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The book “Philosophy of the Name” was written by Fr. Sergius during his stay in Crimea (July 1918 - December 1922), apparently in 1920 558. During her lifetime she was not published, with the exception of the first chapter, published in German under the title “Was ist das Wort?” in the collection in honor of T.G. Masaryk (Bonn, F. Cohen, 1930). For this edition, the text of the book’s only publication is taken as a basis: Prot. Sergius Bulgakov. Philosophy of the name. Paris, YMCA-Press, 1953. (Edited and with a foreword by the student of Father Sergius L. Zander). The manuscript, inaccessible to us, is stored in the Bulgakov archive in Paris. The history of the creation of the “Philosophy of the Name” goes back to the disputes about the name of God, which began in Russian monasteries on Athos and spread to Russia. The “Athos” debate was initiated by Schemamonk Hilarion’s book “On the Caucasus Mountains,” which was published three times in the 1900s–1910s; it was dedicated by the author to a description of his own experience of the Jesus Prayer, an experience quite unique in relation to the tradition of Orthodox ascetic mysticism. Namely, comprehending this experience of his, Schemamonk Hilarion places a value-based emphasis on the name of God, repeated by the ascetic, as if seeing in this name the existential center of prayer. The theological content of the book turned out to be reduced to the formula: “In the Name of God God Himself is present - with all His being and all His infinite properties” 559; This thesis appealed to many Athonite monks, who became admirers of Hilarion’s work. However, the “name-slavers” - as they called themselves - were opposed by the inhabitants of Athos, who were more rational and not inclined to get carried away by the idea of ​​divinity, even of the highest name; these “name-fighters” (the nickname given to them by the “name-slavers”) were supported by the Greek Patriarchate, and then by the Russian Synod. The peak of the confrontation, in fact the split, came in 1912. The accusation of pantheism was followed by direct repressions against the “Imyaslavites”: many of them were expelled from Athos and doomed to a miserable existence in Russia. The “imyaslavists” found support among the parachurch intelligentsia: P. Florensky, S. Bulgakov, V. Ern, who came out in their defense, saw imyaslaviya as a new and promising phenomenon. The name-slav movement testified in their eyes to the possibility of experienced theology, a full-fledged spiritual life in Orthodoxy and in modern times, and was a sign of the vitality of the Church. At the same time, name-glorification posed a number of problems for thinkers on the borders of theology, fundamental philosophy and philosophical linguistics. In the books “Thought and Language”, “Names” by P. Florensky, in “Philosophy of the Name” by Bulgakov, in V. Ern 560, as well as in “Philosophy of the Name” by A. Losev, attempts are made to provide a general ideological and philosophical basis for the experience of the “name-slavers”. These works - masterpieces of Russian religious and philosophical thought of the 20th century - are closely connected, however, with the extensive and varied literature that arose around the Athonite Troubles 561. The ideological essence of the Athonite disputes - as it was seen by the “Imyaslavites” - is presented in the writings of Hieroschemamonk Anthony (Bulatovich). In the midst of the controversy, Bulatovich wrote that the thesis “The Name of God is God Himself” was understood by the name-slavers in the sense of the presence of the invoked Jesus in the invoked His Name, they understood this in the sense of the subjective impossibility for the caller to separate the invoked person from his name in the psychophysical act of naming” 562. The speech, according to Bulatovich, was for the name glorifiers about “the inadmissibility for the person praying to separate God from His invoked Name in prayer,” but the rationalist monks reinterpreted this “in the sense of objective inseparability, and found it absurd” 563. The point of view of opponents of the “name-slavers” is unambiguous: “A name is a conventional word, more or less corresponding to the subject about which we want to think; this is a conventional sign necessary for our mind” 564. The view of the “name-slavers,” obviously, allows for a whole range of interpretations – from a kind of “phenomenology of the Name” or even an aspect of the psychology of prayer (see. the above excerpt from Bulatovich’s work) to the complete fetishization of the word in the thesis of the late (1920s) name-glorification, according to which not only “The Name is God,” but also vice versa, “God is the Name.” Philosophers who interpreted the phenomenon of name-glorification were given the freedom to prefer one or another degree of “realism” of the name. And if Florensky demonstrates a mythological (or occult) attitude to the name and the word of language in general, and Losev thinks in the vein of E. Husserl’s phenomenology, then Bulgakov’s approach remains within the boundaries of philosophical metaphysics - Platonic sophiology, which was the ideological platform of his theological and philosophical concepts. Even in the wake of the rapidly developing polemics between the “name-slavers” and “name-fighters” in 1913, Bulgakov wrote the article “The Athonite Case.” According to its author, the events of Mount Athos “after a centuries-long break once again raise the consciousness of the most basic and burning questions of Orthodoxy”; moreover, thanks to these events, in the church consciousness “the question arose about a new dogma” 565 - the dogma about the real existential connection of the name of God with Himself. Bulgakov's interest in imyaslaviya was initially a dogmatic interest; Later, however, he had to raise in connection with this question, in addition to theological and general philosophical