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Transcription
It is
well-known
that
Eastern
Christianity calls its tradition Orthodoxy.
What is the sense of this name, what idea
does it bring? The Greek word Ortho-doxia
means literally «right praising», that is
the right way to praise God or, more precisely,
the right kind of the relationship between
Man and God. But we must immediately add to
it that this relationship is considered and
felt by Eastern Christians as a deeply personal
relationship. It is felt that its main contents
cannot be expressed by any formal rules or
abstract postulates, because they belong to
the most intimate and profound experience
of a human person. In other words, Orthodoxia
as the right relationship with God is a certain
kind of personal experience: namely, that
unique kind of experience that is the experience
of life with Christ or in Christ, the experience
of Christocentric way or mode of life (cf.
Gal 5,12). This is what is considered here
as the true core of Christ's Good Tidings,
and hence the main task of the religious tradition
as well as of spiritual life of an individual
Christian is to keep this experience authentic
and complete and reproduce it identically,
for the further translation or transmission
in space and time.
Here we notice, however, that the main task
of the religious and spiritual tradition may
also be seen differently. The tradition usually
tries to formulate its message, its positions
in the form of a certain basic postulates
and dogmas, bringing them together into some
self-consistent teaching or doctrine. And
it may naturally see its main task in creating
such full and self-consistent teaching and
then keeping it undistorted and developing
it further. This is
essentially the view adopted by Western Christian
confessions. The presence of the two different
basic attitudes or strategies of Christian
consciousness in the West and East can be
noticed as early as in the 4th c. The «theoretical»
or «doctrinal» strategy has been clearly
put to the foreground by St Augustine and
the subsequent Western theology; while the
«practical» or «experiential» strategy
has been put to the foreground in the East.
Here even the Church Fathers who have written
basic theological texts, acknowledged the
primacy of the personal experience of communion
with Christ.
Let us consider how the Eastern Christian
tradition fulfilled what it considered to
be its main task: the identical reproducing
of the authentic experience of communion with
Christ. Obviously, it was necessary for the
solution of the problem to have indisputable,
authentic examples or models of the experience
in question. Since the experience is deeply
personal, to find its examples means to find
people who indisputably possess such experience.
Thus the crucial question of Eastern-Orthodox
consciousness took the following form: who
are the bearers of the authentic experience
of communion with Christ?
It is not a simple question. Looking for the
answer to it, religious consciousness discovered
that this answer has historical dimension,
it depends upon sacral or spiritual characteristics
of historical situation. Namely, in different
periods of Christian history, in conformity
with changing spiritual situation, the bearers
of the genuine experience of communion with
Christ change too: in the direct succession,
they are represented by apostles -- then martyrs
-- then ascetics. All the three categories
of witnesses are radically different between
them, but the most important thing is that
the experience gained by them is considered
by the Church as exactly the same, perfectly
identical in its spiritual essence in all
the three cases. In apostles' experience this
essence is the most obvious: quite clearly,
this experience is indeed the communion with
Christ, which takes here the form of usual
empiric intercourse. Equally obvious, however,
is that such form of the Christocentric communion
with God is only possible during Christ's
earthly life. In the next period, that of
persecution of Christians by pagan Roman Emperors,
Christian consciousness finds that communion
with Christ continues to be possible, but
now it is achieved in martyrdom. Martyrdom
is the realization of such communion, because
it means taking part in Christ's sacrificial
death, and this means, in its turn, taking
part also in Christ's victory over death,
that is new life in Christ. The form taken
by the experience of communion with Christ
is now completely different, it is not empiric
communication anymore, but the experience
of death by violence, the most terrible kind
of extreme anthropological experience. And
nevertheless, in their spiritual essence,
the death of a martyr and apostle's meeting
with Christ represent the same spiritual or
sacral event.
In the two events we see also one more common
feature, which is very important: they both
are possible only due to some specific features
of the surrounding reality, which do not depend
upon the bearer of the experience and cannot
be secured by him. Apostle's experience is
possible only during Christ's earthly life,
and similarly, martyr's experience is possible
only during persecutions; what is more, it
cannot be «self-made», the Church was always
forbidding to look for martyrdom deliberately,
to organize it, so to say, on one's own. And
this implies that the second historical form
of communion with Christ, martyrdom, also
becomes impossible, when the epoch of persecutions
comes to its end.
Thus the new epoch, when Christianity became
the state religion, brought a new and profound
problem for those Christian believers, for
whom the supreme value and main goal of Christian
life were in gaining personal and authentic
Christocentric experience. Now the reality
of human existence was not anymore an exceptional
kind of reality, in which the possibility
of personal communion with Christ was secured
by some special properties of it, like the
physical presence of Christ or threat of violent
death for any Christian. Christians were now
just in usual empiric life; and it is in such
life that they had to find ways and means
to achieve genuine union with Christ, identical
to the union achieved first by apostles and
then by martyrs. But here we must remember
that by Christian doctrine, uncreated God's
being and created fallen Man's being are radically
different from each other and separated by
ontological distance or split. Hence it follows
that the union with Divine Being means actual
ontological transition or transcension of
man's mode of being, the change of the ontological
status of the latter. Due to this, it cannot
be achieved by any usual, empiric human strategies,
it is impossible empirically, and might be
made possible only with the help of Divine
Being itself, that is God's grace or Divine
Energies, to use the terms of the later Orthodox
theology.
