Pavel Florensky and the Future of Thought

Abstract

The article examines the legacy of priest Pavel Florensky in the context of European culture from antiquity to the present day. The dialogue in which Florensky is a perceiving and continuing comrade-in-arms is conducted with Plato, Aristotle, with the Fathers of the Church and Neoplatonists of different eras, with Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz, with mathematicians — from the Pythagoreans to Kantor; Florensky’s thought echoes Kant’s constructions and builds on them. Belonging to the culture of the “Silver Age”, Father Pavel meets Nietzsche at a philosophical crossroads, becomes friends with Andrei Bely, becomes the object of criticism from Fr. Georgy Florov­sky. In the space of Florensky’s creative dialogue and polemics with philosophers and theologians, the essence of his trinitology and sophiology is revealed. The most important property of the heritage of Fr. Pavel Florensky is a combination of traditionalism, consisting in strict adherence to the teachings of the church fathers and the Orthodox tradition as a whole, and freshness of ideas (up to the coincidence with the understanding of contemporary political trends), which is urgently needed in the modern Christian world both in the East and in the West.

Keywords

• theology
• sobornost
• solovyov
• neitzsche
• christology
• trinitology