Apologetics in V.N. Ilyin’s Works on Aesthetics

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 335-343
Author(s):  
Konstantin M. Matsan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Direct Perception ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Inorganic Substance ◽  
Visible Image ◽  
General Morphology ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Church Service ◽  
Morphological System

In the article the author tries to view the works of Russian philosopher V.N. Ilyin on aesthetics as apologetic. Ilyin’s philosophic system that he himself termed as general morphology is based on such categories as “form”, “image” and “icon” as key elements, and thus it has obvious aesthetic dimension. General metaphysical principles stated in Ilyin’s theoretic and philosophic works that were not published in his lifetime, were reflected in his publicistic works – on aesthetics and liturgics. According to Ilyin, “form” is something by way of which the invisible ousia (essence) of the thing manifests itself on the surface – the phenomenon of invisible in visible image. For Ilyin the illustration of that principle was icon-painting. Ilyin also called his morphological system materologism – the doctrine on Logos running through the substance. Through the prism of this statement Ilyin views the phenomenon of bell-ringing, the “metaphysical task” of which was in “spiritualization of inorganic substance”, in that case – metal. An important part in Ilyin’s morphology was the metaphysics of light: light was something that allowed initially to discern forms and was the prerequisite for beauty and for admiring the beautiful. The appeal to beauty as something that was perceived directly in inner experience and lead the thought out of the limits of abstract logical construct, according to Ilyin, was part of the ontological argument of the divine being. Not only it contained the logically necessary conclusion of the divine being as the Absolute, but also included as a condition the “fact and act” of the man’s personal religious experience, – the experience of the direct perception of the divine reality in prayer and in church service, that, in its turn, was connected with the perception of the beauty of liturgical forms and with the cult as the phenomenon of the Absolute in circumstantial. This is the reason of the importance of the works on aesthetics and liturgics of Ilyin as an apologist.

scholarly journals Immediacy

PhaenEx ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-37
Author(s):  
Jason W. Alvis
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Temporal Expression ◽  
Essential Aspect ◽  
New Form ◽  
The Absolute

At least for Schleiermacher, religion is life in immediate feeling. Whether or not we agree with him, immediacy can be understood as one essential aspect of feeling that makes feeling congenial as the means by which we tend to express the source of religious experience. Yet in general, immediacy is difficult to define and qualify. Is there a hope for immediacy in seeking “to be delivered from contingency” (Merleau-Ponty)? Is immediacy expressed in the instantaneity of how qualities of things are given in a “total interpenetration” (Sartre)? Or are “immediacy and mediation” always inseparable, thus leaving any “opposition between them to be a nullity”? (Hegel)?[i] Might immediacy entail a threat to faith through the absolutizing of the relative (Kierkegaard)? And finally, would not the absolute insistence upon mediation morph it into a new form of immediacy? It is against the backdrop of these questions that this paper investigates the constellation of roles immediacy might play in religious experience, and it does so through building upon the (seemingly diametrically opposed) claims of Jean-Yves Lacoste and Anthony Steinbock in regards to religion. For Lacoste, “feeling” is not an adequate means by which we should give expression to religion, in part because it leaves religion responsive to an all too volitional and intentional account. Lacoste also prefers to conceive relation with the Absolute/God (a relation he calls "liturgy") not as an experience, but as a non-experience. Whereas for Steinbock, even though emotions all to often are conceptualized according to sentimentality and solipsism, he undertakes to reveal that (especially regarding Religious Experience or "epiphanic" givenness) they in fact have an inherent inter-personal/Personal or Moral intelligibility. The paper builds up to the final claims that immediacy is a temporal expression of the unconditioned, yet that it is precisely this temporal element in relation to the Absolute that complicates the mediation/immediacy interaction.  

