III. В историко-философской перспективе

V.V. Rozanov 656. P. A. Florensky about A. S. Khomyakov 657 The just published, very belated July-August book of the Theological Bulletin contains a detailed analysis of the extensive work of Professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy V.V. Zavitnevich, dedicated to A.S. Khomyakov, written by the editor of the magazine, Professor P.A. Florensky. This is how Florensky outlines the subject of the Kyiv professor’s research: “Both by his friends and enemies, Khomyakov during his lifetime was still recognized as the head of that direction of Russian thought, which received the unsuitable and ugly nickname of Slavophilism. Both the government and the intelligentsia in Khomyakov, precisely, saw the source, or at least the hotbed of a new idea. Both praise and blame from theological enemies were directed at Khomyakov, not at any of the Slavophiles, but almost exclusively at him. Every question about Slavophiles and Slavophilism seems to have been three-quarters turned into a question about Khomyakov, and the Slavophil group itself is thought of as Khomyakov and others. Is this fair? We believe that - yes, even without prejudging in comparison with other Slavophiles, Khomyakov’s superiority in talent, intelligence, education and value. Khomyakov was and remains the ideological center and leader of Slavophil thought, not only or, more precisely, not so much in himself, but because of the place he occupied. He is the primary researcher of that sacred center from which the thoughts of the Slavophiles, Orthodoxy, or, rather, the Church returned, originated and returned. He looked at himself most closely and most consistently; he spoke more persistently than anyone about the decisive turn that threatens the worldview of the people depending on the wrong attitude towards the Church, and about the subsequent historical failure. Slavophilism is a worldview that, in its concept, is directly adjacent to the Church, and Khomyakov is the center of the Slavophil group, the ruler of Slavophil thoughts, due to the fact that, according to the general meaning and direct recognition of the Slavophiles, especially the older ones, the Church, with which he, in essence, was involved internally all his life, is the center of created being.” “Researcher of the sacred center of Russia” is well said. “Where” is he? Does he “exist”? Almost a century has passed since the disputes between I.V. Kireevsky and Herzen, on the one hand, Herzen and Granovsky, on the other hand, after the “quivering” of Belinsky, and this “center,” its existence or non-existence, faces us with a question. Both the Westerners and the Slavophiles have faded significantly, the “positions” have been defined and narrowed, and now we have the struggle of socialism with “everyday Russia,” i.e., “no need,” and “we still exist.” The struggle has become less ideological, less spiritual and more physical, more dynamic. “Who will defeat whom?” “Everyday Rus'” is being decisively squeezed out; the cause of “everyday Rus'” is lost, at least in an “educated” society, or one that imagines itself to be “educated”. “Westernism,” in fact, does not have its own “centers” in Russia, and does not seek them, relying and relying on a colossal center outside of Russia, on “Europe,” on the “West,” its successes, its technique of struggle and life, its mind. But Slavophilism?.. Its “center,” of course, is in Russia. The author of the article about the book is Prof. Zavitnevich, and at the same time, unwittingly, a critic of Slavophilism, he himself made with his monumental work “The Pillar and Establishment of Truth”, a precious contribution to the search for this “center of Rus'”... “Life”? “Church”?.. But how unclear all this is in position, in outline... And approaching the “wise head”, you often ask: “Where are your feet?” Every center acts, lives, realizes itself. In Russia there is extremely little “realization of our own.” Precisely “one’s own”, and precisely “realization”. Both words need to be emphasized here. The head is wise. The head is gray. But the “legs” are definitely paralyzed. “Westernism” is perhaps not very wise, but it runs fast. Everywhere on all paths it decisively overtakes Slavophilism. I even want to give it both a mocking and precise definition: “The bitter beginning of Russian history.” “Center of Russia”... Oh, my heart yearns for it. I want it. “Westernism” is disgusting and, to put it bluntly, hateful because it does not promise any “own center for Russia” in the future, it does not want one. And it leaves in place of this “one-fifth of the globe’s landmass” an empty space. “Russia is an empty place in itself,” and this is the slogan of the most active, most “fast-running” part of Russian society, walking ahead, leading behind itself. Who would not be embarrassed by this situation? Whose heart is not saddened by black sadness? Let's listen further to P. A. Florensky: “Khomyakov is all about the Church, and therefore it is clear that the attitude towards the Church on the part of those judging Khomyakov turned out to be decisive in one way or another in the assessment of Khomyakov himself. I say “one way or another,” because in judgments about Khomyakov one can hear the exact opposite. On the one hand, for those who love the Church, but do not see it in Khomyakov, or rather, who see in him the replacement of church truth with something else, home-made, as well as for those who do not love the Church at all and do not feel Her reality - Khomyakov’s teaching is a vague and vague teaching about something dreamy and illusory, some kind of system about an empty place, and, therefore, sophistry, virtuoso idle talk, brilliant originality. In these attacks on Khomyakov, representatives of churchism sometimes agree with ardent Westerners; on the other hand, for people who, in some sense, took into account the reality of the Church that Khomyakov spoke about, and who admitted that he was talking about the real Church, and not at all about a powerless emptiness, modeled on the absolutes of German idealism, and that is why they were afraid of the excessive, in their opinion, reality of this Church, who looked askance at the very possibility for For the Church to become where it, by its meaning, by right, should stand, for those who saw in the Church an obstacle on the path to a semi-church and non-church system of society, be it the idea of statehood or socialism, Khomyakov’s power seemed harmful. Early statists, as well as revolutionary and socialist leaders, both of them did not like Khomyakov’s teachings, instinctively perceived in him, if not a future victory, then at least an actual enemy. Both considered Khomyakov a dangerous man. Thus, statists and revolutionaries extended a hand to each other. Besides all these people who rejected Khomyakov for one reason or another, there remains, finally, a circle of people who looked at Khomyakov, of course, positively. In Khomyakov’s teachings they saw the guarantee of a better future for Russia, the first sprout of national self-awareness, the beginnings of a new, finally truly Orthodox theology, etc., in a word, the dawn of a new culture with which the Slavs will shine upon humanity.” Under the “statists” who looked askance or suspiciously at Khomyakov, of course, without a doubt, Katkov, 658 a great practitioner of politics, the real “Peter the Great” of the newspaper word, thunder and greatness. Katkov somehow did not see and did not appreciate that if anything could prevent the political disintegration of society that was about to set in after complete mental disintegration, it would not be his political speeches, but namely Slavophilism, accepting everyone in the Church, the historical center of Russia. Out of some underdevelopment of mind, undoubtedly inherent in the great publicist, he hoped more for Latin and Greek in the gymnasiums than for Slavophilism. If “who should” he had pointed out with the same insistence that it was high time to bring people of the Slavophile way of thinking closer to the centers of government administration, as he pointed out to them the benefits of the Prussian educational system, then the Slavophiles would undoubtedly have been called to the centers of government. But he really didn’t like the Slavophiles, and he was really afraid, as, in essence, a faithful “chick of Petrov’s nest”, who had not flown anywhere further than this “nest”. Katkov was essentially a Westerner. He read the (very superficial) formula of Slavophilism: “Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality”: “Autocracy, once again autocracy, nationality, and, perhaps, a few Churches.” When making judgments about Khomyakov, P. A. Florensky is somewhat subordinate to the conditions of our time and the level of his own development, which is very high, and does not accept, at least to a clear consciousness of the conditions of the time, Khomyakov. The reign of Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich was underway, and the beginning of the “era of great reforms”, when the authority of Metropolitan Philaret reigned in the Church,” and the chief of the gendarmes, Benckendorff, “evangelized” the affairs of government. 659 In literature, the line of triumph followed successively Herzen, Belinsky, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky. In this situation, raising the banner of attention to the Church, the call to the Church, was incredibly difficult. And what Khomyakov did, however, under these conditions was truly “mountainous.” Florensky says to him: “There is no doubt that Khomyakov’s ever-increasing fame has recently been ready to flare up with a bright flame, due to the aversion that has arisen from Western culture and Slavophilism that has raised its head...” Here, it seems to me, too much has been given in favor of Slavophilism, and in particular Khomyakov. Prof.'s work Zavitnevich is great, but this is only Zavitnevich’s work. Who knows him, Khomyakova? Where is there any reference to it? His ideas take absolutely no part in the ideological movement of our society, and his name is never mentioned in literature. If we say that every hundred times the name of “Karl Marx” is pronounced with respect, we will have to “once hear the cursed name of Khomyakov,” who fought “for the core of Russian self-consciousness,” then we will not only say clearly too much praise for the name of Khomyakov, but will also make a clear exaggeration of the meaning of this name. No, there is no need to hide: even to this day, Khomyakov’s name, of course, is known to everyone, but it is evilly known, cursedly known, his works, or “creations,” are absolutely unknown to society, having ended up in some kind of “monastery” or “seclusions” of isolated, rare people. If they answer us that “society is insane,” then we will say that this is the dominant fact of our mental life, which the Slavophiles were not able to overcome in the slightest. In fact, Khomyakov’s “creations,” Zavitnevich’s work, and Florensky’s sharp article about him are “too tough” for society. And it’s simply funny to read when a critic tells Zavitnevich that his “two volumes are boring to read” because they “only present Khomyakov himself” and do not provide “criticism on Khomyakov.” Who's bored of reading? It’s boring for Florensky to read, because they don’t give anything new, and for society it’s boring and hard to read, because it’s all completely new to him, never heard of, never seen by anyone, and do both, Zavitnevich and Florensky, really want to force society to “work on itself” so much and engage in “its own self-education”? It's cruel and rude. Our society, like the classical gods, feeds only on nectar and ambrosia. It is much sweeter and easier for him to occupy his attention with the feuilleton of a newspaper, where he will read for the 51st time about what great promises for humanity are contained in him, in this society, what a golden soul and sweet dreams he has, how filled he is with brotherly feelings for all peoples. It doesn’t require work, it doesn’t expect responsibility, it’s just sweet, and only sweet. “For less than a pineapple for yourself, our society will not tolerate it.” And this is “the most important business of Russia,” the only important business of Russia”: how to transfer people from pineapple to bread, without which he would apparently have to die from imperceptible exhaustion. P. A. Florensky’s reasoning about the “Protestant beginning in history” in connection with the name and memory of Khomyakov is extremely interesting and important. The most troubling question regarding Khomyakov, he says, is the long-standing suspicion of him, Khomyakov, of Protestantism: “For Khomyakov, the essence of Protestantism lies only in a protest against Romanism (Catholicism), while maintaining, however, the basic premises and characteristic methods of thought of this latter. But one can doubt whether this is so. The development of Protestantism and its derivatives, after Khomyakov, revealed, without a doubt, that the basis of Protestantism as the main exponent of the culture of modern times lies in humanism, human affirmation, love of mankind, or, in terminology borrowed from philosophy, immanentism, that is, the plan of humanity from itself, outside and apart from God, to recreate from nothing all reality, and especially the reality of shrines, to recreate in all senses, starting from the construction of concepts, and ending with spiritual reality. Meanwhile, the essence of Orthodoxy is ontologism, i.e. acceptance of reality from God as a fact, and not something created by man, humility and gratitude. What do we see in Khomyakov? The very contrast between the principles of “Iranian” and Cushitic” is suggestive. In Dostoevsky’s “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” the splitting of the image of Christ into two, neither of which, neither the Inquisitor nor “Christ,” is a pure expression of the spirit of Christ, leads religious consciousness to endless difficulties, forces one to choose between “yes” and “no” where tertium est. The inquisitor is not anointed by the spirit of Christ. But is it really possible, on the other hand, while remaining a member of the Church, to deny “authority, miracle and mystery” or at least one of the three? It’s the same with Khomyakov: Dostoevsky’s Inquisitor corresponds to “Kushitism,” Dostoevsky’s “Christ” corresponds to “Iranianism,” but then the spirit of Christ, the Church, has no true place in the system. “Iranism,” which for Khomyakov is almost synonymous with Christianity in the Church, in fact, in its characteristic features, is very reminiscent of the Protestant self-affirmation of the human “I”, and, in any case, is no closer to Orthodoxy than “Kushitism,” in which Khomyakov caricatured many features of ontology. It is not customary to talk about all this in the press, although other similar opinions have been repeatedly expressed. But it’s time to put the question of “Kushitism” squarely. The spirit of “Kushitism,” although in a distorted position, which L. Tolstoy brought to the end in his blasphemous antics against the sacraments, has undoubted features of genuine churchliness. If one had to choose between two, in different senses, incorrect depictions of churchliness by Khomyakov, one would rather have to settle on the distorting mirror of “Kushitism” than on the embellished “Iranianism.” That in the living Orthodox Church there are both beginnings, Khomyakov saw and recognized this very well, but he too simply got rid of this objection by referring to the contamination of the Orthodox world with the Kushite principle. Looking more closely at Khomyakov’s own theories, we, to our sorrowful surprise, discover in him the same spirit of immanentism that constitutes the essence of Protestantism, albeit in an immeasurably improved form, mainly by introducing the idea of ​​conciliarity, although it should be noted that the idea of ​​conciliarity of consciousness is not completely alien to Western philosophy, for example, to Kant, not to mention Schelling of the last period, and further to Feuerbach, Comte and others. Of course, Orthodox upbringing and awareness of the sources of religious doctrine and church history prompted Khomyakov to be careful in those places where it would be natural for Khomyakov’s thought to diverge from church reason, and dialectics, rare in power, gave Khomyakov’s positions such flexibility and such persuasiveness that the most dubious and the most dangerous seem to have dulled the sharp, cutting edges. But, with all Khomyakov’s caution, and with his purely heartfelt desire not to collide with church teaching, the very sources of his views for an Orthodox person, when carefully examining them, do not seem suspicious? Yes, but “later times” had not yet arrived for Khomyakov, and he was completely unable to see what Florensky was seeing before his eyes. In the 40s and 50s, when Khomyakov lived, it was incredibly difficult to at least somehow connect the mental life of Russian secular society with the Church, and he grasped at least the “Protestant flavor,” which was still “rational” and “humanitarian,” and therefore somehow fit into the heads of the contemporaries of Belinsky, Herzen and Granovsky. To “take communion,” you must first learn to “drink.” Just “drink water.” Khomyakov taught Belinsky’s contemporaries to this initial physiological “taking of liquid into the mouth.” Yes, and not “trained”. No one wanted to “drink” in any way, not even condensed Orthodox wine, not even Protestant water. How is this in medicine? It seems that “dog rabies” also begins with “phobia of hydrophobia.” The “madness” of nihilism began with the reproach: “I can’t swallow.” Indeed, how would anything “from Khomyakov begin to be accepted” by a society that has drunk from the cup of Ferdinand Lassalle 660 and Karl Marx? Things are incompatible. “We need to freak out, and you’re talking about drugs.” The process of “political madness” was underway or had begun, and already “rabies” was revealed in relation to all sorts of ideal or idealistic things. “Here, they also say, there is Pushkin. Besides Khomyakov - and Pushkin. But we don’t need Pushkin either, because he doesn’t lead to the barricades.” 661 Finally, three all-world luminaries led the dear people “to the barricades”: Lassalle, Goldenberg 662 and Azef. 663 “We die for the truth,” the Russians cried, just like those who followed Nikita the Pustosvyat under Peter and Sophia. 664 One of the most interesting parts of P. A. Florensky’s criticism of Khomyakov’s “circle of thought” is his comments regarding Khomyakov’s theory of “autocracy”. Florensky writes: “Just as in his doctrine of the Church Khomyakov contrasts social concepts with state concepts, instead of directly establishing himself on church concepts, so in his doctrine of the state he has a noticeable desire to explain everything from the social moment. Society, not the state—that is the meaning of Khomyakov’s statements, expressed directly. These complex constructions, we think, are nothing more than the approach of popular sovereignty, as above, the approach to the principles of all-human sovereignty. The Roman hierarchy, according to the meaning of Khomyakov’s teaching, is to blame for the fact that it has assimilated for itself the sovereignty of all humanity, that is, the entire Church, and hastily equalizes the concepts of Khomyakov. I said that it was hasty, because if the Roman hierarchy, or even the Pope himself, had proclaimed the true dogmas, and all of humanity opposed Rome, then Rome in this case would have been the entire Church, although the sovereignty of humanity would have been usurped. And that Khomyakov adheres to the theory of sovereignty in general is beyond doubt. He openly expresses it in his thoughts on the origins of the Romanov dynasty, although he does not call this theory by its real name. Russian tsars are autocratic because he believes that the Russian people bestowed such power on them after the Time of Troubles. Consequently, the people are not the children of the King-Father, but the Father-King is from the children of the people. Consequently, the Autocrat is the Autocrat not by God’s grace, but by the will of the people. Consequently, it was not because the people called the Romanovs to the royal throne that in the hour of enlightenment, with a heart purified by suffering, they saw the accomplished determination of the will of God, sensing that Mikhail Fedorovich 665 had already received the royal crown from God, but because they chose, as they had chosen, the most convenient thing for themselves - to grant Mikhail Fedorovich power over Russia, in a word, "he found his Tsar, and did yourself a Tsar. And the first Romanov sat on the throne not because God put him there, but because he entered into an agreement with the people. Consequently, we have to conclude further that the existing powers are not created by God, but contrat sociale, 666 it is not God's will that holds the throne, but the suffrage of the universel 667. This is Khomyakov’s teaching. Perhaps they will say to this that such an objection to Khomyakov is a confusion of the legal and state areas, with the theological and spiritual areas. In legal terms, they will say, the sovereignty of the people must still be recognized, and it cannot be circumvented. This would be so if Khomyakov himself did not deny the purely legal approach to social and state issues and did not demand that everything be led by faith. Of course, in non-religious, purely secular thought, where God is not recognized as the source of the social order, it is impossible to do without popular sovereignty. For if there is no God in the scientific consciousness, then who, if not the people, should be the final judge of their own affairs? And then the right of autocracy without the sovereignty of the people cannot be justified. But will such an autocracy be an autocracy? The fact of the matter is that in the consciousness of the Russian people, autocracy is not a legal right, but is a fact revealed by God himself - the mercy of God, and not human convention. So the autocracy of the Tsar is not a legal concept, but a doctrinal one. This is part of the realm of faith, and is not derived from non-religious premises with a view to public or state benefit.” It is impossible to explain this more clearly, it is impossible to prove it more conclusively. It cannot be doubted for a moment that Khomyakov, having listened to this objection to himself, would have completely changed his argumentation of “autocracy”, and, without a doubt, would have accepted the popular one that Florensky had just expounded in separate words and very clearly. Let us also note for theorists of Russian state building, of whom we especially mean the professor at Odessa University, Kazansky, who wrote a huge book “On the Autocracy of Russian Tsars,” that they should under no circumstances lose sight of Florensky’s reasoning. Meanwhile, he took this part of A. S. Khomyakov’s theories only as an example of the general method of his reasoning. “This is Khomyakov’s main point,” he says. “And this point of view, with less clarity, but still clearly defines his teaching about the Church. The free self-affirmation of a person - being, immanent to a person, manifested in the organization of love, is most dear to him. Indeed, he is a great altruist, as Prof. defines him. Zavitnevich. But great altruism in itself is not at all similar to the Church, for the Church lays its foundation in what is outside of humanity, and for altruism, as for any humanism, the strongest point of support seems to be the internal, immanent forces of man. The position expressed here about Khomyakov may seem unexpected, but being accepted, it casts an unexpected light on Khomyakov’s struggle with the ontological moment in religion. The attitude towards the transcendent in religion, in his opinion, seems to be a manifestation of “Cushiteism”. But then it is clear why he rejects authority as applied to the Church, which, naturally, is authority only insofar as it is outside of the one who submits to authority.” The huge three volumes of V.V. Zavitnevich’s research on Khomyakov gave rise to this entire analysis of individual theories of Khomyakov, by P.A. Florensky. As we were pleased to learn the other day, this critical analysis of Florensky, together with the table of A. S. Khomyakov’s “genealogy” attached to it, and at the same time, the genealogy of almost the entire Slavophil circle, which was compiled by F. K. Andreev, 668 will be published in a short time as an independent book. This is necessary due to the value of the content. Let us please those who are committed to Slavophilism with other news. Soon, this year or next, a huge book will be published - a dissertation on Yu. F. Samarin 669 by the aforementioned F. K. Andreev, also a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy. We already have a good study of N.P. Gilyarov-Platonov in the book. N.V. Shakhovsky. 670 Thus, not quickly, but massively, in works worthy of their subject, the cause of Slavophilism, the area of ​​Slavophilism is strengthening and expanding in Russian self-awareness. I would like to make one more mention here – a reminder. The late K.P. Pobedonostsev 671 did not “closely” join the Slavophiles, but he still joined them significantly, he joined closer than any other circles, parties and programs in Russia. And when studying Slavophilism and the Slavophiles, one must neither bypass it nor lose sight of it. At the same time, there is no need or inevitability to touch upon his state activities, his “affairs” in general. It is too cumbersome, difficult to cover, and especially difficult to study. But many people lose sight of the fact that Pobedonostsev is the author of the “Moscow Collection”, 672 bright and lyrical books, and that in general he is “literary”. was quite broadly expressed. And let us also point out S. A. Rachinsky, 673 whose personality is almost completely ignored in the press. But this is one of the brightest personalities of Russian life in the 19th century. Ah, coffins, Slavophile coffins. Why is it always so difficult, so slow, so unsuccessful. “There is something”... What? Can't be seen. The Slavophiles formed a special current of Russian thought and activity, which went “backwards”... went “against”... They made a “reverse movement” to the two centuries of movement that began with Peter the Great. In essence, we have not very few Slavophiles, especially now. And what is clearly pleasing is that among, especially young people, they are beginning to flock to Slavophilism. This is really a “shore”, this is really a pillar and a stronghold. The names collected here are so bright in intelligence and talent, especially bright in the nobility of personality and activity, that in reality it is impossible to indicate anything better than this “pure shore”. But here’s the thing: everything around him is difficult. It is difficult to stick to it, it is difficult to swim around it. Why is this? Yes, “in spite of” they went, point-blank, in resistance. Peter the Great shouted the cry: “to the West.” Everything rushed here, words, thoughts, but especially the mass of statehood, the main ship of “the state and reality,” rushed here. Alas, although we often “show off” against the state, we are still sailing in the “ship of state.” Because of this, all our so-called “radicals” are only apparent radicals. In fact, they are just a little unofficial. They only go much further and much more quickly “to the West,” where our entire government went with Peter the Great, where the “ship of state” sailed and is sailing for two centuries. If there is anything in them that irritates the government, it is itching, agility, vanity, and nimbleness. Annoying because a big ship must sail solidly, steadfastly and with all the proper flags, certificates and officialdom. But besides this, that is, besides, in essence, little things, the program and the rudder, and the sails of the state and the radicals, are common - “towards the West”, “under the western wind”. The Slavophiles exclaimed: “to the East” and “by the eastern wind.” They are the only ones and they are our radicals. “Everything must be treated from the root,” and “things must be turned around from the root.” One more thing needs to be noted here, and this also explains a lot about the difficult situation of the Slavophiles. It is inseparably connected with the Church, with work around the Church. Now look around with your eyes the entire, now immeasurable, Russian educated society, and see in it who, in fact, is “connected with the Church,” or at least “interested in the Church.” As much as the Church is close to the people and “inevitable in them,” the Church is just as alien and, so to speak, “inevitable” to society. This is fate, fate, and disgusting fate. For this reason, mainly, it is so difficult for Slavophilism to spread and find disciples and proselytes, although, as a consolation, let us say, for the same reason, those who join Slavophilism adhere to it especially firmly, faithfully and ardently. But in general and in the mass, there are so few of them. One can name a number of the most influentially read magazines where the name “Church” is not only not uttered often, but is never uttered at all. And never - for decades. “Sovremennik”, “Domestic Notes”, “Bulletin of Europe”, “Russian Wealth”, “Northern Notes”, the second “Sovremennik”, “Modern World”, “The World of God” (!!!?), published for many years, “Books of the Week” - this is 8/10, this is almost all Russian current literature that has flown around the reader for no less than 60 years!! What about this press, about 6-7 “monthly books” and named magazines, meant single books of the lonely “Russian Messenger”, the ever-languishing “Russian Review”, or the lonely newspaper of N.P. Gilyarov-Platonov “Modern News”, and, finally, the notebooks of “Russian Labor” and other publications of Sharapov. 