The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedNicolas Berdyaev
Title QuotedSlavery and Freedom
Date (Year/Month/Day)1958/05/31
ImprintNew York : Charles Scribners's Sons. 1945
QuotationAn admirable book from the Louisville library. Berdyaev's Slavery and Freedom. I think it is useful to know what one man one tends most closely to sympathize with, to "agre" with in a general way (though by no means with all his individual statements)-to agree with in the whole of his doctrine though not in each particular fact by itself. He says, among other things: "The self-realization of personality presupposes resistance, it demands a conflict with the enslaving power of the world, a refusal to conform to the world"¦". Repeatedly, since last year, two years ago, this thought comes to me with all the power of a "message." And I still don't quite know what to do about it. In a sense, this was the reason for my entering the monastery, but that only shifted the problem to another level. It was not a solution.
Quotation SourceA Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, 1952-1960.; Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 204-05
Letter to 
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