Patristic anthropology opportunities to form new humanitarian approaches in scientific and educational environment

Abstract

The author notes the growing interest in patristic anthropology in recent decades, emphasizes its contact points with the secular humanities (especially with psychology, pedagogy and philosophy), lack of fundamental contradictions between them and relevance of their concepts, defines the basic coordinates of the problem field of its study and ways to overcome differences. For psychology and pedagogy, the Christian anthropology could become a new coordinate system, in space of which the spiritual content of already established scientific facts and theories will be revealed, the opportunities will occur for moral interpretations of the known phenomena in order to be used for specific real help. This approach allows us to speak about the prospects of the Orthodox psychology and Orthodox pedagogy. According to the author, the potential of Christian anthropology and its potential use in the scientific community are great, but for the development of this area not only intellectual effort of the research team is necessary, but a global rethinking of attitudes of modern society.

Keywords

• patristic anthropology
• the image of man in culture
• the spiritual content of the scientific evidence
• humanitarian crisis