The article examines the use of texts by Church Fathers in esoteric constructions, specifically Tertium Organum, an early work of P. D. Ouspensky created in 1911 before his acquaintance with George I. Gurdjieff. The author analyzes fragments from The Philokalia, the well-known collection of texts by Orthodox ascetic writers of the Middle Ages. Despite the difference between the esoteric system developed by Ouspensky and the Orthodox tradition, the esotericist considers it possible to use the texts of this tradition to illustrate (...) and confirm his own constructions. To do this, Ouspensky uses a special strategy of interpretation, which consists of the following: (1) selecting fragments of the interpreted text closest to his own constructions; and (2) rethinking the selected fragments within the framework of these constructions. As a result, the identity of various religious and philosophical traditions becomes vivid; these traditions turn out to be, to one degree or another, imperfect expressions of the doctrine being represented perfectly only in the esotericist’s own work. This strategy leads to the formation of doubles of interpreted texts and, more broadly, doubles of religious traditions to which the texts being interpreted belong. (shrink)

Vladimir Sergeevich Solov'ev was born on January 16, 1853, into the highly educated family of the outstanding Russian historian Sergei Mikhailovich Solov'ev. Solov'ev received his secondary education in the Fifth Moscow Gymnasium, and his higher education at Moscow University. At first Solov'ev studied in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. After three years and eight months there he left the university, but a few months later he stood his candidate's examination for the full university course in the Faculty of (...) History and Philology. At the same time as he was preparing his candidate's examination he audited lectures on theological and philosophical issues at the Moscow Spiritual Academy. (shrink)

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

Wackenroder is a Romantic author of a metaphysical-religious orientation. For him, the creator of art and its most adequate perceiving subject is God. As for art, he sees it as most tightly connected to religion, for both help the human being to rise from the earthly hassle to the heavenly sphere. The art of all times and nations contains a common essence – the beautiful – which is expressed in a variety of ways. Therefore the human being is capable of (...) learning how to see beauty in any art medium. Wackenroder speaks of two symbolic languages that help the human being grasp heavenly matters: the language of nature and the language of art. Creativity is based on inspiration, which is a divine gift. In creating their art artists must begin with nature and present it in a transformed way. The process of creativity begins in the inner world of the artist, when he or she constructs a future painting in its completeness. The contemplation of a work of art is like prayer. Therefore perception of art requires specific training. Before contact with art, the recipient must initiate in him or herself the ability to perceive the beautiful and sublime. The grasping of a true work of art is inexhaustible. Every act of contemplating an artwork reveals to our soul something new. The process of perception of art is enthusiastic in nature; Wackenroder presents it as a confession of our spirit. In his musical aesthetics the place of honor belongs to the spiritual content of music. In painting Wackenroder most highly esteems the pacifying art of Rafael, the allegorical art of Michelangelo, and the cognitive art of Leonardo Da Vinci. (shrink)

