‘We Don’t Want to Chase ‘Em Away’

Abstract

At the start of his article, ‘The Past is a Doctrine of Person’, Basil Sansom employs Berdyaev’s distinction of ‘two ways of considering the past’. The first of these, the conservative standpoint, ‘harks back to the past, impl[ying] faith in tradition’ (Berdyaev 1938, 100, cited in Sansom 1988, 147). The second involves a ‘creative and transfiguring vision which integrates the past in the future and eternity and resuscitates dead things and beings’ (ibid.). According to Berdyaev, it is this standpoint alone which ‘is in harmony with the present which is inherent in the past; the first merely reflects the actual present which is always becoming the past’ (ibid.). Show more