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The main philosophical ideas of Florensky. Pavel Florensky: biography life ideas philosophy: Florensky

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

FEDERAL AGENCY FOR EDUCATION

ROSTOV STATE ECONOMIC

UNIVERSITY "(RINH)"

TEST

in the discipline "Philosophy"

on the topic: “Religious and philosophical views

P.A. Florensky" (No. 15)

Is done by a student:

Groups 412 s / s

Popova Natalya Viktorovna

Bataysk, 2012

Introduction

Biography of P. Florensky

Cosmological views of P. Florensky

The doctrine of the created Sophia the Wisdom of God.

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The assertion of a strong support past the current in eternity, the “ontological nature of the spiritual world”, “laying the paths to the future integral worldview” characterizes the teachings of P.A. Florensky as a metaphysics of unity. The belief in wholeness and unity, deep connection and harmony of being unite him with the philosophical searches of V. Solovyov, N. Fedorov, S. Bulgakov, N. Berdyaev, V. Vernadsky.

Florentine philosophical being divine

1. Biography of P.A. Florensky

P.A. Florensky was born on January 9, 1882. In the city of Yevlakh, Elizabethan province (now Azerbaijan). His father was an engineer, builder of the Transcaucasian railway. According to his mother, his roots go back to the ancient Armenian family of the Saparovs. Being of different religions, breaking away from their birth, the father and mother sought to turn the family into a special world, to instill in children the cult of the family principle. This cult is deeply rooted in the soul of the poor philosopher, but he supplements it with the cult of the family, the memory of the ancestors, the appeal of the soul to previous generations. A deep faith in God, the Church overcomes discord and unites generations.

Impressions from the rich nature of the Caucasus, childhood spent in the constant moving of the family (due to the service of the father), were in many ways decisive factors for the formation of the personality and worldview of the future philosopher. Sincere treatment of nature turns into a passion for the natural sciences.

After graduating from the Tiflis gymnasium, P. Florensky entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. At the university, the range of his interests is unusually wide: philosophy, mathematics, religion, art, folklore. In the same years, he participated in the symbolist movement, met A. Bely, collaborated in the journals Novy Put and Libra, where he was already trying to introduce mathematical concepts into philosophy.

After graduating from the university in 1904, he entered the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1911 he defended his master's thesis "On Spiritual Truth" and accepted the priesthood.

In 1914, Florensky's book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” was published. The experience of Orthodox theodicy”, which brought him recognition and fame, although far from exhausting the problems that interested him. The main task of the book is to comprehend and express the path that led the author to the world of Christianity and Orthodoxy.

Despite the repressions against the church, P. Florensky continues his active work, showing himself as an extremely versatile and unique personality. In addition to philosophy, he works at a professional level in several areas at once: natural science, linguistics, art theory, mathematics, technology, etc. Moreover, this work is united by one goal - the creation of a global synthesis, a single picture of being, reflected in the new work “At the Watersheds of Thought. Features of Concrete Metaphysics. But she never came out.

BUT. Lossky in the "History of Russian Philosophy" cites an excerpt about the philosopher from an article in the Pskov city newspaper, which best characterizes P. Florensky: "Everyone was surprised at the efficiency of this man: Florensky was a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, the author of the sensational religious-philosophical articles, a symbolist poet, whose works appeared in Libra, and a separate book, a gifted astronomer who defended the geocentric conception of the world; outstanding mathematician, author of "Imaginations in Geometry" and a number of monographs in the field of mathematics, authority in the field of physics, author of the exemplary work "Dielectrics and their technical application. General properties of dielectrics", art historian and author of several monographs on art, and especially woodcarving; a remarkable electrical engineer who occupied one of the main posts in the electrification commission ... He was a professor of perspective painting (at Vkhutemas); an excellent musician, an insightful admirer of Bach and the polyphonic music of Beethoven and his contemporaries, who knew their works to perfection. Florensky was a polyglot, fluent in Latin and ancient Greek and most modern European languages, as well as the languages of the Caucasus, Iran and India ... "

The first link P.A. Florensky falls in the summer of 1928. In the early 30s. persecution is again unleashed against him, and in 1933 he is arrested. In December 1937 Father Pavel Florensky was shot in the Solovetsky camp.

The whole life and work of P.A. Florensky are imbued with a very characteristic practical aspiration for him, a concrete, labor attitude to the world. He became a priest in order to practically, really help people. In science, Florensky was interested in research applicable in reality. Even in exile he continued his research work; made a number of discoveries.

P.A. Florensky was a patriot of his homeland. His friend S. Bulgakov wrote: “He wanted to share his fate with his people to the end. Father Pavel organically could not and did not want to become an emigrant in the sense of a voluntary or involuntary separation from his homeland, and he himself and his fate are the glory and greatness of Russia, although at the same time its greatest crime.

2.Cosmological views of P.A. Florensky

In the philosophical heritage of Florensky, a line stands out that is close to the ideas of Russian cosmism. This is the direction of Russian Orthodox philosophy, which N. Berdyaev in his work "The Russian Idea" described as "cosmocentric, contemplating the divine energies in the created world, directed towards the transformation of the world."

This direction, which not only considers a person as a microcosm, a particle of the Universe, but also raises the question of the active, creative mission of a person, his ability to transform his own nature and the outside world. Man is a spiritual, rational being, capable of introducing conscious creativity into nature, spiritualizing the world. The idea of the meaning of human life is considered through the comprehension of the unity of the Earth, the Cosmos, the biosphere and the interests of a particular person.

The evolution of life and man as its highest manifestation is endless. Man is not the crown of creation, his perfection is boundless. This is the unity of the Cosmos and man, the essence of the idea of the meaning of the cosmic process.

Man is the pinnacle of spontaneous evolution and at the same time the beginning of a new, rationally directed evolution. It is indicative that a concept identical to the “noosphere” (the sphere of the mind, the idea of a new specific shell of the Earth, as if superimposed on the biosphere and exerting an ever greater influence on it), is found among many followers of cosmism. So, P. Florensky in a letter to V.I. Vernadsky on September 21, 1929 writes: “For my own part, I want to express an idea that needs concrete justification and is more of a heuristic principle. This is precisely the idea of the existence in the biosphere or, perhaps, on the biosphere of what could be called the pneumatosphere, i.e. about the existence of a special part of the substance involved in the cycle of culture or, more precisely, the cycle of the spirit. Russian religious thought of the late XIX-XX centuries. developed an integral concept of God-manhood as a catholic, all-human cosmic deification. Not only God descends into the World for the salvation of man, but also man can, in a special act of creation, go beyond the limits of his own created nature, see God, i.e. what ideally should become the nature of the person himself.

The true essence of being, or "the unity of all creation in God", is considered by P. Florensky as a process of ascent from the creature to the Absolute, and not vice versa. “The creature is a creature because it is not an Unconditionally Necessary Being and that, consequently, the existence of a creature cannot be deduced in any way not only from the idea of Truth ... but even from the fact of the existence of Truth, from God.” And below: “The existence of a creature cannot be deduced by any, even the most refined, reasoning, and if thinkers still try to make this conclusion, then ... they either perform a logical trick or destroy the God-given creatureness of the creature, reducing it, the personality, free - although weak, from the level of God-like creative being to the plane of abstract being - as an attribute or mode of the Divine.

Such an understanding of the creature is possible only on the basis of Christianity. Only in Christianity created being, nature is considered as an independent living reality, and not a reflection of some other reality. “... This attitude towards the creature became conceivable only when people saw in the creature not a simple shell of demons, not some emanation of the Divine and not its ghostly appearance, similar to the appearance of a rainbow in splashes of water, but an independent, self-lawful and self-responsible creation of God…” , i.e. Florensky adheres to the perception, characteristic of Russian cosmism, of the inexhaustible forces of nature, its creative force, acting in itself, and not from outside.