ones, also problems of the philosophy of language. Such a broad understanding is due to the fact that the case of the “Imyaslavtsy” was supposed to be brought to the Local Council of the Russian Church in 1917. For this purpose, during the preparation of the Council, a special subcommittee was created (however, it never began work) in which Bulgakov entered as a rapporteur and secretary. We know nothing about the existence of the text of Bulgakov’s failed report. Bulgakov’s concept of language, name and the name of God turned out to be presented in the form of a book “The Philosophy of the Name”. Bulgakov interprets the name-slavic thesis about a certain identity of the name and its bearer in the key of his sophiology: in words, in his opinion, the sophian, spiritual-cosmic plane of existence is revealed. In a number of provisions, Bulgakov’s concept echoes the corresponding ideas of Florensky. And if Florensky’s theory has a more directly intuitive nature - and therefore one can assume its primacy in relation to the “Philosophy of the Name” and influence on Bulgakov’s work 566 - then in terms of the completeness of coverage of the issue, Bulgakov’s book surpasses the content of Florensky’s “Thought and Language”. Thus, Bulgakov poses the problem of speech, which remained outside the consideration of Florensky, and also puts forward the thesis according to which criticism of language is the first and necessary condition for solving the epistemological problem, fundamental to all post-Kantian philosophy. The ideas of “Philosophy of the Name” here intersect with the conclusions of “The Tragedy of Philosophy” - a work created by Bulgakov in the same years. And in an unexpected way, Bulgakov - as the author of "The Tragedy of Philosophy" and "The Philosophy of the Name" - finds himself in a unique place among the thinkers of the 20th century, for whom the problem of being was seen as inseparable from the problem of language (as well as vice versa). Among Western philosophers, we must first name here M. Heidegger; in Russia, such an attitude is represented by the work of M. Bakhtin. “The Philosophy of the Name,” together with Florensky’s philological works, belongs to the literature of Russian symbolism. The idea of ​​the word as a symbol of the signified reality is theologically supported by reliance on the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas about the innermost essence of the Divine and Divine energies addressed to the created world. In particular, according to Bulgakov, the solution to the Athonite dispute consists in recognizing the status of Divine energies, the Tabor Light, for the Divine Names. Bulgakov’s sophiology, present in the “Philosophy of the Name”, also gravitates towards Palamite energyism; Among other sophiological works, Fr. Sergius’s book occupies a very special place in this sense. Bulgakov’s concept of a name also echoes the theory of the icon (see the work “Icon and Icon Veneration” in this volume); Florensky as the author of “Iconostasis” and “Reverse Perspective” immediately comes to mind for a researcher of the creative relations between two leading Russian sophiologists. Bulgakov’s syncretic work, designed to substantiate the Church-Orthodox view of language, is at the same time a vivid example of the “religious-philosophical renaissance” that declared itself in Russia in the first decades of the 20th century. I sincerely thank Yu.A. Shichalin for the assistance provided in the preparation of many notes to this work by S.N. Bulgakov. As the first publisher of Bulgakov’s book, L.A., notes in his editorial preface. Zander, “Post-scriptum to the “Philosophy of the Name,” written in 1942, indicates that this problem remained for Fr. Sergius is alive until the end of his life. And the publication of this book was his ardent desire, which, however, constantly had to be delayed by the fulfillment of other, even more important tasks. These tasks did not give Fr. Sergius had the opportunity to give “The Philosophy of the Name” its final form, and the editor had to deal not only with the coherent text of the main part of the book, but also with a multitude of notes and excursions that had neither numbering nor sequence and were also written on separate sheets of paper” (loc. Paris edition, pp. 5–6). The editor as a whole, apparently, successfully coped with the most complex textual task, but its extreme difficulties nevertheless led to a number of typos, inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies (for which, one must think, Bulgakov’s unprocessed draft itself was partly responsible) that took place in the Paris edition. Not having the opportunity to carry out textual work with the original manuscript, we tried to correct the most obvious of these errors, based on the logic of Bulgakov’s presentation, common sense and grammatical requirements. In addition, as a result of the reconciliation, some errors made by Bulgakov when quoting sources (both in the originals and in translations), and many incorrectly indicated references to the texts of the Holy Scriptures were corrected. Nun Elena. Professor Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov // Theological works. Sat. 27. M., 1986. P. 138. Schemamonk Hilarion. On the Caucasus mountains. Kiev, 1912. P. 16. Ern V. Analysis of the Message of the Holy Synod on the Name of God. M., 1917. Our article “On the philological school of P. A. Florensky” (Studia Slavica Hung. 37, 1991–1992. pp. 113–189) contains a bibliography of the issue of Athonite disputes. Bulatovich A. A brief overview of the dispute about the Name of God on its dogmatic side // Bulletin of Moscow University. Series 9. Philology. 1994, No. 2. P.58. Archbishop Nikon. Money-worshipers. Sergius Lavra, 1914. P.5. Bulgakov S. Athos case // Russian thought. 1913. No. 9. P.37. Florensky's philological ideas could have been known to Bulgakov thanks to the close friendly communication between philosophers in the 10s.