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On Sergii Bulgakov’s The Tragedy of Philosophy*

2021; Wiley; Volume: 37; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/moth.12676

1468-0025

Joshua Heath,

Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

What do Immanuel Kant and Pablo Picasso have in common? What sounds like the beginning of a bad academic joke was a serious question for the Russian philosopher-theologian Sergii Bulgakov (1871-1944). For the affinities between the twentieth-century artist and the eighteenth-century philosopher were, for him, substantial. Indeed, readers of Bulgakov’s The Tragedy of Philosophy—recently published in translation by Angelico Press—might consider the description of Kant as a ‘cubist’ and of his philosophy as a ‘cubism’, one of the book’s more outlandish and perplexing claims. Nor is it a claim that Bulgakov makes only once. In Tragedy, Kant’s epistemology is described as ‘subjective-cubistic’,11 Sergii Bulgakov, Tragedy of Philosophy, trans. Stephen Churchyard (New York: Angelico Press, 2020), 32, note 10. in response to Kant’s conviction that the unity of perceptions does not arise from objects themselves, but is instead imparted by the understanding to experience.22 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 134. Later in the same work, Bulgakov simply inserts the exclamation ‘cubism!’ into a citation from Kant’s own text on the unifying role of the understanding. These are the only two instances in Tragedy where Kant’s alleged cubism is asserted. They are marginal and gnomic assertions, and give an indication of the perplexities that await the intrepid reader. But they nonetheless gesture toward the abiding concern of this work. For Kant’s ‘cubism’ has to do with his approach to unity, and particularly his view of the understanding as imparting unity to experience, rather than the unity of things being received by the understanding from the perceived objects themselves. Bulgakov has more to say on Kant’s ‘cubism’ elsewhere. The characterisation of Kant as a cubist pre-dates the extended discussion of the latter’s philosophy in Tragedy by a few years, first appearing in a 1914 article on the works of Pablo Picasso, published under the title ‘The Corpse of Beauty’.33 ‘Trup krasoty’ [The Corpse of Beauty], in Sergii Bulgakov, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2, ed. I. B. Rodnianskaia (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), 527-45. Here Bulgakov claims that the parallel between Kant and Picasso has been noted elsewhere, and he is likely referring to another 1914 article on Picasso, this time by Nikolai Berdiaev.44 Rodnianskaia is the source of this connection. Cf. her notes in Sochineniia, vol. 2, 719. As for Bulgakov, what is at stake for Berdiaev in defining a ‘cubist’ philosophy is its approach to unity, and particularly the unity that both Bulgakov and Berdiaev claim for the world independently of reason. Berdiaev understands a cubist philosophy as one which sunders the unity of the world: ‘cubism is possible in philosophy also. Thus the critical genealogy ends in its latter stages with the slicing up and scattering of being’.55 Nikolai Berdiaev, ‘Pikasso’, first published in Sofiia 3 (1914). Available at http://www.picasso-pablo.ru/library/berdyaev-picasso.html (in Russian). (Accessed 28 September 2020). Bulgakov will describe cubism in similar—albeit more graphic—terms, as a decomposition of organic, living unity. ‘Putrefaction, the smell of rotting flesh and of the disintegrating physical plane are perfectly palpable’ when viewing Picasso’s portraits, whilst in cubism as a whole ‘everything, even living things become matter, become composite, die and disintegrate’.66 Bulgakov, ‘Corpse’, 541. The artist and the philosopher stand together in their sundering of the concrete, living unity of things and in their imposition upon nature of the lifeless, abstract unities of the mind: ‘[there is] a growing indifference to the content of a painting and a gradual transformation of the art of colour into an art of geometry’.77 Ibid., 542. But there is one more ‘conceptual character’ who is yet to make their appearance: the saint. If in the case of Picasso, the artist is in league with the Kantian philosopher, then by disposition the artist possesses an innate affinity with the saint: ‘the artist finds themselves in a particularly intimate communion with the soul of the world [. . .] the artist especially is privy to that limpidity of the flesh which is the attainment of the saints’.88 Ibid., 538. What Bulgakov seems to mean here is that artist and saint are alike characterised by a certain way of seeing. Both perceive the coherence, or again, the unity of things. For the ‘limpidity of the flesh’ means the transparency of matter to form or idea: the saint and the artist behold the idea that is realised in matter, discern the coherence of matter in its expressing this or that particular form. This is what it is to perceive beauty, ‘which is nothing else but