Hence it follows that for this maximalist
type of Christian consciousness, its main
goal can only be achieved by means of a most
specific strategy, alternative to all usual
human strategies: a strategy not directed
to any concrete aim in man's horizon of being,
but trying to go out of this horizon and get
into contact and union with different, Divine
Being, thus performing actual ontological
transformation. The creation and elaboration
of this strategy developed into large-scale
work that was undertaken by Eastern Christianity.
It is not surprising that this work took many
centuries. Obviously, the strategy had to
be holistic: the transformation desired had
necessarily to involve man as a whole and
touch all levels of the organization of a
human being, intellectual, psychic and somatic.
It made the work very intricate; but the main
difficulties lied in the alternative nature
of the strategy. It did not belong to any
kind of strategies of empiric existence, and
hence it implied the distancing from all occupations
of everyday worldly life and rejection of
all usual social, cultural, behavioral forms
and stereotypes. To cut it short, it demanded
a whole alternative way of life. Christian
consciousness became aware of this very quickly.
The Roman Empire has turned into Christian
state, and almost immediately the most ardent
Christians started to escape from this state.
They were fleeing away from cities to secluded
places, to wilderness, and starting to live
there as hermits, avoiding all contacts with
secular society and devoting themselves completely
to spiritual works. Such process was especially
active in the Egyptian provinces of the Roman
Empire, and soon the deserts of Coptic Egypt
became widely known as the place where hundreds
and thousands of people retired from worldly
life. This phenomenon was later given the
name of the opposition of the Empire and Desert;
and now we see clearly the roots and motives
of this famous historical episode.
The opposition of the Empire and Desert represents
just external, social side of the new strategy
of Christian life that was in the process
of formation. Internal sides were much more
important, however. Hermits, or ascetics,
or Desert Fathers as they were called, were
practicing a very specific form of human experience,
called usually mystico-ascetic experience.
In their caves and cells they had to solve
many extremely difficult spiritual and anthropological
problems. How is it possible to advance to
the goal, which is absent in man's horizon
of being and so is not of anthropological,
but meta-anthropological nature? Firstly,
such goal is unattainable by man's own efforts,
and secondly, even if this obstacle is surmounted
somehow, how can there be any map or road
instruction for the way to such goal? How
to be in control of the process of the advancement
in this way? Which are the criteria for the
comprehension and interpretation of the anthropological
and meta-anthropological experience that represented
the contents of the process in question (regarding
that this experience has no analogues in the
usual human experience)? How can it be checked
that the process had not gone astray -- and,
if it did, how to come back to the right way?
This list includes only some basic questions
of mystico-ascetic experience; but it is clear
already that the man who wants to realize
the discussed strategy cannot work out the
answers to all these questions, if he relies
only on his own individual experience. It
is evident that reliable realization of this
strategy needs a certain method or rather
methodological complex describing precisely
all the situation and all procedures, which
are necessary in order to produce the sought-for
experience: how should this experience be
organized -- checked up -- interpreted -- corrected,
if needed; etc.etc. In other words, this complex
should correspond to the Aristotelian notion
of the Organon. Thus we draw the important
conclusion: genuine mystico-ascetic experience
leading to a meta-anthropological goal -- in
our case, to authentic communion with Christ,
identical to the experience of apostles and
martyrs -- should create its own Organon,
which describes and regulates all the process
of the advancement to the goal.
As we stressed, the creation of the Organon
is a task that exceeds by far any individual
possibilities and stretch of individual life.
It demands a coordinated and devoted work
of many generations; and after being created,
the Organon must be preserved and transmitted
in time. This is also a collective work that
should be done by some community that reproduces
itself in generations. Such collective body
that reproduces itself in generations and
devotes itself to identical preservation and
transmission of a certain spiritual and anthropological
experience is exactly what is called spiritual
tradition. Eastern-Orthodox spiritual tradition
founded by Desert Fathers in the 4th c. has
also the name of the hesychast tradition or
simply hesychasm, after the Greek word hesychia,
which means quietness or silence; and the
experience cultivated in this tradition is
called the hesychast practice. The entire
process of the practice has the structure
of a ladder with distinct steps, and the key
feature of the process is the development
of a special form of the art of prayer (namely,
the incessant doing of the so-called Jesus
Prayer, the text of which is: Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God, have mercy on me). The incessant
character of the prayer is secured with the
aid of sophisticated technique of concentrated
attention, and all the process, called also
the «intellectual prayer», has analogues
in the schools of spiritual practice in other
world religions.
The creation of the Organon took about one
thousand years of work of the hesychast tradition,
roughly from the 4th to the 14th c. The last
period of this work which took place in Byzantium
in the 13th -- 14th cc. is of special importance.
It was a period of flourishing of the tradition
which is now called Hesychast Renaissance.
As a result of the so called Hesychast Controversy,
the sharp polemics about the true meaning
of hesychast experience, hesychasm developed
profound theological interpretation of its
practice. This interpretation belongs chiefly
to st. Gregory Palamas (1296-1357) who created
theology of Divine energies. This theology
was then approved by the Church Council and
provided an important link between the ascetic
tradition and Orthodox theology created by
Eastern Church Fathers. Now the core of Orthodox
spirituality for which I use the term Eastern
Christian discourse took the accomplished
form of a triple unity:
classical patristics -- theology of
Divine energies -- hesychasm.
This form conveys very clearly the key feature
of Orthodox spirituality, the inseparable
union of theological thought and mystico-ascetic
experience of personal communion with God.
