ABSTRACT
Russian philosophy, like western philosophy, aims at a solution of the religious problem in general. But, in addition, the ecclesiastico-religious problem demands solution, and today this matter is more important. Religious objectivism and passivism proclaim the church as leading authority. The absolute religious authority of the church logically manifests itself as Catholicism. For all the Christian churches morality forms an integral constituent of religion and of the religious conduct of life. Orthodox Russia, in a state of spiritual arrest, was overwhelmed by the flood of French anti-ecclesiastical and anti-religious rationalism. Acceptance of modern German philosophy with its epistemological subjectivism and individualism, the negation of Old Russia, nihilism as atheism, forced these alternatives upon Herzen, Belinskii, and Bakunin. The liberal program of disestablishment is a socio-political attempt to solve the religious problem; this program was formulated by liberalism in the struggle against the theocratic social order on behalf of spiritual liberty and toleration.