Kant and Ontotheology

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-103
Author(s):  
Uygar Abacı
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Conceptual Representations ◽  
The Absolute

This chapter examines Kant’s objection to the ontological argument, based on the thesis Kant introduces in The Only Possible Argument (1763), “Existence is not a predicate or determination of a thing” (Ak. 2:72), which means that existence cannot be contained in the intension of the concept of any object. However, the historical novelty of Kant’s conception of existence does not lie in this negative thesis but in his two positive theses, “Existence is a predicate not so much of the thing itself as of the thought which one has of the thing” (OPA, Ak. 2:72), and “Existence is the absolute positing of a thing” (OPA, Ak. 2:73). These theses point to a radical discovery: existence is to be reinterpreted as a feature of conceptual representations of things and in reference to a cognitive subject. Kant’s later realization of the groundbreaking implications of this discovery will ground his revolution in modality.

scholarly journals How can we know the existence of God: Anselm and Aquinas?

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chibuikem C. Nnaeme
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Ontological Proof ◽  
Epistemological Conception ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute

This article is concerned with how we can know about the existence of God. In attempting to do this, the article will single out two medieval thinkers, Anselm and Aquinas, and will examine their stances on the subject. The former holds, as exemplified in his ontological proof,that human beings can rationally know the existence of God, whilst the latter objects to theformer�s claim by proffering that human beings can know God�s existence through effects of God�s creation. Over the years these positions have appealed to people who defend eitherstr and of the argument. Such a followership makes worthwhile my efforts to contribute to the ongoing debate. It is my intention to show the argument of each of these positions and indicate which is more plausible to human beings. It is vital to note that Anselm and Aquinas both accept the existence of God; therefore, the existence of God is not in question for them.The article will only concentrate on where the two thinkers differ in terms of how human beings can know God�s existence.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article challenges idealists�philosophy that human beings can prove God�s existence from the concept, God, as epitomisedby Anselm�s ontological argument. The critique of the argument through the application of Aquinas�s realism exposes the limitedness of the human beings in epistemological conception of the absolute metaphysical reality.

scholarly journals N.A. Berdyaev: mystic, gnostic, existentialist

2021 ◽  
pp. 105-139
Author(s):  
Natalia Bonetskaya
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Philosophical Idea ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Other Hand

The article presents the philosophical idea of N. Berdyaev in its internal logic. The author of the article determines the gnoseological origins of Berdyaev’s existentialism, that was initially aiming to overcome Kant's phenomenalism and agnosticism through the connection of philosophical thinking with religious experience. On one hand N. Bonetskaya shows that Berdyaev, the author of the book «Philosophy of freedom» (1911), in search of the freedom conditions for the cognizing person used the conception by R. Steiner, developed for example in his work «Philosophy of freedom» (1894). On the other hand, Berdyaevʼs gnostic thought had its source in his own spontaneous inner experience, which the thinker himself considered as a revelation of «creativity». Berdyaevʼs existentialism developed as a reflection of his philosophical creativity and in this sense, it can be interpreted as selfknowledge.

scholarly journals Rudolf Otto’s ‘the Absolute Other’ and a radical postsecular urban contextualization

2020 ◽  
pp. 147309522091276
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Nawratek
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
21St Century ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Rudolf Otto ◽  
The Early 21St Century

This article proposes an idea of radical urban contextualisation that follows Rudolf Otto’s discussion on an encounter with the Absolute Other. The article critically reviews current applications of postsecularism to urban theory formulated in a general framework of Jurgen Habermas’ intervention in the early 21st century. The article argues that contemporary postsecular urban theory cannot fully answer fundamental challenges that contemporary cities are facing – both political and environmental – mostly because it focuses on linguistic and cultural aspects of a city. The article proposes the ‘radicalization’ of postsecularism, engaging directly with the ‘religious experience’ defined by Rudolf Otto as an encounter with The Absolute Other – the unknown and unpredictable. The Absolute Other notion allows to ultimately contextualize every urban situation in order to formulate conditions for future-oriented (post-capitalist) urbanism.

scholarly journals Noetic and Noematic Dimensions of Religious Experience

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 256-273
Author(s):  
Michael David Barber
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Max Scheler ◽  
Critical Dimensions ◽  
Multiple Realities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mechanistic Worldview ◽  
Finite Provinces Of Meaning ◽  
The Absolute