2. Russian thought in its relation to the
Eastern Christian discourse
Russian culture took its initial shape in
the transference of Eastern Christian discourse
from Byzantium to Rus'. Thus it inherited
some specific features of this discourse important
for the development of philosophical thought.
These features are rooted in the key Orthodox
principle of the primacy of spiritual experience.
During the initial period of Christianity,
from the 1st through the 3rd centuries, stoic
and platonic philosophy provided Christians
with a framework for understanding Christian
truth. But in the 4th c. due to the work of
the Greek Church Fathers a new discourse arose,
that of dogmatic theology. It differs sharply
from philosophy since it is based on two specific
kinds of experience, both cultivated by Christianity
and both non-philosophical: the collective
"conciliary" experience, which is the source
of the dogmatic formulas arrived at by the
Church Councils; and the individual experience
of communion with God rooted in hesychast
practice.
In Eastern Christianity the term "theology"
means not "theoretical discourse about God",
but rather a direct rendering or expression
of the experience of human ascent to God.
The Orthodox theology of spiritual experience
(both conciliary and personal) had always
been the dominant discourse of Byzantine thought.
It raised much stronger obstacles to the development
of philosophy than did the kind of theology
cultivated in the West. Thus, Byzantium had
nothing like Scholasticism; indeed, it was
not until the 14th c., just a century before
Byzantium's collapse, that strong intellectual
movement generated by Hesychast Controversy
created an opening for the development of
Eastern Christianity's own original philosophy.
This opening was exploited by certain Eastern
Christian thinkers, but not
to any great extent.
In Russia, besides these features, there were
additional barriers to the development of
philosophy. For example, in early Russia classical
Greek philosophy was extremely little studied,
since Greek was almost an unknown language.
Moreover, Russian religious consciousness
which was mostly dominated by ethical and
ascetic motifs paid little attention to the
theological and even less to philosophical
content of the Eastern Christian discourse.
Thus, the systematic formation of philosophical
thought in Russia began only in the context
of the westernized culture that gradually
emerged in the country during the 17th and
especially 18th cc. But the westernization
never gained absolute dominance, and although
the influence of the roots of Russian thought
in the Eastern Christian discourse became
weak and almost unnoticeable at times, it
never disappeared completely. From the time
of its birth during the dispute between the
Slavophiles and Westernizers, modern Russian
philosophy always saw itself as confronting
a dilemma -- whether to adopt the western
philosophical discourse or the Eastern Christian
discourse. And its contents, its life, its
ideas always reflected this conflict.
Russian philosophy was gradually emerging
in the first decades of the 19th c., and in
the 1830s it entered a period of remarkable
development. To the end of the 1830s two ideological
parties of Slavophiles and Westernizers have
already been formed which had opposing views
of the differences between Russia and the
West and hence of the tasks and strategies
of Russian social and cultural development.
Both parties besides hot social and political
debates were engaged into intense philosophical
work concentrated chiefly on such subjects
as philosophy of history and philosophy of
personality. The most significant achievements
of this work were Khomiakov's theory of conciliarity
(sobornost'), Herzen's conception of personality
and (what is especially important for our
theme) the unfinished philosophical project
by Ivan Kireyevsky, which raised (but in no
way solved) the problem of creating an authentic
Russian philosophy based not on European metaphysics
but on the principles of Eastern Christian
discourse. Kireyevsky's reflection on the
Eastern Christian discourse displayed its
philosophical aspects and implications and
stressed specially the immanent, never obsolete
role of the "philosophy of the Holy Fathers
of the Orthodox Church" thus anticipating
directly the ideas of neopatristic synthesis
by Father George Florovsky in the mid-20th
c. Slavophiles thought over a new type of
philosophy: contemporary philosophy that provides
solutions to "questions of the day" and is
built upon the foundations of Russia's spiritual
tradition, being therefore distinct from classical
European metaphysics. However, such philosophy
was not yet created in their work.
As everybody knows, it was Vladimir Soloviev
who has presented the first full-blooded Russian
philosophical system. Methodologically and
epistemologically this system was completely
within the Western philosophical tradition;
it also accepted ontological foundations of
this tradition, having especially close ties
with classical German idealism. But still
his philosophy did not join any concrete direction
of Western thought. It had its independent
tasks and themes rooted in the authentic experience
of Russian history and Russian mentality.
By its nature it represented a synthesis and
compromise between Russian and Orthodox spiritual
and existential sources and Western ontological
basis and philosophical framework. A happy
discovery of Soloviev was the key concept,
which could express this double nature most
adequately. The famous concept of All-Unity
combined a strong affinity for Orthodox spirituality
and Russian culture with solid basis in almost
all formations of European philosophy since
Greek antiquity. Thus Soloviev's system attracted
many followers, and soon it was developed
by them into what is now known as the Russian
metaphysics of All-Unity. In its turn, this
metaphysics becomes the core of active philosophical
movement called later the Russian Religious-philosophical
renaissance. In the beginning of the 20th
c. within a very short period an unprecedented
number of bright talented thinkers appear:
brothers Sergey and Evgeny Troubetzkoy (Soloviev's
close friends), Rozanov, Vyacheslav Ivanov,
Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florensky, Lossky, Frank
and many others. Many of them develop major
philosophical systems, and this is how the
phenomenon of Russian religious philosophy
forms up, which takes quite noticeable place
in European philosophy of the last century.
