
philosophy of Heidigger, for whom being as regards it own essence is fallen, but from
no one is it fallen away, the world is hopelessly sinful, but there is no God, the essence
of being in the world is anxiety. Reigning over the mind of the modern average
European is the melancholy, gloomily tragic Kierkegaard, his teaching about Angst has
been rendered very popular, it expresses at present the condition of the world, the
position of man. Meanwhile most interesting and remarkable is the trend in theological
and religious thought known as Barthianism, which is under the grip of an exclusive and
acute feeling of the sinfulness of man and the world, and Christianity Barth tends to
understand exclusively in eschatological terms. This current is a religious reaction
against the liberal humanistic, romantic Protestantism of the last century. There is
likewise a reaction against liberalism, romanticism, modernism to be found in
Catholicism, which they attempt at present to save from modernist dangers and to
reinforce by a return to Thomas Aquinas. Thomism is not only the official philosophy
of the Catholic Church, it has become likewise a cultural trend and has taken hold
among Catholic youth. But both Barthianism and Thomism negate man. The gravitating
towards authoritarianism and towards the restoration of tradition is the obverse side of
the anarchy and chaos of the world. Within Western Christianity there has become
weakened the faith in man, in his creative power, in his aspect in the world. In the
social-political movements prevail principles of coercion and authority, with a
diminishing of the freedom of man -- in Communism, in Fascism, in National Socialism
there triumphs a new victory of materialism both economic and racial. Man as it were
has grown tired of spiritual freedom and is prepared to renounce it in the name of
power, with which to order his life, both inward and outward. Man has grown tired of
himself, of man, has lost the confidence in man and wants to leap off to the supra-
human, even though this supra-human be a social collective. Many of the old idols have
been toppled in our time, but many new idols have likewise been created. Man is so
constituted, that he can live either with a faith in God, or with a faith in ideals and idols.
In essence, man cannot consistently and ultimately be an atheist. Having fallen away
from the faith in God, he falls into idolatry. We can see the idol-worship and the
fashioning of idols within every sphere -- in science, in art, in statecraft, and in national
and social life. And thus, for example, Communism is an extreme form of social
idolatry.

For the contemporary European all faith has weakened. He is more free from optimistic
illusions than the man of the XIX Century, set facing the bare, unadorned and severe
realities. But in one regard modern man is optimistic and filled with faith, and this is his
idol, to which everyone offers sacrifice. We herein come nigh to a very important
moment in the spiritual condition of the contemporary world. Modern man believes in
the might of technology, of the machine, and sometimes it would seem, that this is the
one thing, in which he still believes. And there seems to be a very serious basis for his
optimism in this regard. The dizzying successes of technology in our epoch is a genuine
marvel of the sinful natural world. Man is shaken and crushed by the might of
technology, making all his life topsy-turvy. Man himself has created it, it is the product
of his genius, of his reason, of his inventiveness, it is a child of the human spirit. Man
has succeeded in unlocking secret powers of nature and using them for his own ends, of
introducing a teleological principle into the activity of mechanical-physical-chemical
powers. But to master the results of his work man has not succeeded. Technology has
come to seem more powerful than man himself, it subjugates him to itself. Technology
is the sole sphere of the optimistic faith of man, his greatest achievement. But it brings
man, however, much grief and disappointment, it enslaves man, it weakens his
spiritualness, it threatens him with ruin. The crisis of our time is to a remarkable degree
begotten by technology, which man lacks the strength to deal with. And this crisis is
first of all a spiritual one. It is important for our theme to emphasise, that Christians
have proven to be completely unprepared for an appraisal of technology and the
machine, for an understanding of its place within life. The Christian consciousness does
not know, how to relate to the tremendous worldwide event, connected with the
introduction into human life of the machine and technology. The natural world, in
which man was accustomed to live in the past, no longer still seems to be in the eternal
order of things. Man lives in a new world, altogether quite different from that in which
the Christian revelation occurred, in which lived the apostles, the teachers of the
Church, the saints, all with which the symbolism of Christianity is connected.
Christianity was very representative of a connection with the land, with a patriarchal
order of life. But technology has torn man away from the soil, it has with finality
destroyed the patriarchal order. Christians can live and act in this world, in which
everything is incessantly changing, in which there is naught yet stable, by virtue of the
customary Christian dualism. The Christian is accustomed to live in two rhythms, in the
religious rhythm and in the worldly rhythm. In the worldly rhythm he participates in the
technisation of life, religiously not sanctified, and in the religious rhythm however, on a
few days and hours of his life, he withdraws from the world to God. But it remains
unclear, what religiously this formed anew world signifies. For a long time they
regarded technology as a most neutral sphere, something religiously indifferent,
something furthermost removed from spiritual questions and therefore something
innocent. But this period has past, though not all have noticed it so. Technology has
ceased to be neutral. The question about technology has become for us a spiritual
question, a question about the fate of man, about his relationship to God. Technology
has immeasurably deeper a significance, than ordinarily is thought. It possesses a
cosmogonic significance, it creates a completely new actuality. It is a mistake to think,
that the actuality, engendered by technology, is the old actuality of the physical world, a
reality, studied by mechanics, physics and chemistry. This is an actuality, which did not
exist in the history of the world until the discoveries and inventions, made by man. Man
has succeeded in creating a new world. Within the machine is present the reasoning
power of man, within it operates a teleological principle. Technology creates an
atmosphere, saturated with energies, which earlier were hidden within the depths of
nature. And man has no assurance, that he is in a condition to breathe in the new
atmosphere. He was in the past accustomed to breathe a different air than this. It is still
inexplicable, what this electric atmosphere, into which he is cast, will produce for the
human organism. Into the hands of man technology puts a terrible and unprecedented
power, a power which can be to the destroying of mankind. The first tools, found in the
hands of man, were relatively playthings. And it would be possible to regard them still
as neutral. But when such a terrible power is given into the hands of man, then the fate
of mankind depends upon the spiritual condition of man. One already destructive aspect
of technology is war, threatening almost cosmic a catastrophe, and it posits the spiritual
problem of technology quite acutely. Technology is not only the power of man over
nature, but also the power of man over man, power over the life of people. Technology
can be converted into service to the devil. But therein especially it is not neutral. And
especially in our materialistic times everything acquires a spiritual significance,
everything is set beneathe the standard of the spirit. Technology, begotten by spirit,
materialises life, but it can also indeed assist in the liberating of spirit, of liberation from
the bounds of materio-organic life. It can enable also an in-spiriting.

