Nicholas Berdyaev argued that Russian Nihilism was traceable to Orthodoxy: “if could appear only in a soul which was cast in an Orthodox mold. It was Orthodox asceticism turned inside out, and asceticism without Grace. At the base of Russian Nihilism, when grasped in its purity and depth, lies the Orthodox rejection of the world, its sense of the truth that ‘the whole world lieth in wickedness,’ the acknowledgement of the sinfulness of all riches and luxury, of all creative profusion in art and thought . . . . Nihilism considers a sinful luxury not only art, metaphysics, and spiritual values, but religion also.”
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…
The Possibility of Possibility
"Might could” is a Southern expression meaning “maybe I could” or “I might be able to,” conveying…
The False Promise of No Contact
Around the time nineteen-year-old Alice began cutting ties with her family, she announced on social media that…