Undoubtedly, philosophical work of the Russian
Religious-philosophical renaissance brought
rich and valuable fruits providing philosophical
expression to many important contents of the
Eastern Christian discourse. However, another
considerable part of these contents was left
out because it could not be understood on
the classical basis used by the metaphysics
of All-Unity. The framework of classical metaphysics
turned out to be inadequate for the interpretation
of some vital aspects of Russian and Orthodox
spirituality -- above all, anthropological
aspects connected with the quintessential
Orthodox experience of the communion with
and ascent to God as this experience is presented
in hesychast practice. Philosophical process
during the Silver Age was evolving with surprising
intensity, and the lack of connection with
the experiential sources of Eastern Christian
discourse was already felt and noticed by
Russian thinkers before the Bolshevik revolution
of 1917.
The first serious manifestation of the approaching
turn of Russian religious thought to these
sources was the attempt of several notable
philosophers (Florensky, Bulgakov, Ern, Losev)
to develop philosophical foundations of the
so called Onomatodoxy or Name-Praising (imyaslavie),
a new current within hesychasm, which spread
at the beginning of the 20th c. in some monasteries
in the Caucasus and on Mount Athos and professed
special adoration to the name of God. To explain
the practice of the Onomatodoxy these philosophers
found it necessary to use palamitic theology
of Divine energies, but at the same time they
were preserving the framework and basic concepts
of the metaphysics of All-Unity. Their work
produced a number of in-depth studies in linguistic
philosophy, philosophy of symbol and myth,
but nevertheless the main aim, to provide
a philosophical justification of Onomatodoxy,
was not achieved. The actual distance between
the discourse of classical metaphysics and
Eastern Christian discourse was more significant
than they supposed it to be, and new elements
contained in hesychasm and Palamism could
not be brought into philosophy as mere complements
to the basis of the metaphysics of All-Unity
(nor could they justify Onomatodoxy).
Thus the real turn of Russian and Orthodox
thought to the Eastern Christian discourse
in its entirety came later and followed a
different course. It was performed already
in the emigration by the next generation of
Russian religious thinkers who left out the
metaphysics of All-Unity and also metaphysics
as such and turned to direct and profound
studies of Orthodox spiritual tradition, above
all, of theology of Divine energies, which
was then very little studied and even little
known. This new course formed up in the mid-20th
c. in works of Vladimir Lossky, Georgy Florovsky,
John Meyendorff e.a. meant the return to genuine
origins of Orthodox spirituality and resulted
in the emergence of a whole new trend of Orthodox
thought. Quickly developing, this trend attracted
scholars from all Orthodox countries and became
widely known as neo-palamism and neo-patristics.
It was basically a theological trend, and
one can say that in the field of theology
it achieved a fairly comprehensive integration
of Eastern Christian discourse into modern
Orthodox thought. Today it is still active
and creative, elaborating chiefly such subjects
as theology of energy and theology of personality
and including a number of eminent Orthodox
theologians, like, for example, Metropolitans
John Zezioulas (Greece) and Amphilochy Radovich
(Serbia).
In the field of philosophy the situation is
different, however. Notwithstanding the fall
of the Communist regime, the tradition of
Russian religious philosophy did not come
back to creative development. In fact, this
philosophy obtains lots of attention in postcommunist
Russia and piles of texts on its subjects
are produced each year; but all this work
is predominantly of historic character. The
heritage of great Russian thinkers of Silver
Age is studied in the most detailed way, but
not complemented with new philosophical advancements.
But it should be noted here that such absence
of creative movement, of new promising ideas
and trends is now characteristic also of general
situation in philosophy. After the repudiation
of classical metaphysics and after the big
splash of destructive or deconstructive activity
of postmodernist thought, there is now a kind
of a break or an interval in philosophical
process. A new situation or configuration
has now formed up in all the field of the
humanities. Humanistic discourses and borders
between them are in a process of big changes,
and these changes inevitably influence the
tasks and prospects of philosophy.
In particular, we have now a new situation
also in the old problem of the relationship
between the Eastern Christian discourse and
Western thought. The going-out of classical
metaphysics removed some old barriers in this
relationship. Now European philosophy puts
to the forefront the search for new principles
of philosophical discourse and new vision
of anthropological reality, which could replace
classical personology and subjectology. Eastern
Christian discourse could provide a valuable
contribution to both these fields. Hesychast
anthropology develops discourse of energy,
which describes the human person as a changing
configuration of energies and avoids the concept
of the essence
of man; and such discourse could perhaps provide
a sound alternative to essentialist discourse
of classical metaphysics.
As for the problems of subject and personality,
the positions of Eastern Christian discourse
represent a fresh and independent approach
to them. Who comes after the Subject? -- this
question was chosen for the title of an important
collective work published by a big group of
prominent Western thinkers in 1991. One looks
for new modes of subjectivity instead of the
Cartesian subject
and its clones in various humanistic discourses.
But Eastern Christian discourse has its own
conceptual framework for these problems based
on patristic conception of personality as
Divine Person, hypostasis. This conception
implies that the man acquires the personal
mode of being actualizing his relation to
God and participating in the Divine being;
in other terms, unlocking himself towards
God. Seeing in such unlocking a certain paradigm
of the constitution of human person, synergic
anthropology developed in my works generalizes
this paradigm and obtains with its help a
comprehensive description of types of the
human constitution. This nonclassical and
pluralistic personology is close in many aspects
to the "hermeneutic of
the subject" developed by Michel Foucault
in his theory of practices of the Self.
