Lev Karsavin and natural theology
摘要
This article examines the philosophy of the Russian religious thinker Lev Karsavin (1882–1952). In particular, Karsavin’s relation to the typically Western project of natural theology will, for the first time, be addressed here. It will be show that, despite a surface-level polemical atitude towards natural theology, Karsavin’s metaphysics contain some natural theological arguments. Two of these arguments will be critically analysed here. The article first addresses Karsavin’s critiques of natural theology and then provides an outline of Karsavin’s metaphysical system. The article then address two of Karsavin’s own natural theological arguments which grow out of that system: a moral argument for God’s existence, and an argument for the necessity of the incarnation.