It was last year, when the name of Ivan Ilyin, has become known as the “President Putin’s main philosopher”. Ivan Ilyin was precisely a model of “right” philosophical thought, a monarchist who categorically did not accept the Bolshevik coup. He wrote and spoke excellent German, but for world philosophy he would have remained one of the many researchers of Hegel’s philosophy, if in 2018 the American historian Timothy Snyder had not published the book “The Road to Unfreedom”, where he studied the influence of the philosopher on President Putin’s worldview. Answering a question about the thinkers important to him, President Putin named Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev: “These are people who thought about Russia, thought about its future,” he explained his choice. “I read Ilyin, I still read it,” the President told at the meeting of the Valdai Club. “I have a book on the shelf, and from time to time I take it off and read it”.[1]
Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin was born on March 28, 1883 in Moscow into a large noble family. Father Alexander Ivanovich Ilyin – provincial secretary, sworn attorney of the district of the Moscow Court of Justice. Mother – Ekaterina Yulievna Schweikert, a German by nationality who converted to Orthodoxy.
Parents, religious and educated people, sought to give their children a good upbringing and stood up for their education. All the sons of the Ilyins received an excellent education in law, following in the footsteps of their father.
While studying law, Ivan became interested in philosophy. Gradually, the hobby grew into a deep interest. Knowledge of languages gave the student access to the works of the great thinkers Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Schelling, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but most of all the young man was imbued with the teachings of Hegel. Proximity to the ideas of the German philosopher Ilyin will carry through his whole life; it will become the basis for creating the most outstanding works of the publicist. Ilyin’s teachers were prominent educators-philosophers: Evgeny Trubetskoy, Pavel Novgorodtsev, who, in addition to the high mental abilities, noted his incredible performance.
Analyzing society and individual, Ilyin claims that the main vice is “split”, in contrasting the mind with the heart, the mind with the feeling. According to Ilyin, the basis of the neglect with which modern humanity treats the “heart” is the idea of a person as a thing among things and as a body among bodies. However, “thinking without a heart” is ultimately relativistic, machine-like and cynical. For him, spiritually “split” person is an unhappy one.
Here are some of Ilyin’s thoughts on several concepts related to his philosophy.[2]
On Monarchy
Ilyin was a supporter of the monarchical principle all his life. “The monarch is by no means opposed to the people, but lives in the heart and in the will of each of his nationals; the monarchy does not go against the fair equality of people”, Ilyin wrote.
On Patriotism
In 1956, his book “Our Tasks” has for the first time been published in Paris that became an outline for Russian patriots aiming at the revival of Great Russia. There philosopher elaborates on the special feeling of patriotism. For Ilyin, patriotism is the highest solidarity, unity in the spirit of love for the Motherland (“Gift of the Holy Spirit”), is a creative act of spiritual self-determination, faithful in the face of God and therefore Gracious.
On Nationalism
For Ilyin, patriotism and nationalism are almost identical concepts. Nationalism is a system of actions arising from love towards the historical, the spiritual image of the nation and faith in its God-blessed strength. Ilyin defined the “correct” ways leading to the national revival of Russia: faith in God; historical continuity; monarchical legal consciousness; spiritual nationalism; Russian statehood; private property; new ruling stratum (new Russian national intelligentsia), and new Russian spiritual character and spiritual culture were among those.
On Fascism
Ilyin believed that fascism arose “as a reaction to Bolshevism”- during the onset of left-wing chaos and left-wing totalitarianism, this was a healthy, necessary phenomenon. Philosopher stated that “Europeans must understand that Bolshevism is a real and fierce danger; that democracy is a creative dead end; that Marxist socialism is a doomed chimera; that a new war is beyond Europe’s strength, neither spiritually nor materially, and that only a national upsurge can save the cause in each country, which will dictatorially and creatively take up the “social” resolution of the social issue”.[3]
On Family
Life of a human starts to develop as a result of a biological and physiological processes, however, the spiritual life wakes up in the primary womb of human culture – the family – within the family a child learns how to love, what to believe in and what to sacrifice for. German theologian Friedrich August Gottreu Tholuck claimed that the world is controlled from the baby room. Ilyin completed the statement saying that it is also destroyed from there. Ilyin defines the family as a “live laboratory”[4] of human’s destiny, both personal and national. Thus, family determines the future of individual, the state and national culture.
The components of these concepts has determined and defined philosopher Ilyin’s thoughts on Russia, its place and role in the world and its future.
[1] https://www.mk.ru/politics/2021/11/02/chem-privlek-prezidenta-putina-filosof-ilin.html
[2] Ivan Ilyin, Our Tasks, Moscow: Algoritm, 2017
[3] What philosopher Ilyin told about Russia, Rambler Weekend, 5.11.2018.
[4] Иван Ильинб Что сулит иру расчленение России?, Москва: Пересвет, 1992.
