Politics, Law, and Morality: Essays by V. S. Soloviev

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Soloviev is Kant of Russian philosophy. No understanding of any trend in Russian modern thought may be complete without at least a cursory acquaintance with Soloviev. This is as true for Russian Marxism as it is for Russian religious philosophy, which Soloviev so brilliantly represents. A cursory reading, however, is impossible, once you start browsing the book. Soloviev is not just a philosopher, nor even the greatest Russian philosopher to day (which he is); he is so much more than that. Soloviev is a sage and a prophet, who was sadly not heard in Russia of his times. He is still less than properly understood in the West. There are people who frame him as Russian nationalist; others see just an Orthodox mystic or just a constitutionalist, Christian Democrat and so on. With a similar success, you could try to stick some sort of a mundane label on, for example, Lao Tzu. Was he a conservative - or a reformist? Chinese traditionalist or a mystical revolutionary? What impresses me most in this collection of essays is Soloviev's rational post-rationalism, a brand of thought which is postmodernist and post-traditionalist at once. Soloviev did not believe that human happiness can be constructed by rational design, be it a Marxist or a capitalist/consumerist design that sways today's world. At the same time, he was not preaching passivity and resignation, but rather revival of human spirit and conscience in a community of free individuals. For him, Christianity was the answer. Yet, his view was truly ecumenical in a sense that no races were excluded from the project of universal love based on universal compassion and modesty, something that only humble service to the God's idea of humanity can accomplish. It is impossible to read Soloviev without thinking of painful moral dilemmas of today. He has offered answers to many of those; answers that deserve to be heard in our present debates. Still more importantly, he had shown the way to approach the dilemmas that are yet to come; this way is called Christian humanism and it goes beyond not only grand schemes of modernism, but also grand disorientation of the postmodern "alternatives" to them. This sort of reading enlightens soul, and not just satisfies your intellectual curiosity. Are there many books out there that go that far? A sincere gratitide must go to the translator for doing the job. We can only wish it was a two-or three-volume collection, which could do more justice to Soloviev the thinker.