674 A huge elephant was walking, and a powerless boy was running next to him. And I would like to say, turning to the pupils of the theological school: “This is your business,” that is, that supporting Slavophilism should become almost an estate task of our clergy, but in a much more active way than it has been until now. We know that practical life absorbs almost all the time of our clergy, there are so many “services”, there are also a lot of “requirements”, but still there is reading, there is still a “remainder of time”. Look how in the 60s the Russian clergy, and especially their sons, supported Sovremennik. 675 Without this, to a certain extent, class-based “support,” Sovremennik would not have played its enormous historical role. But it’s better to “take your eyes into your hands” and see clearly that here the clergy supported, admittedly, a “very Russian magazine,” but a magazine that went undisguisedly towards the tasks of eradicating every Church, everything spiritual, and therefore, in the end, of course, to the extermination of the entire clergy, all clergy, including, I think, even “Buddhist,” not to mention “portable Christianity.” Here it is clear, therefore, that the clergy and his sons were cutting off the root beneath them. His guilt, and a major historical guilt, is against Russia. But decades have passed. Obviously, both the East and Russia, and in particular Orthodoxy, are shining with new dawns. And here to rally around Slavophilism, what a corrective task, correcting the mistake of the 60s! In particular, my word is to young students and seminaries. The Moscow Academy does an excellent job in this regard. In Kyiv, V.V. Zavitnevich gave and is giving, I think, a big push. Next to Petrograd and Kazan. It is impossible not to say with great sorrow that if “once there were even little-read magazines of the Slavophile trend, then now there are no such ones at all. It's hard to believe, but no. In the era of the gigantic struggle with Germany, when it seemed that all of Russia should flare up with Slavophilism,” 676 at least it should flare up with purely Russian views, feelings, way of thinking, there are as many magazines for Marxism as you like, as many magazines for socialism as you like, but there is no place for Russian feelings. The German worm ate well, and had been eating Russian soil for a long time. But this, precisely this, shows how urgent the struggle is, how necessary it is... And what’s difficult is that you, gentlemen, are great... N. A. Berdyaev 677. Khomyakov and priest. Florensky 678 ...You did not receive the spirit of slavery in order to live in fear again, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry: Abba, father! This very Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Ap. Paul. Epistle to the Romans I. Article of the priest. P. Florensky about Khomyakov (in the “Theological Bulletin” for July-August 1916), written in the form of a review of a huge study by prof. V. Zavitnevich, not only a major event, but also a real scandal in the Orthodox Slavophile camp. The teacher of the Church of neo-Slavophiles, the head and inspirer of the Moscow circle of revivalists of Orthodoxy, committed an act of renunciation of the teacher of the Church of old Slavophiles - Khomyakov. Priest Florensky not only renounced Khomyakov, but also recognized his ideas as dangerous in their consequences for the Orthodox Church, and proclaimed him an immanentist of the German type. In Orthodox circles, Khomyakov was still considered the greatest, and even the only Orthodox theologian. Priest Florensky declares him a non-Orthodox theologian and accuses him of Protestant deviation. According to the priest. P. Florensky, Khomyakov risks “uprooting the wheat of Orthodoxy from the soil, if only, for example, by his denial of authority in the Church, which supposedly does not exist in Orthodoxy, and with it, therefore, the beginning of fear, the beginning of power and the obligation of the canonical system” (p. 528). It is clear that St. P. Florensky would like to put a limit to the boundless freedom in Orthodoxy, which Khomyakov captured and expressed. Khomyakov attached great importance in the life of the Church to man, human freedom, and mutual human love. The priest sees this. What Florensky is most frightening about is his deviation towards immanentism. And so he asks about Khomyakov: “Has he founded a new school of theology, finally truly Orthodox, and not Catholic or Protestant, or is his teaching a refined rationalism, a system of extremely flexible and therefore most poisonous formulas that corrode the foundations of the church? And further, in the state sphere, was he a faithful servant of the autocracy, this foundation of the Russian state, did he want to strengthen and exalt the royal throne, or, on the contrary, can one see in him the creator of the most popular, and therefore the most dangerous form of egalitarianism? (p. 529). “Khomyakov’s thought evasively runs away from ontological certainty, shimmering with a mother-of-pearl play. But this play of superficial tones, brilliant, but not substantial and therefore changing and changing their outlines at the slightest turn of the head, does not provide a stable content of thought and leaves anxiety and question in the heart. Immanentism, such is the flavor of Khomyakov’s theories” (p. 536). “The free self-affirmation of a person - being, immanent to a person, manifested in the organization of love, is most precious to him” (p. 539). “The essence of Orthodoxy, according to priest. Florensky, there is ontologism - the acceptance of reality given to us by God, and not created by man, humility and gratitude. Priest P. Florensky dots the i’s, and this is the merit of his article. It completes the well-known process of religious thought converting to Orthodoxy. His article is very responsible for representatives of modern Orthodox thought. They have to make a decisive choice between the priests. P. Florensky and Khomyakov, to give decisive preference to one of these teachers of the Church, to go to the right or to the left, to freedom or coercion. The path of the saint Florensky and Khomyakov’s path are incompatible. In our Orthodox religious and philosophical movement there has already been a renunciation of Vl. Solovyov, now there is a renunciation of Khomyakov. But Vl. Soloviev and Khomyakov, our greatest people in the field of Christian thought. Khomyakov and Vl. Solovyov are the forerunners of the coming Russian religious revival. For them, Christianity was a religion of freedom and a religion of love. Khomyakov interpreted Orthodoxy as a religion of freedom. Every line of his theological works breathes the pathos of love for freedom. In the infinite freedom of the Spirit he saw all the originality of Orthodoxy, its heartfelt essence. Dostoevsky also asserted the same unprecedented freedom of spirit, freedom in Christ, in the legend of the Grand Inquisitor, 679 this stunning hymn to religious freedom. Both Khomyakov and Dostoevsky wanted to see in the Russian people such freedom of spirit, Christ’s freedom, which they did not find among the peoples of Western Europe. Priest Florensky breaks not only with Khomyakov, but also with Dostoevsky, he is forced to look for other sources in Bishop Theophan the Recluse, in Metropolitan Philaret, in official Orthodoxy. He will also have to recognize the Apostle Paul as insufficiently Orthodox. He consistently interprets Christianity as a religion of necessity, compulsion and submission. He is not faithful to the traditions of great Russian literature, he turns away from its religious content, from the religious thirst revealed in it. He, precisely he, is a renegade, who has betrayed the covenants of the Russian religious soul, its spiritual hungers, its aspirations for the City of the Future. II. The attitude of the priest is very characteristic. P. Florensky to Khomyakov’s teaching on “Iranianism” and “Kushitism.” In “Iranianism” Khomyakov saw the beginning of the freedom of the creative human spirit, but in “Kushitism” he saw the beginning of necessity, the power of nature, and lower magic. These two main lines, freedom and necessity, determined the history of religion and the entire makeup of cultures. For Khomyakov, Orthodoxy, as the purest expression of Christianity, is entirely in the line of “Iranianism”; the “Iranian” spirit, the freedom of the creative human spirit, triumphs in it. Father P. Florensky is in the Kushite element, in necessity, and in Orthodoxy he sees the triumph of “Kushiteism.” He takes Khomyakov’s “Iranianism” under suspicion as a deviation towards immanentism and Protestantism. The Orthodoxy and autocracy of Father Florensky are entirely immersed in the Cushitic element, in the magic of material necessity. But it must be admitted that to the very fact of Russian historical Orthodoxy and autocracy, the construction of Father Florensky in many respects is closer than the construction of Khomyakov. Khomyakov's philosophy of history is completely outdated, and only his religious sentiment remains alive. Father P. Florensky wants to consistently and completely resign himself to the fact and bow to the fact. He deifies the fact as originally mystical. He flees from his freedom to the necessity of every factual given. In the world struggle of freedom and necessity, he decisively takes the side of necessity. And this path should lead not to Christ, but to the Grand Inquisitor. The path chosen by Father Florensky is clear from his questions to Khomyakov. “What was Khomyakov himself? Is it the protector and deepener of the roots of Holy Rus' or, on the contrary, the eradicator of its original foundations, in the name of the dreamy image of the projected Russia of the future? Did he humbly perceive the shrine of the Russian people, wanting to cleanse it of the random dirt that had fallen on it from the outside, or did he, with the pride of a reformer, try to prescribe to Rus' something invented by himself or by them, a Moscow circle of Slavophiles? After all, to tell the Church on one’s own what it should be, even if only for one’s purest motives, means not recognizing the Church, but recognizing oneself. To prescribe one’s demands to the Tsar, even if they boil down to the demands of the Tsar’s autocracy, means denying autocracy” (p. 529). This is the most consistent religion of slavery and humiliation of man. But slavish obedience always leads to slavish rebellion. The path of Father Florensky is very dangerous precisely for conservative church and state principles. He has already brought the Russian Church and the Russian state to the greatest humiliation, and he is favorable only for revolutionary negative sentiments. When the paths of creativity, the paths of renewal and rebirth are closed, the paths of destruction and denial triumph. The demands of slavish admiration for the actual church reality, obedience to the given, lead only to a falling away from the Church, to unbelief or the fragmentation of religious energy in numerous sects. One can and should remain in the Church only if movement and creativity are possible in it. Khomyakov affirmed the idea of ​​Orthodoxy and the idea of ​​autocracy, but he had a negative and critical attitude towards many things in actual Orthodoxy and actual autocracy, reserving the right to evaluate and oppose. This means that he always allowed for the possibility of a creative degeneration of church and state life. Subsequently, the Slavophiles did not follow this path, and therefore came to death and decay. But some of Khomyakov’s ideas and moods contained other possibilities. Father P. Florensky wants to finally establish himself in the mysticism of the fact, the given, and lay aside the burden of responsibility for the creative movement in the Church. He wants to receive everything from the outside, from others and others, just for his humility and obedience. For him, what is mystical is not freedom, but necessity, compulsion, what is mystical is not immanent to man, but transcendent to him. Father Florensky imperceptibly mixes mysticism with material magic, replacing the spiritual with the spiritual. Both Father P. Florensky and Khomyakov are far from genuine mysticism, which is always immanent, although in different ways. III. Khomyakov preached Orthodoxy as an idea. Not without reason, they objected to him that in Orthodoxy everything turns out to be good for him, because he always has in mind ideal Orthodoxy, but in Catholicism too much is bad, because he always has in mind actual Catholicism. The remarkable Catholic theologian Mehler, 680 had an ideal concept of the Catholic Church as a free unity in love, to which Khomyakov’s concept of the Church was very similar. 681 Mehler and Khomyakov equally revealed the eternal essence of the Universal Church. But this did not prevent Khomyakov from being an everyday Orthodox Christian? in the most direct and simple sense of the word. With all his being, he felt himself to be not only in the depths of the Orthodox Church, but also in its everyday shells. He preached his idea of ​​Orthodoxy from within, as the dynamics of life within Orthodoxy itself. Father P. Florensky is the direct opposite of Khomyakov. He preaches Orthodoxy as a fact, as a given. But in it one senses not so much the fact of Orthodoxy as the idea of ​​this fact, a very complex and not at all direct construction of Orthodoxy as a fact before which one must bow. Father P. Florensky, by his origins, is not at all an everyday Orthodox, not a simple and direct Orthodox, like Khomyakov. He keeps turning to Orthodoxy, as something transcendental and distant for him. Father P. Florensky is a stylist of Orthodoxy, aestheticizing Orthodox life down to the smallest detail. All the time one feels that he is parvenu 682 in Orthodoxy, and that is precisely why he wants to be more Orthodox than Orthodoxy itself. This produces as unpleasant an impression as the zeal of the parvenu in the highest bureaucratic posts. Aestheticism in the reconstruction of everyday Orthodoxy is always very anti-aesthetic. Such constructions, like those of Father P. Florensky, are associated with aesthetic admiration and savoring, characteristic of decadence; great fatigue is felt in them. Khomyakov was closer to the fact of Orthodoxy, as to immediate life. Father Florensky lives by the idea of ​​fact, its secondary, aesthetic reflection. Khomyakov could allow himself to affirm the idea of ​​Orthodoxy, to set tasks for Orthodoxy, because he was a creative participant in the life of Orthodoxy. Father Florensky is not capable of creative participation. He takes the fact statically, not dynamically, and admires it aesthetically, like a tired decadent. He was just as incapable of a creative life within the Church as Huysmans was incapable of it. But he does not have the latter’s sincerity and good enough taste, and therefore he strays into preaching. He is a man of restoration, with all the complexity of restoration thought. He is poisoned by poisons generated by complex accounts with himself. And what is generated by his flight from himself, he makes the subject of preaching to others. 683 He should have remained a subjective writer, and the transition to teaching is his downfall. The attitude of Father P. Florensky to the Church is that of a slave, full of fears and horrors. But this slavish fear is the greatest poison of our church life. And our church life needs nothing more than the emergence of people of the highest religious dignity and the highest religious freedom. Serfdom has already brought the Russian Church to terrible humiliation. Father Florensky would like to mystically justify and strengthen the state of creep. His whole concept bears the stamp of spiritual plebeianism. The religion of Christ for him is a religion of disobedience, and not a religion of love. And the spirit of Christ, the intimate feeling of Christ, cannot be found in any of his lines. He believes more in the Antichrist, and scares himself and others with him. Khomyakov was one of the most noble people the history of Russian thought has ever known. 684 He was not an esthete, but his image is aesthetically beautiful. Khomyakov had a very developed sense of human dignity and human honor. Khomyakov's thoughts about Orthodoxy, in the highest sense of the word, are master's thoughts, not slave thoughts. As a true, noble, and dignified master in the Kingdom of the Spirit, he could not stoop to the mystical justification of groveling. In Father P. Florensky there are no signs of a sense of human dignity as a master and not a slave. Nor does he have that special sense of dignity of a priest, a shepherd of the Church, which cannot tolerate the humiliation of the Church. He's too busy saving himself. Master as a spiritual category is not a slave owner, but a free, self-governing immanentist in relation to his shrine, a creator in religious life, hierarchically mature. In Father Florensky one can feel centuries of oppression and obedience, adaptation to the slave state, fear of one’s own and others’ slave revolts. Father Florensky discovers in Khomyakov a dangerous deviation towards immanentism. But this is his bias towards religious freedom, which has not been fully completed. Immanentism, deeply thought out, is the religion of freedom and the free. Transcendentism is a religion of necessity. The great spiritual reform, which Russia needs as salvation both in its church and in its state life, will be an in-depth transition to immanentism, to a radical consciousness of the creative calling and sovereign dignity of man. On the basis of sentiments and ideas supported by Father Florensky, our Church and state have reached the point of humiliation and putrefactive processes in their visible shells. “The ontologism of Father Florensky, now fashionable in certain circles, is the strengthening of any static given, and the denial of all creative tasks, all dynamics. Father P. Florensky flies along an inclined plane and comes to the following conclusion: “Russian tsars are autocratic because, he (Khomyakov) believes, that such power was bestowed upon them by the Russian people after the Time of Troubles. Consequently, the people are not the children of the king-father, but the father-king is from the children-the people. Consequently, an autocrat is an autocrat not by God’s grace, but by the will of the people. Consequently, the people did not call the Romanovs to the royal throne because, in the hour of enlightenment, they saw the accomplished determination of God’s will, they sensed that Mikhail Fedorovich had already received the royal crown from God, but because they chose, as they had chosen, it was most convenient for themselves to grant Mikhail Fedorovich power over Russia. In a word, he did not find his king, but made himself a king. And the first Romanov sat on the throne not because God put him there, but because he entered into an agreement with the people. Consequently, we must further conclude that the existing powers are not created by God, but by contrat social; It is not God’s will, but the suffrage of the universe that holds the throne, according to the meaning of Khomyakov’s teaching” (p. 538). Father P. Florensky probably does not realize how terribly responsible these thoughts are at the historical hour that Russia is experiencing. There is too much aesthetic admiration in it for one’s own “Black Hundred” radicalism, which is not satisfied with the autocracy of the Slavophiles. He is a hothouse, non-social and anti-social person, and he is more irresponsible than is acceptable for a priest. The thinking of Father Florensky, quite refined and complicated in the sphere, is completely elementary, primitive and simplified in the sphere of public and state alien to him. He knows nothing in this area and has not experienced anything. And he can only deliberately strive for primitivism. But there is something disgusting in this poisonous, humane primitivism. Too much horror and suffering is associated with what Father Florensky amuses himself in the silence of aesthetics. It is clear that he is not on the same path with Khomyakov. Khomyakov was, in essence, a liberal and democrat with a populist and anti-state tint. He affirmed the idea of ​​autocracy only due to the historical situation. His positive pathos was associated with a free society based on love. In our time it would be different. Our time requires complex social thought. And no one has the right to allow himself such primitivism as Father Florensky; there is no real seriousness in this. IV. Orthodoxy has to resolve the question of its attitude to humanism, to man, to his creativity, to his freedom, to his activity, to the meaning of human culture. The Orthodox Church is now catastrophically faced with a solution to this question. This question faces Catholicism differently. The entire future life of the Christian Church depends on the free revelation in it of the human element, of human activity. Humanism must be introduced from within, immanently into the religious mainstream. This is a matter of life or death for both the church people and non-church humanity, since both religious anti-humanism and anti-religious humanism are equally decomposing. Protestantism not only did not solve, but also did not pose this question; it is not anthropological and not dynamic in its religious principle. 685 Luther even had a Monophysite bias towards denying the independence of human nature. In general, it must be admitted that German immanentism always has a bias towards monophysitism, towards the absorption of man and the human in the divine unity. And the great religious reform that must take place will not be a Protestant reformation at all, it will be more radical, more creative, and more connected with the tradition of the Church, less negative. German Monophysitism is not the only form of religious immanence. The internal religious shift will no longer be Protestant because in it the revelation to man will be connected with the revelation of the cosmos, that is, Christianity will become both more anthropological and more cosmic. Khomyakov's weakest point was his attitude towards space. The objections made by Father P. Florensky to Khomyakov’s teaching on the sacraments are not original. They are entirely taken from the arsenal of Catholic theology. Khomyakov had limitations, which I pointed out in my book about him. I also pointed out that in Khomyakov’s teaching on the sacraments there was a bias towards Protestantism, a predominance of the subjective-spiritual and moral element over the objective-cosmic one. 686 Khomyakov was not drawn to revealing the secrets of cosmic life, and in this he does not stand up to the level of modern tasks of religious knowledge. But it must be said that both in our traditional Orthodox life and in our traditional Orthodox theology, the mysteries of Christianity, the mysteries of God’s creation, with which the sacraments of the Church are connected, were not very much revealed. In this regard, Vl. Soloviev was a huge step forward compared to Khomyakov. We must go further than Khomyakov and Vl. Solovyova. The new revelation must be the fulfillment of promises and prophecies, and only man himself can take the initiative. It will not come from outside. You cannot wait for it, because waiting risks turning into a bad infinity. Father P. Florensky and others like him are depressed and crushed by the idea of ​​holiness. Every creative and religious impulse is suppressed by the requirement of prior implementation in personal life of perfect Orthodoxy and holiness. This mood is very characteristic of religious fatigue. The entire creative life of the Church in the past was never realized in such ways. This is a decadent mood, an expression of religious weakness, it condemns one to passive envy of past religious eras, of old holiness. The boldness of creative initiative has always been the achievement of greater religious perfection. Images of prophecy have no less place in religious life than images of holiness. And we must fight decadent and restorationist trends and sentiments, in the name of the dynamics of life in the Church. In these modern trends and sentiments one cannot help but see renunciation and betrayal of the prophetic Spirit of Russian literature, Russian thought, Russian religious quest. Celebration of Father P. Florensky would be the collapse of the Russian idea, which Russia is called upon to bring to the world. Father Florensky is clearly taking the path of the Grand Inquisitor. “We are not with You, but with him, this is our secret!” This mystery is the denial of religious freedom. A priestly robe and humbly downcast gazes will not save you from exposing this anti-Christian secret. In the depths of his heart, he renounced the mystery of Christ: “You desired the free love of man, so that he would freely walk with You, seduced and captivated by You. Instead of a firm ancient law, with a free heart a person had to decide for himself henceforth what is good and what is evil, having only Your image in front of him as a guide.” And we must acknowledge the great merit of Fr. P. Florensky, that he clearly presents the Russian religious consciousness with a choice of two paths. N.A. Berdyaev. Russian idea 687 The main problems of Russian thought of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century In the fall of 1908, a religious and philosophical society was formed in Russia, in Moscow - on the initiative of S. N. Bulgakov, in St. Petersburg - on my initiative, in Kyiv - on the initiative of professors of the Theological Academy. The religious-philosophical society became the center of religious-philosophical thought and spiritual quest. In Moscow the society was called “In Memory of Vl. Solovyov". These societies reflected the emergence of original religious philosophy in Russia. They were characterized by great freedom of thought and not being bound by school traditions. The thought was not so much theological as religious-philosophical. This is typical for Russia. In the West there was a sharp division between theology and philosophy; religious philosophy was a rare phenomenon, and neither theologians nor philosophers liked it. And in Russia, at the beginning of the century, philosophy, which was very flourishing, acquired a religious character, and the profession of faith was justified philosophically. Philosophy “was not made dependent on theology and ecclesiastical authority; it was free, but internally dependent on religious experience. Religious philosophy covered all areas of spiritual culture, and even all fundamental issues of social life. Religious and philosophical societies initially had great success. Public meetings with reports and debates were well attended, and were also attended by people who had intellectual and spiritual interests, but not specifically religious-Christian ones. In Moscow, the central figure was S. N. Bulgakov, then not yet a priest. There was a connection with the trends of the 19th century, mainly with Khomyakov, Vl. Solovyov, Dostoevsky. The search for true Orthodoxy began. They tried to find him in St. Seraphim of Sarov, the beloved saint of that era, and in his eldership. They also turned to Greek patristics. But people like V. Ivanov participated in the religious and philosophical society. Anthroposophists also took part. Russian religious philosophy was prepared from different ends. A very characteristic figure of the Renaissance was Father Pavel Florensky. He was a multi-talented man. He is a mathematician, physicist, philologist, theologian, philosopher, occultist, poet. The nature is very complex and not straightforward. He came from the circle of Sventsitsky and Ern, who at one time tried to combine Orthodoxy with the revolution. But gradually he became more and more conservative, and in the professorship of the Moscow Theological Academy he was a representative of the right wing. However, his conservatism and rightness were not so much realistic as romantic. This happened often at that time. P. Florensky first graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University and showed great promise as a mathematician. After a spiritual crisis, he enters the Moscow Theological Academy, becomes a professor at the Academy and wants to become a monk. On the advice of the elder, he becomes not a monk, but only a priest. At that time, many people from the intelligentsia accepted the priesthood - P. Florensky, S. Bulgakov, S. Solovyov, S. Durylin and others. It was a desire to enter into the depths of Orthodoxy, to join its mystery. P. Florensky was a man of refined culture, and there was an element of refined decadence in him. There is no simplicity or directness in him at all, there is nothing spontaneous, he is always covering up something, speaks a lot on purpose and is of interest for psychological analysis. I characterized his Orthodoxy as stylized Orthodoxy. He is a stylist in everything. He is an esthete, and in this he is a man of his era, a man indifferent to the moral side of Christianity. This is the first time such a figure appears in Russian Orthodox thought. This reactionary in aesthetic sense is in many ways an innovator in theology. His brilliant book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” made a great impression in some circles, and had an influence on many, for example on S. N. Bulgakov, a man of a completely different formation and a different mental make-up. P. Florensky's book gives the impression of falling autumn leaves. It is filled with the melancholy of autumn. It is written in the form of letters to a friend. It could be classified as a type of existential philosophy. The most valuable thing in the book is its psychological side, especially the chapter on ἐποχή. The struggle against rationalism in theology and philosophy and the defense of antinomy are also positive. P. Florensky wants theology