The anthropology of the heart as a way to ecumenical dialogue

The article describes, taking as its main starting point the encyclical Fides et ratio, the importance of the way of thinking appropriate to the culture of the Christian East in the relationship between reason and faith. The encyclical of John Paul II has many different aspects, including the not often emphasised ecumenical and dialogical aspects. The Pope, who held Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity in high esteem and appreciated the Slavic cultural code, also positively points to this method of discovering the truth. In this context, the anthropology of the heart is particularly important (metaphysics of the heart, mysticism of the heart or spirituality of the heart), which enriches and complements the Western way of thinking and of discovering anthropological and theological truth. The anthropology of the heart also appears in the West and for this reason it has an ecumenical significance which is important for the dialogue between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

Habermas’ neue Phänomenologie des Geistes: Zwei Jahrhunderte nach Hegel

Jürgen Habermas’s opus magnum, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, synthesises his impressive work of the last half century. His thesis is that the modern project of the normativity of “rational freedom” can be reconstructed as a learning process of the conflictual dialogue between reason and faith, philosophy and religion in the West. Furthermore, under conditions of a world society, cross-cultural communication across lifeworlds, based on such normative principles, is possible. I argue that Habermas’s argument recapitulates a claim first made in The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel, who presented the normativity of modernity through a narrative unfolding between two epistemological standpoints, namely, that of consciousness and “we.” Just like Hegel, in order to defend the idea of a Lernprozess, Habermas too must presuppose a unified subject called “we;” furthermore the development of such subjectivity unfolds in a homogeneous temporal process that is then assumed to be the same for all mankind. I call this a form of “historicism,” and juxtapose recent historical writing that presents the narrative of modernity and the emergence of world-society as a much more diverse and fractured process than Hegel’s and Habermas’s methodology. “Die Einbeziehung der Anderen,” I argue, must involve including the voices of those others who do not experience the normative of modernity as a process like the one unfolding between faith and reason in the West. Nevertheless, I conclude that this plea for a more complex narrative that “provincialises Europe,” (Dipesh Chakrabarty) is not a rejection of the normative legacy of modern rationality and freedom that are based on the ideals of fallibilism, refutability and revisability through a rational community of inquirers.

“REASON AND FAITH”. THE PROBLEM OF THE SEPARATION OF DISCIPLINES

The paper maintains and reinforces a viewpoint that science and religion (theology) are methodologically and epistemologically independent. However, it also suggests that this independence can be overcome if a “third party” is taken into account, that is – philosophy. Such a possibility seems to follow from the thesis of incommensurability and the thesis of underdetermination formulated and analysed in the current philosophy of science.

Особенности образа современного русского интеллигента на примере романа Алексея Варламова Затонувший ковчег (1997)

The article focuses on the image of the modern Russian intellectual, depicted in the artistic text of Aleksey Varlamov, the Sunken Ark. Understanding the phenomenon of the Russian intelligentsia in the analysed literary work is associated with the problem of the opposition of reason and faith in the process of the personality formation of the modern intellectual. The analysis carried out in the text allows not only to trace and better understand the social processes of the crisis period in Russia, but also to notice their enormous impact on the consciousness of the main hero-intellectual Ilya Petrovich. The use of the methodology of historical and literary research in the work is adequate to the problems posed. The novel under analysis, as a kind of warning, has a deep philosophical undertone that touches upon the problems of faith, unbelief, freedom of the individual and the pursuit of moral perfection. Varlamov’s intellectual, as a typical “hero of our time”, regardless of his weakness, defenselessness and internal rupture, seems to be most needed in life.

Philosophy, Religion, and Heterodoxy in the Philosophy of Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Anne Conway

Philosophers who hold the compatibility of reason and faith, are vulnerable to the charge of opening the way to atheism and heterodoxy. This danger was particularly acute when, in the wake of Cartesianism, the philosophy of Spinoza and Hobbes necessitated a resetting of the relationship of philosophy with religion. My paper discusses three English philosophers who illustrate the difficulties for the philosophical defence for religion: Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Anne Conway, for all of whom philosophical and religious truth were deeply intertwined. But each of them also subscribed to heterodox religious beliefs. This raises questions of whether there is a direct the relationship between their philosophy and religious heterodoxy—whether they exemplify the charge that philosophy undermines religion, or indeed whether their defence of religion was a cover for heterodoxy.