Solovyov Vladimir (1853–1900), Russian philosopher, theologian, essayist, and poet. In addition to major treatises and dialogues in speculative philosophy, Solovyov wrote sensitive literary criticism and influential essays on current social, political, and ecclesiastical questions. His serious verse is subtle and delicate; his light verse is rich in comic invention.
The mystical image of the ‘Divine Sophia,’ which Solovyov articulated in theoretical concepts as well as poetic symbols, powerfully influenced the Russian symbolist poets of the early twentieth century. His stress on the human role in the ‘divine-human process’ that creates both cosmic and historical being led to charges of heresy from Russian Orthodox traditionalists. Solovyov’s rationalistic ‘justification of the good’ in history, society, and individual life was inspired by Plato, Spinoza, and especially Hegel. However, at the end of his life Solovyov offered (in Three Conversations on War, Progress, and the End of History, 1900) a contrasting apocalyptic vision of historical and cosmic disaster, including the appearance, in the twenty-first century, of the Antichrist.
In ethics, social philosophy, philosophy of history, and theory of culture, Solovyov was both a vigorous ecumenist and a ‘good European’ who affirmed the intrinsic value of both the ‘individual human person’ (Russian lichnost’) and the ‘individual nation or people’ (narodnost’), but he decisively repudiated the perversions of these values in egoism and nationalism, respectively. He contrasted the fruits of English narodnost’ – the works of Shakespeare and Byron, Berkeley and Newton – with the fruits of English nationalism – the repressive and destructive expansion of the British Empire. In opposing ethnic, national, and religious exclusiveness and self-centeredness, Solovyov also, and quite consistently, opposed the growing xenophobia and anti- Semitism of his own time.
Since 1988 long-suppressed works by and about Solovyov have been widely republished in Russia, and fresh interpretations of his philosophy and theology have begun to appear.
See also RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY. G.L.K.