“The Kingdom of God Is Anarchy.” Apophasis, Political Eschatology, and Mysticism in Russian Religious Thought

This essay examines the reception of Western mystical theology in early twentieth-century Russian religious thought, showing how leading Russian thinkers—such as Ivanov, Frank, Bulgakov, and Berdyaev—reinterpreted Meister Eckhart’s central categories (Gottheit, Abgeschiedenheit), often in significant conjunction with Nietzschean and Tolstoyan doctrines. It reconstructs a distinctive philosophical current—“mystical anarchism”—emerging at the intersection of apophatic theology, political eschatology, and the critique of violence. Through a detailed analysis of primary texts, the essay argues that Russian philosophers radicalized the doctrine of detachment into a political ontology of freedom, aimed at challenging both metaphysical authority and social coercion. While drawing extensively on negative theological traditions, their most original contributions appear not in strictly speculative or metaphysical terms, but rather in the ethical and political domain. Particular attention is given to Berdyaev’s notion of an “apophatic sociology,” which articulates freedom as the negation of all power of man over man and as the condition of a communal life no longer bound by abstract categories of morality and knowledge. The article concludes that Russian religious thought offers an original contribution to understanding mysticism as a resource for ethical and critical philosophy.