Search Results (23)

“Theosis in Soloviev and Berdyaev” will look at the deification concepts of these Russian philosophers. Deification ideas in both these writers had a strong social side and included a sharp critique of institutional churches. Sources that influenced each author will be examined. In speaking of deification, both thinkers drew upon the philosophy of Jacob Boehme. Both Soloviev and Berdyaev affirmed Orthodox principles but reacted against the authoritarianism of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and wanted the church to return to its legitimate spiritual mission of fostering the Kingdom of God on earth. I first examine Soloviev, reacting, in part, to Jeremy Pilch’s penetrating study of Soloviev’s use of Maximus the Confessor during Soloviev’s middle and late periods. Soloviev pictures deification as a restoration of harmony with God. I argue that Soloviev also drew upon Origen’s concept of apokatastasis, which relates to theosis. Boehme’s philosophy is briefly examined in order to highlight what the two philosophers utilized from him. Berdyaev‘s philosophy is studied, including his usage of Boehme’s notion of the Ungrund. Ruth Coates offers a sophisticated analysis of Berdyaev. I argue that Berdyaev’s work is prophetic rather than Nietzschean. Berdyaev articulates a strongly theistic and anti-Nietzschean philosophy of cooperation with God. For both thinkers, deification is initiated by God, but free human cooperation is required for it to be realized. Both authors assert that Christ made deification possible. Both authors speak of a deification of the flesh, although their meaning is unclear. Full article

This article examines the 1910 philosophical dispute between Vladimir Ern and Semyon Frank in post-1905 Russia as a dispute over the criterion of philosophy itself. The controversy arose in a field where the meaning of “Russian philosophy,” the authority of neo-Kantian nauchnost’ [scientificity], the religious-ontological program of Put’, and the problem of culture had become closely interconnected. The article argues that the central issue concerned what makes a claim philosophical: participation in an antecedent order of being, or conceptual articulation, proof, and universally valid justification. Ern’s intervention is presented as an attempt to reconstitute philosophy through Logos. For Ern, modern rationalism separates the discursive-logical from the “fullness of reason,” producing ratio as an autonomous and ultimately meonic form of thought; Logos, by contrast, names the ontological principle through which thought remains inwardly bound to being. Frank’s response locates the issue in the concept of philosophy itself. While acknowledging intuition, ontologism, and the insufficiency of one-sided rationalism, he insists that every appeal to being becomes philosophical only when it enters the medium of concepts, reasons, and proof. The article argues that the controversy turns on two irreducible conditions internal to philosophy itself: thought must remain faithful to being, yet it must do so in a form through which its claims become philosophically valid. Read in this way, the Ern–Frank exchange discloses a constitutive tension between ontology and conceptual justification, and between historical embodiment and universal validity. Full article

This article explores Vsevolod Meyerhold’s biomechanics as an avant-garde theatrical and anthropotechnical method developed to forge new subjectivity and redefine roles in post-revolutionary society. It delves into early Soviet avant-garde theatre’s emphasis on movement as a core expressive tool and the transformation of the actor’s body into a precise instrument for calibrated gestures. Methodologically, the research is based on cultural studies examining relations between art processes and the functioning of social institutions. The article also analyzes a significant corpus of recently published archival materials related to Meyerhold’s development of biomechanical elements and details the structure of Meyerhold’s exercises and their role in enhancing motor skills and expressiveness on stage. The purpose of this article is to interpret biomechanics in the socio-cultural context of early Soviet times, while also examining it as a complex system transcending mere theatrical training. The key finding of the article is that the development of biomechanics encompassed not only theatrical, scientific, and social aspects but also proved close to the ideas of philosophy of Russian anthropocosmism. Full article

The Book of Changes (Yijing), as a foundational classic of Chinese thought, has been received within the framework of Russian Orthodox theology through a distinctive process of dialectical reconstruction, characterized by both alienation and agreement. This study examines how Russian scholars have translated and interpreted the Yijing, seeking to integrate its impersonal cosmological philosophy into a religious system centered on a personal God. It argues that the religious and philosophical orientations of Russian Yijing studies operate in a dialectical mode: on the one hand, translators employ strategies of alienation to recast the Yijing’s impersonal cosmology as moral or phenomenological notions; on the other hand, through strategies of agreement, they embed its core concepts within the Orthodox theological context, thereby endowing them with renewed universality and practical relevance. By combining textual analysis with philosophical interpretation, the research reveals how the Yijing has been reshaped in Russian cultural and religious contexts. It demonstrates that the transmission of non-Western classics in specific religious environments is not a one-way cultural export, but a dialogical process with local traditions that generates new intellectual forms, thereby offering a valuable case study for cross-cultural religious dialog. Full article

