SOLOVIEV, VLADIMIR S

SOLOVIEV, VLADIMIR S., Russian philosopher, theologian (1853–1900). Vladimir was the son of an eminent Russian historian who wrote The History of Russia in twenty-nine volumes. His career primarily involved writing, after he lectured briefly in Moscow on philosophy and held similar positions in St. Petersburg through 1882. This part of his early philosophical career was spent as a Slavophile and as a close friend of Dostoevsky (qq.v.). But his thinking soon evolved along ecumenical lines, desiring the unity of East and West in Russia through negotiation with the Roman Catholic Church (q.v.)-an evolution that separated him from the Slavophiles.

He never returned to professorial life, possibly because the topics of Russia’s national politics and questions regarding the Russian Church could not be adequately discussed there. His early interest in Russian poetry and folklore, German philosophy, nature myths, and ecstatic visions shaped his theological and philosophical system, which is considered uniquely “Russian”: Pantheism, romanticism, and gnosticism (q.v.) are foundational to his system, as are his visions of what he thought was the Wisdom of God (q.v.) and world soul, the “Divine Sophia”-the Eternal and Perfect Feminine.

In 1889 Soloviev published La Russie et l’Eglise Universelle in Paris in which he not only promoted the mystical unity of the Roman and Orthodox Churches, but pronounced in favor of Roman Catholicism because of its creation of a “super-state” organization. After the publication of this book, he became disinterested in Church problems and did not believe the reunion of East and West possible. It was rumored that he became Roman Catholic, especially when he was communed once (1896) by Fr. Nicholas Tolstoy, who had become Roman Catholic but shared Soloviev’s teaching of the mystical unity of East and West. Soloviev always considered himself faithful to the Orthodox Church in spite of his idiosyncratic behavior. He seems to have desired to preserve the characteristics of East and West in any case, reading confessions of faith that were technically contrary to both, e.g., reading aloud the decisions of the Council of Trent followed by the statement that the Eastern Orthodox Church is the true Catholic Church.

Soloviev wrote more than a dozen principal philosophical volumes and others on political-philosophical questions. His works were especially influential on the return of the Russian intelligentsia to the Orthodox Church, both before and after the Revolution. His sophiology was foundational for theologians like Sergius Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky (qq.v.), though not popular or subscribed to extensively thereafter. One of the common misestimations of Soloviev made by non-Russians is a lack of serious consideration of his poetry-some of which records the mystical experiences foundational to his corpus.

Various students of Soloviev have divided his career and philosophical emphases into three stages. The first was Christian theosophy in which he anticipated Sophia would be incarnate in the world. The second was theocracy in which he hoped Christian politics would create a just state and society. The third was theurgy in which he tried to create a new life corresponding to the Divine Truth through mystical art. His last great work, Three Conversations, gives up all utopianism and refers philosophical problems to resolution at the end of time-eschatology.