to be spiritually experiential. His thought still cannot be called a creative word in Christianity. He is too much of a stylist, he wants too much to be traditional and orthodox. But in terms of his mental makeup, he is still a new man of his time, even of the famous years of the beginning of the 20th century. He understood too much the movement of the Spirit as a reaction, and not as a forward movement. But he poses unconventional problems. This is, first of all, the problem of Sophia - the Wisdom of God. This problem itself is not a traditional theological one, no matter how much Florensky tries to rely on the teachers of the Church. The formulation of the problem of Sophia means a different attitude towards cosmic life, towards the created world. The development of the theme of Sophia and its theological formulation will belong to Fr. Sergius Bulgakov. But oh. Florensky gave the first impulses. He spoke hostilely and further disparagingly about the “new religious consciousness,” but he still gives too much of an impression of a contemporary of D. Merezhkovsky, Vyach. Ivanov, A. Bely, A. Blok. He feels especially close to Rozanov. He is indifferent to the theme of freedom, and therefore indifferent to the moral theme. He is immersed in a magical atmosphere. It is characteristic that in a book that presents an entire theological system, although not in a systematic form, there is almost no Christ at all. P. Florensky tries to hide the fact that he lives under cosmic seduction, and that his man is depressed. But as a Russian religious thinker, he, in his own way, also awaits a new era of the Holy Spirit. He expresses this with great fear, since his book was a dissertation for the Theological Academy, and he became its professor and priest. In any case, P. Florensky is an interesting figure of the Russian Renaissance. S. N. Bulgakov 688. Priest Fr. Pavel Florensky 689 The other day we received direct confirmation of the news of the death of the great Russian theologian and thinker, priest Fr. Pavel Florensky. He died in Solovki, after a 10-year exile to remote places - from Eastern Siberia to the White Sea. Of all my contemporaries whom I was destined to meet during my long life, he is the greatest, and the greatest is the crime of those who raised their hands against him, dooming him to something worse than execution, but to long-term painful exile and slow dying. He departed, illuminated by the aura of more than a martyr, but a confessor of the name of Christ in the Antichrist persecution. Therefore, this death fills the soul not only with stunning sorrow, as one of the darkest events of the Russian tragedy, but it is also a spiritual triumph, as one of those about which the Seer of Secrets is told: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on; to her, says the Spirit, they will rest from their labors, and their works will follow them” (Rev. 14:13). I am destined here, in a foreign land, to now testify to those who did not know him about the greatness and beauty of his spiritual image. But never have I felt the powerlessness of my word to such an extent as in the face of this duty of mine. Father Pavel was for me not only a manifestation of genius, but also a work of art, his image was so harmonious and beautiful. It takes a word, or a brush, or a chisel of a great master to tell the world about it. Moreover, he himself was not only born this way, but was also his own work of spiritual art, for which he had all the subtlety of spiritual and artistic taste. The features of his external face are captured in the famous Nesterov portrait: grace-filled calmness and enlightenment, the image of a kind of celestial being, who, however, was a son of the earth, experienced and overcame its hardships. There was no idyllic naivety and primitiveness in him at all; this could have been said about him: “Oh, don’t wake up sleeping storms, chaos is stirring underneath them.” 690 But he loved her, this native land, like the ancient mother of all mankind, Demeter, but at the same time he knew and honored her as the holy Land of God, the Most Pure and Most Blessed, which he worshiped so much (see his dedication of the “Pillar”: “To the All-Fragrant and Most Pure Name of the Virgin and Mother”). From the outside, he was rather of a delicate and fragile build, but he had great endurance and ability to work, partly achieved through enormous ascetic training. I witnessed this ascetic self-discipline of his, as well as his laborious scientific feat. He usually spent his nights working, going to bed only at 3-4 o'clock in the morning, but at the same time maintaining all the freshness of his mind during the day, and the same could be said about his eating regimen. And all this was in him not only the voice of his spiritual element, but also a matter of iron will and self-control. Weak by nature, in those years when I knew about him (alas, our separation was already a quarter of a century old), as far as I remember, he was never sick at all, leading a life full of ascetic deprivation. When Fr. Paul appeared anywhere, he naturally attracted the attention of at least sighted people, both before his priesthood and especially after it. There was something oriental and non-Russian in his face (his mother was Armenian). Spiritually, I saw in him most of all an ancient Hellenic, and at the same time also an Egyptian. He carried both spiritual elements within himself, being, as it were, a living revelation of them. In his appearance, in his profile, in the reflection of his face, in his lips and nose, there was something from the images of Leonardo da Vinci, which always amazed, but at the same time... Gogol. I remember how we, who knew him, and were present at the opening of the monument to Gogol in Moscow (Ern, A. Bely, etc.), seeing him for the first time after the veil that covered him was removed, gasped: “Pavlusha!” (that’s what his friends and peers called him, his schoolmates at the Tiflis gymnasium, now both retired: V.F. Ern and Father Alexander Elchaninov). 691 And with this appearance, which one cannot pass by without noticing it, there was nothing provocative or arrogant about her. 692 It was the same in his voice and in his speech, Shakespeare’s words always asked for him to be spoken (Hamlet about Ophelia 693): he had a gentle, quiet voice, great charm (not only in a woman, but in this case also in a man). However, this voice had the hardness of metal when it was needed. In general, the most basic impression of Fr. Paul was a force that knew itself and controlled itself. And this force was a certain primordial nature of a genius personality, who was given originality and self-sufficiency with complete simplicity, naturalness and any absence of internal and external posture, which is always a pretense of internal weakness. And in the paths of spiritual development and self-determination we observe in Fr. Pavle these same features. It can be said in a certain sense that Fr. Paul made himself, following his own path. He was born and raised in a cultured family (his father was an educated engineer), and he was brought up in the atmosphere of Beethoven and Goethe, but without religion. Being a spiritual aristocrat by upbringing, he was to a certain extent also an esthete. After graduating from the gymnasium, where he amazed teachers with his mathematical abilities, then already research ones, he entered the mathematics department of Moscow University, after which he was retained at several mathematical departments (and for a long time later Moscow physicists and mathematicians could not forget the gifted student). Instead of all this, Fr. Paul, dramatically changing his path in life, entered the Moscow Theological Academy as a student (at Trinity Sergius), accepting obedience to a new scientific theological work, and at the same time a religious feat. When and how the religious revolution took place in it, I do not have exact data. I recognized him after him. In a scientific guise, Fr. Pavel was always amazed by his complete mastery of the subject, alien to any amateurism, and in terms of the breadth of his scientific interests, he is a rare and exceptional polylogist, the full extent of which cannot even be determined due to the lack of complete data for this. Here he most closely resembles the titanic images of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci and others, perhaps even Pascal, and among the Russians most of all V.V. Bolotov. I knew him to be a mathematician and physicist, a theologian and philologist, a philosopher, a historian of religions, a poet, a connoisseur and connoisseur of art, and a deep mystic. The last years before exile Fr. Pavel gave lectures in Moscow on electricity and the theory of perspective. They say that even during his exile in Solovki, with his all-consuming inquisitive mind, he studied seaweed. If it is impossible to verify this, let it be a myth that naturally arises around a person who is also mythical in his own way. And all this wealth of gifts, and, obviously, achievements, is hidden, and perhaps buried by barbarity, the spiritual invasion of the Huns on Russian soil, crushed by the cast-iron press of “Soviet power” along with millions of human lives. I don’t know what has survived from his scientific and literary heritage, but even then, during the years of our common life, i.e. That is, a quarter of a century ago, I knew that he had several ready-made studies on his desk (about names and renamings, various philosophical and theological courses, mathematics and other works). In general, he had little interest in their publication. But I personally believe that the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” which deservedly glorified his name in theology, is still a youthful work, and not at all his last and only word of all that he took with him to his distant grave. However, in the creative world, nothing disappears from genuine spiritual values, even what perishes here on earth, “their deeds follow them, 694 and their seed will sprout in the next world... However, everything that can be said about the exceptional scientific talent of Fr. Paul, as well as about his originality, by virtue of which he always had his word as a kind of revelation about everything, is still secondary and insignificant if you do not know the most important thing about him. The spiritual center of his personality, the sun by which all his gifts were illuminated, was his priesthood. V.V. Rozanov, who, having once learned about. Paul, then could no longer tear himself away from him, as from the source of life (I know that Father Paul kept a huge and significant correspondence with him, in which they plunged together into the mystical depths of the Jewish question), he once wrote me a letter about him, also absolutely brilliant in strength and expressiveness (I don’t know if it survived in Moscow). I only remember one word from it. As his most significant definition, V.V. Rozanov said: he is ιερέας (in Greek), a priest. And that's exactly how it was. Priesthood Fr. Paul, like everything in his life (besides what satanic anti-Christian malice had done to him), was also his own self-determination, which from the outside seemed to be completely contrary to his entire life situation. Neither his engineer father nor his gymnasium or university teachers dreamed of such foolishness as a cassock. It did not even necessarily follow from the fact of entering the Theological Academy, but such was his inner voice, election and calling. In itself, it had no examples in the history of the Russian intelligentsia. The latter still knows of individual cases of acceptance of the priesthood associated with the transition to Catholicism, in aristocratic and secular convertism, 695 by no means in homespun, peasant Orthodoxy. We can say that Fr. Paul, by his example, first paved this path in our days precisely for the Russian intelligentsia, to which historically, of course, he still belonged, although he was always free from “intelligentsia” and was at enmity with it. With his ordination, he actually made a well-known challenge to her, of course, without thinking about it at all. Along the same path, but after Fr. Paul, people of well-known spiritual and cultural character have come. They go with him, and after him, sometimes consciously, and sometimes even unconsciously. Until now, the priesthood has been hereditary among us, belonging to the “Levitical” blood, along with a certain psychological way of life, but in Fr. Paul met, and in their own way were united, culture and churchliness, Athens and Jerusalem, and this organic connection in itself is already a fact of church-historical significance. What was Fr. looking for in the priesthood? Paul? This was not a calling to shepherding and teaching, although, of course, he did not deny them, but first of all, and most of all, an attraction to stand before the Throne of the Lord, to serve the liturgical-Eucharistic service. First about. Paul sought, perhaps somewhat abstractly and ideologically, to obtain a village parish near Sergiev Posad, so, however, in order to combine the rural priesthood with a professorship at the Theological Academy, where he was entrusted with the department of spiritual philosophy (the routine here also turned out to be stronger than the substance of the matter, and Father Pavel was removed from the purely theological departments), but then he received for himself a small house church of the Red Cross community in Sergiev Posad, of course, until 1918, from which his priestly homelessness already began. After this, obviously, his priestly ministry could not but be interrupted sooner or later. However, Bolshevik Moscow also remembers him giving scientific lectures in a cassock and wearing a cross. I won’t say exactly the year of his ordination, but it seems to have been around 1910. Shortly before his ordination, his marriage took place, which was unexpected in its own way for those close to him. His ascetic path initially led him to monasticism, but then asceticism in the monastery gave way to asceticism in the family. He became the head of the family, a caring and gentle father of several children. Separation from them and worry about them, obviously, was also his special cross in exile. In his ordination, Fr. Paul stepped over the obstacle that for us who returned to the Church, so to speak “intellectuals,” was the dependence of the Church on the state, Caesar-papism. In his exceptional rootedness, despite, and even in spite of, his half-Russian blood - Fr. Paul was, or rather wanted to be, politically rather conservative, although this in him was combined with an apocalyptic and eschatological sense of life, “not having a city that abides here, but seeking the one to come.” At a time when the whole country was delirious with the revolution, and also in church circles, one after another, albeit ephemeral, church-political organizations arose, Fr. Paul remained alien to them - either due to his general indifference to the earthly dispensation, or because the voice of eternity generally sounded stronger for him than the calls of temporality. The renovationist movement among the Russian clergy, which later degenerated into the Living Church, never found an echo in Fr. Paul, no matter how much he suffered from all the inertia of our church life. His Christianity was also not “social”, although at that time various currents of it arose around it. But this was least of all a simple guardianship in him; this outer shell was united with the fiery burning of the fiery spirit, although with a quiet light emanating from it. Therefore, he was not shocked by the change in the relationship between the Church and the state that came after the revolution. He remained internally free from the state, from which he did not seek anything either before or after the revolution, equally alien to any servility, both to the authorities above and below. We can say, without fear of paradox, that Fr. Paul passed through our catastrophic era, 697 spiritually as if not noticing it, as if not paying attention to its external revolutionary nature. This indifference was also expressed in his loyalty to “obedience to all authority,” a paradoxical “priesthood.” However, at the same time, you need to know the full true extent of his love of freedom, which was equally able not only to obey, but also to disobey, of course, in what was essential and important for him. Having become a priest and having assumed the full responsibility of all canonical and hierarchical discipline, Fr. Paul remained free and alien to blind obedience for fear, and not for conscience, recognition of its infallibilitas. 698 He remained free in his theology, which, however, was organically imbued with his churchliness and was inspired by the altar. He did not live to see the direct persecution of sophiology that came later, but, of course, he was ready to accept all its consequences. When the persecution of admirers of the Name of God (name-glorification) began, Fr. Paul gave his theological strength to support the theologically helpless but mystically right movement of the name-glorifiers. I could also confirm his spiritual fearlessness on the basis of some biographical data. In general, one can apply the German expression to him: nur fur schwinderfreie moglich, and he remained schwindelfrei 699 in his priesthood. It was characteristic that he could be found not only in the cell of Abba Isidore, among the elders of Zosima Hermitage, among Bishop. Anthony, who lived in retirement in the Donskoy Monastery, but also in various houses of our then Moscow “Florence”, writers and poets, sometimes where it seemed difficult to expect this, he was both a welcome guest and a night interlocutor. For all his ecclesiastical and liturgical nature, he remained completely free from both hypocrisy and stylish “priesthood”, knowing how to be interested in things on the merits. Therefore, he did not find a real place for himself in the academic environment with its special atmosphere. While remaining completely far from theological “modernism,” that is, rationalism, he was, of course, not alien to it in the best, true sense, recognizing that each era of history has not only the right to exist, but also the law of its life, the special requirements of its creative perception, and as a result of which loyalty to its tradition does not turn into inert guarding. When the theological academies were closed by the Soviet government, together with Fr. Pavel began to actively discuss the project of establishing a free “religious-philosophical” academy according to a modified and expanded program, and for this implementation they were looking for means and opportunities. However, life responded to these projects with cruelty in its own way, for Fr. Paul's imprisonment, which ended in confessional death, for me - lifelong exile in a foreign land. Such were the ways and orders of God's Providence. But in our current Parisian undertaking, 700 which arose in the cultural ruins of Russian life, I would like to see, of course, if not completeness, then at least some faint reflection of our Moscow plans, and in what is conventionally called “Parisian theology”, to find principles that are related and with the inspirations of Fr. Paul, and his spiritual participation with us, as it were, complicity. However, full flowering and fruiting is possible only on its native soil, and under its sun, and a greenhouse plant torn from the soil, even if it grows, inevitably withers. Father Pavel had an organic sense of homeland. Himself a native of the Caucasus, he found the promised land for himself at the Trinity of Sergius, loving every corner and plant in it, its summer, winter, spring and autumn. I cannot convey in words that feeling of the homeland, Russia, great and powerful in its destinies, with all its sins and falls, but also in the trials of its chosenness, how it lived in Fr. Pavle. And, of course, it was no coincidence that he did not go abroad, where, of course, a brilliant scientific future could await him, and, probably, world fame, which for him in general, it seems, did not exist. Of course, he knew what could await him, he could not help but know, the fate of his homeland spoke too inexorably about this from top to bottom, from the brutal murder of the royal family to the endless victims of government violence. We can say that life seemed to offer him a choice between Solovki and Paris, but he chose... homeland, although it was Solovki, he wanted to share his fate with his people to the end. O. 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. A quarter of a century has already passed since we parted with Fr. Paul, leaving the Moscow church after our last joint liturgy. And everything that is said above about him is the essence of impressions only of the first decades of this century, already a distant past. Nevertheless, I do not feel that I remain in some kind of ignorance about him, because for me the past years lived together have allowed me to forever preserve in my soul this image, as if cast from bronze, like a monument. But, of course, it is beyond our power to tell about it without seeing it or feeling it directly. In order to talk about a genius, who is a kind of miracle of nature, you must be one yourself, or at least have the ability to imagine his image through the power of feeling. Let us hope that there will be those who will collect precious grains of memories of him over the past quarter century, although they will all face the same insurmountable difficulty. The real creativity of Fr. Paul is not even the books he wrote, or his thoughts and words, but he himself, his whole life, which has already gone irrevocably from this century to the future. And only those who believe and know that the life of creativity continues beyond the grave, that participation in life here is also possible there, have the Christian hope of meeting it in the eternal homeland, in intelligible Russia, in the coming century, in which nothing truly valuable is lost, but is multiplied, and the deeds of the righteous follow him. A memory haunts me, and at the same time a foreshadowing of future events and accomplishments. This is our portrait, painted by our mutual friend M.V. Nesterov (who also passed away from this life this year) on a May evening in 1917, in the garden at the house of Fr. Pavel. It was, according to the artist’s plan, not only a portrait of two friends made by a third friend, but also a spiritual vision of the era. Both faces expressed the same comprehension for the artist, but in different ways: one of them as a vision of horror, the other as a vision of peace, joy, and victorious overcoming. And the artist himself first had doubts about the appropriateness of the first image, so much so that he made an attempt to remake the portrait, replacing horror with idyll, tragedy with complacency. But the falsity and unbearability of such a replacement were immediately revealed, so the artist had to restore the original vision. But the image of Fr. Paul turned out to be something he immediately found; there was artistic and spiritual self-evidence in him, and he did not have to be changed. It was an artistic clairvoyance of two images of the Russian apocalypse, on this side and on the other side of earthly existence, the first image in struggle and confusion (and in my soul it related specifically to the fate of my friend), the other to the victorious accomplishment that we are now contemplating... He found his resting place. This is the Christian faith and Christian hope. But the world seemed to be empty without him for those who knew and loved him, it became dull and boring, and the Gone One was calling for him from the world. “And I looked,” says the Seer, “and behold, a great multitude of people, which no one can number... stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and with palm branches in their hands... These are those who came out of the great tribulation... they abide before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His church... and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes...” (Rev. 7:9-17). And we believe that in their face one can see the priest of God Paul, the martyr and confessor of the Name of Christ. N. O. Lossky 701. History of Russian philosophy. 702 Ch. XIV. Father Pavel Florensky Vladimir Solovyov became the founder of the original school of Russian religious philosophy. This school includes a whole galaxy of philosophers endowed with versatile talents and often possessing broad erudition. Among them, a special place belongs to Father Pavel Florensky. Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky was born in 1882. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Moscow University, and theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1908, Florensky was appointed to the department of history of philosophy at the same academy. But the priesthood attracted him no less than academic work, and in 1911 he accepted the priesthood. After the Bolshevik Revolution, when theological academies were closed, Florensky began to work in the field of technology and received a post in Glavelektro (Main Directorate of the Electrical Industry). There he was busy studying electric fields and dielectrics. Florensky was a multi-talented person. During the days of the German occupation of Pskov, V. Filistinsky 703 published an article “Russian Leonardo da Vinci in a concentration camp” in the city newspaper “For the Motherland.” In this article he wrote: “I remember the striking appearance of the Moscow priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky. He was a man of average height in an unironed canvas cassock, with Armenian features. 704 No one knew when he slept or rested. Everyone was amazed at this man’s performance. Florensky was a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, the author of the sensational book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth”, a number of religious and philosophical articles, a symbolist poet whose works appeared in “Libra” and a separate book, a gifted astronomer who defended the geocentric concept of the world, a remarkable mathematician, the author of “Imaginaries in Geometry”, 705 a number of monographs in the field of mathematics, an authority in field of physics, the author of the exemplary work “Dielectrics and their technical applications. General properties of dielectrics,” art historian and author of several monographs on art, and especially on wood carving, a remarkable electrical engineer who occupied one of the main posts in the electrification commission. Florensky came to the Supreme Council of the National Economy in priestly attire. He was a professor of perspective painting (at VKHUTEMAS), an excellent musician, an astute admirer of Bach and polyphonic music, Beethoven and his contemporaries, who knew their works perfectly. 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... In 1927, he invented an extraordinary machine, which the Bolsheviks called “Decade”, 706 in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Soviet revolution... I was lucky enough to see Father Pavel only twice. The first time I met him was in 1928 or 1929. Then, in a close circle of Leningrad engineers, he was reading a newspaper article devoted to a very important technical issue. 707 Although I came there with a friend and did not understand a word of what Florensky read, I was deeply impressed by the energy and confidence of this slender man, his priestly attire and the ease with which he talked with respectable gray-haired academicians and professors. Yes, Father Florensky was obviously well aware of his superiority. It even seemed to me that he lacked the Christian virtue of humility. But it was impossible not to sympathize with this involuntary pride of his. We were all aware that a new Leonardo da Vinci stood before us. Repeatedly the Bolsheviks imprisoned him and sent him to a concentration camp in Solovki, and demanded that he renounce his faith and priesthood. However, Father Paul remained faithful to the Church. In 1934 or 1935, however, the Soviets ran out of patience and rewarded the great scientist by condemning him to 10 years of slavery in a concentration camp...” In 1946, a rumor spread among emigrants that Father Pavel had allegedly died in custody. 