This essay examines the reception of Western mystical theology in early twentieth-century Russian religious thought, showing how leading Russian thinkers—such as Ivanov, Frank, Bulgakov, and Berdyaev—reinterpreted Meister Eckhart’s central categories (Gottheit, Abgeschiedenheit), often in significant conjunction with Nietzschean and Tolstoyan doctrines. It reconstructs a distinctive philosophical current—“mystical anarchism”—emerging at the intersection of apophatic theology, political eschatology, and the critique of violence. Through a detailed analysis of primary texts, the essay argues that Russian philosophers radicalized the doctrine of detachment into a political ontology of freedom, aimed at challenging both metaphysical authority and social coercion. While drawing extensively on negative theological traditions, their most original contributions appear not in strictly speculative or metaphysical terms, but rather in the ethical and political domain. Particular attention is given to Berdyaev’s notion of an “apophatic sociology,” which articulates freedom as the negation of all power of man over man and as the condition of a communal life no longer bound by abstract categories of morality and knowledge. The article concludes that Russian religious thought offers an original contribution to understanding mysticism as a resource for ethical and critical philosophy. Full article

The article is devoted to the analysis of the theological-academic ontological doctrine of the three types of being formulated within the framework of the Russian theological-academic philosophy of the 19th century. The study of this problem in the context of the general analysis of the phenomenon of theological-academic philosophy allows expanding our understanding of the genesis of Russian philosophy and its religious-philosophical component. The main aim of the article is the historical-philosophical analysis (on the material of philosophical courses of Russian theological academies and original works of professors of academies) of the doctrine about three types of being, which was developed within the framework of the theological-academic philosophy in Russia in the 19th century. The set goal is achieved by means of textual and religious analysis methods, as well as historical-functional, historical-genetic, and comparative research methods. The authors conclude that the specificity of theological-academic philosophizing was determined by confessional affiliation and consisted in its theistic form: the transversal theme of all theological-academic interpretations was the problem of being. Thus, theological-academic ontology took the form of the doctrine of God as an absolute being and the world as its derivative. The theological-academic doctrine of the three types of being and the synthesizing function of the absolute in relation to theological and material being cannot be characterized as quite logical and consistent. The notion of God as an absolute being is conditioned by the aspiration of theological-academic philosophers not to go beyond traditional orthodoxy and is one of the main specific features of theological-academic philosophical interpretations of religious consciousness. At the same time, the historical and philosophical analysis of the works of professors from Russian theological academies allows tracing how the powerful ideological and theoretical potential accumulated in Russian theological academies after their reforms in the 19th century contributed to the development of professional philosophy in Russia, the development of a philosophical categorical apparatus and the systematic formation of Russian philosophical thought. The development of this theme responds to the urgent research tasks of the history of philosophy. Further, this topic is very interesting not only for historians of philosophy but also for historians of religion, historians of orthodoxy, and culturologists. Full article

Our knowledge of physics and chemistry is relatively well defined. Results from that knowledge are predictable as, largely, are those of their technical offspring such as electrical, chemical, mechanical and civil engineering. By contrast, biology is relatively unconstrained and unpredictable. A factor common to all areas is the trade-off, which provides a means of defining and quantifying a problem and, ideally, its solution. In order to understand the anatomy of the trade-off and how to handle it, its development (as the dialectic) is tracked from Hegel and Marx to its implementation as dialectical materialism in Russian philosophy and TRIZ, the Theory of Invention. With the ready availability of mathematical techniques, such as multi-objective analysis and the Pareto set, the trade-off is well-adapted to bridging the gaps between the quantified and the unquantifiable, allowing modelling and the transfer of concepts by analogy. It is thus an ideal tool for biomimetics. An intracranial endoscope can be derived with little change from the egg-laying tube of a wood wasp. More complex transfers become available as the technique is developed. Most important, as more trade-offs are analyzed, their results are stored to be used again in the solution of problems. There is no other system in biomimetics which can do this. Full article

