Slavery and Freedom: An Essay in Personalist Metaphysics

Description

Newly translated from Russian (2026). Nikolai Berdyaev examines the freedom and dignity of the human person and the spiritual, social, and political forms of enslavement that constrain it.

Table of contents 29 entries

Slavery and Freedom
1. In Place of a Preface. / On the Contradictions in My Thought
2. Chapter I
  1. 1. Personhood
  2. 2. Master, Slave, and the Free Person
3. Chapter II
  1. 1. Being and Freedom. Human Slavery to Being
  2. 2. God and Freedom. Human Slavery to God
  3. 3. Nature and Freedom. Cosmic Seduction and Human Slavery to Nature
  4. 4. Society and Freedom. Social Seduction and Human Slavery to Society
  5. 5. Civilization and Freedom. Human Slavery to Civilization and the Seduction of Cultural Values
  6. 6. Human Slavery to Oneself and the Seduction of Individualism
4. Chapter III
  1. 1
    1. a) The Seduction of the Kingdom. The Twofold Image of the State
    2. b) The Seduction of War and Human Slavery to War
    3. c) The Seduction and Slavery of Nationalism. The People and the Nation
    4. d) The Seduction and Slavery of Aristocratism. The Twofold Image of Aristocratism
    5. e) The Seduction of the Bourgeois Spirit. Slavery to Property and Money
  2. 2
    1. a) The Seduction and Slavery of Revolution. The Twofold Image of Revolution
    2. b) The Seduction and Slavery of Collectivism. The Temptation of Utopias. The Twofold Image of Socialism
  3. 3
    1. a) Erotic Seduction and Slavery. Sex, Personhood, and Freedom
    2. b) Aesthetic Seduction and Slavery. Beauty, Art, and Nature
5. Chapter IV
  1. 1. Human Spiritual Liberation. Victory over Fear and Death
  2. 2. The Seduction and Slavery of History. Two Understandings of the End of History. Active and Creative Eschatologism
6. Notes