Solovyov’s Conception of Christian Culture

Abstract

In previous chapters I have directed considerable attention to Solovyov’s views on Judaic and Christian schemes for a theocratic society. I have also underlined the point that the notion of theocracy became closely bound, in Solovyov’s mind, with the attempt to define as fully and lucidly as possible the features of a spiritual community.

… Reality in general, and in the most direct way human society, becomes for Plato a subject not for denial and avoidance, but for lively interest. The anomalies of the existing order, its lack of correspondence to ideal requirements, are recognised as before, but the relation of the philosopher to this contradiction changes. He wants practically to oppose evil, to rectify worldly falsehoods, to help [alleviate] worldly sufferings.

From Vladimir Solovyov’s article on Plato for the Brockhaus-

Ephron Encyclopaedia.¹

Not to be led astray by the apparent domination of evil, and not to renounce the inapparent good on account of it — [this] is a feat of faith.

From Vladimir Solovyov’s Three Speeches in Memory of F. M.

Dostoevsky.²