Technology signifies the transfer of the whole of human existence from the organism to
the organisation. Man no longer lives in an organic order. Man is accustomed to live in
an organic connection with the soil, with plants and animals. The great cultures of the
past were still surrounded by nature, they loved their gardens, flowers and animals, they
had not yet broken asunder from the rhythm of nature. The sense of the land begat a
tellurgic mysticism (Bachofen has remarkable thoughts about this). Man came from the
soil and he returns to the soil. With this is connected a profound religious symbolism.
The vegetative cults have played a tremendous role. The organic life of man and of
human societies presented itself as a life similar to that of plants. Organic was the life of
the family, of the corporation, the state, the church. Society had resemblance to an
organism. The romantics at the beginning of the XIX Century ascribed an especial
significance to the organism and the organic. From them comes the idealisation of
everything organic and hostility towards the mechanical. The organism is born, and not
made by man, it is begotten by nature, by cosmic life, in it the whole is not composed
merely of parts, but rather precedes the parts and determines their life. Technology tears
man apart from the soil, carries him across the expanses of the world, and gives man the
sensation of earth as a mere planet. Technology radically alters the attitude of man to
space and to time. It is hostile to any organic embodiment. In the technological period
of civilisation man ceases to live amidst animals and plants, he is flung into a coldly-
metallic medium, in which there is no longer any animal warmth, no warm-
bloodedness. The might of technology bears with it an enfeebling of cordiality within
human life, of cordial warmth, coziness, lyricism, sorrows, always connected with the
emotion of soul, and not with spirit. Technology kills everything organic in life and sets
it under the standard of the organisation of the whole of human existence. The
inevitability of the transition from organism to organisation is one of the sources of the
contemporary crisis of the world. It is not so easy to be torn asunder from the organic.
The machine with a cold ferocity rips the spirit from its intertwined organic flesh, from
vegetative-animate life. And this expresses itself first of all in the weakening of the
soul-emotive element within human life, in the dissociation of integral human feelings.
We are entering upon an harsh epoch of spirit and technology. The soul, connected with
organic life, has proven very fragile, it shrinks back from the fierce blows which the
machine inflicts upon it, it flows with blood, and sometimes it seems, that it is dead. We
perceive this as a fatal process of technisation, mechanisation, the materialisation of life.
But spirit can oppose this process, can master it, can enter into a new epoch of being
victorious. This is the fundamental problem. The organisation, into which the world is
passing over, the organisation of the enormous human masses, the organisation of
technical life, the organisation of economics, the organisation of scientific operations
etc, is very burdensome for the soul-emotive life of man, for the intimate life of the
person, and it begets the inner religious crisis. Elements of organisation have existed
since the very dawn of human civilisation, just as always there have existed elements of
technology, but never has the principle of technical organisation been so dominating
and all-extensive, always there remained much of the organic and vegetative condition.
The organisation, connected with technology, is a rationalisation of life. But human life
cannot be ultimately and without residue rationalised, always there remains an irrational
element, always there remains a mystery. The universal principle of rationalisation
receives its just reward. Rationalisation, bereft of any higher spiritual principle, begets
irrational consequences. And thus in economic life we see, that rationalisation begets
such an irrational manifestation, as unemployment. In Soviet Russia the rationalisation
of life assumes forms, reminiscent of collective madness. Universal rationalisation,
technical organisation, the spurning of the mysterious foundations of life, beget a lost
sense of the old meaning of life, and anguish, and the tendency towards suicide. Man is
attracted by the technics created by him, but he himself cannot be transformed into a
machine. Man -- is the organiser of life, but he himself in his depths cannot be the
object of organisation, within him himself there always remains an element of the
organic, the irrational, the mysterious. The rationalisation, the technisation, the
machinisation of the whole of human life and of the human soul itself cannot but
provoke a reaction against itself. This reaction existed during the XIX Century. The
romantics always protested against the might of technology, the dissociating of the
organic wholeness, and they appealed to nature, to the elemental foundation within man.
A strident protest against technology was made by Ruskin. He did not want to reconcile
even with the railroad and he journeyed in a carriage parallel to the rail tracks. The
romantic reaction against technology is understandable and even indispensible, but it is
impotent, it either does not decide the problem or it resolves it too easily. To return to
former times, to the organic lifestyle, to the patriarchal relationships, to the old forms of
the familial economy and handicrafts, to the life with nature, with the land, with plants
and animals, is impossible. And indeed this return would be undesirable, for it is
connected with an exploitive use of people and animals. In this is the tragedy of the
position. And it remains but for spirit creatively to define its own relationship towards
technology and towards the new epoch, to master technology in the name of its own
ends. Christianity ought creatively to define an attitude towards the new actuality. It
cannot be too optimistic. But it also cannot run away from the human reality. This
presupposes an exertion of spirituality, an intensification of the inner spiritual life. Soul-
emotive sentimentalism within Christianity has become already impossible. Soulful
emotionality cannot bear up under the harsh reality. Indifference is possible only for the
hardened, the obdurate spirit. Spirit can be an organiser, it can master the technical for
its own spiritual ends, but it would have to resist itself being turned into a tool of the
organising technical process. In this is the tragedy of spirit.

Another side of the process, engendering the modern crisis of culture, is the entry of
tremendous human masses into culture, of its democratisation, happening upon very
wide a scale. In culture there is a principle that is aristocratic and a principle that is
democratic. Without the aristocratic principle, without qualitative selection the loftiness
and perfectness would never be attained. But together with this, culture has expanded its
scope, and involved with it are altogether new social strata. This is an inevitable and just
process. The culture of our time has lost every organic integral aspect of wholeness,
every aspect of hierarchy, in which the upper reaches sense their own unbroken
connection with the lower reaches. In the cultural elite of our era there has disappeared
the consciousness of service to a supra-personal value over and beyond oneself, of
service to a great goal. The idea of service in general tended to weaken in the era of the
Renaissance, with its oppositely dominant liberal and individualistic ideas. The
understanding of life as service to a supra-personal value is a religious understanding of
life. This understanding however is not characteristic of the modern makers of culture.
It is striking that the idea of service to a supra-personal value has been rendered godless.
The cultural stratum of contemporary Europe possesses neither a broad nor deep social
basis, it is torn asunder from the masses, which claim all ever greater and greater an
allotted weight in social life, and in the doings of history. The cultural stratum,
humanistic in its world-outlook, is powerless to give the masses the ideas and the
values, which should inspire them. The humanistic culture is a fragile thing, and it
cannot withstand the great mass processes, which beset it. The humanistic culture is
compelled to become contracted and isolated. The masses readily assimilate for
themself the vulgar materialism and the outward technical civilisation, but they do not
assimilate for themself the heights of spiritual culture, and they readily cross over from
a religious world-outlook to atheism. And to this end they enable the grievous
associations, connecting Christianity with the ruling classes and with the defending of
an unjust social order. Myth-ideas hold sway over the masses, beliefs either religious or
beliefs social-revolutionary, but cultural humanistic ideas do not hold sway. The
conflict of the aristocratic and democratic principle, of quality and of quantity, of height
or of breadth is unresolvable upon the basis of an irreligious humanistic culture. In this
conflict the aristocratic cultural level frequently feels itself as dying off, and doomed.
the process of techinisation, mechanisation and the process of democtratisation of the
masses leads to the degeneration of culture within the technical civilisation, inspired by
a materialistic spirit. Driving the soul out of people, turning people into machines, and
human work into merchandise is a result of the industrial capitalistic order, in the face
of which Christianity has become perplexed with confusion. The injustice of the
capitalistic order finds its just chastisement in Communism. The process of
collectivisation, in which the human person vanishes, happens already within
capitalism. Materialistic Communism seeks but to bring this process to completion. This
posits for the Christian consciousness in all its acuteness the social problem, a problem
moreso of justice, moreso of the human social order, the problem of spiritising and
Christianisation of the social movement and the working masses. The problem of
culture is at present a social problem and on the outside it is insolvable. The clash of the
aristocratic and democratic principles is solvable only upon the groundworks of
Christianity, since Christianity is both aristocratic and democratic, it affirms the nobility
of the children of God and it summons upwards, to perfection, to the utmost quality, and
together at the same time it is oriented towards everyone, to every human soul. It
demands an understanding of life as service, as service to a supra-personal value, to that
which is valued above and beyond oneself. The fate of culture is dependent upon the
spiritual condition of the working masses, upon whether they be inspired by the
Christian faith or by atheistic materialism, and also upon this, whether technology
becomes subject to spirit and spiritual values or whether ultimately it becomes the lord
over life. It is quite pernicious a thing, when Christians assume a pose of reaction
against the movement of the working masses and against the achievements of
technology, in place of this they ought to inspire and ennoble the processes transpiring
in the world, and subordinate them to higher values.

