Reconsidering Karsavin’s criticism of Fedorov’s thought in On Personhood: thanatology, Christology, and the theory of personality

Abstract

In this article, I examine Lev Karsavin’s understanding of, and reasons for, his harsh criticism of Nikolai Fedorov’s thought. In On Personhood, Karsavin both indirectly references and directly critiques Fedorov. At the end of section 13, Karsavin uses the Fedorovian term smertobozhnichestvo, having understood that Fedorov and his followers sought victory over death as a departure from creatural temporality. Moreover, his quote from Goethe: “O moment, stay!” corresponds to Fedorov’s frequent use of the same expression. However, these two philosophers examined Christ’s life from different perspectives. Karsavin followed the entire course of Christ’s life, focusing on His Suffering and Death, because he believes that True Life is attainable only through participation in His True Death. Fedorov reduced the significance of Christ’s life to the resurrection. He viewed Christ’s earthly life as merely the beginning of the task of resurrection, which he believed has continued throughout human history. Therefore, in the Philosophy of Common Task, Karsavin could not find a foundation for his idea of “True Life through True Death.” Nevertheless, through a careful comparison, this paper also shows that Karsavin and Fedorov formulated similar philosophical systems of all- or multi-unity: Karsavin unfolded his intuition of the all-unity of creation and achieved mutual relations between concrete personhoods. Fedorov focused on concrete resurrecting acts between “I” and “another I,” and developed them into the multi-unity of humankind.