«Solovyov is significant enough to withstand a truthful and critical assessment»: Simon Frank's paper on Vladimir Solovyov (1925)

In: Solovʹëvskie issledovanija, Heft 4, S. 83-99

Abstract

The paper focuses on Simon Frank's relation to Vladimir Solovyov's religious and philosophical ideas. The use of historical, critical, and textual research methods enables to analise possible influence of those ideas on Frank in different periods of his creative biography. It is stated that despite an apparent fundamental difference in perception of Solovyov's philosophy by the "early" and "late" Frank, in fact, his changing attitude to Slovyov was not so radical. The article also presents here an archival manuscript - by Simon Frank's report on Vladimir Solovyov - that has not been known before. The text, having been taken into account of other sources, is attributed as the paper read on November 15, 1925 in Berlin. On the basis of analytical study of this text, as well as the paper "Die russische Weltanschauung" published in 1926, it is concluded that Frank almost invariably kept his critical position towards a number of certain features of Solovyov's philosophical conception, and towards his abstract rationalism in particular. However, in the mid-1920s, and not only in his latest works, Frank defined Soloviev's worldview - as well as his own – as panentheism and justification of the idea of Divine humanity.