Nikolai Berdyaev and Inequality Philosophy

Ethan Gomez82 said:Honestly, he’s just another guy whining about his own fate. It’s human, sure, but you shouldn't take it all too seriously. ☕

Oh, come on now...
It isn't just whining. The man was running for his life from the Ohran or the NKVD. He was escaping a damp prison cell and the very real threat of death.

ruggeddriver21 said:Oh, come on now...
It isn't just whining. The man was running for his life from the Ohran or the NKVD. He was escaping a damp prison cell and the very real threat of death.

Whining...

Maybe they should actually crack open the Gulag Archipelago and then we'll see how much they'd care about holding onto their precious "principles."

The guy didn't just run—he and a bunch of intellectuals who wouldn't bow down to the Red terror were basically kicked out of "paradise."

Jacob Mitchell3 said:Has there ever actually been an aristocracy that wasn't a facade? What defines a "true" aristocracy? Which specific traits are required, who gets to decide those criteria, and by what standard are they selected?

Good question—definitely worth chewing on. According to Max Weber, history is basically just a revolving door for elites. One group rises out of the crowd, kicks the old elite into the trash, and takes their place. Carl Gustav Stroemm—someone who really knows how to read the room in the former states of the old empire—wrote a piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung arguing that all these supposed changes on the ground are totally superficial. The system changed, sure, but the people running it didn't. It’s the same players just wearing different jerseys—nothing actually moved the needle. As someone who was right there in the thick of things back then, I can't say there isn't a massive grain of truth to that.

But what actually makes a true aristocracy? I get what Berdjajev meant when he used the term. I don't think in the context of the book being discussed, he was questioning the definition of aristocracy—which doesn't make it a bad question, mind you—but rather he was starting from the fact that one elite, the aristocracy, was replaced by a new one: a gang of thugs from the underworld. They rode the wave of massive Russian ideas on one side (do yourself a favor and read his book *The Russian Idea*) and universal ideas born from the French Revolution on the other. They surfaced during the revolutionary chaos and grabbed power, essentially becoming the new elite in terms of who holds the reins. If you swap the word "aristocracy" for "elite," things become way clearer within the context of the book—though the question still hangs there: does a "true" aristocracy exist independently, and what defines its authority?

Because let's be real—even what becomes a legitimate aristocracy after centuries of existence usually starts out as a dirty, arrogant, stinking band of thieves. No doubt about it.

According to my sources, the roots of the aristocracy lie within those wealthy merchant and artisan families found in the earliest civilizations. I haven't actually sat down with this author's books yet, but based on the quotes I've seen, the aristocracy is basically just the top tier of the hierarchy—maybe an intellectual elite, for that matter. Since the whole idea of aristocracy relies on passing power down through bloodlines, while an elite doesn't necessarily have to, I think Joseph Murphy10 hit the nail on the head: you could swap out aristocracy for an elite class without losing the core meaning. Historically speaking, aristocracy came before the state was even a thing.

ruggeddriver21 said:Oh, come on now...
It isn't just whining. The man was running for his life from the Ohran or the NKVD. He was escaping a damp prison cell and the very real threat of death.

Back in 1922, he was being interrogated in prison by none other than Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the first Soviet secret police. According to Aleksandr Solženjicin, Berdjajev held his ground perfectly, laying out all the reasons why he just couldn't stomach the new Soviet regime.

Joseph Murphy10 said:Whining...

Maybe they should actually crack open the Gulag Archipelago and then we'll see how much they'd care about holding onto their precious "principles."

The guy didn't just run—he and a bunch of intellectuals who wouldn't bow down to the Red terror were basically kicked out of "paradise."

Yeah, he was basically tossed onto a "philosophical ship"... "Philosophical Ship": Why did Vladimir Lenin exile the Russian intellectuals?

Joseph Murphy10 said:Good question—definitely worth chewing on. According to Max Weber, history is basically just a revolving door for elites. One group rises out of the crowd, kicks the old elite into the trash, and takes their place. Carl Gustav Stroemm—someone who really knows how to read the room in the former states of the old empire—wrote a piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung arguing that all these supposed changes on the ground are totally superficial. The system changed, sure, but the people running it didn't. It’s the same players just wearing different jerseys—nothing actually moved the needle. As someone who was right there in the thick of things back then, I can't say there isn't a massive grain of truth to that.

But what actually makes a true aristocracy? I get what Berdjajev meant when he used the term. I don't think in the context of the book being discussed, he was questioning the definition of aristocracy—which doesn't make it a bad question, mind you—but rather he was starting from the fact that one elite, the aristocracy, was replaced by a new one: a gang of thugs from the underworld. They rode the wave of massive Russian ideas on one side (do yourself a favor and read his book *The Russian Idea*) and universal ideas born from the French Revolution on the other. They surfaced during the revolutionary chaos and grabbed power, essentially becoming the new elite in terms of who holds the reins. If you swap the word "aristocracy" for "elite," things become way clearer within the context of the book—though the question still hangs there: does a "true" aristocracy exist independently, and what defines its authority?