708 I would like to supplement V. Filistinsky’s article with a number of personal comments. In November 1913, Father Pavel sent me his book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” This book contributed to my gradual return to the fold of the Church, and in 1918 I finally became a believer. Naturally, I really wanted to meet Florensky. Usually considered as random unexpected meetings between people, remarkable coincidences of circumstances, generally speaking, intersections in time and space of two independent currents and events, are in fact not accidental, but are purposeful combinations caused by a higher power that binds distant sectors of reality into one whole. Therefore, a person of high spirituality, in his desire for absolute good, unconsciously and independently of his will enters into contact with another person. This happens at the very moment when they can provide each other with the greatest help. It seems that these people are guided by a higher beneficial force. Two incidents from the life of Florensky confirm that he acted precisely as such an intermediary of divine power. That's why I was destined to meet Father Pavel. I remember this happened in 1915. Returning home from the university, I entered the elevator to go up to the third floor, to my apartment. The elevator was quite primitive and was driven by hand. It was impossible to repair a broken cable during wartime (1914‒1918). It took me a long time to get up, and when I got up, the elevator operator could not stop the elevator in the right place. On the third floor, the elevator stopped well below the landing. It was very difficult for me to place my right foot on the platform, and I began to climb as the elevator operator began to pull the elevator down. The upper part of the elevator was already pressing on my right shoulder. Only at that moment did I manage to free myself and jump onto the platform. Soon I was in my office. The shock did not pass, I continued to walk around the room, and thought with excitement about what could happen. Suddenly the bell rang and Father Pavel Florensky entered. He went to the front as an army priest. Our conversation lasted no more than half an hour and was animated. When Florensky left, I remembered the past danger with complete composure. The horror experienced could have caused a nervous illness, but the arrival of Father Florensky smoothed out the experience. I was healed. The following incident dates back to 1922. Our family spent the summer in Tsarskoye Selo. S. Lukyanov, 709 professor of pathology and former procurator of the Holy Synod, also lived there at that time. S. Lukyanov devoted many years of his life to working on an extensive biography of Vladimir Solovyov, collecting materials from those who had ever met him. I also received his invitation. In a conversation with me, S. Lukyanov sadly noted that the terrible atrocities of the Bolshevik revolution destroyed his love for life. S. Lukyanov began one letter to P. Florensky with the fact that he no longer wants to live. S. Lukyanov did not finish this letter and did not send it to the address, because soon he himself received a letter from Florensky, in which the latter admonished him not to lose the will to live, as if Father Pavel had somehow learned about S. Lukyanov’s mood by some supernatural way. Florensky's main works: “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” 1914 (translated into German), 710 “The Meaning of Idealism,” 1915; article about Khomyakov in the Theological Bulletin for July-August 1916 The book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” is remarkable in its subject matter, form and appearance. The author demonstrates his almost superhuman erudition - brilliant knowledge in the fields of philosophy, theology, philology and mathematics. Florensky supports his philosophical conclusions with factual material from the field of medicine, psychopathology, folklore, and especially linguistics. He loved to compare the etymology of words such as “truth”, “faith”, “heart” and so on, using material from different languages. So, for example, by pointing out that the Russian word “truth,” as linguists believe, comes from the verb to be (est, truth – estina; that which is), Florensky proves the “ontological aspect of the idea.” The Greek word αλήθεια draws attention to the unforgettable, or indelible, aspect of truth; The Latin Veritas has the same root as the Russian word believe; The Hebrew word emet emphasizes the aspect of certainty or reliability. Florensky often turns to the most abstract sciences - mathematics and mathematical linguistics. The notes at the end of the book, covering almost two hundred pages, contain many interesting and valuable statements, as well as rich videographic information. Florensky builds his theodicy on the basis of living religious experience, as the only legitimate method of cognition of dogmas. It is therefore natural that his book is written in the form of letters to a friend. The presentation of theological and philosophical issues is sometimes interrupted by descriptions of nature and the author’s mood caused by it. This book was a dissertation submitted for a Ph.D. The appearance of the book is no less striking. The cover reproduces the colors of the ancient icons of Sofia of the Novgorod school. Each letter is preceded by a symbolic vignette from Ambodica's book "Symbola et Emblemata Selecta". The book is dedicated to the “All-fragrant and Most Pure Name of the Virgin Mary.” 711 Frontispiece taken from "Amoris Divini Emblemata studio et aere Othonis Vaeni concinnate", Antverpiae (1660). The symbol of two angels standing on a pedestal with the inscription: “Finis amoris ut duo unum fiant” (“The limit of love is that two may be one”) expresses the basic idea of ​​Florensky’s metaphysics, namely, his assertion that all created persons that form part of the world are beings that coexist with each other. Florensky brilliantly connects the main question of philosophy - the question of truth and its discovery, i.e. epistemological research, with trinitarian dogma and the idea of ​​consubstantiality. He says that truth is absolute reality, super-rational wholeness; there is no room in it for the rational law of identity “A is A.” Florensky believed that the formula of the law of identity symbolizes death-like immobility, static isolation. However, in his opinion, truth, as a living integrity, must contain a transition from A to non-A. In truth, “other” is at the same time “not other” sub specie aeternitatis (from the point of view of eternity). “Therefore A is A, that, eternally being not A, in this not A it finds its affirmation as A.” What is such truth - an abstract formula or a living reality? Florensky answers that truth is known through religious experience, which confirms that God is “consubstantial,” that is, “the concrete unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (53). In such an experience, we learn that love is the basis of living reality and truth, for it means the transition of a being from the complete separation of A to another not A,” asserts its coexistence with it, for it means the transition of a being from a state of complete separation of A to another not A, establishes its coexistence with it; consequently, the being, i.e. A, finds itself in not A. This structure of being and truth is known only when the subject is guided by living reality as such, and its transition from one to the “other,” for what appears in our consciousness is not a subjective copy of an object or a creation of the mind, as Kant thought, but an actual object of the external world. In other words, Florensky argues that the perception of objects is intuition (in the spirit of Lossky’s terminology), that is, direct contemplation of living reality as it exists in itself. 712 Florensky draws a line between irrationalistic intuitionism and Russian intuitionism, which attaches great value to the rational and systematic aspect of the world. Truth cannot be known either through blind intuition, with the help of which scattered empirical facts are known, or through discursive thinking - the desire to reduce the partial into a whole by adding one element to another. Truth becomes accessible to consciousness only through rational intuition, which brings the combination of discursive differentiation ad infinitum with intuitive integration to the degree of unity. “If Truth exists,” Florensky points out, “then it is real rationality and rational reality; it is finite infinity and infinite finitude, or, to put it mathematically, actual infinity, the infinite, conceived as a total Unity...” Therefore, rational intuition proceeds from the highest to the lowest, from the whole to the infinite multitude of subordinate particulars. But such a single truth is possible only “there, in heaven,” while “like with us there are many truths, fragments of the Truth...”. The fragmentation of our knowledge is not such a big drawback. The worst thing is that the integral divine truth, going beyond the law of contradiction, reconciles A and not A, being at the same time divided into a number of truths that contradict each other and are inevitably antinomic. So, for example, there are many dogmatic antinomies: divine one-sidedness and trinity, predestination and free will, etc. “Only at the moment of grace-filled insight are these contradictions eliminated in the mind, but not rationally, but in a super-rational way” (159). When exploring the question of the relationship between created persons and explaining the essence of love, Father Paul relies on the idea of ​​consubstantiality. Victory over the law of identity, a creative transition from one’s self-enclosure into the sphere of the “other,” real self-disclosure in this “other” - this is the basic truth expressed in the dogma of consubstantiality (omousia). When considering both the relationships between the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity and the relationships between earthly beings, since they are individual and strive to realize the Christian ideal of mutual love, we must proceed from the concept of consubstantiality. “The limit of love is that two may be one” (Finis amoris ut quo unum fiant). This kind of homousian philosophy of personality and its creative activity is a Christian spiritual philosophy. Its opposite is the Homiusian philosophy of rationalism, which allows only “generic resemblance” and not “numerical identity”, and is a philosophy of “things and lifeless immobility” (80). Love, leading to the identification of two beings, is, of course, not a subjective mental process, but “a substantial act passing from subject to object, and having support in the object,” ontologically transforming lovers into each other. The same applies fully to ideal friendship, leading to complete unanimity of two beings, creating a new spiritual essence, thanks to which the mind learns the secrets of the kingdom of God and the miracle of transfiguration. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said: “Again, truly, I say to you... that is, I repeat once again, that if two of us on earth agreed on anything that they asked, it would be done for them by My Father in Heaven.” Why is this so? Because two people can be in complete agreement only by following the will of God. “...The gathering of two or three in the Name of Christ, the descent of people into the mysterious spiritual atmosphere around Christ, the communion of His grace-filled power transforms them into a new spiritual essence, makes of the two a particle of the Body of Christ, the living embodiment of the Church” (421). Such pure friendship is “contemplation of oneself through a Friend in God.” Not only the friendship of two individuals, but also true love is unthinkable without the participation of divine power. When we love, we love only in God and through God, since love sets the indispensable condition for overcoming selfishness and entering a new realm of existence, which everywhere has the imprint of beauty. True love creates a reality in which three absolute values ​​are realized, for God enters the lover and is known as absolute truth, that is, love. Love of this kind for another, for “you,” is good. “Considered within me (in the mode of “I”), in “myself” or more precisely, “about myself,” this entry is knowledge. “For another” (in the mode “you”) it is love, and finally “for me”, as objectified and objective (i.e., considered in the mode “he”), it is beauty. In other words, my knowledge of God, perceived in me by another, is love for the perceiver, but objectively contemplated by a third, love for another is beauty. What is truth for the subject of knowledge is love for him for the object, and beauty for the contemplator of knowledge (the subject’s knowledge of the object). Truth, Goodness and Beauty - this metaphysical triad, there are not three different principles, but one. This is one and the same spiritual life, but viewed from different angles” (75). According to Florensky, the beauty of the world is accessible only to those who free themselves through love from the isolation of egoism. He finds confirmation of this argument in the works of such great ascetics as Macarius the Great, Isaac the Syrian, and others, in the stories of wanderers and works of fiction. The desire for holiness reveals to man the holy and eternal side of any creation, for through inner insight he grasps his creation in its “all-conquering incorruptible” beauty. Such a person feels nature more keenly. “...Everything surrounding me seemed to me in a delightful form: trees, grass, birds, earth, air, light; “everything,” the wanderer writes, “seemed to tell me that it exists for man, testifies to the love of God for man, and everything prays, everything sings the glory of God” (317). According to Florensky, “asceticism creates not only a kind, but also a beautiful personality. A characteristic feature of great saints is not the kindness of heart, which is often manifested in both carnal and very sinful people, but spiritual beauty - the magnificent beauty of the radiant radiance of a light-giving personality, inaccessible to a carnal man, burdened with the flesh.” 713 Spiritual beauty is accompanied by the holiness of the body, the radiance of which nods the flesh with light. Florensky paid great attention to stories about the light emanating from the bodies of saints. Sweetness, warmth, fragrance, musical harmony, and above all, radiant light, these are the characteristic signs of flesh filled with the Holy Spirit. Sophia (the most complex object of theological theory) is this universal reality, brought together by the love of God and the mortal beauty of the Holy Spirit. Florensky viewed Sophia as the “fourth hypostasis,” which theologians understand differently due to its versatility. According to Florensky, Sophia is “the Great Root of the entire creation...”, “the primordial nature of the creature, the creative Love of God...”. “In relation to creation,” he says, “Sophia is the Guardian Angel of creation, the Ideal Personality of the world” (326). If we consider Sophia from the point of view of three hypostases, then she is: 1) ideal substance of the created world 2) “the mind of a creature, its meaning, truth or truth” 3) “the spirituality of the creature, its holiness, purity and innocence, that is, beauty” (349). “But not only that, in relation to house building, Sofia also has a number of new aspects.” First of all, it is “the firstfruits and center of the redeemed creation - the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, the created nature perceived by the Divine Word. Only by participating in Him, that is, having our nature included, as if interspersed with the Body of the Lord, do we receive freedom and mysterious purification from the Holy Spirit” (350). In this sense, Sophia is, first of all, the Church in its heavenly aspect. However, being the totality of all individuals who have already begun the feat of purification, Sophia is also the Church in its earthly aspect. And since cleansing by the Holy Spirit reveals chastity and humble purity, then Sophia is Virginity. “The bearer of Virginity, the Virgin in the proper and exclusive sense of the word, is Mariam, the Virgin of Grace, blessed... with the Holy Spirit, filled with His gifts” (350). Considering the aspects of Sophia in hierarchical order, Florensky writes: “If Sophia is the whole of creation, then the soul and conscience of the creature - Humanity, is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is all of Humanity, then the soul and conscience of Humanity - the Church - is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is the Church, then the soul and conscience of the Church - the Church of the Saints - is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is the Church of the Saints, then the soul and conscience of the Church of the Saints - Intercessor and intercessor for creation before the Word of God, judging creation and cutting it in two, the Mother of God, “the Purgatory of the world,” is again Sophia par excellence” (351). That is why there are many miraculous and revered icons of the Blessed Virgin with such meaningful names as “Unexpected Joy”, “Tenderness”, “Joy of All Who Sorrow”, “Seeking the Lost”, “Softening Evil Hearts”, “Unbreakable Wall”. “Every legitimate icon of the Mother of God “revealed,” that is, marked by miracles and, so to speak, having received approval and approval from the Virgin Mother herself, attested in its spiritual truthfulness by the Virgin Mother herself, is an imprint of only one side, a bright spot on the earth from only one ray of the Blessed One, one of her picturesque names. Hence the existence of many “revealed” icons, hence the quest to venerate different icons. The names of some of them partly express their spiritual essence...” This is the deep explanation that Father Paul gave for the desire to worship icons. Orthodox people who are not experienced in religious experience seem to be inclined to identify this cult with idolatry. This characteristic ability of Russian philosophers to understand the concrete ideal principles underlying the universe was strikingly clearly revealed in the philosophy of Vl. Solovyova. However, he did not resolve many important questions of the theory of concrete ideal being. P. Florensky made a valuable contribution to the doctrine of Solovyov’s specifically ideal existence. In his treatise “The Meaning of Idealism” (1915), he explains what Plato meant by the words “seeing an idea” and quotes from the dialogue “Philebus”. Plato argued: to see means that “many” is one, and one is “many,” or to see means the connection of “the infinity of a being and the delineation of a concretely given” (49). Among the scholastics, unum refers to something else - to alia. According to scholastic etymology, it is unum versus alia that is something universal, that is, individual, and at the same time general. The most obvious manifestation of the idea is a living being, as an undoubted unity in heterogeneity. As you know, an instant photograph is an accurate, but at the same time dead and artificial reproduction. By recreating living being in its ideal essence with the help of paints, marble and bronze, the artist does not reproduce a short-term situation, as a photographer does, but merges expressions relating to different periods of time into a single whole, and thus creates a harmonious unity. Florensky illustrates this statement with excerpts from Broder Christiansen's book 714 "Philosophy of Art", which points out that portraits painted by the great Gold, German and Italian masters are a synthesis of various expressions merged into one harmonious unity. For example, the folds of the mouth show “excitement and tension of will,” and “the eyes are dominated by the resolving calm of the intellect” (38). The famous sculptor Rodin 715 says the same about statues that exude truth. Such sculptures convey combinations of various movements in time (32). When contemplating such a work of art, Florensky says, we move on to “synthetic perception,” some semblance of the perception of a three-dimensional body with four-dimensional space (as if objects were visible “from the fourth dimension, that is, first of all, not in perspective, but from all sides at once, as our consciousness knows them”). For example, in the painting “Nature morte” (“Dead Nature”), Picasso attempted to present the violin from different points of view, from all sides, in order to reveal “the comprehensive plastic inner life of the violin, its rhythm and dynamics” (45). Synthetic vision, necessary in order to see even such a relatively simple object as a human face as something whole, is not fully developed in us. It is even less developed in relation to such entities of a higher order as a people, a nation or humanity. For our three-dimensional mind, the idea of ​​a person is only a general concept, only a class, and our three-dimensional vision grasps only isolated examples of this class. Nevertheless, man as an idea is a living whole in which individuals are assigned the role of organs. This is the “Heavenly Man”, as represented by the religious consciousness of the mystics, and the “Body of Christ” in the definition of Swedenborg 716 (Swedenborg), given by him in the treatise “On Heaven, the World of Spirits and Hell” (52). 717 Florensky says that many religions have tried to express such ideal integrity symbolically: the mystical tree of life (der heilige Baum, der Lebensbaum, as well as l'Arbre du Monde) is a synthesis of plants revered in the country. “This is an image of life in its integrity, or, in other words, the idea of ​​life (56), élan vital (vital impulse), not yet divided into separate samples or types. Florensky says the same about such collective animals as Egyptian sphinxes, Assyrian kirubi (winged lions and bulls) and Jewish cherubs. According to the rabbis, the cherubim, who support the throne of God's glory in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel and are depicted on the Ark of the Covenant and on the veil of the Church, embody all created life - the intelligence of man, the strength of the bull, the courage of the lion and the upward striving of the eagle (58). In Christian iconography, this same essence is expressed by the tetramorphon (a six-winged angel - a symbol of the combination of these four aspects of created life). Although Plato speaks of ideas that are transcendental in relation to phenomena, in these cases the “idea” is embodied in the phenomenon, or remains immanent in relation to it. Florensky eliminates this contradiction because he understands the relativity and interdependence of the transcendental and immanent (85), which are only two aspects of one idea. The idea in its transcendental aspect is a heavenly being that forms earthly being (94). Such principles (personal ideas and impersonal forces predetermined from above) are recognized by many religious and philosophical teachings. “This includes, for example, the Hindu doctrine of the Gandharvas or Gandhabbas, which vividly resembles Leibniz’s doctrine of the central part of the organism surviving death” (92). The Freuers and Fravashi of Parsism, the geniuses of people, places and events of the ancient Romans and the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers about the spermatic logos (especially Plutarch of Chaeronea) speak about this. 718 In this highest supra-earthly aspect, ideas are not abstract rules, but “the concrete fullness of perfection and supreme reality” (73). The perfection of the highest reality manifests itself most figuratively in the beauty that belongs to this reality, as well as to a specific living being. The pole opposite to the pole of holiness, beauty and blissful peace of reality, culminating in God, is located in the Kingdom of sin, in which the “self”, expressed by the identity “I = I” and not relating itself to its “other”, i.e. God and all creatures, remains in darkness (light is a phenomenon of the real, and darkness is the invisibility of one by another), and instead of gaining the fullness of being, it remains in a state of separation, which brings “absolute metaphysical destruction” closer. Florensky also had to endure this state: “Once in a dream I experienced it with all specificity. I had no images, but only purely internal experiences. An impenetrable darkness, almost materially thick, surrounded me. Some forces pulled me to the edge, and I felt that this was the edge of God’s existence, that outside of it there was absolute Nothing. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I knew that one more moment and I would be cast out into outer darkness. Darkness began to pour into my entire being. Self-awareness was half lost, and I knew that this was absolute, metaphysical destruction. In final despair, I screamed in a voice that was not my own: “From the depths I cried to You, Lord. Lord hear my voice! " The soul then poured out in these words. Someone's hands powerfully grabbed me, drowning, and threw me somewhere far from the abyss. The push was sudden and powerful. Suddenly I found myself in an ordinary stop, it seems, in my room, from mystical oblivion I found myself in ordinary everyday life. Then I immediately felt myself in front of the face of God and then I woke up, all wet with cold sweat.” 719 Egoistic self-immersion in one’s own selfhood does not lead the personality to greater integrity, but, on the contrary, to its destruction. “Without love - and for love, first of all, the love of God is needed, without love,” says Florensky, “the personality will crumble into fragmentation of psychological elements and moments. God’s love is a personal connection” (173). Without this love, the personality loses its organic and substantial unity. “The entire organism,” says Florensky, “both physical and mental, from an integral and harmonious instrument, from an organ of personality, turns into a random colony, into a rabble of self-acting mechanisms that do not correspond to each other. In a word, everything turns out to be free in me and outside of me - everything except myself” (175). “And if modern psychology keeps insisting that it does not know the soul as a substance, then this only very poorly exposes the moral state of the psychologists themselves, for the most part, obviously, being “lost men.” Then, indeed, it is not “I do”, “it happens to me”, not “I live, but “it happens to me” (174). The last degree of concentration of the individual on himself leads him to a neuropathological state: a feeling of “darkness” and “separation from the whole world” (702). Moscow psychiatrist Nikolai Evgrafovich Osipov 720 (emigrant, died in Prague in 1934) in his lectures more than once pointed out the completely justified attempts of psychologists to reduce mental illness to moral vices. Florensky fully shared this point of view. The destruction of personality does not stop there and can lead not only to some psychoses, but also to the point that is called the second death in mystical literature. If the first death consists in the separation of the soul from the body, then the second death, according to Florensky, in the separation of the soul from the spirit, in the separation of the self, which has become completely satanic, in contrast to man himself, that is, from the original substantial image of God. Deprived of its substantial basis, the “self” loses its creative power, and its future is determined by the unchanging idea of ​​one’s own sin, and the purifying fire of torment. “The eternal bliss of the self and the eternal torment of the self, these are the two antinomically related sides of the final, Third Testament” (250). “If therefore you ask me: Well, will there be eternal torment?, then I will say: Yes. But if you also ask me: Will there be a universal restoration to bliss?, then again I will say: Yes. Both are thesis and antithesis” (255). The sinful “self” is partially destroyed thanks to the healing sacrament of penance, in which the sinful past, once and for all condemned by the repentant sinner, is, so to speak, separated from the soul by the power of mercy, and ceases to influence the subsequent behavior of a person. In the “Theological Bulletin” for July-August 1916, Father Pavel published an article about Zavitnevich’s book “A. S. Khomyakov.” In this article, Florensky criticizes Khomyakov's theological views. In his opinion, Khomyakov’s teaching on conciliarity cannot be one of the principles of church organization. The love that Khomyakov included in his definition of conciliarity was interpreted by Florensky as altruism. That is why, Florensky points out, according to Khomyakov, church unity is based on “the immanent forces of man” (539). However, it should be noted that in reality Khomyakov understood conciliarity as a free union of members of the Church, based on the unanimous love of believers for Christ, and divine idleness. Such love, of course, is inspired by the mercy of Christ and the Holy Spirit, who guide the Church. Florensky’s views were sharply criticized by Berdyaev (see his article “Khomyakov and the priest Florensky”). 721 Berdyaev points out that Florensky views Khomyakov as an adherent of “immanent” philosophy of the German type with a Protestant bias. According to Florensky, Khomyakov denied the authority of the Church - “the beginning of fear, the beginning of power and, necessarily, the canonical system,” and “preached the free self-affirmation of man... Being, not immanent to man, manifested in the organization of love, is most dear to him.” However, “the essence of Orthodoxy, according to Florensky, is ontologism - the acceptance of reality given to them by God, and not created by man, humility and gratitude” (73). Berdyaev writes: “In our Orthodox religious and philosophical movement there has already been a renunciation of Vl. Solovyov, now there is a renunciation of Khomyakov.” If for Solovyov, Khomyakov and Dostoevsky (“The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”) Christianity was “the religion of freedom and the religion of love,” then for Florensky it is “the religion of necessity, coercion and obedience.” In his philosophy of history, Khomyakov interprets the historical process as a struggle between the free creative spirit of “Iranism” and the materialism of “Kushitism,” which denies freedom. Florensky suspects that Khomyakov’s “Iranian” philosophy is prone to “immanentism.” However, Berdyaev points out that Khomyakov combined traditional Orthodoxy with ideal spiritual aspirations, while Florensky replaces living everyday Orthodoxy with the worship of established facts. Calling Florensky an “upstart” in Orthodoxy, accusing him of “decadence,” of “mystical justification for groveling,” Berdyaev wrote that Father Pavel wants to become more Orthodox than Orthodoxy itself. One could expect many fruitful and original thoughts from Florensky if he lived not in a Soviet country, but in a country where there is freedom of thought and the press. How Christian thought is suppressed can be judged by the Soviet edition of the encyclopedic dictionary “Granat” (edition 7). We read in the dictionary that “Florensky considers the fundamental law of the world to be the principle of thermodynamics - the law of entropy, universal equalization (Chaos). The world is opposed by the law of ectropy (Logos). Culture is a struggle against world leveling - death. Culture (from “cult”) is an organically connected system of means for the implementation and disclosure of a certain value, which is accepted as unconditional and therefore serves as an object of faith. Faith determines a cult, and a cult is a worldview, from which culture follows. The universal world pattern is a functional dependence, understood as discontinuity in relation to connections, and discreteness in relation to reality itself. This discontinuity and fragmentation in the world leads to the Pythagorean affirmation of number as a form, and an attempt to interpret Plato’s ideas as prototypes.” 