Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin

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Ivan Ilyin ( Russian Иван Александрович Ильин ; born March 28 . Jul / 9. April  1883 greg. In Moscow , † 21st December 1954 in Zollikon near Zurich ) was a Russian philosopher, writer and publicist. He was an opponent of the Bolsheviks , a supporter of the White Army , a conservative monarchist and a Slavophile . His views and thoughts on the organization of society in Russia had a great influence on other Russian writers and intellectuals of the 20th century, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn .

Ivan Ilyin

Life

Ivan Ilyin came from an aristocratic family from Moscow, some of whose roots were in the Rurikid dynasty. In 1906 he completed a law degree at the Imperial Moscow University (today Lomonosov University ) and stayed there as an employee. His teacher was the philosopher and lawyer Pavel Novgorodzew (1866-1924), who also held the position of director of the Moscow Trade Institute and was a member of the first State Duma . Politically, Ilyin first oriented himself towards the Social Revolutionaries , then gave preference to the Constitutional Democratic Party .

In 1909 he became a private lecturer at the law faculty. In 1918 he wrote a dissertation on " Hegel's philosophy as a textbook on the essence of God and man", after which he became professor of law. He was arrested several times for "anti-communist" activity and even sentenced to death. Ultimately, however, in 1922 he was banished from Russia along with 160 other thinkers on the “ Philosophers Ship ”.

He arrived in Stettin on September 26, 1922 and one year later moved to Berlin to live with Nikolai Berdjajew , who had founded an "Academy of Philosophy of Religion", where Ilyin was a professor at the "Russian Science Institute" until 1934. During this time he became one of the main ideologues of the White Movement abroad .

Between 1927 and 1930 he was editor and publisher of the magazine "Russian Bell" ( Русский колокол ). In 1934 he was arrested by the National Socialists, but was ransomed by Sergei Rachmaninov and moved to Geneva in 1938 . There he continued his journalistic work until the end of his life.

Ilyin belonged to the philosophical direction of transcendentalism . His main work consisted in interpreting the works of Hegel . From his studies, he first published works on the field of legal philosophy and political ethics. But early on he devoted himself to politics. In 1915, for example, he published books on Russia's participation in the First World War . In the same year he was with Michail Gernet (1874–1953), I. Novizki and V. Ustinow a comprehensive study on "Fundamentals of Law".

His main theses in the philosophical views consisted in the knowledge of the spiritual and objective sense of the phenomena. In this he also saw mainly the essence of the soul. His studies on Hegel are counted among the most important works on the investigation of dialectical consciousness. He tried, for example, to connect the “spiritual impulses” described by Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) with Hegel's interpretation of phenomenology .

In his works it can be proven that he was under the influence of the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler . In his work “On the Form of State”, in view of the political development and his status, he pleaded for “a national, patriotic, by no means totalitarian, but authoritarian - at the same time educational and awakening - dictatorship”. He also saw major problems for Russia in relations with the Ukraine and the peoples of the Caucasus .

The teachings of Ilyin, insofar as they concern an ideology about the present state of Russia, have gained increasing importance in the Russian leadership.

Ilyin today

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Ilyin was largely unknown in the Soviet Union because state censorship did not allow his works into the country. In post-Soviet Russia, Ilyin was not immediately remembered. His fame only grew slowly, until in October 2005 one of his admirers, the director Nikita Michalkow, organized the transfer of his remains from Zollikon to Moscow and his burial in the Donskoy monastery , as Ilyin had requested in his will. This event made his name known to larger circles. In the same year several volumes of his works were published and a film "Ilyin's Testament" was made. Ilyin's reputation is also growing among the supporters of the Russian Orthodox Church .

Russian President Vladimir Putin invokes Ilyin for his specifically Russian social philosophy, which is based on religious values.

Works

Ilyin's signature
World before the abyss . 1931

Ivan Ilyin wrote over 50 books and brochures and hundreds of articles in Russian, German and other European languages. Almost all of his works had a political, social or religious character and related to Russia. Among the best known is his book “The Concepts of Monarchy and Republic”, his series of articles “From Russia to the Future” and the book “Our Tasks” published in 1956 with an extensive collection of articles from the pen of Ilyin between 1948 and 1954.