actualized form’.99 Sergii Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 202. So to perceive the unity of this world is to perceive its unity with the world of ideas, or what Bulgakov calls ‘the Divine Wisdom’. The violence of Picasso lies in a treatment of his subjects, especially living human bodies, as merely physical. Thus considered, they lose their coherence, their life, whence the ‘smell of rotting flesh’. If the relation between the saint and the artist is ambiguous, then the saint and the philosopher tend to be quite straightforwardly opposed. They instantiate two very different modes of knowing, or two very different approaches to unity: ‘the experience of the saints qualitatively differs from the wisdom of this world, for in it creation is known not from without, but from within, not in the mauvais infini of Kantian experience, but with the inner eye in wholeness and unity’.1010 Sergii Bulgakov, ‘Hypostasis and Hypostaseity: Scholia to The Unfading Light’, trans. Anastassy Brandon Gallaher and Irina Kukota, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, no. 1-2 (2005): 5-46 (38). Translation modified. So the philosopher seeks to stand apart from the world and to know it or impose unity on it from without. The philosopher, Bulgakov writes in Tragedy, ‘has wished to create a (logical) world out of himself, out of his own principle—“you shall be as gods”’.1111 Bulgakov, Tragedy, 5. The saint, however, knows the world from within and thus is privy to a vision of its proper unity. In this way, the saint is presented in Tragedy as capable of a knowledge that surpasses the possibilities of philosophy: ‘why not postulate [. . .] an ascent into super-rational realms, realms which, although they are not yet accessible to reason, are attainable in principle and are by no means inaccessible, according to the testimony of the Christian ascetics?’1212 Ibid., 7. This picture of the ascetic and the philosopher is remarkable in two respects. The first concerns the assertion that the saint, unlike the philosopher, is within the world. Is this not a contradiction in terms? For surely the ascetic, in their flight from the city to the desert, is driven above all by a desire to renounce the world? Indeed, is not the detached perspective sought by the philosopher a particular iteration of the ascetic impulse to separate oneself from the world? ‘What, then, is the meaning of the ascetic ideal in the case of a philosopher? My answer is—you will have guessed it long ago: the philosopher sees in it an optimum condition for the highest and boldest spirituality and smiles’.1313 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). Third Essay: ‘What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?’, §7. The trio of artist, philosopher and ascetic had, in fact, been put together before Bulgakov by Nietzsche, who likewise considered each as instantiating a particular relation to the world. If ascetic ideals mean nothing for artists, since ‘they do not stand nearly independently enough in the world and against the world’,1414 Ibid., §5. then the philosopher identifies themselves with the saint: ‘they are not unbiased witnesses and judges of the value of the ascetic ideal, these philosophers! They think of themselves—what is “the saint” to them!’1515 Ibid., §8. Bulgakov, pace Nietzsche, uncouples the philosopher and the ascetic, in order to align the latter with the artist as enjoying a ‘particularly intimate communion with the soul of the world’. And this through the affirmation of the body that a properly Christian ascesis entails. ‘A metaphysical affirmation of the flesh in its ontological essence, fullness and sanctity’ underwrites Christian ascesis, which recognises ‘not only the fullness of the flesh but also its individuality, that is, the feeling of the body, my body, which is in some sense an inalienable and indestructible aspect of my I’.1616 Bulgakov, ‘Corpse’, 539. So the ‘intimate communion’ of the saint and the artist with the world, a communion that permits a vision of the unity of the world with itself and with the divine, is a function of the body and depends upon an affirmation of particular embodied existence. Thus, Bulgakov arrives at the bewildering conclusion that Picasso’s work, which repeats the Kantian philosopher’s rejection of the given, organic unity of the world, expresses a hostility to and denial of the full reality of the body: ‘in the work of Picasso one distinctly feels the presence of that noumenal sin against the flesh’.1717 Ibid. (Anyone familiar with the photographs of Picasso playing, dancing, eating and painting in nothing but shorts in his studio in California will be aware of the injustice of this judgement).1818 Cf. David Douglas Duncan, The Private World of Pablo Picasso (New York: Ridge Press, 1958). But again, what Bulgakov means by this is that Picasso does not recognise that the coherence and unity of the body is a function of its being a spiritual as well as physical reality. On such an account, the denial of the