Nikolai Berdyaev’s philosophy of war

N.A. Berdyaev repeatedly turned to the war theme throughout his creative life. His reflections about the war supplemented, elaborated, deepened various interconnected and superimposed fundamental existential problems and, first of all, the problem of presence of evil in the world. Berdyaev considered war, par excellence, as a phenomenon of spiritual order, as a fact of inconsistent and bifurcated spiritual reality. The Russian thinker analyzed war in ontological, ethical, anthropological contexts. The depth and versatility of this analysis allow to speak about Berdyaev’s philosophy of war. The article traces the development of Berdyaev’s ideas concerning the nature and character of war, the influence of war on the person and society. Already in his early works an idealized image of the knight as an embodiment of the noble human type, as an alternative to the bourgeois vulgarity and philistinism is formed. In the beginning of the First World War he writes a lot about the positive influence of war on the formation of national consciousness, on actualization of the person as a necessary condition of realization by the nation of its own global historic mission. Berdyaev believes in the great historic mission of Russia - to become a connecting link between the East and the West, to unite two streams of world history. However, gradually he leaves these illusions. Berdyaev connects degradation of Russia and Russian people with war and the revolution which followed it. In modern war he sees the mass carnage deprived of positive sense, the powerful factor of people's dehumanization and depersonalization, collective hypnosis. The Russian thinker concludes that "mechanization" of war leads to the negation of the person. Modern totalitarian war cancels the positive effects of former wars and becomes absolute evil. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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