Софиология

Individuals are motivated either out of sentiment or emotion, habit or tradition, convictions and beliefs, or rational calculation of interests. The latter two categories Weber considered rational and named goal-rational and value-rational motivations. The first two categories of habit and emotion according to Weber are irrational and more or less unconscious. Emotions and habit are not capable of building society, but only community.[517] According to Weber, in modern society the dominant types of social group action are value-rational or goal-rational actions that give rise to societyformation, not to community-formation.

Vladimir Solov’ëv and Sergei Bulgakov developed an Orthodox Christian social philosophy, or a Christian sociology that they named sophiology or the study of Sophia, the Wisdom of God. In essence, they opposed the rationalistic and individualistic or abstract view on society as an association of self-interest, or of self-chosen values, that Weber′s sociology developed. They also opposed the Christian duty of love for God and neighbor – or carltas/agap – that Lev Tolstoi developed, and that Weber used as an Ideal type to describe the essence of the Christian attitude to life. Finally, they opposed Weber′s acknowledgement that science cannot decide between good and evil with the notion of Divine wisdom (or Sophia) that can provide this knowledge to humankind.

2. a. Love-of-other or love-of-self as the essence of Christian social love: Solov’ëv versus Tolstoi

In Smysl′ llubvl, his famous philosophical-theological treatise on the meaning and essence of love, Solov’ëv reacted to the conception of love as duty, that he saw expressed in Lev Tolstoi′s Krecerova Sonata (1889) and Posleslovle k Krecerovol Sonate (1890).[518] In Smysl′ llubvl, Solov’ëv departed from the meaning of human sexual love or polovala llubov′, whereas Tolstoi was primarily concerned with the sinfulness of carnal love or plotskalallubov′. Solov’ëv′s essay started with the meaning of human love for biological and historical humanity, and in the end found its meaning in Divine-humanity or Bogochelovechestvo. Its smysl′ – that has the double sense of ′meaning′ and essential ′nature′ that reveals itself – is Sophla, the Wisdom of God. Solov’ëv did not mention Sophla in this essay, but referred to her as vechnala Zhenstvennost′ – the eternal Feminine – that he compared to Plato′s heavenly and earthly Aphrodite (SL, chapter 4.VII, p. 63).

Sophia, or the eternal Feminine, makes all human forms of love – including human polovala llubov′ or erotic love – meaningful. According to Solov′ ёч human erotic love is the highest bloom of human individuality. (SL, 2.I, p. 28) The meaning of human love is the justification and salvation of human individuality or personhood through the sacrifice of egoism (SL, 2.III, p. 32), or the transcendence of the self. Erotic love is the means to transcend the self and to become a more complete individual that can take part in the transcendent All-unity without losing its particularity. The individual cannot reach salvation individually, but only together with others in sobornost′, Tolstoi′s vision of salvation was a mystical union of the individual with an absolute God. In order to reach this salvation, the individual Christian had to live a worldly life of abstention, of rigid asceticism in every respect, of vegetarianism, of celibacy (even in marriage), of extreme pacifism, and of disciplined and preferably agrarian daily work. The individual Christian should not love himself and serve only himself, which is the essence of egoism, but should ′love God and neighbor′ that is the core of Christian altruism and self-sacrifice, according to Tolstoi. The ecclesiastical structure of the Church was not necessary to reach this salvation, nor so-called Christian marriage. Tolstoi′s explicit rejection of the sacrament of marriage in his Kreutzersonata shocked Russian and European society most.[519]