Slavophilism

SLAVOPHILISM. - I. LITERATURE. - The Slavophile movement represents in Russian culture a reaction of a national and spiritual character against eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism and rationalism. Slavophilism may appear a Russian "adaptation" of motifs from German idealist philosophy and of tendencies of generically Western origin, inspired by the "mission" and the "primacy" of a particular people and by the simultaneous proclamation of universal values.

Among the principal exponents of Slavophilism are remembered I. V. Kireevsky (1806-56), P. V. Kireevsky (1800-56), A. S. Khomyakov (1804-60), K. S. Aksakov (1817-60), I. S. Aksakov (1823-86). Slavophilism represents, in a certain way, the awakening of national consciousness, a reaction against an ahistorical conception of Enlightenment stamp that saw in Russia the eternal disciple of Europe: but it is likewise characterized by patriarchal, folkloristic and naive traits, by a paternalistic democratism with an agrarian background, under the protection of the tsar. The true Russian "soul" would be sought, according to the Slavophiles, in the primitive peasant and in the Russia anterior to Peter the Great. Latin and Germanic civilization would be in decay, and the new religious and moral values would instead come from the "young Slavic peoples." Among all the Slavic stocks the Russians would have preserved more purely the "pristine virtues." Russian "humility" would be the counterpart of the Roman "tradition of force" and of the medieval Romano-Germanic chivalric world. The Eastern Church alone would not have slipped into rationalism and attachment to "material values." Instinctively the Slavophiles - with a typically Russian anarchic trait - show fear and aversion for the State, for the courts and for every form of hierarchy. In comparison with the Slavophiles, K. Leont'ev

(v.) developed a tendency more closely adhering to the "Byzantine spirit," more openly contrary to the "myths of blood" and to every democratism, even if patriarchal. Other thinkers and politicians later developed Slavophilism in the sense of Pan-Slavism (v.), with greater detachment from philosophical interests and with an ostentatious display of the myths of force. The poetry of Khomyakov mirrors the ideals of the Slavophile school, with moments of delicate lyrical nostalgia.

Wolf Giusti

II. - PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. - Slavophile philosophy, more sketched than elaborated, especially by I. Kireevsky and Khomyakov, tends toward a knowledge that is not incomplete and abstract, but concrete, in which all the cognitive, volitional and sensitive faculties of man are engaged. At the basis of true knowledge are love, unanimity, faith. True and full knowledge is given and guaranteed only in the community of the faithful, that is, in the Church; Slavophile philosophy thus passes over into theology. For the Slavophiles the principal problems are therefore: the relationship between reason and faith, "Orthodoxy" and the Church.

The Church is conceived not as external authority, but as the communion of the faithful in unity, freedom and love. The subject of infallible teaching in the Church is exclusively neither the hierarchy nor the ecumenical council, but rather the whole body of the ecclesiastical people, which must accept the definitions of the councils. The Slavophile conception of the Church constitutes an attempt at self-determination and self-justification of "Orthodoxy" in the face of the Western confessions. The true Christian synthesis would be found only in the Byzantine-Slavic faith, whereas Catholicism would possess only the principle of exaggerated unity, and Protestantism that of exaggerated freedom. Notwithstanding this attitude, Slavophile theology underwent direct Protestant influences and drew close to the Protestant position also in that, protesting against Rome, it sought to justify this protest ideologically. But with its "democratic"-tinged affirmation that the subject of infallibility is not primarily the hierarchy, Slavophile theology also came into conflict with official theology, at least in large part (while certain currents of official theology, e.g., of the teaching of fundamental theology in the Ecclesiastical Academy of Moscow, shared the principal theses of Slavophilism). It was therefore subjected to a severe censorship on the part of the Russian Holy Synod.

From the Slavophile point of view there also results a special conception of universal history (e.g., in Khomyakov, Danilevsky, Leont'ev), and, in particular, of the origin of the schism between East and West. The Church of Rome would be nothing other than the continuation of the ancient pagan Roman Empire. The schism would be the fruit of Latin particularism which, by declaring its own opinion of the Filioque a dogma of the faith, committed "a spiritual fratricide" (expression of Khomyakov), thereby detached itself from ecclesiastical unity and fell into rationalism, of which later Protestantism, rationalism and atheism would be only the logical consequence. This anti-Catholic tendency, in which Catholicism is identified with purely external authority, with an excess of rational and juridical principles, is noted above all in Slavophile ecclesiology, but also in other fields of theology, e.g., in soteriology.

Only relatively few representatives or continuators of Slavophilism drew close, entirely or only in part, to the Catholic point of view (e.g., Soloviev).