With the growth of the might of technology and with the mass democratisation of
culture is connected a fundamental problem of the crisis, especially disquieting for the
Christian consciousness, -- the problem of person and society. The person, aspiring
towards emancipation, all more and more proves to be smothered by society, by
socification, by collectivisation. This is the result of "becoming emancipated", of the
technification and democratisation of life. The industrial capitalist order already, basing
itself upon individualism and atomism, has led to a stifling of the person, to
impersonality and anonymity, to the collective and mass style of life. Materialistic
Communism, having arisen against capitalism, ultimately does away with the person,
dissolves it away into the social collective, and denies the personal consciousness, the
personal conscience, the personal destiny. The person within man, which in him is the
image and likeness of God, is dissociated and disintegrated into its elements, it loses its
integral wholeness. This can be observed in contemporary literature and art, for example
in the novels of Proust. The processes, occurring in modern culture, threaten the person
with ruin. The tragic conflict of person and society is unresolvable upon a basis outside
the religious. The world, having lost its faith and become de-Christianised, either
isolates the person, alienates it from society, immerses it within itself without the
possibility of an exit towards supra-personal values, towards association with others, or
ultimately it subjects and enslaves the person to society. Only Christianity in principle
resolves the tormentive problem of the relationship of the person and society.
Christianity values first of all the person, the individual human soul and its eternal
destiny, it does not admit of a relationship to person as merely a means for the ends of
society, it acknowledges the unconditional value of every person. The spiritual life of
the person unmediatedly connects it with God, and it is a limiting point to the power of
society over the person. But Christianity calls the person towards a communion,
towards a service to a supra-personal value, towards the uniting of every I and thou into
a we, to communism, but totally contrary to the communism materialistic and atheistic.
Only Christianity can defend the person from the ruin threatening it, and only upon the
groundworks of Christianity is there possible the unification of the person with others in
a communion, in a sociality in which the person is not done away with, but the rather
realises the fullness of its life. Christianity resolves the conflict of the person and
society, which has created a terrible crisis, by means of a third principle, supra-personal
and supra-societal, in God-manhood, in the Body of Christ. The religious problem of
the person and society presupposes the resolution of the social problem of our epoch
within the spirit of a Christian personalist socialism, which adopts all the truth of
socialism and repudiates all its falsehood, its false spirit, its false world-outlook, which
denies not only God, but also man. Only then can there be the saving of the person and a
qualitative culture, an utmost culture of spirit. We have no grounds for great optimism.
Everything is too far gone. The hostility and hatred is too great. The sin, the evil and
injustice hold too great a victory. But neither the setting of the creative tasks of spirit,
nor the fulfilling of duty ought to depend upon instinctive reflex, called forth by the
formidable powers of evil, that resist the realisation of truth. We believe, that we are not
alone in this, that in the world are active not only the natural human powers, both good
and evil, but that there are also supra-natural, supra-human, graced powers, assisting
those who do the work of Christ in the world, and in which God acts. When we say
"Christianity", we speak not only about man and his faith, but also about God, about
Christ.

The technical and economic processes of modern civilisation turn the person into their
own tool, they demand from it an incessant activity, making use of each moment of life
for activity. Modern civilisation negates contemplation and threatens to completely
shove it out from life, to make it impossible. This will mean, that man ceases to pray,
that he will no longer have any sort of relationship to God, that he will no longer see
beauty and unselfishly know truth. The person is defined not only in relation to time,
but also in relation to eternity. The actualism of modern civilisation is a denial of
eternity, is an enslavement of man to time. No one instant of life thus is of value in
itself, nor has relationship to eternity or God, every moment is but a means for the one
following, needing all the more quickly but to pass away and be replaced by another.
The exclusive actualism of suchlike a sort changes the relationship to time -- there
occurs an acceleration of time, a mad chase. The person cannot hold on amidst the
flooding current of time, in this actualisation of each moment, it is unable to think about
matters, it is unable to conceive of the meaning of its own life, since meaning is always
revealed in relation to eternity, and the flood of time is of itself incomprehensible.
Indisputably, man is called to activity, to work, to creativity, he cannot only meditate.
The world is not merely a stage-show for man, a spectacle. Man has to transform and
organise the world, to continue on with the world-creation. But man remains a person,
the image and likeness of God, and will not be transformed into a mere means of an
impersonal animate and societal process, only in this instance -- if he is the point of
intersection of two worlds, the eternal and the temporal, if he acts not only within time,
but also contemplates eternity, if he inwardly defines himself in relation to God. This is
a fundamental question of the contemporary actualist civilisation, the question about the
fate of the person, the destiny of man. Man cannot be only an object, he is a subject, he
possesses his own existence within himself. Man, transformed into the tool of an
impersonal actualised process within time, is already no longer a man. The social
collective might think it so, but not the person. In the person there is always something
independent of the flood of time and of the social process. The smothering of
contemplation is the smothering of an enormous part of culture, with which is
connected its summit and blossoming -- mysticism, metaphysics, aesthetics. A purely at
work actualist civilisation transforms science and art into a mere accommodation of the
productive technical process. We see this in the intent of Communistic Soviet culture.
This is a deep crisis of culture. The future of man, the future of culture depends on this,
whether man should still want for a moment to be free, to consider and think about his
life, to turn his gaze towards the heavens. True, the idea of labour and a labouring
society is a great and fully Christian idea. The aristocratic contemplation by a privileged
cultural class, freed of participating in the labour process, frequently became a false
contemplation, and in such a form it has scarcely any place in the future. But every
working man also, every man has a moment of contemplation, immersed within
himself, of prayer and praise of God, of the beholding of beauty, of an unselfish
appreciation of the world. Contemplation and action can and ought to be combined in
the integral wholeness of the person, and only their conjoining affirms and strengthens
the person. A person, totally dissipating oneself in activity, in the temporal process,
becomes exhausted, and the flow of spiritual energy within ceases. Amidst all this, the
activity usually is understood not in the Gospel manner, not as service to neighbour, but
as service to idols. The liturgical cycle of religious life is unique a combination of
contemplation and action, in which the person can find for himself a wellspring of
strength and energy. We are at present at a fatal process of the degeneration of the
person, itself always an image of utmost being, -- but reformed anew into the temporal
collectives, with demands of an endlessly growing activeness. Man is a creative being,
an image of the Creator. But the activeness, which modern civilisation demands from
man, essentially, is a denial of his creative nature, and therefore it is a denial of man
himself. The creativity of man presupposes the combining of contemplation and action.
The very distinction between contemplation and action is relative. Spirit is essentially
active, and in contemplation there is a dynamic element. We come nigh the final
problem, connected with the spiritual condition of the contemporary world, to the
problem of man, as a religious problem. Since the crisis of man occurs within the world,
it is not only a crisis within man, but is also the crisis of man himself. The utmost
existence of man is rendered problematic.

The crisis of man mustneeds be understood inwardly as a Christian one. Only inwardly
can Christianity understand what is happening. In modern civilisation has been shaken
the Christian idea of man, which still has its remnants in humanism. At the basis of
Christianity lies the God-manhood theandric myth (the word "myth" I employ not in the
sense of being opposed to reality, but on the contrary, "myth" corresponds more to
reality, than does "concept") -- the myth about God and the myth about man, about the
image and likeness of God in man, about the Son of God having become Man. The
worthiness of man is connected with this. The plenitude of the Christian Divine-Human
revelation has only with difficulty been assimilated by the sinful nature of man. And the
Christian teaching about man has not been sufficiently developed, has not been manifest
in life. And therefore inevitable was the appearance of humanism upon the basis of
Christianity. But further on the process became fatal in its consequences. There began a
destroying both in mind and in life of the integral wholeness of the God-manhood
Christian mythos. At first, repudiated was the one half -- the myth about God. But there
remained still the other half    the myth about man, the Christian idea about man. And
we see this, for example, with L. Feuerbach. He repudiated God, but there remained
with him still a god-likeness of man, he enroached no further upon man, just as there
did not infringe those humanists, for whom the nature of man remains eternal. But the
destruction of the Christian theandric myth went on further. There began the destroying
of the other half -- the myth about man. And thus there occurred an apostacy not only
from the idea of God, but also from the idea of man. Upon man enroached Marx, upon
man enroached Nietzsche. For Marx already the highest value is no longer man, but
rather the social collective. Man is supplanted by the class, and a new myth is created
about the messianism of the proletariat. Marx is one of the departures from humanism.
For Nietzsche the highest value is not man, but rather the super-man, the higher race,
and man ought to be surpassed. Nietzsche is another departure from humanism. And in
such manner transpires the repudiation of the value of man, of the ultimate value, as
esteemed by Christianity. We see this in such social manifestations, as racism, Fascism,
Communism, as an idolatry nationalistic and an idolatry internationalistic. We enter
upon an epoch of civilisation, which denies the value of man. The supreme value of
God was denied even earlier. And in this is the essence of the modern crisis.
 