The ideal sphere of being for Florensky is a living feeling of the dynamics of being in its roots, a feeling of its living power. This is especially evident in the doctrine of concrete-ideal being and in Florensky's "philosophy of the name".

According to the views of the philosopher, to know specifically the ideal principles underlying the universe means to see a living being as a unity in a heterogeneous one. To recreate living being in its ideal essence is the goal of true art. Synthetic images created by artists and sculptors are a harmonious unity of various expressions, facial expressions, and various changes over time. The ability to express the ideal wholeness symbolically means to see that root, the idea, which is not an abstract concept, but a manifestation of both a higher reality and a concrete living being.

This unity is manifested most fully in the idea of beauty, which belongs to this reality and living being.

P. Florensky's deep experience of the secret power of any word, name is closely connected with the understanding of concrete-ideal being. The name for him is the metaphysical principle of being and cognition, the divine essence, the substance of a thing. Florensky derives the formula: "The Name of God is God himself," but God is neither the Name of God nor a name in general. A name is not letters or sounds. Letters and sounds are icons. God exists in his names, which we spell. But it exists not substantially, but accidental, in its manifestation, in its energy. The name of God has an objective divine side. The entire Orthodox ritual, including prayer, cannot be reduced solely to the subjective. People worship and pray to the icon because the Deity is present in it. Otherwise, the icon would be just a piece of wood with more or less pronounced artistic merit.

Florensky's doctrine of the name (or name-glory) was most fully developed by A.F. Losev, his follower and student. Such are the cosmological views of P. Florensky.

3.The doctrine of the created Sophia the Wisdom of God

The constructions of the philosopher are completed with the doctrine of the created Sophia the Wisdom of God.

The doctrine of Sophia is a certain direction of the metaphysics of unity. Sophia is the ideal prototype of the world, the affirmation of the wisdom and beauty of the universe. In the center of attention P.A. Florensky is still the question of the relationship, the unity of created being and the divine, i.e. how is the perfect unity of the world possible? P. Florensky answers this question, revealing the essence of Sophia in the work “The Pillar and Ground of Truth”.

P. Florensky's sophiology is based on two sources:

) the traditions of the Sophian cult (affirmation of the wisdom and beauty of the universe; Sophia as the bearer of the eternal creative plan of the ideal prototype of the world under God);

) the concept of Christian Platonism (the correspondence of each thing to the ideas-eidos and the recognition of the rational world as the unity of the ideas-eidos of all things).

The relationship between the World and God is expressed by Florensky in two ways. On the one hand, it consists in recognizing the meaning of created being (being as God's plan for it and its image in God). On the other hand, in the creature's love for God. Consequently, each created personality corresponds to its "ideal personality" or "love - idea - monad", in which the connection of the personality with God is realized.

As the unifying force of being, which connects the monads with God and among themselves, is love. Love for the philosopher is the force that determines unity, it is the most important ontological category. In letter XI of the Pillar, which is called "Friendship", he analyzes in detail the various Greek verbs of love, gives a definition of what love means. This analysis shows that the Greek language distinguishes four directions in love: passion, affection, respect and affection. But none of these words expresses that love - friendship, which would combine all four components. Exploring specific philological material, Florensky holds the idea of the existence of levels of love. There are various degrees of love, gradations of love, from perfect love, "numerical identity". Consequently, there are also steps, gradations of the all-unity itself as the unity, connectedness gradually decreases, depending on the degree of its “existence”, authenticity.

Such a unity of being, constantly maintained by the creative power of love, is for P.A. Florensky "a many-in-one being". It belongs to the divine being and is endowed not only with life, but with a hypostatic, personal nature - it is a perfect personality. This person is Sophia.

From the point of view of three hypostases, Sophia for Florensky "is the ideal substance, the basis of the creature, the power or strength of her being." Further: "Sophia is the mind of the creature, the meaning, truth or truth of it." And, finally, it is “the spirituality of the creature, its holiness, purity and innocence, i.e. the beauty".

Sophia is "the fourth hypostatic element ... entering into the fullness of being of the Trinity bowels ... by the good pleasure of God."

In addition, Florensky brings the concept of Sophia closer to the concept of the Church and the Mother of God. Thus, since Sophia participates in the life of the trinitarian Deity, the Cosmos itself enters the sphere of the Absolute with her.

Florensky is characterized by the recognition of the mystical unity of nature, the oncoming movement of two worlds: the visible and the invisible. In this cosmological course, the doctrine of Sophia is developing as an ideal root that links the two worlds. Tracing the process of ascent from the Cosmos to the Absolute, the philosopher comes to the affirmation of the unity of all creation in God, the unity of the Cosmos and the Absolute.

Thus, the “spiritual experience of the fullness of being” is comprehended. Sophia is the perfect unity of the multitude. The principle of its organization is the identity of parts to the whole (which, by definition, is unity). Each person, remaining himself, at the same time merges with others, forming unity in diversity. Such identity is established through love, primarily the love of God.

Personality is dual in nature. This creature is original and suffering, beautiful and polluted at the same time. Opposites of light and darkness, good and evil, sin and salvation from it, redemption destroy the personality. This destruction leads not only to mental breakdowns, but, what is much more terrible, to the separation of the soul from the spirit, to the separation of the self from the person himself as a substantial image of God. The self becomes satanic, loses its creative, creative power. The preservation of the integrity of the individual is possible only, from the point of view of Florensky, in the love of God, in overcoming egoistic self-immersion in one's own self, and, consequently, in repentance. “In the face of eternity, all must undress from everything perishable and become naked.”

Florensky clearly contrasts reason and communion with the Church, although he speaks of the convergence of faith and knowledge. He affirms the suprareason, even antireason, of the truths of faith. In addition, the deep antinomianism of human consciousness is manifested in the separation of reason, which obeys formal logic, and reason, which is close to faith and purified by prayer and asceticism.

Thus, a single integral truth is possible only "in heaven", and on earth - only a multitude of truths or fragments of truth. Truth is conceivable only as an integral Unity. It is both real intelligence and intelligent reality, finite infinity and infinite finitude.

Conclusion

Such, in general terms, are the religious and philosophical views of the Russian philosopher Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky. As many historians of philosophy rightly point out, his theoretical constructions are far from infallible.

Attitude to philosophy P.A. Florensky is very contradictory and ambiguous. She was seriously criticized by N. Berdyaev. In particular, he considered Florensky too close to decadence, to subtle aesthetic experiences, and this contradicts strict Orthodoxy, which Florensky himself wanted to achieve. "Holy. Pavel Florensky - a brilliant, gifted, exquisitely intelligent and exquisitely refined stylist of Orthodoxy - he does not have a single thought, not a single word that has not gone through stylization. His Orthodoxy is not alive, not direct, but stylized, not naive, but sentimental (in Schiller's sense). This is Orthodoxy of complex and refined aesthetic reflections, and not of direct creative life, Orthodoxy of a period of decline, not prosperity.

The teachings of P.A. Florensky was not accepted by the church. P. Florensky elucidates many questions of Orthodoxy in a very original, non-trivial way. This innovative approach, apparently, aroused the resistance of everyday theology.

The fact is that innovation and everyday life for creative perception are combined inconsistently. Usually, attention is focused on the meanings of everyday life only as ordinary, too boring and uninteresting. What becomes too everyday, thereby becomes uninteresting for communication and perception. P. Florensky drew attention to this side of the matter when he analyzed Orthodoxy in connection with its too mundane nature. Religion must combine everyday and extraordinary, unusual, otherwise it will become familiar and ordinary.

P. Florensky's work on the renewal of too traditional, prosaic, boring Orthodoxy was associated with his attention to art history, to the question of the significance of art for theology and church life. These ideas are of great methodological importance for understanding everyday culture and the culture of communication.