AbstractPhenomenologies of religious experience have been developed by Max Scheler and via Alfred Schutz’s frameworks of “multiple realities” and “finite provinces of meaning.” For both, religious experience resists the pragmatic imperatives of the mechanistic worldview or world of working. Schutz’s paradigm begins with a distinctive noetic religious epoché opening the religious province, in contrast with Scheler’s start with spheres of being (especially the absolute sphere) furnishing the noematic context for religious acts. Scheler’s religious act resembles the religious epoché, but his eidetic analysis highlights the act’s distinctiveness, irreducibility to non-religious acts, and immunity to psychological reductionism. Correlating the religious act with his value theory (the absolute sphere), Scheler better withstands the subordination of religion to the pragmatic imperatives and the absolute to lesser values than does a Schutzian ranking of purposes in the province’s form of spontaneity. Scheler’s absolute personal being, whose revelation one must respectfully wait, supports the Schutzian relaxed tension of consciousness. Respectfulness of persons, the social/communal/critical dimensions of religious experience, religion’s need for critique from theoretical provinces of meaning, and the wariness of idolatrously substituting one’s own finite goods for the absolute can all mitigate the religious imperialism and violence to which absolute commitments can lead.

scholarly journals God and Religion in the Postmodern World

1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-172
Author(s):  
Eric A. Winkel
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Process Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
Dynamic View ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Persuasive Arguments ◽  
New Religion

Griffin's larger program in God and Religion in the Postmodern Worldis to develop a process theology able to meet the challenges and opportunitiespresented by science and modernity. This process theology draws extensivelyon the work of Whitehead and Hartshorne and essentially entails destroyingmodernity as an ideology while retaining certain parts of the scientificworldview, returning to some aspects of premodernity (such as the view ofenchanted nature), and creating a holistic, pluralistic, dynamic view of thenature of God and humanity.Besides this program, Griffin develops a number of insightful ideas.Getting around the problem of describing a phenomenon like postmodernism,which wants to preclude all closure and definition, Griffin makes the casethat destructive postmodemism is really ultramodernism, modernism carriedto its logical conclusion. This avoids the confusion of "constructive" postmodernthought.Griffin also makes the case for panentheism, as opposed to pantheismor the absolute dichotomy popular two or more centuries ago among Christiantheologians. Throughout the book, Griffin puts forward many original andinsightful ways of looking at Western thought, Christian theology, and therise of modernism. These insights deserve to be explored; they certainly shouldstimulate fruitful discussion.The major problem of Griffin's work for the Muslim is his desire, andthat of process theologians as a whole, to create a new religion. Huston Smithaddresses this issue in a forthcoming work where the two debate this andother issues. (I look forward to reading this book.) Griffin is not sufficientlyaware of the perennial perspective, which makes me predict that Huston Smithwill offer quite persuasive arguments against process theology. This perspectiveholds that no meaningful religious experience can take place without agrounding and foundation in a divinely revealed tradition. Islam has beencompleted and protected by Allah Himself in the form of the Qur'an andthe Sunnah, and so we need not create a new religion to appreciatepremodernity or to destroy modernity. It is the task of Islamic scholars toengage the issues Griffin brings up, a project which will surely lead us torediscover ideas and processes in our heritage which may be fruitfully ...

scholarly journals Religious Philosophy as an Experience of Knowledge of God: Sergei Bulgakov and Semyon Frank on the Relationship between Philosophy and Religion

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
Ivan Yu. Ilin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Philosophy And Religion ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Relationship

This article attempts to analyze the historical and philosophical views of S.N. Bulgakov and S.L. Frank about the meaning of religion, the nature of philosophy, and the essence of philoso­phical knowledge in the structure of religious experience. The article considers the correlation of religious and philosophical ideas of two thinkers and their positioning relative to each other. The article formulates the problem of the relationship and mutual influence of religious faith and philosophical reason in the legacy of Bulgakov and Frank, and raises the question of what role these outstanding authors of the Silver age assign to religious philosophy in the spiritual life of a Christian. The question of the place of conceptual thinking in the experience of understanding the Absolute is being clarified. The thesis about the role and significance of religious philosophy as a necessary beginning of discursive comprehension of the truths of faith (Bulgakov) and a holis­tic understanding of being (Frank) is being put forward.

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