The processes of technification, the processes of society swallowing up the person, the
processes of collectivisation are bound up with this. All the heresies arising within the
history of Christianity, all the fallings-away from the fullness and the integral wholeness
of truth always presented important and significant themes, which were not resolved
and have to be resolved from within by Christianity. But the heresies, begotten by
contemporary civilisation, are altogether different, from the heresies of the first
centuries of Christianity, -- these are not theological heresies, these are heresies of life
itself. These heresies witness to this, that there are urgent questions, which Christianity
mustneeds answer inwardly. The problems of technology, the problems of a just
organisation of social life, the problems of collectivisation in their relation to the eternal
value of the human person have not been resolved by Christianity in Christian a manner,
in the light of the Christian Divine-Human truth. The creative activity of man in the
world goes unsanctified. The crisis, occurring in the world, is a reminder to Christianity
about its unresolved tasks, and therefore it is not only a judgement upon the godless
world, but a judgement also upon Christianity. The basic problem of our day is not the
problem about God, as many tend to think, as often many Christians tend to think, in
calling for a religious renewal, -- the basic problem of our day is first of all the problem
of man. The problem of God is an eternal problem, it is a problem in every time, it is
always the first and the final, but the problem of our time is the problem of man, about
the salvation of the human person from disintegration, about the vocation and destiny of
man, about the deciding of the basic questions of society and culture in light of the
Christian idea concerning man. People have turned away from God, but by this they
have subjected to doubt not the worthiness of God, but rather the worthiness of man.
Man cannot hold on without God. For man God also is that utmost idea of reality,
constructed by man. The obverse side to this, likewise, is that man is the utmost idea of
God. Only Christianity holds the resolution to the problem of the relationship of man
and God, only in Christ is the image of man preserved, only within the Christian spirit
are there created both society and culture, non-destructive to man. But the truth has to
be realised in life.
 
                                                                                                Nikolai Berdyaev.
                                                                                                    1931

PERSONALISM  AND  MARXISM

(1935 - #400)

I.
The relationship of Marxism to personalism, as also its relationship to humanism, is
more complicated, than is generally thought. It is very easy to point out the anti-
personalist character of Marxism. It is hostile to the principle of person, as also is every
purely sociological teaching about man, which purports to know merely the social man,
formulated as object. Likewise anti-personalist in its understanding of man is the
sociological school of Durkheim. Hostile to the principle of person is every single-
planed world-outlook, for which the nature of man is comprised solely by its belonging
to the social plane of being, i.e. man possesses no dimension of depth. They often
contrast Proudhon to Marx, suggesting, that his social system was more favourable to
personalism, than is Marxism. 1  But the teaching of Proudhon also about man is indeed
entirely social, and person for him does not possess any inner dimension of depth, i.e.
inner life. True, Proudhon was a very keen critic of Communism, as a system of the
slavery of man, and his particular socio-economic system was the more favourable for
person. But he was essentially was inclined towards a peculiar individualism hostile to
Capitalism, rather than towards personalism. The philosophic world-outlook of
Proudhon would not permit making a distinction between individualism and
personalism. Likewise to me it does not seem especially fruitful to contrast Proudhon
with Marx in the understanding of dialectics. In Proudhon the contradiction has not
been surmounted, but has been preserved. 2  But by this dialectic it is deprived of its
dynamic character. Proudhon stands closer to Kant’s teaching about antinomies, than to
the Hegelian dialectics. But insofar as Hegel and Marx believed in the attainment of an
ultimate harmony, not permitting of contradiction, at the third stage, at the synthesis,
they certainly are subject to criticism.

To substantiate a basis for personalism, which also possesses its own social
projection, is possible only in such instance, if we acknowledge, that the problem of
man is more primary than the problem of society. And prior to passing on to a
discussion of the relationship of Marxism to the principle of person, it is necessary to
define, what we philosophically understand by person. It is not appropriate to confuse
the concept of person with the concept of individual, as was frequently done by thought
in the XIX and XX Centuries. The individual is a naturalistic category, biological and
sociological, and it appertains to the natural world. The individual is from a biological
point of view part of the race, and from the sociological point of view it is part of
society. It -- is an atom, indivisible, not having inner life, it is anonymous. The
individual does not possess any unique or independent existence apart from race or from
society. The individual as regards itself is entirely a racial and a social being, only an
element, part of a defining correlation with the whole. Person signifies something
altogether different. Person is a spiritual and religious category. Person speaks not only
about man belonging to the natural and social order, but also to a different dimension of
being, to the spiritual world. Person is a form of being, higher than anything natural or
social. We shall see, that it is not able to be part of anything whatsoever. Society has a
tendency to consider person as an individual subordinate within it, as its product. From
the sociological point of view, person is part of society, and it is a very small part.
Society is the large circle, person however -- is a small circle set within it. In a
sociological setting, person is unable to oppose itself to society and it cannot fight for
itself. But from the point of view of existential philosophy everything is turned round --
society is a small part of person, is merely its social condition, and the world is merely
part of person. Person is the existential centre, not society and not nature, it is the
existentialised subject, and not object. Person realises itself in social and cosmic life, but
it can do this only because that within it, it is independent from nature and from the
principle of society. Person is not definable as a part in relation to any sort of whole.
Person is an whole, it is a totality, it is integral, it bears within itself the universal, and it
cannot be part of any sort of the general, whether of the world or of society, or of
universal being or Divinity. Person is not at all of nature nor does it appertain, like
everything natural, to an objective natural hierarchy, nor is it able to be put into any sort
of natural order. Person is rooted in the spiritual world, its existence presupposes a
dualism of spirit and nature, freedom and determinism, the individual and the general,
the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar. The existence of the human person in
the world bespeaks this, that the world is not self-sufficient, that inevitably there is a
transcending of the world, its completion is not in it itself, but in God, in supra-natural
being. The freedom of the human person, is freedom not only within society and within
the civil realm, but also from society and from the civil realm, and it is predicated by
that which is over and above the world, over and above nature and society, over and
above the kingdom of Caesar, for it is supra-natural being, it is the spiritual world, it is
God. Person is a sundering within the natural world, and it is not explainable from it. 3
        