Despite all the criticism of P.A. Florensky, they deserve a very high rating. P.A. Florensky connects religious issues with modern science and metaphysical research of those spheres of life that go beyond the limits of the human world. He revives the ideals of Christian humanism and clearly shows that the experience of Orthodoxy cannot be separated from Russian culture, the entire spiritual heritage. The true ideal of the Christian life, the achievement of holiness by P.A. Florensky sees not in leaving the world, not in estrangement from life, but in a complete worldview of being, practical service to God and people. It can be said with confidence that the whole life and work of Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky are a vivid embodiment of this ideal.

Bibliography:

1.Bychkov V.V. The Aesthetic Face of Being: The Speculation of Pavel Florensky. - M., 1990.

2.Voronkova L.P. The worldview of P.A. Florensky // Vestn. Moscow university Ser. 7. Philosophy. - 1989. - No. 1

.Zarubin A.G. Fundamentals of philosophy. Rostov N/A, 2006

.Losev A.F. Remembering Florensky... // Lit. studies. -1988.

.Khoruzhy S.S. Philosophical symbolism of P. A. Florensky and its life sources // Historical and Philosophical Yearbook. 1988. - M., 1989

.Shaposhnikov L.E. P.A. Florensky and modern orthodoxy// Philos. science. - 1987. - No. 5

Read the biography of the philosopher thinker: facts of life, main ideas and teachings

PAVEL ALEKSANDROVICH FLORENSKY
(1882-1937)

Russian religious philosopher, scientist, priest and theologian, follower of Vl. S. Solovyova. The central issues of his main work, The Pillar and Ground of Truth (1914), are the concept of total unity and the doctrine of Sophia, which comes from Solovyov, as well as the rationale for Orthodox dogma, especially trinity, asceticism, and veneration of icons. Major works: The Meaning of Idealism (1914), Near Khomyakov (1916), The First Steps of Philosophy (1917), Iconostasis (1918), Imaginations in Geometry (1922).

Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was a man of great talents and a unique tragic fate.

An outstanding mathematician, philosopher, theologian, art historian, prose writer, engineer, linguist, statesman was born on January 9, 1882, near the town of Yevlakh, Elizavetpol province (now Azerbaijan), in the family of a railway engineer who built the Transcaucasian railway. Mother came from the ancient Armenian family of the Saparovs. In addition to the elder Pavel, there were five more children in the family. In his notes "To my children. Memories of past days" (1916-1924), Florensky explores the world of childhood. "The secret of genius is to preserve childhood, the children's constitution for life. It is this constitution that gives the genius an objective perception of the world ...", he believes.

From childhood, he looked closely at everything extraordinary, seeing in the "special" (as one of the sections of his memoirs is called) signals of another world. "... Where the calm course of life is disturbed, where the fabric of ordinary causality is torn, there I saw the guarantees of the spirituality of being - perhaps immortality, in which, however, I was always so sure that it even interested me a little, as it disappeared occupy and subsequently and was implied by itself. The child was excited by fairy tales, tricks, everything that was different from the usual kind of things. Florensky's religious and philosophical convictions were formed not from philosophical books, which he read little and always reluctantly, but from childhood observations. As a child, he was excited by "the restrained power of natural forms, when behind the obvious, the infinitely more hidden is anticipated." Florensky's father once said to his high school student son that his (son's) strength "is not in the study of the particular and not in the thinking of the general, but where they are combined, on the border of the general and the particular, the abstract and the concrete. Perhaps, at the same time my father also said - "on the border of poetry and science", but I do not remember the latter firmly.

Recalling the years of apprenticeship at the 2nd Tiflis Gymnasium, Florensky wrote: "The passion for knowledge absorbed all my attention and time." Mostly he was engaged in physics and observation of nature. At the end of the gymnasium course, in the summer of 1899, Florensky experienced a spiritual crisis. The revealed limitations and relativity of physical knowledge for the first time made him think about the Truth, absolute and integral.

Florensky described this crisis of the scientific worldview in the chapter "Collapse" of the book of memoirs. He well remembered the time ("hot afternoon") and the place ("on the mountainside on the other side of the Kura"), when it suddenly became clear to him that "the entire scientific worldview is dust and conventionality, which has nothing to do with the truth." The search for truth continued and ended with the discovery of the simple fact that the truth is in ourselves, in our life "Truth has always been given to people, and It is not the fruit of learning some book, not rational, but something much deeper structure that lives inside us, what we live, breathe, eat."

The first spiritual impulse after the spiritual upheaval was to go among the people, partly under the influence of the writings of L. N. Tolstoy, to whom Florensky wrote a letter at that time. Parents insisted on continuing education and in 1900 Florensky entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. N. V. Bugaev, one of the founders of the Moscow Mathematical Society, had the greatest influence on him. Florensky intended to make his Ph.D. essay on a special mathematical topic part of a large work synthesizing mathematics and philosophy.

In addition to studying mathematics, Florensky listened to lectures at the Faculty of History and Philology, independently studied the history of art. “My studies in mathematics and physics,” he later wrote, “led me to the recognition of the formal possibility of the theoretical foundations of the universal religious worldview (the idea of discontinuity, the theory of function, number). Philosophically and historically, I was convinced that we can talk not about religions, but about religion, and that it is an inalienable property of mankind, although it assumes innumerable forms.

In 1904, after graduating from the university, P. A. Florensky entered the Moscow Theological Academy, wishing, as he wrote in one of his letters, “to produce a synthesis of ecclesiastical and secular culture, to fully unite with the Church, but without any compromises, honestly perceive all the positive teachings of the Church and the scientific and philosophical worldview together with art ... "

The main aspiration of those years was the knowledge of spirituality not abstractly philosophical, but vital. It is not surprising that Florensky's candidate essay "On Religious Truth" (1908), which became the core of his master's thesis and the book "The Pillar and Ground of Truth" (1914), was devoted to the ways of entering the Orthodox Church. "Live religious experience, as the only legitimate way of knowing dogmas," - this is how P. A. Florensky himself expressed the main idea of the book. "Churchliness is the name of that refuge, where the anxiety of the heart subsides, where the pretensions of reason are subdued, where great peace descends into the mind."

After graduating from the academy in 1908, Florensky was left as a teacher at the Department of the History of Philosophy. During the years of teaching at the MTA (1908-1919), he created a number of original courses on the history of ancient philosophy, Kantian problems, the philosophy of worship and culture. A.F. Losev noted that Florensky "gave the concept of Platonism, in depth and subtlety, surpassing everything that I read about Plato."

“In Father Paul,” wrote S. N. Bulgakov, “culture and churchness, Athens and Jerusalem, met, and this organic compound is in itself a fact of ecclesiastical historical significance.

Around Florensky, who in 1912-1917 also headed the journal The Bogoslovsky Vestnik, a circle of friends and acquaintances developed, which largely determined the atmosphere of Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century. The revolution came as no surprise to Florensky. Moreover, he wrote a lot about the deep crisis of bourgeois civilization, often spoke about the impending collapse of the usual foundations of life. But “at a time when the whole country was raving about the revolution, and also in church circles, one after another, although ephemeral, church-political organizations arose, Father Paul remained alien to them, whether because of his indifference to earthly dispensation in general, or because the voice of eternity generally sounded to him stronger than the calls of the present" (S. N. Bulgakov).

Florensky did not intend to leave Russia, although a brilliant scientific career awaited him in the West and, probably, world fame. He was one of the first among the clergy who, while serving the Church, began to work in Soviet institutions. At the same time, Florensky never betrayed either his convictions or his holy dignity, writing down for himself in 1920: “Never give up anything from your convictions. Remember, a concession leads to a new concession, and so on ad infinitum.” As long as it was possible, that is, until 1929, Florensky worked in all Soviet institutions without removing his cassock, thereby openly testifying that he was a priest. Florensky felt a moral duty and vocation to preserve the foundations of spiritual culture for future generations.

On October 22, 1922, he joined the commission for the protection of monuments of art and antiquities of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. As a result of the activities of the commission, the enormous historical and artistic wealth of the Lavra was described and the national treasure was saved. The commission prepared the conditions for the implementation of the decree "On applying to the museum of historical and artistic values of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra", signed on April 20, 1920 by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. I. Lenin.