former leads to the disintegration of the latter. The crucial and seemingly paradoxical point is that apprehending the unity of the world, which according to Bulgakov is the proper problem of philosophy,1919 Bulgakov, Tragedy, 3f. is incommensurable with the pursuit of a totalising gaze, or ‘view from nowhere’. Rather, and this is the second remarkable feature of Bulgakov’s presentation of the saint, knowledge of the whole depends upon inhabiting a particular location within it. The ideal of impersonal, universal knowledge is a contradiction in terms; for knowledge to be knowledge of the whole, it must of necessity also be my knowledge. Bulgakov expresses this in Tragedy by saying that we are mistaken when we think that our knowledge is primarily concerned with states of affairs that exist ‘out there’ independently of ourselves, that knowledge is fundamentally made up of judgements of the form ‘A is B’. Rather, judgements of the form ‘A is B’ always conceal a more fundamental judgement of the form ‘I am A’. Our judgements about states of affairs are in fact as many acts of self-determination, or self-expression with respect to the world, such that we are necessarily involved in our judgements about the world, no matter how hard we try to suppress that involvement. Put in terms familiar to recent discussions of language, the activity of description, for Bulgakov, always presupposes the activity of expression.2020 Cf. for example, Charles Taylor’s discussion of the ‘expressive’ function of language in his The Language Animal (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), 29-50. We are thus led through seemingly outlandish and marginal comments about Kant’s cubism to the fundamental pre-occupation of Bulgakov’s The Tragedy of Philosophy. The perceived tragedy of philosophy is that reason is incapable of fulfilling its inherent aspirations: ‘the philosopher cannot but fly; he must ascend into the ether; but his wings inevitably melt in the heat of the sun, and he falls and breaks into fragments’.2121 Bulgakov, Tragedy, 5. As we have seen, the cause of this failure lies in the attempt to know the world from without, when in fact all knowledge is necessarily situated. In response to this failure, Bulgakov seeks in Tragedy to provide what might be called a theory of integral knowledge,2222 This is the title of a work by Vladimir Solov’ëv, whose influence on Bulgakov in general and on this work in particular will be discussed later. an epistemology that begins from the fundamentally personal form of knowledge. This requires a further act of integration: that of epistemology and morality. For as the example of the saint shows, the way in which we know is dependent on the way in which we live: the saint’s vision of the unity of the world is a product of their humility, their willingness to live within the world; the failure of the philosopher is a product of their hubris, of a fundamental act of self-assertion that Bulgakov will describe as demonic or Luciferian in nature.2323 This argument runs throughout ‘Corpse’ with reference to Picasso. It also surfaces at several points in Tragedy, with reference to Fichte, to whom is ascribed a ‘Luciferian madness’ (53) and to Hegelianism, which is described as ‘possessed’ (64). Thus our knowing, to once again use terms prevalent in recent discussion, is inseparable from a way of life, a habitus that conditions the mode of our access to the world. Just as Bulgakov’s inscribing of error into the procedures of reason is in keeping with Kant’s critical project,2424 E.g., Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 298/B 354 f.: ‘what we have to do with here is a natural and unavoidable illusion [. . .] one that irremediably attaches to human reason, so that even after we have exposed the mirage it will still not cease to lead our reason on with false hopes’. so too is the method whereby he arrives at his ‘involved’ epistemology. For he does so by asking about the conditions assumed by reason in its operations. What assumed conditions underwrite our pursuit of unity? What conditions underwrite the failure of philosophical thought in this pursuit? Once again in keeping with Kant’s ambitions, the answers found to these questions have both epistemological and metaphysical import. However, while Kant will maintain that the conditions of a thing’s appearing to us in experience need not hold for the thing in itself, Bulgakov will argue that the conditions according to which experience and thought are possible hold for the objects of thought and experience. More concretely, the fact that the condition for these activities is that they be situated with respect to a personal subject, that thinking and experiencing are always someone’s thinking and experiencing, does not condemn us to an inescapable anthropomorphism. Rather, it means that personhood must be inherent to the way things are; that metaphysics is necessarily personal; that the unity of things is the unity of personal life. And this, for Bulgakov, means that the