Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ...of the " universal reason" as it evolves in history. To the Russians, in their adaptation to a commencing Europeanisation, a philosophy of history was especially necessary. In this matter Caadaev occupied a peculiar position between two parties that were then in process of formation, that of the slavophils and that of the westernisers. He accepts the fundamental thesis of the slavophils, that society and historical development are to be conceived, above ' all, in a religious sense. But he is distinguished from the slavophils in that when he thinks of religion and the church. he thinks of the militant and conquering church of the west, whereas the slavophils had in mind rather the contemplative religion of the east with its mystical renunciation of the world. Thus it was that Caadaev, instead of shutting himself up in a Russian monastery, sought out the world, becoming as it were a monk in a frock coat. To Caadaev the slavophils seemed to be. retrospective utopists, learned apostles of a national reaction, whereas his aim was towards a world church, a universal church, modelled on the papacy. Caadaev's papistical leanings constituted a stumbling-block for his slavophil friends and opponents, but in Moscow he had personal associations with Ivan KirSevskii, Homjakov, and the other founders and advocates of slavophilism from whom he derived his later esteem for the Russian and eastern church. In this way Caadaev drew nearer to the program of official theocracy, though he continued to think rather of a " theocracy of consciousness" in Schlegel's sense than of theocracy as it was understood by Count Uvarov, and for this reason he was an object of suspicion to the government no less than to the first slavophils. In'1852, when...