In 1921 Florensky was elected a professor at the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops. During the period of the birth and flourishing of various new trends (futurism, constructivism, abstractionism), he defended the spiritual value and significance of universal forms of culture. He was convinced that a cultural worker was called upon to reveal the existing spiritual reality.

"Another view, according to which the artist and, in general, the cultural figure himself organizes what he wants and how he wants, a subjective and illusionistic view of art and culture," ultimately leads to the devaluation and devaluation of culture, that is, to the destruction of culture and man. Florensky's works "Analysis of spatiality and time in works of art", "Reverse perspective", "Iconostasis", "At the watersheds of thought" are devoted to these issues.

As in his youth, he is convinced of the existence of two worlds - the visible and the invisible, the supersensible, only making itself felt with the help of "special". So special are, in particular, dreams that connect the world of human existence with the world beyond. Florensky sets out his concept of dreams at the beginning of the treatise "Iconostasis". This is a very important idea for Florensky of the reverse flow of time.

"In a dream, time runs and accelerates towards the present, against the movement of time of waking consciousness. It is turned inside out through itself, and, therefore, all its concrete images are turned out with it. And this means that we have moved into the region of imaginary space."

Back in 1919, he published the article "Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Russia" - a kind of philosophy of Russian culture. It is in the Lavra that Russia is felt as a whole, here is a visual embodiment of the Russian idea, which appears as a legacy of Byzantium, and through it - Ancient Hellas.

The history of Russian culture is divided into two periods - Kyiv and Moscow. The first is the adoption of Hellenism.

"Following the formation of the feminine susceptibility of the Russian people from the outside, the time comes for courageous self-awareness and spiritual self-determination, the creation of statehood, sustainable life, the manifestation of all one's active creativity in art and science, and the development of economy and life."

The first period is associated with the name of Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril, the second - with St. Sergius. Women's receptivity is embodied in the symbol of Sophia-Wisdom, the courageous design of the life of Muscovite Russia - in the symbol of the Trinity Trinity - a symbol of the unity of Russian lands. This is how Florensky interprets the Trinity of Rublev, who embodied in colors the ideas of Sergius of Radonezh.

Florensky is a theorist of ancient Russian painting. It was he who substantiated the legitimacy of the "reverse perspective" on which the iconography is built. It was not helplessness, not lack of skill that forced the ancient artist to enlarge objects in the background, but the laws inherent in our vision.

"Russian icon painting of the 14th-15th centuries is the achieved perfection of representation, equal to which or even the like does not know the history of world art and with which, in a certain sense, only Greek sculpture can be compared - also the embodiment of spiritual images and also, after a bright rise, decomposed by rationalism and sensuality" .

Simultaneously with the work on the preservation of cultural heritage, P. A. Florensky was involved in scientific and technical activities. He chose applied physics partly because it was dictated by the practical needs of the state and in connection with the GOELRO plan, partly because it soon became clear that he would not be allowed to study theoretical physics, as he understands it.

In 1920, Florensky began working at the Moscow Karbolit plant, the next year he transferred to research work at the Glavelectro of the Supreme Economic Council of the RSFSR, and participated in the VIII Electrotechnical Congress, at which the GOELRO plan was discussed. In 1924, he was elected a member of the Central Electrotechnical Council of Glavelectro and began working in the Moscow Joint Committee of Electrotechnical Norms and Rules. At the same time, he created the first in the USSR laboratory for testing materials at the State Experimental Electrotechnical Institute, later the department of materials science, in which dielectrics were studied.

Florensky publishes the book Dielectrics and Their Technical Application (1924), which systematizes the latest theories and views concerning insulating materials. He was one of the first to promote synthetic plastics.

Since 1927, Florensky - co-editor of the "Technical Encyclopedia", for which he wrote 127 articles, and in 1931 he was elected to the presidium of the bureau for electrical insulating materials of the All-Union Energy Committee, in 1932 he was included in the commission for the standardization of scientific and technical designations of terms and symbols under the Labor Council and Defense of the USSR. In the book "Imaginations and Geometries" (1922), Florensky deduces from the general theory of relativity the possibility of a finite universe, when the Earth and man become the focus of creation.

Here Florensky returns to the worldview of Aristotle, Ptolemy and Dante. For him, unlike many mathematicians and physicists, the finiteness of the Universe is a real fact, not so much based on mathematical calculations, as following from the universal human worldview.

“The principle of relativity,” wrote Florensky in 1924, “was adopted by me not at all after a long discussion and even without studying, but simply because it was a weak attempt to clothe in the concept of a different understanding of the world. The general principle of relativity is, to some extent, coarsened and my simplified fairy tale about the world.

Florensky believed that the physics of the future, moving away from abstraction, should create concrete images, following the Goethe-Faraday worldview.

In 1929, in a letter to V. I. Vernadsky, developing his theory of the biosphere, Pavel Alexandrovich came to the idea "about the existence in the biosphere of what could be called the pneumatosphere, that is, the existence of a special part of matter involved in the cycle of culture or Or rather, the cycle of the spirit. He pointed out "the special stability of material formations worked out by the spirit, for example, objects of art", which gives the cultural protection activity a planetary meaning.

In the summer of 1928 Florensky was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod. Although three months later he was returned and reinstated at the request of E. P. Peshkova, the situation in Moscow by that time was such that Florensky said: "I was in exile, returned to hard labor."

The authors of all kinds of libels tried to present him as an inveterate enemy and thereby prepare public opinion for the realization of the inevitability and necessity of repression. Florensky was especially severely persecuted for his interpretation of the theory of relativity in his book Imaginations in Geometry and for his article Physics in the Service of Mathematics (Socialist Reconstruction and Science, 1932).

On February 26, 1933, Florensky was arrested by order of the Moscow regional branch of the OGPU, and on July 26, 1933, he was convicted by a special troika for 10 years and sent to the East Siberian camp. On December 1, he arrived at the camp, where he was assigned to work in the research department of the BAMLAG administration.

On February 10, 1934, he was sent to Skovorodino to an experimental permafrost station. Here Florensky conducted research, which later formed the basis of the book of his employees N. I. Bykov and P. N. Kapterev "Permafrost and construction on it" (1940).

In late July and early August 1934, his wife A. M. Florenskaya with her younger children Olga, Mikhail and Maria were able to come to Pavel Alexandrovich (at that time the eldest sons Vasily and Kirill were on geological expeditions).

This last meeting between Florensky and his family took place thanks to the help of E. P. Peshkova. On August 17, 1934, Florensky was unexpectedly placed in the isolation ward of the Svobodny camp, and on September 1 he was sent with a special escort to the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. On November 15, he began working at the Solovetsky camp plant of the iodine industry, where he dealt with the problem of extracting iodine and agar-agar from seaweed and made more than ten patented scientific discoveries.

November 25, 1937 Florensky was convicted a second time - "without the right to correspondence." At the time it meant death penalty. The official date of death - December 15, 1943 - originally reported to relatives, turned out to be fictitious. The tragic end of life was perceived by P. A. Florensky as a manifestation of a universal spiritual law: “It is clear that light is arranged in such a way that it is possible to give to the world only by paying for it with suffering and persecution” (from a letter dated February 13, 1937).

Florensky was posthumously rehabilitated, and half a century after his murder, a manuscript written in prison was handed over to the family from the archives of state security: "The proposed state structure in the future" - the political testament of the great thinker. Florensky sees the future Russia (Union) as a single centralized state headed by a man of a prophetic warehouse, who has a high intuition of culture. Florensky is aware of the flaws of democracy, which serves only as a screen for political adventurers; politics is a specialty that requires knowledge and maturity, inaccessible to everyone, like any other special field. Florensky predicted the revival of faith: "It will no longer be an old and lifeless religion, but the cry of those who are hungry in spirit."

