Humanities & Social Sciences 8 (2015 8) 1683-1709 ~ ~ ~ УДК 2-1:364.624.4 From Solitude to Freedom: Human Person and the Universe in Russian Religious Philosophy Alexei V. Nesteruk* University of Portsmouth Lion Gate Building, PORTSMOUTH, PO1 3HF, UK Received 13.03.2015, received in revised form 24.03.2015, accepted 19.06.2015 The paper deals with the issues of anxiety, solitude, homelessness and non-sense of human existence in the universe as they were posed and addressed in the Russian religious philosophy of the 20th century. <...> Russian philosophers were seeking for overcoming of the present condition of humanity through the restoration of the lost Divine image, encapsulated in the notion of personhood. <...> The diffi culty of defi ning personhood proceeds from the paradoxical condition of humanity in the world refl ected in perennial philosophy, as well as from a fundamental unknowability of man by himself so clearly articulated by Patristic writers. <...> The fulfi llment of personhood implies the overcoming of the constraints and slavery to the rubrics of the incarnate existence in this physical world. <...> It is in this movement that the sense of solitude and despair disappears because the whole of the human history, as well as the whole universe, are brought inside the infi nite and incomprehensible subjectivity of man in the image of the Divine. <...> Russian philosophers expressed a deep concern and care for man, the world and God through looking for the consolation of the soul of all humanity from within a limited historical period in the 20th century’s history full of apostasy and demonic inhumanity. <...> Their hymnology to man is the perennial attempt to affi rm this world as still imbued with faith, hope and love. <...> Research area: philosophy. “The eternal silence of the infi nite spaces terrifi es me. <...> All rights reserved response in the academia and intelligencia, asserting the tragic and ever escaping sense of the human existence, diminution of the value of human life and its “low cost” as paid by the societies and politically struggling powers * Corresponding author E-mail address: alexei.nesteruk@port.ac.uk # 1683 # Alexei V. Nesteruk. <...> From Solitude to Freedom: Human Person and the Universe in Russian Religious Philosophy attempting to impose their utopias of a universal world-order. <...> Russian philosophers, who experienced deeper than others the turmoil and uncertainty of the surrounding world, as well as the loss of hope for humanity’s reconciliation in its progression towards the eternal good, expressed the sense of this loss <...>