Thus ideas and concepts originating in the
Eastern Christian discourse do really contribute
to the modern search for new nonclassical
foundations of philosophical and anthropological
thought. Of course, the role of the Eastern
Christian discourse in contemporary philosophical
process depends, among other factors, upon
the fact that this discourse belongs to the
field of Christian that is religious thought,
while European philosophy is predominantly
secular. However, the coming of the
postsecularism
brings growing chances for dialogue and collaboration
between religious and secular consciousness.
And surely, the philosophical potential of
the ancient Orthodox spiritual tradition is
not yet exhausted by far.
In historiography, there is no consensus regarding the origins of Russian philosophy, its periodization and its cultural significance. The historical boundaries of Russian philosophy directly depend on the philosophical content that a specific researcher sees in Russian intellectual history. Traditionally, since the 19th century, the "pre–Petrine" or "Old Russian" and "post–Petrine" or "Enlightenment" stages of the development of Russian philosophy have been distinguished. In modern historiography, a third, "Soviet" period is also distinguished. Starting from religious thought, Archimandrite Gabriel, the first historian of Russian philosophy, saw its origins in the didactic "Teachings" of Vladimir Monomakh, thereby directly elevating Russian philosophy to traditional ancient Russian scribes. A number of major historians of Russian philosophy, however, tend to view philosophy in stricter boundaries: Russian philosophy is taking shape as an independent phenomenon, thus, in the era of Peter the Great.
The reduction of Russian philosophy to the enlightenment paradigm has been repeatedly criticized in view of the reductivization of the Russian philosophical heritage of previous eras. Discussions about the origins and boundaries of Russian philosophy do not subside to this day, although in most modern historical and philosophical essays, Russian philosophy is considered as a phenomenon of Russian intellectual culture rooted in the theological and didactic literature of Ancient Russia (Kliment Smolyatich, Kirik Novgorodets, Kirill Turovsky and others are among the first Russian philosophers).
Semyon Frank characterized Russian philosophy by pointing out the inseparability of rational and moral meanings inherent in Russian thinkers, inherent in the word pravda. Nikolai Berdyaev also pointed out the striving characteristic of Russian thought "to develop for oneself a totalitarian, holistic world outlook, in which pravda–truth will be combined with pravda–justice".[1]
According to Professor Andrei Sukhov, no other philosophy contains so many reflections on the fate of country.[2]
As noted by the researcher Maria Varlamova, in Russia, Plato is a much more significant figure than Aristotle.[3]
Professor Nina Dmitrieva notes that "Russian philosophical thought until the turn of the 19th–20th centuries developed mainly in the mainstream of literary criticism and journalism, with a primary focus on topical socio–political and ethical issues. And in the last decades of the 19th century, mystical and religious thinkers began to set the tone in academic and so–called free philosophy".[4]
As Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences Natalia Vorobyova notes in her work "History of Russian Spiritual Culture", modern researchers postulate the absence of an original national Slavic–Russian philosophical system, considering the system of Russian philosophy as a phenomenon of Modern period.[5]
As Academician Dmitry Likhachev writes: "For many centuries Russian philosophy was closely connected with literature and poetry. Therefore, it should be studied in connection with Lomonosov and Derzhavin, Tyutchev and Vladimir Solovyov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chernyshevsky...".[6]
Main schools and directions
The main directions of Russian philosophy include:
Philosophical thought in the Old Russian state (11th–13th centuries)
The existence of ancient Russian philosophy is debatable. Some researchers, like Archpriest Dmitry Leskin, recognized the fact of its existence,[7] others denied, claiming only the presence of philosophical ideas and problems in ancient Russian literature.[8] The philosophical thoughts of the "Hellenic sages" fell into the Old Russian literature from translated sources. Within the framework of the religious worldview, the question of human nature (Svyatoslav's Izbornik,[9]Kirill Turovsky, Nil Sorsky), state power (Joseph Volotsky) and universal values («The Word of Law and Grace» by Metropolitan Hilarion, who is sometimes called "the first ancient Russian philosopher") was resolved.[10] The ethical ideal is contained in the Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh. In addition to historiosophy (ethnogenesis as a punishment for the Tower of Babel), The Tale of Bygone Years also contains elements of religious philosophy: the concepts of property (hypostasis), flesh (matter), vision (form), desire and dream (imagination) are being developed. Also in the ancient Russian state, translated literature of Byzantine philosophical monuments was widely circulated, the most important of which was the collection of sayings "The Bee" and "Dioptra" by Philip the Hermit. Among the most famous authors who left philosophically significant works are Vladimir Monomakh, Theodosius Pechersky, Klim Smolyatich, Kirik Novgorodets, Kirill Turovsky and Daniil Zatochnik.