On February 21, 1937, Florensky wrote to his son Cyril: "What have I been doing all my life? - I considered the world as a whole, as a single picture and reality, but at every moment, or, more precisely, at every stage of my life, from a certain angle. I looked through world relations on the section of the world in a certain direction, in a certain plane, and tried to understand the structure of the world according to this, at this stage, I am interested in. The planes of the section changed, but one did not cancel the other, but only enriched. ), with the constancy of the installation on the world as a whole".

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Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was born on January 21, 1882 in the town of Yevlakh in the west of present-day Azerbaijan. His paternal lineage goes to the Russian clergy, and his mother came from an old and noble Armenian family.

The Florensky family before the departure of the eldest son Pavel to study in St. Petersburg. Spring 1900. Sitting: Alexander Ivanovich Florensky, Raisa, Pavel, Elizaveta, Olga Pavlovna, Alexander; standing: Olga, Elizaveta Pavlovna Melik-Beglyarova (Saparova), Yulia

Florensky early discovered mathematical abilities and after graduating from the gymnasium in Tiflis entered the mathematical department of Moscow University. After graduating from the University, Pavel Alexandrovich entered the Moscow Theological Academy.

While still a student, his interests covered philosophy, religion, art, and folklore. He enters the circle of young participants in the symbolic movement, makes friends with Andrei Bely, and his first creative experiences are articles in the symbolist magazines New Way and Scales, where he seeks to introduce mathematical concepts into philosophical problems.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Novosyolov (left), leader of the Circle of Those Seeking Christian Enlightenment in the Spirit of the Orthodox Church of Christ, in which siminarist Pavel Florensky (center) and philosopher S. N. Bulgakov took part

During the years of study at the Theological Academy, he came up with the idea of the book "The Pillar and Ground of Truth", most of which he completes by the end of his studies. After graduating from the Academy in 1908, he became a teacher of philosophical disciplines. In 1911 he received the priesthood. In 1912, he was appointed editor of the academic journal Theological Bulletin.

In 1918 the Theological Academy moved to Moscow, and then completely closed.

In 1921, the Sergiev Pasad Church was closed, where Pavel Florensky served as a priest. In the period from 1916 to 1925 he worked on religious and philosophical works: "Essays on the Philosophy of Cult", "Iconostasis".

In parallel, Pavel Alexandrovich is engaged in physics, mathematics, works in the field of technology and materials science. Since 1921 he has been working in the Glavenergo system, taking part in the GOELRO, and in 1924 he published a monograph on dielectrics.

In the second half of the twenties, Florensky's circle of studies was forcedly limited to technical issues. In the summer of 1928 he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod. But in the same year, at the request of E. P. Peshkova, he was returned from exile.

In the early thirties, a huge campaign was unleashed against Florensky in the Soviet press with articles of a pogrom and denunciatory nature. February 26, 1933 he was arrested and after 5 months he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In September 1934 he was transferred to the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), where he arrived on November 15, 1934. Here he worked at the plant of the iodine industry, where he dealt with the problem of extracting iodine and agar-agar from seaweed and made a number of scientific discoveries.

Some sources claim thatbetween 17 and 19 June 1937 Florensky disappeared from the camp. On November 25, 1937, by a resolution of the Special Troika of the NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region, Florensky was sentenced to capital punishment "for carrying out counter-revolutionary propaganda." According to archival data, he was shot on December 8, 1937. The place of his death and burial is unknown.

There are some legends that claim that Florensky was not shot, but for many years he worked without the right to correspond in one of the secret institutes on military programs, in particular, on the Soviet uranium project. These legends were confirmed by the fact that until 1989 the time and circumstances of his death were not known exactly. In 1958, after rehabilitation, a certificate was issued to Florensky's relatives about his death in the camp on December 15, 1943..

In a letter to his son Cyril dated June 3-4, 1937, Florensky outlined a number of technical details of the method of industrial production of heavy water. As you know, heavy water is used only for the production of nuclear weapons.

It was precisely because of the questions raised in the letters about the production of heavy water that Florensky disappeared from the camp in mid-June 1937, because, as secret institutions know, prisoners were often deprived of the right to correspond.

Another legend says that 13 days passed between Florensky's death sentence and his execution. In ordinary cases, the sentences of special triplets were carried out within 1-2 days. Perhaps the delay in the execution of the sentence was due to the fact that the prisoner was brought to Leningrad from Solovki, or vice versa.

And of course, there remains an insignificant possibility that Florensky could work under a false name in one of the closed research institutes of the NKVD.

bibliotekar.ru ›filosofia/91.htm

P. Florensky with P. Kapterev in the camp

In his last letter from Solovki, Florensky says hopefully, as if inviting us to a dialogue: “In the end, there is joy in the thought that when the future comes to the same end from the other end, they will say: “It turns out that in 1937 such and such NN already expressed the same thoughts, in an old-fashioned language for us. It's amazing how they could think of our thoughts then! And perhaps they will arrange another anniversary or commemoration, which I will only make fun of. All these commemorations after 100 years are surprisingly arrogant ... "

Many of the great words spoken by Florensky came true, except perhaps, apart from fears of the arrogance of descendants - are we arrogant in the face of the unfading memory of such unforgettable people as Father Pavel, especially now? .. - after all, the Word, according to Florensky, is “an infinite unit ”, a unifying force-substance, the inner power of which the magician comprehends in his sorcery, thus forming the very existence of things; The word is human energy, both of the human race and of the individual.

http://www.topos.ru/article/on…

Florensky. Religious and philosophical readings.

From the preface

Turning in such difficult times, especially for intelligent Russians, to the spiritual achievements of their ancestors is evidence of the free, sincere and disinterested movement of the soul, its instinctive thirst for insight and recovery. This is evidence that we still care about neither the cause of historical truth and justice, nor the concept of moral duty, national conscience, honor and dignity.
It is significant that the initiative in this comes from the Kostroma land, with which the names of Fr. P. Florensky and V. V. Rozanov. It is encouraging that this act brought together people of such different life positions, education, professions, political and other views. It is impossible not to see in this a real step towards spiritual unity, without which there is and cannot be either civil peace and harmony, or worldly well-being. And, finally, it is significant and encouraging that this event itself became possible both through the efforts and efforts of civilians and institutions, and thanks to the active assistance of the Russian Orthodox Church in the person of the Kostroma diocesan administration

Philosophical ideas of P. A. Florensky and modernity

The image of the thinker P. A. Florensky

Florensky, like a peasant plowman who plows up the land every year for new fruiting, plows his soul. An interested reader, regardless of how much he accepted this teaching, how much he agreed with it, first of all absorbs the image of the Teacher and experiences the same feelings for him that he expressed about Hamlet: “... After all, he suffered for us, and from “He died for us, looking for a way to move on to a new consciousness… Don’t we feel, listening to him, that there is no time between us, that this is our true brother, speaking with us face to face.”
The word “image” itself, which is very capacious and ambiguous, most of all, in our opinion, fits Florensky’s original interpretation of various concepts, to the study of various aspects of life. For example, the mind is defined by him as "something alive and centripetal - an organ of a living being, a mode of relationship between the knower and the known, that is, a type of connection of being." We are more accustomed to the idea of the mind that Florensky rejects: "the geometric container of its content."

Correlation and dependence of reason and Truth.

When studying Florensky, we face the question of what to focus on more - on a critical analysis of what we have read or on clarifying the consequences for each of us from the “plowed soul”. (Here it should be recalled that throughout human life there has been a certain ban on vast areas of knowledge.)
V. V. Rozanov wrote to S. N. Bulgakov about Florensky: “He is ... a priest”, thus emphasizing the most important thing in Florensky. But in our time we did not know priests in general, and even more so priests who, along with theology (and often on the basis of it), also philosophy, and mathematics, and philology, and many others. Involuntarily, the images of Leonardo da Vinci and Nicholas of Cusa stand before us in the aggregate.
And yet, without pretending to much, we will critically consider the article “Names” from the field of knowledge accessible to us. In general, Florensky's approach to the word, to the writer, to the literary work is determined by the strong influence of the era of symbolism in literature.
When interpreting the image and meaning of the protagonist through his name, in our opinion, the image of the author himself is lost, as well as the image of the Word he created (cf. "The Word about Law and Grace", "The Word about Igor's Campaign", etc.) . In this case, we would not feel Father Paul himself, standing behind the names in his writings. But it's not. Without this powerful image, the author's research would crumble into separate abstractions or, at best, would remain a positivist system of some scientific knowledge. But as we now know, Florensky himself constantly spoke out against such a "bare" systematic.

