Russian Religious Philosophy in a Secular Age
The term “Russian religious philosophy” refers to what has become the canon of Russian philosophy - the religious idealism that was created by Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) and then developed further by Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdiaev and others. They understood themselves as representatives for a new, Russian-Orthodox philosophy. However, this philosophical current emerged from an adoption of German idealism, above all Schelling, reformulating key themes of traditional Orthodox theology, above all the idea of human deification, in an idealist philosophical language. This article analyses this philosophy as an encounter between an Orthodox tradition and Western secular thinking that thereby secularised a religious worldview through a philosophical reflection on faith and dogmas, in parallel to how scholars from Max Weber to Charles Taylor have shown that western secularity is a result of developments within Christian thought.