SOLOV'EV, VLADIMIR SERGHÉEVIČ. — The greatest Russian philosopher, b. 16 (28) Jan. 1853 in Moscow, d. 31 July (13 Aug.) 1900 near Moscow.
He studied at Moscow University and at the Ecclesiastical Academy. In 1874 he defended his thesis *The Crisis of Western Philosophy*, against the positivists. He taught at Moscow University (Jan.–May 1875). He then traveled to London, Paris, Nice, and Egypt (where he had his famous vision of “Sophia-Wisdom”: cf. his poem *Three Encounters*). Between 1880–81 he also lectured at the University of St. Petersburg. Works from this period include *The Philosophical Foundations of Integral Knowledge* (1877), *Critique of Abstract Principles* (1877–80), and, more importantly, *Lectures on God-Manhood* (1878–81). In 1881 he was forced to resign from teaching after publicly appealing for clemency for the assassins of Tsar Alexander II. He made further trips abroad (1886, 1888–89, 1893, and 1899). In 1886 he wrote part of *History and the Future of Theocracy* in Zagreb, and there in 1888 he wrote the introduction to *La Russie et l'Église universelle* (II. trans.), another part of the vast unfinished work. He devoted himself entirely to the study of religious and political questions and to extensive political-religious activity aimed at the reunion of separated Christians. Initially a Slavophile, between 1882–88 he increasingly distanced himself from the views of the old Slavophiles on the cause of the schism between East and West, and ultimately accepted the Catholic doctrine of dogmatic development and the primacy of the Pope. At the beginning of this period he wrote *The Religious (later Spiritual) Foundations of Life* (1882–84). His last important works are *The Justification of Good* (1894–97; 2nd ed. 1898), his ethics, and *Three Discourses* (which conclude with *The Legend of the Antichrist*, 1899–1900). He also began a translation of Plato’s dialogues. In 1896 S. secretly accepted the Catholic faith. He received the last sacraments on the estate of Princes S. and E. Trubetskoy, since there was no Catholic priest, from the local non-Catholic parish priest.
S. stands at the center of Russian philosophy. He was influenced by a wide variety of sources: Neoplatonism, Spinoza, idealism (Schelling, von Baader, but also Hegel), Böhme, Schopenhauer, E. von Hartmann, A. Comte, the Cabala, theosophy, etc., and was in contact with the most eminent Russians of his time (Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, K. Leontyev, and many others). He sought synthesis, both of faith and reason in an intuitive-mystical realism, and of the two main currents of Russian thought, Slavophilism and Westernism. He exerted a notable influence on the “Russian Renaissance” at the beginning of the 20th century and on the best Russian philosophers: S. and E. Trubetskoy, V. BEURON, S. Bulgakov, N. Berdyaev, P. Florensky, V. Ivanov, L. Karsavin, and others.
The great synthetic and universal ideas of S.’s thought are: the “all-unity” (*vseedinstvo*) of God and the cosmic and historical universe (in its various phases of creation, fall, redemption, and eschatology); the “God-Manhood” (*bogo-čelovečestvo*) of the Logos and of Sophia (Wisdom), of Christ and of the Church; the unity of “theosophy, theocracy, and theurgy”; the “universal Christian theocracy,” i.e., the kingdom of Christ on earth (which comprises the three principles of priesthood, kingship, and free prophecy: the “Trinitarian” principle). He later abandoned the idea of the earthly actualization of theocracy, without however renouncing the universality of his cultural, philosophical, and Christian-religious synthesis.
S. was a systematic spirit, whose theoretical speculations were grounded in intuitive-mystical experiences. Admirable is his intellectual journey from an anti-Roman Slavophile position to acceptance of the primacy of the Pope. He classically refuted Slavophilism. From a Catholic standpoint, however, his synthesis contains certain uncertainties: in the relationship between God and creature, the analogy of being, both uncreated and created, is neglected; the relation of God to the world resembles that between soul and body, leading S. close to pantheism. In attempting to deduce supernatural mysteries logically, such as that of the Holy Trinity (whose existence he supposes, moreover, as revealed), he indulges in a certain semi-rationalism. In his effort to affirm and appropriate all that is true in the various Christian confessions, and especially in wishing to be at once “Catholic and Orthodox,” S. sometimes expressed himself in terms of a confessional syncretism in which it is not sufficiently clear that the Catholic Church is the one true Church of Christ, remaining essentially universal even after the great separations of East and West.