The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

The image of The Grand Inquisitor is one of the central supporting elements of N. A. Berdyaev’s philosophical journalism, serving as an analytical tool for the thinker to identify elements of authoritarianism inherent in various spiritual movements, ideologies, forms of religious and quasi-religious consciousness. On the material of the articles “The Grand Inquisitor” (1907), “Quenchers of the Spirit” (1913), “The Spirit of The Grand Inquisitor” (1935) and “Is there freedom of thought and conscience in Orthodoxy?” (1939), the author analyses the work of this image in the philosopher’s publicistic speeches related to the acute problems of church life in the first half of the 20th century. The main methodological technique of the article is the consistent delineation of the rhetorical and ideological components of Berdyaev’s texts, which makes it possible to identify and reconstruct the system of argumentation outlined in them. The similarities and differences of the main arguments are traced, which are put in connection with the development of the philosophical position of the thinker, first of all, with his philosophy of religion. The philosophical-theological, in particular ecclesiological, grounds and the basic polemical situation of the criticism are revealed. The philosopher’s criticism of the Church in the articles under consideration is compared with his criticism of the Russian intelligentsia, outlined in the collection ‘Landmarks’ and other works. The appeal to the image of the Grand Inquisitor allows us to establish that Berdyaev’s consistent criticism of the various forms of authoritarianism inherent in Russian Orthodoxy and the “right emigration” of the first half of the 20th century, on the one hand, is similar to the “milestone” criticism of the “left” intelligentsia, and on the other hand, leads to a kind of confessionalization paradox, in which the community of free–thinking religious intellectuals, trying to overcome the confessional boundaries established by authoritarian thinking, forms quasi-confessional communities and structures themselves. The question of how the philosopher manages to notice and overcome this paradox remains open.