Vladimir Solovyov discerns three types of Being: phenomena, the world of ideas, and the absolute. Three basic kinds of cognition are hence discerned in his gnoseologic system: empiric, reasonable, and mystic. The ontologism of Solovyov’s philosophy shows the essential task of cognition, which consists in transferring the centre of the human being from his nature to the absolutely transcendental world, thus connecting it internally to true Being. The mystic or religious experience plays a particular role in this transfer.
Solovyov will have it that the bases of true cognition contain the mystic or the religious perception which gives our logical thinking its incontestable sense, and our experience the meaning of incontestable truth. The fact of faith is more essential and more immediate than scientific knowledge or philosophical debates. The experience of faith can and should always be submitted to the judgment of critical and philosophical reason. Philosophical is the mind which is never contented even with the strongest belief in truth; it perceives only the incontestable truth which answers all the questions of thinking.
The recognition of the exclusive meaning of philosophical (metaphysical) cognition has always been characteristic of Solovyov. Still in his uncompleted treatise Sofia (started in French in 1876 and translated in Russian 120 years later) he wrote that one of the most important and distinguishing characteristics of the human among live beings is the striving for truth and the aspiration for metaphysical knowledge. We could consider as abnormal those who lack this aspiration. Therefore the destiny of philosophy is inseparably linked to the destiny of the human race; philosophy is one of the human race’s achievements. Vladimir Solovyov insists on the impossibility of becoming a personality out of the striving for absolute truth and that a cognitive subject who does not follow the way of the philosophical (metaphysical) ascent towards truth is nobody!