I remember this article from back in the day but it's only now that I'm struck by the parallel between Russian Cosmism reaching infinitely backwards to assimilate all the dead of the past into its moral schema and tech longtermism having the same orientation towards the unborn generations of the future.
Let us introduce another party to the debate in pre-revolutionary Russia and in entre-guerre Paris, Father Sergei Bulgakov.
Father Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), the foremost modern articulator of Russian sophiology, took up a very different resurrection model and consequent reality from that of Fedorov.
Bulgakov’s theology centers on Divine Wisdom — Sophia — conceived both as the transcendent personhood of God’s wisdom and as the immanent principle that shapes created beauty and order.
For Bulgakov, Sophia is not an autonomous cosmic force but a theological lens through which to understand creation’s sacramental character and its participation in God’s life.
Human persons, in this schema, are creatures called into communion with God and one another through Christ and the Church.
Salvation is restorative participation in divine life (theosis), enacted sacramentally and eschatologically by God’s grace.
Resurrection, therefore, is not the culmination of human technical achievement — but the gift and act of a God who transfigures creation.
Read together, Fedorov and Bulgakov stage a profound debate at the intersection of anthropology, eschatology, and technology: can human agency itself realize resurrection and universal restoration, or must such hopes be reframed within a theocentric, sacramental economy of salvation?
Fedorov’s answer is an emphatic yes. He insists that moral duty requires a collective program of scientific and technological labor — a cosmotechnics — that would gather scattered particles, reverse decomposition, and reconstitute persons.
This vision fuses religion, science, and politics: science becomes a moral instrument under collective self-sacrifice, and technological projects (from radical life-extension to cosmic engineering) become morally mandated continuations of filial duty.
The social implications are sweeping: radical solidarity, universalism, and an ethic of physical stewardship of every human life.
Bulgakov’s response probes the theological costs of such a program. At stake, he contends, is the doctrine of grace and the nature of personhood.
If humans imagine themselves capable of performing resurrection by technical means, they risk displacing Christ’s unique salvific act and reducing persons to mere aggregates of matter that can be mechanically reconstructed.
For Bulgakov, personhood is relational and spiritual: identity is realized in communion with God and the Church, not merely in material continuity.
Human work may participate in God’s economy, but it cannot substitute for it.
Moreover, Bulgakov warns, the Fedorovian program flirts with idolatry and self-deification: it secularizes eschatology, converting Christian hope into an immanent project of human perfectibility detached from grace.
Despite their stark differences, the two thinkers converge on important moral instincts. Both reject resignation before death and decry a privatized religiosity that accepts death’s finality.
Both are moved by compassion for the dead and by a desire to overcome human fragmentation. Their disagreement is decisive, however, on the question of authority and means: whether ultimate restoration is principally a human duty to be realized through technics (Fedorov), or a divine gift mediated sacramentally through Christ and Sophia (Bulgakov).
This exchange anticipates pressing contemporary debates. Fedorov’s thought reads as a forebear of transhumanist optimism, cryonics, and techno-eschatologies that seek to eradicate death by means of biological and engineering mastery.
Bulgakov’s sophiology offers a theological counterpoint: it affirms the moral urgency of alleviating suffering and caring for the dead while insisting that ultimate restoration must be pursued within a framework that honors divine sovereignty, sacramental life, and the relational depth of personhood.
The interplay sharpens perennial ethical questions: when is technological intervention permissible or obligatory, and when does it overreach by attempting to secure ends properly belonging to divine providence?
Can material continuity suffice for personal identity, or does theological anthropology demand more than mere reassembly?
A constructive synthesis can draw from both traditions without collapsing them.
From Fedorov we can take a passionate ethic of responsibility: a conviction that humanity should mobilize knowledge and care to reduce needless death and mend social and historical fractures of memory and kinship.
From Bulgakov we should retain theological sobriety: the insistence that human efforts remain subordinated to divine grace, that sacramental participation and theosis are the heart of salvation, and that technology must not become an idol that eclipses communion with God.
Ethically responsible engagement with technoscience therefore requires both practical compassion and humble deference: pursue medical and scientific advances that alleviate suffering, but resist an eschatological self-sufficiency that treats resurrection as a human engineering project rather than a gift.
Ultimately, the dialogue between Fedorov and Bulgakov stages a foundational question for modernity: what is the proper place of human agency in the face of death?
Fedorov returns an audacious moral-technological answer, reclaiming eschatology for human labor and solidarity. Bulgakov relocates hope within the sacramental, theocentric horizon of Sophia and Christ, protecting Christian hope from being domesticated by the logic of technique.
Their exchange remains fruitful: it equips theologians, ethicists, and technologists to ask whether and how human power to alter life should be guided by theological wisdom, communal responsibility, and a humble awareness of the limits of technique in matters that concern personhood and ultimate destiny.
The phrase "human-like connection" is a clown car of understatement in Worthy's product! Meanwhile, what do the Cosmists believe about death? What is their metaphysic? This version of the mass resurrection of the dead is such a strange, post-christian eschatology. Is it supposed to be creepy? Because it's creepy.
Must say I dread the thought of being resurrected into a Mormon heaven (or any Christian heaven actually) with a bunch of Scientologists or other perfectly balanced people, and I find the thought of being forced into never ending life with people who I have found to be abhorrent (or merely excruciatingly boring) in my current life is horrific! I must confess as I get old I'm beginning to feel tired and am preparing for a permanent rest. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty pace from day to day has never seemed more apposite!.
Can't resurrect the dead without assimilating them into a plan that wasn't their own. Even if it was possible it would be imperious af #letthedeadbe
Ultimately why cosmism is a fascinating but insane philosophy!