In his opening address at a discussion of the book: V. V. Bychkov, N. B. Mankovskaya, and V. V. Ivanov, Trialogue: Living Aesthetics and the Contemporary Philosophy of Art , held on 27 February 2012 at the S. Gerasimov All-Russia State University of Cinematography , the author shows that Trialogue came into existence as a result of interpretation, polemical debate, and further development of ideas formulated in his early fundamental work. The Artistic Apocalypse of Culture . The key idea (...) of both books is V. Bychkov's hypothesis of Culture -post- culture drawn from radical processes that take place in art, aesthetics, and the culture of the last century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It is difficult to do justice to a monumental study such as PJDS in a short review: only time will determine its real significance. We can only offer some preliminary comments, and in spite of anything we have to say, the mere fact that the book contains such a wealth of information justifies for it a permanent place on a bookshelf of a student of medieval thought.The title of (...) PJDS deserves special attention. While we have books on Scotus's theology or particular topics of his thought, there has been no comprehensive study of his "philosophy," seemingly for a good reason: Scotus is clearly a "fundamental" and systematic theologian who simply uses some classic tools of ancient philosophers and some of their texts and ideas as material for his own discussions. So first of all one needs to determine what constitutes "philosophy" in such a case. V. devotes considerable attention to this question, but unfortunately only at the very end of the study, in Part III, which constitutes almost a separate monograph on the historiography of the debate about "medieval philosophy" and Scotus's role in it. Dichotomizing medieval thought into "philosophy" and theology in recent debates comes from the post-Enlightenment habit of seeing "philosophy" , as opposed to "theology," as something positive in itself. In Chapter 14 V. makes a good observation that "philosophy" and "theology" in ancient and medieval thought are simply two systems that can be coherent in themselves but differ fundamentally as far as their premises are concerned. Using the terminology of contemporary hermeneutical-postcritical analysis, one could say that both disciplines are intratextual systems, with their own internal logic but with different "starting points," opened to a conversation ad extra to various degrees. The classification "intratextual system" based on a solid theoretical foundation in the hermeneutical-postcritical tradition would eliminate the unnecessary dichotomy in ancient and medieval thought. Indeed, it is difficult to see why some of Plato's, Aristotle's or Stoic texts should be classified as "philosophy," not to mention those of Plotinus and Proclus that are often clearly "theology." As a whole, V.'s verdict is that Scotus has his own coherent system of thought based on contingency, as opposed to the "necessitarianism" of ancient philosophers. As for the role of "philosophy," V.'s analysis of recent scholarship shows that "medieval philosophy" is often understood as the logical tools in the service of theology: the interpretation that explains the recent interest in the fourteenth-century thought where those tools were best developed.The book in general is quite readable, despite occasional infelicities in the English and some typos. V. employs a variety of styles, from purely scholarly, which includes a straightforward exposition of relevant texts, with some analysis of the diachronic development of issues, to more literary, ornate and emotional. Similarly varied is his presentation of issues: from dry exposition to creating prolonged "mystery plots" that lead to "discoveries." Unfortunately there is also some unevenness in the text flow: from very smooth to abrupt transitions from one statement to another .Although the book will definitely benefit a variety of readers, the exact readership is difficult to pinpoint. Some sections, such as the extended discussion of distinctions and relations in the section on logic, presuppose a very basic audience; often much of the material from previous sections is repeated . Yet other sections presuppose a rather sophisticated reader who is familiar with the context of the discussion and is able not only to follow but also anticipate the author's train of thought.PJDS provides an excellent coverage of Scotus's work, with one notable exception: the Reportatio tradition. Even though the Wolter/Bychkov edition-translation of Rep. I-A appeared perhaps.. (shrink)

The essay is devoted to the reconstruction of the philosophy of art of Novalis, one of the prominent German Romantics, who presents it in his writings in a fragmentary way. Research of this type appears in scholarly literature for the first time; it utilizes a complex philosophical-aesthetic method of analysis of texts of the German thinker. Novalis appreciates art as one of the highest achievements of humanity, which elevates the human being from ordinary life to spiritual heights. Art is a (...) free expression of the artists' Ego. Art is simultaneously a “self-contemplating and a self-creating nature.” The creative principles of nature are transformed within the spiritual world of the artist and express themselves in art. The secrets of nature are revealed to the artist. The artists sees something great in the least significant things. The beautiful is the object of art and this creates kinship between all types of art. Artists (including painters) do not imitate the external world but they create by means of their internal world. All types of art gravitate towards mutual harmony and foreshadow a synthesis of the arts of sorts. Novalis positions poetry above all other arts. This is because according to him poetry establishes heavenly wisdom on earth, elevates the human being over everyday life, and serves as the foundation for all other arts. Philosophy is internally linked to poetry and serves as its theory. The philosopher must be a poet. The poet lives a special, contemplative life and is a wise and prophetic person. Novalis imagines the future Romantic age as fabulous, magical, poetic, ironic, alogical. “Intelligent chaos” will play a specific role in it. All earthly will be elevated to the heavenly. Novalis considers the novel as one of the principal forms of Romatic poetry and presents its chief characteristics. (shrink)

The article discusses the aesthetic aspects of the symbolology introduced by the Byzantine author of the Corpus Areopagiticum that was signed in the name of the pupil of the Apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. The symbolology is understood to mean knowledge of both symbols and symbolic type of consciousness and worldview, which is implicitly present in Dionysius's works. Based on the analysis of the Corpus texts, it is shown that all levels of symbol theory developed by Dionysius—like likenesses, unlike likenesses, (...) apophatic naming, and sacral-liturgical symbolism—have an aesthetic coloration. The symbolology of the Areopagitica gave a powerful impetus to the development of European theological aesthetics and the artistic practice of the Christian culture for many centuries, in Western Europe as well as in the Byzantine Empire and medieval Russia. (shrink)

