“The tragedy” of German philosophy. Remarks on reception of German philosophy in the Russian religious thought (of S. Bulgakov and others)

The article deals with Bulgakov’s critique of Hegel’s monistic system. For Bulgakov, Hegelian monism is an example of philosophical reductionism which aims at reducing the question of Being, the latter expressed by a proposition and constituted by the inseparable unity of three elements (person as hypostasis, its meaning and the essence of Being), to its second principle. Contrary to Hegel, Bulgakov claims that no philosophy can begin with and as itself—it has to be initiated with a datum. This is in fact where the tragedy of German philosophy, and each monistic philosophy, starts.     

Posthumanism and Russian Religious Thought

I argue that one of the centralaspects characterizing the philosophicalhorizon at the threshhold of the twentieth andtwenty-first centuries is the erosion of thehumanist idea, i.e. `posthumanism'. Russianreligious philosophy is pervaded byconsiderations of humanism and posthumanism(antihumanism). The latter ascribes centralsignificance to the category of `Godmanhood'with which the leading Russian philosophersopposed the Nietzschean category of theOverman. But all of Germany philosophy can bereproached for having forsaken man. The`posthumanist' narrative about man and God isan extreme, indeed pathological symptom ofphilosophy waiting for Embodiment.