Person is first of all unity in multiplicity and immutability within change. Person
is not a coordination of parts, it is a primal unity. Person mustneeds undergo change, to
disclose the creativity of the new, to grow and to be enriched. And it mustneeds remain
itself, to be the unchangeable subject of these changes. When we meet again with our
good acquaintance after a number of years during which we have not seen him, we shall
perhaps undergo to simultaneously disturbing and painful impressions. If this man has
not changed at all, and he repeats certain things which have gone cold and stiff, if he has
not grown nor enriched himself by anything, then this produces a painful impression.
This means, that the person has not realised himself. The realisation of person
presupposes changes. But the obverse painful impression is possible. This man has
changed so much, that it is impossible to recognise him, and then he produces the
impression of a different man. He not only has changed, but is himself become changed.
The unity of person has been destroyed in the changes, the existential centre torn to
shreds. Person is first of all an unity of destiny. Destiny is change, amidst the history
and retention of unity of the existential centre. This is a mystery of person. Person
presupposes the trans-personal, the higher being which it reflects, and trans-personal
values, which it realises and which comprise the wealth of its life’s content. Person is
not able to be self-sufficient, it mustneeds emerge from itself towards other persons,
towards the human and towards the cosmic multiplicity, and towards God. Ego-
centrism, being locked up within oneself and being absorbed by oneself disintegrates
the person. Person realises itself through a constant victory over ego-centrism, over the
hardening of self. The realisation of person means the filling-in of its universal content,
for it cannot exist only by its particularity. Person is not something completed, it forms
itself, it posits ends, like God’s idea about every single man. The realisation of person
presupposes the creative process setting off into infinitude. Person-ness is act. M
Scheler defines person, as the concrete unity of all acts. 4  But contrary to M Scheler, it
is not life that manifests itself as active, but rather spirit, the spiritual principle in man,
for life indeed is rather more passive. Only the creative act can be termed act, and in act
there is created the new, the not previously existing, and non-being becomes being.
Person presupposes the creative nature of man. Creativity however presupposes
freedom. Authentic creativity is creativity from out of freedom. Creativity is contrary to
evolution, which is determinism. Only the creative subject is person. A being that exists
entirely determined by nature and by the social process cannot be termed person, not yet
having become a person. Le Senne credibly opposes existence in the sense of an
existential philosophy of determinisation. 5  Person defines itself on the outside for
nature and for society, but it defines itself from within. Person is resistance to a
determining from within, a determining by society and by nature. And only that one is
manifest as person, who conquers this determining. Person is not born in nature’s
generative process and it is not formed in the social process. The existence of person
presupposes an interruptedness, it does not permit of evolutionary uninterruptedness.
Person is created by God and in this is its highest merit, and the source of its
independence and freedom. That which is born in the generative process and formed in
the social process is merely the individual, in which person needs to be realised. Person
is resistance to determining and is therefore anguish. The affirmation and realisation of
person is always anguish. The refusal of this anguish, the dread of anguish is a refusal
of person. The realisation of person, of its merit and independence is a painful process,
it is an heroic struggle. Person-ness is struggle, and the refusal of the struggle is a
refusal of person. And man happens often upon this refusal. Person is contrary to
conformism, it is a non agreement with the conformism, which nature and society
utilise. Since person is an existential centre and presupposes a susceptibility towards
suffering and joy, it is therefore erroneous to adapt person as a category for the nation
and other trans-personal communities, as the philosopher of personalism Shtern does.
The nation is individuality, but not person-ness. We come to this, that person is a
paradoxical combination of contraries: of the personal and the trans-personal, of the
finite and the infinite, of the interrupted and the developing, of freedom and of destiny.
And the fundamental paradox of person is in this, that it mustneeds still be created and it
mustneeds already be, so that there be possible the creative creating of person. One,
who mustneeds himself create, mustneeds already be. Person is not determined by
society, but it is social, it can realise the fullness of its life only in community with other
persons. The social projection of personalism presupposes a radical, a revolutionary
transvaluation of social values, i.e. the transfer of the centre of gravity from the values
of society, the state, the nation, the collective, the social group, to the valuation of
person, of every person. The social projection of personalism is a revolutionary
repudiation of the capitalistic regime, of the utmost anti-personalist, the utmost death-
bearing for person, as ever existed in history. The socialisation of the economy, which
affirms the right to work and a guarantee of a worthwhile existence for each human life
not permitting the exploitation of man by man, is a demand of personalism. The sole
system, therefore, corresponding to the eternal truth of personalism, is a system of
personalist socialism. At the basis of a social world-concept of personalism lies not the
idea of equality nor the idea of justice, but rather the dignity of every human person,
which should receive the possibility to realise itself.
      
After these necessary definitions of person we shall look at how Marxism stands
in relation to it.

II.

The attitude of Marxism towards person is antagonistic. This is connected with the
vagueness of the anthropology of Marxism. The anti-personalism of Marx -- is a
consequence of the anti-personalism of Hegel. Hegel acknowledged the sovereignty of
the general over the individual. The person for Hegel does not possess self-sufficient
significance, it is merely a function of the world spirit. Kierkegaard revolted against the
subordination of the human person to the world spirit, i.e. to the general. And such was
the meaning of Dostoevsky’s revolt. 6  The talented creativity of Ibsen is saturated by
these motifs. The anti-personalism of Hegel was inherited also by L. Feuerbach. The
humanism of Feuerbach was through the generative, and not the personalistic. 7  Man
realises himself in the collective life of the genus and ultimately he is dissolved in it.
Feuerbach broke through towards an existential philosophy, he attempted to discover
the “thou”, and not only the object. 8  But the Hegelianism that flipped over into
materialism prevented Feuerbach from revealing person, as an authentic and primary
existence. Marx follows upon Hegel and Feuerbach, and he recognises the primacy of
the generic being of man over his personal being. With Marx it is possible to discover
the realism of concept of the medieval Scholastics. The general, the generic, precedes
the partialised, the individualised, and defines it. Society, and class, is more primary a
reality than is man, than is person. Class is a reality situated in being, and not in
thought. The class is not, but the human person is an abstraction of thought. Class is
what then is sort of an universalia ante rem. It is class, and not man, that thinks and
effects judgement and holds value. Man as person, and not as generic being, is not
capable of independent thought and judgement. Man is a socio-generic being, a function
of society. Already predisposed by this is the totalitarianism of the Communist society
and state. In this totalitarianism is in opposition to man himself, and not to society and
state. Only the human person can reflect in itself the integral and universal being, and
society and state are always partialised and cannot contain the universalised.

Since Marxism is interested exclusively in the general and is not interested in the
individual, the weakest side of Marxism then appears to be its psychology. If Marx
himself not be considered, and from whom it is possible to find interesting
psychological remarks, then the psychological excursions of Marxists usually is
exhausted by invective. Even the psychology of classes is not entirely worked out. The
bourgeois type is altogether not investigated, but is represented as being malevolent,
blood-thirsty, preparing for an imperialistic war. The weakness of psychology of the
Marxists is particularly discomforting, if compared with the works of Zombart, de Man,
M. Weber, Zimmel and others. It is impossible to be concerned by psychology amidst
an exclusive interest for the general and the generic, alongside the interest for the
struggle. Instead of psychology they give moral judgement and sentence. And this is a
defect of all the Marxist teaching about man. Although in Marx himself there is a
prophetic element and he found himself in conflict with the society surrounding him,
yet this teaching about man which emerged from him, negates the prophetic principle,
which always signifies the elevation of the human person over the social collective, and
conflict with it in the name of the realisation of truth, to which an inner voice summons,
is the voice of God. A complete realisation of Marxism in human society mustneeds
lead to the annihilation of the prophetic principle, not only in the religious sphere, but
likewise in the sphere of philosophy, art and social life. The annihilation of
propheticism results in a legacy of ultimate conformism of person in relation to society,
of complete adaptability, excluding the possibility of conflict. This is a very negative
side of Marxism, and it results from its anti-personalist spirit. Marx himself was a
person, standing in opposition to the world, yet the Marxists cannot be likewise. An
example of the death of the prophetic spirit was already demonstrated by the
socialisation of Christianity in history. But anti-personalism is only one side of
Marxism, its other side.
        
