April ‘24 1-to-1 Wiseletter (Nikolai Berdyaev)
In April's 1-to-1 Wiseletter, we’ll be looking at a quote from Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev.
Quote
Creation must be grounded upon that limitless freedom which existed in the void before the world appeared. Without freedom creation has no value for God. In the beginning was the Word, but in the beginning also there was freedom
Berdyaev tells us the difference between real freedom and raw freedom.
Once upon a time, Fate determined the misfortune and fortune of human existence. In this kind of world, there’s no real choice. Free will can’t truly exist. What has been, will be again.
Don’t think of Berdyaev’s ‘void’ as the universe before the Big Bang, think of it as the world behind all of the inert objects that appear on its surface. Although it appears stable, we know intuitionally and scientifically that the world's ever changing, impossible to fully pin down. And so before the world snaps into being, she's a storm of chaos, free to become anything (and so therefore a ‘no-thing’). It is, as Berdyaev says, limitless freedom.
But then somehow she's elegantly gentled by the pressure of intellect (the Word) into some-thing. This is creation, the union of Logos-Sophia.
The world appears to us because it is defined; because it's limited.
In this same we can be truly free in our own lives. The quality of our life is equal to our ability to apply order to that limitless freedom which makes up the essential nature of existence. In other words, we are free to the extent that we subject ourselves to limitation--like the discipline of a skill, the demands of a vocation, the overcoming of an addiction, the sacrifice of caring for a dying parent, the responsibility of raising a child.
We are unfree to the extent that we remove all constraints on ourselves. This is raw freedom, absolutely necessary for existence, yes, but a senseless and painful kind of freedom to live life by.
QUESTION:
What's one way you could limit yourself to make yourself more free?
Cheers,
John