It has been nearly 200 years since the Daodejing and Daoist thought was first introduced to Russia in the first half of the 19th century. Although the study of Daoist philosophy and Laozi in Russia started relatively late, the Daodejing has been the most translated classic of Chinese culture in Russia. The early dissemination of the Daodejing in Russia was deeply influenced by the government and religion, and there were some controversial and neglected materials that were difficult to verify due to the lack of documents and manuscripts. For example, the first translation manuscript of the Daodejing in Russia has almost become a rare book that is nearly impossible to find and inconvenient to read; the authorship of the first article introducing Laozi’s thought in Russia remains a mystery; the first complete translation was completed by a Japanese theologian living in Russia, but it has not received enough research attention. The insufficient research on the early dissemination of Laozi studies in Russia has had a negative impact on the studies of Laozi in Russia. Therefore, this paper, on the basis of various documentary and manuscript references, aims to conduct an in-depth analysis of the early dissemination of Laozi studies in Russia, paying particular attention to the three early Russian documents in the 19th century about the Daodejing, namely, the first translation manuscript of the Daodejing, the first article introducing Laozi’s thought in Russia, and the first complete Russian translation of the Daodejing. A detailed review of these three documents can help to correct some misconceptions and misunderstandings of the early dissemination of the Daodejing in Russia, and, to some extent, reveal the early dissemination characteristics of Laozi studies in Russia. Full article

This article is devoted to the study of the entropic orderliness of road safety systems of various dimensionalities. The author’s methodology for quantitative assessment of the quality of the road safety systems is based on the use of information entropy analysis, the essence of which is to assess the significance (or “weights”) of various information-technological stages of the road traffic accident rate formation process. The main emphasis in this paper is on the philosophical interpretation of the results of entropic evaluation of the orderliness of urban road safety systems. The article aimed to philosophically understand the reasons for the diversity in the results of assessing the entropy of road safety (RS) in Russian cities. Within the framework of this goal, the results of the analysis of the state of the issue, ideological approaches and methods for assessing the relative entropy of urban road safety systems were presented. The study was based on analyzing statistics that characterize the processes of the formation of road traffic accidents in Russian cities classified into three groups based on population size. The experimental results obtained were explained from the point of view of human psychology. Rather, results were explained from the perspective of human psychology. The final results of the study once again illustrated the objectivity of Hegel’s dialectical laws and, perhaps, once again shattered illusions about the possibility of achieving high levels of road safety in cities by building rigid systems to regulate the actions of traffic participants. In the author’s opinion, the results of the presented philosophical analysis will be useful to managers specializing in the management of complex systems (not only transport but also other fields) to comprehend the contradictions of the complex nature of humans and the paradoxes of their behavior when their freedom of action is restricted through external control. Full article

The purpose of this research paper is to semantically analyze the concept of transhumanism in the publications of Russian scientists, as well as to study the influence of the idea of transhumanism as the leading philosophy of human improvement on the global differentiation of the world through a comparative analysis of the level of life expectancy in the Russian Federation, the USA, and China. Findings indicate that, in general, when setting the right goals based on the Russian cosmism and transhumanism concepts can and should bring certain positive benefits to humanity. First of all, this involves treatment of incurable and complex diseases and enhancement of human capabilities in space expansion. The scientific contribution and practical significance of the research lie in the development of three exponential models of life expectancy growth in accordance with the indicator of economic development that is based on the gross domestic product per capita level. Full article

This article analyzes the evolution of Pavel Florensky’s teachings about language from the end of the 1910s to the early 1920s in the context of the two lines of influence (Humboldtian–Potebnian and Palamite) on the basis of which this teaching developed. In his reasoning about language, Florensky, proceeding from intuition, declares that there is a rigid connection between the word’s sound/phoneme; its morpheme, etymon, and sememe (the given here and now meaning); and its denotate. According to Florensky, this points to the magicism of the word as such. At the beginning of the 1910s, Florensky, having become a participant in the name-glorifying debates, also adhered to the line presupposing a rigid connection between the word’s sound (the name, which is applied to God), its meaning, and its denotate. All these lines converged in Florensky’s thoughts on the nature of language in the late 1910s and the early 1920s. He turned again to the Humboldtian–Potebnian language scheme but rethought it, speaking of the intentionally charged sememe as the word’s inner form. In texts written in the late 1910s and the early 1920s, we single out two aspects of the understanding of the magicism of the word which were key for Florensky, namely the aspect revealed in the discourse of the independent and autonomous existence of words and names and the aspect presupposing the intentionally willed moment in the phenomenon of the magicism of the word. Full article

