The Socio-Ethical Ideal of Orthodoxy in Russian Religious Philosophy: a Conceptual Analysis

This article is devoted to a historical and conceptual analysis of the moral, socio-state ideal of Orthodoxy as it was conceptualized in Russian religious and philosophical thought from the 19th to the fi rst half of the 20th centuries. Drawing on the methodological principles of classical («Hegelian») dialectics as the essence of universal rational thought, the author demonstrates the logical process of the idea of the Triune God, i.e., the totality of the concept of the spiritual Absolute, within the sphere of the objective spirit–the socio-moral ideal of the Orthodox Christian state. The article conceptualizes the transition
from a rational, religious-metaphysical (within the framework of Soloviev’s concept of the metaphysics of all-unity) to a rational, i.e., logical-dialectical understanding of the ideal of conciliar, i.e., ecclesiastical-secular community and statehood, which largely determined the content of classical Russian religious and philosophical social thought as represented by its most prominent representatives: A.S. Khomyakov, I.V. Kireevsky, F.M. Dostoevsky, V.S. Solovyov, N.A. Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov.