Ivan Aleksandrovitch Ilyin – Religion, Law, Personality

Sławomir Mazurek

The intellectual heritage of Ivan Aleksandrovitch Ilyin (1883–1954), one of the most interesting Russian religious thinkers of the XXth century, after his death remained almost forgotten during several decades. It was rediscovered and gained some popularity only in nineties, when his prognoses concerning the collapse of Soviet Union and refl ections on the possible form of government in post-Soviet Russia proved to be true and surprisingly topical. Ilyin was very controversial and provocative figure – a monarchist and counterrevolutionary, openly declaring support for the fascism, but also a defender of the law and the legal state who treated totalitarianism as the greatest political and spiritual danger in human history. The author of the paper tries to sum up Ilyin’s political philosophy, philosophy of history and religious ethics, explaining, where possible, their contradictions. He is especially interested in the relations between Ilyin’s moral thought and so called moral revolutionism, represented among others by Berdyaev, Fyodorov, Wysheslavtsev and Shestov. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that however Ilyin’s ethics has many affi  nities with moral revolutionism, he cannot be treated as a representative of this current in the Russian moral thought.

58s-mazurek

Keywords: Ilyin · philosophy of history · philosophy of law · totalitarianism · religious ethics · Russian philosophy

Sławomir Mazurek — Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Expert on Russian Philosophy; author of several books about so called Russian religious Renaissance, among others: Wątki katastroficzne w myśli rosyjskiej i polskiej (Catastrophical Currents in Russian and Polish Thought 1917–1950); Utopia i łaska. Idea rewolucji moralnej w rosyjskiej filozofii religijnej (The Utopia and The Grace. Idea of Moral Revolution in the Russian Religious Thought).   »  

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