unity of things is necessarily Trinitarian. For the revelation of God as Trinity is also the revelation of God as personal and thus also of the personal-cum-Trinitarian nature of the world, made in the image and likeness of God. The goal of Tragedy is thus the unification of epistemology, morality and ontology, a unification that has its rationale in the Trinitarian structure of creation. This notion that the world is personal because Trinitarian requires further elucidation. As a first step in that elucidation, it is worth noting that in its pre-occupation with unity, Tragedy is very much a product of its context. Bulgakov himself said that the motivation of his intellectual life was ‘characteristic of many Russians: they look for a general understanding of life, a Weltanschauung. [. . .] The Russian soul longs for the integrity of life’.2525 Sergii Bulgakov, ‘Du marxisme à la sophiologie’, Le messager orthodoxe, 98 (1985): 88-95 (88). An early review in English likewise pointed out that in its preoccupation with unity, Tragedy confirmed the view expressed by Semën Frank that ‘the characteristic of Russian philosophy is that it seeks to express the religious and emotional intuition of life as a whole’.2626 Natalie Duddington, ‘Philosophy in Russia’, Journal of Philosophical Studies 2, no. 8 (1927): 550-52 (551). This peculiarly Russian preoccupation with wholeness is concentrated in the notion of sobornost’, a word that runs right through Tragedy, together with the adjectival form sobornii. The latter is the Slavic translation of ‘catholic’, whilst sobor can mean variously a gathering, a council or a cathedral.2727 Cf. Robert Bird, ‘General Introduction’, in On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader, ed. and trans. by Boris Jakim and Robert Bird (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1998), 15. Sobornost’ names the quality of being together, of unity-in-plurality that is instantiated in the various meanings of sobor. It is primarily an interpersonal unity, but also branches out to name the integrity of the created world and also the relation of God with the world. Sobornost’, together with ‘integral knowledge’ [tsel’noe znanie], are the central concepts in what is known as Slavophilism,2828 These terms are described as ‘like two immortal poems, they express entire worlds in their compact energy and unfathomable depth. [. . .] The Slavophiles’ thought is all about sobornost and integral knowledge; these concepts stand at the beginning and end of their writings’. Robert Bird, On Spiritual Unity, 8. a philosophico-theological tendency that began in the early nineteenth century and sought to articulate the distinctive character of Russian or Slavic thought, culture and character with respect to the West. Against the individualizing character of Western theoretical philosophy and political thought, the Slavophiles argued for a theoretical and practical approach that foregrounded relationship and unity. In theoretical philosophy, this was expressed in the pursuit of an ‘integral knowledge’, which insisted on the pre-eminence of the complexity of the concrete over the abstract. In practical philosophy, this was expressed especially in the notion of sobornost’, which asserted that the individual is a secondary reality, derivative of a primary collective, such that individual human fulfilment can only come about through living into that organic, interpersonal unity. Both the theoretical and practical dimensions of this emphasis on unity are developed in the work of Vladimir Solov’ëv (1853-1900), a cardinal influence on the generation of Russian religious philosophers that included Bulgakov. Key terms in Bulgakov’s lexicon have their origin in Solov’ëv’s philosophy of unity, such as ‘Divine-Humanity’ [bogochelovechestvo] and ‘all-unity’ [vseedinstvo]. More substantially, Solov’ëv’s Lectures on Divine Humanity (1878) contain in nuce the interweaving of language, personhood and the Trinity that is central to Tragedy. In particular, in the sixth of his lectures, Solov’ëv interprets being as having a necessarily propositional structure: ‘if grammatically the verb “to be” forms only a link between the subject and the predicate, then logically too, being can be conceived only as the relation of an existent to its objective essence’.2929 Vladimir Solov’ëv, Lectures on Divine Humanity, ed. and trans. by Boris Jakim (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1995), 77. Emphasis in the original. This propositional structure is attributed above all to God, whose naming of himself as ‘I AM’ to Moses invites such an attribution. Moreover, this propositional structure is a threefold one (subject-predicate-copula), with Solov’ëv interpreting the constituent elements of the proposition in terms of the three ‘modes or positings’ of divine being, or the three Persons of the Trinity: ‘it is necessary to assume for these three eternal acts three eternal subjects (hypostases). The second of these [. . .] expresses through its own actuality the