Philosophical problems in the works of Russian scribes of the 14th–17th centuries
A wide controversy unfolded between the followers of Joseph from Volokolamsk (in the world – Ivan Sanin), nicknamed "Josephites", and Nil Sorsky (in the world – Nikolai Maikov), nicknamed the "Trans–Volga elders", or "non–possessors". The central question that worried the polemicists was related to the role of the church in the state and the significance of its land holdings and decoration. The problem of decorating churches and land was not directly related to philosophy, however, it served as an impetus for considering the problems of church possessions in the plane of biblical and patristic literature (in the polemics, Gregory Sinait and Simeon the New Theologian, John Climacus, Isaac the Syrian, John Cassian the Roman, Nil of Sinai, Basil the Great and others are cited) and ultimately led to the question of the meaning of the connection between faith and power, which was resolved on Russian soil in the idea of "charisma" of the ruler. This philosophical problem was further developed in the epistolary legacy of Ivan the Terrible and Prince Kurbsky, in "The Lay of Voivode Dracula" by Fyodor Kuritsyn, as well as in the message of Ivan Peresvetov. In addition, Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky went down in history in the course of the struggle against the heresy of the Judaizers and strigolniki, which spread in the Novgorod land (first of all, in Novgorod itself and in Pskov). With the spread of the heresy of the Judaizers in the Russian intellectual environment, works of pseudo–Aristotle began to appear. The position of the strigolniks in their spirit was close to the Hussites. In this regard, there is a need not only for the arguments of patristic literature, but also for monuments of Latin scholastic scholarship, which Dmitry Gerasimov, also known as Dmitry Scholastic, a member of the Gennadiy circle, began to translate. It is noteworthy that the reaction to heretics on the part of Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky also differed radically: Joseph Volotsky insisted on the destruction of heretics, according to Joseph, it is necessary to "inflict wounds on them, thereby consecrating his hand", while Nil Sorsky and Vassian Patrikeev insisted on the need exhortation, fighting with the word, not with the sword. The controversy between the Josephites and the non–possessors became an important example of the tension between the authorities and free–thinkers in the Russian state, which subsequently reappeared again and again in the history of Russian philosophy, which was repeatedly banned.[11]
An important role in the formation of Russian philosophy was played by the Ostrog School, founded by Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky in his domain in Ostrog in order to strengthen the Orthodox faith and improve the quality of the work of the Orthodox clergy in polemics with the Uniates. In the Ostrog School, much attention was paid to the study of languages: Ancient Greek, Latin and Old Church Slavonic. There was a printing house at the school, in which Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Timofeev served. Prince Andrey Kurbsky also took part in the development of the school. Along with theological literature, scholastic philosophy was studied at the Ostrog School. So Vitaly Dubensky compiled the florilegia "Dioptra, or the Mirror and the Reflection of Human Life in the Next World" in the Univ Monastery. Among the graduates of the academy were: the author of "Grammar" Melety Smotritsky (son of the first rector), archimandrite of the Kiev–Pechersk Lavra, the founder of the Lavra Printing House Yelisey Pletenetsky, polemicist writer, philosopher, author of "Apocrisis" Christopher Filalet and many others. The activities of the Ostrog School predetermined the orientation of philosophical and theological courses at the Kiev–Mogila and Moscow Slavic–Greek–Latin academies.[12]
Rtishchevskaya School
The Rtishchevsky School (also – the Rtishchevsky Brotherhood, the Andreevsky School) was the first educational institution in Russia, founded as a court circle during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich. Education in the Rtishchevsky Brotherhood was carried out on the model of European institutions of higher education. The school arose on the initiative of Fyodor Rtishchev, operated in Moscow since 1648 and was located in the Andreevsky Monastery, built at the expense of Rtishchev at the foot of the Sparrow Hills.
The Rtischevskaya School was the first in Moscow to officially include courses in philosophy and rhetoric. The head of the Rtishchevskaya School was appointed a native of the Kiev Fraternal School, a participant in book research in Russia, a philosopher, theologian and translator Epiphany Slavinetsky.
Moscow Slavic–Greek–Latin Academy
The most important figure within the Moscow Slavic–Greek–Latin Academy was Simeon of Polotsk. Simeon Polotsky was a figure of Russian culture, spiritual writer, theologian, poet, playwright, translator. He was the mentor of the children of the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich from Maria Miloslavskaya: Ivan, Sophia and Fedor. Founder of the School at the Zaikonospassky Monastery, teacher of Sylvester Medvedev.
Other important figures include Sylvester Medvedev and the Likhuda Brothers, Feofilakt Lopatinsky, Pallady Rogovsky.
Philosophy at the Smolensk Collegium
The most important figure in the framework of philosophy at the Smolensk Collegium was Gedeon Vishnevsky. Bishop Gedeon Vishnevsky was the bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, bishop of Smolensk and Dorogobuzh.
Russian philosophy of the 18th century
The reforms of Peter I contributed to the limitation of the power of the church and the penetration of Western philosophy into Russia through the emerging system of higher education. The most popular Western innovation was deism, whose adherents were such key thinkers of the Russian Enlightenment as Mikhail Lomonosov and Alexander Radishchev. It was at this moment that atomism and sensationalism fell on Russian soil. In practice, the ideas of deism were expressed in anti–clericalism and the substantiation of the subordination of spiritual power to secular ones, for which the learned squad of Peter I advocated. Also, the philosophy of Russian Enlightenment adapted many of the ideas of Freemasonry (Nikolay Novikov). Grigory Teplov compiled one of the first Russian philosophical dictionaries.[13]
Important Russian philosophers of the 18th century were Feofan Prokopovich and Stefan Yavorsky, Mikhail Lomonosov, Grigory Skovoroda, Russian Martinists, and "Inner Christians". The central works of Russian philosophers of the 18th century were "A Conversation of Two Friends" by Vasily Tatishchev, "Children's Philosophy" by Andrei Bolotov, "Knowledge Concerning Philosophy in General" by Grigory Teplov and "About Man, His Mortality and Immortality" by Alexander Radishchev.
Schellingism appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1823, the Society of Wisdom is created.
