scholarly journals Soteriological problematic of personality in the Russian religious tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Sergei Vladimirovich Pugin

The subject of this research is the problem of personality in the context of Russian religious thought. The study of such phenomenon as personality, which resembles a person’s unique individuality has been actively pursued in Western European philosophy. However, the history of Russian philosophy indicates other storylines related to personality that take roots in the religious tradition of Orthodoxy. One of the fundamental grounds is the Trinitarian problematic in perception of the doctrine on personality by the Russian philosophers. Application of historical-philosophical material allows comparing the reflection of the phenomenon of personality in Western European and Russian thought. Works of the modern authors on the topic are also attracted. In the course of studying the phenomenon of personality in Russian culture, the author formulate the following conclusions: the original concept of personality, which emerged in the pre-Peter tradition, was not only an intrinsic part of folk culture, but also played an important role as an anthropological marker of “friend and alien” on the level of behavioral or ethical practice. The personal marker is a holy, although such role model is an unachievable goal of self-impersonation. The essence of such devotion is revealed only through personal faith inherent to a group of people who share similar views and affiliate themselves with Orthodox Christians. Impersonation of a holy as a spiritualized person becomes a significant ethical and pedagogical dominant, and personality of a human is understood in relation to the personality of God, which manifests as spiritual marker for each person and simultaneously goal the purpose of earthly life. Namely through this, the phenomenon of Sobornost (Spiritual community of many jointly living people) obtains its transcendent meaning.

Author(s):  
Павел Великанов

У Рода Дреера получилась сильная, понятная и мотивирующая книга. Это настоящий эталон миссионерской (в светском значении этого слова) литературы. За ярким предисловием следует достаточно объёмный, но совсем не скучный экскурс в историю западноевропейской философии, в котором эта самая история постепенно складывается в линейную схему. Как считает автор, с позднего Средневековья и по настоящее время западноевропейское (и, как производная от него, американское) общество движется исключительно по пути моральной деградации и отхода от религии. Но это не эсхатологическая картина «охладения любви», о которой говорил Христос Спаситель (Мф. 24, 12). Речь идёт о якобы существующем кризисе одной из человеческих культурных моделей, вполне преодолимом человеческим же усилием. Rod Dreher's book is strong, clear and motivating. This is a true benchmark of missionary (in the secular sense of the word) literature. A vivid preface is followed by a rather voluminous, but not at all boring excursion into the history of Western European philosophy, in which this very history is gradually formed into a linear scheme. According to the author, from the late Middle Ages to the present, Western European (and, as a derivative of it, American) society has been moving exclusively along the path of moral degradation and departure from religion. But this is not the eschatological picture of the "cooling down of love" of which Christ the Saviour spoke (Matthew 24:12). We are talking about the alleged crisis of one of the human cultural models, quite surmountable by human efforts.


Author(s):  
Alexander A. Korolkov ◽  

The Russian exiled philosophers Alexander Kozhevnikov (Alexandre Kozhève) and Nikolay Lossky, who had to leave Russia in the 1920s, gave paradoxical interpretations of Hegel’s work: Kozhève treated Hegel as an atheist whereas Lossky interpreted him as an intuitivist. Both philosophers have influenced the development of Western European philosophy and contemporary understanding of Hegel’s texts. The history of Russian philosophy would be poorer if we forget that Kozhevnikov acquired recognition as a French philosopher Kozhève only at a mature age. A strong influence on Kozhève’s treatment of Christianity was exerted by Vladimir Soloviev’s philosophy, to which he devoted his first dissertation under the guidance of Karl Jaspers. His attention to the Christian understanding of love as an endless power over the finite manifestations of spirit, which was expounded upon/revealed in his course of lectures on Hegel, enjoyed great popularity in France and influenced the formation of eminent philosophers. Hegel’s atheism in Kozhève’s interpretation is not a denial of religion, since religion and philosophy have common interests applied to eternal themes; they differ only in methods of the cognition of the Absolute. The logic of the anthropological interpretation of Hegel led Kozhève to the rationalization of religion by elevating philosophy over it. Hegel’s atheistic anthropology turned his study into a summary of religious evolution, with theology eventually ousted by anthropology. Nikolay Lossky, who had written a book on intuitivism before the revolution, in his creative work abroad extended his notion of intuitivism by calling Hegel an extreme intuitivist. He based this conclusion on Hegel’s upholding of the principle of the identity of thinking and being, that is following the logic of an object in cognition. The possibility to eliminate the contradiction between knowledge and being, about which Hegel wrote, is interpreted by Lossky as intuitivism and even empiricism.


Author(s):  
Igor I. Evlampiev

This chapter highlights the most important characteristics of Russian religiosity and briefly describes the development of Russian religious thought from Russia’s adoption of Christianity in the tenth century up through the twentieth. It is emphasized that Russian religiosity strives to unite the divine and the earthly, in the interests of imparting to earthly reality a divine perfection. The author develops his view that Russian religious philosophy has always inclined towards the Gnostic version of Christianity, which denies the idea of the Fall and admits that the individual, as well as humanity as a whole, can achieve perfection in earthly life (i.e. the ‘Kingdom of God on Earth’ is possible). This point of view, first expressed by Pyotr Chaadaev, later became known as the concept of Godmanhood. Such a view lies at the centre of the philosophical outlook of the most famous Russian thinkers: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Vladimir Solovyov. The author argues that the main trend of twentieth-century Russian philosophy was to prove the crucial importance of Christianity for the proper development of civilization, while Christianity itself was understood by Russian thinkers (Nicolas Berdyaev, Semyon Frank, Lev Karsavin, Andrei Tarkovsky and others) as a teaching not so much about God as about the divine nature of man.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Vladimir Belov