The phrase combining the terms κάλλ0ς and ἀπoρρoή to my knowledge does not occur anywhere else in the Greek Corpus in the context of contemplating a beautiful beloved. Achilles Tatius therefore must be making an allusion to Plato. This can hardly come as a surprise considering that Phaedr. 251, which describes the influence of the appearance of beauty on the soul of the lover, is one of the most famous and widely known Platonic passages. However, the context within which these (...) two allusions to Plato are introduced deserves attention. Adding a certain learned touch to the description of erotic episodes in his novel, Achilles Tatius presents a ‘scientific’ explanation of the mechanism of visual perception. The consistency of both accounts suggests that he draws on some scholarly theory of vision which was part of his general educational background. But, unlike the above mentioned allusions, this theory is hardly Platonic. (shrink)

A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology presents for the first time in English key passages from the Summa Halensis, one of the first major installments in the summa genre for which scholasticism became famous. This systematic work of philosophy and theology was collaboratively written mostly between 1236 and 1245 by the founding members of the Franciscan school, such as Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle, who worked at the recently founded University of Paris. Modern scholarship has often dismissed (...) this early Franciscan intellectual tradition as unoriginal, merely systematizing the Augustinian tradition in light of the rediscovery of Aristotle, paving the way for truly revolutionary figures like John Duns Scotus. But as the selections in this reader show, it was this earlier generation that initiated this break with precedent. The compilers of the Summa Halensis first articulated many positions that eventually become closely associated with the Franciscan tradition on issues like the nature of God, the proof for God’s existence, free will, the transcendentals, and Christology. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the ways in which medieval thinkers employed philosophical concepts in a theological context as well as the evolution of Franciscan thought and its legacy to modernity. A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology is available from the publisher on an open-access basis. (shrink)

One of the important theological issues for ancient and medieval thought was to account for the existence of evil. Augustine provided an aesthetic explanation: evil exists for contrast, to let the good stand out more prominently. Thus, just as a painting that uses both dark and bright colors, the universe that contains both good and evil is beautiful as a whole. The argument was debated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Alexander of Hales, as well as the Franciscan tradition in (...) general, strongly supported the Augustinian position. The article discusses a previously unknown debate between Albert the Great and Bonaventure about this issue and suggests that Bonaventure is defending his fellow-Franciscan Alexander. (shrink)

R. Pasnau once commented that the present-day academic area of cognitive theory suits medieval thought better than epistemology. The comment seems to the point, and the focus of R. Cross’s book is thus appropriately placed. Scotus’s theory of cognition is worth a new treatment both because Scotus represents a new stage in medieval cognitive theory and because his positions are “sometimes rather fluid” and “not always as clear”. This lack of clarity extends to the most important subject in this book, (...) such as various aspects of the issue of intentionality, where Scotus’s discussion is... (shrink)

This anthology of philosophical texts by Greek and Roman authors brings together works from the late fifth century BC to the sixth century AD that comment on major aesthetic issues such as the perception of beauty and harmony in music and the visual arts, structure and style in literature, and aesthetic judgement. It includes important texts by Plato and Aristotle on the status and the role of the arts in society and in education, and Longinus' reflections on the sublime in (...) literature, in addition to less well-known writings by Philodemus, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, Augustine and Proclus. Most of the texts have been newly translated for this volume, and some are available in English for the first time. A detailed introduction traces the development of classical aesthetics from its roots in Platonism and Aristotelianism to its ultimate form in late Antiquity. (shrink)

This article analyzes the fundamental aesthetic views of two major representatives of European culture, the Croation Juraj Krizanic and the Moldavian Nicolai Spatarul, who worked in Russia in the second half of the 17th century, and who through their works made it possible for Russian culture of the time to adopt the ideas of Western European aesthetics. (edited).

