The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche: Nikolai Berdyaev’s reception and interpretation

Philosophy

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of Nikolai Berdyaev’s reception and interpretation of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. We attempt to reconstruct Berdyaev’s attitude to the creative heritage of the great German philosopher. The phenomenon of Nietzsche was mainly perceived by the Russian philosophy of the early 20th century in a religious context. For Berdyaev himself, the personality of Nietzsche became one of the starting points for comprehending the existential dialectic of human destiny in the world historical process. In Nietzsche’s works, Berdyaev was first of all captivated by the eschatological theme the philosopher addressed, his striving for the end and the limit. Berdyaev called Nietzsche the greatest phenomenon of modern history, dialectically completing the humanistic anthropology of the West. The Russian philosopher viewed Nietzsche as the forerunner of a new religious anthropology, a religious prophet of the West, making a return to the old European humanism no longer possible. Berdyaev was convinced of the need to overcome and internalize the spiritual experience of Nietzsche. The latter opens up the prospect of transition to a new anthropological era, in which human existence must be justified by creativity. Berdyaev viewed creativity as a new religious revelation of Christianity, not manifested in patristic tradition and historical Christianity. In creative acts, man overcomes objectification as a fallen state of the world. The article examines the key ideas of Nietzsche’s philosophy through the prism of religious existentialism and personalism of Berdyaev. Berdyaev’s attitude to Nietzsche was ambivalent: on the one hand, he highly appreciated how radically the German philosopher formulated the problem of a person’s creativity; on the other hand, he viewed the anti-Christian concept of the superman, leading to human godhood, as absolutely unacceptable for Russian religious philosophy and Christianity. Berdyaev assessed the new revelation of Nietzsche about the superman and the will to power as false and demonic, radically contradicting the foundations of Christian anthropology about man and the religious ethics of creativity.