Self-Knowledge
Berdyaev's 1949 autobiography 'Samopoznanie' — an essay in philosophical self-knowledge
Tradition: Russian religious philosophy / personalist existentialism / philosophical autobiography
Berdyaev's 1949 posthumous 'Self-Knowledge' — philosophical autobiography of one of the major twentieth-century Russian religious thinkers
Published posthumously in 1949 in Paris (Berdyaev died in March 1948) as 'Samopoznanie: Opyt filosofskoi avtobiografii' (Self-Knowledge: An Essay in Philosophical Autobiography), 'Self-Knowledge' is Berdyaev's philosophical autobiography. Composed across the 1940s in his Clamart home outside Paris, the book traces his Kievan-aristocratic origins (Berdyaev was born in 1874 into a noble Russian family near Kiev), his university days at Kiev (where he was expelled in 1898 for Marxist socialist activity), his early Marxist period and the gradual movement toward religious-philosophical concerns (the 'Vekhi' [Landmarks] symposium of 1909 was his decisive break with the Russian socialist intelligentsia), his arrest by the Soviet Cheka in 1922 and the famous expulsion on the 'philosophers' ship' (Berdyaev was among 160 prominent Russian intellectuals deported by Lenin's government in autumn 1922), his interwar Berlin and then Parisian-Orthodox-philosophical émigré life (founding the YMCA-Press, editing the journal 'Put' / Way, hosting the philosophical-religious salon at Clamart that included Mikhail Gershenson, Lev Shestov, Sergei Bulgakov, and others), and his late personalist-existential philosophy. The book is one of the major twentieth-century philosophical autobiographies — comparable to Augustine's Confessions in genre and to Russell's Autobiography in literary register, but distinctive for its Russian-Orthodox-religious framework and its position within the Russian émigré-philosophical tradition. Berdyaev wrote the book partly to clarify the relations among his many philosophical works and partly to articulate the personal-experiential ground from which his philosophy had emerged.
Author
Editions cited
- Samopoznanie: Opyt filosofskoi avtobiografii (YMCA-Press, Paris, 1949)
- English trans. Katharine Lampert, Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (Geoffrey Bles, London, 1950; reissued Macmillan, 1951)
- Modern Russian editions in Sobranie sochinenii (Nauka, Leningrad, 1991-)
- Critical context: Donald A. Lowrie, Rebellious Prophet: A Life of Nicolai Berdyaev (Harper, 1960); Olivier Clément, Berdyaev: Un philosophe russe en France (Desclée de Brouwer, 1991)
School Embodiments
Philosophical autobiography of major Russian religious thinker.
"My philosophical-spiritual journey." (Self-Knowledge, preface)
Personalist-existentialist autobiographical method.
"The person disclosed in autobiographical reflection." (Self-Knowledge, throughout)
Strong mystical-religious register.
"The mystical experiences that shaped my philosophy." (Self-Knowledge)
Humanist-philosophical reflection on selfhood.
"Self-knowledge as the philosophical project." (Self-Knowledge, title)
Christian-existentialist methodology.
"Existence as the bearer of philosophical truth." (Self-Knowledge)
Internal Tensions
Berdyaev's posthumous philosophical autobiography; one of the major twentieth-century philosophical autobiographies in the Russian-Orthodox tradition. Continuously read in Russian religious-philosophical scholarship and in the broader literature on the Russian intelligentsia's twentieth-century experience; the chapters on the 1922 'philosophers' ship' have become standard historical references.
I. Time
1940s composition; 1949 posthumous publication. Berdyaev died in March 1948 at his desk in Clamart; the book was published the following year.
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II. Space
Clamart, Paris — Berdyaev's permanent émigré residence from 1924 until his 1948 death. The intellectual-cultural space is the Russian-Orthodox philosophical émigré community in inter-war and post-war France.
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III. Matter
Posthumous philosophical autobiography (~370 pages in Lampert's English translation). Form is essayistic-philosophical-narrative: not strict chronological autobiography but philosophical reflection on the experiences that shaped his philosophical positions.
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IV. Observer
Posthumous Berdyaev. The observer-philosopher is the seventy-something émigré recapitulating a long life of philosophical-political-religious change.
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V. Energy
Late-autobiographical-philosophical energies. The book combines personal narrative, philosophical exposition, and Russian-Orthodox spiritual reflection in distinctive proportions.
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VI. Information
Single autobiographical volume. The chapters are thematic (childhood, university, Marxist period, religious turn, 1922 expulsion, Parisian exile, philosophical-political positions) rather than strictly chronological.
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Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Self-Knowledge resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.