Serving as a conceptual introduction to the ARTS special issue, the article discusses the importance of archaic imagery and poetics of a major avant-garde actor who often symbolizes the main axis of Slavic radical modernism in its Avant-garde phase. Kazimir Malevich has widely explored religious archaic imagery in his oeuvre, engaging in a dialog with a historical tradition of representation. The article discusses Malevich’s iconic legacy, zooming in on the philosophy of Malevich’s suprematist imagery of peasants, Orthodox icons, and the ways of visualizing of an inner Hesychast prayer. In this context, the paper also analyzes Russian philosophy of language, imiaslavie and Hesychasm as it stemmed out from the creative perception of Byzantine philosophical lore developed by Gregory Palamas and several other thinkers. Full article

Over the past decades, the achievements in astronomical instrumentation have given rise to a number of novel advanced studies related to the analysis of large arrays of observational data. One of the most famous of these studies is a study of transient events in the near and far space and a search for exoplanets. The main requirements for such kinds of projects are a simultaneous coverage of the largest possible field of view with the highest possible detection limits and temporal resolution. In this study, we present a similar project aimed at creating an extensive, continuously updated survey of transient events and exoplanets. To date, the core of the project incorporates several 0.07–2.5 m optical telescopes and the 6-m BTA telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory of RAS (Russia), a number of other Russian observatories and the Bonhyunsan observatory of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (South Korea). Our attention is mainly focused on the description of two groups of small, wide-angle optical telescopes for primary detection. All the telescopes are originally designed for the goals of the project and may be of interest to the scientific community. A description is also given for a new, high-precision optical spectrograph for the Doppler studies of transient and exoplanet events detected within the project. We present here the philosophy, expectations and first results obtained during the first year of running the project. Full article

“Dao” is not only a core concept in the Daodejing, but is also an important keyword in Chinese classical philosophy. It encompasses the origin of all things in the universe, the laws of nature, and the laws of dealing with the world. A historical review of Russian sinologists’ interpretation and conceptualization of “Dao” reveals the differences in philosophical understanding and translation strategies of those sinologists, and reflects the translation loss and compensation of Chinese classical philosophical keywords in the process of foreign dissemination. During the Imperial Russian Period, researchers regarded “Dao” as the revitalization of religious theology. During the Soviet Period, the aim of the Soviet researchers was to find the struggle between materialism and idealism in “Dao”. In the Post-Soviet Period, researchers gradually threw off the shackles of ideology, and began to conduct more diversified and multi-level research on “Dao” and the Daodejing. This article aims to discuss the research and translation of the Daodejing in Russia, paying particular attention to the dissemination and reception of “Dao” in Russia. It also endeavors to explore the interpretive trends of “Dao” in Russia and highlight the dissemination and understanding of Laozi thought in Russia. Full article

Intercultural theology is increasingly a major subject matter of 21st-century scholarly inquiry. This results in an interreligious discourse and encounter at different levels. However, gone are the days when the aim is to identify or even to fuse certain overlapping magisteria. A linguistic-cultural approach takes us beyond mergers or grand unified theories. To speak of reality as a whole is not to talk about the whole of reality. Creatio continua, the radical newness of each moment and phase unfolds in unpredictable ways. The ecological crisis of planet earth has forced all responsible researchers to engage with the Anthropocene by establishing space for a common earth religion. Through ressourcement, it appears that the sophiology of theologians of the Russian Silver Age (e.g., Solovyov, Bulgakov, and Florensky) can open up a vista in the spirit of aggiornamento to a meta-religious approach recognising the infinite capacity of humanity to transcend particularised religious identities and so belong in different ways too, with, and in God. In the end, sophiology is a form of progressive Christianity that puts together philosophy and faith by promoting an ecological public theology that is concerned about raising society’s awareness about creation as material nature. Full article