essential content of the first, serving as the eternal expression, or the Word, for the first’.3030 Ibid., 88. Finally, this propositional scheme is characteristic also of created personhood and so constitutes an imago Trinitatis: ‘the triadic relation of our subject to its content corresponds to the relation pointed out above of the absolute subject, or that which absolutely is, to its absolute content’.3131 Ibid., 86. The relationship between this threefold propositional structure and the assertion that the essence of God is the all-one or all-unity needs clarification. First, that the essence of God must necessarily be all-unity is determined without reference to this propositional structure; instead, it follows from the definition of God as absolute: ‘If the divine essence were not all-one, if it did not contain the all, then something could be essentially outside God. But in that case, God [. . .] would therefore not be absolute’.3232 Ibid., 78. In other words, the definition of God as ‘all-unity’ is a function of God as absolute. So how does the definition of God as absolute relate to the characterisation of divine being as propositional? Unity and ‘absolute-ness’ are made especially characteristic of the first positing of divine being, i.e., of the divine ‘subject’, the Father: ‘As the absolute principle, God must include or contain all in Himself in continuous and immediate substantial unity. In this first positing, the all is contained in God, that is, in the divine subject or existent . . .’.3333 Ibid. My emphasis. By contrast, if the Father ‘expresses absolute unity’, then the second positing, or the Son, ‘expresses the all, or multiplicity’.3434 Ibid., 81. This is reinforced in the subsequent lecture, where Solov’ëv presents each of the divine Persons or ‘modes of being’ as enjoying a descending proximity to the ‘inner unity’ that is the divine nature: ‘the three modes of being [. . .] do not represent the inner unity to the same degree. Clearly, this unity is strongest and, so to speak, most inward, most intimate, in will as goodness [i.e., in the Person of the Father], for in the act of will, the object of will is not yet separated from the subject [. . .]. It remains in an essential unity with it’.3535 Ibid., 103. The propositional, Trinitarian scheme may thus seem superfluous to the definition of God as all-unity and as absolute. ‘One may ask: if God, as the first subject, already includes the absolute content, or the all, what need is there for the other two subjects?’3636 Ibid., 88. Solov’ëv’s answer is that God’s being absolute is after all dependent upon God’s being triune: ‘God as the absolute or unconditioned, cannot be content with having all in Himself; He must also have all for Himself and with Himself. Without such fullness of existence, Divinity cannot be perfect or absolute’.3737 Ibid. Thus ‘God the Father, by His very nature, cannot exist without the Word by Whom He is expressed and without the Spirit Who asserts Him’.3838 Ibid., 89. We thus attain some clarity as to the relation between Solov’ëv’s definitions of God as the ‘all-one’, as absolute, and as Trinitarian. But with this clarification it also becomes apparent that the definition of God as Trinity is deduced ultimately from the definition of God as ‘all’. For God to be absolute, God must be Trinity and this because only a threefold possession of the all, or the divine nature, is exhaustive. In other words, the trinity of Persons is necessitated by the demands of nature. But this is precisely the kind of understanding of the Trinity that Bulgakov will contest in his more mature Trinitarian work.3939 For Bulgakov’s critique of Solov’ëv’s deduction of the Trinity from the necessity of nature, see Brandon Gallaher, ‘Antinomism, Trinity and the Challenge of Solov’ëvan Pantheism in the Theology of Sergij Bulgakov’, Studies in East European Thought 64, no. 3-4 (2012): 205-25, esp. 206-11. There, Bulgakov will argue that one cannot maintain that the trinity of hypostases arises as a condition for the exhaustive realisation of the nature. Rather, prior to any determination with respect to nature, the tri-unity of persons is inherent to personal self-consciousness: the self-consciousness of the I requires the presence of both a you and a (s)he. Thus with respect to the Trinity, ‘tri-hypostaseity logically precedes the definition of individual hypostases in their concrete correlation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit’.4040 ‘Glavy o Troichnosti’ [Chapters on Trinitarity], in S. N. Bulgakov, Trudy o troichnosti, ed. Anna Reznichenko (Moscow: O.G.I., 2001), 70. Bulgakov will repeat this in The Comforter, 45: ‘In examining the tri-hypostaseity of the Absolute Personality, it must be kept in mind that in itself—in its first positing of itself, so to speak—it does not yet include the hypostatic distinctions, but is defined solely by the triune self-positing of the I, as I-I-I’. See also ibid., 53-56. Bulgakov’s most extended treatment of the necessarily threefold nature