Michel Eltchaninoff

This article offers a philosophical reflection on the notion of freedom, approached through the thought of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nicolas Berdyaev. Michel Eltchaninoff, editor-in-chief of Philosophie Magazine, examines how these two Russian thinkers conceptualized human freedom, not as an illusory abstraction, but as a concrete and demanding reality. The central idea is that authentic freedom cannot be reduced to an absence of constraints: it entails a profound responsibility, that of fully living what Dostoevsky calls a "living life." The contribution of this article lies in bringing Russian philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into dialogue with fundamental anthropological questions, thereby offering an original perspective on the Orthodox conception of the human person and their free dignity.