Intentionality, mental representation, sensory perception and its reliability, sensory illusions, and the concomitant issue of epistemological skepticism are becoming an important cluster of related topics in research on medieval cognitive psychology. It is no wonder, because these topics are much more relevant to present-day discussions of cognition and sensory perception, as many of these issues remain unexplained to this date, and therefore any observations in these areas could still be of interest, while many other topics traditionally discussed in studies on (...) medieval philosophy have only historical value and gradually fade into oblivion. Although the two publications included in this review are not... (shrink)

The present text is Letter No. 187 written for the Trialogue Project, whose first volume, containing 170 letters, was published in Moscow in 2012., Addressed to Nadežda B. Mankovskaya and Vladimir V. Ivanov, the letter uncovers the chief line of the artistic symbolism in a monumental film tetralogy by Aleksandr Sokurov, a famous Russian filmmaker. The author shows how through the artistic interpretation of such historical personalities as Lenin, Hitler, and Japanese emperor Hirohito as well as such cultural-mythological characters as (...) Faust and Mephistopheles, the film director reveals varying aspects of the social display of an irrational element of Power. (shrink)

The author analyzes artistic symbolization as the process by which the artist creatively embodies metaphysical reality in the work of art and evokes a spiritual and emotional response in the recipient.

The tendency to question the accuracy of sensory perception is found in various medieval theological traditions, including Franciscan and Islamic. In both these traditions, the source of the idea that we cannot trust our sensory perception seems to have been the Greek commentaries on Aristotle. However, both traditions go beyond ideas contained in Greek Aristotelian literature and independently develop similar arguments and come to similar conclusions about the reliability of sensory perception.

This essay provides a conceptual account of contemporary aesthetics defining it as post-nonclassical. The author shows that this aesthetics, which is the direct consequence of the current state of a technogenic, globalizing civilization and is its self-consciousness, is composed of three parts: classic aesthetic metaphysics; opposed to it nonclassical aesthetics, which emerged on the base of a verbal fixation on twentieth-century art practice ; and aesthetic virtualistics, which generalizes the experience of emerging digital and network art experiments. The author introduces (...) the basic aesthetic vocabulary specific to each of the constituent parts of contemporary post-nonclassical aesthetics. (shrink)

Исследование иллюстрируется примерами анализа самого современного искусства в сферах живописи, театра, кино, литературы.

Franciscan thought in the 1300's, starting with Duns Scotus, is quite a revolution in terms of a shift to relying on sensory and phenomenal experience in the construction of cognitive theories.1 However, we do not yet understand the full extent of its convergence with modern and contemporary thought. In what follows, we intend to advance this understanding. The experiential tendency in early fourteenth-century thought is undermined by a Cartesian-style doubt about the reliability of sensory perception and phenomenal experience that stems (...) from the 63rd proposition of the Condemnations of 1277, which rejects the thesis that "God cannot produce the effect of a secondary cause without the secondary cause itself":2 a... (shrink)

The subject of the study is the aesthetics of early Friedrich Schlegel. In his aesthetics, Schlegel continues the traditions of German classical philosophy, focusing special attention on the principles of the beautiful and sublime in art. Schlegel considers beauty, like morality, to be inherently inherent in a person who, along with the moral, has an "aesthetic imperative". As a "transcendental factor", beauty is based on disinterested pleasure and represents an ideal that ancient Greek art approached at one time, and the (...) aspiration for which modern art lacks so much. The highest beauty is organic like nature; two main "elements" make up the essence of beauty: "phenomenon" and "good". The beautiful in its broad sense also encompasses the sublime. Schlegel pays special attention to the ugly as an aesthetic category opposed to the beautiful and sublime, and gives an outline of the future theory of the ugly. He connects the ugly with the animal nature of man and shows that it is based on the disgusting, painful, monstrous, "beggarly chaos" of being, manifesting an absolute denial.  The central aesthetic principles – the beautiful and the sublime – are opposed by two types of the ugly: the own ugly and the "sublimely ugly". Schelling considers art to be one of the main components of culture as a humanitarian factor and sees three types of culture: natural, organically growing on the basis of mythology, artificial, created on the basis of reason according to aesthetic laws and aesthetic, which means a special emphasis in culture on aesthetic essence, on artistry. Schlegel is convinced that further positive development of culture and art is possible only under the guidance of the "correct" aesthetic theory, the beginnings of which he learns from his contemporaries. (shrink)

The issue of why God, the Trinity and Christ in Christianity can be called "beautiful" has been muddled in literature on theological aesthetics. John Duns Scotus’s detailed discussion of relations within the Trinity helps resolve this issue. The Trinity can be called "beautiful" in at least three senses, depending on whether one considers Trinitarian relations at all, whether one looks at the relation of equality, or whether one analyzes relations of origin.