Spinoza and Formation of the Russian Religious-philosophical Modernism (Akim Volynsky as a Successor and Critic of Spinoza)

Abstract

For the fi rst time Spinoza’s philosophical heritage is examined in the process of the formation
of the Russian religious-philosophical modernism in 1880–1890. The fi rst and leading fi gure who
actualized main Spinoza’s ideas in the Russian intellectual movement of the “fi n de siècle” was
Akim Volynsky (Khaim Lejbovitch Flekser), the distinguished Russian free thinker, art and literary
critic, theoretician in the theatre and ballet. Volynsky considered the “Ethics” a minor work but
profoundly perceived and developed principal tenets of Spinoza’s “Tractatus theologo-politicus”
in the direction of modernistic religious ideology. Following Spinoza Volynsky affi rmed that God
is absolutely actual as Idea and with this thesis he linked his initial intuition “To love God means to
love Idea of God”. Volynsky fi lled his relation to God with intellectual and intimate psychic matter
at the same time as distinct from Spinoza’s pure “amor Dei intellectualis”.