Abstract
Discussions on this topic of relating God to the world have been a mainstay in philosophical theology, for instance, between the Russian authors Shestov and Solov’ëv. In discussion with Desmond’s discussion of these authors in Is There a Sabbath for Thought? Josephien van Kessel proposes that there is far greater similarity between the Sophiology of Solov’ëv (and Bulgakov) and Desmond’s metaxology.
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Notes
- 1.
The Russian and English words have the same Latin stem. Sophia is a common female name and often endowed with a feminine nature in Russian Sophiology. I write Sophia and Sophiology with a capital letter, but ‘it’ when referring to Sophia in order to stress its nature as a principle. I write a lower-case initial letter when it is used as an adjective, for example, sophiological or sophic.
- 2.
The Russian intelligentsia is often called a ‘classless class’ consisting of people with similar education. The religious intelligentsia is a relatively small subgroup.
- 3.
He was baptized in the parish church of Livny.
- 4.
Bulgakov writes ‘otkrovenie Sofii’ and ‘Sofiia otkryvaetsia’: Sophia is an agent that can reveal itself. On the other hand, Russian grammar allows an interpretation of a God who reveals his Sophia.
- 5.
Publitsist and publitsistika are untranslatable like many Russian terms. It is a kind of political journalism. See also Schrooyen (2006, p. 7).
- 6.
Sophiology is therefore cataphatic, and not apophatic as traditional Orthodox philosophy and theology that deny the possibility of positive knowledge of God, who is absolutely transcendent to human thought. On apophasis as a characteristic of Orthodox spirituality, see van den Bercken (2011, p. 125).
- 7.
Bulgakov derives his use of antinomy from his friend and Orthodox priest Pavel Florenskii (2004 [1914]).
- 8.
See also Van Kessel (2010) on Bulgakov’s interpretation of sobornost’.
- 9.
Desmond uses Shestov’s article on Solov’ëv: “Speculation and Apocalypse The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov,” first published in Sovremeniye zapiski, nrs. 33–34 (1927–1928).
- 10.
This was a frequent criticism of Solov’ëv’s philosophy by Russian religious philosophers of the Silver Age, amongst others by Bulgakov , who confesses he is more inspired by Solov’ëv’s poetry than by his philosophy (Bulgakov 2008, p. 70).
- 11.
This connects to the political philosophical meaning of Sophiology, see van Kessel (2012).
- 12.
- 13.
Philosophy of Economy, in which Bulgakov introduced Sophia as a social principle, is both his doctor’s dissertation in and goodbye to political economy as a science.
- 14.
- 15.
In his famous Vekhi-article “Heroism and Asceticism,” published in 1909.
- 16.
He did so only in his unpublished work La Sophia, which he wrote before his published philosophical dissertations, and in his published poetry.
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van Kessel, J. (2018). Transcendence in Metaxology and Sophiology. In: Vanden Auweele, D. (eds) William Desmond’s Philosophy between Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98992-1_14
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