Софиология - стр. 44

." If man knows resurrection, the same must be true for nature as a whole, even though there certainly is a difference in quality. Logical thought would have to either deny man′s spiritual essence or admit it for all nature and all creatures.[178] Despite the fact that Solov’ëv never developed this concept into a refined, separate philosophical discourse, Bulgakov praised him for having prepared the ground for a magnificent Christian metaphysics that allocates the sparkling idea of nature as the "other God" or the "second absolute: "[179] "Nature must be the visible spirit, and spirit must be the invisible nature.′[180] Nature is humanised by becoming man′s "peripheral body, submitting to his consciousness and realising itself in him."[181]

His early religious philosophy already turned around the question of "man in nature and nature in man."[182] The content of all activity – which is economic activity – is mere struggle between life and death, a matter of pure survival.[183] Yet, this struggle is not a struggle between "two principles," but rather a struggle between "two states." Life is a principle that differs from death in its potential for "self-consciousness."[184] Potentially, all inanimate matter is organised by life and concentrated in "knots of life [uzelki zhizni]" interconnected to each other.[185] Nature waits for being man′s spiritual "peripheral body." [186] This is the meaning of Creation in two acts, the second of which points to human and nature′s co-creatorship.

Already Bulgakov′s early Philosophy of Economy implicitly contained this conceptualisation of Creation: while production is the conscious transformation of dead inanimate matter into a spiritualised body, consumption is "partaking of the flesh of the world." Life is the"…capacity to consume the world" our bodily organs being"…like doors and windows into the universe, and all that enters us through these doors and windows becomes the object of our sensual penetration and becomes in a sense part of our body."[187] Nourishment is the most vivid means of "natural communion," because it allows man to partake".of the flesh of the world."[188] Nourishment is immanent to our world, whereas the Eucharist meal, ".nourishes immortal life, separated from our life by the threshold of death and resurrection."[189] Production and consumption hence is a form of spiritual communion with nature. Seemingly, Bulgakov redefined the three cornerstones to every economic theory.

In order to understand his notion of labour we now consider his Trinitarian ontology. The Glavy o Troichnosti, 1928/30, unambiguously clarifies that the individual ′I′ exists within a triangular relationship. It is a multiplicity of the eternally given ′I′, the ′I-you′ and, thirdly, the ′I-he.′ As it stands, the ′he′ hinders mere doubling of the ′I′, ensures the recognition of the ′you′ and hence is the condition for the ′we′. This ′we′ forms the basis for all cognition. The ′you′ is possibly alien both to the ′I′ and to the ′he′ after man has fallen and this is precisely why life is a tragic struggle. Nevertheless, from a metaphysical point of view, all three units form the ′we′.[190] Man is entirely free to fill the gaps between these three parts of his being, either to recognise the them, or to give his unconscious, non reflected empirical ′I′ the prominent, or worse, the absolute place.