The sources of the Marxist critique of Capitalism -- are personalist and
humanist. Marx revolted first of all against the Capitalist regime, because that in it the
human person is crushed, is transformed into a thing. In Capitalist society occurs that,
which Marx called Verdinglichung, the making a thing of man. He saw justly the
dehumanisation, the inhumanity in this society. Both the proletariat and the capitalists
are dehumanised. The working man, deprived of the implements of production, is
compelled to dispose of his labour, as though it were merchandise. By this he is
transformed into a thing needful for production. There occurs for man an alienation
from his work activity, it is thrust out into the world as though objective things, it is
projected to the outside. The results of the work activity of man, of alienation from the
total existence of man, are made by external force, by the oppressing and enslaving of
man. In essence, the gap between mental and physical labour is still a splintering of the
whole of human nature and ought to be surmounted. But this problem was put to us
more by L. Tolstoy and N. Fedorov, than by Marx. The thoughts of Marx in any case,
particularly of the young Marx about alienation and being made into a thing, ought to be
recognised as marks of genius. Herein lies the initial motif of his denunciation of
Capitalism and of his antagonism towards the Capitalist order. 9  This motif is purely
human. Marx declares a revolutionary revolt against the social order, in which occurs
the fragmentation of the integral human person, in which part of it is separated,
alienated and transferred into the world of things. The proletariat is also a man, for
whom part of his being is alienated and transferred into the world of things, into the
economy oppressing it. The teaching of Marx about Verdinglichung, about
dehumanisation, was particularly developed by a very intelligent and interesting, and
quite independent among Communist writers, Lukacs. 10  Marx emphasises, that if
socialists attribute an enormous universal historical role to the proletariat, this is not
because they worship him as a divinity, but rather, because that the proletariat
represents an abstraction of everything human, and since his human nature is alienated
from it, he also compels himself to return himself to the fullness of human-ness. 11  And
it is especially one, who is deprived of the fullness of human-ness, that ought to achieve
this fullness. This is dialectic thought. For Marx, for the original Marxism it was a very
important thought, that a deprivation occurs, an alienation of man from human nature
occurs, and in its most acute form this occurs for the proletariat. Hence result the
illusions of consciousness. Man undertakes personal activity for an objective worlds of
things, subject to inexorable laws.
       
In the early Marx is to be sensed the very strong influence of Feuerbach. What
Feuerbach says about religion, Marx extended into all the other areas. In religion
Feuerbach saw alienation of the proper nature of man. Man created God in his own
image and likeness. Belonging to his unique nature presents for man a reality situated
outside of him and over him. The poor man has a rich God, i.e. all the riches of man are
alienated from him and bestown to God. Faith in God as it were proletarises man. When
man becomes rich, God becomes impoverished and vanishes altogether. To return back
to man his riches, he then becomes a totalitarian being, and no part of his nature can any
longer be alienated. Marx placed this idea of Feuerbach at the foundation of his talented
critique of Capitalism and political economy. And for Capitalism this is indisputably
more applicable, than for faith in God. The teaching about the fetishism of goods in
Tom I of “Kapital” is perhaps the most remarkable discovery of Marx. The fetishism of
goods in Capitalist society is also an illusion of consciousness, in the power of which
the products of human work activity are represented by things, by the objective world,
in force by inalterable laws crushing man. Marx navigated this economic world of
things, in which the bourgeios political economy revealed its laws. The economy is not
a world of things, it is not an objective reality of some sort, it is but the activity of man,
the labour of man, the relationship of man to man. And since the economy can be
changed, man can take control of the economy. The riches, created by man, and
alienated from him in a world of things by an objective economy, can be returned to
him. Man can become rich, a totalitarian being, everything can be returned to him, that
had been taken away from him. And this will be accomplished by the activity of the
proletariat, i.e. of those people, from which the most wealth would be alienated.
Everything is but the product of human activity, of human struggle. Economic fate does
not exist, we shall conquer it. From the illusion of consciousness, caused by the false
objectivisation of human activity, it can be set free. And this is the task of the
proletariat. Marx defined capital not as a real thing, but as a social relationship of people
to the process of production. This definition was very shocking to bourgeois
economists. By this definition the centre of gravity of economic life was transferred to
human activity and struggle. In the “Theses of Feuerbach” by Marx is a remarkable
place in which he says, that the chief error of the materialists up until then was in this,
that they viewed reality under the form of object, and not as human activity, not
subjectively. 12  Nothing could be more anti-materialistic. This place merely witnesses,
how controversial the materialism of Marx is. That which Marx says here is far more
appropriate for existential philosophy, than for materialism. For materialism everything
is object, a thing, whereas for existential philosophy everything is subject, activity. In
Marx, just as in Feuerbach, there were elements of existential philosophy. The early
Marx obtained his understanding of the exclusive activity of man, as spirit, and not as
thing, from German idealism. But the idea of person was lacking in him.
       
Economic materialism itself can be understood twofold. First of all, this teaching
produces the impression of a consequent and extreme social determinism. The economy
determines the whole of human life, not only the structure of society, but also the
ideology, all the spiritual culture, and there exists an invariable regularity of the social
process. It was in such a spirit of extreme determinism that both the Marxists and the
critics of Marxism understood Marxism. But this is merely one of the interpretations,
one of the sides of Marxism, and another understanding is possible. That the economy
should define the whole of human life, this is the evil of past times, the slavery of man.
The day will come, when this servile dependence on the economy will cease, and the
economy will depend on man, man will become its master. Marxism announced at the
same time both about the slavery of man and about the possibility of the victory of man.
Economic determinism itself by its sufficiently sad theory is not capable to summon up
a revolutionary enthusiasm. But to an high degree Marxism possesses the capacity to
proclaim the revolutionary will. Young Soviet philosophy moves in a direction of an
indeterminist understanding of Marxism. 13  Marx still lived in a Capitalist society and
he saw, that economics wholly determines human life, economics enslaves the
consciousness of man and evokes an illusion of consciousness. But Russian
Communists live in an era of the proletarians revolution and the world discloses itself to
them from another angle. Marx and Engels spoke about a leap from the kingdom of
necessity into a kingdom of freedom. The Russian Communists sense themselves the
accomplishers of this leap, they already are in the kingdom of freedom. Therefore for
them Marxism is inverted, though they at all costs want to continue to be Marxists.
Already it is not economic being that determines consciousness, but consciousness, the
revolutionary, proletarian consciousness that determines economic being; the economy
does not determine politics, but rather politics determines the economy. Therefore in
philosophising the Russian Communists want to construct a philosophy, based on the
idea of self-actualisation. Into matter is transferred all the qualities of spirit -- freedom,
activity, reason, etc. Such a sort of philosophy is demonstrated as corresponding to the
revolutionary will. Mechanistic materialism is condemned, it does not correspond to the
exaltation of the revolutionary will, it is not a philosophy of the heroic struggle of man.
Man is demonstrated to be free from rule by things, from the objective, from the
determinative-regulated world, yet not as an individual, but rather as collective man.
The individual is not free in relation to the human collective, to the Communist society,
and he attains freedom only in identifying himself with collectivised being. This was so
already not only with Marx, but also with Engels, for whom man is authentically
realised only in commonality, in generic being. Communism is exceptionally dynamic,
it affirms an unheard of activism of man. But this is not an activism of the human
person, this is an activism of society, an activism of the collective. Individual man is
completely passive in regard to the collective, to the Communist society, it discovers
active strength only by its dissolution into generic being. Communism affirms the
activism only of human generic being. This was contained in Feuerbach, and this
emerged in Hegel, for the Hegelian world spirit.
        
