Slavery and Freedom

Book excerpt: Berdyaev outlines his personal "philosophical journey" and describes the influences and experiences which brought him to his unique intellectual position. In Berdyaev's view, the only way of escape from the many forms of slavery--spiritual, economic, political--which shackle and improverish the human spirit lies in the fuller realization of personality, as he defines it. Nicolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev turned to religious views and played a large part in the renaissance of religious and philosophical thoughr in Russian intellectual life early in the century. In 1922 he and a number of other Russian intellectuals were expelled from the Soviet Union. His writings most often deal with the problem of freedom, and man's relationship to the world in the light of this problem.