Note: The titles have been translated into German. Writings that (also) appeared in German are marked.

  • The concepts of law and violence - an attempt at a methodological analysis , Moscow 1910
  • The idea of ​​personality in Stirner's teaching . In: Voprosy filosofii i psichologii, XXII / I, 1911, pp. 55-93
  • The Crisis of the Idea of ​​the Subject in the Science Doctrine of the Elderly Fichte , Moscow 1912
  • Fichte's philosophy as a contemporary religion , Moscow 1914
  • The basic moral contradiction of the war , Moscow 1915
  • The Spiritual Meaning of War - War and Culture , Moscow 1915
  • Basics of law with others, Moscow 1915
  • Doctrine of God , Moscow 1918
  • Doctrine of Man , Moscow 1918 (both works were abbreviated in 1946 in Bern in German with the title Hegel's Philosophy as Contemplative Doctrine of God )
  • The religious sense of philosophy , Paris 1925
  • Home and us , Berlin 1925
  • On violent resistance to evil , Berlin 1925; German first translation: Adorján Kovács (ed.), Edition Hagia Sophia, Wachtendonk 2018, ISBN 978-3-96321-005-1
  • 1930: world before the abyss. Politics, economy and culture in the communist state. According to authentic sources. A compilation of 12 authors. Cover design: German von Schmidt. Preface 1930 by Freiherr W. von Wrangel. Eckart-Verlag, Berlin-Steglitz 1930.
  • Poison, Spirit and Essence of Bolshevism (German) Geneva 1931
  • About Russia - Three Speeches , Sofia 1934
  • The Basics of the Beautiful - On Perfection in Art , Riga 1937
  • Pushkin's prophetic call , Riga 1937
  • The path of spiritual renewal , Belgrade 1937
  • The foundations of the struggle for a national Russia , Narva 1938
  • I look into life (German) Berlin 1938
  • The eternal foundations of life (German) Zurich 1939
  • The lost heart: a book of silent reflections (German) Haupt, Bern 1943
  • Nature and character of Russian culture (German) Zurich 1942, Affoltern am Albis 1944; 2017 and 2018 (new editions)
  • View into the distance , (German) Zurich 1945
  • About fascism , 1948
  • The axioms of religious experience , Paris 1953
  • On the essence of legal consciousness , Munich 1956
  • Our tasks - article from 1948 to 1954 , Paris 1956
  • The way to evidence , Munich 1957
  • The Singing Heart - A Book of Still Looking , Munich 1958
  • On darkness and brightening - an art criticism , Munich 1959

literature

  • Helmut Dahm: Basic features of Russian thought. Personalities and testimonies from the 19th and 20th centuries. Berchmans, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-87056-012-6 ( Science and Present Collection ).
  • Felix Philipp Ingold , power vertical . FAZ of March 27, 2007.
  • Dirk Budde: Ivan A. Illinois - On the nature of orthodoxy . in: Daniel Führing (ed.): Against the crisis of time. Portrait of conservative thinkers . Ares-Verlag, Graz 2013 ISBN 978-3-902732-21-7 pp. 65–80.
  • Wolfgang Offermanns: Man, become essential! The life's work of the Russian religious thinker Ivan Ilyin for the renewal of the spiritual foundations of humanity. Preface by Prof. Adorján Kovács. Edition Hagia Sophia, Wachtendonk 2018, ISBN 978-3-96321-009-9 .

Web links

Commons : Ivan Ilyin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Berlinskij Chronik records about 50 lecture activities of the man in Berlin over the years. The first lecture dates back to January 8, 1922. Accordingly, the above date would be “26. September “wrong, unless he had traveled to Berlin from Russia. online, sorting "Il'in", or January 22, 1922
  2. ↑ cf. on this Timothy Snyder's lecture “Ukraine and Russia in a Fracturing Europe” from May 3, 2016 on YouTube
  3. ^ Ulrich M. Schmid : Putin's Philisoph from Zollikon . Review, in: NZZ, May 19, 2018, p. 23
personal data
SURNAME Ilyin, Ivan Alexandrovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ильин, Иван Александрович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian philosopher, writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1954
Place of death Zollikon