Marxism can be interpreted humanistically, and it is possible to see in it the
struggle against the alienation from man of his human nature, for the restoring of a
totalised existence to him. Marxism can be interpreted on the side of indeterminism , to
view in him a declaration of the liberation of man from the force of the economy, from
the dominion of fate over human life. Marxism exalts the human will, it wants to create
a new man. But in it is also a fanatic side, deeply debasing of man. The Marxist doctrine
about man is situated in a complete dependence on Capitalist industry, on the factory.
The new Communist man is prepared in the factory, he is a manufactured product. The
psychical soul structure of the new man depends on the conditions of life in the factory,
on big industry. The dialectic of Marxism is connected with this. Good is begotten from
evil, which becomes all the more powerful; light is ignited from darkness, which
becomes all the more sombre. The conditions of life of Capitalist industry embitters the
proletariat, dehumanises him, alienates his human nature from him, and makes his
existence possessed by ressentiment, spite, hatred, revenge. Proletarianisation is
dehumanisation, a robbery of the human nature. Least of all in this are the proletariat
guilty. But how to await this progressive dehumanisation, this robbery of human nature,
this terrible constriction of consciousness of the appearance of the new type of man?
Marxism awaits a miraculous dialectical transition of that, which it reckons as evil, into
good, into a better life. But fate weighs upon the proletariat all the same, the fate of
Capitalist industry, of being exploited, oppressed, the alienation from the worker of all
his human nature. The highest type of man would be the result of full alienation of all
the human nature, complete dehumanisation. Suchlike a concept is completely anti-
personalised, it does not acknowledge the self worth of the human person, the depth of
its being. Man for suchlike a concept is a function of the world social process, a
function of the “general”, and the faculty, which would manufacture the new man, is
“the cunning of reason” (Hegel). A quantity of evil transfers into a quantity of good.
The activity of person, its consciousness, its conscience, its creativity, here do not apply.
The cunning reason does everything, which is in “general”. Lukacs recognises the
debasing influence of Capitalism on the class consciousness of workers and he warns
about this, he proposes to struggle against this. 14  This all speaks but about the
complexity and the conflicting condition of Marxism. Marxism gave expression not
only to the struggle against the oppression of man by man, against injustice and slavery,
but also reflected with the materialist spirit the repression obtaining from Capitalist
bourgeois societies, the spiritual decay of these societies.

III.
       
Neither classical Marxism nor Russian Communism remark on a point here, nor did
Feuerbach note it either. The critique of Marxism humanism is connected with this. An
alienation of human nature occurs. According to Feuerbach and Marx, faith in God and
in the spiritual world is nothing other, than the alienation of the higher nature of man,
and the transfer of it into the transcendental sphere. Human nature in its totality ought to
be restored to man. But how is this restoration to man of the fullness of his nature to
occur. In materialistic Marxism this restoration does not happen. The spiritual nature is
not restored to man, it perishes together with the destruction of the transcendental
sphere. Man remains robbed, he remains a material being, a lump of matter. But a lump
of matter cannot possess human dignity. In a material being there cannot be realisation
of the totality of life. Communism wants to return to the proletariat the means of
production alienated from him, but it does not at all want to return the spiritual element
of human nature alienated from him, spiritual life. There therefore cannot be talk about
attainment of the totality of life, just as there cannot be talk about the authentic dignity
of man. The dignity of man is connected with this, that he is a spiritual being, the image
and likeness of Divine being, that in him is an element independent of the external
world, and from society. The dignity of man and the fullness of his life is connected
with this, that man belongs not only to the kingdom of Caesar, but also to the Kingdom
of God. This means, that man possesses an higher dignity and totality, a value of life, if
he is a person. The idea of person does not exist in Marxism, just as it does not exist in
Communism, and therefore they cannot offer a defense of man. Communism at best
affirms the individual, a socialised individual, and demands for him a totality of life, but
it denies the person. The individual is merely a being, formed by society by way of a
drilled discipline. Lenin said, that after a period of dictatorship, in which there would be
no sort of freedom, people would become accustomed to the new conditions of social
life and they would sense themselves free in the Communist society. 15  This preparation
of people by way of a drill-discipline and habit is contrary to the principle of person, of
always presupposing autonomy. Marx began with the struggle against dehumanisation
in Capitalist society. This dehumanisation it was necessary to oppose by humanisation.
But in actuality a complex dialectical process transpired, in which the humanism
crossed over into anti-humanism. Marxism is one of the crises of humanism, one of the
exists from the midst of the humanistic kingdom, which attempted to affirm man upon
himself alone, i.e. it acknowledged his existing as self sufficient, sufficient unto itself.
In materialistic Communism the process of dehumanisation continues, which Marx
denounced in Capitalist society. Communist industrialism can likewise dehumanise
man, just like Capitalist industrialism, it can transform him into a technical function.
Man is not examined as free spirit, i.e. not as person, but as a function of the social
process, as a material existent, pre-occupied exclusively with the economic and
technical, and during the hours of leisure being entertained by art, summoned forth to
embellish the industrialised life. The anti personalism of Communism is connected not
with its economic system, but with its spirit, with its denial of spirit. This mustneeds be
kept sight of all the time. Personalisation indeed requires a socialisation of economy,
but it does not allow of the socialisation of the spiritual life, which would signify the
alienation of the spiritual life from man, i.e. the deadening of spirit.
       
The anti-personalism of Marxism is moreover connected with a false attitude
towards time. Marxism and especially its practical application in Communism looks
upon the relationship between present and future, as upon a relationship of means and
end. The present time is a means, in it an immediate end does not exist. And they permit
of means having no sort of semblance with the end -- coercion and tyranny for the
realisation of freedom, hatred and contention for the realisation of brotherhood, etc. The
totality of human life would be realised only in the future, the perhaps remote future. At
the present time man remains robbed, from him everything is alienated, and he himself
is alienated from himself. And while Marxist Communism affirms man and the totality
of man in the future, at the present time it negates man. Man at present is merely a
means for the man of the future, the present generation merely a means for the future
generation. Such an attitude towards time is incompatible with the principle of person,
with the recognition of the self-worth of every human person and its right to realisation
of the fullness of its life, with its self-consciousness, as an end and not as a part, as an
end and not as a means. Regardless of what sort of man or to whatever sort of class he
might belong, it is impossible for him to be converted into simply a means, or to
consider him exclusively as an obstacle. This is a problem of anthropology, and not
sociology, though in Marxism there is however not yet an anthropology.
       
There are two problems -- the problem of man and the problem of society, and
the primacy, ultimately, ought to appertain to the problem of man. But Marxism affirms
the primacy of the problem of society over the problem of man. Marx was a remarkable
sociologist and made large contributions in this area. But he was not at all an
anthropologist, his anthropology was to the extreme simplistic and out-dated, it was
connected with a rationalistic materialism and naturalistic evolutionism. Man is the
product of nature and society, more concretely -- he is the product of social class, and
there is no sort of independent inner core in man. Anthropology is entirely subordinated
to sociology, is merely an aspect of sociology. Man is considered as the image and
likeness of society, while society also is that higher being, which he reflects. To this is
opposed an anthropology, based not on sociology, but on theology (I here use this word
not in the scholarly sense). Man is not the image and likeness of society, but rather the
image and likeness of God. Therefore in man there is a spiritual principle independent
of society, wherein only is it possible to affirm the dignity of man, as free spirit, active
and creative. Philosophic anthropology first of all teaches about man, as a person, and it
is personalistic. Person cannot be without the spiritual principle, which makes man
independent from the determinism of the external environment, both natural and social.
The spiritual principle is not at all opposed to the human body, to the physical material
condition of man, connecting him with the life of all the natural world. Abstract
spiritualism is powerless to construct a teaching about the integrality of man. The
spiritual principle encompasses also the human body, and the “material” in man, it
means seizing mastery both of “soul” and “body” and the attainment of integrality of the
image of person, of utmost qualification, the entering of all the man into another order
of being. “Body” likewise belongs to the human person and from it there cannot be
abstracted the “spiritual” in man. “Body” is already form, signifying the victory of spirit
over formless matter. The old Cartesian dualism of “soul” and “body”, “spirit” and
“matter” is a completely false philosophy, which it is possible to reckon surmountable.
The present-time dualism is a dualism of “spirit” and “nature”, “freedom” and
“necessity”, “person” and “thing”, which has altogether a different meaning. The
“body” of man and even the “body” of the world can come forth from the kingdom of
“nature”, of “necessity”, of “thing”, and cross over into the kingdom of “spirit”, of
“freedom”, of “person”. This meaning possesses the Christian teaching about the
resuscitation of the dead, a resuscitation in the flesh. The resurrected flesh is not natural
matter, subject to determination, nor is it a thing; it is spiritual flesh, new flesh, but it is
not fleshlessness, not abstract spirit. The teaching about this resurrection is also distinct
from the teaching about the immortality of soul, in that it requires eternal life for all the
whole of man, and not for its abstracted part, not for the soul only. This therefore is a
personalist teaching. The independence of the spiritual principle in man from the
dominion of society does not likewise mean the opposition of the “spiritual” to the
“social”, i.e. the abstraction of the “spiritual” from the “social”, but it means that man
ought to define society and be its master, to realise in full his life also in society, and not
the other way around, not to be defined by society, not to be its slave, its function. The
“spiritual” comprises also the “social”, the social condition of man, and this signifies the
attainment of wholeness, integrality, totality. The end-purpose is not society, the end is
man himself, the fullness and perfection of life, while the perfective organisation of
society is itself but the means. Marxism is anti-personalist in that it posits the end-
purpose not in man who is called to eternal life, but rather in society.
         
