Philosophical and theological discourse by N.A. Berdyaev, Russian avant-garde and religious ideas of Daniil Kharms
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The article discusses the philosophical views of N.A. Berdyaev on the aesthetics of the avant-garde. The thinker, like many of his contemporaries, paid close attention to the crisis phenomena of art and culture at the beginning of the twentieth century and expressed non-trivial judgments about the reasons for the emergence of a new avant-garde aesthetics in the West and in Russia. Berdyaev managed to formulate an original philosophical-critical approach to the assessment of avant-garde creativity, distinguished by both methodological trust in the avant-garde and, of course, its criticism. The study argues that in the philosophical and theological discourse of N.A. Berdyaev's problem of creativity had paradigmatic significance. In the famous publication “The Crisis of Art” (1918), the philosopher summarized his views on the current state of art. Eschatological premonitions associated with the cultural crisis of the era were also characteristic of many other thinkers of the Silver Age. However, N.A. Berdyaev most subtly and deeply reflected the specific features of the avant-garde worldview. The article analyzes the conceptual relationships between the philosophical and theological discourse of N.A. Berdyaev and the religious ideas of Daniil Kharms, the author of the avant-garde group of the 1920s “Union of Real Art” (“OBERIU”). It is shown that it arose in the philosophical works of V.S. Solovyov’s idea of the era of the Holy Spirit or the Third Testament also influenced the philosophical work of N.A. Berdyaev, and on the experimental individual creativity and aesthetics of D. Kharms. The broader cultural context of Berdyaev’s philosophical ideas related to the concept of the “New Middle Ages” is also indicated, which had a strong impact on the intellectual mood of the era and was reflected in the work of another author of the OBERIU group, Konstantin Vaginov.
Source: Solov’evskie issledovaniya
Author: D.L. Shukurov
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4408915772