Because let's be real—even what becomes a legitimate aristocracy after centuries of existence usually starts out as a dirty, arrogant, stinking band of thieves. No doubt about it.

The question itself misses the mark because of the framework you're using.
"Truth" isn't something determined through sociology—like the circulation of elites—or perhaps through some metaphysical speculation.

There are several different layers from which one can examine this problem.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, you could argue that an aristocracy is defined simply by the fact that it rules. Nothing more.
Pinpointing their dominant characteristics is nearly impossible, much like trying to describe the essence of Andrej Plenković, Vili Beroš, Milan Bandić, or that guy Krešimir Beljak.
At most, you can reduce certain fundamental factors down to two things: a) force and b) cunning.

Right now, it seems as though force isn't exactly front and center. It appears this trend has been dominating since the days of Pareto’s analyses. This is how he frames it: "In order to prevent violence or resist it, the ruling class resorts to trickery, deception, and bribery—in short, rule shifts from lions to foxes."

According to his view, the dynamic works like this: "In most cases, those who rely on cunning become less suited for the application of force, and vice versa. Thus, a concentration in Class A of individuals most skilled in cunning leads to a concentration in Class B of individuals most skilled in the application of violence; and if this process continues for a long time, the equilibrium becomes unstable, and so on..."

Based on his concept of circulation, Strohm isn't exactly a subtle observer, because whenever there was war, there were violent upheavals. The only thing is that we haven't seen a total shift in the model yet; instead, we see a concentration of individuals skilled in cunning -> chaos increases (which is also artificial, consisting of maneuvers by those very same cunning rulers through various portals, media outlets, and servers) -> we haven't reached the actual pockets of violence (perhaps somewhere in rural Ohio, according to the novel *Gypsy*, though that's a stretch); it is unclear how much the concentration of violent individuals has grown, though certain signs pop up here and there; and it remains to be seen who will be the dissatisfied member of Class A—the class of cunning foxes—who will lead the raw materials of Class B; or perhaps the concentrations on both sides aren't quite settled yet.

Around the tail end of the 5th century BCE, a tradition began taking shape that we usually attribute to Mo Tia;

Everything in existence is ultimately arranged to serve human interests.

Humans possess spirit, life, and perception, topped off with an innate sense of justice; that’s what makes us the most noble creatures on Earth. – Hs¨un Tzu from the 3rd century BCE

Back in the 4th century BCE, Aristotle laid out his famous hierarchy of living things, where he argued the human soul sits comfortably above those of plants and animals because we carry that unique mix of rational, vegetative, and sensory capacities.

Then you have Mencius explaining back in the 1st century CE how humanity belongs to an entirely different order than the rest of the animal kingdom. We are infused with life, sure, but in a way that is fundamentally distinct from the vast majority of other living beings.

Now, even though we share those basic drives seen in all creatures—self-interest, the survival instinct, and at best, a fuzzy sense of the transcendent—we also have our own incredible capacity for elevating our consciousness.

The big question for Mencius really boils down to human nature; is our core essence inherently good, bad, malicious, or just neutral? Compassion is baked into who we are... yet things like shame, hatred, modesty, the desire to please others, and discrimination are the traits that define us.

Mencius also points out something fascinating;
The human body has 12 major joints to mirror the 12 months of the year. It has 366 smaller joints because it was believed a year consists of 366 days. Inside the womb, a person has five organs to match the five elemental forces in the universe. Our eyes and ears correspond to the Sun and the Moon, our veins to rivers, our breath to the wind, and our hair to the stars. Even the roundness of the head mirrors the shape of the heavens, and our shifts between sorrow and joy reflect the cosmic balance of yin and yang.

You can find these same perspectives tucked away in the Greco-Roman worlds, ideas that later shaped the very foundation of Western philosophy.

I was looking up information on Aleksandr Berdjajev, and this was the first thing that popped up.

It is truly striking how everyone seems to find something personal in Berdjajev’s work; it is as if he articulates the thoughts and feelings of every individual, which suggests his ideas possess a universal, human quality. He is someone who defies easy categorization or classification, despite our relentless urge to label everything we encounter.
(I feel the same way 😎)

For instance, in the book I am currently reading, "fate of man in the modern world" (published in 1923), I see that he held Charles Dickens in high regard. He understood that general pessimism and nihilism are not inherently good. He condemned both fascism and communism, though he noted that "in principle, nationalism and racism are worse than communism," and suggested that the "communist revolution would likely have deeply surprised Karl Marx, because it completely contradicts his teachings, even refuting them entirely." He also criticized capitalism and liberal democracy on several occasions, particularly economic inequality, because his heart was with the plight of the working class. Ultimately, he called for true Freedom—not just freedom of action, but the freedom of being.

