Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/273

Rh the chief peculiarity of "Orthodox thinking" lies in this, that "it does not endeavour to transform individual concepts in order to bring them into harmony with the demands of faith, but aims at elevating the understanding to a level higher than that which this faculty commonly occupies; it endeavours to secure that the very source of apprehension, the very mode of thought, shall be sympathetically attuned to faith"

AVING endeavoured to make a brief sketch of Kirěevskii's slavophil philosophy of history and of religion. I will now venture a short critical discussion of that philosophy.

It is easy to grasp the distinction between Kirěevskii's earlier views and those which he subsequently formulated. We see that there had occurred a real change of tendency, and not a mere change of outlook upon certain points (as, for example, in his attitude towards the French revolution). It is true that in his first work Kirěevskii recognised religion to be the most important among social forces. As early as 1827 he condemned the "stupid liberalism" which had no respect for religion. In his second phase, however, religion, which was first conceived by him in the sense of Schelling, was considered in the historical form given to it by the Byzantine Russian church. Whereas Schelling desired to see the opposition between catholicism (Petrus) and Protestantism (Paulus) done away with in the Johannine church of the future, Kirěevskii found his ideal in the Russian church—though it must be admitted that Kirěevskii constructed an ideal Russian church for himself.

We can learn Kirěevskii's mentality and outlook from an enumeration of the philosophers by whom, in addition to the Greek teachers of the church, he was chieﬂy attracted. Besides Schelling and such men as the Schellingian Steffens,