Aleksey Khomyakov

For Khomyakov, socialism and capitalism were equally repugnant offspring of Western decadence.

The West failed to solve human spiritual problems, as it stressed competition at the expense of co-operation.

[1] Khomyakov's own ideals revolved around the term sobornost, the Slavonic equivalent of catholicity found in the Nicene Creed; it can be loosely translated as "togetherness" or "symphony".

The Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev located Khomyakov's significance in his attempt to free Christianity from rationalism.

The essence of the Church is inexpressible; like all living organisms, she cannot be encompassed by any formula, is not subject to any formal definitions.

The Church is, first of all, a living organism, a unity of love, ineffable freedom, the truth of the faith not subject to rationalization.

This conception may be alien to theological scholasticism, but it is close to the spirit of sacred tradition and the Holy Scripture.

Khomyakov ascribes special significance to sacred tradition, since he sees the spirit of sobornost in it.

Florensky considers that to be immanentism, which ultimately veers into Protestantism: Does not Khomyakov, a waterfall of ideas and themes, provoke many acute and troubling doubts?

For Khomyakov, the essence of Protestantism consists only in protest against Romanism, but with the fundamental premises and characteristic modes of thought of the latter preserved.

Inquiring more attentively into Khomyakov's theories, we, to our sorrowful surprise, see the same spirit of immanentism that constitutes the essence of Protestantism, although in an immeasurably improved form -- chiefly through the introduction of the idea of sobornost (although the idea of the sobornost of consciousness is not completely foreign to Western philosophy, for instance, to Kant, not to mention Schelling of the final period, Feuerbach, Comte, and so on.)

Khomyakov's thought tends to evade ontological determinacy, glistening before us in its play of mother-of-pearl.

But this play of surface tones, brilliant but not substantial, and therefore changing their contours at the slightest turn of the head, does not yield a stable content of thought and leaves alarm and doubt in one's heart.