East Moves West - The Enigma of Vladimir Solovyov
1958; Wiley; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/125723
ISSN1467-9434
Autores Tópico(s)Catholicism and Religious Studies
ResumoVLADIMIR SOLOVYOV (1853-1900), son of the eminent Russian historian, Sergei Solovyov, acquired, soon after he died, some fleeting international fame for his singular life-long activity as a heretical Christian philosopher, prophetic visionary, and almost saintly eccentric. At a time when the confused remnants of lingering religious enthusiasm had not yet been analyzed into bloodless categories by theologians, and before the wings of soaring philosophy had been neatly clipped into shape by logical positivists, Solovyov's admirers were bold enough to describe him as at once the most typical and the most profound of all contemporary Russian thinkers. But even such limited interest in him quickly dwindled, till it is now almost confined to a few neo-Christian commentators, who have dwelt on religious qualities and defects, but have tended to ignore his mental scope and intuitive insight wherever these conflict with their predominantly theological concerns. His intellectual severity in fact prepared the way for more sensational theosophists and fashionable eclectics, who later grouped themselves around Madame Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, and Ouspensky. Solovyov's undoubtedly religious cast of mind grew steadily more heretical, independent, and sardonic with advancing years. The dreary scholastic jargon and hair-splitting pendantry, which mar many of his earlier writings, become redeemed in his maturity by touches of imaginative warmth, insight, and subtle irony, which reveal a judgement more and more strongly tinged with a prophetic sense of the shape of things to come, like an explorer who responds to the tang of salty air before the unknown sea comes into sight. Although he behaved throughout
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