The concept of "transition" in Florensky.

The transition from the logical apparatus to concrete sensory experience occurs in Florensky at the moment of despair of consciousness from the attempt of the "morbid" mind to cognize the world in parts. Disintegration of both the world and consciousness. Transition, therefore, is one of Florensky's most important concepts: the transition from "pre-thought" to thought itself, the transitions between "I", "you", "he" - the concept of trinity. Transitions from pagan consciousness to Christian (article "Hamlet"). Our transition, in turn, from the purely material, pragmatic world to the world of Pavel Florensky promises us the Truth "in the first instance", which we have so vulgarized with our ironism. At the same time, let us not forget that simultaneously with the trampling of the Church of Christ, there was also the trampling of another shrine for us - the land from which the true tiller left and which was also dear to Florensky the patriot, Florensky the naturalist, Florensky the collector of folk art.

Semenov R. A. (Galich region)

Introduction

The most durable, indestructible and constantly self-renewing in the world is that which has been worked out by the human spirit, human thought. On September 21, 1929, priest Pavel Florensky wrote to V.I. Vernadsky “about the existence in the biosphere, or, perhaps, on the biosphere of what could be called the pneumatosphere, i.e. about the existence of a special part of the substance involved in the cycle of culture or, more precisely, the cycle of the spirit. It should be noted that in theology there is a special section of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit - pneumatology, and what the naturalist Florensky wrote to the naturalist Vernadsky, the latter explained as follows: “The irreducibility of this cycle to the general cycle of life can hardly be doubted. But there is a lot of data, however, not yet sufficiently formed, hinting at the special stability of material formations worked out by the spirit, for example, objects of art. This makes us suspect the existence of a corresponding special sphere of matter in space.” To this P.A. Florensky, a scientist who attached great importance to the experimental-concrete study of matter, added: “At present, it is still premature to speak of the pneumatosphere as a subject of scientific study; perhaps such a question should not have been fixed in writing. However, the impossibility of a personal conversation prompted me to express this thought in a letter. 1 So, the idea of the pneumatosphere was preserved precisely in the letter. Any letters, like many other pieces of written paper, belong to the pneumatosphere, inseparable from a person, whose spiritualized efforts determine the “special durability” of its “material formations”.

Many of the works of the priest Pavel Florensky are essentially personal conversations or letters filled with an intimate inner light playing on the edges of the composition, and addressed to the reader-friend. "The Pillar and Ground of the Truth" 2 even has a clarification in the subtitle - "An Experience of Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters". Sometimes letters modified by P.A. Florensky, turned into chapters of his works. So, for example, the preface "On Makovets" to the work "At the watersheds of thought" 3 grew out of a letter to V.V. Rozanov. Florensky's word is a symbol, i.e. it is always something else. This “something” should be revealed to those who are to some extent related to the author in terms of their worldview, hence the appeal to the individual, to a friend, and not to an abstract public. Florensky and his relatives lived in the "epistolary" time. Correspondence genre friend of Florensky V.V. Rozanov called "the golden part of literature". This genre is one of the most ancient: the letters found during excavations give an idea of bygone civilizations, about the personal relationships of people, and the letters of the apostles addressed to loved ones or Christian communities formed part of the Holy Scriptures. Letters are subjective by definition and keep undistorted a concrete and momentary dialogue, but they are also mythological, understanding the myth as an ever-existing reality. The epistolary genre is a Socratic conversation that preserves the dialectic of communication. This letter is fundamentally different from memoirs, which in essence are simulated conversations of a memoirist with himself in the past or with an interested interlocutor in the present, or justifying himself to his descendants in the future. That is why the epistolary genre is sometimes more accurate than time-honored memoirs, which often claim to be an objective reassessment of the past.

1. Biography of Florensky

Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) - Russian religious philosopher and scientist, was born on January 9 (according to the old style) in the town of Yevlakh in the west of present-day Azerbaijan. According to his father, his pedigree goes to the Russian clergy, while his mother came from an old and noble Armenian family. Florensky very early discovered exceptional mathematical abilities and after graduating from the gymnasium in Tiflis entered the mathematical department of Moscow University. After graduating from the University, he did not accept an offer to stay at the University to study mathematics, but entered the Moscow Theological Academy. During these years, he, along with Ern, Sventsitsky and Fr. Brikhnichev created the "Union of Christian Struggle", which strove for a radical renewal of the social system in the spirit of the ideas of Vl. Solovyov about the "Christian community". Later, Florensky completely departed from radical Christianity.

During the years of study at the Theological Academy, he came up with the idea of a major work, his future book "The Pillar and Ground of Truth", most of which he completes by the end of his studies. After graduating from the Academy in 1908, he became a teacher of philosophical disciplines, and in 1911 he received the priesthood and in 1912 was appointed editor of the academic journal The Theological Bulletin. The full and final text of his book The Pillar and Ground of Truth appears in 1924.

In 1918, the Theological Academy moved its work to Moscow, and then closed. In 1921, the Sergiev-Pasadsky temple was also closed, where Florensky served as a priest. In the years from 1916 to 1925, Florensky wrote a number of religious and philosophical works, including Essays on the Philosophy of Cult (1918), Iconostasis (1922), and worked on his memoirs. Along with this, he returns to physics and mathematics, also working in the field of engineering and materials science. Since 1921, he has been working in the Glavenergo system, taking part in GOELRO, and in 1924 he publishes a large monograph on dielectrics. Another direction of his activity during this period was art criticism and museum work. At the same time, Florensky works in the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, being its scientific secretary, and writes a number of works on ancient Russian art.

In the second half of the twenties, Florensky's circle of studies was forcedly limited to technical issues. In the summer of 1928 he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod, but in the same year, due to the efforts of E.P. Peshkova, returned from exile. In the early thirties, a campaign was unleashed against him in the Soviet press with articles of a pogrom and denunciatory character. On February 26, 1933, an arrest followed, and 5 months later, on July 26, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. From 1934 Florensky was kept in the Solovetsky camp. On November 25, 1937, by a special troika of the UNKVD of the Leningrad Region, he was sentenced to capital punishment and shot on December 8, 1937.

2. Stages of creativity P. Florensky

In the work of P.A. Florensky usually distinguish two stages, which ended with the fundamental works on theodicy and anthropodicy.

Theodicy, which in a somewhat simplified translation means justification, explanation, justification of the existence of God, is the book "The Pillar and Ground of Truth", the only great work on philosophy published during his lifetime, written when its author was less than thirty years old. The book played a big role in the churching of the intelligentsia of both the silver and our "iron" age. It was read and known when it was not safe to read religious literature. Florensky was a symbol of a learned priest who died in the camps. Now it is forgotten that it was dangerous to have patristic and ecclesiastical literature in general. Even at the end of the 1980s, for a Bible discovered by customs officers, a person became at least “not allowed to travel abroad”. The names of church leaders in general, and the names of religious philosophers in particular, were crossed out both literally and figuratively, just as the names of those objectionable to Orwell's "Ministry of Truth" were blacked out.

Another work by P.A. Florensky - anthropodicy, the justification of man - was created by a mature forty-year-old thinker with no hope of publication. It includes several volumes, the manuscripts of which were secretly preserved by his family. Now they are published by the efforts of his grandchildren, and many of them, especially Iconostasis 4 and Names, 5 have entered our culture. Priest Pavel Florensky continued his posthumous way of the cross.