722 Thus, here they tried to do almost everything in order to transform Florensky’s Christian philosophy into the philosophy of agnostic naturalism. What valuable contribution did Father Paul make to the Christian worldview? His main merit is that he deeply developed the idea of ​​consubstantiality not only in Trinitarian theology, but also in metaphysics - in the doctrine of the structure of created personalities. Florensky divided all philosophical systems into two types, depending on whether they recognize consubstantiality or simply similarity. Homousian philosophy, which recognizes simply generic similarity, and not numerical identity, is rationalistic. This philosophy “is the philosophy of the thing and of lifeless immobility” (80). Homousian philosophy, which recognizes the idea of ​​consubstantiality, is “a philosophy of idea and reason, a philosophy of personality and creative achievement” (80). Indeed, there is a profound difference between these two types of philosophy. According to the philosophy of similarity, the world consists of beings whose existence in relation to each other is completely external. Therefore, they are connected to each other only through external relations. On the contrary, the philosophy of consubstantiality asserts that ontologically all beings are intimately connected internally. This point of view for the first time makes it possible to satisfactorily resolve many issues (for example, understanding the nature of truth, interpreting the world as an organic whole, justifying the existence of absolute values, etc. The philosophy of consubstantiality existed long before the emergence of Christianity. And after its emergence, it continues to exist along with it. The principles of consubstantiality underlie the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Church Fathers and many medieval philosophers. In the 19th century These principles were defended by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, and in Russia by the Russian philosopher Vl. Soloviev and his followers. Florensky's merit lies in the fact that he consciously introduced this principle into the metaphysics of created being, thanks to which the beginning of its conscious use in other philosophical sciences was laid. Florensky applied this principle extremely fruitfully in his ontological (as opposed to the well-known psychological) theory of love. Of great value is Florensky's teaching that Plato's ideas are living concrete personalities, and not abstract concepts. It should be noted, however, that by these individuals Florensky understood something higher than the human I (for example, race, nation, humanity, etc.). Florensky rightly notes that “personal ideas” have found recognition in many religions (the genius of events and places among the Romans, the symbolic synthesis of plants and animals, etc.). In the New Testament, "personal ideas" were embodied in angels or in the geniuses of individual churches. Philosophy faces a vital task, which is to develop a theory about the existence of such superhuman personalities at all stages of universal existence and in the kingdom of God. Unfortunately, Christian philosophy seems to be suspicious of such theories. This happened, perhaps, because they are discredited by the fantastic teachings of anthroposophists, theosophists and occultists, who, moreover, often still show an unhealthy interest in the superhuman beings of our sinful kingdom, and perhaps even the kingdom of the devil. Father Pavel Florensky refers mainly to the inhabitants of the kingdom of God, and especially St. Sophia as the Mother of God - an absolutely perfect universal being fulfilling the divine will, the world soul. His teaching is free from the shortcomings of Solovyov’s theory, which recognized the Fall of Sophia. Father Paul saw the ideal of Christian life not in harsh alienation from the world, but in a joyful worldview that makes the world richer and raises it to a new, higher level. Oh St. Cyril, who converted the Slavs to Christianity, Florensky wrote the following: “The radiance of Sophia illuminated the whole life of this saint, who did not seek salvation in the desert, and was not like the emaciated saints of Egypt and Palestine. He possessed untold wealth and led a royal lifestyle, blessing not alienation from life, but the transformation of the fullness of being.” 723 The whole life of St. Cyril, in which there was no sharp turn from sinfulness to righteousness, testifies to the gradual achievement of holiness. Being influenced by Kant, many Russian philosophers in significant questions of interpretation of the world tended to resort to antinomies, that is, the expression of truth through two mutually opposed judgments. Only after this did they look for ways to reconcile and overcome contradictions. Both the antinomies themselves and their supposed resolution often turned out to be artificial. A typical example of this is Florensky's assertion that everyone will be saved and achieve eternal bliss, although some are destined to eternal torment. This antinomy is clearly resolved unsatisfactorily by Florensky. He argues that if the “self” becomes definitively satanic, then it is cut off from the substantial, originally created basis of the personality, deprived of its conscious power and given over to eternal torment, obsession with sin, or the trial of purification fire.” However, the eternal suffering of torment, even non-creative, is an experience, therefore, experience is a property of some Self that is aware of it. Thus, according to Florensky, the human personality consists of two selves that can be separated from each other. One Self is doomed to eternal torment, and the other to eternal bliss. But this is completely impossible. Florensky criticized Khomyakov's philosophical views. Obviously, this criticism is unjustified. Khomyakov believed that the Church should be created on the basis of the principle of conciliarity. By this term he understood the free unity of the members of the Church, in their joint pursuit of truth and salvation, achieved through love for Christ and divine righteousness. Khomyakov attached particular importance to any manifestation of love. Indeed, Christianity, according to Khomyakov, is a religion of love, and therefore of freedom. However, such a statement in no way denies the importance of the Church as a unifying force, or the principle of reverent submission. Khomyakov's entire life testifies to the fact that he was a faithful son of the Church. The principle of conciliarity in no way leads to church anarchy, and does not prevent the excommunication from the Church of those who reject its basic dogmas, and thereby place themselves outside the unity of its common love. But, of course, if our behavior, in accordance with the commandment of Christ, is based on love for our neighbor, then excommunication should be a simple statement that such and such no longer belongs to the Church, without bringing upon him either hatred or persecution. Florensky’s book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” is sharply criticized in Father Georgy Florovsky’s book “The Ways of Russian Theology.” “His mind,” says Florovsky, “avoids doubt through knowledge of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Florensky speaks about the Holy Trinity with great enthusiasm and points out the speculative significance of this dogma as a rational truth. However, it is surprising that he somehow bypasses the Incarnation, and immediately after discussing the Holy Trinity he moves on to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. There are simply no Christological chapters in Florensky’s book. He remains alien to the Orthodox world. The spirit of his book is essentially Western. This is a book by a Westerner who dreamily and aesthetically seeks salvation in the East. It is very characteristic that in his work he seems to take a step back, retreating from Christianity to Platonism and the religion of antiquity, or into the realm of the occult and magic. He even took the topics for his students’ works from this area [K. du Prel (K. Du Prel), Dionysus, Russian folklore]. Florensky himself intended to submit a translation of Iamblichus (Iamblichus) with notes for the degree of Master of Theology” (495). 724 The sharp criticisms contained in the excellent book by Father Georgy Florovsky contain only some truth. However, in defense of Father Pavel Florensky, it should be said that the vices of modern civilization - the loss of the ideas of the absolute value of the individual, a fair state and free spiritual creativity - developed because the intellectuals, and after them the broad masses of the people, renounced Christianity and stopped believing in God. The main task of our time is to return first the intelligentsia to the fold of the Christian Church, and then, with their help, the masses, and to revive the ideals of Christian humanism. To achieve this goal, religious philosophical works written in a new, more or less secular style, such works that would connect religious issues with modern science and metaphysical studies of the higher spheres of existence that go beyond the boundaries of the human world, can be of especially great help. Florensky's works belong to this category. That is why they deserve high praise, despite all their shortcomings, from the point of view of the traditional style and content of Orthodox theological literature. V. Zenkovsky 725. History of Russian philosophy. Part IV, ch. VI. Metaphysics of all-unity 726 B). O. P. Florensky (...) 1. The metaphysics of unity attracts with particular force those minds that acutely sense not only the integrity of natural existence, its living unity, but also the connection of the cosmos with the transcendental, absolute beginning of existence. Cosmological ideas here turn into theology; the living diversity of the world, with its infinite diversity, is not only felt in its unity, but turns out to contain the secret of the Absolute. This “ascent” from cosmology to theology, from a changeable being, subject to time, to an unchanging, timeless being, usually leads to systems of pantheism (which is the theological expression of all-unity = “panenism”, if you construct such a term from the words Pan kai hen = all one). Starting from the early Stoics through all of ancient philosophy to Plotinus and Proclus, there are these attempts to build a metaphysics of unity, becoming more and more complex in the problematics and becoming more precise in the basic concepts. But already in Philo, the system of unity (in the form in which it existed during Philo’s time) meets the concept that is characteristic of the Bible, which passed from the Bible into Christianity, becoming the basis of Christian metaphysics, the concept of creation. Despite the extraordinary influence of Neoplatonism on the development of Christian metaphysics, this concept of creation retains its fundamental significance for all Christian philosophy, at least nominally. True, already in the system of Thomas Aquinas we find a decomposition of the concept of creation, to the extent that it turns out to be entirely connected only with the requirements of faith and Revelation, and philosophically turns out to have no basis behind it. But in Scotus Eriugena, 727 and especially in the brilliant Nicholas of Cusa, all the severity of the theme of creation (against the background of the metaphysics of unity) is revealed with full force. Nikolai Cusansky, however, did not cope with the task of incorporating the idea of ​​creation (in its full sense) into the system of unity, and all further development of metaphysics in Western Europe went, and goes, towards the development of certain individual aspects of the problem, tilting either towards pluralism (Leibniz), or towards immanentism (Hegel and others). But soon after Nicholas of Cusa, when the development of natural science brought with it an extraordinary enrichment of our knowledge about nature, questions of natural philosophy, and later anthropology, already began to determine, and still determine, the direction of philosophical research to such an extent that the theme of unity has largely faded. On the other hand, the concept of “creation” again moved somewhere to the side; the idea of ​​“evolution” turned out to be the main metaphysical idea for more than one Spencer or Bergson. Vladimir Solovyov took the initiative (not only in Russian, but also in pan-European philosophy) to revive the concept of “all-unity”, and from him comes the hypnosis of this concept in Russian thought, enchanting and subjugating minds. In Russian philosophy, we have already written about this, the connection of the life of nature (in its unity with the Absolute) was earlier, but Solovyov was especially influential because he had as strong theological motives as a living sense of the integrity of nature (under the influence of Schelling’s natural philosophy). For Karsavin, science and philosophy again return to the position of ancilla theologiae; he surrenders to “the element of free theological quest.” True, he is little concerned about the problem of natural philosophy, he pays more attention to anthropology, but in the “mythology of All-Unity” that he develops, real being somehow shrinks and drowns. Frank is much closer to the immediate reality of the world, but even in his system the sphere of empirical existence turns out to be only a sensory veil of the ideal basis of the world, behind which a gap opens into the “incomprehensible” “essence” of the world. As we have seen, both Karsavin and Frank speak about the creation of the world, but this concept, while retaining its nominal significance, does not occupy any significant place in their systems. The sophiological theme that connects the living fabric of the world with the Absolute, in both systems, although in different ways, is damaged by the obsession with unity, which only nominally gives due to created being. In systems o. Florensky and Fr. In Bulgakov (since we are talking about philosophical and not theological systems, the study of which is not our task), we find much more “ascent” from space to the Absolute than in Karsavin and Frank. Cosmological moment for Fr. Florensky and Fr. Bulgakov is expressed much more significantly and clearly; one can even say that in both (especially in Father Bulgakov) we find philosophical research in the field of sophiology (in the cosmological aspect). If for both thinkers the concept of unity obscured the movement of their thoughts, nevertheless, for the future synthesis in this area, both of them gave a lot. Let's move on to studying their constructions. 2. Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882‒1937) very early discovered exceptional mathematical abilities, and after graduating from high school (in Tiflis) he entered the mathematical department of Moscow University. But already in these student years, Florensky, without abandoning mathematics (the problems of which he studied until the end of his days: he joined the Russian school of “arrhythmology”, the doctrine of “breakthrough functions”), turned to philosophy and theology. After graduating from the University, he did not accept the offer to stay at the University to prepare for an academic title in the field of mathematics, but entered the Moscow Theological Academy. During these years, he, together with Ern, Sventsitsky and Fr. Brikhnichev, created the “Union of Christian Struggle”, which had in mind active actions in the name of a radical renewal of the social system (in the spirit of Solovyov’s ideas about the “Christian community”). 728 Later, Florensky completely moved away from this “radical” Christianity. Brilliant achievements and amazing scholarship in a variety of fields ensured Florensky’s academic career at the Theological Academy. After passing the master's exam, he began to lecture on philosophy and a few years later prepared a dissertation, which he called “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” (“The Experience of Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters”). 729 This book attracted everyone's attention with the richness of its content, the bold confession of some ideas that aroused interest, but also doubts about their orthodoxy, and finally, some kind of consonance with those romantic and mystical trends in Russian society, which we talked about in Chapter 2 of Part IV. Even the appearance of the book with its somewhat unusual font, vignettes and drawings, many unexpected “lyrical” digressions in the book, some kind of “pressing scholarship” in the endless notes, everything was in the taste of the era. The pretentiousness of the author, who presents his ideas not in his own name, but as an expression of the church’s unshakable truth, repulsed some, attracted others. One way or another, the book was a great success. Before the revolution of 1917, P. Florensky, who became a priest in 1911, published several more sketches in the Theological Bulletin (the magazine of the Moscow Theological Academy). Of these, the articles “The Universal Roots of Idealism” and “The Meaning of Idealism” are especially significant. In 1919, Florensky was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod; upon returning from there, he worked in Moscow on physics issues at a special Institute of Physics). In 1933, he was exiled again, first to Siberia, and then to Solovki, where he died, apparently, in 1937 (official date 12/15/1943). As for the influences that are felt in Florensky’s work, first of all, we must mention a certain Fr. Serapion Mashkin, 730 who was, apparently, also a defender of the concept of unity. But about Fr. S. Mashkina (except for the article by Florensky himself) 731 knows nothing, so to judge the degree of influence on him by Fr. S. Mashkin is not necessary. Florensky himself once mentions in his book about the Slavophiles, and speaks of his “significant kinship” with the ideas of the Slavophiles. 732 One must only keep in mind that in later years Florensky rather sharply criticized Khomyakov’s teaching. 733 The influence of Solovyov’s ideas on Florensky is absolutely indisputable, although he mentions Solovyov only once and in the following expressions: “We take Solovyov’s definitions (about the “all-one being”) only formally, without at all putting Solovyov’s content into them.” 734 Florensky himself sees his difference from Solovyov in the fundamental affirmation of “antinomianism,” and here he is, of course, right, but all this concerns the paths of “ascension” (for Florensky) to the “all-one Being,” but not the concept itself. In one place 735 Florensky establishes a decisive difference between “Russian”, generally Orthodox philosophy and Western, and sees this difference in the fact that the West in philosophy is limited by adionalism (the old accusations of the Slavophiles have been resurrected here!). In the West, everything is supposedly determined in philosophy by the forces of reason, expressed in a system of concepts, but we, Russians, build a “philosophy of idea and reason.” In an article about “The Meaning of Idealism,” Florensky once again assures that “despite the powerful ontology of the East, the West still could not understand anything in the world except epiphenomena (!). That’s how he was and that’s how he remains.” 736 I present these extracts to note that despite all his serious knowledge of Western philosophy, Florensky still started from it, looking for support for himself in the Orthodox consciousness. Meanwhile, the concept of all-unity (in the form in which it enchants Russian minds through Solovyov) is of Western origin, where it was developed by Scotus Eriugena, Nikolai Cusansky... This manner, not only of Florensky, however, of treating Western philosophy somewhat condescendingly, is not only not justified by the very history of Russian thought, but is essentially incorrect. Only one thing is true here: the religious attitude of the Christian East, and Russian Orthodoxy in particular, really contains moments that free thought from the difficult deviations through which thought in the West had to go. But in order to find here a serious and real basis for philosophical quests, much more needs to be revealed in Orthodoxy in order to properly express what our Orthodox consciousness calls us to and what it empowers us to do. But this is precisely what is hampered by the concept of unity, which, in essence, cannot accommodate the basic principle of Christian metaphysics - the idea of ​​creation. However, a valuable aspect in Florensky’s (and even more Bulgakov’s) constructions lies in the fact that he (like Bulgakov) strives to proceed from religious data. True, all mental work here is aimed at erecting on this basis the edifice of the metaphysics of unity. Florensky is free, however, from the theological rationalism with which Karsavin irresponsibly associated himself, and in comparison with Frank (who gives only the “philosophy of religion”) Florensky is exceptionally rich in specific religious material with which his book is saturated, not only liturgical texts, hagiographic tales, abundant quotations from St. Fathers, but even these iconographies seem to protect Florensky from philosophical abstraction. But then the other extreme also appears. Florensky places too much emphasis on “personal religious experience,” trying to extract from it everything that is necessary for a theological philosophical system. He is, of course, very concerned to distance himself from “people, the so-called. “new religious consciousness,” 737 but constant references to “mystical experience” (and Florensky finds mystical elements even in the work of memory) 738 in fact brings him very close to people “i.e. called religious consciousness." He attaches great importance to the spiritual experience of the fullness of being, 739 exalting “insights, moments and points of spiritual fullness - the lightning of complete knowledge.” 740 Florensky, however, himself realizes that all this is vague and, in fact, cannot be the basis for “full knowledge.” “I sketch,” he writes in one place, 741 “thoughts that I feel more than I can express,” and immediately adds words characteristic of his manner of writing, “like some kind of fabric, some kind of body is woven in the world’s foundations... something is waiting... the soul is yearning for something...”. However, Florensky himself, who has just fenced himself off from “people of a new religious consciousness,” now adds that, in his opinion, their judgments “are based on a true idea.” 742 Internally connected with “personal religious experience” is Florensky’s taste for the data of folklore, and even the occult. Bowing to the “whole life” of the people living “one life” with nature, Florensky seeks in this material 743 evidence that “all nature is animated, all is alive - in general and in particular, that everything is connected by close ties to each other... the energies of things flow into other things, and each lives in everyone, and everything in each.” 744 Thus it is revealed that “the world is always fluid, always existing and trembling half-being, and behind it a sensitive ear perceives another reality... Everything has its own secret meaning, double existence and another transempirical essence,” 745 “the doors of the otherworld open wide before everyone.” 746 “At that moment when our eyes are opened and the world appears deep,” we will see the forest as a single being, humanity, as a single Grand Etre of O. Comte, 747 as the Adam Kadmon 748 of the cabal, or as Nietzsche’s Ubermensch.” 749 The general (in things) is “not an abstract general, but a concrete general, it is one in them.” 750 This turning from church experience to the experience of the “whole” people’s soul, even to the occult, the convergence of “synthetic (i.e. holistic - V. 3.) vision” 751 among saints and in the popular consciousness, all this is very characteristic of the psychology of Florensky’s creativity. It is no coincidence that he made one characteristic slip of the tongue: after a quotation from Maeterlinck 752, Florensky cited a story from the Alphabetical Patericon and writes: “I borrow this text for the sake of colorfulness.” 753 This moment of “colorfulness” is inherent, however, not only in Florensky’s presentation, but, undoubtedly, is included in the dynamics of his mental work itself. Indeed, Florensky, very often drawing on non-religious sources, however, always wants to develop his ideas from religious “experiences,” and therefore always presents his philosophical speculations as “church thought” and not a personal construction. This gives Florensky’s book the stamp of a certain deliberate mannerism, which lies (like the need for “colorfulness”) in his very spiritual structure. “We’ve been philosophizing quite a lot,” he said, “in the opening speech before the debate,” about religion and about religion, we need to philosophize in religion, plunging into its environment.” This is precisely what Florensky’s entire book is built on, but for all its extreme saturation with church material, Florensky constantly includes extra-church ideas in this material, and he himself does not notice their fundamental heterogeneity, and imperceptibly misleads the reader. 754 Florensky, of course, is in many ways alien to the “new religious consciousness”, alien to the neo-romanticism that we saw, for example, in Berdyaev, but some invisible threads stretch in him to both one and the other. Let us move on to a systematic presentation of his system. 3. We already know that Florensky develops his philosophical views within the framework of religious consciousness, but his originality lies in the fact that he wants to preserve the entire eternity of the tradition of the Church, and at the same time express his new ideas. By pouring new wine into old wineskins, he wants to show that it was this wine that the old wineskins were waiting for, he has little respect, thoughtful attention and humble loyalty to church wealth, he certainly wants to pass off new ideas as old, very old ones. So, for example, relying without hesitation on the data of pagan folklore, he establishes a completely correct view of paganism - alien, however, to the traditional church understanding of it. Florensky’s use of certain statements of occultism is even bolder (this is especially striking in his reflections on the meaning of the body in the composition of man), and this already raises quite fundamental doubts not only among the religiously minded reader. This combination of church and occult material, speculative and folklore data emanates precisely that “new religious consciousness” (let us remember Rozanov, who, by the way, in the last years of his life had an undoubted influence on Florensky), from which Florensky would like to dissociate himself. Florensky's amateurish excursions into the field of philology (which can only impress those who have not seriously studied philology) 755 stand in some elusive connection with the mannerism already known to us, the love for “colorfulness” in Florensky. The reader involuntarily gets the impression that Florensky needs all the rich material taken from church tradition as “church vestments.” Florensky, of course, relies on living, concrete spiritual experience, but the origins of this experience are too often not ecclesiastical, and if Florensky in his mind wants to be faithful to tradition, wants to “plunge into the church environment,” then while the form is ecclesiastical, his content, undoubtedly, was often not composed at all from what the Church keeps within itself. Florensky’s epistemological position is connected with this. He carefully rejects theological rationalism in order to rely on an exaggerated emphasis on antinomianism in thinking: “Truth is antinomy and cannot be otherwise... we need a formal logical theory of antinomy,” we read from him. 756 “Reason turns out to be thoroughly antinomic... the basic norms of reason are incompatible with each other.” 757 “Within the limits of reason there is not and cannot be a solution to this antinomy (it is about the relationship between freedom and necessity. - V. 3.), it is only in the actual transformation of reality itself. “Because of this, the synthesis of thesis and antithesis as a fact, as an experimental reality.” Statistical multiplicity of concepts and dynamic unity are incompatible with each other.” 758 But this antinomy of reason is opposed by the need for “whole and eternal Truth”; “Truth must be something so complete that it contains everything in itself,” and Florensky immediately characterizes it, anticipating all further research as “the existing all-one.” 759 “I don’t know,” he writes (letter three), “if there is Truth, but I feel with all my gut that I cannot live without it.” 760 The psychological introduction to the “mystery” of truth is very close to the exercises of modern “existentialists,” but for Florensky this is more a method of presentation than the real basis of his thought, which is, of course, driven by the “need” of holistic truth. He sees a solid foundation in “reasonable intuition,” 761 “personal experience convinces us of the correctness of the path,” 762 “we need to move out of the realm of concepts into the realm of living experience.” 763 Therefore, Florensky asserts that “the existence of truth is not deducible, but only shown in experience.” 