SLAVOPHILIA. - I. LITERATURE
The Slavophile movement represents in Russian culture a reaction of a national and spiritual character to eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism and rationalism. Slavophilia may appear as a Russian “adaptation” of themes from German idealist philosophy and of tendencies of general Western provenance, inspired by the “mission” and “primacy” of a given people and, at the same time, by the enunciation of universal values.
Among the principal representatives of Slavophilia are I. V. Kireevskij (1806–56), P. V. Kireevskij (1800–56), A. S. Chomjakov (1804–60), K. S. Aksakov (1817–60), and I. S. Aksakov (1823–86). Slavophilia represents, in a certain sense, the awakening of national consciousness, a reaction to an antihistorical conception of Enlightenment stamp that regarded Russia as Europe’s eternal disciple; but it is also characterized by patriarchal, folkloric, and naïve features, by a paternalistic and agrarian-oriented democratic spirit, under the protection of the tsar. According to the Slavophiles, the true Russian “soul” was to be sought in the primitive peasant and in Russia before Peter the Great. Latin and Germanic civilization were supposedly in decline, while the new religious and moral values would instead come from the “young Slavic peoples.” Among all the Slavic tribes, the Russians were said to have preserved the “ancient virtues” in their purest form. Russian “humility” would be the counterpart of the Roman “tradition of strength” and of the medieval Roman and Germanic chivalric world. Only the Eastern Church, it was held, had not slipped into rationalism and attachment to “material values.” Instinctively, the Slavophiles—with a typically Russian anarchic trait—show fear and aversion toward the state, the courts, and 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 opposed to “myths of lineage” and to every form of democratic spirit, even if patriarchal. Other thinkers and politicians subsequently developed Slavophilia in the direction of Pan-Slavism (v.), with greater detachment from philosophical interests and an ostentatious display of myths of strength. Chomjakov’s poetry reflects the ideals of the Slavophile school, with moments of delicate lyrical nostalgia.
II. - PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. - Slavophile philosophy, more sketched than elaborated, especially by I. Kireevskij and Chomjakov, tends toward 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, and faith. True and complete 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 relation between reason and faith, “Orthodoxy,” and the Church.
The Church is conceived not as an external authority, but as the communion of the faithful in unity, freedom, and love. The subject of infallible teaching in the Church is neither exclusively 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” vis-à-vis 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. Despite this attitude, Slavophile theology underwent direct Protestant influences and also approached the Protestant position insofar as, in protesting against Rome, it sought to justify that protest ideologically. But through its “democratic” assertion that the subject of infallibility is not primarily the hierarchy, Slavophile theology also came into conflict with official theology, at least to a considerable extent (while certain trends in official theology, for example, in the teaching of fundamental theology at the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy, shared the principal theses of Slavophilia). It was therefore subjected to severe censorship by the Russian Holy Synod.
A special conception of universal history also emerges from the Slavophile point of view (for example, in Chomjakov, Danilevskij, and 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 concerning the Filioque to be a dogma of the faith, committed “spiritual fratricide” (an expression of Chomjakov), thereby separated itself from ecclesiastical unity and fell into rationalism, of which Protestantism, rationalism, and atheism would later be only the logical consequence. This anti-Catholic tendency, in which Catholicism is identified with purely external authority and with an excess of rational and juridical principles, is especially evident in Slavophile ecclesiology, but also in other fields of theology, for example, in soteriology.
Only relatively few representatives or continuators of Slavophilia have approached the Catholic point of view, either wholly or in part (for example, Soloviev).
Il panlativismo, Rome 1946; B. Schultze, Problemi di teologia presso gli ortodossi. Spirito genuino dell'ortodossia, in Or. chr. per., 7 (1941), pp. 149–205; id., Pensatori russi di fronte a Cristo, Florence 1947–49; id., Russische Denker, Ihre Stellung zu Christus, Kirche u. Papsttum, Vienna 1950; id., Die Sozialprinzipien in der russischen Religionsphilosophie, in Zeitschr. für kath. Theol., 73 (1951), pp. 385–423.