THE RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE
WHAT IS RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY?
So we pose the question: what is Russian philosophy? It’s not an easy question, so let’s try to get to the bottom of it.
Initially it is necessary to say that Russian philosophy is inseparably connected with Orthodoxy. This connection has been constantly stressed by Russian philosophers. Let us refer at least to the statement of V.V. Zenkovsky, “Russian thought has always (and always has been) connected with its religious environment, with its religious ground; here was and is the main root of peculiarity… of Russian philosophical thought” .
Nowadays in the Russian philosophical literature there is an obvious idea that the connection of Russian philosophy with Orthodoxy (“with its religious elemen”) does not testify to its originality: Russian philosophy is permanently connected with the Western philosophy, it is a stage of its development . On what grounds is such a point of view put forward?
The authors of this approach think that Russian philosophy interacts not with canonical, strict Orthodoxy, but with its innermost core, which is Gnosticism. (For example, as I.I. Evlampiev states, “the constant gravitation of Russian philosophy and of all Russian culture toward the Gnostic worldview is beyond doubt. This fact for a long time did not receive due recognition in literature only because of the well-established tendency characteristic of church and Orthodox-oriented authors” .)
Such scholars believe that the Gnostic mindset has been intensively consolidated in the West since the late Middle Ages: Bernard of Clairvaux, Meister (Johannes) Eckhart, etc., and hence Russian philosophy is related to Western philosophy. But what is Gnosticism?
Gnosticism is a complex phenomenon and not fully defined. According to the German-American philosopher Hans Jonas, an authority in this field, “we can speak of Gnostic schools, sects and cults, Gnostic works and doctrines, Gnostic myths and speculations, and even of Gnostic religion” . Jonas concludes that Gnosticism is a peculiar fusion of Hellenistic philosophy and Eastern origins, and notes that “in general, … the thesis of an Eastern (oriental) origin of Gnosticism has the advantage over … a Hellenic origin” .
Thus, Gnosticism is respective a mysticism that came from the East. And what is mysticism?
Mysticism is a set of ideas about the direct connection of man with sacred beginnings . This connection provides man with a breakthrough from the earthly, corruptible world to the divine, incorruptible world, and thereby getting rid of the earthly world, getting out of it.
Mysticism lies at the heart of all religions (this is pointed out in the works of famous researchers of mysticism: E. Underhill, R. Otto, S. Katz, K. Schmidt and others), but especially Orthodoxy as the Eastern Church. Moreover, in Orthodoxy mysticism essentially merges with canonical theology.
Thus, according to V.N. Lossky, “Eastern tradition has never drawn a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology, between … the experience of knowing the Divine mysteries and the dogmas approved by the Church” .
In Orthodoxy, mysticism is primarily represented by Hesychasm.
The homeland of Hesychasm is Byzantium. The most famous Byzantine Hesychists are St. Macarius of Egypt, Diadochus of Photicia, Gregory of Sinai, Isaac the Syrian, and Gregory Palamas. On the basis of Byzantine Hesychasm began to develop in Russia. Therefore it is quite true the statement of V.N. Lossky that “Russian Christianity is of Byzantine origin” and has together with it a homogeneous character of “spiritual familism” .
The basis of Hesychasm is the ascetic practice of inner (silent) prayer, called Jesus prayer, or Mind prayer.
Prayer aims at gaining, storing, and transmitting the experience of unity of a Christian with God. This unity is the attainment of the Holy Spirit by the grace of God. It is a gift of God.
The Christian’s union with God is the union of the energies of the total (whole, in the terminology of the Hesychists) – body-soul-spiritual – of man and the energies of God, which appears as the growth of the energies of man by God’s Grace in the sequence: corporal – mental – spiritual.
In this case, according to Gregory Palamas, the energies of God surpass all the energies of man, “not only because He is their cause, but also because the accepted is always only a tiny fraction of His gift” .
The interaction of the energies of man and the energies of God is called synergy. Synergy provides man to overcome the burdens of earthly life and even death itself. Such overcoming is salvation. (“Salvation” is a concept extremely important in Orthodoxy. In fact, the whole life of an Orthodox person is work, which, by the Grace of God, can lead a person to salvation. And this work, as has been wisely observed, consists in “the transformation of the heart” [Macarius of Egypt].)
Hesychasm determined in Russian philosophy its pronounced anthropologism, metaanthropologism. S.S. Horuzhy points out this.
Horuzhy emphasizes that, thanks to Hesychasm, in Russian philosophy “man becomes being…; being becomes human… (There arises. – A.K.) a mutual belonging of man and being. The reality of events, taken in the horizon of this mutual belonging, (it is possible. – A.K.) to call it the reality of man…” .
Having the closest connection to the Byzantine mystical-philosophical tradition, above all through Hesychasm, Russian philosophy has always tried to find its own identity in it, to find its own face in it – not by excluding Byzantism, but by mastering and transforming it.
And this face, this “I” of Russian philosophy was predetermined by the peculiarity of Russian culture (in essence, Russianness), about which G.V. Florovsky shrewdly wrote.
According to Florovsky, Russian culture (Russianness) consists of two cultures, as if they were on two floors. On the lower floor there is a culture coming from paganism. Florovsky calls it the “night” culture. On the upper floor is the culture coming from Christianity (Orthodoxy), designated by the scholar as the “day” culture. According to Florovsky, “the ‘night’ culture is the area of dreaming and imagination”, it manifests itself “in an insufficient ‘spiritualization’ of the soul, in an excessive ‘soulfulness’ or ‘poeticism’. “’Day’ culture (is. – A.K.) the culture of spirit and mind. When we speak of “day” culture, “we are talking about spiritual sublimation and the transformation of the mental into the spiritual” .
Thus, Russian philosophy’s acquisition of its face, its identity, had two stages. The first stage was the acquisition of itself on the level of “night” culture: soulfulness, and the second stage was the acquisition of itself on the level of “day” culture: spirituality. It is important to remember that spirituality in Russia from ancient times was understood as a moral feat: service to creation and opposition to destruction (destruction) .
And now, taking into account all of the above, we can try to answer the question: “What is Russian philosophy?”
I think that in the most generalized, summarized form the answer to this question will be as follows: Russian philosophy is the solution to the moral problem of victory over death. (L.V. Karasev writes very precisely about this: “There is no problem of Russia, there is a problem of overcoming death” .)