However, in the work of P.A. Florensky, as in his life, it is appropriate to single out two more stages, which correspond to completed and perfect literary and philosophical works. This is his correspondence of the beginning and end of his life and creative path.

Letters to a family from the camps 1933–1937 - the work of the last stage of the work of the prisoner P.A. Florensky. In them, he transfers the accumulated knowledge to his children, and through them to all people, therefore the main direction of their thought is the clan as the bearer of eternity in time and the family as the main unit of human society. The focus of experiences is the unity of the clan, family and personality, a person formed, unique, but at the same time, with thousands of threads connected with his family, and through it - with Eternity, because "the past has not passed." The genus, in turn, acquires in the family a balance of formed personalities, unmerged and inseparable, in the family there is a transfer of the experience of the genus from parents to children, so that they “do not fall out of the grooves of time”. By analogy with previous works, letters from prisons and camps can be called genodicy, the justification of the clan, family.

There is another, no less perfect work - Florensky's youthful correspondence with relatives, letters from the time of study at the Tiflis gymnasium, as well as the period of his studies at Moscow University and the Moscow Theological Academy. In correspondence 1897–1906. reflected the formation of Florensky's personality, the way he separates himself from the family, from the environment, how he sets life tasks. It is appropriate to call this stage the justification of oneself, the justification of the personality - egodicy. With his philosophizing, the unity of his creative biography - theodicy, anthropodicy, genodicy, egodicy - priest Pavel Florensky embraced three usually non-intersecting worlds: the heavenly - supra-world, pneumatospheric - human, and personal-generic - family. Each with its own objects, their special hierarchy, specific axiomatics.

The philosophy of the name is a trend in Russian religious philosophy developed by P. A. Florensky (1882–1937), S. N. Bulgakov (1871–1944), A. F. Losev (1893–1988), V. F. Ern (1882–1917) and others, which arose on the basis of disputes about imyaslaviya, which were conducted within the framework of the Russian Orthodox theology and monastic practice.

The theological dispute ("The Athos Troubles") over the name glorification began with the publication of Schemamonk Hilarion's book "On the Mountains of the Caucasus. A Conversation of Two Ascetic Elders About Inner Unity with the Lord Through Prayer to Jesus Christ, or the Spiritual Activity of Modern Hermits" (1907). Central to this book is the description of the special state in which the believer finds himself during prayer. Based on the theory and practice of hesychasm (or palamism), Illarion argued that an ascetic who performs an appropriate system of exercises can reach a state of ecstasy in which he is able to see the radiation emanating from God - the "Light of Tabor", i.e. the light that, according to the Gospel, the apostles saw on Mount Tabor. This light was interpreted by Gregory Palamas as "energy" emanating from God, as a self-manifestation of God, accessible to human perception, while God himself is absolutely inaccessible to people. Palamism is the officially recognized teaching of the Orthodox Church.

In name worship, the central problem around which the main dispute unfolded was the interpretation of the essence of the Name of God, namely: is it Divine energy or Divine essence, or neither, but simply a human name?

In the latter case, the worship of the Name of God and its deification is idolatry and heresy.

In resolving this issue, two opposing camps arose among theologians. Hieroschemamonk of the Russian Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos (in Greece) Anthony (Bulatovich) stood at the head of one of them (nameslavery). He asserted that "every Name of God, as God's revealed truth, is God Himself." The leaders of the second camp (name-fighters) were Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvensky) and Professor S. V. Troitsky. And it was precisely the position of the latter that the Holy Synod supported in its message of May 18, 1913, declaring the glorification of names as heresy.

However, this decision of the Holy Synod could not prevent further work on the philosophical and religious understanding of this problem, i.e. development of the "philosophy of the name". On the one hand, the conservatism of the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Holy Synod has long caused dissatisfaction among significant circles of the Russian intelligentsia. In particular, the reaction to it was the emergence of the previously mentioned trend of the "new religious consciousness" (Merezhkovsky, Berdyaev, and others). And the emergence of the philosophy of the name was the development of this general trend. On the other hand, the philosophical analysis of the name in Russian philosophy followed a wave of general interest in the problem of language and signs, which was characteristic at that time for Western philosophy as a whole and associated with the development of linguistics and semiotics.

The interpretation of the Name of God in name worship has its roots in a long tradition of veneration of Divine names, which goes far beyond Christianity (both chronologically and "geographically"). So, in the Avesta, the entire "Hymn to Ahura Mazda" is almost completely devoted to the names (about seventy) of the supreme god Good and their mystical meaning. A significant part of the efforts of the Kabbalists was devoted to finding the true names of God and angels. In Muslim philosophy, there is a doctrine of ninety-nine "beautiful names of Allah" and his hundredth - secret - name. In Christianity, the theme of divine names runs like a red thread through all mystical theology, starting with Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory Palamas, etc.

But the problem of divine names, in turn, has its roots in an even more general problem of the essence of names in general. The name plays an important role in many cultures and belief systems ancient world and even the primitive world. So, according to the beliefs of many peoples (Egyptians, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, etc.), the name of a person is one of his souls, and knowledge of the name gives power over the one to whom the given name belongs; a similar belief even existed regarding the true names of the pagan gods.

Such an attitude towards names was born from the idea of an inseparable connection ("connection in essence") between names and the objects denoted by these names, as well as between the very speech sounds that make up the name, and certain ontological entities (or their properties). In philosophy, this point of view was substantiated and developed by a variety of thinkers and in a variety of philosophical teachings: in Vedanta, Confucianism, Kabbalah, Sufism, Hesychasm, etc., and in Ancient Greece - by Heraclitus, the Stoics and Plato. But already in the philosophy of the ancient world, an opposite point of view also arose: names are just conventional signs of designated objects and are not connected with them in any way. In ancient China, this point of view was held by Sun Kuan (IV-III century BC), in ancient India - in the Nyaya school, in ancient Greece, Aristotle became its spokesman. It was Aristotle's approach that established itself and became generally accepted in European culture (in linguistics, logic, philosophy) in modern times. Thus, the decision of the “imyabortsy” and the Holy Synod was carried out in the “spirit of modern times”, while the supporters of imyaslavie developed a tradition that rather dominated the culture of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages.

Significant interest in the word and its essence in the European tradition was due to the fact that, starting from the era of early Christianity, the Word (Logos) was identified with Christ. Therefore, at least, the Divine Word and the Name of God could in no way be interpreted as a purely conventional sign.

This trend was especially evident in the work of the priest Pavel Florensky. He believed that between language and being there is a substantial, not a conditional connection. Words and names in particular are carriers of the energies of being, directed outward, they are forms of manifestation of being; in linguistic signs, being is revealed to man, and at the same time, the energy of the knower (man) and the known (being) interact.

In his work "Names" and in the writings that make up the work "At the Watersheds of Thought", he repeatedly argued that speech sounds that make up words have a direct connection both with ontological entities and with the mental (emotional) state of a person, and capable of acting on a person (listener). Moreover, Florensky argued that there was a certain connection between the names and historical and cultural events in which the people bearing these names played the leading role, or the events that took place "under the banner" of these names (for example, the name "Bartholomew" and "St. Bartholomew's Night" in France in the 17th century).

Florensky owns the famous formulation of the main thesis of imyaslaviya: "The Name of God is God, but God is not the Name of God."

Deep substantiation receives the doctrine of language and names from the priest Sergei Bulgakov in the book Philosophy of the Name. Like Solovyov, Berdyaev, Frank and many other Russian thinkers, the central theme of Bulgakov's philosophy is the relationship between the Absolute (God) and man, the individual. Bulgakov affirms their inseparable connection, the deep fusion of human essence with being. Due to this "fusion" each person has the opportunity to become himself, "expand" his essence, find his voice and "sound" in the Universe. The words (names) that make up the language are not "conventional signs", accidentally or "but agreements" between people denoting the corresponding things. Words exist objectively and are connected with being itself; they are created not by man, but rather "through" man; therefore, the "naming" of a name is, in a certain sense, the "creation" of the named, and hence (through man) the self-manifestation of a thing from the preverbal, illogical darkness of being into the light of certainty and conceivability. Thus, for Bulgakov, the word turns out to be an anthro-cosmic entity.