I remember this article from back in the day but it's only now that I'm struck by the parallel between Russian Cosmism reaching infinitely backwards to assimilate all the dead of the past into its moral schema and tech longtermism having the same orientation towards the unborn generations of the future.
Fedorov you know something of.
Let us introduce another party to the debate in pre-revolutionary Russia and in entre-guerre Paris, Father Sergei Bulgakov.
Father Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), the foremost modern articulator of Russian sophiology, took up a very different resurrection model and consequent reality from that of Fedorov.
Bulgakov’s theology centers on Divine Wisdom — Sophia — conceived both as the transcendent personhood of God’s wisdom and as the immanent principle that shapes created beauty and order.
For Bulgakov, Sophia is not an autonomous cosmic force but a theological lens through which to understand creation’s sacramental character and its participation in God’s life.
Human persons, in this schema, are creatures called into communion with God and one another through Christ and the Church.
Salvation is restorative participation in divine life (theosis), enacted sacramentally and eschatologically by God’s grace.
Resurrection, therefore, is not the culmination of human technical achievement — but the gift and act of a God who transfigures creation.
Read together, Fedorov and Bulgakov stage a profound debate at the intersection of anthropology, eschatology, and technology: can human agency itself realize resurrection and universal restoration, or must such hopes be reframed within a theocentric, sacramental economy of salvation?
Fedorov’s answer is an emphatic yes. He insists that moral duty requires a collective program of scientific and technological labor — a cosmotechnics — that would gather scattered particles, reverse decomposition, and reconstitute persons.
This vision fuses religion, science, and politics: science becomes a moral instrument under collective self-sacrifice, and technological projects (from radical life-extension to cosmic engineering) become morally mandated continuations of filial duty.
The social implications are sweeping: radical solidarity, universalism, and an ethic of physical stewardship of every human life.
Bulgakov’s response probes the theological costs of such a program. At stake, he contends, is the doctrine of grace and the nature of personhood.
If humans imagine themselves capable of performing resurrection by technical means, they risk displacing Christ’s unique salvific act and reducing persons to mere aggregates of matter that can be mechanically reconstructed.
For Bulgakov, personhood is relational and spiritual: identity is realized in communion with God and the Church, not merely in material continuity.
Human work may participate in God’s economy, but it cannot substitute for it.
Moreover, Bulgakov warns, the Fedorovian program flirts with idolatry and self-deification: it secularizes eschatology, converting Christian hope into an immanent project of human perfectibility detached from grace.
Despite their stark differences, the two thinkers converge on important moral instincts. Both reject resignation before death and decry a privatized religiosity that accepts death’s finality.
Both are moved by compassion for the dead and by a desire to overcome human fragmentation. Their disagreement is decisive, however, on the question of authority and means: whether ultimate restoration is principally a human duty to be realized through technics (Fedorov), or a divine gift mediated sacramentally through Christ and Sophia (Bulgakov).
This exchange anticipates pressing contemporary debates. Fedorov’s thought reads as a forebear of transhumanist optimism, cryonics, and techno-eschatologies that seek to eradicate death by means of biological and engineering mastery.
Bulgakov’s sophiology offers a theological counterpoint: it affirms the moral urgency of alleviating suffering and caring for the dead while insisting that ultimate restoration must be pursued within a framework that honors divine sovereignty, sacramental life, and the relational depth of personhood.
The interplay sharpens perennial ethical questions: when is technological intervention permissible or obligatory, and when does it overreach by attempting to secure ends properly belonging to divine providence?
Can material continuity suffice for personal identity, or does theological anthropology demand more than mere reassembly?
A constructive synthesis can draw from both traditions without collapsing them.
From Fedorov we can take a passionate ethic of responsibility: a conviction that humanity should mobilize knowledge and care to reduce needless death and mend social and historical fractures of memory and kinship.
From Bulgakov we should retain theological sobriety: the insistence that human efforts remain subordinated to divine grace, that sacramental participation and theosis are the heart of salvation, and that technology must not become an idol that eclipses communion with God.
Ethically responsible engagement with technoscience therefore requires both practical compassion and humble deference: pursue medical and scientific advances that alleviate suffering, but resist an eschatological self-sufficiency that treats resurrection as a human engineering project rather than a gift.
Ultimately, the dialogue between Fedorov and Bulgakov stages a foundational question for modernity: what is the proper place of human agency in the face of death?
Fedorov returns an audacious moral-technological answer, reclaiming eschatology for human labor and solidarity. Bulgakov relocates hope within the sacramental, theocentric horizon of Sophia and Christ, protecting Christian hope from being domesticated by the logic of technique.
Their exchange remains fruitful: it equips theologians, ethicists, and technologists to ask whether and how human power to alter life should be guided by theological wisdom, communal responsibility, and a humble awareness of the limits of technique in matters that concern personhood and ultimate destiny.
The phrase "human-like connection" is a clown car of understatement in Worthy's product! Meanwhile, what do the Cosmists believe about death? What is their metaphysic? This version of the mass resurrection of the dead is such a strange, post-christian eschatology. Is it supposed to be creepy? Because it's creepy.
Eddie this is insane! Thank you!!
COSMISM MENTIONED
Must say I dread the thought of being resurrected into a Mormon heaven (or any Christian heaven actually) with a bunch of Scientologists or other perfectly balanced people, and I find the thought of being forced into never ending life with people who I have found to be abhorrent (or merely excruciatingly boring) in my current life is horrific! I must confess as I get old I'm beginning to feel tired and am preparing for a permanent rest. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty pace from day to day has never seemed more apposite!.
make this required reading alongside Mircea Cărtărescu's Solenoid!