Why Did Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov Believe that Russia Will Unite All Humanity?
His was a liberalism in the broadest sense, because he truly fought for freedom of conscience, for freedom of religion and speech, and for the rights that belong to the human person. He opposed the death penalty and was against overt and gross forms of inequality.
His philosophy attempted to combine Christianity and public service. We cannot find another figure who so combined a liberal social temperament – again, in the broadest sense of the word ‘liberal’ -- with Christian faith.
All of this makes him the number one philosopher in Russia.
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The Rise of ‘Woke’ Foreign Policy
How did we arrive at a point where our governing and media elites insist (and, frighteningly, actually believe) that war is preferable to peace and that diplomacy and negotiations are the equivalent of treason? Put another way, how did we get to the point where US foreign policy is no longer principally concerned with traditional concepts of security but is instead embarked on a global crusade to spread whatever the political and financial and technological elites deem to be ‘progressive values’?
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To Understand Itself, Russia Needs Knowledge, Not Myths
… In the conditions of the information age, a time of replacing realities with illusions, Russia seems to be frozen in the past, still piously relying on the Tsar-father, or some other firm hand of the supreme power, all the while trying unsuccessfully to regain its former greatness, its lost possessions and global influence.
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What is Modernity? (What’s the Cost of a Ticket to Get There; Why Were We Kicked Out of It; and Can We Find an Import Substitute?)
… When the Elder Filofey, the unrecognized forerunner of Nikita Khrushchev, proclaimed the slogan: “We will catch up and overtake Rome, both the first Rome and the second one,” he did not yet know that he was defining for us a task that would keep us occupied for the next six hundred years, a task we still haven’t coped with. There is always a lot of talk about the Russian curse of playing “catch’ up modernization,” but nobody has explained who is catching up with whom, what kind of race this is, to where, and what prizes the winners will get.
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The Historical Irony and Tragedy of American Revolutionism
… America’s ‘victory’ in the Cold War and America’s status as the ‘world’s lone superpower’ opened up seemingly unlimited political possibilities for ‘promoting democracy.’ Now America was faced with a decision similar to the one Russian revolutionaries had faced a century prior. Should the revolution in other countries be allowed to develop ‘spontaneously’ and from within, or should it be pushed forward from without whenever necessary and by force?
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“The Counteroffensive” by Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum
… The Goldberg-Applebaum piece then is illustrative for what it leaves out. We’re told, via Zelensky, that the Russians are such savages that they even stoop to steal urinals on their way out of town. And that is an illustrative vignette for a magazine feature, no question about it. But why is there, in this “big think” piece, which comes adorned with cover art by U2’s Bono, no mention of the root causes of the war?
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