Let's break this down:
He praised Dickens during a discussion regarding the dehumanization of man (a theme he examined across all spheres) within the novel; essentially, he wasn't critiquing the modern novel itself, but rather the era that the novel faithfully reflects:
"Compare the modern novel to Dickens. The path taken since then is disappointing, almost as if a catastrophe has occurred. In Dickens, there is a rich and diverse human world, a realm of human characters and archetypes, driven by an immense creative fantasy. The human element is preserved; individuals possess distinct personalities, even when they are ugly or ridiculous. .... Today, finding anything similar is nearly impossible. However, the modern novel holds a profound truth about what is happening to humanity."

He identified the Great War as the primary cause of human fragmentation and atomization; he argues that war "horribly devalued human life. After the war, man remains mobilized; he continues to fulfill military obligations, cast out into society, into the state, into nationality, into class, into an objectified world; he can no longer remain within himself, within his inner existence, to define his relationship to the world and others from the inside..."
Once released (after the war), the demons of hatred and violence continue to haunt the world. But we will see that in current processes (the dehumanization and brutalization of the world), war isn't the only major player; there is a much more enduring force with almost cosmic significance: technology and the mechanization of life. Dehumanization moves in two directions—toward naturalism and toward technicism. Man either submits to cosmic forces or to technical civilization. Technical civilization demands that man fulfill specific functions, but my interest lies in the man himself... it isn't about man disappearing into nature, but rather man's adaptation to the machine".

He understood Friedrich Nietzsche, and lamented how his thought had been distorted to serve Nazi ideology:
"The influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on fascism is undeniable—on the modern apotheosis of powerful leaders, on the cultivation of a coarse type of youth stripped of compassion. Nietzsche himself, a solitary aristocratic thinker, would likely turn away in horror from the social consequences of his own preaching . Nietzsche had no affinity for the idea of pan-Germanism; he was not a German nationalist and would probably feel disgust toward the modern plebeian spirit that lacks all nobility..."

Berdjajev maintains that freedom is only possible within the spirit—indeed, he suggests that freedom *is* the spirit itself. He critiques all formal social freedoms as being hollow, noting that "economic freedom, in particular, has proven to be a mockery of true human freedom; the capitalist world is a negation of all brotherhood, community, and human unity. It is a dog-eat-dog world. Life in a capitalist society is a predatory existence."

His empathy for the "earthly struggle":
"The fact that a process of socialization and nationalization of property and the economy is developing (following the war) is not the issue; that is fundamentally necessary and just." The real issue here is the ongoing socialization and nationalization of the individual—the systematic molding of the human soul...

Freedom shouldn't be viewed as a social achievement, but rather as an essence of the spirit and one's private, inner life:
"Most people fail to grasp that the core of the problem lies in how a human being defends and asserts their own freedom against the overreach of society and the state instead of obsessing over how to build a social or political structure that supposedly grants such freedom. True freedom is spiritual, not social; it is defined by its roots in the realm of the spirit, not by its connection to the social world. ....

When we proclaimed the rights of man and citizen, what we actually did was proclaim the rights of the citizen—as a member of a community and a state—rather than the rights of the human being as a whole, as a free spirit.
The concept of the 'citizen' has effectively smothered the human being as a free spirit belonging to a different order of existence. Simultaneously, it ignored the human being as a producer or a worker; there was no true recognition of every individual's right to a dignified existence and meaningful labor. ....

A person exists within two dimensions. This means there isn't just freedom *within* society, but freedom *in opposition* to society—a type of freedom that finds its origin nowhere to be found in the social sphere. The freedom of the spirit does not depend on any social organization. Freedom is the boundary where the power of society over the individual, and the state over the person, must stop. It is a limit established by the fact that humans belong to another dimension entirely: the kingdom of the spirit.

It feels like Berdjajev is cutting from the same cloth as those traditionalists—you know, guys like György Hamvas—it seems like most of those Russian thinkers share this vibe unless they happen to be Marxists, right?

I mean, if you look at them closely, they’ve all got this deep-seated skepticism toward Western humanism and pure materialism, but don't get it twisted—they aren't exactly hugging the institutional church either. They tend to see the state as something to sidestep rather than embrace, and they view freedom as this deeply personal thing achieved through one's own spiritual growth. It’s like, I see Berdjajev arguing that true freedom is actually aristocratic rather than democratic, mostly because the average person doesn't even care about it—or maybe there just isn't an education system out there capable of making people truly free, so the pursuit of liberty becomes this niche longing for a few exceptional individuals instead of the masses, you know?

So... I suppose this is that famous, now largely forgotten (and frankly, despised) "Slavic spirit"?
It quietly recognizes everything that obstructs and dismantles it, remaining true to itself by refusing to pivot toward overt action—be it rebellion or revolution. Instead, it maintains its freedom precisely by simply being what it is: a spirit. Instinctively, the spirit understands that it can only remain infinite and free if it refuses to overstep its own boundaries—if it doesn't push itself too hard into the material world or get entangled in the fleeting, superficial aspects of existence in any binding way.

This work matters because it serves as proof that the same fundamental processes are always at play globally: the eternal struggle between true freedom (the spirit) and worldly power.