Abstract
Pavel Florensky is one of the best known Russian philosophers of the 20th century and is also known as a Christian thinker, a priest and a victim of the Stalinist regime. Nevertheless, there is a century old Nikolai Berdiaev's critique of his philosophy, based on lack of freedom in Pavel Florensky's philosophy.
Berdiaev characterized Florensky's philosophy as "magical", and in a certain way non-Christian. This concept is also adopted by a certain contemporary literature.
At the beginning the paper analyzes mutual relations of Florensky and Berdiaev and their place in the discourse of Russian religious philosophy. Then it comes to its main topic, which is an analyze of freedom in Florensky's main work Stolp i utverzhdenie Istiny and his social philosophy.
Freedom is an important and indivisible part of Florensky's gnoseology, ontology and soteriology. But it is not a discrete problem, as it is by Berdiaev, nor it is ontologized.
In Florensky's thought, the real measure of political freedom in social and political life is not as important as our personal choise of good or evil. Nevertheless, the necessity of political and social freedom is not denied by Florensky, it is just considered less important than the coming of the end of the times.