The book “Spiritual Foundations of Society” falls into two sequential themes: the first analyzes the most popular social concepts of the 19th–20th centuries: historicism, biologism, psychologism. These idols of social science of the 19th century. created the illusion of the possibility of reducing social life to “natural” fundamental principles that could be described in the language of positive science. The simple but compelling arguments of S. L. Frank reveal the internal contradiction of these attitudes, which vainly strive to bring the highest from the lowest. At the same time, the author introduces, for him, a fundamental distinction between “conciliar” and “public”. Society is not a derivative association of separate individuals, but a primary integrity, in it (and only in it) a person is given as concreteness. By choosing WE or I as the initial principle, philosophers choose “the lie of abstract collectivism” or “the lie of abstract individualism.” Without yielding in the subtlety of analysis to the pillars of existentialism and dialogism, S. L. Frank proves that “I,” “you,” and “we” are correlative and “equally primary.”

The book “Spiritual Foundations of Society” falls apart on two consecutive topics: the first analyzes the most popular social concepts of the 19th–20th centuries: historicism, biologism, psychologism. These idols of social science of the 19th century. created the illusion of the possibility of reducing social life to “natural” fundamental principles that could be described in the language of positive science. The simple but compelling arguments of S. L. Frank reveal the internal contradiction of these attitudes, which vainly strive to bring the highest from the lowest. At the same time, the author introduces a fundamental distinction for him “conciliar” and “public”. Society is not a derivative association of separate individuals, but a primary integrity, in it (and only in it) a person is given as concreteness. By choosing WE or I as the initial principle, philosophers choose the “lie of abstract collectivism” or the “lie of abstract individualism.” Not inferior in the subtlety of analysis to the pillars of existentialism and dialogism, S. L. Frank proves that “I”, “you” and “we” are correlative and “equally primary”. They are given immediately as a single structure and dialectically generate each other. (In this section, he polemically obscures the fact that only the “I” can justify this correlation, and a direct connection with the Divine is possible only for the “I,” but in the last chapters justice is restored). For this reason alone, society cannot be considered as the result of a purposeful “summation”, carried out by the idea or will of historical persons and forces. The public is a collective unity realized through external submission to a single guiding will, which is power and law. But underneath the external unification, the power of internal human unity, the power of “conciliarity,” operates. S. L. Frank considers the main vital forms of conciliar unity to be marital and family unity (this is the main “educational force of conciliarity”), religious life, as well as “community of fate and life,” that is, the force that cements people into a living ethnos or community. The philosopher identifies four aspects of conciliarity that distinguish it from other social phenomena. 1) Sobornost is the unity of “I” and “you”, growing from the primary unity of “we” in this regard. 2) Conciliar unity is rooted in the life content of the individual himself, which is fundamentally love. 3) You can only love the individual, and therefore conciliarity exists where the personal principle can be discerned. 4) In conciliarity, the supra-temporal unity of human generations is realized, when the past and the future live in the present. It is not difficult to notice that what we have before us is not entirely Slavophil conciliarity. In the concept of S. L. Frank, the communal is reduced to a minimum and, for the most part, is classified as social. In the foreground is the ability of the individual, thanks to love, to enter the dimension of community while remaining himself. From the article: A. DOBROKHOTOV. FOR THE PUBLICATION OF FRAGMENTS OF S. L. FRANK’S BOOK “SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY”