Abstract
In Chapter 8 I examined the central themes in two of Vladimir Solovyov’s later works, and that analysis was intended to help characterise his historically-based comparative method for evaluating non-Christian, nominally Christian and actually Christian societies respectively. In The Drama of Plato’s Life and On the Decline of the Mediaeval Worldview Solovyov delineated certain features of the non-Christian society (in this case, pre-Christian) and of the nominally Christian society; then, by stressing the shortcomings of their organisation of human affairs, Solovyov hoped to direct his readers towards an increasingly fine appreciation of the society that most adequately exemplifies the Christian social ideal. In other words, Solovyov employed a negative process of elimination and contrast to help him clarify the salient features of an authentically Christian society or culture.
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Notes
See Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism, (University of California Press, 1984).
The ideal of Bodhisattvahood can be, and is, distinguished from the earlier Indian ideal of the Arhat: according to Professor T. R. V. Murti, in The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, (1955):
Sergey Solovyov (the historian, 1820–79), Public Lectures on Peter the Great, (Publichye chteniya o Petre Velikom, Moscow University Press, 1872;
Sergey Solovyov (the historian), Notes for my Children, (Zapiski dlya moikh detey), (Petrograd, 1914) p. 60.
Here Sergey Solovyov actually quotes words from an article by Lev Lopatin, ‘VI. Solovyov and Prince E. N. Trubetskoy’, (VI. Solovyov i knyaz’ E. N. Trubetskoy), in Questions of Philosophy and Psychology, (Voprosy filosofii i psyikhologii), (Sept.-Oct. 1913) p. 356.
Nicolas Zernov, Moscow the Third Rome, (London: Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, 1938).
Vasiliy Rozanov, ‘At the Panikhida in Memory of Vladimir Solovyov’, (Na panikhide Vladimira Solovyova) in By the Church Walls (Okolo tserkovnykh Sten, Petersburg, 1906) vol. I, p. 241.
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© 1988 Jonathan Sutton
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Sutton, J. (1988). A Vision of Conflict and Decline. In: The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. Library of Philosophy and Religion . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19422-3_9
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