Nikolai Berdyaev – from Will to Culture Towards Will to Live

Nikolai Berdyaev was a philosopher who treated the “objectivity of creative work” with disparagement. This article focuses on his attitude to culture as a “mediocre”, “intermediary” affair, and as something unworthy of particular attention respectively. Berdyaev describes the Russian people as always discontented with culture exactly because of its “mediocrity”. The author points out the duality between lived reality and culture as inalienably inherent to Russian spirituality informing great creative works, which, however, are not culture, insofar as they are aiming at the religious transformation of life.