Worldview and Philosophical Foundations of Berdyaev’s “Existential Christianity”

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to review the philosophical foundations of the religious doctrine by Berdyaev based on a comparative analysis of the epistemological, anthropological, and ontological backgrounds for his thinking. The study combines methods and theories from various cultural, religious, and historical-philosophical approaches, which made it possible to reveal the peculiarities of Berdyaev’s rethinking of traditional Christianity in the context of the crisis of Western culture. The scientific novelty proves a fundamental break in his conception with classical metaphysics as the basis of Christian orthodoxy. Human freedom, spirituality as a system-forming principle of human existence, which humanize anthropologism and de-objectification as a priori of the general system of the world-understanding, form that new type of the religious metaphysical basis of “modern Orthodoxy” that Berdyaev sought to establish as a new model of Christianity in the world. The conclusions emphasize that the specifics of “existential Christianity” by Berdyaev consisted in establishing a special commensurability between man and God, and in the thesis about the “eternal humanity” of God, beyond which, in his deep conviction, one can hardly understand and interpret the very possibility of Revelation.