Metaphysical Sources of Radicalism and Nihilism in Russia

Abstract

This article is an attempt to deal with one of the eternal questions of Russian philosophy: the question of how the Russian idea is related to nihilism and how nihilism manifests itself in the Russian idea, and, on the other hand, to what extent the Russian idea is a Russian nihilism. A famous quote by Nikolai Berdyaev on the nihilism of the Russian people is the starting point for further discussion. Berdyaev states that Russians are nihilists, but this nihilism is understood as a moral reflection on culture and a rejection of the existing culture. The first part of the text is devoted to the meaning of nihilism in Russian thought, beginning with Chernyshevsky’s prosvetitel'stvo and Dostoyevsky, then going through Vekhi, and ending with selected representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance of the twentieth century. The second part of the article is an insight into the metaphysical source of nihilism – the existential apathy of being.