of self-consciousness as I-You-(S)he is in ‘Chapters on Trinitarity’. For an analysis of this text, see Joshua Heath, ‘Sergii Bulgakov’s Linguistic Trinity’, Modern Theology (forthcoming). We find the beginnings of this separation of ‘tri-unity’ from the demands of nature already in Tragedy, although this argument is not developed as fully as in subsequent works.4141 Cf. the discussion of the primacy of the first-person plural ‘we’ over the first-person singular ‘I’ later in this article. Indeed, Bulgakov’s Tragedy of Philosophy is in many ways an extended development of this sixth lecture by Solov’ëv. Bulgakov will likewise attribute a propositional structure to reality. The judgement ‘I am something’ expresses ‘in abbreviated form a schema for what truly exists’,4242 Bulgakov, Tragedy, 9. ‘the structure of the real itself’.4343 Ibid., 11. ‘“Substance” exists not only “in itself”, as a subject, but also “for itself”, as a predicate, and, moreover, “in and for itself”, in the copula, as existence’.4444 Ibid. This propositional structure of self-consciousness and indeed all creation, accessible to reason in reflection, is—as for Solov’ëv—the image of God in humanity: ‘If God is Trinity, consubstantial and indivisible, then the human spirit, although it is not a trinity, possesses, nevertheless, the form of triunity [. . .] the triune nature of the human spirit is living proof of the Holy Trinity’.4545 Ibid., 92. Indeed, the extent of Solov’ëv’s influence on this propositional interpretation of the Trinity and Creation is palpable in moments of almost direct quotation, as when Bulgakov describes the subject as ‘a question to which the predicate is the answer’,4646 Ibid., 36f. recalling Solov’ëv’s description of the predicate as that which ‘answers the question, what is this subject?’4747 Solov’ëv, Lectures, 77. Yet Tragedy also presents this propositional-cum-Trinitarian schema in a way that goes beyond not only Solov’ëv’s presentation of it, but also Bulgakov’s own elaboration of the linguistic basis of reality in his Philosophy of the Name. For in Tragedy, this schema is ‘personalised’ to a degree that is novel even for Bulgakov. In both Solov’ëv’s Lectures and Bulgakov’s Philosophy, the subject of the ontological proposition can be as much a personal as an impersonal entity. This is clear in Solov’ëv when he argues that the ‘triunity of God is wholly unfathomable to reason’ because of the propositional structure of being. This unfathomability is not unique to God; instead, ‘the life of any creature whatever is unfathomable, for no entity is, as such, exhausted by its formal objective aspect’.4848 Ibid., 92. My emphasis. That is to say that every being has an ‘inner, subjective aspect’ that transcends what can be known in its manifestations, or its predicate, and this means that ‘Divinity in heaven and the least blade of grass on earth are equally unfathomable, and equally fathomable, for reason’.4949 Ibid., 93. My emphasis. The important point here is that the propositional schema—and the ensuing transcendence of being to reason—obtains equally for impersonal entities (a blade of grass) as for created and indeed divine persons. The ‘subject’ is therefore not necessarily a centre of self-consciousness, an I; it can be a who or a what. The same is true of the proposition and the subject as they are presented in Bulgakov’s Philosophy of the Name. Certainly, Bulgakov maintains there as in Tragedy that the first-person singular I, the personal pronoun, is the subject par excellence: ‘The I is in a certain sense the root of language [. . .] the I is the point of orientation of being, thought and language’.5050 Filosofiia Imeni [Philosophy of the Name], in Sergii Bulgakov, Pervoobraz i Obraz, ed. I. B. Rodnianskaya (Moscow and Saint Petersburg: Iskusstvo/Inapress, 1999), vol. 2, 49. However, impersonal as well as personal beings are described elsewhere in the same work as equal ontological centres, gestured to in a given proposition. In the phrase ‘the king sent an order to the commander’, Bulgakov asks ‘who is being spoken about here?’ ‘The king? But also the commander and the order. These ontological centres are brought into mutual relation’,5151 Ibid., 52. with the order as much an ‘ontological centre’, it would seem, as the king and the commander. The propositional schema obtains for all entities, and both personal and impersonal pronouns ‘gesture’ toward equally transcendent essences: ‘when a person sees a snake and calls it a “snake”, they essentially fulfil the function of endowing mute being that is beyond meaning with meaning and saying: this is snakelike, is a snake’.5252 Ibid., 54. The fundamental form of the proposition is not ‘I am A’, but ‘A is B’, with the first-person pronoun being one candidate for A alongside impersonal pronouns. I see, I think, I sense this black table. This judgement succinctly expresses the being of the table in itself and, like the I, for itself: this table is black.5757 Bulgakov, Tragedy, 16. I see, think, perceive that this ta