Peter Chaadaev – stood at the origins of the original philosophy, asked the question about the meaning of Russia as a separate civilization. For the rest, he repeated the old ideas about the mechanistic structure of the world and the providential nature of history;
Fyodor Dostoevsky declared about the "Russian Idea" and the need to restore the connection between the "educated society" and the people on the basis of the national "soil";
Contemporaries called Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) the central figure of Russian philosophy. He criticized the philosophy that existed before him for abstractness and did not accept such extreme manifestations of it as empiricism and rationalism. He put forward the idea of positive total–unity, headed by God. He saw good as a manifestation of will, truth as a manifestation of reason, beauty as a manifestation of feeling. The philosopher saw the entire material world as controlled by Him, while man in his philosophy acted as a connecting link between God and nature, created by Him, but not perfect. A person must bring it to perfection (up to spiritualization), this is the meaning of his life (movement to the Absolute). Since a person occupies an intermediate position between God and nature, his moral activity is manifested in love for another person, for nature and for God.[14] The concept of all-unity was also used by Semyon Frank and Lev Karsavin.
One of the central places in Russian philosophy is occupied by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). His philosophy was influenced by the views of Kant, Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer. Tolstoy's views were shared by many of his contemporaries ("Tolstoyans") and followers. Gandhi himself considered him to be his teacher.
In his philosophy, Tolstoy recognizes the value of the moral component of religion, but denies all its theological aspects ("true religion"). The goal of cognition is the search for the meaning of life by a person.[15]
At the beginning of the 20th century, the largest Russian philosophers, under the influence of social and political changes in the country, published three philosophical collections, which received a wide public response and evaluation from various political figures of that time. These compilations:
From the Depth. Collection of Articles About the Russian Revolution. 1918.
Russian religious philosophy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries became a kind of synthesis between Slavophilism and Westernism.[17] Following Chaadaev, projects for the construction of the kingdom of God on Earth were preserved, which acquired the features of Sophiology (Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Bulgakov) and Rose of the World (Daniil Andreev). Religion and spiritual and moral regeneration were thought to be an important part of building a just society. In part, the ideas of sophiology are inherited by Bolshevism (communism) and cosmism (noosphere).
In the 20th century, in connection with the dramatic events of Russian history, there is a division of Russian philosophy into Russian Marxism and the philosophy of the Russian diaspora. Some of the philosophers were exiled abroad, but some remained in Soviet Russia: Pavel Florensky and his student Alexei Losev. Through the latter, the traditions of Russian philosophy were revived in Soviet Russia, since Sergey Averintsev and Vladimir Bibikhin received spiritual succession from him.
The most important place in Russian philosophical thought in the first half of the 20th century is occupied by the work of Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), the most prominent representative of Russian existentialism. At the beginning of his journey, Berdyaev adhered to Marxist views, participating in anti–government demonstrations and conducting correspondence with one of the leaders of the German Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky. However, the young philosopher and thinker soon abandoned Marxism, becoming one of the most detailed critics of this doctrine.
Berdyaev calls the main opposition, which should develop in the philosopher's worldview, the opposition between spirit and nature. Spirit is a subject, life, creativity and freedom, nature is an object, a thing, necessity and immobility. Knowledge of the spirit is achieved through experience. God is spirit. Those of people who have had spiritual experience and experience of creativity do not need rational proof of the existence of God. At its core, the deity is irrational and super–rational.
Developing in his teaching the theme of creativity and spirituality, Berdyaev pays great attention to the idea of freedom, which reveals the connection between God, the Universe and man. He distinguishes three types of freedom: primary irrational freedom, that is, arbitrariness; rational freedom, that is, the fulfillment of a moral duty; and, finally, freedom imbued with the love of God. He argues that freedom is not created by God, and therefore God cannot be held responsible for the freedom that created evil. Primary freedom conditions the possibility of both good and evil. Thus, even God cannot foresee the actions of a person with free will, he acts as an assistant so that the will of a person becomes good.
Existential views in Berdyaev's work are manifested in his thoughts on the problem of personality. According to Berdyaev, personality is not a part of the cosmos, on the contrary, the cosmos is a part of the human personality. Personality is not a substance, it is a creative act, it is unchanging in the process of change. A person who manifests creative activity thereby finds a deity in himself.
Berdyaev is trying to formulate the so–called "Russian Idea", which expresses the character and vocation of the Russian people. "The Russian people are a highly polarized people, they are a combination of opposites", the thinker believes. The Russian people combine cruelty and humanity, individualism and faceless collectivism, the search for God and militant atheism, humility and arrogance, slavery and rebellion. In history, such features of a national character as obedience to power, martyrdom, sacrifice and a tendency to revelry and anarchy were manifested. Speaking about the events of 1917, Berdyaev emphasizes that the liberal–bourgeois revolution in Russia was a utopia. The revolution in Russia could only be socialist. According to the philosopher, the Russian idea is rooted in the idea of the brotherhood of people and peoples, for the Russian people in their spiritual structure is religious, open and communitarian. Nevertheless, Berdyaev reminds, one should not forget about the polarization of the nature of the Russian man, capable of compassion and the possibility of bitterness, striving for freedom, but sometimes prone to slavery.
Among the main works of Berdyaev "Philosophy of Freedom" (1911), "The Meaning of Creativity. The Experience of Human Justification" (1916), "The Philosophy of Inequality. Letters to Enemies in Social Philosophy" (1923), "The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism" (1937), "Russian Idea. The Main Problems of Russian Thought in the 19th and 20th Centuries" (1946).
