Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2019)
The conception of crisis and ways of overcoming it in P. A. Florensky’s works
Abstract
This article deals with an important period in priest Pavel Florensky’s life, when all his fundamental religious, philosophical, and theological conceptios were formed. The beginning of this period is associated with a deep internal crisis experienced by Florensky in 1899. His memoirs and correspondence of 1900‒1904 reveal the essence of this crisis, which consists of two main aspects, i.e. the belief in the inferiority (non-viability) of the scientifi c worldview that excludes religion, and an experience of certain internal irrational processes manifesting themselves in fear, mental and spiritual disorder. Both these aspects were reasons for Florensky’s religious conversion. He perceived religion, fi rst of all, as a means of establishing an internal existential “order” in man. In this regard, the article draws attention to the special importance for Florensky of his acquaintance with works of Vladimir Solovyev and to the significance of his personal communication with Boris Bugaev (Andrey Bely) and Vyacheslav Ivanov. The article reveals the reason why Florensky fi rst developed critical attitude to some views of Solovyev and studies in detail the process of Florensky’s dealing with the “historical” Orthodox church in Russia. Based on the facts collected, a conclusion is made that Florensky found accord with his internal condition in Andrey Bely’s emotions and in Vyacheslav Ivanov’s works. This being said, his discord with A. Bely was due not only to his communication with D. Merezhkovsky and to his later fondness for anthroposophy, but rather to the discrepancy in the understanding of the signifi cance of mysteries (sacraments) in human life and in overcoming the internal and global crisis. In this regard, Vyacheslav Ivanov came to be almost unanimous with Florensky. In his conception of “homo liturgius”, Florensky processed and developed in a creative way Vyacheslav Ivanov’s ideas, according to which the personal internal crisis and its consequences can be overcome by those means and instruments that have been developed in the religious cult in the course of the history of humankind.
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