Life and Work
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was born in Moscow on 16 January 1853, in the family of the historian Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov (1820–1879). His mother, Polyxena Vladimirovna, belonged to a Ukrainian-Polish family, having among her ancestors the thinker Hryhori Skovoroda (1722–1794).
In his teens Solovyov renounced Orthodox Christianity for nihilism, but later he changed his convictions and began expressing views in line again with the Orthodox Church. What prompted this change was his disapproval of Positivism. In his The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists he discredited the Positivists' rejection of Aristotle's essentialism or philosophical realism. In Against the Postivists he took the position of intuitive noetic comprehension, noesis or insight stating consciousness, in being is integral (Russian term being sobornost) and has to have both phenomenon (validated by dianonia) and noumenon validated intuitively? Positivism, according to Solovyov, only validates the phenomenon of an object, denying the intuitive reality which people experience as part of their consciousness.
Vladimir Solovyov was also a friend and confidant of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In opposition to Dostoyevsky's apparent views of the Roman Catholic church, Solovyov was sympathetic to Roman Catholic Christianity. He favored the healing of the schism – (ecumenism, sobornost) – between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches – eventually, "through an ethical and social standpoint," converting to Roman Catholicism. Solovyov believed that his mission in life was to move people toward reconciliation or absolute unity or sobornost.
Solovyov never married or had children, but he pursued idealized relationships as immortalized in his spiritual love poetry, including with two women named Sophia. He rebuffed the advances of mystic Anna Schmidt, who claimed to be his divine partner.
Solovyov died an apparently homeless pauper, leaving his brother Mikhail Sergeevich and several colleagues to defend and promote his intellectual legacy.
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