Eurasianism
Eurasianism is a philosophical and political movement advocating the rejection of Russia's European integration in favor of integration with Central Asian countries. The Eurasian movement, which emerged among the Russian emigration in the 1920s and 1930s, gained popularity by the beginning of the 21st century.[18]
The ideas of Eurasianism, practically forgotten by the second half of the 20th century, were largely revived by the historian and geographer Lev Gumilyov and became widespread by the beginning of the 21st century. Gumilyov in a number of books – "Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth", "Millennium around the Caspian" and "From Rus to Russia" – using the Eurasian concept and supplementing it with his own developments, forms his concept of ethnogenesis, leading him to a number of conclusions, among which the largest the following are important: firstly, any ethnos is a community of people united by a certain stereotype of behavior; secondly, an ethnos and its stereotype of behavior are formed in specific geographic and climatic conditions and remain stable for a long period of time, comparable to the existence of an ethnos; thirdly, superethnic wholes are formed on the basis of a generalized stereotype of behavior shared by representatives of different ethnic groups of a single super–ethnic group; fourthly, the stereotype of the behavior of a superethnic integrity is a certain way of being that meets certain conditions of existence.
The main question in Soviet philosophy was the question of the relationship between matter and consciousness, and the main method was dialectics, in which three laws were distinguished. Structurally, philosophy was divided into dialectical and historical materialism, that is, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of history. Nature, interpreted as matter and objective reality, was considered eternal and infinite in space and time. Consciousness was interpreted as "a property of highly organized matter".
In the Soviet years, discussions about the nature of the ideal gained popularity (only "in the head" or not? David Dubrovsky – Evald Ilyenkov), disputes about the nature of information.
After the lifting of ideological prohibitions due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian philosophy found itself in a situation of uncertainty. While maintaining the existing structure of philosophical education, the process of mastering that part of the philosophical heritage, from which Soviet philosophy was artificially isolated, was launched. New disciplines of the philosophical cycle arose and began to develop – political science, cultural studies, religious studies, philosophical anthropology.
Attempts were made to resume the interrupted philosophical tradition, return to the legacy of Russian religious philosophy, but these attempts (according to Yuri Semyonov, Daniil Danin, Mikhail Chulaki and many others)[20] proved to be a failure.
Currently, there are several organizations that declare their continuity to the ideas of the Eurasians. The main ones among them are the Eurasian Youth Union, the International Eurasian Movement of the main ideologist of neo–Eurasianism, Alexander Dugin, and a number of other organizations.[21]
An extremely original and extraordinary[22] contribution to the development of Russian philosophy belongs to Georgy Shchedrovitsky and the methodological school he created, which was subsequently formulated accordingly ("the third Russian philosophy is actually methodology").[23] The philosophical and methodological system, created by Shchedrovitsky and his school (also known as the Moscow Methodological Circle), offers original ways out of the problematic situation of postmodernism ("in the opposition "modernism – postmodernism", the system of thought–activity methodology can be positioned with a number of reservations and conditions").[24] It is indicative that the initially semi–underground Moscow methodological circle forms, forges and polishes the concepts demanded by contemporary period, at a time when the conceptual apparatus of the so–called "post–non–classical" (post–modernist) philosophy has already exhausted its capabilities.[25]
^"Methodologists advise regional and municipal development programs, reorganization and development programs of individual enterprises, business structures, participate in the examination of various kinds of social initiatives, programs and projects, specialize as political strategists and image makers. There are separate experimental platforms in education": Alexey Babaytsev. Systematic Research Methodology // The Latest Philosophical Dictionary: 3rd Edition, Revised – Minsk: Book House. 2003 – 1280 Pages – (World of Encyclopedias)
^Alexey Babaytsev. Systematic Research Methodology // The Latest Philosophical Dictionary: 3rd Edition, Revised – Minsk: Book House. 2003 – 1280 Pages – (World of Encyclopedias)
^Georgy Shchedrovitsky. We Have a Philosophy // Georgy Shchedrovitsky. Philosophy. The Science. Methodology. Moscow: "School of Cultural Policy", 1997, Pages 1–24
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Vasily Vanchugov. The First Historian of Russian Philosophy: Archimandrite Gabriel and His Time – Moscow: World of Philosophy. 2015 – 752 Pages – (Russian Philosophy). ISBN978-5-9906502-0-6
Archimandrite Gabriel. Russian Philosophy / Preface, Text Preparation, Notes – Doctor of Philosophy Vasily Vanchugov – Moscow – Peoples' Friendship University of Russia Publishing House, 2005
Archimandrite Gabriel. History of Philosophy. Part 6. Kazan, at the University Printing House 1840 – Part 6: Russian Philosophy. (Facsimile Edition on the Runivers Portal)
Anatoly Galaktionov, Peter Nikandrov. History of Russian Philosophy – Moscow: Publishing House of Socio–Economic Literature, 1961
Anatoly Galaktionov, Peter Nikandrov. Russian Philosophy of the 9th–19th Centuries. 2nd Edition, Revised and Enlarged – Leningrad: Leningrad State University Publishing House, 1989
Vasily Zenkovsky. History of Russian Philosophy / Introductory Article, Preparation and Notes by Vyacheslav Serbinenko – Moscow, 2001
Galina Grinenko. History of Philosophy – Moscow: Yurayt–Izdat – 2004
Philosophy in the Soviet Union and Post–Soviet Russia / Vladimir Pustarnakov, Alexander Myslivchenko, Vladislav Lektorsky, Alexander Ogurtsov // New Philosophical Encyclopedia: In 4 Volumes / Chairman of the Scientific and Editorial Council Vyacheslav Stepin – 2nd Edition, Revised and Supplemented – Moscow: Mysl, 2010 – 2816 Pages