764 Later we learn that “the organ of perception of the heavenly world is the heart, 765 on the other hand, those “lightnings of complete knowledge” discussed above reflect the “experience of eternity”, i.e. They give precisely the “perception of the heavenly world.” Due to sin, “our very mind is fragmented and split,” no matter what we undertake, we inevitably fragment what we are considering. 766 How then is “reasonable intuition”, the perception of the “depth of being” possible? To this Florensky [answers?], on the one hand, by pointing to the “feat of faith” (which gives a solid foundation to knowledge, creating a transition from “the assertoric truth of the world to the apodictic truth of dogma”), 767 and on the other hand, he puts forward the doctrine of reason that was first developed in Russian philosophy by Kireevsky. 768 “Reason is something moving,” Florensky argued in “Introduction to the Dispute” 769: this concept is dynamic, not static.” In the form of “reason” it decomposes into antinomies, dies in its being, but it “blooms and smells fragrant” when it is freed from fragmentation in the perception of unity, and through the enlightenment of the heart it becomes able to see, behind the fragmented world, its unity. Here “the boundaries of knowledge and faith merge,” 770 and we learn to discern the “eternal roots of creation in God,” 771 after criticizing reason and establishing the law of antinomianism - to the rapprochement of “reasonable intuition” and “contemplation of unity in being with the heart,” to the rapprochement of knowledge and faith, to their even identification. Just as in faith we “participate in the Truth” and are moved by it, so reason “is involved in being, and being is involved in rationality,” 772 especially reason in its spiritual enrichment is no longer separated from faith. Truly, here “the boundaries of knowledge and faith merge,” philosophy “is plunged into a religious environment,” and all philosophical constructions are erected on the solid foundation of churchliness. There is no longer the “element of free theological quest” here, as in Karsavin, here everything is stylized as churchly, and this is Florensky’s internal duality. Just as it is impossible to “mix” oil and water, so faith and knowledge do not merge at all in Florensky, but only “knowledge” is constantly illustrated by the data of faith, stylized as churchliness. In this sense, Florensky’s philosophy only wants to grow from the depths of churchliness, but in reality its main engine in Florensky is antinomianism, which frees him from the limitations of rational knowledge, regardless of faith, even vice versa. It turns out that “only antinomies can be trusted,” that the feat of faith is accomplished in the recognition of antinomianism. 773 It is interesting to note right away that the church teaching about the “mobility” of the mind (so clearly expressed by Kireyevsky is only briefly mentioned by Florensky, 774 just as the doctrine of the eventuality of the church mind 775 is also briefly mentioned (which greatly reduces the importance of “personal experience”, so essential for Florensky). But on the other hand, Florensky extremely developed the strange doctrine that “the mystical unity of two (i.e. e. friendship. - V. 3.) is a condition of knowledge” 776 (friendship turns out to be even a “precondition of knowledge”), and here, too, materials are presented that stylize everything in the tones of churchliness. The non-confluence of the paths of philosophical knowledge and church knowledge, noted by us, is manifested with all force in the metaphysics of Florensky, to the analysis of which we will now move on. 4. Florensky’s metaphysics is also his theology - one is inseparable from the other, but we do not need to go into his purely theological constructions, we will touch on them only insofar as his philosophical ideas are connected with them. For Florensky, the path to the Absolute goes through doubts, which in acute form form a real “skeptical hell.” But “the path of skepticism leads to nothing,” and through the stage of probabilism 777 consciousness moves to the position that if “truth exists,” then it is “real rationality, rational reality.” It must be “a single essence with three hypostases”, it must be a “trinity”. 778 From the difficulties that Florensky himself is aware of, he gets out, again with the help of antinomianism, “dualistic discontinuity”: breaking with “monistic continuity”, which, self-locking in the being given to us, has no idea what is above created being. We “refuse monism in thinking” in order to “find God in the struggle of faith.” 779 Faith, in which we are freed from the “ultimate despair” generated by the “skeptical hell”, leads us to the Absolute. 780 In all this there is a lot of psychologism (close to modern existentialism), and this mark of psychologism greatly weakens Florensky’s theological position; in this sense, Shestov is much deeper than him, who does not seek any psychological “foundations” for faith... But, having “established” the reality of God, Florensky moves on to the theme of man, which immediately expands into the general theme of created existence. Sin, untruth, and evil hide the true essence of existence from us. and here Florensky joins his contemporaries, who “dream about the unity of all creation in God.” 781 At this point, Florensky goes further than his contemporaries, constructing his cosmology very boldly and originally. Understanding the cosmos makes Florensky a “sophiologist,” and this appeal to Solovyov’s theme not only gives him a reason to continue Solovyov’s work, but also finally forms his system. Cosmology unfolds into a system of philosophy, immediately puts on the armor of theological data, and on this path Florensky finds himself. Florensky refuses any “deduction of created being. His path is not a “descent” from the Absolute to the creature, but, on the contrary, an “ascent” from the creature to the Absolute. “From the nature of God,” he asserts, “one cannot in any way conclude about the existence of the world; the act of creation must inevitably be thought of as free, that is, not necessarily coming from God.” 782 “The reason a creature is a creature,” Florensky immediately writes, “is that it is not an unconditionally necessary being; the existence of a creature cannot in any way be deduced not only from the idea of ​​truth, but even from the fact of the existence of truth in God.” This does not in any way contradict the teaching about the “heavenly nature of the creature,” as Florensky 783 expresses in the previous chapter: this “heavenly nature of the creature” should become clear to us from the very analysis of created being, i.e., it can again be revealed only on the path of “ascension” to the Absolute. However, Florensky very much insists that a proper understanding of creation became possible only on the basis of Christianity, that is, that the philosophical understanding of created being, its mystery, presupposes the appearance of Christianity in history. Given the merging of the boundaries of faith and knowledge, which the combination of new ideas and Christianity provides for Florensky, in its historical development, this is important for him. “Only when people saw in the creature not a simple shell, not some kind of emanation of the Divine, and not His ghostly appearance, like the appearance of a rainbow in splashes of water, only then did it become conceivable (the understanding of the creature) as an independent, self-legitimate and self-responsible creation of God.” 784 Here Florensky very correctly reveals the basic premise of modern science of nature, and thereby the main theme of cosmology. What is truly essential for modern science is the perception of the inexhaustible power of nature, its indisputable creative power, the dynamism of its inherent “principles.” Here, by the way, let us recall the above successful formula of V.I. Vernadsky (Part III, Chapter IX) that the basis of modern science about nature is the “axiom of reality.” 785 For Florensky, too, nature is not a phenomenon, not a system of “phenomena,” but a genuine, real being, with the infinite power of forces acting within it, and not from the outside. Only in Christianity, and Florensky strongly emphasizes this (“every worldview outside of Christianity,” he instructs, “is acosmic and atheistic”), 786 nature is not an imaginary, not a phenomenal being, not a “shadow” of some other being, but a living reality. 787 In created being we find its essential unity. Already in similar objects “highlights a single principle in them.” “It comes through in them, through all of them, everywhere in them, always in them... and this “one” is the energy of this kind.” 788 “Mysterious unity binds the genus... The separateness of the genus (i.e., many individuals of a given genus. - V. 3.), which seems moment by moment, is only dismemberment,” in reality, before us is “a purely mystical unity.” 789 “The purer the consciousness is from the fog of sensuality, the more essential the “noumenal grains of things” appear. 790 This “concrete general, or universale contemplated in things, (hen epi pollon), is the idea... the face of a thing” 791 – “the face of reality.” 792 “Ideas are small images of the heavenly foundations,” Florensky concludes his analysis of what is revealed to us behind individual things. 793 “The more you delve into the concept of an idea, the more the transcendental moment of the idea increases,” says Florensky. 794 “The energy of the idea moves away from it,” 795 that “invisible noumenal force” from which created being grows is revealed. 796 “Ideas,” Florensky concludes his analysis, 797 “are “seeds of the elements,” “seeds-logos,” “imperishable logos.” Bringing his understanding of the idea closer to Stoic terminology, Florensky shares Stoic vitalism: “All nature,” he writes in an article on “The Roots of Idealism,” 798, “is animated, all alive—in whole and in parts, everything is connected by secret ties to each other, everything breathes together with each other... everywhere there is an active, sympathetic affinity from within. The energy of things flows into other things, each lives in everyone, everything lives in everyone.” Stoic vitalism, combined with Nicholas of Cusa’s idea of ​​the relationship between the whole and the parts, gives this vivid sense of the cosmos as a Living whole. You need to read the poetic pages in the said article (“The Meaning of Idealism”) to feel how Florensky really perceived life in nature, its “involvement at the same time in another world,” 799 how “the doors of the other world open wide before him.” This is not the sphere of ideas that, captured in concepts, forms, according to Frank, “objective being” (giving “abstract knowledge”), it is, on the contrary, a living feeling of the dynamics of being in its roots, a feeling of its living and creative power. Here it is especially interesting to experience the secret power of every word, every name in Florensky (which blossomed with amazing brightness in Losev’s philosophy of name): “The name of a thing is the substance of the thing... a thing is created by a name, interacts (!) with a name, imitates a name... a name is a metaphysical principle of being and knowledge.” 800 In the name one must see “the knot of being, its most deeply hidden nerve... a name is a clot of beneficial or occult forces, a mystical root by which a person is connected with other worlds... it is a divine essence, carries mystical energies.” 801 This is how the perception of the cosmos and its “secrets” becomes more and more complicated; it ends with the teaching of the created Sophia. “The entire creation (and not just the “whole” creation) has “the great root of its integrity.” With this root (which is called Sophia), the creature goes into the intra-Trinity life (of God), and through it receives Eternal life from the One Source of life.” 802 The concept of Sophia thus completes Florensky’s cosmology, the cosmos is revealed to him not only in its unity and integrity, it is for him a “multi-united being,” 803 an idea - a “monad,” 804 which is revealed to us “not by logical definition, but is experienced in living experience. It is given religiously, in general it is determined not a priori, but a posteriori.” 805 The last words, which so definitely reveal that Florensky’s thought moves all the time along the line of “ascent” from space to its basis in the Absolute, corresponds to the cosmologism of his entire philosophy. Florensky affirms the “metaphysical nature of created nature,” 806 but not simply as a “system of ideas” (combined with pure Platonism), but as a “God-created unity of ideal definitions of creation.” 807 He, “together with other contemporaries,” not only “dreams of the unity of all creation in God,” but directly affirms it. Here it is precisely the “spiritual experience of the fullness” of being 808, already known to us, that prompts Florensky to accept the concept of all-unity, but Florensky certainly wants to present this acceptance of the idea of ​​all-unity as the original concept of the Church... To understand these constructions of Florensky, we need to go into his reasoning in a little more detail. If behind the visible diversity of created being there is a “metaphysical unity”, there are “noumenal grains of things” with their inherent “energy”, then this fits perfectly into the teaching about ideas that we find in St. Fathers, especially Gregory the Theologian and the authoritative church writers who followed him. Do not the “noumenal grains of things” coincide with the “prototypes” that, according to Gregory the Theologian, God contemplated in himself before the creation of the world? In other words, does the sphere of ideas found in the world belong to the world as its “noumenal” side, or does it already belong to the sphere of Absolute Being? Florensky, with his pronounced cosmologism, is characterized by a feeling of the “mystical unity” of nature, with his recognition that there are “two worlds” (i.e., the visible world and the invisible world) 809: “Through the gaping cracks of the human mind,” he claims, 810 “the azure of Eternity can be seen.” But then it is clear that he, like his contemporaries, “dreams of understanding the unity of all creation in God.” 811 He thinks: “There is the root of the entire creature” (which is “the entire creature”), it is, says Florensky, following the thinkers of the ancient and new worlds, Sophia, “the primordial nature of the creature,” “preceding the world,” 812 “the God-created unity of the ideal definitions of the creature.” 813 But in contrast to the church tradition, Florensky, following Solovyov, considers Sophia “a worldly hypostatic collection of divine prototypes.” 814 Having accepted this position, Florensky boldly moves on. For him, created Sophia (i.e., the mystical basis of the cosmos) is the “Guardian Angel of creation, the ideal Personality of the world” 815 - “the fourth hypostatic element... included in the fullness of being of the Trinity bosom by the grace of God.” 816 “Independence from God,” teaches Florensky, 817 “it has no existence and crumbles into fragments of ideas about creation.” Citing a number of texts from St. Athanasius the Great with his distinction between the Logos of God's Wisdom and the “wisdom that exists in us,” 818 Florensky does not merge created Wisdom with the Logos, but brings the concept of Sophia closer to the concept of the Church, and even further (following V. Solovyov) - with the Mother of God, 819 as the “bearer of Sophia,” “the appearance of Sophia.” This is how the theology of Sophia arose, which later received such a vivid development in the system of Fr. S. Bulgakova: After all, Sophia, according to Florensky, 820 “participates in the life of the Trinitarian Deity, enters the Trinity bosom,” and with Sophia “enters” the sphere of the Absolute and the cosmos itself, “purified in Christ.” This is how the cosmos and the Absolute merge into “unity,” and the “spiritual experience of the fullness of being” is comprehended. If we leave aside the theological material cited by Florensky (including iconographic material), then we must admit that “all-unity” still does not work out. Of course, if Sophia is the Church, and the Church is the “body of Christ,” then the appearance of unity is obtained, however, in the absence of the metaphysics of the Incarnation, the connection between the “two worlds” remains undisclosed. About the “fourth hypostasis,” “created Sophia,” Florensky himself says that she enters the Trinity “by the favor of God,” and not by her “essence.” Florensky in one place points out that “only Christianity gave birth to an unprecedented love for creation, and inflicted wounds on the heart of loving pity for all things,” 821 but this means that the mystery of creation is double. Florensky himself immediately says, with the usual oppositions (“antinomianisms”): “When the dirt is washed away from the soul (of an ascetic) through prolonged asceticism, then the creature of God appears before the renewed and spiritually inspired consciousness, as an original and suffering, beautiful and polluted creature, as the prodigal child of God.” How are these two different sides combined in the creature, in this “beautiful and polluted creature?” “Being” is one thing: the unity of the demos is affirmed here, but the polarity of light and darkness, good and evil here is also especially clear precisely for the “enlightened gaze.” That is why Florensky is right when he puts “falling in love with a creature” and “pity in love” side by side in Christianity. But if the “root” of creation is Sophia the Church, 822 i.e. “the unity of creation purified in Christ,” 823 then where does dirt and suffering in the cosmos come from? On the one hand, Sophia is the “root of the whole creature”, “the ideal personality of the world”, on the other hand, she is also its Guardian Angel (i.e. the pole of light in relation to the “dirt” in the world). But Sophia is not “simply a given, spontaneous, actual unity of the world,” 824 - this unity, Florensky immediately adds, “is carried out by an eternal act.” It is this ambiguity in Florensky’s concept of Sophia (either Sophia is associated with the “eternal act”, is the “ideal personality of the world”, then only the “Guardian Angel, protecting beauty in the world from the effects of dirt”) and creates the philosophical incompleteness of this concept. “The lightnings of complete knowledge,” even richly illuminated by theological material, only connect Florensky’s cosmological motives with the Absolute and His “eternal act,” but remain a theme and not a complete concept. Adopting antinomianism, however, helps Florensky make ends meet, but only in terms of rational knowledge, where antinomies are “legitimate,” but in terms of complete knowledge, they have no place. It is characteristic that in Florensky the entire problem of evil, without the resolution of which “full knowledge” will not go beyond individual “lightnings,” is taken only in anthropological terms, as the problem of sin and salvation from it. But here we learn, for example, about the “evil self,” 825 that the entire fabric of the empiric in man gradually acquires a kind of metaphysicality, from which a person must free himself in repentance. 826 The value of Florensky’s construction lies, in our opinion, in the fact that he with great force emphasized the living unity of the cosmos, the mystery of natural existence, that he especially revealed the ideal sphere in the world, associated with visible and invisible being, with the changeable and unchangeable beginning in the world, as the “whole root of creation.” By dressing his cosmological insights in the garb of religious and theological data and thereby nominally solving the problem of “all-unity,” Florensky, of course, freed himself from philosophical difficulties, or rather, simply distanced himself from them, but he did not solve them. Florensky posed the problem of the “sophia of the world” with great force, and this remains behind him, despite all the further incompleteness of his constructions. “Love with the creature,” combined with “loving pity” for it, glows with the light of genuine and deep cosmism, which is especially imprinted in Orthodoxy. In this sense, Florensky moves along the “high road” of Russian thought, and his religious and theological comments are especially valuable. But the value and primary importance of the topic do not yet provide “full knowledge,” no matter how remarkable the individual “lightnings” of such complete knowledge may be. Yu. P. Ivask 827 . Rozanov and Fr. Pavel Florensky 828 This year marked the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (1856‒1919) and, perhaps, the tenth anniversary of the death of father Pavel Florensky (1882‒1946?). Both of them were friends. Wasn’t this friendship established according to the “law of opposites” (which supposedly converge)? Indeed, it is difficult to find a more striking contrast! Rozanov is a “brilliant questioner of Christianity” (Merezhkovsky), full of longing for the Old Testament, who sought and found the religion of “holy flesh”, “holy sex” among the ancient Jews and ancient Egyptians; O. P. Florensky, who supposedly “lacked Christology” (according to Berdyaev, Fr. G. Florovsky) - was obsessed with the image of the coming covenant of the Holy Spirit and the image of Sophia (but differently than V. Solovyov, Fr. S. Bulgakov and other theologians and poets of the early 20th century). Rozanov is a restless Jew by nature, a “carnal” and “spiritual” person; O. P. Florensky is a calm Hellenic, “spiritual” person. The family Rozanov wanted to become like the biblical patriarchs, and Fr. P. Florensky is a new Gnostic, a new Origen (although ideologically he condemned him). Rozanov was a journalist who didn’t really know much, an Egyptologist without solid training, a numismatist who bought counterfeit coins, and Fr. P. Florensky is a wonderful scientist, philosopher, philologist, mathematician, physicist, even an inventor (personalized university and polytechnic school!). Rozanov is a brilliant artist of words, and Florensky is an elaborate stylist who impresses few. It would seem that they are opposite in everything. But both (each in his own way) started from the New Testament, and both of them were “incorrigible dreamers”: the intimately chatty author of “Solitary” (1911) and “Fallen Leaves” (1913‒1915), and the strangely silent author of cameos of “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” (1914). Rozanov, with all his deliberate scatteredness, undoubtedly has his own system - both religious and philosophical, and Fr. P. Florensky is a kind of “born” taxonomist, but they “begin with a dream,” and perhaps that is why they became so close. Ideology separated them, but their dream brought them together. Some of the most careful observers, for example Zinaida Gippius, saw Rozanov as a Thoughtful Wanderer. Even though he himself really wanted to be embodied in the patriarchal Abraham-Isaac-Jacob, but in fact, even in the family circle, he remained a loner, a neurasthenic romantic of decadence. He adored his sick wife and friend, but both the subject and the object of his song was still the same Vasily Vasilyevich, not a patriarch, but a narcissist. All his most cherished words are always about himself: “My God is special. This is only my God, and no one else’s.” Or - he “restlessly” dreams, then he wants to “humiliate” all of humanity, or flutter like a butterfly soul in a sunny Egyptian paradise. Here Rozanov is a genius. He is a great master of Russian prose, conveying in his writings all the intonations of living, intelligent speech (which before him only Avvakum was able to convey). It's not just skill. There is a special, higher meaning in Rozanov’s writings. For more than a quarter of a century, I have been constantly reading Rozanov and dreaming with him (without this dreaming he can hardly open up). His religion of sex and flesh is dubious and superficial. There is decay, rottenness in his work (he himself was aware of this), and even a dreamy conversation with him “sets one’s teeth on edge.” Very often he acts like a fool and is cunning, even in moments of ecstasy. But there is something else. This narcissist had a great gift for lyrical admiration for life, and this lyrical admiration, albeit capriciously individualistic, has its own ontology, its own metaphysics. Who knows, in the New Jerusalem that descends from heaven, whether everything that was truly beautiful in the world, such as the pyramids and the Acropolis, Hagia Sophia and Notre Dame, will not be transformed? But maybe in it those delightful little things in life that Rozanov loved so much and so wanted (unconsciously) to save, for example that “languidly whistling fan that reminded Vasily Vasilyevich of eternity, or a fresh cucumber and a cigarette, in the summer, “after swimming”, will be transformed and “find a place for themselves” ... No one in all of world literature expanded the boundaries of material aesthetics as much as Rozanov, and perhaps none of the versions of the immortal psalm “Let every breath praise the Lord” sounded so reverently intimate... If you listen to Rozanov’s brilliant chatter, to his unique voice, then in the melody of his speech you can hear a hymn to the Creator... Even if he was “blind in religion” (Fr. G. Florovsky), even if he was a semi-atheist (although he wrote “on religious topics” for more than forty years), in him, somehow apart from him, immortal praise of the Lord was sung and sung (as in Pushkin’s poetry, but in Pushkin it is completely different - harmonious and pure). Isn’t this intense experience of life as a great good a kind of ontological proof of the existence of God? With o. For P. Florensky, the situation is more difficult. It is not easy to understand him. But if you read his “lyrical digressions” (in “The Pillar and Statement of Truth”), then no doubt remains that this proud, learned “co-questioner of the world,” a Gnostic and even a magician (N. O. Lossky wrote about his strange insight in his “History of Philosophy”) was also a dreamer. In his monumental work, along with mathematical formulas, quotes in Hebrew, and even excursions into Ossetian linguistics, we read the following: “It was getting dark... And the rain came in bursts. The roof burst into tears in final melancholy and cold despair.” (Precisely, “it was dark” in Florensky.) This is a wonderful example of his unique style, in which the common people, “seminarism” and lyricism are set aside by the most magnificent baroque constructions of the highest style. Rozanov, on the other hand, has a bourgeois or petty-bureaucratic talk, newspaper templates and lyrical sighs, cries... Lyrics of the scientist Fr. P. Florensky feeds on the pathos of friendship (in Rozanov, on the pathos of solitude). Father P. Florensky talks indirectly about some deceased friend of his and quotes the diaries of, perhaps, the same friend (but this remains unclear). From the mentioned diaries we learn that the one who wrote them wanted to go into the world so as not to leave his “sin-bound” comrade. “Enough of platonism,” he exclaims, “if a friend falls, I will fall too” (but with the secret hope of saving him!). The melody of friendship sounds everywhere. The first letter in “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” begins with the appeal: “My meek, my clear!” One of the splash emblems depicts two “cupids” drawing a bow, both of them aiming at each other. The inscription under the “picture” reads: Happy fight. In the central chapter. books (“Friendship”), Fr. P. Florensky talks with admiration about the ancient Orthodox rite of twinning (partly parallel to marriage). From the Gospel he cites those places where it is said that Christ sent disciples in twos (in twos, in dyads). Christ himself is “framed” in “concentric” tapering circles by crowds of people, then by secret disciples, by the twelve apostles, and finally, his beloved disciple remains with him. The Christian early ecclesia is united by universal agape love, but also by individual – physical love. To love all brothers, you must love one in particular. Through one friend God is contemplated. This is pure Platonism (the theme of the dialogue “Phaedrus”). The flame of friendship is a quiet flame of oil. This is again Platonism, Hellenism, and this Hellenistic interpretation of the Gospel is one-sided. But at the same time, there is no doubt that it is friendship (and not marriage, Rozanov would add) that is the grain of the evangelical community, the Christian City of Friends. This friendship is general, but also private: with all the brothers and with one brother (Paul and Timothy). Dyads of spouses were also allowed into this ecclesia (but he does not mention this). Father P. Florensky is a late, autumn Hellenic in Christianity, an “Orthodox decadent.” Berdyaev successfully compares his book to a falling forest in the “golden autumn”. But it’s not for nothing that Father Pavel Florensky’s secret friend exclaims: “Enough with platonism!” And he, a platonist, sympathizes with him. And it is not for nothing that he quotes the truly Christian life of Blessed. John Moschus (from “The Spiritual Meadow”) about how a pure friend went into the world after a sinful friend, and is ultimately saved. This is a parallel to the incident told in the diary (see above). The proud, autumn-cool Fr. In Pavel Florensky one senses not only Hellenic-pagan admiration, but also an evangelical sacrificial zeal, which was not found in Socrates, Phaedrus or Phaedo. The arrow of Christianity ached in the heart of the Greek Fr. P. Florensky, as in the heart of the Jew Rozanov. They are both Christian dreamers. But Christianity is not a dream, and the Church cannot help but distrust this dreaming, and cannot help but condemn the Old Testament, “restoration habits” of Rozanov, or the seductive “accelerated” search for the Third Testament of the Holy Spirit by Fr. P. Florensky (characteristic of his era). But Rozanov’s solitary, involuntary praise of the Lord is the one and only “phenomenon” of Christian poetry. And longing for a friend, pain for a friend - the half-hidden philic pathos of Fr. P. Florensky, this is also Christian poetry, no less reverent than Rozanov’s, although not expressed “in the best words in the best order,” but only barely outlined in the lyrical digressions of “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” What exactly are Rozanov and Fr. P. Florensky spoke to each other in private, we will probably never know. But we know that the Hellenistic Fr. Pavel Florensky confessed and gave communion to the Judaized Vasily Rozanov (just before his death). Rozanov died on January 23, 1919 in Trinity-Sergiev Posad from the consequences of malnutrition, and Fr. P. Florensky (according to data not yet verified) died in a Soviet concentration camp. The agony of Vasily Vasilyevich was painful, but Father Pavel did not die a martyr? Their religious experience was either extra-church or semi-church. But this experience could only be realized in the Christian world. Both were great Christian dreamers, prone to heresy. Both had traits of genius,” both Rozanov, who had spoken out completely, and Fr. P. Florensky, who hid the most important thing. Yes, the first one said everything he could say, and the second one only “let slip” about what he alone knew. 829 S. A. Levitsky 830 . Essays on the history of Russian philosophical and social thought. T. II. XX century 831 Father Pavel Florensky was born in 1882 in Tiflis. He was half-Armenian by origin, but his parents were already quite Russified. Very early, while still in high school, he discovered brilliant mathematical abilities, and graduated from the mathematics department of Moscow University. However, at the University he became so interested in philosophy and theology that he did not accept the offer to occupy the department of mathematics, but entered the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1911 he accepted the priesthood. During his years of study, together with the philosopher Ern, Florensky founded the “Union of Christian Struggle”, which set itself the goal of a radical, essentially revolutionary renewal of the social system, however, not in the spirit of socialism, but in the spirit of Solovyov’s theocracy, with the “free subordination” of the state - the Church. One of the immediate goals of this community was religious revolutionary preaching among workers, which worried the authorities (1904). But soon, not without the influence of the events of 1905, Florensky realized the utopian nature of this undertaking, and the “Union” he founded fell apart. In addition to mathematics and philosophy, Florensky managed to familiarize himself at the University with a number of branches of knowledge (physiology, linguistics, etc.), everywhere revealing phenomenal abilities. He belonged to those richly gifted Russian natures who suffer from an excess of talents and interests. Let us mention that he subsequently published a textbook on dielectrics, 832 which was considered exemplary for a long time. Many called Florensky “the Russian Leonardo da Vinci.” Yet the predominant passion in Florensky was the philosophical and theological passion. Having passed the master's exam, he began to lecture on philosophy at the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1914, he defended his dissertation, published under the title “The Pillar and Ground of Truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy in twelve letters." This book immediately attracted attention and was a great success not only among theologians, but also among wider circles. Unfortunately, war and revolution prevented Florensky from achieving all-Russian glory, which would undoubtedly have awaited him had he been born in a more favorable time. The book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” also attracted attention for its unusual appearance: its stylized font, tastefully executed vignettes, many “notes” worth entire research, unexpected lyrical, almost pathetic digressions, giving way to strict philosophical analysis, or turning into a fiery sermon, all this amazed and interested the reader. The book bears the stamp of the author's undoubted genius. Unfortunately, Florensky was not destined to continue his philosophical and theological activities after the revolution. He remained in Russia and, without taking off his priestly cassock, continued his studies in physics and mathematics. In these areas he became so indispensable that the Soviet government published his textbook and commissioned him to lecture on mathematics and theoretical physics. A whole generation of scientists in the USSR was brought up on the scientific works of Florensky. But in the early 30s, a turning point came in Florensky’s fate. He invariably wore a cassock and refused to renounce the priesthood. Meanwhile, for the young, the figure of the “learned priest” was a temptation. Florensky was offered either to renounce the priesthood, in which case the most brilliant career would open up before him, or to become one of those repressed. He chose the latter. Florensky was exiled to Siberia, where he suffered hunger and hardship. In the 40s he was amnestied, but his creative activity apparently ended. He died in the late 40s. Let us turn to his teaching, which he did not have time to complete, but which was expressed with sufficient clarity by him in the “Pillar”. In the introduction to the book, Florensky writes: “We have philosophized enough about religion and about religion; we must philosophize in religion, plunging into its environment.” This is exactly how his book is structured. Religion for him is more than a “subject,” at least the most important one. He is all in the element of religiosity, and Orthodox Church at that. Numerous references to the writings of the Fathers of the Church, to hagiographic literature, even to iconography, further strengthens this impression of churchliness. And yet Florensky’s thought is so sharp and piercing that it somehow does not fit into the framework of traditional churchliness, despite all the efforts of the author to speak not on his own behalf, but directly on behalf of the Church. The stamp of Orthodoxy in his book is undeniable. But it is equally certain that his fiery thought develops ideas on the basis of Orthodoxy that will seem “tempting” to many. A strange thing: philosophers usually strive to prove the originality of their constructions, even if they are compilers. Florensky, expressing new and bold thoughts, presents them as if they were a long-standing property of theology. Florensky, first of all, is a deep mystic, although he has an excellent command of the gift of acute analytical thought. In the first “letter,” “On Doubt,” he seeks to show that private philosophical thought, if it is deprived of the guiding star of Christian Revelation, inevitably leads to “skeptical hell” and the self-destruction of the mind. The thesis is opposed by the antithesis, the mind is split into contradictions, so that the only way out is “despair.” Only a “feat of faith,” says Florensky, can lead philosophical thought out of the impasse of absolute doubt, and then “through the gaping cracks of reason the azure of Eternity shines,” and “over the destroyed false church of reason the lightnings of true and complete knowledge flash.” Truth is incomprehensible to reason, continues Florensky, although reason brings us to the threshold of Truth. Only faith comprehends the Truth. Being projected onto the plane of reason, he continues, Truth reveals itself to us as an antinomy. “Truth is antinomy.” In other words, Florensky seems to be trying to give an epistemological justification for Tertullian’s “I believe, because this is absurd.” Truth is absurd from the point of view of “pure” reason. Truth is an antinomy for reason wise by faith, while only pure faith comprehends Truth in its pure, consistent essence. Thus, through antinomies that do not end with any reasonable synthesis, Florensky’s path leads to the “feat of faith.” He constantly insists on the duality of the Truth, on its inherent antinomy, and mercilessly denounces all the deceptive claims of reason to possess the Truth “outside the feat of faith.” According to Florensky's teachings, God is absolutely transcendental. The existence of the world cannot be inferred from the nature of God. All creations must be thought of as free, that is, not necessarily coming from God. God might not have created the world; the relative cannot be derived from the Absolute. In these statements, Florensky condemns such attempts by Schelling and Vladimir Solovyov. But, the philosopher continues, since the world was created, God put into it something of his divine essence - emanations of his nature, which he calls “Sophia,” adhering to Solovyov’s teaching, although in a very modified form. Sophia is for him a living connection between God and the world. She is the “whole root of creation,” she is the “primordial nature of creation,” not yet corrupted by sin. Sophia, in a certain sense, “precedes” the world, as before the world, the created “God’s plan for the world.” She is the “Guardian Angel” of the creature, the “ideal Personality of the world.” Moreover, Sophia is the “fourth hypostatic element,” “entering the fullness of the Trinity,” “by the blessing of God.” But regardless of God, Florensky makes a significant amendment, “Sophia has no existence, and crumbles into the fragmentation of a creature.” Here are his thoughts from the chapter “Sophia”. If Sophia is all creation, then the soul and conscience of creation - humanity - is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is humanity as a whole, then the soul and conscience of humanity - the Church - is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is the Church, then the soul and conscience of the Church - the Church of the Saints - is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is the Church of Saints, then the soul and conscience of this Church is the Mother of God, the Intercessor of creation, praying for her before the Word of God. Everything that has been said about the many faces of Sophia also applies to the Mother of God. That is why there are so many revered and miraculous icons of the Virgin Mary: “Unexpected Joy”, “Joy of All Who Sorrow”, “Tenderness”, etc. The chapter about Sophia is one of the most inspired in Florensky’s book. In the spirit of Vl. Solovyov, Florensky brings the concept of Sophia closer to the Church (Bride of Christ) and to the Mother of God as the “bearer of Sophia.” Only in Sofia, by the special blessing of God, is the world united. Being deprived of sophia, it crumbles into decaying atoms, is continuously fragmented in hellish contradictions, and if not for the care of God, it would disintegrate into Chaos, into Nothing. Florensky’s teaching on Saint Sophia, although it follows the traditions of Solovyov, is deeply original and more “Orthodox” than that of Vl. Solovyov, in whose constructions a strong pantheistic element is felt. Florensky's teaching about Sophia served, as is known, as a prototype for the teaching of Father Sergius Bulgakov, who developed this teaching with much greater thoroughness than Florensky. However, the rethinking of Solovyov’s teaching about Sophia in the spirit of his “Orthodoxification” was first developed by Florensky. So, breaking away from Sophia, the human personality loses its connection with God and becomes obsessed with its own lower desires, which easily turn into demonic possession. Then the unity of the personality is violated, the person decomposes alive and is threatened, in the extreme, with spiritual death. If physical death is the separation of the soul from the body, then spiritual death, according to Florensky, is the “separation of the soul from the spirit,” which precedes metaphysical death. Florensky himself testifies that he once experienced this state with extraordinary vividness in a dream. “I had no images, but only purely internal experiences. An impenetrable darkness, almost materially thick, surrounded me. Some forces drew me to the edge, and I felt that this was the edge of God’s existence, that outside it there was absolute Nothing. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I knew that one more moment and I would be cast out into outer darkness. Darkness began to pour into my entire body. Self-awareness was half lost, and I knew that this was absolute, metaphysical destruction. In final despair, I screamed in a voice that was not my own: “From the depths I cried to You, Lord, hear my voice!” My soul then poured out in these words. Someone’s hands powerfully grabbed me, drowning, and threw me somewhere far from the abyss.” The shock was sudden and unexpected. And suddenly he saw himself again in an ordinary environment, in his room. It was as if he had been transported from mystical oblivion into ordinary life. And he felt that he was in the face of the Lord, and woke up covered in cold sweat. Florensky especially insists that any love for creation is possible only through approaching Sophia as the Mother of creation. Only Christianity, he says, gave rise to an unprecedented love for the creature, and inflicted wounds on the heart of the loving pity for the creature. When the dirt is washed away from the soul through a long struggle, he further says, then the creature of God appears before the renewed spiritual consciousness as an original and suffering, and a beautiful and polluted creature, like the prodigal child of God. Florensky’s book is imbued with this loving pity for the creature,” and reading it is useful in the sense that Florensky, like no one else, knew how to expose and humble the pride of reason. He gives a living feeling of the transcendence of Divine Existence, and knows how to “see the world in God.” In addition, reading Florensky’s book provides great aesthetic satisfaction. In the sense of combining the depth and courage of thought with primordial religious experience, it can safely be placed next to St. Augustine’s Confessions 833. Florensky had a great influence on Russian religious thought. Bulgakov completed his evolution “from Marxism to idealism” not without the influence of Florensky, who was his friend and teacher. Following the example of Florensky, Bulgakov returned to the Church and accepted the priesthood. N. O. Lossky also admits that reading “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” contributed to his transition from “abstract religiosity” to concrete churchliness.” The personality and teachings of Father Pavel Florensky have not yet been sufficiently studied. But even now it can be argued that Florensky was one of the most significant figures in Russian religious philosophy of the 20th century. N. M. Zernov 834. Russian religious revival of the 20th century. Ch. IV. The flourishing of literature and art (fragment) 835 The religious awakening that began in St. Petersburg developed in parallel in Moscow, but had less vibrant and less revolutionary forms there. Vladimir Solovyov waged a long and lonely struggle against the hostility of the intelligentsia towards the Church, and left behind him several convinced disciples. Of these, the most famous Muscovite philosophers are Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy (1862‒1905), his brother Evgeniy (1863‒1920) and Lev Mikhailovich Lopatin (1855‒1920). Continuing the traditions of their teacher and friend, they testified by personal example against the deep prejudice of the Russian intelligentsia, which believed that any religion was incompatible with critical reason. At first, like Solovyov, the three philosophers remained lonely figures, but in the first years of the 20th century their influence turned several more young people from among the intelligentsia to Orthodoxy. The brightest of them were Florensky, Ern, Elchaninov and Sventsitsky. The first three come from Tiflis, from “secular” families. Together they began serving the Church, but later their paths diverged. Priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882‒1943) is the most significant of them. At one time at Moscow University, he studied mathematics under the guidance of Professor Bugaev, the father of Andrei Bely, but after graduating from the faculty, he entered the Moscow Theological Academy, after brilliant completion of which he was appointed professor of philosophy (1908). In 1911 he was ordained a priest. In 1914, his book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) was published in Moscow, which began a new era in Russian theology. The main idea of ​​this work is that the truth of dogma can only be known through living religious experience. This statement was associated with the fundamental concept: each person is consubstantial with the other, since he is a creation of the Holy Trinity, the Divine light of which he reflects. 836 Florensky confirmed his philosophical and theological thoughts with examples that he drew from his unusually broad knowledge in the fields of mathematics, medicine, philology, folklore and the occult. Half of the book, a volume of 812 pages, was made up of notes and commentaries, reflecting the truly encyclopedic erudition of the author. Florensky abandoned the theology the Russians had borrowed from the West in the 18th century and reconnected with pre-Petrine traditions, using icons, Russian religious folklore, and art to illustrate Orthodox teaching. 837 As material for an unusual, but at the same time orthodox interpretation of Christianity, he used the latest achievements of European science and thought. Florensky's book revolutionized not only theological thinking, but also the style and form of Russian theological literature. Instead of the prosaic print and dry language common to such publications, he presented his deep reflections on the nature of our knowledge of God in the form of twelve intimate letters to a friend. His theological excursions were accompanied by lyrical digressions, poetic descriptions of the Russian landscape and discussions of personal experiences. The magnificent design of the book spoke of the author's artistic talent. 838 This book immediately placed Florensky among the largest Russian theologians. His further fate was tragic; in 1933 he was arrested and exiled to forced labor camps as a political prisoner, although he was completely alien to politics. He died during the Second World War in one of the camps in Siberia. O. Sergius Bulgakov wrote about him in his obituary: “Of all my contemporaries whom I was destined to meet during my long life, he is the greatest. And the greatest crime is those who raised their hands against him, dooming him to something worse than execution, but to long-term painful exile and slow dying. He walked away, illuminated by the halo of a martyr and confessor of the name of Christ. Father Pavel was for me not only a manifestation of genius, but also a work of art, his image was so harmonious and beautiful. From the outside, he was rather of a delicate and fragile build, but he had great endurance and ability to work, partly achieved through enormous ascetic training. Weak by nature, as far as I remember, he was never sick at all, leading a life full of ascetic deprivation. There was something oriental and non-Russian in his face (his mother was Armenian). Spiritually, I saw in him most of all the ancient Hellene, and at the same time also the Egyptian; he carried both spiritual elements within himself, being as if they were a living revelation. In his appearance, profile, facial structure, lips and nose there was something from the examples of Leonardo da Vinci, which always amazed, but at the same time... Gogol. In a scientific guise, Fr. Pavel was always amazed by his complete mastery of the subject, alien to any amateurism, and in the breadth of his scientific interests he is a rare and exceptional polylogist.... Here he most of all resembles the titanic images of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci and others, maybe also Pascal, and among the Russians, most of all V.V. Bolotov. I knew him to be a mathematician and physicist, a theologian and philosopher, a philologist, a historian of religions, a poet, a connoisseur and connoisseur of art, and a deep mystic. The memory haunts me, and at the same time the omen of future destinies and accomplishments. This is our portrait, painted by our mutual friend M.V. Nesterov (1862‒1942) on May evenings in 1917 in the garden at the house of Fr. Pavel. It was, according to the artist’s plan, not only a portrait of two friends made by a third friend, but also a spiritual vision of the era.” 839 Father Florensky was a genius, an exceptional phenomenon in the history of mankind. In a book dedicated to his memory and published in Paris in 1972 (F. I. Udelov “About Father Pavel Florensky”), the author describes his post-revolutionary activities and his versatile knowledge as follows (pp. 13-14): [The next paragraph is completely repeated in the named book by F.I. Udelov]. “Since 1919 (Fr. Pavel) worked in the field of technology, first at the Karbolit plant, and then at Glavelektro, where he worked on issues of electric fields and dielectrics, which may have been important for the first power plants that were being created then. He had at least 12 certified inventions in chemistry, electrical and other fields. In the early 20s, he was preparing for publication a course of lectures on the “encyclopedia of mathematics.” At the same time he published both “Imaginaries in Geometry” and “Number as Form”. During these same years, I taught a course on ferroalloys at Moscow University. Participated in the first edition of the Great Soviet Technical Encyclopedia, published in 1927–1936, where he participated in a number of departments. According to Modestov, his articles of 1930 show his focus on issues of atomic physics. The first volume of the Encyclopedia contains his articles on asphalt varnishes, asbestos masses and slate; in the 10th volume - about copals; in the 12th - about linoleum. He began publishing in Russian magazines no later than 1903, i.e., while still a Moscow student. In addition to his main works of theological and philosophical content, he had works on electricity, industrial technology, commodity science, astronomy, optics, mathematics, art history, theory of knowledge, perspective painting, folklore, philology and literature. He could speak and write with full knowledge of the matter on issues of medicine, psychopathology, occult sciences, archeology, psychology of vision, the history of ladies' fashion, and the genealogy of noble families. Knew several European and Eastern languages. He read and wrote in Hebrew, Greek and Latin without a dictionary. He translated Kant and the church historian Zom. He published poems in magazines at the beginning of the century (there was also a separate publication: “In the Eternal Azure”).” Of particular significance for Russian culture is the fact that a person who mastered all this diverse knowledge found a true calling in the priesthood, and because of this loyalty to the Church, he suffered a martyr’s death. According to information received from exile, while logging, his head was crushed by a falling tree. Rozanov Vasily Vasilievich (1856‒1919) – Russian religious thinker and literary critic. Works: “Literary Essays” (1892); “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky” (1894, 1902:1906); "Twilight of Enlightenment" (1899); "Religion and Culture" (1899); "Nature and History" (1900); “In the World of the Unclear and Unresolved” (1901); “The Family Question in Russia” (1903); “Near the Church Walls” (1906); "Italian Impressions" (1909); "Russian Church" (1909); “When the bosses left...” (1910); "Dark face. Metaphysics of Christianity" (1911); "Solitary" (1912); "Biblical Poetry" (1912); "Literary Exiles" (1913); “People of the moonlight. Metaphysics of Christianity" (1913), "Mortal" (1913); “Fallen leaves. Box one" (1913); "Among the Artists" (1914); “Fallen leaves. Second box" (1915); “From Eastern motives” (1916‒1917); “Apocalypse of our time” (1917‒1918. Issue 1‒10). The panorama of Rozanov’s perception in the history of Russian thought is shown in the serial publication “Russian Way”: V.V. Rozanov: pro et contra. Book 1‒2. Comp., intro. Art. and note. V. A. Fateeva. St. Petersburg, 1995. We thank V. A. Fateev for his help in preparing materials on Rozanov. Rozanov and Florensky had a very complicated relationship. Rozanov is the author of a newspaper review of “The Pillar...” (Dense book. New time. 1914. February 12 and 23), which we do not place in the Anthology due to excessive saturation with quotes. In his books and unpublished notes, Rozanov conducts a continuous dialogue with Florensky in very confidential intonations, sometimes demanding, but invariably against the backdrop of a clearly felt spiritual kinship. Characteristic in this sense is Rozanov’s unpublished note from 1914, which is quoted by a modern commentator on Rozanov’s works, E.V. Barabanov: “Pavel Florensky is a special person, and perhaps this is characteristic of him. I don't quite understand him. I understand ½, ¾, but in any case, I don’t understand ¼. The most attractive thing about him for me is: a subtle sense of another person, great condescension towards people, and towards everything: towards people and things, great taste. In terms of this superiority of mind and artistry of all nature, he is the only one. Then it’s attractive that he constantly worries about his family. In general, he is not solo, not “I”, but “we”. This is with intelligence and, it seems, distant intentions - excellent, rare and, for me at least, is the main motive of connectedness. In general, we communicate not in “happy” terms, but in “sad” ones. And this is it. In many respects we are opposite to him, but with his vast nature and mind he loves to delve into and work with the opposite.” I find the flaw in his nature to be extreme correctness. He is the right one. Rich. and at the same time correct. There are no “howling winds” in it, the jackal does not sing a “mournful song” in it. It has Caucasian firmness - from the mountains there, and there is no this beautiful, but also crafty “land” of the Russians, in which everything is possible and everything is impossible” (Rozanov V.V. Works: In 2 vols. T. 2: Secluded. M., 1990. P. 650‒651). Without the slightest tension, Rozanov could say: “I met three people smarter, or, rather, more gifted, more original, more original than myself: Shperk, Rtsy and Florensky” (ibid., p. 257). In “Box Two” of “Fallen Leaves” Rozanov recalled Florensky’s remarks. “I heard an amazing judgment from Florensky (1911, winter, December): They are looking for Christ outside the Church, They want to find Christ outside the Church, but we do not know Christ outside the Church, outside the Church there is no Christ, the Church is precisely what gave Christ to humanity” (ibid., p. 445). See also: Rozanov V.V. Thoughts on literature M., 1889. P. 498‒499; Incompatible contrasts of existence. M., 1990. P. 558‒563; Fallen leaves. M., 1992. P. 393. For Rozanov’s topic of Khomyakov, see his articles: Khomyakov. New way. 1904. No. 6; Important works about Khomyakov. New time. 1916. 12 Oct.; Young Moscow Slavophiles before Berdyaev's trial. Bell. 1916. August 26; Religion and nationalism. Bell. 1916. 25 September. Rozanov’s published remark is connected with Florensky’s review “About Khomyakov” (Theological Bulletin. 1916. No. 7) on an extensive work: Zavitnevich V.Z. A.S. Khomyakov. T. I, book. 1‒2. Kyiv, 1902 (first published in the Proceedings of the Kyiv Theological Academy for 1897); T. II. Kiev, 1913. The article by N. Berdyaev, which follows Rozanov’s, is also related to the same plot. Published from the original publication: Bell. 1916. 14 and 22 Oct. Katkov Mikhail Nikiforovich (1818‒1887) - Russian public figure of a conservative direction, publicist, publisher of the Russian Messenger (since 1856) and the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti (1863‒1887). See about him: Kantor V. M. Katkov and the collapse of the aesthetics of liberalism. Question literature. 1973. No. 5. Benkendorf Alexander Khristoforovich (1783‒1844) – count, cavalry general, Russian statesman, chief of gendarmes and chief commander of the III department (since 1826). Participant in the suppression of the Decembrist uprising. Lassalle Ferdinand (1825‒1864) – ideologist of German petty-bourgeois socialism. Organizer and leader of the General German Workers' Union (1863‒1875). ...to the barricades. - a hint at the radicalism of democratic criticism, such as Pisarevskaya (see his early article “Pushkin and Belinsky”, 1865). I. Goldenberg - together with N. Iordansky, published the newspaper “New Day”, where, in particular, Lenin (“On Milestones”) was published. Azef Yevno Fishelevich (1869‒1918) - one of the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, police sext. Exposed in 1908 as a provocateur. ...following Nikita the Pustosvyaty under Peter and Sophia. – Sofya Alekseevna (1657‒1704) – Russian princess, daughter of Alexei Mikhailovich, ruler (1682‒1689). Nikita Pustosvyat - a like-minded person of Archpriest Avvakum, a schismatic agitator, exiled in 1667 and pardoned for his alleged renunciation of the Schism. Executed on the initiative of Sophia on Red Square in 1682. See: Brickner A.G. History of Peter the Great. St. Petersburg, 1882 (M., 1991). pp. 41‒44. Mikhail Fedorovich (1596‒1645) – Russian Tsar since 1613, the first of the Romanov family. Contrat social – social contract (French). Suffrage universel - universal suffrage (French). Andreev Feodor Konstantinovich (1888‒1929) – professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, specializing in philosophy and logic (since 1914), priest (since 1924). The book mentioned by Rozanov was not published. Samarin Yuri Fedorovich (1819‒1876) – Russian historian-Slavic scholar, philosopher, publicist and public figure. One of the ideologists of Slavophilism, as well as one of the initiators of reforms to abolish serfdom in Russia. See research by N.V. Shakhovsky about the Russian publicist, philosopher, publisher Nikita Petrovich Gilyarov-Platonov: [Materials for the biography of Gilyarov-Platonov]. Russian archive. 