The religious dimension of S.L. Frank’s philosophy: a Rus¬sian Fichtean in search of true Christianity

Abstract

An analysis of the pre-revolutionary works of S.L. Frank demonstrates that the Jewish religiosity instilled in him during childhood was subsequently transformed into a form of Gnostic Christianity under the influence of philosophical doctrines that developed this tradition (most notably those of J.G. Fichte, F.M. Dostoevsky, and V.S. Solovyov). In his works of 1905–1909, Frank explicitly admits that he follows Fichte, adopting as one of the foundations of his own philosophy Fichte's idea of true (Gnostic) Christianity. “God” in Frank’s views becomes a metaphor for the innermost essence of man, the disclosure of which makes man the creator of culture, which in turn acts as the highest and absolute value. The article demonstrates that in 1910–1914, Frank altered the main vector of his development: instead of Fichte, he began to draw more heavily upon Goethe and Hegel. However, the definitive formulation of Frank's philosophical system in his books The Object of Knowledge (1915) and Man’s Soul (1917) once again occurred under the determining influence of Fichte’s late doctrine. Expounding the history of the ontological argument—that is, the history of conceptions regarding the relation of our consciousness to the Absolute—in the appendix to The Object of Knowledge, Frank proclaims Fichte’s late doctrine to be the pinnacle of European philosophy and the most profound version of the tradition of mystical pantheism, which serves as the philo¬sophical rendition of Gnostic Christianity.