The fundamental error basic to Communist Marxism is with this, that it believes
in the possibility of coercive accomplishment in not only of justice, but also of the
brotherhood of people, in the possibility of coercive organisation not only of society,
but also of community, of the communion of people. Socialism derives from the word
society, Communism however derives from the word communion, the mutual uniting of
people one to another. Socialism is quite distinct from Communism not on the plane of
the social-economic organisation of society, and on this they can agree. But socialism
can be perceived exclusively as the social-economic organisation of society therein
limiting its task to this, whereas Communism inevitably is totalitarian, it presupposes a
whole world-outlook, it wants to create a new man, a new brotherhood of people, its
own relationship to all the whole of life. Communism is not agreeable to this, that it
should be accepted in part, it demands an all-entire acceptance, a conversion to
Communism, as though to a religious faith. The partial, extended but to the social-
economic sphere, recognition of the truth of Communism, and united with a different
world-outlook, is also socialism. By socialism it is necessary to connote the creation of
a new classless society, in which there would be realisation of great social justice and in
which there would not be permitted the exploitation of man by man. The creation of the
new man however and the brotherhood of people is a spiritual and religious task, it
presupposes an inner regeneration of people. Communism does not want to permit this,
what actually is religion. Therefore a Christian can be a socialist, and even, in my
conviction, ought to be a socialist. But it is difficult for him to be a Communist, since he
cannot be agreeable to acceptance of the totalitarian world-outlook of Communism, into
which enter in materialism and atheism. Christian personalism not only ought not to
oppose the creation of a classless society, it ought to direct its creation. The class
society, which considers as but means the vast quantity of human persons and permits
the exploitation of the human person and the negation of the human dignity of workers,
is contrary to the principle of personalism. Personalism ought to desire the socialisation
of the economy, it ought to guarantee each human person the right to work and to a
dignified human existence, it ought to secure for each the possibility to realise the
fullness of life. But the socialisation of the economy is not able of itself to create a new
man or a brotherly community of people, it regulates the community by communication
between people on the soil of justice, but it does not create the community, the
communion between people, the brotherhood of people. A community of people bears a
personalist character, it is always a community of persons, a matter of “I and Thou”, the
uniting of the I and Thou into the We. This is unattainable by an external organisation
of society, which seizes upon only part of the condition of the human person and does
not attain to its depths. No sort of organisation of society is able to create the totality of
life. The illusion of this totalisation obtains in a strange constriction of the life of the
person, the impoverishment of its consciousness, by the strangling in it of the spiritual
side of life. The Communist consciousness is propped up by this illusion. Marxism
creates this illusion by a non-credible teaching about person, about the whole man. A
movement, directed towards the creation of a new classless society, one indisputably
more just, can be accompanied by a degradation of spirituality, by a shrinking of the
spiritual nature of man. But it is possible, that the creation of a classless society, which
would be accompanied by the materialistic illusions of consciousness, would lead to a
spiritual renaissance, whereas at present it is belaboured by the class struggle, its wicked
topic of the day. When the classless society would be created, they would then see, that
materialism and atheism, the Dukhobor-like spirit-denying in Communism belongs to
the past, to an epoch of the struggle of classes, and the new classless man would be set
afront the ultimate mystery of being, afront the final problematics of spirit. Then also
would be disclosed in plain view the tragedy of human life, and that man longs for
eternity. Then only would there be attained a totality of the existence of the person, and
they would cease to accept the partial in place of this totality. In a period aggravated by
the social struggle, the social system most corresponding to Christian socialism, is a
system of personalist socialism.
 
Nikolai Berdyaev
 
©  1999  by translator Fr. Stephen Janos.
 
(1935 - 400 - en)
PERSONALIZM  I  MARKSIZM.  Journal “Put’”,  juil./sept. 1935,  No. 48,
p. 3-19.
(Appeared in English translation under title “Marxism and the Conception of
Personality” in  Journal  “Christendom”, dec. 1935,  No. 2.  Above translation
is not a reprint of this.)
 
1
  Vide the interesting book of Denis de Rougemont: “Politique de la personne”. De
Rougemont contrasts Hegel and Marx -- opposite Kierkegaard and Proudhon.
2
  Vide concerning the dialectics of Proudhon, in distinction from that of Hegel and
Marx, in G. Gurvitch’s: “L id?e du droit social”.
3
  This is the fundamental thought of the remarkable book of Nesmelov, “The Science of
Man” (“Nauka o cheloveke”).
4
 Vide Max Scheler: “Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materielle Wertethik”.
5
 Vide the remarkable book of Le Senne: “Obstacle et valeur”.
6
 Belinsky revolted against the world spirit of Hegel in the name of the living human
person and he anticipated the dialectic of Ivan Karamazov. Vide the book, “The
Socialism of Belinsky”, in which are gathered the remarkable letters to Botkin.
7
 Vide L. Feuerbach, “Das Wesen des Christentum”.
8
 Vide his “Philosophie der Zukunft”.
9
 Vide K. Marx, :“Der Historische Materialismus”. “Die Fruehschriften”. Kroener
Verlag (Into two volumes are gathered the youthful works of Marx). Vide likewise
August Cornu, “K. Marx: L’Homme et l’?uvre. De l’Hegelianisme au materialisme
historique”.
10
 Georg Lukacs, “Geschichte und Klassen -- Bewusstsein. Studien ueber marxistische
Dialektik”.
11
 Vide Tom I, “Der Historische Materialismus”, p. 377.
12
 “Der Hauptmangel alles bisherigen Materialismus ist, dass der Gegenstand, die
Wirklichkeit, Sinnlichkeit nur unter der Form des Objekts oder der Anschauung gefasst
wird: nicht aber als sinnlich-menschliche Taetigkeit, Praxiss, nicht subjektiv”.  (“The
chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism is, that the matter, the reality, the sense
will have been grasped only under the form of object or concept: but not as sensual
human activity, praxis, nothing subjective”.) -- “Thesen ueber Feuerbach”. -- “Der
historische Materialismus”, II Band. S. 3.
13
  Vide my article, “The General Line of Soviet Philosophy and Militant Atheism”. --
“Put’”.
14
 Vide his cited book, “Geschichte und Klassen -- Bewusstsein”.
15
 Vide V. Lenin, “State and Revolution”. Lenin in his book, “Materialism and
Empirico-Criticism”, defended a quite vulgar materialism and naturalism. His
philosophy is much inferior to the philosophy of A. Bogdanov, and it cannot even be
termed socialist, let alone philosophy, ultimately.