1889. Book. 3; 1890. Book. 1; 1893. Book. 2.; Russian review. 1895. No. 8‒11; 1898. No. 1‒4; In memory of Gilyarov-Platonov. Revel, 1893; Gilyarov-Platonov on the Baltic issue. Revel, 1893. Pobedonostsev Konstantin Petrovich (1827‒1907) - Russian statesman, conservative publicist. In 1880‒1905 - Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod. Op.: The Great Lie of Our Time. M., 1993. The evolution of Pobedonostsev’s views and a wide panorama of assessments of his role in Russian history are presented in the anthology “K. P. Pobedonostsev: pro et contra” (series “Russian Way”). Moscow collection - Slavophile publications by Ivan and Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov (1846‒1847 and 1852). Pobedonostsev’s collection, published in 1896, fits into this tradition. Rachinsky Sergei Alexandrovich (1833‒1902) – Russian publicist, teacher, professor at Moscow University. Sharapov Sergei Fedorovich (1855‒1911) – Russian publicist. Rozanov was published in his weekly “Russian Labor” (1897‒1899). In "Solitary" Sharapov is characterized as "one of the most honest people in literature." ...in the 60s, the Russian clergy supported Sovremennik. – Rozanov is referring to the era of the invasion of seminarians into Russian secular journalism and literary criticism. Perhaps an allusion to V. F. Ern’s brochure, which had just been published at that time, “Time is Slavophilizing. War, Germany, Europe and Russia" (Moscow, 1915). For the first time: Russian thought. 1917. Feb. For a reprint, see the magazine “Symbol” (1987. No. 20). Published according to the edition: Berdyaev N.A. Collection. op. Paris, 1989. T. 3. P. 566‒579. Berdyaev also owns the article “A. S. Khomyakov as a philosopher” (World of God. 1904. June), which was later included in the book “A. S. Khomyakov" (M., 1912). The dialogue between Berdyaev and Florensky around Khomyakov (1804‒1860) took place against the background of heightened attention of contemporaries to the legacy of the head of the Slavophile movement. At the beginning of the century, Khomyakov’s works were published (Complete collected works: T. 1-8. M., 1900-1904; Works: Book 1-6. Pg., 1915), and at the turn of the century and at the beginning of the 20th century, a whole library of studies on the history of Slavophilism was created (see: Florovsky G. Ways... S. 549‒551). Since A. S. Khomyakov was promoted by the Silver Age to the vacancy of the first Russian professional theologian, the question of the purity of Khomyakov’s Orthodoxy came to the fore. At the very beginning of the article, Berdyaev talks about Florensky’s reproaches to Khomyakov for non-Orthodoxy (“accuses him of Protestant deviation”). Wed. G. Florovsky’s quotation of the opinion of S. N. Trubetskoy: “The theology of Khomyakov and his followers does not correspond to the ancient norms of Orthodoxy and contains a deviation from them, but in the Roman Catholic direction” (op. cit., p. 550). In turn, G. Florovsky speaks of Florensky’s review in critical intonations (op. cit., p. 278). . ..in the legend of the Grand Inquisitor." – On Berdyaev’s special attitude to this text by Dostoevsky, see: Isupov K. G. Romantic of Freedom (Russian classics through the eyes of a personalist). Berdyaev N. A. About Russian classics. M., 1993. P. 7‒22. And yet, the following remark that the path chosen by Florensky “should lead not to Christ, but to the Grand Inquisitor” in the light of one of the latest publications takes on a somewhat unexpected and ominous connotation of a prediction that has come true. It is worth putting side by side Dostoevsky’s “Legend...” and Florensky’s “Proposed State Structure in the Future” (Lit. studies. 1991. No. 3. P. 96‒111; dating from 1933) and realizing them against the background of Plato’s utopia, how the kinship of these projects is revealed, which is not very joyful for the modern reader. To what extent Florensky’s text, created during the years of the Solovetsky martyrdom, really corresponded to his inner convictions, it is, of course, too early to say, just as it is too early to draw even preliminary conclusions from the very fact of publication. Mehler I. (1796‒1838) – Catholic theologian. G. Florovsky also speaks about the similarity of the views of Mehler and Khomyakov (op. cit., pp. 274, 278‒280); he mentioned the book. Mehler “Unity in the Church, or the Beginning of Conciliarity” (1825). See Georges Goyau's excellent book "Moehler", in the series "La pensee chretienne". Parvenu – upstart (French). This is very felt when you read his wonderful book of its kind, “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” See the description of Khomyakov’s personality in my monograph “A. S. Khomyakov.” M. Put, 1912. Catholic modernists thoroughly accuse Protestantism of denying the entire historical development of the Church, that is, they see in it a desire to return to original simplicity. See: Loisy A. L'Evangile et l'Eglise. Out of fear of Catholic magic, Khomyakov at times falls into Protestant moralism. The sacraments acquire from him a more spiritual and moral meaning than a cosmic meaning. Khomyakov's religious consciousness reveals primarily those aspects of the sacraments that are associated with spiritual rebirth, and other aspects that are associated with cosmic transformation are almost closed to him. That in revealing the cosmic nature of the sacraments, the mystery of God's creation is revealed, Khomyakov does not foresee this, it is alien to his consciousness... Khomyakov was even afraid to emphasize the objective-cosmic nature of the sacraments, because he was afraid of that bias towards pagan magic, for which he always accused Catholicism. But too much protest against Catholicism easily leads to Protestantism. It seemed to him more Orthodox, more correct to emphasize the subjective-spiritual side of the sacraments. Here, perhaps, Khomyakov’s lack of sensitivity to the mystical side of Christians was reflected. Cosmic mystery is not at the center of Khomyakov’s understanding of Christianity (Berdyaev N.A.S. Khomyakov, pp. 110‒111). Father P. Florensky now says the same thing in a more scholastic form. And I think that on the question of the sacraments, he is more right than Khomyakov. Chapter X, sec. 3 (1946). Published in the collection: About Russia and Russian philosophical culture. Philosophers (Russian post-October Abroad. M., 1990. P. 253‒255 (fragment). Bulgakov Sergei Nikolaevich (1871‒1944) - the largest Russian theologian of the 20th century, philosopher, historian, critic, public figure. Born into a priest's family. He studied at the theological seminary, which he left after experiencing a religious crisis; continued his studies at Moscow University. He moved from legal Marxism and passion for Kantianism to religious idealism. In 1918 he accepted the priesthood. On January 1, 1923, he was expelled from Soviet Russia. Professor of dogmatic theology and dean of the St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris, a regular author of the magazine “The Path” published by N. Berdyaev, one of the ideologists of the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSCM), a participant in the ecumenical movement. About the life of S. N. Bulgakov, see: Autobiographical notes. Paris, 1946. For lists of his works, see: Sergei Bulgakov. Bibliography. Comp. K. Naumov. Paris, 1984; Theological works. 1986. T. 27. P. 179‒194 (compiled by nun Elena). Among the main works we can list: “Two cities. Studies on the Nature of Social Ideals" (1911); "Philosophy of Economics" (1912); "Non-Evening Light" (1917); "Quiet Thoughts" (1918); the “small” trilogy “The Burning Bush” (1927), “The Groom’s Friend” (1927), “Jacob’s Ladder” (1929); “big” trilogy “On God-Humanity” (Part I: “Lamb of God” (1933), “Comforter” (1936), “Bride of the Lamb” (1945). As noted in many works, Florensky significantly influenced Bulgakov’s sophiology, his philosophy of name, ethics and Orthodox aesthetics. For more details, see “History of Russian Philosophy” by V. V. Zenkovsky (Vol. II, part IV, book VI). In the article “The Corpse of Beauty (About Picasso’s paintings)” (1914) Bulgakov talks about “an artistic illustration to the chapter on Gehenna in the book of Fr. Pavel Florensky” (Bulgakov S.N. Works.: In 2 vols. M., 1993. T. 2. S. 533). Published according to the edition: Bulgakov S. N. Works: In 2 volumes. M., 1993. T. 1. P. 538‒547. For the first time: Vestnik RHD. 1971. No. 101‒102. P.126‒135. Oh, don’t wake up sleeping storms... - the last line of F. I. Tyutchev’s poem “What are you howling about, night wind...” (1836). Elchaninov Alexander Viktorovich (1881‒1934) - Russian religious writer, historian of culture and religion, priest (since 1926), friend of Florensky and author of an obituary essay about the latter’s spiritual mentor - Bishop. Antonia (Florensov) (Path. 1926. No. 4). See S. Bulgakov’s essay about Elchaninov in the book: Priest Alexander Elchaninov. Records. 6th ed. Paris, 1990. pp. 19‒22. Arrogant - from lat. arrogans - arrogant, impudent. ...Shakespeare’s word (Hamlet about Ophelia)... – If Bulgakov means Hamlet’s remark “You dance, you jump, and chirp, and give nicknames to God’s creatures...” (Act III, scene I; trans. M. Lozinsky), then the memoirist’s compliment becomes ambiguous. ... “their works follow them”... – Rev. 14:13 (“And I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Write: From now on blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; to her, saith the spirit, they shall rest from their labors, and their works shall follow them.”) Converting is “conversion” here (from the Latin converto). ...not having here... – Heb.13:14. (In modern translation: “For we do not have a permanent city here, but we are looking for the future”). ...went through our catastrophic era... - In the memoirs “Agony” (1923; first published in the book: Bulgakov S.N. Autobiographical Notes. Paris, 1946. P. 73‒93), the author recalls: “Of my friends, only P.A. Florensky knew and shared my feelings in the consciousness of the inevitable and surrendered to his usual amor fati” (Bulgakov S.N. Christian socialism. Novosibirsk, 1991. P. 310). Infallibititas - infallibility (Latin). The German expression... is “only for those who are not prone to dizziness.” This expression became the epigraph to the second part of L. Shestov’s book “The Apotheosis of Groundlessness” (1905), and it ends with it, which is played up in the response article by N. A. Berdyaev (“Tragedy and Everyday Life”, 1905). Wed. this theme in “Forest Paths” (1950) by M. Heidegger. In our current Parisian endeavor... - In the summer of 1925, the Orthodox Theological Institute arose in Paris in the Sergievsky Metochion, in which S. Bulgakov served as dean and head of the department of dogmatic theology until the end of his life. Lossky Nikolai Onufrievich (1870‒1965) – Russian religious philosopher-intuitionist, historian of Russian philosophy. He graduated from two faculties of St. Petersburg University - physics and mathematics and history and philology. Master's thesis - “Basic teachings of psychology from the point of view of voluntarism” (1903), doctoral dissertation - “Substantiation of intuitionism” (1907). Professor of philosophy at the Bestuzhev Higher Women's Courses and at St. Petersburg University. In exile since 1922. Professor at the Russian University in Prague (until 1942), in 1942‒1945. - in Bratislava. In 1945 he moved to Paris, then to the USA. In the late 40s and early 50s, he was a professor of philosophy at St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary in New York. Works: The world as an organic whole. M., 1917; Basic issues of epistemology. Pg., 1919; Logics. Berlin, 1923; Justification of intuitionism. Berlin, 1924; Free will. Paris, 1927; Types of worldviews. Paris, 1931; Value and being. Paris, 1931; Conditions of absolute goodness. Paris, 1938 (M., 1991); Dostoevsky and his Christian worldview. New York, 1953; A public introduction to philosophy. Frankfurt am Main, 1956; The character of the Russian people. Frankfurt am Main, 1957; Memories. Munich, 1968 (Questions of Philosophy. M., 1991. No. 11‒12); Favorites. M., 1991; History of Russian philosophy. M., 1991; 1992; The doctrine of reincarnation. Intuitionism. M., 1992; God and world Evil. M., 1994; Sensual, intellectual and mystical intuition. M., 1995. In “Memoirs,” Lossky highly appreciated Florensky’s initiatives, especially for the development of the concept of “consubstantially created personalities” (Questions of Philosophy. 1991. No. 11. P. 173). In turn, Florensky, who takes the position of intuitionism on many important issues, cites in “The Pillar...” the materials of the discussion around Lossky’s early book (pp. 644‒645). Throughout his creative career, references to “The Pillar...” became almost a ritual gesture for Lossky’s books. The fragment is printed according to the publication: Lossky N. O. History of Russian Philosophy. M., 1991. P. 201‒220. For the initial publications of the section on Florensky, see: Lossky N. The successors of Vladimir Solovyev. Slavonic Review. 1924. June. S. 92‒109; Path. 1926. No. 14‒28; Memories. Munich, 1968; History of Russian philosophy. London, 1952; History of Russian philosophy. M., 1958. V. Filistinsky - apparently Filipp Andreevich Filippov (born in 1905); see information about him in the book: N. Struve. Russian literature in exile. 2nd ed. Paris, 1984. P. 390. Filistinsky-Filippov is the author of an article about Florensky in the well-known collection “Russian religious and philosophical thought of the 20th century.” (Ed. N.P. Poltoratsky. Pittsburgh, 1975. P. 356‒371). The article ends with words about the significance of Florensky for his century: “The Leonardo of our time.” Another article by Filistinsky was published there - about S. A. Alekseev-Askoldov; its author at the Publishing House named after. A. P. Chekhov (New York) edited books by K. Leontyev, N. Klyuev, O. Mandelstam. My impression of Father Florensky’s face was different: it reminded me of Spinoza’s face. On the history of the reception of the book “Imaginaries in Geometry”, see the article by M. Hagemeister in the journal “Principles” (1993, no. 4. pp. 129‒158). ...called the “Decade...” – The myth according to which Florensky received the nickname “Electropop” from the Bolsheviks (report by V. Ilyin). For information on how Florensky solved complex “technical issues”, see: The Past: A Historical Almanac. M., 1989. T. 2. P. 292‒293. The quote is translated from English. language Note first publishers. Works by S. M. Lukyanov: Poetry of Vl. Solovyova. Bulletin of Europe. 1901. March; About Vl. S. Solovyov in his young years: Materials for a biography” Pg., 1916‒1921. Book 1‒3 (see review by G. Florovsky: Put, 1929. No. 9). Translation of "The Pillar..." into German: Der Pfeiler und die Grund-feste der Wahrheit. N. von Bubnoff, H. Ehrenberg. Ostliches Christentum Documente. Bd 2: Philosophy. Mttchen, 1925. S. 25‒294. See the Russian translation of Ambodik’s book “Daniel de la Feuille. Deviseset emblemes anciennes et modernes.: Ambodik-Maksimovich H. M. Selected emblems and symbols. St. Petersburg, 1913. In the note on p. 644 in his book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth,” Florensky points to a number of Russian thinkers who viewed knowledge as “an act of internal unification of the knower with the knowable.” The quote is translated from English. language Note first publishers. Christiansen Broder (1869‒1968) – German philosopher, representative of the Baden branch of neo-Kantianism. Rodin Auguste (1840‒1917) – French sculptor. Swedenborg Emmanuel (1688‒1772) - Swedish scientist, mystic, philosopher and spirit seer. The title of the book is translated from English. language Note first publishers. Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 45 - c. 127) - ancient Greek academic philosopher and moralist writer, creator of Moralia. Domestic readers are known as the author of “Comparative Lives.” Florensky P. The Pillar and the Statement of Truth. M.: Put, pp. 205‒206. Nikolai Evgrafovich Osipov (1877‒1934) – Russian psychologist, founded (together with N. Vyrubov) the journal “Psychotherapy” (1910‒1914). Interpreted the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky from a psychoanalytic perspective. Works: Psychology of complexes. M., 1908; The latest works of the Freudian school. M., 1909; Revolution and Dream (1931). Scientific works of the Russian People's University in Prague. 1931. T. 4. See about him: Life and Death. Ed. N. O. Lossky. Prague. 1935‒1936. T. 1‒2; Etkind A. Eros of the impossible. St. Petersburg, 1993. See Russian thought. 1917. Feb. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Russian Bibliographical Tut “Pomegranate”. 7th ed. T. 44. P. 144. Quote translated from English. language Note first publishers. Zenkovsky Vasily Vasilyevich (1881‒1962) - Russian religious thinker, historian, theologian, teacher. He studied at Kiev University at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, then at the Faculty of History and Philology. He taught philosophy at the same university. Since 1919 in exile. The initiator of the creation (1923) and until his last days the permanent leader of the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSCM). Professor in Belgrade, then in Prague (Higher Pedagogical Institute), then at the St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris, where he headed the department of philosophy. Priest since 1942. Works: “The Problem of Mental Causality” (1914); "Psychology of Childhood" (1923); “Russian Thinkers and Europe” (1926); “The Problem of Education in the Light of Christian Anthropology” (1934); “The Image of Man in the Eastern Church” (1951); “From the history of aesthetic ideas in Russia (1958); "Apologetics" (1959); “Russian pedagogy in the 20th century.” (1960); "N. V. Gogol" (1961); “Fundamentals of Christian Philosophy” in 2 volumes (1961‒1964). From modern publications: Principles of Christian anthropology. Russian Abroad in the year of the millennium of the baptism of Rus'. M., 1991. P. 115‒148; On the threshold of maturity. St. Petersburg, 1991; F. M. Dostoevsky, Vlad. Soloviev, N. Berdyaev. Russian idea. M., 1992; Apologetics. Riga, 1992; On topics of historiosophy. The Secret of Israel. St. Petersburg, 1993. P. 433‒446; The problem of creativity. N. A. Berdyaev: pro et contra: Anthology. Book I. St. Petersburg, 1994, pp. 284‒305. On the works of Zenkovsky, see: Pashuto V. T. Russian emigrant historians in Europe. M., 1992. P. 121. Published according to the edition: Zenkovsky V.V., prot. History of Russian philosophy: In 2 volumes, 2nd ed. Paris, 1989. T. IL P. 413‒430. John Scotus Eriugena (Erigena, c. 810‒c. 877) is the largest representative of medieval theological thought. Basic cit.: On the division of nature (1867; first published in Oxford, 1681). See about him: Brilliantov A. The influence of Eastern theology on Western in the works of John Scotus Eriugena. St. Petersburg, 1898. At this time, Florensky published the pamphlet “The Voice of Blood” (this was his sermon) in connection with the bloody suppression of the revolutionary movement in Moscow in 1905. Published in Moscow in 1914. The 2nd edition appeared abroad in the 30s. books (phototypically). Initially, the book was called “On Spiritual Truth” (M., 1912), but subsequently, apparently, after defending his dissertation, the last five chapters, which were missing in the first edition, were added to the book. Works by Fr. Mashkin did not appear in print. See the collection “Questions of Religion.” Also in The Pillar and Ground of Truth, p. 619 (note 26); With. 791 (note 835). "Pillar...", p. 608 (note 2). Florensky saw in Khomyakov the influence of ideas about “rule of the people.” "Pillar...", p. 612 (note 4). It should be noted, however, that Florensky cites these “formal” definitions of Solovyov, dedicated to the idea of ​​unity, on two whole pages. "The Meaning of Idealism", p. XXXIV (note 133). I quote from a handwritten copy. Here Florensky comes very close to Dacque - in his very interesting book “Urwelt. Sage und Menschheit" (1927). "The universal roots of idealism", p. 11 (manager ot.). Here Florensky simply follows the remarkable interpretation of the teachings of O. Comte by Vl. Solovyova. Grand Etre Comte... – The mythologeme of the “Great Being” of O. Comte (1798‒1857) and its transformation into a “superman” of Nietzsche or another sense was of particular interest to Russian thought. See, in particular, articles by Vl. S. Solovyov “The Idea of ​​Humanity in August Comte” (1898) and “The Idea of ​​the Superman” (1899); as well as the book by V.I. Yakovenko “O. Comte, his life and philosophical activity" (St. Petersburg, 1894). Discussing the essence of the four-dimensional image of a clan (tribe, people, state, race, humanity), Florensky said: “All these entities, extending four-dimensionally, each have their own form, their own integral appearance, and in appearance he is perceived as a genius or as a guardian angel of the tribe, people, state, race and all humanity. Auguste Comte called the total humanity as a single organism the Great Being - Grand Etre and symbolized it with the image of the Madonna. In icon painting, this Great Being, this eternal, unfading purity, integrity and innocence of the Proto-Image of God’s World, fully expressed in the Heart of the World - the Mother of God, it is presented in the form of an winged, fiery, royal female figure” (Florensky P. A. Analysis of spatiality and time in artistic and visual works. M., 1993. P. 217). For the history of the term, see the works: Gangnus A. A. On the ruins of positive aesthetics. From the history of one term. New world. 1988. No. 9; Lebedev A. A. The Last Religion. Question philosophy. 1988. No. 1. P. 35‒55. Adam Kadmon (Heb. “Adam the Original”) is the absolute spiritual prototype of man in the Judaic mystical tradition. The image of Adam Kadmon is one of the most significant in the works of S. Bulgakov. See about this Gnostic mythologem the article by S. S. Averintsev in the book: Myths of the Peoples of the World: In 2 vols. M., 1980. T. 1. P. 43‒44. "The Meaning of Idealism", p. 67. Maurice Maeterlinck (1862‒1949) – Belgian playwright, poet and thinker. Nobel Prize winner (1911). Works: Complete. collection Op.: In 4 volumes. Pg., 1915; Plays. M., 1958. "Pillar...", p. 788 (note 806). “Opening remarks” (directed by ot.), p. 14. From Florensky and Bulgakov he acquired these amateurish forays into the field of philology, which contrasts sharply with his usual scientific conscientiousness. Kireevsky Ivan Vasilyevich (1806‒1856) - Russian thinker, critic, one of the founders of Slavophilism. See his article “On the Necessity and Possibility of New Beginnings for Philosophy” (1856) in the book: Kireevsky I.V. Criticism and Aesthetics. M., 1979. P. 293‒332. “Introduction” (director), p. 8. There, p. 60. “Introduction”, p. 8. This “deduction” of the trinity, although it wants to be rational and logically convincing (ibid., pp. 48‒49), is essentially formal and therefore does not give anything. The axiom of reality - i.e. “consciousness of the reality of the world manifesting itself to us” (V. Ya. Vernadsky. The problem of time in modern science. Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences. 1932. T. VII, No. 4. P. 517). Florensky discussed the problem of the noosphere in letters with the Russian thinker and historian of science Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863‒1937). See: Perchenok F.F. On the question of interpretation of the concept of “noosphere” (V.I. Vernadsky, P.A. Florensky, I.M. Grevs). P. A. Florensky: Philosophy, science, technology. L., 1989. P. 29‒31; Ventskovsky L. E., Potapenko M. I. Perception of science in Russian cosmism. Scientific and analytical review. M., 1992. Adjacent to this is a series of pages devoted to clarifying the value and meaning of the Christian understanding of the human body. See especially p. 292 et seq. “The Meaning of Idealism”, hand. Ott., p. 68. There, p. 75‒76. Wed. Losev has a very striking development of this teaching in his book “Ancient Cosmos,” which makes us think that Losev was, if not a student, then, in any case, a follower of Florensky. About Losev, see Part IV, Ch. IV. “Universal human roots of idealism” (manufacturer), p. 11. There, p. 344 (almost identical with the words of St. Gregory the Theologian). There, p. 348. Wed: ibid., p. 332 (“The hypostatic system of God’s peacemaking thoughts”). There, p. 288. In these words, Florensky comes very close to revealing “Orthodox cosmism.” For Florensky, “the church pre-exists,” he does not allow the separation of the mystical church and the historical church. “This bottom is the same being,” “the eon preceding the world” (ibid., pp. 337‒338). Ivask Yuri Pavlovich (1907‒1986) – Russian literary critic, poet, cultural historian. Born in Moscow, into an eminent merchant family. He studied in Estonia, his father’s homeland. Graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Tartu. In the 40s he moved to Hamburg, and then, in 1949, to the USA. In 1954 he defended his doctoral dissertation at Harvard “Prince P. A. Vyazemsky – literary critic.” He has taught at the University of Kansas, Washington University, and Vanderbilt University. As a poet and literary critic, he was often published in the New Journal, Gnosis, Vestnik RKhD, etc. Works: poetry collections “North Coast” (1938); "Royal Autumn" (1953); "Praise" (1967); "Cinderella" (1970); "The Conquest of Mexico" (1984); “The Tale of Poems” (1986); the poem “The Playing Man” (1973), as well as the series of articles “Praise of Russian Poetry” (1983‒1987). Y. P. Ivask is the author of the most detailed book to date about K. N. Leontiev, on which he worked a lot in the monastery library on Athos [Konstantin Leontiev (1831‒1891). Life and creativity. Frankfurt am Main; Bern, 1974]. This work by Ivask can be found in the anthology “K. N. Leontiev: pro et contra.” Book I. St. Petersburg, 1995. Despite some differences in views, Yu. P. Ivask maintained relations with Archpriest. G. Florovsky. He was also interested in V.V. Rozanov and P.A. Florensky, as evidenced by the present. Anthology article “Rozanov and Fr. Pavel Florensky." Published by: Vestnik RKhD. 1956. No. 42. P. 22‒26. I am not presenting here the teachings of Fr. P. Florensky. It presents a variety of points of view and is subject to criticism. But its main theme, the theme of friendship, was somehow left unattended. Meanwhile, his analysis of friendship is something of a masterpiece. Books about. P. Florensky are now bibliographically rare. Selected works of V.V. Rozanov appeared in the Chekhov Publishing House in 1956 (with my introductory essay). Levitsky Sergei Aleksandrovich (1910‒1983) – Russian religious thinker, historian of philosophy. Born in Lyubava. Graduated from the University of Prague in 1939. Author of the books: Fundamentals of an organic worldview. Frankfurt am Main, 1947; Philosophy of freedom. Frankfurt am Main, 1947; Essays on the history of Russian philosophical and social thought. Frankfurt am Main, 1968. Published from the source of the same name (Frankfurt am Main: Posev, 1968. P, 140‒145). Florensky’s work “Dielectrics and their technical application” was published in 1924. ...next to the “Confession”... – cf. opinion of B.V. Yakovenko (History of Russian philosophy. Berlin, 1922. P. 111). Zernov Nikolai Mikhailovich (1898‒1980) – historian of Russian thought, theologian. Emigrant since 1921. Graduated from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Belgrade (1925). Secretary of the Russian Student Christian Movement (1925‒1932). The first editor of the "Vestnik RKhD" (1925‒1929). Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University (1932), taught there the history of Orthodox culture (1947‒1956). Principal of the Catholic College of South India and Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Drew. Director of the House of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Macrina in Oxford. Author of books and articles on the history of Eastern theology. Works in Russian: The Universal Church and Russian Orthodoxy. Paris, 1952; Biographies and bibliographies of Russian foreign authors on theology, religious philosophy, Church history and Orthodox culture. Boston, 1973; Sunset years. Epilogue of the chronicle of the Zernov family. Paris, 1981. N. M. Zernov is the editor of the collections “At the Turning Point” (Paris, 1970) and “Abroad” (Paris, 1973). Published according to the publication: Zernov N. Russian religious revival of the 20th century. Per. from English 2nd, corrected. ed. Paris, 1991. pp. 112‒116, 144. For a detailed analysis of the book, see N. Lossky, “History of Russian Philosophy”, Zenkovsky, “History of Russian Philosophy”, II, p. 415, and in Florovsky, “The Ways of Russian Theology.” Forty years later, his ideas became popular in the West. See: The of art and liturgy as sources of theology (Initiation Theologique), Paris, 1952. Vasily Rozanov, one of the most original writers of the pre-revolutionary era, called Florensky the Russian Pascal, wrote: “Florensky is the leader of the new generation of Russian Slavophiles. Many hearts and minds in Moscow and even in St. Petersburg are under his influence. His knowledge and erudition are colossal, and he burns with enormous enthusiasm for the search for truth. He seemed holy to me, his spirit was so unusual and exceptional” (Spassovsky. V. Rozanov. Berlin, 1933. P. 18). O. Sergius Bulgakov. Priest Fr. Pavel Florensky. 1943 (manuscript).