Melancholy versus Hope: Considerations about Time

Abstract

The article outlines author’s reflections on traditional religious concept of time, and is based on original analyses of the works of Berdyaev, Losev, Fromm and other philosophers who wrote about different forms of awareness of the time, and their influence upon interpretation of the categories of present, past and future in the public mind. The author demonstrates that the origin and the main source of time gap, intrinsic for the Russian intellectual tradition, when some people worship the past, others are absorbed with dreams of the future, both parties repudiating the reality of the present. Meanwhile, it is the reality of the nowdays that not only supports the present, but links the past with the future as well. The author proposes a maxim: «time deprived of the present is possible only in a world devoid of the genuine».