One of the most important tasks in each philosophical tradition is to determine the methodological foundations and the target reason for research practice. Russian Russian neo-Kantianism raises several fundamental questions, including the criteria for distinguishing individual systems and the possibility of their integral reconstruction, the identification of the independence of Russian philosophers in overcoming the key contradictions of transcendental idealism, as well as discussions regarding the contribution of Russian neo-Kantians to the history of the development of Russian and European philosophy. No less significant is the problem of uniting Russian neo-Kantianism in the context of the general tradition of neo-Kantianism in its development to the latest trends. The prospect of turning to the heritage of Russian philosophers is largely determined by the design of post-Kantianism and post-Neo-Kantianism. In the works of A.I. Vvedensky, and then B.A. Focht, V.E. Seseman, S.L. Rubinstein, and many others, the transition from German classical idealism in the prism of the specifics of Russian philosophy to the formation of a new understanding of transcendental philosophy and its tasks was marked. In many ways, the proposed solutions were distinguished by originality and obvious independence, but at the same time they were implicitly within the boundaries of the tradition of German neo-Kantian philosophy set by I. Kant. Comparing the latest prospects for the development of neo-Kantian methodology, it can be assumed, not without reason, that Russian neo-Kantianism has largely anticipated the latest trends. Russian neo-Kantians need to reveal the unity of the entire tradition for an objective assessment and subsequent actualization of the heritage of the Russian Neo-Kantians, accompanying this process with a historical and philosophical reconstruction of individual systems of philosophy, but also identifying those perspectives for philosophy that were designated by Russian thinkers. Russian neo-Kantians' problem field of self-determination within the framework of the history of Russian and European philosophy is proposed in the content of the article. Special attention is focused on the unity of methodological tasks and the target reason for the research practices of thinkers who at different stages of their development contributed to the formation of the phenomenon of Russian neo-Kantianism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-126
Author(s):  
Anatoly Chernyaev ◽  

Georges Florovsky is one of the world-class thinkers who determined the ways of understanding and developing Russian philosophy and Orthodox theology in the modern era. The youngest contemporary of the brilliant period of the heyday of Russian philosophy, science and culture at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the founders of the concept of Eurasianism, a member of academic corporations of the largest institutions founded by Russian emigrants on both sides of the Atlantic, a participant in the ecumenical movement, he acquired considerable authority and influence in world Slavic studies and religious thought. Florovsky's main works are devoted to the interpretation of the Russian thought tradition and the study of the patristic heritage, on the basis of which he proposed a new project for the development of Orthodox thought: neo-patristic synthesis. It is necessary to consider these areas of Florovsky's activity in interconnection: the picture of the history of Russian religious thought presented in his works is intended to demonstrate that the separation from classical patristic models that occurred in it entailed a crisis of the spiritual culture of Russia, which led to a large-scale social crisis of the 20th century. Florovsky's philosophical and theological program of neo-patristic synthesis was formed in a polemic with the sophiological direction of Russian philosophy and can be regarded as its main alternative; this program received a response and development in the works of a number of domestic and foreign philosophers and theologians.


2020 ◽  
pp. 102-107
Author(s):  
Nadezhda V. Tsepeleva ◽  

. The article examines the traditional philosophy problem of reason and faith, which has two aspects regarding the subject of knowledge. This problem is revealed in the context of the patristic Christian tradition, since the traditional approach in philosophy connects the study of this problem in the course of philosophy only with the West European medieval tradition. Hence the understanding of this problem, ending with the opposition of reason and faith, which, in the end, is enshrined in the philosophy of I. Kant. The author of the article compares the conceptual approach of Western European philosophy to the problem of reason and faith and Russian religious tradition. In Russian religious philosophy of the 19th – 20th centuries the problem of reason and faith was solved on the basis of the idea of integral knowledge, which, as we know, presupposes not a juxtaposition of faith and knowledge, but a harmonious combination of religion, science and philosophy. We believe that the idea of integral knowledge has developed in Russian religious philosophy also under the influence of Western European philosophy, and more precisely, under the influence of European rationalism, as an alternative to the strict separation of religion and science. The article shows that the theory of whole knowledge is not consistent with the patristic Christian tradition. The patristic tradition speaks of “knowledge-ignorance”, it contrasts the conceptual theology and contemplation, dogmas, and experience of indescribable secrets. In conclusion, the author concludes that the opposite of reason and faith, but on a completely different methodological basis. This allows the author to talk about the apophaticism of the Christian faith in the patristic tradition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Paul Shore

The manuscipt Animadversiones, Notae ac Disputationes in Pestilentem Alcoranum is an almost entirely unknown translation of the Qur'an into baroque Latin completed by the Jesuit priest Ignazio Lomellini in 1622, of which only one copy exists. It is accompanied by extensive commentaries and includes a complete text of the Qur’an in Arabic and numerous marginalia. It is, therefore, one of the earliest complete translations of the Qur’an into a western European language and a crucial document of the encounter between western Christianity and Islam in the early modern period. This essay examines Lomellini’s understanding of Arabic and, specifically, of the cultural and religious underpinnings of Qur’anic Arabic. Special attention is given to his lexical choices. This essay also deals with the document’s intended audience, the resources upon which he drew (including the library of his patron, Cardinal Alessandro Orsini), and the manuscript’s relationship to the Jesuits’ broader literary and missionary efforts. Finally, it asks why scholars, particularly those who study the history of the Jesuits, have ignored this manuscript and its author.


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