The Maturation of the Spirit. On Some Philosophical Origins of M.M. Prishvin’s Ecological Thinking

Abstract

The article analyzes the origins of Prishvin’s worldview, and the emphasis is on the period of his participation in the St. Petersburg Religious and Philosophical Society, when the writer actively communicated with the circle of D.S. Me­rezhkovsky, posing the question of the secular and religious foundations of his world perception, and distancing himself from both the popular faith and intel­lectual attempts to adapt the church to the needs intellectual conscience. A hy­pothesis is put forward about the possible influence on Prishvin of the ideas of Vladimir Solov’ev, received and transmitted by S.N. Bulgakov, an active par­ticipant in the Moscow Religious and Philosophical Society, which is confirmed by the facts of attention to Bulgakov, with whom Prishvin studied together at the Yelets Gymnasium for some time. The appeal to Solov’ev, Tyutchev and Dosto­evsky, the desire to see in nature not only its night life and the mirror of the hu­man soul, but also a kind of living you with whom a person enters into a dia­logue – all these thoughts will be reflected in Prishvin’s subsequent work. Referring both to Prishvin’s works of art and to the texts of his diaries, one can try to form the foundations for modern ecological thinking, which will take into account the value aspects and approaches to nature characteristic of religiously oriented ethics. Prishvin notes in his later diaries that “age spirituality” is being formed in him, which speaks of the need to form human consciousness in rela­tion to nature not in the spirit of pragmatic exploitation, but in the spirit of re­sponsible dialogue.