A serious contribution to the development of the philosophy of the name was made by A. F. Losev, who wrote another "Philosophy of the Name" and the work "The Thing and the Name". According to his views, Losev was close to Platonism and Neoplatonism (being, apparently, the most prominent expert on them in all of Russian philosophy). Therefore, it is not surprising that the Platonic interpretation of names as having a direct connection with the named turned out to be close to him.

But with Losev, the act of naming acquires a fundamental ontological character: it is in it that the birth of concrete being from the Absolute takes place. This act is carried out by the Primary Essence (Absolute, God) itself, which is connected with the internal need of the Primary Essence to express itself, to manifest itself outside and thereby comprehend itself. But the Primordial Essence is opposed only by Nothing (meon), which thereby also receives the ontological status of Other Being and gives rise to the initial dualism of the Losev system. Therefore, the manifestation of oneself "outside" means for the Primordial Being "incarnation in meon". The act of naming thus turns out to be a way of introducing "meaning" into a meaningless and dark Other Being, and, embodied there with different strengths, the meaning also receives a different degree of meaningfulness in things (manifested in their properties).

In his works, Losev not only gave a certain philosophical interpretation of the nature of the word, but, in fact, developed a whole and integral system of fundamental concepts of semiotics. Unfortunately, as was often the case with Russian thinkers, his ideas for a long time remained little known and poorly studied both in the West and in Russia itself.

Florensky P. A.

Biographical information. Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882–1937) is a well-known Russian theologian, religious philosopher and scientist. He studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, at the same time attended lectures on philosophy at the Faculty of History and Philology (1900–1904). After graduating from the university, he entered the Moscow Theological Academy (1904-1908). In 1911 he became a priest. In 1914 he defended his master's thesis. In 1912–1917 taught at the Moscow Theological Academy: first as an assistant professor, then as a professor. Since 1918 - member of the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra; in 1921–1924 - Professor of the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, since 1921 he worked at the Glavenergo of the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR and was a researcher at the State Experimental Electrotechnical Institute. In 1928 he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod, returned from exile three months later and continued to work at the same place. In 1933 he was arrested, sentenced to 10 years and exiled to a camp. In 1937 (already during his stay in the Solovki camp) he was convicted a second time and sentenced to death. In 1958 he was completely rehabilitated.

Main works. "On the Symbols of Infinity" (1904); "Pillar and Ground of Truth" (1914); "The Meaning of Idealism" (1914); "Essays on the Philosophy of Cult" (1918); "Iconostasis" (1922); "Symbolic Description" (1922); "Imaginations in Geometry" (1922); "Reverse Perspective" (published in 1967); "Analysis of spatiality in artistic and visual works" (published in 1982); "Names" (published in 1988). Florensky also wrote a number of papers in the field of physics, in particular a large book on dielectrics (1924).

Philosophical views. The philosophical teaching of Florensky is mainly built within the framework of the Orthodox worldview and in many respects is the development of Solovyov's philosophy of unity, although it fundamentally differs from it in some essential points.

The doctrine of unity. According to Florensky, the work of thought directed at the world reveals that the current state of being is a state of "fallen being". The world appears before us as a realm of fragmentation, unreliability, "a swamp of relativity and conventionality." Seeing all this, the consciousness tries to find some kind of "ground under its feet", to find something stable, something to grab onto, something to rely on, i.e. trying to find an unconditional beginning - the Truth. Florensky sees the main feature of being in its current state in antinomy (inconsistency), this being is "defective", the world is "cracked", and the reason for this is sin and evil. Overcoming them is possible only through a feat of faith and love. One of the main questions that concern Florensky is: what is the connection between the local ("defective", creaturely) being and the "undefective" one?

As "connecting links" Florensky primarily distinguishes two lines: "from God to the world" and "from the world to God."

The essence of the line going "from God to the world" is that God is the creator of the created world. Consequently, in this world the plan of God and the image of God are embodied, and this is precisely what gives meaning to created being. The essence of the reverse line "from the world to God" is determined by the fact that each created person is capable of love for God and for each other, constituting a kind of "unity in love" (Scheme 202).

Scheme 202.

Each real created personality in Florensky corresponds to its ideal personality, which is a kind of "atom" of love and divine meaning, originally invested by God in the created world. At the same time, Florensky understands love as a grace-filled unifying force of being, therefore it is precisely thanks to love for each other that individual created personalities are connected to each other into a kind of “unity in love”, becoming a “many being”. But at the same time, the love inherent in created personalities also connects them with God. From here, love receives an ontological interpretation: it is the "Church or the Body of Christ", and hence the "Pillar and affirmation of the Truth."

According to Florensky, this "multiple being" is itself a person, and it is he who calls Sophia ("the wisdom of God"). Separate personalities, gathered in this unity by the power of love, are identical to each other in their essence (Florensky calls this type of identity "numerical"), although they remain different and independent personalities. Sophia, being a person, is also in relation to identity with each individual person in her composition. Thus, it turns out that each part (or, more precisely, an element of the set) turns out to be numerically identical to the whole. According to Florensky, this type of relationship between parts and the whole is the expression of the principle of unity.

concrete metaphysics. Florensky called his doctrine of the world "concrete metaphysics". The sensual corporeal world is understood by him as a manifestation and embodiment of the Divine plan, and in its entirety. Consequently, there are no other meanings (ideas, spiritual entities, etc.) except those that are embodied and revealed in the world. On the other hand, everything that exists in the world carries a Divine meaning, is a manifestation of the image of God, and therefore is two-in-one (sensual-spiritual). From this follows the interpretation of everything that appears in the world as symbols. "Being is Cosmos and Symbol", - says Florensky.

In his specific metaphysics, he brings the spiritual and sensual world as close as possible, in particular, endowing spiritual entities with spatial and temporal characteristics. But only for the spiritual world they turn out to be "inverted", "inverted", "mirror": thus, time moves in the opposite direction in this world, the effect precedes the cause, there is a reverse perspective, etc. In essence, the spiritual and corporeal worlds turn out to be not two different worlds for him, but one two-in-one. In this way Florensky (and he notices this himself) resurrects certain features of primitive thinking. The most important role among the symbols is played by linguistic signs (names), hence Florensky's close attention to the dispute between "name worship" and "name fighters". And in his "philosophy of the name" he unconditionally adjoins the "name-worship".

However, a complete "mirror" similarity of earthly existence to heavenly one takes place only in the case of an ideal sensual existence. Our existence is a sinful, fallen world, and the consequence of this is a violation of the proper relationship between the spiritual and sensual worlds. That is why we see the Divine meaning in the phenomena of the earthly world in a distorted way, the true symbolic reality is not given to us, and it is our task to restore, reconstruct it. It is this that the church performs in the church cult, "sanctifying reality."

The doctrine of the types of culture. Florensky considered human culture as a struggle between two principles: Chaos and the Divine Logos. He believed that in the history of mankind there is a rhythmic change of two types of culture: the Renaissance (revival) and the medieval. The first type of culture is characterized by the dominance of Chaos, and its basic law is the law of entropy increase (ie uncertainty, Chaos) in all spheres of being, left to themselves; the growth of entropy leads to a general equalization, and hence to death. But Chaos is opposed by the Divine Logos, which brings order, and the basic law of medieval culture can be formulated as the law of decreasing entropy and increasing order (ectropy). The leading force of medieval culture is faith, it determines the cult, and the cult determines the worldview, which gives rise to the corresponding culture. At the beginning of the XX century. the next period of the Renaissance culture is coming to an end, and it is again being replaced by the medieval one (Table 127).

Table 127

Two types of culture and their characteristics