Nikolai Berdyaev
God is mystery, beyond all truth, beauty, and goodness that we can comprehend. God eternally chose/chooses to be a person, to relate with other persons. Personality is a mystery, too. Year after year, we go through changes, and yet we are the same person. No matter how well you know someone, you could never define that person. When you love someone, it is not just about the mind and body. There is something indefinable, something wonderful beyond words.
Philosophy is in the business of interpreting the meaning of major concepts, but mystery goes beyond meaning. Wisdom recognizes mystery; wisdom does not try to reduce mystery to something explainable. But wisdom does not fall into permanent silence in the face of mystery. For example, there are still some things that we can say about personality.
For Nikolai Berdyaev, each personality is unique, mysterious, wonderful, and constant through change. The mystery of personality is never fully predictable or comprehensible; it is beyond everything worldly that can be treated as an object by biology or the human sciences. “Personality is the unchanging in change, unity in the manifold.” Human personality transcends itself by relating to God, to other people, to supreme values, and to the “interior existence of the world.” Personality is connected with the mystery of free will. Personality is victory over all mere belonging to a hereditary or social type—victory in effort and conflict, victory over slavery, conquest of self and world. Personality includes reason but is not governed by reason. Nor is personality the soul. Personality encompasses spirit, soul, and body. “Personality, which is not a sum of parts, acts always as a whole . . . on the way to perfectly accomplished unity and wholeness.”
On the basis of this concept, reason can draw a conclusion. If personality is constant throughout change, it cannot be like the body and mind, which change as we grow. A personality that remains constant no matter how perfect we become cannot be a product of evolution; it must have come straight from God. Therefore, each human personality is a masterpiece of the Creator’s art.
Do you find that there is something to the persons you know that is not the same as the mind, the body, or the soul? Do you recognize a unique and indefinable constant through change? How would you express this mystery?
This post concludes our series on philosophical living and begins a transition to spiritual living.
Nikolai Berdiaev, chapter 1, “Personality,” in Slavery and Freedom (London: G. Bles, Centenary Press, 1943). http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Berdyaev2.jpg/95px-Berdyaev2.jpg
Berdyaev has always been one of my favorite philosophers, aphoristic in form and deep in substance. I have a feeling that he had hard time communicating what had been revealed to him. When reading his works, one has to bridge the gaps between his aphorisms, which is also kind of fun because you become involved in a constant deciphering of meaning.
As to your questions, Jeff, contemplating personality IS dealing with a mystery, so “the rest is silence…”
Thanks for helping out, Michael! Yes, indeed, there is a profound silence surrounding mystery, and mystery is everywhere.
What fascinates me is the way perceptive people such as Berdyaev continue to have things to say about what they regard as mystery. There is a sophistic paradox: “Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.” Nevertheless, it is true: our highest experiences are beyond words. We simply cannot communicate them, though we can say something that may lead others in the general direction for their own discoveries. Having begun your novel, “An Angel Called Bill,” and having heard some of your music, especially your opera on Joan of Arc, I know that you are skilled in doing such things.
Berdyaev has always been one of my favorite philosophers, aphoristic in form and deep in substance. I have a feeling that he had hard time communicating what had been revealed to him. When reading his works, one has to bridge the gaps between his aphorisms, which is also kind of fun because you become involved in a constant deciphering of meaning.
As to your questions, Jeff, contemplating personality IS dealing with a mystery, so “the rest is silence…”
Thanks for helping out, Michael! Yes, indeed, there is a profound silence surrounding mystery, and mystery is everywhere.
What fascinates me is the way perceptive people such as Berdyaev continue to have things to say about what they regard as mystery. There is a sophistic paradox: “Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.” Nevertheless, it is true: our highest experiences are beyond words. We simply cannot communicate them, though we can say something that may lead others in the general direction for their own discoveries. Having begun your novel, “An Angel Called Bill,” and having heard some of your music, especially your opera on Joan of Arc, I know that you are skilled in doing such things.
As I contemplate personality, I find that it is a mystery. After having being married for all most 50 years, ,my wife and I have undergone many changes, both physically, intellectually and spiritually, both I recognize her as the same person that I married almost 50 years ago. As I try to identify what it is about her, that remains the same, I am forced to conclude that this something about her is beyond mind, body, and spirit. The closest that I come to identify it, is to express it as a “presence” a presence that remains the same, whether I talk to her in person or on the telephone, or just be in her presence, this sense of presence remains. This must be the manifestation of personality, a unique presence differing from all others.
But the greatest sense of personality presence is within in my inner life. As I retreat to my inner life I am acutely aware that I am the same person who started this life from the beginning of my self consciousness until now, despite the many changes I have undergone.
Dr Perry
Thanks again, Dr. Perry. It is indeed fascinating to observe continuity in a person over decades! And self-consciousness of being the same person is a very important experience. In one more way, I believe, we become conscious of ourselves as a personality: when we are loving or experience being loved.
As I contemplate personality, I find that it is a mystery. After having being married for all most 50 years, ,my wife and I have undergone many changes, both physically, intellectually and spiritually, both I recognize her as the same person that I married almost 50 years ago. As I try to identify what it is about her, that remains the same, I am forced to conclude that this something about her is beyond mind, body, and spirit. The closest that I come to identify it, is to express it as a “presence” a presence that remains the same, whether I talk to her in person or on the telephone, or just be in her presence, this sense of presence remains. This must be the manifestation of personality, a unique presence differing from all others.
But the greatest sense of personality presence is within in my inner life. As I retreat to my inner life I am acutely aware that I am the same person who started this life from the beginning of my self consciousness until now, despite the many changes I have undergone.
Dr Perry
Thanks again, Dr. Perry. It is indeed fascinating to observe continuity in a person over decades! And self-consciousness of being the same person is a very important experience. In one more way, I believe, we become conscious of ourselves as a personality: when we are loving or experience being loved.
Mystery or not, we can realize something of God, by asking: Is the creator of personality not a person? Even The Person?
Mystery or not, we can realize something of God, by asking: Is the creator of personality not a person? Even The Person?