Man and the Church in the Christian Thought of Nicholas Berdyaev

In March 2024, we celebrate 150 years since the birth of Nicholas Berdyaev (1874–1948) — a Russian religious philosopher whose life and creative inheritance continue to gain popularity in our own time.

In his spiritual autobiography, Berdyaev wrote: “I see two primary driving forces in my internal life: the search for meaning and the search for eternity. The search for meaning came before the search for God, and the search for eternity came before the search for salvation. <…> I was never as tormented by theological, dogmatic, ecclesial or scholastic-philosophical questions as I was by questions about the meaning of life, freedom, man’s purpose, eternity, suffering, and evil. In this way, Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s heroes, through whom I absorbed Christianity, were close to my heart.”

N. A. Berdyaev proposed creative answers to many of the issues of the 20^th century — issues which called into question both freedom and human dignity, as well as the realistic nature of non-mass, non-totalitarian forms of human society.

In calling this conference, the organizers wish to air and listen Berdyaev’s answers and endeavour to develop the philosopher’s thought, so as to apply his intellectual and spiritual intuitions in our contemporary 21^st century situation.

For this reason, the primary conference format will be creative laboratories for the discussion of various discrete topics that Berdyaev’s creative inheritance points to:

• “The Dogma of the Human Person”: from the Ethics of the Human Image towards the Mystery of Personality;
• Berdyaev’s Ecclesiological Findings;
• Berdyaev and Pushkin: Sources and Meaning of the Russian Renaissance;
• Berdyaev’s Historiosophical Discourse: Russia and Europe.

Each of the four creative laboratories will involve an extended expert discussion, which will be preceded by short presentations on the stated topic.

The conference will take place at SFI (Tokmakov lane, 11) and is open to participants who wish to attend remotely.

Working languages: Russian and English.

The conference is organised by:
St. Philaret’s Institute 
Gorky Institute for World Literature (Russian Academy of Sciences) 

To take part in the conference as a speaker, please contact: +7 (962) 986 74 33, sofia@sfi.ru

To take part as a listener, please fill in the form: https://forms.gle/SA5gznJM3aqbLT8z9

Chair of the Organising Committee
Alexander Mikhailovich Kopirovsky,
Head of SFI Theology department, PhD in Pedagogics

Deputy Chair of the Organising Committee
Sofia Vadimovna Androsenko,
SFI Press-Secretary